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Join Us at the Iranian Alert -- August 10, 2003 -- LIVE THREAD PING LIST

Live Thread Ping List | 8.10.2003 | DoctorZin

"If you want on or off this Iran ping list, Freepmail me”

[DoctorZIn]

Iran: The Mystery Meeting

NEWSWEEK

Aug. 18 issue — Why were two top Pentagon experts on Iran meeting with a notorious character from the Iran-contra scandal? DOD’s answer: it was by accident—both times. In high-summer Washington, though, conspiracy theories abound.

ONE SOURCE FAMILIAR with administration infighting on Iran says that neocons in the Defense Department don’t trust “appeasers” at State and the CIA to give unbiased intelligence about Tehran. And because the hard-line ayatollahs who dominate Iran’s security agencies support terrorism—including Al Qaeda—these DOD hawks view State’s hopes of someday negotiating a new relationship with Iran as delusional. So, the conspiracy theory runs, they reach out to people like Iranian businessman Manucher Ghorbanifar for an alternative view of what’s going on in Tehran.

The reality, senior DOD officials assert, is that when Pentagon experts Harold Rhode and Larry Franklin met with a handful of Iranians in Italy more than a year ago—the Iranians had offered, through an American intermediary, to give the United States information on terrorism—the DOD pair were startled to find Ghorbanifar there and argued against his remaining. (The CIA once labeled Ghorbanifar “an intelligence fabricator and nuisance.”) Then, one of the DOD pair “ran into” Ghorbanifar again in Paris this summer. End of story, they say. “There is no Defense Department back-channel on Iran,” a senior official insisted. The Italy meetings were authorized by the White House, say officials, though the “unscheduled” Paris session was not.

—Mark Hosenball and John Barry

http://www.msnbc.com/news/950458.asp

[DoctorZIn]

Bush Faces Many Obstacles on Iran, North Korea

August 10, 2003
The Associated Press
Tom Raum

The Bush administration's use of discredited intelligence on Iraqi weapons may complicate America's ability to deal with more tangible nuclear dangers across the Middle East and in Asia.

The recent nuclear activity by North Korea and Iran and the broader issue of keeping mass-killing weapons away from terrorists loom as the biggest foreign policy challenges after the Iraq war.

Yet administration critics suggest President Bush's hand is weakened by credibility issues over assertions before the war about Iraq's nuclear and other weapons capabilities.

"What happens now when we need to rally the world about the weapons programs in North Korea and Iran? How likely are they to believe the detail of what we present to them?" asks Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware, senior Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

The administration is pinning its hopes on diplomacy as the way to contain Iranian and North Korean nuclear ambitions. The United States also is looking toward the same international weapons inspection apparatus that it spurned in Iraq.

The issue is not only whether the two remaining nations in Bush's "axis of evil" are building atomic bombs, but also how their neighbors would react.

For instance, North Korea's testing of a nuclear device might persuade Japan to quickly go nuclear itself, arms-control experts suggest. A nuclear Japan, in turn, might force China to increase its arsenal. That could put pressure on Taiwan to seek such weapons.

A nuclear Iran, meanwhile, could make it harder to establish pro-American governments in neighboring Iraq and Afghanistan.

Tehran's possession of the bomb could trigger an arms race between Iran and Israel. Israel might feel compelled to try to take out an Iranian nuclear plant -- as it did an Iraqi facility in 1981.

Israel has never confirmed being a nuclear power, but it is widely believed to have as many as 100 to 200 such weapons.

Then there are nuclear club members India and Pakistan.

"India has dozens of nuclear weapons and is actively pursuing a long-range missile program to enable them to target not simply Pakistan but also China," said John Pike, a military analyst with GlobalSecurity.org, a consulting group based in Arlington, Va.

"Pakistan's nuclear program and missile program has basically been developed in close concert with Iran and North Korea. You might even think of it as one program doing business at three locations," he added.

Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, said Pakistan and India "are on a hair trigger that is even finer and shorter than the one that existed between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War."

"Yet there has been very little attention focused by U.S. policy-makers or the international community on a systematic, comprehensive approach to reducing risks in that region," Kimball said.

Pakistan's president, Pervez Musharraf, is an important ally in the U.S.-led fight against terrorism. That makes it harder for the administration to press its accusations that Pakistan helped North Korea's nuclear-arms program in return for missile parts.

Bush, vacationing this month in Texas, is hoping that diplomacy and pressure from neighboring powers will help defuse the nuclear threats in both Iran and North Korea.

The best course on Iran is "to convince others to join us in a clear declaration that the development of a nuclear weapon is not in their interests," Bush said.

As to North Korea, Bush hopes its agreement to meet for six-nation talks on its nuclear programs will lead to the country's renunciation of nuclear weaponry.

"We are making progress," national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said late last week. "It's a tough regime to deal with. ... But we're fairly sanguine that if you're going to get this done, it's going to have to be in coordination with other states."

But uncertainties abound.

North Korea last week balked at the makeup of the U.S. delegation to the six-nation talks. Iranian President Mohammad Khatami pledged not to give up a nuclear program he insisted was designed to produce electrical energy, not atomic bombs.

Whereas the first nuclear powers were major players on the world stage -- the United States, the Soviet Union, Britain, France and China -- the emerging nuclear powers are poorer, generally less stable governments.

That fact, and the chance that nuclear materials could wind up in the hands of terrorist groups, worries arms-control experts and administration officials.

Washington's hope is "that somehow diplomatically we can work our way through this issue," Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recently told the Senate Armed Services Committee.

"The notion or the thought" that nuclear material "could be proliferated to other countries could change our security environment in a not-so-nice a way," Myers said.

---

EDITOR'S NOTE -- Tom Raum has covered Washington for The Associated Press since 1973, including five presidencies.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2003/08/09/national1234EDT0511.DTL

[DoctorZIn]

Court suspends provincial weekly for second time

Qazvin, Aug 9, IRNA --

A press court in this northwestern Iranian city has closed down a provincial weekly for the second time on charges of 'promoting depravity and publishing lies', the court's head said Saturday.

Fereydoun Parvinian told IRNA that the court had banned Nameh-ye Qazvin (Letter of Qazvin) from printing until further notice.

The first court hearing at the presence of press jury will be held soon to probe into the weekly's offenses, he added.

The weekly's head, Ali Shahrouzi, said that Nameh-ye Qazvin had been closed down for the second time only after publishing its second issue since the first ban.

He hoped that 'the court will take steps to lift the suspension'.

A senior official of the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance criticized the closure, while acknowledging that the publication had breached the law in some way.

"The fact that a certain publication is closed down on the brink of 'Journalists Day' after printing only its second issue ... is not very favorable," Mohammad Hossein Pilevari said.

The official said that his office's talks with the Justice Department and the press court to retract the ruling had led to no breakthrough.

The press court lifted the temporary ban on Nameh-ye Qazvin in January after suspending it on charges of promoting 'depravity' and discrediting clerics.

The weekly had been slapped with paying three-million-rial (375 US dollars) in cash fine. It had remained closed since last August after the Justice Department of Qazvin province found it with printing 'insulting materials and inciting public opinion'.

Shahrouzi had also been accused of 'encouraging the youth to Western depravity in its articles which contradict moral decency' as well as 'spreading lies and distorting historical facts, spoiling reputation of the country's political and religious figures and undermining state organizations'.

In January, the press court closed down another weekly Taban-e Qazvin on libel charges and lifted the ban shortly afterwards.

BH/AH/210
End

http://www.irna.ir/en/tnews/030810173458.etn08.shtml

[DoctorZIn]

EU must press Iran on nukes

Chicago Tribune
Published August 10, 2003

The evidence that Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapons program grows clearer by the day. Experts disagree on details, but the consensus is that it's only a matter of a few years at most before Iran should have that capability, if nothing is done to stop it.

The full and frightening scope of the Iranian effort was detailed in the Los Angeles Times last week. The newspaper found that Iran has a secret, widespread, sophisticated program to buy or develop the technology to build a nuclear weapon.

Allowing Iran to build a bomb cannot be tolerated, as President Bush has said. A country that supports terrorism on a wide scale and brutally represses its people at home cannot be allowed to acquire or build the ultimate weapon. At the same time, however, diplomatic options to persuade Iran to halt its program are not plentiful.

Several weeks ago Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, went to Tehran to push the Iranian government to sign an expanded protocol to the nuclear nonproliferation treaty. That would have allowed much tighter supervision of the Iranian nuclear program, including short-notice inspections at undeclared sites. There have been mixed signals from Iran about its willingness to sign, but so far the mullahs haven't budged.

The IAEA and the Bush administration must keep the pressure on Iran. But it is also time for Europe to move more aggressively to convince Iran to stop its nuclear program.

The EU, as a major trading partner of Iran, has far better relations with Iran and thus more leverage than the U.S. in some ways.

In the 1990s, European countries favored a softer approach towards Tehran, which was intended to foster reform-minded Iranian politicians like President Mohammad Khatami. But there's evidence that Europe is slowly concluding that the strategy isn't working to arrest Iran's nuclear ambitions. Khatami has defended Iran's right to build nuclear reactors, and insists that his country's efforts are focused on civilian application only.

Those assertions are not convincing, because Iranian leaders have hidden their nuclear weapons efforts for more than a decade and have failed to answer a basic question. Why, in a country rich with oil and natural gas, does Iran need nuclear power?

Partly in response to Iran's stonewalling on its nuclear arms programs, the European Union recently suspended negotiations on a new trade agreement with Iran. The EU is now telling Iran that more favorable trade terms with its biggest trading partner depend on Iran's unconditional signing of the IAEA's additional protocol. Furthermore, the EU agreed in June on a new foreign policy strategy on weapons of mass destruction that didn't rule out "coercive measures," including military action, to prevent states from developing them.

The EU's change of strategy is wise and welcome. But it must now back its words with action.

Several weeks ago, the IAEA scolded Iran for hiding its efforts to build nuclear facilities and import nuclear materials that could be used to construct an atomic weapon. Next month, the IAEA is expected to issue a second report on Iran's nuclear program. It could then refer the issue to the UN Security Council, which could impose trade sanctions or other punishments. It is crucial that the EU, along with the U.S. and the UN, present a united front against Iran's nuclear weapons programs. Such a front has the best chance of swaying the mullahs, especially if it is led by some of their most important trading partners--France, Germany and Italy.

The EU also should help the United States convince Russia to slow down, if not stop, its help in building a nuclear reactor at Bushehr--due to be operational by next year--unless the Iranians agree to stringent new controls.

The world must show Iran how much it risks--in economic sanctions and possible military action--if it continues in its headlong quest for nuclear weapons.

Copyright © 2003, Chicago Tribune

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/chi-0308100317aug10,1,5674932.story?coll=chi-newsopinion-hed

[DoctorZIn]

Iran Minister Takes on Conservatives

ALI AKBAR DAREINI
Associated Press
Posted on Sun, Aug. 10, 2003

TEHRAN, Iran - Iran's reformist interior minister ordered the closure of offices set up by hard-liners to screen candidates for next year's legislative elections.

Members of the hard-line Guardian Council have vowed to reject reformist candidates who seek major changes, and having the offices would allow the council to learn the views of would-be candidates.

Abdolvahed Mousavi Lari told provincial governors to shut down the supervisory offices of the Guardian Council throughout the country, the government-run daily Iran reported Sunday. The council has quietly been establishing the candidate review offices in recent months.

"Activities of the supervising offices of the Guardian Council are a violation of the law because they have not been approved by the Supreme Administrative Council nor the Parliament," Lari told the paper a day earlier. "There is no legal basis for such offices."

Interior Ministry spokesman Jahanbakhsh Khanjani, contacted by The Associated Press on Sunday, confirmed the report. The elections are scheduled for February.

The hard-line Guardian Council and the Interior Ministry in the elected administration of the reformist President Mohammad Khatami, responsible for holding the elections, have previously had a tug-of-war over the list of candidates for elections.

Iran has for years been embroiled in a power struggle between elected reformers who support Khatami's program of peaceful democratic reforms and hard-liners who resist them through the powerful but unelected bodies they control, including the Guardian Council.

Since Khatami took office in 1997, hard-liners have used their control of unelected bodies such as the Guardian Council and the judiciary to block all reform legislation, shut down more than 90 liberal publications and detain dozens of pro-reform activists and writers.

http://www.belleville.com/mld/newsdemocrat/6503316.htm

[yonif]

Dore Gold: Lebanon, Syria, Iran directly responsible for Hezbollah terror

This comes as a 16 year old boy is murdered by Hizbullah terror fire on Israeli border towns.

[DoctorZIn]

Translation of the astonishing and unprecedented letter of Dr. Maleki, Head of the University

SMCCDI (Fax & Documents)
Aug 10, 2003

The following is the translation, by SMCCDI, of the astonishing and unprecedented Public Letter of Dr. Mohammad Maleki, head of the University to the students and scholars of Iran.

Maleki will issue this letter on August 6th and following the issuance, by several students member of the Islamic Student associations, of a public letter calling on UN's Secretary General. These students, who are usually "better" treated than their arrested secularist colleagues, denounced, in their letter to which Maleki makes reference, part of the brutal investigative methods used against their imprisoned colleagues and have asked for the UN's intervention.

Anyone reading Maleki's letter, entitled “A drop is the sea, if it's with the sea”, must note that he was among those 1979 National-Religious revolutionaries who promoted the idea of a religious political system and who will promote, later, the useless and baseless theory of "reforms from within".

But despite his past and present believes, his letter, shall lift off any shadow of doubt on any remaining legitimacy of the theocratic system and shall be considered as a document pointing out to some small parts of the existing pressures and repressive actions used against the Iranian students.


Its translation is as follow:
In the name of Liberty, Knowledge and Justice
A drop is the sea, if it's with the sea

Knowledgeable students, my dear children,
I read the letters of your sufferings addressed to Kofi Anan and the nation of Iran. As I am a drop that’s within the sea, I want to talk to you now about “sorrow.” Because I know, and very well I know, how heavy a sorrow is weighing down your patient hearts.
“The sorrow for your brothers and sisters who have unjustly become caught behind the bars in jails. Jails that have become trysting places for noble broad-minded.

Yes, the brothers and sisters who not just yesterday or today, rather for decades, have been caught behind those bars and have held on to the promise with their lives.
And if your friends and comrades have been sent into prison cells from the class rooms in these days, based on the void belief that the fire that burns within their souls for the love of the country can be extinguished, ignoring that the flames of that fire are unyielding and can not be put down, And if your brothers and sisters have been caught under the torture of the oppressors and the guardians of the government of the “Supreme Leader” these days, let no grief in your hearts; For they are and have remained steadfast with their covenant; Because the “Student Movement” that is critical of the rulers has chosen the war against the unjust and struggle for democracy and its realization as its duty. Congratulations on their choice.

My children, dear students, when I see that you are worried about your fellow students; when you suffer from the knowledge of the fate of a lady reporter in a torture chamber; when you hear from the sidelines what they do to the male or female students in those rooms; When you have heard from your elders what exactly torture confession extraction in the horrific jail houses of the government of the “Supreme Leader” mean, you should be worried. You are justified to be worried because I know it and I know it well. I know, and I know very well. I know prison, torture, interrogation, exorcism, insult and belittling, the interrogator, the court, the religious ruler, the judge, judgment, and etc. in the “Religious Government” and the “Ruling Religion” very well.

I know. I know very well how it burns to your core every time the cable strikes the soles of your feet or any other part of your body.

I know. I know very well how your personality and you whole existence is stirred and disturbed when you are taken blind folded into the interrogation room and the guard closes the door, you can’t see anywhere or anybody, the interrogators hard slap throws you off your balance and you hit the wall hard and you spill on the floor and writhe in pain, you hear the voice of the interrogator who grabs your head by the hair and pulls you up to your feet as he shouts obscenities saying “Don't play dead you piece of sullen dirt. Sit on the chair and answer me.”

I know. I know very well what nightly interrogations mean and how the tired and worried prisoners are treated by the interrogators in the middle of nights.

I know. I know very well, if you happen to be young and inexperienced, how they can frighten you and trick you into writing and admitting whatever they say.

I know. I know very well what “repentant making” means and how they make a repentant out of an innocent prisoner as they make him confess to thousands of sins he did not commit.

I know. I know very well what the mind altering drugs, which they inject into prisoners, can do to your brain, mind, and senses. To the point that you start believing that you have been a spy in the service of Imperialism and “World Arrogance (USA)” since birth!

I know. I know very well what kind of a place the cell block 209 is; where due to overcrowding many are packed in there and what a problem it is to use the toilet. I know the things that can destroy your body and soul can happen to you there if you are there by yourself. And then they throw a woman whose husband has been executed in the cell next to yours with her two years old child. They take away the woman in the morning while the child is still asleep for “interrogation.” When the innocent jailed child wakes up and doesn’t see his mom he cries for few minutes and comes out of the cell towards the back of your cell. He claws on your cell door asking for his mother and you can see his feet through the opening at the bottom of the door where you receive your food and you can hear his moaning and crying. There is nothing you can do but to swallow your rage over the lump of hatred in your throat that is choking you and wipe away your tears with your sleeves. You endure a few burning hours of that feeling until you hear the child’s mother limping towards her cell, moaning and holding on to the end of a stick that is in the prison guard’s hand. Then you understand what happened to that woman in the interrogation.

I know. I know very well the difference between the “white” torture and the “black” torture. I know everything that happened in those 20 years (1981-2001) and whatever else that is still happening in the jail cells of the “Religious Government”, and those are now the cause of your worries.

I know. I know very well…

My children, dear students:
Let me confess. My generation fought against the dictator and the fascist instead of fighting dictatorship and fascism for it thought it can reach liberty and justice by just changing the garb and the name of the ruler.

My generation was after making a hero not after making the people. My generation thought the country would be our homeland again once the Shah was in his burial shroud. My generation’s motto was not death to despotism; rather it was death to the despot.
And we saw and witnessed the results of that erroneous motto. The”King’s government” just transformed into the “Supreme Leader’s government” and several generations, including yours, have been paying the penalty for that historic mistake ever since.

Now that after many ups and downs and a 15-20 year break the “Student Movement” has come to the conclusion that a true democratic system can not be pulled out of the belly of a dictatorship, and time for putting hopes on superficial changes and deceiving the people by the name of “Reforms” has ended, and that by painting a new façade over the decayed structure it can no longer be held up, and now that you have diagnosed the roots of the pain, you have the right to shout: “We no longer have anything to say to the ruling system and treat the system’s submission to the just expectations of the Iranian nation as an illusion and we saw that they give no regard to our just demands. The answer to our lawful actions became unlawful detentions and the result of our human demands became inhuman repression.” (An excerpt from the letter of the Islamic Students Associations to the Iranian nation. Dated Wednesday 23 July 2003)

And in these days that you dear ones, “as the pioneers of the Democratic Movement,” treat reliance on just one individual and “Hero making” and “Icon producing” as the wrong way of doing things, and know yourselves to be responsible and accountable before the Iranian nation, as on the Third Article of your declaration you have stated to remain steadfast and to ask all those who claim of democracy, rule of law, civil society, pursuit of justice, and rejection of foreign interference etc… to announce not once, but many times over again that: “Whereas the fate of every nation isn’t decided by anything but their own policies and contemplations, we recognize the nation of Iran as the rulers of their own destiny and we are of the conviction that, except by reliance on the people’s vote and the wisdom of the whole population, no kind of government will be acceptable.” (Article 3 of the declaration in the letter dated 23 July 2003)


Dear students, scholars,
Today your sacred mission is to publicize and plan the “Return to the Wisdom of the Whole.” Strive in this path and fear not its expenses. For if the rulers do not submit to it, they will loose this last chance for a civil and peaceful transformation and will undoubtedly encounter the storm of nation’s wrath in tomorrow that isn’t too far. The same way that the “Royal Governance” didn’t heed the advice of the advisers and the nation was forced to revolt and take action, certainly much more than a name and memory won’t be left of the “government of the Supreme Leader” in the near future if the repression of the students, journalists, and the scholars continues. And in conclusion, I assure you that as an Iranian, a citizen, and a scholar, I will remain by the side of my student children till my last breath.

And now a message to the so-called “friends:”
Why do you chastise me?
I was like a drop of water in a motionless pond, rotting and turning into slime.
There was a sound, A boulder broke of the mountain and fell into that pond.
I was hurled into a turbulent river that was heading for the sea.
I wanted to become of the sea. I wanted to wash my body, which still held the wounds and pus that the henchmen had inflicted on it, in the sea.
Doesn’t the “Sea” cure and cleanse?
I want to become clean and then die in the heart of the sea.
Like a swan, I want to die alone in a lonely corner of the sea.
Why do you chastise me?
I want to be by, and part of millions of drops of water.
I’d like to be a drop of water, in the sea, a stormy sea raging with waves.
I hate rotting and sliming and then dying.
Pity such existence , such death.
A drop is the sea, if it's with the sea
Then why do you chastise me? Why?

With salutations to all students and freedom lovers who are enduring jail and torture.

Tehran, 6 August 2003
Dr. Mohammad Maleki

http://www.daneshjoo.org/generalnews/article/publish/article_1675.shtml

[DoctorZIn]

Goodbye my friends!!

me ^ | 08/10/03 | Slater Bakhtavar
Posted on 08/10/2003 10:38 PM PDT by freedom44

For the past year and half i've kept you up to date on the pro-American, anti-government demonstrations in Iran through my ping list. The media has largely ignored, the biggest story to be told this decade (Michael Leeden), but i hope that through my ping list you've had accessibility of learning the truth about the Persian nation.

As Conservative Iranian-American i hope to one day serve you as a Senator pushing through legislation meant to perverse family values, faith, morality, principles, and traditional American values.

A strong step i'm going to be taking is law school in Texas on tuesday. I'll have no more time to keep up with my ping list, but once in a blue moon i'll be checking up on news and updates. So for now i'm going to have to say Goodbye!

I think DoctorZin, F14 pilot and others will everyone up to date on Iran's struggle for freedom.

I hope the next time we speak i'm a Senator speaking to you about our greatest ally in the Middle East, and perhaps in the world (similar to pre-79 days)--Iran!

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/961743/posts?page=9

Visit his post and leave a comment to this great guy.

[DoctorZIn]

This thread is now closed.

Join Us at the Iranian Alert -- August 11, 2003 -- LIVE THREAD PING LIST

Live Thread Ping List | 8.11.2003 | DoctorZin

"If you want on or off this Iran ping list, Freepmail me”

[GOPJ]

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