Iranian Alert -- February 24, 2004 -- IRAN LIVE THREAD --Americans for Regime Change in Iran

Statement by the President

February 24, 2004
The White House
President Gerge W. Bush

I am very disappointed in the recently disputed parliamentary elections in Iran. The disqualification of some 2,400 candidates by the unelected Guardian Council deprived many Iranians of the opportunity to freely choose their representatives. I join many in Iran and around the world in condemning the Iranian regime's efforts to stifle freedom of speech -- including the closing of two leading reformist newspapers -- in the run-up to the election. Such measures undermine the rule of law and are clear attempts to deny the Iranian people's desire to freely choose their leaders.

The United States supports the Iranian people's aspirations to live in freedom, enjoy their God-given rights, and determine their own destiny.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/02/20040224-4.html

Oh, nuclear bomb fiddlesticks!
Centrifuges and polonium are vital to a flaky crust.

Bump!

Great to hear the President say this at this time.

“Rejection of Iran’s WTO membership, political”

Tuesday, February 24, 2004 - ©2004 IranMania.com

Tehran, February 24 (IranMania) – Iran’s next call for joining the World Trade Organization (WTO) will not be rejected. The rejection of Iran’s recent call for joining the world body was politically-motivated, Iran’s Minister of Commerce, Mohammad Shariatmadari said.

Saying that Iran’s call was denied only because of the US opposition, the Iranian Minister stated: “Even Iran called for a 5-year supervisory membership. This is while all European countries hold a positive stance toward Iran. We hope that the Iranian Foreign Ministry’s efforts in this field prove fruitful.”

The Former Head of the World Trade Organization said: “The issue of Iran’s membership in the WTO is very complicated because of the governmental nature of Iranian companies and the obstacles in the way of privatization of the state run sectors. I wanted a working group to be formed on Iran’s joining the WTO, but my proposal was rejected.”

http://www.iranmania.com/News/ArticleView/Default.asp?NewsCode=22869&NewsKind=Current%20Affairs

Iran's Rafsanjani Says Open to Dialogue with U.S.

February 24, 2004
Agence France Presse
AFP

Iran's powerful former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani revealed Tuesday he was open to the idea of dialogue with the United States, but that supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was opposed.

"For me, talking is not a problem. But this is only if it was for me to decide on personally," Rafsanjani, who now heads the Islamic republic's top political arbitration body, said in an interview with the hardline Kayhan afternoon daily.

But he added that because Iran's late revolutionary founder Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and his successor as supreme leader, Khamenei, were both opposed to talks with Washington, "I follow them and I say nothing."

Rafsanjani was Iran's president from 1989 to 1997, and he remains a key figure at the top of the 25-year-old clerical regime as head of the Expediency Council.

He also told the paper there were no new developments in Iran's relations with Washington.

"They continue to send us threatening messages and continue to raise the four questions," he said, referring to Washington's concerns over Iran's nuclear programme, opposition to the Middle East peace process, alleged support of militant groups and human rights.

"But they are stuck in the mud in Iraq, and they know that if Iran wanted to, it could make their problems even worse," Rafsanjani told the paper.

He said the two sides were in contact over Iraq and Afghanistan, "but regarding diplomatic relations, there is nothing".

When asked if Iran should hold a referendum on resuming relations with the United States - a possibility raised recently in an official strategic journal - Rafsanjani refused to give his view, "given that I know that the policy of the supreme leader is hostile".

He said Ayatollah Khamenei was the "axis" of the country and that it was "important not to create divisions".

Rafsanjani did acknowledge that there had been some "positive signals" from Washington, but said these were "only signals".

Iran and the United States severed diplomatic relations in 1980, after the Islamic revolution when the US embassy here was seized by students and its diplomatic staff and guards held hostage for 444 days.

Two years ago, US President George W. Bush famously lumped the country into an "axis of evil" along with Saddam Hussein's Iraq and Stalinist North Korea.

http://www.afp.com/english/home/

Iran: Amir Abbas Fakhravar, freelance journalist and prisoner of conscience
Amnesty International is gravely concerned for the safety of prisoner of conscience Amir Abbas Fakhravar, aged 26, following a series of incidents in which he appears to have been subjected to treatment amounting to torture.

This is the first time that Amnesty International has documented evidence of the practice of “white torture” in Iran.

Amir Abbas Fakhravar has been in prison for over a year. In January 2004, he was taken from Qasr prison to a detention centre called 125 to be interrogated about his alleged links with a political organisation called Jonbesh-e Azadi-ye Iraniyan, which opposes the Iranian government. The centre is under the control of the Revolutionary Guards, a military force responsible for matters of national security.

His cell in the 125 detention centre reportedly had no windows, and was entirely coloured creamy white, as were his clothes. At meal times, he was reportedly given white rice on white, disposable paper plates and if he needed to use the toilet, he had to put a white slip of paper under the door of the cell to alert guards, who reportedly had footwear designed to muffle any sound. He was forbidden to speak to anyone.

Amnesty International has been told that the “silence is deafening” in the facility and that this technique of sensory deprivation is called “white torture” (shekanjeh-e sefid). Such conditions of extreme sensory deprivation appear to be designed to weaken the prisoner by causing persistent and unjustified suffering which amounts to torture.

On or around 8 February, Amir Abbas Fakhravar was reportedly allowed to leave the detention centre. However, two days later he was taken into custody again. This is a form of psychological torture, which keeps a prisoner in a permanent state of uncertainty and anxiety. While he was free he was able to tell others about what was being done to him. It is not clear whether he is now held at 125, Qasr or elsewhere.

Amir Abbas Fakhravar was sentenced to eight years' imprisonment on defamation charges in November 2002, because of comments on Iran's political leadership in his book Inja Chah Nist (This Place is Not a Ditch). In February 2003, he and imprisoned student demonstrator Ahmad Batebi signed an open letter which criticised the Iranian authorities.

The letter stated, "We wish to openly and overtly express our dedication to all universal covenants. We want to show our respect for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, universal peace, non-violence, environmental protection, permanent progress" and added that "violence has absolutely no place in our struggle, neither in our words nor in our deeds." Shortly afterwards, he was reportedly beaten in front of judges in the court room where his appeal was being heard.

Background information

The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that sensory deprivation, as used by UK security forces interrogating prisoners held under emergency legislation in Northern Ireland, amounted to inhuman and degrading treatment. The European Commission of Human Rights had previously found that it amounted to torture.

More recently, the Committee against Torture found that the regime of sensory deprivation and “almost total prohibition of communication” under which prisoners at a maximum security detention centre in Peru were held caused “persistent and unjustified suffering which amounts to torture”.

http://www.amnesty.org.uk/deliver/document/15199

Iran's Rafsanjani Says Open to Dialogue with U.S.

February 24, 2004
Agence France Presse
AFP

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1084231/posts?page=47#47

Iran’s election winners to support Khatami
Feb. 24 – The winners of Iran’s parliamentary elections proclaimed Tuesday that they will support the reform trend of President Mohammad Khatami.
“We have seen some pros and cons in Mr. Khatami’s seven year record, but nevertheless we acknowledge his achievements and will support him and his course until the end of his term (August 2005),” Hadad Adel, head of the conservative Abadgaran party, told reporters in Tehran.
Abadgaran – Islamic Iran Developers – won the parliamentary elections in the capital Tehran, the politically most important district, and will dominate the next legislative term along with other conservative deputies from the provinces.
“We will generally focus our activities on economic reforms and at the same time respect the civil rights of the people,” Adel said.
On the controversial nuclear issue, Ahmad Tavakoli, the second man in the Abadgaran party, said that the approval of the additional protocol of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was not a factional but a state matter which should be made whenever necessary.
The IAEA protocol, which will allow inspectors to check without prior notice all nuclear facilities of the country, was a main demand by the West to continue dialogue with Islamic Iran.
After more than 2,000 reformist candidates were eliminated by the hardline clergy due to their secular standpoints, the victory of Abadgaran had been clear even before last Friday’s elections Therefore, both in Iran and abroad, the elections were classified as not legitimate for having deprived the Iranian people from their right to chose.
Abadgaran however is not considered by observers as a hardline but just a conservative group, however loyal to the Islamic framework of the power apparatus in Iran./-
(Photo by Abedin Taherkenareh)

http://www.iranwpd.com/

FT briefing: Iran's nuclear programme

Financial Times
By Fiona Symon
Published: October 24 2003 17:27 | Last Updated: February 11 2004 17:51

Iran has agreed to suspend uranium enrichment and open its nuclear facilities to unhindered inspections by the IAEA, after unprecedented joint negotiations with the foreign ministers of Britain, France and Germany, in an attempt to defuse the row over the nature of its nuclear programme.
Read the FT briefing on the political and background to the nuclear crisis.

Click here to launch interactive graphic showing the nuclear sites, timeline of the recent crisis and the NPT safeguards and additional protocol Iran has agreed to.

http://specials.ft.com/spdocs/iran02.swf

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Political background

US-Iranian relations have never recovered from the low point of the 1979 hostage crisis, when US diplomats were held captive in Tehran after the fall of the Shah. The US supported Iraq in its eight-year war with Iran that began the following year.

Hardline elements within the ruling Shi'a Muslim hierarchy have since offered support to a number of militant groups in the Middle East that are classed by the US as terrorist organisations, including Lebanon's Hizbollah.

Iran hosted a number of exiled Iraqi Shi'a groups during Saddam Hussein's dictatorship and has recently been accused of harbouring al-Qaeda leaders who fled from Afghanistan.

After Ayatollah Khomeini, Iran's revolutionary leader, died in 1989 and the more pragmatic Ayatollah Rafsanjani assumed power, Iran's relations with the west began to thaw. This process continued under Rafsanjani's successor Mohammed Khatami, who was elected president in 1997 and again in 2001. However, President Khatami's attempts to reform and modernise the country have frequently met with resistance from religious hardliners, led by the supreme spiritual leader Ayatollah Khamenei, which control the establishment.

Iran's continued support for militant groups and its hostility towards Israel have thwarted the efforts of those who support a rapprochement with America.

After the terrorist attacks on the US on September 11 2001, calls for action to prevent so-called rogue states such as Iran from harbouring terrorists or from developing weapons of mass destruction increased in Washington, culminating in President Bush's speech of early 2002, in which he accused Iran, along with Iraq and North Korea, of being part of an "axis-of evil".

Nuclear threat

Iran's nuclear facilities at Bushehr have been the focus of considerable concern. Israel and the US have accused Iran of planning to use the facility to develop nuclear weapons. The Bushehr site contains two Russian-designed facilities. One reactor is nearing completion and another is at a very early stage of construction.

The US argues that Iran has sufficient oil and gas reserves for power generation, and that nuclear reactors are unnecessary. Iran insists the reactors are being built for non-military purposes.

But fears have been fuelled by Iranian opposition groups' claims to have evidence of clandestine research and uranium enrichment facilities in central Iran. These claims were given greater credence by the IAEA's discovery of traces of weapons-grade uranium at the Kalay-e Electric Company plant in west Tehran in September, and at a plant in Natanz, central Iran, earlier this year. This prompted the IAEA to issue a deadline, giving Iran until October 31 to provide evidence that it does not have a nuclear weapons programme.

In a bid to defuse the row, French, German and UK foreign ministers travelled to Tehran in October 2003. The EU diplomatic initiative appeared to bear fruit as Iran announced it was suspending its uranium enrichment and would disclose full details of its nuclear programme.
Two months later Iran signed an Additional Protocol to the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, allowing tougher IAEA supervision, including the right of inspectors to visit
Iran's nuclear sites with just two hours' notice.

Nuclear non-proliferation treaty

The nuclear non-proliferation treaty is a way of trying to limit the number of states with nuclear weapons. Those who had nuclear weapons when the treaty was opened for signature in 1968 (the US, Russia, China, Britain and France) were allowed to keep them but agreed not to give them to anyone else. Other countries are allowed to develop nuclear power for peaceful purposes, but only under inspection.

Iran is a signatory, but until late last year, had not ratified two additional protocols designed to prevent states from developing nuclear weapons covertly.

Some countries that have a nuclear capability, such as Israel, India and Pakistan, have refused to sign up. North Korea has withdrawn from the treaty.

http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1066565351941

LOL

LOL
2 good ones, Doctor

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Okay. Just give me some examples of Muslim-majority countries with constitutional/republican forms of government, where the rule of (secular) law governs, based on the sanctity and dignity of human life.

It must be a very long list, so I'll be patient waiting for your response.

Okay. Just give me some examples of self-governing Muslim countries that regularly hold free elections and respect the rule of law. (Examples from 50 years ago don't count.)

Iran's Rafsanjani suggests nuclear attack on Israel (12/19/01)