Iranian Alert -- August 24, 2003 -- LIVE THREAD PING LIST

The regime is working hard to keep the news about the protest movment in Iran from being reported.

From jamming satellite broadcasts, to prohibiting news reporters from covering any demonstrations to shutting down all cell phones and even hiring foreign security to control the population, the regime is doing everything in its power to keep the popular movement from expressing its demand for an end of the regime.

These efforts by the regime, while successful in the short term, do not resolve the fundamental reasons why this regime is crumbling from within.

Iran is a country ready for a regime change. If you follow this thread you will witness, I believe, the transformation of a nation. This daily thread provides a central place where those interested in the events in Iran can find the best news and commentary.

Please continue to join us here, post your news stories and comments to this thread.

Iran Threatens Britain

August 25, 2003
The Guardian
Dan De Luce

Iran threatened "strong action" and demanded an apology from Britain yesterday over the arrest of a former Iranian ambassador to Argentina who faces possible extradition in connection with a bombing in Buenos Aires.

Hadi Soleimanpour, 47, was arrested in Durham on Thursday over the AMIA Jewish community centre blast that killed 85 people in July 1994.

Mohammad Khatami, the president of Iran, condemned the arrest as a political attack but did not specify what actions his country would take.

"I declare from here that the British government will have to cease carrying on with this incorrect deed in a short period of time and apologise," he said in remarks broadcast by state television.

"What has happened has been politically motivated. There are forces and lobbies behind the case trying to put the Islamic republic under pressure by levelling baseless accusations and unfounded allegations against Tehran."

The British charge d'affaires in Tehran, Matthew Gould, was summoned to the foreign ministry yesterday for the second time in two days in a case that threatens to disrupt improving ties between the countries. British diplomats said that the foreign secretary, Jack Straw, and Iran's foreign minister, Kamal Kharrazi, had been in "regular contact".

Britain maintains that the court proceedings are outside the government's authority.

Tehran has cut cultural and economic ties with Argentina, which had exported items such as rice wheat and sunflower oil to Iran.

The extradition proceedings come at awkward time for Iran as it faces mounting pressure from the US and European Union over its nuclear programme, and protests from Canada over the beating to death of a photojournalist.

Since the election of Mr Khatami's reformist government, Iran has tried to shed its militant image and play down its links with groups opposed to Israel.

The conservative daily newspaper Kayhan yesterday called for the expulsion of the British ambassador, Richard Dalton, because of the detention of Mr Soleimanpour. If the reformist government failed to do so, the newspaper warned "the Islamic Iranian nation ... will act itself".

Mr Soleimanpour, who is studying in Durham, is one of several Iranian diplomats named as suspects by the Argentinian authorities.

Argentina, Israel and the US have long suspected Iran or Iranian-backed members of Hizbullah were behind the bombing. Iran withdrew its ambassador from Buenos Aires in March in protest.

Argentinian authorities tried former police officers accused of providing a van used by the bombers, who packed it full of explosives.

The former Argentinian president Carlos Menem has denied a report in the New York Times that alleged he took a bribe to cover up Iran's alleged role in the attack.

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/foreignaffairs/story/0,11538,1029027,00.html

Senior Cleric Targeted in Latest Iraq violence

August 24, 2003
The Financial Times
Gareth Smyth and Edward Alden

A senior Shia cleric was the target of a bombing in the central Iraqi city of Najaf yesterday that killed three guards and wounded 10 people, the latest in a string of attacks at the weekend that underscored the deteriorating security situation in Iraq.

Ayatollah Mohammed Said al-Hakim, one of Iraq's most senior Shia clerics, escaped with cuts to the neck.

Ayatollah Hakim recently told the Financial Times that the measures taken by US-led occupation forces against supporters of the ousted regime of Saddam Hussein were not strong enough, and called for the transfer of more decision-making in security and other fields to Iraqis.

A spokesman for Sciri, the leading Shia Muslim political group, said last night it had begun an investigation into the bombing, and suspected it was the work of loyalists of the former regime.

US-led forces have a very limited presence in Najaf, which is a scholastic city revered as the burial place of Imam Ali, son-in-law of the prophet Mohammed.

The bombing came on a weekend when ethnic clashes between Turkomen and Kurds broke out in the northern city of Kirkuk, leading to several fatalities.

In southern Iraq, three British soldiers died on Saturday in an attack on their vehicle as it left their military headquarters in Basra, the mainly Shia southern city, bringing the number of British fatalities to 10 since president US George W. Bush declared hostilities over on May 1.

The deteriorating security situation in Iraq has raised pressure on the Bush administration to increase troop deployments in Iraq or to move more determinedly to persuade other governments to send forces.

Paul Bremer, who heads the US Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, said on Fox News Sunday that a growing number of al-Qaeda affiliated terrorists had been infiltrating Iraq from Syria and Saudi Arabia. "I suppose they could calculate that if [they] succeed in Iraq, it will change the entire structure of this area of the world," he said.

"It shows what the stakes are for all Americans. We've got to win this fight here."

Joe Biden, the top Democrat on the Senate foreign relations committee, said on NBC News that "we need more troops, we need more cops, we need more civilian affairs people". He said the US needs to "swallow our pride" and go back to the United Nations to seek international support.

He warned unless Mr Bush seeks greater international help, "we are going to lose the American people's support for this undertaking". A Newsweek poll published at the weekend indicated that US public enthusiasm for the Iraqi campaign is waning. A slim majority of 48 to 47 per cent said the US should withdraw from Iraq if current trends continued, while 55 per cent were opposed to putting more US troops in Iraq. Sixty per cent also said the US should reduce spending on Iraq.

The US has tried to shore up support both domestically and internationally by portraying the recent attacks in Iraq as the latest and most important battle in the global war on terrorism. Mr Bush on Friday called Iraq "one of the major battles of the first war of the 21st century".

The Bush administration has insisted that, while it wants an increased international presence, additional US troops are not currently needed.

General John Abizaid, who commands the US force in Iraq, has said that the US's immediate need is for better intelligence, not more troops. But General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, yesterday said the administration would not oppose a request from General Abizaid. "If he wants more troops he can have more troops," he said on NBC News.

http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1059479268206&p=1012571727172

Let Iran be the model

Monday August 25, 2003
The Guardian

As the US and UK struggle to develop a legitimate sovereign government in Iraq, it would be wise for policy-makers to look at the model of Iran in the early 1950s, even though 50 years ago the US helped the British to overthrow the freely elected constitutional government led by Iranian national heroes Mohammed Mossadegh, Hussein Fatemi and the National Front Party (The spectre of Operation Ajax, August 20).
That government was in harmony with the Islamic values enshrined in the Koran: governing with the consent of the governed. It was replaced by the hated Pahlavi regime, which ended with the Islamic revolution of 1979.

One can only speculate as to what the Middle East would be like today if the Mossadegh government had been allowed to flourish. Surely it would not have been dominated by armed societies masquerading as democracies and client states governed by authoritarian dictators.

Allow the Iraqis to develop that model now. Nothing else is working.
Fariborz Fatemi
Former staff member
Senate foreign relations committee
McLean, Virginia, USA

· I was heartened by the Guardian's call for increased security in Afghanistan through the introduction of more Nato troops and for their presence to be extended beyond Kabul (Leaders, August 19). Save the Children was a co-signatory to a letter sent on August 6 by aid agencies to the foreign secretary calling for the UK government to sponsor a UN resolution calling for just such an expansion of the International Security Assistance Force's mandate.

Our concern over the lack of a secure working environment was increased last week by a shooting incident in the Mazar-i-Sharif area in northern Afghanistan involving one of our vehicles. Although no one was seriously injured, the incident has forced us to suspend our operations temporarily while we reconsider the security situation.

Without improved security, similar incidents will continue, and seriously hamper Afghanistan's reconstruction.
Mike Aaronson
Save the Children

· Nothing could be more ludicrous than the suggestion that "the Pakistan President, General Pervez Musharraf, struck a deal with the US not to seize Bin Laden after the Afghan war for fear of inciting trouble in his own country" (Inside story of the hunt for Bin Laden, August 23). I would be keen to know your take on why Saddam Hussain has not been arrested so far.
Javed Akhtar
High Commission for Pakistan

http://www.guardian.co.uk/letters/story/0,3604,1028842,00.html

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