Iranian Alert -- August 11, 2003 -- 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 dissident Hachem Aghajari is a possible Noble Prize winner! Check this out. -- DoctorZin

Chirac Nobel peace prize winner? Don't hold your breath, Norwegians say

OSLO (AFP) Aug 10, 2003
French President Jacques Chirac's chances of winning this year's prestigious Nobel peace prize, for which he boasts a nomination, are microscopic, Norwegian experts say.
"Chirac's chances are infinitely small," said Stein Toennesson, head of the Peace Research Institute of Oslo PRIO, adding that Chirac's stance against war in Iraq did not amount to making him a man of peace.

"Chirac's position during the Iraq crisis was closely linked to national interests and not specifically to any desire for peace for the sake of peace. And looking back over his career, there is no trace of a continuous commitment to peace," he said.

Chirac's name was put forward, ahead of the February 1 deadline, by three Costa Rican sponsors who want to see the president rewarded for his Iraq stance and for peace efforts in Ivory Coast.

Parliamentarians, government ministers, some university professors and former laureates worldwide all have the right to propose their peace price candidates.

On March 4, Chirac got further backing when Algerian president Abdelaziz Bouteflika said that if Chirac could stop the war "I would like to say, in the name of all peoples, including the American people, that he should receive the Nobel prize".

But it was not to be, and the US-led army rolled into Iraq two weeks later.

"The Nobel committee cannot reward a failure," said Tove Gravdal, a journalist and France expert at daily Aftenposten, adding that the Nobel prize for Chirac would be extremely controversial in the United States, but also in Norway.

"Here we remember that one of Chirac's first decisions after being elected president was to resume nuclear testing in the Mururoa atoll. That's enough to outweigh his actions against war in Iraq," she said.

In general, students of French history were "not struck by the country's pacificism", she added.

Chirac is competing with 164 other names, on a list comprising 140 individuals and 25 organisations, which make up the longest ever submitted to the Oslo committee.

While there is agreement that the odds on Chirac are unusually long, experts acknowledged that there is no obvious frontrunner in this year's contest, which will take place in mid-October.

Toennesson thinks this year's winner could be Iranian dissident Hachem Aghajari, currently in prison in his country.

"This would send a message of democracy to Iran to encourage the reform process, and a peace message to the United States saying that change in Iran is not happening through war," he said.

But the only way of knowing whether Aghajari is even on the list is for his sponsors to tell the world, as the Nobel committee itself keeps the list of nominees secret.

Irish pop star Bono, Pope John Paul II, Vaclav Havel, Chinese dissident Wei Jingsheng as well as imprisoned Israeli nuclear technician Mordechai Vanunu have all been rumoured to be on the list.

Last year, the prestigious prize went to former US president Jimmy Carter.

The Nobel Peace Prize consists of a diploma, a gold medallion and a cheque worth about a million dollars (900,000 euros).

http://www.spacewar.com/2003/030810033001.bmsiy8kr.html

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

MULLING THE MULLAH DILEMMA

Op/Ed - New York Post 8.11.2003

Democrats may not have finished bashing the Bush folks for having eliminated Iraq (news - web sites) as a threat, but it's none too early to consider another uncomfortable truth: Something will have to be done soon about Iraq's belligerant Islamist neighbor - Iran.

Certainly, there's plenty of time to figure out what .

Nor would it be at all surprising to learn that American agents have already been "in country" for some time, clandestinely.

But the status quo in Tehran is growing ever more untenable, from an American point of view. And time isn't exactly on the West's side.

First, Tehran admits it has "in custody" several senior al Qaeda operatives, possibly including the terror network's No. 3, Asif al-Adel. But the mullahs have spurned U.S. requests to hand them over.

If Iran is detaining top al Qaeda thugs, are the detentions really just "protective custody" from America? It certainly wouldn't be the first time Iran has been accused of providing a safe haven for al Qaeda.

Then there's Iran's nuclear program. The International Atomic Energy Agency says the Islamic republic is aggressively pursing atomic weapons.

Iran claims that its nuclear plants are for peaceful purposes. But the country's vast reserves of oil easily meet its energy needs.

Last week, the Los Angeles Times reported that "Iran appears to be in the late stages of developing the capacity to build a nuclear bomb."

Compounding that threat is Tehran's unveiling last month of the Shahab-3 missile, which can reach Israel. The L.A. paper also reported that the North Koreans "are now working on a longer-range Shahab-4 [for Iran] and providing assistance on designs for a nuclear warhead."

Then, of course, there's Iran's longtime, relentless support for terrorism.

Iran's proxy militia in Lebanon, Hezbollah - a terrorist group responsible for the murder (among many, many others) of 241 U.S. Marines in 1983 - continues to launch attacks against Israelis, the latest coming just over the past few days.

And Hamas - partly financed, armed and trained by Iran - is behind some of the bloodiest suicide bombings against civilian targets in Israel.

Meanwhile, a number of radical Shi'ite clerics in Iraq are believed to be taking orders from Tehran. And the mullahs continue to make trouble with inflammatory TV and radio broadcasts into Iraq.

For now, Iran seems to know just what it can get away with across its Western border. Perhaps the government fears intervention now that some 150,000 U.S. troops are within just a few days' trek of Tehran and President Bush (news - web sites) has made it clear "states that support terror will be held accountable."

Of course, it may be that the days of the hard-line Islamist regime are numbered anyway; regime change in Iran may come from within. Consider:

* Its population is young (mostly born after the '79 revolution) and restive.

* Its reformist politicians are increasingly willing to challenge the hard-liners - for instance, over murdered Canadian journalist Zhara Kazemi.

* Thousands of its students have risked their lives to protest the mullahs.

Surely, Iran's theocratic thugs must be dismayed, to say the least, that a grandson of Ayatollah Khomeini (who took power in the revolution of 1979), attacked it last week as "the worst dictatorship of the world." On a visit to Iraq, Hossein Khomeini also praised the U.S. overthrow of Saddam.

On the other hand, the hard-liners have a large and brutally effective security apparatus. Regime change may well require direct military intervention.

Prudence dictates that Americans, as the old adage advises, hope for the best - but plan for the worst.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=106&ncid=742&e=4&u=/nypost/20030811/cm_nypost/mullingthemullahdilemma

The War on Terror: A War for Human Rights

August 11, 2003
FrontPageMagazine.com
Robert Spencer

The Indonesian terrorist group, Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), demonstrated last week that the war on terror is not just an effort to prevent recurrences of September 11; it is a struggle for human rights.

As JI celebrates (yes, celebrates) its murder of fifteen people and the wounding of 150 more in a suicide attack on the Marriott Hotel in Jakarta last Tuesday, as well as the death sentence given Thursday to JI member Amrozi bin Nurhasyim, the “smiling bomber” who murdered 202 people in Bali last October, it is instructive to remember that JI is doing all this killing for the Sharia.

The Sharia is the classic code of Islamic law that mandates stoning for adulterers and amputation for thieves, disallows a rape victim’s testimony in her own case, and hamstrings freedom of conscience by prescribing death for apostates from Islam and those who have blasphemed the Prophet — an offense that Christians in Pakistan and other beleaguered minorities in the Islamic world have found to be distressingly elastic. Jemaah Islamiyah, al-Qaeda’s southeast Asian affiliate, dreams of the day when the Sharia holds sway over the entire world, or at least its own corner of it.

Jemaah Islamiyah is fighting to create a Sharia-ruled Islamic megastate in Southeast Asia, comprising Indonesia, Malaysia, southern Thailand, Singapore, Brunei, and the southern Philippines island of Mindanao. In a certain sense it’s fitting that they see blowing up innocent people as a viable means to attain this end, for the utopia that group members envision is just as brutal and unreasoning. There have been numerous indications of that recently in places where the Islamic law that JI reveres is already (in varying degrees) in force:

- The supreme court of Afghanistan on Thursday upheld death sentences for two journalists, Sayeed Mahdawi and Ali Reza Payam. Their crime? Criticizing what they called the “holy fascism” that still holds sway in Afghanistan, and asking: “If Islam is the last and the most complete of the revealed religions, why are the Muslim countries lagging behind the modern world?”

- A court in Pakistan on Tuesday sentenced another man, Bashir Ahmed, to death for making “derogatory remarks against the Holy Prophet and his companions.”

- Women’s groups in Malaysia protested, thus far in vain, against a decision by that country’s Sharia court that men could divorce their wives by leaving a message on their mobile phones.

- The Jordanian parliament rejected on Islamic grounds a measure that would have given women the legal right to file for divorce, as well as another that would have led to stiff penalties for “honor killings”: the barbaric murder of young women by family members who believe that they have committed adultery, thereby shaming the family honor. Many young women have even been murdered after being raped, since traditional Islamic law allows a rape charge to be established only by the testimony of four male witnesses who saw the act itself.

- In Iraq, Muslim authorities in the Shiite holy city of Najaf overruled, also on Islamic grounds, the appointment by American authorities of a woman judge, Nidal Nasser Hussein. Afrah Najem, who like Nidal Nasser Hussein is a female lawyer in Iraq, knows that she has hit the mother of all glass ceilings: “Ours is an Islamic society that would not tolerate a woman judge.”

Draconian blasphemy laws, appallingly loose divorce laws (for men only), a totalitarian resistance to self-criticism, institutionalized brutality and oppression of women — these are the features of the Sharia law that forms the centerpiece of JI’s dream state. Their path to this utopia is stained with the blood of the nightclubbers, businessmen and bystanders that JI is rejoicing over having slaughtered in Indonesia.

Donald Rumsfeld has declared that the United States will not accept an Islamic state in Iraq. One may hope that this indicates that the human rights component of the war on terror has at least some advocates in high places. For the events recounted above illustrate why everyone who values freedom and basic human rights should oppose the Sharia, whether it is implemented in whole or part, not just in Iraq or Indonesia, but everywhere that it hinders the liberty of human beings — including Saudi Arabia.

Like a peevish schoolmarm, the judge who sentenced Amrozi scolded him for perverting Islam and jihad. But it is unlikely that any of the Muslim onlookers who cheered and shouted “Allahu Akbar” (Allah is great) when Amrozi entered the courtroom were brought to a moment of theological reckoning by the judge’s lecture. After all, moderate Muslims still have not answered the nagging question of why, if Islam forbids terrorism and the Qur’an teaches nonviolence, have so many devout Muslims around the world misinterpreted it so thoroughly and repeatedly. Where are the moderate Muslims who can teach not Western non-Muslims, but their fellow Muslims that Islam is peaceful?

If the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) and other Muslim advocacy groups really want to demonstrate that “Muslims follow a religion of peace, mercy and forgiveness that should not be associated with acts of violence against the innocent,” let them definitively renounce the Sharia for which Jemaah Islamiyah kills, and which brings anything but peace and mercy to those who must suffer under it. Let them work to create in the United States a truly moderate Islam that accepts the principles of Western secular society and coexistence with non-Muslims. If they do not do this, it is clear: history will judge them as being on the wrong side of this great struggle for the rights of mankind.

Robert Spencer is author of "Islam Unveiled: Disturbing Questions About the World's Fastest Growing Faith" (Encounter Books) and Onward Muslim Soldiers: How Jihad Still Threatens America and the West (coming this September from Regnery Publishing). An Adjunct Fellow with the Free Congress Foundation, he writes frequently on Islam in a wide variety of publications.

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=9319

It seems that I have mixed up Hassan and Hussein Khomeini here
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/957322/posts?page=16#16

they are two different persons. This explains the strange things that Hassan has done. It is not easy when their names are similar and are transcribed ;-)

IMAM'S GRANDSON DEFENDS IRAN'S ACCOMPLISHMENTS.

Recent statements by grandchildren of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the father of Iran's Islamic Revolution, have contributed to the insider-outsider debate in Iran.

The 30-year-old Hojatoleslam Seyyed Hassan Khomeini comes across in his statements as a trusted defender of the Iranian political and social system. He said in a meeting with members of the University Basij on the evening of 5 July that public morale should not be harmed by drawing a negative picture of events, "Entekhab" daily newspaper reported on 7 August. He said negative comments by the factions of the left and right do not represent reality and, in fact, many great things have been accomplished since the 1979 revolution. Among them he cited is the increase in the number of university students (from 70,000 to 1.5 million), the acquisition of nuclear know-how, and an increase in electricity generation.

Hassan has carried out representational duties for the current Iranian regime. For example, in July 2001 he was sent to Cuba where he met with President Fidel Castro and members of his delegation participated in an anti-U.S. march across from the U.S. Interests Section in Havana. In February 2000, furthermore, he visited Islamabad to participate in a conference called, "Imam Khomeini's Role in Revival of Islamic Thoughts." In February 2002, Hassan criticized President George W. Bush's statement about Iran being part of the "axis of evil" that included Iraq and North Korea.

It would be cynical to suggest that there is a connection between Hassan Khomeini's loyalty to the system and his leadership of the Iran-based Imam Khomeini mausoleum foundation, which is worth millions of dollars. Control of a shrine can become "a trump card to play in the political struggle, even an entry ticket to the political scene," Fariba Adelkhah notes in her 1998 book, "Being Modern in Iran." Hassan may be destined for greater things, then.

In contrast with his cousin Hassan, 46-year-old Hojatoleslam Seyyed Hussein Khomeini has, so to say, "gone off the reservation." The London-based Arabic daily "Al-Sharq al-Awsat" reported on 29 July that Hussein had moved from Qom to Al-Najaf to continue his studies, stating that his move to Al-Najaf will contribute to the revival of the Iraqi Howzeh-yi Elmieh (Shia theological schools) at the expense of the politicized one in Qom. According to the Arabic daily, Hussein opposes politicization of the Al-Najaf seminary.

Once in Iraq, Hussein began making highly controversial statements about his former hosts. According to "Al-Sharq al-Awsat" on 4 August, Hussein supported Iranian President Abol-Hassan Bani-Sadr and opposed the Islamists behind Bani-Sadr's 1981 downfall, such as then-Hojatoleslams Ali-Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani and Seyyed Ali Khamenei. Hussein believes that these individuals prolonged the 1980-1988 war with Iraq in order to stay in power. He also termed the Iranian theocracy "the worst dictatorship in the world," according to the "Al-Sharq al-Awsat" report, and said, "If the Americans provide [freedom], then let them come."

Hussein was very critical in an interview that appeared in the 2 August issue of the Netherlands' daily "De Standaard." He described Iran's leaders as "irresponsible and immature," adding that the Iranian people know that evil things are being done in the name of religion. Hussein also called for the separation of mosque and state in Iran. Hussein went on to suggest in the "De Standaard" interview that Iranian intellectuals, nationalists, and freedom lovers would come to Iraq when the situation stabilizes. "Free Iraq will become a place from where Iran's freedom will be prepared."

Hussein has become so worrisome, "Al-Sharq al-Awsat" reported on 4 August, that an Islamic Revolution Guards Corps assassin has been sent after him. (Bill Samii)

source:RFE/RL Iran Report Vol. 6, No. 33, 11 August 2003

Middle East

COMMENTARY
Iran: The ongoing threat
By Stephen Blank

When President George W Bush labeled Iran part of the "axis of evil" along with Iraq and North Korea, this dismayed many observers for several reasons. Not the least of them was that it is, or was nearly impossible, to discern any collaboration between Iran and Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Indeed, not only did these two countries fight a bloody and inconclusive war from 1980 to 88, Iran was one of the Iraqi tyrant's targets for the use of chemical weapons.

This Iraqi attack, which went unanswered by the rest of the world, must be reckoned as one of the principal reasons for Iran's continuing nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs. But even though there has been no conceivable Iraqi threat since 1991, these programs continue. And since the termination of Saddam's regime by the United States, all signs are that Iran's nuclear program is accelerating at speed.

Worse yet, Iran's partnership with North Korea unfortunately lends credence to Bush's "axis" remarks and Tehran's continuing support for terrorism to derail the Middle Eastern peace process between Israel and the Palestinian Authority does so as well.

The other two principal justifications that are often advanced to defend Iran's nuclearization are that it is responding to the threat of Israel, which has nuclear weapons, and the US threat. However, both of these are smokescreens. Allegedly Iran fears that Israel will do to it what it did to Iraq in 1981, namely bomb its nuclear weapons program. Therefore, much of that program is dispersed and underground.

Yet if Iran was not the principal state sponsor of global terrorism, according to the State Department, and terrorism that is directed on a global basis against Jews, not just Israelis, not to mention a state where domestic anti-Semitism is a state sanctioned policy, Israel would not even think of threatening Iran.

Indeed, under the US-backed Shah up to his ouster in the Islamic revolution of 1979, Israel and Iran had exemplary, almost alliance-like relations for sound geopolitical reasons. And Tehran's policies are no longer driven by the same kind of crusading religious zeal that was the case under Ayatollah Khomeini in the post-revolution era. Although Iranian-backed groups apparently function in Azerbaijan, Iran has virtually given up that kind of overt agitation in the Persian Gulf. Yet it clearly supports terrorism, as most assessments of the 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers US barracks in Saudi Arabia suggest, for reasons of national interest, not Islamic ideology as such.

Likewise, Iran's animosity to America is not only founded on Islamism or whatever sins Washington may have committed toward Iran under the Shah, but on the quite rational basis that its consistent anti-American policies, support of terrorism and alleged proliferation of weapons of mass destruction directly counter vital American interests throughout the Middle East and the former Soviet Union.

If Iran was to cease support of terrorism and its aggressive policies in those areas, which have yielded little except to maintain a kind of state of siege with the outside world that perpetuates the oppressive Iranian internal regime, it would stand to benefit immensely and in very tangible fashion.

Yet, instead, and despite the war in Iraq it has redoubled its efforts to provoke not only Washington and Jerusalem, but also its neighbors. In 2001 and 2002 it threatened Azerbaijan and Kazakstan over Caspian Sea exploration issues. Since the war in Iraq it has not only accelerated its nuclear program and maintained a truculent attitude of denial towards the International Atomic Energy Agency and all other concerned parties, it apparently has now entered into discussion with North Korea to develop nuclear warheads jointly.

This new alliance would represent an enormous magnification of the nightmare scenario for many Asian governments, not just Israel and America, because it means the full materialization of the worst case scenario of what analysts call secondary proliferation, ie one proliferating state assisting another in its weapons development programs. There is no doubt that this alliance would rattle security agendas from the Gulf to South Korea and pour much oil on already troubled waters. But this is not all.

Despite official optimism in Washington concerning the rejuvenated peace progress between Israel and the Palestinians, in fact since June 29, when some of the Palestinian groups involved, Hamas and Islamic Jihad, announced a truce, there have been 178 terrorist attacks in Israel, including the pre-1967 boundaries, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Israeli officials, whose intelligence has been exceptional throughout this war, say that Iran and Yasser Arafat's Fatah organization have been behind most of these attacks and that Iran is ordering and financing the attacks carried out by what they call rogue cells of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade.

Thus Iran is clearly intensifying its efforts to derail both the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians, and to obtain nuclear weapons. It obviously is doing this in part to solidify the hold of its clerical elites at home by playing the cards of foreign threats and anti-Semitism to perpetuate the mullahs' despotic power. But it is also no less clear that Iran still aims to be able to destabilize its neighbors and to retain the capacity to intimidate them, and thereby dominate the Persian Gulf.

Ultimately, this course of action is unacceptable as far as the other Gulf states and other Middle Eastern nations are concerned. As long as there is the threat of terrorism or of weapons of mass destruction in the region, real peace and stability are unlikely to occur. Indeed, any effort to bring peace to troubled areas cannot then come about because other states must be able to defend themselves against these threats.

Among other things, this means bringing in the US military to defend Gulf states against threats to their sovereignty, integrity and independence, and to counter the linked threats of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. Thus the consuming ambition of Iran's mullahs to retain power by any means possible and to pursue an expansionist foreign policy entail both the subjugation of Iran's peoples and also consigning all the people within reach of Iran's missiles to varying degrees of insecurity and fear.

As Iran's terrorist reach through groups it sponsors is global, and the expected reach of the missiles it is developing, whatever their warheads will contain - conventional, chemical, biological or nuclear warheads - is growing to include Europe and much of Asia, clearly this is a threat that must be reversed and terminated sooner rather than later.

For the moment, the powers that Iran threatens have resorted to diplomatic and economic pressure, but if the resort to terrorism and nuclear weapons, combined with an alliance with North Korea are true indicators of Iran's trajectory, then that forbearance may not last very long.

Stephen Blank is an analyst of international security affairs residing in Harrisburg, PA.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/EH12Ak04.html

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