Iranian Alert -- September 11, 2003 -- IRAN 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.

"Surrounded US to be swept out very soon from our way" says Rafsanjani

AFP - World News (via Iranmania)
Sep 11, 2003

TEHRAN - Iran's powerful former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani has accused the United States of seeking to surround Iran but asserted that the arch-enemy had instead only found itself encircled by Iran.

"Even though the United States has a physical presence in the countries that surround us, the reality is that the United States is in fact surrounded by Iran," Rafsanjani was quoted as saying by the official news agency IRNA Thursday.

Since the September 11 attacks two years ago, the United States has occupied Iraq and Afghanistan, while also boosting its military presence in the Caucasus and Central Asia. "God has pushed the Americans into a quagmire in Iraq.

If they stay, they will be victims every day, and if they leave, it will be a loss of honour," said Rafsanjani, who now heads the Islamic republic's top political arbtration body. "Very soon, the Americans will learn a lesson for this historical error that they will never forget. It will be a curse worse than Vietnam," said the outspoken cleric.

"Our enemies such as Saddam (Hussein), the Taliban (in Afghanistan) and the Monafeghins ("hypocrites", term used for Iran's armed opposition People's Mujahedeen) have been swept out of our way, and soon the US will be too."

http://www.daneshjoo.org/generalnews/article/publish/article_2274.shtml

Iranian Rebels in Iraq 'Contained' - U.S. Military

September 11, 2003
Reuters
Andrew Cawthorne

BAGHDAD -- The U.S. military said on Thursday it was holding 3,800 Iranian rebel detainees in eastern Iraq and denied that the People's Mujahideen was still mounting cross-border raids into Iran.

"Are they continuing to enter Iran? I can guarantee you that is not happening. They are contained," Lieutenant-General Ricardo Sanchez, commander of U.S. troops in Iraq, told a news conference in Baghdad.

He was responding to a report in the Washington Post newspaper that the U.S. military may be turning a blind eye to renewed activity by the Iranian opposition group that is on the State Department's list of "terrorist" groups.

The Post quoted State Department officials saying they suspected the Pentagon was allowing the group to retain its weapons, move in and out of camps at will, broadcast propaganda and cross into Iran to conduct attacks.

Sanchez said: "There is no problem with the MEK that we are having today."

The People's Mujahideen, or MEK, was allowed to operate on Iraqi soil by Saddam Hussein's anti-Iranian government but was forced to surrender to the U.S. military after the March invasion of Iraq.

Giving the first official figure for the number of MEK fighters being held, Sanchez said the roughly 3,800 detainees had been "separated from their weapons systems" and were undergoing "screening" to determine their "defined end state."

He gave no further clues to their future fate.

Five hundred soldiers are guarding them at a base in Ashraf, he said. Their weapons -- including tanks, rocket launchers and artillery guns -- are at another base in the desert.

IRANIAN-U.S. SWAP?

He said he knew nothing of other Mujahideen fighters based in Iraq. Some reports put MEK numbers far higher than 3,800.

But he said guarding the long Iran-Iraq border was a vast task only really possible with something like a Berlin Wall.

Tehran has demanded that MEK members be extradited.

Security analysts have speculated that Iran may be willing to swap some of its al Qaeda detainees for MEK leaders.

At the start of the U.S.-led war to oust Saddam, the U.S. military bombed the Mujahideen but agreed a cease-fire after Baghdad fell in April, on condition the rebels withdrew into their bases in "non-combat" positions.

The MEK are classed as "detainees" not prisoners of war.

The group still has offices in major cities across the world and says it has an underground network of members in Iran. But its fighters and weaponry were based in Iraq.

For years, Saddam helped the Mujahideen fight his regional foe, Iran, which itself is no friend of the United States. But after the invasion, Washington was determined to clear Iraq of any independent fighting forces, even its enemy's enemy.

Prior to then, the Mujahideen had said they were clashing daily with Iranian-backed forces in the northeast of Iraq.

Some Washington hard-liners back the Mujahideen, despite its position on the "terrorist" list, as allies against Iran which President Bush has branded part of an "axis of evil" with Saddam's Iraq and North Korea.

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=3429155

HARDENING ITS STAND, TEHRAN WARNS IAEA OF REVISING COOPERATION

VIENNA 11 Sept. (IPS)

As five leading industrialised nations were pushing the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to approve a resolution Wednesday that would give Tehran until October 31 to prove it has no covert nuclear weapons program, representative of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) in the governing council of the Agency, Hoseyn Hanif said the non-aligned states are convinced that Iran has done nothing wrong as for the nuclear activities.

The strongly worded draft worked by the United States, Britain, France, Germany and Japan circulated at a closed-door meeting of the Agency's 35-nation Board of Governors call on Iran to fully cooperate with the IAEA’s experts and also "suspend all further uranium enrichment activities".

The IAEA said in an August 26 report that inspectors found traces of weapons-grade highly enriched uranium at an enrichment facility that Iran has built secretly at Natanz, in central Iran, arousing suspicions that Iran might have been secretly purifying uranium for use in nuclear weapons.

Tehran’s answer was the traces of enriched uranium detected at Natanz were found on machinery that was already contaminated before Iran purchased it abroad in the 1980s.

But the explanation did not convince the IAEA.

"Iran has done no illegal action as for uranium of which samples have been taken, Dato Hanif, the Malaysian Ambassador to the IAEA told reporters in Vienna, quoted by the official Iranian news agency IRNA.

Referring to the proposed resolution by the four western nations and Japan, Hanif said it would be an "inveighed measure" for the IAEA to issue a severe resolution against Iran because it would bring to an end the positive and constructive cooperation between Tehran and the IAEA.

According to Hanif, the non-aligned countries are trying to remove the time limit in the resolution so as the IAEA Chief Mohammad El-Baradei could deal with the Iran case in a calm atmosphere.

"We want to give ElBaradei a free hand to decide," he said. "If you have a specific deadline, then there is also a sense that you're telling (ElBaradei) that you must complete your job by that time."

As he was talking to journalists in Vienna, in Tehran, Iranian Foreign Affairs Minister Kamal Kharazi denounced the "arrogance" and "extremist posture" of certain countries over Iran's nuclear program and warned that Tehran might reconsider its cooperation with the UN's nuclear watchdog.

"The posture of certain countries (on the board of governors of the IAEA) is irresponsible and arrogant", Kharazi said in a statement published by IRNA.

"Unfortunately, some are trying openly and wilfully to destroy the process of cooperation between Iran and the agency and seeking to cut the agency out of the process.

"If the extremists take control of the matter and do not recognize our legitimate rights to have peaceful nuclear activities, we will then be obliged to review the situation and the current level of cooperation with the agency", he added.

A Western diplomat told Reuters that this kind of comment from Tehran was "blackmail.

For its part, the hard line "Keyhan" newspaper which reflects the views of Ayatollah Ali Khameneh'i, the leader of the Islamic Republic said Thursday that even if the government present the Majles, or Parliament, a bill for Iran to sign the additional protocols to the Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT), something that requires months of thoughtful studies, it is doubtful that the lawmakers would approve it.

The United States accused Iran Tuesday of being in breach of safeguards under the nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty but supported a proposed "last chance" for Tehran to clear up questions about its atomic program.

It did not say what would happen if Iran did not cooperate, but a Western diplomat said what was important was "that a signal is sent, that a clear bright line is laid down that Iran must comply with IAEA requests in a quick, complete and transparent manner."

"In a speech to the Board of Governors, the Canadian representative asked that the issue of the Islamic Republic's nuclear activities be immediately sent to the United Nations Security Council.

Canada’s relations with the Islamic Republic suffered a setback after Iranian interrogators killed Ms Zahra Kazemi, a Canadian photojournalist of Iranian origin and refused to transfer her body to Montreal, where she lived with her 26 years-old son, Stephan Hashemi. ENDS IAEA IRAN 11903

http://www.iran-press-service.com/

Grim Anniversary

September 11, 2003
National Review Online
Michael Ledeen

Many of us who have admired President Bush for his amazingly good instincts in foreign policy are now afraid that he has lost his compass. In part, this may be due to political considerations. He may think that it's time for a pause in the war against the terror masters, and we should therefore take a moment for reconstruction in Iraq and Afghanistan, and for diplomatic reason with Israel and the Palestinians. In all likelihood he is hearing that he suffered politically from the military exertions in the first two campaigns of the war, and that the American people, along with public opinion in traditionally allied countries, want a breather.

He has also been told — indeed we have all been told, by everyone from Colin Powell to Condoleezza Rice — that the Middle East has indeed been transformed by the liberation of Afghanistan and Iraq, and that we can now advance the cause of freedom by less-violent means. Thus, Powell is stronger and Rumsfeld is weaker, we are turning to the U.N. to bless our peacemaking efforts, and even cooing in the direction of La France.

There is a certain logic to this view, but only if you ignore the facts on the ground. As Amir Taheri has well explained, the fall of the Taliban and the liberation of Iraq have indeed had a profound effect on the rest of the region, but it is not yet a fait accompli. It is a great start but not yet a great accomplishment. The same potential existed at the end of the Gulf War, but we threw it away by abandoning the Iraqi people and those others in the region who dreamed of newfound freedom, in the name of good diplomacy and sweet reasonableness. We can do it again, by making the same mistakes George W.'s father and his current secretary of state made in 1991: stopping too soon, and failing to support our friends and defeating our enemies.

President Bush has said from the beginning that this is a broad war, and we will have to fight several enemies with several strategies. Yet listening to his speech Sunday night, one did not hear much of this. One heard about Iraq, with a few throwaway lines about Afghanistan. That suggests a narrowing of the administration's vision, and it is a very dangerous phenomenon, because there are still several regional enemies — with potent allies within Iraq — who know that the war is not yet over, and they are still fighting to win. We have seen those enemies at work in Iraq in recent weeks: big-time bombings of the Jordanian embassy and U.N. headquarters in Baghdad, and the assassination of Ayatollah Hakim in Najaf, outside the shrine of Ali.

Our response to these assaults has been unsatisfactory. Instead of empowering Iraqis of proven democratic conviction and pro-American action over more than a decade, we turned over at least part of security in Najaf to the so-called Badr brigades, who were trained in Iran by our enemies. Some of the Badr fighters are working for the mullahs rather than for a free Iraq, and the Iraqi people know that. Our willingness to strengthen our enemies sends a chilling message to Iraqis hoping for a purge of their oppressors (why has there still been no Nuremberg trial for Saddam's henchmen?) and an active campaign against the thousands of terrorists entering Iraq from Iran.

The lack of action against the Iranian-backed terror campaign is all the more perplexing since the facts are widely accepted. Sunday's Washington Post caught up with NRO with an excellent article detailing plans by al Qaeda, before the liberation of Iraq, to launch a terror war against us in Iraq. This reportage is doubly encouraging. First, since it depends on governmental sources, it means that analysts in the executive branch are beginning to understand the central role of Iran in the events in Iraq. And second, it helps the journalistic community catch up with events. Perhaps we will hear more about the Iranian campaign (and, in time, about the Syrian and Saudi support for the terrorists) than about the presumed vast Baathist underground, operating on its own against Coalition forces and NGOs. There are certainly Baathists at work in Iraq, but a good deal of their potency depends on the mullahs.

Which brings us back to the Hakim assassination, which was an event of considerable importance. People who grew up with Hakim, and remained in contact with him during his years in Iranian exile, speak of a man who knew he was under house arrest in a foreign country, who hated the mullahcracy, and who swore that, if he ever had the chance, he would help Iraq resist the forces of the Islamic Republic. He may have gulled the mullahs while he was in Iran, but they recognized an enemy when they saw one, and eliminated him as quickly as they could. As in the case of the Ayatollah Khoei, who was killed at war's end in Najaf, the vulnerability of moderate Shiite clerics to jihadists is terrible for the morale of religious leaders we should be supporting and protecting.

Instead of this sensible policy, we are piously pronouncing our evenhandedness. Our top people in Iraq constantly repeat their official mantra: "We don't play favorites." Thus, while Iran and Saudi Arabia are pouring millions of dollars into the country through a network of Shiite philanthropic organizations, our allies get little or nothing. The anti-American religious organizations are rolling in cash, and they buy support with it, while our friends go begging. This leads ordinary Iraqis to conclude that we either don't know our friends from our enemies, or we don't care about our friends. Either answer is bad for morale.

But none of this is as alarming to our prospects for winning the war by transforming the Middle East, as our recourse to the United Nations. Whatever our diplomats may think, this gambit is viewed as a sign of weakness and fecklessnss all over the region. It is viewed as a deliberate dilution of our power and a first step toward disengagement. It terrifies our allies, and encourages our enemies. You can be sure that the tyrants in Tehran, Damascus, and Riyadh are now purring with pleasure, telling themselves that they were right all along about the Americans: no stomach for a long, tough fight. Keep killing them, and they will go home.

I have a strong premonition of new attacks against us, at home and abroad. The Osamas and the Mughniyahs feel vindicated, and smell blood. They will now go all-out to press what they see as their advantage.

As for the problem so many in the administration believe is the central issue in the Middle East (the peace process, whatever its current label), recent events should have demonstrated that we should devote our energies to winning the war against the terror masters, and not waste time and effort trying to unscrew the unscrutable. You can't make peace until the war is won. Never could, never will.

Faster please.

— 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.

http://nationalreview.com/ledeen/ledeen091103.asp

Russia Supports Draft Iran Resolution at UN Nuclear Agency

September 11, 2003
Ample
AFX

MOSCOW -- Russia supports a draft resolution at the UN nuclear watchdog that would set an Oct 31 deadline for Iran to prove that it is not secretly developing nuclear weapons, a source at the Russian atomic energy ministry told Agence France-Presse.

"Russia has to be in the majority on this question," the source said.

The comments came as the US and its key allies lobbied fellow members of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to support the resolution in backroom talks at the agency's headquarters in Vienna.

The draft was a softer version of a resolution proposed earlier, the source said in Moscow.

"Russians are huddling together with the Americans to find a compromise in a softer resolution," the source said.

"Iran has to be given room to maneuver so they are not pushed into a corner like North Korea and withdraw from the NPT (nuclear non-proliferation treaty)," the source said.

The negotiations led to the suspension of a key meeting scheduled today of the IAEA's 35-nation board of governors. The session is now expected to be held tomorrow.

"We're still working behind the scenes to bring as many people on board for the (deadline) resolution as possible," a Western diplomat said.

Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi said his government was willing to cooperate, but warned setting a deadline would complicate matters, and again denied Tehran was developing nuclear weapons.

"We are ready to cooperate with the IAEA fully to give them access to files to do an inspection," Kharazi told journalists during a visit to Sarajevo, but warned "putting pressure on Iran will make it more complicated."

The US claims Iran is hiding a program to develop atomic weapons.

Russia is building Iran's first nuclear plant in Bushehr, a project that has attracted criticism from Western nations, who fear Iran may use spent fuel from the plant in a weapons program.

Russia will not call off the project if Iran does not agree to IAEA demands, but will do so if it is found in violation of the agency's norms, the source said.

"Then we'll stop our cooperation immediately," the source said.

The plant was originally due to go online by the end of 2005, but the project has been held up as Russia and Iran negotiate a separate agreement that would oblige Iran to return the plant's spent fuel back to Russia for storage.

http://www.iii.co.uk/shares/?type=news&articleid=4743430&action=article

Argentina Under Fire for Appeasing Iran Over Bombing Case

September 12, 2003
Dialy Times
Marc Perelman

BUENOS AIRES -- After promising to throw its full weight behind the investigation of the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish community centre, Argentina’s new government is now under fire from Jewish groups that say it appears unwilling to confront Iran, the country suspected of responsibility for the attack.

The unexpected arrest by British authorities last month of an indicted suspect in the case, former Iranian ambassador to Argentina Hade Soleimanpour, provided an unprecedented test of Argentina’s willingness to confront Tehran.

Iran, which denies involvement in the attack, has denounced the arrest in the strongest terms, recalling its ambassador to London and threatening to break off cultural and economic relations with Argentina.

The government of Argentina’s newly elected president, Nestor Kirchner, has responded by scrambling to avoid antagonizing Tehran, receiving an Iranian delegation to discuss the matter and suggesting that the entire case be referred to an international tribunal. At the same time, Buenos Aires has told Jewish groups and Jerusalem that it is determined to bring Soleimanpour to Argentina, and is merely exploring the best way to achieve that, given the diplomatic aspects of the affair.

“After the arrest and very harsh words from Iran, we had to make a decision,” said Eduardo Valdes, chief of staff to Foreign Minister Rafael Bielsa and a key actor in the deliberations on how to handle the matter. “If you only think of dignity, Argentina would have had to cut diplomatic relations with Iran. But we also need to continue with Iran and so we decided that we would try to get them to be involved in the investigation.”

While the case’s investigative judge, Juan José Galeano, who issued the initial warrant for Soleimanpour’s arrest an Iranian delegation came to Buenos Aires to meet the judge and Argentinean officials.

At the same time, Argentina’s foreign minister undercut Galeano’s drive to prosecute Soleimanpour, proposing instead the creation of an international tribunal for the case like the one created to judge Libyan officials for the 1989 bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over the Scottish town of Lockerbie.

This infuriated the country’s main Jewish groups, which accused the government of coddling Tehran and seeking a compromise after announcing with great fanfare that it would leave no stone unturned in pursuit of the perpetrators of the attack, which killed 85 people.

“It now seems that the gestures of Kirchner were just publicity stunts,” said Miguel Bronfman, a lawyer for AMIA, a Spanish acronym for the Jewish Mutual Association of Argentina. “They say this is a government priority, we are opening the SIDE archives, etc. But when Soleimanpour is arrested, they say this is just the judge’s problem, then they come up with the idea of an international tribunal.”

But Valdes said that the government was fully committed to the investigation and that it was not avoiding its responsibilities.

The diplomat said that Argentina was consulting with London and Washington to craft its position, an indication that Buenos Aires does not want to confront Tehran on its own.

The extradition process could take some time, observers said. After the British judge renders a verdict, the last word on the extradition belongs to the British Foreign Office. In the meantime, Soleimanpour has been ordered to remain in jail.

It remains an open question whether the information from intelligence agencies that form the bulk of Galeano’s case against Soleimanpour will be accepted as legally valid evidence by a British judge.

One allegation is that Soleimanpour attended an August 13, 1993 meeting at the Iranian Security Ministry at which the decision to bomb the AMIA was taken. The meeting was allegedly headed by Ali Khamenei, and then-intelligence minister Ali Fallahian. Soleimanpour and Rabbani then allegedly coordinated the attack that was carried out by Hezbollah operatives, according to a March 2003 indictment from Galeano. The judge also issued arrest warrants for Rabbani and Fallahian.

There remains a mystery about Soleimanpour’s arrest that could provide another explanation about Tehran’s concern about the case: When arrested he may have been in the middle of defecting and providing information to Britain.

Soleimanpour apparently did not seek diplomatic protection from the Iranian Embassy, nor did the embassy apparently inquire about him after this alleged questioning. Meanwhile, Iranian authorities had known since March that Galeano was preparing an arrest warrant and attempting to locate Soleimanpour, and they apparently did not bother to attempt to remove him from the country.

“It could well be that this is because he had decided not to come back to Iran,” a well-placed source said. “And this could be a big worry for Tehran.”

—Courtesy Forward.com

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_12-9-2003_pg4_20

Movement and its members pay tribute to 9/11 victims and to the People of America

SMCCDI (Information Service)
Sep 11, 2003

The Movement and its members payed tribute, today, to the victims of the Tagedy of September 11th, their families and to the Noble American Nation.

A statement issued by SMCCDI at the occasion of the 2nd anniversary of this infamous terrorist act, which shaped the face of the World, reminded again of the dangers of the Islamist Fanatism.

The Movement while expressing again its deepest sorrow, reminded to the wounded People of America that Iranians are their natural allies in the "War against Terror". SMCCDI requested Americans' moral support in order to extinguish, as the soonest, the main source of the Islamist Terror and warned some of the US lawmakers on the dangers of hoping to find "reformist elements" within the facist-theocratical Islamic republic regime.

Several Movement members wrote slogans on walls of Iranian cities, such as, Tehran, Shiraz, Esfahan and Ahwaz. These slogans were stating "9/11 Digar Hargez" (9/11 Never Again),
"Amrica Tasliat" (America Condoleance) and "Marg bar Taleban e Iran" (Down with the Taleban of Iran). These slogans were written with red color sprays in order to show the bloody nature of this murderous act.

Flowers were deposed by SMCCDI members at the New York Memorial and at several US embassies, such as in Rome, Berlin and Paris, where the Movement's representative, Kaveh Mohseni, was received by Mr. Bauer of the US Embassy.

Mohseni hand remitted, on behalf of SMCCDI, a letter to the US diplomatic Corp. which was endorsed by several prominent French intellectuals, scholars, writers, cinematographers and politicians. Famous names, such as, Pascal Bruckner, Alain Finkielkraut, André Glucksmann, Yves Michaud, Florence Taubmann, Ralph Pinto, Michèle Tribalat, Claire Brière-Blanchet, Rachid Kaci, Jeanne-Hélène Kaltenbach, Pierre Rigoulot, Michel Taubmann, Pierre-André Taguieff, André Senik, Ilios Yannakakis and Romain Goupil were on this letter of support and sympathy expressed by the Movement.

The SMCCDI statements , issued at the occasion of the 9/11 Tragedy and its anniversaries, can be found in the "Public Statements" section; And the French letter is located in the "Document" section of the French language part of the Movement's website.

http://www.daneshjoo.org/generalnews/article/publish/article_2291.shtml

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