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.

Air France Flights Welcomed in Iran

Jun 23, 2004, 09:38
Persian Journal

Air France that resumed last week nonstop commercial flights between Paris and Tehran after a seven-year halt is facing rapturous welcome from Iranians who are willing to fly to the French capital.

"70% of Tehran-Paris flights have been reserved for the coming three months. Air France predicts to carry around 40,000 passengers between Tehran and Paris in ten months," Air France chief Jean-Cyril Spinetta told reporters during a visit to mark the resumption of Air France flights between Paris and Tehran.

The French airline struck Tehran off its list of destinations in 1997 because of the poor profitability of the route. But growing foreign investment opportunities in Iran have seen increased demand for seats in recent years. Air France offers three direct flights a week, the first of which landed at Tehran's Mehrabad International Airport on June 15. Spinetta said: "Iran and France have seen their exchanges grow in recent years.

France is the third largest trade partner of Iran, just behind Germany and the United Arab Emirates." "That is why we decided to resume our flights," he said. French-Dutch airline Air France-KLM is ready to tie up with Alitalia after the struggling Italian carrier restructures, the French official added. "We are open to the proposition but that will not be possible until Alitalia draws up a restructuring plan," Spinetta told reporters.

"Alitalia needs to focus on breaking even," he stressed. Alitalia is in deep financial crisis and faces the possibility of bankruptcy unless drastic measures are taken, according to its auditor Deloitte and Touche. Air France acquired KLM last month in a deal that creates the biggest European carrier and the number one worldwide in terms of sales.

At the time the deal was originally announced in October 2003, Alitalia expressed interest in merging with the other two airlines. The thrice-weekly flight is the first non-stop service between France and Iran by a non-Iranian carrier since Air France called off its flights in 1997. Iran Air already flies non-stop between Paris and Tehran.

http://www.iranian.ws/iran_news/publish/article_2703.shtml

Troubled Waters: How an Eight-Man British Flotilla Steered Itself Into a Diplomatic Crisis

June 23, 2004
The Guardian
Owen Bowcott, Ian Traynor and Richard Norton-Taylor

A blustery north wind was whipping sand up from the surrounding desert. The dust clouds severely limited visibility as the flotilla of three small, British craft nosed its way up the Shatt al-Arab channel.

The eight men crewing the boats - six Royal Marines and two Royal Navy sailors - had left the Ministry of Defence's base at Umm Qasr on the Persian Gulf at dawn. They were due to rendezvous late on Monday morning with other British vessels heading down from the Iraqi river port of Basra.

The north-bound flotilla consisted of a combat support boat (CSB) and two Boston whalers. The smaller CSB was being delivered to the newly formed Iraqi riverine patrol service, whose duties include preventing oil being smuggled across the international border.

On the right hand side of the broad waterway, formed by the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, the shoreline is Iranian. To the left, fringed by reeds, the near shore is Iraqi.

No one in the MoD's headquarters in Whitehall could yesterday say precisely where or when the three boats veered off course or were captured.

But at lunchtime on Monday, the patrol sent south to escort them back to Basra radioed to alert its commanding officer that the eight men had not arrived.

These can be dangerous waters. The Shatt al-Arab, one of the the most strategically sensitive channels in the Middle East, has been the focus of conflict for centuries. Ottoman Turks and Persian Shias fought successive wars to establish control of the lucrative trade route.

In 1980, festering disputes over navigation rights gave Saddam Hussein the pretext for launching a war against Iran which lasted eight years, claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands and failed to resolve the row over the frontier. Crippled oil refineries and abandoned jetties still line the banks.

Under the terms of what is known as the 1975 Algiers agreement, the international border is deemed to run along the centre of the main deepwater channel. The problem is that the navigable channel does not always flow down the centre of the river but sometimes meanders from side to side. It also migrates over time.

Whether the British craft lost their way in the sandstorm and crossed deep into Iranian waters or were intercepted by Iranian naval forces in disputed territory was not clear yesterday. Confirmation that the men had been seized only emerged late on Monday when Iran's al-Alam television said: "The Iranian navy has confiscated three British boats that entered Iranian territorial waters."

The broadcast sparked frantic diplomatic manoeuvres between London and Tehran as the Foreign Office attempted to defuse the situation quietly before it developed into a public row. It failed.

Yesterday the state-run station showed pictures of the marines and sailors wear ing blindfolds and said equipment found on their boats suggested that they were from special forces. They had been interrogated, it added.

"Their weapons, instruments, large equipment, machine guns and submachine guns, and the flag of their special naval unit indicate that they are not regular sailors," the news report stated. "Their mission is still unclear." The British naval personnel, it maintained, were a kilometre beyond the marine border and had apologised for losing their way.

A spokesman for Iran's Revolutionary Guards, Massoud Jazaeri, said Tehran was determined to defend its territory. "Anyone from any nationality entering our waters will face the same response," he said.

In London yesterday, the MoD denied that the men were members of a special forces unit and insisted they had only been carrying personal weapons. "We don't know where they were taken," a spokesman said. "The weather was pretty awful at the time with 25-30 knot winds picking up a lot of dust. They were difficult conditions."

Richard Schofield, a lecturer in political geography at King's College London, has studied the Shatt al-Arab boundary dispute. He said weather forecasting sources told him visibility was reduced to 50 metres at times on Monday.

"There have been one or two incidents over the waterway involving the Iranians and the occupying authorities recently," he explained. "I suspect the incident occurred close to the entrance of the waterway near the Persian Gulf."

Previous international border disputes had been sparked by local commanders, he added, rather than being the product of policy changes in the capital.

This episode could also have been the initiative of overzealous border guards, but there was speculation that hardline factions of the government in Tehran were keen to exploit the political row.

There have been demonstrations outside the British embassy in Tehran recently to protest about the US and UK invasion of Iraq.

Senior members of the governing coalition provisional authority in Baghdad have accused Iran of attempting to destabilise the military occupation but most commentators point out that Iran, sandwiched between turmoil in Afghanistan and Iraq, has a vested interest in securing good relations with reliable neighbours.

The Shatt al-Arab incident has also been connected to the ongoing row between Iran and the west over its nuclear ambitions. Over the past fortnight Tehran has stepped up its bitter criticism of Britain and Europe.

As the co-author of a UN censure of Iran, attacking Tehran's half-hearted responses to a UN nuclear investigation, Britain has been under rhetorical fire from the Iranian regime.

Last Friday a board meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency ended in Vienna with the consensus adoption of a resolution strongly critical of Iran's failure to cooperate fully with the UN inspectors, who for the last year have been trying to get to the bottom of a 20-year-old covert nuclear programme.

Tehran reacted furiously to the resolution and for the first time in the long-running row directed the thrust of the criticism not at the Americans but at the European powers of Britain, France and Germany who are engaged in a policy of "critical dialogue" with Iran and who last October believed they had made a breakthrough that could defuse the nuclear row. The Iranians accuse the British and the other two from the EU troika of reneging on the their side of the bargain which amounted to a pledge from Iran to freeze uranium enrichment activities in return for European technology and trade.

While the Europeans claimed that the October agreement was a rare diplomatic triumph for the EU - showing that car rots could produce better results than US-wielded sticks - the Iranians have not frozen all of their enrichment-related activities, according to UN inspectors, and are now threatening to abandon the "voluntary suspension" after Britain, France, and Germany drafted last week's censure.

Even if the outcome to the Shatt al-Arab dispute is swift, it will be the second time this year that Britain has been diplomatically humiliated by nonaligned countries over its presence in Iraq.

In March, the Mexican authorities detained and expelled 13 British soldiers on a caving expedition. The row was said to have been fuelled by claims that Britain helped the US spy on Mexico 's UN mission in the run-up to the Iraq war.

MoD silent on names

The Ministry of Defence last night refused to comment on the names of the eight soldiers, their units, or their bases. The decision was taken at the highest level, defence sources said, referring to ministers and the chiefs of staff.

The MoD did not comment on pictures on Iranian television where two of the captured sailors gave their names as Sergeant Thomas Harkins of the Royal Marines and Chief Petty Officer Robert Webster.

Scottish television last night said some of the marines belonged to the Fleet Standby Rifle Troop based at HMS Naval Base Clyde at Faslane, and some were from Arbroath, home of 45 Commando of the Royal Marines.The MoD has said that the men were training a new Iraqi river patrol service. It admitted that some news organisations had been given the names, but refused to comment further.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/iran/story/0,12858,1245227,00.html

TV Hell of Navy Captives

June 23, 2004
Daily Record, Scotland
Pippa Crerar

Troops from Scots commando units were paraded by their captors on Iranian TV last night. The eight servicemen seized after allegedly straying into Iranian waters were first shown blindfolded.

Then two of the men had their blindfolds removed by the hardline Iranian Revolutionary Guards before they were forced to apologise for illegally crossing the border.

Last night, defence chiefs continued to insist the men,who were arrested on Monday, were from a Navy training unit.

But military experts claimed the group was made up of six Marines from 45 Commando of the Royal Marines based at Arbroath and the Fleet Standby Rifle Troop from HM Naval Base Clyde at Faslane and two sailors from 539 Assault Squadron RM based at Plymouth.

Last night, officials in Tehran said they would release the men if it could be proved they strayed into their territory by mistake.

A senior Iranian military official said: 'If they don't have any bad intentions, they will be released soon.'

On the Iranian television broadcast, one of the servicemen, who identified himself as Chief Petty Officer Robert Webster, appeared to be reading from a statement.

The other, identified as Sergeant Thomas Hawkins, told Iran's official Al-Aram television station: 'The team wrongly entered Iranian waters and we apologise for this mistake because it was a big mistake.'

It was hoped the gesture would speed up the captives' release.

Military insiders said last night a distinctive US issue rifle which was found on the captured men was a 'giveaway' they are were ordinary troops.

The US-issue M-16 machine gun is used only by reconnaissance units. The weapon was paraded on Iranian television yesterday.

One insider said: 'It is very probable that they were on a CTR a close target recce when they were picked up. It is a deep embarrassment that an American weapon was pictured.' At least some of those who were captured are from Faslane, where they are used to guard the submarine base.

Others are commandos from Arbroath.

The insider added: 'They were there at the start of the Iraq war and are the ones who took the Al Faw peninsula.'

A Ministry of Defence spokesman said last night: 'These guys are from a Navy training team and have been out there doing their jobs for months.'

When questioned about the weapons the men were carrying, the spokesman added: 'These men were travelling in three boats.

'The boats were unarmed but the men were carrying their own personal weapons, as is standard practice.'

Last night, Ministry of Defence officials suggested the American weapon could have been 'edited in' to the footage shown onTV.

At one point, the Iranians were threatening to prosecute the men. Unnamed Iranian military sources were quoted as saying they would face charges of 'illegally entering Iran's waters.'

Later, the official line appeared to soften, with the state news agency saying they would be handed over to British officials late last night or early today.

However, the men's public humiliation at the hands of the Revolutionary Guards infuriated the British Government.

Foreign Secretary Jack Straw was outraged and intervened yesterday amid concern the incident could spiral out of control. He phoned Iranian foreign minister Kamal Kharazzi to demand an explanation for the TV ordeal and urge an amicable end to the affair.

He also summoned Iran's ambassador in London to the Foreign Office.

Downing Street warned Tehran they expected the men to be treated in accordance with international law.

Tony Blair's spokesman said: 'We will continue to underline to the Iranian government we expect the people involved to be treated under the relevant international criteria.

'We will be reminding Iran of its obligations under international law.'

The TV pictures of the prisoners, dressed in fatigues, could be in breach of the Geneva Convention.Themen appeared healthy and were not shackled.

The broadcast said they had 'confessed' to straying about half a mile into Iranian waters.

They were seized on the Shatt-alArab waterway, the middle of which marks the Iran-Iraq border.

The Ministry of Defence said the troops were on a routine mission to deliver the three patrol boats to the Iraqis.

A spokesman added: 'It's quite feasible that they went astray despite their satellite positioning equipment.

'I'm told it was very windy and dusty.

'The loss of visibility would have made navigating challenging.' The Iranians refused any access to the men and British diplomats did not even know where they were being held.

A Revolutionary Guards official told the Fars news agency the soldiers had been carrying sophisticated maps and arms.

He said: 'They were fully armed. 'Besides personal arms, they were equipped with advanced rifles and night-vision systems.'

Piles of weapons and other items of equipment were shown on TV to back the claims, with the report suggesting the boats contained cameras 'for spying'.

There are suspicions that the new government in Tehran are using the incident to warn the Iraqi administration to keep clear of their borders.

http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/tm_objectid=14358264%26method=full%26siteid=89488%26headline=tv%2dhell%2dof%2dnavy%2dcaptives-name_page.html

Solving the Problem of Kurds is Too Complex for Most Iraqis

June 23, 2004
Gulf News
Amir Taheri

With the end of the 14-months period of occupation, Iraq is likely to be faced, once again, with some of the problems it has had ever since it was put on the map as a nation-state in 1921. The most complex of these concerns the Kurds whose leaders are playing a game of bluff and counter bluff in the hope of exacting maximum advantage in a period of uncertainty.

Both Massoud Barzani and Jalal Talabani, the two most prominent leaders of the Iraqi Kurds, have dropped hints that they might decide to "part ways" if their demand for a Kurdish veto on some key national decisions is not included in the new constitution. This may be a bluff, but the threat of Kurdish secession has already met with two different reactions from Iraq's non-Kurdish leadership élite.

Some Iraqi Arab leaders are horrified at the thought of the Kurdish problem dominating the nation's agenda once again. They are prepared to do all they reasonably can to satisfy Kurdish demands within a multi-ethnic pluralist system. Others, however, manifest some frustration against the Kurds.

Many Iraqis, and some policymakers in Washington, see the Kurdish secession as the worst case scenario for Iraq. Barzani and Talabani know this and try to exploit such fears. A closer look at the reality of the situation, however, would show that there is little chance for a breakaway Kurdish state in northern Iraq. There are several reasons for this.

To start with, Iraqi Kurds do not constitute a single ethnic entity let alone a "nation" in the accepted sense of the term. Iraqi Kurds speak two different, though mutually intelligible, languages, each of which is divided into several sub-dialects, with distinct literal and cultural traditions. They are also divided into half a dozen religious communities, including different brands of Sunni and Shiite Islam, Zoroastrianism, and a number of heterodox creeds. Some of the people generally labelled "Kurdish" are, in fact ethnic Lurs and Elamites with their distinct languages, cultures and histories. At the same time the predominantly Kurdish area is also home to some non-Kurdish communities, including ethnic Arabs, Turcomans, Assyrians and Armenians.

To make matters more complicated, at least a third of Iraqi Kurds live outside the area that might one day become an independent Kurdish state. (There are more than a million Kurds in greater Baghdad, for example). The creation of a breakaway Kurdish state in Iraq could trigger a process of ethnic cleansing, population exchanges, and displacements that could plunge the whole region into years of conflict.

A Kurdish mini-state in north-eastern Iraq might not even be viable. It would be landlocked and will have few natural resources. Almost all of Iraq's major oilfields fall outside the area under discussion. Also, the area's water resources would be vulnerable to manipulation from Turkey and Iran where the principal rivers originate.

But what about a Greater Kurdistan, encompassing all who describe themselves as Kurds? Such a state, including Kurds in Syria, Turkey, Iran, Armenia and Azerbaijan as well as Iraq, would have a population of 30 million in an area the size of France. To create this Greater Kurdistan one would have to reorganise a good part of the Middle East and re-draw the borders of six states, including the two largest in the region: Turkey and Iran. Even then the Greater Kurdistan would still be a weak landlocked state with few natural resources, and surrounded by powers that, if not hostile, would not go out of their ways to help it get along.

Such a Greater Kurdistan would face numerous internal problems also. To start with it will have to decide which of the four alphabets in use for writing the various Kurdish languages should be adopted as the national one. If the view of the majority is to prevail the alphabet chosen should be Turkish because almost half of all Kurds live in Turkey. At the same time, however, the bulk of Kurdish historic, literary, political, religious and other significant texts are written in the Persian alphabet, itself an expanded version of the Arabic. And where would be the capital of the Greater Kurdistan?

If history, myth and, to some extent, the number of inhabitants, are the yardsticks the Iranian cities of Sanandaj and Mahabad would be strong candidates. And, yet, the city with the largest number of Kurdish inhabitants is Istanbul, Turkey's cultural and business capital which is home to more than 1.6 million ethnic Kurds. In a Greater Kurdistan the intellectual élite would come from Iran and the business élite from Turkey. Would they then allow Iraqi Kurds to provide the political élite? That is hardly likely.

The experience of the 3.5 million Iraqi Kurds who have lived a life of full autonomy, thanks to US-led protection since 1991, is a mixed one. The area was divided into two halves, one led by Barzani the other by Talabani, showing that even limited unity was hard to achieve in a corner of Iraq let alone throughout the vast region where the Kurds live. The two mini-states respectively led by Barzani and Talabani developed a complex pattern of shifting alliances in which, at times, one allied itself with Saddam Hussain against the other. The two mini-states even became involved in numerous battles, including a full-scale war that was stopped thanks to US pressure.

Barzani and Talabani should stop bluffing about "walking away". Other Iraqis, meanwhile, should realise that a shrunken Iraq, that is to say minus its Kurds, would be a vulnerable mini-state in a dangerous neighbourhood. The preservation of Iraq's unity is in the interests of both Kurds and Arabs.

The Kurds, wherever they live, must be able to speak their languages, develop their culture, practice their religions and generally run their own affairs as they deem fit. These are inalienable human rights, and the newly-liberated Iraq may be the only place, at least for the time being, where the Kurds can exercise those rights.

In other words this is not the time for the Kurds to think of leaving Iraq nor for other Iraqis to deny the legitimate rights of their Kurdish brethren.

Amir Taheri, Iranian author and journalist, is based in Europe. www.benadorassociates.com

E-mail: amirtaheri@benadorassociates.com

http://www.gulfnews.com/Articles/Opinion2.asp?ArticleID=124435

Stop the Mullahs Before it's Too Late

June 23, 2004
Ottawa Citizen
David Warren

The Iran of the ayatollahs has just executed a formidable power play in the Shatt-al-Arab -- the waterway shared by Iraq and Iran at the sea-mouth of -- Mesopotamia) by taking British forces into custody.

According to British officials, the three small Royal Navy boats and their crew of eight sailors were on a routine mission and may or may not have strayed into Iranian waters. According to a British intelligence source, confirmed by both Iraqi and American sources -- the boats were (or were probably) laying sensing devices on the bed of the Shatt-al-Arab for the express purpose of detecting Iranian-launched terrorist hits on Basra's extensive oil-exporting facilities.

And according to Michael Ledeen, the U.S. journalist with the best sources within Iran, there was every reason to be laying such sensing devices. For the ayatollahs, like the leaders of the Sunni Islamist terror networks whose nexus is Saudi Arabia, would very much like, under the present circumstances, to drive the price of oil to $60 per barrel. The Iranian Islamists have even better motives than the Saudi Islamist "underground" (and the overground Saudi princes who fund and encourage them). For the Iranians would be left selling the oil for $60 a barrel -- after Iraqi and Saudi exports had been wiped out by the direct and indirect effects of terrorism.

This would create economic chaos in the West, while supplying both the money and distraction the Iranians need to complete their nuclear weapons program. That it is close to success is indicated by every particle of information reaching the West -- and indeed more noise on the subject is being made currently by the United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency than by the Bush administration, which would rather not have it as an election issue. The Iranians have been caught red-handed with at least two large undeclared nuclear research facilities, and have stonewalled IAEA inspectors in the Saddamite manner. They also occasionally gloat that they will soon be members of the "nuclear club," and ought to be accepted.

On the other hand, almost everyone believed Saddam Hussein's Iraq was harbouring large quantities of weapons of mass destruction. So we can't be entirely certain of anything until the weapons are actually used -- which is the moment when the chorus from the left changes its tune from, "Why are you trying to do something about it?" to "Why didn't you do something in time?" The failure to find the kind of "smoking guns" in Iraq, which would meet the news criteria of The New York Times or CNN, has made every kind of assertion about mortal threats from rogue states politically unwise. It's "the boy who cried wolf." (And the reader will remember how that story ends.)

Given the existence of a real wolf now --and the Iranian wolf is bigger and smarter than the Iraqi one the United States dealt with -- we are in a fix. President Bush proved himself bold over Iraq, willing to act with most of the world against him. But is he big enough to sacrifice his presidency to confront Iran while there is still time? A president is lucky to get away with one war per term in office; Mr. Bush has already had two, and needs three.

Alternatively, I'm fairly certain the Israelis, this time, aren't up to the job they performed in 1981, taking out Saddam's nuclear reactor at Osirak in time, to a chorus of world outrage. It is too large for them -- the Iranian nuclear program is dispersed over too many sites, and most of them are out of range of the IAF's strike aircraft, which would anyway have to overfly too many hostile or unco-operative countries. And yet the very survival of Israel must be brought into question, once the ayatollahs have The Bomb.

We needn't waste time considering whether the United Nations or the European Union might have a plan. Even Britain is up to its ears in high-tech contracts with the Iranian regime, of the sort that tend to make the supplier docile.

Once armed with nukes, and even without actually using them, Iran's ability to project power throughout the region -- both diplomatically and through Hezbollah -- is much enhanced. The mullahs' chance of surviving domestic challenges to their power will be likewise enhanced. Saddam's domestic power, recall, came from the common belief that he was armed with hideous weapons.

To sum up, the West is in no position to act boldly against the ayatollahs. But they, for their part, are now acting boldly against us.

http://www.canada.com/national/nationalpost/index.html

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