Free Republic

TEHRAN, June 13 (AFP) - Anti-regime protestors took to the streets of Tehran for a third night late Thursday, drawing strong support from the United States and new warnings to the Islamic regime over its policies toward Iraq and its alleged nuclear weapons programme. Demonstrators directed their venom at supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has accused Washington of fomenting the unrest, and called again for him to step down. A hundred students managed to break out of their university campus after midnight and take to the street after smashing down a door. They chanted slogans hostile to Iran's hardline...

TEHRAN, June 12 (IPS) - This week's student protests, the largest in months, reflects the restiveness that many young people feel about their future under the country's clerical leaders, many Iranians say. • Eurasianet • Radio Netherlands • Reporters Without Borders • OneWorld on Iran Supported by Cable & Wireless State-run media say the protests that began on the night of Jun. 10 with some 200 students from the Tehran University--and are still continuing--were fueled by dissatisfaction about school issues. But these, official media say, were misused by the "stooges" of foreign forces, leading to the eruption of street protests...

PARIS, June 11 (IPS) Iranian authorities confirmed Wednesday that students and ordinary people had clashed with security forces and protested against the Islamic Republic system. Thousands of students protested late Tuesday evening at government plans for privatising some of the country’s universities, but when they came out of their dormitories, they were joined immediately by ordinary people and slogans and demonstration’s chants became political, mostly against Ayatollah Ali Khameneh'i, the leader of the regime. Demonstrators did not even spare the lamed President Mohammad Khatami, calling on him to resign. "Khatami, Khatami, resign, resign", one slogan said. "Death to Khameneh'i"; "Death...

TEHRAN - Iranians demanding reform staged their biggest protest in months Wednesday, chanting slogans against powerful Muslim clerics they accuse of limiting freedoms and the reformist government for failing to rein them in. Political prisoners must be freed," the crowd shouted in a square near Tehran University, the scene nearly four years ago of the biggest pro-reform unrest since the 1979 Islamic revolution. Several motorcycles were torched and windows of some shops and a state bank were smashed as protesters dispersed. Uniformed and plainclothes police with batons broke up the protest without major clashes. A handful of people were arrested....

But one man who firmly believes his historic destiny is fast approaching is Reza Pahlavi, son of the last Shah, who fled Iran in 1979 on the eve of the Islamic revolution and then died of cancer wandering in exile. The heir to the Peacock Throne is 42 and has not seen his homeland for a quarter of a century. But viewed from Virginia, where he lives on his dwindling inheritance, Mr Pahlavi is convinced the ayatollahs who deposed his father are on their own way out. "It could happen in the next few months, or in one or two...

ANKARA, Turkey - The son of the late shah of Iran has said he believes there will be protests, strikes and a non-violent uprising against the Iranian regime in July, a Turkish newspaper reported Wednesday. Reza Pahlavi, in an exclusive interview with the daily Vatan, hinted that stopping production in Iran's oil industry would be key to changing the regime dominated by religious leaders into a secular democracy. Pahlavi proposes that Iranians choose a system of governance through a referendum. "Wait for important developments in Iran in July," Pahlavi told Vatan in an interview in Washington on Monday. "There will...

Analysis THE battle for Iraq is drawing to a close, but the war against terrorism has only just begun. As President George W. Bush has said since the first days after the September 11 attacks in the US, this will be a long war, involving many terrorist organisations and many countries that support them. Saddam Hussein's Iraq was never the most threatening of those countries. That dubious honour belongs to Iran, the creator of modern Islamic terrorism in the form of Hezbollah, arguably the world's most lethal terrorist organisation. And then there is Syria, which has worked hand-in-glove with Iran...

TEHRAN, April 12 (AFP) - A second key reform bill adopted by Iranian MPs in a bid to remove hardline barriers to President Mohammad Khatami's legislative agenda is set to be vetoed by a conservative watchdog body, a top official was quoted as saying SaturdayIran's reformist-controlled parliament last week approved the bill that would allow Khatami to challenge the judiciary and issue "warnings" to government institutions, including the judiciary, over the abuse of their powers. The judiciary, a bastion of Iran's religious right, has been a major stumbling block to Khatami's brand of "Islamic perestroika" and has been accused of...

America has other worries in the region. First, Iran. A little over a week into the war, the Shia theocracy of neighbouring Iran called tens of thousands of people on to the streets to deplore it. That day, March 28th, happened to be the one on which Donald Rumsfeld, America's defence secretary, warned Iran's proxy in northern Iraq, an Iraqi Shia militia called the Army of Badr, not to take any part in the battle or else it would be considered hostile. Are Iran and America on a collision course? It suits hard-line Iranians, puffing on the dying embers of...

For many years, Western democracies have been pessimistic about the possibility of Iran becoming a secular democracy. Thus, Western policy toward Iran has long been characterized by a series of hesitant, inconsistent, and ad hoc decisions aimed at countering Iranian-sponsored terrorism, coupled with a relative lack of concern about the tyrannical nature of the Iranian regime. This unfounded pessimism is predicated on a profound misreading of the Islamic Republic as a traditional religious government rather than a revolutionary regime. Khomeini's Revolutionary Ideology The Islamic regime owes its character to two potent and eminently modern myths: the myth of "the people"...

<p>TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -- A prominent pro-reform journalist who has described the hard-line establishment as dictatorial was detained at home Tuesday, according to his son.</p> <p>Mohsen Sazegara was arrested by plainclothes security officers who gave no reason for their actions, Vahid Sazegara told The Associated Press.</p>

TEHRAN 18 Feb. (IPS) The arrest of Mr. Mohsen Sazegara, an outspoken dissident and critic of the present Iranian regime and it's leader, Ayatollah Ali Khameneh'i is a slap the Iranian Judiciary placed of the face of the United Nations and all other organisations, like the European Union, engaged in dialogue with the Islamic Republic. The arrest, on Tuesday, by unidentified security agents, follows the last letter he wrote, entitled "First Step, Last Word" in which he repeated his acerb criticism of the theocratic regime, its leaders from both left and right, and proposed a referendum for defining the nation's...

Congressman Tom Allen on US-Iran Relations * According to a report on the CBN television network, more than the people of any other country in the Middle East, Iranians favor normal relations with the US. It said the conservative clerics are concerned that the US may be planning to attack Iran after Iraq. Congressman Tom Allen (D-Maine) tells Radio Farda that he does not believe that Iran would be next to be attacked by the US. He says members of the administration who believe we have to go after Iraq does not have a similar feeling about Iran. They are...

Conservative forces in the Middle East and South Asia have cracked down on shops marketing Valentine's Day. In the Indian capital, Delhi, several people were reported injured when stores selling romantic cards and gifts were attacked by right-wing militants. Police in Iran, meanwhile, are reported to have closed several shops in Tehran, while religious groups in Pakistan have held protests against the 14 February celebration. Religious hardliners consider such Western occasions as decadent and an insult to Hinduism and Islam. Violent protest In Delhi, about a dozen members of the Hindu Shiv Sena Party attacked two shops selling Valentine items,...