Iranian Alert - January 8, 2005 - Iranian opposition exposes another secret nuke plant

Regime Change Iran ^ | 1.8.2005 | DoctorZin

[DoctorZIn]

Problems with Syria, Iran should not be aired publicly: Allawi

Sat Jan 8, 6:40 AM ET

Mideast - AFP

DUBAI (AFP) - Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi said he would use all available means to defend Iraqis against neighboring states harboring "terrorists," but appeared to rebuke his defense minister who has repeatedly slammed Syria and Iran.

AFP/File Photo

"The interim Iraqi government is entrusted with ensuring the security of Iraqi citizens with all available means -- be they diplomatic, political or otherwise -- and we will not hesitate to use them," he told the Dubai-based daily Al-Bayan on Saturday.

"Some neighboring countries host terrorist elements who make plans to undermine (Iraqi) national security from inside these countries," Allawi said.

But asked about Defense Minister Hazem al-Shaalan's "fiery" remarks about Syria and Iran, which he has repeatedly blamed for violence by anti-US insurgents in Iraq (news - web sites), Allawi said differences within the government were not about substance but about "ways of dealing" with the issue.

"In my judgement, that should be (through) diplomatic channels, not in a media auction that does not help resolve any problem with this or that country," he said.

"A positive relationship with Syria is at the top of my priorities," Allawi added.

Allawi himself has made public statements critical of Syria and asked it to hand over Iraqis implicated in the ongoing violence in Iraq.

In his latest diatribe against Syria and Iran, Shaalan threatened Friday to instigate violence in these two countries.

"We do not want to be a party in harming either Syria or Iran ... (But) we have the means of shifting the battlefield from the streets of Baghdad to the streets of Tehran and Damascus," said Shaalan, whose remarks were reported by Arab satellite channels.

"But believe me, neither I, nor the prime minister, nor the president, nor the ministers, nor even the (US-led) coalition forces intend to meddle in Syrian or Iranian affairs," he added.

His remarks were accompanied by the release of a video purporting to show confessions by a top insurgent that militants received help from Iran and Syria.

In the interview with Al-Bayan, Allawi charged that neighboring regimes feared a democratic Iraq would make it impossible for them to survive in office if their peoples demanded similar democracy.

He said his government wanted two things of its neighbors: "control their borders with Iraq and prevent infiltration (of insurgents), and stop media mobilization campaigns ... whereby terrorism is called 'resistance'."

Both Syria and its key regional ally Iran have repeatedly rejected US-led accusations that they are meddling in Iraq.

[DoctorZIn]

Iranian judiciary warns those who allege prisoner abuse

(AFP)
8 January 2005

TEHERAN - Iran’s hardline judiciary has threatened legal action against those who alleged that detained journalists and Internet writers were abused to extract confessions and apologies, official media reported on Saturday.

“We will legally deal with those who have published unrealistic material that corresponds with that of the enemy media and that tries to tarnish the work of the police,” said a statement from Tehran’s prosecutor.

In recent months the judiciary has been engaged in a fresh crackdown on pro-reform press and Internet sites, detaining some 20 reporters. Four of them wrote letters of repentence after being arrested.

Last month the reformist government admitted that it was concerned over the confessions, and said President Mohammad Khatami had ordered an enquiry amid allegations that the detainees were subject to ill-treatment or threats.

But the judiciary’s statement asserted that “after being confronted with proof of their criminal actions, almost all of those accused said that they regretted having cooperating with illegal sites and they accepted their errors.”

The statement also pointed to “contradictory” comments over the treatment of detainees, pointing to the case of female writer Fereshteh Ghazi, who claimed her nose was broken in detention.

“The police consider her claim to be a lie, since after a medical check it turned out that she had had plastic surgery some months ago,” the statement said. Her allegation was aimed at ”distorting the public mind and providing fodder for the enemy and foreign media.”

The statement also named former Iranian vice president and outspoken reformist Mohammad Ali Abtahi, who maintains a personal website complete with weblog, as one of the people circulating such allegations.

Abtahi quit Khatami’s isolated government in October, saying that working with hardliners, who took control of parliament after most reformists were barred from contesting the February elections, had become impossible.

The judiciary statement said the case of the allegations of abuse “was going through its legal process and will be handed over to a court for prosecution.”

[DoctorZIn]

>

Iran protester sentenced to over five years jail, to be flogged 60 times

Sat. 8 Jan 2005
Iran Focus

Tehran, Jan. 08 – An Iranian woman who took part in human rights protests in front of the United Nations office in Iran in October has been sentenced to five years and three months in prison and 60 lashes.

Mina Darabvand took part in protests organised by family members of political prisoners outside the UN building in Tehran calling on the world body to condemn “torture being carried out” on their relatives.

The judge sentenced Darabvand after concluding that it was “illegal” for the demonstration to have taken place without prior permission.

Last summer many relatives of political prisoners demonstrated outside the UN building as well as a number of embassies calling for foreign governments to stop negotiations with the clerical state.

A large number of political prisoners throughout Iran went on hunger strike at the time in protest to the Iranian regime’s use of torture against its opponents.

[DoctorZIn]

Pentagon to Focus on Iraq, Other Hot Spots

Saturday January 8, 2005 2:31 PM

AP Photo BAG102

By PAULINE JELINEK

Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - The military will have plenty to do in the four years of a second Bush administration. While the war in Iraq figures to dominate all else, as it has the past two years, other potential hot spots could demand attention.

And overshadowing all will be the questions of whether the military has enough troops - and money - to do everything the administration has planned.

``Conventional wisdom says that most of our assets are going to be involved in Iraq,'' said Peter Brookes, an assistant defense secretary for Asia at the start of President Bush's first term.

``But you're just not sure what sort of things are going to develop ... flare up,'' the Heritage Foundation analyst said, wondering about the possibility of issues arising with China, Taiwan and North Korea.

Consider the tsunami in Asia. The Pentagon is devoting more than 13,000 troops, an aircraft carrier and dozens of aircraft to humanitarian relief.

As for new combat operations, the seeds of possible military conflict have been germinating for some time in Iran, Syria, Pakistan and elsewhere, analysts said.

Right now, some 150,000 American troops are trying to stabilize an increasingly violent Iraq, with no time table for when they can leave.

``At the Pentagon, policy-makers are utterly absorbed with Iraq,'' said analyst Loren Thompson of the Lexington Institute.

The military also must anticipate and plan for increased China-Taiwan tensions; troubled diplomatic efforts to halt suspected Iranian and North Korean nuclear programs; and the struggles by Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, to hold his nation together while he allies himself with U.S. counterterror efforts in the face of violent disapproval from domestic Islamic fundamentalists.

Massive tasks that can't be finished but on which defense officials need to make headway in the next four years include the transformation of the military and its weapons systems toward a more modern force, the moving and closing of some overseas bases, and another round of closings of domestic military bases.

``What happens is that they have all these things on their plate ... things being nudged along like a peanut with your nose, and then there's a fire you have to put out,'' Brookes said.

Defense officials are trying to figure out how to offset the unexpectedly high cost of the campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan. Among cost-saving ideas being discussed are retiring one of the Navy's 12 aircraft carriers and reducing the Air Force's purchase of F-22 stealth fighters, officials say.

But it could cost an additional $3 billion a year to expand the 512,000-strong Army by 30,000 soldiers, something a senior Army official this week said they may have to do. The Army has the authority to add the soldiers but arranged for it to be only a temporary boost because it did not want a long-term commitment to the cost of a larger force.

The fact that the military is severely stretched restrains those who might be tempted to use force in new places, Thompson said.

``Inner counsels at the White House - people like Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld - would very much like to do something about troublemakers like Iran and Syria, but in order to act on that impulse they would need a much larger'' force, he said.

``We are not going to be looking for any wars of choice, that's for sure,'' The Brookings Institution's Michael O'Hanlon said. ``But if some of these things happen,'' he said of any flare-up surrounding Korea, Pakistan, Iran or Taiwan, ``we won't have a choice.''

Without new provocations, analysts see little chance the administration would use force against North Korea. In Iran, by contrast, some think it somewhat more possible that there could be U.S. or Israeli action.

On the issue of realigning U.S. forces around the world, Bush says he plans to move back to the states up to 70,000 uniformed personnel and 100,000 dependents, part of a worldwide plan to break down large Cold War-era bases and move smaller numbers of troops to places where they can more quickly respond to flare-ups.

That effort can either be complicated or hastened by the continued deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan, analysts said.

``Any time you have a plan, you have to overlay with reality,'' said Brookes, noting that the two campaigns could require much of the military to stay in the Middle East region. ``Right now you may need the bases in Germany that you had hoped to close ... this may have to be put off.''

``Alas, the current administration's rebasing plan, like the rest of its defense program, has partly become captive to the hope that the missions in Afghanistan and Iraq are temporary,'' American Enterprise Institute analyst Thomas Donnelly wrote in a recent paper.

O'Hanlon disagreed, saying a plan to decrease troops in South Korea over the longrun, for instance, might be made easier by Iraq's needs. Troops sent from Korea this year to help temporarily in Iraq may never be built back up in Korea, he said.

[PhilDragoo]

Uranium hexafluoride for the gas centrifuges will not be produced on this site [Natanz]. According to Iranian government statements, uranium hexafluoride will be produced at the uranium conversion facility at Isfahan and shipped to the Natanz site. The uranium conversion facility is expected to open soon and produce its first uranium hexafluoride by the end of 2003. This material would likely enter the enrichment halls through an underground vehicle entrance.

From
The Iranian Gas Centrifuge Uranium Enrichment Plant at Natanz: Drawing from Commercial Satellite Images
By David Albright and Corey Hinderstein
The Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS)
March 14, 2003

[PhilDragoo]

"Khamenei has ordered his regime to not only continue the enrichment of uranium, but to buy time and accelerate the project in order to make the bomb as quickly as possible," Mr. Mohaddessin said.

"Khamenei has ordered his diplomats and his negotiators to prolong the negotiations as much as possible, possibly by between eight and 12 months, which is exactly the time needed to complete the bomb," he said.

[MeekOneGOP]

[ntnychik]

Nice one, Meek!

[windchime]

Bump!

[DoctorZIn]

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[MeekOneGOP]

Thank you. :^)