Iranian Alert -- January 1, 2004 -- IRAN LIVE THREAD --Americans for Regime Change in Iran

The US media almost entirely ignores news regarding the Islamic Republic of Iran. As Tony Snow of the Fox News Network has put it, “this is probably the most under-reported news story of the year.” But most American’s are unaware that the Islamic Republic of Iran is NOT supported by the masses of Iranians today. Modern Iranians are among the most pro-American in the Middle East.

There is a popular revolt against the Iranian regime brewing in Iran today. Starting June 10th of this year, Iranians have begun taking to the streets to express their desire for a regime change. Most want to replace the regime with a secular democracy. Many even want the US to over throw their government.

The regime is working hard to keep the news about the protest movement in Iran from being reported. Unfortunately, the regime has successfully prohibited western news reporters from covering the demonstrations. The voices of discontent within Iran are sometime murdered, more often imprisoned. Still the people continue to take to the streets to demonstrate against the regime.

In support of this revolt, Iranians in America have been broadcasting news stories by satellite into Iran. This 21st century news link has greatly encouraged these protests. The regime has been attempting to jam the signals, and locate the satellite dishes. Still the people violate the law and listen to these broadcasts. Iranians also use the Internet and the regime attempts to block their access to news against the regime. In spite of this, many Iranians inside of Iran read these posts daily to keep informed of the events in their own country.

This daily thread contains nearly all of the English news reports on Iran. It is thorough. If you follow this thread you will witness, I believe, the transformation of a nation. This daily thread provides a central place where those interested in the events in Iran can find the best news and commentary. The news stories and commentary will from time to time include material from the regime itself. But if you read the post you will discover for yourself, the real story of what is occurring in Iran and its effects on the war on terror.

I am not of Iranian heritage. I am an American committed to supporting the efforts of those in Iran seeking to replace their government with a secular democracy. I am in contact with leaders of the Iranian community here in the United States and in Iran itself.

If you read the daily posts you will gain a better understanding of the US war on terrorism, the Middle East and why we need to support a change of regime in Iran. Feel free to ask your questions and post news stories you discover in the weeks to come.

If all goes well Iran will be free soon and I am convinced become a major ally in the war on terrorism. The regime will fall. Iran will be free. It is just a matter of time.

What We Will Do in 2004

New York Times -
By Colin L. Powell
Jan 1, 2004

WASHINGTON — As we Americans turn the last page of our calendars, many of us are moved to review the achievements of the year gone by and to make resolutions for the year ahead. This can be a frustrating business if one dwells on subjects like exercise and dieting, but the twin task of stock-taking and resolution-making is a worthy discipline — and not just for individuals.

We in the Bush administration have also taken stock and made resolutions. We do so with confidence because President Bush's vision is clear and right: America's formidable power must continue to be deployed on behalf of principles that are simultaneously American, but that are also beyond and greater than ourselves.

We resolve, of course, to expand freedom, and we are focused in particular on Afghanistan and Iraq. The Afghan people now have a constitution, a rapidly advancing market economy, and new hope as they look toward national elections. The aspirations of a free and talented Iraqi nation are also taking wing, now that Saddam Hussein's murderous and dangerous regime is no more. We are working to return sovereignty to the Iraqi people through a fair and open process and to ensure that the country receives the maximum feasible debt relief. As the Coalition Provisional Authority closes its doors on June 30, in accord with the Nov. 15 transition plan, we will open an embassy in Baghdad.

While our efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq will continue in 2004, we are resolved as well to turn the president's goal of a free and democratic Middle East into a reality. We will expand the Middle East Partnership Initiative to encourage political, economic and educational reform throughout the region. We will also stand by the Iranian people, and others living under oppressive regimes, as they strive for freedom.

This struggle will not be confined to the Middle East. We are working for the advent of a free Cuba, and toward democratic reform in other countries whose people are denied liberty. And we are resolved to support the young democracies that have risen in Latin America, Europe, Asia and Africa. The consolidation of freedom in many new but often fragile democracies will shape the aspirations of people everywhere, assuring that the 21st century will be a century of liberty worldwide.

Our efforts will apply to individuals as well as nations. In 2003 we freed thousands from oppression through President Bush's program to combat human trafficking — whether for prostitution or forced labor or to turn children into soldiers. We have saved lives and redeemed the enslaved, and we will do more in 2004. Also in 2004, the president's plan for H.I.V. and AIDS relief will help free millions worldwide from the devastation of this horrible disease.

We resolve to promote prosperity, too. A new international consensus is helping poorer countries develop themselves through good governance, sound economic, trade and environmental policies and wise investments in their people. The centerpiece of our program for development, to be started in 2004, is the Millennium Challenge Account — an incentive system that makes assistance contingent on political and economic reform.

We also made important strides in 2003 toward a more open international trade and investment climate, signing free trade pacts with Chile, Singapore and the countries of Central America. In 2004 the president will lead the effort to reinvigorate our global free trade strategy, and to advance regional and bilateral free trade as opportunities arise. His proposal to develop a Middle East free trade agreement is high on the agenda.

We are resolved, as well, for peace. Freedom cannot flourish and prosperity cannot advance without security, and this we are determined to achieve. Americans are safer as 2004 begins than they were a year ago. Afghanistan is no longer a devil's playground for terrorists, nor is Iraq an incubator for weapons of mass murder that could have fallen into terrorists' hands.

Al Qaeda remains a great danger — the main reason for our current heightened security posture. But its members are increasingly on the run, in hiding, in jail or dead. Its finances and communications are being disrupted, and closer intelligence and law enforcement cooperation among peace-loving countries is making headway against terrorist plots.

Iran has felt our sustained pressure and that of our allies to come clean on its nuclear weapons program, and has begun to do so. And Libya has renounced terrorism and weapons of mass destruction thanks to the president's robust counterproliferation strategy and bold British and American diplomacy. In our own hemisphere, narco-traffickers and terrorists are on the defensive thanks to strong United States support for a resolute Colombian government.

The war on terrorism remains our first priority, but success in that war depends on constructive ties among the world's major powers. These we pursue without respite; America's relations with Russia, China and India all improved in 2003. Ties with allies old and new have been strengthened as well, despite the growing pains of adjustment to a new era. Indeed, both NATO and the European Union will expand this year, which is good news for international security.

Our partnerships remain strong as do the institutions of international cooperation. We will rely on both to advance freedom, prosperity and peace in 2004. As we work to restore a liberated Iraq to its people, we invite the United Nations and the international community to help Iraqis establish a new citadel of free minds and free markets in the Middle East. With our NATO allies we will support the Afghan people as they heal their wounds and chart their future.

With China, Japan, Russia and South Korea we will continue to tackle the problem of North Korea's dangerous nuclear weapons programs. We seek peace and reconciliation in the Korean peninsula, but we will not reward threats from Pyongyang or provide incentive for blackmail. With our quartet partners — the United Nations, the European Union and Russia — we will help Israelis and Palestinians achieve peace, so that a free Palestine will exist alongside a secure and democratic Jewish state in Israel.

We are resolved, too, to share the burden to bring longstanding conflicts in Sudan, Liberia, Northern Ireland and elsewhere to an end. Such achievements will build momentum for the success of American diplomacy worldwide.

Freedom, prosperity and peace are not separate principles, or separable policy goals. Each reinforces the other, so serving any one requires an integrated policy that serves all three. The challenges are many, for the world is full of trouble. But it is also full of opportunities, and we are resolved to seize every one of them. If some of us drop a few pounds in the process, that's O.K., too.

Colin L. Powell is secretary of state.

http://www.daneshjoo.org/generalnews/article/publish/article_4351.shtml

Eleven more people found alive in quake debris

AFP - World News (via Yahoo)
Jan 1, 2004

BAM - Eleven more survivors were pulled from the devastation caused by the earthquake in southeastern Iran, state radio said, in a report apparently aimed at providing at least a glimmer of good news amid the devastation and death.

They included Yadollah Saadat, 26, who was rescued thanks to the persistance of his wife Fatemeh Asgari, relief workers said here.

Saadat had been protected by furniture which toppled over him as his house collapsed, forming a cavity.

His wife, who was knocked out, recovered consciousness in hospital and insisted on returning to their home to search for her husband. He was found, also unconscious and with a fractured pelvis, but had recovered enough to speak as he was being flown out Thursday to hospital in Tehran.

Rescue workers in the affected region, centred on the city of Bam, had however expressed pessimism at the chances of finding any more people alive five days after the quake killed an estimated 40,000 people.

Some estimates have put the number of dead as high as 50,000.

Earlier, citing Iran's "extraordinary humanitarian needs," the United States temporarily suspended restrictions on money and equipment meant to help the Islamic republic recover from last week's devastating earthquake.

"The Iranian people deserve and need the assistance of the international community to help them recover," White House spokesman Trent Duffy said in a statement. "The American people want to help."

The US Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control issued a general license temporarily enabling US citizens and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to send money to aid activities in and around the stricken city of Bam.

Donations of items like food, certain medecines, clothing, and tents do not require a licence, Duffy said in a statement released here while US President George W. Bush ushered in the new year at his nearby ranch.

The US State Department said it was issuing additional licenses allowing the US government and US NGOs to export to Iran sensitive items like transportation equipment, satellite telephones, and radio and personal computing items.

"After consultation with Congress, the Secretary of State determined that, due to the extraordinary humanitarian needs created by the earthquake, it is in the national interest of the United States," to allow such exports, the State Department's number two spokesman, Adam Ereli, said in a statement.

The general license, valid for three months from last Saturday, allows US citizens to make direct contributions of US dollars to Iranian and other organizations for such relief.

The move, the latest in series of US outreach efforts to its longtime foe in the earthquake's aftermath, waives requirements that individual licenses be granted for such payments which are usually illegal without federal approval.

Applying for those permits can be an onerous process, with lengthy waits for approval. Violations are punishable by hefty fines.

The general license announced Wednesday streamlines that process and makes it easier for US citizens, aid groups and others to contribute to Bam relief efforts.

US Secretary of State Colin Powell, who this week hinted that new dialogue between the United States and Iran could emerge from the ruins of the earthquake, actively campaigned for the suspension of the sanctions which have been in place since the 1980s, US officials said.

So far, however, Iranian officials have, in public at least, snubbed the US overture. Iran's presidency and foreign ministry signaling that Tehran's aversion of what it brands the "Great Satan" remains intact.

But over the weekend, the United States offered -- and Iran accepted -- US humanitarian assistance to the victims of the December 26 Bam earthquake, which is believed to have taken some 40,000 lives.

Earlier Wednesday in Bam, US firefighters joined their Iranian counterparts for the first time to search ruins, where sniffer dogs and listening devices suggested people might have survived.

Powell's remarks came just days after the first US military planes carrying aid arrived in Iran for the first time since Washington and Tehran broke diplomatic relations over a hostage crisis in 1981 after the Islamic revolution.

Since the hostage-taking, the two countries have engaged in sporadic informal discussions, but have not held a formal dialogue.

The situation soured last year when Bush lumped Iran with Iraq and North Korea in an "axis of evil" bent on acquiring weapons of mass destruction and supporting terrorism.

http://www.daneshjoo.org/generalnews/article/publish/article_4349.shtml

US Eases Restrictions On Sending Money To Iran

December 31, 2003
Dow Jones Newswires
The Associated Press

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration Wednesday eased restrictions on assistance to Iran in response to the country's devastating earthquake last week.

"Getting aid to those so greatly affected by this devastating earthquake is a top priority," Treasury Secretary John Snow said.

The goal, Snow said, was speeding up the process of helping Iranians.

Blanket licenses are being issued to permit U.S. firms and individuals to transfer funds to Iran, the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control announced.

Also, export of transportation equipment, satellite telephones and radio and personal computing systems will be permitted to help manage relief efforts, a U.S. official said.

A 90-day period, which began last Saturday, has been set to permit people in the U.S. to donate funds to private organizations to be used for relief and reconstruction efforts, the Treasury office said.

Iranians listed by the U.S. government as suspected financiers of terrorism will remain barred from receiving funds.

Usually it is illegal to transfer funds to Iran because of sanctions on Tehran, dating to 1979. To get around that, individual licenses for exceptions to the rule are required, and that can be a time-consuming process, a senior U.S. official said Wednesday.

Secretary of State Colin Powell consulted members of Congress and concluded that the earthquake had created extraordinary humanitarian needs and that it was in the U.S. national interest to provide help, a U.S. official said on condition of anonymity.

Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage placed a phone call to Iran's U.N. envoy, Javad Zariv, who was in Tehran at the time of the tragedy, and pledged U.S. assistance in light of the disaster.

But while Zariv accepted the offer and Iranian President Mohammad Khatami thanked the U.S., Khatami said there could be no change in a nearly 25-year estrangement with the U.S. unless Washington changed its tone and behavior.

Within the Bush administration there continues to be disagreement on how to deal with Iran and on whether democratic change is in the wind in Tehran.

Powell told The Washington Post earlier in the week that there were encouraging developments in Iran and that Tehran was demonstrating a "new attitude" on some issues.

But a White House spokesman, Trent Duffy, accompanying President George W. Bush in Crawford, Texas, cast a different spin.

"We've made clear to the Iranian government on many occasions our grave concerns regarding its support for terrorism, pursuit of weapons of mass destruction and other of its activities," Duffy said.

In the meantime, the administration has been speeding relief to Iran where more than 28,000 people perished in the earthquake.

State Department spokesman Adam Ereli said the U.S. Agency for International Development had assembled an 84-member team of experts, including 60 physicians from the Boston area and other medical workers.

They arrived in the devastated city of Bam on Tuesday and began setting up a mobile hospital.

http://framehosting.dowjonesnews.com/sample/samplestory.asp?StoryID=2003123123330002&Take=1

Some Electricity Restored In Bam

January 01, 2004
Dow Jones Newswires
The Associated Press

BAM, Iran -- Relief workers restored some electricity and rushed more aid into Bam, Iran , keeping watch Thursday for aftershocks or disease outbreaks as the shattered ancient city recovers from its devastating earthquake.

Iranian authorities have begun registering people and issuing food ration cards, while aid workers have begun restoring electricity to parts of Bam. Street lights are now working on main thoroughfares.

Estimates on the death toll varied.

A U.N. report that cited government figures said the death toll by Tuesday was at least 33,000. A provincial government spokesman, Asadollah Iranmanesh, said the confirmed toll wasn't yet that high but he predicted it would top 30,000.

"Definitely it will not reach 40,000," Iranmanesh told The Associated Press. Iranmanesh added that 26,500 bodies had already been recovered and buried in Bam and surrounding cities.

The U.N. report said 30,000 people were injured, but Iranmanesh put the figure at just 15,000.

The U.S. team was shocked by its first look at the damage brought by the 6.6-magnitude quake last Friday, as hopes of finding more survivors faded. A Taiwanese team hoped it could rescue a baby detected by sniffer dogs but found only the infant's body.

"The one in Turkey was the worst, and this is worse than that," said U.S. aid worker Robert Dube, of the Urban Search and Rescue Unit from Fairfax, Va. "The destruction is just complete. Everything that is not down looks like it's at the point where it's not going to be used again."

Aftershocks have rumbled Bam repeatedly since the quake - with two to three a day - and remain a "real danger" because the ruins could easily topple over, said Ted Pearn, the top U.N. relief worker in Bam.

Taking a first assessment of the structural damage, six U.S. aid workers passed the mangled remains of crushed cars, women in chadors cooking by gas stoves on the sidewalk beside their tents and people still sifting through the rubble for their battered possessions.

Pearn said officials plan to start setting up three camps with heated tents to get the homeless out of small tents pitched on the roadside that offer little protection from near-freezing nighttime temperatures.

Officials estimate the camps will need to house about 40,000 people - but they're still not clear how many remain in the city after many residents fled after the quake. It is also unclear how many bodies remain buried beneath the rubble or if any more survivors can be found.

The U.S. team was set to open its hospital on New Year's Day after building it overnight as Washington sought to help in Iran's recovery.

Iran's orphanages are rapidly filling as aid workers sort the living from the dead and deliver young survivors to the provincial capital of Kerman, 190 kilometers northwest of the destroyed ancient city of Bam.

In one children's care center, 6-year-old Atefeh Razmi was playing with a puzzle while waiting for her parents to come pick her up.

But like the 80 other children at the Kermanian Nursery Center, Atefeh was orphaned by the quake. An estimated 1,500 children have been recovered without family so far and are being held at orphanages.

Forty-eight countries have now sent aid teams, with more than 1,000 foreign workers now at the scene. More than 200 foreign planes have brought assistance to the airports in Dam and Kerman.

A top priority in the days ahead was to prevent the outbreak of typhoid or cholera, though there have been no reports of epidemics yet.

Iranian authorities have an "excellent surveillance system in place for monitoring any possible outbreaks," said Elfatih Elsamani, a World Health Organization representative in Iran .

http://iranvajahan.net/cgi-bin/news.pl?l=en&y=2004&m=01&d=01&a=1

State of the World in 2004

January 01, 2004
Center for Security Policy
centerforsecuritypolicy.org

As we welcome in 2004, it's time to take stock of the geopolitical panorama that provides the backdrop for the early stages of what is becoming known as World War IV:

- Mop-up operations after the hugely successful Battle of Afghanistan and Battle of Iraq, and formidable reconstruction of those blighted countries;

- Al Qaeda's efforts to reconstitute itself, to continue funding its networks, to franchise its operations to other organizations, and to plan even more spectacular and deadlier attacks;

- Fissures in the Saudi-led Wahhabi global terrorist support network, from the epicenter in Riyadh to the cell-level arrests and neutralization of key operatives in the US and abroad;

- A strengthening, pro-US, democratic revolutionary movement in Iran - despite Washington's unwillingness to embrace it;

- Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi apparently folding his WMD arsenal in the face of American-led firepower and iron will in Iraq, opening his programs up to international inspectors including the CIA, and publicly exhorting other regimes to follow his example (while paradoxically not following a similar course concerning his longtime support for international terrorists);

- The shrill third leg of the Axis of Evil, the North Korean regime, turning up the volume of its nuclear threat;

- The People's Republic of China, led by a corrupt and decrepit Communist Party, milking the West on the North Korea issue, while geometrically increasing its military spending, advancing its nuclear weapon and space-launch programs, encroaching on the sovereignty of nearly all its neighbors, threatening to destroy democratic Taiwan, running extremely aggressive espionage operations against the US and its allies, and pretending to be an ally in the war against the terrorists;

- A Franco-German axis that is dividing a newly united Europe against itself and its American ally;

- An onrush of harsh anti-US populism throughout Latin America, manifested in the Chavez regime of Venezuela, and the political movements behind the new governments of Argentina and Brazil;

- Sustained, sophisticated political warfare operations waged against US interests by the anachronistic but still influential Communist regime in Cuba;

- The continued strength of narcoterrorists, especially in Colombia - as well as the new strength of those resisting and, yes, destroying narcoterrorists;

- A Mexican government whose national strategy is to export millions of illegal aliens into the United States to relieve domestic political and economic pressures, and to siphon billions of dollars in US wage remittances and Social Security payments into the Mexican economy;

- A US government that intentionally, for political reasons, refuses to enforce its own immigration laws designed to secure the borders and control who enters the country;

- Increased understanding of how jihadist political influence operations work inside the US, and gradual degradation and isolation of those operations through arrests, raids, and public exposure;

- A US government that still cannot figure out how to use political persuasion abroad to win the war;

- A president and his defense team who, despite the formidable foreign and domestic obstacles, are committed to following through and destroying the enemy, regardless of how long it may take.

http://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/index.jsp?section=today

Hawks tell Bush how to win war on terror

By David Rennie in Washington
(Filed: 31/12/2003)

President George W Bush was sent a public manifesto yesterday by Washington's hawks, demanding regime change in Syria and Iran and a Cuba-style military blockade of North Korea backed by planning for a pre-emptive strike on its nuclear sites.

The manifesto, presented as a "manual for victory" in the war on terror, also calls for Saudi Arabia and France to be treated not as allies but as rivals and possibly enemies.

The manifesto is contained in a new book by Richard Perle, a Pentagon adviser and "intellectual guru" of the hardline neo-conservative movement, and David Frum, a former Bush speechwriter. They give warning of a faltering of the "will to win" in Washington.

In the battle for the president's ear, the manifesto represents an attempt by hawks to break out of the post-Iraq doldrums and strike back at what they see as a campaign of hostile leaking by their foes in such centres of caution as the State Department or in the military top brass.

Their publication, An End to Evil: How to Win the War on Terror, coincided with the latest broadside from the hawks' enemy number one, Colin Powell, the secretary of state.

Though on leave recovering from a prostate cancer operation, Mr Powell summoned reporters to his bedside to hail "encouraging" signs of a "new attitude" in Iran and call for the United States to keep open the prospect of dialogue with the Teheran authorities.

Such talk is anathema to hawks like Mr Perle and Mr Frum who urge Washington to shun the mullahs and work for their overthrow in concert with Iranian dissidents.

It may be assumed that their instincts at least are shared by hawks inside the government, whose twin power bases are the Pentagon's civilian leadership and the office of the vice-president, Dick Cheney.

Such officials prevailed over invading Afghanistan and Iraq, but have been seen as on the back foot since the autumn as their post-war visions of building a secular, free-market Iraq were scaled back in favour of compromise and a swift handover of power next June.

The book demands that any talks with North Korea require the complete and immediate abandonment of its nuclear programme.

As North Korea will probably refuse such terms, the book urges a Cuba-style military blockade and overt preparations for war, including the rapid pullback of US forces from the inter-Korean border so that they move out of range of North Korean artillery.

Such steps, with luck, will prompt China to oust its nominal ally, Kim Jong-il, and install a saner regime in North Korea, the authors write.

The authoritarian rule of Syria's leader, Bashar Assad, should also be ended, encouraged by shutting oil supplies from Iraq, seizing arms he buys from Iran, and raids into Syria to hunt terrorists.

The authors urge Mr Bush to "tell the truth about Saudi Arabia". Wealthy Saudis, some of them royal princes, fund al-Qa'eda, they write.

The Saudi government backs "terror-tainted Islamic organisations" as part of a larger campaign to "spread its extremist version of Islam throughout the Muslim world and into Europe and North America".

The book calls for tough action against France and its dreams of offsetting US power. "We should force European governments to choose between Paris and Washington," it states. Britain's independence from Europe should be preserved, perhaps with open access for British arms to American defence markets.

http://news.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;$sessionid$IG5OCOPRTTRXNQFIQMGSFFOAVCBQWIV0?xml=/news/2003/12/31/wcons31.xml&sSheet=/news/2003/12/31/ixnewstop.html&secureRefresh=true

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