Protests continue in Tehran, as US turns up heat

Iranmania ^ | 6/14/03 | Iranmania

[jazzyjen97]

TEHRAN, June 13 (AFP) - Anti-regime protestors took to the streets of Tehran for a third night late Thursday, drawing strong support from the United States and new warnings to the Islamic regime over its policies toward Iraq and its alleged nuclear weapons programme. Demonstrators directed their venom at supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has accused Washington of fomenting the unrest, and called again for him to step down.

A hundred students managed to break out of their university campus after midnight and take to the street after smashing down a door.

They chanted slogans hostile to Iran's hardline Islamic leadership and hurled stones at police and members of Islamist militias.

Police fired teargas to disperse hundreds of other student demonstrators who had lit fires inside the campus.

Thousands of cars converged near the campus, with drivers sounding their horns in support of the students. But unlike the two preceding nights, few people rallied in the area on foot.

Anti-riot squads largely succeeded in blocking the roads, preventing both drivers and the extremist Ansar Hezbollah militia from getting too near the campus.

Armed with clubs and chains, the militia members roared around on motorbikes, smashing car windscreens and insulting the occupants, and even confronting the police at times, witnesses said.

Khamenei on Thursday accused the United States of stirring trouble in the country.

He said Washington had realized it could not overthrow the Islamic republic militarily and "wanted to create trouble in Iran ... divide the people and create a chasm between the regime and the populace".

In a speech in the southern city of Varamin broadcast on state television, he said that if the United States "sees that disgruntled people and adventurers want to cause trouble, and if it can turn them into mercenaries, it will not hesitate to do so in giving them its support."

Later, he was reported to have claimed that Washington was stirring up trouble because of its anger over Tehran's nuclear programme.

Iran is a part of US President George W. Bush's "axis of evil" and is accused of seeking to develop nuclear weapons and supporting organizations Washington deems to be terrorist.

"After seeing that young Iranian scientists have managed to master nuclear science, the (American) enemy has realised that talented youth in the universities have made the Iranian people independent of foreigners and has decided to threaten to disrupt the universities," Khamenei was quoted by the Iran Student News Agency as saying.

The United States gave its full backing to the anti-government protestors in Iran but the State Department refused to address Khamenei's accusations.

"Iranians like all people have a right to determine their own destiny," spokesman Richard Boucher said. "The United States fully supports their aspirations to live in freedom.

"It's our hope that the voice of the Iranian people and their call for the rule of law and democracy will be heard and transform Iran into a force for stability in the region," he told reporters in Washington.

"We applaud the Iranian people for calling attention to the destructive policies of the Iranian government that do such a disservice to its population," he said.

"Iran's support for terrorism, pursuit of weapons of mass destruction and denial of human rights deter the kind of foreign investment that could help create jobs for numerous unemployed and underemployed Iranians," Boucher said.

For her part, US National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice took tough aim at Iran, warning it not to meddle in the formation of new power structures in Iraq and to halt any illicit weapons programmes.

She also said Washington was keeping a close eye on Iran's possible involvement with international terrorism and stressed Washington's support for the anti-government protesters.

"We cannot tolerate circumstances in which Iran, with a different vision of what Iraq ought to look like, tries to stir trouble in southern Iraq," she said in Los Angeles.

"And we must, as an international community, be resolved to say to the Iranians that the pursuit of weapons of mass destruction, particularly nuclear weapons, is not acceptable."

She said a soon-to-be-released International Atomic Energy Agency report indicated that Iran has "been doing exactly what the US has thought.

"That is, using its advanced technology and advanced know-how ... to do, under its civilian nuclear programme, things that could lead to a nuclear weapons programme, and that is unacceptable," she said.

Rice said the elected Iranian government had not managed to deliver on its promise of democracy and had instead allowed unelected elements of the regime to "frustrate the efforts of democracy."

"We have to stand with the aspirations of the Iranian people which have been clearly expressed," Rice said.

[Land_of_Lincoln_John]

The sooner these Islamo-facsists are gone, the better.

[alloysteel]

So which way should the US play this? Just stand aside, and allow a civil war to break out in Iran, then react, or go proactive by going in and set a few rats gnawing at the foundations of their theocracy?

There was a bombing run, early in the air assault phase of the Battle for Baghdad, that was intended to hit somewhere around Basra, but somehow went astray, and hit targets in Iran. The US acknowledged the error, but the lesson was not wasted on the Iranians, who have been quite cautious about sending any of their own troops into the disorder that abounded in Iraq in the first critical weeks before the coalition could move in and secure the ground positions.

Probably a little bit of both reactive and proactive going on in Iran at the moment. We may not have much diplomatic clout with Teheran, but they sure do tiptoe around in our near proximity.