[DoctorZIn]

Join Us At Today's Iranian Alert Thread – The Most Underreported Story Of The Year!

"If you want on or off this Iran ping list, Freepmail DoctorZin”

[DoctorZIn]

Join Us At Today's Iranian Alert Thread – The Most Underreported Story Of The Year!

"If you want on or off this Iran ping list, Freepmail DoctorZin”

[DoctorZIn]

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

[DoctorZIn]

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

[freedom44]

http://www.radiofarda.com/transcripts/topstory/2003/11/20031113_0230_0653_1024_EN.asp

US-Based Anti-Regime Activist Proposes Freedom Fund

•Iranians in the US have a net worth of $800 billion, former education minister and anti-Islamic regime activist Manouchehr Ganji tells Radio Farda. He proposes the establishment of a US-based fund to channel donations from Iranians in the US to freedom fighters in Iran. (Firouzeh Khatibi)

Missing Student Activist Calls Home from Jail

•Jailed student activist Ahmad Batebi, who disappeared last week, three days before the end of his week-long furlough, after a meeting with UN Human Rights Commission's Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Opinion and Expression Ambeyi Ligabo, called home yesterday to say that he had been taken to jail in blindfolds. Batebi, was thrown in jail at the age of 22 in the aftermath of the July 1999 student uprising, after a picture of him holding up the bloody tee-shirt of a fellow demonstrator appeared in foreign press. (Farin Asemi)

Angry Demonstrators Clash with Police in Qum

•Demonstrators angered by a widespread rumor about execution of a woman for insulting the holy Qoran, clashed with police, set fire to a bank and broke windows of offices of other banks in the center of Qum. The gathering became political. Demonstrators shouted slogans against the Supreme Leader and President Khatami, after police officers began beating and arresting the crowd, Qum-based reformist commentator and activist Dr. Naser Karami tells Radio Farda. Due to lack of press freedom, any false rumor can spread. (Mehdi Khalaji)

[DoctorZIn]

Salehi Repeats Threat Against Security Council Action

November 15, 2003
AP
George Jahn

VIENNA, Austria - Iran's chief delegate to the U.N. atomic agency said Saturday the United States will fail in its attempt to take his country before the Security Council to face possible sanctions for suspect nuclear activities. Ali Akbar Salehi told The Associated Press that any Security Council involvement "could lead to consequences that none of us would like to witness."

Diplomats fear harsh actions against Tehran could backfire, leading it to renege on promises of cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency and again draw the curtain on Iran's nuclear agenda.

The Bush administration wants Iran declared in violation of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty at next week's IAEA board meeting, a move that would lead to U.N. Security Council involvement and possible sanctions.

Yet most members of the board advocate less drastic measures, the diplomats said, speaking on condition of anonymity - and some added that Washington could back away from its stance.

An IAEA report has found Iran guilty of covering up past nuclear programs - including enriching uranium and processing small amounts of plutonium - that Washington says prove Tehran's intent to manufacture weapons.

The document, prepared for the Thursday meeting of the IAEA's board of governors, lists nuclear cover-ups, some over decades, and suggests they effectively represent violations of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty through "breaches" of safeguards agreements that are part of that treaty.

http://www.phillyburbs.com/pb-dyn/news/93-11152003-196367.html

[nuconvert]

Link to flash movie . (little different than the last one)
Take a look .......

http://www.didgah.com/slide/Ey%20Azadi.html

[DoctorZIn]

This thread is now closed.

Join Us At Today's Iranian Alert Thread – The Most Underreported Story Of The Year!

"If you want on or off this Iran ping list, Freepmail DoctorZin”