Iranian Alert -- February 28, 2004 -- IRAN LIVE THREAD --Americans for Regime Change in Iran

The Iranian Student Movement -- Up To The Minute Reports ^ | 2.28.2004 | DoctorZin

[DoctorZIn]

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.

DoctorZin

[DoctorZIn]

Join Us At Today's Iranian Alert Thread – The Most Underreported Story Of The Year!

"If you want on or off this Iran ping list, Freepmail DoctorZin”

[DoctorZIn]

Join Us At Today's Iranian Alert Thread – The Most Underreported Story Of The Year!

"If you want on or off this Iran ping list, Freepmail DoctorZin”

[DoctorZIn]

Spain Put Stamp Of Approval On Iran's Cooperation With IAEA

Feb 28, 2004, 04:29

Iran news - Spain's Foreign Minister Ana Palacio in Madrid Thursday expressed her satisfaction with Iran's cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Talking to IRNA, she reiterated Iran's cooperation with the IAEA is progressing. Referring to her meeting with IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei in Vienna last week, Palacio quoted ElBaradei as saying that Iran and the agency have taken major steps toward bilateral cooperation. ElBaradei has said the two sides should keep going although some cases require further efforts.

Palacio voiced her country's readiness for reconstruction of the quake-stricken city of Bam, southeastern Iran. A deadly quake, measuring 6.3 degrees on the open-ended Richter scale rocked the historical city on Dec 26, killing some 30,000 people and leaving tens of thousands injured.

http://www.iranian.ws/iran_news/publish/article_1518.shtml

[DoctorZIn]

Uranium Traveled to Iran Via Russia, Inspectors Find

By WILLIAM J. BROAD
Published: February 28, 2004
NY Times

Inspectors have found evidence that some of the highly enriched uranium found on nuclear machinery in Iran came from Russia, European diplomats and American experts said Friday. The nuclear fuel appears to have come through the global black market, the experts added, and not with the blessings of Moscow.

With the findings, Russia emerges as a new and unexpected foreign source of supply to Iran's nuclear efforts. Recent revelations had shown that the Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan had provided Iran with some sophisticated centrifuge technology that could be used to refine weapons-grade uranium through his hidden nuclear trading network, according to international nuclear officials and Dr. Khan's own testimony.

The Bush administration has long accused Iran of harboring a secret bomb project, which Tehran denies, saying its nuclear program is only for peacetime purposes.

In that light, last year's discovery in Iran of highly enriched uranium —a potential bomb fuel — set off an international crisis about the country's nuclear intentions and raised questions about where it had originated. Iran claimed it was contamination that came in on imported equipment, which Iranian officials said they acquired to concentrate uranium for reactors to generate electricity. The centrifuges spin rapidly to enrich uranium for both nuclear reactors and nuclear arms. High concentrations of uranium's rare 235 isotope can fuel warheads.

In a report on Tuesday, the International Atomic Energy Agency said that its inspections had found that centrifuge equipment made indigenously in Iran — but not imported gear — showed many traces of the concentrated fuel, leading experts to doubt the Iranian explanation and suggest that Iran had enriched the uranium itself. Its purity was 36 percent U-235 — short of the 90 percent needed for most nuclear bomb designs but greater than that needed for most nuclear reactors.

On Friday, however, European diplomats said the agency's laboratory at Seibersdorf, Austria, had discovered a likely match between the atomic signatures of Russian uranium and samples agency inspectors had gathered from Iranian centrifuges.

In its sleuthing, the lab studies such things as a sample's isotopes — atoms of the same element that have different numbers of neutrons. A distinctive mix of such isotopes can amount to a fingerprint that experts check against atomic databanks.

The agency, a diplomat cautioned, was being extremely careful in its interpretation of the Seibersdorf data and other evidence and was still actively looking at alternative explanations.

Michael A. Levi, a science fellow at The Brookings Institution in Washington who has studied the recent I.A.E.A. report, said yesterday that he had independently deduced that the Iranian uranium originated in Russia. The strong clue, he said, was its 36 percent enrichment, a level that matches a kind of fuel used in certain Russian submarines and research reactors. Globally, he added, he knew of no other nuclear technology that used 36 percent enrichment.

"There's no reason for Iran to enrich to 36 percent," he said. `The only place that does that is Russia."

He added that it was highly unlikely that the Russian government sold Iran the uranium because its scientists could have easily concealed the telltale signature.

Rather, he argued, thieves probably stole the material either from Russia proper or elsewhere in the former Soviet Union and sold it on the black market.

Nations that use Russian reactors fueled with 36 percent enriched uranium, Mr. Levi said, include not only Russia but also the Czech Republic, Germany (in the former East sector), Hungary, Kazakhstan, North Korea, Poland, Ukraine, Uzbekistan and Vietnam. None of the similarly enriched Russian submarine fuel is exported through legal channels.

Poor security over such materials has been the rule rather than the exception since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Mr. Levi said. For instance, in 1993, two Russian naval servicemen stole nearly four pounds of 36 percent enriched uranium from a naval base at Andreyeva Guba, Russia. They were caught and the material recovered.

Mr. Levi said Iran might have wanted a supply of 36 percent uranium because it could ease the production of bomb-grade uranium, making the process much faster and easier.

He estimated, for instance, that enriching one bomb's worth of material would take one year of running 66 pounds of 36 percent enriched uranium through just 25 centrifuges. A set of such centrifuges, known as a cascade, incrementally concentrates the U-235 isotope.

In contrast, if Iran started with natural, unenriched uranium, Mr. Levi said, the same production run would require 13,200 pounds of raw material running through 750 centrifuges. Such a cascade, he noted, "would be far harder to hide than the 15 centrifuge arrangement."

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/28/international/middleeast/28NUKE.html?ex=1078549200&en=e4daab5883869995&ei=5062

[DoctorZIn]

Iran's Rafsanjani: "All terrorists backed by US"

Saturday, February 28, 2004 - ©2004 IranMania.com

TEHRAN, Feb 27 (AFP) -- Iran's influential former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani said that all famous terrorists get their money and support from Washington, in response to the latest US government report slamming Tehran's human rights record.

"All the world-known and notorious terrorists are made with US money, support and experience," he said in his Friday sermon, broadcast live on state radio.

According to an annual United States government report released Wednesday, human rights conditions worsened last year in Iran as well as in China, Cuba and Myanmar.

The US State Department human rights report gave a bleak assessment of Iran's rights record, amid a "pursuit of numerous violations," against fundamental rights that notably targeted government opponents in politics and the media.

Younesi bluntly accused the United States of supporting terrorism because its State Department lists the Mujahedeen Khalq Organization as a terrorist organization.

The MKO was given sanctuary by Iraq's then-president Saddam in 1986 after being driven out of Iran in the wake of a vicious power struggle following the 1979 Islamic revolution.

"An example of the US action which it calls combatting terrorism, are those terrorists who are serving the US, they explode the Shiite Muslim shrine of Imam Reza and martyred a lot of worshippers, and now they are in US asylum either in Iraq or the US," Rafsanjani said.

Nearly a dozen people were killed when a bomb exploded at the Shiite Muslim shrine of the eighth Imam Reza in northeastern city of Mashad on June 20, 1994.

Iran blamed the blast on the People's Mujahedeen, also known as the MKO, which were disarmed under a treaty with the US military in Iraq after the US-led war ousted Iraqi president Saddam Hussein.

The MKO's deal with the US forces angered Tehran, which accused Washington of being equivocal in its "war on terrorism".

About nine months ago, Iran's intelligence minister demanded the US extradite a suspect in the 1994 Mashad bombing.

Iran and the United States cut off diplomatic relations 23 years ago but have been holding talks recently on matters of mutual interest.

Rafsanjani also saluted Iranians' participation in last week's first round of parliamentary elections.

"The people's participation in the elections was able to neutralize the psychological war which was headed by the US, thus saving the country from the whirlpool they had envisioned for it," he said.

http://www.iranmania.com/News/ArticleView/Default.asp?NewsCode=22986&NewsKind=Current%20Affairs

[DoctorZIn]

Iran's Rafsanjani: "All terrorists backed by US"

Saturday, February 28, 2004 - ©2004 IranMania.com

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1087255/posts?page=5#5

[Bombay Bloke]

The conflict between reformers and conservatives in Iran has been going on for years. But the Bush administration has offered no support for the reformist government of Khatami. The fact is, most young Iranians want a secular, democratic state, but that doesn't necessarily make them pro-American. I think the bellicose, war drum-beating by some US commentators sounds shrill to Iranian ears and only shores up support for the conservatives.

Or do you think the Iranians will be throwing flowers when US tanks roll into Tehran? Like in Iraq?

[DoctorZIn]

...The fact is, most young Iranians want a secular, democratic state, but that doesn't necessarily make them pro-American...

Of course. But in reality they are Pro-American.
Read the posts on this thread and you will see even the world media is reporting the Pro-US sentiments of the Iranian people.

[F14 Pilot]

I'd like to say that first of all there is no difference between those so called reformers inside the Iranian government and those hardline clerics.
How are you sure that youths in Iran are not pro-America?
Have you seen those pictures of Iranians, Old and Young, Men and Women mourning for 9/11 victims a few nights right after that incident?
And I have to add there is not necessary to send troops and tanks into Iran to overthrow a brutal regime because Iranian are strong enough to topple the mad Mullahs' regime, and what they demand is just our moral support. They want America to support their freedom movement.

[F14 Pilot]

Osama captured

[F14 Pilot]

Is that true or false?

[F14 Pilot]

Iranian Radio Reports Bin Laden Captured

Ajc.com
28 feb 2004

TEHRAN, Iran (AP)--Iran's state radio, quoting an unnamed source, said Saturday that Osama bin Laden was captured in Pakistan ``a long time ago.'' A Pakistan army spokesman denied he was captured.

The report said that U.S. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's visit to the region this week was in connection with the arrest.

The state radio said a reporter for its Pushtun service in the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar ``confirmed the news'' that bin Laden had been captured in a tribal region in Pakistan. He said the news was from ``a very reliable source in Peshawar, Pakistan,'' but the source was not identified.

Pakistani Army spokesman Gen. Shaukat Sultan told The Associated Press that the report is completely untrue. ``That information is wrong,'' he said.

A Pakistani military operation has been under way in the border region between Pakistan and Afghanistan and a Pakistani official said previously that members of al-Qaida are being sought there, although bin laden was not a specific target.

Iranian state radio quoted its reporter as saying the arrest happened a long time ago.

``Osama bin Laden has been arrested a long time ago, but Bush is intending to use it for propaganda maneuvering in the presidential election,'' he said.

Homayoun Jarir, son-in-law of Afghan warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, said he could not confirm the report.

Shamim Shahed, the bureau chief for ``The Nation,'' an English-language newspaper in Peshawar, was cited by the director of IRNA's Pashtun radio service as the source of the bin Laden report.

But Shahed denied in an AP interview ever telling the Iranian news service that bin Laden had been captured.

``I never said this, but I have for the last year been saying that he is not far away. He is within their (the Americans) reach, and they can declare him arrested anytime,'' Shahed said. He gave no evidence to back up that claim.

AP-NY-02-28-04 0601EST

http://www.ajc.com/news/content/news/ap/ap_story.html/Intl/AP.V7725.AP-Bin-Laden.html

[RAY]

True democracy / freedom and Islam seem to be at odds.

How do you have a secular government functioning under the rule of law, with religious freedom for all, in an Islamic dominated state?

[nuconvert]

U.S. Denies Iran Report of Bin Laden's Capture


http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1087281/posts

[F14 Pilot]

Swiss human rights group visits Iran

IRIB News
28 Feb 2004

Tehran, Feb 28 - A Swiss expert delegation on human rights visited Iran last week following the first round of negotiations between Iran and Switzerland held last October.

According to the press department of the Foreign Ministry, the delegation held talks with officials in charge of administration of the prisons, the Judiciary and Foreign Ministry and visited the some rehabilitation centers in Tehran and Mashhad.

A statement faxed to IRNA by the Foreign Ministry said that the Swiss team was satisfied with the standard of Iranian prisons.

Iran has entered into talks with Japan, Australia and Switzerland on human rights to help enhance the level of understanding with them.

http://www.iribnews.com/Full_en.asp?news_id=199441

[F14 Pilot]

A statement faxed to IRNA by the Foreign Ministry said that the Swiss team was satisfied with the standard of Iranian prisons.

No COMMENT!!!

[DoctorZIn]

Sounds like the Mullahs think we are about to capture Osama Bin Laden.

Most Iranians believe the Mullahs of Iran's existence depends on Bush's defeat in November. Therefore they need to help Kerry (who has said he will repair relations with these terror masters. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1077998/posts

By preemptively claiming we have had Osama in custody for a long time they are trying to provide the Democrats with an argument that his "capture date" was a lie and the announcement of the capture "politically motivated."

If we do capture Osama soon, the Mullahs will use this charge of a US conspiracy re: Osama to create doubts about the US on a whole range of issues, most importantly Iran's nuclear weapons development program.

By the way, perhaps the most powerful Mullah of Iran said yesterday: ""All the world-known and notorious terrorists are made with US money, support and experience," he said in his Friday sermon, broadcast live on state radio." http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1087255/posts?page=5#5

So much for Iranian credibility.

[DoctorZIn]

Mourners beaten up in Izeh

SMCCDI (Information Service)
Feb 28, 2004

Several mourners were beaten up and the last week's victims of the sham elections commemorative ceremony was ended brutally by the Islamic republic regime 's security agents.

The families of the victims, who had witnessed the official refusal of returning the bodies of the killed demosntrators, had created a ceremony. The regime's local authorities had asked huge sum of money in order to give the bodies for burrial.

The regime's move was intending to avoid more demos.

The situation is very tense in the region and many residents still under arrest.

http://www.daneshjoo.org/generalnews/article/publish/article_5135.shtml

[DoctorZIn]

Bahais Say Iran Released Two Prisoners

February 28, 2004
Victoria Advocate
VictoriaAdvocate.com

WASHINGTON -- Iran has released two members of the Bahai faith who spent nearly 15 years in prison due to their beliefs, the U.S. Bahai information office said.

The office said Bihnam Mithaqi and Kayvan Khalajabadi were imprisoned in 1989 solely for associating with Bahai institutions, sentenced to death in 1991 by the Islamic Revolutionary Court but granted reduced sentences in 2001 after judicial review.

The Bahai office said more than 200 Iranian Bahais have been killed, hundreds imprisoned and thousands deprived of jobs or education because of their religion.

Kit Bigelow, external affairs director with U.S. Bahais' National Spiritual Assembly, said "the overall situation of the Bahais in Iran remains serious."

http://www.thevictoriaadvocate.com/Religion/story/1712985p-2016781c.html

[DoctorZIn]

Tehran Radio: Osama bin Laden Captured

February 28, 2004
Ha'aretz
Yossi Melman

Osama bin Laden has been captured along the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, according to a report Saturday on Tehran Radio.

In the report quoting "knowledgeable sources," the official Iranian media outlet does not specify when the Al-Qaida leader was captured, and the report has yet to be confirmed elsewhere.

It said that Bin Laden was apprehended in a region populated by tribes along the border of the two countries, adding that U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld visit to Pakistan on Thursday was related to capturing the Al-Qaida leader.

Bin Laden has been the target of a massive manhunt by the United States since the September 11, 2000 attacks in which two hijacked airplanes slammed into the World Trade Center in New York, causing it to collapse, while another plane hit the Pentagon, and a fourth apparently crashed in a field when passengers resisted the militants. Thousands were killed in the attacks.

Earlier Saturday, DPA reported that hundreds of U.S.-led coalition troops launched an operation in the Afghanistan's eastern province of Khost to hunt down Al-Qaida and Taliban fugitives, citing the Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press (AIP).

Qoting witnesses AIB said about 35 military vehicles and tanks were seen moving towards the southeastern part of the province close to the Pakistani border.

"The convoy has now reached around the areas of Tora Ghara, Toda Cheena and Mustalbar and has launched the search operation, along the Pak-Afghan border region," travellers moving across the border into Pakistani town of Miranshah told AIP.

Helicopters were also flying over the area that faces Pakistan's north Waziristan region in the east, they said.

According to AIP no Khost official was immediately available for comments on the new operation but U.S. officials had indicated last week that a big mobilization of coalition troops in Afghanistan was imminent to flush out militants suspected in the mountain region.

There had been rockets attacks in recent weeks from the southeastern part of the Khost aimed at U.S. and government targets.

Khost had been one of the main strongholds of the extremist Taliban regime in the years before they were toppled by a U.S.-led military coalition in late 2001.

Some 11,500 U.S. troops are currently deployed in Afghanistan to hunt down remnants of the ousted Taliban regime and members of the Al-Qaida network, mainly in the south and southeast.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=399184&contrassID=1&subContrassID=8&sbSubContrassID=0&listSrc=Y