Iranian Alert -- DAY 9 -- LIVE THREAD PING LIST

Thousands demonstrate outside Tehran university

Wednesday, June 18, 2003 - ©2003 IranMania.com

TEHRAN, June 17 (AFP) - Thousands of anti-government demonstrators converged on Tehran university in their cars for an eighth straight night of protest on Tuesday but police appeared well in control of the situation.

Demonstrations around the campus -- the focal point of the week-long student protests -- have become more low-key since the weekend, with few people venturing out of their vehicles or shouting slogans.

There was no sign, however of the Islamist miliciamen who used clubs and iron bars to disperse protesters on Friday.

Meanwhile in Tehran-Pars, a poor neighboorhood some 15 kilometres from the university, small groups of young people staged a brief demonstration but were immediately scattered by police, witnesses said.

Police special forces and members of the Basij militia were taking up positions at key points in the large neighborhood to enforce a return to calm.

Scores of people have been injured or detained over the past week of anti-government protests, which come amid a worsening political deadlock between reformists loyal to President Mohammad Khatami and powerful hardliners.

The protests have been marked by slogans targeting supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and have involved clashes with hardline vigilantes loyal to him.

But tensions in Tehran have been eased by a police crackdown on the activities of the hardline Islamist Basij and Ansar Hezbollah militias.

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Mideast - AFP

Iran's nuclear program reason for grave concern: US

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VIENNA (AFP) - Iran's nuclear program is reason for "grave concern" as it points to the development of nuclear weapons, Kenneth Brill, US ambassador to the UN's nuclear watchdog said.

AFP/IAEA/File Photo

He said that although investigations by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) were continuing, there was already evidence that "confirms that Iran's nuclear program is cause for grave concern."

"The US expects the agency's accumulation of further information will point to only one conclusion -- that Iran is aggressively pursuing a nuclear weapons program," Brill said in a speech to an IAEA meeting in Vienna considering a report on Iran's failure to honor international agreements on reporting nuclear material.

He rejected Iran's claims that it has cooperated in nuclear inspections.

Brill said "we all need to reflect on the implications of the fact" that the IAEA's report on Iran "was the result not of reports by Iran to the IAEA but largely of information that came to the agency through open sources."

He said Iran has not been clear about "the import of nuclear material ... the subsequent processing of that material or ... the facilities where the material was stored and processed."

Brill said he expected the continuing IAEA investigation to provide additional informationm on "Iran's experimentation in the production of uranium metal, an activity without apparent justification in Iran's fuel cycle."

"I don't need to remind the Board that uranium metal is required to make fissile components for ... nuclear weapons," Brill said.

He said the Iranian failures to comply documented in the IAEA report reflected "a conscious effort by Iran to avoid monitoring of its fuel cycle research and development activities."

Khatami steps in for damage control:

Iran's president demands right to protest, condemns violence

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TEHRAN (AFP) - Reformist President Mohammad Khatami (news - web sites) defended Iranians' right to hold protests but condemned violence, whether caused by demonstrators or hardline Islamist groups.

AFP Photo

"If we want democracy, we must accept such protests as natural. We recognise the right to protest, which existed in the past and still exists," the president said in his first reaction to eight consecutive nights of student-led anti-regime protests in Tehran and other Iranian cities.

But he added that "what characterises democracy is that those demonstrations and the reactions to those demonstrations remain in a civil and democratic framework."

He also condemned violence "from wherever it comes" -- a reference to some radical protestors and hardline Islamist vigilantes who have been engaged in a string of serious clashes.

This report sounds less positive for the the protestors...sounds like the crackdowns by police are discouraging protesting.

Cross-link:

-Unrest in Iran--

Mideast - AFP

Iranian president demands France extradite Mujahedeen members

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TEHRAN (AFP) - President Mohammad Khatami (news - web sites) demanded France extradite to Iran detained members of the armed People's Mujahedeen opposition group and told Washington to take the lead from Paris by arresting Mujahedeen members still in Iraq (news - web sites).

Here are some of the latest news reports...

Wednesday, June 18, 2003

Iran's Mullahs are in Trouble

June 17, 2003
United Press International
Eli J. Lake

In Tehran, demonstrations against the government have raged for more than seven straight days -- and spread to other cities -- forcing the regime to bring in outside militias to attempt to put down popular unrest because the local police have refused.

And with the anniversary of the student demonstrations on July 9, 1999 nearing, fears of more violent confrontations are peaking.

In Washington, President Bush threw his full support behind the pro-democracy protests Sunday despite some of his closest advisers' desire to keep the door open to furthering diplomatic contacts with the regime. And in Brussels Monday the International Atomic Energy Agency released a report that stated plainly that numerous questions remained unanswered about the existence of an illegal and clandestine nuclear weapons program.

So far the Islamic Republic has, at least publicly, chalked up its recent woes to U.S. meddling. Last Friday, Iran's powerful ex-President, Hashemi Rafsanjani warned students not to fall into "the trap the Americans had dug for them," by protesting too vocally against the government. The Foreign Ministry issued a statement blasting the White House over the weekend for its support for the Iranian protestors. As for the recent report from the IAEA, an Iranian spokesman attributed this to America's "psychological warfare."

The clerics have been making such charges for the last few years, and like many distortions, inside there is a grain of truth. While the United States government has not directly given any money to Iranian activists, some Iranian Americans have.

Last fall, the Broadcasting Board of Governors replaced its shortwave station with a more popular AM music/news station. From Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, Radio Farda broadcasts 46 newscasts per day, seven days a week. Since June 10, Farda "has aired in-depth, special coverage from correspondents on the scene of student protests in Iran. News reports, often with background noise, described what was actually happening in the streets -- the mood of the demonstrators, the location of clashes with security forces and how they were attacking the people," according to BBG spokeswoman Joan Mower.

As Norm Pattiz, the chairman of the BBG's Middle East committee which oversees Farda said in an interview Monday, "If people think that giving people in Iran examples of a free press in the American tradition as destabilizing an oppressive regime, then good for our side."

Iran's rulers peddle the theory of American intervention because it would crumble the very foundations of the state to face the painful truth that the country's emerging democracy movement is real, that the Islamic revolution of 1979 has totally failed. What started as a popular movement has turned into a corrupt and autocratic regime despised by its subjects.

Consider that in Tehran young people openly hold hands, drink alcohol and listen to rock music. The police in the big cities have stopped enforcing Islamic moral codes in any meaningful sense. Some women in the recent protests have taken to burning their veils. The country's oil workers have stopped working because they have not been paid in some cases for two months. Books on Persian pre-Islamic culture are among the most popular in Iran's bookstores.

As popular support for the government has eroded, the mullahs have not only sought to explain their unpopularity by citing charges of America's hidden hand. They have also made an extra effort to seek their legitimacy from the outside. Thus the regime prizes the European Union's policy engagement more than ever because it fosters the illusion that this government is like any other.

But it's at least possible, and perhaps likely, that the IAEA's recent report on Iran's nuclear program could threaten this relationship and the trade that goes along with it. In a rare recent example of effective American diplomacy, the State Department managed to get heads of state for the Group of Eight industrialized nations -- United States, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Canada and Russia -- to sign a statement expressing concern with Iran's activities to seek nuclear weapons.

It also seems likely that IAEA's European members will sign onto a statement urging Iran to come clean. Behind the scenes, U.S. officials are beginning to make the case to their European counterparts that diplomatic and economic engagement with Iran has done little to actually correct the country's troubling behavior.

Iran's options now are far less appealing than they were a few months ago. Considering charges that the mullahs encourage and support suicide bombers in the Palestinian territories and that it funds Islamic theocrats seeking to take over Iraq, trouble for the mullahs could become a most welcome development in Washington.

By ELI J. LAKE, UPI State Department Correspondent

Copyright 2003 by United Press International.

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Is the internet connection to Iran still working?

A bump for freedom for the Iranian people.

Wednesday, June 18, 2003

Iran Internet Use at Risk

June 18, 2003
The Euronet
Firouz Sedarat

TEHRAN -- The diary of a former prostitute is one of the hottest Web sites in Iran, a strict Islamic society where the Internet is coveted for the access it gives users to a forbidden world.

The anonymous author, who presents herself as a 24-year-old former sex worker, says she does not want to just titillate readers in the conservative country which bans sex and romance outside marriage.

"Some may see my writings as an erotic film, but others might learn something useful from them. It's like a knife that can be used to kill or to peel a cucumber," she says on her site (faheshe.persianblog.com).

Her site and other unabashed online diaries offer a rare insight into the mindset of Iranian youth who have grown up under strict social rules since the 1979 Islamic revolution.

The new generation has been using the Internet to express themselves and satisfy their hunger for knowledge about taboo subjects, ranging from sex to Western-style entertainment or politics.

But they are at risk of losing that window to the world as Islamic conservatives move to restrict Internet use as they have done with foreign satellite television. Their aim is to blot out the "immoral" effects of Western culture.

"This is my only link to the West. One click and I'm in Los Angeles. It also allows me freer contact with other young people inside Iran," said Haleh, a young woman.

After school, she often goes to a neighbourhood Internet cafe to chat online or look for the latest fashions or news of Iranian entertainers living in exile in Los Angeles.

She tries to suppress a giggle as she furtively reads an Iranian site offering tips on dating.

"I'm worried about being denied access to many of my favourite sites. I don't approve of immoral sites, but the question is who decides what is or is not moral," Haleh added.

A latecomer to the Internet age, Iran began last month to block pornography and other sites deemed obscene or subversive.

Some 70 youngsters were arrested in March for meeting through an illegal online dating site, newspapers reported, suggesting the authorities had monitored a chat-room they used.

An Internet boom has caught officials by surprise and prompted them to draw up rules for the largely unregulated sector. The number of users has jumped by 90 percent in the past year. Still, only about three million of Iran's population of 65 million -- half of them under 25 -- have access to the net.

Iranian youths have launched 20,000 active Web logs, or "blogs", -- online diaries which range in topic from simple musings on life to political discussions to sports.

In April, Sina Motallebi became the first blogger to be arrested in Iran where dozens of reformist journalists have been charged by hardline courts. He was freed on bail three weeks later but still faces undisclosed charges.

Women have been especially active bloggers, seizing the opportunity to speak out freely and anonymously on subjects such as dating and romance.

Besides popular political and news sites, half of the 10 most visited Persian blogs are about sex, according to figures from a service providing statistics on Web usage.

"Blogs show us a new generation...that is self-expressive, tolerant and individualistic," said Hossein Derakhshan, a Toronto-based veteran Iranian blogger (hoder.com/weblog).

"Many are lonely and hopeless to the point of depression. They seem to be frustrated and have a problem with sex," said Derakhshan, who presented a study on Iranian blogs at a conference in Vienna in late May.

Growing tension with Washington since the war in neighbouring Iraq has prompted hardliners to tighten control over the flow of information. There is heavier jamming of U.S.-based Iranian satellite television stations carrying entertainment and dissident messages calling for anti-government protests.

"I think authorities are upset about the parallels these stations draw between Iraq and Iran," said Hassan, a journalist.

The United States has hardened its rhetoric against Iran since the Iraq war, raising the spectre of military action against a country it calls part of an "axis of evil".

Iran's conservatives also seek to counter reformist and dissident groups using the net to reach the public and get round a ban on some 90 pro-reform newspapers in three years.

Reformists allied with President Mohammad Khatami are opposed to restrictions but conservatives say they are needed to check "enemy propaganda" and Western cultural influences.

So far 100,000 mainly foreign porn sites and about 200 Iranian sites have been blocked, but industry sources say the curbs are less drastic than those in nearby Gulf Arab states.

"Up to now mostly political sites have been hit, not blogs. But nothing is predictable here," said Ata Khalighi of persianblog.com, which hosts most Iranian Web logs.

"The day the filtering started, I rushed to check if our site has been blocked or not," he said.

Among the first sites to be blocked were the Persian Web page of the Voice of America, one of its most-viewed sites, and that of Radio Farda, a 24-hour station set up by Washington to try to woo young Iranians with a mix of pop songs and news.

http://www.euronetmag.com/euronet/article/articleDetail.jsp?id=60688

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Another bump.

Wednesday, June 18, 2003

Fresh Night of Protest in Iran

June 18, 2003
Reuters
Jon Hemming

TEHRAN -- Hundreds of Iranians demanding more freedom have demonstrated for the eighth consecutive night and scores of protesters were arrested and some injured in rallies in seven cities.

The Unites States backs the protests as a cry for freedom from a people whose government U.S. officials accuse of being part of an "axis of evil" for allegedly developing nuclear arms, backing terrorism and trying to destabilise post-war Iraq.

Protesters in Tehran, wary of possible beatings from hardline Islamic vigilantes which marked previous nights, kept to their cars and sounded their horns in traffic jams around the city's university on Wednesday -- the focus of the unrest.

The official IRNA news agency reported protests in six other cities in which scores were arrested and several injured. But numbers taking part in the demonstrations -- among the largest and most violent for four years -- appeared to be dwindling.

Iran's government and most parliamentary deputies accused the United States of blatant interference in Iran's internal affairs. Hardline clerics say they have detected a U.S.-inspired plot to destabilise Iran.

But demonstrators said they were not on the streets for the sake of Washington.

"If coming to the streets will give me more freedom, I don't care who calls for it, I will come here and tell all my friends to come with me," said teenage high school student Amir.

Protesters have expressed anger at moderate President Mohammad Khatami as well as unelected conservative clerics who have blocked his efforts to reform Iran's "Islamic democracy".

DISCONTENT IN IRAN

IRNA said at least 90 people had been arrested in the past two days in the northwestern city of Tabriz where riot police surrounded the university there.

Police used tear gas to break up protests in the southern city of Yazd and the windows of banks, shops and a judiciary building were smashed in Karaj, west of Tehran.

Analysts predict that with most student leaders in jail or having fled the country after campus protests in 1999 and 2002, the unrest was likely to fizzle out.

While Khatami has remained silent on the protests, his younger brother, deputy parliamentary speaker Mohammad Reza Khatami, said Iran should not use Washington as a scapegoat for the unrest.

"America or any other power does not have the ability to disturb order in our society," he told the Iran newspaper. "There is discontent in Iranian society and we have turned a blind eye to it," he added.

Uniformed police once more guarded Tehran University keeping hardline militiamen and the students inside apart and preventing any repeat of Friday night's clashes in which the Islamic militants fired shots and beat protesters with clubs and chains.

But in one eastern Tehran working class suburb, police, riot police and plainclothes Islamic militants stood shoulder to shoulder as gangs of youths roamed the side streets.

IRNA said the protest was sparked by a sudden crackdown on illegal satellite dishes. Iranian opposition stations based in Los Angeles have played a key role in encouraging people to take to the streets in recent days.

http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsPackageArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=319880

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Hey Tiger I hear about that on BBC World news late actually if I know Froggy they surrender to Iranians cops LOL!

...Is the internet connection to Iran still working?...

I didn't get my nightly internet correspondence from Iran so it appears that may be the case. I should be able to confirm this later in the day.

Taking the Iran regime by the horns
By Pepe Escobar

A few thousand University of Tehran students have shaken the Islamic Republic of Iran to the core. Teary-eyed veterans of the student movements of the 1960s celebrated by dusting up their situationist slogans and their Bob Dylan anthems: could this be the first revolution of the 21st century?

It all started a just over a week ago when a few hundred students didn't take their nightly meal to protest against the privatization of a university restaurant on the campus. Radio Iran Farda, based in the US, and Los Angeles-based satellite channels broadcasting in Farsi immediately seized the story. As thousands converged to the students' dormitories, the demonstration inevitably became politicized. The defiance was vocal: down with the mullah dictatorship, down with the "Leader of the Revolution" Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and down even with reformist President Mohamad Khatami. The startled regime, via intelligence minister Ali Yunisi, claimed that "developments outside the campus were directed by foreign media and satellite channels, and a few extremists from within committed these acts". For Mohammad Reza Djalili, professor at the Institut Universitaire des Hautes Etudes Internationales in Geneva, this 2003 Tehran spring reflects a very deep social, political and economic malaise: "Iranian society is about to implode. The system is totally blocked. First of all politically, because the reformers can't find a way to change the regime. And socially because the regime can't come to grips with unemployment among young people." Djalili agrees that Iran's actual encirclement by the US - on the one side Afghanistan, on the other Iraq - has added to the regime's extreme nervousness, and has also given alternative ideas to a lot of Iranians. "But all these factors have a relative and marginal impact. The major problem is an internal problem."

The religious conservative elite has been forced to perform a dangerous balancing act: it can't organize a massive crackdown, but at the same time it must prevent the movement from spreading to the rest of the country. Djalili confirms that instead of brutal armed repression, the regime has preferred to send the bassidjis - young Islamist militants, all voluntary recruits - to confront the students, wielding their chains, iron bars and riding their Harley Davidsons.

The bassidjis - literally "mobilization" - are part of an organization created slightly after the Shah's fall in 1979 to entice poor kids into the service of the embryonic Islamic revolution. In the beginning of the war against Iraq in the early 1980s, they were integrated into a special army created to counter-balance a regular army "too influenced by the West", according to the mullahs. Farhad Khosrokhavar, an Iranian sociologist who teaches in Paris, qualifies them as exponents of "lethal Shi'ism, neo-mysticism and necro-mysticism". Middle-class boys and girls in Tehran are experts in dealing with the bassidjis. Whenever the militants patrol the routine Friday get-together of young people in the mountains north of Tehran, girls instantly readjust their black veils over their dark glasses and the odd stereo disappears inside a backpack. And when the bassidjis discover cassettes of "decadent" American pop, a bribe in the form of a pack of cigarettes will do the trick. The bassidjis are complemented by members of the Ansar-i Hizbullah, a plainclothes, volunteer Islamic militia that suppresses dissent and upholds strict codes of behavior by thuggish means.

Djalili stresses that the regime at this point simply cannot afford a repression with lots of dead and wounded: "The students have families, and their parents support them. And the conservatives have to be even more careful because the demonstrators now want the head of reformist President Khatami."

"This is the main news. Until now, Khatami was the security valve for the regime. But after seven years of Khatamism, people are angry, they don't believe him anymore." Significantly, Khatami has not been seen and has not uttered a single public word since the beginning of the protests a week ago.

Djalili poses many relevant questions for the immediate future. How long will the students be able to sustain their resistance? Will the movement cross the gates of the university? Will the state be divided? And in the event of a wave of strikes - for instance in the oil industry - will the state keep the means to take care of its clients? The major problem for now seems to be the absence of a political network to follow up on the students' demands. Djalili reminds us that "in these last 20 years, all movements of the left, liberals, nationalists, even monarchists, were severely repressed".

Last Friday, in the Azadi stadium in Tehran, 100,000 people were watching a soccer match between top local teams Persepolis and Istiqlal. But only 3,000 or 4,000 people were at the Amir Abad university campus - where the students were being hit by the iron bars of the bassidjis and the Ansar-i Hizbullah. Nevertheless, the number of protesters keeps growing slowly but steadily, day by day. One university after the next is being hit by the movement in key urban centers like Isfahan, Shiraz and Mashad. Tahkim-e Wahdat ("Movement of the Consolidation of Unity"), a student union, has been particularly active: three of its leaders have already been arrested.

Many in the Iranian diaspora in Europe, following the events extremely closely, regret only one thing: that the fusion between the very well-organized student movement and the rest of the population still has not happened. But the distance may now be only physical as the campuses in Tehran have been isolated from the rest of the city by anti-riot police. And this cordon sanitaire has only had limited success in preventing the bassidjis and the Ansar-i Hizbullah from attacking the students. And it may prevent the general population from enrolling in the protests. But it certainly does not prevent them from expressing very vocal support.

The key date to watch will be July 9 - the anniversary of the brutal repression of the student demonstrations of 1999. The regime, in full balancing-act-mode, is negotiating a deal with the students: the anniversary of 1999 may be celebrated, but only inside the campuses. And Ansar-i Hizbullah will not be able to invade the campuses to beat up students.

Roughly, south Tehran - very poor and ravaged by the country's economic crisis - has been oblivious to the protests. But north Tehran, middle-class and more Westernized, is very much alert. North Tehran is literally rolling with the arrangement - in their cars, and with their hands on their horns: as reformist journalist Issa Saharkhi put it, "this is protest by honking". Some reformist members of parliament support the student protests - but very carefully. They always make sure to also denounce American interference. In a recent open letter signed by 137 members of parliament, the reformist camp warned that political legitimacy is the only Iranian antidote against a possible American intervention. Reformists have been threatening to resign en masse for quite some time. But the conservatives don't believe that they ever will. And even if they do, the conservatives know they can blame them for the inevitable consequences - or what the Iranian diaspora has already dubbed American "occuberation" (occupation plus liberation).

The conservatives are playing hardball. Students and intellectuals can't do much against the ultra-conservative judiciary. The unelected Guardian Council once again humiliated them all, not to mention President Khatami and the parliament, as it recently rejected twin bills aimed at reclaiming more political authority for the elected parliament and president. The bills will be returned to parliament - and then an extremely diluted version may eventually be approved by the Guardian Council.

Things may be about to implode, as Djalili warned. In another unprecedented, very harsh open letter published last Sunday, 248 Iranian personalities defended the Iranians' right to criticize and even get rid of their leaders: "The exercizing, because of its position, of a divine and absolute power ... and instilling fear in people, is an heresy against God and it oppresses human dignity", reads the letter. The object of the intellectuals' anger couldn't be more specific: the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei - who according to the Islamic Republic's laws simply cannot be criticized.

As much for its mesmerizing cultural influence, dating back to more than 2,500 years, in the 20th century alone Iran has many times left its lasting mark far beyond its borders - from constitutional revolution and oil nationalization to the 1979 Islamic Revolution. The goal used to be limited to a single theme: the establishment of a judiciary, nationalization of oil, the end of absolute monarchy. Now Iranians want real democracy: they want it all, and they want it now. Many in East and West cannot but see in these Tehran students the vanguard of a true, indigenous revolution.

(Copyright 2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for information on our sales and syndication policies.)

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/EF19Ak02.html

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from the WSJ:

Iranian Resolution

Ping.

BTTT

Iranian president demands France extradite Mujahedeen members

Just like they deported Khomanei to the Shah?