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Iranian Alert -- September 29, 2003 -- IRAN LIVE THREAD PING LIST
The Iranian Student Movement Up To The Minute Reports ^
| 9.29.2003
| DoctorZin
Posted on 09/29/2003 12:02:20 AM PDT by DoctorZIn
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.
Thanks for all the help.
DoctorZin
TOPICS: Extended News; Foreign Affairs; News/Current Events; War on Terror
KEYWORDS: iran; iranianalert; protests; studentmovement; studentprotest
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To: DoctorZIn
EU to Warn Iran Trade Ties at Stake in Nuclear Row
September 29, 2003
Reuters.com
Reuters
The European Union was set to warn Iran on Monday that lucrative trade ties with the 15-nation bloc could be in jeopardy if it fails to restore international trust in its nuclear program.
In a draft statement obtained by Reuters, EU foreign ministers demanded that Tehran sign up for tougher inspections of its facilities and refrain from fuel enrichment which could be used to produce fissile material for nuclear weapons.
"Such action would also enhance perspectives for political and economic dialogue and cooperation," the draft statement to be issued later on Monday said.
It said ministers would review future steps in the light of the next report by the International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA) director general, Mohamed ElBaradei, to the board of the U.N. nuclear watchdog.
The IAEA, at Washington's urging, has given Tehran until the end of October to dispel the international community's concerns that it is secretly developing nuclear arms. Tehran has denied it has any such designs.
The 15-nation EU sought progress from Tehran in four areas before negotiations on a trade and cooperation agreement can move ahead. These include human rights, Iran's attitude to the Middle East peace process and cooperation in the fight against terrorism, as well as tough inspections of its nuclear program.
In July the EU issued its strongest warning so far about Iran's nuclear program and human rights record, and set Monday as a deadline for reviewing relations.
However, diplomats say the EU has since extended its deadline to coincide with the October 31 date set by the IAEA....
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=3523876
To: Pan_Yans Wife; fat city; freedom44; Tamsey; Grampa Dave; PhiKapMom; McGavin999; Hinoki Cypress; ...
To: DoctorZIn
German Court Sentences Iranian for Spying
September 29, 2003
Reuters
MSNBC News
BERLIN -- A Berlin court on Monday sentenced a 65-year-old Iranian-born man to two-and-a-half years in prison for spying on Iranian opposition groups in Germany.
The man, identified as Iraj S., admitted spying on exile opposition groups from 1991 but claimed he had been forced to do so to protect his family from reprisals by Tehran's secret services.
But the court found the former Iranian vice-consul to West Berlin under the shah of Iran and restaurateur had acted to boost his social standing and secure entry rights to Iran.
Following the Islamic revolution which toppled the shah in 1979, the man, who took German citizenship, ''risked a fall into insignificance,'' the court found.
It said he had spied on opposition groups in Berlin, Frankfurt, Hamburg and other locations over a 12-year period.
http://famulus.msnbc.com/FamulusIntl/reuters09-29-074518.asp?reg=EUROPE
To: DoctorZIn
Pentagon Targets Iran's Nuke
September 29, 2003
Mich News
Gordon Thomas
GLOBE-INTEL -- The Pentagon’s forward planners have targeted two Iranian nuclear facilities after weapons-grade enriched uranium has been found in one by UN inspectors. A UN report published this week says the country could acquire a nuclear bomb within two years.
Particles of weapons-grade enriched uranium were discovered at Natanz. Iran claims the particles were from “contaminated components” it bought on the black market in the 1980s when it was trying to set up its “peaceful nuclear programme” – and could not find a supplier in the West ready to help.
But both the CIA and MI6, who have now each made intelligence gathering on Iran a priority, discount Iran’s claim of how it came to have sufficient enriched uranium to make an effective “dirty bomb”.
Neo-conservatives around Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld have not discounted a pre-emptive strike against the plants at Natanz and Arak. They are sited south of Tehran, in the remote fastness of central Iran.
Unlike the rift that developed over the war with Iraq between the United States and the European Union, there is a consensus that it is “essential and urgent” for Iran to stop arming itself with nuclear weapons.
Washington is supporting a UN resolution – sponsored by Britain, France and Germany – that Iran must stop its nuclear programme by the end of October. Implicit in the resolution is a warning the plants could be hit by missiles fired from US warships in the Gulf.
The plant at Natanz is far bigger than anything Iraq ever had. Natanz is guarded by a heavily patrolled thirty-mile deep perimeter within the featureless landscape.
The Tehran regime claims the Natanz plant is only working to develop the country’s peaceful nuclear energy programme to bring power, heat and electricity to its hundreds of small towns and villages.
But British and German intelligence agents have pinpointed an underground complex capable of holding 1,000 personnel.
UN inspectors, diverted from searching for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, have confirmed the existence of the complex.
Buried thirty-feet below ground, it has eight-feet thick walls to protect two large halls.
In a report last week to the 35-member board of governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency, IAEA, the inspectors told their closed meeting in Vienna they are certain the underground complex is designed to carry out the process of turning enriched uranium into weapons-grade material.
The report states: “there are 1,000 gas centrifuges and components for the manufacture of 50,000 further centrifuges”.
Highly enriched uranium is an essential element in producing a nuclear weapon.
Iran has two plants – one at Arkadan, east of Natanz, the other near the historic town of Isfahan – to convert uranium ore into yellowcake, a processed form of uranium. The yellowcake can be converted into enriched uranium as well as producing hexaflouride gas, essential to drive the centrifuges.
Russian engineers are helping Iran to build a heavy water plant at Arak. Iran again claims the plant will be used only for peaceful purposes.
But the UN report states: “heavy water can also produce more plutonium than light water reactors, and therefore can produce significant quantities to be used in weapons”.
Kenneth Brill, the US ambassador to the United Nations in Vienna said last week that the evidence against Iran “already justifies an immediate non-compliance verdict”.
Under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the UN Security Council could introduce crippling sanctions against Iran. That would most certainly place the United States on a collision course with one of the nations President Bush has named as being part of the “axis of evil”.
There is also a clear danger that Israel could act unilaterally and launch its own air strikes against Iran’s nuclear plants. It has done so before – when it destroyed Iraq’s nuclear reactor outside Baghdad in March, 1981.
“We will not stand by and allow the Iranians to use the same cat-and-mouse games over their nuclear plants that Saddam used over many years”, said a senior Israeli intelligence officer in Tel Aviv. “There is a need to take a touch line now. In two years time, it could be too late”.
The prospect of military action came that much closer after Hashemi-Rafsanjani, one of Iran’s most influential clerics and the country’s former president, called on Muslim states last December to use nuclear weapons against Israel.
Mossad analysts told Israel’s Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, that the appeal was directed not only at Pakistan, the one Muslim nation known to have nuclear weapons, but also to Iran’s partner in the “axis of evil” – North Korea.
That possibility has led to the Pentagon forward planners continuing to prepare their own missile strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities.
As the Israeli intelligence officer said: “it could be a race who presses the button first – us or the Americans”.
http://bigjweb.com/artman/publish/article_1176.shtml
To: Pan_Yans Wife; fat city; freedom44; Tamsey; Grampa Dave; PhiKapMom; McGavin999; Hinoki Cypress; ...
To: DoctorZIn
IRAN SETS CONDITIONS FOR SIGNING THE NPT PROTOCOLS
TEHRAN 29 Sept. (IPS)
Iran confirmed indirectly that it is determined to continue its program for enriching uranium despite urgent and categorical demand by the United Nations nuclear watchdog to stop it before the end of October.
In an interview with the American television network ABC, Iranian Foreign Affairs Minister Kamal Kharrazi said the Islamic Republic would sign the Additional Protocols to the Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT) "provided it is assured that it can continue enriching uranium for its nuclear-powered electricity plants" and also be provided with modern atomic technology for peaceful purposes.
Though Mr. Kharrazi has reiterated and repeated that all its atomic projects are for civilian use, but experts, both Iranian and foreign say Iran is after the nuclear bomb, hence its insistence for enriching uranium.
"What the decision-makers are after is to buy as much time as they need for building the atomic bomb or to get close to it", Mr. Qasem Sho’leh Sa’di, a prominent Iranian political dissident and respected lawyer and university professor told the Persian service of the Radio France International in an interview last week.
Last week, President Mohammad Khatami had made it plain that iran wants the nuclear technology to make itself strong miliatrilly.
The conditions put by Mr. Kharrazi for signing the Protocols are difficult to understand since the enriched uranium needed for Iran’s first atomic-powered electrical plant, which is under construction in the Persian Gulf of Boosher, would be provided by Russia, the country that is building the 1000 megawatts, 800 millions US Dollars station.
Last week, diplomats at the Vienna-based International Atomic energy Agency (IAEA) disclosed that experts from the Agency had discovered new uranium-contaminated materials at a new site near the Capital Tehran, the Kalaye Electric factory operated by the government.
This is the second plant where Iran is enriching uranium. The first one is located near the central city of Natanz, built several years ago secretly, without being reported to the IAEA.
According to Mr Ali Akbar Salehi, Iran’s Ambassador at the IAEA, Iran is already producing enriched uranium with some 163 centrifuges it has purchased many years ago when it was not compulsory to report them to the Agency.
He also said that the finds were due contamination from parts it had imported. "Iran would have needed large numbers of centrifuges operating for a long period of time to produce the level of uranium enrichment found", Mr. Salehi explained last week, adding that both the IAEA and we know that such a thing does not exist (in Iran).
The signing of the additional Protocols is opposed by the ruling Iranian ayatollahs, as it allows inspectors to visit Iranian nuclear sites at will, without any preconditions or restrictions, a condition that hard liners in the Iranian clerical establishment compare to an "unconditional surrender" to the Americans.
In repeated articles, conservatives-controlled newspapers urges the government of the embattled and powerless Mohammad Khatami to leave the NPT and follow the path adopted by the communist regime of North Korea, the Islamic Republic’s main supplier of technologies for making missiles and atomic weapons, alongside with Pakistan, the first Muslim nation to possess the A-bomb.
"It is naive to think that after accepting the protocol (on snap inspections) America, the European Union and America's allies will stop accusing Iran", the independent Iranian Students News Agency ISNA quoted Mr. Hoseyn Shari’atmadari, a high-ranking intelligence officer specialising in interrogating intellectuals and political dissidents appointed by Ayatollah Ali Khameneh'i as editor of the hard line "Kayhan" newspaper.
"Signing or rejecting the Protocols lead the Iranians to the same dead end road", Mr. Sho’leh Sa’di told the RFI, explaining that by signing, they would give international experts unrestricted access to all Iranian atomic-related sites, but if they refuse, they would expose the country to sanctions by the UN’s Security Council.
On 12 September, the IAEA’s Board of Governors gave Iran until the end of October to sign the Protocols and stop all its uranium enriching programs or the matter would be transferred to the Security Council for decision, including imposing economic sanctions on Iran.
Iranian government’s official spokesman Abdollah Ramezanzadeh said on Monday that negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program will get underway on Thursday after the arrival of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors.
The experts were due in Iran on Sunday, but Tehran had demanded a short delay to "prepare itself", as officials are not able to decide what to do with the Protocols.
Commenting that all nations, including Iranians, are entitled to peaceful application of nuclear energy, he said that no compromise could be made on such matters. "Iran will not give in to any restriction to the peaceful application of atomic energy", he reiterated, according to the official news agency IRNA.
In reply to the question whether the IAEA inspection trend will be conditional, he said, "We have so far fully complied with our commitments towards the IAEA and continuation of cooperation will depend on the outcome of negotiations", IRNA added. ENDS IAEA IRAN URANIUM 29903
http://www.iran-press-service.com/articles_2003/Sept-2003/iaea_iran_uranium_29903.htm
To: Pan_Yans Wife; fat city; freedom44; Tamsey; Grampa Dave; PhiKapMom; McGavin999; Hinoki Cypress; ...
To: DoctorZIn
I hear they've gone from being content to have people jam satellite broadcasts to sending gangs of volunteer thugs out to confiscate satellite antennas.
Do you post under the screename of "Persia" or is that someone else?
28
posted on
09/29/2003 1:26:49 PM PDT
by
cake_crumb
(UN Resolutions = Very Expensive, Very SCRATCHY Toilet Paper)
To: DoctorZIn
Web Site Takes on Repressive Government
September 29, 2003
San Mateo Times
Francine Brevetti
9.29.2003
As developing countries increasingly acknowledge the importance of high technology to their economies, those with centralized economies nevertheless tend to restrict their populations' Internet access.
This typifies the approaches of the governments of Burma, China, Cuba, Laos, North Korea, Saudi Arabia and, to some degree, Singapore.
China, for instance, arrested a Web surfer last week who expressed his anti-government sentiments in chat rooms.
This past May, the Iranian government blocked access to a reported 15,000 Web sites. An unknown number are foreign news sites that would give Iranians access to news unmanipulated by the government in Tehran.
"People are hungry for news not controlled by the government" said Ken Berman, manager of the Internet anti-censorship program for the International Broadcasting Bureau. The IBB provides the administrative and technical support for U.S.-sponsored international broadcast services other than military ones. The Voice of America and Radio Free Europe may be among its best known services.
To keep Iranians in touch with Western Web sites, the IBB contracted with San Diego Internet security company Anonymizer to circumvent Tehran's censorship, as it has done previously for users within the People's Republic of China. The value of the contract would not be disclosed.
"Anytime the VOA Web site is blocked, it's a good bet other sites are as well, (for example) the New York Times, Washington Post, BBC and a whole host of other Western news sources. We went through a similar situation in China with Internet users trying the VOA or Radio Free Asia sites," Berman said.
When Tehran cracked down on surfing, numerous listeners reported to the IBB they couldn't access the VOA Web site anymore or that of Radio Farda, according to Berman. Radio Farda, also supported by the IBB, provides Iran with local news and stories that would not be carried through international commercial channels.
But since the adoption of Anonymizer's technology, the IBB has received positive feedback that attests to the satisfaction of Iranian listeners, said Berman.
This is how it works, according to Lance Cottrell, founder and chief executive officer of Anonymizer: The company e-mails in bulk to Iranians the name of a URL where they can find the VOA or Radio Farda without government intervention. Berman said Radio Farda also announces the URL on the air.
When an Iranian surfer goes to this Web site, called a proxy, it redirects them to the VOA or Radio Farda Web sites. There the surfer can also input any other URL that he wants.
Although the user accesses the proxy, the government cannot track what sites he is now surfing by virtue of the Anonymizer technology.
With the proxy URL being publicly announced, the Iranian government will surely catch up with it and block it eventually. But the URL is changed daily.
"We change it faster than they can block it," Anonymizer's Cottrell said.
Cottrell recalled that Iran's theocracy had been censoring print and broadcast before it became aware of the Internet's power to transmit criticism of the government or Islam.
Cottrell said that when he founded the company 1997 he was inspired to protect free speech online from tracking and monitoring.
Today, he insisted, the Internet worldwide is "absolutely more censored" than it was five years ago, especially among Third World countries.
"More and more countries are waking up to the importance of the Internet," he said -- to the detriment of free speech in the case of certain governments.
China is particularly a concern since it is attempting to circumvent the technology that Anonymizer provides.
"China is taking our box and reverse engineering it," he said. "First they just started blocking (Web sites), but now they are more subtle. Now they are redirecting (users). You try to go to the New York Times (Web site) but wind up at China Daily. And then they know you were trying to go to the New York Times."
Cottrell also despairs the many American companies whose technology, whether routers and servers or filtering software, sell their products to China, which uses them to subvert user access to the Internet.
Even as China keeps its iron fist on access, the government has proclaimed its future lies with high-tech and broadband communications. The IBB's Berman said the Chinese government is "spending billions putting fiber up and down the coast. Every new construction project has broadband throughout the office."
The Chinese government is contemplating a domain name registration system in Chinese characters rather than in the Roman alphabet.
Vietnam too has thrown its weight behind high technology to ensure economic growth, even while it, too, censors residents' Web access.
The Global Internet Freedom Act was introduced into Congress this summer. It would provide the IBB with funds to counter other governments' efforts to block and jam sites and the persecution of those who use the Internet.
Francine Brevetti can be reached at (510) 208-6416 and
fbrevetti@angnewspapers.com http://www.sanmateocountytimes.com/Stories/0,1413,87~11271~1664603,00.html
To: DoctorZIn
Canada Returning Ambassador to Iran
September 29, 2003
The Canadian Press
myTELUS
OTTAWA -- Canada is sending its ambassador back to Iran, less than two months after withdrawing the diplomat over the country's handling of the killing of a Montreal photojournalist.
Foreign Affairs Minister Bill Graham said Canada needs to have a strong voice in Iran as the trial of two people accused in the death of Zahra Kazemi gets underway.
He added that the ambassador will be able to continue pressing for the return of Kazemi's body to Canada.
Kazemi, a Canadian born in Iran, was arrested in June taking photos outside a Tehran prison. After days of interrogation, she was rushed to hospital where she died two weeks later.
Graham also said Canada needs a voice in Iran as the world monitors that country's controversial nuclear program.
http://www.mytelus.com/news/article.do?pageID=canada_home&articleID=1421257
To: DoctorZIn
Ayatollah Rohallah Khomeini's Grandson Promotes Freedom and Democracy
September 29, 2003
Washington File
William Armbruster
Washington -- Hossein Khomeini, grandson of the late Ayatollah Rohallah Khomeini, who led the Iranian revolution, called "freedom and democracy a basic means of life and living."
During a September 26 appearance at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, he said there is no one in Iran at present to lead the Iranian people's struggle for freedom.
Referring to the Iranian Revolution, he stated that "25 years ago the Iranian people hoped for freedom."
"An important goal for the revolution was the creation of democracy and freedom," the younger Khomeini declared. "This was not achieved. There are no freedoms in Iran."
He discussed the reasons for the acceptance of religious authorities as political rulers, pointing out that, at that time, "the religious leaders had legitimacy."
Now, he went on, "The Iranian people have experienced theocracy. They have come to understand that religion and government cannot be one and the same."
He denied the necessity of religious training for governmental positions, declaring, "Democracy is compatible with all the basic values of Shi'ism and Islam." He pointed to the earliest Islamic traditions that "Faith is free and individuals can follow or not follow a particular religion as they wish."
"If everybody was supposed to become a Muslim, God Himself would have turned everybody into Muslims," he pointed out.
He introduced the current political issues, saying, "At the present time, the question is how we can get to democracy and freedom in our communities in the Middle East."
He said that Iran "is ready but there is no leadership" to bring the country to freedom. He speculated that if there were "a center for leading Iranians..., maybe then a movement would be started in Iran."
Khomeini expressed his surprise and admiration that "The United States, in a world of cold, heartless thinking, could go to Iraq and free that country." He doesn't "see any kind of material reason for the United States to go to Iraq and free that country." He called the U.S. liberation of Iraq "really a blessing for the people of Iraq and I admire that."
He thinks the United States is paying more attention to Iran because "Iran is intervening in Iraqi affairs extensively."
He said his current round of speeches and presentations has "stressed and asked for all free societies in the world to think and be concerned about those countries in the Middle East if they want to be in peace and security here."
"They should try to create hope in these people in the Middle Eastern countries."
He compared Iran, where some are economically well off, with Indonesia, where people are not as well off economically but now have hope due to the recent introduction of democracy. The lack of hope in Iran has caused young Iranians (70 percent of the country is less than 30 years old) to be depressed, he said. The oppression they face causes frustration, which leads to melancholy in some and extremism in others, he added.
"Establishment of freedom and democracy in Islamic countries is the guarantee of international peace and security," Khomeini said. He explained that the psychological imbalance in oppressed peoples leads to hatred. "Religious radicalism has nothing to do with religion," Khomeini declared. But it comes from psychological imbalance "due to lack of freedom and democracy in these societies," he said. This needs to be taken very seriously in the free societies, he explained. Otherwise, he added, they will not be left in peace in their own countries.
(The Washington File is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site:
http://usinfo.state.gov) http://usinfo.state.gov/xarchives/display.html?p=washfile-english&y=2003&m=September&x=20030929172257retsurbmrAW0.0602228&t=usinfo/wf-latest.html
Comment #32 Removed by Moderator
Comment #33 Removed by Moderator
To: DoctorZIn
Iraq could show that a different Shiite model is possible — and thus deal a serious blow to the claims of the Iranian rulers that walayat al-faqih is the only divinely sanctioned form of government in Islam. BADDABING BADDABOOM
34
posted on
09/29/2003 5:31:24 PM PDT
by
PhilDragoo
(Hitlery: das Butch von Buchenvald)
To: PhilDragoo
That is exactly the fear of the Mullah's of Iran.
That is why they must see us fail in Iraq.
Otherwise they will fail in Iran.
To: DoctorZIn; Grampa Dave; BOBTHENAILER
U.S. journalists have no guts, else they would get into Iran and show the truth.
Again, the Left shamefully betrays repressed peoples.
FDR's ambassador to the Soviet Union Joseph Davies admired the show trials--today the Left finds nothing amiss in Iran.
36
posted on
09/29/2003 6:53:13 PM PDT
by
PhilDragoo
(Hitlery: das Butch von Buchenvald)
To: DoctorZIn
Iran is Iraq redux: the reaction to the UN demand for inspections is another in-your-face dance-of-seven-veils.
Iran is brittle--it cannot bend, only break.
It rests on fire ants below and depends on protection from Pooty-Poot above.
After Camp David, it is not likely the latter will last.
Memo to Bush Administration: Feed the Fire Ants.
37
posted on
09/29/2003 6:57:42 PM PDT
by
PhilDragoo
(Hitlery: das Butch von Buchenvald)
To: DoctorZIn
Natanz is guarded by a heavily patrolled thirty-mile deep perimeter within the featureless landscape. And we know Iran will not allow inspectors in.
Will it allow our missiles in?
Do we care?
38
posted on
09/29/2003 7:40:06 PM PDT
by
PhilDragoo
(Hitlery: das Butch von Buchenvald)
To: PhilDragoo
I have read reports that the regime has hidden much of their nuclear uranium enrichment efforts under cities in Iran.
I cannot confirm this but if true they have made it difficult to destroy these sites without significant civilian deaths.
To: DoctorZIn
"What the decision-makers are after is to buy as much time as they need for building the atomic bomb or to get close to it", Hence there will be no cooperation, only stalling for time.
40
posted on
09/29/2003 9:03:15 PM PDT
by
PhilDragoo
(Hitlery: das Butch von Buchenvald)
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