Free Republic

Forget, for the moment, Saddam's weapons of mass destruction — or lack thereof. Consider instead the other WMD conundrum: Iran. Events in Pakistan, where two nuclear scientists were arrested last week, suggest the whole issue is about to blow. (Figuratively, that is.) Last month, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the United Nations nuclear watchdog, declared, implausibly, that there was no evidence of Iran's trying to build an atomic bomb. Washington was gob-smacked. As with the proverbial duck, Iran's efforts looked like a nuclear-weapons program and sounded like a nuclear-weapons program. The trouble was the lack of proof sufficient to...

Two scientists at Pakistan's top nuclear laboratory have been taken into custody for questioning, sources said Thursday. The nuclear scientists at the Khan Research Laboratories were being interrogated after complaints were made against them, said a government official and two Pakistanis affiliated with the country's nuclear programs. All three spoke on condition of anonymity. Confirming reports in three Pakistani newspapers Thursday, the sources identified the two detained men as Yasin Chohan and Mohammad Farooq, the former director general at the facility. Farooq also is a former aide to the founder of Pakistan's nuclear weapons program, Abdul Qadeer Khan, who had...

The election of Mohammad Khatami as president of Iran in May 1997 launched what many of his supporters hoped would be the most ambitious attempt in the Islamic world to bridge the divide between the public and private spheres. In the years since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, the conservative clerical establishment had systematically eliminated almost all traces of the democratic pluralist currents that had helped feed the original rebellion against the U.S.-backed shah. What is more, they fortified Iran's traditional political despotism with an equally despotic reading of the Shiite Muslim faith, forcing dissent, debate, and differences of opinion to...

This year saw two major nuclear weapons crises. One, in Iran, found a temporary solution following a showdown between Tehran and the UN's nuclear inspections agency. The other, in North Korea, continues to simmer with no solution in sight. Prague, 10 December 2003 (RFE/RL) -- In 2003, the nuclear crises in Iran and North Korea independently tested the world's ability to stop the spread of nuclear weapons. The Iranian nuclear crisis was most in the news -- thanks largely to a year-long showdown between Tehran and the UN's nuclear inspections agency. The dispute saw the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)...

How to fight extremism? This is a question that a number of Muslim theologians will be debating in Makkah, later this month. The debate is long overdue. For, in its various modern shapes, extremism has been responsible for many tragedies in the Muslim world and beyond over the past decades. In the 1980s over a million people died in the Iran-Iraq war, which was provoked by the clash of two extremes. Since 1992 an estimated 120,000 Algerians have died as a result of a war unleashed by extremist groups. The clash of extremist groups in Afghanistan claimed over 100,000 lives...

Today my friend of more than 25 years, Iranian human rights advocate Shirin Ebadi, is to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. Predictably enough, when the honor for this remarkable woman was announced in October, forces that control her country's most powerful state organs were infuriated. "Awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to a defender of human rights in Iran is a political act that aims to interfere in Iran's internal affairs," they said. Indeed, it is. For Iranians, especially women, who for 24 years have experienced the bitter consequences of the 1979 revolution, it is a welcome political message. It is...

Iran on Wednesday hailed a decision by Iraq's US-backed interim leaders to expel the Iranian armed opposition People's Mujahedeen, but denied suggestions of a secret deal involving the extradition of detained al-Qaeda members from the Islamic republic. "The decision taken by the (Iraqi) Governing Council is very positive. We have been saying to the fighters not to be stubborn and to surrender, in which case we will show leniency," Intelligence Minister Ali Yunessi told reporters. When asked if Iran could now hand over top members of al-Qaeda it says are in its custody, Yunessi said "there is no link". "When...

Those in Iran and overseas hoping human rights activist Shirin Ebadi would use her new stature as Nobel Peace Prize winner to stand against the Islamic regime look set to be disappointed. For Ebadi, "nothing has changed", and her often quiet work consisting of poring over the case files of dissidents or lobbying for steady legal reform does not look set to evolve into open political confrontation with authorities. Ebadi, 56, is also firm in her determination to stay out of politics -- and has been quick to stamp on suggestions she could one day, for example, run for president....

The United States renewed calls for Iran to turn over al-Qaeda operatives on its territory but denied suggestions it might exchange Iraqi-based Iranian opposition figures to Tehran in return for members of Osama bin Laden's terror network. "We believe Iran should turn over all suspected al-Qaeda operatives to the United States or to countries of origin or third countries for further interrogation and trial," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said. "It's essential that other countries have direct access to information these people may have about past and future al-Qaeda plans," he told reporters. "We acknowledge that Iran has in the...

Norwegian politicians joined Iranian reformists in hailing Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi on her arrival in Oslo Monday to pick up the award, urging the world to open its eyes to human rights violations by Tehran. Members of the Norwegian parliament said giving the 2003 prize to the Iranian lawyer for her work to promote children's and women's rights would help reinvigorate reformists in Iran, who under President Mohammad Khatami have struggled to overcome stiff resistance to change from powerful hardline clerics. Ebadi was Iran's first female judge before the 1979 Islamic revolution forced her to step aside in...

Hundreds of Iranian students celebrated the national Student Day on Sunday, calling for freedom of speech and the release of political prisoners. Because the authorities had refused authorisation to organise demonstrations outside the universities and even in the open campuses, the students held their meetings inside auditoriums, preventing basiji students, the islamist vigilante who are on the payroll of the ruling conservatives from disturbing them, as they had done previously with Mrs. Shirin Ebadi, the Nobel Peace laureate for 2003. The annual Student Day marks the death of three students during a protest at Tehran University against former U.S. President...

Unrest in the city of Saravan, situated near the Pakistan border in the Sistan and Baloochistan province continue, five days after police shot dead a young motorist And despite curfew, according to Balooch sources both inside and outside Iran. Though officials admitted to the killing of four people in clashes between the angry population and Law Enforcement and Revolutionary Guards forces, but other Baloochi sources say the number of dead is "much, much more". "The police shot and killed a motorist who refused to obey an order to stop. After this incident, people started to protest and there were clashes...

Iran insisted Sunday that it remained committed to an agreement allowing unfettered inspection of its nuclear facilities but gave no date for when it will sign the deal, despite mounting Western pressure. Mohamed ElBaradei, director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said last week he expected Iran to sign a protocol to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty ``shortly.'' A Western diplomat in Vienna, where the IAEA is based, suggested Tehran was stalling, and said the United States and other countries were impatient ``for Iran to keep its promises and sign.'' ``From our point of view, it's definite. We have announced to...

Jordan's King Abdullah is quietly trying to broker a deal that would lead Tehran to surrender about 70 al Qaeda operatives, including the son of Osama bin Laden, in exchange for U.S. action on the largest Iranian opposition group now based in Iraq, according to U.S. and Middle East officials. Abdullah, who is hoping to revive dialogue between the United States and Iran, discussed prospects with the Bush administration during a private visit to Washington on Thursday and Friday. He visited Tehran earlier this fall, the first visit by a Jordanian leader in a quarter-century, the officials said. Jordanian Foreign...

Some in the West, particularly in the European Union, view the United Nation’s IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) censure of Iran for concealing details of its nuclear program as a great victory for diplomacy. Unfortunately, nothing in the IAEA statement truly holds Iran accountable for its actions and the prevailing attitude surrounding Iran’s nuclear ambitions could lead the world down the same slippery slope that led to North Korea building nuclear weapons while the free world hoped for the best. At issue in Iran is whether or not the radical Islamist theocracy desires to obtain nuclear weapons. Iran, along with...

Iran's president Sunday ordered two Cabinet ministers to crack down on hard-line vigilantes who disrupt political meetings following an attack on one of his close aides, the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported. President Mohammad Khatami ordered Intelligence Minister Ali Yunesi and Interior Minister Abdolvahed Mousavi Lari to provide security and protection for participants and speakers at authorized rallies, saying he won't tolerate further attacks as the country prepares for parliamentary elections slated for Feb. 20. ''I seriously want you to, firstly, make use of all the facilities available to provide security for legal gatherings. Secondly, no effort should be...

Ayatollah Ali Meshkini stood erect in the pulpit of this holy city's central mosque, delivering the political portion of his Friday sermon by engaging the 3,000 worshippers in a familiar volley of call and response. "The first issue and only issue is Palestine," said Meshkini, a lean figure who wore a white turban. "The Great Satan is supporting Israel unconditionally. That's why they are repressing the Palestinians." "Down with the U.S.A.," chanted the faithful. A few blocks down Riverbank Street, Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri sat in the house where Iran's government kept him locked away for five years. His...

After 25 years of living under an ochlocracy, we, the Iranian people, have quite well learned the nature and the ways usual to the mullahs. Nowadays almost everybody in Iran believes that the ruling clerics are terribly busy doing something evil and nasty in the neighboring Iraq. In fact the mullahs have clearly perceived that, with a free and prosperous Iraq, they would not have any chances of prolonging their corrupted reign of terror and tyranny in Iran. Although the two countries of Iran and Iraq were engaged in an eight-year war against one another, which left hundreds of thousands...

In 1997 Lida Salehi enthusiastically worked on the presidential campaign of Mohammad Khatami, the reformist candidate. She even talked her parents, who had not cast a ballot since the referendum in 1979 that turned Iran into an Islamic Republic, into voting for him. "I believed that he was the man who would bring change, especially because of what he said about freedom and democracy," said Ms. Salehi, a 25-year-old painter. She has voted for reformist politicians in three more elections since then. Now, with parliamentary elections scheduled for February, she and many others who supported the reformists are changing their...

About 1,500 Iranian students gathered at Tehran University on Sunday, shouting slogans against the Islamic regime and its clerical leadership, and demanding the freeing of political prisoners, an AFP journalist at the scene said. The students were massing to mark national students day, commemorating the 1953 shooting by police of three students who were protesting against the then regime of the Shah. "Death to the dictator", "We don't want an repressive regime or its police", "Free students" and "Free political prisoners" were among the slogans heard inside the campus where the group was confined by security forces. Slogans were directed...