Free Republic

Will President Obama show courage and save Iranians who seek a soft revolution in Iran? With the commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of JFK’s assassination on November 22, words from Profiles in Courage, cross paths with past, current, and future upheavals. They include a soft revolution in America, Arab revolts in Tunisia and Egypt, and a prospective revolution in Iran. Iranian dissidents held in prison-like conditions in Iraq are the true profiles in courage. Just like few dreamed that freedom riders and sit-in demonstrators would ignite the civil rights movement, it seems inconceivable that suffering of a few might ignite...

PARIS (AFP) - Iran's exiled opposition movement said Thursday it had learned of two previously unknown sites in and near Tehran that are being used to build nuclear warheads. "Resistance sources have managed to uncover two centres that work directly on nuclear armaments and which were until now kept secret," Mehdi Abrihamtchi of the People's Mujahedeen told reporters in Paris, where his group is based. "They are places for research and production of detonation systems which is a major part of the mullah's atomic bomb project," he said, adding that his organisation had passed on the information to the UN...

TEHERAN - One hundred members of Iran’s exiled armed opposition group, the People’s Mujahedeen, have quit their base in Iraq and returned to the Islamic republic, press reports said Tuesday. “These people had requested the Red Cross officials to return to Iran after fleeing the camp in Iraq,” the governor of the Iranian border town of Qasr Shirin was quoted as saying. Press reports said a further 233 members of the group had also asked to return to Iran, with the next group due to enter the country next week. But the People’s Mujahedeen said “75 percent” of those seeking...

WASHINGTON, Nov. 19 - Despite having collected substantial information about Iran's nuclear and weapons programs over the last several ears, Western officials have limited intelligence about the crucial question of whether Tehran is trying to meld those two programs to produce a nuclear warhead that can be carried by a missile, administration officials said Friday. The inability to answer that question so far poses an obstacle to the Bush administration's efforts to press for a hard line against the Tehran government. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said this week that he had seen intelligence indicating that Iran was "working...

   The Cult of Rajavi  By Elizabeth Rubin   For more than 30 years, the Mujahedeen Khalq, or People's Mujahedeen, has survived and operated on the margins of history and the slivers of land that Saddam Hussein and French governments have proffered it. During the 1970's, while it was still an underground Iranian political movement, you could encounter some of its members on the streets of New York, waving pictures of torture victims of the shah's regime. In the 80's and 90's, after its leaders fled Iran, you could see them raising money and petitioning on university campuses around...

Five Iranian opposition hunger strikers hospitalized in France Mon Jun 23, 3:41 AM ET Add Mideast - AFP to My Yahoo! AUVERS-SUR-OISE, France (AFP) - Five hunger strikers close to the Iranian opposition People's Mujahedeen have been hospitalized in Cergy-Pontoise near their base in this town northwest of Paris, police said. Forty-eight people started a hunger strike on Thursday after a crackdown by French police on the People's Mujahedeen with some of them, including the five hospitalized, also refusing water. Three people were evacuated after feeling ill on Sunday and two women were taken out on Sunday evening, AFP reporters...

June 24, 2002 Case Against Seven Tied to Group Labeled Terrorist Is DismissedBy GREG WINTER federal judge has dismissed the Justice Department's case against seven people accused of funneling charitable donations to an Iranian military group deemed partly responsible for the 1979 takeover of the United States Embassy in Tehran and still labeled a terrorist threat. After deliberating for months, Judge Robert M. Takasugi of Federal District Court in Los Angeles ruled on Friday that a 1996 law passed by Congress to classify foreign groups as terrorist organizations is "unconstitutional on its face," and thus cannot be used as the...