Posted on 08/07/2005 8:39:49 PM PDT by freedom44
Top News Story
Reuters
TEHRAN, Aug 7 (Reuters) - Two people have been killed, eight injured and 145 arrested in unrest among the Kurds of western Iran, Iran's Interior Ministry said on Sunday.
The deaths in the town of Saqqez followed rioting and a gun battle elsewhere in Kurdish-dominated territories.
The Interior Ministry Web site named the dead men in Saqqez as Mohammad Shariati, a 55-year-old retired teacher, and 18-year-old Farzad Mohammadi.
It quoted an unnamed senior official as saying that police had denied firing their pistols, but investigators were looking into the type of shots fired to work out what had happened.
"Public and state-owned buildings, including banks, were damaged," the official said.
Iranian officials deny the rash of unrest on the western borders is ethnically motivated, but Kurdish leaders disagree, saying Tehran's discrimination towards their people was fomenting discontent.
A U.N. report last month suggested Tehran was discriminating against its religious and ethnic minorities in the allocation of basic amenities.
A Daily Briefing of Major News Stories on Iran:
I may have missed something, but what happened to DoctorZin?
One day, these updates will be THE focus of everyone... hopefully the local revolutionaries will hold on/make progress while Iraq is secured and Syria dealt with.
I have a feeling its going to be 75/25 or 80/20 Iranian/US in the eventual liberation of the Iranian people. Those brave men are in my prayers. Good luck, and God speed my friends...
I run it on sundays.
While a percentage of Iranians are "pro-america", it may not mean what you think it means..
They are probably willing to adapt a more representative type of government, with a greater participation of the people, etc., even a less aggressive international position and peaceful relations with "some" of their neighbors, but that doesn't spell out Israel..
Israel may well be "persona non grata" in a new Iran as well..
Example:
Lebanon has recently formally recognized Syria's "right" to continue it's fight against Israel..
Lebanon still accepts arms shipments via Syria from Iran, which are being distributed and implemented by Hezbullah, which controls most of the Lebanese border areas with Israel...
Lebanon, in fact, still accepts it's own role in ridding the "Holy Land" of Jews, driving every last one into the sea...
A change in the power structure may have more to do with changing the power structure, and less to do with lofty ideals of living in "brotherhood" and peace with one's ancestral enemies..
More to do with DVD's, Ipods, and Bluejeans than ending research into Atomic Weapons research..
We all have hopes that a change in Iran will lead to better things, but one must also consider the area, culture, religion, and political situation in the Middle East..
Do not raise your hopes too high..
One big mistake.
Iranians are Persians who dislike Arabs and therefore natural allies of Israel to confront Arab aggression. Pre-1979 they were great allies and in the future democratic government there will likely be an alliance.
Lebanon is an Arab country.
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Iran in Pictures
http://www.bia2.com/wallpaper-iran.php
http://www.iran.color.nu/
http://www.bia2.com/wallpaper-food.php
http://www.bia2.com/cam.php
Israel and the Arabs: Iran, the Palestinians and the [Persian] Gulf
John K. Cooley
From Foreign Affairs, Summer 1979
Summary: In February 1979, Palestine Liberation Organization chairman Yassir Arafat, arch-foe of the Israeli rulers, was welcomed to Tehran by the Iranian revolutionaries as the first foreign "head of state" to visit them. The historical irony was manifest: Arafat was treated as a hero in the same land that had supplied much of Israel's oil; the country where Israelis had participated in training the SAVAK, the Shah's secret police; and where both Israeli and Iranian pilots had trained on U.S.-supplied Phantom F-4 fighter-bombers. Arafat announced that the Ayatollah Khomeini has assured him that Iran's revolution would be incomplete until the Palestinians won theirs. Within weeks, the PLO had installed a mission in the former Israeli embassy in Tehran, as well as in Ahwaz and Khorramshahr, in the heart of the Iranian oil province, selecting as its Tehran representative Hani al-Hassan, of al-Fatah's conservative "Muslim" wing, in a move obviously designed to appeal to the Ayatollah.
John K. Cooley, currently Pentagon Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor, served as that paper's Middle East Correspondent from 1965 to 1978. He is the author of Green March, Black September: The Story of the Palestinian Arabs.
In February 1979, Palestine Liberation Organization chairman Yassir Arafat, arch-foe of the Israeli rulers, was welcomed to Tehran by the Iranian revolutionaries as the first foreign "head of state" to visit them. The historical irony was manifest: Arafat was treated as a hero in the same land that had supplied much of Israel's oil; the country where Israelis had participated in training the SAVAK, the Shah's secret police; and where both Israeli and Iranian pilots had trained on U.S.-supplied Phantom F-4 fighter-bombers. Arafat announced that the Ayatollah Khomeini has assured him that Iran's revolution would be incomplete until the Palestinians won theirs. Within weeks, the PLO had installed a mission in the former Israeli embassy in Tehran, as well as in Ahwaz and Khorramshahr, in the heart of the Iranian oil province, selecting as its Tehran representative Hani al-Hassan, of al-Fatah's conservative "Muslim" wing, in a move obviously designed to appeal to the Ayatollah.
The PLO is thus now positioned near the heart of the industrial West's main oil reservoir in Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf states. And PLO radicals now see themselves closer to realizing Arafat's implied promise after the Camp David conference in September 1978-in response to Zbigniew Brzezinski's earlier phrase, "Bye-bye, PLO"-to threaten the whole U.S. position in the Middle East, a threat repeated in more explicit forms following the signing of the Egypt-Israel peace treaty in Washington, March 26, 1979.
Actually, Iran under the Shah had never been remote from the Palestine question. While keeping a close and special relationship with Israel and supplying it with oil, the Shah had also given at least lip service and diplomatic support to the Palestinian cause. For all his myopia and misjudgment at home, and his delusions of building a new Persian empire abroad based on the armed might he purchased from the United States, the Shah was shrewd enough to recognize that the Palestine question was the heart of the matter in the Middle East. Once, in an interview with this writer, the Shah used almost the exact words about the PLO spoken by Israeli Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan on February 13, 1979: the PLO "is not a state, but we cannot deny their position or their value in the conflict." The Shah believed that, to reach a peace settlement, "the civilian part, the refugees" would have to be taken into account, "not just the terrorists or the terrorist organization." The Shah in 1967 and 1968, when Ardeshir Zahedi was Iranian Foreign Minister, invited some al-Fatah representatives to Tehran. He even paid small subsidies to the PLO, at a time when the hospitality of most Arab governments toward the PLO was uncertain at best, and consistently ordered Iranian representatives in the United Nations to vote with the Arabs.
Despite this, the PLO leaders had marked the Shah as Israel's strategic ally; they consider his fall to be a major victory for the Palestinian cause. The Shah's regime and the American presence in Iran, which entailed major support to the same ...
http://www.foreignaffairs.org/19790601faessay9926/john-k-cooley/israel-and-the-arabs-iran-the-palestinians-and-the-gulf.html
I see the future of Iran as "Unsure".. at best..
Why?
1 The world is a very small interconneted place, and getting more so every day.
2 This part of the world is a sinkhole dictatorships, oppression, poverty, terrorism.
3 We can no longer allow this situation to continue.
Ah the 'paleo-cons'. You people just don't 'get it', do you?
Read lots of Pat Buchanan lately?
This is just in
4 more IRGC officers were killed today afternoon in Western Azerbaijan province in an armed struggle with local people.
BBC Persian Service and Other major Persian news websites confirm the above news.
In another development today, Judge Mortezavi's agents raided Ganji's apartment and beat his wife and children.
They took his computer and notes and accuse his family of being spies of the United States.
To read today’s thread click here.
Join Us At Today's Iranian Alert Thread – The Most Underreported Story Of The Year!
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