Replies

Iran 'rushing to build nuke bomb'

Cable News Network - World News
Apr 27, 2004

WASHINGTON -- An Iranian opposition group with sources inside Iran's military is making public a list of the senior military personnel and military units it says are involved in Iran's secret nuclear weapons programs.

The National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) says in a summary of its findings that Iran is rushing to complete a first nuclear bomb in "between one and two years."

The opposition group says the nuclear weapons effort by a special military unit functioning secretly outside the Iranian Atomic Energy Organization is under the personal supervision of the Ayatollah Khamenei, Iran's supreme ruler.

In a recent report, the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency said parts of Iran's nuclear program are under military control.

The Iranian government denies ever having a nuclear weapons program and says its facilities and programs are used only for the generation of electricity.

The Iranian opposition group's summary says the view of Iran's government is that "because of its problems in Iraq, the United States has no choice but to go soft on Iran."

The NCRI was the first to make public Iran's secret nuclear weapons research activities at sites in Natanz and Arak. The IAEA subsequently confirmed them.

The group, also known as the People's Mujahedeen of Iran, has been put on the U.S. State Department list of terrorist organizations because it is accused of violence against civilians in Iran, a charge NCRI leaders reject.

The group plans a news conference to make public its findings in Brussels, Belgium on Wednesday.

http://www.daneshjoo.org/generalnews/article/publish/article_5934.shtml

Iran's Military Supervising Nuclear Experts

April 27, 2004
Reuters
Louis Charbonneau

VIENNA -- Iran's Revolutionary Guards are overseeing some 400 nuclear experts in order to prevent further leaks of sensitive information about Tehran's atomic facilities, an Iranian exile and informed diplomats said.

Alireza Jafarzadeh, who disclosed in August 2002 that Iran had a hidden uranium enrichment facility at Natanz and a heavy water plant at Arak, told Reuters his new information came from the same sources who told him about Natanz and Arak.

"According to the latest information I have from well-placed sources inside Iran, some 400 nuclear experts are now under the control and supervision of the Revolutionary Guards," he said.

The Revolutionary Guards were set up after the 1979 Islamic Revolution as a force dedicated to protecting the revolution. It works in parallel with the regular army and its head is appointed directly by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Jafarzadeh was a spokesman for the exiled opposition group National Council of Resistance of Iran before the United States, which lists it as a terrorist organisation, closed the NCRI's Washington office last year. He is now president of the Washington-based Strategic Policy Consulting Inc.

The United States accuses Iran of using its atomic energy programme as a front to build the bomb, and insists the Iranian military is intimately involved in Tehran's nuclear activities. Tehran denies this, saying it is a civilian programme dedicated to the peaceful generation of electricity.

Since August 2002, the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has been attempting to verify Tehran's statements that its nuclear programme is entirely peaceful. However, Tehran has consistently withheld information from the IAEA about potentially weapons-related technology.

A diplomat who follows Iran's nuclear programme told Reuters the guards' supervision of the nuclear programme was not new. "Since a long time ago, the Revolutionary Guards have taken over supervision of all the nuclear activities and have trained some of their people to work there," the diplomat said.

"There are hundreds of them" now working at nuclear sites up and down the country, the diplomat said. He said they have placed some sites "off limits" to personnel they do not trust.

Iran's ambassador to the United Nations in Vienna, Pirooz Hosseini, told Reuters: "I have not heard such information. I don't think we should put too much emphasis on such news."

REVOLUTIONARY GUARDS WANT A-BOMB

Other diplomats told Reuters it was no secret that the Revolutionary Guards were one of the most powerful hardline elements inside Iran. Unlike many of the reformists who oppose building an atom bomb, the diplomats said the Revolutionary Guards want to Tehran to build a bomb as soon as possible.

The guards have even forced some personnel changes inside the Iranian Atomic Energy Organisation, the diplomats said.

Jafarzadeh also said that the arrest of two atomic experts last week was part of an overall crackdown on employees working inside the Iranian nuclear industry to prevent further leaks to the NCRI and other whistle-blowers.

Iran's intelligence minister denied that the two men had been arrested for passing on atomic secrets to foreigners.

Jafarzadeh declined to say whether the atomic experts were linked to the NCRI, but warned that all "patriotic people who oppose the Iranian regime" working inside Iran's nuclear programme are in danger of being arrested.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/nm/20040427/wl_nm/nuclear_iran_dc

Experts Fear Iran Acquiring Atomic Arms

April 27, 2004
The Seattle Times
David Wood

WASHINGTON -- Already writhing with tension and terror, the Middle East is sliding toward a new crisis: As soon as this summer, Iran could be unstoppably on its way to producing nuclear material for its own bombs.

A nuclear-armed Iran would plunge the Middle East into a destabilizing new arms race, jeopardizing the West's access to Persian Gulf oil and threatening the conservative regimes of Gulf states such as Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, according to assessments by U.S. intelligence agencies and American and Israeli experts.

Unlike Saddam Hussein's Iraq, Iran has proven ties to international terror groups such as Hezbollah, and some analysts say a nuclear-armed Iran would be able to provide terrorists with "dirty" suitcase bombs that could be carried into Tel Aviv or New York.

Nuclear weapons also would give Tehran the clout to back up some of its radical ambitions, including the destruction of Israel, denial of U.S. military access to the region and the collapse of Western-oriented Arab regimes in Egypt and Pakistan.

With a hard-line Islamist regime in power in Tehran, U.S. experts are concerned the network of treaties and international sanctions intended to prevent nuclear-power programs from turning to bomb making aren't working.

Inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) were in Tehran earlier this month to check Iran's assertions that it has stopped work on building centrifuge facilities that can produce enriched uranium. That material can be refined into nuclear warheads.

The inspectors' visit came days after Iran said it would begin in June to build a 40-megawatt nuclear reactor. That would be its second facility capable of producing bomb material — in this case, enough for one bomb a year, experts said.

Once either facility is fully on line, Iran can manufacture its own enriched uranium in secret. That material can be processed into warheads or simply passed off to terrorists to use as "dirty" bombs, conventional explosives that spew deadly radioactive material into the air.

Iran had insisted that its nuclear program has always been for the peaceful production of power, but IAEA inspectors late last year found traces of bomb-grade uranium at its nuclear facilities. The discovery kicked off a series of declarations and inspections that have left the issue unresolved.

Meanwhile, Iran's February elections consolidated the power of the hard-line clerical wing, and it is now taking a harder line on nuclear matters, said Rose Gottemoeller, a former senior U.S. nuclear-proliferation official in the Clinton White House and Department of Energy. The question of nuclear weapons "is hanging very much in the balance," she said.

If Tehran continues to thumb its nose at nuclear-weapons prohibitions, the international community is likely to impose stiff sanctions to prevent it from selling its oil and natural gas.

"The perception is that Iran's revolutionary zeal is tempered, and that they're much more conservative now than in the early 1980s," when Iranian-backed terrorists attacked Americans and Israelis in the region, said Richard Russell, a former CIA analyst who teaches at the National Defense University's Near East-South Asia Center for Strategic Studies in Washington. "Who's to say they won't become emboldened with nuclear weapons?"

But the hand on the trigger might well be Israel, which may increasingly feel pressured to destroy Iran's nuclear-weapons facilities in a pre-emptive strike, one that analysts say would unleash a firestorm of anger in the region.

Israel launched such a pre-emptive strike in 1981, with eight F-16 jets striking a French-built nuclear reactor outside Baghdad. Then-Defense Minister Ariel Sharon, now prime minister, said the possession of nuclear weapons by a hostile Islamic neighbor "is not a question of balance of terror but a question of survival. We shall therefore have to prevent such a threat at its inception."

Iran today represents just such a threat, Israeli officials say.

"We believe the Iranians will continue developing nuclear military projects and in their hands such weapons pose, for the first time, an existential threat to Israel," Meir Dagan, head of the Mossad, Israel's secret service, told the Israeli parliament last fall.

Many observers believe an Israeli pre-emptive strike — after the manner of the pre-emptive U.S. war on Iraq, avowedly to destroy Saddam's weapons of mass destruction — would provoke a furious Arab backlash, jeopardizing the 110,000 U.S. troops in Iraq and derailing efforts to build democracy and stability in the Middle East.

Indeed, Arab leaders are "already alarmed at what they see as an American precedent for waging pre-emptive or preventive war," Russell said.

The United States would not impose punitive sanctions on Israel, as it did after Israel's strike into Iraq in 1981, "because the United States is also committed to pre-emption," Shlomo Brom, a retired Israeli general and strategic planner, said in an e-mail interview

Although Israel's 1981 raid on Iraq produced an international uproar, "the political price it had to pay was eventually insignificant," Brom said, compared with the risk of having a nuclear-armed Iraq in the neighborhood.

Could Israel do it? A cold-eyed analysis prepared by Brom suggests it would be difficult but not impossible.

Israeli jets, in sustained sorties to Iranian targets 900 to 1,100 miles away, would have to blast through Jordanian and Iraqi airspace or go the long way around the Arabian peninsula.

The F-16C/D and F-15I strike jets can barely make the distance one way and would burn more fuel flying at wave-skimming altitude to avoid radar. They would have to be refueled twice during the operation, raising the risk that Israel's lumbering Boeing 707 tankers would be shot down.

"Iranian nuclear installations are dispersed (and) well defended. ... Operational difficulties may lead to high (Israeli) casualty rate," Brom wrote in his assessment, adding, "an Iranian violent reaction is almost a certainty."

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2001913658_irannukes27.html

US Warns that if Iran's Nuke Prog. Goes Unchecked, it "Will be Too Late"

April 27, 2004
Kuwait News Agency
KUNA

U.N. -- John R. Bolton, US Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, told the Preparatory Committee for the 2005 Review Conference of the parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons that Iran is actively violating its treaty obligations by gaining access to technologies and materials for its nuclear weapons programs.

"If we permit Iran's deception to go on much longer, it will be too late. Iran will have nuclear weapons," he warned.

He said the International Atomic Energy Agency will at "some point" report Iran's non-compliance to the Security Council. If the council is unable to act, it "will not only be a blow to our efforts to hold Iran accountable, but also a blow to the effectiveness of the Council itself and to the credibility of the entire NPT regime".

He accused Iran of concealing a large-scale covert nuclear weapons program for over eighteen years. "It is clear that Iran draws from many of the same networks that supplied Libya with nuclear technology, components, and materials, including the A.Q. Khan network, as Khan himself has confessed".

He said Iran's recent failures to disclose work on uranium enrichment centrifuges of an advanced design and on Polonium-210, and to explain the presence of highly enriched uranium, are clear indicators that Iran continues its quest for nuclear weapons.

Iran has expressed interest in the purchase of up to six additional nuclear power plants, and has told the IAEA that it is pursuing a heavy - water research reactor at Arak - a type of reactor that might be well suited for plutonium production. "This ambitious reactor program is a remarkable venture for a country whose oil and gas reserves will last several hundred years." He argued.

North Korea, he added, also violated its NPT obligations while a party, and then proved its strategic decision to seek nuclear weapons by withdrawing from the Treaty entirely.

Iraq and Libya, he noted, had also violated the NPT, adding that Libya took the "important decision" to disclose and eliminate its weapons of mass destruction programs, a "paradigm that other nations now seeking nuclear weapons should emulate".

"There is a crisis of NPT noncompliance," Bolton stated, "and the challenge before us is to devise ways to ensure full compliance with the Treaty's nonproliferation objectives. Without such compliance by all members, confidence in the security benefits derived from the NPT will erode".

President Bush, he said, is determined to stop rogue states from gaining nuclear weapons under cover of supposed peaceful nuclear technology.

"We must resolve to deal firmly and swiftly with countries whose nuclear programs pose a serious threat to the NPT. We must resolve to send a signal to potential Treaty violators that their actions will not be tolerated. We must resolve to take action now or more and more states could be emboldened to follow the lead of Iran and North Korea, and could hide behind the cover of NPT legitimacy while pursuing nuclear weapons technology," he warned.

"The time for business as usual is over...What will eventually result is a world with an ever-growing number of states possessing nuclear weapons, where terrorists and rogue states would have expanded access to nuclear technology and expertise. In such a world, the risk of catastrophic attacks against civilized nations would be far greater," he concluded.

http://www.kuna.net.kw/English/Story.asp?DSNO=626114

US Officials Suspect Iran May Have Parallel Nuclear Ops

April 27, 2004
Dow Jones Newswires
The Associated Press

VIENNA -- Iran may be running a covert military nuclear program parallel to the peaceful one it has opened to international scrutiny in efforts to dispel suspicions it has weapons ambitions, U.S. officials said Tuesday.

The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said new intelligence on Iran's nuclear activities was strengthening suspicions of two programs - one that inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency have access to and another, run by the military and geared toward making nuclear weapons.

"We are beginning to see indications that there is a parallel military program." one of the officials told The Associated Press, cautioning, however, that the "limited evidence" available at this point wasn't enough to draw firm conclusions.

Another official spoke of "explicit concerns" of that the military is controlling nuclear programs aimed at making weapons.

The U.S, has long maintained that Iran isn't telling the truth when it says its nuclear programs are geared only toward generating activities, insisting that the Islamic Republic's real goal is to make arms.

But the comments Tuesday by the U.S. officials appeared to be the first suggesting that Tehran was running two programs - one for public show, to appease world concerns, and the other to make weapons.

Pirooz Hosseini, Iran's chief delegate to the Vienna-based IAEA, dismissed the comments as "baseless allegations."

Any valid information on Iran's nuclear intentions "will come from the IAEA and not from these kinds of people," Hosseini told the AP.

The IAEA declined comment.

But an Iranian exile said sources "with access to the Iranian regime's nuclear program" told him that hard-liners answering directly to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had recently formed a "new military special unit to take over the (military) nuclear program."

Alireza Jafarzadeh, a former spokesman of exiled opposition National Council of Resistance, said the unit controlled a program separate from that under the responsibility of Atomic Energy Organization of Iran now being probed by IAEA inspectors.

That program runs facilities scattered over the country, including secret laboratories and facilities used for enriching uranium with the objective "of making (nuclear) weapons, he said from Washington.

Iran said it suspended uranium enrichment last year under strong international pressure but continued manufacture of uranium-enriching centrifuge components. This month it said it had also stopped building centrifuges.

Iran's nuclear aims first came under international scrutiny after the IAEA discovered a covert centrifuge facility at Natanz. First word of the existence of the centrifuges came nearly two years ago from Jafarzadeh. He now runs the Strategic Policy Consulting think thank after his exile organization was closed down in the United States, which lists it as a terrorist group.

Since the initial discovery of the centrifuges, traces of weapons grade, highly enriched uranium, new, more advanced centrifuge prototypes and suspicious covert experiments that can also have military applications have increased suspicions, even though Tehran says it was interested only in low-enriched uranium for power generation.

Tehran last month acknowledged for the first time that its military was involved in the country's nuclear program but insisted that its participation - building centrifuges - had been for the civilian sector.

After several inconclusive board meetings of the IAEA on Iran's agenda, agency chief Mohammed ElBaradei hopes to present a fuller assessment of Iran's nuclear activities to the next board of governors gathering in June.

Iran said Saturday it has offered the "complete story" to the U.N. nuclear watchdog both about the traces of weapons-grade uranium and documents pertaining to advanced centrifuges that could be used to produce atomic bombs.

http://news.nasdaq.com/news/newsStory.aspx?&cpath=20040427ACQDJON200404271636DOWJONESDJONLINE001324.htm

SENIOR IRAQI CLERICS AND IRAN TAKING DISTANCES FROM SADR

PARIS, 27 Apr. (IPS)

The unexpected, and somehow surprising return of hard line Ayatollah Kazem Ha’eri to Najaf might be the result of the fact finding mission an Iranian delegation that visited Baghdad recently, political analysts said Tuesday.

The delegation, led by an Iranian diplomat, was sent to Iraq on a suggestion from Britain to help ease the situation, particularly stopping Hojjatoleslam Moqtada Sadr, the young, turbulent cleric who, at the head of his so-called Mahdi Army, is battling against American forces in Iraq.

However, the mission returned to Tehran almost empty hand, following the assassination of an Iranian attaché in Baghdad by unidentified gunmen.

The Iraqi-born Ayatollah was in Iran in the past decades, following the massive crackdown on the Iraqi Shi’a by the former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, now in prison somewhere in Iraq waiting his trial, immediately after the first Iraq war, when the Shi’ite population in southern Iraq, encouraged by the Iranian ayatollahs, rebelled against the dictator.

The return of Ayatollah Ha’eri to Najaf, the Shi’ite’s holiest cities now under the direct control of the Americans is important since he is both considered as the mentor of Mr. Sadr, and therefore responsible for his outbursts, menaces and military actions against the Americans as well as being a close friend of the leader of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ali Khameneh'i.

"In his position, the senior cleric can well harness Moqtada while looking after Iranian interests in Iraq, in a way, a continuation of the Iranian initiatives", commented one Iranian analyst, observing that Mr. Ha’eri is returning to Najaf at a time that heavy fighting rages between American forces with the Mahdi Army.

According to Iranian and Arab experts of the Iraqi scene, Moqtada is not supported by any of the Iraqi senior clerics like Ayatollah Ali Sistani nor by any leading political formations, such as the Supreme Assembly of the Islamic Revolution of Iraq (SAIRI), considered as the largest, strongest and most popular of Iraqi religious and political organisations led by Hojjatoleslam Aziz al-Hakim, a member of the Iraqi Provisory Government.

"Rich with experiences he cumulated from the years he lived in Iran, Aziz does not intend to repeat mistakes made by the ruling Iranian ayatollahs. It is for this reason that SAIRI decided to join the American-installed IPG and established working relationship with other Iraqi political and religious parties, notably with the two leading Kurdish parties and the moderate Sunnis", said Mr. Ali Amini, an independent Iranian journalist and respected observer of the Iraqi affairs.

Informed sources said immediately after settling in Najaf, Mr. Ha’eri informed the other high-ranking Shi’a clerics that neither he nor Tehran supports Mr. Moqtada and his operations that, in his view, are "counterproductive".

Meanwhile, the internet news site Baztab close to the conservatives reported Tuesday that senior Iraqi clerics from Najaf and Karbala, in order to save the holy and sacred shrine of Ali, the Shi’ite’s first imam and his on Hussein (who is buried in Karbala) from possible "direct or collateral" damages, have urged Moqtada to stop his operations and leave Najaf.

"The same as Imam Hussein, in order to safeguard the sanctity of the House of God, decided to leave Mekka, knowing that be doing so he goes to his death, you should emulate him by leaving Najaf", the clerics wrote to Moqtada.

"Now that Sadr, despite the fact that due to the inequality of forces he and his army are doomed, insists on the continuation of his operations, we urge him to respect the sanctity of Najaf and Karbala and the holy shrines there by evacuating the Mahdi Army from holy cities of Najaf and Karbala and help preventing the attacks of the Coalition forces against these cities, causing the suffering of their inhabitants", Baztab added.

ENDS IRAQ SADR 27404

http://www.iran-press-service.com/articles_2004/Apr_04/iraq_sadr_27404.htm

Mullahs in Iran afraid of the Internet and its Impact on Regime Change

Apr 28, 2004, 01:08
Hamid Namvar

Sometimes you read the news and you just want to scream; sometimes out of anger, sometimes out of shock, and sometimes both.

Today was one of those days. News agencies have reported that the Police Directorate of Public Education warned Iran's youth that "the Internet can jeopardize your bodily well-being, make you lose your friends and turn you into an anti-social, faithless and mentally damaged individual".

The Directorate names "depression, weakness in faith, and tens of other forms of psychological and social damage," among the side-effects of the "Internet addiction".

I checked the report from several other sources to make sure it is not a joke, and it was not. Only in Iran you can find authorities so shameless to brazenly shed crocodile tears for the well-being of Iran's youth while our prisons are full of student activists, some of them so severely tortured that they are in the need of immediate medical care.

The regime in Iran has a proven record of outmost carelessness about the well-being of its people. Dismal economic and social situation, particularly absence of any prospects, jobs, and education, for majority of our youth has driven them to drugs, prostitution and other vices. With harsh suppression of any political and social dissent and with the rate of suicide so high especially among women, Iran's youth, thanks to the mullahs' rule, are already suffering from "depression, weakness in faith, and tens of other forms of psychological and social damage".

Obviously, the mullahs are not concerned about the youth at all. They are not concerned about anything Iranian, except their own pockets. What they are really concerned about is the youth's access to information via the Internet.

It is a general rule that in dictatorial systems of government, particularly in a theocracy such as Iran, access to uncensored information is one of the ways that cracks appear and then widen in the regime's wall of suppression.

Iran spends millions of dollars each year to feed people, both inside and outside of Iran, with propaganda and lies about what is really going on in our country. About half-a-dozen TV broadcast and dozens of radio broadcast in different dialects and languages are tasked with a providing a false image of reality to their audience. One may say that many other countries do the same. That is true. But in the case of mullahs, it is a key to the survival of their regime and the Internet can poke their propaganda bubble.

For example, Iran's TV channels spend a lot of time showing the post-war "misery" of the Iraqi people. Don't be fooled. They don't care about Iraqis at all. Not this regime. It does not even care about its own people. Don't you remember how they sent tens of thousands of minors with a "key to heaven" around their necks to the slaughterhouse during the war with Iraq? They are simply brainwashing people into believing that any kind of regime change in Iran would bring a similar misery to Iran.

Mullahs' message to people: "We may be terrible but it would be even worse after us. We are the best you have got right now." In fact this has been a common theme in activities of Tehran's propaganda machine. The golden rule of their propaganda campaign is not so much to defend themselves but to demonize the opposition to their regime so people start believing that the mullahs are bad but whatever comes after them would be even worse.

To reinforce this perverted notion, the mullahs' propaganda machine even spreads this idea that having a revolution is a terrible idea since it would bring about a regime worse than them. "See what happened with the last one, from one dictatorship to another, much worse than the first. Be happy with what you have."

And this is the biggest trick the mullahs have successfully played on Iranians that there is no alternative future for them and for their children. Iranians with a great heritage and a tradition of confronting despots deserve and will achieve a truly democratic system. Their past failures will not succeed in convincing them that the mullahs' regime is what they deserve. Never.

We have a huge responsibility to crush the mullahs' propaganda. It is a fact that they have a well-lubricated publicity machine in the United States working under benign goals of getting the Iranian-Americans involved in the political processes and providing a level-playing field for the their businesses. On the surface, these are all admirable and noble goals but not when Tehran lobbyists use these types of "mission statements" to network among professional Iranian-Americans to use them as foot-soldiers to give the mullahs a soft image in the political circles.

To confront this we have to stay focused on the main enemy of Iran and the Iranian people. It is the mullahs' regime and nothing else. We, regardless of our political differences, must expose the lies and deception emanating from Tehran. Expose them, their suppression of political dissident, their corruption, their anti-Iran policies, etc.

We must also expose Tehran's network in the Unites States; all of the groups and individuals who are tasked with presenting a soft image of the mullahs.

We must the voice of the voiceless in Iran. We should zoom in on the mullahs and stay away from anything which is divisive. We have had enough of that in the past twenty five years and the mullahs have done a great job of creating hundreds of diversionary issues among the opposition to exhaust their resources and energy. The mullahs love to tell their allies in the EU capitals how their opposition is in disarray and filled with internal bickering and that they are the only game in town.

The idea is not to sweep our political differences under the rug. That is unrealistic and politically unhealthy. Rather, we should not let them overshadow our struggle against the mullahs ruling our beloved country.

http://www.iranian.ws/iran_news/publish/article_2172.shtml

Iran's Khatami admits to "signs of despotism" in Islamic regime

TEHRAN, April 27 (AFP) - Iran's embattled reformist President Mohammad Khatami publicly acknowledged Tuesday that there were "signs of despotism" in the Islamic republic, as he countered criticism in a meeting with young people.

According to Iranian news agency reports, Khatami -- frequently criticised for failing to stand up to more powerful hardline clerics -- was given a tough grilling in a meeting to mark national youth day.

"I know that what you are saying to me now you cannot say anywhere else, because you would pay dearly and have already payed dearly, and that there are many signs of despotism in our society," the president responded.

"During my presidency, I have received many letters from young people: complaints, protests and commentaries. One day I will publish them as documents that illustrate this sensitive period of our history," said the mild-mannered cleric.

Khatami was swept into office in 1997 and again in 2001 on the back of a tide of support from young people eager to see his message of social and political tolerance translated into real change.

But his initiatives have been consistently blocked by hardliners in the courts, security forces and legislative oversight bodies. Khatami is now even more isolated after his allies in parliament were ousted in February's elections.

His second and final term in office ends in June 2005. Khatami only promised that he would "in the near future and in the form of a letter, spell out to people the things and the preoccupations that I have never revealed."

The president also akcknowledged there were political prisoners in Iran, despite assertions to the contrary by the judiciary.

"I never said that we have no political prisoners. We have them, and that is incontestable. They have been jailed for what they believe in," he said, adding that he had "pursued their cases and in doing so I have written letters and voiced my objections."

Nevertheless, Khatami did defend a recent move to increase the filtering of certain Internet sites to web users in Iran. Most of those blocked are pornographic or run by exiled opposition activists.

"Our society has moral foundations and the sites that are immoral are filtered," he said. "We do not block access to political sites, although we will not allow political sites seeking to overthrow us."

http://www.iranmania.com/news/270404i.asp

Iran's Hard-line Judiciary Bans Use of Torture

April 28, 2004
Reuters
Paul Hughes and Parinoosh Arami

TEHRAN -- Iran's hard-line judiciary on Wednesday ordered a ban on the use of torture which human rights groups say the Islamic Republic's security organizations routinely use to extract confessions.

Iran's constitution specifically outlaws the use of torture of detainees. But several attempts by the reformist-dominated parliament to pass a bill banning torture have been blocked by a constitutional watchdog run by religious hard-liners.

"Any torture to extract confession is banned and the confessions extracted through torture are not legitimate and legal," judiciary chief Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi-Shahroudi said in a 15-point directive to judiciary, police and intelligence officials obtained by Reuters.

Rights lawyers and political activists said the statement was a tacit admission that torture is still prevalent.

"If we want to see a real change in the judicial system it won't be by emphasizing what's already in the constitution," said student leader Abdollah Momeni.

Momeni, who said he was placed in solitary confinement for more than six weeks and forced to confess to acting against state security last year, said change would only come about if "the officials are fully committed to implementing the law."

There was no clear reason for the announcement's timing. Iran's rights record is routinely criticized by Western governments. But last week Tehran escaped a censure motion by the U.N.'s Human Rights Commission for a second year running.

The European Union has been involved in a human rights dialogue with Iran for about two years. But European officials privately acknowledge the talks have achieved little save a suspension on the use of stoning to execute women.

Shahroudi instructed officials that "blindfolding, restraining, pestering and insulting of detainees must be avoided during arrest, interrogation and investigation."

He emphasized that detainees cannot be deprived of their right to a lawyer, unnecessary detentions must be avoided and confessions must be written and verified by the accused.

RIGHTS LAWYERS UNIMPRESSED

His directive appeared to address most criticisms leveled at the judiciary and security forces by human rights groups and political activists. But rights lawyers were unimpressed.

"The fact that he has issued a directive cannot be justified from a legal point of view because all of these points have been mentioned as binding in the constitution," said Mohammad Sharif, a lawyer who has defended several political dissidents.

Vice President Mohammad Ali Abtahi, a close ally of President Mohammad Khatami whose reformist government has struggled to deliver on promises to improve human rights in the country, told reporters it was "important that this directive becomes effective in our judiciary and our prisons."

Ahmad Batebi, a student arrested in 1999 gave a grueling account of his treatment in prison.

"The soldiers beat my hands and secured them to plumbing pipes. They beat my head and abdominal area with soldiers' shoes," he wrote in a letter after his arrest.

"They held me under (a drain full of excrement) for so long I was unable to breathe and the excrement was inhaled through my nose and seeped into my mouth."

UK-based rights group Amnesty International, in its latest report on Iran, said: "Torture and ill-treatment ... continued to be used, usually in cases where judicial or security officials denied detainees access to lawyers and relatives."

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=4968841

Failed Model

April 28, 2004
National Review Online
Michael Rubin

Coalition concessions will not bring peace.

“It's going to lead to war!" The Iranian student intercepted me near Palestine Square in central Tehran. "Turkey has just bombed Iran," he said. The incident was a shock to many in Iran. On July 18, 1999, the Turkish Air Force bombed the Iranian frontier town of Piranshahr, hitting the town, surrounding villages, and an Iranian border outpost. While the Turkish government denied that the strike into Iran was intentional, Defense Minister Sabahattin Cakmakoglu defended Turkey's military. "Terrorists who carry out attacks on our territory escape to Iran, Iraq, and Syria," he said. Hamid Asefi, an Iranian foreign-ministry spokesman, called the bombing "unprovoked and unexplainable" and warned that Turkey "would have to shoulder its consequences."

Turkey did shoulder the consequence: success. In response to Turkey's quick and precise action, Iran cracked down on Kurdistan Worker party (PKK) terrorists it had previously sheltered and supplied. The PKK ceased to be an effective force inside Turkey. Today, the group, infamous for executing schoolteachers, is a shadow of its former self.

Unfortunately, in Iraq, the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) has learned the wrong lesson. On April 23, CPA Administrator L. Paul Bremer went on Iraqi television and rewarded terror. In response to attacks on Coalition military and Iraqi civilians, Bremer eviscerated his May 15 order purging top-tier Baathists. His message was clear: The CPA would not stand by President Bush's rhetoric of liberty and freedom. Because of the violence of a vocal minority, the CPA would abandon the entire Shia and Kurdish communities, in addition to the vast majority of Sunni Arabs. Bremer's reversal was not sudden, however, but rather the culmination of an established pattern of State Department and Foreign Office appeasement which has undermined American policy Jay Garner first deployed to Iraq one year ago.

Confronted with terrorism, the CPA appeases. Take the case of Hawija, a small town southwest of Kirkuk. Since the Iraqi monarchy inaugurated the Hawija irrigation scheme seven decades ago, Sunni Arabs have dominated the district. Once attached to Tikrit, Saddam's Baathist government gerrymandered provincial boundaries to dilute the proportion of non-Arabs in oil-rich Kirkuk. Within weeks after liberation, Hawija became a hotbed of anti-Coalition activity. The CPA response? British diplomats initiated a "Sunni strategy" to pump money into the town. They diverted funds from aid projects in Kirkuk. The lesson learned? The CPA punishes peace and vindicates violence. Former Baathists in Hawija remain restive. The disenfranchised Kurds, Arabs, and Turkmen in Kirkuk also learned the lesson. The level of violence in Kirkuk continues to increase.

Prior to the current standoff, diplomats in Fallujah signaled that violence is lucrative. On December 23, 2003, the Washington Post featured the exploits of Keith Mines, an American diplomat coordinating local governance in Fallujah. Mines solicited bids for a contract to tear down the ruins of the local Baath-party headquarters. He tossed aside the lowest bids, and instead awarded the contract to a tribal sheikh whose bid was $15,000 above the best. In other words, Mines offered a bribe for peace. "He's been very helpful to us. He's a force for stability in the area," Mines told the reporter. "The Sunnis are the spoilers. If they're not satisfied with how things go in the next six months, they'll take the whole project down," he explained. There are two problems with the State Department (and Central Intelligence Agency) strategy to buy tribal sheikhs, though. Firstly, tribal sheikhs can always go to a higher bidder; and secondly, payment for peace encourages bloodshed when money runs short.

The policy of General David Petraeus to appease recalcitrant elements has also failed. While commanding the 101st Airborne in Mosul, Petraeus held sway over security at the Syrian border. Petraeus reinstalled an Iraqi general and former high-level Baathist, Mahmud Muhammad al-Maris, to coordinate Iraqi Civil Defense Corps [ICDC] units guarding the border. In late January, I traveled out to the Syrian border without alerting CPA colleagues or the 101st Airborne. Despite the predominant Kurdish population in the area, al-Maris assigned only Sunni Arabs al-Shammar tribe members to the border guards. Consistent with the ethnic chauvinism and discrimination that characterizes Baathism, al-Maris demanded that Kurdish ICDC applicants "change" their ethnicity before they could be hired; few did.

Not only did Petraeus's decision lead to the disenfranchisement of the local population, but his appeasement of Baathists also undermined security. The al-Shammari were well known both for their support of Saddam Hussein and for the extent of their kin network on the Syrian side of the border. As I drove along an unguarded military road, I failed to see any ICDC patrols, and spotted several locations where tire tracks breached the single coil of barbed wire that delineates the Syrian-Iraqi border. Concessions do not bring peace.

It is a lesson the CPA should learn. While the journalists concentrate on Najaf and Fallujah, the firebrand cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's Jaysh al-Mahdi militia is regrouping in Karbala. For three weeks, they have laid siege to the local CPA office, nightly raining machine-gun and mortar fire upon the compound. Residents of Karbala watch the assault and interpret CPA inaction as weakness. Their confidence is eroding. If the U.S. tolerates assaults on its own people, how can the Iraqis trust their lives to Bremer's whims and promises? As one CPA official based in southern Iraq wrote earlier this week, "Failure to make a decision is a decision."

In the war against terrorism, appeasement always fails. Concession in the face of terrorism will bring not gratitude, but terror. We should not replicate examples of failure, but rather models of success.

— Michael Rubin is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.

http://www.nationalreview.com/rubin/rubin200404280837.asp

Iran Court Orders U.S. to Pay $600 million

April 28, 2004
Reuters
AlertNet

TEHRAN -- An Iranian court has ruled the United States should pay $600 million in compensation for supplying ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein with chemical weapons, the official IRNA news agency said on Wednesday.

IRNA said the money in the case, brought by Iranian war veterans and disabled, should be paid to survivors of attacks on the town of Sardasht which borders Iraq.

Iraqi gas attacks killed thousands of Iranians and Iraqi Kurds in the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war. Hundreds of thousands died on both sides and Iran has thousands disabled by chemical arms.

No further details were available and Iranian officials were unavailable for any immediate comment.

"The court has ordered the American government to pay the money for furnishing Saddam with chemical weapons to attack Iran," IRNA reported.

The United States and Iran have been at odds since 1979 when more than 50 Americans were held hostage by Iranian student militants at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran for 444 days after the Islamic revolution.

The verdict was submitted to the Swiss Embassy which has covered U.S. interests in Iran since Washington cut ties with Tehran in 1980.

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/OLI848341.htm

Envoy: Iran Has No More Nuclear Secrets to Reveal

April 28, 2004
Reuters
Louis Charbonneau

VIENNA -- Iran's ambassador to the United Nations in Vienna said on Wednesday Tehran has no more secrets to reveal to the U.N. nuclear watchdog and dismissed as baseless fresh accusations it has a covert atom bomb program.

Iran is expected to make a full declaration of its nuclear program to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in mid-May. Asked if it would contain any new surprise disclosures of sensitive nuclear research, envoy Pirooz Hosseini said: "No."

"We will hand in the declaration as agreed," Hosseini told Reuters. "We are doing our utmost to cooperate with the IAEA."

After receiving a previous "full" declaration of Iran's nuclear program in October, IAEA inspectors learned that it failed to include research on a number of items that could be related to a weapons program. These included advanced "P2" centrifuges capable of making bomb-grade uranium.

IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei described the P2 revelations as a "setback" in cooperation with Iran and said he hoped Tehran had no more such secrets.

But allegations that it does have continued. An Iranian exile who has reported accurately in the past on Tehran's nuclear program said the Iranian military was now overseeing some 400 experts mobilized to develop an atomic bomb.

"These are baseless allegations. It is an attempt to disturb our very fruitful cooperation with the IAEA," Hosseini said.

IRAN GROWING IMPATIENT

Exiles from the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), which revealed in 2002 that Tehran was hiding a uranium enrichment plant at Natanz and a heavy-water facility at Arak, gave more details of their latest allegations on Wednesday.

In a press release issued in Brussels, the group said Iran's leaders would stop at nothing to get the bomb and aimed to have one within one to two years.

The NCRI quoted what it said was an official review of progress in Iran's alleged secret weapons program as saying: "Those with nuclear weapons would be the masters of the world and others would be enslaved."

Last year the United States listed the NCRI, political wing of the People's Mujahideen which wants to topple and replace Iran's government, as a "terrorist organization" and shut down its Washington offices. But Western diplomats have privately praised the NCRI's atomic intelligence.

In June, the IAEA Board of Governors will meet to discuss the agency's inspections of Iran's nuclear program, which the United States charges is a front for developing atomic weapons. Tehran says the program is dedicated to the peaceful generation of electricity.

Hosseini said that after the June meeting, Iran wanted the IAEA board to stop listing it as a special case.

"We are doing our job. We should not be on the agenda of the IAEA board as a special case. We are like every other IAEA member. People in Iran are asking why we are on the agenda as a special case when we are cooperating in such a vast area?"

But one Western diplomat told Reuters Iran would remain on the agenda until it made "a strategic decision to abandon nuclear weapons."

On Tuesday, U.S. undersecretary of state for arms control John Bolton told a U.N. conference that Iran was still pursuing nuclear weapons. He said this would eventually have to be reported to U.N. Security Council, which could impose sanctions.

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=4972719