Iranian Alert -- September 6, 2003 -- IRAN 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.

Is Iran next on Bush hit list?

Posted: September 6, 2003
1:00 a.m. Eastern
© 2003 WorldNetDaily.com

The Bush Doctrine authorizes pre-emptive strikes by U.S. armed forces on any sovereign state the president "determines" to be acquiring chem-bio weapons or nukes that could ultimately be used against us, our forces abroad, our friends or our allies.

The recent invasion and occupation of Iraq resulted from a presidential "determination" that Saddam Hussein had chem-bio warheads he could deliver by ballistic missile to Israel, and was also reconstituting the uranium enrichment program the International Atomic Energy Agency had destroyed in the early 1990s at the direction of the United Nations Security Council.

Unfortunately, the IAEA reported to the Security Council only days before the invasion that Saddam had made no attempt to reconstitute his program.

Similarly, other U.N. inspectors reported that if Saddam had chem-bio weapons and ballistic missiles, they couldn't find them.

Bush brushed aside the Security Council reports and invaded Iraq anyway.

As the whole world now knows, the application – in defiance of the U.N. Charter – of the Bush Doctrine to Iraq was a terrible mistake.

Bush and his media sycophants refuse to admit it, of course.

You see, what the rest of the world thinks doesn't matter. The Bush Doctrine is intended to supercede the U.N. Charter and the U.N. regime for preventing nuke proliferation.

Almost every sovereign state is a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Every signatory not having nukes pledges to not acquire them in return for gaining access to everything "nuclear" that is peaceful. However, everything peaceful that could be used in a nuke program – such as a uranium-enrichment facility – has to be "declared" and made subject to an IAEA Safeguards Agreement.

If the IAEA determines that a signatory is circumventing its Safeguards Agreement and is engaged in any non-peaceful activity, it may ask the U.N. Security Council to impose "sanctions," which could – under the U.N. Charter – include the use of force.

As a result of such an IAEA determination, the Security Council did impose economic sanctions on Iraq in 1991. However, once Iraq's nuke-oriented infrastructure was destroyed, all research and development programs ended, and a monitoring and verification regime established, insofar as the IAEA was concerned, sanctions could have been lifted.

Therefore, the application of the Bush Doctrine to "disarm" an Iraq the IAEA considered to be already disarmed was widely viewed by other NPT signatories as invalidating the IAEA-NPT Safeguards regime.

For example, North Korea had produced, before becoming subject to the IAEA-NPT Safeguards regime in 1992, enough weapons-grade plutonium to make a half-dozen nukes. For ten years, that plutonium was under IAEA lock and seal. Now, as a direct result of the application of the Bush Doctrine to Iraq, North Korea has withdrawn from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and may have, by now, produced a half-dozen nukes, for sale to the highest bidder.

Now, even though this scary situation in Korea was created by an improper application of the Bush Doctrine, if ever there was a case for properly applying the Bush Doctrine, North Korea is it.

But, Bush isn't going to.

Why?

Because North Korea's weapons-grade plutonium-producing reactors are not a direct nuke threat to our friend Israel?

Well, Israel has long maintained that the nuclear power reactors being built by Russia for Iran at Bushehr constitute a direct nuke threat to them – Iran already having ballistic missiles capable of reaching Israel. But that's silly; unlike the North Korean reactors, the Iranian reactors can't produce weapons-grade plutonium.

Of course, the Iraqi reactor the Israelis pre-emptively destroyed in 1981 with US-supplied bombers couldn't produce weapons-grade plutonium, either.

Come to think of it, the Israeli pre-emptive strike on Osiraq may have become the kernel for the Bush Doctrine.

Well, Bushehr is much too far away for a repeat of the Osiraq bombing. Besides, in 1981, Iraq was at war with Iran, so the Israelis could claim they were allied with the Iranians.

But, Iran is not at war now. So, how can the Israelis get Bushehr destroyed?

Well, how about this? The IAEA recently found trace amounts of highly enriched uranium on a piece of Iranian equipment. Bush could demand that the IAEA get the Security Council to impose sanctions on Iran for being in non-compliance with its IAEA Safeguards Agreement. With a Security Council resolution on Iran – similar to the one he got on Iraq last year – he can improperly apply the Bush Doctrine to Iran next year, just as he did to Iraq this year.

The IAEA Board of Governors meets on Monday. Stay tuned.

Physicist James Gordon Prather has served as a policy implementing official for national security-related technical matters in the Federal Energy Agency, the Energy Research and Development Administration, the Department of Energy, the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Department of the Army. Dr. Prather also served as legislative assistant for national security affairs to U.S. Sen. Henry Bellmon, R-Okla. -- ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee and member of the Senate Energy Committee and Appropriations Committee. Dr. Prather had earlier worked as a nuclear weapons physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California and Sandia National Laboratory in New Mexico.

http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=34445

American pressure on Iran is reminiscent of lead-up to invasion of Iraq

Arab Press
9.6.2003

A daily selection of views from the Middle East and North Africa, compiled and translated by The Daily Star

Al-Anwar (Beirut)

The United States is asking the UN Security Council for support in Iraq, columnist Rafik Khoury said Friday. Without Washington’s current crisis in Iraq, it would have been difficult for US Secretary of State Colin Powell to convince US President George W. Bush to seek a return to the legitimacy of the United Nations and the Security Council.

“But, while Washington is asking other countries to contribute money and men to the Iraqi war effort, it is not prepared to make any concession of its own like abandoning the leading role in Iraq,” Khoury added.

Meanwhile, the draft resolution submitted by Washington to the Security Council actually reflects the impact of the unrest in Iraq on the “ideological battle” within the US administration. “The draft resolution changes nothing in the equation, as required by France, and does not lead to the formation of an Iraqi law and order force. Also, it does nothing to pave the way for a new Iraqi constitution serving as prelude to UN-monitored general elections.

“What is taking place in Iraq now has actually not changed the attitude of Washington’s neoconservatives. They still see Iraq as a theater for a geostrategic war which will decide whether or not the US will come out victorious or defeated in the eyes of the region and the world.

“US Assistant Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz was quoted as saying in a recent Wall Street Journal article that the terrorists who blew up the UN headquarters in Baghdad last month and those who planted the car bomb that killed Shiite cleric Mohammed Baqer al-Hakim last Friday did not want to cause casualties as much as to destroy what they hate most: an Arab country free of their hegemony and serving as a model to the Arab world to copy,” Khoury said.

An-Nahar (Beirut)

US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s sudden visit to Iraq suggests that he had miscalculated when he made plans that, by fall of this year, the number of US servicemen in Iraq would have been reduced from its present level of 140,000 to 40,000, columnist Sahar Baassiri said Friday.

“He would be lucky to maintain the size of the American force at its present level, let alone reducing it. Actually, his country is even going one step further in seeking UN help,” Baassiri wrote. “Some reports even say that US military generals are pushing in this direction.

“Meanwhile, US Secretary of State Colin Powell is finding it difficult to understand how France and Germany have rejected a US draft plan aimed at obtaining a UN mandate for a multinational force in Iraq. Powell must have forgotten that France and Germany had always opposed the US-led war against Iraq without a UN mandate. In any case, the US attitude reflects a major backdown for Washington and an admission by the US administration that it has failed to complete its mission in Iraq,” the columnist said.

Ad-Dustour (Amman)

Iran seems to follow in Iraq’s footsteps in its relations with Arab countries and the United States, columnist Oraib Rantawi said Friday.

“It seems increasingly likely that, despite the problems it is facing in Iraq, Washington is exerting increased pressure on Tehran in much the same fashion as it did Baghdad.

“Iran is now slammed with an international campaign targeting its nuclear program. Washington wants the entire dossier of Iran’s nuclear research put before the UN Security Council and wants the international community to start issuing resolution after resolution, exerting pressure on the Iranians in the same way as the Americans did to Iraq before dealing it the final blow.

“Already the International Atomic Energy Agency … is speaking of an Iranian breach of the international rules governing the use of nuclear power and claimed that some questions about the nuclear program had not been answered by the Iranians. This is reminiscent of similar questions that the IAEA said Iraq had not answered and which had served as an excuse for the US-led offensive against Baghdad. Meanwhile, the country that is working overtime to line up the entire world against Tehran, claiming that it represents a threat to mankind, is none other than Israel.”

http://www.dailystar.com.lb/opinion/06_09_03_i.asp

Opinion

A daily selection of views from the Middle East and North Africa, compiled and translated by The Daily Star
__
Arab Press

Al-Anwar (Beirut)

The United States is asking the UN Security Council for support in Iraq, columnist Rafik Khoury said Friday. Without Washington’s current crisis in Iraq, it would have been difficult for US Secretary of State Colin Powell to convince US President George W. Bush to seek a return to the legitimacy of the United Nations and the Security Council.
“But, while Washington is asking other countries to contribute money and men to the Iraqi war effort, it is not prepared to make any concession of its own like abandoning the leading role in Iraq,” Khoury added.
Meanwhile, the draft resolution submitted by Washington to the Security Council actually reflects the impact of the unrest in Iraq on the “ideological battle” within the US administration. “The draft resolution changes nothing in the equation, as required by France, and does not lead to the formation of an Iraqi law and order force. Also, it does nothing to pave the way for a new Iraqi constitution serving as prelude to UN-monitored general elections.
“What is taking place in Iraq now has actually not changed the attitude of Washington’s neoconservatives. They still see Iraq as a theater for a geostrategic war which will decide whether or not the US will come out victorious or defeated in the eyes of the region and the world.
“US Assistant Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz was quoted as saying in a recent Wall Street Journal article that the terrorists who blew up the UN headquarters in Baghdad last month and those who planted the car bomb that killed Shiite cleric Mohammed Baqer al-Hakim last Friday did not want to cause casualties as much as to destroy what they hate most: an Arab country free of their hegemony and serving as a model to the Arab world to copy,” Khoury said.
____
Ad-Dustour (Amman)

Iran seems to follow in Iraq’s footsteps in its relations with Arab countries and the United States, columnist Oraib Rantawi said Friday.
“It seems increasingly likely that, despite the problems it is facing in Iraq, Washington is exerting increased pressure on Tehran in much the same fashion as it did Baghdad.
“Iran is now slammed with an international campaign targeting its nuclear program. Washington wants the entire dossier of Iran’s nuclear research put before the UN Security Council and wants the international community to start issuing resolution after resolution, exerting pressure on the Iranians in the same way as the Americans did to Iraq before dealing it the final blow.
“Already the International Atomic Energy Agency … is speaking of an Iranian breach of the international rules governing the use of nuclear power and claimed that some questions about the nuclear program had not been answered by the Iranians. This is reminiscent of similar questions that the IAEA said Iraq had not answered and which had served as an excuse for the US-led offensive against Baghdad. Meanwhile, the country that is working overtime to line up the entire world against Tehran, claiming that it represents a threat to mankind, is none other than Israel.”

http://www.dailystar.com.lb/opinion/06_09_03_i.asp

Iran may agree to tougher nuclear inspections in near future: minister

TEHRAN (AFP) Sep 06, 2003
Iran's foreign minister said Saturday that the Islamic republic may soon agree to tougher nuclear inspections if ongoing talks on the issue with the UN's atomic energy watchdog removed "ambiguities".
"With explanations and the removal of ambiguities from the IAEA, Iran will in the near future will sign the additional protocol," Kamal Kharazi was quoted as saying by the state news agency IRNA.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), with major international backing, is pressing Iran to quickly sign and ratify an additional protocol to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) which would allow unannounced checks of its nuclear facilities by UN inspectors.

Iran, which has dismissed widespread suspicions that it is using an atomic energy programme as a cover for nuclear weapons development, has maintained that it needs certain points of the protocol clarified before it can sign.

Kharazi, who was speaking just days ahead of a key IAEA meeting in Vienna, gave no indication on how the talks on the protocol were progressing.

However, the foreign minister did call on the agency's board of governors not to bow to US pressure when they discuss Iran's nuclear programme in the coming days, saying he hoped their final decision on how to move ahead on the Iran dossier was "professional and not politicised".

The US ambassador to the IAEA said Thursday that Washington will push for "a strong resolution" on Iran's suspect nuclear programme at the Vienna meeting, which begins on Monday.

But he stopped short of saying that Washington and its allies on the IAEA's 35-member board of governors would push for a resolution calling it in non-compliance with the treaty. Such a resolution could send the matter to the UN Security Council, which could in turn impose tough sanctions on the Islamic republic.

http://www.spacewar.com/2003/030906093922.v2v5yriv.html

EU to start human rights dialogue with Iran mid-September

The next round-table on human rights dialogue between the EU and Iran will take place on September 15 and 16, an EU official said in Brussels on Thursday, IRNA reported.

EU Commissioner Poul Nielson, speaking on behalf of the European Commission in the European Parliament on an EU human rights report, said freedom of expression will be the main subject for discussion at the round-table.

"Thus far, the EU has noted with satisfaction, the de facto moratorium on stoning (in Iran) is still a reality. I hope further results will be achieved with our Iranian partners," said Nielson. The EP adopted Thursday a non-binding resolution on the situation of human rights in the world.

The House underlines the importance of engaging in genuine political dialogue with non-EU countries and of integrating human rights into the EU`s external policies.

EP member states call on the EU to play a more vigorous role at the UN Human Rights Commission (UNHRC) but they believe that the standing of this body is suffering from growing politicization. The report says that "human rights dialogues must not be turned into mere talking-shops, or be confined to exchanges of views on cultural and historical differences".

It calls for special dialogues with Mediterranean countries, Russia, Ukraine, the south Caucasus countries and the Balkan states. It asks the European Council to assess the EU`s structured dialogues with Iran and China and urges the governments of these two countries to allow in the UN`s special rapporteurs on human rights.

http://www.payvand.com/news/03/sep/1020.html

Iran: The Long Wait for Change

It’s not easy getting people to talk about Canadian photojournalist Zahra Kazemi outside the dusty brick walls of Tehran’s Evin prison. This is where she was arrested on June 23 before being beaten to death during interrogation. Passers-by in this northern suburb in the foothills of Iran’s Elborz Mountains are few, and most walk past without breaking step. Only one, a middle-aged man, stops long enough to say he hopes the authorities “find and punish the murderers.”

They are not the only ones keeping their heads down. Of five prominent reform-minded members of parliament repeatedly called on their mobile phones, not one replied. “No coincidence,” quips the youthful political editor for the reformist daily Etemad, Rouzbeh Mirebrahimi. “They’ve had them turned off all week.”

His willingness to give his name is in itself remarkable. After nationwide demonstrations early in June, hard-liners in the judiciary and executive have cracked down severely on dissent, jailing several prominent journalists and detaining thousands for their part in protests. “In the current climate, talking about the Kazemi affair is highly dangerous, particularly for reformist journalists,” explains one editor who insisted on remaining anonymous. But Mirebrahimi’s defiance is not just youthful bravado. “Ms. Kazemi’s death could just be the miracle we’ve been waiting for,” he says. “It has opened the world’s eyes to what we are facing, and it’s a warning to reformists to stick together.”

If there is one thing decidedly lacking among pro-reform supporters of President Mohammad Khatami, two years after his second crushing electoral victory, it is solidarity. Dismayed by unelected hard-liners’ continual vetoing of liberalizing laws, the reformist majority in Parliament appears increasingly split between mainly clerical moderates willing to continue working within the system and others who, at least privately, want out. With rumors rife that a small group of radical MPs may be preparing to resign, analysts question Khatami’s ability to hold his group together until elections next year. “Khatami’s insistence on change through consensus has reached the end of its usefulness,” says one reformist MP. “The time has come for confrontation.”

One of Iran’s best-organized protest groups, the student-led Office to Foster Unity, is similarly pugnacious. In a letter to United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan early in July, it announced it was withdrawing its support for Khatami’s reformers, who it sees as too timid to bring democracy and human rights to Iran. It accused the hard-liners, meanwhile, of creating a system of “political apartheid.”

“The only difference between Khatami and his opponents is that he smiles more,” says Azita, an engineering student at the University of Tehran. “We need more than smiles.” The editor of the conservative daily newspaper Resalat, Amir Mohebbian, mocks reformist arguments that Iran’s leaders ignore the demands of the people. “Reformists are like a surfer who has missed his wave,” he says. “They overestimate their own support and underestimate support for the status quo.”

The scathing criticisms ordinary Tehranis direct against their leaders, reformist or otherwise, suggest he is wrong. But it is debatable how far they are willing to—or can—push for quicker change. “The situation is deadlocked,” says political scientist Davoud Hermidas Bavand. “Iranians voted for Khatami because they wanted reform, not particular reformists. For all his good intentions, though, he has proved too willing to compromise, and too inexperienced to capitalize on his support.”

A pro-Khatami businessman, Saeed Laylaz, is less willing to blame the government. If there is paralysis, he argues, it is because hard-liners have been just flexible enough to appease most of their critics. “Their willingness to loosen puritanical laws on dress and public behavior have created the illusion of freedom,” he says. He also warns against the assumption that grumbles in Tehran are shared throughout Iran. “The shah made that mistake, and he died in exile,” he points out. “Rural Iranians are demanding bread, not reforms.”

He may be right. But a more convincing explanation for Iranian apathy was given by Mohsen, a student at the University of Tehran. “Look where our last one-night revolution got us,” he says. “How can we be sure the next one won’t be worse.” Without a credible alternative to President Khatami, analysts say, Iranian reform faces a bleak future.

Optimists like Rouzbeh Mirebrahimi are convinced the international outcry over Kazemi’s death can be used to squeeze concessions from the hard-liners. He points to a concerted press campaign calling for the resignation of Saeed Mortazavi, the Tehran prosecutor originally appointed to lead the inquiry into Kazemi’s death despite rumors he had participated in her interrogation. “The man is a psychopath, a hanging judge, detested even by the conservatives,” comments British-based Iran expert Ali Ansari. “He’s been the main instigator of newspaper closures over the past four years. Now it’s pay-back time.”

Others feel the reformists’ only hope lies in finding support among those who, until now, have tacitly supported the regime. While the vast majority of Iranian clerics have always considered the country’s theocratic system to be blasphemous, they say, recent months have seen growing numbers converting silent hostility into open criticism. Bavand doesn’t hold out much hope for either.

“Whatever happens,” he says, “we’re in for a long wait.”

http://www.worldpress.org

Iran: Moscow, Tehran Fail To Agree On Return Of Nuclear Fuel

nuclear power plant at Bushehr.

Russia is helping Iran build the nuclear power plant at Bushehr. But, under strong international pressure -- particularly from the U.S. -- Russia has demanded that Iran return spent fuel from the plant. The U.S. has accused Tehran of seeking to develop its nuclear weapons program.

Russia's Atomic Energy Ministry said today it would not start delivering fuel for the Bushehr plant until an agreement is reached on the return of the fuel once it is used.

Representatives of the two countries met yesterday in Moscow but failed to agree on a date for signing the agreement.

Meanwhile, Iran's Foreign Ministry today rejected U.S. claims that Tehran was not doing enough to prevent anti-U.S. fighters from crossing from Iran into Iraq.

Iran's state news agency IRNA cited Foreign Ministry spokesman Reza Asefi as saying Washington is looking to lay blame for the continued resistance to U.S. troops in Iraq.

U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said this week that Iran and Syria's efforts to stop foreign fighters were "intermittent" and "uneven."

Washington has blamed fighters loyal to ousted Iraqi ruler Saddam Hussein and foreign Islamic radicals for the continued violence in Iraq.

http://www.rferl.org/nca/features/2003/09/06092003144134.asp

Asylum 16 tell of torture fears

4 September 2003
Expatica

BRUSSELS – Sixteen Iranian asylum seekers have barricaded themselves into a room at the Petit Chateau asylum centre since Monday morning in protest at their failure to receive refugee status.

“Iran is the cradle of terrorism. If we go back there, the government will not hesitate to torture us and throw us into prison,” one of the protesters told Le Soir.

The protesters are accusing Belgium of acting in opposition to the Geneva Convention by not granting the group asylum.

But Director General of the Foreign Office, Freddy Roosemont, said he disagreed.

“We are conscious that the situation in Iran is unstable. But each case has been studied closely and none of those applying for asylum is in direct danger in Iran. They want Belgium to grant asylum to all Iranians,” he said.

In June, a group of Iranian asylum seekers went on hunger strike at the Minimes church in central Brussels in protest at having received repatriation orders.

“The Minimes group was given the opportunity to re-submit their application for asylum, so why not us?” said the group’s spokesperson, Shiva.

All 16 are threatening to begin a hunger strike Saturday if the government does not intervene favourably.

Meanwhile, six Kurdish asylum seekers ended their hunger strike after 37 days at the Red Cross centre in Nonceveux Tuesday. They were immediately taken to hospital and are expected to be repatriated within three months.

http://www.expatica.com/belgium.asp?pad=88,89,&item_id=33980

Leader Stresses Using All Capacities to Promote Prayers

TEHRAN ? In a message on Saturday the Leader of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei called for using all scientific, cultural and propagation capacities to promote prayers in the country, IRNA reported.

Ayatollah Khamenei, whose message was read out at the opening ceremony of the 13th Prayer Seminar in Shahr-e Kord, the capital city of the southwestern province of Char-Mahal and Bakhtiari, called for establishing committees to draft working plans for the relevant institutions to promote prayers in the country.

He stressed that special boards must be formed to constantly oversee the performance of the committees and evaluate their activities.

The Leader also urged the annual Prayers Seminar to consider the progress and the shortcomings of the plans and devise the necessary considerations for pushing forward the goals pursued by the committees.

The 13th Prayer Seminar opened in Shahr-e Kord on Saturday in a ceremony that was also attended by President Mohammad Khatami and will end on Sunday afternoon.

President Khatami was to address the prayer seminar.

The seminar will discuss the ways and the means for promoting prayers in Iran.

http://www.tehrantimes.com/Description.asp?Da=9/7/03&Cat=2&Num=033

Comment: What is behind this? A reduction in devote followers? Are people fed up with the mullahs?

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