Posted on 05/21/2006 11:05:06 AM PDT by nuconvert
Fugitive pleads with US to 'liberate' Iran
Sarah Baxter, Washington
FOR almost eight months, Amir Abbas Fakhravar was held in solitary confinement in a soundproof cell in Iran. His bare, constantly lit surroundings were all a creamy white — the walls, the floor, his clothes and the door, with a slit through which white rice would be delivered in a white bowl by guards wearing slippers to muffle their footfall.
Amnesty International calls his case the first known example of “white torture” in Iran and it nearly drove Fakhravar mad. He was stuck in a terrifying, real-life version of the George Lucas film, THX 1138, about a dystopia where dissidents are imprisoned in a white room.
“I was living with my childhood memories, but I couldn’t remember my mother’s face,” Fakhravar said. “I’d see the deformed faces of my family in my nightmares.”
Fakhravar, a 30-year-old writer and leader of the dissident Iranian student movement, who has been repeatedly jailed, emerged in Washington last week after spending 10 months on the run inside Iran. His sister was told by Revolutionary Guards that there were orders to shoot him on sight.
He surfaced at the end of last month in Dubai, where 24 hours later he was met by the leading American neoconservative, Richard Perle. Fakhravar was whisked to America last weekend and has already met congressmen and Bush officials. He said he was in Washington to spread one message only: “Regime change,” he said, breaking from Farsi into English to deliver it.
In Iran, Bush is regarded as a liberator, Fakhravar said. “People are afraid to express what is in their hearts, but in small, private gatherings, they see him as a saviour.”
Fakhravar believes dialogue with Iran is useless. “The regime wants to have a nuclear bomb so it can wipe out a country it doesn’t like,” he said. “We don’t understand why the rest of the world doesn’t understand this.”
He hopes to warn President George Bush and Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state, in person not to be lured into talks with the regime of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, which he says is lying about its plans for peaceful nuclear energy.
“If it is a matter of national pride to have it, why did they keep the programme secret for 18 years?” Fakhravar asked.
The dissident’s plain-speaking comes as the Washington establishment is divided over whether to negotiate directly with Iran.
Henry Kissinger, the former secretary of state, called last week for new channels to be opened with Iran. “Focusing on regime change as the road to de-nuclearisation confuses the issue,” he wrote in The Washington Post. President Ronald Reagan invited his Soviet counterpart, Leonid Brezhnev, to a “dialogue” after denouncing the USSR as an evil empire, the architect of realpolitik noted.
Some neoconservatives, including William Kristol of the Weekly Standard magazine, are rethinking their blanket hostility to talks and wondering if there is a hawkish way to speak directly to Tehran. They fear that relying on Europe is merely allowing Iran more time to develop the bomb.
Ehud Olmert, the new Israeli prime minister, arrives in Washington tomorrow for his first summit with Bush. “Olmert will try to get Bush’s approval for an Israeli military strike on Iran in the event that the West backs down,” a well-informed Israeli source said. If diplomacy fails, however, the view inside the Pentagon is that American airstrikes would be quicker and more effective than anything the Israelis could muster.
Additional reporting: Uzi Mahnaimi, Tel Aviv
Fakhravar believes dialogue with Iran is useless. “The regime wants to have a nuclear bomb so it can wipe out a country it doesn’t like,” he said. “We don’t understand why the rest of the world doesn’t understand this.”
pong
War with Iran is inevitable, if not already openly declared by Ahmadinejad. The only question is whether we want to engage him militarily before or after he has nukes.
More on Amir Fakhravar .....
http://www.amirabbasfakhravar.com/
Talk about selfishness! It's almost complete arrogance to say that the IAF is "inferior" to the USAF
Somebody in the Pentagon just doesn't want the surrounding Arab nations to get all steamed up over an Israeli show of firworks.
I 100% approve of our Iraq policy, but in this case, wouldn't it be interesting to go to the UN and say, "You know, just this once, why don't YOU handle this, you humanitarians who are always bitching about human rights?"
And then watch the rush to actually DO something rather than just talk. Yeah, right.
Amazing article. After hearing about this white torture business the panties on the head and nude pyramid scheme seem like child's play.
Thanks for posting.
I feel sorry for the guy, but before we get our asses stuck in Iran, I would like to see a favorable sign. A popular revolt would be nice for starters. Show me a couple of pipelines blown up, or their parliament building set on fire. (Not a good one, it was done before, somewhere else. They blamed the Jooooz then too.)Its all talk and no action coming out of Iran. If they can smuggle explosives into Iraq it should work the other way too. Actions speak louder than words.
Call me cynical,
but I wouldn't buy a bridge
from this gentleman . . .
Well, we probably have more heavy combat experience than the Israelis now...when was the last time they were engaged in heavy air-to-ground against any defenses?
Hm. I suppose you could say the same about the USA, after the way we made mincemeat of the Iraqi air defenses.
Nice story. It is hard to know how big the Iranian dissident movement is, but it is at least a sizeable and well-spoken minority. If they ever did win a democratic government, though, they'd be plagued by the madness of their fundamentalists. Islamofascism will at best be reduced to the organized crime--the Murder, Inc.--of the Middle East.
I also think it is safe to say Iraq and the US would be having fewer problems today if Iran were democratic.
"Call me cynical"
Okay, you're cynical.
This is not the first time Iranians inside Iran have said this. Right after the Iraq invasion, there were a number of reports coming out of Iran, of ordinary people wondering when "the President Boosh" would come to liberate them too.
Sorry, but it has nothing to do with arrogance, it has to do with logistics. IAF cant get there and back, much less with sufficient sorties to do the job that will need to be done. The US can. That's not saying anything bad about the capabilities that the IAF does have.
"I also think it is safe to say Iraq and the US would be having fewer problems today if Iran were democratic."
I don't think anyone doubts that.
There are Iraqis
who call us liberators.
But that's like saying
there are professors
at US colleges who
are conservatives . . .
(Let's be rational --
It's the number of people
who believe that count.)
Talk about selfishness! It's almost complete arrogance to say that the IAF is "inferior" to the USAF
Even if it's true?
I do see your point in that logistically and geographically, we are better set for fixed-wing strikes against the Iranian nuclear plants.
But even still, I'd sure like to see some Stars of David melting some glass over Iran.
I agree. We should wash our hands of the matter. They are years from developing a working nuclear bomb. Until they actually perform a test and have a missile capable of hitting the United States, it's not our problem.
Iran knows that attacking the U.S. with a nuke is suicide. Not even this madman will do it. Clearly Iran has one goal- build a bomb and drop it on Israel. So let Israel deal with this.
Preferably, before. When he gets them, by his own admission, he will use them, and that is the egg. If a nuclear exchange is inevitable, he who strikes first, strikes last. I see no reason why we should not crack the egg and scramble it before it hatches. The spew coming out of the mouth of that crazy is warning enough. Kill the sumbitch where he sleeps before he plunges the world into the abyss.
He has sent us a nice, polite warning. 'Submit or else!' In very real terms, that is a declaration of war and an act of aggression. Time to not throw down the gauntlet, but to draw the sword and cut off the hand that would press the button. Time's a'waistin'. No first strike on Israel or America. No such power in the hands of an idiot who doesn't care what the difference is between a light switch and bomb button.
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