Iranian Alert -- November 15, 2003 -- IRAN LIVE THREAD

The US media almost entirely ignores news regarding the Islamic Republic of Iran. As Tony Snow of the Fox News Network has put it, “this is probably the most under-reported news story of the year.” But most American’s are unaware that the Islamic Republic of Iran is NOT supported by the masses of Iranians today. Modern Iranians are among the most pro-American in the Middle East.

There is a popular revolt against the Iranian regime brewing in Iran today. Starting June 10th of this year, Iranians have begun taking to the streets to express their desire for a regime change. Most want to replace the regime with a secular democracy. Many even want the US to over throw their government.

The regime is working hard to keep the news about the protest movement in Iran from being reported. Unfortunately, the regime has successfully prohibited western news reporters from covering the demonstrations. The voices of discontent within Iran are sometime murdered, more often imprisoned. Still the people continue to take to the streets to demonstrate against the regime.

In support of this revolt, Iranians in America have been broadcasting news stories by satellite into Iran. This 21st century news link has greatly encouraged these protests. The regime has been attempting to jam the signals, and locate the satellite dishes. Still the people violate the law and listen to these broadcasts. Iranians also use the Internet and the regime attempts to block their access to news against the regime. In spite of this, many Iranians inside of Iran read these posts daily to keep informed of the events in their own country.

This daily thread contains nearly all of the English news reports on Iran. It is thorough. If you follow this thread you will witness, I believe, the transformation of a nation. This daily thread provides a central place where those interested in the events in Iran can find the best news and commentary. The news stories and commentary will from time to time include material from the regime itself. But if you read the post you will discover for yourself, the real story of what is occurring in Iran and its effects on the war on terror.

I am not of Iranian heritage. I am an American committed to supporting the efforts of those in Iran seeking to replace their government with a secular democracy. I am in contact with leaders of the Iranian community here in the United States and in Iran itself.

If you read the daily posts you will gain a better understanding of the US war on terrorism, the Middle East and why we need to support a change of regime in Iran. Feel free to ask your questions and post news stories you discover in the weeks to come.

If all goes well Iran will be free soon and I am convinced become a major ally in the war on terrorism. The regime will fall. Iran will be free. It is just a matter of time.

PS I have a daily ping list and a breaking news ping list. If you would like to receive alerts to these stories please let me know which list you would like to join.

SAME TACTICS, NEW TARGET

by Amir Taheri
NEW YORK TIMES
November 15, 2003
ARIS

With the terrorist attack on Riyadh last week, which killed at least 17 people, the Saudis are finally experiencing the nightmare many other Arab and Muslim regimes have already lived through: the Islamist monster they created has turned against them.

The Shah of Iran played Islamists against the left and liberals for 20 years. He was overthrown by an Islamist-led revolution in 1979. President Anwar Sadat of Egypt promoted Islamists against pan-Arabists throughout the 1970's. Islamists murdered him in 1981. Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto of Pakistan gave up drinking and promoted Islamists in the army as a move against leftist and centrist opponents. In 1979 he was hanged by General Zia ul-Haq, the Islamist officer he had put in charge of the army.

What is surprising in the case of the Saudis is that it has taken so long. And what is unknown is whether they will succeed in slaying the monster they helped to create.

The Saudis began to play the Islamist card in the early 1960's, mainly against the pan-Arabist movement led by President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt. When Nasserism ceased to be a threat, in the 1970's, the Saudis used Islamism against the Communist menace from South Yemen and Oman. In 1975, an Islamist member of the royal family assassinated King Faisal, the architect of the kingdom's Islamist strategy. In the 1980's, the king's successors used Islamism to counter the message of the Islamic Revolution coming from Iran.

By the 1990's, the Islamist card was being played against the increasingly liberal aspirations of urban middle classes in the kingdom. The state created a religious police corps known as the mutawwa ("the enforcers") that terrorizes Westernized city-dwellers who might one day want a voice in government.

According to some estimates, the Saudis have spent $100 billion to promote Islamism of various forms at home and abroad in the past two decades. Part of that came from cash collections at mosques, bazaars, schools, hospitals and other public places throughout the kingdom. But the bulk of the money came from the Saudi state.

The first signs of tension in the Saudi state's alliance with Islamists appeared in the wake of the Gulf war of 1990. Islamists were outraged when American troops were welcomed in the kingdom as allies against Saddam Hussein. In 1995, King Fahd formed a Consultative Assembly, whose members he appointed. Although many liberals in Saudi Arabia dismissed the assembly as powerless and ineffective, to many Islamists it was a sign of Westernization.

Islamist resentment of the House of Al Saud has increased with Crown Prince Abdullah's timid but unmistakable efforts to broaden the dynasty's support. The crown prince, who has been in charge of the kingdom's day-to-day government since 1996, has tried to court pan-Arabists, liberals and even some openly secularist figures to balance Islamists. He has created a number of government councils — for economic planning, for example, and for social and youth affairs — which are filled with people that Islamists regard with suspicion.

Their suspicions were confirmed last year when Crown Prince Abdullah unveiled a plan for all Muslim states to establish relations with Israel in exchange for a Palestinian state. To Islamists, this was heresy: any policy short of the total elimination of Israel is a betrayal of their cause.

Undaunted by Islamist attacks, Crown Prince Abdullah has used every suitable occasion to undermine and isolate the Islamist movement. One act that especially antagonized Islamists was the crown prince's decision this year to meet with a group of Shiite leaders to discuss the rights of the Shiite minority as full citizens. Saudi Islamists regard Shiites, who form about 15 percent of the kingdom's population, as heretics. Crown Prince Abdullah, however, has given them seats in the Consultative Assembly and, for the first time, appointed Shiites to senior posts in the civil and diplomatic services.

Islamist anger against the regime rose again when the government launched a crackdown against the more radical elements of the Islamist movement. In the past six months, more than 800 preachers and muezzins have had their government-issued licenses revoked. The number of Islamists purged from the education system is more than 2,000, according to official estimates.

At the same time, a committee, appointed by the crown prince, has started rewriting Saudi textbooks in a bid to expunge themes of hatred against other religions and cultures, especially Christianity and Judaism. That has incensed Islamists who believe that Muslims should regard all non-Muslim faiths as, at best, deviations from the truth and, at worst, as lies spread by the enemies of God.

Islamists are also angered by the announcement last month that the first elections in the kingdom's history will be held next year. Modest in scope, these elections concern only half the seats in the municipal councils. For the first time, however, women may be allowed to vote, something that Islamists see as an outrage in a country where women are not even allowed to drive cars or travel without the written permission of a male guardian.

Two other events may have persuaded Islamists that this was the moment to make a stand against their onetime benefactor.

The first was the invasion of Iraq by the United States, which was accompanied by the announcement that the United States is evacuating its bases in Saudi Arabia. Islamists saw this as a victory, comparing it to the Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon.

Some Islamist strategists believe that the United States, busy in Iraq, will be unable to spare any forces to help its Saudi allies. Thus it is time to fight on local fronts — in Saudi Arabia and Iraq as well as in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The second event that angered the Saudi Islamists was Crown Prince Abdullah's visit to Moscow in September. President Vladimir Putin of Russia is deeply unpopular among Islamists because of Russia's war with Chechnya, which is mostly Muslim. To make matters worse, the crown prince invited Mr. Putin to attend the Islamic summit conference in Kuala Lumpur last month.

The situation has been further complicated by the return to the kingdom in the past two years of an estimated 3,000 former mujahedeen from Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Caucasus. Some returnees have resettled into their original communities. But many more are part of armed terrorist cells that have been behind scores of often unreported attacks that have targeted the government and the expatriate community since last year.

Having at first tried to ignore these cells, the Saudi authorities started dismantling them earlier this year. According to Interior Ministry figures, security forces were involved in 80 operations against Islamists in the past 18 months. More than 100 Islamists have been killed and some 700 have been captured in these operations, according to sources within the ministry.

It is too early to say whether the Saudi regime is truly determined to break with the Islamists, as the Egyptian and Algerian governments did in their time. A real break with Islamists will come when the Saudi leadership offers a new strategy aimed at an alliance with the modernizing forces in the kingdom. That has not happened.

Islamists have little popular support. They are practically shut out of the oil-rich eastern provinces, where Shiites form a majority of the population. They are also regarded as aliens in much of the south, the stronghold of another sect of Shiism. Much of the west, where Mecca and Medina are located, is also hostile to Islamists because a majority of the population are followers of a less radical school of Sunni Islam.

The only part of the kingdom where Islamists have many religious sympathizers is the desert heartland of Najd. But there, too, in a clash between the state and the terrorists, strong tribal links to the Al Saud dynasty could weaken support for Islamists.

The fight between the Egyptian state and the Islamist monster it created lasted 20 years, ending with the latter's defeat. The Algerian state crushed its Islamist monster after 12 years of war. How long the Saudi state may take to kill its monster is anyone's guess. What is clear, however, is that an Islamist defeat in Saudi Arabia, when and if it materializes, could make it easier to cut the hydra's many other heads.

Amir Taheri is co-author, most recently, of "Irak: Le Dessous des Cartes" ("Iraq: The Hidden Story"), published in France.

Copyright 2003 The New York Times

http://www.benadorassociates.com/article/699

State Blasts IAEA on Iran's Nukes

Posted Nov. 14, 2003

By Kenneth R. Timmerman
LIVERMORE, Calif. - The Bush administration is finally taking off the gloves as it prepares for next week's showdown in Vienna over Iran's previously undisclosed nuclear-weapons program.

On Nov. 13, Undersecretary of State John Bolton and his top deputy, Assistant Secretary of State for Arms Control Steve Rademaker, delivered stinging rebukes of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the U.N. nuclear "watchdog," for failing to hold Iran accountable for flagrant violation of its commitments not to develop nuclear weapons.

Iran has "lied repeatedly" to the IAEA, Rademaker told an audience of U.S. nuclear-weapons experts at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Iran claimed that it had never conducted a program to enrich uranium to weapons-grade or to reprocess spent fuel to extract plutonium. When U.N. inspectors found evidence that Iran had done both, Iran's leaders simply changed their story and "lied again," he said.

Despite having discovered previously undeclared facilities suspected of carrying out weapons-related work, the IAEA concluded in a recent confidential report to its board that it had found no evidence of a nuclear-weapons program. That conclusion, Rademaker noted acidly, was "not supported by the IAEA's own report."

The United States believes that the "massive and covert effort" by Iran to develop a wide range of nuclear technologies - from uranium mines to milling plants to a heavy-water plant to a centrifuge-enrichment "cascade" to plutonium reprocessing - "only makes sense as part of a bomb program," he added.

According to the IAEA report, the Iranians showed extraordinary contempt for U.N. inspectors, apparently in the belief they would not be caught in their lies.

Initially they claimed that their entire uranium-enrichment program was indigenous and used no foreign supplies. But when the inspectors found traces of highly enriched uranium on centrifuge parts, the Iranians said the parts were imported and must have been contaminated by the suppliers. Pressed to identify those suppliers, the Iranians replied that they had bought the equipment from "brokers."

"Is it plausible that Iran bought centrifuge components and didnt know where they bought them?" Rademaker asked.

When the IAEA Board of Governers meets in Vienna on Nov. 20, the United States will press members to "declare that Iran is not in compliance" with the treaty, he said. That would mean "referring" Iran to the U.N. Security Council, which would then have to debate whether to take punitive measures against Tehran.

The unusual public criticism suggests that the Bush administration is preparing for another high-profile standoff at the United Nations. But unlike the diplomatic confrontation over Iraq, this time it appears likely that Britain will not join the United States in urging vigorous international action against Iran.

"How many times has [British Foreign Minister] Jack Straw gone to Tehran recently?" one administration official asked Insight. "We get the sense that the British feel they need to show their independence from us on this one."

Straw accompanied his French and German counterparts for two days of talks in Tehran on Iran's nuclear program at the end of October. At the conclusion of those talks, French Foreign Mnister Dominique de Villepin hailed Iran's decision to "come clean" on its previous nuclear-research programs and promised that Europe would assist Iran to acquire "peaceful" nuclear technologies in exchange.

That was the original bargain on which the 1968 Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) was based, Rademaker noted. "Under the NPT, Iran can acquire all the capabilities it needs to produce nuclear weapons," he said.

Former chief U.N. arms inspector and Swedish ambassador Rolf Ekeus urged the United States and other supplier nations to rethink the terms of that pact. In comments at a Livermore conference to commemorate the 50th anniversary of President Eisenhower's "Atoms for Peace" program, Ekeus said there was little justification to spread enrichment technologies to developing countries.

As a condition for providing nuclear-power reactors, he said, supplier nations should provide reactor fuel and take back nuclear waste and either reprocess it or dispose of it themselves.

U.S. nuclear labs currently are exploring new ways of handling nuclear waste, either by mixing it with uranium into a form of fuel known as "MOX" that cannot be diverted to make nuclear weapons or through long-term disposal in deep underground sites such as the $60 billion Yucca Mountain facility in Nevada that has yet to be built.

Siegfried Hecker, a former director of the Los Alamos nuclear-weapons lab, agreed that nuclear-exporting nations should consider new restrictions on future nuclear sales and needed to begin a "global cleanout" of nuclear research reactors which are fueled with weapons-grade uranium. "We should be asking what are the requirements for handling nuclear technologies? Economic stability? Political stability? Technological infrastructure? Membership in the World Trade Organization?"

With rogue nations on the hunt for nuclear weapons and an increasingly jittery public worried about loose nukes and possible nuclear accidents, "The choice in managing nuclear technologies is between peace and prosperity and war and disaster," he said.

Kenneth R. Timmerman is a senior writer for Insight.

http://www.insightmag.com/news/558710.html

Remembering a night of Ramadan prayer in Iran

By Janet Rae Brooks
The Salt Lake Tribune

ISFAHAN, Iran -- I am shrouded in a chador, anonymous in a crowd of women wrapped in identical swathes of black. For hours, the crouched figures around me have been crying and rhythmically beating their chests. Their anguish is raw, seemingly bottomless. But they are not lamenting lost children or dead husbands.
They are grieving for a man who died more than 1,300 years ago.
An Iranian friend had invited me to this special night of Ramadan prayer to commemorate the murder in 661 of the prophet Mohammed's son-in-law Imam Ali. Centuries later, posters sold at kiosks on Isfahan streets portray Ali as a baby-faced man with a sweep of dark hair.
I was on a whirlwind tour of Tunisia, Iran and Pakistan to study how the monthlong fast of Ramadan was observed in the Islamic world. Muslims had been amazed by my interest and generous with their invitations. Tina's eyes had sparkled as she described tonight's prayers as one of her favorite nights of the year.
"We Iranians," she said, "love our martyrs." Late that night, as I approached the illuminated mosque, I heard a voice calling my name.

Only Tina's face showed between the folds of the chador clutched at her throat. Over one arm, she carried another jumble of black. Earlier she had asked if I had a chador, and when I told her I didn't, she had offered to bring one.
"You'll be more comfortable," she said.
I drew the chador around me, securing it over my forehead with a built-in circle of elastic. Tina had correctly assumed I didn't possess the knack of holding a slippery piece of cloth around my head, so she had brought her 13-year-old sister's training chador. Already, the elastic was cutting into my temples.
We joined the crowd streaming into the mosque, a white-domed structure augmented by a ramshackle collection of baked-brick houses.
"Are you a Christian?" asked the imam greeting the throngs entering the mosque.
I hadn't attended a church service in years. My parents had purposely not baptized their children, so we could chose our own religion as adults. I had found this out one day after my friends at school starting talking about their godparents, and I had come home to ask why I didn't have any. But I had studied Scripture every morning at a school in Quebec for several years, and earned a Girl Guide badge that required spotless church attendance for a year.
"Yes," I said.
"Then welcome," he said. "We are a crowd of love."
We climbed the stairs to the darkened women's section above the mosque and knelt on the wood-plank floor where Tina's mother and sister had saved a few inches of space. Soon, the imam's voice boomed over the loudspeakers. Tina leaned toward me every few minutes to translate from his Farsi monologue.
"He just mentioned you," she said. "He said, 'There's a Christian among us.' "
Then a deeper voice began reciting a long prayer in praise of Allah. It went on for more than an hour. Tina knew it by heart. Stanza after stanza, Allah was intoned as "the one who is not obeyed, and then accepts an apology; the one who is hidden and is quite aware; the one who needs no one and nothing."
"That's sad," I said.
"No, it's not," said Tina. "He doesn't need anyone."
When the prayer ended, the lights flicked on and we huddled together to suck oranges and wet our mouths with water. Woozy from the heat, I discretely flapped my chador, which I had put on over my coat. In a country where women are required by law to cover themselves in public with or shapeless robes, a street corner had been no place to remove a coat, even to replace it with a chador.
When the lights dimmed again, Tina indicated she would move off to the left.
The thumping started first. Throughout the mosque, thousands of clutched fists began striking chests. Slowly and rhythmically, right hands beat relentlessly on left breasts.
Tina hadn't mentioned this. The THWACK, THWACK, THWACK was as regular as a heartbeat, as hypnotic as a legion of jack-booted soldiers. My chest reverberated with each pounding.
Then the weeping started. Whimpers at first, then aching sobs and full-throated wails. Just a few hours earlier, Tina had been talking about her boss, her husband, her aching back, her hopes of getting pregnant. Now she and the others seemed to have slipped back centuries.
Should I join in? What do I feel that sorrowful about? Imagine staying up all night to beat your breast in public. I've never wailed like this about anything in my life, even the death of my father. I just don't have it in me. Why don't I? Why do they?
My culture of self-help books and positive thinking offered no touchstones for mass sorrow. On and on it went: THWACK, WAIL, THWACK, WAIL, THWACK, WAIL. I hunkered on the floor, utterly alone amid thousands, feeling as if I had been trapped in some inverse celebration of all the miserable lives and senseless deaths of the eons.
It was after 4 a.m. before we were rummaging for our shoes and fleeing the mosque, Tina fretting about having to get up at 7 to go to work.

Salt Lake City Shia Muslims will mark the same special night of prayer tonight that the writer observed three years ago in Iran. Imam Ali, whom Shia Muslims consider the successor to the prophet Mohammed, was struck on the head by an assassin while praying in a mosque on the 19th day of Ramadan in 661 and died two days later.

http://www.sltrib.com/2003/Nov/11152003/saturday/111119.asp

Iran responsible for TWA 800 tragedy?

November 15, 2003
WorldNet Daily

Few Americans know the Middle East as well as Kenneth Timmerman, author of the eye-opening new book "Preachers of Hate: Islam and the War on America" (Crown Forum). Timmerman, in fact, has been reporting on this part of the world since 1975.

No dilettante, in 1982 Timmerman was taken hostage in Lebanon and spent more than three weeks there in an underground cell. Given his willingness to hit the streets, he has developed excellent sources throughout the Middle East, and his reporting reflects this. "Preachers of Hate" has a scary firsthand freshness about it that few other books about that benighted region can match.

Deeply impressed by the book and Timmerman's other reporting – he also wrote the bold best seller "Shakedown" about Jesse Jackson – I called him this week to see what, if anything, he knew about TWA Flight 800. His response was stunning and adds a new layer of knowledge to an extraordinary episode in American history.

For the record, TWA Flight 800 was destroyed off the coast of Long Island on July 17, 1996. According to the FBI, 270 eyewitnesses would tell its agents they saw streaks of lights ascending from the sea or arching over towards the plane in the seconds before it exploded. Only the uninformed and self-interested continue to believe that those streaks were all optical illusions unrelated to the destruction of the plane.

As it happens, in mid-June 1996 one of Timmerman's sources contacted him with a warning. He told Timmerman that the intelligence service of Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps was planning an attack on an American airliner. The source, who was living in exile, was himself a former member of the Iranian military with access to Iranian intelligence circles. He had been vetted by several U.S, intelligence agencies and found credible.

Two weeks later, the source repeated the warning. Although his information was not precise, he believed that the targeted flight would originate in Athens – as TWA Flight 800 actually did – but he made no mention of missiles and implied that a bomb would be planted on board.

For his part, Timmerman was concerned enough to contact a friend who worked in counter-terrorism at the State Department, and the friend was concerned enough to bring in the FAA. As far as Timmerman knows, nothing came of this warning.

About a week later, or about a week before the destruction of TWA Flight 800, Timmerman's source contacted him with an "urgent" warning. This time, he said, the attack was "imminent." Timmerman alerted a well-placed friend who set up an emergency meeting with a deputy director of operations for the CIA. On this occasion, Timmerman provided the CIA with a written summary of the warnings to date.

Timmerman believes that his warnings were ignored. Indeed, within a week of the meeting, TWA Flight 800 was blown out of the sky. After that tragic event, another Timmerman source – this one from inside the American intelligence community – confirmed that Timmerman's report to the CIA "jibed completely" with what the source and his colleagues had been hearing as well, namely an imminent "Iranian attack on an American airliner." Timmerman was dismayed to hear the Clinton administration claim that it had received "no warning" prior to the plane's destruction. It had likely received several, some possibly more specific than the one he offered.

As I told Timmerman, I am not sure his warnings were ignored. In our book "First Strike: TWA Flight 800 and the Attack on America," James Sanders and I document at least six highly credible sightings of a U.S. Navy cruiser or cruisers prowling up and down the coast of Long Island on that fateful July 17. Even those who had been vacationing on Long Island for years had never seen anything like this before. It has been argued that these cruisers were on some sort of training exercise, but "training" may well have provided the cover for a more substantive mission, just two days before the start of the Atlanta Olympics.

In "First Strike," Sanders and I make the case that the mode of attack was a small plane, perhaps a business-class jet, filled with explosives. If we are correct in this deduction, it might explain why missile-bearing cruisers and U.S. Navy submarines were tracking the JFK flight path off the south coast of Long Island. As Timmerman allowed, "Maybe they did take my warnings seriously."

If Iranian intelligence planned the attack, there is still some question as to who executed it. The fact that the plane was destroyed on July 17 adds a rogue variable to the equation. This past July 17 the major media made no mention of the Flight 800 anniversary, but they did call attention to the fact that the date was posted prominently in public places throughout Iraq. It was – I should say "had been" – Iraq's National Liberation Day, the day the Baath Party took power 35 years earlier, and these are a date-conscious people.

Were Mecca to be bombed on the 4th of July, the disinterested observer would logically conclude that either the USA was responsible or that some provocateur did it to implicate the U.S. The same holds true with the destruction of TWA Flight 800 on July 17. The odds are strong that either Iraq was involved or that the Iranians timed the attack to shift the blame to Iraq. In either case, the timing is not likely to have been coincidental

None of this information seems to have intrigued the bipartisan Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. In its annual reports for 1996 and 1997, the committee made no mention at all of TWA Flight 800, this despite the fact these reports document virtually all CIA activity, from the serious to the trivial.

And the CIA was surely involved with TWA Flight 800. We have long known that the CIA was responsible for the notorious animation that discredited the eyewitnesses. We now know that the CIA had received highly credible warnings before the plane's destruction. The absence of any information at all about the CIA on a still unsolved case cries out for explanation.

A good person to ask might be Sen. John Kerry. He sat on the Select Committee in 1996 and 1997. He has twice on national TV referred to the destruction of TWA 800 as a "terrorist act," and now he is desperately refocusng his presidential campaign.

Senator, what better way to attract national attention than to tell the truth about TWA Flight 800?

http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=35610

Payvand's Iran News ...

11/15/03
EU to tell Powell not to push Iran in the corner
The European Union and the Islamic Republic are to hold the next round of the "comprehensive dialogue" in Tehran on December 15, a sign that Brussels is keen on pursuing the path of dialogue and engagement with Tehran, IRNA reported from Brussels.

Moreover, EU foreign ministers in their meeting with US Secretary of State Colin Powell in Brussels on Tuesday will appear with one common position vis-a-via Iran, said EU sources.

EU foreign ministers will tell Powell that Iran is cooperating very well with the IAEA on its nuclear program and hence there is no need to refer the issue to the UN Security Council.

They will also tell Powell that Iran`s consent to sign the Additional Protocol to the NPT and to suspend the uranium enrichment and processing activities as very important developments and will warn that pushing around Iran could lead to dangerous consequences.

The ministers will inform Powell that the 12 (present and future) EU members on the 35-member IAEA Board of Governors will vote against referring Iran`s nuclear program to the UNSC, according to EU sources.

The IAEA is to present its report on Iran`s nuclear program on Thursday next week.

Washington`s dismissal of the IAEA report on Iran is expected to be raised by EU foreign ministers in the meeting with Powell. John Bolton, the top US arms official on Thursday dismissed the IAEA assessment that there is no evidence that Iran is making nuclear weapons as "impossible to believe".

Transatlantic relations, Iraq, Iran and the Middle East are the topics on the agenda of the meeting between Powell and the EU foreign ministers.

EU sources in Brussels said that relations with Iran are on the agenda of the EU foreign ministers meeting in Brussels on Monday.

"EU ties with Iran are under review for some time. We are at an interesting moment. We are coming to a point where we would be able to draw some positive conclusions," said the sources speaking on the condition of anonymity.

The sources pointed out that IAEA head, Mohammad ElBaradei, has reported that he has found no evidence that the Islamic Republic is building nuclear weapons.

The ministers in particular will exchange views on the declaration by Iran on its decision to sign and ratify the IAEA Additional Protocol, as well as voluntarily suspend uranium enrichment and processing activities.

Last month`s visit to Iran by the foreign ministers of Germany, France and the UK was part of the EU policy and engagement with Iran, noted the sources.

The situation in the Middle East and developments in Iraq are among the topics on the agenda of the two-day meeting of the EU foreign ministers` council.

"Security is a big concern in Iraq. The ministers will be looking at what Europe has always said that there is the necessity to transfer power to the Iraqis themselves as soon as possible. The UN has a vital role in that process," said the sources.

The ministers are expected to adopt conclusions expressing solidarity with Italy after the attack on the Italian barracks in Nassiriya.

They will also discuss the political as well as economic reconstruction of Iraq and the follow-up to the Madrid donors conference.

The Council will discuss the situation in the Middle East in light of recent events, including the formation of the new Palestinian government of Prime Minister Ahmed Qurie.

EU-Israel political dialogue will be held on Monday and the fourth meeting of the EU-Israel Association Council will take place on Tuesday.

The EU ministers will assess the political and security situation in Afghanistan ahead of a donors conference in February.

EU-Russia relations, EU-Africa dialogue, weapons of mass destruction, European Security and Defense Policy, Western Balkans are some of the other topics to be discussed by the Council during the two-day meeting.

The Council will discuss the issue of adding a clause on the non-proliferation of WMDs in all agreements between the EU and third countries.

Moreover, the ministers will prepare for the EU summit to take place in Brussels on 12-13 December.

http://www.payvand.com/news/03/nov/1098.html

Israeli paranoia on Iran 'nukes'

November 15, 2003
By Gordon Prather
WorldNetDaily.com

The Israelis failed to intimidate the Russians and the European Union with threats of what the Israelis would do if "appropriate actions" were not taken against the Iranian nuke program – a program the International Atomic Energy Agency says doesn't exist.

So, Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz met this week with Secretary of State Powell, Vice President Cheney and National Security Adviser Rice, and afterwards held a press conference.

Quoth Shaul: "Concentrated efforts are needed to delay, to stop or to prevent the Iranian nuclear program. I hope that you understand what I said."

Do you understand?

If you don't, it may be because you're too young to remember what the Israelis did just over 20 years ago.

Iraq was soon to begin operating Osiraq – a French-supplied 40 megawatt research reactor.

Since almost 28 pounds of highly enriched uranium had also been supplied by France for use as reactor fuel, Osiraq and all related facilities and operations were made subject to IAEA safeguards.

Bear in mind that it would take at least 120 pounds of weapons-grade HEU to make even one gun-type [Hiroshima] nuke.

Nevertheless, the Israelis claimed to have learned from "sources of unquestioned reliability" that Iraq was producing nukes at the Osiraq site.

So, the Israelis persuaded the Iranians – who were at war with Iraq at the time – to bomb Osiraq,

But, the Iranian raid was only partially successful. So, on June 7, 1981, Israel launched its own pre-emptive strike, totally destroying Osiraq.

The entire civilized world was outraged.

The United Nations Security Council strongly condemned the military attack by Israel, which it considered to be "in clear violation of the Charter of the United Nations and the norms of international conduct." The attack was also "a serious threat to the entire safeguards regime of the International Atomic Energy Agency, which is the foundation of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons."

And, of course, the Security Council was right. Israel was not a party to the NPT, but Iraq was. Furthermore, Iraq was in full compliance with its Safeguards Agreement. IAEA inspectors – on the scene, before and after the attack – insisted that the Iraqis did not then have a nuke program.

We now know that the Israeli "sources of unquestioned reliability" were wrong – and the IAEA was right – about Iraq nuke programs not only at the time the Israelis bombed Osiraq (1981), but also when Clinton bombed Baghdad (1998), and when Bush invaded Iraq (2003).

As for Iran – also a party to the NPT – here are excerpts from a paper written in the aftermath of the Gulf War by nuclear fuel-cycle expert David Albright:

U.S. officials say they have clear indications that Iran wants nuclear weapons. But so far, the U.S. government has failed to identify any clandestine facilities in Iran that might be part of a secret nuclear-weapons program.
U.S. officials say that many Iranian nuclear scientists who left after the Shah was overthrown are returning to the country. Some of them are interested in working on uranium enrichment, others on chemically reprocessing irradiated nuclear fuel to obtain plutonium – both potential routes to bomb material.

Iran has many "hot cells" usable for separating plutonium from irradiated fuel. These were provided by the United States in the 1960s, when it supplied a five-megawatt research reactor to Iran.

One official said Iran is working on laser uranium enrichment – a program also begun under the Shah. But this technology has not progressed far in the West, and the official said he was "not very concerned" about that aspect of Iran's research.

Iran has been under a virtual embargo on nuclear technology since the 1980s, when the United States urged Germany and France not to restart nuclear cooperation with Tehran until "satisfactory reassurances about Iran's nonproliferation credentials are forthcoming."

If Iran's new ambitions are really peaceful, some Western officials have said, they might end their embargo on power reactor technology – after Iran agrees to let the IAEA come in and take a good look around.

Well, Albright wrote that in 1992. Iran now has invited the IAEA to come take a good look around, and it is their confidential report on what they found – and didn't find – that is the cause of current Israeli sound and fury.

The IAEA didn't find any "indications" of an Iranian nuke program.

So, what do you think the odds are that the IAEA is wrong about Iran and that the Israelis are right – for a change?

http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=35615

Nuclear Weapons & Waste: In Depth: Report

Iran Develops Nuclear Technologies in Secret for 18 Years
A report issued by the International Atomic Energy Agency and obtained by NRDC describes technological advances and a policy of concealment.

On November 10, 2003, the International Atomic Energy Agency issued a 30-page confidential report on Iran's nuclear activities. The report, which the agency sent to its board of governors and to 20 governments (NRDC also obtained a copy -- see below), reveals that for the past 18 years Iran has secretly developed technologies for producing weapon-usable highly enriched uranium and plutonium. During that time, the report says, Iran violated its Nonproliferation Treaty obligations and falsified declarations to the agency regarding safeguards required under the treaty.

According to the report, "Iran's policy of concealment continued until last month, with cooperation being limited and reactive, and information being slow in coming, changing and contradictory. While most of the breaches identified to date have involved limited quantities of nuclear material, they have dealt with the most sensitive aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle, including enrichment and reprocessing."

Despite these findings, the report goes on to say that no evidence exists of a current weapons project in Iran, a conclusion that NRDC's nuclear experts dispute. "It's dumbfounding that the IAEA, after saying that Iran for 18 years had a secret effort to enrich uranium and separate plutonium, would turn around and say there was no evidence of a nuclear weapons program," said NRDC nuclear program director Tom Cochran in an interview with The New York Times. "If that's not evidence, I don't know what is."

http://www.nrdc.org/nuclear/iaeairan.asp

November 16, 2003

Does the U.S. really want democracy in the ME? Majid Mohamadi
Long-term commitment to transforming the Middle East and making democracy have never been a pillar of U.S. foreign policy and it is hard to believe that it will be. The U.S. administrations basically do not want democracy
- any reading of it -in the Middle East. There is a huge gap between the rhetoric of democratization and the reality of the United States' actual
policy. The reasons are:

1. The U.S. administrations have been very comfortable living with full or partial autocracies in one form or the other in the region for a long time. They want to deal with one "big" guy or family in every state in the region. They do not want to get involved in working with
democracies due to their complexities in domestic and foreign policies. Do they really want another E.U. when dealing with the U.N. or other international institutions?

2. Democracies are not usually interested in long-term conflicts - other than the U.S.- when they are not directly attacked. How will the U.S. benefit from peace while military production for internal and external needs is one of the most profitable areas for American companies?

3. Supporting democracies is based on understanding and dialogue. The U.S. administrations usually talk the language of power not the language of mutual understanding even with the allies.

4. Local democracies are usually related to international trade. The largest Middle Eastern state, Iran, which has made the greatest genuine strides towards representative government is also under the greatest burden of US trade sanctions (and now Syria). Sanctions have a high correlation with the sanctioned state's policy toward Israel: more enmity toward Israel, more sanctions.

5. Have anyone heard about encompassing and well-funded U.S projects and programs in the area of economics, education and civil society in the region?. Have anyone heard about anything like this in Iran? But we have heard thousands of words and lip services from the U.S. officials about promotion of democracy in Iran. USAID, the National Endowment for Democracy, Middle East Partnership Initiative and the like have usually other intentions, causes and functions than democratization.

6. Is it possible to promote democracy by overthrowing democrats (like coup against Mossadeq)? The U.S. administrations have usually capitulated any democratic movement in the region and radicalized them. Maybe they are seeking the paradox of "democracy without any democratic movement," put aside "democracy without democrats." The U.S. administrations consciously know that every democratic movement in the region would not be pro-U.S. Supporting democratic movements has never been the declared U.S. policy in the region. The U.S. wants clients and not colleagues.

7. If there really were free democracies in the Middle East, the unpopularity of the United States would likely have guaranteed that Washington would never have had any bases or support in the region.

8. The very low credibility of the US in the M.E is an important obstacle for real engagement in democratization from abroad. Even elites and modern strata like technocrats and university scholars and students cannot trust the U.S. administrations.

9. Developing democracy would be very effective through educating people to the real notions of democracy. Have anyone heard about the U.S. support for education in the region? Has the U.S. done anything about the millions of children that have no access to education or depend on the Islamic madrasas for receiving part of their daily nutritional needs?

10. The U.S. administration is not ready to push the democratization process in the region because it knows this could empower the Islamists.

11. No body in the administration talks about constitutional and judicial reforms with resort to civil society institutions but they talk about women's right or liberalization with resort to a mass society approach. Gradual democratization is impossible without constitutional and judicial reform.

12. The U.S. administrations have no idea about the kind of democracy that would fit in the region. Would it be " direct democracy", "guided democracy", "liberal democracy", "religious democracy", etc?

13. They want to sell this idea to the U.S. public that Israel is the only democratic state in the region and this justifies one-sided policy of the U.S. in blinded support for Israel. The non-democratic ME provide a handful of cases for this policy in the West. This is an essential part of the neocons' presentational strategy which tries to
reshape the Middle East in line with Israel's perceived ideological and material needs.

Majid Mohammadi

http://news.gooya.com/english/archives/001816.php

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