Iranian Alert -- November 4, 2003 -- IRAN LIVE THREAD PING LIST

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.” But 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. Starting June 10th of this year, Iranians have begun taking to the streets to express their desire for a regime change. Most want to replace the regime with a secular democracy. Many even want the US to over throw their government.

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.

PS I have a daily ping list and a breaking news ping list. If you would like to receive alerts to these stories please let me know which list you would like to join.

Iran's economic strengths come back into focus

AMEinfofn
Monday, November 03 - 2003 at 19:01

Gill James and Daniel Hanna

Iran's agreement with the UN Nuclear Watchdog, the IAEA, was an important positive step. It removed a potential obstacle to foreign investment and should also allow attention to shift from politics to economics, and Iran's impressive recent growth performance. Daniel Hanna and Gill James examine an economy that is on track to grow by 6% in 2003.

Iran is expected this week to confirm when it will sign the Additional Protocol of the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty. This marks a remarkable turnaround from a month ago where it seemed that Iran could ignore an October 31st deadline imposed by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and be subject to UN economic and political sanctions. Iran's disclosure of documents last week detailing its nuclear programme has lifted a major political risk that had been overhanging the country.

Uncertainties remain. Iran's declaration needs to be verified by the IAEA as being comprehensive and comments over the weekend highlight that some senior Iranian officials remain uncomfortable with some of the IAEA's demands. Nonetheless the progress has been positive and the agreement with the IAEA is an important step forward. It also potentially removes a major obstacle to foreign investment. Several large deals, particularly in the oil and gas sector, had been postponed and these should now be revived. Indeed a positive response from the IAEA at its next board meeting on November 20th would allow attention to shift to Iran's economic position, rather than its political one, and the strong performance of the economy in 2003.

The non-oil sector is booming and the dominant oil sector (it accounts for close to 50% of government revenues and 80% of export earnings) is benefiting from the twin effects of increased output and high international crude oil prices. We now expect real GDP growth to reach around 6% in the current Iranian year ending March 2004. Although below the 6.8% growth reported by Bank Markazi for the year ended March 2003, this is well above recent trend growth.

Non-oil sector activity is once again driving the economy. Iran's non-oil sector has benefited tremendously from the gradual easing in import restrictions (imposed to protect foreign exchange reserves and allow Iran to meet external debt obligations in the 1990s) that has accompanied the steady build up in foreign exchange reserves since 2000. Combined with exceptionally low interest rates and increased liquidity, industrial and manufacturing activity has soared. Services are also booming. The Tehran stock exchange is on a roll. Share prices have rocketed and market capitalisation has gone through the roof. The outlook for non-oil sector activity remains positive with non-oil GDP expected to build on last year's strong performance (7.5% in the year ended March 2003). There are suggestions that some import restrictions may be re-imposed if oil revenues slump, but if so they will be limited.

Currently the near term outlook for oil is reasonably encouraging. Supply disruptions and low inventory levels suggest prices will remain firm through the northern-hemisphere winter months. The big test is likely to be Q2 2004, when seasonally oil demand traditionally softens. Oil market fundamentals imply that OPEC members, including Iran, will need to cut production to defend the cartel's target price band. Iranian crude output has been running at an average 3.7mn barrels a day (mbd) so far this year, 7.5% up on average output in 2002.

Annual growth has averaged 6% since 1999 but further economic reforms are needed if Iran's economy is to reach its full potential. Efforts to diversify the economy away from oil and gas need to be accelerated, trade liberalisation enhanced and the role of the state in the economy scaled back. The IAEA's approval on November 20th would lift a major geopolitical risk surrounding Iran and should help support the reform process.

Gill James is Standard Chartered's Chief Economist for the Middle East and South Asia. Daniel Hanna is the Regional Economist for the Middle East.

Iran Agents Free Most of Cleric's Aides
By ALI AKBAR DAREINI
ASSOCIATED PRESS

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - Iranian security agents freed all but one of the close aides to Iran's most senior dissident cleric - including two of his sons - but sealed off a building that he planned to use as a seminary, one of the cleric's son said Tuesday.

Ahmad Montazeri, Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri's son, said that he, his brother Saeed, and several others were freed Monday evening. However, Reza Ziaei, one of Montazeri's close aides, was blindfolded, handcuffed and beaten during interrogation and his whereabouts remain unknown.

Ahmed Montazeri said he and his brother were not mistreated while in custody. He said they were questioned about the family's plans to turn a building next to their home into a seminary where the elder Montazeri would teach.

On Monday, Rabbani had said that security agents detained four people but Ahmad told The Associated Press Tuesday that two more aides and five construction workers were detained Monday but freed several hours later.

The elder Montazeri, 81, is one of a few grand ayatollahs, the most senior theologians of the Shiite Muslim faith. He enjoys a huge following in Qom and Isfahan, his birthplace, and many reformists see him as a charismatic leader who could bring profound democratic changes in Iran.

The elder Montazeri resumed teaching in September after spending five years under house arrest in Qom, a holy city 80 miles southwest of Tehran, for telling students that Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was incompetent to issue religious rulings.

Grand Ayatollah Montazeri had also accused ruling hard-line clerics of monopolizing power and ignoring Iranians' demands for democracy. Khamenei denounced him as a traitor and the mosque where he made the speech was closed.

"That mosque still remains closed, and we need facilities for the grand ayatollah to teach," Ahmad Montazeri said Tuesday. Hard-liners "don't want my father to have any facilities to teach, let alone engage in political activities."

He said security agents on the order of the Special Clergy Court, a body dealing with clerics, used welding machines to seal off the entrance to the building where the seminary was to have been located. He did not say whether the family would press ahead with plans to open a seminary.

The senior Montazeri had been the designated successor of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, founder of the 1979 Islamic revolution, until he fell out with Khomeini shortly before his 1989 death after complaining about powers wielded by unelected clerics.

In his first public speech in six years following the lifting of the house arrest order in September, Montazeri denounced Iran's theocratic establishment as undemocratic and urged it to allow the country's young people to choose their future.

http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/w-me/2003/nov/04/110404426.html

ElBaradei: Iran Didn't Comply with NPT Commitments
Tue November 4, 2003 06:11 AM ET

(Page 1 of 2)
MADRID (Reuters) - The head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog said Iran's declaration showed it had previously failed to comply with commitments under the global non-proliferation pact, a Spanish newspaper reported Tuesday.
"We have analyzed certain parts of the documents and they show that Iran failed to comply with some of its commitments under the (nuclear Non-Proliferation) Treaty," International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Mohamed ElBaradei said in an interview published in El Pais newspaper.

On Oct. 23, Iran gave the IAEA a declaration that it described as a complete and accurate history of its nuclear program, which Tehran insists is peaceful.

This declaration was delivered to the United Nations to meet an October 31 deadline set by the IAEA governing board for Iran to come clean about its nuclear program, which Washington says is a front for building an atomic bomb.

"I will give further information on this next week," ElBaradei said in the interview which took place Monday in New York.

Next week, diplomats in Vienna are expected to receive ElBaradei's latest report on IAEA inspections in Iran. This report will be the subject of discussion at the IAEA Board of Governors meeting on November 20.

Although the contents of Iran's declaration have been kept confidential, Iran's ambassador to the IAEA Ali Akbar Salehi said Tehran had been forced to be "discreet" about many of its nuclear activities due to decades of sanctions.

This was why it had repeatedly not informed the IAEA of many of its atomic activities, Salehi said.

IRAN'S FAILURES TO COMPLY ARE HISTORY

The United States has been pushing the 35-nation IAEA governing board to declare Iran in "non-compliance" with its Safeguards Agreement under the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

Such a finding would require the board to report Iran to the U.N. Security Council for possible sanctions. Diplomats have told Reuters that Washington has little support on the IAEA board and that Iran will likely escape censure by the council.

Furthermore, Iran says its failures to inform the IAEA of its activities are all in the past and that it has since declared all activities and facilities to the U.N. inspectors.

ElBaradei said there were "divisions" on the board about whether to inform the council about Iran's failures. He also made it clear the inspection process in Iran was far from over, indicating that a finding of non-compliance would be premature.
"There are still a lot of things to analyze," ElBaradei said. "I don't think we will have finished before the November 20 Board of Governors meeting."

ElBaradei said the investigation into the origin of traces of weapons-grade highly-enriched uranium found at two sites in Iran would take months to complete.

Iran says the traces came from contaminated machinery purchased abroad, an explanation that has met with skepticism among countries like the United States which suspect that Iran either bought or purified the uranium itself for use in a bomb.

"We have to identify the country of origin of the contamination, go to that country, take traces to verify if, in fact, the traces of enriched uranium are from contamination and not home-produced," ElBaradei said. "(We need) at least another couple of months, until the beginning of next year."

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=3749603&pageNumber=1

"Flag burning" Marks Iran-US Hostage Anniversary

November 04, 2003
AFP
IranMania

TEHRAN -- Some 10,000 Iranian hardliners gathered outside the former US embassy here Tuesday for the 24th anniversary of the storming of the compound, with the annual letting off of steam featuring the habitual chanting of "Death to America".

After being driven by specially-arranged buses to the city centre compound -- now a Revolutionary Guards base -- the crowd waved anti-US banners and chanted "Death to America", "Death to Britain" and "Death to the Zionists".

Other slogans included "Martyrdom is our dream, this is the response to our enemies". US and Israeli flags and effigies of Uncle Sam were also set ablaze in the festivities.

Flags were also laid out on the road so drivers could enjoy taking a spin over the stars and stripes.

On November 4, 1979, in the wake of Iran's Islamic revolutions, a group of Islamist students stormed the US embassy in Tehran and held its staff hostage there for 444 days. The crisis led to the suspension of diplomatic ties between Washington and Tehran.

http://www.iranmania.com/News/ArticleView/Default.asp?NewsCode=19360&NewsKind=Current%20Affairs

UN Rights "Rapporteur" in Iran For Key Probe

November 04, 2003
IranMania
AFP

TEHRAN -- A top United Nations human rights official began a week-long visit to Iran Tuesday to conduct a key probe focusing on press freedoms and freedom of expression, UN officials here said.

During his visit, UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Opinion and Expression Ambeyi Ligabo is lined up for talks with senior Iranian government officials and magistrates as well as members of the media and academics.

In a statement, the UN said he would be "gathering relevant information on, among other issues, discrimination and threats or use of violence and harassment directed at persons, including professionals in the field of information, seeking to exercise or to promote the exercise of the right to freedom of opinion and expression."

Ligabo had initially been due to visit the country in July, but Tehran postponed the trip in June at the height of anti-regime protests accompanied by arrests of journalists, student leaders and dissidents.

The intervening period has seen the spotlight focus on more on Iran's human rights record, following the death in custody of Canadian-Iranian photographer Zahra Kazemi and the Nobel Peace Prize win of women's rights activist and lawyer Shirin Ebadi.

During his visit, UN sources said Ligabo was expected to meet with Ebadi -- a woman loathed by Iranian hardliners for her defence of dissidents.

The French-based press rights watchdog Reporters Without Bordersurged Iranian authorities to use the visit to unconditionally free 11 jailed journalists and lift bans on a number of newspapers.

It also said the rapporteur should be permitted to meet the detained writers, especially those being held in solitary confinement

More than 100 Iranian newspapers have been shut down since 2000, amid a crackdown on the reformist press carried out by the hardline-controlled judiciary.

RSF has branded Iran "the biggest prison for journalists in the Middle East".

http://www.iranmania.com/News/ArticleView/Default.asp?NewsCode=19356&NewsKind=CurrentAffairs

Sharon Leaving Moscow with Russia's Sympathy

November 04, 2003
The Associated Press
The International Herald Tribune

MOSCOW -- Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon held a second day of meetings in Moscow Tuesday after raising concerns about Iran’s nuclear program and a Russian-backed U.N. resolution on a Mideast peace plan.

In a Kremlin meeting on Monday with President Vladimir Putin, Sharon failed to win any guarantees that Russia would meet his requests to drop a U.N. resolution on the ‘‘road map’’ plan or act against what Israelis say is a covert Iranian nuclear arms program.

Nor did he get any firm pledge from Putin that Russia would pressure Syria to rein in the radical Islamic Hezbollah group in Lebanon, a senior Israeli official said.

The official added that Hezbollah currently has 11,000 Syrian and Iranian-supplied missiles deployed in southern Lebanon with ranges of up to about 50 miles and the ability to hit many northern Israeli cities and towns.

On Tuesday morning, Sharon met Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov. He was due to meet Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov, then fly home Tuesday evening.

Israel sees the United Nations as a hostile body, skewed in favor of the Palestinians, and objects to Russia’s move to have the Security Council formally endorse the ‘‘road map’’ Mideast peace plan, which lays out steps for the end of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the creation of a Palestinian state.

The Israeli official said Sharon told Putin the road map was aimed at forging a bilateral agreement between Israel and the Palestinians and could not work if imposed by outsiders.

‘‘The agreement we accepted was between two sides and needs to be resolved between two sides, not by coercion from the Security Council,’’ the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Israel only reluctantly accepted the road map, attaching a list of reservations making its implementation dependent on the Palestinians’ disarming and disbanding militant groups and stipulating that any monitoring be under U.S. control.

‘‘Russia’s position in this (U.N.) forum does not help strengthen our relations,’’ the official quoted Sharon as telling Putin.

A major part of the one-on-one portion of Monday’s summit was devoted to Israel’s fears that Iran is covertly trying to develop nuclear weapons, the official said.

Sharon told Putin that a nuclear-armed Iran would pose a threat not only to Israel but to world peace. The official said Putin and Sharon agreed to keep up consultations on the issue.

Asked if Sharon carried any American message on the perceived Iranian threat, the official said only that Jerusalem and Washington were in very close contact on developments in Iran.

Russia’s relations with Israel have seen a dramatic improvement since the Soviet collapse, and Moscow has played a role in peace efforts as part of the international quartet also including the United States, the United Nations and the European Union.

http://www.iht.com/articles/116255.html

Set My People Free

November 04, 2003
The Wall Street Journal
Reza Pahlavi

The U.S. blessing for the joint trip by the foreign ministers of Britain, France and Germany to Tehran demonstrates a spirit of unity absent in their recent past. It is understandable that the specter of the foremost state sponsor of terrorism acquiring nuclear weapons should unite the EU and the U.S. in great fear.

But which is the greater component of that fear: Is it the nuclear state or the terrorist regime? In Iran's immediate neighborhood, in one of the least technologically advanced regimes, the Taliban's allies demonstrated that all they need is box cutters to use the free world's own resources against it. Yet nuclear-armed Pakistan is frequently praised as an ally in the war against terror. So it is the character of the regime, rather than the technology it possesses, that constitutes the greater part of the threat.

Then why doesn't the international community come together on the greater part of its fear, and declare its unambiguous opposition to a terrorist regime in such a strategic region? Why doesn't it unite with Iran's people, whose loudly demonstrated wish is to be rid of the only regime in the world whose theocratic constitution specifically rejects popular sovereignty?

Why the double talk from the West? Sometimes it is recognized that Iran is governed by an unelected few. But we also hear that Iran is democratic because it holds elections -- even though unelected cabals veto candidates; more journalists are in jail than in any other country; a self-styled judiciary is accountable to none; and, most importantly, the elected president, now in the second half of his last term, confesses that he never had the power to carry out his mandate.

The explanation may be the belief that the 50 theocrats who rule Iran are thuggish enough to keep Iranians enslaved for years to come, and so the world must content itself with damage limitation and containment. That belief is as wrong as it is cynical, and it is seen as such by my compatriots. It also means living in continuous fear of a catastrophe, possibly delayed by relying on "nuclear fact-finding" in a country four times Iraq's size, with deeper valleys and higher mountains than bin Laden's hideouts.

Even more ominous is Iran's approach to nuclear technology. Whereas with Saddam's paranoid compartmentalization, knowledge developed and resources accessed were confined to a tightly controlled few, Iran has a souk approach. There are mullahs who compete for public slush funds by developing networks for sourcing nuclear material and skills. No one knows who will use these networks in the future, or where and for what purpose. We only know that the theocrats have provided a safe haven and funds for nurturing these and other terror networks. But the world need not live in fear of a nuclear terrorist regime: I have no doubt that if it unites in support of democracy in Iran, it will unleash a popular force that will overwhelm the theocrats and sweep away their terrorist regime.

Mr. Pahlavi is the son of the late Shah of Iran.

http://www.rezapahlavi.org/articles/wsj110403.html

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