Another must read article but Amir Taheri.
"U.S. and Iran Involved in Their Own Mini-Cold War"
Posted by Amir Taheri
Saturday, July 12, 2003
Whichever way you look at it, Iran and the United States are engaged in what amounts to a mini-version of the Cold War in the Middle East. It all started almost a quarter of a century ago when the Khomeinist movement, backed by Soviet-sponsored communists of various shades, overthrew the Shah's regime and established a totalitarian system with a religious vocabulary.
During that period Iranian agents seized and held over 100 American hostages, releasing them only after Tehran exacted concessions from Washington. Several hostages were murdered, including a U.S. Marine colonel, hanged by the Hezballah in Beirut, and the CIA station chief in Lebanon who was transferred to Tehran and died under torture during interrogation.
In the same period Tehran organised terrorist attacks in which over 300 Americans, including 241 Marines were killed in Lebanon and other parts of the Middle East.
Iran's Khomeinist regime has also acted as the principal opponent of all U.S.-backed peace initiatives in the region. In 1982 Iran founded the Lebanese branch of the Hezballah that, in time, emerged as the most active force against the " peace process" in the region.
Today, the Hezballah is one of the world's strongest unofficial armies and, equipped with some 10,000 medium-range Iranian-made Fajr IV missiles, is capable of attacking any target in Israel. It also enjoys high prestige in the region as the only Arab force that managed to drive Israel out of a chunk of occupied Arab territory.
For much of the 1980s Iran also tried to foment revolution in a number of Arab states with friendly ties to the U.S. Among those targeted were Kuwait, where a plot to kill the Emir was aborted at the last moment. Bahrain suffered years of violence promoted by Iranian agents while Saudi Arabia witnessed a number of terrorist attacks organized by groups linked to Tehran.
So intense was Iran's promotion of terrorism that several Arab countries, including Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Bahrain severed diplomatic ties with it for varying lengths of time.
In 1987 the Islamic Republic and the United States became directly engaged in military conflict. President Ronald Reagan dispatched the U.S. Navy to protect Kuwaiti oil tankers against missile attacks by Iran. The Iranians, testing U.S. resolve, continued to fire at the Kuwaiti tankers. The American riposte came hard and fast and led to the sinking of more than half of the Iranian Navy's combat fleet. The U.S. navy also dismantled several Iranian offshore oil installations, inflicting an estimated $2 billion in damages.
For part of the 1990s Iran was the main source of support, including money and arms, for the military fundamentalist regime in the Sudan. Iranian mullahs also backed various terrorist groups operating against a number of Muslim countries, including Turkey.
With the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq, Iran emerges as the principal source of support for all radical Palestinian groups, including Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the People's Front for the liberation of Palestine.
Today, Tehran is the only place where terrorists from all over the world can still meet and operate in the open. Every year, from February 1 to 10, Tehran hosts a festival of radicalism in which terror groups, including the last remaining Marxist-Leninist ones, come together to exchange views and coordinate strategies. The Shining Path may have been defeated in Peru. But it still has a big office in one of Tehran's poshest streets. The main Colombian terror group FARC operates several front companies based in Tehran. At least 22 other terrorist groups maintain offices, and in some cases, such as the PKK, which fought a 15-year war against Turkey, even operational and logistical bases in various parts of Iran.
Tehran is the only capital where several of its major streets are named after convicted terrorists. The street where the British Embassy is located is named after Bobby Sands, an IRA leader of the 1970s. The street where the Egyptian Embassy, now empty, is situated is named after Khalid al-Islambouli, the man who killed President Anwar Sadat.
Iran's Khomeinist leaders are convinced that modern history will be a repeat of what happened in early the Islamic era. At that time the world was dominated by two " superpowers," the Persian Empire and Byzantium. Within three decades, however, both empires had been destroyed, almost all of their territories captured by Muslim armies.
According to Ali Khamenehi, Iran's ''Supreme Guide,'' the late Ayatollah Khomeini, known to his followers as ''The Imam,'' had the ''divine mission of reviving Islam'' and ''putting it on its natural path of cleansing the whole world.''
''The contemporary world has been dominated by perfidious empires: the Soviet Union and the United States,'' Khamenehi said in a celebrated speech in 1991. ''Now, one of the two empires, the communist one, has collapsed thanks to its defeat by the forces of Islam in Afghanistan. Our energies should now be directed at dismantling the other incarnation of perfidy which is the Great Satan, America."
Thus anti-Americanism and the dream of destroying the United States lie at the heart of the Khomeinist ideology. Without it, Khomeinism would lack a coherent discourse and could quickly lose its hard core of supporters who still believe that, one way or another, the whole of mankind would be converted to their brand of Islam.
The liberation of Afghanistan from the Taleban and of Iraq from Saddam Hussein, have added two new theatres to the cold war waged between Tehran and Washington.
In Afghanistan, Tehran has armed and continues to finance a number of armed groups with the aim of preventing Hamid Karzai, the pro-American interim president, from establishing a support base and gaining a durable hold on power.
Iran's closest allies in Afghanistan are the Hazara Shiites who form a majority of the population in two provinces: Bamiyan and Maydanshahr in central Hindukush. With Iranian money and weapons, the Hazara now have the second most powerful indigenous military force in Afghanistan, second only to that of the Panjshiris led by ''Marshall'' Qassim Fahim. But Iran is also supporting the Pushtun extremist leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar who has concluded an alliance with the remnants of the Taleban and is mounting growing attacks against the Americans and their allies in southern Afghanistan. Iran has also concluded a number of accords with Ismail Khan, the ''Emir'' of Heart who controls six western provinces.
More interesting is the fact that Iran has allowed large the Taleban and the Al Qaeda terrorist groups to seek refuge in its territory. There is, of course, little love lost between Iran and the Sunni militants of the Taleban-Al Qaeda axis. But there is a shared interest: to prevent a pro-American regime to be established in Kabul.
Despite Tehran's denials, large numbers of Taleban and Al Qaeda militants and sympathisers are currently in Iran. According to our sources, some Iranian border villages, including Pishin, Qasr Qand, and Dost Muhammad now shelter hundreds of Taleban and Al Qaeda fighters and their families. More prominent Al Qaeda and Taleban figures openly live in the larger frontier cities of Khash, Zahedan, and Zabol.
On a smaller scale the Islamic Republic is also engaged in a campaign against the U.S. and its allies in other parts of the region, notably in Transcaucasia where, in coordination with Russia, it backs Armenia against Azerbaijan.
During the past six months, Iran has arrested over 200 Arab Al Qaeda members and/or sympathisers and returned them over to their respective native countries. But those were individuals whose names were given to the Iranian authorities by their respective governments, notably Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.
All others are allowed to stay, presumably because Iran believes they may one day become useful for its designs in Afghanistan or other Muslim countries.
The Islamic Republic is also engaged in what amounts to a low intensity war against the U.S. presence in Iraq. There, Iran is joined by Syria that is trying to gain control of what is left of the Iraqi Ba'ath Party.
Iran has not put all its eggs in one basket in Iraq. It maintains much influence in the newly renamed High Council for the Liberation of Iraq, led by Muhammad Baqer al-Hakim al-Tabatabai. The group's military wing, the Badr (Full Moon) Brigade maintains close ties with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard in Tehran. But Iran also finances several other smaller Shiite groups, including a breakaway faction of the Al-Daawah (The Call) Party. In the northern part of Iraq, Tehran finances and largely controls the Kurdish branch of the Hezb Allah plus a number of tribal networks. The current Iranian strategy is aimed at preventing the US from securing a support base for an eventual pro-American administration in Baghdad. Tehran pursues that strategy through a mixture of threat, bribery and actual violence against those tempted to tilt towards Washington.
One thing is certain: The Khomeinist regime regards itself as a regional ''superpower'' and is determined to do all it can to prevent the Bush administration from imposing its new ''political architecture'' on the Middle East.
''The idea that the United States could impose its wishes on the Middle East and marginalise our revolution is based on a dangerous illusion,'' says Ali Akbar Velayati, a former foreign minister and now senior advisor to Khamenehi.
Now involved in the Middle East more deeply than ever, the U.S. has no choice but review its attitude towards Iran.
What could the U.S. do?
Ignoring Iran is not possible. The Khomeinist leadership pursues an active anti-American policy at various levels. It is determined to oppose and, when possible, frustrate U.S. policies on a wide range of issues in the Middle East, Transcaucasia, the Persian Gulf, the Caspian Basin, and Central Asia.
At the same time the Khomeinist regime has embarked on a program of massive military build up. With help from North Korea, it has already developed a wide range of missiles, based on Soviet and Chinese models, and has the industrial potential to produce large quantities of chemical and biological weapons. There is now little doubt that the Islamic Republic is also working on a military nuclear program that is expected to reach production stage by 2005.
If ignoring Iran is not possible, containing it is not a realistic option either. After Russia, Iran is the one country in the world with the largest number of neighbours. It is thus directly important in the affairs of numerous nations in some of the unstable parts of the globe.
So what are the other options?
A version of détente as practised between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. from the 1970s onwards could, of course, be an option for dealing with the Islamic Republic.
The Khomeinist regime has shown that it understands the language of power. Whenever its survival has been in jeopardy it has backed down without any qualms. It has shown that , unlike Saddam Hussein's Ba'athist regime in Iraq, it is not suicidal.
But détente could strengthen the Khomeinist regime at a time that is facing the most serious challenge to its rule at home. Détente could prolong the Khomeinist regime's historical lifespan just as it did in the case of the Soviet Union. Given legitimacy and access to world capital markets and U.S. technology, the Khomeinist regime may last several more decades during which the new ''political architecture'' of the Middle East, as envisaged by President Bush would have to be left on the backburner.
If détente is ruled out, military confrontation may emerge as an option. But Iran is certainly not a pushover as Afghanistan and Iraq. The Khomeinist regime has a stronger popular base than did Saddam or the Taleban. Iran is also better armed and could , if provoked, inflict serious damage on some of the United States closest allies in the region.
In a military showdown with the U.S., the Khomeinist regime will be ultimately defeated. But such a showdown could lead to a disintegration of Iran, triggering decades of conflict and crises with repercussions that are not easy to foresee.
Possibly the most effective option would be a mixture of political, diplomatic, and economic pressure backed by the threat of military force. The Khomeinist regime, currently split between hardliners and moderates, is also facing a growing popular opposition movement. That movement is still in gestation, its core ideology and eventual leadership still unclear. But there is evidence that the anti-Khomeinist movement harbours some democratic sentiments and is generally well disposed towards the U.S.
Many analysts believe that the historic countdown against the Khomeinist regime has started. Some foresee its demise within the next year or so. I am not so sure. One thing, however, is certain, the Khomeinist regime has become ''overthrowable.'' It has lost a good part of its revolutionary and religious legitimacy, is rejected by many from within its traditional support base, and, weakened by corruption and mismanagement, lacks the moral authority to crackdown against its opponents.
Thus the U.S. should consider supporting the Iranian opposition movement and encouraging its latent democratic aspirations. But regime change in Tehran should not be perceived as an American project. It should remain an Iranian enterprise backed by the U.S. and other democratic powers.
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Amir Taheri is an Iranian journalist and author of 10 books on the Middle East and Islam. He's available through www.benadorassociates.com
http://www.benadorassociates.com. "If you want on or off this Iran ping list, Freepmail me”
Posted on Sat, Jul. 12, 2003
Detained Canadian Journalist Dies in Iran
Associated Press
TEHRAN, Iran - A Canadian photojournalist allegedly beaten into a coma by Iranian police for taking pictures of a Tehran prison has died, a senior Iranian official said Saturday.
Zahra Kazemi died late Friday in a Tehran hospital after suffering a "brain stroke," Mohammad-Hossein Khoshvaqt, an official in the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, said in a statement carried by Iran's official news agency.
The Islamic Republic News Agency quoted Khoshvaqt as saying Kazemi, 54, had been authorized to cover last month's violent pro-reform protests in Tehran. No mention was made of her arrest.
Canada reiterated its demand for an explanation of the circumstances of her detention and injuries.
Kazemi's son, Stephan Hachemi, said his mother, who is of Iranian origin, traveled to the country after 1 1/2 months in neighboring Iraq. The freelance photographer from Quebec was arrested in Tehran on June 23 and branded a spy for taking pictures of a prison in the Iranian capital, friends and relatives say.
Kazemi called her mother in the town of Shiraz in southern Iran to say she had been detained, Hachemi said from Montreal. He said she was beaten up about two weeks ago while still in police custody.
Friends who visited her in a hospital Tuesday said she was unconscious, with severe cuts and bruises on her face and head.
Club- and knife-wielding hard-line vigilantes aligned with Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, battled with students and bystanders during a week of pro-reform protests last month in Iran, predominantly in Tehran.
Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Bill Graham spoke to Hachemi on Saturday to "express his deep sorrow and regret" and offer the continued support of the Canadian government, Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Lillian Thomsen said.
"The minister has instructed the Canadian ambassador to meet with the Iranian foreign minister at the earliest possible time in order to obtain the cooperation of the Iranian authorities, and to reiterate our earlier request for an explanation of the circumstances surrounding the detention of Mrs. Kazemi and her injuries," Thomsen said.
http://www.twincities.com/mld/twincities/news/6290826.htm