Iranian Alert -- August 25, 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.

China Ready to Push Forward Relations with Iran

August 25, 2003
Xinhua News Agency
Xinhuanet

BEIJING -- Chinese President Hu Jintao said here Monday that China hopes to push forward its relations with Iran on the basis of the five principles of peaceful co-existence in the new century.

Hu told visiting Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi that China attached great importance to its relations with Iran, and hoped to develop relations on the basis of the principles of mutual respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity, mutual non-aggression, non-interference in each other's internal affairs, equality and mutual benefit, and peaceful coexistence.

The Chinese president noted that China-Iran relations had developed smoothly, characterized by frequent top-level visits and smooth cooperation in areas of trade, energy, telecommunications and transportation.

"Iran has become an important trade partner of China in the Middle East," Hu said.

"We appreciate and thank the Iranian Government for its firm support to China on the issue of Taiwan."

Hu said both China and Iran were developing countries in Asia, and both insisted on building a just and reasonable new world political and economic order.

The economies of the two countries were highly complementary and the potential for cooperation was great, Hu said.

Kharazi said Iran hoped to expand cooperation with China in all areas. He conveyed to Hu greetings from Iranian President Seyyed Mohammad Khatami, and said the exchange of top level visits between the two countries had pushed forward the development of bilateral relations.

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2003-08/25/content_1044012.htm

A "MUST READ" article by Michael Ledee. -- DoctorZin

Angrier and Angrier

August 25, 2003
Michael Ledeen
National Review Online

Self-deception, big-time.

One of the central themes of The War Against the Terror Masters is that we weren't ready for September 11 because the intelligence community did not want to see it coming. Over many years, people in the field and analysts in Washington and Langley had seen careers ruined because somebody tried to warn the policymakers that trouble was coming. The policymakers didn't want to hear that sort of thing because they were not prepared to do the unpleasant things that knowledge of the real situation required. The ultimate example was the Clinton White House, where the top people simply refused to even receive information about Osama bin Laden's activities in Sudan. Clinton was hardly unique; the NSC under Bush the Father simply refused to believe that Saddam would invade Kuwait, and even ignored seemingly incontrovertible information provided the night of the invasion, when General Scowcroft went home early.

When people lower down the food chain, perhaps driven by love of country, insisted on making their superiors face the facts, they often became living examples of "no good deed goes unpunished in Washington." Bob Baer, for example, who both proved the Iranian and PLO involvement in the Beirut-embassy bombing of 1983, and got inside the terror network a decade later, was threatened with criminal prosecution. And today, Michael Maloof, whose nearly 30 years of service in the Department of Defense uncovering all manner of anti-American skullduggery by various enemies should be rewarded with medals and high praise, is instead subjected to an internal inquisition and nasty leaks to the popular press.

Moreover, whenever either the CIA or FBI aggressively went after suspected terrorists, Congress was ready to investigate, to rewrite guidelines, and to punish anyone who actually succeeded. By September 10, the FBI could not even clip newspaper articles about openly anti-American groups, Muslim or otherwise. It was illegal.

The intelligence community accordingly learned that it must not take risks, and must not bring forward alarming information. So, over the years, the case officers and the top bureaucrats adapted to the political requirements, and they developed elaborate stratagems to ensure that they did not know the things that the policymakers did not want to know. On those occasions when, despite their best efforts, the information became so manifestly clear that it could not be ignored, the intelligence community denied its significance, or whispered darkly about the unreliability of the sources. Thus, for example, when some of the Ayatollah Khomeni's sermons were translated and published in the popular press, CIA sent experts to tell Senator Scoop Jackson's committee that the material was probably forged. And, at the same time, the CIA neatly refused to call the PLO a "terrorist" organization.

This convenient self-deception soon spread to the State Department, where in recent times it has taken on the characteristics of a full-blown obsessive/compulsive neurosis. No matter how many times State's policies fail, no matter how often the "peace process" produces more bloodshed than the preceding period, Secretary of State Colin Powell, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage and Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs William J. Burns fly off to beg our Palestinian, Iranian, Saudi and Syrian enemies to behave better, and warn our allies in Israel to show restraint at all costs. No matter how many times Iran makes monkeys out of our policymakers, Powell and Armitage insist that Iran is a democracy, redefine the bloody internal conflict as a "family squabble," and beg the mullahs for some of the al Qaeda leaders now acknowledged to be in Iran (a fact first revealed on NRO during the fighting in Afghanistan). That is not in the cards. Iran supports al Qaeda and is not about to betray them merely to give our secretary of state a nice day.

Although clinically interesting, the patient most likely to die from this syndrome is the national security of the United States, with collateral damage throughout the Western world. Our policymakers are now willfully blind, if not always to the facts themselves, at least to their plain meaning. The BBC announced over the weekend that Iraqi police had arrested Iranian terrorists planning operations in Baghdad, and turned them over to the Americans. The general phenomenon is well known, as Jerry Bremer invariably notes in his many interviews and public statements. Yet even Bremer, a man of great talent and courage, has bought into one of the major State Department myths, namely that Sunnis and Shiites don't actively cooperate. When Brit Hume asked whether the large number of terrorists pouring across the Iran/Iraq border showed that the mullahs were supporting anti-American terrorism in Iraq, Bremer said one could not say that with confidence, since most of the terrorists were Sunni, and the Iranian regime is famously Shiite.

I suppose that, if asked about Syrian support for the terrorists pouring into Iraq from Syria, our experts would remind us that the Damascus regime is secular (Baathist, like Saddam), and does not endorse jihad.…

And so we dither and debate, and go to the Security Council in order to lure more young soldiers to face the terror masters in Iraq, even as Imad Mughniyah, the lethal chieftain of Hezbollah, has now begun his operations against us in both Iraq and Jordan, and as the Iranian mullahs send out orders to begin taking American and British hostages. As Bashar Assad told us some months back, they are going to turn Iraq into a second Lebanon. This is total terrorist war, and we are trying to limit our losses, playing defense instead of taking the war into our enemies' havens.

Our inability to see the world plain carries over into more specialized areas of intelligence, even those of enormous importance. On some occasions, CIA and State have refused to even talk to sources whose previous information saved American lives, and promising leads on the location of WMDs in Iraq were dropped as well.

It is hard to believe that the president approves of this state of affairs, especially as he sees the poll results that document the American people's mounting dissatisfaction with developments in Iraq. They are right to be upset, and they are likely to get angrier still if, as I expect, the terror war against us gets uglier. I am an admirer of George W. Bush. He seems to have extraordinarily good instincts and the kind of faith-based courage that makes for good leadership under terrible circumstances. But I do not think he has come to grips with the systematic myopia of our policymakers, and the culture of self-deception that afflicts our intelligence community.

You don't need master spies to see what's going on in the Middle East, or brilliant diplomats to tell you that we are playing for enormous stakes. Most normal Americans, unencumbered by visions of diplomatic breakthroughs and negotiated settlements, sense that we are losing the initiative, and that this is costing us money, blood and prestige. We are indeed at war, but we have inexplicably stopped waging it.

Faster, please.

— Michael Ledeen, an NRO contributing editor, is most recently theauthor of The War Against the Terror Masters. Ledeen, Resident Scholar in the Freedom Chair at the American Enterprise Institute, can be reached through Benador Associates.

http://www.nationalreview.com/ledeen/ledeen082503.asp

Held Islamic Ambassador involved in more terror actions than in Argentina

SMCCDI (Information Service)
Aug 25, 2003

The Islamic republic's former Ambassador, held by the British Justice, is part of an Islamic network which has more terrorist activities on its active than the Argentina bombings. Soleimanpoor is part of a specific Islamist group, with governmental supports, which has the main goal of the total annihilation of the "Satanic USA" and the "Israeli Zionism".

This group was formed, in the late 70's, by Islamist terrorists recruited from several Middle Eastern countries and especially from Lebanon where they were trained in the Fedayin camps. Its activists will play a major role in the 1979 Islamic revolution and later in the crackdown on any source of opposition and dissidence in Iran.

Following the establishment of the Theocratic regime in Iran and benefiting of Rouh Ollah Khomeini's support the members of the group will occupy key governmental functions. They will use their posts in order to carry several actions outside Iran and especially in western European countries, such as, Spain and France where Jewish group members and Iranian opponents will become their main targets.

It's during these years than the close friendship of some of its members will lead to several marriages in order to consolidate the existing "Muslim brotherhood" links. The regime's "respectable" Ambassador will become the brother in law of the famous Lebanese terrorist named "Anis Naghache" who will be involved in the first murder attempt against the life of the late Shahpoor Bakhtiar.

Several French citizens including a pregnant women and a policemen will be killed during the attempt and another French policeman will be paralyzed for life.

Naghache will be caught during this 1981 action in the French Capital.

Supposed to make a life time jail, he'll be freed few years later following a controversial amnesty granted by Francois Mitterand, the then French president. Several oil and industrial contracts will be awarded, by the Islamic regime, to French companies such as the Total Petroleum in order to thank the French Justice.

Understanding the level of impunity, offered by the French government, the Islamic regime will succeed, few years later, in the murder of Bakhtiar by sending another death squad.

http://www.daneshjoo.org/generalnews/article/publish/article_1935.shtml

Scapegoats to be used in Kazemi affair

SMCCDI (Information Service)
Aug 25, 2003

The Islamic republic regime which is facing an unprecedented International pressure and fears to see the Canadian door to the N. American continent gets close has decided to use scapegoats in order to close the Kazemi affair.

Based on confirmed reports, the two security officers that the regime intends to condemn for Kazemi's death are in reality innocent in the rape-murder case. The two individuals have been forced to accept making false confessions in order to have the lives of their families saved.

The real guilties are named "Jafar Nemati" and "Ala-Bakhshi" who are the officers of the Intelligence Unit of the regime and close collaborators of Judge Mortazavi in the Kazemi case. One of them will rape to death Kazemi following receiving a return slap from the victim who was refusing to sign false confessions on her link with foreign powers.

The trio benefits of the strong support of the regime's Supreme leader.

The Islamic regime has already used scapegoats in other elimination affairs which turned to scandals. Several of its forced scapegoats, such as Saeed Emami, will be each time killed in order to cut any link to the higher echelons of the Murder Machine.

Saeed Emami was the alleged "Rogue Agent" of the Islamic Ministry of Intelligence who will be burned out during the scandal named as "Chain Murders". Forced to make false confessions about having made the murders on the request of US and Israeli Intelligences in order to tarnish the "Islamic regime's Respectability", he will be killed while being held in captivity.

The official cause of the death will be announced as "Having committed suicide by drinking depilatory substance".

http://www.daneshjoo.org/generalnews/article/publish/article_1936.shtml

London-Tehran Relations Sour After Terror Suspect's Arrest

The detention of an ex-Iranian ambassador wanted by Argentinean officials in connection with a terror attack on a Jewish community center in 1994 has triggered a diplomatic dispute between Britain and Iran.

Since the arrest of former Iranian senior diplomat Hade Soleimanpour last Thursday in Durham, Britain, officials in Tehran have twice summoned top representatives at the British embassy, and newspapers and Iranian leaders have launched rhetorical tirades against their British counterparts.

In a particularly vitriolic editorial, the conservative Tehran daily Keyhand demanded the eviction of Britain’s ambassador from the Iranian capital. Direct contacts between London and Tehran have been simultaneously intensive and tense, with Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi saying the arrest would harm bilateral ties.

In recent weeks, Argentinean investigators identified the former Iranian ambassador to Argentina as one of the masterminds behind a massive terrorist attack against a Jewish facility in Buenos Aires in 1992.

Khatami: Incorrect deed

"I declare from here that the British government will have to cease carrying on with this incorrect deed in a short period of time and apologize," Iranian President Mohammed Khatami said after a visit to the grave of Iran’s spiritual leader, Ayatollah Khomeini. Khatami also threatened to take an unspecified "strong action" against Britain.

In "incorrect deeds," Khatami referred to the arrest of the 47-year-old, who was registered as a student at a university in northeastern England. The arrest came after Argentinean prosecutors issued an arrest warrant against the diplomat. Prosecutors believe Soleimanpour to be the key planner of the July 1994 terrorist attack on the AMIA Jewish Community Center in Buenos Aires, the largest single act of terror in Argentinean history.

On June 18 of that year, just before 10 a.m., a bomb detonated in front of the community center leaving 85 people dead in the rubble of the decimated building and 200 more seriously injured. Two years earlier, an attack on the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires killed 29 dead and injured 200.

Neither crime has ever been solved, but the Argentineans have long speculated that Iran played a role -- an accusation Tehran has forcefully rejected as a "Zionist" smear campaign organized by Argentina’s 300,000 person-strong Jewish community. Argentinean investigators maintain that evidence suggests that both Iran and the militant group Hizbollah played a role in the attack.

Little happened on the investigative front until after 1999, when former President Carlos Menem left office. Federal prosecutors then put the investigation on the front burner, at the same time presenting some uncomfortable allegations about the former leader. Menem, whose family is of Syrian origin, is under investigation by Argentinean justice officials on the suspicion that he accepted a $10 million bribe from Iran to cover up the attacks and that he keeps well-padded bank accounts in Switzerland.

Investigation advances

Investigators also appear to be making progress. Argentinean media reports this spring suggested the government was preparing to issue arrest warrants against a group of Iranian diplomats as well as ex-diplomat Soleimanpour, former Iranian Intelligence Minister Ali Fallahian and the country's supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei.

But the Iranian spiritual leader has not been the focus of investigators in Buenos Aires -- at least not at this stage. The fact that British officials arrested a former Iranian diplomat has nonetheless angered leaders back in Tehran.

"It’s already well known how much damage and suffering terrorism has caused for the Islamic Republic of Iran," said Mehdi Karroubi, president of the Iranian parliament. "Still, pressure just continues to be put on the Islamic Republic. The Iranian government must defend its own rights as well as those of the innocent ambassador."

Link to attacks in Germany

The current investigation in many ways mirrors an investigation in Germany into the 1992 murders of four Iranian Kurdish opposition figures at Berlin's Mykonos restaurant. Investigators later fingered an Iranian agent as the bloodbath's ringleader, and several of the suspects fled to Iran. German prosecutors in that incident accused senior members of the Iranian government of involvement in the attack.

The two investigations also have a link: Argentinean prosecutors have asked Abolghasen Mebahi, a witness in the German case now under protection, to provide testimony against Menem. Buenos Aires prosecutors believe Mebahi may have information about the bribes allegedly received by Menem as well as the 1994 attack against the Jewish center.

Iran has retaliated against Argentina for the latest investigative developments by cutting all cultural and commercial ties with the South American country.

http://www.dw-world.de/english/0,3367,1433_A_955450_1_A,00.html

Rogue State Department

By David Bedein
FrontPageMagazine.com | August 25, 2003

The US Constitution mandates that the US Congress, the elected representatives of the American people, must advise and consent the US Administration in matters of foreign policy.

The time has come for the American people to make State Department policies accountable to the the US Senate Foreign RelationsCommittee, the US House International Relations Committee, the media and the American electorate.

In at least twenty critical matters of Middle East foreign policy, the US State Department has acted independently of US Congressional approval in its implementation of Middle East policy.

1. The US State Department has ignored all data brought to its attention from Israeli intelligence which provides documents, records minutes, and recordings which demonstrate Abu Mazen's direct involvement with the PLO murder campaign which has ensued over the past three years, which has resulted in more than 18,000 terror attacks and more than 800 Israeli citizens who have been murdered by Arab terrorists in cold blood.

2. The US State Department has demanded that Israel free hundreds of Arabs who have been involved in acts of premeditated murder, meaning that Israel would have to free Arab terrorists who qualify as not having "blood on their hands" because while they tried to hurt people with bullets, bombs and rocks, they missed.

3. The US State Department has demanded that Israel free members of Arab terror organizations who are ideologically committed to murdering Jews.

4. The US State Department has refused to demand that the PLO withdraw its sentence of death for any Jew who lives in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, Katif or the Golan.

5. The US State Department has demanded that Israel not publish the documents that it has acquired which demonstrate the direct involvement of the Palestinian National Authority and the Fateh in the PLO campaign of premeditated murder that has continued for the past
three years.

6. The US State Department has refused to comment on the new Palestine State Constitution which mandates that the Palestinian State will be based on the Islamic Sharia Law and allow for religious freedom, human rights or civil liberties, while legislating the "right of return" for all Palestinian Arab
refugees from 1948 and for their descendents.

7. The US State Department has mandated that Israel and the PA not dissemble the Hamas, which endorses the murder of all Jews in any part of Israel.

8. The US State Department refers to the June 29th "Hudna" agreement that was achieved between the PLO and the Hamas as a "cease-fire", despite the fact that the US State Department knows full well that a "hudna" implies a respite before the next battle in the war. Since the requirement of the "hudna" is that Israel free all jailed terrorists as a condition for continuing the war, there is no chance that the "hudna" will lead to peace or reconciliation.

9. The US State Department, while approving massive arms shipments and weapons upgrade for Egypt, has not used any leverage with Egypt to demand that Egypt put a stop to the mass construction of weapons tunnels into Israel.

10. The US State Department, despite its protestations against those who aid and abet terrorist organizations, will issue no public call for Saudi Arabia to cease and desist from its funding of Arab terror organizations.

11. The US State Department, mandated by the US Congress to monitor PA education, has hired a leading PLO advocacy organization known as IPCRI,which has whitewashed the PA school curriculum as a 'peace curriculum while not citing any specific reference in that same curriculum, That US-funded IPCRI report is being used as the rationale for US AID and the EU to renew funding for the PA schools. Meanwhile, the US State Department is ignoring the text analysis of the newest PA school textbooks provided by CMIP, the Center for Monitoring the Impact of Peace, whose work is located at www.edume.org

12. The US State Department, mandated by the US Congress to provide a critical analysis of the status of religious freedom inside the Palestinian Authority, issued a report in which it described the
PA "transformation" of "Kever Yosef", Joseph's Tomb,into a mosque as an "act of religious freedom".

13. The US State Department acts under binding legislation which mandates that the US state Department not deal with the PLO unless and until the PLO cancels its covenant which calls for the
dismemberment of the state of Israel. The PNC, the Palestine National Council, met in special session on April 24, 1996 and on December 14, 1998 to consider the question of the PLO covenant. In both cases, the PNC did not cancel the PLO covenant. Even so, US State Department falsely claims that the PLO cancelled its covenant. In other words, the US State
Department's negotiations with the PLO remain in flagrant violation of US law

14. The US State Department recently dispatched emissaries to the middle east, John Wolfe and William Burns, both of whom met with Israeli political organizations that lobby for the PLO. However, Wolfe and Burns refused to meet with Israeli organizations which critique the PLO, leaving pro PLO groups as the only Israeli organizations which are in a position to provide feedback for the US State Department

15. The US State Department, mandated by the President to seek ways to facilitate a two-state solution, has allocated a special grant of $26 Million to UNRWA, the UN agency which runs Arab refugee camps under a policy that promote the "right of return" for four million Palestinian Arab
refugees to take back Arab villages which have been replaced by Israeli town collective farms and woodlands within the 1949-1967 lines.

16. The US State Department, mandated by the US Congress to facilitate the creation of a "democratic state of Palestine", describes the one party elections in which Arafat was elected
president of Palestinian Authority in January 1996 as "free and democratic" despite the fact that all candidates had to be selected and approved by Arafat in order to run. PA Foreign Minister and
Palestinian State Constitution author Nabil Shaath has confirmed that Arafat would again be the only candidate for president of the Palestinian Arab entity.

17. The US State Department, mandated by the US Congress to facilitate a system of human rights in the Palestinian Authority, turns a blind eye to the fact that the PA has placed more than 200
dissidents on death row for the crime of criticizing the PA. The PA calls them "collaborators" for media consumption.

18. The US State Department has authorized the resumption of direct assistance to the Palestinian Authority, before it took any steps to disarm and disband Arab terror groups which act within the PA. That aid to the PA was supposed to be predicated on that PA crackdown on organizations that plan and conduct acts of premeditated murder against Jews.

19. The US State Department has resumed military training of the PA military forces, after a three year period in which those same PA security forces were directly involved in all levels of terror
activity, while incorporating the Hamas.

20. The US State Department has provided financial backing to PASSIA, the Palestinian Arab lobby organization which trains professionals to lobby Capital Hill for the PLO cause. The PASSIA training manuals thank US AID for their generous sponsorship. In other words, the US government pays the PLO to lobby the US Congress to advance their interests.

David Bedein is the Bureau Chief of the Israel Resource News Agency.

http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=9521

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