Replies

Why Throw a Lifeline To a Sinking Regime?

January 31, 2004
Iran va Jahan
Shaheen Fatemi

The regime in Tehran has never been closer to total collapse. This morning's headlines read:

TEHRAN (Reuters) - President Mohammad Khatami said on Saturday Iran's parliamentary election would lack legitimacy after the hard-line Guardian Council confirmed bans on hundreds of reformists from standing in the Feb. 20 vote.
The government's own poll conducted by the Ministry of Interior reports that more than 85% of the people intend to boycott the forthcoming parliamentary election by NOT participating in this show.

Under such circumstance hearing and reading the following report from a US funded radio beamed to Iran is very hard to understand:

A group of US congressional staff members will visit Iran next month in an effort to improve relations with Iran, US Senator Arlen Specter said on Friday. "They are showing some signs of wanting to improve relations," Specter said in a telephone interview with the Associated Press, noting "now is a good time." Specter said he hoped the visit, arranged in a meeting with Iran's ambassador to the UN on Wednesday, would lead to trips to Tehran by members of US Congress and then by Bush administration officials.
How is this to be explained to the people of Iran who have been listening to the President of the United States and his message of hope for the future of democracy in the region? While people of Afghanistan and Iraq are inching their way toward freedom and true self-determination, why is the Taleban-like regime in Tehran being courted?

It is time for all Iranians in the United States and elsewhere to raise their voices in opposition to such last minute efforts to save a regime that has lost total support of its own people. A regime that is currently deeply involved in support of terrorism against its own people as well as the American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. A regime that has a long record of terrorist acts against the Americans for the past twenty-five years. A regime that has been forced to admit that it has violated its obligations under the Non-proliferation treaty. A regime that continues to violate the most basic rights of its own people.

At a time when the European Union has publicly denounced the regime in Tehran and has conditioned all its future cooperation on full democratization of the country, why is the US Congressional throwing a lifeline to this regime?

Is there again another "intelligence failure" and people in Washington don't know what is really going on in Iran? Or have they allowed themselves to be hoodwinked by a clever former intelligence ministry official who is now serving as the regime's ambassador at the UN?

It's time for raising our voices of protest by contacting the Whitehouse and the US Congress against this untimely and unfortunate decision.

http://iranvajahan.net/cgi-bin/news.pl?l=en&y=2004&m=01&d=31&a=2