Iranian Alert -- August 13, 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.

Rising Tide of Islamic Militants See Iraq as Ultimate Battlefield

By Neil MacFarquhar
Aug 13, 2003

SULAIMANIYA, Iraq — In much the same way as the Russian invasion of Afghanistan stirred an earlier generation of young Muslims determined to fight the infidel, the American presence in Iraq is prompting a rising tide of Muslim militants to slip into the country to fight the foreign occupier, Iraqi officials and others say.

"Iraq is the nexus where many issues are coming together — Islam versus democracy, the West versus the axis of evil, Arab nationalism versus some different types of political culture," said Barham Saleh, the prime minister of this Kurdish-controlled part of northern Iraq. "If the Americans succeed here, this will be a monumental blow to everything the terrorists stand for."

Recent intelligence suggests the militants are well organized. One returning group of fighters from the militant Ansar al-Islam organization captured in the Kurdish region two weeks ago consisted of five Iraqis, a Palestinian and a Tunisian.

Among their possessions were five forged Italian passports for a different group of militants they were apparently supposed to join, said Dana Ahmed Majid, the director of general security for the region.

Long gone are the bearded men in the short robes believed worn by the Prophet Muhammad that the Arabs who went to Afghanistan favored. Instead, the same practices that allowed the Sept. 11 attackers to blend into American society are evident.

The fighters steal over Iraq's largely unpoliced borders in small groups with instructions to go to a safe house where they can whisper a password to gain admittance and then lie low awaiting further instructions, say Iraqi security officials in northern Iraq and in Baghdad.

"They come across as civilians, they shave their beards and have clean-cut hair," said a senior security official in the Kurdish region.

Iraqi officials say they expect a broad spectrum of Muslim militants to flood Iraq. They believe that Ansar al-Islam, a small fundamentalist group believed to have links with Al Qaeda, forms the backbone of the underground network. The group was forced out of northern Iraq by a huge attack during the war.

Mullah Mustapha Kreikar, the founding spiritual leader of Ansar al-Islam, said in an interview on Sunday with LBC, the Lebanese satellite channel, that the fight in Iraq would be the culmination of all Muslim efforts since the Islamic caliphate collapsed in the early 20th century with the demise of the Ottoman Empire. "There is no difference between this occupation and the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in 1979," he said from Norway, where he has political asylum.

"The resistance is not only a reaction to the American invasion, it is part of the continuous Islamic struggle since the collapse of the caliphate," he said. "All Islamic struggles since then are part of one organized effort to bring back the caliphate."

Such appeals appear to be attracting a wide range of militants. The fight against Al Qaeda and its numerous offshoots worldwide during the last two years has severely disrupted their coordination, but details emerging from either suspects captured in the last few weeks or from recent surveillance indicates that Qaeda training methods in everything from forgery to establishing sleeper cells are being applied here.

Al Qaeda Web sites carry long treatises on the need for jihad, or holy war, and argue that the effort should not be dissipated in meaningless activities like peaceful demonstrations. Chat-room discussions occasionally focus on how to sneak across borders.

Once established in Baghdad or in the Sunni triangle north of the capital, where much of the armed resistance occurs, the Islamic militants often make common cause with members of the former Baathist government who are also determined to fight Americans.

At least one Saudi and one Egyptian formerly linked to Al Qaeda helped establish an initial training camp three weeks ago where new recruits are lectured on the theological underpinnings of jihad, a security official in Baghdad said.

"All previous experiences with the activities of the underground organizations proved that they flourish in countries with a chaotic security situation, unchecked borders and the lack of a central government — Iraq is all that," said Muhammad Salah, an expert on militant groups and the Cairo bureau chief of the newspaper Al Hayat. "It is the perfect environment for fundamentalist groups to operate and grow."

United States troops have arrested two clerics from Islamic Kurdish groups — once all part of one big organization — suspected of providing logistics help to Ansar fighters, Iraqi officials said. More than 150 members of Ansar al-Islam are believed to have slipped into the country in recent weeks, said a security official in the Kurdish region. Smugglers are believed to be bringing them over daily.

In addition, there are an estimated 100,000 former members of the Iraqi security services without gainful employment, all concentrated in the Sunni triangle north of Baghdad. Perhaps 2,000 of them, especially those with no source of income and no hopes of gaining any kind of amnesty, would be likely recruits for the fundamentalists, the official said.

Although attacks like the deadly car bombing outside the Jordanian Embassy that killed 17 people last Thursday are most likely the work of militants, security officials say, some attacks are carried out either for money or by Iraqis who just do not want Americans here. But the officials anticipate that militant organizations will carry out more attacks.

The training around Baghdad so far has been in three stages, a security official said. Some sort of initial contact is made — usually after prayers in a mosque — and then a second meeting is arranged. Some recruits are weeded out then, but the third round of likely candidates are the ones who make it to the training camp, the official said. They are told to move away from their families and not communicate with anyone.

Some candidates are believed to be the men who worked for Muhammad Khtair al-Dulaimi in the Special Operations Directorate, the branch of the Iraqi secret service that specialized in remote control bombings, poisoning and other operations. The former chief is still at large and is suspected of putting his employees to work against the Americans, the source said.

But the main group organizing an underground route of safe houses and coordinating the various efforts is believed to be Ansar al-Islam, or the Islamic Partisans in English, whose suspected ties to Al Qaeda were among the reasons the Bush administration used to justify the war against Iraq. Although initially a strictly Kurdish organization, its ranks swelled with Arab fighters after the United States attacked Afghanistan in October 2001.

Before the Iraqi war the group was believed to have some 850 members, but up to 200 were killed in the attack against them by Kurdish and United States Special Forces troops in March. Several hundred more were either captured or turned themselves in, leaving an estimated 300 to 350 who fled to Iran.

The extent of their activities remains cloudy. But Web sites believed linked to Al Qaeda are clear enough about the envisaged fight: "The struggle with America has to be carefully managed, the `electric shock method' must be applied, relentless shocks that haunt the Americans all the time everywhere, without giving them a break to regain balance or power."

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/13/international/worldspecial/13ISLA.html

Israel's Red Flag on Iran

August 13, 2003
The Washington Post
Jim Hoagland

A grim warning from Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to President Bush that Iran is much closer to producing nuclear weapons than U.S. intelligence believes has triggered concern here that Israel is seriously considering a preemptive strike against Iran's Bushehr nuclear reactor.

Sharon dramatized his forecast by bringing Maj. Gen. Yoav Galant, a three-star army officer who serves as his military secretary, to a meeting with Bush in the Oval Office two weeks ago, U.S. and Israeli sources tell me. Galant showered a worried-looking Bush with photographs and charts from a thick dossier on Iran's covert program.

So much for the news. Now the analysis: Oy. And vey.

Sharon's description of the unacceptable risks of Iran's being able to launch "a nuclear holocaust" comes just as the Bush administration is making headway in constructing a diplomatic containment strategy for the nuclear weapons programs of Iran and North Korea. Unilateral Israeli action against Iran would destroy this strategy and gravely complicate Bush's reconstruction efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan as well.

Bush's frequently warring senior policymakers have reached a consensus (now there's news) in recent weeks that the United States has no attractive military options in Iran or North Korea. Instead, Washington must work with its allies to impede these rogue efforts to create nuclear arsenals. Europe and Russia have responded by increasingly distancing themselves from Iran and by joining the Bush team in pressuring North Korea into multilateral talks.

Knee-jerk Bush critics will no doubt poke fun or scorn at these post-Iraq multilateralist efforts. As someone almost said once, let them eat yellowcake. An improving climate in transatlantic relations as the bitterness over Iraq recedes makes this strategy the best bet for the next six months, and probably beyond. U.S. officials believe they can use that time to put new obstacles in the way of the Iranian and North Korean programs.

But Sharon's presentation to Bush challenges the assumptions and viability of the emerging U.S. nonproliferation strategy on Iran. U.S. intelligence estimates that put Iran's covert nuclear weapons drive about four years short of being able to turn plutonium into a workable nuclear warhead overstate the time factor by at least 100 percent, Sharon argued. One to two years is his projected timeline.

To be sure, Sharon would face formidable logistical and political problems in trying to update Israel's successful preemptive 1981 strike against Iraq's Osirak reactor. His Oval Office briefing may have been designed to pressure Bush to move more forcefully on Iran rather than to advertise an impending Israeli action.

Israeli leaders have consistently warned Americans for two decades that Iran's Islamic regime is a mortal enemy for the Jewish state and must not be underestimated. Sharon's account, while apparently more urgent and dramatic than past presentations, fits a pattern of Israel "treating a nuclear-arming Iran as an immediate existential threat," says one U.S. official, while Washington does not.

But it is Israel's experience with Osirak that makes Sharon's alarming words impossible to ignore. The trigger for that strike was intelligence that the Iraqi reactor was about to be loaded with nuclear fuel. Hitting it after the loading would have risked spreading radioactive contamination across a wide area in the Middle East. And after the 1991 Gulf War it was discovered that outside assessments -- including Israel's -- underestimated how close Saddam Hussein had been to getting the bomb.

Russian delivery of fuel to the Bushehr reactor that it will complete for Iran later this year could be taken by the Israelis as a similar point of no return. The Iranians also have a covert uranium mining and enrichment effort underway that could be tied into the Bushehr reactor, international inspectors have reported.

"The enrichment effort is the bigger unknown for us," says a U.S. official. "But our estimate is that Iran does not now have a completely indigenous nuclear capability. Efforts to prevent it from reaching that point of no return are worth pursuing. The longer you can keep Russia from delivering the fuel, the better off you are."

A year-long effort led by Undersecretary of State John Bolton to persuade Russia and other countries to be more wary of Iran seems to be making inch-by-inch progress. Moscow has joined in summit-level statements critical of Iran, and Germany and France recently blocked shipment of aluminum tubes useful to Iran's enrichment program. Bolton will seek new action from the International Atomic Energy Agency at a Sept. 8 meeting.

Hope that he gets it. Whatever his purpose, Sharon has usefully sketched one awful alternative to the Bush administration's making multilateralism work for it.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A52278-2003Aug12.html

Iran Plan to Remove Inequalities Blocked

August 13, 2003
The Financial Times
Najmeh Bozorgmehr

Iran's hardline constitu-tional watchdog yesterday blocked a move by Iranian reformists to remove legal and social inequalities against women.

State television announced that the conservative-dominated Guardian Council had rejected a bill binding Iran to the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women. The council ruled the measure was against Sharia (Islamic law) and the constitution "in numerous cases", and could oblige Iran to accept un-Islamic laws.

The bill was presented by the pro-reform government and won overwhelming support in parliament.

Iran's legal system, which is based on Sharia, enshrines unequal rights in areas including divorce, custody, inheritance and blood money.

In the past few weeks senior conservative clerics, based in the holy city of Qom, have criticised reformists for endorsing the campaign. Ayatollah Ali Meshkini, a prominent hardline cleric, this week addressed a letter to the parliament, calling the motion "illegitimate" for "imposing cultural and social patterns" of the west, and for contradicting "tens of Islamic decrees".

The pro-reform Yas-e-No daily wrote yesterday that women in Qom had claimed the bill could allow opposite sexes to mingle even in traditional public baths and swimming pools. Under the present law, men and women are segregated for activities that require loose covering of hair and body.

Analysts believe that the embattled reformists, who face declining popularity for failing to meet demands for reform among young Iranians, women in particular, had expected the bill to be blocked. But analysts said the main intention was to challenge conservatives and demonstrate the obstacles they presented to reforms.

The parliament is expected to refer the bill to a higher forum.

http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1059478959949

Iran Watchdog Rejects Bills on Elections, Torture

August 13, 2003
Reuters
Paul Hughes

TEHRAN -- A conservative Iranian constitutional watchdog has rejected a raft of key legislation on election procedures and civil rights, dealing another heavy blow to President Mohammad Khatami's reformist agenda.

The official IRNA news agency said on Wednesday the Guardian Council -- a 12-member body dominated by conservative clerics -- had rejected the bills on the grounds that they were unconstitutional and against Islamic Sharia law.

One bill, on election procedures, was aimed at curbing the Guardian Council's power to bar candidates from running for office. The other bills related to Iran adopting U.N. charters on banning torture and eliminating discrimination against women. All had been approved by the reformist-controlled parliament.

Khatami acknowledged in a speech on Tuesday that his reform agenda had largely failed after six years in office and warned his hardline rivals that they were alienating the country's youth and storing up trouble for the future.

Khatami's failure to overcome conservative resistance to his reformist agenda has caused his popularity to plummet and led to growing calls for him to resign.

Guardian Council spokesman Ebrahim Azizi told IRNA the election reform bill had been rejected because it contained ''many legal problems which were contrary to the constitution.''

It was the second time that the bill had been rejected.

If the Guardian Council and parliament fail to come to an agreement on the bills they should be sent to the Expediency Council, an arbitration body which has tended to side with Guardian Council rulings in the past.

Khatami has said he does not want the election bill to be sent to the Expediency Council. He has linked this bill with another proposed reform which would increase the president's authority over the judiciary -- another bastion of hardline opposition to Khatami's reforms.

REJECTIONS LITTLE SURPRISE

Khatami and his allies argue the election bill is essential to ensure real democracy prevails in the Islamic Republic.

They say that the Guardian Council has in the past used its powers to bar reformist candidates from running for office and fear it will do the same in upcoming parliamentary elections in March next year and a presidential vote in 2005.

The Guardian Council insists it only rules out candidates who are ''anti-revolutionary'' or have criminal records.

Conservatives point to the fact that reformists won a large majority in the last parliamentary elections as evidence of the Guardian Council's impartiality.

The Guardian Council has already set up scores of offices around the country to monitor the statements and records of potential candidates for next year's parliamentary vote.

Reformists have called the Guardian Council regional offices illegal and demanded they be closed down.

As with the elections bill, the Guardian Council's rejection of legislation to adopt U.N. charters on torture and women's rights came as little surprise.

The torture bill has been rejected several times by the Council and sent back to parliament for amendment.

The bill to adopt the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women had met with fierce opposition from conservative clerics, some of whom described it as a colonialist ''plot to undermine Islam.''

Guardian Council spokesman Azizi said the bill had been rejected as several articles contravened Islamic Sharia law.

http://famulus.msnbc.com/FamulusIntl/reuters08-13-005913.asp?reg=MIDEAST

Iran stakes a claim to the Silk Road

By Hooman Peimani
Aug 13, 2003

Iran, positioned at the crossroads of the 7,000-mile Silk Road, the ageless trading track between China and the West, has embarked on a variety of transport and other projects to reconstruct, revitalize, expand and diversify its economy to become the epicenter of Asia- Middle East trade.

These diverse projects mainly seek to capitalize on Iran's rich resources or on its geographical location. They aim at returning Iran to its traditional role in expanding trade between Europe and Asia and making it a trade powerhouse. As such, their determination has strategic and economic significance for shippers and traders not just across Asia to Europe, the traditional end of the Silk Road, but all along the Arabian Peninsula, to India and the Mediterranean Sea as well.

Apart from many under-construction highways and ports, railway construction reflects the determination of the Iranians to achieve their objective. The country is now setting a Middle East record for railway construction. Mohammad Saeednejad, managing director of the Islamic Republic Railways, said on Monday that, on average, "500 kilometers of railways have been laid in the country annually" since 2000. Currently they are laying 3,300 kilometers of track, including the 1,000 kilometer Bafq-Mashhad line, which, once finished, will cut by about 900 kilometers the existing track distance connecting Turkmenistan and the entire Central Asia to the Persian Gulf via the Tajan-Mashhad-Bandar Abbas line.

Bandar Abbas is a well-developed Iranian port through which a growing amount of international cargo transaction is conducted. Another major line is a 400 kilometer line connecting the Caspian Sea to the Persian Gulf through the Tehran-Bandar Abbas line. Apart from their position as the main connecting ports between Iran and Russia, the Iranian Caspian Sea ports are becoming increasingly important for their role in expanding regional and international trade between the Caucasus, Central Asia and Russia.

Iran has an advanced land transportation infrastructure, the result of extensive investment since the early 1960s. Various high-quality, well-kept highways connect its major trading, mining and industrial regions to each other as well as to neighboring countries, but that includes few railways. Its main lines stretch less than 10,000 kilometers, extremely inadequate for a vast country of 1.64 million square kilometers. Especially since its major ports are along its 2,500 kilometer coastline with the Persian Gulf and the Oman Sea in the south and most of its populous and industrial regions are in the north.

Apart from Iran's plan to expand its international trade, this rapid transport development is also part of a plan to expand economic relations with the newly-independent neighboring Central Asian and Caucasian countries, and also with its main regional partner, Russia.

In particular, Iran's efforts to turn itself into the major transit route for the landlocked Central Asian countries as well as for the two landlocked Caucasian states, Azerbaijan and Armenia, require connecting road and railroads as well as expanding its domestic land transportation network. The idea of restoring the ancient Silk Road by connecting China's roads and railroads to Europe via its neighboring Central Asia and through Iran is another part of its ambition to expand trade.

Yet another factor has been Iran's membership in the Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO). Formed by Iran, Turkey and Pakistan in the 1980s, the ECO was revitalized when five Central Asian countries, Afghanistan and Azerbaijan, joined it after the Soviet Union's fall. Iran's geography makes it the natural link among all these countries, which are its neighbors or which can access it through a land neighbor (Turkmenistan) or a sea neighbor (Kazakhstan) in the case of three Central Asian countries (Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan).

Finally, Iran's joint project with India and Russia to offer an alternative route for European-Asian trade to the one via the Suez Canal has been a factor. Their land/sea route is both shorter and cheaper.

To meet growing domestic and regional/international demand, Iran is expanding and modernizing its land and sea transportation networks to function as the main regional connecting state for long-term trade routes. Within this context, land transportation, and in particular railway construction, is a priority.

Iran is also building a 150 kilometer railroad connecting its eastern Khorassan province with Afghanistan's Herat province, through which it can access other parts of Afghanistan. Since that country borders Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, Iran can also access those Central Asian countries by a shorter link than the current one through Turkmenistan.

To that end, last June Iran signed trilateral agreements with each country and Afghanistan. Given Afghanistan's shared border with China, Iran is also considering offering its route to the Chinese in search of a shortcut for their trade with the Middle East and Europe for which highways and railways would be required.

Iran's plans include connecting the Iranian railway network to Iraq and to its neighboring Syria, which would begin after the completion of Bafq-Mashhad, according to Saeednejad. That rail link would enable the Iranians to access the Mediterranean through an alternative route to the existing Turkish one, which is both long and expensive. There are also political considerations arising from Turkey's close ties with the United States and Israel.

It is not clear if the rail track will pass through Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region, which is on good terms with Iran and which, at least theoretically, does not require the American approval or through its non-Kurdish region requiring that approval.

The expanding railway network is creating a market for foreign suppliers, most of which are struggling to survive. The troubled French corporation Alestom has so far supplied 20 locomotives, while 80 more will be assembled in Iran. China is now selling 150 passenger wagons to Iran, although Iran's Pars Wagon Manufacturing produces and exports wagons to countries such as Syria.

Railway cargo handling capacity is growing. According to Saeednejad, in the first four months of the current Iranian year beginning on March 21, Iranian cargo trains carried 10 million tonnes of cargo and 342,000 tonnes of transit cargoes, indicating, respectively, 17 percent and 40 percent increases compared to the same period in the last year. Nevertheless, the Iranian rail network requires rapid expansion to meet growing domestic and international demands, although the highway system compensates, to a large extent, the former's limitation for the time being.

Despite the shortcoming of their rail system, evidence suggests that the Iranians are determined to fully exploit their geographical location as a major source of income, employment and economic and political influence. If all the existing rail, road and port projects are fully implemented, Iran will certainly become a major transit route for the Asian-European trade on its own merit.

Dr. Hooman Peimani works as an independent consultant with international organizations in Geneva and does research in international relations.

http://www.daneshjoo.org/generalnews/article/publish/article_1723.shtml

Consider enemy threat

USA Today
By Newt Gingrich
Aug 13, 2003

Some will argue that a weapon capable of protecting American and allied lives is more dangerous than the terrorists and dictators who openly state their willingness to use weapons of mass murder to kill hundreds of thousands and even millions of civilians. This argument against America protecting itself is a path to enormous danger.
Imagine an enemy of the United States that has developed a chemical or biological weapon. Now imagine that we knew conclusively its precise production and storage locations. However, because our enemy has studied us and has learned our capabilities and our vulnerabilities, he has located the facility two stories deeper than any weapon in our arsenal can penetrate.

The president would be told that we know what it is and where it is but that we have no capability to stop it.

Every year, as tunneling technology improves, countries such as Libya, North Korea and Iran get closer to an ability to create a weapons-of-mass-death facility that simply will be out of our reach. We should conclude from this reality that in order to pre-empt such weapons of mass murder, and those who would use them, we must have the capability to destroy those sites.

The most promising option is a very accurate, limited and reliable low-yield nuclear weapon— a "bunker buster" — that is capable of penetrating deep into the earth and destroying with certainty a fortified weapons facility that is buried deeply underground.

Some will argue that existing weapon systems can do the job, but that is simply not true. Improvements in precision guidance and weapons design would allow a microtactical weapon to be developed that would effectively eliminate a weapons-of-mass-murder program with minimum collateral damage.

This would be a weapon designed to be used. It would not simply be a weapon of deterrence, as current nuclear weapons are.

Yet after Sept. 11, 2001, and after all of the public threats of Osama bin Laden, Kim Jong Il and others, how can we not be prepared to defend ourselves if necessity requires it?

Such a weapon with its potential to save millions of innocent lives should not be seen as a threat but as a necessary step toward strengthening American and world security.

Those who accept the reality of this threat — and all of us must — and yet oppose such a weapon because it is "new" or because they dislike anything "nuclear," need to answer one question: What will they do to defend American lives when such a facility is discovered — if they refuse to use the only current technology that can get the job done.

Former speaker of the House Newt Gingrich is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

http://www.daneshjoo.org/generalnews/article/publish/article_1722.shtml

Amnesty slams the regime's watch body on Women's convention
SMCCDI (Information Service)

Aug 13, 2003

Amnesty International (AI) slammed, today, the Islamic republic's Guardian Council for its refusal to ratify the proposal to let Iran to accede to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women

The famous rights watch organization stated, in its communiqué : "The women's convention includes standards that are contained in international human rights treaties to which Iran is already a state party, such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR),"

"The Guardian Council's decision therefore undermines Iran's commitment to uphold international human rights standards and fails the aspirations of all Iranian women to have their dignity and place in society measured against international standards relating to women's rights." AI added.

It's to note that the Islamic ideology is in direct contradiction with Women's Rights as known in our time. Based on this ideology a women can never became a judge or a ruler or to benefit of the same share, or her statement is considered as half of a man.

This backwarded principle is being followed by the therocratic system and its leaders while the majority of the Iranian Nation is composed by woman under 35 years of age who are following with big interest the liberal model of life as existing in the western world.

Many Iranian women have been killed, injured, arrested or fined for having defied the Islamic tabou's.

http://www.daneshjoo.org/generalnews/article/publish/article_1729.shtml

Iran Hard-liners Again Show Their Claws

August 14, 2003
The New York Times
Nazila Fathi

TEHRAN -- In another blow against Iran's reform movement, the country's hard-line watchdog rejected Wednesday three progressive bills approved by Parliament that could have increased civil rights.

The Guardian Council rejected two bills that required Iran to adopt United Nations conventions on eliminating torture and discrimination against women.

The third bill was aimed at curbing the Guardian Council's power to bar candidates from running for office.

The council's spokesman, Ibrahim Azizi, said that the bills were rejected because they were unconstitutional or against Islamic law.

But the move was widely considered as another blow to the reform movement prior to the next parliamentary elections, which are scheduled for February.

The Guardian Council has set up offices around the country to identify potential candidates and examine their political records.

Reformers have said that the offices are illegal. "We had predicted that the council would reject the bills because the current structure of the council is like a book that has been printed a million times and everyone is familiar with its contents," said Jafar Golbaz, a member of Parliament, Iranian Labor News Agency reported.

Golbaz said that the time had come for Parliament to use its constitutional power and put the election bill to a referendum. "By putting the issue on referendum, the fate of the matter will get out of both the Guardian Council and Parliament's hands," he added.

President Muhammad Khatami acknowledged in a speech Tuesday that his reform agenda had largely failed and warned his hard-line opponents that they were alienating the country's youth.

"Lately, speaking has become difficult for me because I feel that many of the ideas and programs I sincerely offered and the people voted for have not been materialized," he said.

Scores of activists, frustrated with the slow pace of reforms, remain in jails since pro-democracy protests around the country in June. Only a number of student activists were released after the supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, called on the judiciary to show leniency toward them.

The internal conflict is continuing as the international pressure is increasing on Iran to clarify its nuclear programs. Hard-liners have proposed that Iran should withdraw from the nonproliferation treaty as well while reformists close to Khatami are trying to ease the tension.

However, the head of Iran's atomic energy agency, Gholamreza Aghazadeh, told reporters Wednesday that the result of the latest meetings with inspectors were positive.

A team from the UN nuclear agency arrived in Iran this week for another round of inspections. The team took environmental samples to determine the scale of nuclear tests already conducted. Another legal team came last week to explain Iran's obligations if it decided to sign on to an additional program.

Iran has come under pressure to sign a protocol that will allow intrusive and unexpected visits of its sites. The UN agency will review Iran's case Sept. 8 and may send the case to the Security Council if it finds that the program represents a threat.

http://www.iht.com/articles/106267.html

Washington Post: U.S. Fears Israel May Strike Iran's Nukes

August 14, 2003
Ha'aretz
Aluf Benn and Natan Guttman

A senior Washington Post columnist yesterday reported that after the latest meeting between Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and U.S. President George W. Bush in Washington, there is mounting concern in the administration that Israel might be planning to attack Iranian nuclear facilities.

The columnist, Jim Hoagland, opened his column yesterday by saying: "A grim warning from Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to President Bush that Iran is much closer to producing nuclear weapons than U.S. intelligence believes, has triggered concern here that Israel is seriously considering a preemptive strike against Iran's Busher nuclear reactor." According to Hoagland, who quoted U.S. and Israeli sources, Sharon brought Maj. Gen. Yoav Galant, his army liaison officer, "to shower a worried-looking Bush with photographs and charts from a thick dossier on Iran's covert program."

Hoagland said Sharon told Bush that Israel believes Iran is much closer to a bomb than American intelligence suspects, and that as far as Israel is concerned, the delivery date of Russian fuel for the Iranian project will be a point of no return. Hoagland noted that Israel deliberately struck the Iraqi reactor in 1982 before it was supplied with nuclear fuel.

The column indicated that Sharon still "enjoys" a reputation in Washington as a "wild card" or "rogue," a reputation that the prime minister put to good use leading up to the war in Iraq when his semi-veiled threats to take action if Baghdad struck Israel made Washington provide both a defensive umbrella for Israel and a hefty aid package.

But Sharon has been careful not to make explicit threats, lest they be tested one day and meanwhile cause unnecessary escalation. Instead, he has preferred to make vague statements that have left the Arabs, Iranians and Americans in a worrying fog.

Israel has made no secret that the Iranian nuclear program is the leading risk to its national security. Israeli intelligence believes the point of no return in the Iranian nuclear program is within two to three years, and some elements in Israeli intelligence apparently think it could come sooner.

But attacking Iran's nuclear facilities would be far more complicated than the 1982 strike outside Baghdad. First, Iran's nuclear program is dispersed at several sites, some of which are protected from conventional weapons; the distance to fly is much greater; and perhaps most importantly, the Iranians could respond in a painful manner.

Therefore, Israel would prefer that the United States handle the problem through either diplomatic means or force. There have been recent reports that the CIA has shown some countries, although not Israel, plans for an air and missile attack on the Iranian facilities.

Israel would like to maintain a low profile and let the Americans lead the campaign against the Iranian program, so Israeli officials are not commenting on it right now.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=329267&contrassID=2&subContrassID=1&sbSubContrassID=0&listSrc=Y

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