Iranian Alert -- September 10, 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.

Argentina Ripped For Coddling Iran In Bombing Case

By MARC PERELMAN
FORWARD STAFF
BUENOS AIRES — After promising to throw its full weight behind the investigation of the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish community center, Argentina's new government is now under fire from Jewish groups that say it appears unwilling to confront Iran, the country suspected of responsibility for the attack.

The unexpected arrest by British authorities last month of an indicted suspect in the case, former Iranian ambassador to Argentina Hade Soleimanpour, provided an unprecedented test of Argentina's willingness to confront Tehran.

Iran, which denies involvement in the attack, has denounced the arrest in the strongest terms, recalling its ambassador to London and threatening to break off cultural and economic relations with Argentina.

The government of Argentina's newly elected president, Nestor Kirchner, has responded by scrambling to avoid antagonizing Tehran, receiving an Iranian delegation to discuss the matter and suggesting that the entire case be referred to an international tribunal. At the same time, Buenos Aires has told Jewish groups and Jerusalem that it is determined to bring Soleimanpour to Argentina, and is merely exploring the best way to achieve that, given the diplomatic aspects of the affair.

"After the arrest and very harsh words from Iran, we had to make a decision," said Eduardo Valdes, chief of staff to Foreign Minister Rafael Bielsa and a key actor in the deliberations on how to handle the matter. "If you only think of dignity, Argentina would have had to cut diplomatic relations with Iran. But we also need to continue with Iran and so we decided that we would try to get them to be involved in the investigation."

While the case's investigative judge, Juan José Galeano, who issued the initial warrant for Soleimanpour's arrest, was working on an extradition request that must be transmitted to a British judge before September 20, an Iranian delegation came to Buenos Aires to meet the judge and Argentinean officials.

At the same time, Argentina's foreign minister undercut Galeano's drive to prosecute Soleimanpour, proposing instead the creation of an international tribunal for the case like the one created to judge Libyan officials for the 1989 bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over the Scottish town of Lockerbie.

This infuriated the country's main Jewish groups, which accused the government of coddling Tehran and seeking a compromise after announcing with great fanfare that it would leave no stone unturned in pursuit of the perpetrators of the attack, which killed 85 people. Kirchner's government had previously earned their praise two months ago by announcing that it would open the archives of Argentina's intelligence agency, known as SIDE, pertaining to the case and have its operatives testify in public.

"It now seems that the gestures of Kirchner were just publicity stunts," said Miguel Bronfman, a lawyer for AMIA, a Spanish acronym for the Jewish Mutual Association of Argentina. "They say this is a government priority, we are opening the SIDE archives, etc. But when Soleimanpour is arrested, they say this is just the judge's problem, then they come up with the idea of an international tribunal."

But Valdes said that the government was fully committed to the investigation and that it was not avoiding its responsibilities. In addition, he said, the Iranians had agreed to participate in the judicial process by appointing a local lawyer who would give them access to court documents. An Argentinean diplomat closely involved in the discussions with the Iranians said the Iranian delegation had visited some 15 law offices in Buenos Aires.

The diplomat said that Argentina was consulting with London and Washington to craft its position, an indication that Buenos Aires does not want to confront Tehran on its own.

The extradition process could take some time, observers said, pointing to the case of former Chilean strongman Augusto Pinochet, who remained in legal limbo for more than a year in London following a Spanish extradition request.

After the British judge renders a verdict, the last word on the extradition belongs to the British Foreign Office. In the meantime, Soleimanpour has been ordered to remain in jail.

It remains an open question whether the information from intelligence agencies that form the bulk of Galeano's case against Soleimanpour will be accepted as legally valid evidence by a British judge.

One allegation, which is based on the testimonies of several Iranian defectors, is that Soleimanpour attended an August 13, 1993 meeting at the Iranian Security Ministry at which the decision to bomb the AMIA was taken. The meeting was allegedly headed by Iran's supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, and then-intelligence minister Ali Fallahian. Also allegedly participating was Mohsen Rabbani, who was at the time a cleric in a Shiite mosque in Buenos Aires and was subsequently named cultural attaché to the Iranian Embassy in Buenos Aires.

Soleimanpour and Rabbani then allegedly coordinated the attack that was carried out by Hezbollah operatives, according to a March 2003 indictment from Galeano. The judge also issued arrest warrants for Rabbani and Fallahian.

There remains a mystery about Soleimanpour's arrest that could provide another explanation about Tehran's concern about the case: When arrested he may have been in the middle of defecting and providing information to Britain.

Despite his past as an ambassador and his alleged links to terror activities, he was granted a student visa by the British authorities. In addition, an Iranian newspaper reported that he had been questioned three times by British security services prior to his arrest — a report several Argentinean and European sources believe to be true.

Soleimanpour apparently did not seek diplomatic protection from the Iranian Embassy, nor did the embassy apparently inquire about him after this alleged questioning. Meanwhile, Iranian authorities had known since March that Galeano was preparing an arrest warrant and attempting to locate Soleimanpour, and they apparently did not bother to attempt to remove him from the country.

"It could well be that this is because he had decided not to come back to Iran," a well-placed source said. "And this could be a big worry for Tehran."

http://www.forward.com/issues/2003/03.09.12/news5a.argentina.html

Hawks a threat to cooperation, Iran warns watchdog

REUTERS AND AFP
Thursday, Sep 11, 2003,Page 6

Iran will be forced to review cooperation with the UN nuclear watchdog if it is denied the right to a peaceful nuclear program, Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi told the official news agency yesterday.

Kharrazi made the comments to the IRNA news agency as diplomats said the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) board in Vienna appeared ready to approve a US-backed resolution giving Tehran until Oct. 31 to reveal the full extent of its nuclear program.

"If the hawks gain the ground and ignore our legitimate rights for peaceful nuclear activities, we will be forced to review the state of play and the current level of cooperation with the agency," Kharrazi said.

Kharrazi did not specify who the "hawkish elements" were, but denounced them for "arrogance" and taking an "extremist posture." Japan, Britain, France and Germany joined forces with the US in co-sponsoring the toughly worded draft resolution.

"The posture of certain countries (on the board of governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency) is irresponsible and arrogant," Kharazi said in a statement published by state news agency IRNA.

"Unfortunately, some are trying openly and willfully to destroy the process of cooperation between Iran and the agency and seeking to cut the agency out of the process.

"If the extremists take control of the matter and do not recognize our legitimate rights to have peaceful nuclear activities, we will then be obliged to review the situation and the current level of cooperation with the agency," he added.

The IAEA draft demands Iran show its full compliance with the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which Washington says Tehran has violated.

"There is an apparent and deliberate attempt by some to torpedo the process of cooperation and remove the agency from the process," Kharrazi said, adding the position of some states was "outrageous and irresponsible."

The draft did not say what would happen if Iran did not cooperate, but a Western diplomat said what was important was "that a signal is sent, that a clear bright line is laid down that Iran must comply with IAEA requests in a quick, complete and transparent manner."

Kharazi stopped short of criticizing the draft resolution but singled out Canada for its hard line: "In a speech to the board of governors, the Canadian representative asked that the issue of the Islamic Republic's nuclear activities be immediately sent to the Security Council, thus wanting to ignore the role of the agency," he said.

The draft came after Ken Brill, the US ambassador to the IAEA, had said: "The United States believes the facts already established would fully justify an immediate finding of non-compliance by Iran" with international non-proliferation accords. Such a finding by the IAEA could send the issue to the UN Security Council.

Tehran insists that it has fully cooperated with the IAEA and denies it is trying to develop nuclear weapons.

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/world/archives/2003/09/11/2003067407

9/11/03: What has changed, what has not

By: ROBERT D. GARY

The profound reverberations of the terrorist attacks of 9/11 continue to reshape our world two years later. The Bush presidency was defined by the events of that day. George W. Bush, who as a candidate condemned nation-building, is now mired in it. The perceived success or failure of his policies may very well determine the outcome of the 2004 presidential race. The Homeland Security Act threatens our privacy from our credit card purchases to our library books while simultaneously promising to be a necessary tool to prevent another strike. We now live in a color-coded world where the primary impact of Code Orange is longer waits at the airport and greater general anxiety while conspicuously absent is any meaningful information.

We watched live on CNN as our sterling military quickly vanquished the Taliban in Afghanistan and the Republican Guard in Iraq. The outcome of the military battles in Afghanistan and Iraq were never in doubt but two years after 9/11 the winning of the peace remains perilously out of view. Afghanistan has reverted to being a major producer of drugs. Lawless warlords continue to exert their authority, and a resurgence of Taliban resistance is emerging. All prior assurances by our government to the contrary, Afghanistan has mostly slipped off the public radar and is now a case of out-of-sight, out-of-mind.

The events of 9/11 provided the rationale, and the inevitable heightened anxiety created a fertile ground, to persuade the American people that Iraq's possession of now-illusory weapons of mass destruction required a preemptive strike to head off another potential 9/11. The alleged and improbable connection between Saddam Hussein's secular regime, the religious extremists al-Qaida, and the WMD threat, was a cover for the real reason we sought to upend Saddam Hussein. It was certainly not to lift the Iraqi people from an undeniably oppressive and murderous government. If so, where were we in Rwanda, Sierra Leone, the Sudan, the Congo and most recently Liberia where hundreds of thousands of civilians have been mutilated, raped and butchered?

Our real reason for invading Iraq was considered by our political leaders, Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld, to be politically unacceptable to the world community and too nuanced to sell to the American public. Post 9/11, America's present and future security required a foothold, maybe even an armlock, in the simmering Middle East.

For years we turned a blind eye to the explosive expansion of radical Islam, which although unquestionably virulently anti-American, was believed to be contained almost exclusively within the borders of our friends and enemies in the Middle East.

The American public, until September 11, 2001, remained blissfully ignorant of Osama bin Laden. We were all, for the most part, indifferent or unaware that the Wahabbi-influenced bin Laden had in August of 1996 published a "Fatwah" entitled "Declaration of War Against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Places," referring to Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia. Five years later, any statement by bin Laden is not only widely reported but pored over by soldiers and scholars for clues to the next terrorist attack.

Prior to 9/11, our government paid no heed to the government-sponsored media from Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria and the like's penchant for wildly inflammatory anti-American rhetoric. It has been widely reported in the media of those nations and widely accepted that it was not al-Qaida that destroyed the twin towers but the Jews. A prominent Egyptian columnist, Fatma Abdallah Mahmoud, recently published an article accusing American soldiers of skinning Iraqis, subtitled "America Does No Less Than Prehistoric Cannibals." We were unworried when the Saudis pumped millions of dollars into programs run or sponsored by the fundamentalist, anti-American Wahabbi Islamists. The Wahabbis are not only intolerant of non-Muslims but also of non-Wahabbi Sunnis and Shiites. Nor were we overly concerned with the increasing strength and influence of Islamist terrorist organizations such as Hamas.

America tolerated all of this pre 9/11; it was more someone else's problem than our own. Post 9/11 the stakes changed. The recruitment and training of terrorists became an American nightmare. Post 9/11 the very real threat of the overthrow of Saudi Arabia and other oil producing nations became a vital security issue that could not be ignored. The potential solution was Iraq. If Iraq could be converted into a model of democracy as well as an example to the rest of the Arab world of democracy's impact on quality of life, the mindset of the entire region would begin to shift. We reasoned, perhaps naively, who would want to be a suicide bomber with a motorbike in the drive, a TV in the house and a chicken in the pot?

It was no small bonus that Iraq had the second-largest known oil reserves in the world next to Saudi Arabia. With an established military presence in the Middle East, a western-inclined government in place, and a people with a dramatically improving standard of living, we could reshape the Middle East, drain the terrorist swamp and assure a continued flow of oil. All accomplished by knocking out the unpopular regime of Saddam Hussein and replacing it with an Iraqi version of a western democracy.

Having won the military battle, the peace in Iraq is not cooperating with the Bush administration's vision of the post-war situation. Iraq has become the favored destination of fighters from Saudi Arabia and other foreign extremists looking for a short-cut to paradise by dying fighting infidels. There are constant attacks against our soldiers. Nor are the Iraqi people welcoming the American presence with roses and fresh-baked bread. Most disturbing is the reaction of the Shiite Muslim community. During Saddam Hussein's rule the Sunni Muslim minority had oppressed the Shiite majority. Younger Shiite Muslim clerics are calling for our expulsion. Those clerics, who are to some degree favorable to an American presence, may have been murdered by Wahabbi-inspired Sunni Fundamentalists, hostile to an American presence. The death of the influential Shiite cleric Ayatollah Mohammed Bakr al Hakim, silenced a constructive influence on the Shia community to remain calm and avoid sabotage. His stance, although openly resentful, counseled a wait-and-see attitude and willingness to consider the political process. But caveat-emptor, in the words of the Princeton Islamic scholar, Bernard Lewis, Islamic democracy can best be described as "one man, one vote, one time." This is not the democracy we hoped for as described by our pugnacious Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

The bombing at the holiest Shiite Muslim shrine, the Iman Ali Shrine in Najaf, if by foreign Sunni Muslims influenced by the ultra-extreme Wahabbi sect, may be the spark that ignites ethnic violence in Iraq. The religious significance of this bombing was underscored by Saddam Hussein, who not known for his sensitivity, denied by audio tape any connection to it. If extremists are able to pit the Shiite Muslim majority against the Sunnis and then mix in the Kurds, who get along with neither, our limited American forces would soon be overwhelmed by the ensuing chaos and violence. Ethnic-based civil war looms as a very real possibility in Iraq. As goes the Shiite majority, so goes the American hope to have a stable pro-western presence in the Arab Middle East. The jury is out.

Post 9/11, having occupied Iraq from a homeland security perspective, we cannot afford to leave. The terrorists fear the American strength but believe we have no resolve. Our stunning and swift victories in Iraq and Afghanistan surely have deflated those falsely encouraged by our withdrawal in Somalia and Lebanon. Leaving Iraq before it has been stabilized will fuel the perception we can be bullied and even intimated. It will embolden terrorists to strike at American targets across the world as well as in our own country. Once the decision was made to invade Iraq we have no choice but to succeed in what may be the greatest, perhaps most expensive, nation-building exercise in our history.

While Iraq occupies center stage, the Hamas terrorist organization still holds the trump card on the Israeli-Palestinian peace. Whenever the peace talks proceed, Hamas unleashes a terrorist attack in Israel, which prompts an Israeli response, which begins the cycle again. This is the side show, not the main event.

The goal of Islamic fundamentalists is an all-Islamic region with Islamic governments. A secular state in the Middle East, rather than a religious state, whether it is Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iraq or Israel, cannot be tolerated. The Islamists recognize no separation of church and state. Just take a look at Iran.

So we will have to learn to live in a color-coded world. Much has changed from Sept. 11, 2001, but much has not. The site of the World Trade Center remains an open pit. The adjoining Deutsche Bank Building still stands empty as if in mourning, covered by a black mesh shroud. The American Red Cross continues to provide mental health services and aid to nearly 3,000 victims of Sept. 11. There is a plan to place still-unidentified remains in vacuum-sealed bags to await improved technology. Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden continue to get up in the morning and go to bed at night despite lottery-sized bounties on their heads. The former now powerless; the latter arguably growing in popularity and strength. Sept. 11, 2001, neither marks a beginning nor an end, but the day when most Americans first saw the face of the enemy.

The most significant fact in the intervening two years since Sept. 11 is that there has not been a second attack on American soil. Do not rest easy - annihilation remains the terrorist's goal and our crime is failing to believe properly. It is ultimately intolerance that drives the terrorist to contemplate the spread of smallpox or the detonation of a dirty radioactive bomb in our cities.

If intolerance is at the root of the problem, then ultimately only tolerance, rather than military might, is the antidote. Although the origins of the war in Iraq may have preceded 9/11, it is the success of the peace and the potential for fostering co-existence and tolerance in the Middle East which hold out the best hope to defuse terrorism.

Have we, as a response to 9/11, defeated Iraq perhaps only to have created an even more dangerous haven for the Islamists, but with unlimited access to oil and money, or will we succeed in creating a new Iraq which will reshape the Middle East and defuse terrorism? We have raised the stakes and now must be prepared to pay the ante.

When we appeared invincible, we should have struck our deal with the United Nations, France and Germany. We will now have to concede more influence and control. Our fair-weather friends, President Jacques Chirac and Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, having skipped the war, will reluctantly assist in the management of post-war Iraq, but only after they have extracted concessions on oil and reconstruction contracts. Even after 9/11, the fight against international terrorism is still governed by "what's in it for me?" If we are to contain the number of American casualties, we must bring them to the table. American lives are more important than pride.

http://www.morningjournal.com/site/news.cfm?BRD=1699&dept_id=46368&newsid=10134992&PAG=461&rfi=9

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.