Al Qaeda Deputies Harbored by Iran

Washington Post ^ | 08/28/2002 | Peter Finn

[Pokey78]

Pair Are Plotting Attacks, Sources Say

JIDDAH, Saudi Arabia, Aug. 27 – Two figures who have assumed critical roles in the al Qaeda hierarchy in recent months, including one reported dead by the Pentagon, are being sheltered in Iran along with dozens of other al Qaeda fighters in hotels and guesthouses in the border cities of Mashhad and Zabol, according to Arab intelligence sources.

The two – Saif al-Adel, an Egyptian on the FBI's most-wanted list, and Mahfouz Ould Walid, also known as Abu Hafs the Mauritanian, whom U.S. officials reported had been killed near the eastern Afghan city of Khost in January – are directly involved in planning al Qaeda terrorist operations, according to the intelligence sources, who are outside Saudi Arabia and did not want their names or countries disclosed.

[Pokey78]

First Iraq, then Iran!

[Pokey78]

Ping

[PhilDragoo]

Iran's Next Revolution

By Michael A. Ledeen

As part of its war on terrorism, the United States should help the people of Iran overthrow their rulers. The current leadership represses its citizens, sending special forces to attack and torture reform-minded Iranians, humiliating young women, and shutting down publications that report such atrocities. Outside of its borders, the regime has aided Palestinian and al Qaeda terrorists against Western democracies.

Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Iranian Islamic Republic and the central figure in the creation of modern Islamic terrorism, died in 1989 on the thirteenth day of Khordad, the third month of the Iranian calendar. Thirteen being a famously unlucky number, the Iranians celebrate Khomeini's death on the lucky fourteenth of Khordad, which was June 4. In honor of the great man, amid the obligatory chants of "Death to America! Death to Israel!" 167 top leaders of twenty-five terrorist organizations gathered in Tehran for a conference on "Support for the Intifada." They included the usual suspects, among them seven representatives from al Qaeda, whose leader, Osama bin Laden, has been reported by local newspapers to be living in a remote region of Iran itself.

The terror summit comes at a time of considerable internal agitation and intense Iranian support for terrorist activities against the United States, Britain, and Israel. The country's internal problems catalyze its external violence. In late May, Ayatollah Ebrahim Amini, deputy leader of the Council of Experts--perhaps the most powerful institution in Iran--publicly warned that the country was on the verge of insurrection. Life is so bad for the Iranian people that many have begun fleeing the country. Recently, ten Iranians were found by Turkish authorities in the city of Van. Three were dead of malnutrition, and the others were in desperate physical condition.

The Iranian people's mounting desperation and disgust with the regime is driving them to take more and more overt action against the mullahs. In late May, a group of armed young people in the city of Lamerd in Fars Province attacked the Revolutionary Guards' headquarters, badly damaging the building. Troops had to be called in to put down the uprising, the latest of many in the past year.

Terror Masters

Despite Ayatollah Amini's admonitions against the use of repressive force, the regime is moving in the opposite direction. Interior Minister Abdol Vahed Moussavi-Lari ominously announced that the "crisis center"--a particularly nasty group of special forces and trained assassins--has again started to act. The Revolutionary Guards recently attacked buses carrying students on tour to the historical sites in Gomen, arresting seventy-three young men and women, killing two of them. Mohammad Khordadian, a noted folk dancer who lives in Los Angeles, returned to Iran a number of weeks ago to attend his mother's funeral. He was arrested at the Mehrabad airport and locked away, accused of "corrupting youth." Just on May 29, the reform-minded Nationalist-Religious Group published graphic photographs documenting the torture of Vahid Sadeqi, one of their activists.

This sort of information is not supposed to circulate in the Islamic Republic, whose leaders have been at pains to shut down any publication that reports the regime's evildoing. At the moment, virtually every newspaper worthy of the name has been shut down, six others are facing judicial action, several books have been banned, and judicial action has been undertaken against several members of the hapless Parliament.

Even fun is now under assault. Roadblocks manned by the Basij--the regime's version of the fascist storm troopers--now routinely stop cars playing forbidden Western music, and if unmarried women are found in the company of men, they are arrested and charged with moral corruption. Thirty people were arrested in Tehran on May 30, and eighty more were picked up in Fuman, all accused of "illegal and immoral behavior." Single women can be subjected to humiliating virginity tests, and if they flunk, they are given the option of marrying or being flogged.

The regime is also cracking down on simple expressions of opinion, most recently concerning relations with the United States. The Iranian people are probably the most enthusiastically pro-American in the Islamic world, and would love to see an active American presence in their country. The regime, at least publicly, constantly attacks the United States, and has banned any discussion of normalization of relations from all media, and even in school classrooms. When two journalists challenged the decree, they were quickly issued subpoenas.

These are only a few examples of the widespread repression of the Iranian people who, as President Bush remarked in his State of the Union address, have shown a great desire to be free of their regime. The mullahs are trying to deprive the Iranian people of all hope, and to that end they have intensified their terror campaign against the United States and its allies. They aim to drive America out of Afghanistan, just as Khomeini did in Lebanon in the 1980s: by killing and kidnapping Americans, and eventually demonstrating that the United States does not have staying power. The recent conference in Tehran shows their determination, and the considerable support they enjoy from the other terror masters.

The Iranian regime has recently provided chemical weapons to the Palestinian terrorists, and in honor of Khomeini's anniversary it has just contributed 314 (third month, fourteenth day) missiles to Iranian-sponsored terrorists in Afghanistan. Iran's intention to assault our soldiers is not a secret; hardly a day goes by without a leader of the regime pronouncing it. While some of the details of Iranian terrorist activity in Afghanistan and elsewhere in the region are not known, we know enough to justify serious action against the regime in the name of self-defense.

America Should Respond

The legitimate desires of the Iranian people have been acknowledged by President Bush. Yet we still have no Iran strategy. There is no coordinated public policy, such as radio and television broadcast in Farsi, a sustained condemnation of the "mullahcracy" by our own leaders, and material assistance for those leading the freedom movement inside Iran. It is hard to imagine that the Iranian people require enormous support to rid themselves of their meddlesome priests, and, unlike the challenge in Iraq, one can readily envisage a successful regime change in Tehran without dropping a single American bomb or firing a single American bullet.

All we have to do is act in keeping with our national tradition of fighting tyranny. If the regime in Iran is brought down with our help, it will demonstrate to the Islamic world that radical Islamist regimes, whether Sunni (Afghanistan) or Shiite (Iran), ruin their countries and alienate their people, who prefer America to the mullahs. Is this not what the war against terrorism is supposed to accomplish?

[PhilDragoo]

Iran in Crisis
by Daniel Pipes
New York Post
July 23, 2002

Militant Islam is on the ascendant almost everywhere around the globe - except in the nation that has experienced it longest and knows it best. In Iran, it is on the defensive and perhaps in retreat.

This situation has vast potential consequences. It derives from the fact that (putting aside the exceptional case of Saudi Arabia), militant Islam first attained power in Iran in 1979, when Ayatollah Khomeini overthrew the shah. Twenty-three years later, Khomeini's aggressive, totalitarian project has left Iranians deeply disillusioned and longing for a return to normal life.

The population wants freedom from a regime that bullies them personally, tyrannizes them politically, depresses them economically and isolates them culturally. As in Afghanistan under the Taliban, suffering the ravages of militant Islam means (Rob Sobhani of Georgetown University notes) that Iranians now "know evil when they see it up close."

On an almost daily basis, Iranians manifest their wish to be free by skirmishing in newspapers, student dormitories, football stadiums and elsewhere. Most remarkably, disillusion has reached the ruling elite itself, as manifested earlier this month in a scathing letter of resignation published by Ayatollah Jalaleddin Taheri.

This nearly 90-year-old stalwart of the establishment had a part in overthrowing the shah, helped establish the regime's intolerance and occupied the position of Friday prayer leader (roughly equivalent to a bishop) in the historic city of Isfahan.

But now he's had enough.

He resigned because, as he poetically put it, he saw "the flowers of virtue being crushed and values and spirituality on the decline" by those who "sharpen the teeth of the crocodile of power." More specifically, he found the Islamic Republic spawned "crookedness, negligence, weakness, poverty and indigence."

Taheri's resignation was timed to coincide with large anti-regime demonstrations which lead to the arrest of more than 140 protesters. He then won the endorsement of nearly half of the deputies in Iran's parliament.

These and other indications of support prompted a highly unusual statement from President Bush advising that Iran's "government should listen" to its people. This declaration in turn nearly panicked the government, which then compelled Taheri to issue another statement, somewhat softening his critique.

All this has several implications.

* Iran's future: As a rule of thumb, when the apple of a regime's eye turns against it, the government is vulnerable. Taheri's rejection of the Islamic Republic is roughly analogous to the situation in Poland two decades ago, when the workers of that supposed "worker's paradise" rejected the Communist state that claimed to benefit them.

The Islamic Republic is not near collapse, for the rulers are ready to kill as many Iranians as it takes to keep power. Still, that much of the population - and even some of the leadership - despises the current authority means that regime change is just a matter of time.

* Democracy: By virtue of getting more or less what they wanted in 1979 (i.e., no shah), the Iranian population realized that it had control over and responsibility over its destiny.

This development, unknown among Arabic-speaking populations, has led to something quite profound and wondrous: a maturation of the Iranian body politic. It has looked at its choices and thumpingly comes down in favor of democracy and a cautious foreign policy.

The contrast between the maturity of Iranian politics and the puerile quality of Arab politics could hardly be greater. Yes, both are dominated by tyrannical regimes, but Iranians can see their way out of the darkness. It is conceivable that before too long, the apparently disastrous Iranian revolution of 1978-79 will be looked back on as the inadvertent start of something wholesome and necessary.

* Islam: Iranians have apparently begun a process of seriously thinking about Islam of the sort that must precede that religion's developing into a moderate and anti-militant influence.

Only Muslims who have suffered from the full debilitation inflicted by militant Islam over a period of decades, it seems, are immune to the charms of this totalitarianism and prepared to take on the challenge of finding an alternative vision to it.

In all, Iran finds itself in the wholly unaccustomed role of providing glimmers of good news to the outside world. The militant Islamic nightmare is far from over, but in that country, at least, the end is in sight.

[Lurker]

Mr. Ledeen makes an awful lot of sense.

L

[Shermy]

"Iran's motives are not entirely clear. Its seemingly contradictory actions may be explained by tensions between reformers and conservatives within the government, Arab officials said. Moreover, the hard-line conservatives, in sheltering al Qaeda, do not appear to be acting out of any innate sympathy for bin Laden's group, the sources said."

Oh brother. Iran supports Al Qaeda because it will do its dirty work for them, disrupting oil competitors like Russia, central Asia and the Caucasus. Probably will back stab Saudi too.

[Grampa Dave]

You know my feelings. These are the most dangerous of all the Islamakazis in the Middle East, the ancient Mullah thugs of Iran.

They started this hate America Bravo Sierra when they overthrew the Shah, seized our embassy and Jimmy Carter laid down to honor them.

We need to spend about 24 hours taking out the top 3-4 levels of the Islamakazi Mullah thugs and their incredibly weak and out of date military. Then, the good people in Iran would finish the job in less than a week.

That would be the beginning of the end for Iraq, Syria and then the Saudi Opecker Princes. Iran has a lot of good airfields from which it will be easy to hammer Saddam's trouble makers from.

Their oil and gas in the hands of a real free market democracy would break the back of Opec in weeks. Break Opec's back, and most of the Islamakazi terrorism will just dry up from lack of funds and leadership.

[Robert_Paulson2]

Indeed he does.

[PoorMuttly]

These nations of the wretched take themselves MUCH too seriously. We must put 'em out of business.

[MeekOneGOP]

Thanks for the post and ping, Pokey!

Al Qaeda Deputies Harbored by Iran

Excerpt:

Mr. al-Adel, Mr. Walid and other al-Qaeda fighters are staying in a cluster of hotels in Mashhad, in northeastern Iran near the borders with Turkmenistan and Afghanistan, and in guesthouses in Zabol, about 400 miles farther south on the Iranian-Afghan border, the sources said.

Saif al-Adel

A spokesman for the Iranian mission to the United Nations denied that Mr. al-Adel and Mr. Walid are in Iran. "Iran's policy is not to permit such people to enter Iran," he said.

With Osama bin Laden and his second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, unaccounted for, the sources said, and with the death of the former military chief, Mohammed Atef, the two have assumed operational control of al-Qaeda's military committee, which directs attacks, and its ideological or religious committee, which issues fatwas, or statements, to justify those attacks.

The idea of the transfer of power arose after the attacks in New York and at the Pentagon on Sept. 11, when it became apparent to al-Qaeda that the United States might attack Afghanistan and capture or kill some of its senior leaders, the sources said. The need to put the transfer into practice became even more apparent in March with the capture in Pakistan of Abu Zubaydah, a Palestinian and senior al-Qaeda planner.

Please let me know if you want ON or OFF my General Interest ping list!. . .don't be shy.

[WaterDragon]

Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Libya.....time to "destabilize" ALL these folks. Actually, the destabilization has already begun. The Democrats' squealing in the media is a good indication of that.

The Democrats doesn't want their American-murdering and Israeli-murdering Islamist buddies to topple.

[BOBTHENAILER]

Militant Islam is on the ascendant almost everywhere around the globe - except in the nation that has experienced it longest and knows it best. In Iran, it is on the defensive and perhaps in retreat.

That just about says it all. Once Iraq goes, the domino theory could quite easily take effect. Bush knows this and so do all the opponents of the "regime change" philosohy.

Gonna be an intersting world over the next few years.

[Grampa Dave]

Both Iran and Iraq are lynch pins in keeping the Islamakazis afloat.

Take out Iran and add Syria in a preemptive move that would take a day or two of some intensive and right on target use of air and spec ops. The general population in these two Islamakazi Thug run countries would decimate the thugs who have ruled them for decades. Despot heads will be on Pikes all over Iran and Syria after mass rebellions.

Then destabilizing Iraq and taking out their top thugs will be a lot easier. Once Iran and Iraq are no longer members of Opec, the Opecker Princes of Saudi land will be on the way out.

Hopefully, we read several times a week about the cozy relationship between the Mullah Thugs of Iran and al Qaeda. Then one day we wake up and hear that we have eliminated those Mullah Thugs and their war toys and that a massive rebellion is going on in Iran. That the Mullah Thugs are losing their heads at a rapid pace all over Iran.

[Grampa Dave]

You posted:The Democrats doesn't want their American-murdering and Israeli-murdering Islamist buddies to topple.

Makes you wonder how much of that loyalty of the Rats from universities, to left wing fish wraps, to politicians and the phoney non profits like NOW has been bought by blood money Petro $'s sneaked in by the Opecker Princes the past 2 decades?

We may never be able to see the blood money trails from the Vile Opecker Princes to the left wingers in this country and Europe. However, I predict that within a year after we shut down Opec, most of their phoney non profits will start to disappear due to lack of funds! Many of the left wing fish wraps will go backrupt. CNNNBCABC may be forced to get out of the left wing agenda/mantra pushing and actually have some real news. Also, the left wing professors will not have the funds to do half a$$ed science to punish the rest of us.

[MeekOneGOP]

It sure is! Bush is going to be busy I think, and Rummy, and the troops.......

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the heads up!

[headsonpikes]

MAN! I love your frank bluntness!

[Grampa Dave]

Your name says it rather bluntly!:)

The elite rats, who are college professors and deans at universities, own and run fishwraps, own and run tv news, run phoney non profits and are in other areas of hate America 24/7, never do anything unless the money comes to make their elite fascist lifestyles even more powerful and more elite.

Their cash cows, the Opecker Princes and other thugs who control Opec are in peril. If GW has his way, he will put all of their cash cows out of business. This is why they hate GW and love Saddam, Arafat, the Iranian Mullahs and of course the Opecker Princes and never condemn them for 9/11 and other terrorists actions agains the US and Israel.

If we destroy the Opec Cash Cows, not only will Islamakazi terrorism die down, we will see in a couple of years vast reductions in the power held by these left wing lunatics. Without the Opec blood money, many will not be able to operate. Many will just disappear or become powerless.

That will be a big win win for the rest of us.

[cake_crumb]

"The current leadership represses its citizens, sending special forces to attack and torture reform-minded Iranians, humiliating young women, and shutting down publications that report such atrocities. Outside of its borders, the regime has aided Palestinian and al Qaeda terrorists against Western democracies."

If you scribble out "Iranians", isn't amazing how well that paragraph describes Saudi Arabia too?

[cake_crumb]

"As in Afghanistan under the Taliban, suffering the ravages of militant Islam means (Rob Sobhani of Georgetown University notes) that Iranians now 'know evil when they see it up close.' "

Progress...but obviously there is still something dangerously wrong with these people's "vision."