Russia will preserve its positions in Iran under any president

MOSCOW (RIA Novosti commentator Pyotr Goncharov) - Russia will not lose no matter who wins the second round of the presidential election in Iran.

It has a fair chance of preserving its priority standing in Iran's foreign policy under any president - Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, chairman of the Expediency Discernment Council, technocrat and pragmatist, or his rival, the ultraconservative Tehran Mayor Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad, who produced a furore with his surprise success at the election. This is the unanimous opinion of most Russian experts.

Unlike Washington, which said the election in Iran was undemocratic and would not create a legitimate power, Moscow regards the election as a crucial event in the history of Iran and has pledged to respect the choice of millions of Iranians.

Radjab Safarov, director of the Center for Modern Iran Studies, thinks this is not simply a diplomatic gesture to Tehran. The election campaign, he said, "has turned into a national referendum where the people expressed their support for the country's political system." He said it was notable that none of the observers reported falsification of voting results.

In his opinion, radical changes in Iran's foreign policy with regard to Russia are improbable no matter who comes to power, the pragmatic reformer Rafsanjani or his opponent, the conservative radical Nejad.

The main reason is that under Iran's constitution the president is not the head of state and hence not the last instance in decision-making. The strategy of Iran's foreign policy is approved by the unelected spiritual leader and the actual head of state, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Yet much will depend on the president, as Rafsanjani has proved once. During his previous presidency, Iran opted for liberal reforms and many Russians still remember that bilateral relations became lively and Russia got the contract for the construction of the Bushehr nuclear power plant.

Moscow should not be embarrassed by Rafsanjani's calls for normalizing relations with the U.S., as this would be a positive development for Moscow. The West will stop pressuring it to terminate nuclear cooperation with Iran. Described as a pragmatic politician, Rafsanjani will most probably welcome a broader Russian involvement in the Iranian projects.

Neither would Russia lose its standing in Iran if Nejad wins the election. Moreover, Safarov holds that Russia would get a carte blanche in oil, gas and, of course, nuclear projects. On the other hand, this may increase Western, including U.S., pressure on Russia.

But some Russian experts are dissatisfied with the current stage in Moscow-Tehran relations. Nina Mamedova, head of the Iranian sector at the Russian Institute of Oriental Studies, agrees that the victory of either candidate would not seriously influence bilateral relations. The trouble is not that Russia has serious rivals in Iran, she said, but that bilateral relations, contrary to numerous declarations, are far from impressive. Russia is not sufficiently active on the Iranian market. Tehran is waiting for a breakthrough in bilateral relations and links its hopes to the visit of President Putin.

Nuclear cooperation remains the priority sphere for Russia. The outcome of the presidential election will not affect the pace of the Iranian nuclear program. All political leaders of Iran support the plans of building a network of nuclear power stations. Tehran wants to develop nuclear power engineering so as to preserve its hydrocarbons reserves.

So far, Russia has no major rivals in this sphere, mostly thanks to the stand of the Tehran authorities. This stand with regard to Russia may change only for the better as a result of the election.

But is Russia, which has pledged to accept any winner, ready to advance its interests in Iran more energetically?

LEST WE FORGET...

Just as the PLO does not represent palestinian or Arab interests, the "Islamic fundamentalists" are not religious in nature. Rather, all these organizations have been created, supported, and directed by the Communists, operating on orders emanating from Moscow.

The terrorist group Hezballah, and its official sponsor, the government of Iran, provide a case in point.

Because of media distortion, the Ayatollah Khomeini was seen in the west as a fanatic religious leader. But the Iraqi family of the Grand Ayatollah Muhsen Hakim-Tabataba'i, which in the 1960s and 1970s exercised leadership over the Shi'ite movement of Islam, opposed Khomeini so thoroughly that they worked closely with the Shah of Iran. Saddam Hussein, the Soviet-backed dictator of Iraq, murdered the family at his first opportunity, thereby eliminating Shi'ite opposition to Khomeini.5

Khomeini's revolutionary movement was known as "Islamic Marxism," a movement begun from within the Russian Bolshevik Party in 1916.6 During the 1970s, the Soviet Union mobilized its resources to organize a revolution in Iran, with Khomeini as its official leader. Khomeini's brother was serving time in prison as a member of the Tudeh Party—the Communist Party of Iran; Khomeini's intimate advisor, Sadegh Ghothzadeh, was an affiliate of the French and Italian Communist Parties. Soon the Soviets were broadcasting pro-Khomeini propaganda into Iran, while they began publishing a well-funded revolutionary magazine entitled Navid, meaning "Good News." KGB agents working among the 4,000 Soviet personnel in Iran coordinated the protests and riots, and the Tudeh Party, acting on Soviet orders, openly backed the "Islamic" revolution and created a broad coalition of the Left to support Khomeini.7

Moscow also mobilized the PLO to back Khomeini. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, led by self-proclaimed Marxist Leninist George Habash, supplied training and weapons to the Feda'iyin-e Khalq, the Iranian Islamic-Marxist terrorist group that began the revolution to overthrow the Shah. Meanwhile, Yasser Arafat's Fatah organization trained and armed the Mujahedin-e Khalq, another main pillar of Khomeini's revolution, and it trained future members of the Revolutionary Guards of Iran, including the Minister of the Guards later appointed by Khomeini.8

Once Khomeini seized power in Iran, Arafat brought a large delegation of PLO officials into the country, where "he was formally given the Israeli consulate building and, raising the Palestinian flag over it, opened the first PLO office, also appointing a PLO 'ambassador' to Iran."9 The Soviet Union and Communist China have since continued to arm Iran with weapons.

Khomeini immediately created Hezballah as an international terrorist wing of the PLO-trained Revolutionary Guards. Inside Iran, Hezbellah worked closely with Iranian Communist organizations in consolidating the regime's power. The terrorist training camps in Iran have been supervised by Mostafa Chamran Savehi, a follower of Trotskyite Communism who, as a student in Berkeley, California during the 1960s, founded such Islamic-Marxist groups as Red Shi'ism and the Muslim Students' Association of America. The instructors at the Iranian terrorist camps have been Communist experts from North Korea and Syria, as well as Iranians trained by the PLO and the Communist government of Iraq.10

The organizer of Hezballah in Pakistan and Lebanon, Abbas Zamani, was also trained by the PLO and has been identified as a probable agent of the KGB.11 In Lebanon, Hezballah's terrorist mastermind has been Immad Mugniyeh. For years Mugniyeh was a leading member of Yasser Arafat's Force 17, an arm of Fatah. When the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 forced the PLO to leave, Arafat had Mugniyeh and other members of Force 17 switch over to Hezballah, allowing these terrorists to remain in Lebanon. Mugniyeh quickly became the effective head of Hezballah, and has coordinated Hezballah-PLO terrorism to this day. On Arafat's orders, the PLO transfers weapons, money, and terrorist units to Hezballah, while Hezballah has provided intelligence and other logistical support to the PLO—including helping PLO units infiltrate into Lebanon.12

Full link:

http://www.attacreport.com/ar_archives/art_iswr2_muslim.htm

==Oh, and by the way, did the communists set up the Mujahadjin Islamic warriors in Afghanistan too?

ANSWER (everyone would do well to remember this):

Soviet Islamists in Afghanistan

Russia has long traditions in the political art of provocation, dating back to the imperial age, when the secret police finally lost track of its own web of "agents provocateurs", who successfully infiltrated and compromised opposition parties by committing themselves to so serious crimes, that they could just as well be considered revolutionaries in police disguise. Provocations were adopted by the Soviet secret services, and widely used in the "ethnic conflicts" that appeared suddenly in Central Asia and the Caucasus, between 1987 and 1993. (See: Caucasus...!)

Provocations were exercised already during the invasion of Afghanistan, as has been recently (in February 2002) revealed by Vasili Mitrokhin, a KGB officer from 1956 to 1984, who prepared a secret report in 1987 and defected to Britain in 1992. He describes "false flag" operations, where "Soviet-trained Afghan guerrilla units posed as CIA-supported, anti-Soviet mujahidin rebels [Islamic freedom-fighters] to create confusion and flush out genuine rebels". In January 1983, there were 86 such "false bands", trained by KGB officer V. Kikot of the 8th Department of the "Directorate S". Kikot was transferred from Cuba, and was acquainted with training Palestinian terrorists. There were also over 110 agents infiltrated in Iran and over 200 agents in Pakistan, including Murtaza Bhutto, son of the former president and brother of the future prime minister. (WP 24.2.2002; IHT 25.2.2002)

Former KGB general Oleg Kalugin assured correctly on a BBC World News TV discussion on September 23rd, 2001, that there were more terrorists of al-Qayda who had been trained by the KGB than by the CIA, but his words were not taken seriously by other debaters, who preferred to blame the prevailing poverty in Palestinian refugee camps, American non-involvement there, American involvement in assisting Afghan freedom-fighters in the 1980s, and global inequality, as breeding-grounds for terrorism. For some reason, logically inconsistent and practically unfounded theories remain far more popular in western media than the simple facts confessed by top-ranking ex-Soviet officials.

Afghan freedom fighters recognized Gulbuddin Hikmatyar as a KGB provocateur already by 1985. Two-thirds of the conflicts between Afghan guerrilla factions were caused by KGB provocation. (Bradsher, p. 295; Afghanistan..., p. 203-227 and 395) This should have been no surprise, since Hikmatyar is told to have spent four years in the Afghan communist party (PDPA) before becoming a "devout" Muslim. (http://www.afghan-web.com/bios/today/ghekmatyar.html) Even an Afghan left-wing feminist group accuses Hikmatyar for participation in an assassination carried out by the KGB in 1985. (http://www.geocities.com/Wellesley/3340/rawa.html)

"The Soviets manipulated and exploited Gulbaddin Hekmatiyar’s Hizbi-i Islami [Islamic Party] primarily through the numerous agents in his military council, which included representatives not only from the Muslim Brotherhood but also from Libya, Iran, and the PLO. In the mid-1980s, Gulbaddin Hekmatiyar was known to have visited Libya and Iran and was rumored to have visited the PDRY [communist South Yemen]." (Bodansky, p. 22-23)

As CNN’s reporter Richard Mackenzie has said, Hikmatyar "gained notoriety in Afghanistan for killing more fellow Mujahideen than he did communists."

Full link:

http://www.cc.jyu.fi/~aphamala/pe/issue5/roots.htm

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