Iranian Alert -- September 15, 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.

Firm stance needed on Iran

Daily Yomiuri - Editorial
Sep 14, 2003

The resolution adopted by the International Atomic Energy Agency board concerning suspicions that Iran has a nuclear weapons program reflected international concerns about Tehran's ambitions.

The latest resolution urged Iran to disclose all details of its nuclear program by the end of October. The 35-member board had every reason to make such a request.

Iranian representatives, however, walked out of the meeting to express their displeasure over the resolution. They went so far as to say that their government might review its relations with the IAEA.

The Iranian attitude should be regarded as a challenge to the international community's due concerns.

For months, the international community has strongly urged Iran to clear up question marks over its nuclear program. However, it is suspected that Tehran is continuing to develop nuclear arms. It is all too easy to tell which party is at fault.

Friday's resolution came after the IAEA board urged Iran to help resolve the dispute in June. At that time, the IAEA put together a chairman's summary report outlining a proposed protocol granting the nuclear watchdog the right to conduct unannounced nuclear inspections in Iran.

Tehran showed a willingness to cooperate with the IAEA in this respect. Indeed, the Iranian government said that it would start talks aimed at signing the proposed protocol.

Revelations fan suspicions

However, the international community has since become even more suspicious of Tehran's nuclear ambitions following various revelations that could discredit its seemingly cooperative attitude.

IAEA inspections have detected traces of highly enriched, weapons-grade uranium at an Iranian nuclear facility. Tehran sought to convince the IAEA that its nuclear program was designed to serve civilian purposes, insisting that the facility in question was contaminated with enriched uranium from imported equipment.

Iran also had to take back its assertion that it had never conducted uranium conversion tests after the IAEA reported finding traces of evidence that such an experiment had been carried out at another nuclear facility in that nation. Tehran's unreported uranium conversion testing was an unmistakable violation of the IAEA nuclear inspection treaty.

These developments, combined with Iran's inadequate and inconsistent explanations of its nuclear program, gravely undermine international trust in that country.

Other nations have good reason to conclude that Iran's assertions cannot be taken on faith.

Nothing to hide?

If Tehran has only peaceful goals for its nuclear program, it has nothing to hide. The Iranian government should meet the deadline set by the IAEA board and disclose its nuclear program in its entirety.

This should be complemented by Iranian efforts to sign, ratify and implement the additional protocol as soon as possible. Tehran has demanded that the IAEA ensure the protocol would not violate Iranian sovereignty. However, Iran can hardly justify such demands, given that the protocol is in effect in more than 30 IAEA member nations, including Japan.

Iran also should take to heart that the IAEA members who submitted the latest resolution included Japan and European nations, all of which have maintained relatively favorable relations with that country. Tehran should not be mistaken about the international community's determination to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons.

Japan relies on Iran for about 10 percent of its oil imports. However, given the severity of the dispute over Iran's suspected nuclear program, the government should take a resolute attitude on this issue.

http://www.daneshjoo.org/generalnews/article/publish/article_2342.shtml

Third Shooting Targets British Mission in Iran

Mon September 15, 2003 03:31 AM ET
By Christian Oliver

TEHRAN (Reuters) - A motorcycle passenger fired shots at the main gate of the residential compound of the British embassy in Iran, the third time the mission has been targeted this month, a British diplomat said Monday.

As with the previous incidents, nobody was hurt in the latest shooting which took place Sunday evening, British diplomat Andrew Greenstock told Reuters.

Tensions have been rising between Tehran and London over Britain's arrest at Argentina's request of a former Iranian diplomat in connection with the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires that killed 85 people.

Britain protested "strongly" to Iran last week after the second of two drive-by shootings around the British embassy in central Tehran in under a week.

Witnesses at the sprawling, leafy Gholhak compound where British embassy staff and their families live in northern Tehran, said they heard two shots Sunday night.

"There were witnesses. It seems to be two men on a bike again," Greenstock said.

He said the shots were fired around 6:10 p.m. (1340 GMT). Iran's government was quick to condemn the shooting.

"These kind of moves are completely unacceptable," Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi told Reuters. He said the government would ensure those responsible were brought to justice.

Witnesses said an increased number of guards had been posted at the Gholhak compound Monday.

The Gholhak compound is a high-walled haven in the north of Iran's crowded capital, filled with trees, gardens and diplomatic residences.

British diplomats said there have been two drive-by shootings at the embassy in central Tehran but this was the first time the residential compound had been targeted.

In the first incident on September 3 gunshots, also apparently fired from a passing motorcycle, pierced windows in the embassy building that stands near a busy street.

On September 9, witnesses said three or four shots were fired at or near the embassy, coming from two men on a motorcycle.

Iran was outraged by Britain's arrest in August of Hadi Soleimanpour, who was Iran's ambassador to Argentina at the time of the Buenos Aires bombing. The arrest followed a provisional extradition request from Argentina.

Iran insists the case is politically motivated and called for the swift release of Soleimanpour, who was studying in Britain. Soleimanpour was released on bail of 730,000 pounds ($1.2 million) Friday.

(Additional reporting by Parisa Hafezi)

http://asia.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=3442469

Iran, Sept. 11 and the repercussions of ‘regime change’

To the countries of the former Eastern Bloc and parts of the so-called “rogue states” of the Middle East, a short rain of intervention came gently just after the Cold War. The principle of intervention based on redefining the collective security regime entered into force in four areas: gross violations of human rights, civil wars, terrorism and weapons of mass destruction.
The Balkan crises came to serve as a precedent in cases of human rights and civil wars, while the problems of the Middle East were mainly considered as falling into the unknown but highly controversial domains of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. The outcome of Sept. 11 was only to accelerate the pace of intervention. The US desire for “regime change” in Afghanistan was already on the agenda. Mention could be made, for instance, of Congressman Bill Campbell’s call as early as Sept. 1, 2000 to convene a Loya Jirga and re-establish a representative government in Afghanistan. The US acted too late and Al-Qaeda carried out a pre-emptive attack. Shortly after the attack, I argued in the Iranian press that the United States would seek to decapitate the target regimes in three phases: first, Afghanistan; then the Middle East (Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Lebanon and Iran); and finally North Korea and other Asian countries (Kashmir, China and Indonesia).
I also argued that in the cases of Afghanistan and Iraq, the US would launch a decapitation attack, while in other cases it would pursue a “process” of decapitation. Accordingly, the use of force through Revolution in Military Affairs, based on a series of United Nations resolutions, toppled the Taleban and the Baath regime in Afghanistan and Iraq, respectively. By next March, Iraq will be stable enough to implement UN Resolution 1483 or its complementary resolution, which is being debated at the UN. A stable Iraq together with Qatar can replace Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates as the pillar of stability and center of US free trade in the Gulf region. This free trade might change the pattern of economic behavior in the Middle East. The United States and the United Kingdom as the authority under UN mandate can thus influence the course of events in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), an organization upon which the future of oil-producing countries like Saudi Arabia and Iran is highly dependent.
Yet the process of regime change in Saudi Arabia will not be an easy task. The US problem with Saudi Arabia is much deeper than one resolved by mere decapitation. If broached, the US dilemma would be how to change the attitude and mentality of the young neo-Wahhabi generation, and to change the Saudis’ educational system.
In the case of Iran, I would argue that the US is neither willing nor able to bring about prompt regime change, for several reasons. First, the US is preoccupied with Afghanistan, Iraq and Wahhabism in the Arab world. Its commitments, human costs and military expenditures could drain US desire for a major military operation in Iran. Second, US decision-makers do not have a common stance on Iran. They are highly divided on the issue. Third, despite great political rhetoric against each other, the US and Iran have frequently compromised in a give-and-take process.
The United States has traditionally been advised by the British to be prudent with the Iranians. And, Americans are convinced that resorting to hard power in the case of Iran would be costly and that soft power can better materialize a regime change in Iran, especially when that soft power is supported by domestic forces.
The United States has resigned itself to the use of threats in order to cause serious pain in Iran, and these ultimatums have been wired through diplomatic channels to Tehran in a diplomatic process of “shock and awe.” The final tick in US calculations is that the above-mentioned areas of intervention are not genuine problems with Iran.
On the surface, three of the four areas human rights, proliferation of nuclear weapons and terrorism are on the US agenda. None of them, however, is really a big deal for America. Underneath them lies the Palestinian-Israeli conflict; if it is resolved, the controversial disputes will wither away in a twinkle.
Seemingly, the case pending before the international community against Iran involves the failure on the part of Iran to comply with its International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) obligations as a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). To facilitate the process of transparency and inspection anytime and anywhere, the US and the EU want Iran to sign an additional protocol to the NPT. Geoffrey Kemp’s monograph at the Nixon Center elaborates on Iran’s nuclear options and recites two of my statements made at the Institute for Political and International Studies of Iran and the Majlis Research Center. The monograph goes on to say that my remarks, according to Kemp’s interpretation, signify that Iran has nuclear weapons.
Such is not the case. I made those statements at a time when India and Pakistan tested their nuclear weapons. I simply said that Iran should invoke Article 10 of the NPT and consider those tests as “an extraordinary event” against the “supreme interest” of Iran and therefore should render notice to step out of the NPT before the NPT and the CTBT monitoring systems and inspections regimes are in place. Iran failed to do so. That opportunity was lost and Iran has to pay the price. If you ask me as to whether or not Iran possesses the weapons, I would say no. If you ask me as to whether or not Iran will live up to its NPT commitments, I would say yes. If you ask me if Iran needs to nuclearize itself, I would say this is a must for Iran’s strategy of survival. A nuclear Iran must not be seen as a threat to its neighboring countries or to Israel. The weapons would serve as a minimum deterrence for self-defense in a world of uncertainty. It is necessary not only as a substitute for fossil energy but also for Iran’s social cohesion and prestige.
Six years ago, I warned that internally Iran is in a state of disarray. That argument still holds water. I would now argue that, only by becoming a nuclear weapons state, can Iran consolidate its social coherence. Iran needs both soft and hard power to regain its national identity and prestige. I strongly believe that if the underlying cause of conflict between Iran and the US the Palestinian-Israeli issue is resolved, those three outstanding issues would be irrelevant in the eyes of Americans. Sept. 11 militates against all forms of radicalism, including radicalism in Israel. The solution can hardly be located in arms control regimes such as the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and NPT. It must start within the ambit of Alternate Dispute Resolution.
Sept. 11 is driving Iran and Israel toward that resolution.

Abumohammad Asgarkhani is professor of international relations at the University of Tehran. This commentary is taken from bitterlemmons.org

http://www.dailystar.com.lb/opinion/15_09_03_b.asp

Update on the above: RELEASE OF HARD-LINE ACTIVIST RENEWS FOCUS ON VIGILANTES.

Iranian journalists, student activists, and political dissidents are routinely jailed and held incommunicado for extended periods. While in prison, they are subject to physical and mental torture and forced to participate in televised confessions. Hard-line activists, however, seem to be able to come and go as they please, killing and beating their fellow citizens without penalty. Recent developments in the case of Said Asqar, a leader in the Ansar-i Hizbullah, shed some light on this situation.

Asqar was released from Evin prison and seen shopping with his wife in the vicinity of Dolatabad Avenue on 9 September, Fars News Agency reported on 11 September. Asqar received a 15-year prison sentence for shooting reformist ideologue Said Hajjarian in March 2000, but was out on bail when he played a role in suppressing the June 2003 unrest (see "RFE/RL Iran Report," 27 March and 29 May 2000, and 23 June 2003). He subsequently turned himself in when he heard that Prosecutor-General Said Mortazavi wanted to have him arrested (see "RFE/RL Iran Report," 11 August 2003).

The Tehran governor-general's assistant for political-security affairs, Ebrahim Rezai-Babadi, said in the 16 June "Iran" that Asqar was the main person behind the June 2003 violence at Allameh Tabatabai University's Tarasht Dormitory. Rezai-Babadi promised that Asqar and his cohorts would be dealt with severely.

But certain irregularities came to light after Asqar's trial got under way in mid-August. The indictment against him described Asqar as a man without a criminal record and disregarded his conviction in the Hajjarian case, "Aftab-i Yazd" reported on 18 August. Moreover, there was no follow-up on the complaints against him by the police intelligence unit or the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps.

Hard-line vigilantes such as the Ansar-i Hizbullah are sometimes referred to as plainclothesmen (lebas shakhsi-ha) or pressure groups, and they routinely justify their actions as being in defense of the theocratic system and Islam. Rezai-Babadi, however, described the plainclothesmen as a problem for the security forces -- "obstinate individuals who prevent the establishment of security with their presence."

Interior Ministry Undersecretary for Security and Discipline Ali-Asqar Ahmadi also criticized these individuals in an interview that appeared in the 28 July "Nasim-i Saba." "They think they are serving the system," he said of the plainclothesmen. In reality, Ahmadi said, "they play a role in the commotion and creation of insecurity. Then they interfere in the activities of the security and disciplinary forces." Therefore, Ahmadi asked, how can they be described as defenders of the system?

A different perspective on vigilantes and plainclothesmen came from Mohammad Ali Rahmani, who heads the police's Ideological and Political Organization. Rahmani said that people who interfere in security affairs on their own initiative and are not organized are vigilantes, and it is inaccurate to call them plainclothesmen, "Aftab-i Yazd" reported on 12 July. Rahmani went on to say that the police may sometimes call on the Basij for help, but then the Basij personnel would be under the police's command. Basij personnel who are not under police command and have not been organized do not have any right to interfere with police activities

Mohammad Zeynalzadeh, a member of the Tehran Province universities' Student Basij Central Council, offered yet another perspective on how the vigilantes are organized. He said in the 16 June "Entekhab" that there are four categories of such groups. The first group has revolutionary concerns and consists of people who act on their own initiative, but ignore Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The second group deceives students into opposing the regime's revolutionary wing. "The third group is made up of concerned and understanding Hizbullah individuals who cannot tolerate this situation."

Zeynalzadeh said the fourth group, which is the biggest one, consists of what he termed "official agents." He continued: "These are the people who can be present on the stage but not in uniforms. Many of them come from the Law Enforcement Security Division [hefazat-i niru-yi entezami] or the security divisions of other organizations. At any rate, all security, military, and law enforcement organs in our country see themselves as having responsibilities in this situation. It is natural for their security and intelligence forces to be present on this arena." (Bill Samii)

Source: RFE/RL Iran Report Vol. 6, No. 37, 15 September 2003

EXECUTIVE BRANCH CONFRONTS EXISTENCE OF PARALLEL INTELLIGENCE ORGANIZATIONS.

President Hojatoleslam Mohammad Khatami's "housecleaning" of the Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) after the 1998 serial murders of dissidents is described as "one of the few genuine achievements to come out of his many confrontations with the conservative power structure" by Columbia University's Professor Gary Sick in the Autumn 2003 issue of "The Washington Quarterly" ( http://www.twq.com/03autumn/docs/03autumn_sick.pdf). The investigation into the serial murders led to the arrest of ultraconservative MOIS officials, Sick writes, and to the replacement of personnel associated with former MOIS chief Ali-Akbar Fallahian-Khuzestani.

Even if the MOIS is no longer a hard-line stronghold, as Sick indicates, that doesn't mean that hard-liners have not created alternative structures to it. Khatami and his reformist associates have now turned their attention to these institutional competitors.

Deputy speaker of parliament Mohammad Reza Khatami, secretary of the reformist Islamic Iran Participation Party and also the president's brother, warned in a 9 July open letter to the country's executive that organizations working in parallel with the MOIS are interfering with judicial proceedings against people detained on political charges, IRNA reported. The parliamentarian wrote that such institutions are violating the rights of these individuals and referred to constitutional bans on torture and solitary confinement. A report on this letter that appeared in the 10 July "Yas-i No" daily added that many of those working in the parallel institutions are the same people who were purged from the MOIS after the serial murders investigation.

Isfahan parliamentary representative Rajab Ali Mazrui said in a 9 July interview with ISNA that the parallel intelligence organizations became active about two years ago. "They have especially tried to build a case against reformists," he said.

Describing the actual form of these institutions, Shahr-i Qods and Shahriar parliamentary representative Mohammad Ali Kuzegar said that they could be divided into two categories, ISNA reported on 9 July. "One group is made up of the cliques that are operating outside state institutions," he said, and "Another group is made up of parallel organizations which have been set up by other institutions."

More details were provided by parliamentarian Mohsen Mirdamadi in the 19 July "Yas-i No." He said that the people purged from the MOIS continued and expanded their activities elsewhere, and "the intelligence apparatus of one of these organs in Tehran has three times the number of personnel that the MOIS has throughout the country." Not only are the confinement and torture of students and national-religious activists examples of the parallel organs' existence, he said, but so is the case of Canadian photojournalist Zahra Kazemi, who was killed while in detention.

President Khatami referred his brother's complaint about parallel intelligence organizations to the Committee for the Implementation and Supervision of the Constitution on 26 July, IRNA reported. Khatami established this organization in November 1997 to protect people's rights. The committee asked Mohammad Reza Khatami to provide it with evidence so it could pursue the complaint.

More recently, there have been complaints that the provincial supervisory offices being created by the Guardians Council for oversight of elections will have an intelligence function. Mohammad Sadeq Javadi-Hesar, the former managing director of the banned "Tus" daily, said that these offices would have more latitude in their activities than the MOIS, "Toseh" reported on 4 August. They would have the power to permanently monitor and survey individuals, whereas the MOIS only has this power for a limited time and in specific cases. Javadi-Hesar ascribed this development to the conservatives' loss of confidence in the MOIS. A commentary in the 12 August "Yas-i No" said the Guardians Council is being transformed into an intelligence organization, and is becoming a government that acts against the official government.

President Khatami said in a 22 August speech to MOIS executives that their organization must have the dominant role in intelligence activities, "Iran" reported on 23 August. He added that the establishment of any parallel intelligence organizations is unconstitutional and harmful to the state. An unattributed article about Khatami's speech in the 23 August "Toseh" warned that parallel intelligence organizations counteract and duplicate each other's efforts, and make oversight impossible. The article noted that the MOIS was created in the late 1980s to centralize intelligence activities in the country and to eliminate duplication.

Regardless of the executive branch's efforts, it must contend with the existence of many official security and intelligence institutions that operate autonomously. Writing in the 28 August issue of Beirut's "Daily Star," commentator Nawaf Obaid referred to the "newly created Foreign Intelligence Service" that reports directly to the Supreme Leader's Office. The Islamic Revolution Guards Corps, different branches of the military, and the police all have their own intelligence and counterintelligence units. The Iranian executive branch will find it difficult, if not impossible, to reign them in and to centralize intelligence activities. (Bill Samii)

source:RFE/RL Iran Report Vol. 6, No. 37, 15 September 2003

Iran looks to fight back
By Safa Haeri

PARIS - Officially, Iran has reacted guardedly to a resolution passed by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) board of directors calling on it to sign up to the additional protocols to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), and also to immediately stop all its uranium enriching programs - in effect, prove by October 31 that it is not building an atomic weapon.

If Iran does not cooperate and it is officially declared in non-compliance of the NPT, "Iran will forfeit it's right to share nuclear technology for peaceful purposes" and Russia will not be able to provide critical nuclear fuel for Iran's Bushehr nuclear plant, an IAEA official said. Although Russia is the main foreign contributor to Bushehr, China, Pakistan and some Western countries also provide dual-use technology and equipment and "that would no longer be legal under international law if Iran was not a country in good standing" under the NPT, he said.

On Sunday, Iranian Foreign Affairs Ministry senior spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi told reporters, "The Islamic Republic is examining how to continue cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency," even though Iran's delegation had stormed out of a closed-door meeting with the IAEA in Vienna on Friday, accusing Washington of having new invasion plans after Iraq.

Following intense US pressure for action against Iran, the 35-nation board, effectively the United Nations' watchdog of nuclear activities, passed the resolution setting the deadline, which gives Iran a last chance to prove that it has been complying with the NPT.

"The Islamic Republic from the beginning had declared that the IAEA must act professionally and had warned the agency not to enter a political game," Asefi said, "regretting that the agency has been misused by certain Western states, particularly the US, and the process of debates and the behind-the-scene lobbies showed that Iran's warnings were right and that the IAEA has overlooked its professional work and has entered political bickering."

In the absence of any firm answer from Iran's leaders to the resolution, it has been the press, both reformist and conservative, that has taken up the matter. In angry editorials that reflect the views of officials from the two sides of the Iranian clerical leadership, editorialists and columnists expressed outrage and urged the authorities to expel the ambassadors of the three nations that initiated the resolution - Canada, Australia and Japan; to get out of the NPT and review Iran's relations with all the nations that approved the decision.

Many Iranian political analysts consider the resolution adopted on Friday without a vote - a procedure that IAEA spokeswoman Melissa Fleming described as "very unusual" - as a "humiliating defeat" for the Islamic Republic.

Iran's delegation at the board, led by Ali Akbar Salehi, its ambassador at the IAEA, walked out of the meeting, stating that "such an offensive text risks to kill an otherwise constructive process". "My country can possibly not accept a decision taken under political considerations," he told journalists in Vienna, accusing Western powers of the board of presenting Iran "biased, illegal and illegitimate" demands that could not be met in the time limit of October 31.

"The Iranian walkout was a protest against the resolution and against the procedure," an IAEA spokesman explained.

Salehi on Sunday also accused the US, Britain, France and Germany for their "extreme position" that, he said, was "nothing new".

What angered Salehi most was that not only had Russia, the country that is building Iran's first controversial nuclear-powered electrical plant, backed the resolution, but also some members of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), despite assurances offered a day before the Friday meeting by Malaysia's ambassador, Hoseyn Hanif, that the NAM would press for a compromise solution.

But Mohammad ElBradeh'i, the Egyptian director of the IAEA, expressed satisfaction, saying that the resolution sends a clear and strong message to Iran, and calling on it to cooperate with the IAEA "fully and immediately". "I reiterate that in the weeks ahead we have a lot to do in regard with Iran's nuclear projects, as I have to submit to the board [of directors] a precise report concerning the state of Iran's cooperation with the resolution," he stressed at the end of the meeting.

In a report submitted to the 35 directors, IAEA experts indicated that in one or two years from now, Iranian scientists would master the whole cycle of uranium enriching, a technology needed for developing an atomic bomb. In an August 26 report, the IAEA said that it had found traces of weapons-grade highly-enriched uranium at an enrichment facility at Natanz.

"They advance fast and it is in every one's interest to fix them a time limit. We must have a very precise idea of what's going on in Iran and what they are up to," an expert told Asia Times Online on condition of anonymity.

The US and Israel, joined by the EU, allege that Iran's civilian nuclear programs are a front for building atomic bombs aimed at destroying the Jewish state. But both Tehran and Moscow reject the accusation, insisting that all atomic projects are for civilian and peaceful purposes, mainly producing electricity.

Noting that urging Iran to sign "immediately and unconditionally" the additional protocols to the NPT is the "most humiliating clause" of a resolution that denies the majlis (parliament) and other decision-making organs of the nation the exercise of their sovereign rights. The hardline evening daily Keyhan said on Saturday that the least officials can do is to immediately expel the ambassadors of the three countries that formulated the resolution and not allow them to return until their countries presented full apologies to the Iranian people and government.

In an editorial signed by Hoseyn Sharia'atmadari, a specialist in interrogating political and intellectual dissidents appointed as editor of the paper by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the leader of the Islamic Republic, Keyhan assured that if the authorities failed to expel the three ambassadors, "the Muslim people of Iran would do it by closing down their embassies in Tehran".

"Yesterday's [Friday's] resolution of the board of directors of the IAEA leaves not doubt about the fact that the recent cacophonies over the nuclear activities of our nation are a well calculated plot aimed at toppling the Islamic Republic of Iran, using the NPT as a pressure tool," added the daily that reflects the views of Khamenei.

"In other words, the IAEA board of the directors negates the existence of the Islamic Republic, dealing with our Muslim nation as a surrogate state of the Middle Age type," Sharia'atmadari noted.

The article prompted the pro-reform press to express concern that the proposed threats against Ottawa, Tokyo and Canberra might provoke "some people" to in fact attack the three nation's embassies, "as happened to the British embassy, which was gun fired [on September 3] after a similar article in Keyhan," it was noted.

For its part, Jomhuri Eslami (Islamic Republic), a radical daily belonging to Khamenei, went even further, saying that Iran should follow the example of North Korea, which on December 31 expelled all IAEA inspectors and later withdrew from the NPT. "It should be accepted that the correct way was the one North Korea chose," the paper said, advising the authorities to continue the controversial atomic programs "unabated, whether Washington likes it or not".

While the state-run, leader-controlled Tehran Radio run a commentary along the same lines, Resalat, another conservative-controlled newspaper that speaks for the bazaar and clerical oligarchy, questioned the government decision to allow the IAEA's experts to inspect Iran's nuclear sites, "knowing well that some of them [experts] are spies".

Yas No, the official organ of the Islamic Iran Participation Front, a coalition of groups and parties that back embattled President Mohammad Khatami and also control parliament, advised the government to "revise" its relations with all the countries that supported the resolution.

"The [IAEA] resolution was adopted under heavy pressures applied by the United States on other countries, including the European Union, and this is exactly what makes it partial, discriminatory and unusual," said Morad Veisi of Yas No. "Not only will the Iranian people stand up to the discriminatory decisions of the IAEA, but they will also consider revising relations with all the nations that supported the resolution," he wrote.

However, Veisi indirectly blamed the ruling conservatives for Iran's unprecedented isolation on the international scene, adding, "One must also ask why the position of Iran has degraded from its peak of the golden period of after the second Khordad [May 26, 1997, marking the surprising landslide victory of Mohammad Khatami in presidential elections] to the present situation where even nations such as Japan, Canada and Australia side against the Islamic Republic?"

This is the view of most of Iran's reformists, who accuse the conservatives of having plunged the nation into a political abysses by making the wrong decisions at the wrong time and in the wrong places. In fact, the unprecedented gap between Tehran and the IAEA is so deep that Iran has lost all of its traditional friends and supporters, such as the European Union, Russia, Japan, and even in the NAM.

In a recent visit to Tehran, Xavier Solana, the Spanish minister on the European Union's Security and Foreign Affairs committee, warned Iran to accept the additional protocols or face "bad news".

"The resolution of the IAEA giving Iran six weeks to comply has placed the regime in a very difficult situation. In the 25 years of its life, the ruling Iranian ayatollahs have never been in such an awkward position on the international scene," observed Sadeq Saba, a senior commentator of the BBC on Iranian affairs.

In his view, Tehran has no other choice but to bow to the IAEA's demands and convince the international community about its nuclear programs, or adopt the North Korean model and cut all of its ties with the IAEA and accept the consequences.

"In case Iran's answers fail to convince, then the United Nations Security Council can impose economic sanctions against it. But contrary to North Korea, Iran's economy is tied to international exchanges, making it vulnerable to international embargoes," Saba concluded.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/EI16Ak01.html

Iran remains fully committed to NPT: Iran vice president

Iran remains fully committed to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) despite its objections to the deadline given to Tehran to prove it is not developing atomic weapons, Iranian vice president and atomic energy agency chief Gholamreza Aghazadeh said.

"Iran is fully committed to its NPT responsibilities not only because of its contractual obligation but also because of its religious and ethical considerations," Aghazadeh told a general conference in Vienna of the UN nuclear watching, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

His comments set the record straight after Ali Akbar Salehi, Iran's ambassador to the IAEA, had said in a press interview that Iran was reconsidering its cooperation with the UN watchdog and might even withdraw from the NPT.

Aghazadeh said Iran was trying "to find ways and means that would salvage" the safeguards process of the NPT, a treaty which demands that signatory nations like Iran do not develop nuclear weapons.

"We are studying the (IAEA) resolution carefully and will respond to it officially in a few days," he said.

But he stressed: "Our cooperation with the agency within the framework of the comprehensive safeguards shall continue as before."

He also said Iran would continue negotiating on a protocol to allow IAEA inspectors to make wider, surprise inspections of suspect sites.

The United States charges that Iran is secretly developing nuclear weapons but the Islamic Republic denies this.

Aghazadeh condemned the United States for using a "heavy-handed approach" to force through the deadline in a resolution at a meeting last Friday of the IAEA's 35-nation board of governors.

He said the US tactics were part of an "agenda" that "is conceived in escalating tension and chaos to divert attention from serious issues that deal with partisan politics in the United States."

"This is unilateralism at its worst . . . extreme unilateralism imposed under a multilateralist cloak," Aghazadeh said.

He said the resolution, which gave Iran some six weeks, until October 31, to answer all the IAEA's questions about Tehran's nuclear program, was "engineered in such a manner as to guarantee its non- or half-implementation," implying that Iran was being condemned in advance.

IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei had opened the conference here of the agency's 136 member states by re-stating on Iran that "it is essential and urgent that all outstanding issues, particularly those involving high enriched uranium, be brought to closure as soon as possible."

He said he was looking forward "to enhancing the cooperation with Iran in the next few weeks."

US Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said in his comments to the conference that the international community needs to look at how states like North Korea made progress on developing nuclear weapons even while belonging to the NPT.

North Korea has "sent a worrisome message to other would-be proliferants," Abraham said.

He said the message was that "a state can be a member of the NPT, enjoy its benefits and still put in place the assets it needs to break out of the Treaty and pronounce itself a nuclear weapon state."

The IAEA had in February referred the issue of North Korea, which claims to have manufactured nuclear bombs, to the UN Security Council.

North Korea kicked IAEA inspectors out of the country in December and then announced it was withdrawing from the NPT.

Abraham said the deadline set on Iran "makes clear that the North Korean precedent is unacceptable."

But Aghazadeh alluded to the United States when he said people should be asking "which country takes . . . the blame of providing Israel with nuclear weapons and thus overlooking its NPT obligations on non-proliferation."

http://sg.news.yahoo.com/030915/1/3e6nc.html

The Lebanon Scenario

Anonymous car bombs, political kidnappings, ethnic militias ... The Iraqi battleground has echoes of an earlier occupation.

By Rod Nordland
NEWSWEEK

Sept. 22 issue — Iraq under occupation is starting to look uncomfortably similar to Lebanon during its long civil war. The central government exists only in name, and neither police nor occupying troops are able to keep the peace.

IN RESPONSE, militias organized along ethnic and religious lines are taking up arms. Neighboring countries patronize friendly groups, or try to undermine rival ones. Arms smuggling over the borders is rife. Massive but anonymous car bombs assassinate opponents, terrorize civilians and intimidate foreigners. Even kidnapping has returned as a political tactic.
It’s dangerous to overemphasize historical parallels, but also useful to examine similarities—particularly at a time when senior U.S. officials, like Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, are arguing that Iraqis should take a greater role in securing their country. Many leading Iraqis want the Americans to hand over power altogether; they just don’t agree on who or what should replace them. Rival groups don’t trust one another. And many want to form their own militias—not in order to fight any other group, they insist, but for self-defense.
How U.S. forces deal with nascent militias may well determine the future of the country. Already the Coalition has worked with local fighters—in part because they depend on Iraqis for intelligence. U.S. Special Forces cooperated closely with Kurdish peshmerga guerrillas, some 70,000 strong, during the invasion. And the Iraqi National Congress still maintains an armed force, composed mainly of glorified bodyguards, but which conducts its own operations and detentions. The Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), which was based in Iran before the war, has a 15,000-man militia called the Badr Brigades. The militiamen had been keeping a low profile until the assassination of SCIRI’s leader, Ayatollah Mohamad Baqir al Hakim, in a massive car bombing at a sacred shrine in Najaf last month. Then it was the Badr Brigades that took over security at the shrine and in much of the city. That in turn prompted the U.S. commander in Najaf to issue a warning last week that militias there had to disband by Friday. He was only partially obeyed. “How many ayatollahs can we sacrifice?” says Adel Abdul Mehdi, political-bureau head of SCIRI. “We have to ensure our own security.”

More worrisome still are the armed followers of Moqtada al-Sadr, a radical young scion of a rival family of Shiite leaders who has built a small but vocal following in the Shiite slums of Baghdad. “We have guns not to attack people but to protect ourselves and our leaders,” al-Sadr said in a rare inter-view last Monday with a small group of journalists. “That’s our right.” Al-Sadr’s followers vowed to defy the American order to disband. But when the deadline approached, al-Sadr’s group avoided a confrontation by staying mostly out of sight.

If Iraq does become the new Lebanon, it could make the old one seem tame. “It’s an even uglier potential than you had in Lebanon because so much more is at stake,” says Yahya Sadowski, an American political scientist who lived in Beirut through much of the war. “You could run a nightmare scenario where Iraq is the Congo of the Middle East, militias all coming in from neighboring countries,” he says. Yet precisely because so much is at stake, Sadowski doesn’t think it will come to that. America can’t afford to pack up and leave, as it did in Beirut after a suicide bomber hit the Marine barracks in 1983, killing 241 Americans.
Israel’s bloody history in Lebanon is even more instructive. The Israeli occupation of the south was initially welcomed by the disenfranchised Shiites. But with time, it was the Shiites under Hizbullah leadership who eventually drove them out (after 17 years). Uri Lubrani, who was Israel’s main policymaker on Lebanon, believes that the Shiite majority in Iraq—representing 60 percent of the population—could give the country stability that Lebanon never had. But he also envisages their turning on their occupiers, and he suspects that Iran will try to foment that: “Their strategy might be to have as many Americans sent back in body bags during the election period as possible.” As Lubrani and the Israelis found in their own occupation, today’s friends can easily become tomorrow’s enemies.

**With Babak Dehghanpisheh in Najaf, Colin Soloway in Baghdad and Dan Ephron in Jerusalem**

http://www.msnbc.com/news/966400.asp

Iran: The Noose Starts to Tighten

September 15, 2003
The Washington Times
Editorials/Op-Ed

While the news media fixates on the financial and logistical challenges Washington faces in rebuilding Iraq, it has largely ignored the Bush administration's campaign to head off the development of nuclear weapons by a regime that is hardly any less brutal and dangerous than Saddam Hussein's late dictatorship: the mullahcracy next door in Iran.

On Friday, the United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) announced that it has set an October 31 deadline for Tehran to disprove the mounting body of evidence that it is developing nuclear weapons.

The decision made by the IAEA (an institution previously known for its lethargic responses to nuclear weapons programs in Iraq and North Korea) represents a major diplomatic victory for the Bush administration. It is just the latest sign that the international community is coming to realize that it would be intolerable to permit Iran — perhaps the world's foremost supporter of terrorist groups, including Hezbollah, Hamas and al Qaeda and a bitter enemy of any peaceful resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — to obtain nuclear weapons.

"It is essential and urgent...that Iran remedy all failures identified by the agency and cooperate fully," the IAEA said in its resolution, which passed without any dissent. The agency urged Tehran to open all of its nuclear sites for inspections and provide a "full declaration" about its nuclear program. IAEA Director-General Mohammed ElBaradei declared that the deadline sent "a very powerful message to Iran to cooperate fully and immediately." The IAEA called on Iran to suspend all uranium enrichment activities after evidence of weapons-grade uranium production was found at Natanz — ostensibly a civilian nuclear facility.

The IAEA move represents a potentially embarrassing setback for British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw. Since 1997, London has pursued a policy of attempting to carry out a dialogue with Iranian "moderates" such as President Mohammed Khatami in an effort to get Tehran to moderate its behavior. But mounting evidence of Iran's continued repression of dissidents (including violent crackdowns by security forces against students and other pro-democracy forces in 1999 and earlier this summer) and the apparent murder of a Canadian photojournalist by security thugs this summer has made it clear this policy is a failure. When combined with Iran's support for terrorism and the possibility that it might become a nuclear weapons state in the next few years, it becomes increasingly obvious that more pressure against the regime is necessary.

In short, following an intense pressure campaign from Washington, the IAEA has set in motion a process that could turn Iran into an international pariah state — in much the same way that Saddam's dictatorship next door came to be understood as an outlaw regime. As if that wasn't enough, Israel, which 22 years ago destroyed Iraq's Osirik nuclear facility, is warning that it may take similar action against Iran. Although the Israeli action in 1981 was widely condemned, most sober-minded people subsequently came to realize that it did the rest of the world a favor. If Tehran continues to stonewall the IAEA, don't expect too many tears to be shed in Washington if Israel manages to pull off another Osirik-type pre-emptive strike against Iran's nuclear facilities.

http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20030914-113650-4539r.htm

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