Iranian Alert -- August 11, 2003 -- LIVE THREAD PING LIST

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

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

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

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

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

Israel, Iran, and U.S. Have Secret Contacts

August 11, 2003
Radio Free Europe
Bill Samii

The public displays of mutual hostility between the governments of Israel, Iran, and the U.S. make it very difficult for any of the governments to engage in normal and open relations, regardless of any shared concerns or interests. This situation results in a lack of transparency in their relationships and necessitates secret contacts -- with at times embarrassing results, as illustrated by three recent cases.

Israel and Iran have been negotiating an exchange of prisoners since May, as reported in the 7 August edition of the Tel Aviv Russian-language daily newspaper "Novosti Nedeli." The contacts initially were an outgrowth of Tehran-Washington discussions begun in Geneva in July. According to the report, the interlocutors were a former U.S. official named Frank Andersen and a former Islamic Revolution Guards Corps officer identified as "Mohammad Khatami." Former government personnel were used in order to ensure the deniability of these official contacts. Tehran expressed a willingness to extradite Al-Qaeda's Sayf al-Adel (see above) in exchange for Mujahedin Khalq Organization leaders, but Washington rejected this offer.

Tehran then tried to get custody of the MKO personnel by involving the Israelis, "Novosti Nedeli" reported. In a meeting with an Israeli intermediary identified as "Amnon Zikhroni," Khatami said that, in exchange for MKO personnel, Iran would deport al-Adel, ensure the release of captured Israeli reserve officer Elhanan Tenenbaum, return the remains of Israeli soldiers captured by Lebanese Hizballah, and seek information on captured Israeli pilot Ron Arad. Washington again rejected the deal, according to "Novosti Nedeli," but the Iranian side insisted that the so-called "Jewish lobby" pressure the White House.

The case of Palestinian, Lebanese, Syrian, Jordanian, and Iranian prisoners in Israel was added to in subsequent discussions. According to "Novosti Nedeli," some Israelis would like to have the U.S. release convicted Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard in exchange for al-Adel. These discussions reportedly are continuing, but Pollard's release is not open for discussion.

In another recent case, two officials from the Pentagon working for Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith held "several" meetings with notorious Iran-Contra figure Manuchehr Ghorbanifar, "Newsday" reported on 8 August, citing anonymous "administration officials." Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld confirmed later the same day that the meetings had occurred, but he said they took place more than one year ago, were part of an effort to gather information on Iran, and they had gone nowhere, Knight-Ridder reported.

The White House had not authorized the meetings, and it was only by chance that it, the State Department, and the CIA learned about them, "Newsday" reported. Rumsfeld said that information on the meetings was shared with other government agencies. According to "Newsday's" sources, the "ultimate policy objective of Feith and a group of neo-conservative civilians inside the Pentagon is regime change in Iran." Administration policy, however, is one of engagement over issues such a nonproliferation and the Al-Qaeda extraditions.

An anonymous "senior U.S. official" told Knight-Ridder that Ghorbanifar wanted to be paid for introducing the U.S. officials to Iranian moderates. Michael Ledeen of the American Enterprise Institute opened the Ghorbanifar channel, "Newsday" reported, citing a former CIA officer who learned this from current intelligence officers. Neither Ledeen nor Ghorbanifar would comment, according to "Newsday."

Israeli officials introduced Ghorbanifar to Ledeen -- who was a consultant to the National Security Council -- in the mid-1980s. Ghorbanifar claimed at the time to know Iranian moderates. This eventually would become the arms-for-hostages scandal (see Theodore Draper, "A Very Thin Line: The Iran-Contra Affairs," [New York: Hill and Wang, 1991]; see also Michael Ledeen, "Perilous Statecraft," [Scribners, 1988]).

Late on 8 August, an anonymous "senior defense official" said that another meeting with Ghorbanifar took place in Paris in June, and this one resulted from "an unplanned, unscheduled encounter," "The Washington Post" reported on 9 August.

In a different matter, Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Assefi said on 7 August that President Khatami has not written a letter to any U.S. official, Fars News Agency reported. Assefi added that Iran has transparent relations with other countries and it does not need to establish secret relations with any country and, in the case of the U.S., "Over many long years, official channels have existed for regulating relations between the two countries and Iran has conveyed its views to the opposite side through these official and legal venues."

Assefi was reacting to a 6 August report in the Saudi Arabian "Al Watan" newspaper which stated that Khatami had written a letter to U.S. Secretary of State Powell calling for the continuation of the secret and official Iran-U.S. talks that are reported to have taken place in Geneva.

http://www.rferl.org/iran-report/

A Grandson’s Remarks Hint at Unrest in Iran And Iraq

August 11, 2003
EurasiaNet
Nicolas Birch

The image of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, founder of Iran’s theocracy, looks down from posters in Shia districts of Baghdad. Iran, officially neutral in the US-led invasion of Iraq, has bristled when American President George W. Bush has warned it against interfering in Iraq’s post-invasion chaos.

But an August 5 statement by Khomeini’s 45-year-old grandson, Sayyid Hussein Khomeini, shows how that chaos can have Iran’s ruling clerics on the defensive.

"Iranians insist on freedom, but they are not sure where it will come from," Khomeini told journalists in Najaf August 5. "If it comes from inside, they will welcome it, but if it was necessary for it to come from abroad, especially from the United States, people will accept it." These startling remarks quickly circulated around the world’s newswires, deepening awareness that Iran’s ruling clerics are facing unprecedented challenges to their legitimacy. Khomeini, by vaulting himself into the global spotlight, may have been positioning himself as a champion of Iran’s millions of disaffected youth. If he taps Iraqis’ yearnings for freedom as well, Khomeini could contribute to turbulence in both countries.

A little over a year ago, Iran’s fundamentalist strain seemed to be growing inexorably stronger.The clerics who retain final authority in the government are still pressing to capitalize on reform-minded voters’ impatience with President Mohammed Khatami and his allies. But they are being careful about making overtures to Iraq. The country has responded to Bush administration scolding by saying that "no one has the right to interfere in another country’s affairs." Amir Mohebbian, a columnist for the hard-line daily Resalat, professes that Tehran’s policymakers have "no intention" of forcing their "political model" on Iraq. Khomeini’s remarks may suggest that the model in question faces too much friction at home to be exportable.

Some observers dispute this, noting that senior ayatollahs in Qom have backed a young cleric in the holy Iraqi city of Najaf and that Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has been known to work closely with Iraqi-born members of the Iran-backed Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq. A Khamenei representative accompanied that group’s leader, Ayatollah Bakr al-Hakim, when he returned to Iraq in May. Seyed Mostafa Mohaghegh Damad, an expert on Islamic law at Tehran University, argues that Iranian fundamentalist rulers see attractive prospects for a "clone theocracy" in Iraq. He sees liberation from Saddam as a chance for "those wishing to conform to the age-old precepts of Shia tradition – the pious, apolitical links between senior ayatollahs and their followers." But these links would not necessarily entail political devotion. Indeed, shortly after al-Hakim arrived in Iraq, Iranian press said he professed himself "a religious clergyman" rather than a politician.

It is not clear how Iranian fundamentalists can deploy client Iraqis like Hakim, who have at times made conciliatory gestures toward the Bush administration. Western observers who have fixated on Khatami’s failure to push broad reforms through the power structure may overestimate the fear that the ruling clerics command in Iran. One London-based clerical opposition group estimates that of approximately 5,000 ayatollahs in Iran, only 80 wholeheartedly support the regime. And of 14 exalted "Grand Ayatollahs" inside Iran, many ayatollahs now question the marriage of governing power with religious purity. And the younger Khomeini’s remarks about freedom indicate that the clerics’ muted ideology corresponds to a muted authority.

Some Iranian analysts see signs that dissatisfaction in Iran is beginning to spread to traditionally pro-regime clerics. They point to remarks in May 2002 by Ayatollah Ebrahim Amini, deputy head of the conservative Assembly of Experts. "The regime cannot maintain itself in power by force," he told a crowd in Qom then. "Society is on the verge of an explosion." More than a year later, these remarks by an official of a group that can appoint or remove the Supreme Leader cannot easily be discounted as alarmist.

One phenomenon that the young Khomeini’s remarks highlighted was the contrast in reputation between his grandfather and the current Supreme Leader. The older Khomeini, for all his vitriol, had a reputation as a peerless scholar. Khamenei does not. "Senior clerics treat his theological pronouncements with disdain," says Nadeem Kazmi, spokesman for the London-based Imam Al-Khoei Benevolent Foundation, a charity with close links to a revered but apolitical ayatollah based in Najaf. Critics say that Khamenei has compensated for his lack of credentials with efforts to stifle dissent among clerics. An indeterminate number of dissenting clerics – perhaps as many as 60 – have been executed on the orders of special clerical courts since 1989.

In this context, the young Khomeini’s remarks about the United States looking like an acceptable agent for liberation may block any inroads clerics might have hoped to forge into Iraq. Some doubt whether Shia in general can incite Iranians who have lived with a generation’s worth of disappointment under the clerics. "Young people are far more interested in Cyrus the Great and all that nationalist claptrap" than in Shia, says Ali Ansari, who teaches Middle Eastern history at the University of Durham. Sayyid Hussein Khomeini’s ideas may tap those young Iranians’ anxiety for a new political model. That could foster instability in Iran and Iraq.

Editor’s Note: Nicolas Birch specializes in Turkey, Iran and the Middle East.

http://www.eurasianet.org/departments/insight/articles/eav081103.shtml

Judiciary Admits its Officials had a Hand in Canadian's Death

August 11, 2003
AFP
Yahoo News

TEHRAN -- Iran's hardline judiciary admitted for the first time that individual officials may have had a hand in the death of Iranian-Canadian photojournalist Zahra Kazemi, but insisted all the evidence suggested they were acting without orders.

"The information made available to the investigating magistrate by the presidential commission of inquiry has allowed us to advance the investigation, particularly concerning the journalist's movements in the crucial hours and the blow to her head," the judiciary's official spokesman Gholam Hossein Elham told the Iranian Student News Agency.

"No institution is under suspicion, it is individual officials that are facing charges. We have not concluded that official agencies or bodies committed any crime, it was individuals who broke the law," said Elham.

On July 26, the prosecutor's office announced that it had arrested five people in connection with Kazem's death, two of whom have been subsequently released.

But Elham's comments marked the first admission by the judiciary that murder charges might be pressed in the affair which has rocked Tehran's relations with Ottawa.

Previously the conservative-controlled body had insisted there was no evidence to suggest the brain haemmorrhage which killed the Canadian journalist was the result of foul play.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20030811/wl_canada_afp/iran_canada_media_030811152151

Like Grandfathers, Like Grandsons

August 11, 2003
Iran va Jahan
Reza Bayegan

Countdown to a Referendum, XIV

The following column marks the author's own countdown to a true national referendum and the end of the rule of fear in Iran. It is dedicated to two rare human virtues, patience and courage.

The grandson of a man who took Iran out of the dark ages and brought peace, unity and progress to a country left at the mercy of disease and armed bandits is telling the Americans that his nation is capable of deciding its own political future and the only help he expects from the international community is for it to refrain from doing anything that might strengthen the oppressors of his homeland.

The grandson of a man who plunged our nation back into the dark ages and brought war, terrorism, poverty, insecurity and dishonor to a country at the height of its affluence is calling upon the Americans to make Iran next on the list of their armed interventions.

While the grandson of the builder of modern Iran carries around Iranian soil in a box, using it like rare jewels to adorn the coffin of a beloved sister, the grandson of a man who admitted to having no feelings for his homeland is signing blank checks from his zero credit account, dispensing away Iranian national sovereignty as if it was his own.

The grandson of the man who twenty-five years ago promised Iranians freedom, dignity and democracy, but brought them persecution, oppression and humiliation is opining how "American liberty and freedom is the best freedom in the world".

The grandson of a man who in May 1928, annulled all special legal privileges to colonial powers and ended the "capitulation rights", reminds the president of the United States of the political self-reliance of the Iranians, and of their by and large lonely struggle against repression and tyranny:

"My compatriots demand for secularism and democracy is on its way through an exclusively homegrown nonviolent national campaign of civil disobedience".

If Iranian nationalists were duped twenty-five years ago into seeing black and white turbans as signposts leading them to a glorious future, today they cannot play colorblind and ignore the green - white - red flag of our national survival and the man who has devoted his life to the cause of restoring its dignity, honor and significance.

http://www.iranvajahan.net/cgi-bin/news_en.pl?l=en&y=2003&m=08&d=11&a=8

Ten more detained Iranian students to be freed
World News
Aug 11, 2003

TEHRAN - Ten Iranian students arrested during pro-democracy protests in June and July will be released on Monday bringing to 22 the number freed since last week, the ISNA student news agency reported.

The releases follow an order by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei -- the head of Iran's ruling clerical establishment -- for the judiciary to show leniency to the detained students.

Quoting Tehran MP Mohsen Safai Farahani, part of a parliamentary team charged with following up on the fate of the arrested students, ISNA said the 10 detainees would be freed from Tehran's Evin prison on Monday night.

He said the releases would bring to 22 the number of students freed since last Thursday.

Judiciary officials have said 4,000 people were arrested in the June and July demonstrations in which hundreds of people took to the streets at night to protest against Iran's clerical leaders in several cities.

More than half of those arrested were quickly released but legislators said last week that at least 30 students were being held in Evin prison from the recent protests.

Local analysts said the move to release students indicated an effort by Iran's ruling clergy to ease lingering social tensions in the wake of the protests and wave of arrests.

University students have been at the forefront of protests against Iran's clerical leadership in recent years, staging occasional rallies and protests calling for the release of political prisoners and greater freedom of speech.

But they have paid a high price for their political activism. Many student leaders remain behind bars after being arrested during street demonstrations in 1999. Others have fled the country.

http://www.daneshjoo.org/generalnews/article/publish/article_1689.shtml

Iran: The Ongoing Threat

August 12, 2003
Asia Times
Stephen Blank

When President George W Bush labeled Iran part of the "axis of evil" along with Iraq and North Korea, this dismayed many observers for several reasons. Not the least of them was that it is, or was nearly impossible, to discern any collaboration between Iran and Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Indeed, not only did these two countries fight a bloody and inconclusive war from 1980 to 88, Iran was one of the Iraqi tyrant's targets for the use of chemical weapons.

This Iraqi attack, which went unanswered by the rest of the world, must be reckoned as one of the principal reasons for Iran's continuing nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs. But even though there has been no conceivable Iraqi threat since 1991, these programs continue. And since the termination of Saddam's regime by the United States, all signs are that Iran's nuclear program is accelerating at speed.

Worse yet, Iran's partnership with North Korea unfortunately lends credence to Bush's "axis" remarks and Tehran's continuing support for terrorism to derail the Middle Eastern peace process between Israel and the Palestinian Authority does so as well.

The other two principal justifications that are often advanced to defend Iran's nuclearization are that it is responding to the threat of Israel, which has nuclear weapons, and the US threat. However, both of these are smokescreens. Allegedly Iran fears that Israel will do to it what it did to Iraq in 1981, namely bomb its nuclear weapons program. Therefore, much of that program is dispersed and underground.

Yet if Iran was not the principal state sponsor of global terrorism, according to the State Department, and terrorism that is directed on a global basis against Jews, not just Israelis, not to mention a state where domestic anti-Semitism is a state sanctioned policy, Israel would not even think of threatening Iran.

Indeed, under the US-backed Shah up to his ouster in the Islamic revolution of 1979, Israel and Iran had exemplary, almost alliance-like relations for sound geopolitical reasons. And Tehran's policies are no longer driven by the same kind of crusading religious zeal that was the case under Ayatollah Khomeini in the post-revolution era. Although Iranian-backed groups apparently function in Azerbaijan, Iran has virtually given up that kind of overt agitation in the Persian Gulf. Yet it clearly supports terrorism, as most assessments of the 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers US barracks in Saudi Arabia suggest, for reasons of national interest, not Islamic ideology as such.

Likewise, Iran's animosity to America is not only founded on Islamism or whatever sins Washington may have committed toward Iran under the Shah, but on the quite rational basis that its consistent anti-American policies, support of terrorism and alleged proliferation of weapons of mass destruction directly counter vital American interests throughout the Middle East and the former Soviet Union.

If Iran was to cease support of terrorism and its aggressive policies in those areas, which have yielded little except to maintain a kind of state of siege with the outside world that perpetuates the oppressive Iranian internal regime, it would stand to benefit immensely and in very tangible fashion.

Yet, instead, and despite the war in Iraq it has redoubled its efforts to provoke not only Washington and Jerusalem, but also its neighbors. In 2001 and 2002 it threatened Azerbaijan and Kazakstan over Caspian Sea exploration issues. Since the war in Iraq it has not only accelerated its nuclear program and maintained a truculent attitude of denial towards the International Atomic Energy Agency and all other concerned parties, it apparently has now entered into discussion with North Korea to develop nuclear warheads jointly.

This new alliance would represent an enormous magnification of the nightmare scenario for many Asian governments, not just Israel and America, because it means the full materialization of the worst case scenario of what analysts call secondary proliferation, ie one proliferating state assisting another in its weapons development programs. There is no doubt that this alliance would rattle security agendas from the Gulf to South Korea and pour much oil on already troubled waters. But this is not all.

Despite official optimism in Washington concerning the rejuvenated peace progress between Israel and the Palestinians, in fact since June 29, when some of the Palestinian groups involved, Hamas and Islamic Jihad, announced a truce, there have been 178 terrorist attacks in Israel, including the pre-1967 boundaries, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Israeli officials, whose intelligence has been exceptional throughout this war, say that Iran and Yasser Arafat's Fatah organization have been behind most of these attacks and that Iran is ordering and financing the attacks carried out by what they call rogue cells of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade.

Thus Iran is clearly intensifying its efforts to derail both the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians, and to obtain nuclear weapons. It obviously is doing this in part to solidify the hold of its clerical elites at home by playing the cards of foreign threats and anti-Semitism to perpetuate the mullahs' despotic power. But it is also no less clear that Iran still aims to be able to destabilize its neighbors and to retain the capacity to intimidate them, and thereby dominate the Persian Gulf.

Ultimately, this course of action is unacceptable as far as the other Gulf states and other Middle Eastern nations are concerned. As long as there is the threat of terrorism or of weapons of mass destruction in the region, real peace and stability are unlikely to occur. Indeed, any effort to bring peace to troubled areas cannot then come about because other states must be able to defend themselves against these threats.

Among other things, this means bringing in the US military to defend Gulf states against threats to their sovereignty, integrity and independence, and to counter the linked threats of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. Thus the consuming ambition of Iran's mullahs to retain power by any means possible and to pursue an expansionist foreign policy entail both the subjugation of Iran's peoples and also consigning all the people within reach of Iran's missiles to varying degrees of insecurity and fear.

As Iran's terrorist reach through groups it sponsors is global, and the expected reach of the missiles it is developing, whatever their warheads will contain - conventional, chemical, biological or nuclear warheads - is growing to include Europe and much of Asia, clearly this is a threat that must be reversed and terminated sooner rather than later.

For the moment, the powers that Iran threatens have resorted to diplomatic and economic pressure, but if the resort to terrorism and nuclear weapons, combined with an alliance with North Korea are true indicators of Iran's trajectory, then that forbearance may not last very long.

Stephen Blank is an analyst of international security affairs residing in Harrisburg, PA.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/EH12Ak04.html

Iran calls for strong ties with Iraq

Tehran, Aug 11, IRNA -- Iran on Monday said it sought to forge strong
ties with Iraq which waged an imposed war against the Islamic Republic
between 1980 and 1988 during the rule of ousted Saddam Hussein.
However, it called for patience to say when Tehran would recognize
a US-appointed Governing Council, a 25-member body which roughly
reflects Iraq's ethnic and religious make-up.
"Our official position will be announced (in due time) but we
should exercise patience in this respect," Foreign Ministry spokesman
Hamid Reza Asefi told reporters at a weekly news briefing.
Asefi said, "We would like to forge strong relations with our
neighbor now that its dictatorial government, which kept the two
countries separated for years, is gone."
The official called for the immediate pullout of occupying forces
from Iraq in order to end chaos in that country.
"To establish peace in Iraq, the occupying forces must immediately
pull out from that country and leave Iraq's future to its own people.
"It is only in this case that one can hope the internal chaos in
Iraq will end," Asefi added.
Iran recently dispatched its first high-ranking delegation for
discussions with the Governing Council to shore up fences between the
two countries.
Asefi hailed the trip as 'positive', saying it enabled Iran to
'clarify our stances, views and approaches towards Iraq and hear the
views' of the other side.
Iranian officials met with members of the Governing Council as
well as several Iraqi clerics and UN special representative on Iraq,
Sergio Vieira de Mello, he said.
"All the individuals whom the delegation met with ... described
the visit as very positive and valuable and stressed on expanding
and strengthening relations with Iran," Asefi said.
He described economic transactions between the two countries in
recent months as good, saying Iran exported 160 million dollars of
goods to Iraq in the period.
NO IRAQI POWS IN IRAN
Asefi stressed that Iran holds no Iraqi prisoners from the
1980-1988 war. "There is no Iraqi PoW in Iran and all the registered
PoWs and those who were in Iran have been freed," he said.
The statements apparently came in reaction to demonstrations held
by around 50 people in Baquba, 60 kilometers northeast of Baghdad, to
demand the release of Iraqi POWs in Iran and compensation for those
already freed.
Iran itself says that close to 4,000 Iranian prisoners of war in
Iraq still remain unaccounted for.
The country has appealed to the International Committee of the Red
Cross (ICRC) to help establish the fate of its remaining prisoners of
war in Iraq. Tehran has already accused US of intending to 'blackmail'
the Islamic Republic on the fate of missing Iranians.
The Islamic Republic has also said that it considers US-British
troops responsible for any threat against Iranian PoWs who may still
be in Iraqi prisons.

http://www.irna.ir/en/tnews/030812202539.etn01.shtml

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