Iranian Alert -- June 9, 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.

European Resolution Focuses on Iran Nuke Program

AP - World News (via Yahoo)
Jun 8, 2004

VIENNA - Leading European nations presented a draft resolution Tuesday that criticizes Iran for not answering key questions raised by a U.N atomic agency probe of its suspect nuclear program.

The draft, written by France, Britain and Germany, "deplores" Iran's failure to cooperate in a "complete, timely and proactive' way, said a diplomat quoting parts of the text to The Associated Press. He spoke on condition of anonymity.

At the same time, the diplomat said, the draft acknowledges Iranian cooperation in granting agency inspectors access to key locations, including "defense industry" sites.

While the Islamic Republic says its programs are geared solely toward producing energy, the United States and its allies say Tehran wants to build nuclear weapons.

In an allusion to Pakistan — which indirectly supplied much of Iran's covert nuclear program through renegade scientist A.Q Khan — the draft calls for the "full and close cooperation of third countries" to clear up Iran's nuclear ambiguities.

Diplomats close to the International Atomic Energy Agency say Pakistan has refused to allow U.N. experts to independently take samples that would test Iranian assertions that traces of weapons-grade uranium found in Iran came from equipment bought from the Khan network.

If the IAEA cannot match trace samples from Pakistan and Iran, it cannot verify whether Iran's version is accurate or a cover up.

The diplomat said the draft — circulated among delegations representing the U.N. agency's 35-nation board ahead of a meeting Monday — also focused on Iran's centrifuge program, the other main outstanding issue in the IAEA's more than yearlong probe.

After initial denials, Tehran has acknowledged that it researched advanced centrifuges capable of uranium enrichment. But it denied it wanted to embark on full-scale enrichment, despite IAEA findings that it bought thousands of parts, far in excess of what it needed for research only.

The draft called on Iran to reveal the full scope of its centrifuge program.

It also urged Tehran to rethink plans to build a uranium conversion plant and heavy water reactors.

Another diplomat said the United States largely approved of the draft, but was likely to push to toughen up the wording.

Monday's board meeting will review a report on Iran by IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei, as part of the agency's probe of its covert nuclear activities.

The report voiced the same concerns as the draft circulated Tuesday — that Iran tried to buy critical parts for advanced P-2 centrifuges and that it was unclear where traces of weapons grade uranium found inside Iran came from.

In the face of mounting international pressure, Iran suspended uranium enrichment last year, and in April said it had stopped building centrifuges.

Iran has rejected U.S. allegations its nuclear program is for military purposes. ElBaradei said last month his agency had not found proof of a concrete link between Iran's nuclear activities and its military program, but "it was premature to make a judgment."

http://www.daneshjoo.org/generalnews/article/publish/article_6532.shtml

Gradually Iraqis are Waking Up to IRI's Plots

June 09, 2004
MichNews.com
Amir Naderi

There has been an upsurge of virulent anti-Iraq and anti-American diatribe spewing out of various Iranian officials, including its Supreme Leader, following the inauguration of the Interim Iraqi government last week. More worrying, this venomous rhetoric has been coupled with a series of threatening actions by Iran’s tyrants, namely the recruitment of volunteers for suicide bombing in Iraq against the United States and members of the coalition.

But there is some good news from Iraq too: There seems to be an increasing awareness on the part of Iraqis of all walks of life with different religious and ethnic background, about the sinister game Iran’s tyrannical regime is playing in their country. The Iraqi media are being increasingly vocal in condemning Iran’s plots.

It is abundantly clear now that the make-up of the new interim Iraqi government has dashed Iran’s hopes for a significant representation of its allies in the new government. The mullahs, who had many friends in the now-defunct Iraqi Governing Council, are apparently outraged seeing the new government does not include many of their allies.

Although Hassan Rowhani, the Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council cautiously welcomed the establishment of the new Iraqi government, Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has been just furious.

Even Rowhani could not hide his anger by saying that the new government does not “fulfill all of our expectations.” As if Iran’s expectation must have been a criterion in formation of an independent Iraqi government.

But the Iran’s real sentiment about the make-up of Iraq’s new government was revealed last week when Khamenei spoke. Upon learning that their number one proxy in the Governing Council, Ayatollah Abdul Aziz Hakim’s Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), is not in the new cabinet, Khamenei aimed his vindictive on the United States.

“Installing a lackey government” is “what happens when you remove the clergy from politics," Khamenei said at the mausoleum of his predecessor Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

Iran’s official news agency meanwhile reported that commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Rahim Safavi said on Monday that the United States has set up a puppet government in Iraq since it is unable to establish a broad-based government there.

Translation: Many of our allies are absent in the new government.

To put some muscle behind their rhetoric, the Iranian regime has started mobilizing its political and paramilitary shock troops to establish registration booths for recruiting volunteers for carrying out suicide bombings in Iraq against Americans and other coalition forces under the pretext of revenging the damage they caused on the shia holy shrines in Iraq.

Last Saturday, Reuters news agency quoted Mohammad Ali Samadi, a spokesman for the Committee for the Commemoration of Martyrs of the Global Islamic Campaign, a front set up by the Revolutionary Guards, as saying "Some 10,000 people have registered their names to carry out martyrdom operations on our defined targets."

Forouz Raja'ifar, the Committee's secretary, had announced in late May that "We consider martyrdom operations the only effective and useful way to counter domination of the World's Arrogance… We are confident that dismissal of the American and British Occupiers from Iraq is not possible without martyrdom operations.”

Infusing some ideological context to these declarations, a senior leader of Iran’s ruling dictatorship Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati urged worshippers at Friday prayers in Tehran to attack U.S. and British interests. "It is the duty of every Muslim to threaten U.S. and British interests anywhere," he said.

Now the good news: There is an apparent rude awakening of the various Iraqi religious, political, and social sectors to the destructive threat of Khomeini-inspired fundamentalism and terrorism emanating from Iran.

The Iraqi newspaper Al-Menar Al-Yaum wrote late May that “Despite all of Iran's meddling in Iraq's internal affairs and despite all the tragedies they have caused, we still have not heard any political group to call for severance of ties with Iran or issue a statement denouncing these interferences!! Have the Iraqi people turned into mere spectators for the atrocities Iran commits against the people of Iraq?”

Al-Hadath daily stated on May 29 that “Iran is still banking on the United States’ failure to improve conditions in Iraq and undo the damages caused by Baghdad's former regime. Tehran fears the ultimate transition of the people of Iran from a state of suppression, oppression and deprivation... In this way, Iraq may drive its neighboring countries, particularly Iran, towards democracy after the Iraqi style.”

And the Iraqi weekly Al-Araq Al-Yum reported last week about a conference held by the National Front of Iraq in Baghdad where many Iraqi political parties had participated. The weekly reports that the participants in the conference, billed as “For a Better Future in Iraq Free of Fundamentalism and Terrorism,” stressed on expansion of the front against the terrorism and fundamentalism as two major sources of threat to Iraq’s future and stability, and rejected any claim of the Iranian regime to Iraq.

In another interesting turn of events, Agence France Presse reported last month that a group of 300 Iraqi lawyers called for international guarantees for the continued presence in Iraq of the Iranian main opposition group Mujahadeen after Iraqi sovereignty is restored at the end of June, a far cry from a December 9th decision of the Iraqi Governing Council to expel the group.

Are we seeing the impetus of an Iraqi anti-fundamentalist, anti-terrorist front taking shape to neutralize Tehran’s wicked designs for Iraq? If true, it could be the best news yet coming from Iraq, marking a reversal of fortunes for Tehran. We must do all we can to facilitate the growth of this front.

http://michnews.com/artman/publish/article_3937.shtml

Russia Qualifies Its Nuclear Cooperation with Iran

Tue Jun 8, 2004 09:53 PM ET
By Richard Balmforth

SAVANNAH, Ga. (Reuters) - Russia on Tuesday refused to halt plans to build a nuclear reactor for Iran but, in the face of U.S. pressure, said Tehran must meet international calls for openness about its nuclear program.

The thorny issue of Russia's plans to construct a $800- million reactor at Bushehr was raised with Russia's Vladimir Putin by President Bush who has branded Iran part of the so-called "axis of evil."

"We have cooperated with Iran and will continue to cooperate with Iran in nuclear power generation," Sergei Prikhodko, a senior Putin aide, told reporters after talks between the two leaders at the Group of Eight summit of industrial countries.

"This is conditional on Iran fulfilling the International Atomic Energy Agency's conditions and the extent to which we can, bilaterally, solve all remaining technical problems concerning construction of the Bushehr power plant," he added.

The issue of Iran's atomic program, which the United States says is a front for developing nuclear weapons, cropped up too in discussions between Bush and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder -- indicating Washington's desire to forge a common view among the G8 of the threat it sees posed by Iran.

"I would say Schroeder and Bush share a degree of skepticism about Iran's intentions," a senior U.S. administration official said, adding that Washington was lobbying other of the European G8 members -- Britain, France and Italy -- on the issue.

Tehran says its atomic program is peaceful and denies U.S. charges that it is trying to develop a nuclear weapon covertly. It says it needs nuclear energy to meet booming demand for electricity and keep oil and gas reserves for export.

Earlier on Tuesday, France, Britain and Germany, in a draft resolution, called for a sharp rebuke of Iran by the IAEA, the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog.

The text, seen by Reuters, calls for IAEA inspections to continue and urges "Iran to take all the necessary steps on an urgent basis to resolve all outstanding questions" on its atomic program, which Washington says is a front for developing arms.

It was not clear, however, if the G8 leaders meeting on Sea Island, Georgia would succeed in reaching anything more than a generalized statement on Iran.

"I think that the leaders' statement tomorrow, hopefully, will show that, in fact, they are united, unmistakably united, in their determination that Iran not achieve nuclear weapons ... there is no division among the G8 that a nuclear weapons-equipped Iran would be unacceptable," another senior administration official told reporters

MOSCOW UNDER PRESSURE
The United States has been pressing Moscow hard to think twice about building the Bushehr reactor, saying it fears the Islamic republic may use the project as a cover for the transfer of other sensitive nuclear technology.

Russia says Iran could not produce a nuclear bomb, even using Moscow's nuclear technology, but all the same has told Tehran it must agree to a deal to return spent fuel from the reactor to Moscow.

Such a deal could help alleviate U.S. concerns that Iranian scientists could extract plutonium from spent fuel and potentially use it in warheads.

A Kremlin official, who did not wish to be named, said however that the Iranians were trying to wring concessions from the Russian side over the deal.

He did not elaborate but said: "They are trying as usual to pull the blanket toward them. But we will only start work on the plant only when contractual problems are solved."

In theory, once this deal has been signed -- possibly in summer -- the 1,000-megawatt reactor could go on stream in 2005. The plant was originally supposed to start up in 2003.

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=5377408

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