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Let's Not Forget About Iran's Students

Digital Freedom Network - by Luke Thomas
Sep 10, 2003

Iran's university students are in the midst of a rebellion.

Although they and their cause are generally unknown, Iran's student population has been engaged in a slow, but steady repudiation of Iran's current hard-line Shiite government. Thirsting for tastes of sovereignty and personal choice, the student protestors have immersed themselves in an uphill battle to have basic rights and freedoms acknowledged by their government. Student reformers acknowledge the process has been fraught with setbacks and failures, but have made notable strides worthy of international attention.

Presently, two-thirds of Iran's population of 65 million are under the age of 30, bringing the total young to over 40 million. In truth, only five percent of the 40 million are able to attend higher education (nevertheless, the almost 2 million students exercise significant political muscle). However, both groups have lived almost entirely under the Islamic regime, but with pervasive Western influences and ideas in an increasingly technological media. Iranian students access to Western media has resulted in shifted thinking towards substantially more democratic values. This "democratic alternative" is largely viewed as superior to the anachronistic version of Islam they perceive to be stymieing Iran's development. Consequently, they have grown profoundly discontented with their stagnant theocratic government.

Iranian students have essentially narrowed the focus of their cause into two requests: the need for government accountability and promotion of citizens' rights. Nearinternational.org claims that in a petition signed by Iranian university intellectuals, journalists and student activists, demands such as the ability to "supervise their rulers, criticize them and remove them from power if they are not satisfied" have been enumerated as well as that no leader's power is "absolute power". BBC.com reports students no longer believe in the ability of the present government to meet the needs of Iran, citing double-digit unemployment, a shortage of university placements and lack of proper housing.

What is evident from the students' protests are more than just a dislike for current policies, but rather, a paradigm shift in ideas. Current students have been very receptive to democratic vales and ideals and are particularly leery of "Velayet-e-Faghih": the notion that the supreme leader is both the religious and political authority. The adoption of Western ideas is intellectually antithetical to Islam and the current Iranian government. However, there exists no desire among the students to eliminate religion. The youth allege they are not attempting to dismantle Islam, but merely separate it from government affairs.

These protests, however, have not come without firm and determined reprisal from the government. BBC.com reports in July 1999, the government performed a raid on a student hostel at the University of Tehran where at least one student was killed and as many as 20 injured, some from beatings and others by being thrown from a window. Students then began a series of widespread protests, calling for the reinstatement of several banned publications, investigations into the deaths of murdered writers and dissidents and the release of jailed students. Additionally, there was a call for the removal of the clerical government, but this was met with little or no reception.

As a consequence of the July 1999 protests and subsequent student action, a large and enormously diverse demographic of Iran's population have begun supporting the students' cause and become increasingly vocal about their dislikes of their government. Coined the "Third Force", this nebulous group is both a social and political force comprised of essentially all those disaffected with the government. Notably, the group's members transcend gender, age and income. Their common belief is that the Shiite hard-liners do not have legitimately-sanctioned power and employ tactics of politics rather than beneficial policy. The Participation Front, the largest faction of the reform movement, has turned itself into a functioning political party outside the reach of the clerical government and attempted to institute reforms by urging current leaders for both social and economic change.

Reformers, whose trust was placed in the leadership of twice-elected President Khatami, have had their hopes wane. Although promising both social and economic reforms, Khatami have been largely unable to exercise any real power. In many cases, the Guardian Council (the ruling clerical body that has the ultimate power of veto) has either reversed his decisions or diluted their potency. Regardless, many Iranian citizens no longer feel President Khatami will be capable of fostering democracy and desired social reforms as long as the clerical Islamic government performs watchdog legislation.

President Khatami is particularly susceptible to the current religious and political leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (successor to the revolutionist Ayatollah Khomeini). Iht.com reports that following a series of bombings in Saudi Arabia (believed to be the work of Iranian political militants), President Khatami purged extremists from the Intelligence Ministry only to have Ayatollah Khamenei subsequently create the ad hoc Foreign Intelligence Service, a group where many of those extremists were able to recycle themselves back into the government. Such consistent undermining of President Khatami has engendered the status-quo contempt for the Islamic regime by students and ordinary citizens.

Given the lack of genuine political power among the students, the vanguard movement is looking for international assistance to forward their cause, albeit in a limited scope. For example, students and leaders alike acknowledge the need for democracy in Iraq. With an Iraqi democratic neighbor protecting citizens' basic rights and freedoms, Iran would be under immense pressure to accommodate its' people by granting some of those same provisions. Additionally, students contend a push to open the Iranian national television network known as the IRIB and other media outlets would be instrumental. Young activists insist these various forms of media spread government propaganda that support its' hard-line Shiite outlook without scrutiny or counterpoint. Lastly, student protestors ask that when engaging in diplomacy with Iran, the middleclass should been kept firmly in mind. Often overlooked and undervalued, the Persian middleclass is a growing and already influential energy in Iranian society. With some external assistance, this group can have a colossal effect on Iranian domestic policy.

In an effort to accommodate some of these needs, a radio station known as "Radio Azadi", or "Radio Freedom", was created by the United States to give listeners an alternative to state-run media. Similar to Radio Free Europe, broadcasts from Prague are sent to Tehran where students can listen to American-controlled media that has frequently featured open debate, hourly news and scholarly commentary. Though recent programming selections have come under question, Radio Azadi (now known as "Radio Farda" or "Radio Tomorrow") nevertheless still commands the attention of Iranian youth.

It is unclear as to what the future holds for Iran and its' student rebellion. Experts widely disagree on possible outcomes for the movement. The more optimistic contend Iran has a strong possibility of experiencing a bloodless revolution where the current government implodes and is supplanted with a democratic replacement. Others fear the student rebellion could boil over and foment a violent clash between the ruling elite and those promoting democracy. Regardless, most experts agree the student protestors are a viable political group with bottomless determination whose requests for freedom are largely basic.

http://www.daneshjoo.org/generalnews/article/publish/article_2272.shtml

A CIVIL WAR OF IDEAS

By AMIR TAHERI
NY Post
September 11, 2003

FOR the past few weeks, Islamist circles in the Middle East, Europe and the United States have been abuzz with rumors regarding a videotape from Osama bin Laden (remember him?). A middleman from Birmingham in the English Midlands launched an advance sales campaign for the tape last March. He began by asking $250,000, but ended up cutting the price to $25,000, a sure sign that OBL's stocks are not as high as on the first anniversary of the 9/11 attacks against the United States.

Yesterday, indeed, a tape of bin Laden was aired by al Jazeera, but it well may have been an old tape or a fake one. The best information available shows that Osama bin Laden died on Dec. 5, 2001, in Afghanistan and was buried the same day in an unmarked grave.

OBL is the only one of the seven top leaders of al Qaeda not to be fully accounted for. The organization's No. 2, the Egyptian Ayman al-Zawahiri, is in Iran. Its No. 3, and military commander, Muhammad Atef, was killed in Afghanistan during the war that ended the Taliban rule.

Three other leaders, the Palestinian Abu Zubaydah, the Yemeni Ramzi bin Al-Shibha and the Kuwaiti Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, were picked up between March 2002 and March 2003. Yussuf al-Ayyeri, the terror network's theoretician, was killed in a gun battle in Riyadh, the Saudi capital, in June.

Last year this time, some sympathizers of al Qaeda were able to gather at a rented hall in central London to hear some of OBL's old tapes and compare notes on their doomed movement. This year, however, there will be no such gathering. Some of the al Qaeda stragglers are either in prison or have fled Britain. A walk up Edgware Road, London's "Arab street," reveals the end of almost two decades of al Qaeda-style terrorist presence in the British capital, once known as Londonistan.

The terrorists have suffered similar setbacks in other Western countries.

In military and police terms, the War on Terror has gone much better than anyone would have expected.

Of the dozens of bases the terrorists had in Afghanistan and Pakistan, only two or three may still be operational in the Mohand area, one of the seven mountain enclaves in Pakistan. The last place in the Muslim world where the terrorists could gather, as late as December 2002, is the dusty town of Rabat, a thieves bazaar located in the so-called "Devil's Triangle" where the borders of Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan meet.

The liberation of Iraq has shattered the structures of two dozen terror organizations, at least one of which was directly linked to al Qaeda.

Some money is still flowing into the coffers of the radical organizations that, in turn, finance the half dozen terror groups still capable of launching sporadic attacks.

But even there, what money now flows into terror is but a trickle, compared to the flood before 9/11.

In the meantime, predictions that several Muslim countries would fall into the hands of the terrorists have proved unfounded.

Pakistan, regarded as the "ripest for a fall," is emerging from two decades of uncertainty and gaining self-confidence.

Saudi Arabia, far from inaugurating a new regime headed by terrorists, is beginning to fight them in earnest, for the first time.

Algeria, another candidate for a "fall," is arguably more stable now than two years ago. Indonesia, which was presented as the next target of the terrorists, is consolidating its newly won democracy.

Last but not least, there is Iraq, where the most brutal regime Islam had seen in more than a century collapsed like a house of cards, largely because the Iraqi people welcomed their liberation.

More important, the past two years have witnessed an unprecedented debate in the Muslim world. One weekly magazine recently ran a series based on a central question: Who are we?

For the first time, mainstream media in the Muslim world allow difficult questions to be raised, including whether Islam should remain on the sidelines of the modern world and sulk, throw bombs at it or take part in its development and improvement.

In almost every Muslim country what amounts to a civil war of ideas is shaping up. Reformists and modernizers have realized that rather than dismissing Islam as a "feudal relic," they should seek to understand it in modern terms and redefine some of its practices to reflect the existential realities of their societies.

The alienation of the modernizing elite from the largely illiterate and poor base of most Muslim societies created a vacuum that a small stratum of fanatics was able to fill with a message of hatred and terror. Many Muslim regimes, meanwhile, exploited Islam as a way of isolating and silencing their reformist critics. Those regimes have begun to realize that the monster they trained to eat their foes could also eat them.

No one can deny that the party of terror in the Muslim world has failed to attract any significant level of popular support. The liberation of Afghanistan and Iraq was largely approved by the silent majority of Muslims.

The loudest protests came from within Western societies, including the United States.

This civil war of ideas within Islam represents the most difficult, and ultimately the deciding, phase in the war against terrorism. Unless this war is won by people who wish to lead Islam out of its ghetto and into the mainstream of contemporary life, no number of military and publicity victories against terror will produce the safer world that we all want.

BUT a similar civil war is raging in the West. On one side there is a neo-Imperialist movement, which urges the Western democracies to leave the Muslim world alone to stew in its own juice of poverty, despotism and violence. The idea is that Muslims will never accept democracy and the rule of law and that the best the West can do is to ignore them in the name of cultural "alterity" (otherness) and political correctness.

On the other side there is a neo-nationalist movement, which believes the only way to deal with terror is to teach Muslims a lesson they shall not forget. This neo-nationalist movement ignores the need for a broad alliance with Muslim reformists and democrats in a joint effort to curb and ultimately defeat terror. It forgets the fact that the principal victims of terrorism are Muslims themselves. (Saddam caused the deaths of over a million Iraqis, Iranians, Kuwaitis and other Muslims. The Taliban massacred tens of thousands of Afghans.)

Two years after 9/11 it is clear that the Muslim world has rejected the deadly message now associated with the name of Osama bin Laden, although he was but a small cog in a diabolical machine constructed over more than a century. Instead of understanding that vital fact and expanding people-to-people relations, some Western democracies have erected new barriers to keep out "the Muslim hordes."

Some Muslim governments, anxious to preserve their despotic hold on power, have seized the opportunity for distancing their societies from the West and keeping out dangerous ideas, such as democracy and human rights.

EVEN though a videotape of him was aired yesterday, Osama bin Laden has nothing new or interesting to say. Binladenism has no future in the Muslim world. But this does not mean that the Muslim world is ready to emerge from almost two centuries of confusion and crisis that led parts of it into the historic impasse of terrorism. In the war against terror, we are now witnessing only the end of the beginning.

E-mail: amirtaheri@benadorassociates.com

http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/5484.htm

Diplomats Concerned with Iran Laser Tests

September 11, 2003
Tri-Valley Herald
Ian Hoffman

As U.N. diplomats debate Iran's intent for 50,000 uranium-gas centrifuges, they also confront clues that Tehran could be exploring a more sophisticated path to nuclear-weapons materials that is more efficient and easier to conceal.

International inspectors report that Iran's nuclear-energy scientists have produced uranium metal and are testing powerful green lasers -- potential steps toward an exotic means of harvesting weapons fuel that so far has been the exclusive province of developed nuclear nations.

Unlike Iraq and its dozens of Calutrons, the old workhorses of electromagnetic separation invented by Berkeley physicist and Nobel laureate E.O. Lawrence, Iran is overwhelmingly banking on thousands of stan-dard European-style centrifuges capable of fueling nuclear reactors or producing dozens of nuclear weapons by the end of the decade.

Yet some U.S. and foreign intelligence analysts worry that Iran also is pursuing a more modern, compact source of bomb material.

That source is AVLIS -- atomic vapor laser isotopic separation -- devised in the 1970s at Lawrence's namesake lab in Livermore. France, the United States and Russia spent billions perfecting laser separation in the 1980s and '90s, yet scientists never saw its commercialization due to a glut in enriched uranium left over from the Cold War.

But an AVLIS factory in the Third World would offer an indigenous source of weapons-grade uranium while consuming so little real estate and electric power that it could be easily hidden from spy satellites that monitor weapons programs abroad.

"This is a top-notch, high-tech, sophisticated approach and it's really dangerous," said former weapons inspector Victor Mizin, a senior research associate at the Monterey Institute's Center for Nonproliferation Studies. "It's a very serious development."

Evidence that Iran is pursuing AVLIS program is hazy, however. Tehran denies any interest in laser enrichment or, for that matter, in nuclear weapons. Yet the Clinton administration had to press aggressively to persuade Russia to cancel contracts in 2000 to supply AVLIS to Iran.

"If it's shown that Iran really does have or is developing a substantial, working laser program, that would add a whole new dimension to the internal proliferation problem. But that's a big if," says Joseph Cirincione, head of the nonproliferation project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Weapons fuel expert David Albright, president of the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security, also is skeptical.

"I think it does show a very large commitment to the entire nuclear fuel cycle and things nuclear-related in general, but I don't think it shows they had a large commitment to laser enrichment for military or civilian uses," he said.

The clues are still tantalizing, he said.

Inspectors for the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency recently visited two sites identified by opponents of the Tehran's Islamist government as related to uranium enrichment.

One turned out to be an agricultural research facility. In the second, inside tall security fences, inspectors found scientists building and testing copper-vapor lasers. Iranian off-icials said the site was originally intended for laser fusion research and laser spectroscopy.

But experts say copper-vapor lasers, while offering high-powered visible light, are largely useless for laser fusion, which generally uses invisible light beams. And Iran's scientists have their pick of cheaper, easier-to-use lasers for spectroscopy.

In AVLIS, scientists vaporize metal uranium with an electron beam, then fire chemical dye lasers through the vapor to selectively excite atoms of uranium-235, scattered in a cloud of uranium-238. The U235 atoms take on a negative charge and accumulate at a positive electrode inside the separator chamber, later harvested as metal coins.

In early forms of AVLIS, scientists used the bright green light of copper-vapor lasers to pump the chemical dye lasers.

IAEA inspectors found that Iran also had produced hundreds of pounds of natural uranium metal. Iranian scientists said the metal was for shielding in its nuclear reactors, but inspectors found that it had an exceptionally high purity that was inconsistent with shielding.

"There is a reason to wonder about the laser because the rationale for making the metal at the purity they're making it does raise questions," Albright said. "Iran knew it wasn't going to need metal at this purity, and so why make metal at this scale?"

One possibility is for Iranian scientists to practice making weapons components. "The other answer is to feed a laser-enrichment program," Albright said.

By far, weapons experts are more worried about Iran's centrifuges.

Tehran plans to have 1,000 gas centrifuges operating in a pilot plant at Natanz by year's end.

Inside the same security fences, workers are finishing two sprawling, underground complexes that would house more than 50,000 centrifuges, piped together in "cascades."

Iran's leaders say these subterranean cascade halls, each enclosing almost eight acres, would supply fuel for nuclear reactors planned or under construction by Russian workers on Iran's coast. At full capacity, Iran's cascades could produce enough enriched uranium for at least 25 nuclear weapons a year sometime before 2010.

All of these are more reliable sources of reactor fuel or bomb ingredients than AVLIS. It looks like a backup plan in case the centrifuges don't work, Cirincione said. So far, the centrifuges seem to be working very well for them.

But suspicions about Iran's laser enrichment pursuits could lead the United States and allies to insist on Iran allowing more intrusive inspections.>

Contact Ian Hoffman at ihoffman@angnewspapers.com

http://www.trivalleyherald.com/Stories/0,1413,86%7E10669%7E1624695,00.html

Iran Vows to Fight Any Nuclear Deadline

September 11, 2003
The Associated Press
George Jahn

Iran warned Thursday that it will resist any deadline to prove its nuclear programs are peaceful, even as support for such a measure grew among leading members of the U.N. atomic agency.

Chief Iranian delegate Ali Akbar Salehi spoke as the board of governors' meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency adjourned for the second day to allow member nations to hold informal talks on how to get to the bottom of Iran's nuclear activities.

Iran, however said it would fight any attempt to impose a deadline, in an implicit warning that it might break off all ties with the agency.

"We will oppose that," Salehi told The Associated Press. "Nobody is in a position to impose a deadline on a sovereign country."

Backers said that by Thursday about 20 members of the 35-nation board had indicated they would vote in favor of a U.S-supported draft resolution essentially requiring Iran to disprove by October that it is running a covert nuclear weapons program.

Tehran warns such a demand could aggravate nuclear tensions. But the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency said Wednesday that the agency's board of governors generally favored the October deadline.

"I think there is broad agreement that the board would like to see a deadline," IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei said, adding he personally favored "an immediate disclosure of all nuclear activities" on the part of Iran.

Underlying the need for quick action, ElBaradei, in separate comments, said that unless Iran cooperated, he and his agency might soon be unable to verify whether Tehran was diverting nuclear material into a weapons program. Those fears, expressed at a closed session of the board meeting, were relayed by diplomats present.

In Sarajevo, Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi told reporters any resolution coming down hard on his country "could make the situation more complicated."

While not outlining consequences, the draft indirectly threatened U.N. Security Council involvement if the board rules at its next meeting in November that Iran ignored IAEA demands.

The United States says Iran has violated provisions of the treaty banning the spread of nuclear weapons. Chief U.S. delegate Kenneth Brill called Iran to task based on a report outlining discrepancies between its past statements on its nuclear program and IAEA findings.

The report, by ElBaradei, lists the discovery of weapons-grade enriched uranium and other evidence that critics say point to a weapons program.

Tehran insists its programs are for generating electricity and says its equipment was "contaminated" with enriched uranium by a previous owner.

The United States, which accuses Iran of working on a secret weapons program, had been pushing for a resolution finding Iran in noncompliance of a part of the treaty banning the spread of nuclear arms. That would have brought the matter before the Security Council, which in turn could have called for sanctions. But lack of support at the board meeting scuttled that plan.

The U.S.-backed draft resolution submitted by France, Germany and Britain to the closed meeting called on Iran to "provide accelerated cooperation" with agency efforts to clear up Tehran's nuclear question marks.

It also urged Iran to "ensure there are no further failures," in reporting obligations and called on it to "suspend all further uranium enrichment-related activities, including the further introduction of nuclear material," into a facility where IAEA inspectors found traces of weapons-grade enriched uranium.

Besides expressing concern about the weapons-grade uranium, the IAEA report to the board also questioned the purpose of tests and programs that experts say make little sense unless the country was pursuing nuclear weapons.

Opening the conference, ElBaradei pressed the Iranians for a complete list of all imported equipment and components they contend were contaminated as well as their countries of origin, the dates they were acquired and where they have been used or stored since.

The nuclear agency also needs to know more about Iran's uranium conversion experiments and its testing of gas centrifuges to enrich uranium, he said.

http://www.gadsdentimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20030911/API/309110643&cachetime=5

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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