[FREE IRAN Project] In The Spirit Of Cyrus The Great

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EU says Iran has data on making N-warheads

WIRE REPORTS
11.25.2005


VIENNA, Austria - The European Union accused Iran on Thursday of having documents that show how to make nuclear warheads and joined the United States in warning Tehran it faced referral to the U.N. Security Council for possible sanctions.

Iran, meanwhile, suggested it was considering a compromise to reduce tensions.
Iran attempted to play down the importance of information it received from the black market on making the core of a nuclear weapon, and said on Thursday the material was freely available on the Internet.

Last week the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said in a report that Iran had handed over several pages related to the production of key components of a nuclear weapon.

The United States and European Union said the pages showed Iran's atomic ambitions may include a nuclear arsenal but Iran's ambassador to the IAEA, Mohammad Mehdi Akhunzadeh, denied that.
"The information contained in 1 1/2 pages is simple and nonsophisticated information which could be found in (public) literature and on the Internet," Akhunzadeh told a meeting of the IAEA's 35-nation board of governors.

He said the documents were "incomplete" and argued that handing the documents to the IAEA was in itself "a clear indication of Iran's full transparency with the IAEA."
But Western diplomats and analysts disagreed.

"The Iranian explanation is laughable and not credible. It's classified information. It's about metallurgy and how to machine uranium successfully into spheres for a nuclear weapon," William Peden, a Greenpeace nuclear analyst, told Reuters.
A European diplomat pointed out that the Internet did not even exist at the time Iran got the documents.
Britain, in a statement on behalf of the 25-nation bloc, offered new negotiations meant to lessen concerns over Iran's insistence it be in full control of uranium enrichment - a possible pathway to nuclear arms.

Diplomats described the statement as a veiled threat of Security Council referral.


Iran's ticking time-bombBY URI DROMI
The Miami Herald

Nov. 25, 2005

JERUSALEM -- Now that everything in Israel is dominated by the political bombshell dropped by Ariel Sharon -- who quit the Likud, formed his own party and caused new elections -- it is easy to forget that, just a while ago, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made the statement about eliminating Israel. This declaration should not be taken lightly or pushed aside too quickly.

When he made that statement, by sheer coincidence I was reading Ian Kershaw's biography of Adolph Hitler. I had thought that I already had read everything on Hitler, World War II and the Holocaust. Still, I found myself mesmerized by this two-volume, fascinating account of how one man grabbed a whole nation and led it on a disastrous track of hate and violence, destroying Europe and causing the death of millions, including one third of the Jewish people.

What struck me in particular was a statement that Hitler made on Jan. 30, 1939, in the German parliament, the Reichstag. He said that in the course of his life he had made several prophecies, only to be ridiculed. However, he said, ``Today I will once more be a prophet: If the international Jewish financiers in and outside Europe should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, then the result will not be the Bolshevizing of the Earth, and thus the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe!''

This statement, which was later referred to by Hitler's lieutenants as ''The Führer's Prophecy,'' became the sinister guideline for genocide. There was no need anymore for Hitler to issue a specific directive about the massacre of the Jews. Everybody in high position in the Nazi regime, trying to ''aim at the Führer's will,'' did their best to murder the Jews, whenever the opportunity presented itself.

Few people in 1939 took Hitler's ''prophecy'' seriously. Unfortunately, even when the terrible news of the Holocaust reached the West, many tended not to believe them, until it was too late.

Now, Ahmadinejad is no Hitler, and 2005 is not 1939. The world has presumably learned the hard way that appeasing fanatic tyrants can only backfire. And Jews, who now have a state of their own, are not helpless. That's why it is mind-boggling to realize how easily such statements can still be made, and by no other than the president of a state that is a member of the United Nations -- an organization created in 1945 to ''maintain international peace and security,'' according to its charter.

There was a wave of protest all over the free world. Muslims, however, mostly kept their mouths shut, except for some mavens who rushed to assist the Iranian president, trying to soften his harsh message. ''He is just talking,'' they explained. ''He doesn't really mean it.'' Yet a weak later, Ahmadinejad not only repeated his threat, but even launched a big rally under the slogan: ``The world without Israel.''

It was heartening, therefore, to get an e-mail from my Palestinian friend Walid Salem, director of the Panorama Center in East Jerusalem. In a message that he sent out, he condemned the Iranian president's statement. ''Is this the tolerant Islam that I and all the average citizens know? The Islam that recognizes the other?'' No, concludes Salem. ``The blind ideology has nothing to do with Islam. It only creates the opposite of what Islam calls for. It creates hatred and religions wars.''

Walid Salem is a brave man, and I salute his courage. In the general Islamic silence, his voice thunders. But until he and his like become the dominant figures in the Arab and the Islamic world, we shouldn't sit idle.

That Israel will defend itself against any threat, goes without saying. Flying with the Israeli Air Force for 37 years, I know that those wishing to destroy Israel will eventually bring destruction upon their own people. But the Iranian threat is aimed not only at Israel.

American flags are as frequently burned in Tehran as are Israeli ones. And once the Iranians have nuclear bombs and the missiles to launch them, the whole of Europe will be threatened. This is a ticking time bomb, which the free world must defuse now, before it's too late.

Threats of aggression and mass murder, if not checked in time, can become self-fulfilling prophecies. If you don't believe it, read Kershaw's book on Hitler, especially the second volume: Nemesis.

Uri Dromi is director of international outreach at the Israel Democracy Institute in Jerusalem.

Iran accused of having warhead plans AUSTRIA: Vienna



Herald Today

Nov. 25, 2005

The European Union accused Iran on Thursday of having documents that show how to make nuclear warheads and joined the United States in warning Tehran it faced referral to the U.N. Security Council for possible sanctions.

Iran, meanwhile, suggested it was considering a compromise to reduce tensions.

Britain, in a statement on behalf of the 25-nation bloc, offered new negotiations meant to lessen concerns over Iran's insistence it be in full control of uranium enrichment - a possible pathway to nuclear arms.

Holocaust acknowledged

AUSTRIA: Vienna - British historian David Irving now acknowledges that Nazi gas chambers existed but admits that some of his past statements could be interpreted as denying people were gassed, his lawyer said Thursday on the eve of a court hearing.

Prosecutors this week charged Irving, 67, under an Austrian law that makes denying the Holocaust a crime. The charges stem from two speeches he gave in Austria in 1989 in which he allegedly denied the existence of the chambers. He faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted.

Ex-dictator indicted

CHILE: Santiago - Former Chilean dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet was indicted on human rights charges Thursday and placed under house arrest, hours after he made bail on unrelated corruption charges filed only a day earlier.

In a widely expected decision, Judge Victor Montiglio charged Pinochet in connection with the kidnapping and disappearance of six dissidents in the early years of his 1973-90 dictatorship, his office said.

Montiglio sent a court secretary to Pinochet's Santiago mansion to inform the general of the charges, which will force him to spend his 90th birthday today under arrest. The judge did not grant Pinochet bail.

King wants war

JORDAN: Amman - Jordan's King Abdullah II appointed a new prime minister Thursday and urged him to launch an all-out war against Islamic militancy in the wake of the deadly triple hotel bombings earlier this month.

Abdullah also called for a new anti-terrorism law to replace the current, general one that does not specify punishment for different terrorist acts and their perpetrators.

In a designation letter to Prime Minister Marouf al-Bakhit - who was named hours after his predecessor resigned - Abdullah said the Nov. 9 attacks "increase our determination to stick to our reform and democratization process, which is irreversible."

Kosovo division talks

SERBIA-MONTENEGRO: Belgrade - Serbia's president on Thursday formally proposed dividing Kosovo between its independence-seeking Albanian majority and a Serb minority as the chief U.N. mediator met with government officials.

Martti Athisaari, the envoy who was appointed earlier this month by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and is on his initial fact-finding mission in the Balkans, said the troubled province's final status will ultimately be decided by the Security Council.

Jailed leader charged

UGANDA: Kampala - Uganda filed new charges of terrorism and illegal firearms possession against the country's jailed opposition leader Thursday in a military court controlled by the president's trusted aides.

Opposition leader Kizza Besigye believes the charges, which carry the death penalty, are baseless and he refused to answer them at a closed military court session, the defense lawyer Sam Njuba said.. The head of the court entered a not guilty plea on Besigye's behalf.



Israeli think tank: Iran playing for time on nuclear development

By Associated Press

November 24, 2005



Iran's negotiations with the international community are an attempt to buy time as the Islamic nation pushes ahead with a nuclear weapons program, a respected Israeli think tank said in its annual report on the military balance in the Middle East.

The Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University said Iran is "walking a thin line" between continuing negotiations with international inspectors while advancing its military program.

"The dynamic that has characterized negotiations thus far leaves little room for hope that Iran will terminate its program," the report said. "Should the program advance to the point that Iran achieves nuclear capability, this would represent the most significant long-term potential threat facing Israel and the strategic balance in the area."

Researcher Emily Landau, who wrote the report's chapter on Iran, said she had little doubt about Iran's real intentions. "According to all indications, it looks like they are active in the military direction. I have no doubt they have intentions in this field, despite all their denials," she said Wednesday.

Under the latest international proposal, Iran would move its uranium enrichment reprocessing to Russia, depriving the Iranians of the chance to enrich uranium to weapons grade, suitable for use in the core of nuclear warheads.

Iran says it only wants to enrich to lower levels of uranium to generate energy. Still, it has resisted the plan to move its enrichment capabilities to Russia, insisting it has the right to all aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle.

Iran resumed uranium reprocessing - one step before uranium enrichment - at its Isfahan facility in August. Iran's parliament on Sunday also approved a bill requiring its government to block any in-depth U.N. inspections of its nuclear facilities if Iran is referred to the U.N. Security Council.

European Union foreign ministers urged Iran on Monday to live up to the "clear obligations" made to the international community to allow U.N. inspectors to tour its nuclear facilities.
The Jaffee Center's report also said that Israel has expanded its military supremacy in the Middle East.

"The strategic balance decidedly favors Israel, which has continued to widen the qualitative gap between its own military capability and deterrence powers and those of its neighbors," said the report, which is submitted to Israeli policy-makers.

The military balance gave a breakdown of the armed forces of 21 Mideast nations, including those of neighboring Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Egypt.

However, in a modern, high-tech, military world, the quantitative differences between Israel and its neighbors has almost become moot, said researcher Yiftah Shapir, who co-edited the report.

"Strategically speaking, our situation has never been better," he said. "The numeric differences are not that great, but from year to year the numbers are less and less important since they less and less reflect the qualitative differences."

Israel added F-16I planes, Apache Longbow helicopters and Gulfstream surveillance aircraft to its arsenal, he said. Aside from the United States, Israel is the only nation in the world to have modernized its military systems to a point where it could quash other armies with minimal casualties to its own troops, he said.

"The Israel Defense Forces could erase the Syrian army in two weeks with less than 100 casualties, and the Syrians know this," he said.




Iran: 5000 Fanatic Muslim Clerics to US Mosques
By J. Grant Swank Jr. (11/24/05)American Daily

http://www.americandaily.com/article/10347

Mosques in America need more clerics. The solution? Send hard-line, fanatic clerics to the United States. Fill in the blanks: the US sleeper cells are getting more murder-hungry clerics by which to instruct neighborhood Muslims in how to rise up and take over America.

They are already taking over the Netherlands by threatening that country with murder in the streets. Therefore, according to recent press reports, the citizens won’t speak anything negative about Islam for fear of being murdered. It’s called "self-censorship" there. With that the Muslims can overtake a society.

In Pakistan Muslim males are kidnapping Hindu women from their houses. They force the Hindu females to "convert" to Islam. If others in the family report these crimes, they are in danger of being killed. Therefore, there are some families escaping wholesale to Canada, India and elsewhere. In other words, Muslims can overtake a society by kidnapping young Hindu girls for Islam.

Fill in the blanks regarding this request from American mosques for Iranian cleric increase: It is the Iranian leadership that has declared that "execution of suicide and missile attacks (must be) aimed at 29 sensitive sites." Further: It is the goal of Islamic international killers to "wipe Israel off the world map."

How better to serve the Koran’s Allah than to plant subversives throughout this republic by which to do in America while elsewhere other Muslim murderers global are doing in Israel and so forth, the latter being "29 sensitive sites?"

According to BBC Persian and Persian service of IRNA, these disciples of Allah are in league with "hard-line ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi who has let it be known that ‘the Iranians living in the US need 5000 Islamic clerics for their religious services.’"

This particular spokesman for Allah has requested the Iranian authorities to finance the clerics’ training. Training in what? In fulfilling the killing passage of the Koran, of course. (See footnote).

"This hard-line ayatollah is known as the founder of the Shiite version of Taliban in Iran."

Do the American political liberals thereby understand that they are in support of such sleeper cell instructors when they call for US troops to leave New Iraq immediately? Do they not realize that US troops returning to American shores would keep on their uniforms to fight cleric-trained Muslim killers in our own cities and villages?

Do not the entrenched Democrats, particularly those who hate US President George W. Bush, understand that by bucking Mr. Bush at every freedom spread they are cooperating with the Iranian hard-line trained mosque leadership in the United States?

Do not the Cindy Sheehan disciples know that by their wailing on behalf of anti-New Iraq, these same American citizens are undercutting their futures as American citizens. There will no American citizens but Muslim American citizens once the Islamics have establish Iran world rule, killing off all infidels (non-Muslims).

While Muslim murderers global send their sleeper cell slayers to America under the guise of International students, why not then add to these "pupils" the mosque clerics who swell the numbers?

Is it not the aim of every zealot Muslim to destroy western civilization by eliminating it from the planet? Then how better to see the start of the program through than via the religious clerics in mosque pulpits?



IAEA chief urges Iran to show more transparency on nuclear issue
Xinhua, Nov. 25, 2005

International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Chief Mohamed ElBaradei reiterated Thursday that the inspection of Iran's nuclear program needed support from Iran and hoped it could enhance transparency of its nuclear plans.

More transparency was "indispensable" for his agency to clear up issues still open, ElBaradei said at the opening ceremony of a two-day IAEA Board of Governors meeting, at which Iran's nuclear program came under scrutiny.

During the comprehensive IAEA surveillance of Iran's nuclear program, strengthening dialogue among all parties concerned was the best way to resolve disputes, he said.

He confirmed that Iran was continuing to conduct uranium conversion activities at its Isfahan plant but the IAEA was monitoring them.

ElBaradei also confirmed that Teheran had recently given the IAEA documents on its nuclear program and the IAEA was currently evaluating this information.

Diplomatic sources said the United States and the European Union were not pressuring at the meeting to refer Iran to the United Nations Security Council, deciding to give more time for a Russian compromise proposal which would see Iran undertake uranium enrichment activities on the Russian soil.

Both the IAEA and Teheran pledged to work towards restoring talks between Iran and the EU trio of France, Britain and Germany over the issue.

The talks between the two sides, which were halted in August at the demand of the European side, could resume in December.



Iran stands by nuclear enrichment ambition


11/25/05

AFX News

TEHRAN (AFX) - Iran stands by its "right" to enrich uranium despite international demands for Tehran to accept a compromise on the ultra-sensitive nuclear technology, a senior official was quoted as saying Friday.
"Like all member countries in the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the Islamic Republic of Iran has the right to enrich uranium," Iran's ambassador to the IAEA Mohammad Akhundzadeh told Iranian media.
He repeated his country's refusal to give up enrichment on its territory, saying Tehran was "ready to study any proposals including the Russian proposal, but any such proposals must guarantee Iran's right to uranium enrichment".
His comments came after the IAEA, the Vienna-based UN watchdog, put off taking Iran to the Security Council over its nuclear programme.
The European Union and United States suspect that the Islamic republic, despite its denials, is using an atomic energy drive as a cover for nuclear weapons development.
Iran has already refused an EU offer of trade and other incentives in exchange for it abandoning fuel cycle work, and the focus has now turned to a Russian proposal involving moving the enrichment process to Russian soil.
Enrichment can make both nuclear fuel and the explosive core of a weapon.
In a statement to the IAEA on Thursday, the EU decided to allow "more time for diplomatic talks over the future of Iran's programme" but urged Tehran to "seriously consider" the Russian proposal.

America and Europe Should Listen to a Whispered Message from Isfahan

November 24, 2005
The Guardian
Timothy Garton Ash

Visiting Iran, I found a regime wedded to violence and a society eager for peaceful change. We must address both.

The young lecturer in Isfahan was visibly frightened. "Keep your voice down," he muttered to his friend as we talked politics in one of that magical city's many teahouses. Mahmoud, as I shall call him, went on to blame his people's troubles on American and European skulduggery - an old Iranian pastime. So what, I asked him, did he think America and Europe should do about Iran? Mahmoud gulped. There was a long silence as he communed with his tea-glass. Then, leaning towards me and lowering his voice, he said with quiet intensity: "Stick together. Understand what is happening in Iran. Have a consistent policy."

As the board of the International Atomic Energy Agency meets again to consider the Iranian nuclear programme, we need to work out what to do about Iran. The crunch will not come quite yet, mainly because the Bush administration has so many other problems on its plate. The last thing Washington needs is another Iraq. But some sort of a crunch will probably come in the first half of next year, perhaps with Iran being referred to the UN security council. So, don't be scared - be prepared. And that whispered message from Isfahan is a good place to start our preparation.

First, understand what is happening in Iran. This is much easier for Europeans than Americans. We have embassies there. We do business there. We can travel there. As senior American officials freely admit, there is no country in the world they have less contact with. So there's a particular obligation on us Europeans to go there, to look and listen, and then to share our findings with our American friends. The weakness of western policy is so often that it does not start from a realistic analysis of the country the west is trying to change. That's why I travelled round Iran for two weeks earlier this autumn, having many uncensored conversations with people like nervous Mahmoud. (My longer report is on www.nybooks.com).

If you see it at first hand, you will have no doubt that this is a very nasty and dangerous regime. I will never forget talking in Tehran to a student activist who had been confined and abused in the prison where Iranian-Canadian journalist Zahra Kazemi was beaten so severely that she later died of her wounds. Half the Iranian population are subjected to systematic curtailment of their liberty simply because they are women. Two homosexuals were recently executed. The backbone of the political system is still an ideological dictatorship with totalitarian aspirations: not communism, but Khomeinism. The Islamic republic's new, ageing-revolutionary president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a subordinate but still important part of that power structure, has just revived Ayatollah Khomeini's call to wipe Israel off the map. According to an official spokesman, some 50,000 Iranians have signed up in a recruitment drive for "martyrdom-seeking operations". Elements connected to the regime have almost certainly supplied weapons across the frontier into southern Iraq, where they are used to kill British soldiers. And, yes, the mullahs probably are trying to get nuclear weapons.

So, as this argument about Iran develops, let's have none of those confused and/or dishonest apologetics on the European left that, out of hostility to American policy, try to pretend that the other side (Pol Pot, Brezhnev, Saddam) is not half as bad as Washington says it is. Taking our lead from George Orwell, it's entirely possibly to maintain that Saddam Hussein ran a brutal dictatorship and that the invasion of Iraq was the wrong way to remove him. Now it's right to say that the Iranian mullahs run a very nasty regime and that it would be a huge mistake to bomb them.

For the second thing you find if you go there is that many Iranians, especially among the two-thirds of the population who are under 30, hate their regime much more than we do. Given time, and the right kind of support from the world's democracies, they will eventually change it from within. But most of them think their country has as much right to civilian nuclear power as anyone else, and many feel it has a right to nuclear arms. These young Persians are pro-democracy and rather pro-American, but also fiercely patriotic. They have imbibed suspicion of the great powers - especially Britain and the United States - with their mother's milk. A wrong move by the west could swing a lot of them back behind the state. "I love George Bush," one young woman told me as we sat in the Tehran Kentucky Chicken restaurant, "but I would hate him if he bombed my country." Or even if he pushed his European allies to impose stronger economic sanctions linked to the nuclear issue alone.

Our problem is that the nuclear clock and the democracy clock may be ticking at different speeds. To get to peaceful regime change from within could take at least a decade, although president Ahmadinejad is hastening that prospect as he sharpens the contradictions within the system. Meanwhile, the latest US intelligence assessment suggests that Iran is still a decade away from acquiring nuclear weapons. But significant, non-military action to prevent that outcome clearly has to come sooner; for as soon as dictators have nukes, you're in a different game. Then, as we have seen with North Korea and Pakistan, they are treated with a respect they don't deserve.

This is where we need to hear the other half of the message from my friend in Isfahan: stick together and be consistent. If Europe and America split over Iran, as we did over Iraq, we have not a snowball's chance in hell of achieving our common goals. To be effective, Europe and America need the opposite of their traditional division of labour. Europe must be prepared to wave a big stick (the threat of economic sanctions, for it is Europe, not the US, that has the trade with Iran) and America a big carrot (the offer of a full "normalisation" of relations in return for Iranian restraint). But the old transatlantic west is not enough. Today's nuclear diplomacy around Iran shows us that we already live in a multipolar world. Without the cooperation of Russia and China, little can be achieved.

And we have to be consistent. Consistent in our policy to Iran, embedded in a kind of Helsinki process for the whole region. Consistent in advocating an international set of rules governing the use of nuclear power, not just for Iran but for others as well. Consistent, too, in recognising that our policy must be addressed as much to the people as the regime. For every step we take to slow down the nuclearisation of Iran, we need another to speed up the democratisation of Iran. At every stage, we need to explain to the Iranian people, through satellite television, radio and the internet, what we are doing and why. Isfahan is not just the increasingly notorious location of a nuclear processing plant; it's also a beautiful city where many critical citizens live. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a reckless leader, but there are many other Mahmouds in Iran. We must listen to them. In the end, it's they, not we, who will change their country for the better.

The Sorry State of World Iran Policy

November 23, 2005
National Review Online
Ilan Berman

Another month, another diplomatic reprieve for the Islamic Republic of Iran. On Thursday, the board of governors of the United Nations nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, will meet for what many had hoped would be a decisive step toward curbing Iran's runaway nuclear ambitions. But already, all the signs suggest that the summit is shaping up to be anything but.

Back in September, the IAEA had shown unexpected backbone when it ruled that Iran's diplomatic "rope-a-dope" with the international community over its nuclear program warranted referral to the U.N. Security Council. In its September 24th resolution, the IAEA board expressed concern over "Iran's motives" and declared lingering questions over the Iranian nuclear program to be "within the competence of the Security Council." But the IAEA stopped short of recommending immediate referral, opting instead to reconvene to consider further steps. The unspoken hope was that, in the interim, Iran could still be diplomatically muscled into accepting some sort of atomic deal.

The Iranian regime wasted no time in proving the IAEA wrong. In recent weeks, Iran's new hard-line president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has definitively put to rest the question of whether an atomic Iran would be a proliferation threat, publicly announcing his government's intention to share nuclear technology with any number of nations in the Muslim world. Ignoring international entreaties, Iran has also begun processing a new batch of uranium ore for enrichment purposes. Most recently, Iran's parliament, the Majles, defiantly passed a resolution endorsing still more uranium enrichment and threatening to effectively suspend cooperation with the IAEA if a Security Council referral should take place.

Predictably, the IAEA has ignored these provocations. Secretary-General Mohamed ElBaradei has reportedly urged member states to give Iran "one last chance" to cooperate with the international community, throwing his weight behind a new proposal to Iran to conduct uranium enrichment in Russia. And now, there are signs that the United States and Europe are doing just that, backing away from plans to push for immediate Security Council referral at the board meeting Thursday in order to give the Russian government time to persuade its long-time strategic partner to accept the new enrichment deal.

This diplomatic dance provides a revealing glimpse into the sorry state of international policy toward Iran. Since mid-2003, Europe has been engaged in a series of halting, haphazard talks with Tehran over its nuclear program. This dialogue, aimed at securing a lasting Iranian freeze on uranium enrichment, is long on diplomatic and economic carrots but alarmingly devoid of strategic sticks. Yet over time, it has become the principal international vehicle for dealing with Iran's nuclear ambitions. Even Washington, for lack of a better strategy, has signed on to this approach, endorsing Europe's deeply deficient nuclear diplomacy as the best method to defuse the Iranian threat.

The outcome is deeply disturbing. After all, the reasons for concern over a nuclear Iran have little if anything to do with Iran's nuclear program itself. Rather, they stem from the nature of the regime that will ultimately wield those capabilities. It is the current Iranian regime's intimate relationship with international terrorism, and its potential for catastrophic proliferation, that will make a nuclear Islamic republic a truly global threat.

Unfortunately, for both the United States and Europe, diplomatic negotiations have become a substitute for serious strategy. To be sure, diplomacy can certainly help to deter and contain Iran's nuclear drive. But ultimately, if European and American policymakers are serious about neutralizing the dangers posed by an atomic Islamic Republic, they must also focus their energies upon spurring a fundamental transformation of that regime.

The means to do so exist. All that has been lacking so far has been the political will.

— Ilan Berman is vice president for policy at the American Foreign Policy Council in Washington, D.C. and author of Tehran Rising.

Engage! If You Want to Win the Debate, Win the War

November 23, 2005
National Review Online
Michael Ledeen

More than three years ago, prior to the liberation of Iraq, I lamented that our great national debate on the war against terrorism was the wrong debate, because it was "about using our irresistible military might against a single country in order to bring down its leader, when we should be talking about using all our political, moral, and military genius to support a vast democratic revolution to liberate the peoples of the Middle East from their tyrannical rulers. That is our real mission, the essence of the war in which we are engaged, and the proper subject of our national debate."

The proper debate has still not been engaged, and the administration's failure to lead it bespeaks a grave failure of strategic vision. The war was narrowly aimed against the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein. But, as President Bush himself said after 9/11, it was logically and properly a war against both the terrorists themselves and against the regimes that foster, support, arm, train, indoctrinate, and guide the terrorist legions who are clamoring for our destruction.

Following the defeat of the Taliban, there were four such regimes: Iran, Iraq, Syria and Saudi Arabia. They were the true terror masters, without whose active support the terrorist groups would have been unable to mount a global jihad. They had — and the surviving three still have — two common denominators: all actively support terrorism in one way or another, and all are tyrannies.

Contrary to much of today's conventional wisdom, they did not all rest on religious fanaticism: Saddam had no religious standing, having come to power as a secular socialist, and the Assad family dictatorship has similar origins. They are not all Arabs: The Iranians (aside from a small minority in the south), would bridle at that misidentification. All share a common hatred for the Western world and unconcealed contempt for their own peoples, knowing full well that their oppressed citizens are a threat to their power and authority.

It is no accident that the terror masters work together, notwithstanding the oft-overstated differences between Arabs and Persians, and Sunnis and Shiites. The Syrians and Iranians worked hand-in-mailed-glove for years, supporting Hezbollah and other terror groups in occupied Lebanon. Nearly a decade before the overthrow of the shah of Iran, the Ayatollah Khomeini's fanatical Shiite Revolutionary Guards were trained in Lebanon by the Sunni terrorists of Yasser Arafat's al Fatah. They are working together today, to kill Iraqis and Coalition soldiers.

The most dangerous, and paradoxically the most vulnerable, of the terror masters was, and likely still is, Iran. Most everyone agrees that Iran played a unique role in the terror war that has been waged against the United States for nearly a quarter-century. According to the State Department's annual survey, Iran has long been the world's leading sponsor of international terror. Both Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad are Iranian creations and clients, which is why Imad Mugniyah of Hezbollah and Aywan al Zawahiri of Islamic Jihad and al-Qaeda keep showing up in Tehran, along with Abu Musab al Zarqawi, the leader of the jihad in Iraq who had operated out of Tehran for many years. Unsurprisingly, the 9/11 Commission found hard evidence of collusion between Iran and al-Qaeda, going back into the mid-nineties.

In 2002, I argued that our first move against the terror masters should be to give political and economic support to the Iranian people in their efforts to topple the mullahcracy. At that time, the streets of the country's major cities were filled with demonstrators almost every week. Had the democratic opposition received the same kind of help we gave to Solidarity in Poland, the anti-Milosevic forces in Yugoslavia, and the anti-Marcos movement in the Philippines, the mullahs might have been brought down then and there, thus making the war against Saddam, the Assads, and the pro-terrorist elements of the Saudi Royal Family much easier, and greatly reducing the requirement for military power. A strategy of actively supporting democratic revolution throughout the region was precisely what President Bush proposed, and it made good historical sense: It was of a piece with the dramatic spread of freedom in recent decades, including the defeat of the Soviet Empire.

It was objected that such a revolutionary mission was far too ambitious, and that prudence required us to move carefully, one case at a time, all the while mending our diplomatic fences with friends, allies, and undecideds. But, as so often happens, the "prudent" strategy proved more dangerous. Moving step by step — first Iraq, then we'll see — gave the surviving terror masters time to organize their counterattack before we liberated Iraq, and, as I predicted, the extra time was also used to develop the weapons of mass destruction that rightly concern us, and give urgency to our cause.

The long period of dawdling after the defeat of the Taliban, along with the failure of strategic vision that blinded us to the regional nature of the war, enabled the terror masters to develop a collective strategy, for which we were famously unprepared. Yet there was no excuse for us to be surprised, since, on the eve of Operation Iraqi Freedom, Syrian dictator Bashar Assad announced publicly that a terror war would be unleashed against us inside Iraq. That terror war would be modeled on the successful campaign against American forces in Lebanon in the mid-eighties. And so it was, including the Syrian-Iranian (Sunni-Shiite) alliance, often using Saudi jihadi volunteers.

Like it or not, we are in a regional war, and it cannot be effectively prosecuted within a narrow national boundary. There will never be decent security in Iraq so long as the tyrants in Tehran and Damascus remain in power. They know that the spread of freedom is a terrible threat to them, and that if there were a successful democratic Iraq, their power and authority would be at risk. That is why they are waging an existential war against us in Iraq.

It is virtually impossible to read the daily press without finding at least some further evidence of the Syrians' and the mullahs' deep involvement in the terror war in Iraq, and the Iranians are up to their necks in Afghanistan as well. Several weeks ago Afghan President Hamid Karzai said that playing defense against the terrorists in his country wasn't good enough. Karzai stressed that we need to take the fight to those foreign countries where the terrorists are trained, which certainly includes Iran. There is abundant information about joint Iranian/Syrian support for the terrorists in Iraq, even including photographs captured after the battle for Hilla last year, which showed terrorist leaders meeting in Syria with Iranian and Syrian military intelligence officials. This was confirmed to me by a translator who worked for U.S. special forces during and after the fighting, who also read documents with similar information in both Hilla and Fallujah.

Our most potent weapon against the terror masters is revolution, yet we are oddly feckless about supporting pro-democracy forces in either country. Nor is there any sign of support for the Iranian workers, who just last month staged a brief national strike. Workers need a strike fund to walk off the job and stay at home, a lesson mastered by Ayatollah Khomeini, who sent sacks of rice all over the country in the weeks leading up to massive strikes against the shah in 1979. The opposition groups need good communications tools, from cell and satellite phones to laptops and servers. It wouldn't be very difficult to organize this sort of support; it wasn't that hard in the eighties, when we did the same for Solidarity and other democratic forces in the Soviet Empire.

Alas, we have no policy to support regime change in Tehran or Damascus. Indeed, there is no policy at all, four long years after 9/11. A State Department official recently assured me that there were regular meetings on Iran, although there is still no consensus on what to do. Whether this is paralysis or appeasement is hard to say, but it is certainly no way to wage a war on terror.

If we were able to get past the basic strategic error — reflected in the national debate as in our conduct on the ground in Iraq — we might yet see that we hold the winning cards. Freedom has indeed spread throughout the region. Contrary to the confident predictions of many experts, many, perhaps most, Arabs and Muslims crave democracy, and are willing to take enormous risks to win it. Syria has received several devastating blows to its hegemony in Lebanon as the result of a popular uprising. The Egyptians and the Saudis have to at least pretend to hold free elections. The Iranian people are being beaten, tortured and killed as never before, but most every week there are large-scale demonstrations, reaching even to the oil-producing regions without which the mullahcracy would be brought to the verge of collapse. And there is an encouraging surge of pro-democracy enthusiasm in Syria itself. These people are the gravediggers of the old tyrannical order in the Middle East, and they deserve our help.

The main arguments against this policy are that the repressive regimes in Damascus and Tehran are firmly in control; that any meddling we do will backfire, driving potential democrats to the side of the regimes in a spasm of indignant nationalism; and that the democracy movements are poorly led, thus destined to fail. The people who are saying these things — in the universities, the State Department, National Security Council and the Intelligence Community — said much the same about our support for democratic revolution inside the Soviet Empire shortly before its collapse. They forgot Machiavelli's lesson that tyranny is the most unstable form of government, and they forgot how much the world changes when the United States moves against its enemies. Most experts thought Ronald Reagan was out of his mind when he undertook to bring down the Soviet Empire, and hardly a man alive believed that democratic revolution could bring down dictators in Georgia, the Ukraine, and Serbia. All these dictatorships were overthrown by a small active proportion of the population; in Iran, according to the regime's own public opinion polls, the overwhelming majority hate the mullahs. Why should it be more difficult to remove the Iranian Supreme Leader and the Syrian dictator than it was to send Mikhail Gorbachev into early retirement?

What is the alternative? If we do not engage, we will soon find ourselves facing a nuclear Iran that will surely be emboldened to increase its sponsorship of al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, Jamaah Islamiah, and Hamas, and will redouble its efforts to shatter Iraq's fragile democratic experiment. Which is the more prudent policy? Cautiously defending Iraq alone, or supporting the revolutionaries against the terror masters? Active support of the democratic forces in the Middle East would be the right policy, even if there were no terror war, and even if Iran were not a shallow breath away from atomic weapons. It is what America is all about.

Faster, confound it.

— Michael Ledeen, an NRO contributing editor, is most recently the author of The War Against the Terror Masters. He is resident scholar in the Freedom Chair at the American Enterprise Institute



Conversation with Nasser Zarafshan



Under the title „Tehran’s reformist mask has come off“ the German newspaper „Junge Welt“ published an interview with Nasser Zarafshan...

Opip - an observation post



Iran27 Sep 2005



Dr. Zarafshan acted as a lawyer to the relatives of Iranian writers assassinated in the ‘serial murders‘ (more on the serial murders), when he was himself arrested in 2002. He has been in prison ever since. In June he went on hunger strike to protest his detention. During the summer he was shortly transfered to a hospital to undergo treatment for kidney stones.



Following are excerpts from the interview in my translation. The interview was conducted by Rüdiger Gِbel. The thematic headers to the somewhat regrouped answers are mine.



On the impact of the presidential election:



“Neither my release, nor the release of other prisoners depends on who is president. The election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as Chatami’s successor doesn’t have the same significance as the election of a state leader in Europe. The president in our republic is a small, powerless institution. He occupies a decorative space in the hierarchy. This power structure has not changed with Ahmadinejad.



But: the pressure at home and abroad in my case and in that of other prisoners has brought to light differences of opinion among those in power. Still, I don’t expect to be released.”



“The machine of repression is now more unified and without its reformist mask. But because of the complexity of relations in the Gulf region one can say little about its political strategy.”





On his insisting on unconditional release from prison:



“A conditional release in the end means a confirmation of the verdict. It is provided for by law when the convict has served some portion of the penalty. But the condition means that the released is obliged not to repeat the act for which he was sentenced. I have only seen to the rights of my clients. I fiercely stood for justice and respect for the law. How could I oblige myself to not do that again? When such had been my position I wouldn’t have been in prison for so long. My endurance and my resistance reflect the perseverance of my people. I am not allowed to break that. The political murders in Iran, known as the serial murders, are of national importance. They are relevant to the entire nation. In the end, I am a legal representative of the Iranian people and, therefore I cannot judge about its rights.



When someone is responsible, it should be those who have ordered these murders and executed them. They should apologise and never repeat such a thing. Whether the people accept these apologies and promises I can’t tell.”



On the number of political prisoners in Iran:



“The islamic regime doesn’t recognise any political activity or political prisoner. All those, who have been indicted because of expressions of opinion and who are imprisoned, are ranked as ordinary prisoners. They are detained with common criminals, so no one can determine the exact figure. Among the ordinary prisoners there are a lot of amoral tendencies as well as police-informers to put pressure on the political prisoners. Only in Evin prison and for some part in Rajai-Shahr in Karaj political prisoners are held seperate from others. They are considered a high security risc and are under tighter control. In university cities and other big cities a lot of students, reporters and social activists are detained who are not ranked as political prisoners. Added to that should be the prisons that are overwhelmingly occupied by members of ethnic minorities: in the prisons of Mahabad and Sanadaj for Kurds, in Ahwas prison for Arabs and in Sahedan prison for Baluchis there are many who stood up for their national, religious and cultural rights. They too are not ranked as political prisoners.



Apart from these official prisons there are prisons in the Islamic Republic of Iran that are controled by the Ministry of Security and Information, the Pasdaran - the Revolutionary Guards – and other parallel centres of power like the security services and the military. In Evin prison for example Section 209 is controled by the Security Ministry and Section 325 by the Pasdaran. Every day people are arrested under various pretexts and others are surprisingly set free. Therefore no one can give you a number of political prisoners.”



On neo-liberalism and the victory of Ahmadinejad:



“On the one hand, there has been election fraud. That is almost commonplace in countries like Iran. But the fraud hasn’t been so serious that it would have determined the outcome substantially. Crucially, the Pasdaran, a kind of second army, and the paramilitary Basij forces were practically everywhere and have mobilised the common people for Ahmadinejad. They could easily win the ignorant mass. This organised influence is something the so-called islamic liberals of whatever colour are lacking. They just want to negotiate in the upper centres of power and abroad. They are incapable of working in the mass of the people. They are captive to their liberalist dream. Even the present shock won’t wake them up.



In the presidential elections in June the people have expressed what they do not want, not who they want. With their vote for Ahmadinejad many have reacted to the neo-liberal policy.”



“The negative vote shows how blind many people are. The new leadership won’t solve the problems of our country, but worsen them.



During the past years not a single problem-solving model was shown to the people. Casted on Iranians was just neo-liberal policy. But apart from corruption, aggravating class antagonisms and poverty, this had nothing to offer. The regress of the populace in this election is the result of the reformist-islamist model. It could not serve the interest of the people any longer and did not have appropriate answers.



With the election of Ahmadinejad, parts of the population that up to now hadn’t thought about a real change of the Islamic Republic have said no the policy of Hashemi Rafsanjani and Mohammad Chatami within the existing structure. Both were president for two legislative periods. The results of their terms in office were privatisation and corruption as well as canceling of subsidies of goods that are needed by ordinary people; the continuation of the free market economy, the privatisation of the education and health sector and the public services. Permanent inflation was the consequence. Elementary food has become scarce, unemployment has risen, inflation has risen, drug addiction and prostitution have exploded. At the first election of Chatami a lot of hope was invested in him. That was destroyed by socio-economic decline. After his second term all found out that they had entertained illusions and had been fooled.



Disillusionment is accompanied by bitterness and pain. Those that felt they were betrayed not only distanced themselves from the islamic reformists: their pain turned into feelings of revenge. In this situation Rafsanjani came and stood candidate. He is carrying not just his own legacy of two terms in office as president of the republic but also the legacy of Chatami. For in the run-off elections the supporters of Chatami announced their support of Rafsanjani. The reaction of the people, who for eight years had witnessed their being looted, was obvious. There was no alternative, only fake alternatives. That way Ahmadinejad could present himself as the representative of social justice.



Rightwing totalitarian regimes with parafascist tendencies always try to mobilise the mass. Countering that is only possible when one becomes active in the population. The liberals though were not capable of doing that. They are locked inside their ideology. The elections have been a shock above all for democratic and leftist forces, who divulged in liberal illusions in recent years. It was a huge lesson for them. They have learnt that in society much complicated and tedious work has to be done.



In boycotting the elections many Iranians reacted the right way though. They realised that within the framework of the regime no change and reform is possible. No matter who gets elected, in reality he can’t do anything. As a consequence you should distantiate from this meaningless game. The reaction of this part of society is decisive, because this part is the agent of a fundamental change.”



On the influence of the accusations of manufacturing nuclear weapons:



“Discussions about Western attacks in the Gulf region, especially the threats by the USA are of a predominantly intellectual nature. They are being followed and held by the diverse strata of the intellectual elite of the country. Through the media they have access to relevant information on international developments. But they do not constitute the bulk of those that have elected Ahmadinejad. It was the working people in small towns and the population of the country side. Most Iranians have neither time nor resources to inform themselves about such problems, and they are not interested either. The threats of attack by the West against the islamic republic have no direct effect on the lifes of these people and therefore they don’t react to them. The discussion started by islamic reformists eight years ago about democracy and human rights and the noise about a few arrested journalists has not reached the ordinary people.



In contrast to that stands reality. The factual, social and economic problems are unemployment, inflation, lack of health services and education, the prostitution, drug addiction, man slaughter and murders. That is what people have to cope with day by day. The bulk of the population gets looted every day by the young elite in power and is suffering humiliation every day by the newly rich. This daily life is closer to them than any discussion on a possible attack by the West and on the conduct of Washington towards the Islamic government.”



On the role the western states could play:



“We are living in a world where we first and foremost have to rely on our own strength. States act very egoistically and without principle in international affairs.



We expect other states, especially states like Germany that have extensive relations with Iran, to at least produce a balance between their interests and the interest and fate of our people. In their relations to Iran they should reflect on on their own political axioms. For the democratic rights of our people to become real pressure has to be exerted on Iran. This can be done in international relations.



I don’t mean to say that this pressure should be exerted because of me and the probably better known regime opponent Akbar Ganji. Hundreds of political prisoners in Iran are threatened by execution! If international treaties, the Convention of Human Rights and other similar resolutions signed by Iran, were followed by the regime, people like me should not be in prison.”



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URL: http://www.opip.org/2005/09/27/conversation-with-nasser-zarafshan/