Iranian Alert -- February 20, 2004 -- IRAN LIVE THREAD --Americans for Regime Change in Iran

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

EU Worried About Iran's Election But Downplays Fallout

February 20, 2004
Agence France Presse
AFP

The European Union said Friday it was concerned about the conduct of Iran's elections but played down the impact on its policy of "constructive engagement" with the Islamic republic.

"We are watching developments closely and we are concerned as to what happened in the run-up to these elections," a source with the EU's executive commission told reporters.

Iran's hardline Guardians Council disqualified more than 2,000 reformist candidates from running in Friday's election, leaving the way clear for a crushing victory by religious conservatives.

"The quality of democracy affects our relationship with all of our partners. Clearly it's something that we take very seriously," the EU source said on condition of anonymity.

"But what it doesn't change is our clear preference to keep the channels of communication open and to develop ways of talking to Iran," she said.

EU foreign ministers will debate Iran at a meeting on Monday, including the election and whether to resume stalled talks on a trade and cooperation agreement.

"Nobody could be happy about what has happened in the lead-up to the elections," said an official with the EU's Irish presidency.

"So there is concern that these developments will affect at least the perception of legitimacy about the outcome of the elections," the official said.

"There's also of course concerns about continuing problems on the human-rights front in Iran."

The EU's approach of "constructive engagement" with Iran contrasts sharply with US mistrust of the country, which Washington has labelled part of an "axis of evil".

In contrast to the United States, the EU is pressing ahead with a carrot-and-stick approach with Iran by pursuing human rights issues while at the same time seeking to negotiate a bilateral trade agreement.

But the trade talks have been suspended since June amid concerns about Iran's nuclear ambitions.

By Monday's monthly meeting of the EU foreign ministers, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Mohamed ElBaradei may have released a report on Iran's nuclear programme, the EU sources said.

IAEA diplomats said this month that UN teams in Iran had found components of an advanced uranium enrichment centrifuge, of a type Tehran had failed to declare while claiming to provide full disclosure on its atomic programme.

"I wouldn't want to pre-empt the (IAEA) report. We'll respond in whatever terms the report dictates," the Irish presidency official said.

The commission source said: "If Dr ElBaradei is able to give a positive report, then the response should be positive.

"But the key point is we don't want to move the goalposts. We are against the idea that new demands be made as condition for the resumption of talks," she added.

http://www.afp.com/english/home/

Wish-list Unites Iranians

February 21, 2004
Iran va Jahan
Reza Bayegan

With the disappearance of the last vestiges of hope for democratic transformation within the existing political system, the Iranian opposition to clerical dictatorship is closing ranks and converging on items of a common agenda for the future of the country. At the beginning of Khatami's presidency, even many of those Iranians who were sympathetic to the Islamic revolution privately voiced the view that the reform card was the regime's last chance. They argued that either Mohammad Khatami would succeed in transforming the religious state into a democracy, or his presidency would be remembered as the final nail in the coffin of the Islamic Republic. Not very surprisingly a term and a half into his presidential mandate, Mohammad Khatami looks increasingly like an undertaker. His public credibility has all but vanished and the political movement that became synonymous with his name lies in tatters.

Hashim Aghageri, a leading Iranian dissident reacting to the massive disqualification of reformist candidates by the Guardian Council has declared that Iran's reform movement is finished. In an open letter published by the Iranian news agency ISNA, this history professor who is a reformist himself said that hopes for mending the system from within are over and he advises Iranians to oppose the regime through passive resistance.

Passive resistance or civil disobedience is one of the items on the wish-list, which is uniting Iranian activists from all over the political spectrum. Many of the items on this wish-list entered the Iranian political lexicon with the publication of a book in 2002 called Winds of Change by Reza Pahlavi, son of the late Shah of Iran, who is leading a campaign to overthrow the mullahs' dictatorship from his home in exile in the United States. Arguing that violence breeds more violence, he has been insisting on a peaceful plan of bringing down the regime through political non-participation. He has also proposed a democratic referendum on the future of the country as the only way out of the present political quagmire. Many of the reformist intellectuals who once vehemently supported President Khatami and his effort to change the republic from within now have also come to see a referendum on the future of the country as the only viable option. One of these people is the prolific satirist Ebrahim Nabavi. Reflecting on the legacy of the reformist movement in a recently published article, this hugely popular writer says: 'What we can all do at this moment is to make up for our past mistakes. We have no choice but to carefully navigate our country's vessel through its surrounding stormy waters and towards the free and democratic world. The reformist movement at this point should concentrate on forcing the hardliners to accept a national referendum on the future of the country'.

What Nabavi means by 'forcing the hardliners' is putting them in a situation so they can see that a quiet departure is their only route to self-preservation and the most generous deal they can expect from the nation. Twenty-five years of mismanagement and impetuous policies in the name of revolutionary Islam has brought the country to the verge of collapse. Iranians are left unprotected not only against man-made and natural calamities, but also against a government that has consistently assaulted their human rights and freedoms. How such a government with such a disastrous record has been able to survive for such a long time has been the subject of mystifications even for some Iranians with long experience in politics. Fereydoun Hoveyda, Iran's ambassador to the United Nations during the time of the Shah, blames the British, French and Germans for propping up the Islamic Republic and preventing its downfall.

In an article published on 13 February 2004, he asks 'how a group of incompetent and often corrupt lower ranking clerics' who have brought nothing but misery and bankruptcy to our nation have been able to survive except with the backing of those powerful European governments in whose economic benefit it is to keep them in power.

Whether one agrees or disagrees with this theory, it is true however that the Islamic Republic has succeeded in defrauding, or as Mr. Hoveyda argues bribing the key European countries and even elements within the Democratic Party in the United States. Seeking the protection of these powers the mullahs have found it necessary to create the impression that they are interested in democratic reform. One should keep in mind that a dictator like Khomeini who thought nothing of ordering the mass execution of hundreds of his opponents also found it expedient to call himself a democrat. Many Iranian activists who had a soft spot for Khomeini's revolution turned a blind eye on profound and irreconcilable defects of the system. They waited patiently hoping that one day a democratic state could emerge from within the Islamic Republic.

One of these activists who supported the 1979 revolution was Shirin Ebadi, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. Faced with the mass elimination of candidates, she has declared that she will refuse to vote in an undemocratic election where people are deprived of the right to vote for whomever they wish. The decision of the influential Nobel laureate to stay away from the polls is bound to give a moral boost to the the advocates of political non-participation and civil disobedience.

Ironically, the reform movement which was an ineffective force in its prime, is showing signs of vitality at its deathbed. The disgruntled candidates not only boycotted the polls but have broken a taboo by openly criticizing Khamenei's role in their disqualification accusing him of duplicity.

The recognition that the Islamic Republic is the common enemy of freedom and democracy has induced the country's political activists; monarchists as well as republicans to form a united front against dictatorship.

http://iranvajahan.net/cgi-bin/news.pl?l=en&y=2004&m=02&d=21&a=1

Tyranny Wins in Iran

February 21, 2004
Telegraph
Opinion

The conduct of the campaign leading up to yesterday's Iranian elections tells us more about the political balance of power in that country than any interpretation of the results of the discredited poll.

The hardline clerical leadership marked the eve of the election by shutting down the office of the main reformist party, the Islamic Iran Participation Front, many of whose members had been among the 2,500 candidates already disqualified from standing in the election. The offices of the last two pro-reform newspapers still publishing were simultaneously padlocked, raising concerns that conservative forces are tightening their grip in advance of declaring "victory" in the election.

The hardliners' current confidence in acting so brazenly against the reformists raises questions about the European Union's efforts to encourage Teheran to change its ways. The British Government authorised - perhaps encouraged - Prince Charles to visit Teheran this month as part of this strategy, but today that gesture looks decidedly ill-judged. If the royal trip, and other diplomatic overtures from Britain and EU governments, were designed to tilt the balance in favour of the reformist President Khatami and against the ayatollahs, they would appear to have failed.

The political clampdown inside Iran coincides this week with further revelations about Teheran's nuclear ambitions. United Nations inspectors have discovered previously undeclared components for uranium enrichment so sophisticated that civilian use can all but be ruled out. The White House will seize on these new discoveries to demand Teheran be referred to the Security Council for sanctions at next month's meeting of the board of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

There may have been good reasons for the EU to play good cop to the Washington bad cop in its dealings with Iran. But given the alarming developments in Iran this week, it seems that policy towards Teheran should now be based on robust vigilance.

http://portal.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2004/02/21/dl2103.xml&sSheet=/opinion/2004/02/21/ixoplead.html

AND THE WINNER IS ALI AKBAR HASHEMI RAFSANJANI

By Safa Haeri

PARIS 20 Feb. (IPS)

As expected, elections in the Islamic Republic of Iran for the regime’s seventh Parliament, or Majles went on amidst general apathy and visibly low turn out of the voters, despite repeated calls by senior officials and religious authorities, including Ayatollah Ali Khameneh’i stating that going to the polls is a "religious duty".

"Why to vote, since the result was decided months ago", a student who presented himself as "Mehran" told Iran Press Service, referring to the conservatives resolve of controlling the Legislative at any cost.

"I did not vote today because those in the Majles did failed to materialize the promises for fighting inflation, soaring prices or creating more jobs, mostly for the educated. Not only I did not vote, but none of the people I know voted", one woman in the city of Karaj near Tehran told the 24-hour, Prague-based, Farsi language Radio Farda (Tomorrow).

As official media reported "warm reception" by the people and the State-owned, leader-controlled Television showed long queues of people in polling stations in Tehran and other cities, almost all foreign and independent Iranian correspondents were unanimous reporting "rather empty" voting bureaus and "massive abstention" of voters, mostly the young ones who preferred to profit from the occasion to go to mountain resorts in the outskirts of the Capital or rushing to the popular cities of the Caspian Sea.

While the "Voice and Visage of the Islamic Republic" (Radio and Television Organisation) would constantly show "enthusiastic voters" queuing in front of poling stations telling its reporters about the "importance of voting in order to "punch the Great Satan of America", ISNA, the semi-official students news agency, in an "all pictures" item about the elections, showed women in black chador in front of a poling station coming down from a bus. In another shot, one can see a queue in front of a bureau, but to make it look long, voters, most of them old and disgruntled men, were placed half of a metre of each other.

But Western and Iranian journalists who visited several poling bureaus also noted that most of the voters were elderly, plain faithful and traditionalists visibly illiterate, bussed to the voting places open to the press, like the "Hoseynieh Ershad", where most of the high-ranking officials cast their ballots.

"In order show the mass turn out of the voters, the authorities had drastically reduced the number voting places in Tehran and other major cities, thus forcing people to walk to the few open stations heavily guarded by security forces" said the independent internet newspaper "Peykeiran" (www.peykeiran.com), placing the percentage of the voters between 5 to 15 per cent.

"Why voting when the ballot has no meaning. My young son did, cast a blank vote, just because he had been warned by his school master that if he did not, he would not be admitted to the college", a man in Mash-had, the Capital city of the north-eastern Province of Khorasan told IPS.

The Islamic Guidance and Culture Minister in charge of journalists said near 300 foreign correspondents, including photographers and television crews had come to cover the election, much less than over 300 that covered the race four years ago, Iranian embassies abroad having refused visa to many "indesirable" journalists.

"It's religious fascism", the American news agency Associated Press quoted Mr. Hamidreza Jala’ipour, a prominent and influential columnist for the now banned Yas-e-No.

"They are traitors to Islam and the country", shot back Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, the Secretary of the Council of the Guardians speaking at the traditional Friday prayers.

"Of course I'm not going to vote and I don't think anyone else is. All of them (politicians) have only worked for themselves", the British news agency Reuters quoted war veteran Ali Asghar, a white-haired man with shrapnel lodged in his leg.

For her part, Nobel Peace laureate for 2003 and popular lawyer and human right activist Shirin Ebadi had also dealt a severe blow to the conservatives by stating that she would not vote "because people were not free to choose their representatives".

In a sharp contrast to both Khameneh’i and a lugubrious looking Khatami who had again urged the people to come forward voting and while the badly lamed President had accused his own camp of creating an electoral "cacophony", casting his vote, former president Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani regretted that the "tragic events before the elections" had created a "sour atmosphere" bringing the people to "turn their back" (to the elections), blaming indirectly the Council of Guardians (CG) for the situation.

However, Radio and Television censored Mr. Hashemi Rafsanjani’s short declaration to the press, changing his "people turning their back" into "the people not being in speaking term".

The CG that is controlled by the conservatives and of which the leader appoints six clerics out of its 12 members had disqualified more than 2.000 reformist candidates running for the race, including more than 80 incumbent lawmakers, among them the younger brother of the President, Dr. Mohammad Reza Khatami, who is both a first deputy-Speaker and General Secretary of Islamic Iran Participation Front (IIPF), the country’s largest political formation that controlled the outgoing Majles.

Though Mr. Khameneh’i had "advised" the Guardians to "review" the list, they respectfully ignored him, provoking the anger of disqualified deputies and their decision to boycott the race.

Subsequently, more than 100 lawmakers went even further and in an open letter to Mr. Khameneh’i, they indirectly accused him of being the mastermind behind the mass rejection of reformist hopefuls.

As a result, the Judiciary that like all other key powers in the Islamic Republic is directly controlled by the leader on Wednesday shut two dailies, namely Yas e No, the organ of the IIPF and Sharq, close to the reformists that had dared to publish parts of the open letter, sealed off the office of the IIPF and also banned the Organisation of Mojahedeen of Islamic Revolution, the best organized and most powerful group backing the powerless President, for their call to boycott the elections.

Mr. Hashemi Rafsanjani, who as the Chairman of the powerful Assembly for Discerning the Interests of the State (ADIS, or the Expediency Council) sits between a leader who has been weakened in the process and a president who has lost his popularity and charisma, is considered as the real winner of the electoral crisis.

According to most Iranian political analysts, the next Majles would be controlled by "moderate, non-political" candidates "united" under the umbrella of the pragmatic Hashemi Rafsanjani, hence his prediction that the seventh parliament would be "more docile and equilibrated" compared to the outgoing one that was controlled overwhelmingly by the reformists.

"The conservatives blamed their reformist rivals for the situation, but in fact the population had made his mind much before, realizing that under the present political system, there is no way to bring any major and real reform", noted Mr. Mohammad Mohsen Sazegara, a former "Islamist revolutionary" now struggling for a "radical change" of the theocracy into a secular and truly democracy based on the power of parliament.

"When Hojjatoleslam Mohammad Khatami was elected to presidency in 1979 thanks to massive vote of the young generation, the Iranians were happy with the limited reforms he promised. But the system is such that he, nor the Majles he also controlled, were able to advance one single item of their reforms. As a result, what people are asking now is no more reforms in the Constitution, like limiting the powers of the Council of the Guardians or giving the president some of his constitutional responsibilities, but fundamental structural changes",

The long-standing dispute between the Interior Ministry which is in charge of the organization of the elections and the Guardian Council continued to the last minute, as voting for the 189 out of the original 290 – the earthquake-stricken region of Bam, in south-eastern Iran was not voting -- started at 8 AM local time must have ended 6 PM, but it was reported for another four hours in some places on order of the CG.

The official media said it was because of great turn out, but journalists said just the contrary, attributing to the hope of seeing late-comers to come voting, but the Interior Ministry, in a statement released late Friday night, criticized the CG for extending the legal time of voting and putting the number of eligible voters at 43 instead of the official 46.3 millions.

"No matter what the authorities would announce on the percentage of participation, it must be at best divided by two", one local journalist who had visited several poling stations told IPS, referring to sustained reports about "mass rigging and fraud".

The Ministry also refused to give any estimate about the number of the voters, as sources close to the reformists had insisted that over 3 million ID’s belonging to dead people or forged were to be used (by the conservative clan) in today elections where, contrary to the electoral laws, having ID cards with photograph of the owner was ruled "not necessary".

An unidentified spokesman for the Revolutionary Guards, speaking on Tehran Radio as an "election expert" hold the Interior Ministry for "any possible rigging" in the elections.

Arash Qavidel, a freelance journalist covering for Radio Farda also predicted the turn out at between 20 to 35 percent for respectively Tehran and the rest of the 70 million Iran.

However, according to the last unofficial estimates, the percentage of participation in Tehran was put at less than 16 and in the whole of the country at less than 35 per cent..

ENDS IRAN ELECTIONS 20204

http://www.iran-press-service.com/articles_2004/Feb_04/iran_elections_20204.htm

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