Iranian Alert -- DAY 31 -- LIVE THREAD PING LIST [Riots erupt]

Re #49

Yeah. If American planes begin to bomb mullahs' villas, they will be right there serving as human shields. As for protesters in the street of Teheran, they are irritants to their worldview, who do not deserve their help.

Interesting article from CBN. In this forum, in the last few posts,we have Christians, Jews, and Persian Muslims uniting against this regime... uniting for freedom for all. Now that is solid. That is how the Middle East should look, folks.

I hope this report is wrong. The US media is silent on the events in Iran...

ANALYSIS-Iranian protesters intimidated and leaderless

By Paul Hughes
10 Jul 2003 14:36:54 GMT
TEHRAN, July 10 (Reuters) - Intimidated, leaderless and few in number, Iran's pro-democracy protesters face an uncertain future with little to show for several nights of sporadic unrest against the country's Islamic clerical rulers.

Hundreds of people converged on the streets around Tehran University on Wednesday night in defiance of an official ban on gatherings for the anniversary of violent 1999 student unrest.

Apart from scuffles between police, youths and hardline Islamic vigilantes, the protest passed off with little incident. There was none of the chanting of virulent slogans against the clerical elite that could be heard during 10 nights of protests in Tehran and other cities last month.

"You couldn't even call it a protest really," said a foreign diplomat who went to see events for himself. "Most people were just sitting in their cars, too scared even to honk their horns. I hardly think the government is quaking in its boots."

Unlike in June's protests, which mushroomed unexpectedly out of a small student rally against privatisation and spread to more than half a dozen cities, authorities were well prepared for trouble on Wednesday.

Police, riot police and Islamic vigilantes fiercely loyal to conservative clerics were out in force.

"Intimidation is a key factor. Not many people are prepared to risk being beaten up or arrested," a European diplomat said.

SATELLITE CHANNELS BLOCKED

Communication is another weak point for the protesters. Mobile telephone networks across Tehran appeared to be blocked for much of Wednesday night.

Local and foreign media were instructed not to cover the demonstrations and the signals of U.S.-based Iranian exile satellite channels, which played a key role in promoting June's protests, were jammed.

Many expect the current wave of protests to enter a period of dormancy, although they could flare up again at short notice.

"The pent-up anger is still there, beneath the surface. But for it to seriously take off you need a catalyst, you need a cause, you need organisation and leadership. It's a big task," one European diplomat said.

Most analysts agree the protests reflect widespread frustration among Iranians, the vast majority of whom were born after the 1979 Islamic revolution. But an effective channel for that frustration remains elusive.

"People have a wide range of complaints. Some want more democracy, some want more social freedom and some just want jobs and lower prices," said political analyst Hossein Rassam.

"They need a common cause, a vehicle to express their anger," he said.

Just a few years ago millions of Iranians felt pro-reform President Mohammad Khatami would serve as the vehicle to deliver their hopes for a more prosperous, open and democratic society. Now, many have lost hope in Khatami's ability to overcome resistance to change from powerful hardline clerics.

PEOPLE LOOK TO STUDENTS

"Khatami has just prolonged the status quo," said one frustrated housewife. "I voted for him but now I wish I hadn't. Maybe without him things would have changed by now."

With political disillusionment on the rise, many Iranians look to university students to take the lead in the protests.

But students have paid a heavy price for playing that role in recent years.

Some 800 students were among the 4,000 people arrested during and after June's demonstrations. Dozens of others were seriously injured when hardline Islamic vigilantes burst into dormitories to attack students with chains, knives and clubs.

Plainclothes men arrested three student leaders on Wednesday just after they held a news conference to announce the cancellation of events to mark the 1999 student unrest.

"The student movement has effectively been emasculated," said one European diplomat. "Every time one of their leaders stands up and says something he's grabbed off the streets and isn't heard from for weeks."

Most students are too scared to talk openly to the foreign media for fear of arrest. A few still dare to speak out.

"Everyone in our country, be they a worker, teacher, businessman or whatever wants freedom, democracy and respect for human rights and in the future people will become more and more critical," Mehdi Habibi, a senior member of Iran's largest pro-reform student organisation, told Reuters on Thursday.

"Today's world is too small for dictators and dictatorships," he said.

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/HUG023873.htm

"If you want on or off this Iran ping list, Freepmail me”

Here's the link for RaceBannon's photos from yesterday, in case anyone missed them.

I did miss them. Thanks! What does the sign in the past photo say? I don't know Farsi and can only fully make out "azad-e" (?if I have that correct...), freedom.

The LA Jewish-Iranian community is involved.

In Seattle the Christian-Iranian community is involved. My wife noted quite a number of crosses being worn at the demonstration.

Iran press limits protest comment

BBC Thursday, 10 July, 2003, 12:09 GMT 13:09 UK

Reformist newspapers in Iran have reluctantly complied with the authorities' request not to comment on the fourth anniversary of a raid on a Tehran University dormitory that triggered student riots in 1999.

Conservative and hardline dailies, however, praise students for not turning out for the expected street demonstrations.

"We apologise to all the people and our readers for not being able to write a word yesterday, 9 July, about this tragic and criminal event," says the reformist paper Yas-e Now.

"When we read other reformist papers, we realise that they did the same and followed orders."

A 'normal' day

The hardline daily Jomhuri-ye Eslami, however, thinks the day represented a defeat for the opposition.

A chaos-seeking faction has been hoping to exploit the students' movement since 1999 Resalat echoes the same sentiment. "The dregs of society had not learned a lesson from the shame of their earlier defeat a few weeks ago," it says, referring to those who took to the streets of Tehran in mid-June protesting against the privatisation of the universities.

"They called on their gang of thugs and hooligans to start riots under the guise of marking the 9 July 1999 student demonstrations," the paper adds.

"But the situation remained normal and their propaganda failed once more."

'US involvement'

The conservative daily Resalat echoes the same sentiment.

"A chaos-seeking faction has been hoping to exploit the students' movement since 1999," the paper proclaims.

It accuses the US of trying to fuel the unrest by "gathering thugs and mob to start the riot".

"Students and other young people realised the nature of this faction and avoided becoming victims of this political game," the paper adds.

The hardline daily Keyhan also praises the authorities for banning a sit-in planned by the students in front of the UN offices in Tehran.

It says that this action foiled a plan by five reformist MPs who wanted to "score a point by playing the role of mediators and persuade the students to abandon their planned sit-in".

"As if one could run a country through such spoilt games," it says.

BBC Monitoring, based in Caversham in southern England, selects and translates information from radio, television, press, news agencies and the Internet from 150 countries in more than 70 languages.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3055291.stm

and the signals of U.S.-based Iranian exile satellite channels, which played a key role in promoting June's protests, were jammed.

I believe that jamming a satellite requires that you jam the uplink. Jamming the downlinks doesn't seem practical to me since you could only do it over a wide area from a satellite in the same orbital location.

I don't know much about what satellite or satellites are being used by the Iranian exiles but jamming a commercial satellite is a serious offense. It would take a reasonable sized dish and a transmitter and should be a piece of cake for the U.S. to locate.

It is one thing to jam the receivers in your own country. It is quite another thing to jam a commercial satellite channel from any location.

So why is this happening and why is the U.S. just watching?

>>>> I hope this report is wrong. The US media is silent on the events in Iran...
>>>> Intimidated, leaderless and few in number, Iran's pro-democracy protesters face an uncertain future with little to show for several nights of sporadic unrest against the country's Islamic clerical rulers.

This is what I feared. Peaceful protests are useless against tyrants who believe what they're doing is right for ideological reasons. Nothing will change without violence or economic destruction of the mullarchy.

"We certainly don’t mean to question the patriotism of Messrs. Biden or Lugar or to suggest that either one is rooting for the Axis of Evil nation."

We Don't?

Stupid question time. Just how much power and authority does President Mohammad Khatami have? Assuming he really wanted to institute reforms could he have done it, or is the office of president a figurehead position?

It's always the anonymous European diplomats who get quoted.

Iran: Perceptions and Misperceptions
www.stratfor.com

Originally published on Jul 08, 2003

Summary

Student protests calling for reform in Iran came to a screeching halt in late June after 10 days of unrest. A large segment of the Iranian population wants to reform the country's 24-year-old Islamist regime, but that does not necessarily mean replacing it with a Western-style democracy. In studying the Iranian political landscape, it becomes clear that most reformers -- unlike the student protesters and their allies in some civil society groups -- are not in favor of doing away with the current system and establishing a liberal democracy. Instead, most Iranians want to curtail the arbitrary power of the traditional clerics and set up an Islamic democracy.

Analysis

Calls for reforming the Islamist political system, such as those that culminated in 10 days of student protests in mid-June, have become ever more insistent -- both in and outside the country -- since the mid-1990s. The reform movement has matured over this period, and it has organized several waves of protests. However, the government thus far has been able to contain the movement with relative ease. Not only is this a measure of the government's power, but it also highlights the amorphous nature of the reform movement -- which lacks leadership, organization and direction, making it easy for Tehran to contain.

Officials in Iran's judiciary, which is a bastion of religious conservatism, estimate that 4,000 people were detained during last month's demonstrations, which ended June 20. These protests were marked by unprecedented slogans targeting Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and fierce clashes between hard-line Islamist vigilantes and demonstrators.

Despite the number of arrests, these protests were relatively small, with only a few thousand participants. Western media, however, portrayed the protests as a possible step toward the overthrow of the Islamist regime. This perception likely stems from two things: the memory of the 1978-79 revolution in Tehran (one of the biggest news items to hit the Western press about Iran), and an imperfect understanding of the relationship between the modernists -- led by President Mohammad Khatami -- and the traditionalists, led by Khamenei. Outside observers see Khatami and Khamenei as opponents rather than competitors who agree on the rules of the game. In reality, neither the modernists nor the traditionalists are willing to let the system sink.

The most recent protests -- with many participants calling for an outright overthrow of the regime -- show that a small but radical faction that is increasingly disillusioned with Khatami's potential to effect change has emerged within the overall reform movement. However, apart from student demonstrators, there was not much support among the Iranian masses for last month's protests, which petered out relatively quickly. There are three possible explanations for this:

1) The government crackdown was severe enough to scare the protesters into giving up.

2) The protesters do not enjoy the support of the larger, mainstream reform movement, which wants to change the system rather than topple it.

3) With the United States surrounding Iran on all four sides, national security is a higher priority than reform for most of the population right now.

The presence of a large U.S. military force encircling Iran has kept the masses -- as well as the reformists -- from voicing any serious dissent. On the other hand, there simply is not enough widespread popular support for a complete overthrow of the current Iranian political system. Mainstream activists want to reform the current system from within, not to replace it with a more Western-style system.

Most Iranian reformists do not want to subvert the Islamist system; they only wish to curtail the arbitrary power of the unelected traditionalist mullahs. And the reform movement as a whole is not a secular movement. It is a moderate strand within Iranian Islamism that is trying to negotiate modernity with tradition, and hence advance a contemporary interpretation of Islam instead of applying medieval prescriptions to a modern reality. Most Western, and particularly U.S., observers tend to miss this distinction -- seeing a reform movement as intrinsically linked to a shift closer to Western ideas on governance, or as bringing about at least the possibility of an uprising against an oppressive (Islamist) government, which fits with the Western perception of Iran.

The various factions in Iran likely are conscious of this perception and tailor it to their advantage in their international dealings. Many Iranian officials give the impression that they are quite liberal when catering to an international audience. These attempts to present a less-than- accurate, moderate image of themselves reinforce the simplified understanding prevalent in the West.

This perception is guiding Washington's current attempts to foment unrest in Iran. U.S. government sources report that they expect a wave of demonstrations to sweep Iran on July 9 -- the anniversary of the 1999 student protests. Given that the sources claim to have foreknowledge that demonstrations are certain, it can reasonably be concluded that the unrest will be planned and orchestrated rather than spontaneous.

This does not mean that the U.S. administration wants to overthrow the government in Tehran -- at least not immediately -- since it still could serve some purposes for the Bush administration. Instead, Washington likely is trying to rattle the Iranian regime by threat or by action, hoping to bring officials to the negotiating table for a quid pro quo on Iraq.

The question is whether the expectations of unrest will come to fruition, given the alignment of forces within Iran. Student leaders on July 8 reportedly pledged to defy an official ban on protests, but in light of all the factors at play, any demonstrations that do erupt are likely to be small and easily contained.

By trying to stir up domestic problems for Tehran, the Bush administration likely is seeking leverage to convince the regime to help craft a solution to the guerrilla insurgency in Iraq. Since the U.S. administration views the Iraqi resistance as a mainly Sunni initiative, officials likely believe they can counter the uprising by bringing Iran to the table to use its influence with the Shiites. This plan seems plausible, considering that Shiites constitute a 60 percent majority in Iraq. By including Iran in the negotiations, the United States likely will avert the possibility that the Shiites -- who are growing restless with the U.S. occupation -- might join the mostly Sunni resistance movement.

Even if the United States solicits and receives Iranian assistance with the guerrilla war in Iraq, however, there remains the problem of the oversimplified Western view of the situation inside Iran. In essence, the issue is perception versus misperception. The reformist camp in Iran wants democratic consolidation, rule of law and civil liberties -- but most reformists and their supporters do not want to achieve these goals at the expense of the Islamic fabric of the regime. Instead, they wish to curtail the arbitrary and unbridled power of a clergy that is unique to Shiite Islam and Iran.

http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/bw-exec/2003/jul/10/071004918.html US agencies search companies suspected of supplying arms to Iran through a third party company in the UK.

Powell has horrible political instincts
< /understatement of the day>

Yet even that proposal was too much for Ayatollahs Lugar and Biden. In the end, what was added to the Senate bill neither clearly stated that Iran is undemocratic nor called for an internationally monitored referendum. It merely stated that the United States supports transparent, full democracy in Iran and the rights of the Iranian people to choose their own system of government, and that the United States condemns the human rights abuses of Iranians expressing political dissent inside Iran.

Bold words! /sarcasm

There was a report yesterday(?) that the jamming is coming from our old friend castro.

Well, thank you. And aren't we glad President Bush is in the White House?

Some how the word "Hessian" comes to mind with respect to these security forces.

I thought Khomeini was from Iraq. I did know that he wasn't ethnically Persian.