Iranian Alert -- February 4, 2004 -- IRAN LIVE THREAD --Americans for Regime Change in Iran

Insight on the News - World
Issue: 02/17/04

Proof That Tehran Backed Terrorism
By Kenneth R. Timmerman

As a former Iranian intelligence officer was providing testimony in a courtroom in Germany detailing operational ties between the September 11 hijackers and the government of Iran, lawyers from the U.S. departments of State and Justice and appeals-court judges in Washington were working hard to overturn a law that has allowed victims of terrorism to sue foreign governments for sponsoring terrorist crimes that have killed Americans.

The measure, known as the "Flatow amendment," was signed into law by President Bill Clinton in October 2000. Terrorism experts believe it has had a sobering effect on terrorist sponsors, including Iran and Libya, because it has made them financially accountable for the crimes of their proxies by awarding damages to victims from frozen assets held in the United States.

The simple message of the Flatow amendment is this: If you direct terrorist groups to kill Americans, you will pay. Damage awards to victims from Iranian government assets in the United States in some 50-odd cases now top $3 billion.

Among those victims have been U.S. hostages held in Lebanon, the families of U.S. citizens killed by Iranian government proxies in suicide bombings in Israel and the Palestinian territories, and the families of the 241 U.S. Marines who were killed when an Iranian government agent rammed a truck full of explosives into their barracks outside of the international airport in Beirut on Oct. 23, 1983 [see "Invitation to September 11," Jan. 6-19].

Now the U.S. government, apparently without the consent or knowledge of the Bush White House, is about to engage in what observers call "an act of unilateral disarmament" that will comfort state sponsors of terror, especially Iran.

"We always knew the State Department was against these lawsuits and tried to scuttle them from day one," a representative of a group of victims' families tells Insight. "At every step of the way, they intervened - whether to block efforts to discover where frozen Iranian government assets were held, or how we could get them released once we found them on our own."

But in the opinion of congressional sources, the attorneys for the victims and the family members themselves, the decision handed down by Judge Howard Edwards of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia on Jan. 16 is an act of judicial activism that violates the will of Congress and delivers an overwhelming victory to terrorist states. "By vacating the Flatow amendment pure and simple, the U.S. government is sending a crystal-clear message to the terrorists: Go right ahead," said one attorney who has followed these cases for several years.

Pleading the case to repeal the law was Peter D. Keisler, an assistant attorney general in the Bush administration. He was assisted by U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Roscoe C. Howard Jr. and Mark A. Clodfelter, a legal adviser to the secretary of state.

"We ran this up the flagpole and went through the whole interagency process before sending our recommendation up to the Solicitor General's Office," an official involved in the litigation tells Insight. "The solicitor general approved our approach and set out the guidelines for our appeal."

If true, that would be astonishing. Barbara Olson, the wife of U.S. Solicitor General Ted Olson, was among those killed during the 9/11 attacks when American Airlines Flight 77 was crashed into the Pentagon by al-Qaeda hijackers. As solicitor general, Ted Olson vigorously has defended every aspect of the U.S. war on terror, including the USA PATRIOT Act and the government's right to detain illegal combatants for indefinite periods without access to counsel. When pressed about who had authorized their appeal, government attorneys interviewed by Insight declined to respond.

Lawyers from the State and Justice departments argued that the law crafted by Congress, and vetted by their own attorneys at the time, allowed victims of terrorism to sue in U.S. courts but not to seek damages because the language provided "no private cause of action against foreign governments." In response to questions from Insight, they insisted that the distinction was not just "splitting legal hairs." But attorneys who helped write the legislation contested that view and revealed that State Department attorneys made last-minute "technical changes" to the bill that required victims of terrorism to sue "officials, employees and agents" of a foreign state, rather than the government itself.

"We had no objection to that change during the conference," one of the attorneys told Insight, "because they are one and the same thing. But what they are saying now is that Congress is a bunch of incompetents who don't know how to draft legislation. We'll be back in a year's time with a much more muscular bill."

These are not lawsuits like any other. They involve U.S. foreign policy, national security and the rights of victims of murderous crimes to seek redress under the law.

What makes the decision by Judge Edwards and the active intervention of the State and Justice department lawyers particularly odious, lawyers and family members of victims tell Insight, is the potential cost in human lives it could entail. As President Ronald Reagan was fond of saying, weakness or the perception of weakness invites attack.

The shabbiest treatment of all was reserved for the families of the 19 U.S. airmen and Air Force personnel who lost their lives when Iranian-backed Hezbollah terrorists drove a truck bomb into the Khobar Towers barracks in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, in June 1996. After keeping them waiting two weeks for their day in court, Magistrate Judge Deborah A. Robinson sent some 100 family members back to their homes around the country in mid-December after she single-handedly attempted to block the testimony of former FBI Director Louis Freeh [see "Is Khobar Towers Testimony Being Silenced," posted Dec. 17, 2003].

Freeh already had testified in open session on Oct. 8, 2002, to the Joint Intelligence Committee about involvement of the Iranian government in the Khobar Towers bombing and told Insight when he first appeared in Robinson's courtroom on Dec. 2, 2003, that he planned to give the same testimony. But Robinson kept disappearing from her own courtroom for brief, unexplained recesses. When she returned, she read out long lists of questions, apparently dictated to her by others, that raised objections to Freeh's testimony and to every other witness the victims' attorneys tried to call. A longtime observer of the court called Robinson's courtroom behavior "disingenuous" and "out of line" and "in violation of federal rules of evidence."

To family members, Freeh had become a hero. "He was the only man in Washington during this whole thing who gave a damn," said Katherine Adams, mother of U.S. Air Force Capt. Christopher Adams, a pilot who had been taking another officer's tour of duty in Saudi Arabia so he could stay home with his wife while she was having a baby. "He was the only man who kept his word to the families, who cared, who met with us. [President] Clinton never did anything, except to show up for a photo op," Katherine Adams says.

When Robinson finally allowed the former FBI director to testify to an empty courtroom on Dec. 18, Freeh got straight to the point. "My own conclusion was that the [Khobar Towers] attack was planned, funded and sponsored by the senior leadership of the government of Iran," he said. Freeh's breathtaking conclusion, and the hard evidence of the Iranian government's role in the attack, is widely seen as far more compelling than the evidence used by the Bush administration to justify the war in Iraq. Making all evidence public could increase pressure on the administration to move militarily against Iran, a step most observers agree the administration would prefer to avoid.

Robinson also took the unprecedented step in a terrorism case of disqualifying the most qualified nongovernmental witness on Iranian government funding of terrorism, Patrick Clawson of the Washington Institute of Near East Policy, in a written order handed down Jan. 27. Clawson has testified in more than a half-dozen lawsuits against the government of Iran, providing hard data culled from Iranian government reports on state budgets allocated to international terrorism. Robinson ordered that his testimony be "stricken in its entirety" because Clawson would not reveal all the sources for his expert opinion on Iranian government sponsorship of terror. Clawson was unable to attend one hearing, an affidavit shows, because he was scheduled for all-day briefings at CIA headquarters in McLean, Va.

Sources familiar with the U.S. government investigations tell Insight that Iran "supplied the explosives" for the 1998 al-Qaeda bombings of U.S. embassies in Africa that killed more than 200 persons, and designated top terrorist operative Imad Mugniyeh as their liaison to Osama bin Laden's groups.

U.S. intelligence agencies consistently have argued that Iran could "not possibly" have a connection to al-Qaeda or to Sunni Muslim terrorist networks because Sunnis and Shias "do not talk to one another." And yet, a handful of intelligence analysts resisted this consensus view and compiled "B-Team" reports on al-Qaeda/Iran contacts for Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and Undersecretary of Defense Doug Feith. After an Oct. 26, 2001, briefing, Wolfowitz expressed astonishment that this information had been kept from him, and he asked to be given more information as it became available. Instead, the Defense Intelligence Agency analyst who compiled the report, Kai Fallis, was fired by his superiors.

"What has been done is incredibly hypocritical," says Stephen Perlis, a lawyer involved in a dozen similar cases, including the original Flatow case. "They used the Flatow amendment to facilitate rapprochement with Libya by resolving the Pan Am 103 case, but now they want to destroy it when it applies to Iran."

As the war on terror progresses, the Bush administration is seeking to put pressure on hard-line clerics in Iran, deter their use of terror, stop weapons of mass destruction and encourage pro-democracy forces - at least, that is what the president says. But the message sent by the repeal of the Flatow amendment, and by the refusal of the State Department to back up the president's promise to support the pro-democracy movement in Iran, suggests a policy process the president does not control, say former National Security Council officials.

http://www.insightmag.com/news/2004/02/17/World/Proof.That.Tehran.Backed.Terrorism-594889.shtml

IAEA Urges Iran To Halt Uranium Enrichment
Gary Fitleberg, 02/04/04

The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) pressed Iran on to suspend more activities related to enriching uranium, a technology that can be used to make nuclear weapons.

"I am advising them that it would be good to have a very generous, comprehensive suspension," Mohamed ElBaradei told Reuters after talks with Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

"That would create confidence and it would help me and the Europeans to move forward in normalizing and expanding cooperation between Iran and the international community."

El Baradei stated IAEA concerns focused on the discovery by agency inspectors in Iran of equipment contaminated with highly enriched uranium, along with continued enrichment-related activities like production of centrifuges.

Iran has blamed the contamination on parts imported from elsewhere without identifying their origin.

Asked about the IAEA's concerns, Kharrazi said: "It's just a question of spare parts or something, it's minor issues."

"We have very good cooperation with the IAEA," he told Reuters. "I believe the important thing is that we do not have any program to produce weapons and this is now established."

U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney, also in Davos, said his country would support European diplomatic efforts to get the Iranians to agree to a more intrusive inspection regime.

"We'll have to see whether or not that produces the desired result. We believe the Iranians have been actively and aggressively pursuing an effort to develop nuclear weapons," Cheney told the conference of political and business leaders.

"They deny that, but there seems to be a good deal of evidence out there to support the fact that that's exactly what they have been doing," he said.

Kharrazi said Iran's nuclear technology was a source of pride for all Iranians. "At the same time it is totally peaceful and nothing is wrong with having nuclear technology for peaceful purposes," he said.

"We have suspended the activities of uranium enrichment, but this does not mean we are going to stop it for ever. This is our right, based on the NPT, to have nuclear activities for peaceful purposes," he said, referring to the provisions in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty for the sharing of nuclear know-how.

France, Britain and Germany, whose diplomacy encouraged Iran to suspend uranium enrichment and sign the NPT's additional protocol permitting intrusive inspections, worry that Iran is reneging on its November pledge to halt all enrichment-related activities in return for a possible exchange of technology.

Western diplomats say Iran has been acquiring large amounts of equipment for centrifuges, used to enrich uranium.

Foreign Ministers of France, Germany and Britain met and discussed Iran's insistence on applying a very limited definition of the term "enrichment-related" to enable the continuation of amassing centrifuges.

http://www.americandaily.com/item/4589

More Iran Election Bans to be Reversed

February 04, 2004
Reuters
Parisa Hafezi

TEHRAN -- A hardline watchdog will reinstate some reformist candidates it had barred from standing in parliamentary elections in a compromise deal to end Iran's worst political crisis for years, lawmakers say.

But the reformist lawmakers said it was not clear if the number of candidates recalled to the February 20 race would satisfy their demands.

"It seems that they are going to qualify some of the rejected candidates," one of the legislators said. "They are trying to reach a compromise," said another.

The government of reformist President Mohammad Khatami, which organises the election, has called for the polls to be postponed and has threatened not to hold the vote at all.

But Oil Minister Bijan Zanganeh told reporters after a cabinet meeting on Wednesday that Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the last word on all state matters, has made it clear he wants the vote to go ahead on schedule.

"The leader has said the elections should be held on February 20," he said.

And government spokesman Abdollah Ramazanzadeh also said on Wednesday the government hopes to solve the row by Thursday afternoon that will allow it to hold the elections as planned.

"We hope that by tomorrow afternoon we can reach acceptable results which could prepare the ground for the government to be able to hold the election," Ramazanzadeh told reporters.

The lawmakers said the compromise deal on reinstating some candidates emerged from talks involving top officials including Khamenei and Khatami.

Khatami's government is outraged by the move by the Guardian Council -- an unelected oversight body dominated by religious hardliners -- to bar more than 2,000 aspiring candidates from standing in the election.

Most of those barred are reformist allies of Khatami, including more than 80 current members of parliament.

PRESSURE PLOYS

The lawmakers said they did not know how many candidates would be reinstated by the council or whether they included prominent firebrand reformists such as deputy parliament speaker Mohammad Reza Khatami, the president's brother.

Protesting reformist lawmakers, who have staged a three-week sit-in at parliament, resigned from their parliament seats and announced a boycott of the election in an effort to put pressure on the council, had said they would not take part in elections on February 20 even if all of the candidate bans were reversed.

They argue that the electoral dispute has disrupted their campaign to retain their parliamentary majority and have called for a postponement.

Khatami was elected in a popular landslide in 1997 and his reformist allies won control of parliament in 2000.

But unelected hardliners control powerful institutions such as the military, judiciary and Guardian Council, which they have used to block reformist legislation, jail dozens of reformist activists and close down scores of liberal newspapers.

Public interest in the election row has been muted with most Iranians disillusioned with the reformist-conservative power struggle and the lack of progress on economic and social reforms.

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/040204/325/el5nd.html

Iran Between Worlds

February 04, 2004
Open Democracy
Charles Grant

How do Iranians see the world – its foreign policy establishment, its dissident intellectuals, and its ordinary people? Charles Grant, just returned from a week in Tehran, presents a vivid portrait of a political system under pressure.

The rest of the world has become used to viewing Iran as a stable country. The country’s conservatives and liberals seem locked in struggle that is never resolved. The United States continues to shun relations with the Islamic Republic, while the European Union goes on trading with it. And on the streets of Tehran – an ugly, gridlocked city of some 14 million people, strangely void of historical monuments – there are few signs that Iranians expect dramatic changes in the near future.

However, Iran may be less stable than it appears. President Mohammad Khatami and his reformist allies in the majlis (parliament) are a spent force. At the same time, American and European responses to Iran’s attempt to gain nuclear weapons capabilities have thrown Iranian foreign policy into a state of flux.

I have just returned from my first trip to Iran, to attend a seminar on Iran’s foreign policy organised by the Tehran-based, foreign ministry-backed Institute for Political and International Studies (IPIS) in cooperation with the London-based Centre for European Reform (which I work for) and the Landau Network-Centro Volta, an Italian institute.

The seminar provided insight into current Iranian thinking at leadership level, and a week in Tehran provided the opportunity for more informal discussions with a wider circle of Iranians – journalists, academics, professionals. The big question that came up in conversations at all levels is whether, and to what extent, Iran should open up to the United States and the European Union.

At the seminar, the exchange of views was frank. When the Europeans recommended that Iran should recognise Israel in order to promote closer ties with the west, the Iranians – who included the deputy foreign minister, Alireza Moayeri – said that hostility to Israel was a fundamental principle of the Islamic Republic.

The Iranians regarded the concept of “conditional engagement” – which underlines the European Union’s negotiating a trade and cooperation agreement with Iran – as a patronising one that did not treat them with “dignity”. We agreed instead on the idea of “reciprocal engagement”: if Iran does certain things that the EU desires, the EU should respond with things that Iran wants.

Beneath the surface, fear

Iran can seem a fairly free country. Print journalists, though not television or radio, do criticise the regime. Iranians do not need an exit visa to leave the country; foreign businesses can and do trade there. By most measures, the human rights situation is better than it was ten years ago.

But I sensed uneasiness, even fear. The regime is afraid, because it knows that many people hate it, and that its anti-American stance has provoked widespread pro-American sentiment amongst much of the population. Its primary concern is how to maintain power. Indeed, the evident pro-American sentiment of the people – and not only liberal academics – was the biggest surprise that I had in Iran. In the words of one prominent academic at Tehran university: “if there was a referendum on whether Iran should have close relations with the United States, 80% would vote yes.”

The regime’s liberal opponents are also afraid. The various intelligence services spy on them, tap their phones, prevent them from teaching, and send informers to shadow them at conferences when they go abroad.

More active liberals are in prison, though incidents like the killing of the Canadian-Iranian journalist, Zahra Kazemi – who died in July 2003 from severe injuries inflicted when in the custody by security officers – are now relatively rare.

Within the regime, the president and his allies appear to be more or less finished. They have proved incapable of pushing through many of the reforms they promised. Conservatives, using the Council of Guardians to block reformist legislation, wield the real power. The reformists have frequently threatened to resign unless the Guardians pass a reform – only to back down and remain in office.

Most people appear to oppose the regime, but they will not demonstrate or vote in support of the reformists. It is significant that there have been no popular demonstrations in favour of the sit-in by reformist members of the majlis protesting against their exclusion from the legislative elections due on 20 February.

Instead, many opponents of the regime, fed up with politics and the blocking of reform, are adopting a quietist attitude; they want to get on with their lives as best they can. Most of the young Iranians I met, while contemptuous of the mullahs, have lost faith in the parliamentary system and are planning to abstain in the elections.

The real political struggle is between the ideological conservatives on the Council of Guardians, who usually have the support of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei; and the pragmatic conservatives, such as Hashemi Rafsanjani, who chairs the Expediency Council (which has the job of reconciling disputes among other bodies), and Hassan Rohani, who chairs the Supreme National Security Council.

The ideological conservatives do not want to open up politically or economically, or to modify their US-hating, Israel-hating ideology. The pragmatic conservatives probably want to pursue a Chinese model: liberalise the economy and make peace with the US – but maintain political repression, albeit with the worst excesses softened.

The pragmatists understand that the Iranian economy is a basket-case and that it needs to open up to international investment: per capita GDP is about 30% lower than it was before the 1979 revolution. That is partly because of the population explosion: from 36 million Iranians in 1979 to 67 million by 2003, of whom more than two-thirds are under 30. The regime has proven incapable of converting the country’s oil wealth – 10% of global reserves – into economic development.

Iran and the United States

A key question for members of the political elite in Iran is how to conduct relationships with the United States and the European Union. Some opposition figures expect the west to topple the mullahs; one intellectual told me that he wanted a US invasion. In such circles, there is criticism of the EU policy of conditional engagement (and notably the promised trade and cooperation agreement) on the grounds that engagement prolongs the life of the regime. The US sanctions might work, said one intellectual, if the EU joined in too.

A widely-held view in Tehran is that the pragmatic conservatives are keener to strike a bargain with the US than are the liberal reformists. The pragmatists agreed the deal with the EU in October 2003 that led to Iran putting its nuclear facilities under international supervision; they did so because they want the trading agreement. They have shown the west that, unlike the reformists, they can deliver; now they want to engineer a rapprochement with Washington, and an end to US sanctions.

But is the US ready to make peace with Iran? The short answer is no. The hostage crisis of 1979 is still seen in the US as a national humiliation that has never been resolved satisfactorily. It is one reason why the American right is so keen on regime change in Iran. The fact that Iran has always opposed the Oslo peace process and a two-state solution in Israel/Palestine is another reason why many Americans do not want to deal with Tehran. Iran also supports groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas, which use violence against Israel.

There are two more proximate reasons that hold the US back from dealing with Iran. The first is Iran’s detention of an unspecified number of al-Qaida operatives, whom the Americans want handed over for interrogation while any information they can provide might still have value. The second is Iran’s efforts to assemble the capability to build an atomic bomb.

There is no longer any doubt about Iran’s ambitions: in 2003 the International Atomic Energy Authority (IAEA) discovered that Iran had broken its obligations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty and used clandestine means to buy the technology required to build a bomb. After the deal with the EU, Iran signed the IAEA’s “additional protocol”, which means that it has to accept unannounced inspections of its nuclear facilities. But many in Washington still believe that Iran is merely playing for time, and that it has not abandoned its nuclear ambitions.

Is Iran ready to give the US what it wants, in order to engineer a rapprochement? The government has softened its rhetoric on Israel a little. Foreign minister Kamal Kharrazi now says that if the Palestinians reach a settlement with Israel, Iran will endorse it and that it will “not be more Palestinian than the Palestinians”. However, there are no signs that the al-Qaida prisoners – apparently held by the Revolutionary Guard – will be handed over to the US. As for Iran’s nuclear ambitions, only time will tell whether it is serious about setting them aside; the regime’s track record of not telling the whole truth makes the US right to be cautious.

The US’s current difficulties in Iraq guarantee that its leadership will not, for the foreseeable future, attempt to remove the Iranian regime by force. But any reconciliation with Iran would annoy those Republicans who cheered when it was placed in the “axis of evil”, and President Bush will not want to do that in an election year.

There are, however, informal contacts between the US and Iranian governments. The two countries are cooperating quite well over Afghanistan and Iraq. Once the Iranian legislative and US presidential elections are over, the two sides may try to move towards a partial thaw.

The future of Iran-US relations may depend on the balance of power between realists and ideologues in Washington and Tehran. If it tilts in favour of the neo-conservatives in Washington, who are virulently opposed to any dealings with the mullahs, and the hardliners in Tehran, who hate the US, there will be no deal. But if the realists in both countries – who believe in putting national interest ahead of ideology – win the argument, a deal becomes feasible.

Iran and the European Union

For as long as the regime has no formal ties with the United States, it needs good relations with the European Union. Iran will probably provide the ‘assurances and clarifications’ on the nuclear deal that the EU has demanded (for example, that Iran’s promise to ‘suspend’ the enrichment of uranium really means that the process has stopped). The current EU line is that it will restart negotiations on the trade and cooperation agreement only when these assurances are provided and when the IAEA gives Iran a clean bill of health. On this basis, the negotiations could start in spring 2004.

However, human rights are a constant source of tension in EU-Iran relations. The Iranians generally give Javier Solana, the EU’s high representative for its Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), a very hard time; they almost cancelled his January visit to Tehran – because of his tough criticism of Iran’s human rights record and its nuclear ambitions.

When in Tehran, during the sit-in of liberal parliamentarians, Solana said publicly that while he did not want to interfere in Iran’s internal politics, the electoral process was important, and that if it was flawed it would have an impact on Iran’s relationship with the outside world. And so it would: the EU might find it hard to go ahead with the trade and cooperation agreement if the reformists are not allowed to stand in the elections. The Americans, too, would find it harder to restore ties.

Although Solana insists on mentioning human rights when he meets members of the Iranian regime, this subject has not been the EU’s top priority. The EU believes that it is easier to influence Iran on external matters – namely the nuclear programme, the fight against terrorism, and cooperation on Iraq and Afghanistan.

If the EU achieved success on the external dimension, I asked Javier Solana in Tehran, would it then try harder to influence Iran’s internal behaviour? He said that in those circumstances the EU would pay much greater attention to human rights issues. European pressure has already secured limited ‘victories’: Iran has agreed to halt public amputations and execution by stoning, and some dissidents have had their death penalties commuted to life imprisonment. However, Solana is not free to say a great deal on this subject: it is the member-states who define the terms on which the EU deals with Iran.

Iran and nuclear weapons

Only those at the heart of the Iranian regime know the extent of the Islamic Republic’s nuclear ambitions. All factions of the regime probably want at least the capability to build a nuclear bomb. Some hardliners undoubtedly want the weapons themselves, as a defence against a potential US invasion; but many others in positions of power would probably be prepared to trade the nuclear programme in exchange for sufficiently high dividends. If this is right, the European policy of using stick and carrots to influence Iran is the right one. The policy of the US hawks – that Iran is determined to become a nuclear weapons state, whatever the EU or the US offers, so it would be wrong to offer carrots to an evil regime – is less likely to achieve the objective of a non-nuclear Iran.

If the EU and the US try hard enough, they may be able to persuade Iran to abandon its nuclear plans. This will require real concessions – diplomatic recognition and an end to sanctions from the US, negotiation of the trade and cooperation agreement from Europe, the transfer of technologies and encouragement of Iran’s ambition to join the World Trade Organisation from both.

They might go further, and help the Iranians develop the idea of a common regional security framework – proposed by, amongst others, my colleague Steven Everts – involving the states around the Persian Gulf. A Gulf Security Organisation (GSO) would encourage confidence-building measures and transparency on military matters, while establishing procedures for resolving disputes. Iran is more likely to abandon its nuclear ambitions if it feels that its security concerns are being addressed through an institutional framework.

Iranian foreign ministry officials told me they like this idea, as does Javier Solana. Senior officials in the UK and French governments, and in the US state department, also speak in favour of it. However, the dependence of the Gulf states (including, for now, Iraq) on the US in security matters means that a GSO becomes feasible only when the US and Iran have made peace.

Iran and Russia

The west needs to be unified in its dealings with Iran, in order to maximise its chances of success. It should also try to involve Russia, which is a major trading partner in Iran, and is building the nuclear reactor at Bushehr in south-west Iran. I have discussed Russia’s ties with Iran with officials in Moscow, who are reluctant to admit any worry about Iran’s nuclear ambitions; they regard the Iranians as a friendly people who, even if they had the bomb, would not use it against Russia. When pressed, these officials say they would prefer Iran not to have a bomb, but they also express total confidence in the IAEA’s ability to sort out the problem.

Most Iranians know that the US and the EU have more of the technology their economy, especially the oil industry, needs. Iran’s leaders tend to regard Russians as unreliable and as susceptible to US pressure (for example they are slowing work on the Bushehr reactor) though some hardliners see Russia as a bulwark against US hegemony.

A number of people close to the government also think that a Franco-German-led EU could help create a multipolar world. I told them they should not count on it: the Iraq war of 2003 was a very specific event, and the west’s divisions over the war stemmed partly from President Bush’s inept diplomacy. Iran should not assume that the transatlantic rift will continue for ever.

The future of the regime

Should Europe try to expand trade with Iran, even if it prolongs the life of the regime? I believe that it should: more trade generates more contact with the outside world, more wealth, more dynamism in the economy – and thus more social change. This process would undermine the bonyads, the Islamic foundations which control much of the economy and fund the bodies dominated by ideological conservatives.

Yet the EU is right to apply a policy of “conditional” (or, in our agreed term, “reciprocal”) engagement: only when the EU suspended talks on the trade and cooperation agreement did Iran agree to sign the IAEA additional protocol.

How long will the Iranian regime – formally democratic but in practice, largely theocratic – endure? At present, the pragmatic conservatives seem to be gaining ground over both reformists and hardliners. Many analysts in Tehran argue that these pragmatists have a better chance of modernising the economy than the reformists, on the grounds that they are tougher and better able to deliver. If the Hashemi Rafsanjani / Hassan Rohani grouping can make peace with the US, and open up the economy, the system could evolve without a convulsion.

At the same time, the Iranians – despite years of disillusion – still care about politics and democracy. The mullahs will find it very hard to modernise the economy while smothering political life.

If the pragmatic conservatives fail to modernise the economy, the combination of slow economic growth, the population explosion, and frustration with the corrupt and repressive nature of the regime could prove explosive. Although the current generation of reformers has lost credibility, in time another group may arise. Iranians have shown in recent decades that when they are angry they are prepared to demonstrate. Another revolution cannot be ruled out.

http://www.opendemocracy.net/themes/article-3-1710.jsp

Iran's Leader Sticks to Poll Plan

February 04, 2004
BBC News
BBCi

Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has insisted parliamentary elections due later this month should go ahead as planned.

The government argues they should be delayed because conditions are not right for a free and fair election.

Mr Khamenei was speaking after talks between the hardline Guardian Council and senior politicians failed.

He said the 20 February polls would not be "delayed by even one day" and warned against "un-Islamic" protests.

The BBC's Middle East analyst, Roger Hardy, notes that Iranians should be celebrating the 25th anniversary of the revolution which overthrew its US-backed monarchy and replaced it with a radical and fiercely anti-American Islamic republic.

Instead, he says, their country is in constitutional chaos and its political institutions are gridlocked, with reformists on the ropes and their followers deeply demoralised.

Warning

More than 2,000 reformist allies of President Muhammad Khatami have been barred from taking part in the vote.

The conservatives are now confident they can deliver the knock-out blow by recapturing control of parliament and re-taking the presidency once Mr Khatami stands down at the end of his second term.

In calling for the elections to go ahead as scheduled, Ayatollah Khamenei argued there was "no knot which cannot be untied".

But he also warned reformists not to advance their case too far by threatening to resign over the election dispute.

"Evading responsibility by resigning or any other method is illegal and religiously forbidden", he said.

On Sunday, more than 120 members of parliament resigned in protest over the vote row.

They said that the mass disqualification by the hardline Guardian Council only served to dissuade an already politically disillusioned public from voting.

The Guardian Council is an unelected overview body dominated by religious hardliners.

But there are now signs of a compromise, with the Council expected to announce that many of those barred from the election race may now run.

It is not clear if the deal will be enough to satisfy reformist MPs.

They have insisted that not only should all the bans be overturned but also that the vote should be postponed to give all candidates enough time to conduct their campaigns.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/3458589.stm

"The government of reformist President Mohammad Khatami, which organises the election, has called for the polls to be postponed and has threatened not to hold the vote at all."

Yes, but has he threatened to quit this week? LOL

""It seems that they are going to qualify some of the rejected candidates," "

Wonder if it will be more than the 7 extra they Added to the list after the "reformists" protested. LoL

Persian Warriors, Intellectuals, Opportunists and History

SMCCDI (Letters - By John Ross)
Feb 4, 2004

Throughout recorded history, warriors, male and female, have defined the geographic boundaries of nations. Intellectuals, when permitted, develop the social backbone of successful nations and empires. Opportunists and politicians govern, and, ultimately, dilute the purpose and sacrifices warriors and intellectuals have made through ignorance, or greed. The cycles repeat themselves building upon the sacrifices of previous warriors and intellectuals made through history to, hopefully, refine and create economic and social order.

Somewhere within the male and female Persian psyche is the warrior that will free their ancient land from the foreign forces that have come to dominate this tormented people. The intellectual sophistication of Persians is revered, feared, and continues to evolve. Sacrifices and commitment will be needed to throw out hated foreign influences, or they will continue to bicker amongst themselves, and be managed as mere Arab cattle.

For a quarter of a century, Iranian Persians have been subjected to anti-reformist Islamic pogroms, forced into international isolation, and treated as inferiors by their government. The Iranian Persians that escaped to the West in1979, have become the doctors, lawyers and engineers that help ensure the success of a nation, and define its? social order. As such, Iranian Americans recognize and appreciate the freedoms and opportunities that are enjoyed by everyone in America that will work hard and make sacrifices.

Recent Iranian national and international orchestrated events are about to culminate into an opportunity that could result in the orderly, or violent, political transition of Iran. Huge American, European, OPEC and Islamic interests are at play in this all but predetermined dance of giants that will be determined by the Persians themselves. Arab mercenaries, Palestinian, Afghan and Saudis that influenced the outcome of the 1979 revolution, and Iranian Islamic fanatics will soon be the recipients of Persian retribution.

Compounding the Persian anger is the American public and military that remembers the 1979 hostage situation, Beirut bombing and current complicity in Iraqi resistance. Seething just below the surface is that Americans will learn in a Hamburg courtroom that the highest levels of Iranian government were complicit in the WTC atrocity of 9/11/01. It has been recently reported that significant political contributions have been given to Sen. John Kerry by the Islamic Iranian government, hoping to unseat President Bush. Selected members of the European Union are not eager for the present Islamic Iranian theocracy to lose power, because of financial arrangements that have been awarded. The "awards," given to key politicians and organizations, similar to the influence buying that Saddam Hussein did, are just now becoming common knowledge.

The freedom loving people of Iran can now remove the Islamic fascist mullahs without fear of Iraq, or other foreign influences, because the U.S. will not allow any intervention. In addition, the Iranian military, should it turn its' guns on their fellow Persians, could very easily become the targets of U.S. bombs.

http://www.daneshjoo.org/generalnews/article/publish/article_4187.shtml

The Mother of All Probes

New York Post - By Amir Taheri
Feb 4, 2004

BEFORE the liberation of Iraq, the war cry of the "Don't touch Saddam" lobby was: Let's have a U.N. resolution. Now that he's behind bars, the Saddam fan club has found a new slogan: Let's have an inquiry.

Two committees of the British House of Commons have already held inquiries into aspects of the war. Another, led by a senior British judge, looked into the row over the use of intelligence information available on the eve of the war. This week Prime Minister Tony Blair and President Bush announced yet other inquiries.

Will all that satisfy the "Don't touch Saddam" lobby? No.

Remember when they were playing the resolution game? Each time the United Nations passed a resolution, the "Don't touch" lobby asked for one more. On the eve of the war, with 18 resolutions already in place (some for more than a decade), the Saddamites clamored for a 19th, which would have envisaged a 20th.

The truth is that the Saddamites didn't want a resolution at all. What they wanted was to keep the despot in power.

Some in the "Don't touch Saddam" lobby had landed there because they hate the United States and/or George W. Bush. It's a school of thought that says, echoing Mephistopheles in "Faust," Where America is, I shall be on the opposite side. Other lobby members had benefited from Saddam's largesse, in some cases for years.

These guys would never have been satisfied with any number of resolutions, and now won't be content with any number of inquiries. Last March, they wanted to stop the film of history from moving forward. Today, they want to rewind it to cast doubt on the justice of the liberation of Iraq.

In the "resolutions" phase of the game, Saddam's supporters always insisted on narrowing the debate down to one issue, the search for weapons of mass destruction. They knew that the United Nations would never find hidden weapons unless Saddam wanted it. The resolution game was aimed at ensuring endless, and meaningless, inspections that would leave Saddam in place.

Today, too, those clamoring the loudest about the need for inquiries into the war are trying to narrow the focus to the WMD issue. What they say is simple: Show us the large stocks of WMDs that Saddam held, or admit that we should not have removed him from power.

It is as if Saddam Hussein had been a whiter-than-white angel whose sole fault was a penchant for collecting deadly weapons. However, anyone who reads the 18 resolutions passed by the Security Council (all available on the Internet) would realize that WMDs constituted just part of the U.N. dispute with Saddam.

He was a an evil ruler who had practiced genocides against Shi'ites and Kurds, triggered two civil wars and three foreign wars, refused to recognize the borders of any of Iraq's neighbors, funded more than two dozen terrorist organizations and remained a threat to regional peace.

So, if we are going to have yet another inquiry let us have a "Mother of All Inquiries."

This can start with the WMD issue.

No one could claim that Iraq never had any WMDs. Exhaustive lists of Iraqi WMDs are available from countless U.N. reports. Just a week before the liberation war started, Iraq admitted it was manufacturing the Al-Samoud missiles in violation of U.N. resolutions.

But establishing what kind and how many WMDs Iraq had, and until when, won't provide the full picture. We should also find out who gave Iraq the technology, the equipment and the materiel.

Our "Mother of All Inquiries" should establish a full list of companies that sold Saddam pieces of his death machine over three decades. Is it too much to ask who sold Saddam an estimated $100 billion in weapons and materiel between 1975 and 2000?

Who built Saddam's first atomic center, launching his nuclear weapons program?

Who were the estimated 6,000 Western and Russian technicians who, according to Tariq Aziz (one of Saddam's most faithful minions), worked in Iraqi military industries throughout the 1980s?

We also would like to know who financed Saddam between 1980 and 1988, when Iraq couldn't export oil because of the war with Iran.

Let us also not limit the inquiry into the WMDs that Saddam had or did not have on the eve of the war. It is possible that at that time he had destroyed or shipped abroad his remaining WMDs to weather the storm he faced. What is certain, however, is that he had the intention, the scientists and the resources to re-launch his programs once the storm had passed.

Let us establish the circumstances under which the 4,000 mass graves came about and who were the 300,000 skeletons found in them. And should we not find out who organized those gas attacks that killed tens of thousands of Iraqi Kurds and Iranians in what is now regarded as the biggest use of chemical weapons since 1918?

Our inquiry should also take testimony from the estimated 5.5 million Iraqis who served prison terms of varying length under Saddam and, in many cases, were subjected to tortures unseen since the darkest days of Stalin.

And should we not hear from the former inhabitants of the 4,000 villages that Saddam torched and razed during his infamous Anfal campaign?

The inquiry will have to hear at least some of the 4 million plus Iraqis driven into exile during Saddam's reign of terror. It would also have to provide answers for families who are still searching for more than 10,000 people listed as "missing" after being arrested by Saddam's agents.

We may not find the "large quantities of WMDs" that Rolfe Ekeus, Richard Butler and Hans Blix reported as missing. But we have thousands of mass graves and millions of torture marks to prove that Saddam was evil and his removal an overdue act of human mercy.

Our "Mother of All Inquiries" would show one thing above all else: It was a shame that the so-called international community, ignoring its own resolutions, chose to appease Saddam and, in some cases, even prop up his murderous regime for more than a decade after the first Gulf War.

The nit-picking lawyers' approach to this complex issue will do further injustice to the victims of Saddam's terror.

The only proposition worth debating is this: Removing Saddam Hussein from power was an act of international justice - Discuss!

Sure, let's have an inquiry.

http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/17240.htm

Although Solana insists on mentioning human rights when he meets members of the Iranian regime, this subject has not been the EU’s top priority. The EU believes that it is easier to influence Iran on external matters – namely the nuclear programme, the fight against terrorism, and cooperation on Iraq and Afghanistan.

Human rights abuses is the sure way to gain attention to the regime's crimes. Why would the EU want to highlight that? It is only America who stands up to help those who demand freedom. When was the last time the Italians, French or Belgians were implored by repressed people to denounce their suffering? And what was the result? Seems to me that when people clamor for democracy, they look to America... the leader of the Willing.

Historian's Take on Islam Steers U.S. Policy

Wall St Journal ^ | 2-02-04 | PETER WALDMAN
Posted on 02/03/2004 5:19:18 AM PST by SJackson

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1070558/posts

Arab mercenaries, Palestinian, Afghan and Saudis that influenced the outcome of the 1979 revolution, and Iranian Islamic fanatics will soon be the recipients of Persian retribution.

I am not a historian, however the emphasis of outside influence on the revolution and the hostage crisis should be explained further, if the goal is to get the average America interested in the current events in Iran. For many Americans, the hostage crisis is their main argument, and they won't listen further.

Bump!

Pardon for scientist who sold atom bomb secrets
By Ahmed Rashid in Lahore and Robin Gedye
February 4, 2004

Pakistan is likely to pardon without trial the father of the country's atomic bomb even though he has confessed to selling nuclear technology to rogue states, a senior government official told the Telegraph yesterday.

President Pervaiz Musharraf, now facing mounting anger over the detention of Abdul Qadeer Khan, is expected to indicate the government's plans in a television address in the next few days.

The scientist, a national icon, is under house arrest. He is said to have confessed to selling nuclear weapons technology to some of the world's most radical anti-western states, including Libya, Iran and North Korea, over at least 11 years.

There were growing indications last night that the mix of popular feeling and the risk that a trial would expose the army's involvement in the scandal will effectively end any chance of a trial.

Since Mr Khan had confessed to selling technology "there was no further need to humiliate the father of Pakistan's nuclear bomb, who has kept the nation safe from Indian attack", the official said.

The official, intimately involved in Mr Khan's investigation, said a trial would be too sensitive when "political opposition to the president is building up".

According to yesterday's Washington Post, the Pakistanis have other reasons for burying the issue.

It quoted a friend of Mr Khan and a senior Pakistani investigator as saying the scientist helped North Korea design and equip facilities for making weapons-grade uranium with the full knowledge of senior military commanders, including Gen Musharraf, who is also army chief of staff.

Mr Khan apparently urged investigators to question army commanders and Gen Musharraf, saying "no debriefing is complete unless you bring every one of them here and debrief us together".

Even if the president does not explicitly pardon Mr Khan, who led Pakistan's development of the Islamic world's first nuclear bomb in 1998, he is expected to say enough to calm mounting anger over his detention.

Both Washington and London, keenly aware of President Musharraf's dilemma, are understood not to have pressed him to stage a public trial.

While Pakistan can expect international indignation if a pardon were granted, the Americans and British say they are content that the nuclear network has been smashed.

"There is relief that this avenue for proliferating nuclear weapons has been cut off," said a senior diplomat in London.

"These transgressions occurred several years ago and even though one must assume they did so with the knowledge of Pakistan's intelligence services, it is not for us to advise a key ally on how to deal with the matter."

Other western diplomats appeared less conciliatory. One said leading western countries and institutions, including the US, Britain and the International Atomic Energy Agency, would demand that their experts debrief Mr Khan "in jail and not after a pardon in his mansion".

Another promised international indignation in the event of pardon. "He is the world's biggest criminal, involved for 27 years in selling nuclear technology. If you let him off with a slap on the wrist, then what kind of message are you sending to others?" he said.

Mr Khan has let it be known that he is prepared to blow the whistle on the army's involvement. A cabinet minister revealed that Mr Khan's daughter, a British citizen, had travelled to London with papers that could incriminate generals and other Pakistani leaders, including the former prime ministers Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif.

Mr Khan is also reported to have briefed several trusted local journalists with similar information before he was placed under house arrest two weeks ago, asking them to publish it if he went on trial.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/02/04/wpak04.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/02/04/i

You are absolutely right Pilot. Reading the article it came to me that this looks like a set up. I think they will allow the people to run that they always anticipated allowing to run. The people will think they won this round and will show up and vote thus giving legitimacy to these "reformists".

This looks to me like a magic show to manipulate the people into thinking they won something.

Freedom now ~ Bump!

I followed your link to this thread.

This is a MOST illuminating article.

The kind of self-criticism that leads to truth. Refreshing to read, and giving hope for the kind of society that will truly revive the Persian people.

Thanks for this post.

"We always knew the State Department was against these lawsuits and tried to scuttle them from day one,"

The enemy of the people; THE STATE DEPARTMENT.

President Bush: TEAR DOWN THAT BUREAUCRACY!!!!!!

Iran's supreme leader orders review of disqualified electoral candidates

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - Iran's supreme leader has ordered a review of the disqualifications of thousands of candidates from legislative elections, a government spokesman said Wednesday, in a bid to defuse a standoff with reformers threatening a boycott.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's move came a day after he sided with hardliners and rejected a request by reformist President Mohammad Khatami for the Feb. 20 elections to be postponed.

Khatami's government has said it would not stage voting unless the disqualifications are overturned. However, the powerful, hardline Guardian Council has refused to withdraw its disqualification of about 30 per cent of the 8,200 people who applied to run in the polls.

Government spokesman Abdollah Ramezanzadeh said Khamenei decided on the review, the second in less than a month, in a meeting with Khatami on Tuesday.

"We hope to achieve a final result as soon as possible that would allow us to hold an election with a huge turnout," Ramezanzadeh told reporters.

"I think we can expect some positive results tomorrow," Ramezanzadeh added. He did not elaborate.

Ramezanzadeh's announcement was the first in days that suggested the elections might go ahead as planned. On Tuesday, scores of reformist legislators called for the elections to be postponed.

Also, Iran's provincial governors said in a statement posted on the Interior Ministry's website that they would not hold the elections, suggesting that hardliners would have to use the military to run the polls.

The Guardian Council, which is appointed by Khamenei, has disqualified more than 2,400 people from the polls. Reformers have protested the disqualifications as an attempt to fix the elections in favour of conservatives. Hardliners have denied any political motives, arguing that the disqualified lacked the criteria to stand. But the disqualified include 80 incumbent legislators.

Ramezanzadeh said the review would be conducted by the Intelligence Ministry.

A cabinet minister indicated that most of the candidates, but not all, were likely to be restored to the ballot by the review.

"A large number are expected to be reinstated," said Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh, a pro-reform minister told reporters Wednesday.

While Ramezanzadeh and Zanganeh sounded upbeat about the review's prospects, reformists have been disappointed before. Early last month, Khamenei urged the Guardian Council to reconsider the disqualifications. It did so, but its reinstatements were regarded as politically insignificant.

What makes the new review different is that it is to be conducted by a ministry that is nominally under the control of reformists.

When the list of approved candidates was first announced in early January, it emerged that the Guardian Council had disqualified about 3,600 people of the 8,200 who filed papers to stand.

After protests, and Khamenei's requested reconsideration, the council reinstated 1,160 low-profile names, but the major reformists, including the leaders of the Islamic Iran Participation Front, remained barred. Reformists rejected the reinstatements as cosmetic.

The meeting between Khamenei, who has the final say on all state matters, and Khatami was seen as a last chance to ease Iran's worst political crisis in years. It was attended by parliamentary speaker Mahdi Karroubi, a reformist who had urged Khamenei to intervene, and Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, the hardline head of the judiciary.

The leader of the Islamic Iran Participation Front, the largest reformist party, Mohammad Reza Khatami, said Monday his group would boycott the polls. The day before, more than 120 legislators tendered their resignations, saying there was no point in holding elections whose outcome was a foregone conclusion.

http://www.canada.com/news/world/story.html?id=AAFFB595-447A-483A-A626-1B69A5FC44F3

Proof That Tehran Backed Terrorism

February 04, 2004
The Insight Magazine
Kenneth R. Timmerman

Nineteen U.S. Air Force personnel died here when terrorists attacked with a truck full of explosives. Freeh testified it was planned, funded and sponsored by Iran.

As a former Iranian intelligence officer was providing testimony in a courtroom in Germany detailing operational ties between the September 11 hijackers and the government of Iran, lawyers from the U.S. departments of State and Justice and appeals-court judges in Washington were working hard to overturn a law that has allowed victims of terrorism to sue foreign governments for sponsoring terrorist crimes that have killed Americans.

The measure, known as the "Flatow amendment," was signed into law by President Bill Clinton in October 2000. Terrorism experts believe it has had a sobering effect on terrorist sponsors, including Iran and Libya, because it has made them financially accountable for the crimes of their proxies by awarding damages to victims from frozen assets held in the United States.

The simple message of the Flatow amendment is this: If you direct terrorist groups to kill Americans, you will pay. Damage awards to victims from Iranian government assets in the United States in some 50-odd cases now top $3 billion.

Among those victims have been U.S. hostages held in Lebanon, the families of U.S. citizens killed by Iranian government proxies in suicide bombings in Israel and the Palestinian territories, and the families of the 241 U.S. Marines who were killed when an Iranian government agent rammed a truck full of explosives into their barracks outside of the international airport in Beirut on Oct. 23, 1983 [see "Invitation to September 11," Jan. 6-19].

Now the U.S. government, apparently without the consent or knowledge of the Bush White House, is about to engage in what observers call "an act of unilateral disarmament" that will comfort state sponsors of terror, especially Iran.

"We always knew the State Department was against these lawsuits and tried to scuttle them from day one," a representative of a group of victims' families tells Insight. "At every step of the way, they intervened - whether to block efforts to discover where frozen Iranian government assets were held, or how we could get them released once we found them on our own."

But in the opinion of congressional sources, the attorneys for the victims and the family members themselves, the decision handed down by Judge Howard Edwards of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia on Jan. 16 is an act of judicial activism that violates the will of Congress and delivers an overwhelming victory to terrorist states. "By vacating the Flatow amendment pure and simple, the U.S. government is sending a crystal-clear message to the terrorists: Go right ahead," said one attorney who has followed these cases for several years.

Pleading the case to repeal the law was Peter D. Keisler, an assistant attorney general in the Bush administration. He was assisted by U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Roscoe C. Howard Jr. and Mark A. Clodfelter, a legal adviser to the secretary of state.

"We ran this up the flagpole and went through the whole interagency process before sending our recommendation up to the Solicitor General's Office," an official involved in the litigation tells Insight. "The solicitor general approved our approach and set out the guidelines for our appeal."

If true, that would be astonishing. Barbara Olson, the wife of U.S. Solicitor General Ted Olson, was among those killed during the 9/11 attacks when American Airlines Flight 77 was crashed into the Pentagon by al-Qaeda hijackers. As solicitor general, Ted Olson vigorously has defended every aspect of the U.S. war on terror, including the USA PATRIOT Act and the government's right to detain illegal combatants for indefinite periods without access to counsel. When pressed about who had authorized their appeal, government attorneys interviewed by Insight declined to respond.

Lawyers from the State and Justice departments argued that the law crafted by Congress, and vetted by their own attorneys at the time, allowed victims of terrorism to sue in U.S. courts but not to seek damages because the language provided "no private cause of action against foreign governments." In response to questions from Insight, they insisted that the distinction was not just "splitting legal hairs." But attorneys who helped write the legislation contested that view and revealed that State Department attorneys made last-minute "technical changes" to the bill that required victims of terrorism to sue "officials, employees and agents" of a foreign state, rather than the government itself.

"We had no objection to that change during the conference," one of the attorneys told Insight, "because they are one and the same thing. But what they are saying now is that Congress is a bunch of incompetents who don't know how to draft legislation. We'll be back in a year's time with a much more muscular bill."

These are not lawsuits like any other. They involve U.S. foreign policy, national security and the rights of victims of murderous crimes to seek redress under the law.

What makes the decision by Judge Edwards and the active intervention of the State and Justice department lawyers particularly odious, lawyers and family members of victims tell Insight, is the potential cost in human lives it could entail. As President Ronald Reagan was fond of saying, weakness or the perception of weakness invites attack.

The shabbiest treatment of all was reserved for the families of the 19 U.S. airmen and Air Force personnel who lost their lives when Iranian-backed Hezbollah terrorists drove a truck bomb into the Khobar Towers barracks in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, in June 1996. After keeping them waiting two weeks for their day in court, Magistrate Judge Deborah A. Robinson sent some 100 family members back to their homes around the country in mid-December after she single-handedly attempted to block the testimony of former FBI Director Louis Freeh [see "Is Khobar Towers Testimony Being Silenced," posted Dec. 17, 2003].

Freeh already had testified in open session on Oct. 8, 2002, to the Joint Intelligence Committee about involvement of the Iranian government in the Khobar Towers bombing and told Insight when he first appeared in Robinson's courtroom on Dec. 2, 2003, that he planned to give the same testimony. But Robinson kept disappearing from her own courtroom for brief, unexplained recesses. When she returned, she read out long lists of questions, apparently dictated to her by others, that raised objections to Freeh's testimony and to every other witness the victims' attorneys tried to call. A longtime observer of the court called Robinson's courtroom behavior "disingenuous" and "out of line" and "in violation of federal rules of evidence."

To family members, Freeh had become a hero. "He was the only man in Washington during this whole thing who gave a damn," said Katherine Adams, mother of U.S. Air Force Capt. Christopher Adams, a pilot who had been taking another officer's tour of duty in Saudi Arabia so he could stay home with his wife while she was having a baby. "He was the only man who kept his word to the families, who cared, who met with us. [President] Clinton never did anything, except to show up for a photo op," Katherine Adams says.

When Robinson finally allowed the former FBI director to testify to an empty courtroom on Dec. 18, Freeh got straight to the point. "My own conclusion was that the [Khobar Towers] attack was planned, funded and sponsored by the senior leadership of the government of Iran," he said. Freeh's breathtaking conclusion, and the hard evidence of the Iranian government's role in the attack, is widely seen as far more compelling than the evidence used by the Bush administration to justify the war in Iraq. Making all evidence public could increase pressure on the administration to move militarily against Iran, a step most observers agree the administration would prefer to avoid.

Robinson also took the unprecedented step in a terrorism case of disqualifying the most qualified nongovernmental witness on Iranian government funding of terrorism, Patrick Clawson of the Washington Institute of Near East Policy, in a written order handed down Jan. 27. Clawson has testified in more than a half-dozen lawsuits against the government of Iran, providing hard data culled from Iranian government reports on state budgets allocated to international terrorism. Robinson ordered that his testimony be "stricken in its entirety" because Clawson would not reveal all the sources for his expert opinion on Iranian government sponsorship of terror. Clawson was unable to attend one hearing, an affidavit shows, because he was scheduled for all-day briefings at CIA headquarters in McLean, Va.

Sources familiar with the U.S. government investigations tell Insight that Iran "supplied the explosives" for the 1998 al-Qaeda bombings of U.S. embassies in Africa that killed more than 200 persons, and designated top terrorist operative Imad Mugniyeh as their liaison to Osama bin Laden's groups.

U.S. intelligence agencies consistently have argued that Iran could "not possibly" have a connection to al-Qaeda or to Sunni Muslim terrorist networks because Sunnis and Shias "do not talk to one another." And yet, a handful of intelligence analysts resisted this consensus view and compiled "B-Team" reports on al-Qaeda/Iran contacts for Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and Undersecretary of Defense Doug Feith. After an Oct. 26, 2001, briefing, Wolfowitz expressed astonishment that this information had been kept from him, and he asked to be given more information as it became available. Instead, the Defense Intelligence Agency analyst who compiled the report, Kai Fallis, was fired by his superiors.

"What has been done is incredibly hypocritical," says Stephen Perlis, a lawyer involved in a dozen similar cases, including the original Flatow case. "They used the Flatow amendment to facilitate rapprochement with Libya by resolving the Pan Am 103 case, but now they want to destroy it when it applies to Iran."

As the war on terror progresses, the Bush administration is seeking to put pressure on hard-line clerics in Iran, deter their use of terror, stop weapons of mass destruction and encourage pro-democracy forces - at least, that is what the president says. But the message sent by the repeal of the Flatow amendment, and by the refusal of the State Department to back up the president's promise to support the pro-democracy movement in Iran, suggests a policy process the president does not control, say former National Security Council officials.

Kenneth R. Timmerman is a senior writer for Insight magazine.

For more on this story, read "Defector Points Finger at Iran in September 11 Plot."

http://www.insightmag.com/main.cfm?include=detail&storyid=594915

Defector Points Finger at Iran in September 11 Plot

February 04, 2004
The Insight Magazine
Kenneth R. Timmerman

An Iranian defector stepped forward to provide key testimony in the trial of an alleged 9/11 conspirator, a 31-year old Moroccan named Abdelghani Mzoudi, just hours before a German court was preparing to drop all charges against him. The defector, Hamid Reza Zakeri, told a court in Hamburg on Jan. 30 that a Mzoudi colleague, 9/11 hijacker Ziad Samir al-Jarrah, met in Iran with Zakeri's former bosses at the Ministry of Information and Security (MOIS), Iran's intelligence service, two years before the September 11 terrorist attacks. "I saw him at a training camp in eastern Iran with [Lebanese terrorist] Imad Mugniyeh and [top al-Qaeda operative] Saef al-Adil," he said.

Mzoudi himself was in Iran for training in 1997, Zakeri says. The Germans had charged Mzoudi with providing material support to the al-Qaeda cell in Hamburg that included al-Jarrah and two other 9/11 hijackers, but they were preparing to drop the charges before Zakeri stepped forward with new information. Insight first published Zakeri's allegations of an Iranian government link to the 9/11 conspiracy last year [see "Defector Alleges Iranian Involvement in Sept. 11 Attacks,"posted June 10, 2003, at Insight Online]. At the time, the CIA responded to Insight inquiries regarding Zakeri's credibility by calling him a "serial fabricator."

Zakeri claimed that he met with a CIA officer at the U.S. Embassy in Baku, Azerbaijan, in July 2001 and provided warning of the 9/11 attacks. The CIA acknowledged the meeting, then claimed Zakeri had provided no credible evidence of a terrorist plot against the United States. But German prosecutors and the German intelligence agencies who have interviewed Zakeri don't appear to share that assessment. Germany's counterespionage service, the Bundeskriminalamt, supplied prosecutors with a 30-page transcript of its interview with Zakeri on Jan. 21, prompting the court to halt Mzoudi's trial and expected release.

In his original interview with Insight, which was picked up by American media organizations only after Zakeri's name surfaced in the German 9/11 trial on Jan. 21, the former MOIS operative said he personally handled security at two meetings between top al-Qaeda operatives and Iranian officials held in Iran just months before the September 11 attacks.

Zakeri's information dovetailed in many respects with an earlier report on Iran's al-Qaeda ties produced by the Defense Intelligence Agency that Insight first revealed in November 2001 [see "Iran Cosponsors Al-Qaeda Terrorism," Dec. 3, 2001]. Both reports have been spiked until now.

Zakeri backed up his original account of the two meetings between al-Qaeda and Iran with a document signed by Hojjat-ol eslam Ali Akbar Nateq-Nouri, who headed the Intelligence Department for Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. The letter, dated May 14, 2001, carried instructions from Khamenei to his Intelligence Ministry regarding relations with al-Qaeda.

In a follow-on interview with Insight just hours before he appeared in the Hamburg courtroom on Jan. 30, Zakeri reiterated his earlier allegations that Saad bin Laden, eldest son of the Saudi terrorist, and bin Laden's deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, both came to Iran in the months prior to the 9/11 attacks to discuss the logistics and strategy of a major attack on the United States with Iranian intelligence officers.

Saad bin Laden "spoke good English" during his talks with MOIS officials when he came to Iran four months and seven days before 9/11, Zakeri tells Insight.

Another top al-Qaeda operative, Saef al-Adil, currently is in Iran, Zakeri tells Insight, where he has met with the deputy military commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), Gen. Mohammad Baqr Zolqadr. Training of al-Qaeda operatives by the IRGC took place at the "Fathi Shiqaqi" camp to the northeast of Iran, he adds. Shiqaqi was the leader of Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), an Iranian-backed terrorist group, until Israeli intelligence operatives assassinated him in Malta in October 1995. Shiqaqi was replaced as head of PIJ by Ramadan Shallah, who left a teaching job at the University of South Florida where he had worked alongside professor Sami al-Arian, now awaiting trial in the United States on terrorism-related charges.

U.S. officials say they believe Saad bin Laden currently is in Iran, where he is being given refuge and safe harbor, but repeated requests to the Iranian government to hand him over for trial have gone unanswered. The Iranian government says only that a number of al-Qaeda operatives crossed into Iran from neighboring Afghanistan and that they currently are awaiting prosecution for unspecified violations of Iranian law.

Kenneth R. Timmerman is a senior writer for Insight.

For more on this story, read "Proof That Tehran Backed Terrorism."

http://www.insightmag.com/main.cfm?include=detail&storyid=594889