Free Republic

Demonstrations in Esfahan and Najafabad are evidence that the opposition movement has spread beyond Tehran to include a broad cross-section of people in central Iran. Esfahan and Najafabad were the "spiritual capitals" of the late Montazeri, said Mashallah Shamsolvaezin, a Tehran analyst and journalist who strongly supports the opposition movement. The harsh crackdown against Montazeri's supporters has the potential to drive them deeper into the opposition camp. "What has happened was a religious reaction out of devotion and conviction" to Montazeri, he said. "While on the surface the unrest has no relation with the political agenda of the green [opposition]...

Heavy clashes have been reported outside an Isfahan mosque where a memorial ceremony was due to be held in honor of Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, a founding architect of the Iranian Revolution and spiritual father of Iran's opposition Green Movement. The clashes come two days after a funeral ceremony for the 87-year-old Montazeri, who died on December 19 in his home in Qom, turned into a huge antigovernment protest in the holy city located southwest of the capital. Eyewitnesses tell RFE/RL that as mourners and opposition supporters arrived for today's memorial service, they found security forces and plainclothes agents...

Isfahan: Riot police thugs run from protestors into safe distance. (Youtube video)Tehran: Police thugs beat unconcious (or dead) man in a court.

Note: The following blog entry is a quote: Blog Details Ahmadinejad: Iran's Entered Final Phase In Nuclear Fuel Production At an inauguration ceremony yesterday for a nuclear fuel production facility in Isfahan, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad expressed his pride at Iran's entering into the final phase in the nuclear fuel production cycle. He said that despite the threats from the West, "the Iranian train is moving ahead with increasing speed, on the right track." Iranian Atomic Energy Organization director Gholam Reza Aghazadeh said that the speed of the new centrifuges was five to six times greater than that of the...

“Iran’s Fuel Manufacturing Plant At Isfahan To Be Launched This Month” SNIPPET: “The fuel manufacturing plant (FMP) at Isfahan, in central Iran, is to be inaugurated in late March, according to Iranian Atomic Energy Organization deputy head Abdallah Solatsana. Solatsana said that the stages for producing nuclear fuel assemblies are being carried out according to schedule.”

Poland commemorates her refugees in Iran by Ryszard Antolak 24-Jun-2008 The Polish Postal Service has commemorated the role Isfahan played during World War 2 in caring for Polish orphans. The new stamp, "Isfahan - the City of Polish Children", went on sale earlier this month. It depicts a pupil at School No. 15 near Isfahan (Stanislaw Stojakowski), standing in front of a Persian carpet woven at the city's Carpet School in 1944. In 1942, Isfahan housed thousands of Polish orphans released from the Soviet work camps of Siberia and Kazakhstan. At its peak, twenty one areas of the city were...

TEHRAN, Iran: President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has agreed to allow an American scholar to be buried in the historic Iranian city of Isfahan when he dies, the state broadcasting company said Thursday. Richard Nelson Frye, an 87-year-old professor emeritus of Iranian and Central Asian studies at Harvard University, made his request in a letter addressed directly to Ahmadinejad, the broadcasting company reported on its Web site. "I ask the Iranian president to allow my burial in the beautiful city of Isfahan to prove the unbreakable link between the honorable Iranian and American nations," Frye was quoted as saying in his letter....

Reports from Inside Iran Armed revolt by Bakhtiari, Lor and Ghashghai tribes against the Islamic Regime has reportedly flared up. Yesterday, freedom seeking tribal fighters in the Isfahan and surrounding provinces and region began fighting local Islamic Regime forces and freeing their villages and townships from the Islamic Regime's control. The Semirom area, which is on the Ghashghai tribal migrations route, apparently saw heavy fighting and more clashes occurred in between Isfahan Province and Yassooj further south, which is the center of the Boyer-Ahmadi tribal territory. Local fighters from the various tribes, confronted Islamic Regime paramilitary forces – the IRGC...

GOTTA SEE THIS - War for Enduring Freedom 3/18/06 - Samarra, Op. Swarmer, Natanz, Bushehr, Isfahan, Tehran BREAKING: Samarra -Operation Swarmer : U.S. and US-liberated-Iraqi soldiers meet minor resistance, capture weapons caches Natanz - facility perimeter and inside the uranium enrichment facility Bushehr - nuclear power plant weapon research site - Russian technicians Isfahan - uranium conversion facility (UCF) Tehran - female police graduation ceremony and with terrorist founder Khomeini QFN ==== YE OLDE QUAGMIRE-FREE NEWS Exclusive to FReerepublic PICTURES YOU WILL NEVER SEE IN THE MAIN STREAM MEDIA TODAY: IRAQ and IRAN: THE GOOD, THE BAD, and the PUG-UGLIES...

MOSCOW, Feb. 13 (UPI) -- Despite the ongoing controversy about Iran's nuclear program, Russia intends to sell Tehran up to 30 Tor M-1 surface-to-air missiles in a deal estimated to be worth up to $700 million. Tor M-1 missiles are short-range, surface-to-air missiles. The system is able to identify up to 48 targets and fire at two targets simultaneously at a height of up to 20,000 feet. They are already used by several other armed forces, including China. Analysts believe that the Tor M-1s will be deployed at Iran's Isfahan nuclear research center and around the Bushehr reactor that Russia...

Vienna, Feb 12 (AP): Inspectors from the UN nuclear watchdog agency have stripped most surveillance cameras and agency seals from Iranian nuclear sites and equipment as demanded by Tehran in response to its referral to the UN Security Council, diplomats said. The diplomats, who demanded anonymity in exchange for revealing the confidential developments, said yesterday that the move was part of retaliatory measures announced by Iran that have left the International Atomic Energy Agency with only the most basic means to monitor Iran's nuke activities. It came as Iran's president suggested his country might even pull out of the Nuclear...

Tehran, 3 Feb. (AKI) - Judicial authorities in the central Iranian city of Isfahan have announced that women state employees who fail to wear the Islamic hijab or head scarf, face lashing as punishment. Isfahan's director general for Judicial Authority, Mohammad Ansari, apparently wants to apply to the letter an article in Iran's penal code stipulating 74 lashes for women who do not dress according to Islamic law including wearing the chador, the black veil that covers women from head to toe. Since Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's election as Iranian president in June last year, pressure has increased on people to...

Iran on Sunday rejected what it termed conditional negotiations with Europe over Tehran's nuclear program and said it wanted instead to have talks with the UN nuclear watchdog agency. FM spokesman 'Asefi' said any future nuclear negotiations would not include the USA, which contends Iran wants to build atomic weapons. Iran insists its nuclear program is solely to produce electricity. "Since EU has demanded conditional negotiations, Iran will not accept that and negotiations won't be held," Asefi told reporters. "We are interested in negotiations and working with the IAEA, as our partner." Earlier this week Britain's Foreign Office said there...

A high ranking Kremlin official emphasized Wednesday, "Iran's right to take advantage of nuclear power for peaceful purposes must be internationally recognized," the official Iranian news agency reported today. Speaking to his country's official Itar-Tass news agency, the Russian official who spoke on condition of anonymity added, "Russia believes it is appropriate for the international community to recognize Iran's right to continue its nuclear programs, since that would solve the current crisis and save unnecessary problems." Meantime, IRNA reported that: senior Iranian officials warned the European Union Wednesday to stop pressuring the Islamic republic to limit its nuclear activities and...

THE foreign secretary Jack Straw sought to distance Britain yesterday from comments by President George W Bush that he would not rule out a military strike against Iran. It came as diplomats gave warning that British attempts to solve the crisis prompted by Tehran’s resumption of its nuclear programme last week were doomed to failure. Bush raised the temperature by giving an interview to Israeli television from his ranch in Crawford, Texas. Asked if he would consider force, he replied: “All options are on the table.” He added: “The use of force is the last option for any president and...

Never underestimate a revolutionary regime. In particular, never underestimate the durability of the revolutionaries' fervour to fight for their cause. The French revolution began in 1789, but it was only after two decades of war that the fight was finally knocked out of the revolution's heirs, and repeatedly - in 1830, 1848 and 1870 - they threatened to make a comeback. The Russian revolution began in 1917, but the Soviet Union posed a mortal threat until the mid-1980s. As for the Chinese revolution of 1949, it was only last month that the regime in Beijing was threatening to go nuclear...

ISFAHAN, Iran - Iran removed the final seals from equipment at a uranium conversion plant as U.N. inspectors watched Wednesday, paving the way for Tehran to fully open the facility despite European and U.S. calls for it to maintain the suspension of its nuclear program. The move came as Europe and the United States were struggling to find leverage to stop Iran from forging ahead with its nuclear program, which Washington says secretly aims to develop nuclear weapons. Iran says its program is peaceful, intended only to produce electricity. Board members of the U.N. nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy...

MOSCOW, August 2 (RIA Novosti) - Russia has always acknowledged Iran's right to develop a nuclear fuel cycle (NFC), although it urged countries without an NFC to avoid developing nuclear programs, a source at the Russian Federal Agency for Nuclear Power, Rosatom, said Tuesday. He said the resumption of work on NFC development would not affect scheduled deliveries of nuclear fuel from Russia to Iran. Russia is finishing the construction of the first power-generating unit with a 1,000 MW capacity at the Bushehr nuclear power plant (NPP) on the Iranian coast of the Persian Gulf. The plant will become operational...

Iran Agrees to Delay Reopening Nuclear Plant Story created 8/1/2005 - 10:27 AM ISFAHAN, Iran (AP) -- Supreme National Security Council official says Iran has agreed to a two-day delay in reopening its nuclear processing plant, at U.N. request. The U.N.'s nuclear watchdog agency urged Iran not to jeopardize its negotiations with the European Union after Iran informed the International Atomic Energy Agency that it planned to resume reprocessing uranium today. Agency chief Mohammed ElBaradei urged Iran "to continue the negotiation process" with European negotiators and "not to take any action that might prejudice the process at this critical stage."...

Iran to break seal at Isfahan UCF in presence of IAEA inspectors: source TEHRAN, July 31 (MNA) -- In a formal letter to International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Mohamed ElBaradei, Iran has announced that it is determined to break the seal at the Isfahan Uranium Conversion Facility, a high-ranking Iranian nuclear official told the Mehr News Agency. This is Iran’s second letter to the IAEA in the past week informing the agency that the Islamic Republic intends to restart nuclear activities at the Isfahan UCF that it had suspended voluntarily and as a confidence-building measure. Following a long...