Free Republic

For months Iranian activists and even moderate clerics have been concerned about the radical tendencies of Iran's new president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. In the past few weeks - after he said that the Holocaust was a myth, called for Israel to be wiped off the map and banned Western music from state-run radio and television, the concern spread around the world. But there is another development in Iran - this one positive and with great potential - that the world should not miss: civic defiance against Ahmadinejad's authoritarianism is increasing.

Incredible though it may sound there are signs that Tehran may be preparing for a military confrontation with the United States, and has convinced itself that it could win. The first sign came last June with the election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as president of the Islamic Republic, an event that completed the conquest of all levers of power by the most radical elements of the establishment. Since thenIran Readying for Conflict With US the revolutionary factions have conducted a little publicized purge of the military, the security, the civil service, and state-owned corporations and media. The most significant purges have...

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's denial of the Holocaust is a matter for academic discussion and the West should be more tolerant of his views, Iran's foreign ministry spokesman said on Sunday. Ahmadinejad last week called the Holocaust a myth and suggested Israel be moved to Germany or Alaska, remarks that sparked international uproar and threaten diplomatic talks with Europe over Iran's nuclear programme. Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi defended the president's remarks, which also drew a rebuke from the U.N. Security Council. "What the president said is an academic issue. The West's reaction shows their continued...

Maryam swept expertly down the mountainside before swivelling to a halt, sending a spray of snow over her male companion who was waiting for her by the chair lift at the base of the slope. The 21-year-old lifted her Raybans from her eyes, ran her fingers through her bleached blonde tresses and leant towards him for a congratulatory kiss. Such coquettish behaviour, although officially banned, has become commonplace on the ski-slopes of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The country's middle classes fear that under the hardline fundamentalist presidency of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who was elected in June, their freedoms will soon...

WASHINGTON -- Lest you get carried away with today's good news from Iraq, consider what's happening next door in Iran. The wild pronouncements of the new Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, have gotten sporadic press ever since he called for Israel to be wiped off the map. He subsequently amended himself to say that Israel should simply be extirpated from the Middle East map and moved to some German or Austrian province. Perhaps near the site of an old extermination camp? Except that there were no such camps, indeed no Holocaust at all, says Ahmadinejad. Nothing but ``myth,'' a ``legend'' that...

Iran, West head for confrontation Wed Dec 14 2005 09:34:38 ET By repeatedly calling for Israel's destruction and slamming the door on a nuclear compromise, Iran's hardline president has put Tehran on a collision course with the West, diplomats and analysts warned, AFP reports. In his latest anti-Israeli assault, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad dismissed the Holocaust as a "myth" and said the Jewish state should be moved as far away as Alaska -- views that one European envoy posted in Tehran described as "way beyond political incorrectness". "At first, we were tempted to put it down to inexperience or a simple gaffe,"...

LONDON, December 14 (IranMania) - Iran has become a problem for Middle East stability on several fronts that the international community will have to address, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said, according to AFP. Taking questions after a speech on Iraq to the Heritage Foundation, Rice again took Tehran to task on a range of issues, from its suspected nuclear arms program to its anti-democratic clerical regime. "I do think that it has to be said, it has to be spoken, that Iran is a problem for a stable and democratizing Middle East," she said. "And the international community...

To think clearly about how best to remove the looming threat of a nuclear-armed Iran, just keep in mind the National Rifle Association’s much maligned – but perfectly sensible – old slogan: Guns don’t kill people. People kill people. It’s the same with nuclear weapons. The threat isn’t from the warhead, but from the individual who controls it. For example, right now several countries whose governments aren’t always friendly to the US – China, Russia, France – each have enough nuclear warheads, and the means to deliver them, to obliterate our country. But we don’t lose one minute’s sleep over...

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration is ruling out a guarantee not to attack Iran to induce it to halt development of nuclear weapons. ADVERTISEMENT Anderson Cooper Iran must first act like a responsible member of the international community and stop violating its agreements, State Department spokesman Adam Ereli said Monday. "That would represent a sea change in its behavior," Ereli said. "Then maybe other kinds of notions might be more palatable." "But right now, I don't think people should be asking the United States, 'Why don't you do this or why don't you do that?'" the U.S. official said. Ereli's...

No nuclear power will attack another one for fear of committing national suicide. That is the familiar logic of Mutually Assured Destruction (M-A-D), which kept the US safe but pretty nervous over fifty years of the Cold War. Stalin and Mao rattled some fearsome sabers, and Castro tried to sneak nuclear missiles into Cuba. But as saner voices took over in the Communist powers, the Cold War settled down to a long, drawn-out struggle. Nuclear deterrence created stability. Mohammed El-Baradei, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, has just been quoted as saying that Tehran is only a few...

MORE NEWS FROM IRAN Speaking of Islamic dictatorships, the president of Iran is once again speaking his mind. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said yesterday that he doubted the Holocaust took place and that Israel should be moved to Europe. That's at least a step up from wanting to destroy it. Kofi Annan condemned the statements, which may be a first. This in addition to the cancellation of his trip to Tehran after Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said he wanted to wipe Israel off the map. Now given Iran's desire to get rid of Israel, and that regime's previous call for the destruction of the...

Akbar Ganji, Iran's most outstanding dissident, is in renewed danger. LAST March, during the Persian New Year holiday, Akbar Ganji, Iran's best-known political prisoner, was cracking jokes into his mobile phone at the edge of the Iranian desert. Chubby from festive dishes of polov (rice, often with lamb) and delighted to be surrounded by his family, he showered this correspondent's two-year-old son with kisses before speeding off to keep an appointment with a dissident ayatollah and return to Tehran's Evin prison by the end of his holiday probation. Nine months on, he is a sick man, severely weakened by the...

CAIRO, Egypt -- In the aftermath of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's ascendancy to the presidency of Iran, the country's opposition is beginning to show signs of unifying as the clerical regime wages a war against internal dissent. Yesterday, the regime closed all schools in Tehran, citing poor air quality, after word leaked of the first major demonstrations since the summer. Nonetheless, a rally at Tehran University attracted 300 demonstrators amid a heavy police presence on campus. Of note is that before the rally against the new president, a coalition of Kurdish students also signed on to the call. In Brussels on Monday,...

A conversation with Amir Abbas Fakhravar. Iranian Amir Abbas Fakhravar is a hunted man. A former medical student and journalist for the now-banned reform newspapers Moshareka and Khordad, Fakhravar came to prominence with the publication of his book This Place Is Not a Ditch, in which he criticized Iran’s rulers and called on the Iranian people to reject the mullahs’ regime. For doing so, he was sentenced in 2002 to eight years in prison. His status as a political prisoner and his mistreatment while incarcerated — he was reportedly denied medical care, and suffered frequent physical attacks — brought international...

It is not politically-correct to say it, but it is nonetheless true: “Islam cannot peacefully co-exist with other faiths from a position of strength or equality.” It was, is, and always will be a conquering, xenophobic philosophy (Browne, 2005; Bostom, 2005; Trifkovic, 2002). Mohammed was a conqueror who killed and enslaved thousands, who forced people at sword-point to convert, who taught Muslims have a divine right to rule over all, and Muslims have a duty to spread Islam by word or by conquest. Not once in its 1400-year history do we find it accepting other faiths as equals (Koran 5:51,57;...

The mullahs of Iran, quite properly included in the Axis of Evil, are vastly unpopular in their brutal regime of Iran. America has never recognized the legitimacy of that realm, which in violation of international law occupied our embassy and held our diplomatic staff as hostages in 1980. Few, if anyone, in the democracies doubts the incredible danger which will be posed to world peace if Iran obtains atomic or thermonuclear weapons. Much of our work to democratize Afghanistan and Iraq will be in vain. The delicate balancing act the India and Pakistan are pursuing as two relatively new members...

TEHRAN For years, Massoud Dehnamaki was known widely as the feared enforcer of conservative rules that restricted freedom for women and society. In recent years, however, he has emerged as Iran's Michael Moore, having directed a documentary on the taboo issue of prostitution and another forthcoming film on soccer as a metaphor of political struggle. Reformists and conservatives alike harshly criticized Mr. Dehnamaki for making the first movie, "Poverty and Prostitution." Conservatives were furious that one of their own had not only highlighted an un-Islamic social pathology but seemed to sympathize with the prostitutes. Reformists believed he deliberately exaggerated the...

Iran’s hard-line president called for the Bush administration to be tried on war crimes charges related to Iraq and denounced the West for its stance on Iran’s controversial nuclear programme, state-run television reported today. “You, who have used nuclear weapons against innocent people, who have used uranium ordnance in Iraq should be tried as war criminals in courts,” Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said in an apparent reference to the US. Ahmadinejad didn’t elaborate, but he was apparently referring to the US military’s use of artillery shells packed with depleted uranium, which is far less radioactive than natural uranium and is left over...

Iranian investigative journalist Akbar Ganji has been awarded the 2006 Golden Pen of Freedom. That's the annual press freedom prize of the Paris-based World Association of Newspapers, which represents 18,000 newspapers around the world. Ganji has been jailed for the past five years in Iran because of his critical articles and investigations into the murders of political dissidents and intellectuals. The World Association of Newspapers says Akbar Ganji's fight for freedom of expression in Iran is being "watched around the globe." And it calls Ganji's resistance to repression and his refusal to be silenced "an inspiration to journalists everywhere." Larry...

FOR years, Massoud Dehnamaki was known widely as the feared enforcer of conservative rules that restricted freedom for women and society. In recent years, however, he has emerged as Iran's Michael Moore, having directed a documentary on the taboo issue of prostitution and another forthcoming film on soccer as a metaphor of political struggle. Reformists and conservatives alike harshly criticized Mr. Dehnamaki for making the first movie, "Poverty and Prostitution." Conservatives were furious that one of their own had not only highlighted an un-Islamic social pathology but seemed to sympathize with the prostitutes. Reformists believed he deliberately exaggerated the problem...