Iranian Alert -- April 12, 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.

Iran denies receiving 'strong-worded' message from US: press
Tehran, April 12, IRNA -- Iran has denied receiving a written message from the United States, allegedly warning Tehran against interfering in Iraq's affairs, press reports said Monday.

"Iran has not received any strong-worded letter, demanding that it give up interfering in Iraq's internal affairs," newspapers on Monday quoted Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi as saying.

His statements came in reaction to reports published in several Arab newspapers, alleging that Washington had warned Tehran to steer clear of Iraq, which has seen an upsurge in violence in recent days.

Top US officials have conceded that there was no evidence of the Islamic Republic's involvement in any case of insurgency operations across Iraq.

"We've seen, generally speaking, reports of suggestions of Iranian involvement, collusion, provocation, coordination, et cetera. But I think there's a dearth of hard facts to back these things up," US State Department deputy spokesman Adam Erely has said. The official, quoted by American media, was commenting on reports that Iran was targeting provocative radio broadcasts at Iraqi insurgents.

Iranian press on Monday also cited claims by Abu Dhabi television channel, alleging that Iran's top diplomat in Iraq, Hassan Kazemi Qomi, had left Baghdad on the order of the interim Governing Council. "The provisional Governing Council of Iraq has asked Hassan Kazemi Qomi to leave the country for what has been described as his link to recent developments in Iraq," the press quoted the channel as saying.

On Friday, Qomi dismissed as 'rumours' reports that he had been expelled from Iraq.

"It is wrong. I am here. I am working. It is only a rumour," AFP quoted Qomi as saying at the Iranian embassy in central Baghdad.

http://www.payvand.com/news/04/apr/1073.html

Judiciary Arrests Students and Political Activists

•After the New Year holidays, the wave of summons, arrests and convictions of student and political activists continued. The Hamedan Islamic revolutionary court sentenced Hamedan University's physics student Mohammad Majdzadeh-Qaemi to three years in jail for his role in last June's pro-democracy demonstrations. The Urumieh revolutionary court summoned Hadi Soudbar, member of the central council of Urumieh university's Islamic student council. Next week, the Tabriz Islamic revolutionary court will try independent journalist Ensafali Hedayat, who was arrested three months ago, a day after he returned from Berlin where he attended the first convention of the coalition of the secular republicans E'ttehad-e Jumhurikhahan-e Iran. Student activist Peyman Piran was sentenced to ten years in jail for his work on the student journal Tajadod. He is being held in a cellblock for common criminals at the Qasr prison in Tehran. Independent political activist Arzhang Davoodi, who had been beaten badly during his 100 days in solitary confinement at a prison run by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corp, needs surgery for his broken arm, bleeding of eyes and broken teeth. Masoumeh Shafii, wife of jailed journalist Akbar Ganji told the state-run “students” news agency ISNA that her husband, who suffers from asthma, has been given only 45 days of furlough during his four-year in jail. Homa Zarafshan, wife of jailed lawyer Naser Zarafshan, said the judiciary refused to release her husband, who has spend more than one-third of his five-year jail term. Shahla Behnudi, wife of jailed Tehran teacher's college history professor Hashem Aghajari, said her husband's situation has not changed. Aghajari has been kept in jail after a branch of the Islamic supreme court overturned his death sentence for insulting ruling clerics in a speech in June 2002 in Hamedan, during which he criticized clerical rule and the Shiite principle of religious emulation. The wives of nationalist-religious activists Hoda Saber and Taqi Rahmani said their husbands did not receive furloughs to spend the New Year holidays with their families. Father of jailed student Ahmad Batebi said his son received a 12-hour furlough to attend university exams. Jailed pollster Abbas Abdi's lawyer said his client returned to the Evin prison after a four-day New Year furlough. (Farin Asemi)

http://www.radiofarda.com/transcripts/topstory/2004/04/20040410_1230_0750_1052_EN.asp

•The US intelligence officials believe that Iran's hard-line and fiercely independent security services are providing support -- either directly or through proxies -- to outlawed Iraqi militia forces loyal to Shiite Muslim cleric Moqtada al-Sadr that have been clashing with the US-led coalition during the past week, current and former US government officials and analysts said yesterday, according to the Boston Globe. “We know on the ground that there are many hundreds and probably thousands of Iranian intelligence agents spreading money to their favored forces,” said Larry Diamond, who returned from Iraq on Saturday, where he served as a senior adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority. “There are multiple signs all over. Iran has been funding and arming several radical Islamic militias, not just Sadr's, with different elements of the Iranian power structure aiding different groups,” he told the Globe's Bryan Bender. “The US government does not control a great many things that are done by the Iranian state machinery,” said Edward Luttwak, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington and a Pentagon adviser. “One of these parts is the Revolutionary Guard Corp,” he told the Globe.

•Iran is concerned about the rising violence in Iraq, even though the Islamic Republic officials may have initially rejoiced at seeing the US forces mired in the Iraqi “swamp,” writes Paris daily Le Figaro.

•Quoting security officials, Italian newspapers Couriere della Serra and Il Reformista printed articles linking the Islamic Republic to the Moqtada Sadr's al-Mahdi Army. (Ahmad Ra'fat, Rome)

•Due to the hostilities that exist between the US and the Islamic Republic, any problem in the region is being blamed on Tehran, political science professor of universities in Tehran and London Pirouz Mojtahedzadeh tells Radio Farda. The Islamic Republic supports the plan to transfer power to an Iraqi government by June 30, and anyone linking the Islamic Republic to the Shiite unrest in Iraq should offer convincing proofs, he adds. (Mehdi Khalaji)

•Several Arab governments believe that Tehran played a role in Moqtada Sadr's move to take over state buildings in several Shiite Iraqi cities, Egyptian analyst Vahid Abdolmajid told the AFP. The regime's hardliners try to entrap the US forces in the Iraqi swamp in order to divert the US attention away from Iran, he added. To consider recent unrest in Iraq simply as resistance to opposition would be simplistic, the situation is far more complicated, he added.

http://www.radiofarda.com/transcripts/topstory/2004/04/20040410_1230_0750_1052_EN.asp

The path to national reconstruction and democratization.

By Amir Taheri
April 12, 2004, 8:30 a.m.
Iraq, April ’04

To the Iraqi poet Awad Nasir, April 9 marked the first anniversary of what he terms "the rebirth of Iraq as a free nation." On that day last year, the first contingent of the Coalition forces led by the United States entered Baghdad to an almost hysterical welcome from thousands of Iraqis. Within minutes the latest statute of Saddam Hussein, depicting the despot who had ruled Iraq for almost three decades on a horseback, was toppled, and his reign of terror brought to an end.

Anyone familiar with Iraqi sentiments today would know that the poet's feeling is shared by the overwhelming majority of his compatriots. (In one of its first moves last year, the Iraq Governing Council declared April 9 as the country's new National Day.)

Beyond Iraq, however, April 9 does not have the same meaning for some Arabs and segments of Western public opinion that did not wish to see Iraq liberated by the United States and its allies.

In a recent meeting in Beirut a group of Arab lawyers, volunteering to defend Saddam in his coming trial on charges of crimes against humanity, described April 9 as a "day of sorrow for the Arab nation." In the West, those who fought to prevent Saddam's overthrow still insist that liberating Iraq was a mistake, if not an actual crime. It is unlikely that the debate will end anytime soon.

The reason is that we have two Iraqs.

One is the Iraq of reality: A nation that is rebuilding its civil society from scratch in the face of opposition from dark forces that fear democracy for a variety of reasons. The other is the Iraq that has become an issue of American and European domestic politics.

Despite many ups and downs and regardless of the numerous mistakes made by the occupation authorities and its Iraqi partners, the experience of the real Iraq over the past year must be regarded as a success both for the Coalition and the Iraqi people as a whole.

Opponents of liberation had forecast that the fall of Saddam would turn millions of Iraqis into refugees. That did not happen. On the contrary, an estimated 1.2 million Iraqi refugees have returned home from neighboring countries while the inward flow continues at an average rate of 300 a day. Nor has Iraq experienced the famine that was supposed to kill millions of people. Anyone strolling in the bazaars of any city in Iraq today would see that more foodstuff is available than at anytime since the 1980s.

Anti-liberation groups also forecast an Iraqi civil war in which everybody would be killing everybody else. But that, too, has not happened. Despite efforts by the remnants of the fallen regime and its sympathizers in some Arab countries to foment sectarian and/or ethnic conflicts, Iraq's various communities have managed to avoid that trap.

Those who opposed liberation also claimed that Iraqis would be unable to even imagine anything but a dictatorship as their system of government.

One argument, put forward by the London Times columnist Matthew Parris, and echoed by the New York Times's Thomas Friedman, runs like this: It was not Saddam who made Iraq what it was but Iraq who created Saddam! In other words the people of Iraq are genetically programmed to produce bloodthirsty and corrupt rulers.

But that claim is shattered in the face of reality.

The people of Iraq have just prepared the draft of what is by far the most democratic constitution anywhere in the Arab world. A large number of newspapers have emerged along with more than two dozen political parties representing the widest spectrum of political opinion that the Muslim world has seen.

One may like or dislike some or even all the members of the Iraq Governing Council and/or their politics. But the fact remains that, together, they represent the most broadly based governing elite anywhere in the Muslim world today.

Predictions that any elections in Iraq would be won either by Islamist radicals or the pan-Arabists addicted to despotism have not been borne out by facts. In every one of the municipal elections that have been held in 17 Iraqi cities so far, victory has gone to democratic and secularist parties and personalities. This has also been the case in elections held by professional associations representing medical, legal, and commercial constituencies. A string of opinion polls, including some financed by those opposed to the liberation, show clear majorities in favor of democratization.

There is also some good news on other fronts in Iraq.

The educational system is back to capacity after more than 20 years with a record number of schoolchildren and university students.

The derelict infrastructure left by Saddam has been partly repaired, ensuring a majority of Iraqis with regular supplies of clean water and electricity for the first time since 1980.

Almost all hospitals have reopened while hundreds of Iraqi doctors have returned from exile to help rebuild the healthcare system.

The economy is also on the mend with at least 200,000 new jobs created in the past 12 months, half of them in the renascent government ministries. Iraq's post-liberation currency, the dinar, has gained almost 65 percent in value compared to its predecessor a year ago. By ending a system of command economy, Iraq is opening itself to outside investment. For the first time in more than 50 years foreign capital is flowing into Iraq reversing a trend of capital flight that had accelerated during the last years of Saddam's rule.

The vital oil industry is making a full comeback. Last month, Iraq managed to produce its full OPEC quota of crude oil for the first time since 1979.

Four government ministries are already under exclusive Iraqi control, indicating the ability of Iraqi technocrats and administrative personnel to replace the occupation authorities faster than anyone had envisaged.

Work on rebuilding some of the 4,000 villages destroyed by Saddam Hussein as part of his ethnic-cleansing strategy, has started. This is especially impressive in the southeast were Saddam had ordered the draining of the marshes that had been home to the Marsh Arabs for 1,000 years.

All but one of the top leaders of the fascist Baathist regime are now under arrest while much of the apparatus of oppression and corruption created by Saddam has been dismantled.

But the most important element on the positive side of the annual balance sheet of liberation is the freedom that Iraqis have won — freedoms that might appear banal to the Westerners but to most Arabs remain nothing but chunks of a distant dream. These include the freedom to speak, to create political parties and trade unions, to demonstrate against the authorities, to travel inside and outside the country without a permit from the security services, and to set up businesses without offering extortion money to Mafia-style gangs backed by the regime.

To be sure, a year of liberation has not made Iraq a bed of roses. Nor is Iraq immune against the law of unintended results and the reversals of fortune that provide the stuff of history. What is important, however, is that Iraq has been put on the path to national reconstruction and democratization. Whether or not the Iraqis will be able to seize the historic opportunity offered them as a result of a combination of events largely beyond their control remains to be seen. My guess is they will succeed. No measure of lamentation from the opponents of the liberation will bring Saddam or anyone like him back to power in Baghdad.

At the one-year mark, what matters above all is that, despite all the hardship still caused by terrorist attacks and common criminality in some cities, Iraq is free. And, as far as I am concerned, this means that Iraq is a better place — indeed the whole world is a better place, without Saddam Hussein. And that is the core issue in the debate between those who supported the liberation of Iraq and those who continue to oppose it to this day.

— Amir Taheri, Iranian-born author of ten books on the Middle East and Islam, is the author, most recently, of "L'Irak: Le Dessous Des Cartes" (Editions Complexe, France; 2003). Taheri is reachable through www.benadorassociates.com.

http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/taheri200404120830.asp

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