Iranian Alert -- June 23, 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.

BACK TO OLD DEMONS, THE ISLAMIC REPUBLIC BID FAREWLL TO DÉTENTE

By Safa Haeri
Posted Tuesday, June 22, 2004

PARIS, 22 June (IPS) “By giving free arena to new hard line voices connected to the ruling conservatives, the regime is returning to its former demons of the beginning of the Islamic Revolution, saying goodbye to the era of détente initiated by President Mohammad Khatami”, according to Dr. Qasem Sho’leh Sa’di, a former Member of the Majles now leading the movement of Iranian neo-reformists.

Commenting for the Persian service of Radio France International (RFI) recent declarations by a certain Dr. Hasan Abbasi, an ideologue for the Revolutionary Guards and animator of the so-called “Centre For Recruiting Suicide Volunteers” threatening some Persian Gulf emirates, Mr. Sho’leh Sa’di, a respected lawyer and university professor said “such statements demonstrates the regime’s desire and tendency to renew with a policy of generalised antagonism”.

In a meeting with some newly recruits, Dr. Abbasi, who is sitting in the new conservative-dominated Majles as a representative of the Ansar Hezbollah, a pressure group controlled by hard liners warned Kuwait, Bahrain and Qatar “not to become a base of the enemies of the Islamic Republic or they would face a deluge of Iranian bullets”.

The Centre for Recruiting Suicide Volunteers aims at organising Muslim volunteers to fight the Americans and other “infidel” forces in Iraq and elsewhere in the Muslim world by the mean of suicide operations.

According to Mr. Abbasi, the Centre has already listed “thousands” of volunteers and aims at recruiting “at least 40 millions, ready to go on the battle front the moment Ayatollah Khameneh'i decides”.

He said the Centre has designated 29 objectives, including some in the United States. “The list of the targets has also been passed on to other (terrorist) organisations around the world and they could be hit by the suicide volunteers who had been trained for the purposes”, he indicated.

Attacking also liberal democracy, Mr. Abbasi said, “We have to uproot liberal democracy from the face of the world to prepare the ground for the return of Mahdi (Shi’a Muslims twelfth and last imam who went into hiding more than a thousands years ago at the age of eight).

“With the reformists out of the race and President Khatami becoming a virtual yes man of the conservatives in the one hand and clouds getting darker over the head of the Islamic Republic, the regime is facing serious challenges and threats from both outside and inside”, Mr. Sho’leh Sa’di told RFI.

The author of a famous open letter written more than a year to Mr. Ali Khameneh'i, the leader of the Islamic Republic questioning both his clerical rank by addressing to him as “Hojjatoleslam” rather than the usual “Ayatollah” and his domestic and foreign policies, particularly his stubborn opposition to any dialogue with Washington, Mr. Sho’leh Sa’di who now is launching the Party of Iranians for Democracy with fellow companions like Dr. Mohammad Mohsen Sazegara, was jailed for forty days on charges of activities against the regime and offences to the leader.

Pointing out to the recent harsh Resolution approved by the Board of Governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency on the initiative of Britain, France and Germany and the Dublin-sponsored statement by the 25-members European Union “deploring” Iran’s lack of clear-cut and full cooperation with the Vienna-based IAEA and the worsening condition of human rights, Mr. Sho’leh Sa’di warned that “by taking wrong decisions and making wrong policies, the hard liners have laid down the bed for foreign menaces. Seemingly, this what they are after, now than they have no more friends nowhere in the world”.

“Statements by people like Mr. Abbasi is part of the new policies adopted by the conservatives. It is part of the carrot and stick, as seen with the IAEA. In the one hand, and considering that Abbasi and company are connected to the hard liners, they send messages to the world leaders. But at the same time, they can always retreat back, saying the threatening declarations are made by independent people with no official responsibilities”, he commented.

Though the new MMs, -- the great majority of them approved by the leader-controlled Council of the Guardians that had barred hundreds of reformist candidates from running for the last Legislative race that took place on February – had been told not to become political like the last parliament meddling with national and foreign policies and pay more attention to people’s real problems, such as job and security, but they started work with shouts of down to America and continued with menacing the international nuclear watchdog of getting Iran out of the Non Proliferation Treaty and not signing the Additional Protocol to the NPT, as promised by Tehran last October.

“These people are hand picked by the Council of the Guardians and the conservatives and they have to respond to what the ruling hard liners expects them to do”, Mr. Sho’leh Sa’di went on, predicting more difficult times ahead for the Iranian people and in Iran’s relations with the international community.

“However, the more they increase oppressions and crackdowns, the more they antagonise the world outside, the more they get unpopular hat home and the more isolated abroad, hastening their own count down”, he concluded.

ENDS SHO’LEH SA’DI COMMENTS 22604

http://www.iran-press-service.com/ips/articles-2004/june/sholeh_sadi_comments_22604.shtml

Walking Back the Chalabi Cat

By Daniel Pipes
FrontPageMagazine.com | June 22, 2004

The Iranian government learned recently that American intelligence has deciphered its codes and can read its mail. This is a blow to U.S. interests, for it means losing the ability to access the enemy’s confidential communications, with all the advantages that offers.

Who is to blame for this development?

Ahmad Chalabi – the Iraqi politician whom I have known, worked with, supported, and admired since 1991 – has for the past month sat in the hot seat, accused by unnamed intelligence officials of informing the Iranian regime that its codes had been cracked.

Chalabi denies the accusation, saying that he and his organization, the Iraqi National Congress, have not received “any classified information” from the U.S. government. For what it is worth, the Iranians also deny that Chalabi told them about U.S. code breaking.

Thinking this through logically, I conclude that Chalabi is not responsible for the damage to U.S. interests; rather, the blame falls on his opponents in the Central Intelligence Agency and State Department. Here is my logic, a form of “walking back the cat” (spook-speak, defined by William Safire as applying “what is now known to the actions and events of a previous time”).

To begin with, I make three assumptions: First, that the reaction in Washington (which includes possible criminal prosecutions) bespeaks sincerity and confirms that U.S. cryptographers did indeed crack the Iranian codes. Second, that Tehran interprets the U.S. reaction as proof that its codes were cracked. Third, that it is taking the necessary steps to regain secrecy.

One possibility is that Chalabi told the Iranians nothing. In which case, the allegation that he did so originated elsewhere:

· Perhaps State or the CIA made it up. (Plausible: Time magazine has documented how since April, the White House has been attempting to marginalize Chalabi.)

· Or the Iranians floated it to check if their codes were broken. (Plausible: It would explain why they used that same code to tell about the code break.)

Or Chalabi did tell them that Washington had cracked the code. In which case:

· Perhaps he made this up and just happened to be right. (Plausible: Chalabi reportedly took steps in 1995 to trick the Iranians.)

· Or he thought he was providing disinformation but actually was telling the truth. (Unlikely: Too convoluted.)

· Or he knowingly divulged classified information. (Unlikely: Why should the Americans give Chalabi, a British subject known to be in close contact with the Iranian regime, a crown jewel of U.S. state secrets?)

Whichever scenario actually took place, the implication is identical: the brouhaha in D.C., not what Chalabi did or did not say, signaled Tehran that the Americans broke their code.

That’s because anyone can assert that the code was cracked, but why should he be believed? The Iranians surely would not accept Chalabi’s assertion on its own and go to the huge trouble and expense of changing codes because of his say-so. They would seek confirmation from U.S. intelligence; and this is what the unnamed sources who leaked this story did – they supplied that proof. Their fury at Chalabi instructed the Iranians to change codes.

In the end, what Chalabi did or did not do is nearly irrelevant; his detractors in the U.S. government, ironically, bear the onus for having informed the Iranian opponent about a vital piece of intelligence.

Americans might pay heavily for the rank irresponsibility of those in State and the agency who publicly confirmed the code break as part of their turf wars with the Defense Department and, more broadly, their fight with the so-called neoconservatives.

On this latter point, note how gleefully elements of the American press exploited the allegations against Chalabi. To take one example of many, the Los Angeles Times on June 10 published “A Tough Time for ‘Neocons’,” which states that neoconservatives are “under siege” partly because, “in a grave threat to their reputation, Iraqi exile leader Ahmad Chalabi … is enmeshed in an FBI investigation of alleged intelligence leaks that supplied secrets to Iran.”

Were the press properly doing its duty, it would stop playing the Washington favorites game and investigate the likely damage Chalabi’s opponents have done. Were State and CIA managements doing their job, they would be punishing the elements who conveyed a vital secret to the militant Islamic government in Iran.

Daniel Pipes (www.DanielPipes.org) is director of the Middle East Forum and author of Miniatures (Transaction Publishers).

http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=13868

Iran has always dreamt of dominating the Middle East

By John Keegan
(Filed: 23/06/2004)

The least desired complication to the current situation in Iraq is a dispute with Iran over the Shatt al Arab waterway.

The Shatt al Arab, formed by the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers above Basra, is the most important waterway at the head of the Gulf. It has also traditionally been a source of contention between Iraq and Iran, marking as it does the international frontier between their territories.

During the early 20th century, when the dominant power in the Middle East was European, Iraq was brought to agree that the legal frontier should run along the Thalweg, a German term meaning the line running along the deepest point of the river bed.

Iran, historically the most important local power, never accepted the Thalweg and, with the decline of European influence in the Middle East, exerted pressure on Iraq to redraw the frontier, so that it followed the bank of the Shatt al Arab on the Iraqi side. At the height of his power, the last Shah of Iran was able to force Saddam Hussein in 1975 to agree to the alignment.

Saddam was at the time only vice-president of Iraq, though still the power behind the throne. After his seizure of full power in 1979, he proceeded to undertake military operations against Iran. One of his motives was to deter the Khomeini regime, which had overthrown the Shah, from making trouble among its Shia co-religionists in Iraq's south. Another was to regain the Thalweg in the Shatt al Arab.

The resulting war lasted from 1980 to 1988, caused hundreds of thousands of casualties and resulted in Khomeini conceding defeat. In the aftermath, Iraq reverted to regarding the Thalweg as the international frontier.

By operating patrol craft in the waterway, British Marines have inadvertently fallen into a dispute that does not concern them. They were simply proceeding with a programme to train Iraqi river police and deliver suitable equipment to them.

They have now been arrested by Iranian security forces on grounds not yet specified. It is not even clear what sort of Iranian security troops are responsible - the Iranian regular forces or the religious militia. There is a difference. The regular forces operate by rules understood in the West. The religious militia have motives that baffle Westerners.

If Iran's regular forces are involved, the incident can probably be settled quite swiftly, by a Western admission that a mistake has been made. If the religious militia are responsible, negotiations may be more complex and the timetable protracted.

There are two foreseeable dimensions. One concerns Iranian interest in the welfare of their Shia co-religionists in Basra and its surrounding districts. At a moment when the future of Iraq's national government is being decided, the religious regime in Iran may well be seeking measures to ensure that the political, cultural and religious rights of the Shia in Iraq's southern regions are properly respected.

It is difficult to perceive how the arrest of eight Royal Marines could be used to ensure such an outcome. The thought processes of Islamic fundamentalists are difficult to discern, however, and we may have to accept that we are in for a protracted confrontation on the issue.

The other dimension concerns Iran's nuclear programme. For several decades, nuclear military power was concentrated in America, the old Soviet Union, Britain, France and China. In the past decade, nuclear military power has spread into the southern half of the northern hemisphere.

Israel is known to be a nuclear power, though unacknowledged as such. India and Pakistan have become acknowledged nuclear powers, though thankfully moving towards an accommodation that precludes the use of their nuclear weapons. Iraq sought to become a nuclear power. Its ambition was frustrated by the Israeli raid on the Osirak reactor in 1981 and the subsequent regime of sanctions imposed by the United Nations.

Iran also seeks to become a nuclear power. Though it denies its ambition, that is understandable, given its propinquity to Pakistan, India and Israel. Its ambition is also understandable in political and social terms. Iran, with nearly 60 million people, is one of the largest societies in the Middle East.

Historically, it has been a dominant regional power and today it is one of the region's most advanced. An optimistic Western assessment is that its young people reject its religious government and would welcome liberation from the ayatollahs. A more realistic judgment is that, while Iranian youth seeks liberation, it does so within an Islamic context.

It would be a delusion for Westerners, therefore, to suppose that condemnation by the International Atomic Energy Agency of Iran's programme to proceed with nuclear enrichment - leading to its achieving, by perhaps as early as 2006, a nuclear weapon - is likely to acquire domestic endorsement. The contrary seems more likely.

Iran, historically, is a great power. It is, in actual terms, one of the most advanced societies outside the Western world. National pride will encourage the Iranians to become a nuclear power. Western efforts to prevent it doing so risk being counterproductive.

Current events in the Shatt al Arab are neither here nor there. If the West does not wish Iran to become a nuclear power, it will have to take braver steps than hitherto, as it will also have to do against North Korea.

http://www.opinion.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2004/06/23/do2301.xml&sSheet=/opinion/2004/06/23/ixopinion.html

Iran counts on depleted U.S. forces

By PHILIP GOLD
GUEST COLUMNIST

"I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just ...."

And that our enemies can count.

Thomas Jefferson's nervousness remains as apt today as when he first expressed it in 1774. Of more immediate concern is the fact that our enemies -- Iran, especially -- can count.

The relevant arithmetic:

Today, nine of 10 active Army divisions are in Iraq or Afghanistan or back and recovering for the next deployment. The Army reserve and National Guard grow ever more exhausted. The Marines, always overstretched, have taken on additional Iraq duties. In short, the United States has no combat-ready strategic ground reserve.

And while it is true that in an emergency, you go with what you've got, air and sealift shortfalls make it virtually impossible to move those forces in less than several months while still maintaining the current ventures.

This situation was eminently predictable, and for more reasons than the fact that occupation/counter-insurgency missions can be horrendously people-intensive. Ten years ago, the Clinton administration drew bitter mirth from the defense community when it announced that the United States could fight two simultaneous major regional conflicts, presumably in Korea and the Middle East, and win. After several seasons of the two-MRC sitcom, the administration decided to try a sequel: changing MRC to MTW (major theater war) and "simultaneous" to "overlapping time frames."

It mattered not. Any competent sergeant, and most generals, could tell you that our limited capabilities would permit us to fight one war while deterring the other with air and sea power or, failing that, applying the bombs and cruise missiles lavishly. That's still our de facto strategy, especially regarding North Korea, where we're moving troops off the border and withdrawing at least one brigade for Iraq duty.

Unfortunately, our fleet now numbers less than 300 ships, smallest since the 1930s. This month, the Navy undertakes "Summer Pulse 04," an exercise keeping seven aircraft carrier strike groups out of 12 at sea simultaneously, a feat considered impossible only a few years ago. It's a magnificent effort -- and a magnificent symbol of a Navy now far too small. As for the Air Force, it no longer maintains the frenetic operating tempo of the '90s. But those planes that got so overworked patrolling Iraqi no-fly zones and bombing the Balkans, haven't grown any younger. Adequate numbers of replacement aircraft are still years away.

In sum, with our ground forces occupied and strategically immobile, the Air Force and the Navy have a lot of deterring to do. Sad to say, not even the most technologically advanced aircraft or ship can be in more than one or two places at once.

Enter Iran.

In mid-June, Arab media reported that Iran had moved four divisions to the Iraqi border, along with the usual missiles. Iran, be it noted, also possesses a nasty array of anti-ship missiles and mines.

Now posit an Iraq in violent disarray this summer, or an Iraq getting ready to explode into a set of anti-American insurrections and civil vendettas and wars. An Iranian cross-border "incursion-in-force" could well intensify the in-country strife -- or trigger it. Perhaps the Iranians take a couple northeastern towns, settle in and dare us to respond. Do we send the already overengaged Army in? Or do we summon the Navy and the Air Force? And if so, how much and from where and for how long? And if we find ourselves having to tie down additional forces after it's over, how do we keep the world, and especially the North Koreans, from noticing?

Would Iran do this? Perhaps. In the Islamic world, the borders that matter aren't always the borders on U.S. maps. In the Islamic world, challenging and hurting America constitute victory. And war can always be used by the ayatollahs to justify more domestic repression in that restive land. Iran has much to gain from a limited cross-border incursion.

And so do the neoconservatives. Some, such as Michael Ledeen, have long argued that "regime change" must include Tehran, Damascus and Riyadh. For them, "Cauldronize the Middle East" is a slogan and a goal, not a fear. Nearly all the neo-cons favor dramatically increased defense spending. Perhaps they're also salivating over possible resumption of the draft. (The Selective Service System must notify the president by March 31, 2005, that it's ready for activation.)

Whether neo-con fantasies represent administration policy is hard to tell; so is the degree of their actual influence. What is clear is that both Iran and the neo-cons have their reasons for welcoming a limited expansion of the war.

After all, as a venerable Beltway proverb has it: Sometimes nothing succeeds like the right kind of failure. And what's true, or at least expedient in Washington, D.C., can also be true in Tehran.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/179014_iraqiran23.html

CULTURE OF HATE [Excerpt]

By AMIR TAHERI
NY Post.com

June 22, 2004 -- HOURS after Paul Johnson's decapitated body was shown Friday in Riyadh, Saudi Interior Minister Prince Nayef bin Abdul-Aziz announced that government forces had killed the man responsible for the murder, Abdul-Aziz al-Mouqrin, and two of his accomplices.
"This crime was committed by a handful of deviants," the prince said.

A few deviants? Hardly.

The tragedy that struck Johnson is the product of a culture of hatred, arrogance and cruelty built over decades by the Saudi society.

To be sure, this does not mean that all Saudis think or would, if given the opportunity, behave as the killers did. But there is no escaping the fact that they do bear part of the responsibility, if only by providing the socio-cultural topos in which terrorism thrives.

Until recently, Saudi textbooks taught schoolchildren to regard non-Muslims as sub-humans who did not deserve the same respect due to "true believers," that is to say the followers of the officially approved Hanbali brand of Islam.

For decades, Saudi society has been obsessed with what could only be described as religious exhibitionism.

The nouveaux riches have tried to secure a place in the next world by building mosques, some 4,000 in Riyadh alone, and by contributing to so-called "Islamic causes."

What can only be described as a "religion industry" employs more muftis, preachers, teachers, enforcers, muezzins and theologians than the oil industry that produces 80 percent of the nation's income. Saudi universities churn out more "religious scholars" each year than doctors and engineers.

The state has spent an estimated $100 billion on "Islamic" causes since the mid '70s. No doubt part of the money went to humanitarian causes and the financing of development projects in the poorer Muslim countries. But there is also no doubt that vast sums of money were funneled to radical organizations that believe they have a mission to conquer the world for Islam through terrorism and war.

Today, the Saudi authorities insist that no more government money is going to terrorist groups. This may be true. After all, the Saudi rulers now realize that the ultimate aim of the monster they helped create is to devour them. But what about wealthy Saudi individuals who, either to buy personal protection or because they wish the ruling family to be overthrown, continue to fund the terrorists?

The problem goes beyond textbooks and ready money for terror. The average Saudi citizen is subjected to systematic Islamist brainwashing.

http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/26165.htm

DoctorZin Note: Here we go again...

France Steps Up Its Investments in Iran

New York Times - By Borzou Daragahi
Jun 23, 2004

TEHRAN -- Undeterred by Iran's pariah status in the United States and by the shortcomings of the country's commercial climate, French companies have been increasing their presence in the country in the last few years.

New Peugeots and Citroëns flood crowded highways and streets. French business people dine in the capital's restaurants and work on Persian Gulf oil platforms. Air France resumed flights to Tehran this month after a seven-year hiatus. And the carmaker Renault is about to make the first large-scale, long-term direct investment in the country by a French company since the 1979 revolution that toppled the pro-American Shah Reza Pahlavi.

"The French are eager to come to Iran," said Bernard Hourcade, a Paris-based Iran scholar who acts as a consultant to French companies considering doing business here. "It is the only major place in the Middle East to invest because the other countries are more or less in a revolutionary or prerevolutionary situation."

Though companies from Germany and the United Arab Emirates have a bigger presence in Iran, France is catching up.

French exports to Iran have nearly doubled in five years, totaling 2 billion euros ($2.4 billion) in 2003, according to the economic mission of the French embassy in Tehran. And the number of French-connected companies registered with the embassy - some of which are joint ventures and some representative offices - has risen from a handful several years ago to more than 40.

Among the French exports are luxury goods, for Iran's increasingly affluent middle class. If even a fraction of Iran's 68 million people are "rather prosperous," one Western diplomat said, that could exceed the total population of all the smaller, wealthier gulf kingdoms combined.

The Iranian business of Société Générale, one of a handful of French banks with small offices in Tehran, has grown roughly 20 percent a year in the last five years, according to Jean-Michel Meunier, the bank's Tehran chief.

Alcatel, the French telecommunications giant, recently signed multimillion-dollar contracts to provide high-speed Internet service in Iran as well as communications for offshore oil and gas platforms.

PSA Peugeot Citroën, under a licensing agreement, sells kits for several models, including the Peugeot 206, a sports car that has become a status symbol in Tehran's chic sections.

The Total Group, one of the world's largest energy concerns, has long been involved in Iran, a country with 9 percent of the world's oil reserves and as much as 18 percent of its natural gas reserves. This year, it formed a $2 billion venture with the government-owned National Iranian Oil Corporation and Petronas of Malaysia called Pars LNG, which aims to produce eight million metric tons of liquefied natural gas a year, equal to about 15 percent of current world output.

Total executives in Paris would not comment on Middle East operations. A spokeswoman said the company employed 242 people on its Iran projects.

But Total's buyback agreements with Iran, under which it builds plants and then is paid back and sent on its way as its operations produce energy, means it never owns anything long term in Iran. Peugeot employs only 15 people to oversee the assembly of its cars by local employees of the government-owned factories. Alcatel sells and installs equipment. Société Générale's business here is also limited, consisting mostly of setting up transfers and repatriating funds.

Far more ambitious is Renault's plan to begin making its low-budget Logan series cars here in 2006, eventually bringing hundreds of Western experts to Iran. Renault says it will initially spend 300 million euros ($363 million), and some people close to the deal say the company could lay out $700 million over the next several years. The initial outlay alone nearly equals the total foreign investment in Iran by French companies in 2002, the last year for which statistics were available from the French economics mission, up from zero in 1994.

Under the agreement, Renault owns 51 percent of the joint venture, Renault Pars, with the Automotive Industry Development Company, a concern owned by the country's two main, government-controlled carmakers, the Saipa Group and the Iran Khodro Industrial Group.

The car is coming on line just as the Iranians begin halting production of the clunky, fuel-guzzling Paykan, a knockoff of the 1960's British Hillman Hunter that dominates the domestic market.

"The Renault investment will encourage other companies to come," the Western diplomat said, adding that the company would bring along many subcontractors.

Executives for Renault, which is 15 percent owned by the French government, were not made available for comment.

Iran is among several developing countries, including Romania, where Renault is bolstering its presence.

"Four-fifths of the world's population don't yet have access to a car: these markets therefore have the highest potential for growth," Louis Schweitzer, Renault's chief executive, says on the company's Web site. According to Peugeot, Iran has 1 car for every 21 inhabitants, compared with 1 for every 12 in neighboring Turkey, another developing Muslim country.

The country produced 600,000 new cars in the fiscal year that ended March 20, up from 430,000 in the previous year. This year, the country is slated to produce nearly 900,000 cars.

Despite such potential, many Western companies doing business in Iran do so clandestinely, worried they will cross the United States, which has imposed strict sanctions on Iran since 1996. At least one major French company in Iran with significant United States operations has not registered with the French embassy. The front door to its office in Iran says simply, "French company."

While American officials have not said anything publicly about Renault, they did complain about Total's recent deal and said they would look at possible actions under the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act of 1996.

"We do not encourage investment in Iran's petroleum sector," said Richard A. Boucher, a State Department spokesman, according to an Associated Press report in February. "We have laws that affect our attitudes toward these investments. And we will have to look at those laws appropriately."

State Department officials did not respond to repeated requests for comment. But trade experts said they did not think the act, which allows for the imposition of penalties on foreign companies for certain large investments in Iran, had ever been invoked.

"As to whether the U.S. has actually sanctioned any firms for prohibited investments in Iran, there is not much of a track record,'' said Donald A. Weadon Jr., a Washington lawyer specializing in foreign trade sanctions. "But companies are investigated, and pressure is brought to deter investment."

And, he said, other sanctions and embargos are being imposed.

According to Mr. Hourcade, the consultant, the companies are mostly worried that they will have trouble running their businesses without access to products - like software or spare parts - made by American companies, which are barred from doing business with Iran.

An executive of a multinational with a big United States business said his company decided to open an office here in part to keep an eye on its competitors and not be totally clueless about Iran should Washington lift sanctions.

"So many companies are here, but they're keeping a very low profile and you can't figure out what they're doing here," he said, asking his name and his company's not be used.

Iran's business climate also poses formidable challenges, including a byzantine regulatory system and unorthodox accounting practices that sometimes have left companies wondering whether they will be able to repatriate any profits.

The country has worked hard to draw foreign investment, with officials vowing to remove red tape and saying that foreign investors now can establish a company in Iran and own 100 percent of it.

Still, one person involved in the Renault Pars deal said that problems had already begun. Though the company is nominally French-controlled, he said, the Iranian manufacturers can override Renault's decisions.

Western business leaders here also complain of a lack of demographic and marketing data. Half of the country's cars, for example, are registered in Tehran. But Peugeot - whose business in Iran is its third largest non-European operation, behind China and Brazil - found that many of those living along the cool, rainy Caspian coastline register their cars in the relatively warm, dry capital, to increase resale values.

And though the Peugeot 206 is selling, said Jacques Manlay, the Tehran representative for Peugeot, no one is sure why and to whom. "All I know," he said, "is that it's a car for the young lady in the north of Tehran."

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/23/business/worldbusiness/23iraninvest.html

Several "bandits" to be executed in public

SMCCDI (Information Service)
Jun 23, 2004

The Islamic regime's official sources have announced the regime's Judiciary decision to execute publicly seven "bandits" and "murderers" in the next days in several Iranian cities. Four are to be executed in different areas of Ghazvin alone while three of them will be hanged in Tehran and Tabriz.

Based on official announcements, these future victims of the Islamic regime were engaged in "armed robberies" as like as many of the officially sixty (60) other executed since last March 21st. Twenty (20) more executions will follow in the next weeks. These executions, often in public, are intended to increase the existing policy of governmental terror and fear among the Iranian population exasperated by a quarter of a century of religious dictatorship.

In this line, the shaky theocracy has increased its usual repressive measures due to the approach of the anniversary date of the Student Uprising of July 1999 and in order to smash the increasing armed struggle in Iran. Already several public amputation and lashing actions have been carried in the last days in some of the Iranian cities, such as in Ahwaz and Karaj; Fresh troops often composed by foreign mercenaries, from Iraq, Sudan and Lebanon have been deployed and check points are organized in Iranian cities leading often to the blind beaten up of youth and arrest of anyone; Activists and students are summoned or arrested; The control of phone communications and filtering of Internet accesses have been increased; The brutal confiscation of Satellite dishes are made on a daily basis and plans have been made to close the universities dorms and facilities before July 8th.

The Islamic regime hopes by this way to avoid mass hostile demos from taking place.

It's to note that the Islamic regime labels, often, its armed opponents as "bandit", "armed robber", "murderer", "hooligan", "spy" or "drug trafficker". Such policy helps its European and Japanese partners to justify, vis a vis their public opinions, the continuation of their economic relations with an illegitimate and repressive regime.

http://www.daneshjoo.org/generalnews/article/publish/article_6752.shtml

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