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Grand Ayatollah Sistani Wants No Role for IRI in Iraq

August 30, 2004
Middle East Media Reseach Institute
MEMRI News Ticker Headlines BR>
August 30, 2004
Visit www.memritv.org to view recently translated segments from Arab and Iranian television

August 30, 2004
While in London after surgery, Ayatollah Al-Sistani had a stormy meeting with an Iranian delegation that demanded a role for Iran in Iraq. Al-Sistani categorically denied them any role and subsequently packed and left for Iraq without consulting his hosts or the Iraqi government. (AL-HAYAT, LEBANON, 8/27/04)

August 30, 2004
An Iraqi delegation headed by deputy prime minister Burham Saleh is visiting Iran, carrying with it security and political documents pertaining to Iranian intervention in internal Iraqi affairs. (AL-ZAMAN, BAGHDAD, 8/29/04)

August 30, 2004
Iraq’s national security advisor Dr. Muwaffaq Al-Rabi'i says that there is evidence to prove that Muqtada Al-Sadr has been supported by foreign elements.' (AL-SHARQ AL-AWSAT, LONDON, 8/28/04)

August 30, 2004
Iran’s president Khatami responded to criticism to his performance during eight years in office saying: 'I did not get involved in politics to change the Islamic regime, but to improve it.' Khatami rejected the calls for constitutional reforms saying that 'the present constitution has great potentials if it were indeed implemented.' (AL-AYYAM, BAHRAIN, 8/29/04)

August 30, 2004
Iranian expediency council chairman Hashemi Rafsanjani said that U.S. moves in the Gulf only exacerbated the crisis in the region and gave momentum to global terrorism. He added that when U.S. attempts to reinforce Israel and get control of Iraq’s oil resources failed, it attacked Najaf, which again led to shameful defeat. (IRNA, IRAN, 8/29/04)

Posted on Mon, Aug. 30, 2004

Wisconsin delegate dreams of free Iran

JR ROSS

Associated Press

NEW YORK - To some, President Reagan's call for the destruction of the Berlin Wall was a defining moment in the fall of communism.

For Saied Assef, President Bush's declaration that his native Iran was part of an axis of evil could be just as important in helping foster democracy in the Middle East.

Assef, a Wisconsin delegate to this week's Republican National Convention, said the president's support for democracy in the Middle East has pulled him into this fall's election like never before.

Having immigrated from Iran in the 1970s before the rise of the ayatollahs, Assef believes the president's Middle Eastern policy may be the only hope for those he left behind as they strive to be free. He sees the war in Iraq as a key to that struggle, believing the country could serve as an example that democracy can coexist peacefully with Islamic values.

"It's a government of the minority ruling over the unwilling majority," said Assef, who now lives in Green Bay.

Assef left Iran in 1974 to attend medical school at Stanford University. He decided to stay after the 1979 Islamic revolution that toppled the pro-U.S. shah. That also led to the imposition of restrictions on Iranians and created a clerical establishment that has used its control of government bodies to thwart reforms. Washington also has accused the Iranians of meddling in Iraq in hopes of turning the country into a theocracy like itself.

Assef, who was raised Muslim but converted to Lutheranism after his second marriage, said he still worries about those he left behind.

Assef brought to the convention with him T-shirts he had made that feature a picture of an Iranian college student during a 1999 protest holding aloft the shirt of a friend who had been shot by Iranian authorities. He said the student was later sent to prison and is feared dead.

The T-shirt has a drawing of the Iranian flag under the picture and a quote from a Bush State of the Union address superimposed over the picture that reads: "I believe that God has planted in every human heart the desire to live in freedom. And even when that desire is crushed by tyranny for decades, it will rise again."

Assef said he does not trust Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry's stance on democracy in the Middle East and does not feel he has clearly stated his intentions.

Jamie Rubin, a Kerry adviser, said the Massachusetts Democrat also believes democracy in Iraq could serve as an example to the rest of the Middle East. But he said the president's mishandling of the war in Iraq has undermined efforts to promote democracy in the region.

He said Kerry would build international support to put pressure on Iran to lift restrictions on its people, put an end to its nuclear weapons program and cease support for terrorists.

"The question is not who wants to promote democratic change in the Middle East," Rubin said. "The question is who is going to be in a better position to support American interests in the region."

Assef, the father of six, still has friends and relatives in Iran with whom he keeps in touch. His parents and brother immigrated to the United States not long after he did.

He has not been back since he left but would like to again some day - after democracy has returned.

"It is my dream to be able to take my family to a safe Iran to visit," Assef said.

France Criticizes Allawi Comment on Terrorism Fight

Reuters-World News
Aug 30, 2004

PARIS - France criticized Iraq's interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi Monday for saying states which did not actively fight terrorists would become their targets, after two Frenchmen were kidnapped in Iraq.

Allawi's comments in Le Monde daily came as France raced against the clock to secure the release of two French journalists kidnapped in Iraq by militants who told Paris to drop its ban on Muslim headscarves in schools by Monday evening.

"The French, like all democratic countries, cannot let themselves be satisfied with adopting a passive position," Allawi told Le Monde in an interview.

"Governments that decide to stay on the defensive will be the next terrorist targets," Allawi said.

"Let me tell you that the French, despite all the noise they are making, (such as) 'We don't want war', will soon have to fight against terrorists," he said, adding that future attacks could happen in French cities as well as in the United States.

The French government, which led the opposition to the U.S.-led war in Iraq, called his comments unacceptable.

"These declarations seem, in effect, to cast doubt on France's determination in the fight against terrorism," the Foreign Ministry said in a statement, adding France had called for a political solution in Iraq since the start of the crisis.

"The French authorities have, for a long time, affirmed the necessity and urgency to mobilize against all forms of terrorism. France, which has itself been a victim of terrorist attacks, leads unrelentingly a determined action against this plague," the ministry said.

French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier held talks in Egypt with prominent regional figures Monday aimed at securing the release of journalists Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot.

The Islamic Army in Iraq gave France 48 hours to revoke the controversial ban on headscarves in schools, but did not specify what would happen when the deadline ends Monday night.

Study: Terror Groups Operating Over the Internet
15:27 Aug 30, '04 / 13 Elul 5764

A new study demonstrates how Islamic terror groups use the internet to spread their message, and exposes the western companies who host such hate sites.

The study was conducted by the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center at Israel’s Center for Special Studies (C.S.S.).

“Palestinian and international terrorist organizations make massive use of the Internet to spread propaganda supporting terrorism and as a means of maintaining contact between organizations (and headquarters), their infrastructures and their target populations (often over enormous distances),” reads the report.

The study focuses on the Islamic Jihad as representative of the phenomenon of Islamic groups using Internet sites supported by Western (mainly American) companies to spread their message. Using Islamic Jihad for the case study is particularly significant because the web sites are hosted in the United States and Europe despite US and EU policies banning the group as a terrorist organization.

According to the case study, Islamic Jihad operates three main websites, hosted in Iran, Englewood, Colorado and Baltimore, Maryland. The terror group runs several subsidiary sites as well. The study does not include sites that support the Islamic Jihad but do not officially belong to the organization.

The first site is qudsway.com, which “posts current notices from the terror organization, archival material about its activities, publication of books and articles sponsored by the Islamic Jihad, encouragement of terrorism against Israel and praise for the suicide bombers.” A nearly identical site is entitled palestineway.com, and the most sinister of the three main web addresses is sarayaalquds.com. “This is the site of the organization's operational-terrorist wing (the Jerusalem Battalions). It includes updated documentation about the Battalions, archival material about the organization's terrorist activities, publication of books and articles sponsored by the Islamic Jihad, encouragement of terrorism against Israel and praise for the suicide bombers.”

The secondary sites are rabdullah.com and shikaki.com, dedicated to the current (Ramadan Abdallah Shalah) and past (Fathi Shikaki) leaders of the terror group. The sites document their pronouncements, activities and worldview in favor of an uncompromising armed insurrection for the "liberation" of "all Palestine" and the establishment of an Islamic state. It posts articles, lectures, speeches, pictures and biographies of Shalah and Shikaki.

“Insofar as can be verified, the organization's Internet infrastructure is supported by Western companies located mainly in the United States,” reads the report. Although Islamic Jihad and other Islamic groups are listed as terror organizations in the U.S. and E.U., United States and Western companies are largely chosen to host the ‘internet Jihad.’ “It is not a matter of chance but rather convenience,” reads the report, explaining that terror groups can “easily ‘disappear’ among so many Western companies, while being shielded from any serious consequences by extensive freedom of expression laws.

“[I]t is worthwhile to note that other Palestinian terrorist organizations, such as Hamas and the Lebanese Hezbollah, as well as international terrorist organizations such as - paradoxically - Al-Qaeda, all extensively use Western companies and technology, particularly those in the United States.”

“The importance of the Internet as a means of marketing terrorism became significantly greater after …September 11, 2001,” concludes the study. “That was because the Web makes it relatively easy for [terrorists and their supporters] to evade the difficulties imposed by various governments (particularly the American government). It also enables them to exploit liberal Western laws ensuring freedom of speech to spread their propaganda without effective supervision and with no censorship whatsoever.”

The full study, including the names and contact information of the companies who host the terror-sites, can be viewed here.

Published: 00:15 August 30, 2004
Last Update: 15:27 August 30, 2004

Iran Fits Shihab With Chemical Warhead

International Christian Embassy Jerusalem, August 30, 2004

The warhead of the Iranian Shihab-3 missile has been upgraded to better carry a lethal chemical warhead, Ha'aretz reports following the publication in Iranian newspapers of photos detailing the results of a recent series of test launches.

The Iranians gave the latest Shihab test extensive media coverage as part of the escalating war of words against Israel, hoping to force Jerusalem to think twice before attempting to sabotage their nascent nuclear program.

According to Tehran, the test was a response to the joint Israeli-US launch of the Arrow missile defense system, which intercepted an earlier generation Scud missile off the California coast at the end of July.

Speaking in Jordan on Sunday, the day before arriving in Israel for his first talks in over 6 months, German Foreign Minister Joschksa Fischer confirmed that the build-up of Iranian nuclear arms would be a "nightmare" for the region. But Europe, Fischer said, is looking to head off any dangerous confrontation with Tehran with a policy of constructive engagement.

"We are in intensive talks with Iran, and we hope the leadership in Tehran would not miscalculate the situation," he said.

http://www.truthnews.net/month/2004080061.htm

Aug. 30, 2004 22:04
Taking Iran at its word
By STEVEN STALINSKY

IRANIAN PRESIDENT Khatami. Is it time to launch a civilizational war?
Photo: AP

There are growing indications that Iran may be planning an attack on American soil. These indicators are not secret – they appear in speeches, newspaper articles, TV programs, and sermons in Iran by figures linked to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and other government officials. All discuss potential Iranian attacks on the US, which will subsequently lead to its destruction.

A report on May 28 in Al-Sharq Al-Awsat reported that an Iranian intelligence unit has established a center called "The Brigades of the Shahids of the Global Islamic Awakening." The paper claimed it had obtained a tape with a speech by Hassan Abbassi, a Revolutionary Guards intelligence theoretician who teaches at Al-Hussein University. In the tape, Abbassi spoke of Teheran's secret plans, which include "a strategy drawn up for the destruction of Anglo-Saxon civilization."

In order to accomplish this, he explained, "there are 29 sensitive sites in the US and in the West. We have already spied on these sites, and we know how we are going to attack them."

It was reported that the US had expelled two Iranian security guards employed by Teheran's UN offices on June 29, after the mission was repeatedly warned against allowing its guards to videotape bridges, the Statue of Liberty and New York's subway.

This was the third time the Iranians had been caught in activities which could be connected to plans to attack the US.

Abbassi's speech further detailed that "[Iran's] missiles are now ready to strike at their civilization, and as soon as the instructions arrive from Leader [Ali Khamenei], we will launch our missiles at their cities and installations."

In fact, over the past few months Khamenei has been vocal about the impending "destruction of the US." In May he was quoted in the Iranian paper Jomhouri-Ye Eslami as stating that "the world will witness the annihilation of this arrogant regime."

On July 5, in front of a crowd chanting "Woe to the enemy if Khamenei commands me to wage Jihad," Khamenei said: "If someone harms our people and invades our country, we will endanger his interests anywhere in the world."

Other Iranian religious leaders have also called for the destruction of the US.

Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, secretary-general of the Guardian Council, appeared on Iran's Channel 1 TV on June 4, stating, "Every Muslim and every honorable man who is not a Muslim must stand against the Americans, English, and Israelis and endanger their interests wherever they may be."

When he added "They must not have security," thousands in the audience repeated chants of "Islam is victorious, America will be annihilated."

On June 25, Jannati also led prayers and promised, "Anyone who confronted the revolution, the Imam [Khomeini], and our dedicated people eventually collapsed. America is the last one, and, Allah willing, it will collapse...."

The following week Ayatollah Mohammad Emami-Kashani delivered the Friday sermon live on Channel 1 stating that the US would collapse like Genghis Khan's empire: "I say to you, the American people you will collapse, America will collapse."

"Time-bombs within America" is how Iranian MP Hamid-Reza Katoziyan described Muslims within the US, who could be behind future terrorist attacks on America.

Speaking on Iranian TV channel Jaam-E-Jam 2 on July 27, Katoziyan warned: "The whole group of people belonging to the Arab community and Muslims living in the US are currently, in my opinion, in a special situation. Perhaps they do not walk the streets with weapons in their hands or attach bombs to themselves in order to carry out a suicide operation, but the thought is there."

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1093835909853

Arrow Missile a Sure Bet against Shehab-3 Missiles

06:15 Aug 31, '04 / 14 Elul 5764

(IsraelNN.com) Aryeh Herzog, who is responsible for the air force’s air defense system, announced at a Washington press conference on Monday that the Arrow anti-ballistic missile system can with certainty down an incoming Iranian Shehab-3 missile. The statement comes following a “failed” test of the Arrow against an incoming Scud D rocket last week, a second test of the system. The first test of the system, also conducted in the U.S., was a large success.

System developers who explained last week’s test added that it too was not a failure, explaining the actions of the Arrow system and it interpretation of the incoming Scud rocket.

Iranian journalist arrested in Najaf

(Reuters)
31 August 2004

TEHERAN - An Iranian photojournalist working for the semi-official Fars news agency has been arrested by Iraqi police in the holy Shia city of Najaf, the ISNA students news agency said yesterday.

“Hasan Qaedi, who wanted to cover Najaf developments, was arrested by Iraqi police on Thursday,” ISNA quoted one of the Fars news agency’s editors as saying.
Iranian journalists have faced problems with the authorities in Iraq in the past weeks. Four Iranian reporters were arrested by Baghdad police on Aug. 9. They were released last week.

The Iranian bomb

By Frank J. Gaffney Jr.

One could be forgiven, in light of recent headlines and press accounts, for wondering precisely who the enemy is in this war on terror. For some people, it clearly seems the list should include — if not be headed by — a democratic ally that has been subjected, per capita, to considerably more sustained and deadly terrorist attacks than the United States: Israel.

This argument requires Israel to be seen not for what it is — namely, a longstanding U.S. partner in a strategically vital region of the world where few exist, one that shares America's values and is a bulwark against the rising tide of anti-Western Islamist extremism. Israel must, instead, be portrayed as perfidious, pursuing an international agenda divergent from (if not actually at odds with) that of the United States and a liability, rather than an asset.

Those who would portray Israel in such an unflattering light doubtless are gleeful over leaks claiming the Jewish State surreptitiously obtained state secrets from a U.S. government employee working for the Pentagon. At this writing, no evidence has been provided to support such charges. Nor has anyone been apprehended — although, for several days, the FBI has been described as poised to arrest someone employed by the Defense Department's policy organization. Only time will tell whether anyone actually is taken into custody, the type of charges and whether he is actually found guilty.

In the meantime, these leaks have already diverted attention from a nation that genuinely should head the list of America's foes: the terrorist-sponsoring, nuclear-arming and ballistic missile-wielding Islamist government of Iran. This effect has been all the more ironic insofar as, according to press accounts, the classified information the FBI thinks was improperly purveyed to Israel involved documents shedding light on America's evolving policy toward the Iranian mullahocracy.

Strategic analyst Steven Daskal recently offered a reminder of the peril posed by Iran: "While the Islamic Republic of Iran as a state is technically not at war with the U.S., Ayatollah Khomeini's fatwa calling for total war by all Shi'ites, regardless of citizenship, against the 'Great Satan America' remains in effect — it has never been rescinded, and in fact was expanded to include killing Americans as being a necessary part of a defensive jihad to make the world safe for Islam. Khomeini's pioneering pseudo-theology was later picked up by Sunni extremists, including Osama bin Laden."

In a thoughtful article in the Aug. 23 New York Post, Amir Taheri recounted how Khomeini and his successors have translated that fatwa into a 25-year-long war against the United States — waged asymmetrically, both directly (for example, in attacks against U.S. embassies and personnel) and indirectly (through terrorist proxies like Hezbollah in Lebanon, Sheik Muqtada al-Sadr in Iraq and Shi'ite warlords in Afghanistan). Mr. Taheri correctly observes "the Khomeinist revolution defines itself in opposition to a vision of the world that it regards as an American imposition. ... With or without nuclear weapons, the Islamic Republic, in its present shape, represents a clear and present threat to the kind of Middle East that President Bush says he wants to shape."

Therefore, for the U.S., stopping Tehran's Islamist government before it obtains the means to carry out threats to attack Americans forces in Iraq and elsewhere should be an urgent priority. For Israel, however, denying the ruling Iranian mullahs nuclear arms is literally a matter of national life and death.

Israel's concern about the growing existential threat from Iran can only be heightened by overtures Sen. John Kerry and his running mate have been making lately to Tehran. In remarks Monday, vice presidential candidate John Edwards said a Kerry administration would offer the Iranians a "great bargain": They could keep their nuclear energy program and obtain for it Western supplies of enriched uranium fuel, provided the regime in Tehran promised to forswear nuclear weapons. According to Mr. Edwards, if Iran did not accept this "bargain," everyone — including our European allies — would recognize the true, military purpose of this program and would "stand with us" in levying on Iran "very heavy sanctions."

There is just one problem: Based on what is known about Iran's program and intentions — let alone its history of animus toward us — only the recklessly naive could still believe such a deal is necessary to divine the mullahs' true purposes.

While it may be inconvenient to say so, Iran is clearly putting into place a complete nuclear fuel cycle so as to obtain both weapons and power from its reactor and enrichment facilities. And a deal like that on offer from Messrs. Kerry and Edwards failed abysmally in North Korea.

If the United States is unwilling to take concrete steps to prevent the Iranian Bomb from coming to fruition, its Israeli ally will likely feel compelled to act unilaterally — just as it did with the 1981 raid that neutralized Saddam Hussein's nuclear infrastructure. At the time, the Reagan administration joined the world in sharply protesting Israel's attack.

A decade later, however, the value of the contribution thus made to American security was noted by then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, who said he thanked God every day during Operation Desert Storm that Israel had kept Iraq a nuclear-free zone. If such a counterproliferation strategy becomes necessary once again, it will be in all of our interests to have Israel succeed.

    Frank J. Gaffney Jr. is president of the Center for Security Policy and a columnist for The Washington Times.

Commentary: Iran's war threat is very real

By Martin Sieff
UPI Senior News Analyst

Washington, DC, Aug. 19 (UPI) -- Forget an October Surprise, a much worse one could come in September: Full-scale war between the United States and Iran may be far closer than the American public might imagine.

For Iranian Defense Minister Ali Shamkhani Wednesday warned frankly and openly that if his military commanders believed the United States was serious about attacking his country to destroy its nuclear power facility at Bushehr, or to topple its Islamic theocratic form of government, they would not sit back passively and wait for the U.S. armed forces to strike the first blow, as President Saddam Hussein in neighboring Iraq did in March 2003. They would strike first.

"We will not sit to wait for what others will do to us," Shamkhani told an interviewer on the Qatar-based al-Jazeera satellite television news network, which is widely watched throughout the Middle East.

"Some military commanders in Iran are convinced that preventive operations which the Americans talk about are not their monopoly."

The Iranian defense minister was speaking in response to an increasing barrage of tough, even ominous statements from senior U.S. officials that Iranian leaders and many Middle East diplomats believe parallel the drumbeat of rhetoric that prepared the American public for the war in Iraq a year and a half ago.

On Aug. 8, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said the world was "worried and suspicious" about Iran's nuclear program and she made clear the Bush administration was determined not to let the Iranians develop nuclear weapons from their new Russian-built reactor. So seriously did Rice intend the message to be taken that she repeated it twice in the same day in separate interviews to different network news shows.

Just this Tuesday, one of the hottest hawks in the Bush administration, Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security John Bolton told a sympathetic audience at the right-wing Hudson Institute in Washington that the Iranian nuclear program had to be taken up by the U.N. Security Council. "To fail to do so would risk sending a signal to would-be proliferators that there are no serious consequences for pursuing a secret nuclear weapons programs," he said. "We cannot let Iran, a leading sponsor of international terrorism, acquire nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them to Europe, most of central Asia and the Middle East, or beyond," Bolton said. "Without serious, concerted, immediate intervention by the international community, Iran will be well on the road to doing so."

Bolton's tough talk came after reports that the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna appears unlikely to announce next month that Iran's nuclear program contains military elements. Nor, according to these published reports, is the IAEA expected to recommend referring the Iranian nuclear program to the U.N. Security Council as Bolton and his administration colleagues clearly want.

The comments from Bolton and Rice come within weeks of leading neo-conservative pundits and activists in Washington proclaiming that Iran's nuclear program had to be destroyed, even if waging war was the only way to do it.

Influential neo-conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer wrote July 23 column in The Washington Post: "The long awaited revolution (in Iran) is not happening. Which (makes) the question of pre-emptive attack all the more urgent. If nothing is done, a fanatical terrorist regime openly dedicated to the destruction of 'the Great Satan' will have both nuclear weapons and missiles to deliver them. All that stands between us and that is either revolution or pre-emptive attack."

Krauthammer's column was widely discussed in the Tehran press, further fueling the fears there that the United States may act in cahoots with Israel to launch a pre-emptive strike on the Iranian reactor. Iranians also remember that President George W. Bush included Iran with Iraq as fellow members of the "axis of evil" in his 2002 State of the Union speech. Just over a year after that, he unleashed the U.S. armed forces to topple Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

Iranians therefore fear that the goal of Bush and his Pentagon hawks is now exactly what Krauthammer advocated in his July 23 column: to use the new, "strong fortress" of pro-American Iraq as the launch point to destabilize and topple the Islamic Republic of Iran. Both the desired counter-revolution in Iran and a U.S.-delivered or U.S.-backed pre-emptive strike "are far more likely to succeed with 146,000 American troops and highly sophisticated aircraft standing by just a few miles away in Iraq," Krauthammer wrote.

In reality, however, Iraq is anything but a "strong fortress." The embattled U.S. troops there are hunkered down, on the defensive, an undermanned, over-stretched, over-worked exhausted force isolated in a nation that has almost universally rejected them and about which they were deceived and given no adequate preparation whatsoever.

Indeed, if a full-scale war broke out with Iran, the United States might even have to send in hundreds of thousands of more troops to relieve and rescue its current over-extended force in Iraq, or go nuclear, or implement both extreme options in order to prevent current U.S. forces there from being cut off and even possibly over-run.

Shamkhani Wednesday made clear that this possibility had already occurred to his own military planners in Tehran. "The U.S. military presence will not become an element of strength at our expense," he said. "The opposite is true because their forces would turn into a hostage."

Shamkhani also made very clear that his country would regard any pre-emptive strike against the Bushehr reactor as a casus belli: sufficient cause to unleash full-scale, unrestricted war against the United States. "We will consider any strike against our nuclear installations as an attack on Iran as a whole and we will retaliate with all our strength," he said.

Some political leaderships specialize in using tough talk that they never seriously mean to back up with equally ruthless actions. But the Iranians are not like that. They lost around a half-million dead to repel Saddam in the eight-year Iran-Iraq war from 1980 to 1988. So when Shamkhani threatens the prospect of a major war against the United States: Believe him.

Iran's nuke program nearing point of no return

Israeli military intelligence has concluded Iran is preparing to accelerate uranium enrichment in violation of Teheran's pledge to the European Union. The assessment anticipates an Iranian effort to complete the acquisition of nuclear expertise, produce fissile material and assemble its own nuclear weapons by 2007. Stateside, the assessment is the same. "If we permit Iran's deception to go on much longer, it will be too late," U.S. Undersecretary of State John Bolton told the Hudson Institute on Aug. 17. "Iran will have nuclear weapons."

Iran says has arrested several nuclear spies

[Excerpt]

Updated: 9:14 a.m. ET Aug. 31, 2004

TEHRAN - Iran has arrested dozens of spies, including several who passed secrets about its nuclear programme to its enemies, Intelligence Minister Ali Yunesi said on Tuesday.

The United States accuses Iran of using its atomic programme as a smokescreen for building nuclear weapons, but Tehran insists the programme is solely dedicated to meeting booming domestic demand for electricity.

"The Intelligence Ministry has arrested a number of spies that transferred Iran's nuclear intelligence (abroad)," Yunesi was quoted as saying by the official IRNA news agency.

Yunesi said most of those arrested were linked to the Iraq-based Iranian opposition group the People's Mujahideen Organisation (MKO).

He did not say when the arrests took place, but his remarks came after Iran's "government week" in which ministries catalogue their achievements over a broad timeframe.

"The hypocrites (MKO) had the lead role and they have boasted before about spying against Iran in a press conference in America," he added. "We have identified and arrested dozens of spies on various grounds."

Iranian officials label the MKO hypocrites for losing faith in the 1979 Islamic revolution and the government says the group has killed several prominent politicians since the revolution. Washington lists it as a terrorist group.

The National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), the MKO's political wing, has been the source of some of the most reliable information about Iran's nuclear programme in recent years, as subsequently proven by U.N. inspections.

Bush rules out war against Iran

[Excerpt]

President says circumstances not the same as Iraq

NBC, MSNBC and news services

Despite U.S. allegations that Iran is developing nuclear weapons, the administration is not considering a military option against Tehran because diplomacy has just started, President Bush told NBC News in an interview aired Tuesday on the "Today" show.

Asked if he would act preemptively against Iran just as he did against Iraq, the president said the Iraq war came only after "we had tried diplomacy" with Saddam Hussein for over a decade.

"The military option is always the last option for a president, not the first," Bush said, noting that the diplomatic effort was only starting in the case of Iran.

"We can work with others to continue sending a message [to Tehran]," Bush said. "We expect them to give up their nuclear ambitions."

Publication:The New York Sun;

Date:Aug 30, 2004;

Section:Editorial & Opinion;

Page:12

An Israeli Spy?

    Is being as a story possible espionage for Israel by a midlevel Pentagon analyst. But it is starting to look more and more like another example of criminalizing Washington’s policy disputes. The tip-off is that the weirdness started with federal officials leaking information about the investigation before any arrests had been made or charges filed. In a serious espionage case, things tend to work the other way around.

    And it may be that in the end this is not about espionage but, if anything, about the mishandling of classified information by a midlevel official. That is also a serious matter, but a less grave one, especially at the end of a week in which Congress held a hearing where a Pentagon official described excessive classification as an “extensive” problem. It prompted the Washington Post to run an editorial headlined “Too Much Secrecy.”

    The draft “national security presidential directive” that the official, Larry Franklin,is accused in anonymous leaks of having given to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee was described to us as little more than a wordier version of a Wall Street Journal op-ed piece. If it was secret, it was because of American political sensitivity, not any genuine security concerns. The document may not have been labeled classified at all until some time after it was written, as bureaucrats mulled over what level of secrecy was appropriate.

    The existence of the draft directive was, in any case, no secret. A June 15, 2003, Washington Post dispatch by Michael Dobbs reported that “the national security presidential directive on Iran has gone through several competing drafts and has yet to be approved by Bush’s senior advisers, according to wellplaced sources.” If some of Mr. Dobbs’s well-placed sources were in the State Department and arguing for a softer line against Iran, we’d like to see them subjected to the same FBI scrutiny as Mr. Franklin.

    The American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which denies any wrongdoing, is an American group broadly allied with the Bush administration in the war on terrorism. The leaks about the Franklin investigation — which prominently mention Mr. Franklin as aligned with the deputy secretary of defense,Paul Wolfowitz, and the undersecretary of defense for policy,Douglas Feith — seem designed to damage the faction in Washington that has argued for a tougher stance in the war against Islamic terrorism.

    The leaks also have the effect of turning our Iraqi friends with ties to Mr. Franklin — such as Minister of State Kassim Daoud — into marked men. The leaks about Mr. Franklin come in the context of an administration that is bitterly divided internally. The person in charge of Iraq policy at the National Security Council, Meghan O’Sullivan, wrote a 2003 book issued by the Brookings Institution in which she criticized Aipac-backed sanctions on Iran as “extreme” and called for “lifting the remaining restrictions on civilian trade between the United States and Iran.”

    In any event,these leaks have an ugly dimension,coming as they do at a time when protesters are mobbing the Republican National Convention to support, among other things, the Palestinian Arab regime launching terror attacks against Israelis and other Jews. Back in 1997, there were press leaks about another possible Israeli spy in America, code named “mega.”They turned out to be false. Haaretz reported that George Tenet, who was then director of central intelligence, wrote a letter of apology to Israel’s security chief. The Israelis may want to watch their mail.

An Improbable Molehunt

Sorting it out.

Must be something to do with the hurricanes and typhoons — or maybe it's the street demos in New York — but it took longer than usual for me to get in touch with my late friend, James Jesus Angleton. The ouija board kept giving me a "no service available" message, but finally I got through. There was a lot of static on the line.

ML: Lots to talk about, huh?

JJA: I'll say! I knew counterintelligence had been gutted, but I had no idea how bad it was.

ML: Don't you believe the stories about a mole hunt in the Pentagon?

JJA: Of course there are mole hunts. That's what CI people do. But they're supposed to be secret. Once you go public with the story, you've alerted your targets, and sabotaged your own investigation.

ML: So you're not impressed with all the news stories?

JJA: Look, as you've said, if the FBI has a real case, they don't go whispering to the press about it. They go to the grand jury. They don't leak, they indict and prosecute.

ML: Plus, they promised their media agents — I mean the journalists — that there would be arrests, and pronto. Nobody's been arrested, and some of the latest stories even quote the "sources" as saying that the Pentagon target — my pal Larry Franklin — may well be exonerated. That's quite a turnaround in a couple of days, isn't it?

JJA: It's embarrassing. At this point, given the state of the "news stories," you'd have to conclude that the CI folks in the bureau are either incompetent or McCarthyites. Either they leaked information that should have been kept secret — if there is indeed any case against Mr. Franklin or others — or they are trying to smear him and some of his friends and colleagues. Including you, I might point out.

ML: Thanks for noticing, but it's same old, same old. But maybe it's not the bureau. Apparently people on the intelligence oversight committees were briefed on the investigation, so maybe they're the leakers.

JJA: It's an attractive theory, and I’d love to believe it, because it would mean that the FBI isn't going through one of J. Edgar Hoover's worst moments. But as I read the stories, there are specific references to FBI sources. I doubt those are invented by the journalists to protect pals on the House or Senate committee staffs.

ML: If you were a serious journalist working on this story, what questions would you be asking?

JJA: Well, first of all I'd be trying to find out whether the wiretap stories are true, because that would be an indicator of the seriousness of the investigation. If the bureau wants to listen to somebody's telephone conversations, they need explicit permission from a special court, and for the court to approve a wiretap, or whatever the electronic equivalent is nowadays (you'd be amazed how low-tech life is around here, confound it!), the bureau has to provide reasonable grounds to believe a crime has been committed, or is about to be committed.

ML: So if there were such approval, it would give weight to the leaks?

JJA: Yes. Conversely, if there were no such approval, it would suggest that they don't have much of a case. I'd be interested in knowing specifically how many wiretaps were approved or rejected. For example, I'd be quite astonished if a court approved a wiretap of AIPAC — which, according to the stories, is the alleged intermediary of the "classified information" Franklin is supposed to have passed to the Israelis.

ML: What's your gut reaction?

JJA: I can't really tell, because the "story" doesn't make any sense. What do we know about Franklin? The main fact is that he's an intelligence professional. He spent his career in the DIA. Like everyone else who handles classified material, he knows the rule by heart: You cannot disclose such information to "unauthorized persons." So if a professional decides to do that, he's always going to do it very carefully. You've read enough spy novels to know the methods: dead drops, secret writing, codes, the whole nine yards.

ML: Yeah, John le Carre.

JJA: Oh for heaven's sake! That hack.

ML: Sorry, sorry. But the "stories" say that Franklin walked into a restaurant where one or two guys from AIPAC were having lunch or coffee or something with some Israeli, and dumped the documents on the table.

JJA: Not good spycraft, is it? More like Laurel and Hardy.

ML: Yeah. Reminds me of the old Neapolitan joke, where Mr. Smith goes to Naples, takes an apartment, lives quietly for ten years, and then one day a new face shows up at the front door and asks the concierge whether a Mr. Smith lives there. "Oh, Smith the spy? Yes, second floor, first door on the left."

JJA: Worse even. Because, to use your metaphor, Franklin would have a big sign over the door saying "Franklin the Israeli agent."

ML: But countries, even friendly countries, certainly spy on one another, so theoretically there might be friendly espionage operations in Washington.

JJA: There are certainly espionage operations here, from all our friends and enemies. But Israel is one of the countries least likely to recruit agents in the American government.

ML: Because of Pollard, right?

JJA: You bet. That damn near wrecked the relationship, and they don't want a repeat. And I keep coming back to the professionalism question. If someone in the U.S. government were passing secrets to Israel, I just can't imagine that it would take place in a restaurant, or that AIPAC — which knows it has endless enemies in the counterintelligence community — would do such a thing.

ML: So what do you think an AIPAC guy would do if somebody walked up to him in a restaurant and said "Here, I've got some interesting documents for you about American policy debates on Iran."

JJA: The AIPAC guy would run away as fast as he could. Are you kidding?

ML: I agree. And I also agree that we're dealing with incompetence or McCarthyism. In either case, it's disgusting.

JJA: Yes it is. Counterintelligence is a very complex and frustrating art. You're going to get things wrong, inevitably. Look at the guy who's reportedly in charge of this case. He was totally off base when he was involved in the Ames investigation. So be it. It happens, and you can't lose your morale just because you get something wrong from time to time. But it's totally unprofessional for the story to be leaked, and it's morally repugnant for a mid-level civil servant to be ruined if there is no serious case against him.

ML: You had some bitter experiences along these lines didn't you?

JJA: Yes. Sad to say, I thought I had strong cases against some people who, in the fullness of time, turned out to be innocent. I ruined their careers, for which I've paid in the last few years. But at least it happened quietly. I didn't go talk to some television producer and whisper that we'd found a Soviet mole. And when their innocence was established, they got some compensation. That was bad; this, at least so far as we can tell today, looks worse.

ML: Let's come back to the journalists for a second. Aren't they culpable too?

JJA: That's a bit more difficult, but they certainly haven't covered themselves with glory. Whenever they're approached with a story like this, they should ask the FBI: If you've got such a strong case, why haven't you obtained indictments from a grand jury? And if there aren't any indictments, and if nobody's been arrested, then why are you asking me to do your dirty work for you?

ML: So put up or shut up, right?

JJA: Amen, brother. Put up or shut up.

ML: I'll get back to you if there are further developments.

JJA: Thanks. I'll look forward to it.

ML: Me too.

An Improbable Molehunt

Michael Ledeen
National Review Online

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1203549/posts?page=19#19