Iranian Alert -- January 27, 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.

Iranian President Said To Turn Down Resignations

27/01/2004 12:35
VOA

A report in Tehran says Iran's reformist president, Mohammad Khatami, has turned down the resignation of several senior officials, frustrated by the disqualification of thousands of reformist general election candidates.

The Iranian news agency IRNA, a branch of the country's state media, said Monday Mr. Khatami replied to a letter from the officials and asked them to remain in their posts.

The report says the president vowed to insist on "the need to hold a free and fair election." The Iranian agency says Mr. Khatami has also complained that state radio and television are censoring his statements calling for a review of the disqualification of general election candidates.

Earlier this month, the Guardian Council banned thousands of mostly reformist candidates from running in next month's general elections, including at least 80 sitting legislators. It has since reinstated several hundred candidates in a review ordered by Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

The 12-member, conservative-dominated Council, an appointed group of Islamic clerics and jurists, has the power to review all candidates for public office in Iran and to overturn legislation.

On Sunday, the council vetoed legal amendments passed by parliament and aimed at weakening the council's control over Iran's election process.

Some information for this report provided by AFP and AP.

http://www.bakutoday.net/view.php?d=7811

Defector: Bin Laden Son 'Forewarned Iran of 9/11'

January 27, 2004
Reuters
Mark Trevelyan

BERLIN -- An Iranian defector, preparing to testify in Germany's second major Sept. 11 trial, said on Tuesday that a son of Osama bin Laden had personally told Iranian leaders of the planned attacks on U.S. cities in 2001.

Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi rejected the accusation, saying the defector was not credible and had invented his story.

The defector, who goes by the cover name Hamid Reza Zakeri, told Reuters in a telephone interview that al Qaeda had forewarned Tehran of the attacks because it wanted Iran's help in sheltering its leaders afterwards.

"I'm not saying that Iran had a hand in it (Sept. 11). I'm saying that Iran knew about it," Zakeri said.

"Iran would be the safest place for al Qaeda because it wasn't a country where the U.S. could directly or indirectly intervene" to seize al Qaeda leaders on the run after the planned attacks, he added.

Zakeri says he is a former intelligence official who defected in July 2001 and tried to warn the United States, through its embassy in Baku, Azerbaijan, that a major attack would take place on or about Sept. 10.

The Iranian foreign minister, asked about the defector's assertions, told a news conference on Tuesday: "This is untrue. He has made up this information... he has made it up for fraudulent purposes. He wants to make money and his views are of no value."

Western intelligence sources have privately voiced skepticism about Zakeri's accusations, but German prosecutors have taken them seriously enough to call him as a key trial witness.

He is due to testify for the prosecution Friday in the case of Abdelghani Mzoudi, a Moroccan accused of conspiring with the al Qaeda "Hamburg cell" that provided three of the Sept. 11 suicide hijackers. Another Moroccan, Mounir El Motassadeq, was convicted in Germany on similar charges last year but will hear the outcome of his appeal Thursday.

TOP-LEVEL QAEDA VISITS

Speaking by mobile phone from an undisclosed location, Zakeri said he had handled security arrangements in January 2001 for a visit of about 30 al Qaeda members to Iran, led by Osama bin Laden's deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri.

Zakeri said he had previously seen Zawahiri several times since 1996 at camps used by the militant group Hizbollah in Iran. The talks took place southeast of Tehran, lasted four days and were headed on the Iranian side by a representative of Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, he said.

Four months later, in May 2001, Zakeri said he had been ordered to collect a VIP delegation arriving by army helicopter at a special base east of the Iranian capital.

This time the guest was Osama's son Saad bin Laden, accompanied by three bodyguards. Zakeri said the visit lasted three days and included late-night talks with Khamenei, ex-president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and three other top leaders.

Zakeri said he was not part of the discussions and not privy to details of the Sept. 11 plot or the targets, but added: "I knew in general that there was an operation being prepared against Israel and the United States for September 10."

He said he passed a warning to a CIA official in Baku, but "they didn't take me seriously."

Zakeri said he had not wanted to testify in the Mzoudi case, but had been drawn in after telling German investigators he had received information by email from someone else relating to al Qaeda activity in Germany.

He said he was under close German police protection after contacts in Iran had warned him his life was in danger.

"They said: 'They sent the people already, and they are very close to the door.' I know what that means. It means they are very close to kill me. But already I informed the German authorities and the German police... I'm all right, hopefully I'm safe," he said.

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=4220296

Ex Mossad, Shabak chiefs: Ron Arad is alive

By JPOST.COM STAFF
Jan. 26, 2004

Former Mossad chief Shabtai Shavit said on Channel 2 Monday night that he believes Ron Arad is alive and that Israel has done everything possible to locate him.

"My assessment is that Ron Arad is alive," Shavit said.

During my term, before me, and after me, everything possible was done to find him. Not one stone was left unturned. Intelligence tried to find where is he and what happened to him, and to bring him home," the former Mossad boss said.

Shavit was the head of the Mossad from 1989 to 1996.

Arad bailed out of his Phantom jet over Lebanon in 1986. Arad was quickly captured and spent the better part of the next 18 months in Amal militia leader Mustafa Dirani's trunk, before the latter 'sold' him to Hizbullah. There has been no concrete information regarding Arad's fate since, and Iran adamantly denies any connection to the affair.

"Without a doubt he was transferred from Lebanon to the Iranians. The Iranians wanted him as a bargaining chip. They thought he was a very valuable asset. After a while though, he became a burden to them. Iran is a bigger country than Europe, and its not a problem to hide a single man there," Shavit said.

Former Shin Bet chief Yaakov Perry, who served on and directed groups searching for Israeli MIAs, said that the working assumptions of the intelligence braches was that Ron Arad is alive.

"That was our working assumption. Over the years we received bits of information about him. Some saying that he was alive, some that he was dead. Some information pointed that he was being held in Iran," Perry said on Channel 2 Monday.

Perry said he supported and welcomed the coming prisoner exchange deal with the Hizbullah, but added that he had just one major reservation.

"Israel must not release Mustafa Dirani. Dirani was the last person we know that interrogated Arad and handed him over to the Iranians. Morally speaking, we should not release him," Perry said.

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1075114460221&p=1008596981749

Iran, Europe are Part of Hizballah's POW Sting Operation

January 27, 2004
DEBKAfile
DEBKAfile Exclusive Report

The Israeli-Hizballah POW-abductees-DIA deal going into effect Thursday is even more lopsided than first reported, as discovered by DEBKAfile’s intelligence sources from unpublished elements of the accord. Tuesday, January 27, the Israeli government published the lists of prisoners to be released two days hence for the bodies of three Israeli soldiers kidnapped three years ago by the Hizballah on the Israeli side of the Lebanese border and businessman Elhanan Tannenbaum.

It includes 371 Palestinian prisoners and 60 detainees, 30 Lebanese and Arabs, and 1 German plus 59 bodies. Extra Palestinians were listed to top the figure up to 400 in case appeals to Israel’s Supreme Court in the next 48 hours block some of the releases.

However Part One of the deal is dwarfed by Part Two, according to the fresh revelations obtained exclusively by DEBKAfile’s sources. They also demystify some puzzling remarks dropped in the last three days: Saturday, January 24, the German mediator, Ernest Uhrlau, thanked Iran for its contribution (!); 24 hours later, Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah, reversing a long-held claim, announced that the missing Israeli navigator Ron Arad was not in Iran but Lebanon.

Our sources have discovered that not only Germany, but France, Belgium, Switzerland, Greece and the Netherlands are “contributing” to the victory parade the Hizballah chief is stage-managing in Lebanon to celebrate the successful outcome of the deal. These European countries are preparing to release Iranian, pro-Iranian, pro-Syrian Lebanese, Hizballah and other prisoners under sentence for assorted terror-linked crimes dating from the 1980s, mostly against American and Israeli targets.

However, in a second round of releases, Israel will pay up too by setting free thousands of Palestinians, including men convicted or detained for murdering Israelis, on top of the 400 going to their West Bank and Gaza Strip homes Thursday.

Israel’s reward will be information attesting to the fate of its missing airman.

Over a TV talk show Monday night, two former Shin Beit directors, Shabtai Shavit and Yaacov Peri, spoke persuasively about the need to pull back from Part Two of the deal before it gets out of hand. They questioned prime minister Ariel Sharon’s claim that the transaction was moral when even the German mediator has not been told whether the information on offer proves the navigator is alive or dead. Like a majority of Israelis, his family is against handing over terrorist killers for his remains, certain that they will soon return to their old ways and gained a further incentive to continue kidnapping Israelis.

It has gradually dawned on informed Israeli circles that Part Two is the outcome of the German mediator actively assisting Iran and the Hizballah chief to use the POW deal for a sting operation against Israel. He has struck a secret side deal with Tehran to open a great many European prison gates to Iranian, pro-Iranian, pro-Syrian, Lebanese and possibly Palestinians convicted of terrorism. Israel has been drawn over its head into the arrangement by the lure of unspecified information about a serviceman who fell captive 18 years ago. Part One of the POW deal therefore may now be labeled “the small transaction” because Part Two is ballooning out of hand from a single name, that of the Druse Nahariya killer, Samir Kuntar.

The fallout is already palpable:

1. The Hizballah chief has begun boasting about how he sprang more Palestinian prisoners from Israeli confinement than all the Palestinian leaders, from Yasser Arafat to Abu Mazen, and Arab rulers rolled together. He is therefore claiming the adulation of the Palestinian and Arab masses and the right to force international diplomats to reckon with him as a strong regional voice in any future Middle East steps and decisions. For the Europeans, a new and forceful representative of the Palestinian people takes the place of the discredited Arafat.

2. Sharon and his defense minister Shaul Mofaz, who refused to negotiate with Arafat but agreed to engage Nasrallah, will find it hard to continue dismissing him as a mere terrorist chief.

3. The Europeans have nailed two birds with a single shot: First , Israeli concessions have enabled them to extend their protection to the Hizballah and its chief in case the United States takes action against a group listed officially in Washington as a terrorist organization. Second , for the same price, Europe has built itself a new bridge to Tehran, whose hard line leaders will be grateful to find relief from much of the international pressure weighing on their sophisticated weapons, including nuclear programs.

DEBKAfile’s sources with access to the text of the Israel-Hizballah agreement mediated by Germany were surprised by the gaps. There is no provision for either contingency of Arad being discovered alive - however unlikely, or being proven dead. In both cases, Israel is committed to freeing thousands of Palestinians. One source said: “Had there been any chance of recovering Arad alive, the price might have had a modicum of logic. But if Hizballah and Iran come up with proof that he is dead, Israel is trapped in a blind commitment and can hardly turn round and say we are reneging on the deal because you murdered our airman.”

In the interests of morality as well as avoiding the Hizballah-German-Iranian trap, Sharon and Mofaz would have done better to heed the last wish of Batya Arad, the aviator’s mother, who said on her deathbed: “If my son is dead, not a single terrorist should be given away for his body.”

Interestingly no comment has come from Washington on the European ramifications of the POW swap even though notorious murderers of Americans may go free. DEBKAfile’s Washington sources note that last week Sharon said Israel was wiling to iron out of the security barrier separating the West Bank and Israel the enclaves winding round the Jordan Valley, Ariel, Beit Arieh and Gush Etzion. In a conversation with the Australian foreign minister Alexander Downer Monday, January 26, he said he was considering re-routing the fence, whose construction has slowed down in the last week. Mofaz has meanwhile set up a special defense ministry team to take care of Palestinian humanitarian needs.

When these developments are added to the prospect of thousands of Palestinians being turned loose from Israeli prison in the coming weeks, including convicted murderers, the Israeli government looks as though it is in the midst of a sweeping policy change as regards the Palestinians. This departure, which coincides with the arrival of John Wolf, a senior state department official, may be Sharon’s way of meeting the Bush administration halfway in its demands with regard to the barrier and the need to address the human problems of the Palestinian people.

http://www.debka.com/article.php?aid=776

In condemnation of "Babak Shahr" massacre

SMCCDI (Public Statement)
Jan 26, 2004

Freedom loving noble nation of Iran,

Once again the inhumane and anti constituent government of Islamic Republic committed another felonious crime as its barbaric forces of suppression cruelly murdered several of the deprived and dispossessed residents and workers of City of Babakshahr and Khatoonabad village, both located in Kerman province that is still trying to recover from that deadly recent earthquake. On Saturday and Sunday, 24-25 Jan.2004, these suppressive forces that were comprised of the diehard Bassidji goons and special elements of the Revolutionary Guard Corps, answered the noble people who had gathered to demand jobs to sustain their lives with bullets and bloody crackdown, the only answer that could be expected from the incompetent and murderous heads of the hated Islamic Republic regime.

According to the latest updates, at least 8 protestors were shot to death and tens of others were wounded and arrested. This barbaric atrocity of regime’s killers took on such unprecedented dimensions that now the regime’s ostentatious military commanders claim that "some unidentified people committed the massacre after the special units had withdrawn from the area!"

Such a statement is naturally expected from a system which its own "president”" always refers to the secularist freedom fighting students as “a bunch of hooligans and hoodlums” or "spies" and denies existence of any "political prisoner" in the dark dungeons of its oppression apparatus and in Europe he claims that there is only one news reporter in custody!

The ludicrous statements of the military commanders about the massacre they committed shouldn’t seem strange either. Those utterances are testaments to the wicked and deceiving nature of an illegitimate and crumbling regime which they have sold their souls and conscience to. A regime which sees its only way of survival in maintaining the support of its European allies and partners in crime and repays the favor by generously giving them the nation’s wealth and natural resources while trying to perpetrate to the world the fraud of "justice and civil society" in Iran.

Yes indeed, in one hand, as Mohammad Khatami kisses up to the supreme leader and tries to hawk his "national hope" and as the so-called "reformers’" products meet a dull market among the citizens, the faction known as the hardliner conservatives, to fend off their eventual demise, comes up with oddities such as "unidentified individuals," "irresponsible elements," or "unknown groups." Other examples of their baseless excuses range from the attack and plunder of the "help and necessities sent to the victims of the Bam earthquake" to “the murderers of babakshahr city and Khatoon village." And on the other hand this new mass murder occurs at a time when we witness quiet closures of evermore factories and production facilities of our country and rampant privatizations which have eliminated jobs of thousands of Iranian workers or practically destroyed Iran’s industrial foundations or have put them at the disposal of foreign companies and governments. No doubt these types of anti-national practices, meaning destruction and or transference of ownerships of Iran’s new industries, are results of implementations of incorrect policies and negative functioning of the entire ruling class of the Islamic Republic and or assortment of embezzlements by government executives and the children of the ruling clique; "PetroPars" and "StatOil" can be named as such examples.

Thus, with aim to save Iran and Iranians, it is in reaction to such daily increasing crimes, plunders, and trickeries of this unholy oligarchic-fascist-religious terrorist mob, and to profiteering futile actions of their European partners, that our country’s entire collection of "responsible and progressive political forces" must unite as soon as possible. They must, by earning the trust of all of our countrymen, in general workers’ laborers, teachers, and students, and by taking advantage of the present favorable international climate, induce the needed wave to bring about the final change in our homeland. Unfortunately, so far the expansion of the trend of people’s spontaneous and costly (in terms of lives lost and destroyed) movements have been much too fast for the slow moving caravan of the opposition factions abroad. Factions whose so-called intellectuals have not been able to correctly read and analyze the situation and have rather continually been an impediment to union of the opposition forces outside of Iran’s borders…

Therefore, now more than ever, our country’s “collective responsible and progressive political forces” must set aside such impeding people and set aside their own differences and “100%” demands and rely on and uphold their common denominator, which is the just demands of the arisen nation of Iran, The Third Force. They must come together to accelerate mobilization of the masses and liberation of Iran by forming a non-ideological council for furthering such eminent objectives as unity of totality of secular forces that will replace the entirety of the Islamic Republic with a national and democratic structure by means of a public and true referendum.

At this time, as the "Student Movement Coordination Committee for Democracy in Iran" (SMCCDI) extend their most heartfelt condolences to the families of the victims of the massacre of Babakshahr and khatoon and all the freedom loving and noble citizens of Iran, especially to the workers and laborers of this land, they announce their support and sympathy to them and all the wounded and arrested.

This committee, with belief in the need for mobilization of masses and unity of all the progressive and secular forces in order to achieve liberation from the rotten regime of mullahs, invites the freedom loving and noble nation of Iran who cleverly and clearly demonstrated their indignation of the ruling parties of the regime and did not participate in their puppet shows, to stay in their houses on "Friday the 1st Esfand 1382" (February 20th 2004), in a destiny making act of civil disobedebience and in order to ever stigmatize the illegitimate nature of the ruling regime, turn that day into an historical day of protest. That undoubtedly will result very positively in the arena of global pressure on the ruling system just as did at the time of the sham elections of cities and townships when it met people’s widespread boycott.

Be it that the all out boycott of the puppet show known as the Seventh Islamic Parliament elections brings about the total disgrace, seclusion, and abolishment of the of the Islamic Republic.

Long Live Freedom !

Long Live Secularism !

Established be Democracy !

January 26, 2004 (6th Bahman 1382)

The "Student Movement Coordination Committee for Democracy in Iran" (SMCCDI)

http://www.daneshjoo.org/article/publish/article_3113.shtml

BREAKING RANKS, KHATAMI SAYS ELECTIONS WOULD TAKE PLACE ON TIME

TEHRAN, 27 Jan. (IPS)

Iranian President Mohammad Khatami broke rank Tuesday with his reformist camp by stating firmly that elections for the next Majles, or parliament "would be held on time".

"No force, being it local or foreign, would prevent the elections for the seventh Majles of the Islamic Republic to be organized on the schedule time", Mr. Khatami told journalist while bidding farewell to his Austrian guest.

His firm statement came as a shock to the reformist lawmakers rejected by the Council of the Guardians to run for the next Legislative exercise, due on 20 February, urging the Government to consider delaying the elections in case the Guardians insist on their decision.

Mr. Khatami’s declaration was also a rebuke to the Government’s official spokesman Abdollah Ramezanzadeh who, on Monday, had assured journalists that there would be no elections if they are not "fair, free and just, offering equal chances to all the hopefuls".

Next to suggesting a delayed elections, rejected deputies did also proposed a mass resignation of the entire Government and reformist faction of the Majles or a national referendum on the issue in case the CG insisted on its disqualifications that includes the President’s younger brother, Dr Mohammad Reza Khatami as well as all senior tenors of the reformists camp both inside and outside the House.

"Once again, Khatami betrayed both the people and his camp by bowing to the conservatives, taking the side of the leader, Ayatollah Ali Khameneh’i, who effectively control the CG", one Iranian analyst told Iran Press Service on condition of anonymity.

"Ever since he came to power seven years ago, Khatami always sided with Mr. Khameneh’i on every major power struggle opposing the reformists to the ruling conservatives", the analyst pointed out.

Coming as some 50 students from the Office for Consolidating Unity, the Iranian student’s largest organization joined the bulk of reformist MMs (Members of the Majles) in their sit-in, now in its 17th day, protesting the CG’s decision to bar more than 3.000 candidates, including some 80 incumbent reformist lawmakers, from presenting themselves to the electorate.

The students decided to support the lawmakers despite recriminations against the reformists in general and the those in the Parliament in particular, not forgetting the President himself, for their lack of support for the students during their historic uprising of July 1999, their protests against the death sentence pronounced by the Judiciary against professor Hashem Aqajari and their last demonstrations in the summer of 2002, according to a dispatch by the French news agency AFP, quoting Mr. Abdollah Mo’meni, a member of the OCU Executive Committee.

To diffuse the crisis that some analysts describes as a "storm in a tea cup" because of the indifference shown by the general public, Ayatollah Khameneh’I, who last week had urged the 12-members Council to "review" the disqualifications, met last night with the heads of three powers.

As a result, a four-ministers committee comprising those of Information (Intelligence), Mines and Industries, Trade and Oil was formed Tuesday to find a solution for the crisis.

According to the Majles Speaker Hojjatoleslam Mehdi Karroobi, the Committee has until Thursday to submit its conclusions. But a spokesman for the protesters repeated Tuesday that in case they do not get a satisfactory answer from the CG, they would resign on Sunday.

In fact, in a letter to the Interior Minister Hojjatoleslam Abdolvahed Mousavi Lari, the Secretary of the CG, Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati observed that lawmakers could not be automatically validated because they had received approval in earlier elections.

But considering the fact that the Guardians rejected outright an "urgent" proposal of the reformists-controlled Majles to help finding a solution and has yet to respond to the leader’s order to review the disqualifications, many analysts expressed doubt that the Committee would support the protesters.

Meanwhile, Grand Ayatollah Hoseyali Montazeri, Iran and one of the Shi’a Muslim’s most senior religious authority expressed solidarity with the disqualified lawmakers and at the same time urged the CG to "stop at once its illegal, unjust and irrational attitude that damages Islam, the Islamic revolution and the Iranian people".

Because of his harsh criticism of the present leaders, most particularly Ayatollah Khameneh’i, Mr. Montazeri was placed under house arrest for more than five years in his residence in the city of Qom and prevented from teaching. Though he recovered partial and conditional freedom, but he continued his timely criticim, that also includes the embattled President Khatami.

ENDS IRAN DISQUALIFICATIONS 27104

http://www.iran-press-service.com/articles_2004/Jan_04/iran_disqualifications_27104.htm

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