Iranian Alert -- May 4, 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.

Tehran Seeks to Keep EU, US Divided on Iranian Nuke Issue

May 03, 2004
EurasiaNet
Camelia Entekhabi-Fard

Iran’s Foreign Minister, Kamal Kharazzi, began a European tour on May 3 by pledging that the Tehran would be a "good partner" for the European Union. Kharazzi’s chief aim during his tour is to prevent the EU from joining the United States in exerting pressure on Iran over its nuclear program.

The United States has long pressed for tougher anti-proliferation action against Iran, charging that Tehran is activity seeking to produce nuclear weapons.

EU officials have been far more willing than the Bush administration to give dialogue a chance in trying to promote greater Iranian cooperation with International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) monitoring efforts. Of late, however, the perception has spread in Europe that Iran is stonewalling the IAEA. Accordingly, EU patience with Iran seems to be waning and Tehran’s relations with some key member states appear to be fraying.

In late March, the foreign ministers of Great Britain, France and Germany issued a statement expressing displeasure over Iran’s decision to restart research work at its Isfahan nuclear facility. Then, during late April discussions with Kharazzi, French President Jacques Chirac reportedly took Tehran to task over the nuclear issue. The French president is said to have demanded Iran’s full cooperation with international monitoring efforts, and to have insisted that Tehran make all pertinent documentation available to the IAEA in advance of the agency’s next board meeting in June.

Meanwhile, an Iranian-German diplomatic row erupted in late April, spurred by the unveiling of a plaque in Berlin that accuses Iran of involvement in the assassination of four Iranian Kurds in 1992. In response, the Tehran city council has approved a plan to build a monument near the German Embassy that criticizes Germany for supplying chemical weapons to former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq war

The IAEA criticized Iran in late 2003 for not being completely forthcoming on its nuclear program, which Tehran insists is solely for peaceful, power-generating purposes. Iran has been stung by recent reports, however, that it has been carrying out an atomic weapons program in secret. On May 2, Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi strongly denied that Iran was developing nuclear weapons, calling such reports "fabricated," the official IRNA news agency reported. Asefi added that Tehran would seek to resolve "ambiguities" in its relations with the IAEA by June.

IAEA chief Mohammad ElBaradei visited Tehran in early April in an effort to work out a schedule for the resolution of questions that continue to cloud the Iranian nuclear program. Iranian officials have indicated they will present an updated report to the IAEA on the country’s nuclear program as soon as mid May.

Washington has repeatedly called on the international community to approve action that would compel Iranian compliance with IAEA monitoring initiatives. On April 21, US President George W. Bush said that Iran’s development of a nuclear weapon would be "intolerable," and indicated that the United States would expand efforts to get the United Nations to toughen the existing anti-nuclear proliferation framework. At a UN conference on non-proliferation issues on April 28, US Undersecretary of State John Bolton accused Iran of engaging in deceptive practices. "It is clear that the primary role of Iran’s nuclear power program is to serve as cover ... to support nuclear weapons development," Bolton said.

Iranian diplomacy in recent weeks has sought to keep in place the wedge that separates the EU from the United States on the Iranian nuclear question. The lack of US-EU consensus is seen by many in Tehran as the key to keeping the Iranian nuclear issue out of the UN Security Council.

Kharazzi’s appearance in Brussels on May 3 marked the start of his second European tour in the past two weeks. In late April, Kharazzi visited Britain and France – the EU powers that have taken the lead on attempts to broker an IAEA-Iran deal. On May 3, Kharazzi told EU Commission President Romano Prodi that Tehran would respond favorably to the continuation of strong EU support for Iran. "I told the president [Prodi] that if Europe is serious [about cooperation], it will find Iran a good partner for Europe to work together to resolve different issues," IRNA quoted Kharazzi as saying. After his talks with EU officials, Kharazzi planned to visit Germany and Denmark.

Some observers say recent Iranian moves to improve its human rights image could make it easier for the EU to maintain its current position on the nuclear issue. On April 28, the head of Iran’s conservative-dominated judiciary, Ayatollah Mahmud Hashemi-Shahrudi, issued a directive that formally prohibited the use of torture against imprisoned Iranians. Shahrudi’s directive also upheld the presumption of innocence for all Iranian suspects. On May 2, the Iranian judiciary followed up on the anti-torture directive by granting furloughs to seven prominent dissidents.

Other political analysts in Tehran believe domestic factors provided the main impetus for Shahrudi’s move. Conservatives are set to take control of the Iranian parliament later in May, after sweeping disputed elections last February. The anti-torture directive may be part of a drive to improve the conservatives’ domestic image, striving to reassure the population that hardliners do not intend to crack down once they regain legislative authority.

Editor’s Note: Camelia Entekhabi-Fard has reported from Afghanistan and Iran for EurasiaNet.

http://www.eurasianet.org/departments/insight/articles/eav050304.shtml

Headlines From The Middle East Media

May 03, 2004
Middle East Media Research Institute
MEMRI Ticker Headlines

May 3, 2004
Iran's supreme leader Ali Khamenei said, 'when a political system lacks convincing reasons for its actions and positions, it loses its political credibility and slips into decline... the U.S. government is now moving on this track and the people of the world will witness the annihilation of this arrogant regime.'
(Aftab-e Yazd, Iran, 5/2/04)

May 3, 2004
Iranian workers demonstrated in Tehran, calling on the government to focus more on the internal problems of the country and less on the Palestinian cause.
(al-Bayan, U.A.E., 4/30/04)

May 3, 2004
Iran's supreme leader Ali Khamenei said: 'the occupiers [of Iraq] are like a wolf in a trap and like the Zionists are repressing the people, but the power of the oppressed Iraqi and Palestinian nations will ultimately prevail over the oppressive Americans and Zionists.'
(Jomhouri-ye Eslami, Iran, 5/2/04)

May 3, 2004
Iran's supreme leader Ali Khamenei said: 'the ruling gang in America, with the Zionists pulling the strings, wants to swallow this rich part of the world through the greater middle east plan, but contrary to their assumptions, the arrogant powers will choke on this mouthful.'
(Jomhouri-ye Eslami, Iran, 5/2/04)

May 3, 2004
Iranian and Egyptian trade officials have agreed to form a joint council in order to increase their economic opportunities.
(Aftab-e Yazd, iran, 5/2/04)

http://memri.org/ticker.html

U.S. Blunders with Keyword Blacklist

May 03, 2004
CNET News.com
Declan McCullagh

The U.S. government concocted a brilliant plan a few years ago: Why not give Internet surfers in China and Iran the ability to bypass their nations' notoriously restrictive blocks on Web sites?

Soon afterward, the U.S. International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB) invented a way to let people in China and Iran easily route around censorship by using a U.S.-based service to view banned sites such as BBC News, MIT and Amnesty International.

But an independent report released Monday reveals that the U.S. government also censors what Chinese and Iranian citizens can see online. Technology used by the IBB, which puts out the Voice of America broadcasts, prevents them from visiting Web addresses that include a peculiar list of verboten keywords. The list includes "ass" (which inadvertently bans usembassy.state.gov), "breast" (breastcancer.com), "hot" (hotmail.com and hotels.com), "pic" (epic.noaa.gov) and "teen" (teens.drugabuse.gov).

"The minute you try to temper assistance with evading censorship with judgments about how that power should be used by citizens, you start down a path from which there's no clear endpoint," said Jonathan Zittrain, a Harvard University law professor and co-author of the report prepared by the OpenNet Initiative. The report was financed in part by the MacArthur Foundation and George Soros' Open Society Institute.

That's the sad irony in the OpenNet Initiative's findings: A government agency charged with fighting Internet censorship is quietly censoring the Web itself.

The IBB has justified a filtered Internet connection by arguing that it's inappropriate for U.S. funds to help residents of China and Iran--both of which receive dismal ratings from human rights group Freedom House--from viewing pornography.

In the abstract, the argument is a reasonable one. If the IBB's service had blocked only hard-core pornographic Web sites, few people would object.

Instead, the list unintentionally reveals its author's views of what's appropriate and inappropriate. The official naughty-keyword list displays a conservative bias that labels any Web address with "gay" in them as verboten--a decision that affects thousands of Web sites that deal with gay and lesbian issues, as well as DioceseOfGaylord.org, a Roman Catholic site.

More to the point, the U.S. government could have set a positive example to the world regarding acceptance of gays and lesbians--especially in Iran, which punishes homosexuality with death.

In order to reach the IBB censorship-evading service, people in China or Iran connect to contractor Anonymizer's Web site. Then they can use Anonymizer.com as a kind of jumping-off point, also called a proxy server, to visit Web sites banned by their governments.

Ken Berman, who oversees the China and Iran Internet projects at IBB, said Anonymizer came up with the list of dirty words. "We did not," Berman said. "Basically, we said, 'Implement a porn filter.' We were looking for serious, hard-core nasty stuff to block...I couldn't come up with a list (of off-limits words) if my life depended on it."

In an e-mail to the OpenNet Initiative on Monday morning, Berman defended the concept of filtering as a way to preserve bandwidth. "Since the U.S. taxpayers are financing this program...there are legitimate limits that may be imposed," his message said. "These limits are hardly restrictive in finding any and all human rights, pro-democracy, dissident and other sites, as well as intellectual, religious, governmental and commercial sites. The porn filtering is a trade-off we feel is a proper balance and that, as noted in your Web release, frees up bandwidth for other uses and users."

OpenNet Initiative did its research by connecting to the Anonymizer service from computers in Iran and evaluating which Google Web searches were blocked that theoretically should not be.

The report concludes: "For example, usembassy.state.gov is unavailable due to the presence of the letters 'ass' within the server's host name, and sussex.police.uk is unavailable for the same reason. In addition, the words 'my' and 'tv,' which are also domain suffixes, are filtered by IBB Anonymizer. As a consequence, all Web hosts registered within the domain name systems of Malaysia and Tuvalu are unavailable."

Harvard University's Berkman Center worked on the project, as did the University of Toronto's Nart Villeneuve and Michelle Levesque. They tested only connections from Iran, but Anonymizer said the same list of keywords was used for China.

The U.S. government "asked us to filter broadly based on keywords to generally restrict" Web sites, says Lance Cottrell, founder and president of San Diego-based Anonymizer.

"What they didn't want to get into was something complex, fine-grained filtering which is going to try to remove all the porn. What they wanted was something that would generally remove most of the adult content while not blocking most of the information that these people need."

Cottrell said Anonymizer would manually unblock non-pornographic Web sites if requested by Chinese or Iranian Net surfers. "Literally, we have never been contacted with a complaint about overbroad blocking," he said.

Monday's report also takes a swipe at IBB and Anonymizer for not using the SSL encryption method to scramble the Web browsing behavior of Iranian citizens. "I would think that if the U.S. government is going to go through the trouble of funding and offering the service, they might offer the more secure one," Harvard's Zittrain said.

Anonymizer's Cottrell said he discontinued that feature because "it seemed to cause trouble for a lot of people. The utilization of the service went way down." Iran currently doesn't monitor the contents of Web pages downloaded. But if that changed, encryption would be turned back on, Cottrell said. (Because China does do that kind of monitoring, SSL is already enabled for Chinese users.)

This episode represents a temporary black eye for IBB, but it should also serve as a permanent lesson to the agency. When American taxpayers are paying the bill, any "anticensorship" scheme needs to be beyond reproach.

http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1107_2-5204637.html

5/2/04 - U-N RIGHTS GROUP IGNORES IRAN

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

The annual session of the United Nations Human Rights Commission has ended in Geneva with no rebuke of Iran. The commission's silence comes after a year of particularly grievous violations by Tehran's Islamic fundamentalist regime: the beating to death of Canadian-Iranian photojournalist Zahra Kazemi while in government custody; the disqualification of thousands of electoral candidates; the closing of independent newspapers and journals; the imprisonment of journalists, students, and other reformers; sentencing dissidents to be flogged or killed.
Basic human rights are denied by law in Iran. As one of the commission’s own working groups reported, Iran’s legal system stipulates that “evidence by a man is equivalent to that of two women”; punishments for sins “against divine law” are “the death penalty, crucifixion, stoning, amputation of the right hand and, for repeat offenses, the left foot, flogging”; “criminal proceedings in their entirety are. . .concentrated in the hands of a single person since the judge prosecutes, investigates, and decides the case.”

Unlike the U-N Human Rights Commission, Ambeyi Ligabo, the U-N's Special Rapporteur on freedom of opinion and expression, has not been silent about human rights abuses in Iran. In January, after a visit to Iran, Mr. Ligabo issued a report that described the "climate of fear induced by the systematic repression of people expressing critical views against the authorized political and religious doctrine." He said that the severity of the sentences imposed by the government has led to "self-censorship among many journalists, intellectuals, politicians, students, and the population at large." In light of these findings, Mr. Ligabo recommended visits to Iran by the U-N's Special Rapporteur on the question of torture and by the Special Rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers.

President George W. Bush says that despite such abuses, the desire for liberty is alive in Iran:

"In the face of harsh repression, Iranians are courageously speaking out for democracy and the rule of law and human rights."

The U.S., says Mr. Bush, strongly supports the aspirations of Iranians for freedom.

http://www.voanews.com/Editorials/article.cfm?objectID=9761E0A8-28E8-4A7E-BEEEF9AB01665233

An Advanced Nuclear Weapons Program Behind Iran’s Sham Cooperation

USADI Dispatch
05/04/04

As the EU big three - France, Britain, and Germany - are playing footsy with Tehran over its nuclear program, new revelations last week confirmed that Iran’s military is now running the mullahs’ secret nuclear weapons program.

A U.S. official told the Associated Press in Vienna last Tuesday that “new intelligence on Iran's nuclear activities was strengthening suspicions of two programs -- one that inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) have access to and another, run by the military and geared toward making nuclear weapons.”

And another official expressed "explicit concerns" that the Iranian military was controlling nuclear programs aimed at making weapons.

The same Iranian opposition group which shed lights on Iran’s secret nuclear sites in August of 2002, concurred with those accounts.

At a news conference in Brussels last Wednesday, the Paris-based National Council of Resistance said “Tehran is aiming to develop a nuclear bomb within the next two years, using secret military facilities in parallel to the civilian program open to international scrutiny,” the Associated Press reported. “Up to 400 nuclear experts and researchers were working on the secret military programs which answered directly to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei,” the group added.

These revelations come as Undersecretary of State John R. Bolton warned last week that Iran was using the 1968 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty "as cover for the development of nuclear weapons."

Late last year, after 18 years of deception and double talk, Iran was forced to acknowledge it had been secretly developing a nuclear capability, in violation of relevant non-proliferation protocols. The IAEA’s report last year chronicled staggering breaches of Iran’s obligations to its international commitments. The details of Iran’s secret activities provided a stunning picture of a strategic and sophisticated program which began in the mid-80s.

Tehran’s past conduct and its attempts to exert its dominance in the Gulf region, leaves no doubt that it has strategic goals in developing nuclear arms. In the mid-1980’s, Tehran’s leaders came to the conclusion that they needed a non-conventional arsenal to gain the upper hand in the region and fulfill their hegemonic desires. They adopted asymmetric warfare as the cornerstone of their military doctrine. It would be naïve to suggest that Iran's rulers have since had a change of heart.

Last March the EU gave Iran yet another chance to buy time; it rejected a U.S. push to refer Iran’s nuclear file to the U.N. Security Council for possible sanctions. “The EU-3 has hijacked the process," one U.S. official told Reuters, adding “there are countries out there who are always going to give Iran the benefit of the doubt.” So it seems the clerics will continue to deceive and lie while the EU continues to appease and pat the mullahs on the back.

Iran’s nuclear hide and seek and with the IAEA is primarily designed to prolong the IAEA’s off-and-on inspection process by giving the anxious world community this false feeling of relief that inspections are really working.

The fact is that Tehran does not care much about the stunning discoveries the IAEA makes as long as these findings don’t impede its one and only goal: to get to the nuclear point of no return. They know full well that their regime is already synonymous with tyranny, terrorism, and export of fundamentalism. They are not cooperating to rebuild their image; they want the bomb.

The EU-3 love to boast about how their nuclear dialogue with the mullahs is working. But conducting inspections just for the sake of having inspections, as time is fast running, is a recipe for disaster.

The mid-April European tour by Iran’s Foreign Minister was indeed intended to convince the EU-3 that they should reject any attempt by Washington to refer Iran’s systematic nuclear breaches to the United Nations Security Council.

As Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi was wrapping up his trip in London, Iran’s official news agency pressed home the point that “Trade between Iran and the European Union reached a record $20 bn last year.” “The latest figures show a consolidation in Iran’s position as the EU’s third largest trading partner in the Middle East,” it added.

Given their lucrative business dealings with Tehran and geopolitical jockeying in the region, the EU-3 have reason for conciliation with Tehran. However, the specter of a nuclear armed Iran – the most active state sponsor of terrorism – is far too ominous to let appeasers in the EU dictate the policy toward Tehran.

While the United States must meet Tehran’s challenge in Iraq head-on, it should also demonstrate firm leadership to stop the mullahs in their nuclear tracks.

For now, Iran’s breach of its nuclear obligations must be referred to the United Nations. In the long term, however, only a regime change will ensure that Iran will be free of weapons of mass destruction. To this end, Washington should embrace democratic opposition forces that are working to unseat the ruling mullahs.

USADI Dispatch is a commentary by the US Alliance for Democratic Iran

http://www.americandaily.com/item/5566

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