Iranian Alert -- August 9, 2003 -- LIVE THREAD PING LIST

The Iranian Student Movement Up To The Minute Reports ^ | 8.9.2003 | DoctorZin

[DoctorZIn]

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.

Thanks for all the help.

DoctorZin

[DoctorZIn]

Iran to Try Some Detained Al Qaeda Members

August 09, 2003
Reuters
Khaleej Times Online

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/960950/posts?page=20#20

"If you want on or off this Iran ping list, Freepmail me”

[DoctorZIn]

China expands missile proliferation to Mideast

Worldnetdaily.com
By Geostrategy-Direct
Aug 9, 2003

Egypt, Iran, Libya, Syria, North Korea benefiting from campaign

The United States believes China is expanding missile exports to the Middle East in violation of its pledges to the international community and its own nonproliferation laws.

The Bush administration has determined Beijing has violated its pledges to end the proliferation of missiles, U.S. officials said. The action is part of a Chinese campaign to increase exports and expand its Mideast clients.

China has been exporting missiles directly to Egypt, Iran, Libya and Syria and has transferred missiles via North Korea, the officials said.

The missile exports were discussed during a hearing last month by the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission. Officials expressed concern over China's increasing failure to enforce its own nonproliferation laws, announced in August 2002.

"China does not appear to be enforcing controls at its borders, allowing unauthorized transfers to go undetected," said Paula DeSutter, assistant secretary of state for verification and compliance. "Furthermore, it must establish a system of end-use verification checks to ensure that items approved for transfer are not diverted," she told the commission on July 24.

The State Department has accused China of transferring missiles to Iran, Libya, North Korea and Pakistan. The department's most recent Noncompliance Report said the exports violated China's commitments to the United States and calls into "serious question China's stated commitment to controlling missile proliferation."

"China is a key to achieving the administration's goal of stopping the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction technology throughout the world," DeSutter said. "While there are many buyers in the market for WMD [weapons of mass destruction] and missiles, there are only a handful of states with the capability to be dealers in that market. China's sophistication with many of these technologies has made it possible for Chinese entities to become key exporters of WMD and missile technology."

Congress helped create the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission in 2000. The panel has been mandated to analyze and assess the Chinese role in the proliferation of WMD to countries listed by the State Department as sponsors of terrorism.

The Bush administration has approved sanctions against several leading Chinese companies in connection with their missile and WMD exports to Iran. They include China North Industries Corp., known as Norinco, which conducts extensive business with the United States.

Other Chinese companies in the missile and WMD market in the Middle East include the China Great Wall Industry Corp. and the China Precision Machinery Import-Export Corp., both of which sold M-11 missiles to Pakistan.

Officials said China began violating its missile nonproliferation commitments issued as early as 1992. In the mid-1990s, the officials said, China provided what they termed significant assistance to the missile and WMD programs of Iran and Syria.

The assistance included components and technology in liquid- and solid-fuel missiles.

In November 2000, China provided its most specific commitment to the United States. Beijing pledged not to assist any country in developing a missile that would violate the Missile Technology Control Regime. The MTCR bans the transfer of missiles with a range of 300 kilometers and a payload of 500 kilograms.

Within a year, officials said, China violated the commitment and exported missile-related technology to Pakistan. The export was arranged by the China Metallurgical Equipment Corp.

In her testimony, DeSutter termed Norinco and CPMIEC as major suppliers to Iran's missile program. She said Beijing has taken no action to stop the Chinese state-owned companies, both of which were sanctioned by Washington this year.

"The U.S. remains concerned, however, about the role of Chinese entities providing CW related equipment, technology, and precursor materials to Iran," DeSutter said. "The U.S. continues diplomatic efforts to encourage China to prevent exports to CW-related end-users, particularly in Iran."

WorldNetDaily brings readers exclusive, up-to-the-minute global intelligence news and analysis from Geostrategy-Direct, a new online newsletter edited by veteran journalist Robert Morton and featuring the "Backgrounder" column compiled by Bill Gertz. Geostrategy-Direct is a subscription-based service produced by the publishers of WorldTribune.com, a free news service frequently linked by the editors of WorldNetDaily.

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=33998

[DoctorZIn]

China expands missile proliferation to Mideast

Worldnetdaily.com
By Geostrategy-Direct
Aug 9, 2003

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/960950/posts?page=22#22

"If you want on or off this Iran ping list, Freepmail me”

[DoctorZIn]

Accused in Kazemi's death, claims Iran media have "highest degree of freedom"

World News
Aug 9, 2003

TEHRAN - Tehran's chief prosecutor Said Mortazavi insisted Saturday that the media in Iran have the "highest degree of freedom", matched by only a few Western states, during a visit to the student news agency ISNA.

"Thanks to the Islamic revolution and the country's constitution, the Iranian press and media enjoy the highest degree of freedom, matched by only a few Western countries," he said.

"In other words, the freedom of the Iranian press can not be compared with those in neighboring countries and the Middle East," he added.

Mortazavi, a conservative hardliner who headed Iran's press courts from May 2000 until April this year, oversaw the closure of nearly 100 pro-reform publications and the jailing of dozens of journalists.

Hundreds of Iranian journalists downed tools Friday in protest at a worsening clampdown on the pro-reform media and the death of an Iranian-Canadian journalist in custody here in still unexplained circumstances.

The reformist strikers also demanded Mortazavi's removal.

The prosecutor said: "In accordance with the leader's call, nine university students were released and possibly the next phase of university students' release ... is going to happen in the next few days of this week."

On August 5, Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, told the courts to "exercise clemency" toward dozens of students jailed in protests, especially those who have since pledged their loyalty to the Islamic regime.

Mortazavi last Wednesday ordered the release of nine student leaders arrested during the wave of anti-regime protests in June and July. But dozens of students are still languishing in prisons around Iran.

http://www.daneshjoo.org/generalnews/article/publish/article_1654.shtml

[DoctorZIn]

Accused in Kazemi's death, claims Iran media have "highest degree of freedom"

World News
Aug 9, 2003

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/960950/posts?page=24#24

"If you want on or off this Iran ping list, Freepmail me”

[DoctorZIn]

Here are a few of pictures of the journalists in Iran that are on strike.

http://www.pendar.net/spage.asp?id=39

[nuconvert]

"Tehran's chief prosecutor Said Mortazavi insisted Saturday that the media in Iran have the "highest degree of freedom",

LOL! They're as free as he'll let them be....!

"Mortazavi, oversaw the closure of nearly 100 pro-reform publications and the jailing of dozens of journalists."

No Contradictions here!

[nuconvert]

"In a statement, the protesters denounced the "miserable conditions" of Iranian journalists, urged the authorities to dismiss Tehran and Islamic revolution tribunal Prosecutor Judge Sa’id Mortazavi, better known as "The Butcher of the press" and called on the Minister of Islamic Guidance to resign, accused of failing to defend the "legitimate and legal rights of journalists".

"butcher of the press" / Mr."highest degree of freedom?"
Think Mortazavi's got a bit of an image problem.
A credibility problem, too.

[F14 Pilot]

Iran surplus oil revenue growing

Khorasan Prov, Aug 9 - The country has earned 2.6 billion dollars in surplus oil revenue in the first four months of the current Iranian year (started March 21), a senior planning expert said here Friday.

Mohammad Sattarifar, head of the Management and Planning Organization (MPO) made the disclosure during a session of the Khorasan provincial planning council.

He said the revenue will be deposited in the country's surplus foreign exchange account if the trend toward increasing oil prices continues.

The official noted that the country's foreign exchange revenue stood at 8.1 billion dollars in the last Iranian year (1381) and that 4.4 billion dollars of this amount went to the production and job creation sectors.

Sattarifar went on to say that the private sector is asking for a five-billion-dollar allocation for various projects from the organization, and that the government has already awarded contracts worth 2.1 billion dollars to various economic sectors.

The MPO head also said that the western province of Kermanshah had received 400 million dollars from the government's special forex account for development of the Assalouye region.

The projects, once operational, are expected to fetch some 10 billion dollars in revenue for the country.

Sattarifar further said that the outlines of the government's fourth economic development plan is now being studied, adding that the plan will not be merely relying on usual credit sources as previous plans did.

http://www.iribnews.com/Full_en.asp?news_id=185464&n=37

[DoctorZIn]

CENSORSHIP, TEHRAN-STYLE

Wed Aug 6, 4:06 AM ET
OP Ed New York Post

The world got a rare glimpse of the brutality of Iran's Islamic fundamentalists with the recent savage murder by Iranian security agents of Canadian journalist Zhara Kazemi.

The world got a rare glimpse of the brutality of Iran's Islamic fundamentalists with the recent savage murder by Iranian security agents of Canadian journalist Zhara Kazemi.

In June, the 54-year-old photographer of Iranian descent was arrested and beaten after photographing the regime's nightmarish Evin prison during student-led anti-government protests.

Four days later, she was taken in a coma from an unknown prison to the Ministry of Intelligence and then to a hospital, where she died.

Her relatives say that after her initial roughing up, she was subjected to beatings and torture. Though the judiciary claimed she died of a stroke, the country's vice president later admitted that she had been beaten to death.

Iran's elected, supposedly moderate, government is often at odds with the hard-line mullahs who control the courts, the Council of Guardians, the Revolutionary Guard and other key security forces.

But it was the "moderates" who authorized a hasty burial in Iran, against the wishes of her family and before any outsiders could examine the body.

Kazemi's death coincided with a vicious crackdown against democracy activists, reporters and student leaders. At least 15 other journalists are being held at the jail where she was brutalized, and nine more are imprisoned elsewhere for negative reporting about the regime.

It's not surprising that a regime that sponsors terrorists in Lebanon and suicide bombers in Israel is willing to murder journalists.

But it's something folks here and in Europe who are pushing for warmer ties to Tehran would do well to remember.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=106&ncid=742&e=14&u=/nypost/20030806/cm_nypost/censorshiptehranstyle

[DoctorZIn]

CENSORSHIP, TEHRAN-STYLE

Wed Aug 6, 4:06 AM ET
OP Ed New York Post

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/960950/posts?page=30#30

"If you want on or off this Iran ping list, Freepmail me”

[DoctorZIn]

This just in... from friends in Iran.

Ms, taleghani the secretary general of the Women Center will hold a sit in in front of the door of the Evin prison on 25 th of Aug to protest against the death of Ms. kazemi, she will sit in for more than 3 hours and demands no one take part in her session because of security problems.

(ILNA NEWS AGENCY ) IRAN LABOUR NEWS AGENCY

http://www.ilna.ir/shownews.asp?code=32122&code1=1

[nuconvert]

"CENSORSHIP, TEHRAN-STYLE"

This OP Ed is so late in coming, you wonder if the Post has it's own censorship problems?
And where are the rest of the OP Eds regarding all the IRANIAN journalists beaten and tortured in prison?

[DoctorZIn]

Jordanian Embassy Bombing and Hizballah Bombardment - Dual Show of Tehran`s Muscle

August 09, 2003
DEBKAfile
DEBKAfile Special Report

The fingerprints of Ansar al-Islam, the Iraqi fundamentalist terror group linked to Al Qaeda, prompted Washington to place the FBI at the head of the investigation into the Jordanian embassy bombing in Baghdad Thursday, August 7, in which 19 people lost their lives and over 60 were injured.The day after, Lt.-Gen. Norton Schwartz, director of operations at the US Joint Staff, named the group as the possible perpetrators.

Saturday, August 9, Gen. Richard Myers, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said non-Iraqi terrorists were responsible. He warned that the infiltration of Iraq by armed fighters from neighboring countries could raise tensions between the United States and those countries.

Early in the Iraq War, American bombers wiped out Ansar al-Islam’s main headquarters in Kurdish-controlled northeastern Iraq near the Iranian border. But US administrator Paul Bremer said recently that the group was reconstituting and members filtering back into Iraq from Iran.

What Bremer did not spell out was that Ansar members could only have returned to Iraq with a blessing, logistical aid and funding from Iran’s Revolutionary Guards special intelligence arm which owns a strong presence on both sides of the Iranian-Iraqi border.

DEBKAfile’s counter-terror analysts note that the US official reference to Ansar al Islam was tantamount to blaming Tehran for the Jordanian embassy outrage. And if Iran, our analysts say, then the key al Qaeda figure uniquely qualified to orchestrate the attack must have been Abu Musab al Zarqawi, who is also in Iranian hands.

DEBKAfile has kept close track of this Jordanian-Palestinian terror master’s checkered career. In October 2001, a month after the September 11 hijack-bombings in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania, our sources exposed Ansar’s main headquarters at Bayara in northern Iraq and Zarqawi’s presence there. We reported that he was part of a secret chemical and biological weapons experimentation project run there in the darkest secrecy by Iraqi intelligence officers. DEBKAfile’s counter-terror sources report that Zarqawi is the only al Qaeda agent known to intelligence experts to have spent time in early 2000 at the Salman Pak facility 25 miles southeast of Baghdad for instruction in advanced terrorist and air hijacking techniques.

On Saturday, August 9, official sources in Washington uncovered information received for the first time that Iraq provided al Qaeda with training facilities and the components of chemical and biological weapons systems. The information came from recently captured al Qaeda men under interrogation. It aroused scant interest because most media are intent on questioning the Bush administration’s claims that Saddam had operational links with al Qaeda.

However, DEBKAfile’s sources and field inquiries traced these links from an early date.

Two and a half years ago we discovered that Zarqawi, on the strength of his studies in the northern Iraq Ansar base at Bayara, had been appointed al Qaeda’s expert in chemical, biological and radiological warfare. Then, just before the Iraq War in March 2003, he was given responsibility for designing unconventional weapons attacks in West Europe and Israel.

Latterly, DEBKAfile found Zarqawi in a minor logistical role in the Casablanca bombings of May 16, four days after the suicide attacks in Riyadh.

However, his lead function in the Jordanian embassy bombing in Baghdad has broad significance for the large picture of regional security: The interaction between al Qaeda, Iran, Syria and Iraqi resistance on three warfronts bodes ill for the anti-American guerrilla war, which has claimed 56 American soldiers’ lives in 100 days, and for the global war on al Qaeda terror; it is showing promise of generating an armed Hizballah-Israeli border clash that would also involve Syria.

The Iranian leadership was shown up by the embassy attack as a fraud. After the suicide attacks on three Western compounds in Riyadh on May 12, a group of top al Qaeda operations officers was discovered sheltering in Iran, the most prominent being Zarqawi, Suleiman Abu Ghaith, the organization’s treasurer, Said al-Adel, who has top rating as the network’s chief of staff and lead organizer of the Riyadh operation, and one of Osama bin Laden’s sons, possibly Saad.

In quiet negotiations subsequent to the Riyadh bombings held with American and Egyptian representatives (see DEBKAfile July 27 article on this page) – and open talks with the Saudis - Iranian officials vouched for these men being held incommunicado and not permitted to control outside networks. The Bush administration counted on this guarantee to paralyze an important part of al Qaeda’s operational capabilities and to open the way for further discussion with Iran on two other pressing issues, its nuclear weapons program and interference in Shiite affairs in southern Iraq and Baghdad.

That Zarqawi was permitted to set up the Jordanian bombing in Baghdad meant the Iranians had no serious intention of keeping their word or preventing al Qaeda from mounting terrorist attacks from their soil. The Jordanian embassy strike was too meticulously planned to have been put together in less than two or three weeks at the very least, certainly not on the spur of the moment like a sniper attack on a US convoy.

The night before the attack, a minivan packed with explosives was parked outside the Jordanian embassy unnoticed by the Iraqi police guards. Thursday morning, August 7, when the Jordanian consul and staff reached the gate of the compound on their way to work, a second vehicle drew up with four gunmen who shot rocket-propelled grenades at the bomb car and the embassy building, outside which a queue of visa applicants stood waiting.

Most of the casualties were hit by the exploding bomb car. A wing of the building caved in and caught fire. In a trice, a mob burst into the embassy, tore up the carpets and burnt the pictures of King Abdullah and his father King Hussein in front of television cameras. This was no spontaneous, frenzied mob but a staged scene for circulation around the Arab world’s television screens as a demonstration of how one of America’s closest allies was humiliated. The spectacle contributed little to US reputation in Iraq and even less to the standing of the Hashemite crown in Jordan.

Zarqawi worked through two parties, according to DEBKAfile’s intelligence and counter-terror sources: Ansar al Islam, with whom he was in touch since just before the American invasion of Iraq in March 2003, and Iraqi intelligence officers, whom he knew well from his training days at Salman Pak and the Ansar base at Bayara.

From his Iranian detention, he passed instructions out to Ansar contacts to get in touch with certain ex-Iraqi intelligence officers. As soon as contact was made, Zirqawi sent over a second set of instructions and money for the assault on the Jordanian embassy.

Thus was formed the first direct operational connection between Iran’s radical Revolutionary Guards - the dreaded Pazdaran, al Qaeda and former Iraqi intelligence officers still loyal to Saddam Hussein. They all share a burning ambition: to cripple the American presence in Iraq as part of a comprehensive onslaught on American’s strategic positions across the Middle East.

Twenty-four hours after the embassy blast in Baghdad, Tehran’s surrogate, the Lebanese terrorist Hizballah, began pounding Israeli military positions on Mt Dov and the Hermon. For three hours, Hizballah fired almost every heavy weapon in its arsenal - Katyusha rockets, anti-tank missiles, artillery and mortar shells and heavy machine guns - at Israeli border positions.

But their heaviest fire was concentrated on the Israeli command center known as Position Radar on Mt. Dov for the purpose of piercing its outer defensive fence. It worked and the central section of the position’s defense, command and communications system was struck and badly damaged. Hizballah also turned its long-range artillery on the Golan Heights with deliberate intent. The Druze village of Majd al Shams suffered damage to a house.

DEBKAfile’s Middle East sources point out that the Hizballah is not authorized to carry out attacks on a scale as extensive as this without a very clear directive from the highest levels of government in Tehran and Damascus. Ominous meanings may therefore be read into the timing and targeting of this round of Hizballah strikes.

1. It is a hands-off warning from Tehran to Washington to stop stirring up domestic dissent against the Iranian regime and ease its pressure with regard to Tehran’s nuclear weapons program. It is a reminder that Tehran is capable of activating two anti-American terror fronts, one through al Qaeda in Iraq and a second through the Hizballah against Israel. Tehran’s radicals also believe they command a third potential warfront, the Shiite millions of Iraq.

2. Tehran is boasting that in addition to al Qaeda in Iraq and the Hizballah threatening northern Israel, it commands a third resource capable of damaging American interests – the Assad regime in Damascus. The Hizballah bombardment of the Golan Heights which Israel captured from Syria in the 1967 war signified Damascus’s assent to Hizballah’s incorporation in a Syrian military offensive against Israel staged on the Golan Heights.

3. Syria is already deeply involved in pumping a motley assortment of Arab, Syrian, Palestinian, Egypt, Saudi, Yemen and Sudanese fighters across its border to fight the Americans alongside Saddam Hussein’s supporters. Syrian military intelligence also plays host to al Qaeda terrorists in Damascus and southern Lebanon. Given Syria’s adversarial role in both of the Bush administration’s main conflicts, the Hizballah escalation of violence against Israel rounds off Tehran’s threat to active all three military-terrorist fronts at the same time, along a line running from Baghdad to Israel’s borders with Lebanon and Syria - unless Washington turns the heat down.

Jordan has clearly joined Iran’s list of targets, and not only as an ally of Washington; Zarqawi, sentenced to death in absentia in the kingdom for plotting a series of terrorist strikes in Amman, has a personal score to settle with the Hashemite kingdom.

DEBKAfile’s Middle East and terror analysts conclude that Iran’s offensive has proceeded step by step from the May 12 bombings in Riyadh to the August 7 Jordanian embassy attack in Baghdad and the August 8 Hizballah barrage against Mt Dov. They also believe that this offensive is just starting, taking full advantage of the absence of President George W. Bush from Washington on vacation and the preoccupation of American and Israeli officials with settling the very important issue of the legitimate route for Israel’s anti-terror security barrier.

http://www.debka.com/article.php?aid=536

[DoctorZIn]

Jordanian Embassy Bombing and Hizballah Bombardment - Dual Show of Tehran`s Muscle

August 09, 2003
DEBKAfile
DEBKAfile Special Report

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/960950/posts?page=34#34

"If you want on or off this Iran ping list, Freepmail me”

[aculeus]

Could you please limit your pings to once per thread?

If not, please drop me.

Thanks and regards.

[DoctorZIn]

I have a once a day list and a list for those who want to know all the breaking news. People just need to let me know what they want to be put on.

[SpookBrat]

I'm praying about this. God has been very generous with my prayer requests lately so hopefully I can do some good. LOL

~Blessings~

[Doc On The Bay]

"Sigh!!"

--"Safavi is FULL OF SH+T!!

Best (Unbiased) Information Indicates that the Iraqi People Generally Welcome the Americans, & are Quite Ready to assume Their Duties as the "Rulers of" Iraq!

Contrary to Elitist Belief, the PEOPLE of Muslim Nations are QUITE ABLE to Rule Themselves. They Merely Need to Understand that--in Political, Human Affairs--There MUST BE a Framework of Law within which ANY society must operate!!

"Islamic Law,"--Like Christian Commandments--applies to INDIVIDUAL ACTIONS.

"Civil Law" regulates Societal Interactions.

Once the "Adherents of" the Tenets of Either Religion understand that--in Civil Society--"Constitutional Principles" PRECEDE "Religious Precepts," It becomes possible to Construct a Civilization.

Absent a Viable "Civil Law Structure," NO viable political Structure can long endure.

The Disintegration of the Iranian "Theocracy" is a Prime Example of this Thesis!!

Iran's "Theocracy" is based on adherence to Impossible "Absolutes!!"

Such a Government is RIPE for Corruption & Abuse of It's Citizens.

When the Iranian Theocracy Implodes (soon), Horror Stories similar to those told in Iraq will surface.

A Stable Civil Society can NEVER allow ANY "Belief System" to dominate it.

NAZI Germany & the Japanese "Bushido System" should stand as Classic Examples of the Danger of an "Overriding Belief System" Dominating an otherwise Peaceful Society.

Violent Subsets of "Islam" represent the Same Threats to Civilization that "Bushido & Naziism" did a Generation ago.

At Least now, some of us see the Horrific Potential of these misguided Souls; & Most of us agree that the "Leaders" of this Pathology MUST BE ERASED!!

Clearly, Humanity is capable of forming a relatively Peaceful Society--if we FINALLY "Remove" Those Who would Foment Conflict for Their Personal Gain!!

It BEHOOVES US to identify & DESTROY those who foment dissent for Their Personal Aggrandizement.

We Are Better Than That!!!

Doc

[Pro-Bush]

Most of the casualties were hit by the exploding bomb car. A wing of the building caved in and caught fire. In a trice, a mob burst into the embassy, tore up the carpets and burnt the pictures of King Abdullah and his father King Hussein in front of television cameras. This was no spontaneous, frenzied mob but a staged scene for circulation around the Arab world’s television screens as a demonstration of how one of America’s closest allies was humiliated. The spectacle contributed little to US reputation in Iraq and even less to the standing of the Hashemite crown in Jordan.

This highlights the need for new leadership in Iran. We are losing the PR game in the Arab world thanks to terrorists who are sheltered in Iran.