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VOA: The regime of the mullahs in Iran is ready to fall

 
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cyrus
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Joined: 24 Jun 2003
Posts: 4993

PostPosted: Tue Nov 30, 2004 11:19 pm    Post subject: VOA: The regime of the mullahs in Iran is ready to fall Reply with quote

Iran Nuclear Program: Analysts Argue Nature of Regime Poses Higher Risk By Ed Warner
Washington
29 November 2004


The regime of the mullahs in Iran is ready to fall, says Assad Homayoun. Let's give it a timely push.


Dr. Assad Homayoun

Source VOA : http://www.voanews.com/english/NewsAnalysis/2004-11-29-voa27.cfm

An Iranian opposition leader in the United States whose sources inside Iran may be second to none, Mr. Homayoun has little patience with efforts to conciliate or compromise with the government in Tehran.

Westerners, he insists, are misled by the religiously inclined but ineffectual reformists associated with President Khatami. The Iranian future does not lie with them, he says, but with the growing coalition of secular nationalist forces that favor democracy.

"I believe that the solution is in the hands of the Iranian people, but the Iranian people need support," says Mr. Homayoun. "The United States should come enthusiastically, vigorously, openly in support of the Iranian people. President Bush supported Iranians before, but different voices from different branches of the administration confused the Iranian people."

Mr. Homayoun writes in the CIPA journal: "What the secular force needs is legitimization through recognition - not financial or covert assistance but rather the unconditional moral and political support of the world democratic community."

Mr. Homayoun traces the spread of Islamic militant fundamentalism to the regime in Iran. Remove that, he says, and you may stop the spread of terrorism as well.

"Nothing will be peaceful in the Middle East," says Mr. Homayoun, "unless the government of Iran changes its position, but change of position means change of government from theocracy to secular democratic government."

Mr. Homayoun says Tehran seeks nuclear weapons not so much to threaten other nations as to shore up internal support for its own shaky government. In fact, citing the work of Washington strategic analyst Yossef Bodansky, he believes Iran already has acquired nuclear warheads from the Muslim areas of the former Soviet Union and possibly from North Korea.

So the military option is out. An attack on Iran would have unfathomable consequences, he says, and besides, change must come from within untainted by material help from abroad. He writes in WorldTribune.com that if attacked, "Iran is advanced in various fields of WMD, and those weapons could fall into the hands of radicals and terrorist groups and create problems much more extensive than those today in Iraq."
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stefania



Joined: 17 Jul 2003
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Location: Italy

PostPosted: Wed Dec 01, 2004 11:33 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Fatal Fool’s Game

Europeans ignore the deadly stakes in negotiating with Iran.



http://www.nationalreview.com/editorial/editors200412010556.asp

Here we go again. The game is nuclear rope-a-dope with a dictatorship. The U.S. played it with the North Koreans in 1994, and now the Europeans are going a round with the Iranians, with the same disastrous results almost assured.

Iran has announced that it will temporarily suspend uranium enrichment while negotiating with France, Germany, and England over the terms of a possible final nuclear deal. Such a deal would require Iran to halt uranium enrichment, a key step in producing nuclear weapons, in exchange for economic incentives as well as light-water reactors, access to fuel, and other support for its civilian nuclear-power program.

This final deal, even if it's possible to reach (unlikely), would be terrible policy. It would basically mean trusting the mullahs to stop producing nuclear weapons, while at the same time making it easier for them to produce them. Light-water reactors are generally considered difficult to use for weapons production. In fact, they can "be a copious source of near-weapon grade plutonium," according to a recent study by the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center. The Iranians could easily extract bomb-grade plutonium in small facilities that would be difficult to detect.


In short, it would be easy for Iran to continue its weapons program clandestinely even under a comprehensive European agreement. In fact, that's precisely what North Korea did under the Clinton administration’s Agreed Framework, a similarly hapless attempt to bribe a nuclear weapon-seeking rogue state.

So, the so-called EU3 are headed toward folly, and are happy to embrace farce on the way there. Tehran will probably not cut even such a sweetheart final deal, exactly because it is so set on pursuing nuclear weapons. The mullahs don't want to give up uranium enrichment. How do we know? They say it — all the time. Iranian National Security Council chief Hassan Rohani said on Tuesday, "Iran did not promise to stop enrichment but only to suspend it for a limited period of time."

There is only one reason for such determination — Iran wants a nuke. Theoretically, uranium can be enriched to low levels and used for civilian purposes only. But Iran has no need for such a uranium-enrichment capability, since it sits on vast amounts of oil and natural gas and, in any case, the Europeans have promised to ensure that its civilian reactors are supplied with fuel. If a rogue state walks and talks as though it's seeking a nuclear weapon, it’s seeking a nuclear weapon.

Diplomatically, Tehran has been wiping the floor with the EU3. This latest "breakthrough" came just in time to avoid a U.N. Security Council referral, which the Bush administration had been advocating. The Europeans have been negotiating with Iran since August 2003, and getting strung along the entire time as Tehran tries to extract more "carrots." Tehran later reneged on its agreement to stop building centrifuges and enriching uranium, but the Europeans continued to negotiate anyway. Now, the Bush administration — apparently the only international actor serious about ending Iran's nuclear program — will have to wait on the sidelines while the EU3 once again buys the mullahs time.

But sidelining the Bush administration is exactly the point for the EU3. They are desperate to prove that, unlike the cowboys in Washington, they can take care of global threats without resorting to force. As the EU expands, Germany and France are also realizing that they need a broader power base — hence the importance of having the Brits on board. Meanwhile, Tony Blair is anxious to establish that he is, after all, a good European.

No one should mistake what is really at stake here. As Colin Powell pointed out last week in a Santiago, Chile press conference, we have every reason to believe that Iran is seeking a nuclear weapon, and it has become ever harder for the international community to deny it (try as they might). In Iran, the world faces a potentially nuclear-armed terror state. All that phony diplomatic deals can achieve is to delay the day of reckoning, and maybe not even that.
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