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U.S. troops are set to completely withdraw from Iraq on the 31st of December. That is also the date for another more ominous deadline: al-Maliki's government has ordered what looks to be a bloody attack on innocent political refugees on that very same day, despite strong condemnations from human rights groups, parliamentarians, and journalists from around the world. Maliki's order to empty Camp Ashraf, which will no doubt lead to a massacre, came after his meeting with the Iranian leader Khamenei. Dispersion of the camp residents no doubt will resemble what happened to the Jewish community during the Second World...

A tragedy is presently unfolding in Iraq that makes a mockery of the boast by US defence secretary Leon Panetta that American forces are leaving it a “free, independent and sovereign country”. And in two weeks’ time it seems set to come to a bloody climax. For some years this column has been drawing attention to the horrible threat that hangs over Camp Ashraf, the once neatly-ordered town on the Iranian border which has, since 2001, been home to 3,400 Iranian exiles, members of the People’s Mujahideen of Iran (PMOI), the leading group opposed to the tyranny of the mullahs...

Reza Pahlavi Uses Stamford Visit to Push Democracy For Iran September 10, 2003 The Advocate Mark Ginocchio STAMFORD -- For a crown prince, there was something familiar and comfortable about Stamford for Reza Pahlavi. "While driving on (Interstate) 95, I started thinking about how my mother used to live in Greenwich, and I, myself lived in Fairfield in 1984 before I relocated to Washington (D.C.)," he said. Pahlavi, son of the late Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Shah, and heir to the ousted Peacock Throne, has been fighting against Iran's ayatollahs since his own exile in 1979. Last night, at...

In Washington and Los Angeles, Iranian exiles are stirring the pot by satellite US News and World Report Nation & World 7/14/03 By Bay Fang Off a street of strip malls in Reseda, Calif., tucked behind an Arby's, a burly Iranian-American talk-show host named Shahram Homayoun sits at a desk, before a camera, and tries to foment revolution. But instead of guests joining him on the peach-wallpapered set that resembles a suburban living room, Homayoun has only a phone and fax machine, and he works like a switchboard operator. As the camera rolls and the phone lights up, he punches...

Iranian Exiles Sow Change Via Satellite Islamic Government's Foes Tap TV, Web and Phones to Encourage Protests (Excerpted article) By Michael Dobbs Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, June 26, 2003; Page A01 LOS ANGELES -- "Good morning, Iran," says Zia Atabay, a former Iranian pop star who fled Iran after the 1979 Islamic revolution. "And good evening, America." It is 9 a.m. in Tehran, 9 p.m. in Los Angeles. The previous evening, Iranian demonstrators roamed the streets of Tehran, shouting, "Down with the mullahs." From a makeshift television studio halfway around the world, Atabay is urging people to join the...

Mon October 13, 2003 10:25 AM ET By Louis Charbonneau VIENNA (Reuters) - An Iranian opposition group that has provided accurate information about undeclared nuclear facilities in Iran in the past said Monday that Tehran has been hiding another nuclear facility from U.N. inspectors. "We have information about another secret nuclear facility in Iran," an official from the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), an exiled opposition group, told Reuters. The official gave no details about the site, but said the NCRI would provide full details Tuesday. In an emailed statement, the NCRI also said it would provide information...

The London-based Arabic-language daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat reported that Hussein Khomeini, the grandson of the founder of Iran's Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ruholla Khomeini, had left his place of residence in Iran's holy Shi'ite city of Qom to relocate to Iraq's holy Shi'ite city of Najaf, which is traditionally the seat of the highest Shi'ite religious authority, as a sign of protest against Iran's regime. [1]Hussein Khomeini, 46, called the Iranian regime "the world's worst dictatorship," and stated that the regime's heads, Supreme Leader 'Ali Khamenei and former president and current Expediency Council head Hashemi Rafsanjani"and everyone who has taken over the...

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- The name is the same, but the words from the younger Ayatollah Khomeini's mouth could hardly be more jolting for those who remember his grandfather's explosive revolution in Iran with the chants of "Death to America!" "America" says Ayatollah Seyed Hussein Khomeini, "is the symbol of freedom." Seated in the sprawling living room of his temporary Baghdad home, where he lives under armed guard, Khomeini says, "The best example of freedom in our life now is America, especially its Constitution." Khomeini, 45, the oldest grandson of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, slipped out of Iran in early July and,...

<p>A leading Iranian exile opposition group yesterday charged that Tehran is forging ahead with nuclear-weapons development, despite warnings from the United States and the U.N. nuclear agency to stay within international nonproliferation boundaries.</p> <p>"Uninterrupted, Iran's clerics would be able to get their hands on a nuclear bomb by the year 2005," warned the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI).</p>

Report: Iran Exiles Planned Killings PARIS (AP)--An Iranian opposition group under scrutiny in France planned to assassinate former members suspected of betraying the movement, according to a report by France's counterintelligence agency. The report by the agency known as the DST also said the group, the Mujahedeen Khalq, recently discussed getting its supporters to commit suicide to draw attention to their cause. A London-based spokesman for the group said it rejects ``every single allegation'' in the DST report. Several Mujahedeen Khalq supporters throughout Europe lit themselves on fire after French agents raided the group last week. Two women--one in London...

<p>It is 1942, France has been overrun by the Germans who have installed a puppet regime in Vichy. Out of a clear sky, comes a thunderclap report: Great Britain has made a deal with Vichy. Since the fall of France in June 1940, Charles de Gaulle has been living legally in Britain as he organized the democratic resistance to Fascism. Suddenly it is announced that the British have agreed to extradite de Gaulle to Nazi-occupied France and to certain death.</p>

Five Iranian opposition hunger strikers hospitalized in France Mon Jun 23, 3:41 AM ET Add Mideast - AFP to My Yahoo! AUVERS-SUR-OISE, France (AFP) - Five hunger strikers close to the Iranian opposition People's Mujahedeen have been hospitalized in Cergy-Pontoise near their base in this town northwest of Paris, police said. Forty-eight people started a hunger strike on Thursday after a crackdown by French police on the People's Mujahedeen with some of them, including the five hospitalized, also refusing water. Three people were evacuated after feeling ill on Sunday and two women were taken out on Sunday evening, AFP reporters...

Iranian exiles in the United States have played an important role in supporting the recent protests in Tehran - but their role is coming under increasing scrutiny. Arrests have not stopped the rallies in Iran A nondescript industrial estate in the San Fernando Valley on the outskirts of Los Angeles may be an unlikely place to start another Iranian revolution. But Woodland Hills, California, is the headquarters of the satellite television station National Iranian TV (NITV) whose programmes are beamed into Tehran and other parts of Iran to illegal satellite dishes in private homes. It is one of half a...

PARIS - Paris police rounded up nearly 100 members of an Iranian exile group Thursday to stop them from setting fire to themselves in protest of a French crackdown on their organization. Three people from the group, the Mujahedeen Khalq, doused themselves with flammable liquid and set themselves on fire in Europe on Thursday — two in Rome and one in Bern, Switzerland. That raised the group's number of self-immolations to seven, even as its leaders appealed for a halt to the practice. The Mujahedeen Khalq has been protesting in the streets of Paris and other European cities since French...

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 years," Mr Pahlavi tells the Financial Times over tea. "This regime feels cornered. People are rejecting this regime in its totality, they want to find a secular alternative." He compares the situation now with 1978, a few months before the...

Donald Rumsfeld has said he does not do diplomacy. But some of his fellow neo-conservatives in the Pentagon, emboldened by victory in Iraq, are attempting to construct an improbable alignment of interests to effect regime change in neighbouring Iran. The defence department is trying to muster support from exiled Iranian fighters of the People's Mujahideen Organisation (MKO) and from Reza Pahlavi, son of the last Shah of Iran who ruthlessly suppressed the MKO before his own downfall. The Pentagon's decision to negotiate a ceasefire with MKO members in Iraq - who were previously designated by the US as terrorists -...