Iranian Alert -- April 25, 2004 [EST]-- 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.” 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. I began these daily threads June 10th 2003. On that date Iranians once again began taking to the streets to express their desire for a regime change. Today in Iran, most want to replace the regime with a secular democracy.

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.

Suffering in Iran

April 24, 2004
VOA News
Editorials

The following is an editorial reflecting the views of the United States government:

Behzad Nabavi is one of the deputy speakers in Iran’s outgoing parliament. Mr. Nabavi decided to resign early. “It was impossible for reformists to move ahead because the conservative unelected bodies have paralyzed parliament,” says Mr. Nabavi. “I am resigning,” he says, “because of not being able to defend people’s rights as a deputy.”

In February, controlled elections were held for parliament. The unelected radical Islamic clergy who make up the Guardians Council disqualified approximately one-third of the eight-thousand-two-hundred submissions for candidacy. Mohsen Mirdamadi, a member of Iran’s parliament, says that, “Through these massive disqualifications, [the hard-liners] want only their own thinking to control the next parliament.”

U.S. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said, “free and fair elections should be the norm” in Iran and elsewhere:

“We do continue to believe the Iranian people deserve a government that responds to their aspirations, and we believe that that desire on the part of the Iranian people will continue to be expressed in a variety of ways.”

The suppression of Iranian rights by religious extremists has been going on since the 1979 Iranian revolution. Among the shocking tactics is the murder of Zahra Kazemi, a Canadian-Iranian photojournalist. She was arrested in June 2003. Three weeks later, she died in a Tehran hospital from head injuries suffered from a violent beating, while in police custody.

Reporters Without Borders is an international group that defends imprisoned journalists and press freedom around the world. The group says that by April 2003, Iran had “the Middle East’s biggest prison for journalists.” As many as eighty-five newspapers have been closed in Iran since 1995.

Despite such repression, the future of Iran will be decided by the people of Iran. “Right now,” says President George W. Bush, “the Iranian people are struggling with the difficult questions about how to build a modern twenty-first century society that is at once Muslim, prosperous, and free.”

http://www.voanews.com/Editorials/article.cfm?objectID=75E1318F-72EB-4002-97A41BE0CB514506&title=4%2F22%2F04%20%2D%20SUFFERING%20IN%20IRAN

Iranian-Armenian Activists beaten up by plainclothes agents

SMCCDI (Information Service)
Apr 24, 2004

Several Iranian-Armenian activists were beaten, today, by the plainclothes agents of the Islamic regime.

The activists who wanted to commemorate the anniversary of the Armenian Genocide of 1905, were attacked as they ignored the official ban and tried to march toward the Turkish Embassy in Tehran. Clubs and chains were used against them resulting in the injuries of several.

Most of the attackers were Islamists who were insulting the Iranian-Armenians in Azari dialect.

The Islamic regime plays the multi ethnic card is order to create unrest and play some members of Iran's various ethnicities one against each other. Such policy is intended to raise fear among the majority of the Iranian population on the prospect of a Civil war and the split of Iran, as happened in Yugoslavia, in case if the Islamic regime is ousted from power.

It's to note that many of the few Iranian Azari, Kurdish, Arabic and Baloutch Independentist groups are in reality infiltrated by the Islamic regime's Intelligence and are playing its destructive game. These groups have more presence abroad than inside of the country and are often helped by opportunist foreign sources who are "thinking" of increasing the decomposition of the Islamic regime by helping them but in reality are helping the longevity of an unpopular regime.

These few independentist groups are not more influential than independentist movements existing in many other countries, such as, the Corse Independentists of France or the Republic of Texas in USA.

In general several occasions, such as, foreign wars have proved the profound attachment of the overwhelmingly majority of Iran's various ethnicities to the country. Even a desperate try of Independentist Azaris witnessed a fiasco, in 1951, as soon as their Soviet backers left Iran. Iranian Azaris used the occasion in order to overthrow the so-called "Independent Republic of South Azarbaijan" and re-attach back this province to Iran.

For a better understanding of Iran's ethnicities, check the following links directing to various topics located in the "About Iran" section of the SMCCDI's website:

1) Population: http://www.daneshjoo.org/article/publish/article_2206.shtml

2) Languages: http://www.daneshjoo.org/article/publish/article_2375.shtml

2) Geography: http://www.daneshjoo.org/article/publish/article_2203.shtml

http://www.daneshjoo.org/generalnews/article/publish/article_5888.shtml

Ariel Sharon Hints at Israel's Nuclear Deterrent

April 24, 2004
The Associated Press
Yahoo News

JERUSALEM -- Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon came close to ending four decades of secrecy about the country's nuclear-arms capability, saying the United States recognizes that Israel needs a credible deterrent to Iran and other hostile countries.

Sharon spoke Friday in an interview with Israel's Channel One TV, just two days after whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu ended an 18-year jail term for disclosing details of Israel's nuclear secrets.

"They understand that Israel's existence is still in danger," Sharon said, referring to the United States.

"Iran represents an existential threat, one of the existential threats or maybe the main existential threat," he said. "But the recognition of Israel's right, and of the importance of Israel's ability, to defend itself, by itself, these things are clearly understood."

Since acquiring a nuclear reactor from France in the 1960s, Israel has maintained a policy of "ambiguity," refusing to confirm or deny that it has nuclear weapons. But based on information Vanunu gave in a 1986 newspaper interview, experts concluded that Israel has sixth-largest arsenal in the world.

Israel's military censors insist that any reference by Israel-based journalists to the question of Israel's nuclear capacity be attributed to foreign press reports. Sharon used the same formula in his Friday interview.

"If you read the foreign press you will see that they talk about a whole complex of defensive tools, which Israel needs in its hands," he said.

"Almost an admission," the TV anchor commented at the end of the taped interview.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/cpress/20040424/ca_pr_on_wo/israel_nuclear&cid=2149&ncid=2149

Iran Amok with Terror on 2 Fronts

April 23, 2004
New York Post
Uri Dan

JERUSALEM -- There are two theaters of terrorism in the Mideast these days - one featuring Hamas in the Gaza Strip, the other, Muqtada al-Sadr in Iraq. And, according to Israeli intelligence, they have a common link: the mullahs of Tehran.

Iran is encouraging Muslim militancy in both theaters in order to ensure that Tehran - and not Osama bin Laden or anyone else - will control the future of the Islamic revolution.

Hamas needs Iran's help, particularly in the aftermath of Israel's back-to-back assassinations of its two leaders, Sheik Ahmed Yassin and Abdel Aziz Rantisi, in the past month.

It was Rantisi, slain last Saturday, who opened the gates of Gaza to Iran.

He welcomed the flow of arms and money from Iran to Palestinian terrorists that was sorely needed after the fall of Saddam Hussein, who had routinely provided $25,000 to the families of homicide bombers.

The Iranian connection to terrorists also runs through the Shiite Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon.

An internal report by the Israeli Foreign Ministry, dated Monday, says Iran is playing a double game.

On the one hand, it claims to be a force for stability. In reality, Iran wants the situation in Iraq to deteriorate to "blacken the face of Washington in the Arab and Muslim world."

The Israeli newspaper Yediot Achronoth reported how Italian intelligence found that Iran is investing $70 million a month in the Iraqi insurgency. Iraqi Shiite rebel Sadr and Hamas' Rantisi recently gave "identical speeches in which they vowed not to let the Arab-hater George Bush be re-elected."

In the Mideast, that's no coincidence.

http://www.nypost.com/commentary/19410.htm

U.S. Fails to Deter Iran from Developing Nukes

April 24, 2004
Middle East Newsline
MENL

WASHINGTON -- Despite its defeat of Iraq, the United States has failed to deter Iran from pursuing its nuclear weapons program.

A study published by the U.S. Army War College has asserted that the U.S. ouster of the regime of Saddam Hussein has led to an acceleration of Iran's nuclear weapons program. The report said neither Iran nor its ally, North Korea, has been swayed to abandon its missile or weapons of mass destruction programs.

"Iran also revealed a potential nuclear program more advanced than most suspected," the report, entitled Bounding the Global War on Terrorism," said. "Neither state seemed in the least bit deterred, although North Korea, under considerable pressure from China, finally entered into multilateral negotiations with as yet unknown results. The administration, however, did not take or even speak of military action against these states in part because of preoccupation with Iraq and in part because military action against Iran, and especially North Korea, would entail far greater difficulties and risks than action against Iraq."

Authored by Jeffrey Record, the report, which the college said does not represent the views of the U.S. Army, said the Bush administration chose to attack Baghdad because of the U.S. assessment that the Iraqi military would quickly collapse. In contrast, the administration has rejected any suggestions to attack neighboring Iran, with a much more powerful military, despite Teheran's huge nuclear and missile programs.

http://www.menewsline.com/stories/2004/april/04_25_2.html

KHAMENEH’I IS RESPONSIBLE OF UN-ELECTED EXACTIONS, PRESS ASSOCIATION SAY

By Sfa Haeri
PARIS 24 Apr. (IPS)

In an unprecedented move, the Iranian Association for the Defence of the Press (ADP), in a open letter, called on Ayatollah Ali Khameneh’i, the leader of the Islamic Republic to "start from himself answering the people" about his action during the 15 years he is serving as the country’s highest authority.

Published on independent Iranian internet sites both at home and outside, the Association, led by Hojjatoleslam Mohsen kadivar, a scholar, islamist reformer and philosopher, the ADP was referring to the leader’s decision to declare the new Iranian year of 1383 (21 March 2004-20 March 2005) as "The Year of the officials, the Administration and all other governmental organs answering to the people on their deeds".

Welcoming the decision, the press defence watchdog reminded Mr. Khameneh’i that while he is urging the others to be answerable to the people, yet not only he had failed to answer an earlier letter of the Association concerning the appalling situation of the Iranian press, but also the condition of journalists and the press has deteriorated and the crackdown more repressive.

"As the regime’s leader, having the greatest responsibilities, you must, before anyone else, be responsible and answer the people’s demand concerning your actions and the conduct of the nation’s affairs during the time you have been in office", the letter observed.

On the first letter, the IADP had, among other observations, challenged Mr. Khameneh’i to explain his order to the Majles Speaker, four years ago, to withdraw immediately a projected debate about reforming the press law, one that had been approved by the precedent House right at the end of its life, placing drastic restrictions on journalists and the press, a law that the (then) new Majles, dominated by reformists, had wowed to scrap, replacing it by a more open law.

As a result of the order, more than a hundred of independent and reformist publications were closed down and dozen of journalists and commentators, among them some most influential were jailed, silenced or forced to leave the country.

"On the first letter, we asked the leader to respect the Constitution, help restoring press freedom and stop organs under his control to in total violation of the law, continue crackdown the press and harass journalists and their families, free all imprisoned newsmen and allow the publication of all the press shut down. Now, we call on him to be the first one in answering people, starting with answering our first letter addressed to him two years ago", explained Mr. Kadivar in interview with the Persian service of the BBC.

Asked what the ADP expects from the leader, Mr. Kadivar, who had served a year imprisonment for the charges of offending the leader and insulting Islam said: "Just to reply, as we told him that we would consider his answer as a parameter for the sincerity of other officials answering for their deeds and undertakings while in office".

Analysts say though asking such questions to Mr. Khameneh’i is not against the Constitution, but in a system where the leader is considered as the representative of God on earth, the Association’s letter is quite unusual and could send the authors to prison.

Most of the Iranian political dissidents like Dr. Qasem Sho’leh Sa’di, Dr. Mohammad Mohsen Sazegara, student’s leaders and some reformist lawmakers who had in the past addressed open letters to Mr. Khameneh’i, criticising his domestic and foreign policies and even questioning his religious title have landed in jail, accused, among other charges, of "insulting the leader", they noted.

"The Association for the Defence of the Press continue to hold the role of the leader as responsible for most of illegal or semi-legal decisions by un-elected organs under its direct control, like the Judiciary, the Council of the Guardians, the Assembly for Discerning the State’s Interests or the Voice and Visage (Radio and Television) restricting the freedom of the press and journalists", the Association said.

The ADP was published at a time that Ayatollah Khameneh’i also joined the increasing number of Iranian officials creating their own web logs.

"Since you have not dared to answer us in the one hand and has declared this year as that of answering, we ask urge to start by answering our first letter, observing that there could be no answering without questioning, a right that cannot exist in the absence of free press and critical newspapers. In a country were critics and loyal dissidents are deprived of their right of criticism and independent journalists and commentators are placed behind bars on charges of offending you, who can one expect people to ask officials", the letter said.

"Until now most people wanting to air their criticism Mr. Khameneh’i would use the un-elected organs he controls, calling on him to be an impartial mediator, acting as the guide of Iranian people, nut now it seems that facing his indifference to their remarks and demands, they are now targeting himself directly", one analyst told Iran Press Service on condition of anonymity.

Says Mr. Mas’oud Behnood, a veteran Iranian journalist now based in England: "Khameneh’I is finding himself now in the same position were the former Monarch, Mohammad Reza Shah was. Becoming the leader of the conservatives and a staunch and autoritative outspoken critic of the reformists and dissidents, Khameneh’i is considered as the sole responsible for the nation’s miseries at home, the unpopularity of the system, the growing alienation of the people, even the devout, with the Islam he represents as well as Iran’s isolation on the international scene".

ENDS IADP LETTER 24404

http://www.iran-press-service.com/articles_2004/Apr_04/iadp_letter_24404.htm

Issue of Democratization Enlivens Muslim World’s Political Discourse (Amir Taheri)

Arab News
Wednesday, 21, April, 2004
Amir Taheri

PARIS, 21 April 2004 — While a section of the Western media continues to predict an “explosion of the Arab street”, it is possible that Arab, and Muslim politics in general, may be seeking other, more institutionalized, forms of expression. Starting this year, the Muslim world has witnessed a string of conferences, all devoted to the issue of democratization.

Some of these conferences, in Kuala-Lumpur, the Malaysian capital, in Istanbul, Turkey’s cultural and business center, in the Yemeni capital Sanaa, and in the Egyptian Mediterranean port of Alexandria, for example, have come out with clear statements that democratic reform is the only way for out for Muslim nations caught in “an historic quagmire”. The issue will be at the center of another conference next month to be held in Jordan under the auspices of the Davos-based World Economic Forum. After that the issue of how best to guide the Muslim world toward reform will be discussed at the NATO summit in Istanbul and during the G-8 summit to be held in the United States in June.

This is not the first time that Muslims identify democracy as a panacea for their political, social and cultural ills. Many such conferences were held in the 19th and 20th centuries which also witnessed the short-lived victory of democratic forces in both Turkey and Iran. By the mid-1950s, however, there were hardly any genuine democrats in the Muslim world.

The intellectual and political life in most Muslim countries was dominated either by Marxist or other advocates of leftist totalitarianism or conservative religious forces. In the 1960s and 1970s the left, including its nationalist version, was in the ascendancy in most Muslim countries. From the late 1970s onward, however, Islamism, in its different versions, emerged as the dominant political force especially in the Middle East and North Africa.

The speedy collapse of the Taleban in Kabul and the Baath in Baghdad, in 2002 and 2003, however, opened a new chapter in which advocates of democratization may have an opportunity to address the broader audiences at least in some Muslim countries.

The reason for this is not hard to guess.

The Ba’ath regime in Baghdad represented the most radical version in the Muslim world of leftist nationalism inspired by both Nazism and Communism. If anybody could have created the Arab nationalist Utopia it was Saddam Hussein. But he ended up in a hole near Takrit. The Taleban regime for its part represented the ultimate “must” in Islamism. No one could claim to be more Islamist than Mulla Muhammad Omar. But he, too, ended up hiding in a hole in Arzangan.

There is a growing sentiment in the Muslim world that their political systems have reached a deadend and that the only way out is some form of democratization. The old debate on whether Islam is compatible with democracy is hardly engaged these days. The issue now is the necessity of democracy for Muslims rather than its compatibility with Islam. Even the most conservative of Muslim regimes are now committed to the creation of elected organs of government.

There is, of course, no guarantee that such elections will not be “fixed” to prolong the domination of the existing ruling elites at last in the short-run. Nor could anyone be sure that some power-sharing at the formal political level will necessarily broaden the base of regimes that use complex networks of business interests, economic tools, and security services to perpetuate their domination.

Nevertheless, it is refreshing that, for the first time in more than half a century, the political discourse in the world of Islam is increasingly dominated by the democratic lexicon.

It is interesting to see turbaned mullas discussing Locke and Tocqueville in television talk-shows beamed from “holy” cities. And to hear military dictators donning the habit of champions of democracy is more than just amusing. Even the traditional rulers and the Stalinist-style state-owned radio and television networks still in place, now speak of elections, human rights, equality for women, and, ultimately, democracy.

Even in the closest of Muslim societies, words and phrases that denote democratization are being heard, and read: Elections, reform, change, opening, dialogue, participation, consent, pluralism, separation of powers, the rule of law, due process, free enterprise, civil society, good governance, human rights, gender equality, accountability, and transparency.

Some of these words and phrases had not been heard anywhere in public in the Muslim world for decades. Others are neologisms, coined to express the new aspirations of many Muslims.

Cynics might suggest that all this is nothing but the compliment that vice pays to virtue. The ruling elites may be using all this talk of democracy as a tactic to weather the storm created by the events in Afghanistan and Iraq, and then revert to their well-tested methods of rule by violence and bribery.

But cynics are likely to be wrong, as often they are. A change of mainstream discourse is a necessary prelude to structural political reform.

Peer pressure and the force of example are likely to be important instruments in furthering the cause of democratization in the Muslim world, especially as far as the laggards are concerned.

Some Muslim countries are already building viable democracies while others have launched a process of reform that cannot be reversed at will.

A collective Muslim commitment to reform, especially in difficult areas such as the status of women and the place of the Shariah (Islamic law) in the legal system, will enable the regimes that still fear a backlash from domestic reactionary sources to place change in the broader context of the Islamic family. The rest of the world can help not by dictating the rhythm, and tempo of reform, let alone its details, but by supporting those Muslim regimes that show a genuine commitment to change while ostracizing those that do not.

Muslim politics as limited to palaces, barracks, mosques, and streets has led to what must be regarded as the most glaring collective failure for any group of nations in history. It is, perhaps, time to envisage other institutions, notably political parties, Parliaments and law courts as the focal points of political life in the Muslim world.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1121426/posts

In possible tit-for-tat, Iran shuts down German cultural Center

IranMania News
April 25th, 2004

TEHRAN, April 25 (AFP) - Iran has closed a German government-funded language institute in Tehran, the German embassy said Sunday, in what was seen as possible retaliation for a plaque put up in Berlin marking the killing of four Iranian Kurds in an attack officially blamed on the clerical regime.

"Officially, the reason given to us was that the centre did not have the necessary permits and the procedure to get them was still in progress," embassy spokeswoman Deike Potsel told AFP.

But privately, other diplomatic sources said they did not rule out the possibility that the closure of the language institute was a tit-for-tat response to the unveiling of the Berlin plaque a week ago.

That plaque, in Berlin's upmarket Charlottenburg district, marks a 1992 attack in the Mykonos restaurant, and carries the victims' names and the words: "Murdered by the then regime in Iran. They died fighting for freedom and human rights".

A German court concluded in 1997 that the killers of the four were acting on Tehran's orders, prompting the German government to recall its ambassador and the European Union to suspend dialogue with the Islamic republic for a year.

In retaliation for the placing of the plaque in Berlin, Tehran's conservative-controlled city council has also decided to erect one of its own denouncing Germany for supplying chemical weapons to former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, with whom Iran fought a bitter war from 1980-1988.

On Wednesday Germany's ambassador to Iran, Baron Paul von Maltzahn, was summoned to the foreign ministry to hear of Iran's "strong objection" to the plaque and hear fresh denials of a state link to the murders.

http://www.iranmania.com/news/250404f.asp

Iran's Covert Actions in Iraq

April 25, 2004
The Washington Times
Constantine C. Menges

On April 4, 2004, Sheik Muqtada al-Sadr, a pro-Iranian Iraqi cleric, called on his followers to "terrorize your enemy," meaning the Americans and all those Iraqis cooperating to bring about a constitutional government.

This led tens of thousands of the cleric's armed and unarmed followers to attack U.S. and Coalition forces in four Iraqi cities. This was a preview of the violence and turmoil Iranian covert action could inflict in the coming months.

This threat is the current September 11, because the administration has not yet "connected the dots" revealing Iran's secret but discernible activities.

Following removal of Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq, the Iranian clerical dictatorship began a covert effort to set up an allied Shi'ite Islamist extremist regime in 60 percent Shi'ite Iraq. Iran has prepared this for many years and recruited political, military and covert agent assets among the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi Shi'ites who fled Iraq to live in Iran.

The Iranian dictatorship is acting to bring about a "second Iran" in Iraq in five ways:

(1) Those Iraqi Shi'ite clerics who agree with the heretical Khomeini view that the clergy should rule society in all aspects are used by Iran to build a power base from their mosques and associated social services. Iran views as the future religious leader of Iraq Ayatollah Al Haeri, an Iraqi cleric who has lived in Iran for the last 30 years and who, when Baghdad was liberated last year, issued an edict telling Iraqi clergy not to cooperate with the United States.

(2) Iran established the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq as a political movement that could win elections or take power town by town with the help of covert Iranian funds and propaganda. This organization also has an Iranian-trained and -armed paramilitary group of about 30,000. Both the political and the armed wings began moving from Iran into Iraq in March 2003. Iran also funds the Dawa Party. Leaders of both these Iran-linked parties are on the Iraqi Governing Council.

(3) Iran is working covertly with Iraqi extremist Sheik al-Sadr to use political and coercive means, including murder, to intimidate and take over Iraq's Shi'ite leadership. The murders of several prominent Shi'ite clerical leaders who favored democracy and cooperation with the coalition repeats Iran's covert actions since December 2001 in post-Taliban Afghanistan. There, a number of moderate Muslim clerics and political leaders were killed. It was Sheik al Sadr who issued the call to violence in Iraq on April 4, 2004. The next day, the coalition announced an Iraqi judge had issued an arrest warrant for Sheik al Sadr for the April 2003 murder of the respected moderate cleric, Ayatollah Al Kohei.

(4) Hezbollah, the Iranian-supported and often -directed terrorist organization has moved hundreds of cadres into Iraq as reported since last November. They along with Hamas, another Iranian-supported terrorist organization, have opened offices in Iraq and are recruiting Iraqis to be the foot soldiers and suicide killers in the massive terrorist attacks planned against U.S. and coalition forces. Iran is most likely to order these to begin fully after the planned July 1, 2004, turnover of civil authority to the Iraqis. It also is quite likely Iran will use its links with Hezbollah and al Qaeda to facilitate major terrorist attacks inside the United States this summer and fall to try to force the U.S. out of Iraq and increase the odds of an electoral defeat of President Bush.

(5) Iran has spent heavily seeking to dominate radio and television broadcasting in Iraq. A survey by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty found Iran is the source of 33 of 59 AM broadcasts and of 41 of 63 AM/FM/TV broadcasts heard in Iraq. In comparison, the U.S.-supported Iraq Media Network has one television station, two radio stations and one newspaper.

The Bush administration must immediately counter Iran's covert assets and planned actions or risk major setbacks to its goals in Iraq. Indeed, if Iran brings about an anti-U.S., pro-Iranian Shi'ite extremist regime in Iraq, the risks to the United States and its allies from terrorism and weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) would dramatically increase. And it would defeat the Bush "forward strategy for freedom" in the entire Middle East.

A first step is recognizing, analyzing and understanding the intent of Iran and its Iraqi allies and what they have done to date. Next, there is an urgent need to work with moderate Shi'ite leaders to build pro-democratic political parties and a broad pro-democratic political coalition that can withstand and overcome the pressures, coercion and terrorism of the pro-Iranian Shi'ite groups. This means revising the currently self-defeating and much-too-limited efforts to aid genuinely democratic Shi'ite and other political parties and groups.

The pro-democracy Iraqi media also needs to be enlarged, and, as a corollary, the pro-extremist, Iranian-funded media needs to be restricted. This is an inescapable element of the early stages of a post-dictatorship transition where anti-democratic groups and media have sources of support far greater than those now available to moderates.

It also is necessary to quickly arrest all extremist leaders advocating violence and disarm their thousands of armed followers. It is may be necessary to detain many of these armed extremists for some time, to assure they are cannot join anti-U.S. terrorist operations.

Such detention should be humane. Efforts should be made to educate these misguided people about the values of political democracy and tolerance and to counter lies they have been told by extremist leaders for the last year.

The best defense against Iranian destabilization of Iraq is helping Iran's people to politically liberate themselves from their dictatorship. While the Iranian regime has a 25-year record of effective and brutal terrorism and secret action abroad, it is weak, fragile and vulnerable at home.

Polls and a series of partially open elections since 1997 reveal more than 75 percent of Iranians completely reject the extremist Shi'ite clerical regime that is perceived as very corrupt and a total economic failure. The people know the dictatorship has spent much of Iran's oil wealth supporting terrorism, Islamic extremism and on WMDs and ballistic missiles.

Ironically, while the United States may face difficulty fending off covert Iranian political action in Iraq, it has the symbolic credibility of its democratic institutions and the knowledge and experience to encourage the Iranian people to free themselves.

President Bush has spoken eloquently and often about the Iranian people's right to freedom. Now he needs to instruct his State Department to cease all its open and secret "dialogue and engagement" activities with the clerical regime. These legitimatize the dictatorship and discourage those in Iran who might otherwise act to bring about a democratic future.

Taking these actions now in Iraq and encouraging the Iranian people to liberate themselves this summer could result in two democracies. Otherwise, there is grave risk the removal of Iraq's Saddam Hussein will ultimately result in two Irans -- two Shi'ite extremist regimes in the region.

Constantine C. Menges, a senior fellow with the Hudson Institute, is a former presidential special assistant for national security affairs and a former Central Intelligence Agency officer. He has analyzed events in Iraq and Iran since 1980. His forthcoming book is "China, The Gathering Threat -- The Strategic Challenge of China and Russia."

http://www.washtimes.com/commentary/20040424-101403-3604r.htm

Former Prince Says Iran Ready for Democracy

April 22, 2004
iBerkshires.com
Linda Carman

WILLIAMSTOWN -- The outside world should cease implicitly tolerating the repressive theocratic regime in Iran, that country’s former crown prince, Reza Pahlavi, told a Williams College audience Monday night.

“It is incumbent upon the world to say, ‘We will not condone these violations of human rights’ and not legitimize the regime by entering negotiations with the regime,” Pahlavi said at a press conference Tuesday morning.

A resident of the United States since 1984, Pahlavi attended Williams during the Iranian Revolution. During his talk Monday, he called his visit here an emotional homecoming. And he underlined his country’s need for a secular democracy.

“You don’t need to send troops,” he said, stressing that the outside world should simply “not cut a deal with the regime.”

Speaking on “Iran: Past, Present, Future,” he maintained that regime has lost the support of its people, and he noted that 90 percent of voters boycotted the last parliamentary elections. Pahlavi, author of “Winds of Change,” has written numerous political articles and was recently featured in The Wall Street Journal. He wants international support for a national referendum by the Iranian people to determine their own political future.

Not only should the outside world withhold its support on human-rights grounds but out of enlightened self-interest, he said.

Elaborating on his topic at the press conference, he maintained that change would produce “immediate ramifications in our area,” ramifications such as a drastic reduction in terrorism and a better climate for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

“This wall has to crumble,” he said.

Theocrats in the Islamic Republic in Iran are a significant element in encouraging the insurrection among some Shiite groups in Iraq, he maintained.

“Any kind of democracy next door is bad news for them,” he said. “They give every encouragement of the insurgency.”

He added that the groups “will do everything to put a wrench into the system. They have every reason to try.”

And, he said, the growing influence of Shiite clergy in the Iraqi centers of Najaf and Karbala would diminish that of the Iranian regime. He charged that they “are behind the financing of radical groups” and that they have sent funds and people into Iraq.

In his talk, Pahlavi stressed that the majority of Iranian citizens have come to the conclusion that they need a modern, progressive government, but they are stuck with a medieval, anti-democratic theocracy that quashes dissent and jails dissidents.

“It has lost any kind of legitimacy. It has to be brought down, but my position has been that the preferred method is non-compliance and civil disobedience,” he said.

The change is inevitable, he said, and international reaction can help expedite that change. The current regime will not vote itself out of office, he said.

“After 25 years, Iranians have no hope for any kind of improvement or reform within the system,” he said.

Underlining his country’s quest for freedom, Pahlavi noted that people in Iran held vigil after the attacks of 9-11, while those in some other Muslim countries celebrated.

He rejected the notion of a “clash of cultures,” insisting, “It’s about freedom, liberty. What you value for yourselves, don’t monopolize.”

He also maintained that the climate in Iran is more favorable to change than that in Afghanistan and Iraq.

“Invest in the process of change. Engage with the people of Iran, with the democratic opposition, with the diaspora,” he urged.

On the other hand, sending delegations of diplomats to break picket lines to meet with the regime “takes the wind out of the sails” of regime opponents, he said.

“Do not cut a deal with the current regime in Iran,” he said. “The message is that people do care.”

He said that message could be conveyed “without us having to send a single Marine.”

During the question-and-answer period, Pahlavi said most clerics in Iran favor a secular system because the current system taints them.

“The concept of secularism does not frighten clerics in Iran,” he said. “We’re where Europe was at the end of the Spanish Inquisition … life under the Islamic republic has been hell.”

Pahlavi’s talk was part of his effort to spread his message “beyond the White House and Capitol Hill that a clearer engagement with democratic forces in Iran will achieve not just tangible results but psychological support as well.”

He wants to mobilize citizens to demand government action. Now, he said, the United States is sending mixed signals, with on one hand President George W. Bush saying he stands with the people of Iran and on the other, State Department delegations meeting in Switzerland with representatives of the regime.

While he believes the people of Iran will change their government, as those in Chile, Argentina and South Africa have done, he said he was concerned about the passage of time.

He wants the change to occur “before yet another generation of young Iranians has to be sacrificed,” and before the current regime gets even closer to having an atomic bomb and perhaps prompting military action, which, he said, is “totally unnecessary in Iran.”

Asked what form of government he favors, and whether that form might be a constitutional monarchy, he replied that his entire focus is on a national referendum.

“My focus is how do we get from here to the day we go to the polls.”

He said that he favors a secular government that guarantees human rights but that the final form matters less than its being arrived at democratically.

“I can’t put a timeline on it, but we’re much, much closer,” he said.

Since its inception, the clerical regime in Teheran as been the epicenter of extremism and radicalism, and it needs to export that radicalism to ensure its survival, he said.

After the death of his father, Shah Muhammed Reza, he transferred to the University of Southern California, graduating with a bachelor’s degree in political science.

“I really appreciated the understanding and sympathy shown to me while I was at Williams,” he said. “I was not the normal student freshman.”

He noted the difficulty of “being low key with the need to have adequate security.”

But he quipped that he would rather face an assassin “than ever have to take another exam. I hated exams. Always did.”

Asked if he would return to a secular democratic Iran, he said, “Of course. It’s my country.” But he declined to specify a particular role he might play.

“I stand ready to serve,” he said. “But first, let’s save the country.”

http://www.iberkshires.com/story.php?story_id=14139

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