Iranian Alert -- October 3, 2003 -- IRAN LIVE THREAD PING LIST

Authorities Urged to Give Medical Care to Imprisoned Journalist Mohsen Sazgara

October 03, 2003
Reporters Without Borders
RSF

Reporters Without Borders called today on the Iranian authorities to give immediate news and guarantees about the state of health of imprisoned journalist Mohsen Sazgara, a prominent reformist who has heart problems and has been very weakened by a hunger-strike staged since he was jailed on 15 June.

Since 14 August, his family has not had word of him and not been able to see him in prison. He was transferred on 2 October from Teheran's Evin prison to Baghiatollah Hospital, where Canadian-Iranian journalist died in July after being beaten at Evin.

"We demand that Sazgara's family doctor be allowed to see him," said the press freedom organisation's secretary-general, Robert Ménard. "His life must not be endangered in any way, either health-wise, which would suit some people, or by being beaten, which is not unusual at Evin prison, as the attacks on Kazemi there have shown.

"We also call on the European Commission to press the authorities for an inspection of the country's prisons," he said.

Sazgara, one of the founders of Iran's reformist press, published the daily papers Jameh, Neshat and Tous, which have all been suspended, and is the founder of the Internet website www.alliran.net, which was closed after his arrest.

An outspoken political commentator, he wrote that "the past five years have shown that the country's religious rulers are neither reformable nor effective." He also called the Guide of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, "dictatorial." He was charged with undermining state security, insulting the Guide and making propaganda against the state, and jailed for a year on 27 September.

Sazgara is a thorn in the side of the predators of press freedom, who fear that once he gets out of jail he will reveal details of his conditions of detention and the practices of officials inside Evin prison. . Several journalists currently in jail are under the supervision of hardline Teheran prosecutor Said Mortazavi and the Guardians of the Revolution and are being held in the same section of the prison where Kazemi was beaten. With 17 journalists in jail, Iran is the biggest prison for journalists in the Middle East.

http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=8152

Authorities Urged to Give Medical Care to Imprisoned Journalist Mohsen Sazgara

October 03, 2003
Reporters Without Borders
RSF

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/994288/posts?page=21#21

AL QAEDA'S NEW COURSE

By AMIR TAHERI

October 3, 2003 -- STILL smarting from the blows it has received in the past two years, the Islamist terror movement is debating a new strategy. Conducted in Islamist circles in Pakistan, the Middle East and Europe, and echoed in numerous Web sites and newssheets, the debate centers on a key question: Which should be our priority target - the United States and its Western allies, or the fragile Muslim states where we could come to power in a reasonable time frame?
Some argue that the 9/11 attack against the United States was "premature." They insist that the Islamist movement should have first seized power in several Muslim countries and dotted itself with nuclear weapons before taking on America, which is regarded as "the last champion of unbelief in the world."

Supporters of that view cite the position the Prophet took in the last year of his life, when he led a large Muslim army against the Byzantine Empire. On reaching the border between Arabia and Byzantium, the Prophet halted his army to have a good look at the forces of Emperor Heraclius (Hirqil in Arabic).

The Prophet was impressed: He saw that the Byzantine army would be no pushover. He ordered his own host to march back home without a single engagement. Although criticized by some Arab commanders at the time, the Prophet's decision to retreat was quickly endorsed by God Himself through a message relayed by Archangel Gabriel.

The lesson was that Muslims should not become involved in suicidal operations against a far stronger foe.

That was the position that Abdallah Azzam, the Palestinian ideologist of al Qaeda, took in the autumn of 1989. The question then was whether the Islamist movement, having helped drive out the Red Army from Afghanistan, should immediately move to attack the United States, whose support had been crucial for the Soviet defeat.

Azzam delivered his answer in a sermon in Peshawar, Pakistan. It was simple: The movement must consolidate its position in Afghanistan, seize control of Pakistan, capture the Arabian Peninsula and, having created a solid power base, liberate Kashmir and then-Soviet-held Central Asia before attacking the United States.

A few days after that sermon, Azzam was killed in a car bomb attack. At the time, the murder was blamed on Ayman al-Zawahiri, an Egyptian who later became al Qaeda's No. 2.

The two men had fought an ideological duel for months. Al-Zawahiri had accused Azzam of "localism," and dismissed the strategy of focusing on the region as "cat's p-ss politics." The Egyptian argued that the time had come for a frontal attack against the United States, that driving the Americans back into their neck of the woods would lead to the domino-like collapse of those Muslim states backed by Washington.

The al-Zawahiri-Azzam ideological duel was arbitrated by Osama bin Laden, a Saudi millionaire through whom funds for the movement were channeled from the oil-rich Arab states. Days after bin Laden had decided that al-Zawahiri was right, Azzam was dead.

Having won the argument, al-Zawahiri tested it with two attacks inside America, first in 1993, against the World Trade Center in New York, and then in September 2001.

Last week, however, al-Zawahiri, making an ideological U-turn, unveiled a new strategy that sounds like a rehash of that envisaged by Azzam.

In a taped message, played in Islamist cells all over the world and broadcast in part by two Arab satellite-TV channels, the Egyptian (believed to be hiding either in Pakistan or in Iran) presents the strategy in three segments.

* First, he calls on "brothers in Jihad" to try to seize power in Muslim countries where the present regimes are regarded as weak. He singles out Pakistan as "ripe for liberation."

Al-Zawahiri's analysis is based on the assumption that the pro-Jihad elements in the Pakistani army and secret services would help the radicals win power in Islamabad. As the only Muslim country with an acknowledged nuclear arsenal, Pakistan could put the Jihadists in a new league.

* The second segment of al-Zawahiri's strategy is focused on what he calls "lands of war," meaning Afghanistan and Iraq. There, he envisages years, if not decades, of war pitting the United States against Jihadists. The aim is to weaken America in preparation for its eventual fall.

Reading between the lines, it is clear that al-Zawahiri hopes that a future U.S. administration would get tired of involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan and withdraw from both. And if and when that happens, the only organized force capable of seizing power in Baghdad and Kabul would be the Jihadists.

* The strategy's third segment focuses on what al-Zawahiri regards as unstable Muslim countries, including Indonesia, Yemen and Somalia. All three suffer from tribal, ethnic and sectarian feuds dating back centuries - feuds that Islamists could exploit to weaken the established order before administering the coup de grace.

There are two omissions in al-Zawahiri's worldview.

The first is his native Egypt - where the Jihadist movement appears to have suffered its first major political defeat, followed by mass defections. Virtually the whole of the Gamaa-Islamiyah (Islamic Society) leadership has publicly renounced violence in the past year or so.

The dominant theme in the Egyptian Islamist movement now is "the re-Islamicization of society through preaching and example" rather than armed action. It may well be that the ideological swamps in which terrorists thrived have been drained, at least for the time being.

Al-Zawahiri also omits the oil-rich Arab states of the Persian Gulf. This may be because al-Zawahiri does not want to frighten the golden goose. With the bulk of Jihad funds coming from those states, al-Zawahiri may have decided it unwise to target them publicly. There is also the fact that, since 2001, the Jihadists have suffered many defections in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates.

Al-Zawahiri's new strategy does not mean that there will be no terror attacks in America or Western Europe. The global Islamist movement consists of numerous groups with independent sources of finance and strategies. They were never totally controlled by al Qaeda and are less so today if only because al-Zawahiri and his gang are forced to spend the bulk of their energies avoiding capture.

Al Zawahiri's conversion to the doctrine of his dead rival may have come too late. His strategy ignores one important fact: What happened on 9/11 changed the parameters of global politics.E-mail:

amirtaheri@benadorassociates.com

http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/7130.htm

AL QAEDA'S NEW COURSE

By AMIR TAHERI

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/994288/posts?page=23#23

Iran makes arrests over UK embassy shootings - TV

Reuters
03 Oct 2003 18:30:54 GMT

TEHRAN, Oct 3 (Reuters) - Iran has made arrests in connection with three drive-by shootings directed at the British embassy in Tehran, state television reported on Friday.

"According to the Intelligence Ministry the attackers of the British embassy have been identified and arrested," television reported.

British embassy staff and witnesses said the September attacks -- two against the embassy and one against the residential compound -- were carried out by two men on a motorbike. No-one was hurt.

The television did not say how many arrests had been made or gave any further details.

At the time of the shootings, tension had been rising between Tehran and London over Britain's arrest, at Argentina's request, of a former Iranian diplomat in connection with the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community centre in Buenos Aires which killed 85 people.

Iran was outraged by the arrest in August of Hadi Soleimanpour who was Iran's ambassador to Argentina at the time of the bombing. (Writing by Christian Oliver; editing by Steve Pagani; Tehran newsroom +98 21 850 0085))

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/OLI364667.htm

UN Experts Say They Can't Be Fooled in Iran Probe

Reuters
Fri October 3, 2003 11:12 AM ET
By Louis Charbonneau

VIENNA (Reuters) - U.N. nuclear experts can find the smallest needle in the biggest of haystacks when hunting for clues of secret weapons programs in Iran or other countries where U.N. inspectors are called on to probe and poke around.

On Friday, a team of technical experts from the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) arrived for a month of intense inspections ahead of Iran's October 31 deadline to prove it has no secret atomic bomb program as Washington alleges.

If a country has a secret weapons program, it naturally tries to cover its tracks, as was the case in pre-1991 Iraq, before the IAEA discovered and dismantled its bomb program.

But an A-bomb maker still needs 20-30 kg of arms-grade uranium or plutonium to build a bomb. This leaves a highly detectable trail, says the IAEA, as it can detect atomic particles down to a single picogram -- one trillionth of a gram.

"If you handle weapons-grade materials, trace amounts get out," said Therese Renis, a technical specialist at the IAEA.

She compared the agency's ability to find nuclear traces to finding one among thousands of marbles spread across a square mile in the center of the Austrian capital.

Some of the technology IAEA inspectors use to find sub-microscopic traces of fissile uranium and plutonium appears deceptively simple at first glance. The most important tool is a cotton swab, just 4x4 inch, used for environmental sampling.

Inspectors are especially interested in swiping areas around ventilation systems, light fixtures and the tops of shelves, said David Donohue, head of the IAEA's Clean Laboratory Unit.

"Wherever people don't usually dust," he explained.

CONTAMINATION EXPLANATION IN VOGUE

Such inspections have already yielded suspicious results in Iran -- traces of arms-grade highly-enriched uranium at two nuclear sites. This has fueled suspicions that Tehran has been secretly purifying uranium for use in a bomb, which Iran denies.

The Iranians say the uranium came from contaminated machinery purchased abroad. But this explanation has met with widespread skepticism.

IAEA experts say Iran is not the first country to claim that the discovery of arms-grade material is due to contamination.

"It's in vogue," Renis said about the contamination explanation. "It used to be: 'your results are bad'."

Asked how many contamination claims have been confirmed, Renis said: "More have been disproved than proved."

After arriving at the IAEA labs in Seibersdorf, Austria -- a half-hour from Vienna -- the samples taken at nuclear facilities in Iran or elsewhere are analyzed by several machines which detect and identify the tiniest particles on the cotton swabs.

Great care is taken to prevent contamination of the swabs before and after they have been used to swipe a location. Six identical swipes are taken at each site and each is double-bagged and sealed to prevent cross-contamination.

Of the six swipes, several are analyzed, several archived and several sent anonymously to some of the IAEA's network of 14 labs around the world to ensure consistency.

If IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei decides to inform the agency's governing board about a finding by his inspectors -- as happened with the discoveries in Iran -- the results have been checked so many times that they are virtually unassailable.

"We have to have a high degree of confidence in our data to go that far," said senior IAEA safeguards analyst, Diane Fischer. "We want strong, conclusive evidence."

http://reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=3554611

Iran's 'New Terms' for Inspections

October 03, 2003
BBC News
BBCi

A senior Iranian cleric has set out four new conditions for allowing the United Nations to make snap inspections of the country's nuclear facilities.

Former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani said they included from protecting Iranian security to continuing civilian nuclear projects.

Mr Rafssanjani said his country had the right to the same inspection conditions as those demanded by the United States.

Officials from the UN's nuclear watchdog are in Tehran to persuade Iran to accept tougher inspections.

The UN has given Iran until 31 October to convince it that it is not seeking to produce nuclear weapons.

'Hypocritical West'

Mr Rafsanjani, a leading cleric in the Islamic state, referred to the new conditions in a sermon at Friday prayers at Tehran University which was broadcast live on television.

The four conditions set out were:

That Iranian national security is not jeopardised

That Islamic values and holy sites are not affected

That military secrets unconnected with the nuclear programme are not disclosed

That other states "fulfil" their duty to assist Iran with its civilian nuclear programme

"Our conditions... are the same as those the Americans want," Mr Rafsanjani said.

The US has signed, but not ratified, an international agreement permitting snap inspections of nuclear sites - the Additional Protocol to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

Mr Rafsanjani said that pressure on Iran to prove it had no nuclear weapons ambitions was a "scandal".

"The hypocritical policy of the Americans and Westerners has no justification," he said.

It is unclear of the new conditions have the official backing of the Iranian leadership which has been negotiating with a team from the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) since Thursday.

Indignation

If Iran fails to convince the IAEA by the end of October that it is not seeking to produce nuclear weapons, the issue could be referred to the UN Security Council, and Iran could face sanctions for breaching the NPT.

The BBC's Jim Muir reports that the 31 October deadline has stirred anger in Iran, which has been giving out mixed signals about how far it will co-operate.

The IAEA has already given Iran a detailed programme and timetable for the work it wants its inspectors to do during the four remaining weeks.

The question is whether Iran will go along with that programme and answer the many questions the agency is also asking, such as how traces of highly-enriched weapons-grade uranium came to be found at two Iranian facilities.

Iran's ambassador to the IAEA, Ali-Akbar Salehi, told the BBC that Iran would answer such questions - handing over, for example, lists of the imported components on which it says the contamination was brought in from outside the country.

Mr Salehi said Iran would also co-operate in allowing further inspections and the taking of more samples.

But Iranian officials have made it clear that it is not going to be a one-way street.

North Korean way?

They want practical recognition of Iran's right to produce peaceful nuclear energy and to process their own uranium for fuel - something the IAEA has asked them to stop doing, at least for the time being.

Iran also wants assurances that if it signs an additional protocol that would allow tougher inspections, there would be limits to how intrusive they would be - and also that signing that protocol would not spur the Americans to make more demands.

This has emerged as a substantial middle ground here, after several weeks of widely-divergent views and arguments behind the scenes.

Some hardliners have been arguing that Iran should scrap its NPT commitments altogether and go the way of North Korea.

That is certainly not the official position, though it cannot be ruled out if the talks go badly wrong.

One problem, our correspondent says, could be that the Iranians want to negotiate on many points, while the IAEA officials are bound by the resolution passed by the agency's board of governors last month and have little room for manoeuvre.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3157332.stm

Thank you for your daily thread, DoctorZ. Thanks for the ping, PYW. I too often miss early morning pings.

Pinging the list to DoctorZin's interesting posts re. shifts in power in the ME. #23, Al Qaeda dreaming of a future President who's a pushover. #4, (back in the real world) two rival Shiite leaders are working to influence the future of Iraq:

The re-emergence of Najaf as a center of “Ijtihad” is the best news for Shiism in more than half a century. Competition between Najaf and Qom could enrich Shiite theology and benefit both centers. This is one duel that should be welcome, because it is one of ideas.

Thanks, Tonkin!

If you want on or off my Pro-Coalition ping list, please Freepmail me. Warning: it is a high volume ping list on good days. (Most days are good days).

Thanks for ping. I had no idea there was a thread with all this info on it about Iran happenings.

It's a great daily thread. I've been neglectful. Iraq and Iran have much in common and DoctorZ's info isn't found at the DoD sites.

Shirazi uses words such as “must” and “obligatory”. This means that the clergy should exercise authority over society, and that their edicts should leave no room for individual choice and judgment.

Sistani uses such words as “recommended” or “preferable”. He casts the clergy into the role of “advisors” and “ethical counselors” of society. The ultimate decision is made by the individual on the basis of reason, which is the most precious gift from God to man.

Beneath censorship and oppression, Iranis have had enough of the former, and are ready to embark upon the latter--Boucher and the rest of the Saudi whores to the contrary notwithstanding.

Thank you for your work on these threads Dr. Z. Lots of good information here, always.

Prairie

Manji's experience confirms the fascist nature of Islamism.

And of course she is correct that the cause of oppression of Muslims is the dictatorship of the mullahs, not the hated Americans or Jews or anyone or anything else.

This woman is the most dangerous threat to that dictatorship, and thus must be targeted for assassination by their craven terrorist murderers.

Your NO23 deserves it's own thread Doc.

Bump!

"...al-Zawahiri hopes that a future U.S. administration would get tired of involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan and withdraw from both. And if and when that happens, the only organized force capable of seizing power in Baghdad and Kabul would be the Jihadists."

Absolutely. That's why the Democratic calls for leaving Iraq before the country is stabilized, are so blind, naive and dangerous. Knowing the Jihadists would move right in, the result (among others) would be our fallen soldiers having died in vain.

An outspoken political commentator, he wrote that "the past five years have shown that the country's religious rulers are neither reformable nor effective."

Nor are they humane--not that Boucher and the other douche bags at State give a whit.

Memo to President Bush: Do the Augean Stables bit at State--and Give Medical Care to Imprisoned Journalist Mohsen Sazgara.

What a pathetic admission of the unsaleability of extremist Islam--that it must be spread at the point of a gun.

These pygmys aren't polling well in Iraq--or Iran--or anywhere.

Saturday, 4 October, 2003, 04:01 GMT 05:01 UK

Embassy attack arrests welcomed

BBC News

The arrests of a number of people suspected of shooting at British embassy buildings in Iran has been welcomed by the Foreign Office.
Nobody was hurt in last month's attacks in Tehran, but the embassy was closed to the public and many non-essential staff were sent home.

"We welcome this and look forward to further developments," a UK government spokesman said following the arrests.

Officials in Iran have not said how many people were held, or who they are.

Criminal offences?

A brief announcement from the Iranian intelligence ministry said only that those responsible for carrying out the attacks had been identified and arrested.

It said more information would be made available later.

It was not known whether any of those arrested had been charged with criminal offences.

Three shooting attacks were carried out in less than two weeks in September.

Two were at the embassy's main compound in the city centre and one at the residential compound further north.

There were no injuries, but in the first attack bullets pierced the window of the main embassy office building, when many of the staff were there.

Since then the embassy has been closed to the Iranian public and offering just a limited visa service.

More than half of its UK based staff have left.

Lengthy investigation

No group has claimed responsibility for any of the attacks, which Iranian officials had earlier described as illogical and unacceptable.

The shootings came amid tension between London and Tehran over the arrest in the UK of a former Iranian diplomat.

The diplomat, Hade Soleimanpour, was detained last month in connection with the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community centre in Argentina in which 85 people died.

Mr Soleimanpour was Iran's ambassador to Argentina at the time of the bombing. He denies any involvement in it.

An Argentine judge issued an arrest warrant for him following a lengthy investigation.

He is currently free on bail while a London court considers Argentina's extradition request.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3162980.stm

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