Iranian Alert -- May 5, 2004 [EST]-- IRAN LIVE THREAD -- "Americans for Regime Change in Iran"

Iran Ayatollah Calls for Ban on Film Mocking Clergy

May 05, 2004
Reuters
reuters.com

TEHRAN -- One of Iran's most powerful hardline ayatollahs wants a ban slapped on a box-office hit film that satirizes the Islamic state's ruling clergy, a newspaper said on Wednesday.

The film "The Lizard," which follows the fortunes of a thief who escapes prison by donning the turban and robes of a Muslim cleric, has been playing to packed houses in Iran.

Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati -- head of the Guardian Council, an unelected constitutional watchdog with sweeping powers -- said the film was a "bad influence and should be banned."

"The screening of such movies must be confronted because it makes fun of clerics...it creates social corruption," the liberal Sharq newspaper quoted him as saying.

The film's release was delayed by more than a month as censors debated whether it should be banned -- a common fate of many home-produced and most Western films deemed too provocative or corrupting for the Iranian public.

Eventually it was given the green light after four scenes totaling one minute were cut.

Cinemas have sold out performances days in advance and been forced to schedule extra late-night screenings to cope with the huge demand.

In the film, thief Reza Marmoulak (Reza the Lizard) slips out of a prison hospital in clerical disguise and takes up the life of a man of the cloth.

As a preacher, his irreverent style -- cracking suggestive jokes and referring to "brother (film-maker Quentin) Tarantino" during a sermon -- has cinema audiences unaccustomed to open mockery of the clergy in stitches.

But it has not met favor everywhere. In the northeastern shrine city of Mashhad, where much of the film is set, the local judiciary banned its screening and confiscated film reels and publicity material from cinemas.

Religious hard-liners, opposed to reformist President Mohammad Khatami's efforts to ease censorship, have threatened to attack cinemas showing the "immoral" film, the hardline Jomhuri-ye Eslami newspaper said.

Many moderate clerics have praised the film, pointing to the protagonist's gradual moral transformation as he leaves behind his life of crime and finds God.

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=5043356

Man Hanged in Prison

May 05, 2004
AFP
Khaleej Times Online

TEHERAN -- A jailed Iranian drug dealer caught trying to distribute narcotics in prison was hanged on Tuesday in Karaj jail, some 30 kilometres (18 miles) west of Tehran, the governmental daily Iran reported on Wednesday.

The man, aged 43, already had a conviction for distributing 250 kilograms (550 pounds) of narcotics, when he was caught in prison two years ago trying to infiltrate 200 grams (seven ounces) of heroin with his wife’s help.

The paper gave no details about the wife. Murder, armed robbery, rape, apostasy and serious drug trafficking are all punishable by death in Iran.

Editor's note - With no transparency, the judicial system of the Islamic Republic of Iran hangs, executes and stones to death under the cover of fighting "moral corruption". The accuracy of these convictions are under serious question.

http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticle.asp?xfile=data/middleeast/2004/May/middleeast_May150.xml&section=middleeast&col=

Iran's Nuclear Weapons Are Almost Here

May 05, 2004
Strategy Page
James Dunnigan

Despite promises to halt nuclear weapons development, Iran's Islamic conservatives are moving ahead secretly, attempting to develop a working nuclear bomb as quickly as possible. With what is now known of Pakistani weapons experts secretly selling nuclear weapons technology to countries like Iran, it's quite possible that Iran will have an atomic bomb within a year, if not a few months.

It is not known which atomic bomb designs Pakistan sold to Iran, but it was probably the more primitive ones. That means Irans first nuclear weapons would be rather large and bulky. This would not be suitable for use on a long range missile, but could be carried by an aircraft, or put in a shipping container. Millions of these seagoing shipping containers enter the United States each year. And Iranian Islamic conservatives still consider America the "Great Satan."

While much of the world's attention has been focused on Sunni Moslem terrorists, we forget that there is a separate group of Shia Moslem terrorists operating as well. Because of the ancient hostility between Shia and Sunni (it's a theology and ethnic thing, as most Shia are Iranians, who are not Arabs, but an Indo-European people), the larger number of al Qaeda terrorists have grabbed all the headlines for the last three years. There are still plenty of Shia terrorists out there, but most of them are in Lebanon, where most belong to the Hizbollah organization. Hizbollah has been observing a truce of sorts along the Lebanese border with Israel. However, time has caught up with most of the Shia firebrands of the late '70s and early '80s. The original ones, that are still alive, are middle aged and somewhat mellowed. Those in Iran have their hands full dealing with the majority of Iranians who no longer believe in the revolution. In Lebanon, there is also local politics to deal with, mainly in the form of many Lebanese who no longer want to play host to Iranian terrorists. But the Islamic conservative leadership in Iran, who still have veto power over the government, access to billions in cash, and control of the armed forces, still believe in exporting the (Shia) Islamic Revolution. It's an export that no one wants, and the Sunni Moslems will actively resist. But there's always the "Great Satan." Sending a nuclear weapon to the United States, and setting it off there, would be suicidal (analysis of the debris would likely identify its origins) because of American nuclear retaliation. Alas, there are still some really fanatical Shia clergy in the senior ranks of the Iranian government, who believe they are on a mission from God, and are willing to go to extremes to smite the enemies of Islam.

http://www.strategypage.com/dls/articles/200455.asp

Israel to Reveal Nuclear Secrets to Baradei Says IRNA

May 05, 2004
The Jerusalem Post
JPOST.com Staff

Israel will reveal its nuclear secrets to International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) head Mohammed El Baradei, during his visit to the country in July, Iran's Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA), reported Wednesday.

Israel's permanent representative to the IAEA, Gabriella Guffney, told the BBC that El Baradei would be visiting Israel in July for what she described as a routine visit.

She said the trip was still in the planning phase and that further details would be released at a later date.

According to the Iranian report, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon reached an understanding with US President Bush during his recent visit to Washington, that Israel would sign on to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Israel has expressed its willingness to sign the treaty after El-Baradei's visit under the condition that it will be recognized as the only nuclear power in the region, IRNA reported.

A spokesman for the IAEA, Melissa Fleming, said this would be Doctor El Baradei's first trip to Israel in six years.

She said he intends to use the trip to promote non-proliferation and a nuclear weapons free zone in the Middle East.

The visit was agreed upon by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon during his meeting with US President George Bush last month.

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1083726862199

Street Slang a Big Hit with Iran Book Lovers

May 05, 2004
Reuters
Christian Oliver

TEHRAN -- Persian is famed as the melodic, courtly language of mediaeval poets such as Omar Khayyam and Hafez, but it is a dictionary of vulgar street slang that is taking Iranian literary circles by storm.

At Tehran's annual book fair, the woman running the stall of the dictionary's publisher Nashr-e Markaz had to explain to a disappointed stream of bookbuyers that the sixth edition had already sold out.

Much of the slang is the vernacular of "Javads", a wayward breed of young men who drive around Tehran, trying to lure girls into their cars.

Unsurprisingly, many of their racy, often chauvinistic expressions derive from their beloved automobiles.

A "zero kilometre", a reference to a car with no mileage on the clock, is a virgin. "Been in an accident" refers to a girl who has become pregnant.

Girls' backsides, a favourite talking point of hot-blooded Javads, are "hubcaps".

The most popular stall at the fair which opened on Monday was one specialising in books on the giddy social life of the Pahlavis, the royal family deposed in the 1979 Islamic revolution.

"Iran's bestsellers at the moment are all contemporary history," said Ahmad Pirani, who contributed to a book on the private life of the last Shah. His colleague Paris reckoned he knew why: "People want to read about this part of history to know who they are."

A white-turbaned mullah leafed through "Wives of the Shah".

In a country with few entertainments, Tehran's 11-day book fair is viewed as a fun day out. Fast-food and ice-cream vendors do a brisk trade.

Outside the exhibition rooms, couples exchanged tentative, illicit caresses on the lawns as schoolgirls perched on a wall reading Tintin comics.

STRICT CENSORSHIP

Publishing thresholds have relaxed a touch since liberal President Mohammad Khatami came to power in 1997 but his attempts to push through widesweeping social reforms have been thwarted by conservative supervisory bodies.

Iran zealously censors any works criticising the Islamic system. It banned "The Stoning of Soraya M", Freidoune Sahebjam's tale of violent, arbitrary justice in rural Iran.

British novelist Salman Rushdie, sentenced to death by an Iranian fatwa in 1989, is still taboo. An American book on male psychology called "All Men Are Jerks Until Proven Otherwise" has also fallen foul of the censors lately.

Religious and scientific texts dominated the fair's book stacks but young people also snapped up horror novels, U.S. rock lyrics and biographies of England footballer David Beckham.

Islamic publishing houses were also selling new technology: swarms of women in the all-enveloping chador gathered round CD-ROM virtual tours of holy shrines.

"I have come here almost every year," said black-bearded law student Hamid Soleimani, 25. He had bought some books on the early martyrs of Shi'ite Islam.

Elsewhere, a young woman in a green silk headscarf thumbed through a Persian translation of "The Fox", D.H. Lawrence's tale of simmering erotic tensions. Other stands were decked with works by American Jewish actor and director Woody Allen.

Adel, a silver-haired religious bookseller from Tehran's sprawling bazaar, said he was complementing his Korans with the adventures of boy-wizard Harry Potter.

"These J.K.Rowling books are selling pretty well," he said.

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/040505/325/estcf.html

Baroness Should Not Defend Medieval Regime

May 05, 2004
Barnet and Potters Bar Times
Laila Jazayeri

As an Iranian woman who is a counsellor working with victims of atrocities of the mullahs in Iran and happens to have been a witness to the marriage of one of the 'Barnet Two' men, I am disgusted at the claims that Baroness Nicholson has made about the status of the two prisoners in Iran ('Family denies Iran's terror claims', April 29).

I should make it clear that I have great respect for Tom Spender for his articles in the past regarding the plight of these two men. But Emma Nicholson's horrifying allegations could have come straight from the most violent factions of the sinister mullahs.

Let us ask Baroness Nicholson why she has refused to comment on the state of democracy in Iran? It would be better for her to spend her time in the European Parliament condemning the stoning of women to death, eye gouging, amputating limbs, public hangings, flogging and other barbaric punishments by the mullahs in Iran. Instead she has repeatedly, and in different ways, defended this medieval regime. Of course, the fundamentalist mullahs are delighted on hearing such claims and use them to their benefit.

Laila Jazayeri
Association of Anglo-Iranian Women

http://www.barnettimes.co.uk/news/letters/display.var.486323.0.baroness_should_not_defend_medieval_regime.php

Film Has Everyone but Clerics Giggling in Iran

May 04, 2004
The New York Times
Nazila Fathi

TEHRAN -- Thousands of Iranians have rushed to movie theaters since late March to see a comedy that dares to mock clerics.

"The Lizard," which has quickly become a box office hit, is the story of a criminal who escapes from prison disguised as a cleric, and in his adopted identity, is forced to deal with society's mistrust and unanswered questions.

"Mullahs have made up heaven and hell to fool you and me," declares the film's protagonist, Reza, to the cleric whose robe he steals. When Reza, who is known as the Lizard among his friends, appears on the street dressed as a cleric for the first time, cars try to run him over. Eventually, a man gives him a ride only to drop him at the wrong address.

Much of the film's humor stems from Reza the Lizard's struggles to fit in as a man of God. His bulging eyes at the sight of an attractive young woman and his fake Arabic chants evoke roars of laughter from audiences. Still, the film's ending is politically correct, as Reza the Lizard, a criminal, finds God.

But the movie succeeds at mocking the social restrictions imposed by the Iranian government. When Reza the Lizard is taken for a village cleric, he is bombarded with questions about social mores, to which he responds with amusing advice. When asked, for example, how Muslims are supposed to say their prayers five times a day at the North Pole where it is dark six months a year, he simply advises them to stay home where it is warmer.

Many clerics object to the film, saying it ridicules their position and shows the growing gap between society and clerics.

The daily Jomhouri Islami, a hard-line newspaper close to Iran's supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, warned Monday that "such blatant insult to clerics" could not have happened even under the secular regime before the 1979 revolution.

"The movie is part of series of efforts to weaken the Islamic system and the clerical establishment and the Judiciary must confront such measures," it said in an editorial.

But Kamal Tabrizi, the film's director, said he tried to defend clerics delicately.

"It is true that the movie points to the gap between people and clerics but it is also offering a way to fill this gap," he said. "The solution is for clerics to find a way into people's hearts."

The screening of the film was delayed for a month until four scenes were cut. The movie has already been banned in two cities, and there are persistent rumors that it may be banned in others.

President Mohammad Khatami saw the film in a private screening with the director before it was released and laughed throughout it, Mr. Tabrizi said. Mr. Khatami's cabinet ministers and their families got an exclusive screening last week.

Mohammad Ali Abtahi, the vice president, who is also a cleric, saw the film twice and praised it on his Web site, www.webnevesht.com.

He said it was useful to fix the broken tie between society and clerics. "The movie is about realities that exist in society," he said in a telephone interview. "Talking about these things will help bring closeness."

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/05/international/middleeast/05iran.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1083766295-1sRzFfciS2pJ/Atm915CIQ

Those Friendly Iranians

May 05, 2004
The New York Times
Nicholas D. Kristof

Finally, I've found a pro-American country.

Everywhere I've gone in Iran, with one exception, people have been exceptionally friendly and fulsome in their praise for the United States, and often for President Bush as well. Even when I was detained a couple of days ago in the city of Isfahan for asking a group of young people whether they thought the Islamic revolution had been a mistake (they did), the police were courteous and let me go after an apology.

They apologized; I didn't.

On my first day in Tehran, I dropped by the "Den of Spies," as the old U.S. Embassy is now called. It's covered with ferocious murals denouncing America as the "Great Satan" and the "archvillain of nations" and showing the Statue of Liberty as a skull (tour the "Den of Spies" here).

Then I stopped to chat with one of the Revolutionary Guards now based in the complex. He was a young man who quickly confessed that his favorite movie is "Titanic." "If I could manage it, I'd go to America tomorrow," he said wistfully.

He paused and added, "To hell with the mullahs."

In the 1960's and 1970's, the U.S. spent millions backing a pro-Western modernizing shah — and the result was an outpouring of venom that led to our diplomats' being held hostage. Since then, Iran has been ruled by mullahs who despise everything we stand for — and now people stop me in the bazaar to offer paeans to America as well as George Bush.

Partly because being pro-American is a way to take a swipe at the Iranian regime, anything American, from blue jeans to "Baywatch," is revered. At the bookshops, Hillary Clinton gazes out from three different pirated editions of her autobiography.

`It's a best seller, though it's not selling as well as Harry Potter," said Heidar Danesh, a bookseller in Tehran. "The other best-selling authors are John Grisham, Sidney Sheldon, Danielle Steel."

Young Iranians keep popping the question, "So how can I get to the U.S.?" I ask why they want to go to a nation denounced for its "disgustingly sick promiscuous behavior," but that turns out to be a main attraction. And many people don't believe a word of the Iranian propaganda.

"We've learned to interpret just the opposite of things on TV because it's all lies," said Odan Seyyid Ashrafi, a 20-year-old university student. "So if it says America is awful, maybe that means it's a great place to live."

Indeed, many Iranians seem convinced that the U.S. military ventures in Afghanistan and Iraq are going great, and they say this with more conviction than your average White House spokesman.

One opinion poll showed that 74 percent of Iranians want a dialogue with the U.S. — and the finding so irritated the authorities that they arrested the pollster. Iran is also the only Muslim country I know where citizens responded to the 9/11 attacks with a spontaneous candlelight vigil as a show of sympathy.

Iran-U.S. relations are now headed for a crisis over Tehran's nuclear program, which appears to be so advanced that Iran could produce its first bomb by the end of next year. The Bush administration is right to address this issue, but it needs to step very carefully to keep from inflaming Iranian nationalism and uniting the population behind the regime. We need to lay out the evidence on satellite television programs that are broadcast into Iran, emphasizing that the regime is squandering money on a nuclear weapons program that will further isolate Iranians and damage their economy.

Left to its own devices, the Islamic revolution is headed for collapse, and there is a better chance of a strongly pro-American democratic government in Tehran in a decade than in Baghdad. The ayatollahs' best hope is that hard-liners in Washington will continue their inept diplomacy, creating a wave of Iranian nationalism that bolsters the regime — as happened to a lesser degree after President Bush put Iran in the axis of evil.

Oh, that one instance when I was treated inhospitably? That was in a teahouse near the Isfahan bazaar, where I was interviewing religious conservatives. They were warm and friendly, but a group of people two tables away went out of their way to be rude, yelling at me for being an American propagandist. So I finally encountered hostility in Iran — from a table full of young Europeans.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/05/opinion/05KRIS.html

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