Iranian Alert -- September 27, 2003 -- IRAN LIVE THREAD PING LIST

The regime is working hard to keep the news about the protest movment in Iran from being reported.

From jamming satellite broadcasts, to prohibiting news reporters from covering any demonstrations to shutting down all cell phones and even hiring foreign security to control the population, the regime is doing everything in its power to keep the popular movement from expressing its demand for an end of the regime.

These efforts by the regime, while successful in the short term, do not resolve the fundamental reasons why this regime is crumbling from within.

Iran is a country ready for a regime change. 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.

Please continue to join us here, post your news stories and comments to this thread.

Iranian agents flood into Iraq posing as pilgrims and traders
By Philip Sherwell in Najaf and Jessica Berry
(Filed: 28/09/2003)

Iran has dispatched hundreds of agents posing as pilgrims and traders to Iraq to foment unrest in the holy cities of Najaf and Kerbala, and the lawless frontier areas.

Teheran's hardline regime has also allowed extremist fighters from Ansar al-Islam, a terror faction with close links to al-Qa'eda, to cross back into Iraq from its territory to join the anti-American resistance.

The Pentagon believes that Iran is building a bridgehead of activists inside Iraq, ready to destabilise the country if that serves its future interests. So concerned is the coalition about Teheran's activities that it is recruiting former agents from the Iranian section of Saddam Hussein's notorious mukhabarat (intelligence) to help to counter Iran's influence in the predominantly Shia south and east of Iraq.

"They are provoking sectarian divisions, inciting people against the Americans and trying to foment conflict and anarchy," said Abdulaziz al-Kubaisi, a former Iraqi major who was jailed by Saddam and is now a senior official in the Iraqi National Congress.

"The last thing that certain elements in the regime want is to see a stable democratic and pluralistic Iraq next door, so they are trying to export trouble here," said a leading official in another Iraqi party.

Although Iran's president is a political moderate, true power remains in the hands of the fundamentalist clergy. At a time when Iran is facing domestic discontent over the slow progress of democratic reform and mounting international pressure over its nuclear programme, hardline elements believe that instability in Iraq will distract attention from the regime's problems.

The National Council of Resistance in Iran, an opposition group, claims that some translators working for the United States forces are reporting back to Teheran. It also says that its informants within the regime have supplied details of senior Iranian intelligence commanders who are operating inside Iraq.

Paul Bremer, the American head of the Coalition Provisional Authority, has already accused Iran of "meddling" in Iraq's internal affairs and backing some attacks on American forces.

On Friday, he confirmed that several hundred members of Ansar, which set up a Taliban-style mini-state in Kurdish-controlled territory in 2001, had re-entered Iraq. "They are a very dangerous group," he said in Washington. "The flow of terrorists into Iraq is the biggest obstacle to the reconstruction of the country."

Mr Bremer revealed that US forces are holding 19 al-Qaeda suspects among 248 non-Iraqi fighters captured in Iraq. Most came from Syria, but the second largest group were Iranians.

At the start of the war to topple Saddam, Kurdish militia and US special forces had crushed Ansar's 750-strong force of Arabs, Pakistanis, Chechens and Kurds. About 250 Ansar fighters were killed and another 100 captured, but Iran's military turned a blind eye as the rest escaped across the mountainous border.

Most have returned to the violent flashpoints west and north of Baghdad, according to US military officials, Kurdish political leaders and former mukhabarat officers.

Ansar adheres to the same extremist Sunni Muslim interpretation of Islam as al-Qa'eda. Although Iran follows the alternative Shia version of Islam, its hardline military rulers have allowed Ansar to regroup and return to Iraq because they share its anti-American cause.

Iran has also taken advantage of its largely unpoliced border with Iraq - a 210-mile stretch of which was yesterday turned over to an American-trained police force by the US Army - to deploy agents who are building networks of spies.

One Iraqi of ethnic Iranian origin, who returned to Najaf after 23 years in Iran and who has contacts with Teheran's intelligence services, told The Telegraph that he has seen many Iranian agents mingling with visitors to the city.

Last week, many of the visiting pilgrims were speaking Farsi (Persian). Long-banned pictures of Ayatollah Khomeini, the leader of the Islamic revolution in Iran in 1979, are once again on sale in the markets of the town where he spent part of his early exile.

The returning Iraqi exile said that several agents from the political wing of the Revolutionary Guards had been deployed to Najaf, some operating within the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, one of the "Big Five" political parties.

Iran denies the allegations of interference or sending agents to Iraq, saying that it has already recognised the Governing Council (the US-installed Shia-dominated transitional authority).

The Iranian opposition, however, says that the Quds force of the regime's Revolutionary Guards, which specialises in foreign operations, commands the loyalty of key commanders within the Badr Brigade, the Iranian-trained militia army of the SCIRI.

• American troops uncovered a large weapons cache yesterday at a farm near Saddam's birthplace, Tikrit, including 23 Russian-made surface-to-air missiles and a huge quantity of explosives used in the homemade bombs that have killed numerous American soldiers in the area.

A tip led troops to the cache, buried in a river bank near the village of Uja. It included 1,000lb of plastic explosives, four rocket-propelled grenade launchers and 115 rockets, a mortar and 40 mortar rounds, 1,300 blasting caps and 423 hand grenades.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/09/28/wirq28.xml&sSheet=/portal/2003/09/28/ixportal.html

Hard-liners Defy UN Nuclear Deadline

September 27, 2003
The Associated Press
The Globe and Mail

Tehran — Iran's controversial nuclear program is the latest battleground for the country's fierce political foes — the powerful, yet unelected hard-liners and the reformists who back Iran's popularly elected President.

Hard-line clerics, who have railed against the U.S.-led assault on Iran's atomic agenda, want Iran to reject an Oct. 31 UN deadline to prove its nuclear program is peaceful. They are also calling for Iran to withdraw from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

Reformists are pressing for Tehran to comply with international demands and allow UN inspectors unrestricted access of any site they wished to visit in Iran.

So far, Iran has given only vague answers on whether it will meet the deadline to sign a protocol allowing the inspections. If it doesn't do so, it would mean a further blow to reformist President Mohammed Khatami's grip on power and could cause even more international isolation for Iran.

Concerns that Iran may be developing a nuclear weapon have brought a rare alignment between the United States, Europe and Russia — which have long differed sharply on how to deal with Iran's Islamic regime.

On Saturday, U.S. President George W. Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin — whose country has been the main foreign assistance to Iran's nuclear program — jointly called on Tehran to show openness.

A top reformist lawmaker in Iran, Mohsen Mirdamadi, warned in remarks published Saturday that delaying on the nuclear issue was forging international consensus against Iran.

“I think our policy of procrastination over the nuclear issue is not correct,” said Mirdamadi, who heads the National Security and Foreign Policy Committee at Iran's parliament.

“Our behaviour has effectively brought Europe and the United States, which have had different positions, closer together. We are gradually creating an unprecedented global consensus against ourselves,” he told the reformist daily Yas-e-Nou. Mr. Mirdamadi is a close Khatami ally and a leader of the Islamic Iran Participation Front, Iran's largest reformist political party.

But a hard-liner close to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the final say on all state matters, insisted, “We should protect our dignity and sovereignty and not give in to coercive diplomacy.”

Hossein Shariatmadari, who manages the hard-line daily Kayhan, said Iran could not be forced to accept the NPT and should withdraw from it altogether. He also said Iran should ignore the Oct. 31 deadline and restrict access to its nuclear facilities.

“The deadline is illegal and a threat to our national sovereignty,” Shariatmadari told Associated Press on Saturday. “It's a plan, similar to the U.S. plan against Iraq, seeking the fall of the Islamic establishment in Iran.”

Iran says its nuclear program aims to produce electricity, not weapons. The United States and other Western countries, accusing Iran of seeking to develop weapons, have been pushing the UN's nuclear agency, the International Atomic Energy Agency, to find Iran in noncompliance with the NPT.

Saber Zaeimian, Iran's Atomic Energy Organization spokesman, told state-run radio Saturday that IAEA inspectors are expected to arrive in Tehran on Thursday to continue efforts to clear up questions into Iran's nuclear program.

The trip, initially scheduled for Monday, was postponed on Friday upon a request from Iranian authorities, an IAEA has said.

Iranian hard-liners appear to be seeking public support for the opposition to the U.S.-led campaign.

The hard-line elite Revolutionary Guards have displayed several Iranian-made missiles in public squares in Tehran in an apparent show of military strength and opposition to international pressure.

Political analyst Saeid Leylaz said if Iran accepts the additional NPT protocol, it will stop the EU from siding with Washington's policy of isolating Iran.

“Iran's policy of procrastination is meant to win concessions but it didn't work,” he added. “... At the end, I believe logic will prevail and Iran will sign before the deadline expires.”

http://www.globeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20030927.wiran0927/BNStory/International/

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