Iranian Alert -- DAY 30 -- LIVE THREAD PING LIST [Riots erupt]

To the Iranian students:

My heart and prayers are with you!!! Every American should support you in your efforts!

May the evil mullahs rot in hell! I will NEVER forget what the likes of them and their warped ideas did to our American heroes they held against their will!!!!!!!

Bump for freedom

Read this for those thinking the mullahs of Iran are warm hearted guys the liberal media seems to want them to be... I have been told the same would probably happen to me if I went there now...

Ottawa Still Waiting for Information on Canadian Arrested in Iran

July 09, 2003
The Canadian Press
myTELUS

OTTAWA -- Canadian officials were still waiting for information Wednesday about a Quebec woman arrested in Iran and allegedly beaten into a coma after snapping pictures of a prison.

Reynald Doiron, a Foreign Affairs spokesman, said Canada sent a diplomatic note Tuesday asking the Iranian government to clarify the matter, but no reply had been received as of Wednesday afternoon. Family and friends of Zahra Kazemi, 54, said she is a freelance photographer who was arrested June 23, branded a spy and beaten into unconsciousness by police interrogators.

Friends who visited her in hospital Tuesday said she was unconscious with severe cuts and bruises on her face and head.

Kazemi was born in Iran but emigrated to Quebec. She has a son in Montreal.

An official at the Iranian Embassy in Ottawa said he had no information about Kazemi other than what he had read in media reports.

"We just know that she has not been there as a Canadian reporter with a visa from us," said the official, who asked to remain anonymous.

"She might have been there by her Iranian passport and Iranian citizenship."

He said he did not know when the Iranian government would respond to Canada's request for information.

http://www.mytelus.com/news/article.do?pageID=canada_home&articleID=1361195

Here is an interesting report from Debka. Debka is a source that is either months ahead of the rest of the media or way off the mark. I don't usually post their reports. But since it appears consistent with what I am hearing in Iran today, I thought you should see it....

Tehran Police Drive Wedge between Islamic Vigilantes and Students

DEBKAfile Special Report

July 9, 2003, 10:57 PM (GMT+02:00)

Violent three-way clashes in Tehran marked the July 9 anniversary of the brutally suppressed student demonstrations of 1999, despite the Islamic regime’s advance crackdown against the pro-democracy student movement. Hundreds of hard-line Islamic vigilantes, police and students milling about outside Tehran University got into running battles Wednesday night. Police clashed with students as well as with the Basiji vigilantes, who are fiercely loyal to Iran’s radical spiritual leader Ali Khamenei and controlled by the Revolutionary Guards, to prevent them from getting closer to the university.

In expectation of trouble, the authorities had banned gatherings and closed campuses. Riot police lined the streets around Tehran University. Earlier Wednesday, three student activists were hauled off by vigilantes after declaring President Mohammed Khatami’s reforms a failure and declaring the intention of staging a sit-in opposite the UN.

DEBKAfile’s sources in Teheran report that the Islamic authorities took a number of steps to ensure that the July 9 anniversary passed quietly, although they failed to take into account clashes that would bring police and Islamic vigilantes into collision. The government shut all universities to prevent students from organizing, although end of term exams were still being held. Orders went out to close all dormitories – where students had been organizing their protests – to force out-of-towners to return home. Those who had nowhere to go had no time for demonstrations – they were too busy looking for new lodgings

Official preemptive actions included the arrest of the entire student leadership along with protest organizers after inciting them to demonstrate for ten nights in June in order to catch them off-balance a month before the anniversary. To make the student leaders show their hands, the pro-government Kayban and Jomhouri-e Eslami newspapers published inflammatory reports of government plans to privatize universities and force students to pay prohibitively steep tuition. The Basij were used as agents provocateurs to fan the flames of protest so as to mark out student activists for arrest or worse. Basij students are granted free tuition and exemptions from university entrance exams.

Despite mass arrests – even official figures showed some 4,000 people had been detained – multitudes of non-students kept on joining the protests, keeping them on the front burner for days. They then moved on to hunger strikes that went on and off for about three weeks.

But they failed to make much of an impact on the domestic and international press and many gave in to exhaustion. By the time July 9 rolled around, most student leaders were behind bars or in hiding, with death threats being made covertly and openly against their families.

Still, the Islamic regime prepared for the worst by setting up a command center for protest suppression at a military base in west Teheran where the Sar-Allah Brigades of the Revolutionary Guard are stationed. Anti-riot units massed at the facility, backed up by the Revolutionary Guards. Instructions were issued banning people in uniform – soldiers and revolutionary guardsmen – from approaching universities or other flashpoints alone or in pairs. Civil servants were told to be ready to take part in pro-government demonstrations in case opposition protests broke out.

In the meantime, a new wave of arrests and trials has begun. According to DEBKAfile’s sources, known political reformists have been targeted and at least seven newspapers belonging to the freedom camp will be closed.

The ruling mullahs also managed, in a move unprecedented in the annals of broadcasting, to jam the signals that Farsi-language television stations in Los Angeles send via ground stations to satellites that beam the anti-government programs into Iran. The tactic was a departure from partially successful attempts in the past to block transmissions from the satellites themselves, jamming that touched off protests by ordinary Iranians and even reformists. This time, DEBKAfile’s sources report, Iran paid Cuban experts handsome fees to disrupt the uplink itself, stopping even exiled Iranians in Canada and Europe from tuning in.

The United States has not protested this violation of its airwaves, although owners of the Farsi-language television stations in Los Angeles intend to complain to President George W. Bush and demand an inquiry.

Though cheered on from Washington and Iranian émigré communities around the world, the pro-democracy students and reformists have failed to shake the theocratic regime which has ruled Iran for a quarter century. But demonstrators may get a second chance; more street protests are expected soon. The United States is also keeping Teheran under pressure with accusations of granting sanctuary to senior al-Qaeda operatives and demands that Iran throw all its nuclear sites open to closer and unannounced international inspections.

http://www.debka.com/article.php?aid=520

DoctorZIn - is there something more tangible than our prayers for the success of the Iranian people against their oppressive government that we can offer?

Money, supplies, anything?

The militia are hired guns. There to do the job the police have refused to do. (beat their own neighbors)

...DoctorZIn - is there something more tangible than our prayers for the success of the Iranian people against their oppressive government that we can offer? Money, supplies, anything? ....

The Iranian broadcasters need $. The best stations are:
NITV
http://www.nitv.tv/main.htm
and Azadi TV
http://www.azaditv.com/prog_01.htm

as does the Student Movement Coordinating Committee for Democracy in Iran
http://www.daneshjoo.org/

You can also write, fax, call the media and make sure they cover the story. Iranians in Iran watch FoxNews and it is depressing for them when they are putting their lives on the line and not even FoxNews is covering it.

So wake up the media. Your calls, emails, and faxes do wake them up.

As much as I distrust Debeka, that sounds pretty plausable. The thing is, the mad mullahs can't keep those students boxed up forever. I'm worried about what they might do to those already in their prisons.

Now we have to focus on getting those students free as soon as possible.

FOX just ran clips of the protests in Iran. They ran them for quite a while if that helps.

Fox News had a report via phone (hmm, I thought the cells were down?) not more than 20 minutes ago.

On Iran, US Opts for Peer Pressure

July 10, 2003
The Christian Science Monitor
Howard LaFranchi

WASHINGTON -– Despite fresh evidence that Iran is accelerating and diversifying its suspected development of nuclear weapons, the Bush administration appears willing to wait and see - at least for now - if international pressure short of force can persuade the Tehran regime to give up its nuclear program.

The explanation can be found in the increasingly unified voice with which the international community is telling the Iranian government, in effect: "Forget the nukes, or face isolation."

The growing unity is prompting the US to follow a line with Tehran that roughly parallels its approach to North Korea and its provocative nuclear steps. In both cases, the emphasis is more multilateral pressure than unilateral action.

Yet while the US is looking to regional pressure to dissuade North Korea from its nuclear ambitions, "in this [Iranian] case the pressure is not so much regional, but from countries who do business with Iran," says Miriam Rajkumar, a nonproliferation expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace here.

"The administration seems to have concluded, at least for the time being," she says, "that working with the European Union and Russia in particular, both of which do substantial business with Tehran, is the way to go about it." And part of the formula, adds Ms. Rajkumar, is for the US to play down its image as a threat to Iran. "That would be key to getting Iran to back off its nuclear program."

Last month President Bush said the US would not tolerate Iran becoming a nuclear power. But in a major speech in Poland on May 31, the president also laid out a vision for stopping the spread of weapons of mass destruction through strengthened international cooperation. It's this multilateral approach that the administration is emphasizing - and which many of America's international partners, stung by the US's go-it-alone approach to Iraq, now want to encourage.

As a result, some of Iran's traditional partners are sounding tough on Tehran's nuclear program:

• The European Union is indicating that trade cooperation with Iran hinges on the country verifiably giving up any ambitions of developing nuclear arms.

• Moscow, which is helping Iran build the first of several planned nuclear reactors in southern Iran, is increasing pressure on Tehran for assurances that the plant is meant for peaceful energy-generating purposes.

• Europeans and Russians are calling on Tehran to accept tougher international inspections of its nuclear facilities to erase the darkening clouds of suspicion.

At the same time, the US State Department is pressing for a crackdown on the US operations of the leading Iranian opposition organization, which the Bush administration lists as a "foreign terrorist organization." Curtailing the activities of the People's Mujaheddin would be well-received by a Tehran regime wary of American intentions.

Going farther to squelch Tehran's concerns about US interventionist behavior, Secretary of State Colin Powell said Wednesday the US should "not get in the middle of [Iran's] family fight too deeply," signalling intentions to stay out of the ongoing tug-of-war between the elected reform-minded faction of President Mohammad Khatami, pro-democracy students who have protested recently for expanded rights, and the conservative mullahs who largely run the country.

At the same time, it is the Mujaheddin's political arm, the National Council of Resistance of Iran, which has exposed the existence of secret nuclear facilities in Iran - revelations that shocked international nuclear officials and that have prompted much of the building pressure on the Tehran regime.

THE National Council again this week claimed to reveal new nuclear sites in Iran, detailing in a Washington press conference Tuesday the existence of facilities intended for uranium enrichment in Kolahdouz near Tehran. The significance of the new sites, according to Alireza Jafarzadeh of the Council's US office, is that they are under the control of Iran's Defense Industry Organization - a branch of the Defense Ministry.

That affiliation and the new sites, which the Council claims were developed beginning only in February, offer additional support to mounting evidence that Iran intends to develop nuclear weapons, Mr. Jafarzadeh says.

The Council's revelations came a day before Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, was to visit Tehran to gather details of the nuclear program. He was also set to press the government to sign an agreement with the IAEA to accept a regime of more intrusive, unannounced inspections of nuclear sites.

The US, Europe, and Russia support having Iran sign an "additional protocol" to its agreements as a signatory of the Nonproliferation Treaty. Up to now, Iran has suggested its willingness to sign the protocol, but only in exchange for legal access to advanced nuclear energy technology.

Still, many proliferation experts say even the additional protocol won't be enough in the long run to stop Iran from going nuclear. "All it does is allow you to do more intrusively something that's not very effective to begin with," says Henry Sokolski, executive director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center in Washington.

He says even intrusive monitoring allows secretive weapons programs to remain one jump ahead of inspections - while loopholes in the Nonproliferation Treaty allow countries like Iran to proceed legally "until they break out and in a matter of weeks reveal they've got the bomb." But Mr. Sokolski believes a united international front against Iranian proliferation can work - if accompanied by the carrot of foreign business cooperation.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0710/p01s02-usfp.html

....Fox News had a report via phone (hmm, I thought the cells were down?) not more than 20 minutes ago....

Great News...

Call or email them and ask them to keep it up.

I've seen this collage many times. Very powerful.

...Fox News had a report via phone (hmm, I thought the cells were down?) not more than 20 minutes ago....

Apparently it depnds of the kind of cell phone, so I understand. Fortunately people can call into Iran, but calls from Iran to the US are typically cut off as soon as the regime can do so.

The report they got via phone was regarding Al Baradi's visit. I would imagine they allowed it for that purpose since the journalist was probably with the UN press corps. FOX just asked at the last minute about the protests.

We've got FOX. They showed a snippit of the rally in D.C..

Actually spent some time talking of Iran.

Thank you Tony Snow.

Very discouraging news.

Powell's latest blatherings about "the us not getting into this family fight" is being touted around the world as the us official position, even though it is the polar opposite of what Bush has been saying. It has probably sent the message to the mullahs that they are free to crack down.

I predict that Powell will have blood on his hands in this matter. If Bush doesn't fire his scummy a$$, then so will he.