Iranian Alert -- February 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.

Time Not on Side of Iranian 'Leaders'

February 27, 2004
Scripps Howard News Service
Dale McFeatters

If Iran ever held a truly free election, that country’s supreme leader, his appointed Guardian Council and their coterie of corrupt clerics would be swept from office.

The Iranian people know that, we know that, the Europeans know that — and so do the hard-line clerics. The clerics hit upon the obvious solution.

They guaranteed that there would not be a repeat of the 2000 election, when moderates took control of the parliament, by the simple expedient of banning 2,400 moderates, including about 80 sitting members of parliament, from last Friday’s election. To be on the safe side, the clerics shuttered two popular newspapers that supported the moderates.

The conservatives, with no opponents, easily retook control of the parliament. It requires no great stretch of the imagination to see that next they will go after Iran’s popular but ineffectual reformist president, Mohammad Khatami, when he comes up for re-election next year.

Khatami stunned the hard-liners when he overwhelmingly won election in 1997 and was easily re-elected in 2001. Like with the parliament, the hard-liners aren’t about to let that happen again.

All of this is a dismaying setback for the Iranian people who would like to see their country free of the repressive hand of clerical rule. However, time is not on the clerics’ side, as a restive youthful nation, with no memory of the 1979 revolution, chafes at the lack of opportunity, jobs and social freedoms.

The conservative clerics in control of parliament will now begin agitating for the United States and the European Union to recognize their rule as legitimate. Nations that believe in democracy and civil liberties should not dignify that claim. If it’s legitimacy the clerics crave, let them try to win an honest election, open to all comers and watched over by a free press.

http://www.leadertelegram.com/story.asp?id=38638

EU, US to Seek Common Ground on Iran, Middle East

February 27, 2004
Reuters
John Chalmers

BRUSSELS -- Transatlantic relations may look bad on Monday when the European Union slaps trade sanctions on the United States, but the two sides look set to find common ground on the Middle East at talks in Washington the same day.

Diplomats said the meeting would cover issues which spawned deep differences last year - notably the Iraq war, the Israel-Palestinian conflict and how to handle Iran's nuclear programme - but on which positions have since moved closer.

"After all the tensions there now seems a determination to find pragmatic solutions and move ahead," said one EU diplomat, pointing to this week's deal over Europe's plans for a satellite navigation system rivalling the U.S. Global Positioning System.

He was echoed by a U.S. official who described the agreement on navigations systems as a "win-win" and a good trailer for next week's six-monthly meeting.

The meeting will bring together U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice with EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana, European External Relations Commissioner Chris Patten and Irish Foreign Minister Brian Cowen, whose country is current president of the bloc.

They will seek to prepare for a major EU-U.S. summit in June at which, Washington hopes, various ideas for a Greater Middle East Initiative will be tied together.

U.S. officials say Washington's plan is to offer countries from Morocco to Afghanistan trade deals, political engagement and military support in exchange for democratic reform.

EUROPEANS SCEPTICAL

The Europeans are sceptical about whether such a sprawling region has any coherence as a unit, and they suspect it could distract attention from the need to revive the "road map" for peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

They favour more modest steps such as deepening NATO's Mediterranean partnership, boosting EU-Gulf ties and laying more emphasis on democracy and human rights in the bloc's trade and aid-oriented Barcelona process with Mediterranean rim states.

"There's been some scepticism and criticism that this is a one-time fix... just meant to distract from the fact that the road map has been a road block. I don't think that is the case," said the U.S. official.

He said Powell would be "prepared to respond" on Monday to the European view, expressed by the fiercest critics of the U.S.-led Iraq war, that the international community must address root economic and social causes of instability in the region.

Germany argues that Syria and Iran could not be excluded from any wider Middle East initiative.

The EU's biggest powers, Britain, France and Germany, joined forces again last week to persuade Iran to completely suspend uranium enrichment activities after convincing Tehran to accept intrusive spot inspections of its nuclear programme.

The EU believes Iran should be rewarded with peaceful nuclear cooperation and a resumption of trade talks if it complies, while Washington - which now backs the Big Three initiative after initial misgivings - still opposes any help for Tehran's civilian nuclear programme, diplomats say.

Other issues on the agenda on Monday include: Iraq, the handover of NATO's peacekeeping mission in Bosnia to the EU, the Cyprus peace talks and Turkey's EU candidacy, Afghanistan ahead of next month's Berlin conference and relations with Russia.

(Additional reporting by Paul Taylor).

http://www.reuters.com/

Power, Cash May Be The Ties That Bind Iran

February 28, 2004
The Age
Ed O'loughlin

Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini has been dead for 15 years but his face is still everywhere in Tehran, looking down from giant murals over dingy, traffic-choked streets, framed behind glass on every office wall.

Utterly unbending in life, the founder of the Islamic Republic glares down at his creation from a place beyond mercy or compromise. But if the late ruler is frozen forever in certainty, his absolutist blend of politics and religion has had to muddle on without him.

For all the Ayatollah icons, anti-US slogans and hardline Islamic rhetoric, Iran is no longer a country governed by one iron will, or even one coherent faction. Even the Islamic clergy who have the last word in the world's only official theocracy are deeply divided over who, if anyone, should wear Ayatollah Khomeini's mantle.

The hardline clerics and their lay supporters may have come together last week to defeat the reformist, modernist movement in deeply flawed parliamentary elections, but political observers in Tehran say that in truth they are split into at least three main factions.

What holds them together, the regime's critics say, is no longer love of country, Ayatollah or even Islam, but the same things that kept the shah's regime together - power and cash. Mullahs and lay activists who once braved the shah's torturers for justice and religion have become fat on state-owned industries and the network of religious foundations set up by Ayatollah Khomeini to take over the nationalised assets of the shah, foreign businesses and anyone who fled the revolution.

Today, the conservative factions still shout of the need to defend the revolution against America, Zionism and those treacherous Iranians who want secular freedoms. But the real wellspring of reaction, their opponents say, is privilege and wealth. And if any one group or power centre can be said to be directing this effort, many say, it is the political movement calling itself Jami'at-e Motalefeh-e Eslami, or the Society of Islamic Coalition.

"Motalefeh is the so-called business aspect of the conservative group. Both extremist and conservative clerical factions rise out of Motalefeh because it has monopolised economic power on their behalf," said Davoud Hermidas Bavand, professor of international law at the University of Tehran. "If Iran adopts modernism, one of the things it has to do is take this monopoly out of the hands of Motalefeh and the big foundations that are closely linked to it, and of course they'll do what they can to prevent that," Professor Bavand said.

Or as one Tehran-based diplomat put it: "If there is a force in the background pulling the levers, Motalefeh is it."

Not so much a party as a political-religious pressure group, Motalefeh occupies a niche in Iran strikingly similar to the great Catholic orders in reformation Europe, or more recently the secretive right-wing Catholic society Opus Dei. Like its Christian counterparts, Motalefeh believes its task is doing God's work on earth.

The people have not been appreciative. Wiped out in earlier elections, Motalefeh has stopped running candidates under its own banner. Instead, it offers behind-the-scenes support to like-minded candidates running on other lists, notably the Abadgaran Iran-e-Islami (Developers of Islamic Iran).

This will be the largest block in the new Parliament after a 70 per cent voter stay away in reform-minded Tehran gifted it a sweep of the seats.

Perhaps seeking to moderate their public profile, Motalefeh and its clients now deny that they are reactionary or fundamentalist: even the label "conservative" annoys them.

This week Abadgaran rejected suggestions that conservatives plan to use their new control of Parliament to reverse recent relaxations in the enforcement of Sharia law. Motalefeh likes to portray itself as merely another player in mature democracy.

"In our society there has always been different views - among students, people who protest - but it never comes to antagonism," asserts Asadollah Badamchian, Motalefeh's second in command and a survivor of the shah's torture chambers.

"Iran is a free society. It's natural some are extreme and some are moderate. This is what we fought for. We didn't get rid of a dictatorship to replace it with another," he said. Yet dictatorship is what many Iranians do call their form of government, especially since the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and unelected clerical councils repeatedly vetoed reform bills passed by the last, overwhelmingly reformist parliament.

Then in the run-up to last week's election, the 12-man Islamic Council of Guardians hamstrung the liberal movement by banning 2000 reformist candidates for not being sufficiently Islamic. This prompted most of the rest to withdraw. By the time the polls opened last Friday only half the country's 290 seats were contested by a reformist candidate. With the main reformist parties calling for a boycott, the 50 per cent turnout was the lowest in Iran's post-revolutionary history.

Despite its ascendant position, the traditional conservative right represented by Motalefeh is unlikely to have things all its own way. A smaller but more pragmatic conservative faction under the formidable former president Hashemi Rafsanjani, keen to ease international relations, is manoeuvring in the wings.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is also said to enjoy little support from the main conservative faction, and could yet be drawn into an alliance against them.

Reasserting their power, the conservatives must be careful not to stir up resistance from the public, particularly in Tehran. Many people are desperate for change but are too disillusioned with the reform process, and too frightened of possible violence from the groups linked to the Islamic establishment to actively resist.

The political clergy and their backers must also be wary of resistance from within the Islamic establishment itself.

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/02/27/1077676961275.html

Now Tehran's Pushing Buttons

February 28, 2004
Australian Financial Review
Tony Walker

George Bush may appear to have love and marriage on his mind, but Iran is tweaking nerve-endings in Washington severely and for several reasons.

In the swirl of events in an exceptionally busy news week, the following interlocking events could easily have passed unnoticed in the Great Game of tracking the twists and turns of American foreign policy in an era when the administration hardly speaks with one voice.

On the day that US President George Bush commandeered the national debate by announcing he would support a constitutional amendment effectively banning gay marriages, his spokesman, Scott McClellan, addressed another contentious issue which barely stirred the interest of a White House press corps slavering over same-sex unions.

The issue was Iran, and what McClellan had to say in the President's name might have seemed unexceptional, but the fact that he said it, and said it belatedly, added significance to his remarks.

Four days after Iran's parliamentary elections, which by any standards represented a travesty of democratic principles and practice, this is what Bush said: "I am very disappointed in the recently disputed parliamentary elections in Iran. The disqualification of some 2400 candidates by the unelected Guardian Council deprived many Iranians of their 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."

What Bush omitted to mention in his brief statement was the fact that 87 members of the 290-member Parliament were excluded from contesting the poll, vetted out by the Council of Guardians, an unelected body of elders dominated by clerics, which reports to spiritual leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

The conservatives have spoken, and the reformers' impotence has been exposed. So the calculus shifts from expectations of a continued struggle between modernists and medievalists to a lop-sided outcome which appears to have established a new, regressive and fractious status quo.

Shaul Bakhash of the Brookings Institution, whose book, The Reign of the Ayatollahs, is one of the best pieces of work on post-Shah Iran, said in an interview recently that above all what the election result indicated was that supreme leader Khamenei had asserted his authority by throwing in his lot with the hardliners.

The leadership, he said, was now a mixture of hardliners and conservative centrists whose influence will almost certainly ensure the election next year of a conservative to replace the reformist Mohammad Khatami, who has been a disappointment to those in Iran and in the West who hoped that he might preside over a new era.

In Bakash's view, the reformists are in retreat and it is hard to see them regrouping soon.

But perhaps the real politics was not in Iran but in Washington itself. For it is no secret that the Bush administration is under pressure from conservatives within and without to adopt a sterner posture towards Iran.

In his remarks, which came four days after the February 20 poll, Bush appeared to come down marginally on the side of US hardliners, but the administration's critics on the right identify an obvious contradiction in the US approach between words and deeds.

"We're three years into [the Bush administration] and we don't have an Iran policy," says Michael Ledeen, of the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute. "Iran is the leading supporter of terrorism in the world, and we claim to be in a war against terrorism. Maybe we should stop coddling them. Maybe we should support democracy."

What supporting democracy might mean beyond pious words is not clear, but what is almost certainly the case, when the four following pieces of the jigsaw are fitted into place, is that the chances of a thaw between Washington and Tehran have receded for the time being. Hopes, even expectations, of the beginning of an accommodation now seem quite remote.

* In Baghdad this week, US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld indulged in some of the heftiest criticism of Iran in recent memory.

Asked at a press conference whether the US planned to increase pressure on Iran to stop an influx of terrorists, Rumsfeld engaged in this exchange with a journalist.

Question: How about pressure on Syria and Iran, maybe increasing the pressure on them?

Answer: That wouldn't be a bad thing. Syria and Iran have not been helpful to the people of Iraq. Indeed, they've been unhelpful.

Question: How have they been unhelpful?

Answer: They've allowed people to move from their countries into Iraq to engage in terrorist activities against the Iraqi people."

* The State Department last week issued its verdict for 2003 on human rights abuses, Country Reports on Human Rights Practices 2003, which was scathing about Iran in a lengthy and detailed section.

Here's a flavour of it: "Continuing serious abuses included: summary executions; disappearances; torture and other degrading treatment, reportedly including severe punishments such as beheading and flogging; poor prison conditions; arbitrary arrest and detention; lack of habeas corpus or access to counsel and prolonged and incommunicado detention."

The Central Intelligence Agency chief George Tenet, in a briefing on Tuesday with the Senate Intelligence Committee, provided a gloomy, though not alarmist, assessment of Iran's future. The regime was secure for now, its foreign policy, which has been in the grip of the more conservative elements anyway, won't change much, if at all, but repression will deepen discontent.

Tenet touched on the issue that is of most concern without going into details. This is suspicion, actually near certainty, that Iran is persisting in its efforts to acquire a nuclear weapons capability in spite of an appearance of co-operating with the International Atomic Energy Agency.

As Tenet put in open session with the committee before briefing it behind closed doors, Iran was "trying to preserve its weapons of mass destruction options".

* This latter observation corresponds with a piece of intelligence that emerged this week to cast doubt, if that was necessary, on Iran's claims that its nuclear intentions are peaceable.

On Tuesday, the International Atomic Energy Agency said in a report that United Nations inspectors in Iran had found signs of polonium, a radioactive element that can help trigger a nuclear chain reaction, like that in a nuclear bomb, according to an Associated Press dispatch.

This comes on top of the discovery earlier this month at an air base in Iran of an advanced P-2 centrifuge system that could enrich uranium for weapons use. The US has said the finding raises "serious concerns" about Tehran's intentions.

These "concerns" are certain to be ventilated by the US representative at a board meeting of the 35-member IAEA on March 8 to re-assess what is being described by the Americans as the "Iranian threat".

The atmosphere will be quite tense.

But beyond Iran's trashing of its reformists, beyond its apparent program to acquire a nuclear capability, beyond its support for organisations like Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Palestine, it is Iraq which is of most immediate concern to the US and where potential for friction arises, as Rumsfeld indicated.

It would hardly be news in Washington that Iran has no interest in a flourishing example of Jeffersonian democracy on the banks of the Tigris.

As Shaul Bakash observes: "Iran doesn't want Iraq to break up, but if they can make life difficult for the Americans and undermine this shining example of democracy, fine, great."

http://afr.com/world/index.html

Japan Misses the Big Picture

February 28, 2004
The Korea Herald
Robyn Lim

Japan needs to see its strategic security through a wider lens than the resource concerns of its powerful economic ministries. Japan's decision to fund the development of Iranian oil "against Washington's objections" ignores this principle.

In return for access to bases here, it still suits America to provide long-range maritime security for Japan, as well as nuclear security. But it isn't America's oil that comes from the Persian Gulf through East Asia's maritime chokepoints and marginal seas. And with the Cold War long over, forward deployments in this region are a matter of strategic choice rather than necessity for the United States. America's alliance with Japan is grounded in interest, not sentiment. Japan's rationalization for signing the deal to develop the Azadegan oil field in Iran is that Tehran has now agreed to accept additional inspections from the International Atomic Energy Agency.

But evidence is daily coming to light that Tehran has not come clean. The IAEA has discovered additional violations, with the latest connection being to a military airfield.

Certainly, resource-poor Japan has reason to be interested in Iranian oil. Last year, Iran supplied some 16 percent of Japan's oil, making it the third-largest supplier after Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. And in relation to the Azadegan contract, Iran has played off Japan against China and France. But if Japan is serious about the nonproliferation of nuclear weapons, it is far too early to make this deal with Iran. It's hard to believe that Iran, awash with oil and gas, needs nuclear power for peaceful purposes. Moreover, the installation of pro-American regimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, on Iran's borders, seems to have made Iran more determined to seek security in nuclear weapons.

In Iran, unlike North Korea, political power is being contested. It is very likely, though, that any government in Tehran will want nuclear weapons now. In any case, the hardline mullahs are digging in, as shown by the recent election charade. They are sponsors of Islamic terrorist organizations such as Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah. Iran is also knowingly harboring operatives of al-Qaeda, which has threatened Japan because it has sent non-combat forces to Iraq. Japan also needs to think about what might happen if a nuclear-capable Iran were able to keep "hostile" shipping out of the Persian Gulf. And if Iran acquires nuclear weapons, Saudi Arabia will probably want them too. The Saudis have long bankrolled the Pakistan nuclear weapons program.

Nor can Japan afford to ignore the connections between Iran and North Korea. Indeed, these countries are mounting an unprecedented challenge to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. North Korea, having benefited from the treaty, evicted international inspectors and flaunted its nuclear weapons. Then it left it, the first state to do so. Yet the U.N. Security Council has not even met because China, North Korea's quasi-ally, will not allow it. That lack of will by the "international community" has emboldened Iran. Moreover, Iran and North Korea have long cooperated in exchanges of missile technology. Iran's Shahab 3 missile is, in fact, a North Korean Nodong. Northchanges of missile technology. Iran's Shahab 3 missile is, in fact, a North Korean Nodong. North Korea now has some 200 Nodongs threatening Japan. There is also speculation about cooperation in nuclear technology. Japan, by announcing the Iranian oil deal just before the six-party talks started Wednesday in Beijing, risks encouraging North Korea to seek to drive a wedge into the U.S.-Japan alliance. Yet, last year, Japan was complaining that America might agree to a multilateral security guarantee for North Korea, in return for Pyongyang's promises to freeze its nuclear weapons program. Japan worries that such an undertaking would put a hole in Japan's American-supplied nuclear security blanket. Thus Japan's behavior shows a continuing strategic myopia.

Japan needs to think hard about the huge benefits it derives from alliance with America at little cost and risk to itself. Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi should invite his economic ministers to explain how they think Japan would fare if it had to look after its own security. It certainly would not be able to do so while spending only 1 percent of GNP on defense. Moreover, Japan has not been able to resolve the issues of World War II on terms satisfactory to its neighbors. So if Japan were to rearm unilaterally, that would inflame regional tensions. Economics and security interact in complex ways. It's time Japan saw the big picture.

http://www.heraldm.com/

Hezbollah Lures Israeli Arabs : Intel Chief

February 27, 2004
New York Post
Uri Dan

Israel's secret-service chief is warning that Iran and its Lebanese-backed Hezbollah terrorist group have been making "tremendous efforts" to recruit Israeli Arabs to carry out terror attacks.

Avi Dichter, the head of Israel's Shin Bet intelligence service, said also that there is recruiting in the Palestinian territories.

But while those who sign up in the territories get paid thousands of Israeli shekels for every attack - and also pocket a bonus when they kill Israelis - the Israeli Arabs "are doing it for free."

"For them, it's not a financial matter," Dichter said in the semiannual report he gave this week before the Knesset's security and foreign affairs committee.

He underlined the importance of Iran in the mobilization of Palestinian terrorists.

"Iran is the number one terrorist state in the world," he said. "The Iranian threat against the state of Israel is substantial, organized and planned on a long-range basis, including giving directives and pointing at targets."

"There is a worrisome increase in the number of recruits among the Israeli Arabs by Iran," Dichter said. "The Iranians are activating a channel to infiltrate terrorists through Europe into Israel."

In his report to legislators, Dichter underlined the importance of the barrier Israel has been constructing along the West Bank and the fence that already exists in the Gaza Strip.

Israel says it needs the barrier as a defense against homicide bombers.

On Wednesday, Arab and Muslim nations asked the International Court of Justice to rule against the legality of the barrier, which is now one-fourth completed. Any decision by the court would be nonbinding.

Yesterday, in what became the most bloodstained protest yet over the partition, three Palestinians were killed and dozens wounded after hundreds of Palestinians and Israeli leftists hurled stones at Israelis bulldozing ground for the barrier.

The clashes in the West Bank villages of Bidou, Beit Surik and Beit Iksa not far from Jerusalem became so fierce that the Israeli border police fired tear gas and rubber bullets, authorities said

"This is a new uprising, an uprising of the wall," said Beit Surik school principal Ibrahim Mughar.

http://www.nypost.com/

Iran Irks IAEA

February 26, 2004
The Heritage Foundation
Heritage Policy Weblog

The International Atomic Energy Agency claims that Iran has not yet answered several outstanding questions about its nuclear program. Iran Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi responded to Reuters that the disagreement is over "only procedural issues" and should not "cast doubt on Iran's peaceful nuclear activities."

Heritage's Peter Brookes explains why this sort of development is especially troubling:

Here's a dirty little secret from the rogue regime playbook: The U.N.'s Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) has a dangerous loophole. Under the guise of a peaceful, civilian nuclear energy program, a state can openly develop - right under the nose of the IAEA - most of what it needs for a nuclear-weapons program. It worked for North Korea and it's working for Iran today.

It is not encouraging, then, that Iran can't even convince the IAEA that it's in compliance with its obligations.

Also of concern is recent information that has come to light about Iran's programs. Two weeks ago, writes Helle Dale, "international inspectors discovered that Iran had hidden blueprints for a highly sophisticated centrifuge, capable of producing a key element in nuclear weapons." In other words, "even as Iran was pretending to be cooperating with the IAEA, it was engaged in a double-cross."

The lesson to take from all this? It is positive that Iran is working with the IAEA, but there is still the risk that this could end up like the 1994 agreement with North Korea. As Brookes maintains, "Washington must remain skeptical of Iran's intentions to hold up its end of the EU-brokered deal until it is verifed that this was, indeed, a breakthrough for nuclear non-proliferation and not for Iran's nuclear weapons program."

http://www.heritage.org/Press/DailyBriefing/policyweblog.cfm

US Criticizes Islamic Government's Human Rights Violations

•In a 30-page chapter of its annual country report on human rights practices around the world, the US State Department criticized the Islamic government for abuses, including persecution of opponents and suppression of liberties, including freedom of expression. (Amir-Mosaddegh Katouzian)

US Accuses of Iran of Hiding Info on Nuclear Program

•Iran's actions, as well as information in an IAEA report made public on Tuesday, strengthen the U.S. assessment that Iran's nuclear program is not consistent with its stated purpose, but is clearly geared towards the development of nuclear weapons, US representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency Ambassador Kenneth Brill said, adding that the Islamic government was engaged in “a continuing pattern of deception and delayed admissions.” (Alireza Taheri)

•Iran must disclose fully the details of its nuclear programs to the IAEA, British Prime Minister Tony Blair demanded today, commenting after a report earlier this week by IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei which said there remained a number of questions and discrepancies over Iran's nuclear program that were “a matter of serious concern.” (Leyli Sadr)

•The Islamic Republic does not find it necessary to report the outcome of its research on centrifuge P2, or its other nuclear research projects, to the IAEA, secretary of the supreme national security council Hasan Rowhani said on Wednesday, reacting to the IAEA report. He said the suspension of the uranium enrichment program was voluntary and Iran will not stop the project. Rowhani's statement does not agree with Iran's legal commitments to the IAEA, Stockholm University's political science professor Said Mahmoudi tells Radio Farda. Iran has made a commitment to report all of its nuclear activities to the IAEA, he adds. However, the Islamic government may have taken this position because it had not received promised help to further its peaceful nuclear programs from the three European powers, he adds. (Bahman Bastani)

•It is time to turn over Iran's nuclear case to the UN Security Council, the Washington Times writes. (Amir Armin)

Reformers Demand Recount, Summon Khatami to Explain “Unfair” Elections

•Dozens of reformists MPs signed a petition summoning President Khatami to the Majles to explain why he let last week's elections go ahead even though 2,500 of reformists were barred from standing by the Guardians Council. (Keyvan Hosseini)

•“Many reformers and ordinary Iranians feel let down by Khatami, who promised freedom of speech and the rule of law, but failed to stand up to powerful hardliners once they blocked him, the Reuters reports in a dispatch from Tehran.

•Announcing the final count of the Tehran electoral district's votes, the interior ministry said 5 of 30 Tehran Majles seats will be decided in runoff elections. Majles speaker Karrubi and Tehran MP Montajebnia, both from the society of reformist clerics (Majma-ye Rowhanioun Mobarez), who had failed to receive the required minimum of 25 percent, withdrew from the runoff elections.

•Twenty were arrested in the Kermanshah province for damaging public property, following post-election riots in Paveh, Javanroud and Falat-Babajani, local resident Koroush Nouri tells Radio Farda. Demonstrators protested against the elections results, asking how 24,000 had voted in Falat-Babajani electoral district, which has only 14,000 eligible voters, he adds. (Nima Tamadon)

Conservatives Win Majles Majority

•After last Friday's elections, some conservative theoreticians talked of plans to adapt what they call the Chinese model –a combination of political repression and economic development. The economies of the countries with closed political systems always lag in development, Cambridge University's economic professor Hashem Pesaran tells Radio Farda. Furthermore, he adds, the conservatives, who will takeover the Majles next June, will further close doors to foreign capital and foreign participation, compounding the existing economic problems. Iran, as an oil exporting country, is in constant need of new technologies, and no regime, under present conditions, can afford to close the doors to foreign capital and more advanced technology. (Shahran Tabari, London)

•Some reformist observers warned that following the conservatives' victory in the Majles elections, more oppression against pro-reform activists and journalists could be expected. The conservatives do have a capacity for increased oppression, Tehran-based pro-reform columnist Jafar Golabi tells Radio Farda. However, in today's political atmosphere, any more repression would blemish the conservatives' election victory, which has given them a greater sense of power. The faction that no longer feels besieged by the opposition would in fact open the political atmosphere, he adds. The people received the conservatives' election victory with indifference, he says. (Jafar Golabi)

•Pro-reform party the Participation Front's central committee member Hadi Qabel said he hoped that the conservatives will let the party remain active in politics, but managing editor of the conservative daily Kayhan, who called the reformists traitors and foreign agents, said they do not deserve to occupy any key government positions. (Keyvan Hosseini)

•British Foreign Office Minister for the Middle East Baroness Symons criticized the mass disqualification of 2,500 candidates in the Friday's elections, calling the elections a setback after years of progress towards democracy. (Alireza Taheri)

•The conservatives have taken up and are running with many of the slogans and ideas championed by the reformists, such as prison reform, human rights and respect for traditional Iranian (non-Islamic) celebrations, such as the annual fire fest, or Charshanbeh Suri, Tehran-based journalist Said Dehqani tells Radio Farda. (Nima Tamadon)

•It appears that the next Majles will be under the control of the Supreme Leader, but the differences among the traditional and pragmatic branches of the conservative faction may pull them apart, independent Amsterdam-based journalist Sina Motalebbi tells Radio Farda. (Amir-Mosaddegh Katouzian)

http://www.radiofarda.com/transcripts/topstory/2004/02/20040226_1530_0542_1120_EN.asp

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