Iranian Alert -- June 14, 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 Ordered to Dispel Nuke Doubts 'In Months'

June 14, 2004
Reuters
Louis Charbonneau and Mark Trevelyan

VIENNA -- Iran is not fully cooperating with U.N. inspectors and must provide full answers within months on the extent of its nuclear programme, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency says.

Mohamed ElBaradei said the process of clarifying unresolved issues -- particularly over Iran's uranium enrichment activities -- could not be allowed to drag on for ever.

"It is essential for the integrity and credibility of the inspection process that we are able to bring these issues to a close within the next few months, and provide the international community with the assurances it urgently seeks regarding Iran's nuclear activities," he told the IAEA's board of governors on Monday.

The United States has long accused Iran of trying to build a nuclear weapon under cover of a civilian atomic energy programme. Tehran denies this, insisting it is only interested in generating electricity.

Diplomats said the United States would be pushing at the IAEA board meeting in Vienna, expected to last at least several days, for the agency to set Iran a deadline to cooperate fully.

ElBaradei said any deadline would be a matter for the member states to decide, but his comments made clear that Iran had to stop delaying and changing its story.

"We still have a central issue, and that is whether Iran has declared all its (uranium) enrichment activities," ElBaradei said, demanding "accelerated and proactive cooperation".

He highlighted concerns over the detection of traces of low-enriched and highly-enriched uranium at sites in Iran, and over Tehran's work with advanced P2 centrifuges.

These are used in the process of enriching, or purifying, uranium for use in an atomic reactor or in a nuclear weapon.

Information provided by Tehran on its P2 programme had been "changing and at times contradictory", ElBaradei said.

IRAN TO REJECT 'EXTREME DEMANDS'

Iran wants the IAEA to give it credit for the information it has disclosed to date, and has said failure to give it due recognition will affect future cooperation.

Iran's senior delegate Hossein Mousavian told reporters his country was providing "full cooperation", supplying all the information requested, and narrowing down the range of outstanding issues.

In Tehran, newly elected hardline lawmakers threatened not to ratify a U.N. protocol allowing snap nuclear inspections, which Iran signed last year and has so far been implementing.

"If Western governments impose extreme demands, the parliament will not sign the protocol," parliamentarian Mohammad Reza Tajeddini said in a newspaper article.

Delegates at the Vienna meeting will consider a joint draft resolution from France, Germany and Britain that "deplores" Iran's lack of full cooperation with the U.N. nuclear watchdog. But diplomats said Washington wanted to go further.

"The Americans want a deadline," a diplomat from one of the 35 nations on the IAEA board told Reuters. "A deadline would be to keep the pressure on Iran."

Another diplomat said a deadline could be used to force Iran to finally keep some of the promises it made to the Europeans in October 2003, when Tehran agreed to suspend uranium enrichment activities in exchange for peaceful atomic technology.

Washington would also like a "trigger mechanism" that would call for the board to report Iran to the U.N. Security Council for possible sanctions if its cooperation remains sluggish.

U.S. ambassador Kenneth Brill, commenting on ElBaradei's remarks, said: "It was a firm message that Iran has to do much better than it has been doing."

http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsPackageArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=529233&section=news

Democracy and Morality

June 14, 2004
VOA News
Voice of America Editorials

The following is an editorial reflecting the views of the United States Government:

Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said recently that “liberal democracy. . .is devoid of morality” and is “the source of all human torment and suffering.” Around the world, hundreds of millions of people disagree strongly with this characterization of democracy -- including millions of Iranians. They are more inclined to the view of America’s former President Ronald Reagan, who died this month. President Reagan referred to democracy as “the most deeply honorable form of government ever devised by man.
”
Throughout his presidency, Mr. Reagan emphasized the universal right to liberty and democracy, and the need for, in his words, “free people. . .not only to remain so, but to help others gain their freedom.” He played a pivotal role in the collapse of Communism and the end of the Cold War. In a proclamation, President George W. Bush said that “through his courage and determination, [Ronald Reagan] enhanced America's security and advanced the spread of peace, liberty, and democracy to millions of people who had lived in darkness and oppression.”

Supporting the spread of democracy is also crucial today, says President Bush. The global war on terrorism “resembles the great clashes of the last century”:

“Between those who put their trust in tyrants, and those who put their trust in liberty, our goal, the goal of this generation, is the same: We will secure our nation and defend the peace through the forward march of freedom.”

Since September 11th, 2001, Mr. Bush says, terrorist violence has been seen in an arc stretching around the world. But the “center of the conflict. . .is the broader Middle East”:

“If that region is abandoned to dictators and terrorists, it will be a constant source of violence and alarm. . . . If that region grows in democracy and prosperity and hope, the terrorist movement will lose its sponsors, lose its recruits, and lose the festering grievances that keep terrorists in business.”

Defeating terrorism and supporting the spread of democracy in the Middle East require perseverance. But says President Bush, “our confidence comes from one unshakeable belief: We believe, in Ronald Reagan's words, that 'the future belongs to the free.'”

http://www.voanews.com/Editorials/article.cfm?objectID=886FA0E5-A9CD-4DF2-AA41FC92A1317145&title=6%2F14%2F04%20%2D%20DEMOCRACY%20AND%20MORALITY

Iran defiant but UN agency increasingly united over Tehran nuclear programme

VIENNA : Iran was defiant as the UN atomic energy agency prepared to meet but the hardline United States and more conciliatory Europe were drawing closer to insist Tehran dispel suspicions it is secretly developing nuclear weapons, diplomats said.

Even non-aligned nations sympathetic to Iran seemed ready to sign on to a draft resolution Europe's big three -- Britain, France and Germany -- are to present when the International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA) 35-nation board of governors opens what could be a week-long meeting in Vienna.

The resolution raps Iran for hiding sensitive nuclear activities but also presses for continued cooperation with Tehran.

Iran is preparing itself for a souring in ties with the IAEA as Tehran refuses to renounce its right to enrich uranium for nuclear fuel, Seyed Hossein Mussavian, a member of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, told the Iranian student news agency ISNA Sunday.

"We are entering into a second phase which is the challenge posed by enrichment," Mussavian said, adding that this was difficult since "the Americans and the Europeans are on the same side".

"The Europeans are saying that in order to be sure that nuclear fuel is not used to produce nuclear weapons, Iran must renounce enrichment.

"But Iran considers enrichment to be an absolute right in the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and Iran is not ready to renounce this," Mussavian said.

Highly enriched uranium (HEU) can be used as nuclear fuel but also to make a nuclear bomb.

Tehran has agreed to suspend enrichment as a confidence-building measure but has insisted the suspension is only temporary and continued to work on other key parts of the sensitive nuclear fuel cycle.

Mussavian said the Euro-3 draft resolution signifies "that the Europeans, the IAEA and the Americans have a tacit agreement to keep the dossier at the top of the agenda so that the suspension of enrichment is longer."

He demanded it be amended, and Iranian diplomats were lobbying for this in Vienna.

"Everyone realizes what's at stake," a diplomat close to talks on the resolution told AFP about the need to determine whether Iran is hiding a nuclear weapons program, as the United States claims, or developing nuclear power for peaceful purposes, as Tehran says.

The diplomat said "no one questions the work of the agency" in finding omissions and discrepancies in Iran's reporting on its atomic activities.

And no one, except Iran, thinks the Iranian issue can be decided this June, the diplomat said, as the investigation is far from being completed.

The board meeting will also review Libya, with the IAEA vowing to persist in investigating Tripoli's now abandoned nuclear weapons program, as much to discover new facts about Libya as about the international smuggling network that supplied it, as well as Iran.

A tough Washington-inspired IAEA board resolution in March had condemned Iran for omitting to report its work into sophisticated P-2 centrifuges which can enrich uranium to bomb-grade levels.

But it drew protests from Iran that included delaying crucial agency investigations, a delay that makes it difficult for the IAEA to draw conclusions this June.

The United States looks ready to sign on this time to the Euro-3 draft resolution as it feels the tough language is "moving towards where the United States wants to be."

The United States wants to cut off cooperation with Iran and take it to the UN Security Council for possible sanctions but Washington does not have support at the IAEA for its hardline stance.

Diplomats said however that even the EU-3 were getting impatient with Iran, as the IAEA has been investigating the Iranian program since February 2003 with Iran consistently failing to deliver on promises for full disclosure.

http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_world/view/89897/1/.html

Trouble from Tehran

June 14, 2004
National Review Online
Michael Ledeen

Iran is making trouble, and finessing it is a dangerous strategy.

Abu Musab al Zarkawi, born Ahmad al Khalayla in Jordan, is the current deus ex machina of the terror war against the Coalition in Iraq. He is credited with numerous assassinations — including that of an American official, Thomas Foley, in Amman — and suicide bombings, along with the spectacular but little-reported attempt to launch a chemical attack against American targets in Jordan. Secretary of State Colin Powell named him on February 3, 2003, in his speech to the United Nations. Powell reported that Zarkawi had been sighted in Baghdad, where one of his legs had been amputated due to injuries sustained in Afghanistan.

Two months earlier, I had written about Zarkawi on the basis of German and Italian intelligence documents, presented by the prosecution in court cases against members of his European network. At that time, I noted that these documents identified Iran as the base of Zarkawi's operations. Powell was making a case against Iraq, and understandably omitted the Iranian connection, but the evidence of the Iranian matrix has just been reinforced in a book by Stefan Dambruoso (and co-authored by Guido Olimpio, a well-known journalist at Corriere della Sera), one of the Italian judicial officers charged with investigating terrorist activities in Milan. The book is entitled Milan-Baghdad, and excerpts dealing with Zarkawi appear in the current edition of Panorama , the leading Italian weekly newsmagazine.

Dambruoso flatly confirms what I wrote in December 2002: "Our investigations permit us to establish that the country of the Ayatollahs is the preferred springboard for militants headed for Iraq." Dambruoso lays it out in some detail. Zarkawi had already organized groups of fighters before the liberation of Iraq, and they operate alongside the remnants of Saddam's killers. The European network is used to recruit new bodies for the jihad in Iraq, and they enter from Iran in groups of three to five, with phony passports and usually pretending to be businessmen (or, I can add, journalists). They rent or buy small apartments in Baghdad, Tikrit, and Ramadi, where they organize larger cells, and then move into the battle area. Zarkawi himself entered Iraq by this method, along with one of the leading ideologues of the jihad, Abu Masaab (a Syrian).

Dambruoso seems to believe that the relationship between Zarkawi and Osama bin Laden is ambiguous, having seen some evidence (primarily the famous letter captured by U.S. special forces late last year) that Zarkawi was unhappy about the lack of support from al Qaeda. But whatever their tactical and personal disagreements (and these can be feigned), they share a common strategy for Iraq: kill members of the Coalition and any Iraqi who cooperates, and provoke internal conflicts among the various ethnic and religious communities. That tracks with my own analysis, which is that we are dealing with several different groups, supported by the various terror masters in Tehran, Damascus, and Riadh, in a joint operation within the overall matrix of Hezbollah — which of course means Iran.

I think Iran's diabolical hand can also be seen in the evolution of the image of Zarkawi. As Dambruoso points out in his book, the figure of Zarkawi has become more glorious, and he is not only a fighter but a preacher, who, like Osama, posts sermons on jihadist blogs.

Dambruoso explicitly refers to American intelligence sources for some of this information, including the movements from Iran to Iraq. Yet as recently as Saturday, June 12, Robin Wright of the Washington Post was loyally transmitting messages from unnamed "intelligence sources" claiming that Iran was not causing trouble in Iraq, and presenting the usual disinformation about a regime said to be internally divided and strategically paralyzed.

That sort of thing makes one wonder whether anyone at the CIA takes time to read the newspapers, or whether they rely entirely on classified cables from blind men "in the field." Had they read the newspapers they would have seen the mullahs calling for a new wave of suicide terrorism against us in Iraq, and even the remarkable spectacle of a formal signup sheet for those who want to blow themselves up (it thoughtfully gives the volunteer a choice of becoming a martyr in Iraq, Israel, or elsewhere).

I suppose this doesn't constitute troublemaking, huh?

Well, how about the news from Agence France Press on June 7 that Ukrainian troops in eastern Iraq arrested "about 40 Iranians trying to enter the country illegally...with assault rifles, Kalashnikovs, hunting guns and ammunition..."

I suppose the CIA thinks the Iranians were members of a peace-loving gun club.

Well, then, how about the report from IDF Chief of Staff Yaalon to the Israeli Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee on May 18, which dealt with massive arms smuggling operation from Egypt to Gaza? Yaalon said that most of the operation was "almost entirely financed by Iran and being conducted via Palestinian groups in Damascus and Hizbullah in Lebanon. He said weapons are also coming from Saudi Arabia and Africa."

We are inundated from all sides with evidence that should drive our strategy in the Middle East. The war in Iraq is part of a broader struggle, and we will not be able to succeed there unless we also defeat the terror masters who are funding, arming, training, and directing the terror war in Iraq. But instead of going after the Iranian regime by supporting a mass movement to democratize the country, our leaders tell pliant journalists that the Iranians aren't causing trouble, and the real danger comes from the possibility that Ahmad Chalabi leaked some information to the mullahs.

Did no journalist think to ask an anonymous source the obvious question: If Iran's not a problem, why are you so upset about the leak? And if Iran is a problem, why don't we have an Iran policy after four years of discussion? Is there a national-security process or not?

The Bush administration has clearly decided to try to "manage" Iraq and "finesse" Iran, hoping to muddle through until the election and then, if victorious, consider its options in the broader theater. The president and his top advisers evidently want to avoid "new adventures" between now and November.

But this is a very dangerous strategy, because it leaves the initiative, in Iraq and elsewhere, entirely in the hands of people like Zarkawi and his longtime Iranian sponsors. Indeed, it seems to me that doing nothing is an open invitation to "new adventures" in the Middle East, in Europe, and in the United States.

You don't need classified information to see this; it's right in front of our noses. Yet we refuse to see it. This is what intelligence failures are really about: denial of the most obvious facts about the world. And it's what policy failures are about as well: refusal to take the obvious steps to protect our citizens, our allies, and our national interests.

We buried Ronald Reagan. Let's hope we haven't buried American courage along with him.

Faster. Please?

http://www.nationalreview.com/ledeen/ledeen200406140945.asp

Iran Competes with U.S. for Iraq's Loyalty

By Dale Hurd
CBN News Sr. Reporter
June 14, 2004

The United States has spent much blood and treasure on the rebuilding of Iraq. But another nation intends to become the closest partner with a sovereign Iraq. That nation is Iran.

CBN.com – (CBN News) - The United States has spent much blood and treasure on the rebuilding of Iraq. But another nation intends to become the closest partner with a sovereign Iraq. That nation is Iran.
After America's rebuilding effort in Iraq, you would expect America to be the major player in that country, after the handover of sovereignty in 3 weeks.

But the White House says Iran is positioning itself to be the major player in Iraq after the handover of sovereignty, according to The Washington Post. The Post says Iran has spent months building networks in Iraqi political and religious circles, infiltrating the country with hundreds of spies, and paying millions of dollars into public works projects.

Iran is Shiite, as are the majority of Iraqis. And Iran has been building relationships with key religious leaders, even the former U.S. favorite, Ahmed Chalabi.

And while the U.S. is spending billions on rebuilding an infrastructure that many Iraqis do not actually see, Iran is spending a far smaller amount on more visible public services, like health clinics, community centers and power generators.

From the standpoint of Iran's hard-line mullahs, the U.S. must fail in Iraq. They cannot have a functioning democracy and a U.S. ally on their border.

http://www.cbn.com/CBNNews/News/040614d.asp

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