Iranian Alert -- March 17, 2004 [EST]-- IRAN LIVE THREAD -- Americans for Regime Change in Iran

The Last 24 hours were intense. As the student movement reported, "What's going on this evening has never been seen and the night is just at its start and will be very long for the regime."

Although it is now midnight on the east coast of the US, it is now morning in Iran. I expect to post numerous reports on the celebrations/demonstrations later in the day and expecting more photos.

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.

Iran Has Long Way to Go to Convince World of Nuclear Intentions

March 16, 2004
VOA News
Melanie Sully

Listen to Melanie Sully's report
http://www.voanews.com/mediastore/sully_us_iran_iaea_nuclear_long_16mar04.ram

A U.S. diplomat says Iran has a long way to go to convince the International Atomic Energy Agency and the rest of the world that its nuclear program is for civilian purposes, as it claims. The U.S. ambassador to the IAEA says Iran has been deceiving the world and is not cooperating with the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency.

Kenneth Brill, says a majority of the 35 countries represented on the IAEA board of governors are genuinely worried about Tehran's nuclear ambitions. He said Iran's past deceit has fueled these concerns. "The classic example of why people are concerned about the Iran nuclear program is the Kalaye Electric Company plant which was originally portrayed by the most senior Iranian officials as a simple watch factory or simple warehouse and over time its true use and purpose was conveyed to the IAEA: it was a place where centrifuge experiments had been done," he said.

Tehran claims the centrifuges are used in its civilian program, but the United States insists that they are part of the government's secret weapons program.

"Before the Iranian government would allow the agency inspectors into that facility they took it apart. They took out all the equipment. They repainted it. They did everything," said Mr. Brill. "They dug it up and they tried to hide as much as they could. Nonetheless the agency still found evidence of things going on there that clearly shouldn't have been. The question that we all have when we heard about the delay in the inspection was is this going to be yet another example of where Iran delays inspectors from coming to facilities that [the IAEA] hasn't yet inspected while they try to clean it up and get rid of evidence."

Unlike Libya, Mr. Brill said, Iran has not cooperated fully with the IAEA, and this is cause for concern. "The lack of cooperation makes it very clear Iran has something to hide. We know it has something to hide. We think their actions have only underscored that fact in the past few days," he said.

The IAEA board of governors will meet in June to consider once again what to do about Iran's nuclear ambitions.

http://www.voanews.com/article.cfm?objectID=CF44105A-89FD-4AB6-B11891A780568F06&title=US%20Diplomat%3A%20%20Iran%20Has%20Long%20Way%20to%20Go%20to%20Convince%20World%20of%20Nuclear%20Intentions&catOID

Washington hardliners wary of engaging with Iran

Financial Times
By Guy Dinmore in Washington
Published: March 16 2004 21:57 | Last Updated: March 16 2004 21:57

Iran's proposal of a road map leading to the restoration of relations with the US did not come as a complete surprise to the Bush administration, but it has intensified a fierce internal debate between "realists" and "neo-conservatives" over ambitious plans to remake the wider Middle East.

Signs of an overture from Tehran had been picked up by Washington a year before the invasion of Iraq, as Iran's faction-riven clerical rulers struggled to reach a consensus over how to respond to the threat inherent in the "Axis of Evil" speech by President George W. Bush in January 2002.

Even before May last year when the road map proposal arrived from Tim Guldimann, the Swiss ambassador representing US interests in Iran, a suggestion had been aired by Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a former president.

Mr Rafsanjani, a powerful figure central to several abortive bids over the past 18 years to strike deals with the US, suggested the question of Iran-US relations could be put to a referendum, a move almost sure to secure approval for rapprochement.

His remarks were published in Tehran soon after the fall of Baghdad. But instead of replying to Tehran, an official said the State Department rebuked the Swiss foreign ministry for overstepping its diplomatic mandate. Mr Guldimann told the Financial Times he never commented on such matters.

According to the US side, the Iranian offer mentioned cutting off support to the militant Palestinian groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and converting Lebanon's Hizbollah into a purely socio-political organisation. Iran also indicated it could recognise Israel and a separate Palestinian state.

But it was not clear whether Iran was prepared to abandon its development of the nuclear fuel cycle programme, including uranium enrichment that can be used to run reactors or make bombs.

The offer was said to come from a senior Iranian official designated two years ago by Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader, to co-ordinate a special committee on US relations. The Bush administration did not question the authenticity of the proposal, a US official said.

Mohammad Javad Zarif, Iran's ambassador to the United Nations, followed up with a commentary in the International Herald Tribune on May 12 suggesting talks with the US on Iraq and the nuclear issue.

Mr Zarif played an important role in mediating with Lebanese groups in the early 1990s to secure the release of western hostages in Beirut. Mr Rafsanjani was then president.

Important figures on the US side then, and still wielding influence now, are Brent Scowcroft, national security adviser under Mr Bush's father, and Thomas Pickering, then US ambassador to the UN. Now in the private sector, both encourage engagement. Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, backs Mr Scowcroft's talks with Mr Zarif.

Fellow realists inside the administration include Colin Powell, the secretary of state, and his deputy, Richard Armitage.

Last October, Mr Armitage told a congressional hearing that pursuit of regime change was not official US policy and that change should come from within. His statement had not been cleared with all other departments.

Another believed to favour engagement is Robert Blackwill, strategic planner for the Middle East under Ms Rice. He was quoted as telling a meeting of European diplomats that "Bush has a vision for the Greater Middle East but not a strategy. My job is to make sure that gap doesn't cost him an election."

But for US hardliners and neo-conservatives, their experience of Iran is dominated by events a decade earlier - the morass of Lebanon and the Iran-Contra debacle when Ronald Reagan, then US president, tried to trade guns for hostages.

For Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, Iran and its creation Hizbollah cannot be forgiven for the retreat of US forces from Lebanon in 1983 after 241 Marines were killed by a bomb.

For many in the Bush administration, that humiliation, followed by no meaningful retaliation, created an image of American weakness in the Arab world that ultimately encouraged the al-Qaeda attacks of September 11, 2001.

US officials concede that the blood spilt in Beirut and the 444-day Tehran embassy hostage crisis have left baggage far weightier than Libya's destruction of the Pan Am flight over Scotland or the Korean war half a century ago.

A bargain can be struck with Muammer Gadaffi of Libya or Kim Jong-il of North Korea because there is no internal opposition or alternative, officials say. But in Iran, US hardliners see an alternative to bargaining: a mass of discontented people who are ready to revolt, perhaps with US help.

In May Mr Rumsfeld responded to Iran's overtures by fighting for regime change to be made official US policy, though not necessarily through military means. He attacked Iran publicly, accusing it of being unhelpful over Iraq. He told the Council on Foreign Relations that getting into a close, intimate relationship with Iran would give its clerics the legitimacy they craved and discourage Iranians who sought change.

The neo-conservatives believe the Iranian regime will collapse sooner rather than later. The realists are not so sure. For Mr Bush, who has no personal experience of Iran, it is a moral question. In speeches on the Middle East, he has said that consorting with tyrants such as the Shah of Iran or his religious successors has rebounded on America.

Reuel Gerecht, an Iran expert at the right-wing American Enterprise Institute, says the realist school sees a silver lining in the conservatives' rigging of last month's elections that ended four years of reformist majority.

Writing in the Weekly Standard, he said the realists (his political rivals) believed the "pragmatic conservatives are the men to cut a deal" over Iran's weapons of mass destruction. "The realist temptation in the American foreign policy establishment is always powerful, principally because it is the path of least resistance and least action and it dovetails nicely with the status quo reflexes of the State Department, the Central Intelligence Agency and the military brass at the Pentagon," he wrote.

Senator John Kerry, the Democrats' challenger to Mr Bush in this year's election, appears to have embraced the realist cause.

US officials admit the Bush administration's dysfunctional policy on Iran has resulted in confused signals such as the sizeable relief effort for the quake-stricken city of Bam, a moderate, European-led approach on the nuclear issue within the International Atomic Energy Agency, and indecision over how to deal with a growing Iranian presence in Iraq.

Mr Gerecht expresses the concern of neo-conservatives that Mr Bush is "going soft" because of the sobering US experience in Iraq. The administration is urged to take a tougher approach on Iran, especially in response to its suspected sheltering of al-Qaeda fugitives.

Much more than Iran is at stake. What neo-conservatives foresee as a generational struggle with the Islamic world could start or finish with the regime in Tehran.

As Mr Gerecht concluded: "If the Bush administration is serious about transforming the Muslim Middle East - and the jury is still out on whether it is - it will inevitably unsettle, if not alienate, every single pro-American king, emir and dictator in the region."

http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1079419684413

U.N. watchdog suggests U.S.-Iran nuclear dialogue

17 Mar 2004 01:37
By Carol Giacomo, Diplomatic Correspondent
WASHINGTON (Reuters)

The U.N. nuclear watchdog chief, during meetings in Washington on Tuesday, suggested a U.S. dialogue with Iran as a way of resolving a growing controversy over Tehran's nuclear program, U.S. sources said.

One source familiar with the meetings told Reuters that Mohamed ElBaradei, director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, "thinks the Iranians are open to a deal" on the nuclear issue but it would need to include a move toward normalized ties between the United States and Iran.

ElBaradei raised the idea of a U.S.-Iran dialogue in talks with Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, who took the idea "under advisement," a U.S. official said.

While the United States is willing to talk to Iran's government "if we see it in our interest to do it," the U.S. official said the Americans were unclear if ElBaradei was communicating a message from Tehran or expressing his own views.

ElBaradei "said what others have said before, that the Iranians are interested in talking about things," a U.S. official said. But he added: "It's not clear where this is coming from. It could be what you hear from technocrats," rather than an authoritative feeler from Tehran.

A third source familiar with ElBaradei's comments said the IAEA chief told the Americans: "It's time for dialogue."

The United States has accused Iran of developing nuclear weapons and has been pushing to put the issue before the U.N. Security Council for possible sanctions.

Washington intends to keep pressuring Iran to allow IAEA inspectors to probe its nuclear facilities and produce a "clear and verifiable declaration of what Iran is up to," the official said.

The issue could come to a head in June when the IAEA board of directors next meets.

European Union countries led by Britain, France and Germany have favored a negotiated solution to Iran's nuclear controversy, although they went along with a tough IAEA resolution last week after Iran temporarily halted IAEA inspections.

President George W. Bush's administration has been divided about the wisdom of pursuing a dialogue with Iran and many are skeptical that Bush would take the risk of any dramatic gesture toward Tehran before the November U.S. presidential election.

http://www.reuters.com/locales/newsArticle.jsp;:4057add2:7079a0efaf724375?type=worldNews&locale=en_IN&storyID=4582824

U.S. stalls over offer of talks from Iran - report

Wed 17 March, 2004 03:18

LONDON (Reuters) - The United States has for 10 months been stalling over an Iranian offer of talks on nuclear weapons, terrorism and Israel because of divisions within the Bush administration, the Financial Times says.

U.S. President George W. Bush, who in January 2002 branded Iran as part of the "axis of evil", was now looking for an opening with Tehran, Secretary of State Colin Powell recently told an internal meeting, the newspaper said on Wednesday.

But talks, which could help establish normal diplomatic relations between the two arch-foes, have been resisted by hawks in Washington, according to U.S. officials and go-betweens, the FT said.

The offer, known in diplomatic circles as "Iran's grand bargain" was first communicated to the U.S. State Department through Swiss diplomats in May 2003, the report said.

Under the plan, Iran would address U.S. concerns over nuclear weapons, terrorism, co-ordinate policy on Iraq and consider a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the FT said.

In return, Iran would expect a lifting of sanctions, recognition of its security interests, dropping of "regime change" from the official U.S. lexicon and eventual re-establishment of relations.

"There was a lot of detail to be worked out," an American familiar with the proposal was quoted by the FT as saying. "They proposed concrete steps on how to work on this. The substance of the agenda was pretty reasonable".

The U.S. gave no formal response to the Iranian offer and the Swiss foreign ministry received a rebuke from Washington for "overstepping" its mandate, the FT said. Switzerland has looked after U.S. interests in Iran since Washington cut ties with Tehran after the 1979 Islamic revolution.

The U.S. has accused Iran of developing nuclear weapons and has been pushing to put the issue before the U.N. Security Council for possible sanctions.

U.S. sources said on Tuesday that Mohamed ElBaradei, director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, suggested during meetings in Washington that Tehran was open to a deal on the nuclear issue but it would need to include a move towards normalised ties between the two nations.

Relations have been tense since 1979 but the two countries came together to help victims of the earthquake in the Iranian city of Bam last December that killed more than 30,000 people.

The recent example of Libya, which has pledged to give up its weapons of mass destruction, has shown how some countries that the U.S. branded as "rogue" nations can rehabilitate themselves in the eyes of the Bush administration.

http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsPackageArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=477051&section=news

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