Iranian Alert -- April 6, 2004 [EST]-- 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.” 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. I began these daily threads June 10th 2003. On that date Iranians once again began taking to the streets to express their desire for a regime change. Today in Iran, most want to replace the regime with a secular democracy.

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.

UN "running out of patience with Iran"

AFP - World News (via Yahoo)
Apr 5, 2004

FRANKFURT - UN nuclear chief Mohamed ElBaradei said he was running out of patience with Iran over its failure to fully assure the international community that it does not have a secret nuclear weapons program.

ElBaradei, on his way to the Islamic republic, said the 35-member board of governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was "impatient with Iran's cooperation."

The international probe into Iran's program "cannot go on forever. We have to discuss how to accelerate cooperation," he said. "We need to satisfy ourselves there are no undeclared nuclear activities in Iran."

The IAEA director general is due in Iran on Tuesday on the nuclear issue, although the Islamic republic insists it is not hiding any of its facilities from UN inspectors.

"We have a transparent and constructive cooperation with the agency, and this will continue," Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi told reporters on Sunday.

Iran also declared that its resumption of work on a key part of the nuclear fuel cycle was not a violation of its commitment to suspend uranium enrichment activities.

In a deal with the IAEA brokered last year by the European Union's big three -- Britain, France and Germany -- Tehran agreed to suspend uranium enrichment and related activities while UN inspectors delved into its program.

However, an IAEA board resolution on March 13 condemned Iran for failing to report sensitive nuclear activities, such as the possession of designs for sophisticated P-2 centrifuges that can make bomb-grade uranium.

Since then, ElBaradei said, Iran has delayed a crucial IAEA inspection mission to research the P-2 question.

"We were supposed to do the P-2 (investigation) last month and now we are going in on April 10," ElBaradei, making his third trip to Iran since February 2003, told reporters on a stopover in Frankfurt.

He said no date had yet to be set for Pakistan -- a nuclear power -- to allow IAEA inspectors in to the country to carry out so-called "environmental sampling" to compare certain key components with those sold on the international black market to Iran.

Iran has always claimed that the presence of highly enriched uranium (HEU) discovered by the IAEA was due to contamination from particles on the imported components.

HEU can be used both as nuclear fuel in civilian reactors or as the raw material for an atomic bomb.

IAEA inspectors have found traces of HEU at two sites in Iran. The United States says the particles are proof that Iran is trying to develop nuclear weapons, despite Iran's claims of contamination.

The IAEA board is to hear a report on Iran's nuclear program when it meets in Vienna in June to consider "progress in verifying Iran's declarations and of how to respond" to Iran's omissions in reporting on its atomic activities.

Asked if the delay in inspections would make it impossible to file a full report, ElBaradei said: "A month is still four weeks."

He said there has been "some slowing of cooperation" from Iran since it filed in October what it said was a full report on its nuclear activities.

The report also did not mention that Iran had the P-2 designs.

During his visit, ElBaradei will meet with Iranian President Mohammad Khatami, Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi, Iran's top nuclear policy-maker Hassan Rowhani and the head of Iran's atomic energy organization Gholamreza Aghazadeh.

ElBaradei said he "would like to make clear in my visit that restoring and accelerating cooperation is in the interests of everybody."

"After all this time, there has been ample time for us to come to a conclusion," he said.

http://www.daneshjoo.org/generalnews/article/publish/article_5599.shtml

Iraqi police detain 15 illegal Iranian pilgrims in Karbala

Payvand Iran News
6th April 2004

Karbala, IRNA -- Fifteen Iranian pilgrims are being held in police custody in this holy Shi'ite city in southern Iraq on charge of illegal entry into the war-ravaged country, an informed police source told IRNA here Saturday.

The source, who asked not to be named, said that most of the detainees were men, who had been picked up by the Iraqi police since last week after illegally entering the country ahead of the major mourning occasion of Arbain.

The arrests came following a series of coordinated attacks which turned a similar commemoration into carnage in early March, in which 171 people were killed in Karbala and Baghdad.

Arbain marks the peak of a 40-day period of mourning for Prophet Muhammad's (PBUH) grandson Imam Hussein (AS), who was martyred in the plains of Karbala more than 1,300 years ago.

The occasion is expected to attract millions of Muslims to the holy city, giving Iraqi police enough reason to worry amid worsening security situation in the war-torn country.

According to the informed police source, efforts were underway to release the Iranian detainees in the next few days and repatriate them, given that their intentions were merely pilgrimage.

Despite the Iraqi Governing Council's implementing of new security measures following the Ashura bombings, some Iranian pilgrims set out illegally for the holy sites in the country.

According to witnesses, many illegal pilgrims avoid arrest by the Iraqi police by prodigally bribing them.

Illegal arrivals have turned to a major security issue for Iraq, forcing its leading Shi'ite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani to issue a decree, in which he banned such entries.

Iran, which has a dominant Shi'ite Muslim population, took action following the Ashura bombings and closed all its border crossing points with Iraq, except for Manzariyah, Zorbatiyah and Shalamchah.

http://www.payvand.com/news/04/apr/1019.html

Banking on prosperity

Tehran dispatch

Monday April 5, 2004
Guardian, UK
By Dan De Luce

The world's media seemed to expect drama and confrontation when Iran's clerical regime banned more than 2,000 candidates from standing in parliamentary elections in February.
However, that drama never materialised. A sit-in held by blacklisted MPs came to nothing. Reformist cabinet ministers threatened to resign, but ended up staying in office. Without a single street protest, the conservative establishment took back control of parliament in an orchestrated election.

The conservatives, allied with Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, correctly calculated that the public had long since given up on the reformists.

Millions of voters had come out in support of reformists in previous elections, believing that the president, Mohammad Khatami, and his allies could nudge the country's authoritarian theocracy towards genuine democracy and tolerance. This year, however, they stayed at home.

After humiliating Mr Khatami and killing off his experiment with reform, the conservatives are gambling that prosperity, not democracy, will keep them in power.

The victorious conservative bloc, Developers of Islamic Iran, has promised to create what it calls a more "efficient parliament", and says that it will turn Iran into an "Islamic Japan". The group has yet to explain how it will manage to create more jobs and curb inflation while speeding up the privatisation of state-owned industry.

According to Iranian newspapers, the conservatives are pursuing the "China model". This scenario would see the regime open up the vast state-owned economy, and tolerate a degree of social freedom, while keeping a firm hand on the levers of political authority.

On paper, Iran's economy is booming. Oil prices are high, and climbing higher, with hundreds of millions of dollars in oil revenue flowing into government coffers every month.

The country's robust growth figures are the envy of the Middle East, with GDP at more than 6% over the past two years. The roads are full of flashy new cars, and mobile phone sales are brisk.

Much of the growth is based on high oil prices and a speculative bubble in the property market. But, for ordinary Iranians, all that oil wealth does not seem to be trickling down.

Inflation eats away at wages. Secure, full-time jobs are hard to come by. Unemployment is officially standing at 15% and, according to most economists, is probably higher.

In the capital, Tehran, and other major cities, housing has become unaffordable for young couples without affluent parents. Teachers, and workers in the state car industry, have launched strike action over low wages in recent months. The gap between rich and poor is steadily increasing, even according to cautious government estimates.

Sensing public frustration, conservative commentators speak about the need for social justice and a fight against corruption.

"We want to use social welfare measures and also proceed with privatisation plans, so the gap between rich and poor does not increase," said Amir Mohebian, a pragmatic voice among the conservatives, who writes for the daily newspaper Resalaat.

To address Iran's economic problems, the conservatives would have to make painful choices and take on vested interests that profit from the mercantile system.

Attracting more foreign investment would require dismantling large, inefficient state-owned enterprises, as well quasi-state foundations, or bonyads, that enjoy monopolistic privileges.

No government has been willing to take the decision to shut down enterprises employing large numbers of workers, or to confront the powerful bonyads that have close ties to the ruling clergy. Previous attempts to wean Iran from its dependence on oil exports have failed.

During the early 90s, former president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani recruited western-educated technocrats and set out ambitious plans for economic liberalisation. The reforms ended in half-measures and debt, with the bazaar merchant class firmly entrenched in monopolies and cronyism.

If fundamental reform seems unlikely, the regime may instead use the cash generated from higher oil revenues as a way of softening the effects of inflation through subsidies.

Such measures won't bring prosperity, but they might defuse tensions among the majority of Iranians, whose wages are outstripped by inflation.

On the ideological front, the regime has decided to turn a blind eye to violations of the Islamic dress code and rules that discourage mingling with the opposite sex. State television now shows Hollywood films alongside religious and ideological programming, with glamorous foreign women appearing without the veil.

Hamid Reza Taraqi, a leading member of the conservative Motalefeh party, said that CDs not completely in line with Islam have been allowed, and restrictions on how young people dress have been adjusted.

"We have provided normal freedoms in society and in the university environment for youth to express their mentality and worth in the way they dress, the way they wear their hair and also the kind of [social] relations they have," he said.

Such comments illustrate how the conservatives seem ready to abandon aspects of the ideology of the 1979 Islamic revolution to stay in power, and to co-opt the reformist agenda when convenient.

Hardline ideologues, who favour a strict interpretation of Islamic Sharia law, oppose moves to mollify the younger generation and worry about Iran taking a conciliatory stance towards former adversaries, both in the region and in the west.

Last October, they were incensed the leadership backed down and agreed to intrusive UN inspections of Iran's nuclear sites.

"If the system wants to rationalise and improve its image, then it means marginalising these hardliners," one Iranian analyst, who asked not to be named, said. "But there would be consequences for that."

Conflict between so-called "pragmatists" and the more ideological elements of the conservative establishment will increasingly emerge over economic reforms, social freedom and foreign policy.

Less than a week after the election, the head of the judiciary, Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi-Shahrudi, called for the creation of a new government office to combat "vice".

The comment, made on state media, seemed to hint at a revival of the notorious "komiteh" morals police that once patrolled the streets, enforcing strict Islamic dress codes.

The judicial chief's remarks were quickly buried, and the conservative press ignored the suggestion - a sign, perhaps, that the regime wanted to avoid antagonising Iranians over social restrictions.

While it has moved to stifle democracy activists, and keeps dozens of political dissidents in jail, no one expects the theocratic leadership to turn the clock back to the severe repression that followed the 1979 revolution.

Instead, Iran may be entering an era of stagnation, in which political opposition remains disorganised and oil wealth keeps the economy afloat.

Still reeling from their defeat, the reformists are debating the way forward. The more strident among them are considering forming a unified "front" that would openly advocate a secular state without superior authority invested in the Shia clergy.

One prominent student leader, Mehid Aminizadeh, of the Office to Foster Unity, said that the reformists never had a clear idea of what they were striving for. "This is the time for thought, contemplation and reconstruction," he said.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/elsewhere/journalist/story/0,7792,1186098,00.html

This just in from a student inside of Iran...

"Doc
I have just got a report from a German based Persian Language website http://www.iran-emrooz.de discussing the role of the terrorist Mullahs of Iran in the recent Iraq unrests. The original article was also published in Al-Hayyat Arabic paper.

I am going to translate some of it here for the readers of your thread;

The Mullahs were fast to recognize interim governing council of Iraq but that doesn't mean they wanted to help Iraqis and the coalition forces.

Their favorite in Iraq is to see the quick defeat of the USA and stop rebuilding a country.

There is nothing more dangerous than victory of the US to the Mad Mullahs of Tehran and that is why they try their best to increase the casualties of the coalition forces in Iraq.

And the latest blocking of the border crossing points and decrease the number of the points from 19 to 3 shows that the US officials and Iraqi security services know better than all of us about the role of Iran in Iraq.

This website adds, American founds evidences about the role of the Iranian Charge D' Affair in Iraqi Capital.

This man, named Hossein Kazemi, is not just a diplomat. He is a former IRGC Intel officer who has personal connections with Lebanese Hizbollah and Palestinian Hamas.

He is the mediator of Hamas and Hizbollah with Moqtada Sadr.

The paper continues that This Iranian former officer will be expelled from Iraq as soon as possible.

Charge D' affair of the Iranian Embassy in Baghdad is also responsible for the attacks on US forces in Falujah in the past days.

He organizes a mission named "Sword" to prepare safe houses and weapons for foreign and internal terrorists inside Iraq.

Iran has already given $ 49 milion to Sadr and his deputies to increase their power in more than 800 mosques and some poor shiite regions.

The evidences of the aboved events are in hands of Kurdish forces and they handed these documents to American authorities in Baghdad.

Iran hasn't yet said about the arrest of its Charge D'Affair in Baghdad.

We have to wait for more bloodshed in Iraq in the days ahead."

Iranian pilgrim killed in Kufa chaos

Tuesday, April 06, 2004 - ©2004 IranMania.com

Holy Najaf, April 6 (IranMania) -- According to Iran's State News Agency (IRNA) an Iranian pilgrim got killed in Sunday chaotic conditions of Kufa due to the arrest of the head of the office of Iraqi prominent cleric Moqtada Sadr by Spanish forces.

The unrest between Sadr's followers and the occupier forces was meanwhile due to the ban on publication of Sadr's weekly publication by the civilian US administrator of Iraq, Paul Bremer.

One of the officials of the Iranian Hajj and Pilgrimage Affairs Organization, Hamid Farshadi, told IRNA on Monday night that Ms. Pour-Kouhi, from Deyr Township of the Bushehr Province, was unfortunately shot dead in Kufa`s Sunday unrest.

The official added, "The deceased Iranian pilgrim's body will be kept at Najaf's City Hospital before burial, either in Najaf, or being transferred to Iran, depending on her relatives' decision."

It is also said that two other Iranian pilgrims were wounded in Sunday chaotic conditions of various Iraqi cities, but IRNA could not get any more specifications about them in contacts with concerned Iranian and Iraqi officials and hospitals here.

Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid-Reza Asefi deplored the deaths or injuries among a large number of Iraqi nationals. Foreign Ministry Information and Press Department quoted Asefi as saying that the the occupying forces are responsible for continued ongoing unrest in Iraq and presence of the occupiers in Iraq has caused growing insecurity and chaos in the country.

Asefi called for speedy pullout of the occupying forces from Iraq and full transfer of power to the people. The campaign of violence by the Shiite radicals raised serious alarm for coalition troops who were initially welcomed by Iraq`s majority community after years of vicious rule by Saddam Hussein's Sunni-dominated regime.

Already burdened by a Sunni insurgency, a full revolt among the country's 15 million-plus Shi'as would be disastrous for the Iraqi ation and the occupiers alike. A coalition spokesman revealed Monday an arrest warrant was in force against Sadr for the murder of a rival cleric, Abdel Majid al-Khoei, last April, days after the fall of Saddam.

Aides of the anti-coalition cleric, who is currently barricaded in a mosque in the Shi'a shrine city of Kufa, vowed that he would never be captured. Apache helicopters fired on Sadr`s Mehdi Army militiamen during fierce battles in the western Baghdad district of Al-Showla Monday.

"There is only one God and America is the enemy of Allah," chanted the crowds in different Iraqi cities on Sunday and Monday. Hospital officials in Baghdad said that 22 Iraqis were killed and 85 wounded Sunday. The US military said it lost eight men in the violence as its forces were besieged by anywhere between 500 and 1,000 men.

The fighting was the worst to erupt in Baghdad since US troops entered the capital last April. The coalition's civil administrator, Paul Bremer, declared Sadr an outlaw and pledged that US forces would stop his power grab.

http://www.iranmania.com/News/ArticleView/Default.asp?NewsCode=23737&NewsKind=Current%20Affairs

IAEA chief arrives in Iran with new warning

www.chinaview.cn 2004-04-06 11:13:17

TEHRAN, April 6 (Xinhuanet) -- International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Mohamed ElBaradei arrived here early Tuesday with a warning that Iran needs to prove it was not seekingto develop nuclear weapons.

"We need to satisfy ourselves there are no undeclared nuclear activities in Iran," said the head of the United Nations nuclear watchdog in Vienna before leaving for Tehran.

ElBaradei is expected to meet with Iranian President Mohammad Khatami, Chief of Iran's Supreme National Security Council Hassan Rowhani and Gholam Reza Aghazadeh, vice president and chairman of Iran's Nuclear Energy Organization.

ElBaradei told reporters at IAEA headquarters in Vienna that hewould address two key issues with top Iranian officials: origin oftraces of enriched uranium found in the country, and an advanced P-2 uranium-enrichment centrifuge, capable of making bomb-grade uranium.

"The international probe into Iran's nuclear program cannot go no forever. I and the international community would like to bring the issue a conclusion," he said.

The IAEA chief also said he would make it clear that "restoringand accelerating cooperation is in the interests of everyone."

Repeatedly denying charges that it was developing a secret nuclear program, Iran agreed last year to submit to tougher IAEA inspections and suspend all enrichment-related activities.

ElBaradei said last month's resolution by the IAEA's 35-member board of governors, which censured Iran for hiding sensitive nuclear activities, showed the board had become "a little bit impatient" and that they would like to see progress.

Iran suspended IAEA inspections on March 14 in protest of the IAEA resolution. However, it reversed the decision the next day and allowed UN inspectors to return to Iran on March 27. Enditem

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2004-04/06/content_1403243.htm

ElBaradei Arrives in Iran With Firm Warning

April 06, 2004
AFP
Yahoo News

TEHRAN -- The head of the United Nations' atomic energy watchdog, Mohamed ElBaradei, arrived in Iran with a warning to the Islamic republic's clerical leaders that they were failing to ease suspicions that the country was seeking to develop nuclear weapons.

On his arrival, ElBaradei was asked by an Iranian journalist why he needed to visit when Iran had cooperated with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), to which he bluntly replied: "I think that does not necessarily reflect the facts."

"This is not a political issue, this is a technical issue," he added. He comment was an apparent dismissal of Iranian allegations that the IAEA was putting pressure on the Islamic republic because of lobbying by Tehran's arch-enemy, the United States.

The United States accuses Iran of using its atomic energy program as a cover for the secret development of nuclear weapons, a charge angrily denied by Tehran which insists it is only interested in producing electricity.

"I would like to close the issue tomorrow, if not today, but there are outstanding issues," ElBaradei said.

The IAEA director general told reporters accompanying him on his one-day visit that the 35-member board of governors of his Vienna-based anti-proliferation agency had become "impatient with Iran's cooperation".

The international probe into Iran's program "cannot go on forever. We have to discuss how to accelerate cooperation," he said. "We need to satisfy ourselves there are no undeclared nuclear activities in Iran."

ElBaradei said he "would like to make clear in my visit that restoring and accelerating cooperation is in the interests of everybody."

Later Tuesday was due to hold talks ElBaradei with President Mohammad Khatami, top national security official Hassan Rowhani -- the regime's point-man on the nuclear issue -- and the head of the national atomic energy body Gholam Reza Aghazadeh.

In a deal with the IAEA brokered by Britain, France and Germany in October last year, Iran agreed to make a full declaration of its nuclear activities, allow tougher IAEA inspections and suspend uranium enrichment-related activities.

But since then, inspectors have found undeclared designs for advanced P-2 centrifuges -- which can enrich uranium to weapons-grade -- and Iran also threatened to cut off cooperation altogether after such omissions from its declaration were condemned in Vienna.

In addition, Iran announced last week that it was resuming work at a uranium conversion facility in the central city of Isfahan, a key part of the sensitive nuclear fuel cycle that covers the early stages of uranium conversion before it is enriched.

Iran insists that does not violate its suspension, but the move has been criticised by the EU's big-three as likely to further damage confidence.

But an Iranian official greeting ElBaradei said he hoped the visit would manage to clear up the problems.

"We hope that all the outstanding issues will be sorted out, except the problem of contamination is a complicated problem," said Amir Hossein Zamani-Nia, director general at the Iranian foreign ministry for international political affairs.

A major question dogging the IAEA is how to account for traces of bomb-grade uranium found here. Iran says the traces came into the country on equipment bought on the black market from Pakistan, but the IAEA has yet to take samples in Pakistan to verify Iran's assertion.

"There are matters outside our control," Zamani-Nia told reporters. "But Iran has given all the information."

ElBaradei said earlier that no date had yet to be set for Pakistan -- a nuclear power -- to allow IAEA inspectors in to the country to carry out the so-called "environmental sampling" to compare certain key components with those sold on the international black market to Iran.

The next IAEA board meeting is in June, and Iran risks being declared in breach of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and find its dossier on the desk of the UN Security Council -- which in turn could choose to impose punishing sanctions.

Zamani-Nia, however, said Iran was more optimistic.

"We hope that after the June meeting, the question of Iran will no longer be on the agenda of the IAEA board of governors," he said.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=1512&ncid=1276&e=5&u=/afp/20040406/wl_afp/iran_nuclear_iaea

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