Iranian Alert -- January 12, 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.

EU's Solana Urges Transparent Electoral Process In Iran

January 12, 2004
Dow Jones Newswires
The Associated Press

TEHRAN -- The European Union's foreign policy chief on Monday called for a clear electoral process in Iran after hard-liners disqualified hundreds of liberal candidates, including more than 80 sitting lawmakers allied with the reformist president.

Javier Solana, on a two-day visit to Iran, criticized the disqualifications, saying it was "difficult to explain (to the European parliament) how a lawmaker can't be a candidate."

"The electoral process is very important for democracy and will be very important to us," he told reporters. "We want very much the electoral process to be clear and transparent."

For a second consecutive day, reformist parliament members staged a sit-in at the legislature to protest the disqualifications.

The 12-member Guardian Council, which comprises conservatives picked by Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has barred more than 80 incumbent lawmakers, all reformists, from seeking another term in Feb. 20 parliamentary elections.

About 900 of the 1,700 people who wanted to contest seats in Tehran have been disqualified, members of parliament said.

The disqualified hopefuls still have the option to appeal the decision.

President Mohammad Khatami vowed Sunday to challenge the disqualifications, saying there would be a "harsh reaction" if legal channels failed to overturn the council's decision.

Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi said elections were an internal issue and that the government was consulting over what action to take.

"The top leaders are thinking of a solution so that, God willing, the rights of no body will be ignored and a crisis does not develop," Kharrazi said.

Reformist leaders have threatened a boycott of the election if their candidates are disqualified.

The disqualified legislators include Mohammad Reza Khatami, the younger brother of the president, and Behzad Nabavi - both deputy speakers of parliament. Mohammad Reza Khatami leads the Islamic Iran Participation Front, the largest reformist party.

The Guardian Council also disqualified Fatemeh Haqiqatjou and Elaheh Koulaee, two female legislators who have fought for women's rights.

Some 8,200 prospective candidates registered last month to run in the elections for 290 legislative seats. Their qualifications must be approved by local trustees and then the Guardian Council.

Government spokesman Abdollah Ramezanzadeh said the government "will not consider illegal decisions by any body as binding."

That means the Interior Ministry, which is controlled by reformists, may ignore the Guardian Council's rulings and put the disqualified names on the ballots.

The Guardian Council had warned earlier that it would disqualify candidates whom they deemed to oppose Khamenei's absolute rule.

Hard-liners consider Khamenei above the law and answerable only to God. Reformists want Khamenei's powers to be curbed so that he becomes answerable to the nation.

In the February 2000 elections, the conservatives lost control of the parliament for the first time since the 1979 Islamic revolution. They won less than a third of the legislature.

Next month's polls will be a crucial test for Iran's reform movement, which has frequently been thwarted by hard-line organs of government and has lost popularity because of a perceived failure to deliver on its promises of liberalization.

http://framehosting.dowjonesnews.com/sample/samplestory.asp?StoryID=2004011210350008&Take=1

"Iran Elections will have Bearing on Ties with EU"

January 12, 2004
AFP
IranMania

TEHRAN -- The European Union's foreign policy chief Javier Solana told Iran's clerical leaders Monday that the holding of free and fair elections here next month would have a bearing on their relations with the European bloc.

Solana's two-day visit to Iran, described by diplomats as an effort to keep up momentum in the two sides' warming relations, has been overshadowed by a major political crisis here following the large-scale barring of reformists from the February 20 parliamentary elections.

Although Solana referred to the issue as an "internal matter" for Iran, he was clear in spelling out the potentially dire consequences for Iran-EU relations if the vote is perceived as being rigged by religious hardliners.

"The fairness of an election is not only on the day of the election, the process should be fair," he told reporters in a joint press conference with Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi.

"But it's very difficult for me to explain to the Europeans how MPs who are representatives of the people could not participate again in the election," he added.

"What is important is that the elections are fair," Solana emphasised, although he did acknowledged the political wrangling ahead of the crucial vote was far from over.

In contrast to the United States, which has labelled Tehran part of an "axis of evil," the EU is pressing ahead with a policy of constructive engagement with Iran, pressing human rights issues while at the same time seeking to negotiate a bilateral trade agreement.

The policy has scored in some areas, notably with the foreign ministers of Britain, France and Germany succeeding late last year in convincing Iran to come clean on its nuclear programme and sign up to tougher inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN's nuclear watchdog.

But EU diplomats say the dialogue has largely been with Iranian reformists -- whose control over parliament and therefore the government is now under threat from powerful religious conservatives controlling the Guardians' Council, the political watchdog seeking to blacklist large numbers of reformist candidates.

"A very important component of our engagement with Iran is democracy and human rights, and Mr. Solana will certainly be looking at what is happening in the run up to the elections next month," a senior EU diplomat close to Solana told AFP.

"It would be hard to envisage our dialogue continuing with the same intensity if hardliners are in power and had taken power in such questionable circumstances," said the diplomat, adding that a conservative victory could put EU-Iran dialogue "back to square one".

In addition to human rights and the nuclear issue, the EU has also been pressing Iran on two other matters -- cooperating in the fight against terrorism and lending its support to Middle East peace efforts.

http://www.iranmania.com/News/ArticleView/Default.asp?NewsCode=21556&NewsKind=Current%20Affairs

Out of Misery, Hope

January 12, 2004
National Review Online
Koorosh Afshar

An open letter to President George W. Bush.

Dear Mr. President,

I sincerely hope that you have enjoyed a merry Christmas and a happy New Year. And while the year has gotten off to an unfortunate start for my fellow Iranians, I remain hopeful that this will be, at last, a year of peace and freedom for all the nations of the world.

So far, my freedom-loving peers and I have, in our struggle to be heard, skipped over statesmen and governments and appealed directly to the people. We have done everything in our power to convince the world's ordinary citizens — people like us — to lend a hand in freeing our homeland from the reign of a small and corrupt, but armed, mob. Yet we have finally decided to make one exception: We have decided to write to you.

I write on behalf of my beloved friends — the ones abducted months ago who are still missing; the ones shackled in the theocratic regime's torture cells; the girls raped and tortured on the nights before their executions by Islamic thugs; the ones buried in mass graves. Yet I write most of all on behalf of all of us who aspire to a free and democratic Iran.

Mr. President, we appreciate the generosity of your resolve in helping the Iranian nation heal one of its many wounds. We treasure this kindness, which we consider an example of America's compassionate attitude toward the Iranian people.

Thank you very much, Mr. President; and thank you, all the American people! You have soothed and calmed the pain of this most recent suffering, and we drew strength as we saw that you were, once again, there to support us.

But amid all the scenes of misery, you may have missed something. You may not have noticed that the disaster in Bam was like a final shot in the skull of a moribund people, for whom life (as most in the West know it) ceased decades before the earthquake. Like millions of other Iranians, they never had the chance to experience that sacred trio of rights: to life, to liberty, and to the pursuit of happiness. Most knew nothing but misery, and liberty was the stuff of dreams. Now, thanks to the earthquake, they can no longer claim even life.

Mr. President, we may be able to rebuild the ancient citadel of Bam. But how can we ever hope to rebuild the devastated minds and spirits of those children who have lost their parents, or their siblings, to the darkness of bloodthirsty tyrants? How can we buy back the totally ruined lives of the Iranian teenage girls sold to neighboring countries? Please understand our anguish, and our frustration: Iranian lives matter little to some of your European counterparts, and even to some of your opponents in America.

Sir, please remind Secretary Powell that even the thought of negotiating with the mullahs is absolutely futile. Khatami and Khomeini are both against the Iranian people. And consider another example of political corruption that might be useful to your administration — look at what happened in Bam. President Rafsanjani had constructed a gigantic complex there called Arg-e-Jadid-e-Bam, meaning "The Modern Citadel of Bam," for the workers and foreign staff of one of his many factories in Iran. Of course, the "Modern Citadel" was not destroyed in the earthquake; not one person was injured there. It's too bad Mr. Rafsanjani couldn't be bothered to ensure such modern, rigorous building codes for the rest of Bam: Tens of thousands of died; one out of every two people in the city was killed in the quake.

As if that wasn't treachery enough, the mullahs showed their true vicious colors when it came to the earthquake-relief money, according to some Iranian sources. Fully aware of the horrible conditions in Bam, the mullahs still didn't hesitate to seize hefty portions of the international humanitarian aid, only to use it as campaign funding for the upcoming elections for the Islamic parliament. Mr. President, how can Secretary Powell even speak of negotiations with people this evil?

Lastly, Mr. President, please do not forget that what you and your allied forces have begun in Iraq and Afghanistan can only bear fruit if the Iranian problem is solved. We can do it: Trust us, not the mullahs. Invest in the real Iran, not the Islamic occupying regime. Allow us to make this plague the last to afflict the Iranians; allow us to make 2004 the year of Iran's liberation.

And please allow us write to you again — next time, about our free and peaceful homeland.

With gratitude,
Koorosh Afshar

— Koorosh Afshar is a pseudonym for a student at the Iranian University in Tehran.

http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/afshar200401120907.asp

The Vision Thing

January 12, 2004
Center for Security Policy
Decision Brief

In this political year, George W. Bush is said to have felt the need to demonstrate that he has a quality his father once derided as "the vision thing." So he has reportedly embraced an ambitious, long-term and stupefyingly costly (some estimates run as high as a trillion-dollars over the next few decades) program for manned exploration of the Moon and Mars.

Real Vision

As it happens, there is far more immediate, clear and, frankly, credible proof of this President's 20-20 vision: His determination to liberate Iraq and his courageous, steadfast and effective realization of that strategically critical initiative.

Just how visionary was this presidential undertaking can be measured in two ways. First, Mr. Bush recognized – apparently from the very outset of his administration – that the removal of Saddam Hussein from power would not only be of immense benefit to the long-suffering people of Iraq and to their long-threatened neighbors. It had the potential to catalyze long-needed changes among other terrorist-sponsoring and weapons of mass destruction-wielding regimes in the region and beyond.

Changing the Mideast – and Beyond

Today, there can be no doubt that the forcible toppling of the Butcher of Baghdad -- and the demonstration it entailed of American power and, no less importantly, will – has "concentrated the minds" of his counterparts elsewhere in the Mideast and Central and East Asia. With characteristic lucidness and verve, syndicated columnist William Safire enumerated in a column published Monday in the New York Times how enemies of freedom in Libya, Afghanistan, Syria, the West Bank, Iran and North Korea have all trimmed sail of late.

As Safire observes of the sudden renunciation last month of Libya's WMD programs by its despotic ruler Moammar Qadhafi, "the notion that this terror-supporting dictator's epiphany was not the direct result of our military action, but of decade-long diplomatic pleas for goodness and mercy, is laughable."

The Vision-Challenged

The second measure of just how visionary was President Bush's decision to liberate Iraq can be found in the lack of vision exhibited by so many of his critics. Some, like Joseph Cirincione of the Carnegie Endowment writing in Sunday's Washington Post, insist on making the "laughable" case that "It is unclear whether these breakthroughs [in Libya, Iran and North Korea]...are the result of the American success in Iraq or of our failures there."

Now, Cirincione – like the left-wing think-tank for which he works – has a powerful interest in diminishing the far-reaching and beneficial effects of George Bush's surgical application of American military power. He and the Carnegie Endowment have long promoted the idea that arms control, international treaties and regimes, supranational government bodies, multilateral inspections and, in extremis, UN-approved sanctions can be safely relied upon to resolve basically all threats to our security.

Just last week, Cirincione and two Carnegie co-authors published a much ballyhooed critique of the Bush Administration's perceptions of, representations about and efforts to eliminate the threat posed by Saddam Hussein. Few of those in the press who uncritically touted the report's conclusions took note of their self-serving nature. For example, Cirincione et.al. concluded that, "Considering all the costs and benefits, there were at least two options clearly preferable to a war undertaken without international support: allowing [UN] inspections to continue until obstructed or completed, or imposing a tougher program of ‘coercive inspections' backed by a specially designed force."

If you start from the perspective that U.S. military action is essentially illegitimate unless authorized by the UN and that inspections ("coercive" or otherwise) are always useful – even in the face of systematic deception and concealment operations by the inspectees and of international inspectors who don't want to give offense to their hosts, it almost always follows that there are "clearly preferable" alternatives to war. An analysis that flows from such premises is so predictably skewed as to amount to "garbage-in, garbage-out."

Disqualified for the Role of Visionary Commander-in-Chief

More importantly, many of President Bush's would-be-successors are displaying a similar, stunning lack of vision. Two of the most prominent Democratic candidates, former Vermont Governor Howard Dean and retired General Wesley Clark, have endlessly described Iraq as a "diversion" from the war on terror. (Last week, Gen. Clark further disqualified himself for the job of Commander-in-Chief when he made the preposterous and dangerously misleading pledge that, "If I'm president of the United States, I'm going to take care of the American people. We are not going to have one of these incidents [like 9/11].")

The Bottom Line

The reality is, as Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz said long ago, to win the war on terror we must not only kill individual terrorist "mosquitoes" but "drain the swamps." One need not believe that the various tactical changes the rogue state regimes have adopted represent real changes of heart to recognize that none of them – not one – would likely have occurred at this point in time without President Bush's vision and the actions that flowed from it.

We are unlikely to see the world really made a safer place for the long run unless and until the regimes that have lied to us in the past – notably, those running Libya, Iran, North Korea, the Palestinian Authority, Sudan and Syria – are replaced with ones that respect their people, the rule of law and their word. As long as President George W. Bush does not lose sight of that reality, he will be remembered for his transforming vision long before any American takes up residence on the Moon or steps foot on Mars.

http://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/index.jsp?section=papers&code=04-D_02

Let My Father Go

January 12, 2004
National Review Online
Banafsheh Zand-Bonazzi

The U.N. human-rights committee proves to be worse than impotent: dangerous.

Ever since November 2001 when the Iran's hard-line goon squad, the Motalefeh, abducted my father, Siamak Pourzand, a 74-year-old Iranian journalist and film historian, the United Nations High Commission on Human Rights (headed by the boisterous Mary Robinson, 1997-2002 and now, Guyana diplomat Bertrand Ramcharan) has treated my family with nothing but contempt and willful disregard. We have been completely stonewalled at every turn. From November 2001 until now I have placed 23 phone calls (each time leaving a message), written five e-mails, and sent several faxes to human-rights commission offices in Geneva, Paris, and New York, desperately hoping to connect with at least one of their sanctimonious rapporteurs. Thus far, we have been given nothing but the proverbial cold shoulder.

Nine weeks ago, the U.N. rapporteur on freedom of speech, a Kenyan man by the name of Ambeyi Ligabo, visited Iran. His visit was made out to be a critical maneuver on the part of the United Nations. His mission was to personally interview twelve of the most highly publicized political prisoners, my father among them. In spite of all the information and indications given to these authorities by Iranian activists and families of political prisoners over the last few years (when the U.N, after years of persistent appeals, finally accepted that the Islamic Republic might just be the confederacy of assassins it is said to be), these people continue to disregard the gut-wrenching truth about what those prisoners are put through. They arrogantly think that a couple of five-minute visits to Iran and their perusal of a few dossiers written by Western compassionistas (mostly Europeans) enlightens them to the putrid reality that is Iran today.

Mr. Ligabo and the United Nations brass knew full well what the outcome of this stunt would be for those political prisoners. The day after his interview (November 9) with Ligabo, Ahmad Batebi, a 25-year-old student activist who had been on a one-week medical furlough from prison, simply vanished from his family home in Tehran and is still being detained in an undisclosed location, undoubtedly under severe torture. (Batebi was arrested and incarcerated in July 1999 due to an irresponsible cover photo of this young hero published in the British magazine The Economist, taken during a student demonstration that year.) Indeed Ligabohimself had conveniently warned these prisoners, before departing from Tehran, that they should take care of themselves as they may very well have to deal with the consequences of their discussion with him. Now, does that not beg the question, how could someone who knows all that, bring himself to risk the lives of innocent people?

Back in February, when another delegate from the U.N. blew into Tehran to conduct yet another one of these meretricious investigations, my poor old Dad, who was at the time (like Batebi was during Ligabo's visit) on medical furlough, had been called in to be interviewed — but he had categorically refused to meet with the investigator. He, like the rest of the innocent men and women held unfairly and inhumanely by the mullahs, has no faith in anything claimed by the feckless human-rights representatives on New York City's East River.

The United Nations has become nothing more than a tool for the festering European coterie of imperialists who fancy themselves to be the arbiters of propriety. But what propriety? The Europeans may pride themselves on their intellectual heritage, but a continent whose citizens often loathe each other from country to country and who does not practice what it preaches is nothing more than duplicitous.

As the people of Iran jam the streets of Tehran and other Iranian cities month after month, year after year in defiance of the rogue regime of mullahs, as they boycott more and more "elections" and persistently demonstrate their pure hatred for the thieves of the Persian heritage and their painted gophers, the European Union's refusal to cease all business dealings with a regime which essentially abhors all Westerners is perfectly certifiable. Europeans cannot accept that their multi-zillion-dollar contracts with the Islamic Republic do not guarantee their safety against acts of terrorism on their soil and against their own citizens.

Finally, Europeans have been forewarned time and time again, by Iranian activists both inside and outside Iran, that their continued support of the rogue regime of terrorist clerics now will only lead to further Iranian contempt and animosity toward them in the future. If the European Community does not respectfully comply with the will of the Iranian people in their struggle for freedom from religious tyranny — now — they will have been the cause of their own descendants' fallout with the people of Iran, upon the inevitable departure of the mullahs. This, too, has fallen on deaf ears.

At this juncture the mortally fatuous game of "chicken" — whose object it is to push the envelope to test the limits of possible disaster — seems to be the game that the United Nations and their European overlords have chosen to play with the equity of the world in these very critical times.

— Banafsheh Zand-Bonazzi, a native of Iran, is currently and activist and writer based in New York.

http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/zand-bonazzi200401120840.asp

[This is from almost 1 1/2 yrs ago.]

Via TV and the Net, Iran's Youth Plot Social Revolution

Tim Judah reports from Tehran, where rising hemlines and access to technology point to the erosion of the mullahs' power

Sunday August 25, 2002
The Observer

It is Friday prayers at Tehran University. A wizened, elderly mullah is preaching to thousands about the need for Muslim unity. Beside him is a Kalashnikov rifle and in front, in Farsi and English, are the slogans of the revolution. 'America is Extremely Nothy [sic]!' screams one. 'The President of America is Bloodthirsty!' proclaims another. Then in unison the faithful begin to chant: 'Death to America! Death to America!'
But these are the slogans of a bygone age, of an ossified revolution that is almost a quarter of a century old. Now, almost unnoticed by the rest of the world, Iran has lurched into the throes of a new revolution - although where it will lead nobody knows.

Seven years ago 69 per cent of Iranians elected Ayatollah Mohammad Khatami as president, a man who pledged to reform the Islamic Republic in order to save it. Now his reforms have stalled, blocked by powerful hardliners such as Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme religious leader and successor to Ayatollah Khomeini.

The Islamic hardliners believe Khatami must be stopped. They compare him to Mikhail Gorbachev and say unless his reforms are stopped the Islamic Republic will drift towards collapse - in the same way that reform killed the Soviet Union. And they may be right.

Take a look at the faces at Friday prayers and one thing is clear. Few here are students at Tehran University. They are middle-aged men who made the revolution, alongside blocks of young soldiers, policemen and other members of the security services who had been bused in. The look of boredom as they raise limp fists to chant 'Death to America!' says it all.

Iran's new revolution is not one that is spilling on to the streets - or at least not yet. Although there are increasing numbers of demonstrations by students and angry, unpaid workers, this is not where the real force for change lies.

For the moment it is a social revolution. It is a revolution that is transforming this country from the bottom up, whether the politicians like it or not. Two-thirds of Iran's population is under 30 and it is clear they have little in common with the ageing mullahs who are trying to control their lives.

Behind closed doors, young Iranians are simply getting on with it, especially in the cities. Across Tehran, underground rock bands are thriving, just waiting for the day they can come out into the open. And every month thousands more Iranians are going online.

Today there are 1.75 million Iranians with access to the internet, and in five years that figure is expected to be five million. While the internet is a window on the world, it is also Iran's leap into free speech. Recently newspapers which the government has closed have continued to publish online.

Close to the centre of Tehran is an office which helps coordinate the burgeoning non-governmental sector. Activists say there are now 30,000 NGOs in Iran, dedicated to everything from women's rights to the environment.

And opinion polls consistently show that the vast majority of Iranians want reform - and they want it now. One reformist academic, who asked not to be named, believes the longer hardliners block reforms and fail to ease the social restrictions of the Islamic state, the more problems they are storing up.

He warns that unless change is allowed to develop peacefully, it will still take place 'but the process could be different'. Asked whether that meant there could be violence, he replied: 'There might be such a possibility.'

In the meantime, signs that the social revolution is proceeding apace are everywhere. Across Tehran, ever more girls taunt the hardliners by wearing their obligatory headscarves way back over their head, to reveal as much for bidden hair as possible. Compulsory 'manteau' gowns are getting shorter - and tighter.

One area where the authorities have already lost control is television. Increasingly uninterested by the staple fare of prayers, domestic dramas and news about the Palestinian uprising millions are tuned into satellite television, which is, of course, strictly illegal.

Climb a high building and the evidence is stunning. Mushroom-like clusters of satellite dishes have sprouted across Tehran. If Iranians were simply watching BBC, CNN or MTV that would be bad enough, but what really worries the authorities is that many are tuning in to exile stations broadcasting from the United States. And the star of the satellite show is Reza Pahlavi, son of the last shah.

Until a few years ago hardly any Iranians had seen or heard him. Now satellite television beams the heir to the Peacock Throne into millions of living rooms every week. Although few people think that a restoration of the monarchy is a viable option, the young shah is the only Iranian politician who talks about a secular democracy. That would be well beyond the pale within Iran - but many are intrigued by Pahlavi, especially those too young to remember the bad times under his father. With reforms blocked and an economy under strain, the frustration is palpable. A few weeks ago the remains of 570 Iranians who died during the Iran-Iraq war were returned amid much fanfare. The government arranged well-organised shows of grief, some of which was undoubtedly genuine. But, as the coffins were trundled around Tehran on the backs of lorries, many residents were unimpressed.

'They have been dead for 20 years and now they give us a hard time for some dried-up old bones and close off the streets,' snarled a taxi driver. 'They are idiots!'

Even the powerful merchants of Tehran's bazaar, long regarded as a staunch bastion of the Islamic revolution, are showing signs of exasperation. Like other Iranians, many are too scared to speak, but one man told me how people here were enraged by a decision to let ideology ride roughshod over business.

He said: 'Last year in international rug exhibitions there was talk about sending an invitation to Iranian-Jewish rug merchants who now live abroad, but the government did not allow the Jewish dealers to come and now there is even less business than before.' A colleague added: 'If we could talk freely you could fill that notebook.'

Something has to give. Reformists threaten to abandon parliament, but no one knows what this would mean. Indeed, reformists are split. Omid Memarian, a 27-year-old who helps coordinate Iranian NGOs, says the country has no choice but to continue the path of slow reform. 'Things can't happen in a rush,' he says, arguing that Iranians, who have already experienced a revolution, don't want a return to the past.

Others are not so sure. A human rights activist, who talked on condition of anonymity, says there are 'more than a thousand' political prisoners in Iran. In the provinces unknown rebels will simply disappear, without anyone to raise the alarm for them.

He is scathing about Iran's 'passive' human rights organisations. He believes that, with reforms stalled, activists must go on the offensive and even take their protests on to the streets. 'The time is ripe,' he says. Iran is lurching into the unknown.

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0%2c6903%2c780339%2c00.html

The United States has added its criticism to the decision by Iran's conservative religious authority, the Guardian Council, to disqualify many reformist politicians from parliamentary elections next month. The State Department said the United State supports elections that are free, fair and open to all.

The United States has joined the European Union in criticizing the move by the Iranian Guardian Council to disqualify half of the more than 8,000 candidates for the country's February 20 parliamentary vote.

The council, an appointed body dominated by hard-line Islamic clerics, had disqualified some candidates from previous elections and blocked reform legislation from parliament, but its action Sunday was by far the most sweeping action taken against reform elements.

At a news briefing, State Department spokesman Adam Ereli said the United States opposes limiting voters' choices as a matter of principle and he urged that the Iranian government to invalidate the Guardian Council's decision:

"We, as a matter of course, support free and fair elections in Iran, and we are therefore opposed to interference in the electoral process," he said. "We call upon the Iranian government to disavow attempts by the Guardian Council to shape the outcome of the February 20th parliamentary elections. And we would note that a government's handling of the electoral process is one of the fundamental measurements of its credibility."

Mr. Ereli said decisions about who should govern a country are best made by the citizens of that country through an open and transparent process, and said the options of a people should not be limited by other institutions so as to prejudge the outcome of an election.

The spokesman rejected a suggestion that the U.S. position amounted to interference in an Iranian internal matter and said the Bush administration has made clear on numerous occasions that it is important that the voice of the people in Iran be heard.

He said there are measures within the Iranian constitutional system for the Guardian Council decision to be overturned and he said it is important that the political process in the country be transparent, fair and open to all.

The council action would disqualify more than 80 reformist lawmakers from the February 20 vote. European Union chief diplomat Javier Solana, on a visit to Iran, said it would be hard to explain to EU lawmakers how a sitting member of a parliament can be barred from seeking re-election.

http://www.voanews.com/article.cfm?objectID=85B92DA9-471D-46C5-9ED68D64D01C2DB9

TEHRAN, 12 January 2004 Iran was plunged into a major political crisis yesterday after powerful conservatives moved to disqualify massive numbers of reformists from standing in next month's crucial parliamentary elections, a move one MP branded a coup d'etat.

There was uproar in Parliament, held for the past four years by moderates loyal to President Mohammad Khatami, as it emerged that the Guardians Council had also barred leading pillars of the reform movement, including a brother of the president. I consider this rejection of candidates to be an illegal coup d?etat and an act of regime change by non-military means, fumed Mohsen Mirdamadi, head of the Parliament's foreign policy and national security commission.

Mirdamadi was one of over 80 incumbent reformist MPs who have been barred from standing in the Feb. 20 election by the 12-member Guardians Council, an unelected political supervisory body and bastion of the religious right.

He said the bulk of disqualified MPs were found to have been in violation of an article in the electoral law that stipulates candidates must show their commitment to Islam and respect the position of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as supreme leader.

Mohammad Reza Khatami, the president's brother and head of the Islamic Iran Participation Front (IIPF) the Islamic republic's largest pro-reform party said the move was a mockery of democracy.

If the situation continues, the conditions for voting will not exist, people will not be prepared to vote and naturally we are heading in the direction of a national election boycott, he said. We demand the president and the government... not be responsible for organizing undemocratic elections, he told AFP, while warning of dire consequences for Iran's international image.

The Majlis building, where reformist MPs gathered for an all-night sit-in, would be transformed into a center of resistance against this illegal action, he said. As one senior politician revealed a group of up to eight Cabinet ministers had prepared their letters of resignation, the president himself issued an impassioned appeal for calm.

Violence must be averted. Insha allah (God willing), with calm we can solve this problem. We should not do anything to stoke tensions,Khatami said, alluding to fears the latest explosion of reformist-conservative tensions could again bring out pro-reform students already frustrated with the slow pace of reforms onto the streets.

And speaking during a stormy Majlis session carried live on state radio, Parliament Speaker Mehdi Karoubi said he and the president were in contact with the Guardians Council and Ayatollah Khamenei. Calling on those rejected to lodge a formal complaint, Karoubi said reformers had several channels and time to reverse the decision before a definitive list is published 10 days before the vote.

http://www.aljazeerah.info/News%20archives/2004/Jan/12%20n/Iran%20Plunged%20Into%20Major%20Political%20Crisis.htm

Commentary > The Monitor's View
from the January 13, 2004 edition

Pending Regime Change in Iran

As much as American conservatives want the US to push for a regime change in Iran, they should relax. Political turmoil in Tehran is heading that way anyway.
Iranian hard-liners' grip tight as reformists regroup

In Iran's awkward mix of democracy and theocracy, the Muslim clerics on the powerful Council of Guardians overplayed their hand this week in a losing battle with elected reformers. The council barred one-third of the current members of parliament from running in the Feb. 20 elections and eliminated more than half of the candidates registered to run.

This was a desperate act, and a clear sign that the self-appointed heirs to the 1979 Islamic Revolution are willing to risk a popular revolt over their clumsy power play.

The head of parliament's security committee, Mohsen Miradamadi, who was one of those barred from running, says the clerics are trying a "coup."

What's really behind this "coup"? The 12-member Council of Guardians, led by Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, doesn't like the way things are headed in Iran. They want to keep more clerics, especially supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, from jumping over to the reform side.

But the slide toward democracy now seems unstoppable. After Mohammad Khatami was elected president as a reformer in a surprise win in 1997, reformers then won control in parliament in the 2000 elections. The attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, helped the reformers, allowing the United States to open back-channel talks with the Khatami government over Iran's holding of Al Qaeda members.

Meanwhile the US keeps 130,000 troops in post-Hussein Iraq next door. The government has also come clean with international nuclear inspectors about Iran's secretive nuclear program.

Most of all, the hard-line clerics also face the resentments of jobless youth - more than two-thirds of Iranians are under 30.

If the Council doesn't back down on its aggressive vetting of candidates, the normally moderate Mr. Khatami warns of a "harsh reaction."

This is the biggest political showdown in Tehran in the quarter century since the revolution. While both sides may compromise, that will be difficult: The stakes are high in determining who holds the upper hand in negotiating with a US eager to solve a number of issues. The generous US response to the recent massive earthquake in Bam shows just how eager.

Iran's real battle, however, is finding an interpretation of Islam that can coexist with Western-style democracy.

As Khatami stated last month: "Democracy is the only alternative. We can take it as Muslims."

The US need only wait for that to happen.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0113/p08s02-comv.html

U.S. Bill Wants Firms to Disclose 'Rogue Nation' Contracts

January 12, 2004
Bloomberg News
The International Herald Tribune

General Electric has sold locomotives in Syria. Alcatel has installed telephone lines in Iran. Siemens is building a power plant in Sudan. While such deals are legal, they have rankled some members of the U.S. Congress.

Lawmakers say Americans unwittingly invest in some 375 U.S. and foreign companies that have tens of billions of dollars in contracts in the seven countries that the State Department says support terrorists. Representative Frank Wolf, Republican of Virginia, wants companies whose shares are traded in the United States to disclose those ties, so he inserted a provision in a $328 billion spending bill that is headed for approval as early as this month.

"You're going to see some pretty angry investors," said David Petersen, the state treasurer in Arizona. "This is a big enough risk that you should at least screen these companies, and for some companies it could well mean investors divest, and quickly."

The action has been criticized as unfair by the National Foreign Trade Council, which represents 400 exporters, including General Electric. The group says the requirement sought by Wolf may tar corporate reputations even though the companies are breaking no laws and are bringing jobs and Democratic ideals to what the State Department calls "rogue nations."

"All of this makes us nervous," said William Reinsch, the council president. "It would expose companies to intimidation and harassment."

A growing number of institutional investors, including municipal and state pension funds in New York City, Pennsylvania and Arizona, say they have been taking companies' overseas ties into account since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Montana's pension funds last year sold some of their shares in French companies after France opposed the war in Iraq. A General Electric spokesman, Gary Sheffer, said the company's transactions in those countries represented only a small percentage of its business, adding that GE did not report its financial information on a country-by-country basis.

William Donaldson, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, whose agency would have to enforce the new rule, wrote in a letter to Wolf that a blanket requirement for disclosure was not necessary. Nancy McLernon, deputy director of the Organization for International Investment, which represents U.S. units of companies such as Sony and Nokia, said the rule would make it harder for the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq to attract companies looking to list shares.

"A lot of countries are vying for global companies to list on their exchanges," McLernon said. "If the U.S. makes a list of so-called bad guys, that would put them at a disadvantage."

Wolf, who declined to comment, has voiced concern about such investments for years. He has traveled to Sudan, where a civil war has raged for two decades and children have been forced to become soldiers or sex slaves. He has said he would be repelled if he knew he was investing in companies that did business there.

"I'd literally want to just be so sick," he said at a hearing last March.

The U.S. has imposed sanctions against the seven countries: North Korea, Cuba, Libya, Iran, Sudan, Syria and Iraq, which has not yet been removed from the list.

While U.S. companies are prohibited from selling arms and transferring most technology to those countries, they can conduct other business through foreign subsidiaries that they do not directly manage.

Siemens, based in Munich, has provided power-plant parts and mobile phone equipment to projects in Sudan. The company has "comprehensive procedures" to ensure that its practices comply with U.S. and European Union laws as well as United Nations sanctions, said a spokesman, Bud Grebey.

General Electric sold and refurbished locomotives in Syria. GE and Paris-based Alcatel, the world's biggest maker of broadband Internet equipment, do business in Iran.

http://www.iht.com/articles/124640.html

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