The US media still largely ignores news regarding the Islamic Republic of Iran. As Tony Snow of the Fox News Network has put it, “this is probably the most under-reported news story of the year.” As a result, most American’s are unaware that the Islamic Republic of Iran is NOT supported by the masses of Iranians today. Modern Iranians are among the most pro-American in the Middle East. In fact they were one of the first countries to have spontaneous candlelight vigils after the 911 tragedy (see photo).

There is a popular revolt against the Iranian regime brewing in Iran today. I began these daily threads June 10th 2003. On that date Iranians once again began taking to the streets to express their desire for a regime change. Today in Iran, most want to replace the regime with a secular democracy.

The regime is working hard to keep the news about the protest movement in Iran from being reported. Unfortunately, the regime has successfully prohibited western news reporters from covering the demonstrations. The voices of discontent within Iran are sometime murdered, more often imprisoned. Still the people continue to take to the streets to demonstrate against the regime.

In support of this revolt, Iranians in America have been broadcasting news stories by satellite into Iran. This 21st century news link has greatly encouraged these protests. The regime has been attempting to jam the signals, and locate the satellite dishes. Still the people violate the law and listen to these broadcasts. Iranians also use the Internet and the regime attempts to block their access to news against the regime. In spite of this, many Iranians inside of Iran read these posts daily to keep informed of the events in their own country.

This daily thread contains nearly all of the English news reports on Iran. It is thorough. 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. The news stories and commentary will from time to time include material from the regime itself. But if you read the post you will discover for yourself, the real story of what is occurring in Iran and its effects on the war on terror.

I am not of Iranian heritage. I am an American committed to supporting the efforts of those in Iran seeking to replace their government with a secular democracy. I am in contact with leaders of the Iranian community here in the United States and in Iran itself.

If you read the daily posts you will gain a better understanding of the US war on terrorism, the Middle East and why we need to support a change of regime in Iran. Feel free to ask your questions and post news stories you discover in the weeks to come.

If all goes well Iran will be free soon and I am convinced become a major ally in the war on terrorism. The regime will fall. Iran will be free. It is just a matter of time.

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September 27, 2004, 9:23 a.m.

Know Thine Enemy

The beheadings are about them, not us.

Accustomed as we are to believing that everything in the world has to do with us, we've misunderstood what the recent beheadings are all about. The terrorists are not trying to make us cower. They are not using the beheadings as a technique to drive us out. Insofar as the slaughter of Westerners affects the policies of Coalition members, the same effect could be accomplished by other forms of murder; a government that is prepared to be routed from Iraq will turn tail when its public demands it, regardless of how its citizens have been killed.

This is not about us — it is about them. The beheading films are recruitment tools. They've been around for a long time, part and parcel of the first generation of "jihad" home movies, circulated mostly in North Africa to excite homicidal fanatics and lure them into the Islamist bands. The main difference between then and now is that their marketing and distribution have improved, thanks to their comrades at al Jazeera and al Arabiya, and the Internet.

We should have no trouble understanding this and drawing the proper conclusions. A movement that draws its foot soldiers from people who dream of beheading one of us is clearly a barbarous phenomenon, one that puts the lie to the notion that our enemies in this terror war are human beings driven to desperation by misery and injustice. Not at all: The recruiting films are aimed at subhuman homicidal maniacs who revel in bloody brutality. Given the human capacity to rationalize most any ghastly behavior, some of the killers' supporters — even in the Western intelligentsia — include misguided souls who are so confused they can accept and even justify barbarism in the name of the cause of the moment. There is nothing new in invoking ends to justify dreadful means. But in this case, the means — the beheadings — define our enemies and their followers.

It follows that there is no policy that will successfully end their jihad against us short of total surrender and mass conversion to their brand of Islam. They see us, quite explicitly, as animals who deserve slaughter. The terrorists' recent response to Tony Blair's statement that he would not negotiate with them was eloquent: We are not interested in negotiations, they said. Either the British withdraw or we will slaughter the hostage.

Do not think for a moment that the beheadings are a unique form of viciousness aimed only against Americans or American allies. Beheading has been a common form of execution of Islamic (and Christian, and Bahai, and Zoroastrian) enemies, and I have no doubt the jihadists have beheaded more of "their own" than of ours. It is not about us, it's about them.

Our debate, however, is not about them; it's about us. Should we permit the horrible videos to be broadcast? Does it not risk either dulling our sensitivities or truly terrifying our own people? The very nature of this debate shows how far we have strayed from the understanding we gained on September 11, 2001. That day we saw scenes every bit as horrible as the beheadings, and we recognized that we were facing a war that would have to be fought to the finish. The people who were burned or crushed in New York and Washington, those who jumped to certain death from the Twin Towers — they provided the clearest possible documentation of what awaited us all if we did not win.

The opponents of our campaign against the terror masters immediately recognized that it was crucial to cancel that message, to dilute it with nuance and deception, and the first step in their campaign was to stop broadcasting the images of 9/11. They justified it by saying they did not want to shock the American people, that the pictures were too horrible, that we needed to move on. In like manner, they now say that the beheadings should not be shown, because they too are too shocking, too upsetting to our sensitivities. Others say they should not be shown because in showing them we risk becoming indifferent to such acts, losing our sense of shock and our will to resist.

This is all nonsense. We cannot wage an effective war unless we understand the nature of our enemy. If we do not grasp that the terrorists' ranks are full of people who are there precisely because they are thrilled by the prospect of beheading human beings, we will fail to see the war through to its necessary conclusion. The beheadings are about them, not us. They show us very important things we need to know: What they are, what they want, what they will do if we do not stop them.

Two factoids from recent days should enhance our understanding. The first is a story about a man recently released from Guantanamo who showed up back in Afghanistan, working to kill Coalition soldiers. A fine triumph of legal nicety! The second has not yet been published, so far as I know, but it helps us understand a bit more about the terror network. It turns out that many of the hostages in Iraq are taken by "common criminals," who then sell the hostages to the terrorists so that they can behead them. I suspect, for example, that the Italian women held by terrorists in Iraq fell victim to such a gang.

It is folly to think of the terrorists and their masters in the various capitals of the region as people merely trying to avenge injustice or settle old grievances. The only way sensible people can come to believe that is to censor the evidence — by taking the scenes of 9/11 and the beheading videos off the air, by filtering the utter barbarity of these people through the use of uncharged words that lose their emotional impact.

Don't worry about our sensitivities. Show us — we need to see — so that we bring our full political and military might to bear and end this thing as quickly as possible.

Faster, confound it.

— Michael Ledeen, an NRO contributing editor, is most recently the author of The War Against the Terror Masters. Ledeen is Resident Scholar in the Freedom Chair at the American Enterprise Institute.

Kerry on Iran

Posted: September 27, 2004
1:00 a.m. Eastern

In recent weeks, John Kerry has crossed the line from the traditional American position of "loyal opposition" in his fierce and self-contradictory criticism of President Bush's policies in Iraq.

He crossed that sometimes blurry line in a free society to the point where he is endangering Americans' lives and giving aid and comfort to the enemy.

The man who urged pre-emptive military action in 1997 and who voted to authorize the invasion now says a policy of regime change was all wrong – simply to position himself as a viable political alternative to the president.

But Kerry is sending even more potentially dangerous and deadly signals to another enemy – one the United States must decide how to confront in the coming weeks and months.

That enemy is the soon-to-be nuclear-armed, fanatical mullah regime in Iran.

Over the weekend, there were reports Iran has developed the range and targeting capability of missiles and is now capable of hitting London, Berlin, Paris and, of course, all of Israel.

Iran is on the verge of becoming a nuclear power, and, despite the regime's claims of only wanting to build a reactor for peaceful energy uses, it is also moving rapidly to begin reprocessing weapons-grade plutonium.

In addition, there were new reports that Iran has been talking to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad about the possibility of providing safe haven for former Iraqi nuclear weapons scientists.

Despite these ominous developments, Kerry's campaign rhetoric is making it more difficult for the United States to address the imminent threat posed by Iran.

For instance, listen to what Teresa Heinz Kerry told an audience in Colorado over the weekend:

The way we live in peace in a family, in a marriage, in the world, is not by threatening people, is not by showing off your muscles. It's by listening, by giving a hand sometimes, by being intelligent, by being open and by setting high standards.

In case anyone wasn't certain which nation she was talking about, Heinz Kerry elaborated – even mentioning Iran by name and denouncing the administration's warnings to Tehran: "There are about 50 countries in the world that have the capability to build nuclear weapons. Are we going to attack them all?" she said.

It should be of grave concern to every American that among Kerry's top fund-raisers are three Iranian-Americans who have been pushing for dramatic changes in U.S. policy toward Iran.

I'm talking about Hassan Nemazee, 54, an investment banker based in New York, who has raised more than $100,000. Why is he betting on Kerry? Read Teresa's lips.

I'm talking about Faraj Aalaei, who has raised between $50,000 and $100,000 for the Kerry campaign. Why is he betting on Kerry? Read Teresa's lips.

I'm talking about his wife, Susan Akbarpour, whom the Kerry campaign also lists as having raised between $50,000 and $100,000 for the campaign. Why is she betting on Kerry? Read Teresa's lips.

And the Iranians may not have to read Teresa's lips. There may be more direct communication at work between Kerry and the terrorist-supporting mullah regime.

Last February, WorldNetDaily reported that Iran's official Mehr News Agency had received an e-mail from Kerry's campaign pitching the candidate as one who will "repair the damage done" to international relations by Bush.

Yes, once again, Kerry is doing what he always does – what he has done ever since he came to the attention of the American people in 1971 and, in fact, what first brought him to the attention of the American people.

He is giving aid and comfort to the enemy.

But, this time, the enemy is not a group of communists in black pajamas with conventional weapons. This time, the enemy is a soon-to-be nuclear-armed jihadist nation with one goal in mind – destroying the "Great Satan," otherwise known as the United States of America.

Regime's apologists target influencing US Intelligence

SMCCDI (Information Service)
Sep 28, 2004

Some of the Islamic regime's notorious apologists are intending to open their way of influence to the "US House's Select Committee on Intelligence". In this line a "fundraising" has been planned for the Honorable "Anna Eshoo" (D-14th/CA) who's a prominent US lawmaker and member of a very sensible legislative body.

The House Representative member seems to be totally unaware of her supporters background and their ultimate goals.

The main organizers and members of the Host Committee are "Susan Akbarpoor", founder of "Silicon Iran" and "Iran Today", and her husband, "Faraj-Alaei" head of the "Centillium Corp." and co-founder of the so-called "Iranian American Political Action Committee" (IAPAC). The couple and some of their related organizations are notorious for having tried, for several years, to legitimize the tyrannical and terrorist Islamic republic regime in the US.

The controversial fundraising is to take place in a Bay area home, located at 27011 DeZahara Way in Los Altos Hills - CA 94022, on October 10th from 05:00 PM. This home seems to be belonging to "Gita Kashani" who's a former head of the "Society of Iranian Professionals" (SIP) of N. California. Involved in the organization of some very controversial activities, Kashani was one of the main planners of "Technological trips to Iran", by non scrupulous US researchers, scholars and businessmen, and a well known organizer of official exchange seminars in cities, such as, Esfahan. It's to note that such actions are known to be needing the collaboration of the highest levels of the Islamic regime's Intelligence and Government in order to take place. She has since joined IAPAC and has increased her activities in a different way and which are more adapted to the current sensible circumstances.

Akbarpoor is a close friend to Hashemi Rafsanjani's daughter and a firm advocator of Kamal Kharrazi the Islamic regime's FM. Her organizations are intending to bring US Technology firms to lobby the US Administration for a recognition of the Mullahcracy and the cancellation of sanctions. She seems to have been able to attract, so far, the support of some mercantilist individuals, such as the wife of one of AT & T's main heads, to her goals.

In addition, "Hassan Nemazee", IAPAC's main co-founder who has tried to silence the Movement by initiating a costly juridical litigation, is expected to be present during Ms. Eshoo's questionable fundraising along with his long date colleague, Akbar Ghahary, the current front man of the Kerry Campaign for Iranian-Americans.

It's to note that IAPAC's initial founders, Nemazee, Alaei and Ghahary, were also Board members of the infamous and self-called "American Iranian Council" (AIC). Nemazee used of his position, as AIC Board Member, for publicly calling for the recognition of the Islamic regime, on June 1, 2002, in presence of Senator J. Kerry.

AIC, which is headed by the infamous "Hooshang Amir-Ahmadi", is still publicly trying to lobby for the recognition of the Islamic regime. It has to its dark credit the formal apology offered to Iran (meaning the Mullahs) by "Madeleine Albright", the then Secretary of State; Joe Biden's fundraising at the IMAN Islamist Center of Los Angeles headed by Sadegh Nemazikhah who's a AIC Board member; And various meetings organized between members of the Mullahs' regime, such as Mehdi Karoubi, and several US lawmakers and members of Clinton Administration. Biden is well known for having tried to use of his influence within the US Senate's Foreign Relations Committee to push for resumption of ties with the illegitimate Mullahcracy.

The IAPAC's trio founders are also among John Kerry's main fundraisers. They're hoping that the election of the Democratic Candidate, as a future US President, will help to avoid Islamic regime's total collapse by boosting it via commercial and nuclear deals with Uncle Sam. Huge amounts of money are getting disbursed, at this time, by this group's members and their affiliated creations or partners, such as the self called "National Iranian American Council" (NIAC), in order to use some of non scrupulous Iranian Satellite TV and Radio networks, such as Tamasha, Channel One or 670 AM, in order to promote Candidate Kerry among the Iranian-American community.

NIAC's front man President is Titra Parsi. He was also a AIC Board member and a well known Khatami advocator. In addition to some questionable Iranian financial sources, the group is receiving financial contributions from groups affiliated to Theresa Heinz Kerry , such as Tides Foundation, and George Soros' Open Society Institute. Playing the nationalistic feelings of young Iranians, NIAC claims to be bi-partisan while in reality its heads are targeting a Democrat victory in the next US Presidential elections.

The Honorable Anna Eshoo's contact references are:
Phone: (202) 225-8104; (650) 323-2984; (408) 245-2339
Fax: (202) 225-8890 ; (650) 323-3498
E.mail: http://www-eshoo.house.gov/contact.aspx

Two Islams face off

By Jalal Ganje''i

Thirty-five years ago, when in a jurisprudence course in Najaf, Ayatollah Khomeini boasted that Khoms (a religious tax equivalent to one-fifth on property or income) from Baghdad's Bazaar was adequate to run the affairs of the Islamic world, he wanted to affirm that assuming power on his part cost very little but benefited the public at large.

However, no one, not even me, attending his course as a student at the time, had any idea that some day Khomeini's covetous design on Baghdad, not to mention Tehran, would emerge as the principle foreign policy objective of the theocracy that he erected a few years later.

Several years after, as Khomeini's despotic views became more evident, I chose to disassociate myself from him. That meant I had become an infidel and Khomeini sentenced me to death in absentia.

My classmates in Najaf then and the power brokers in Tehran now are trying their utmost to exploit the crisis in Iraq to realize Khomeini's dream not only to give the regime in Tehran some permanence, but also to impose their fundamentalist reign on Iraq.

That prospect would represent a catastrophe for the civilized world and Muslims across the globe. The Iranian experience is a case in point. Since the onset of Khomeini's rule, the face-off between two Islams came to the forefront of Iranian political landscape. The mullahs were challenged by tolerant and democrat Muslims who rejected fanaticism.

Khomeini realized that the tolerant Islam was the antithesis to his brand of Islam, prompting him to shun the democrat Muslims, namely the People's Mujahideen, the main Iranian opposition movement. The vast majority of the 120,000 people executed in Iran in the past quarter century were members and sympathizers of this group.

From day one, the fundamentalists in Iran found the export of crisis and expansion as the only way to counteract their popular illegitimacy. Article 11 of Iran's Constitution stipulates, "All Muslims are one nation and the Islamic Republic of Iran is duty bound to rest its general policy on the unity of Islamic nations and undertake efforts to realize the political, economic and cultural unity of the Islamic world."

Owing to many historical factors, including a majority Shiite population, Iraq was the most strategic target. Despite an eight-year war, Khomeini failed to make his dream of "liberating Jerusalem via Karbala" come true. He died in 1989, but his disciples have followed suit.

Subsequent to the Iraq war, the clerics saw a window of opportunity. Months before the fall of Saddam Hussein, the clerics devised a two-pronged strategy under the guidance of SupremeLeaderAli Khamenei. One was to expand seemingly benign charities, clinics and health-care centers. The other was to spread clandestine armed cells in order to deliver military blows to the coalition forces and be in position to fill the vacuum of power quickly in case the United States left Iraq.

Four agencies — the Revolutionary Guards, the Ministry of Intelligence and Security, the state radio and television, and the clergy network — have been coordinating their meddling in Iraq.
The West has mistakenly tried to minimize the scope of Iran's meddling. The reality on the ground depicts an entirely different story. Thousands of Iranian operatives have already crossed into Iraq. The mullahs have also sent tens of thousands of weapons and millions of dollars to that country.

"Iranian intrusion has been vast and unprecedented since the establishment of the new Iraqi state. The Iranians have penetrated the country's sensitive centers and set up many intelligence and security centers in Iraq," warned Iraqi Defense Minister Hazem Shaalan in an interview with the Arabic language daily Asharq Al-Awsat on July 20.

If the mullahs were to succeed, not only the people of Iraq, but also other regional states would fall victim to religious fascism.
The policy of appeasing Tehran by ignoring its egregious human-rights abuses, drive to procure nuclear weapons and sponsorship of terror has been a dismal failure. The West even kowtowed to Tehran's biggest demand: blacklisting the People's Mujahideen. This policy has only strengthened the most anti-Western and extremist faction of the ruling theocracy, while disarming of the People's Mujahideen has been the biggest help to the mullahs in advancing their goals in Iraq.

It is now time for decisiveness against Tehran. The fate of Iran and Iraq are intertwined as never before. The vision of a stable, tranquil Iraq without a halt in Tehran's meddling is naive and a recipe for disaster, since it would hand the entire region over to the fundamentalists on a silver platter.

Conversely, the mullahs' defeat in export of fundamentalism to Iraq would deprive it from a strategic lever and profoundly impact the developments in Iran and beyond. Everyone, including the Iranian and Iraq people as well as tolerant Muslims would be the main beneficiaries.

Ayatollah Jalal Ganje'i, a prominent dissident ayatollah based in Paris, is chairman of the Committee on Religious Freedom in the National Council of Resistance of Iran. Several members of his family, including his son, have been executed by the clerical regime.

Posted on Mon, Sep. 27, 2004

Israel May Not Be Able to Destroy Nukes

PETER ENAV

Associated Press

JERUSALEM - Israel would not be able to destroy Iran's nuclear installations with a single air strike as it did in Iraq in 1981 because they are scattered or hidden and intelligence is weak, Israeli and foreign analysts say.

Israeli leaders have implied they might use force against Iran if international diplomatic efforts or the threat of sanctions fail to stop Iran from producing nuclear weapons.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said this month Israel is "taking measures to defend itself" - a comment that raised concern Israel is considering a pre-emptive strike along the lines of its 1981 bombing of an unfinished Iraqi nuclear reactor at Osirak near Baghdad.

Speculation has also been fueled by recent Israeli weapons acquisitions, including bunker-buster bombs and long-range fighter-bombers.

Israel's national security adviser, Giora Eiland, was quoted Monday by the Maariv daily as saying Iran will reach the "point of no return" in its nuclear weapons program by November rather than next year as Israeli military officials said earlier.

Concern about Tehran's nuclear development intensified last week when Iran's Vice President Reza Aghazadeh said Iran has started converting raw uranium into the gas needed for enrichment, an important step in making a nuclear bomb.

The declaration came in defiance of a resolution passed three days earlier by the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog, demanding Iran freeze all uranium enrichment - including conversion. The group's 35-nation board of governors warned that Iran risked being taken before the U.N. Security Council, which could impose sanctions.

Iran denies it is developing nuclear weapons, saying its nuclear development program is aimed at generating electricity. Israel and other countries, including the United States, doubt that.

Recent Israeli weapons purchases could be crucial in a possible strike.

In February, Israel received the first of 102 American-built F-16I warplanes, the largest weapons deal in its history. Military sources say the planes were specially designed with extra fuel tanks to allow them to reach Iran.

In June, it signed a $319 million deal to acquire nearly 5,000 U.S.-made smart bombs, including 500 "bunker busters" that can destroy six-foot concrete walls, such as those that might be found in Iranian nuclear facilities.

Military and strategic analysts in Israel and abroad say even with the new weaponry, Israel lacks the ability to carry out a successful strike against Iran's nuclear installations.

"You have to have solid intelligence, you have to know what to hit ... The intelligence on Iran is very weak," said Alex Vatanka, an expert on Iranian security issues at Jane's Sentinel Security Assessments in London.

Israeli strategic analyst Reuven Pedatzur pointed to a claim last year by Iranian opposition figures that foreign intelligence services have been unaware of two of the Iranian nuclear facilities.

"There is no good intelligence on Iran, and this is the proof," he said. "Any Israeli attack on Iran would cause huge political damage, and in the end, the program would proceed."

After Israel attacked the Osirak reactor, it came in for worldwide criticism. Arab opposition to an Israeli strike against Iran - particularly if it appeared to be unprovoked - would likely be widespread and intense. It could lead to attacks against Israeli and Jewish institutions abroad and condemnations from the United Nations.

Other difficulties in attacking Iran's nuclear facilities include their dispersal throughout the country, their sophisticated defense systems and the likelihood that some of the installations have been replicated, said Cliff Kupchan, vice president of the Nixon Center in Washington, a former Clinton administration Iranian expert who met with Iranian officials during a visit there last year.

Kupchan said IAEA threats to impose sanctions on Iraq are unrealistic, because U.N members, including those with fledging nuclear programs, such as Brazil, would be reluctant to back them.

Sanctions against Iranian oil production are also unlikely when world demand is about 80 million barrels per day, prices are sky-high, and the only surplus capacity - about 2 million barrels per day from Saudi Arabia - is heavy oil the market usually shuns. Iran exports about 2.6 million barrels per day.

Kupchan said if diplomacy fails, there may be no choice but for the United States to lead a concerted military campaign against Iran. "If the U.S. moves aggressively, it won't be sanctions, it will be a coalition of the willing," he said.

Speaking at the United Nations last week, Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom appeared to back him up.

"The time has come to move the Iranian case to the Security Council in order to put an end to this nightmare," Shalom said.

THE HATE OF THE PEOPLE REACHING EXPLOSION POINT

By Safa Haeri
Posted Tuesday, September 28, 2004

PARIS, 28 Sept. (IPS) The demonstrations that took place in Tehran and some other major Iranian cities on Sunday 26 September 2004 on the call by a maverick, if not lunatic, Iranian opponent reverberated by the Los Angeles-based Iranian radio and television stations shows above all the degree of the hate the Iranians have for the ruling ayatollahs and the vulnerability of the Islamic Republic, according to political analysts and experts.

On the invitation of a certain Ahoura Pirouz Khaleqi Yazdi, an “unknown illustrious” who, since two months ago, promises the “liberation” of Iran from the grip of the ayatollahs on first of October, hundreds of people and cars poured into the streets, blaring horns, congratulating each other and distributing sweets and patisseries to passer byes.

That so many people come out on the invitation of a man whom they don't know tells you that the society, frustrated, humiliated, oppressed and insulted by the clerics, has reached the explosion point.

Addressing Iranians inside the country on the Rangarang (multicolour) television, Mr. Ahoura who has predicted the “disappearing” of the mullahs, the restoration of a secular and democratic regime, had urged Iranians to come out on Sunday 26 September for peaceful demonstrations.

According to press reports, about two thousand people milled around streets in downtown Tehran, many of them driving cars up and down major avenues, honking their horns and flashing victory signs. Hundreds of volunteer militiamen arrived on the scene, but there were no violent clashes.

Although demonstrations for democracy are rather rare in Iran, but it is not unusual neither, for, in the past, Iranian students have taken to the streets several times to call for change from the country's conservative clerical leadership.

In 1999, the closure of a reformist newspaper led to student protests and six days of rioting. In 2003, thousands of students held nightly marches in Tehran, backed by ordinary people, on the incitation of foreign-based radio and televisions, most of them pro-Monarchy.

“That so many people come out on the invitation of a man who was the centre of jokes and laughter for the last two-three months tells you about the depth of the hate the Iranians for the ruling ayatollahs. It also shows that the society, frustrated, humiliated, oppressed and insulted by the clerics, has reached the explosion point. It is also dangerous, for it shows that any group, or a hostile nation with proper planning and program, might bring down the Islamic Republic”, one Iranian journalist told the Persian service of Radio France International.

Those who have heard Dr. Ahoura say he seems to be a bit illiterate, his Farsi is weak and he lack charisma.

So, how to explain the presence of so many people in the streets, not only in the capital, but also major cities and even some smaller ones?

“As soon as Iranians hear something, as soon some one invites them to come out into the streets and demonstrate against the regime, there are plenty, mostly young ones, to heed”, a analyst in Tehran explained to Iran Press Service, adding that the last Sunday after noon demonstrations was not “that strange”.

“People are so desperate that they are ready to throw themselves into the fire. They came out, greeted each other, saying haxa, haxa–code name of Dr Ahoura -- mobarak, tabrik (felicitation, congratulation) without ever thinking what that haxa means or that Mr. Ahoura speaks as he is another God’s Messenger?”, he pointed out.

Mr. Alireza Nourizadeh, an independent journalist in London says Iranians are so desperate for change nowadays that they are willing to believe anything. He added that many who don't put faith in Dr. Ahoura's claims still went into the streets out of a desire to see something happen.

"The majority of people who participated in the demonstration came out either out of curiosity or they came out expecting something big is going to happen," he said. "I mean, I was talking to a university professor and he was telling me: I know all this is a shamble, it's crooks, and all of that, but I came out with my wife and my children just to see what's going to happen", the Voice of America quoted Mr. Nourizadeh as having explained.

The Iranian Labour News Agency ILNA described the protesters as “monarchists”, loyal to the monarchy regime that was toppled in the 1979 by Grand Ayatollah Rouhollah Khomeini, the leader of the Islamic revolution and founder of the present Islamic Republic.

"These people are obviously under the influence of the Iranian opposition based abroad", the report said, confirming also that some clashes had occurred and several demonstrators arrested by Law Enforcement Forces and plain clothes agents.

The leniency – some says unusual -- the Police showed towards the demonstrators prompted other analysts asking if the new liberator is not a product of the regime itself?

A group of volunteer militiamen arrived on motorbikes as scores of people had been chanting "freedom," clapping and handing out pastries but there was no sign of any fighting.

In the view of Mr. Sadeq Saba, a senior analyst of Iranian affairs for the BBC, the fact that no major clashes had been reported shows that the regime is not afraid of such calls and demonstrations.

The leniency – some says unusual -- the Police showed towards the demonstrators prompted other analysts asking if the new liberator is not a product of the regime itself?

However, other analysts, more adept of “theories of conspiracy”, a national sport of Iranians in general asked if the whole affair is not a “rehearsal” of some scenarios, some foreign nations are preparing for Iran?

"We were responding to his call to avoid a war," the French news agency AFP quoted one person who said he had taken part in the gathering.

"Ahura Pirouz Khaleghi was saying that Israel intends to attack Iran and that he had asked (Israeli Prime Minister) Ariel Sharon to give him the time to return home and sort out the problem", the person told AFP.

“The invisible hand that pushes Haxa, is that of the United States and Israel, busy taking polls and preparing plans”, wrote the leftist “Peyknet” website on the event, predicting that the time bomb generated by the hate of the regime would explode, “maybe not on first of October, the date of liberation and freedom promised by Mr. Ahoura, but at another time”.

ENDS IRAN DEMOS 28904

September 28, 2004, 8:42 a.m.
The Heart of Darkness
There is no word to describe the horror.

By Ramin Parham

Another man has just been decapitated in Iraq and a video showing the horror posted online. In Tehran, the French ambassador recently met the head of the national-security and foreign-affairs committee of the Islamic Majlis (parliament), and the president of the Iranian-French Parliamentary Commission to discuss "the expansion of ties...." Did this meeting have anything to do with what took place in Paris last week? A meeting of the International Moral Court was held in the French capital September 23-25 to expose the crimes of the theocracy in Tehran. Having lived under religious fascism, I prepared myself psychologically for three days of horrific stories and images.

At the hotel where the event took place, I met Ali, a 23-year-old man in a family of nine. Ali came here eight months ago, fleeing persecution. "I have a high-school bachelor's degree and I used to work as a mechanic in Islam-Shahr (Islam City)." Islam-Shahr — a poverty-ridden suburb that saw, back in the mid-1990s, the first popular anti-regime demonstrations — is located on the outskirt of Tehran, a world away from those chic quarters north of the city from which western reporters regularly speak of the bright horizons of reformism. Islam-Shahr is where Ali was born and lived until he left the country out of fear.

"When did it all start for you?" I asked my young compatriot, by then at ease in the conversation after a cup of coffee. "It started with the first student uprising [in 1999]. The whole city was turned upside down. Even in our neighborhood, far away from the main Tehran University campus, bassij [the Islamist militia] quarters were taken over by the people, their vehicles burned, their walls covered with anti-regime graffiti...I was identified by the denouncers and later summoned to Islamic court."

The "denouncers," as Ali calls them, are the shadowy figures behind the more visible agents of the bassij. While the latter are "known to all, in every neighborhood, the former are more pernicious, more difficult for us to keep an eye on."

Ali continued, reciting his ordeal for the "umpteenth time," as he sadly said. Later "my case became even thicker," he related. "Why?" I enquired. "The local mullah [a Shia cleric], having seen my wife God knows where, started having a malicious eye on her. He wanted her and she was mine. So, he went after me, found out about my recent security troubles and managed to put his hands on my file. He then made it thicker than it already was. And that was the end of it. What followed was yet another summoning to Islamic courts, and, in absentia, I was notified of my charges: 'Insult to His Sacred Leadership's dress,' 'Insult to the System's sanctities,' and 'Conspiracy against national security.'"

"What do you mean 'His dress'?" I asked. "They all wear the same f***ing dress," he replied, before adding, "Insulting one is insulting them all, and above them all, His Sacred Leadership."

As we talked, the court went on. Following the administrative procedures a film was shown; smuggled out of Iran, it pictured scenes of despicable horror. We all watched the unwatchable: a man lay on a stretcher while another, bearded and looking like an official, read what seemed to be a court sentence. Then a man dressed in white comes in — presumably a physician — bends over the lying man and applies the sentence.

There is only one word to describe the horror of what I saw: horror. There is other word for the act of tearing out a living man's eyes; there is no adjective to describe it. The whole assembly was plunged into a macabre silence. In the next scene, another man, lying alive and awake on a stretcher, watched his physician-torturer cut his fingers with a hand-mower. Next, a third man, or woman — there is no way of distinguishing the gender of someone wrapped up like a mummy — is buried, alive and awake, up to his chest, before being stoned to death. It barely takes a minute or two before the chest and head of the living mummy start circling around in a dance of death. What magnifies to near-infinite the evil of these scenes of barbarity is the unbearable accompanying cry, "Allah Akbar!" — "God is Great!"

"The situation becomes so explosive, every now and then, that they bring in their Lebanese commandos," Ali told me, turning his head away from that sickening screen. "Lebanese?" I asked. "Yah, Lebanese. They run out of local hands to repress, so they rely on their network. These guys are physically huge and mentally sick. Speaking not a word of Persian, they just beat. A friend of mine got caught the other day by one of these patrols. The guy was so colossal that he sucked my friend in through the car's window with just one hand. They laid him on the car's floor and started beating him. I never saw him again. Seventeen of us disappeared like this in our hood alone. Eleven never came back. Those who did return, including one of my own childhood friends, were so profoundly disrupted psychologically that no one would ever talk of his ordeal."

The projection is followed by testimonies of those who survived the heart of darkness. Coming back from death, a woman goes to the microphone, and, as she speaks, the room sinks into silence once again. A Kurdish sympathizer of an armed opposition group, she was arrested in her native Kurdistan in 1982. Hanged naked upside down — to "tear apart the self that is in every one of us," she says — she was then raped, over and over again. Gang rape, rape with a bottle...

"We will never forgive our parents for having done this to us with their revolution," says Ali, staring at nowhere. "My father said once that they did it because they thought they would get free oil at their door step. Can you believe that? Now, people won't take to the streets anymore. I mean, what for? Every one saw what they did to Zahra Kazemi [a Canadian journalist killed while in the custody of the government in Tehran]. Did the Canadians do anything in outrage? Did the Canadian government take any significant retaliatory step? Every one knows that the mullahs have huge personal savings and investments in Canada. So why should we sacrifice ourselves by defying Lebanese mercenaries in our own neighborhoods? Is the world going to recognize that we exist? Has anyone among the Iranian expatriates supported us? Has any Iranian even come to the refugee camps to see in what miserable conditions we live? We hate the mullahs so much that we could hang every single one of them on every single tree in Tehran, but, so long as we, the Iranians, are only "I" and never "Us" — so long as the West is behind the mullahs — no one will take the matters to the streets any more."

I leave the courtroom, sick of myself, sick of bearing my being. I retire to an adjacent room to write and forget. "Did Nicholas Kristoff of the New York Times ever talk to Ali when he toured Iran a few months ago? He has never lived under fascism, has he? Mr. Kristoff doesn't have to face the Lebanese Hezbollah in the streets of New York, does he? So why does he advocate reforming the theocracy and flooding it with American dollars? The "reform" movement is dead, Mr. Kristoff. The aspiration for liberty and a life without fear, for a life with dignity, is not."

"We are 70 percent of the people," said Ali before I left him. They are the most redoubtable weapon of mass destruction against the mullahs, I keep telling myself. They are the end of the tunnel, if only we could recognize that there is tunnel out there and not a dead-end — if only we decided to lend them our voice.

If only...

— Ramin Parham, editor of Iran Institute for Democracy, is an independent commentator based in Paris.

Consensus Approach Needed on Iran's Nuclear Programme

September 28, 2004
The Irish Times
Rory Miller

The possibility that Iran's Islamic revolutionary regime may be close to developing a nuclear weapon capability has come to top the international non-proliferation agenda.

Only last week Tehran announced that it would begin converting raw "yellow cake" uranium to prepare it for enrichment - a process that can ultimately lead to an atomic capability.

This despite an October 2003 promise to France, Germany and Britain that it would halt its uranium enrichment programme and a more recent International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) resolution demanding Iran cease such activities.

The international response to this latest development has been predictable. The Bush administration, which in January 2002 included Iran in its "axis of evil", continues to call for a united front behind its threat of UN sanctions.

The EU, which since 1993 has pursued a policy of "Critical Dialogue" that has put it at odds with both the Clinton and Bush administrations, refuses to commit to this approach and continues, publicly at least, to place its faith in the powers of persuasion.

Ireland adheres to the EU's official Iran policy of dialogue and on the nuclear issue, defers to the "EU-3" - Germany, Britain and France - who, in the absence of US engagement, have taken it upon themselves to negotiate a compromise on behalf of the international community.

Nevertheless, one cannot help contrasting the muted Irish position on Iran's nuclear programme with the commitment of successive Irish governments during the Cold War to the UN's nuclear non-proliferation effort.

This was so widely recognised at the time that the groundbreaking 1961 General Assembly resolution on nuclear disarmament came to be known as the "Irish Resolution" and foreign minister Frank Aiken had the honour of being the first signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) on July 1st, 1968.

It is true that Ireland's unflinching effort, in the words of Aiken, "to promote a Pax Atomica while we build a Pax Mundi" during the Cold War was idealistic and may have little relevance in an era when mutually assured destruction is possibly the objective, rather than the fear, of those who control an Iranian "bomb".

It is also true that Ireland has had little success on those rare past occasions when it has attempted to act independently of the EU to see if it could moderate Iran's stance.

It failed to gain concessions on the fatwa against author Salman Rushdie; on Iranian opposition to the Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations at Madrid and Oslo; and on human rights, when it managed, in the company of Britain and the Netherlands, to get the EU's "Critical Dialogue" to emphasise the "human rights dimension".

But it should also be remembered that at no time in the quarter of a century since Iran became a theocracy has its atrocious human rights record or its wide-ranging links to international terrorism topped Ireland's agenda.

Rather Ireland has focused its efforts on developing two distinct but overlapping priorities - trade and positive diplomacy - both of which necessitated a willingness to ignore the worst excesses of the Iranian regime.

At the time of the establishment of an Islamic republic in 1979 Iran was Ireland's second most valuable export market in the Middle East after Saudi Arabia. From this time until 1986 Ireland's main priority was building on economic ties with this oil rich, beef-importing nation and by the mid-1980s over half of the work of the Irish diplomatic mission in Tehran was occupied with trade.

Following the kidnapping of Brian Keenan in Beirut in 1986, until his release in August 1990, the main focus shifted to fostering close diplomatic relations with the ayatollahs in the hope that they would use their influence in Lebanon to help gain his release.

From 1993 to the present time Ireland has followed the EU's policy of "Critical Dialogue" based on the belief that normalising economic, cultural and political ties with the radical regime would foster domestic reforms, empower moderate factions and, in particular, help the reformer president, Mohammad Khatami, known affectionately as "Ayatollah Gorbachev", to marginalise extremists.

Dialogue is a viable option for dealing with Iran's long-time involvement in domestic repression and sponsorship of terror.

But as long as Iran refuses to suspend its enrichment programme for the duration of such talks, it is of little use in dealing with the nuclear issue.

A nuclear Iran will be an immense threat to regional and global security. Ireland should use its position inside the EU and its credibility and prestige outside, particularly in the Islamic world, to urge consensus on the matter of UN sanctions in the case of continued non-compliance.

This in itself would not solve the current crisis. But it would contribute to the establishment of a united front that would send a clear message to future proliferators.

It would also help the process of rebuilding trust and co-operation between the EU and US, a key priority of Irish foreign policy. Last, but by no means least, it would help restore the credibility of the NPT, a framework that past Irish governments laboured so hard to bring about.

Dr Rory Miller is a lecturer in Mediterranean Studies at King's College, University of London

Iran's nuclear no-return point by November

By ASSOCIATED PRESS

National Security Adviser Maj.-Gen. (res.) Giora Eiland was quoted Monday by the Maariv daily as saying Iran will reach the "point of no return" in its nuclear weapons program by November, rather than next year as Israeli military officials said earlier.

The declaration came in defiance of a resolution passed three days earlier by the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN nuclear watchdog, demanding Iran freeze all uranium enrichment - including conversion. The group's 35-nation board of governors warned that Iran risked being taken before the UN Security Council, which could impose sanctions.

Iran denies it is developing nuclear weapons, saying its nuclear development program is aimed at generating electricity. Israel and other countries, including the United States, doubt that.

However, and contrary to expectations based on Israel's 1981 strike in Iraq, Israel would not be able to destroy Iran's nuclear installations with a single air strike because they are scattered or hidden and intelligence is weak, Israeli and foreign analysts say.

Israeli leaders have implied they might use force against Iran if international diplomatic efforts or the threat of sanctions fail to stop Iran from producing nuclear weapons.

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said this month that Israel is "taking measures to defend itself" - a comment that raised concern that Israel is considering a pre-emptive strike along the lines of its 1981 bombing of an unfinished Iraqi nuclear reactor at Osirak near Baghdad.

Speculation has also been fueled by recent Israeli weapons acquisitions, including bunker-buster bombs and long-range fighter-bombers.

Recent Israeli weapons purchases could be crucial in a possible strike.

In June, it signed a $319 million deal to acquire nearly 5,000 US-made smart bombs, including 500 "bunker busters" that can destroy six-foot concrete walls, such as those that might be found in Iranian nuclear facilities.

Military and strategic analysts in Israel and abroad say even with the new weaponry, Israel lacks the ability to carry out a successful strike against Iran's nuclear installations.

Israeli strategic analyst Reuven Pedatzur pointed to a claim last year by Iranian opposition figures that foreign intelligence services have been unaware of two of the Iranian nuclear facilities.

"There is no good intelligence on Iran, and this is the proof," he said. "Any Israeli attack on Iran would cause huge political damage, and in the end, the program would proceed."

After Israel attacked the Osirak reactor in Iraq, it came in for worldwide criticism. Arab opposition to an Israeli strike against Iran - particularly if it appeared to be unprovoked - would likely be widespread and intense. It could lead to attacks against Israeli and Jewish institutions abroad and condemnations from the United Nations.

Kupchan said IAEA threats to impose sanctions on Iraq are unrealistic, because UN members, including those with fledging nuclear programs, such as Brazil, would be reluctant to back them.

Sanctions against Iranian oil production are also unlikely when world demand is about 80 million barrels per day, prices are sky-high, and the only surplus capacity - about two million barrels per day from Saudi Arabia - is heavy oil the market usually shuns. Iran exports about 2.6 million barrels per day.

Kupchan said if diplomacy fails, there may be no choice but for the United States to lead a concerted military campaign against Iran. "If the US moves aggressively, it won't be sanctions, it will be a coalition of the willing," he said.

Speaking at the United Nations last week, Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom appeared to back him up.

"The time has come to move the Iranian case to the Security Council in order to put an end to this nightmare," Shalom said.

Sep. 23, 2004 20:55

Column One: How to deal with Iran

By CAROLINE GLICK

Iranian soldier with banner reading ‘Death to America’ during paramilitary parade marking 24th Iran-Iraq war anniversary.
Photo: AP

Iran this week summarily rejected the latest call by the International Atomic Energy Agency to cease all its uranium enrichment programs. Speaking at a military parade on Tuesday, where Iran's surface-to-surface Shihab-3 ballistic missiles earmarked "Jerusalem" were on prominent display, Iranian President Muhammad Khatami defied the IAEA, saying: "We will continue along our path [of uranium enrichment] even if it leads to an end to international supervision."

US and European sources involved in tracking the Iranian nuclear program have made clear in recent weeks that Iran is between four and six months away from nuclear "break-out" capacity. This means that in the next four to six months Iran will have the nuclear fuel cycle complete, and will be able to independently construct nuclear bombs whenever it wishes. More conservative estimates have spoken of 12-24 months.

Given the seeming inevitability of Iran attaining nuclear weapons capabilities, a new received wisdom seems to be coalescing in Washington. This view is that it is not possible today, given US preoccupation with Iraq, either to change the Iranian regime and therefore moderate the threat posed by a nuclear Iran, or to engage the mullahs in negotiations that would appease them into giving up their nuclear ambitions. Therefore, it is being said, a new "middle road" policy must be constructed.

The most serious voice weighing in on the "middle road" option to date is Henry Sokolski. Sokolski, who now heads the Washington-based Non-proliferation Policy Education Center, was a US arms control negotiator in the first Bush administration and has held senior positions on arms-control-related issues in Congress and in the US intelligence community. Last week, the NPEC published a report, partially funded by the Pentagon, on the Iranian nuclear program, entitled "Restraining a Nuclear-Ready Iran: Seven Levers." (http://www.npec-web.org/projects/Iran/2004-09-13SevenLevers.pdf)

Given Sokolski's own hard-won credibility in non-proliferation affairs, and the fact that the Pentagon partially funded his report, it is important to analyze the study and its conclusions.

The study asserts at its outset that it will be impossible to target Iran's nuclear sites militarily. This assertion arises from intelligence reports which have shown that Iran has up to 15 separate and disperse nuclear sites, many of which are hardened and underground. Aside from this, the report and its precursor, "Checking Iran's Nuclear Ambitions," asserts that Iran already possesses the scientific knowledge base necessary to reconstitute any sites that are destroyed or damaged by air strikes.

Similarly, the study asserts that engaging Iran on its nuclear program is an exercise in futility, given Iran's current and past duplicity on the subject.

Disturbingly, while Sokolski accuses officials presently working on the Iran issue of being "in denial" about the inevitability of Iran acquiring nuclear capabilities, he himself is in denial about the threat that a nuclear-armed Iran would pose. Sokolski enumerates three dangers that he views as likely to emanate from a nuclear Iran.

First, he says that Iranian nuclearization will act as a catalyst for neighboring countries to attempt to gain nuclear capabilities, citing Saudi Arabia, Syria, Egypt, Algeria and Turkey as likely candidates for adopting such a policy.

Second, the report argues that nuclear capabilities will embolden Iran to take action to reduce world oil shipments by attacking tankers in the Straits of Hormuz or Saudi and Iraqi oil installations and pipelines, leading to a dramatic increase in oil prices.

Finally, a nuclear armed Iran would feel free to increase its support for terror strikes against the US and its allies. Such strikes would lead to a diminishment of US influence in the Middle East and throughout the world.

In truth, all of the threats that Sokolski's report argues will arise if Iran becomes nuclear capable already exist. Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Algeria are all already seeking to gain nuclear capabilities, as the report itself acknowledges. As well, Iran has been linked to much of the terrorism against oil-related targets in Saudi Arabia over the past year-and-a-half, and to most of the sabotage attacks against Iraqi oil installations since the US-led invasion. Indeed, Teheran is already the main cause of the recent surge in global oil prices. Furthermore, Iran today is the world's primary sponsor of terrorism. Its links to al-Qaida have been copiously documented. Its primary sponsorship of Hizbullah, Islamic Jihad, Hamas and Fatah is also unquestionable.

Yet, while labeling already existing threats emanating from Iran as future ones, Sokolski ignores the main new threat that would exist were Iran to become equipped with nuclear bombs – the use of those bombs to destroy Israel or its neighbors and rivals in the Persian Gulf, or the transfer of nuclear weapons to a terrorist group deployed as Iran's proxy.

Given that Sokolski fails to acknowledge this threat, it is not surprising that his policy recommendations for checking Iran's nuclear ambitions read like an instruction manual for US arms negotiators facing the Soviets during the era of detente in the 1970s. They are all based on the assumption that, like the Soviet Union, Iran is a status-quo power that will respect some mutually acceptable game rules.

Some of Sokolski's recommendations are interesting, but irrelevant to the matter at hand. He talks of the need to strengthen the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty by amending it to extend automatic nuclear blacklisting and other sanctions on any state that vacates its signature to the treaty. This may be a good idea, but what possible effect could it have if Iran has independent nuclear capabilities?

Other such recommendations are variations on ideas that have been tried in the past and failed. For instance, Sokolski calls for the US to achieve Russian cooperation in checking Iran's nuclear aspirations by offering the Russians a long-sought-for and lucrative nuclear cooperation deal. In the 1990s, the US offered Russia a near partnership in much of its space program. It often threatened that it would curtail its space cooperation if Russia did not stop assisting Iran in its ballistic missile program, but it never followed through. US sanctions on Russia for its cooperation in the Iranian ballistic missile programs were limited to sanctions on specific Russian entities that were directly involved in the enterprise, and the Russian government never flinched.

Most significantly – and egregiously – Sokolski recommends that in an effort to check Iranian nuclear capabilities, "Israel should announce how much weapons usable material it has produced and that it will unilaterally mothball (but not yet dismantle) Dimona, and place the reactor's mothballing under IAEA monitoring. Israel should announce that it will dismantle Dimona and place the special nuclear material it has produced in 'escrow' in Israel with a third trusted declared nuclear state, e.g., the US." That is, the primary target of Teheran's nuclear arsenal should respond to the emerging threat by disarming itself.

If this recommendation were made by a European or an Arab, one could simply laugh it off. But given the respectability of the source, it is necessary to engage it. Adopting such a course would be devastating for three main reasons:

First, it ignores the real danger of Iran using nuclear weapons to destroy Israel, as it has threatened.

Second, it ignores the rationale behind Israel's nuclear program: deterring the threat of physical destruction by both conventional and non-conventional enemy forces. It is not simply a deterrent against nuclear attack. To discuss nuclear transparency for Israel without calling for conventional disarmament of, say Egypt, whose conventional armed forces alone constitute a strategic threat for Israel, is to ignore Israel's strategic vulnerabilities.

Finally, the recommendation makes no distinction between a nuclear-armed, stable democracy and a nuclear-armed, terror-supporting theocracy. Comparing a nuclear Israel and a nuclear Iran is like comparing a housewife in the kitchen wielding a butcher's knife to a murderer in a dark alleyway wielding a butcher's knife. It is both morally obtuse and strategically blind.

Sokolski states at the outset that the option of a military strike against Iran must be dismissed because Iran's program is too far flung and its sites are too hardened. That is, since it may well be impossible to hit every nuclear target, it is not worth hitting any of them. As well, Iranian leaders daily threaten that any military action taken against Iran will be responded to in a devastating manner.

Yet, were an air strike on Iran to take out say, only 10 of 15 sites, it would still severely retard the Iranian nuclear effort, buying the West time to formulate and enact either a policy of engagement from a position of strength, or a policy of regime change with the requisite credibility among regime opponents that such a strike would inspire.

As to the threat of Iranian retaliation, it can be mitigated by taking certain steps. Hizbullah leadership, as well as its rocket and missile depots and launchers, can be preemptively destroyed or disabled in Lebanon. Saudi oil installations can be secured by Western Special Forces. A naval flotilla can be deployed to the Persian and Oman Gulfs, ready to secure the Strait of Hormuz for oil tankers.

In addition, immediately following a military strike on Iran's nuclear installations, allied governments could launch a massive information warfare campaign, flooding Iran with radio and satellite television broadcasts explaining the need for the strike and offering assistance to Iranian reformers.

In short, while calling for a "middle ground" – looking askance at naive formulations of engagement with no deterrent credibility, or regime change with no operational credibility – may seem like an attractive option, in reality, given the hostility and radicalism of the Iranian regime, Sokolski's report provides no real new option. A more formidable middle road that could be used to develop options for either regime change or engagement must necessarily be predicated on a comprehensive military option supporting limited air or commando strikes at Iran's nuclear facilities.

Spend on nukes? Iran should tend to its poor first

By Pranay Gupte

IS IRAN - with oil-export revenues of more than US$30 billion (S$51 billion) expected this year - on its way to producing nuclear weapons that would threaten not only neighbouring Middle East enemies such as Israel but also European nations?

Indeed, should it be allowed to do so? With growing unemployment among its young, and rising social tensions, can Iran afford to pursue the development of a nuclear arsenal?

And even with proven crude oil reserves of more than 130 billion barrels, and daily production of some 4.2 million barrels, can Iran - a nation of 70 million overwhelmingly poor people - afford to live off its oil revenues if imports, already at US$32 billion now, keep rising each year?

The oil industry is not generating the volume of jobs required to alleviate Iran's reported unemployment rate of 16-17 per cent. Among those younger than 30 years of age, the jobless rate may be even higher. Inflation - usually a key indicator of economic health - is running in excess of 17 per cent annually.

NO IDLE THREAT

BACK in 1979, when I covered the Islamic Revolution that deposed Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, the new rulers of what had been transformed overnight into a theocratic state often boasted about how their country would one day become a nuclear power. They pointed out that the Shah had plans to build more than 20 nuclear reactors with the assistance of Germany and the approval of the monarch's ally, the United States.

Iran, they said, would match the presumed nuclear capability of Israel, the Jewish state hated by the Shi'ite fundamentalists who took over the oil-rich country. The ayatollahs turned to the erstwhile Soviet Union to replace Germany as Iran's main builder of these plants, of which one - at Bushehr - has already been completed.

Their boast, 25 years ago, has not turned out to be an idle threat. Last week, President Mohammad Khatami said that Iran would continue to produce enriched uranium fuel for nuclear energy. He said Iran had begun converting 40 tonnes of uranium oxide into uranium hexafluoride gas, the feedstock for enriched uranium.

While it has not yet resumed enrichment of the gas by feeding it into supersonic centrifuges, President Khatami - who is ineligible for re-election when his second term expires at the end of the year - said Iran intends to do so.

The cleric-politician also said that Iran plans to build a second nuclear reactor. Although Mr Khatami stopped short of saying that Iran would develop nuclear weaponry, there has long been suspicion within the International Atomic Energy Agency that Iran is not quite pursuing its nuclear plans for civilian purposes alone.

Last week's disclosure by Mr Khatami was followed by another Iranian announcement that it had test-fired a new long-range missile, the Shahab, which means 'shooting star' in Persian. According to the Israelis, this missile can easily reach London, Paris and southern Russia.

There is speculation that the Israelis may well use US-manufactured bunker-busting rockets to destroy Iranian nuclear facilities, just as in 1981 when they bombed Iraq's incipient nuclear plants.

Iran, predictably, says that it will resist any Israeli efforts to attack its nuclear facilities. It also contends that, even though it is a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), it has every right to develop nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.

It is not alone in maintaining such a stance: virtually every developing country that has signed the treaty insists that it needs nuclear energy to meet growing domestic demands for electricity, manufacturing and industry.

The Associated Press reported last week that some of these developing countries say that the NPT has become 'a tool of nuclear states to impede nuclear development in nations they mistrust, and has lost its original purpose'.

The original purpose was to encourage a system under which countries without nuclear weapons that signed the treaty were promised full support in developing other nuclear technologies in exchange for renouncing nuclear weapons.

But could there be some truth in Iran's public insistence that its nuclear ambitions are confined to sustainable economic development?

The 61-year-old Mr Khatami told union representatives in Teheran recently that it was high time that the theocracy weaned itself away from its traditional reliance on oil export revenues, which account for about 80 per cent of the Islamic republic's export income.

Industrial productivity needed to be enhanced, he said, and the country's management and training projects warranted overhauling. And Iran, he added, would be seeking more foreign direct investment through already proven successful vehicles such as the issuance of euro bonds and other measures.

But it is not going to be easy for Iran to attract foreign capital in the volume it would like. Last year, the Islamic republic received a puny US$40 million in foreign direct investment, less than a twentieth of neighbouring Pakistan, also an Islamic state, but one that has acknowledged it is a nuclear power.

Foreign capital is also critical for Iran because it wants to increase its daily oil production from 4.2 million barrels to 12 million barrels. It cannot accomplish this without heavy foreign investment in the oil industry.

NON-OIL SECTOR WEAK

IRAN has been severely affected by the US-imposed sanctions in 1979 soon after Islamic militants seized the American Embassy in Teheran and kept diplomatic hostages for 444 days. Unless there is greater inflow of foreign technical know-how, Iran's prospects of reviving its moribund non-oil sector remain weak.

That sector was once much more productive. For example, exports of Caspian caviar sturgeon have fallen nearly 90 per cent since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

A report by Reuters said recently that hand-woven Persian carpets, Iran's second most valuable exports, have been 'bludgeoned' by foreign copies - made in Pakistan, Turkey and Iraq.

Only exports of pistachio nuts - a key agricultural product - have shown continued strength. Non-oil exports are expected to be about US$7 billion this year, according to the International Monetary Fund.

The IMF also estimates that Iran's overall economic growth rate for the next four years is expected to be 5.2 per cent annually. This will not be sufficient to make up its budgetary deficits as it attends to domestic social and economic development projects, rebuilds its long-neglected infrastructure, and also continues major agricultural and fuel subsidies.

Iran, in short, neither needs nor will be able to sustain a nuclear weaponry programme. It is time that the ayatollahs tended to their own parish first.

Crisis in Iran could blow up in an instant

With news media full of stories about roadside car bombs in Iraq and the military records of President George W. Bush and Sen. John Kerry, Americans may not have noticed news about Iran is worsening rapidly.

- Last week, Iranian officials revealed that they already have begun to convert 37 tons of uranium ore to enriched weapons-grade uranium, which is enough for about five bombs.

- Iran also announced last week that it successfully tested a "strategic missile" and delivered it to the nation's armed forces. Israeli military experts believe the missile is an improved version of the Shahab 3 missile, which is capable of reaching Israel — or American bases in the region.

- Israel plans to buy 500 bunker-buster bombs, according to the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz. The bombs can penetrate 6 feet of concrete and could be used against fortified missile silos.

Iran officials say they want enriched uranium to operate a nuclear power plant. "We have made our choice. Yes to peaceful nuclear technology and no to nuclear weapons," Iranian President Muhammad Khatami said last week.

Few western nations, however, were reassured by Khatami's words.
The international community, led by Britain, Germany and France, has been pressuring Iran to stop it's nuclear enrichment program.

Earlier this year, it appeared the diplomatic effort might be fruitful.
Now, with Iranian officials saying they may stop cooperating with inspectors from the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency, it appears Iran may have just been buying time.

John Wolfstahl of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace told National Public Radio that it appears Iran is "almost daring or bluffing the United States or Europeans to decide what they're prepared to do about it."

The diplomatic effort will reach ahead in November. The U.N.'s watchdog agency has called for full disclosure of its nuclear program by the time the International Atomic Energy Agency meets that month.
The wild card in the diplomatic effort is Russia, which has assisted Iran with its nuclear research in the past. Russia holds a veto on the U.N. Security Council against imposition of sanctions or other stern response.

In the meantime, Iran officials sound more combative than ever. After the missile test, Defense Minister Ali Shamkhani said Iran stands "ready to confront all regional and extraregional threats."

All the elements for a crisis, from a bombing attack by Israel to a missile strike by Iran, are present. The stakes in the ongoing negotiations are enormous. If diplomatic efforts don't succeed soon, it may be too late.

Iran's hardline lawmakers want withdrawal from NPT

28 Sep 2004 15:44:58 GMT

Source: Reuters

By Parisa Hafezi

TEHRAN, Sept 28 (Reuters) - Iran's hardline lawmakers could try to force President Mohammad Khatami's government to follow North Korea's example and quit the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the official IRNA news agency said on Tuesday.

Leading conservative parliamentarian Hassan Kamran has prepared a bill for submission to parliament that would force the government to set a November deadline for the U.N. nuclear watchdog to take Iran off the agency's agenda, IRNA said.

"The bill obliges the government to pull out of the NPT if the International Atomic Energy Agency does not meet the deadline," IRNA quoted Kamran as saying.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has threatened it will take tough action against Iran at its November meeting if it defies the agency's call to stop uranium enrichment.

The United States accuses Iran of running a secret nuclear weapons programme and has forced the IAEA to report Iran to the U.N. Security Council for possible economic sanctions.

Iran insists its network of nuclear facilities are geared to produce atomic power, not bombs. Iran's Foreign Minister said Iran did not intend to pull out of the NPT: "No that is not our policy," said Kamal Kharazzi when questioned on CNN on Tuesday. "We are sticking to NPT".

The bill by Kamran, a member of parliament's Foreign Affairs and National Security commission, will be submitted to parliament if it is backed by 15 out of 290 lawmakers.

Kamran said he was seeking special triple-urgency status for the bill. If accepted by two-thirds of lawmakers, parliament would have to discuss it immediately. It would then go to the hardline Guardian Council, a watchdog body, before becoming law.

Some sections of Iran's clerical establishment have called for the country to withdraw from the NPT in return to the IAEA's "hostile stance". But the government has assured the world that it had no intention to end its co-operation with the IAEA.

Kamran said the government would be obliged to end its "voluntarily undertakings" to the IAEA as well if the bill passed into law.

International pressure forced Tehran last year to agree to snap checks of its nuclear sites and to halt the enrichment of uranium, a process that can be used to develop nuclear weapons.

Reformist lawmakers said they were against the bill. "We believe in more co-operation with the IAEA," Nureddin Pirmoazen told Reuters. He added: "But we are in minority in parliament".

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