Friday, April 28, 2006

Iran capable to become int'l superpower: President - IRNA

- We now know what Aghmagh-nejaad's problem is. The poor guy suffers from delusions of grandeur!

In some respects he's right. Iran does have the potential to become a world superpwer. It has a population of seventy-million, it holds vast amounts of resources, and it has a highly nationalistic people. But under this regime, these goals will be far from being recognized. Over the last twenty-seven years the Mullahs of Iran have managed to increase unemployment to 30% (conservative estimates), force much of our young to turn to drugs and/or prostitution, they have killed nearly nine-thousand of our finest free-thinkers, and have managed to chase our brightest out of the country. So while our country does have great potential, this potential is very far from ever being realised. If we want to truly reach greatness once more, the first thing we need to do is to get rid of this regime!

Long Live Iran
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President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said here Thursday night that Iran has potentials to become an international superpower speedily.

Ahmadinejad, who arrived in the northwestern city of Zanjan for his 12th visit to various provinces of the country Thursday morning, made the remark in a meeting with representatives of women, laborers, university students, farmers, artists and guilds of Zanjan province.

He said access to peaceful nuclear energy was a major step towards the country's development, adding, "Today, all international equations have been changed after 27 years of propaganda against the Iranian people and new conditions have emerged.

"There are many countries which produce nuclear fuel and use atomic energy without causing any sensitivity and having any impact on the international equations.

"Access of the Iranian people to peaceful nuclear energy has been so much important that reversed the international equations." Head of Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) stated, "We have no need to weapons and military build-up because our position will be upgraded in the world speedily. Our words have currently influenced all the international equations."

"We cannot become an international power if we have 500 nuclear power plants. We should believe in ourselves and identify our potentials."

The president said promotion of self-reliance is the biggest cultural task, adding, "Establishment of peaceful nuclear facilities at Natanz is the result of self-confidence of the Iranian youth." Elsewhere in his address, Ahmadinejad lauded huge potential of Zanjan province and said, "Construction of a petrochemical factory and five power plants in Zanjan are on the government's agenda." The president and his cabinet will hold a session in the capital city, Zanjan, to discuss the province's problems and requirements before concluding their two-day visit.

Ahmadinejad and his entourage had already visited the provinces of South Khorasan, Sistan-Baluchestan, Ilam, Qom, Hormuzgan, Bushehr, Chahar Mahal and Bakhtiari, Lorestan, Golestan, Kohgilouyeh and Boyer Ahmad and Khorassan Razavi.

Original Article

Wednesday, April 26, 2006

The Nuclear Bunker Buster - Union of Concerned Scientists

- Recently, there have been reports that the United States had been flirting with the Idea of using Nuclear "bunker-busters" against specific targets within Iran. Here is a demonstration of the potential disaster it could cause.

Instead, the United States must support the people of Iran in their struggle against the Islamic Republic. A secular and democratic republic of Iran will never be a threat to any country because it would be accountable to its own people.
Long Live Iran.

Don't let Iran exploit World Cup, ex-players say - Reuters

BERLIN (Reuters) - Three former Iranian national soccer players said on Wednesday Iran may try to exploit the World Cup to spread misinformation about exiled groups opposed to the Tehran government.

The players, who represented their country in the 1970s, are members of an exiled opposition organisation. They criticised Berlin for signing a security accord with Iran which they said would restrict peaceful demonstrations during the tournament.

"Don't let the Iranian regime misuse the World Cup in the same way that Hitler did with the Olympic Games in 1936," Hassan Nayeb-Agha, who played for Iran at the 1978 World Cup in Argentina, told a news conference in Berlin.

He was referring to the Olympics which the Nazis tried to use to showcase their ideals.

A spokesman for the Interior Ministry rejected the group's criticism and said the security agreement Germany had signed with Iran provided for an information exchange about possible acts of violence and terror.

"There's no need for any concern that information about exiled Iranians who have not done anything to endanger internal security will be passed on," the spokesman said. "That will not happen and is not part of the agreement."

There have been calls in Germany to ban Iran from taking part in the World Cup, which begins on June 9, after President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad labelled the Holocaust a myth and said Israel should be "wiped off the map".

Chancellor Angela Merkel said the remarks were unacceptable and has likened Iran's nuclear plans to the threat posed by the Nazis in their early days. But she opposed banning the team.

Iran's opening match against Mexico on June 11 is in Nuremberg, a city associated with Nazism. A far-right group, which says it admires Tehran's defiant stance against the West over its nuclear programme, plans to show its support for Iran when they play Angola in Leipzig on June 21.

The head of Iran's soccer federation had said Ahmadinejad was considering coming to Germany for the World Cup but a government official in Tehran later said he had no such plans.

Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said recently Ahmadinejad would be welcome in Germany but would be taken to task for his anti-Israel comments and Holocaust denial.

Denying the murder of six million Jews by the Nazis is a crime in Germany punishable with up to five years in prison.

Bahram Mavadat, a reserve goalkeeper for Iran at the 1978 World Cup, said on Wednesday it was still possible the Iranian president would attend the tournament.

"We are planning demonstrations in several German cities if the president comes," he said.

Original Article

Saturday, April 22, 2006

It's Official, Ebadi is a Mullah!

-Here's an interesting article for those of you who are familiar with Ebadi and speeches that are made by Mullahs. Please read Ebadi's statements below and make your own determinations on whether she sounds like a Mullah. It's scary...
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Title: Nobel Laureate Says Iran Would Defend Self
Source: Associated Press via Yahoo! News

The Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi, an Iranian activist who won the peace prize for her struggle for women's rights, warned Friday that the Iranian people would defend their country against any American attack.

"We will not allow an American soldier to set foot" in Iran, said Ebadi, who won the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize. "We will defend our country till the last drop of blood."

President Bush has not ruled out the use of force against Iran but has said force is not necessarily required to stop Iran from having a nuclear weapon. Bush has dismissed recent reports of plans for a military attack against Tehran as "wild speculation."

The Iranian government has said the nuclear program is intended only for peaceful purposes, while the United States and others say the country is seeking nuclear weapons. Ebadi said Friday the program does not pose a threat, but repeated her calls for Tehran to open up its program, to persuade the international community that it is not building a bomb.

"The Iranian government intends to use the nuclear program for peaceful purposes, but must convince international public opinion of that," Ebadi told reporters in Paris.

She called for democratic reforms in Iran, but said change can only come from within the country.

"The intervention of the American army will not improve the situation — the experience of Iraq has demonstrated that," Ebadi said, adding that Iranians would "not allow another Iraq to happen."

Ebadi, 58, a veteran human rights and democracy activist, was the first Iranian and first Muslim woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize.

Original Article

Friday, April 21, 2006

The Last Mistake? - MPG

- If air strikes are made against targets in Iran it will truly be a sad day for the democratic movement. Not only will the regime have an excuse to go after any and all dissent, but the people of Iran will be less likely to welcome a change in regime. We, who live in the West, have a special privilege. Not only are we in a position to effect change within Iran without comming into the purview of the regime's hand, but we can also influence the policies of the respective countries in which we reside. The Iranian diaspora needs to make it clear that any military aggression against Iran will not be appropriate. Furthermore, alternatives to the regime need to be presented as truly viable alternatives.

I hope that we can change this regime before there is any bloodshed.
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Despite all the warnings and all the facts about the regime in Tehran funding and supporting terrorism, the Bush administration decided to invade Iraq - their first mistake. Going against the international community the bush administration decided to eliminate the threat in Iraq, ignoring the facts that the real threat is next door in Tehran. While enjoying the resources of a rich country, the regime in Tehran has illustrated out in polished detail how the undeclared war in Iraq should bring the US on their knees. Judging by the latest developments and the administration's green light to Khalilzad, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, the regime in Tehran seems to have done a good job.

The Islamic regime in Tehran seems to be perpetually a few moves ahead of the international community. International community was in total denial, believing that the regime could be persuaded to stop their nuclear activities by carrots and sticks unaware that the regime has both the carrot and the stick. Controlling the various terrorist organizations and Hamas,while providing the lucrative deals to the Russians and the Chinese, the regime possesses both the carrot and the stick.

Playing the Russians and the Chinese against the E.U. and U.S., the Islamic Republic has clearly demonstrated that some are incapable and some are unwilling to confront the regime. To make this even more obvious, the U.N. nuclear agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei has pushed the idea of a nuclear Islamic republic.

Not that the regime in Tehran needed the agreement of the nuclear agency to pursue its nuclear activities. The day before ElBaradei was due in Tehran, Ahmadinejad officially announced that the regime has completed the uranium enrichment cycle.

The DEBKAfile reported on April 14th, 2006, that the Islamic regime is constructing a secret, large-scale enrichment plant at Neyshabour. According to the exclusive report, there will be 155,000 centrifuges, enough to enrich uranium for 3-5 nuclear bombs a year, which will be ready to go in three years.

The IAEA reported in 2003 that Iran had hidden a uranium enrichment program for 18 years. The report above about the larger mirror sites which came out only days ago indicated the low level of intelligence the west possesses on the Islamic regime's activities.

Given the fact that the Israeli and U.S. interests are in clear and present danger, there is very little doubt that the Bush administration will resort to military air strikes and ground military activities are unlikely. Various reports indicate that the Bush administration is hoping that an uprising by the Iranian people will overthrow the regime while military air strikes are taking place. Given the fact that the Islamic regime has been steps ahead at all times, the regime is well aware of this move and will simply smother any uprising. While the leaders are in their secure hideouts, regime militias will be on highest alert to repress any mass movement by any means necessary.

Once the attacks are over, and the identified sites have served their purposes as bombing baits, the regime will gain the full support Russia and China and probably the United Nations while playing the victim card. Simultaneously, as "waiting Bush out" strategy, the real nuclear activities which are only partly known to us will continue underground, gearing up for the retaliation which will be billed as self-defense.

Yesterday, Ahmadinejad called Israel "a rotten, dried tree" that would be annihilated by "one storm", inferring to a nuclear Armageddon, while Ahmad Jannati, a senior cleric, said in a Friday prayer sermon that the United States was a "decaying power". "We are sure that U.S. will return to saner policies" said Manouchehr Mottaki recently referring to the "waiting Bush out" strategy.

All of the sudden Islamic Republic's statement makes much more sense.

Obviously, the second and probably the last mistake U.S. may make as a super power is to let the regime in Tehran remain in power at the end of the day.

Original Article

Thursday, April 20, 2006

The State Department’s Dead Parrot - FrontPage Magazine

In the Monty Python skit, a man brings a parrot back to the store where he purchased him half an hour earlier, complaining that the parrot is dead.

The shop owner insists it must be resting, but the man says he discovered that the only reason that parrot was sitting up at all was because it had been nailed to the perch in its cage.

Like the shop owner, the State Department is promoting a long-dead policy of supporting “moderates” in Tehran, under the guise of promoting “reform” and “change.”

Not only is State making a monumental mistake: it has fallen for one of the oldest tricks of Iran’s clerical elite.

Over the past three years, President Bush has accumulated a tremendous capital of goodwill with the Iranian people because of his outspoken support for their struggle for freedom.

The president has made clear in private meetings with Iranian exiles that his public statements were not mere rhetoric. He really meant it when he called Iran part of an “axis of evil” in his 2002 State of the Union speech.

He meant every word he uttered after the regime disqualified some 2,400 candidates for parliamentary elections in February 2004 and he said, “The United States supports the Iranian people’s aspiration to live in freedom, enjoy their God-given rights, and determine their own destiny.”

He meant it when he spoke to the Voice of America’s Persian service on August 17, 2004. “There is a significant diaspora here in the United States of Iranian-Americans who long for their homeland to be liberated and free. We’re working with them to send messages to their loved ones and their relatives…say[ing], ‘Listen, we hear your voice, we know you want to be free, and we stand with you in your desire to be free.’”

And he meant it again when he addressed the Iranian people during his State of the Union speech this year. “Our nation hopes one day to be the closest of friends with a free and democratic Iran.”

Somehow, that message hasn’t made it over to Foggy Bottom.

At the State Department, where Condoleeza Rice has admirably pledged to spend $85 million this year to support the pro-freedom movement in Iran, careerists have taken over the show and are steering her in the wrong direction.

Of that $85 million, nearly $50 million has been tentatively ear-marked to expand the Voice of America and the Persian service of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

Both radios need to improve the quality of their broadcasts and, especially, their political content, before they deserve another dime in taxpayer funding. But that is a story I will treat in depth in a future column.

The rest of the money is being spent on a variety of programs led by former Tehran regime officials, student leaders, and U.S. academics who believe the Tehran regime can be reformed, but does not need to be changed.

This is sweet music to the ears of Iran’s ruling mullahs and to Iran’s boy president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

They all want “reform.” After all, Ahmadinejad campaigned for president on a platform of “reform.” He was going to drive out corrupt mullahs, such as the “reformist” Rafsanjani, and reform Iran’s nuclear weapons program.

Mohsen Sazegara was one of the founders of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps. He fell out with the regime in the late 1980s, published a series of reformist newspapers, and was jailed for nearly two years.

He came to the United States last year at the invitation of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and with the blessing of the Department of State.

Sazegara’s break with the regime was sincere. But since coming to the United States, he has teamed up with “reformers” such as Akbar Atri, Ali Afshari, and Ramin Ahmadi of Yale University, who have gotten the lion’s share of the “pro-freedom” moneys from the State Department.

Instead of providing seed money to a home-grown pro-democracy movement, State Department has sponsored Atri to go on a tour of U.S. college campuses, and is now talking of providing him with a radio station to broadcast his message of “reform” into Iran. They have also thrown money at Ramin Ahmadi by the million – initially, to sponsor a data base of Iranian human rights abuses (something that a number of other groups had already pulled together privately over the past decades, on shoestring funding).

It was Ahmadi who sponsored the ill-fated “non-violent training workshops” in Dubai that backfired last year, sources familiar with the program told me.

The idea of training Iranian activists in the weapons of non-violent conflict is an excellent one. But as reported by the Washington Post, the problem with the Dubai workshops was the choice of people who were selected to attend.

They were reformers, not activists seeking to grow a pro-democracy movement.

They didn’t want to change the regime in Tehran; they wanted to make it stronger, just as Iran’s reformist clerics have sought to do. When they found out that the State Department – and not Yale University - was financing the workshops, they fled back to Tehran, where they denounced the United States publicly.

Roozbeh Farahanipour was one of the leaders of the student rebellion at Tehran University in July 1999. He remembers Ali Afshari well.

“When we tried to get students to take the demonstrations from the university to the streets of Tehran, Afshari came along behind us in a truck with a sound system, shouting at the crowd to not follow us because we were against the revolution,” Farahanipour recalls.

That is one of the tricks the regime likes to play. It periodically gives leash to “reformers” and allows them to publish newspapers and speak out against regime excesses, for as long as they don’t cross the red line and demand true freedom and a change of regime.

Several authentic, grass roots movements for change in Iran do exist. One is led by Farahanipour and is called Marzeporgohar, or Iranians for a Secular Republic.

Another is the Iran Nation’s Party (sometimes referred to as the Iran People’s Party in the West). It was led by Darioush Forouhar until he and his wife were brutally hacked to death by regime thugs in Tehran in November 1998. The current leader is Khosrow Seif.

Yet another authentic pro-democracy group worthy of U.S. funding is the Iran Referendum Movement. Prompted initially by Sazegara’s campaign that collected 35,000 signatures on the Internet in favor of an internationally-monitored referendum on the regime, the movement now has chapters in 35 cities worldwide who sent 250 delegates to a founding convention in Brussels, Belgium, this past December.

They elected a 15-member Central Committee, who in turn selected a 7-member Executive Board. Although they have extensive networks inside Iran, they can’t seem to get the eyes and ears of the State Department.

Sazegara himself told me last year that the reform movement was “dead.” And yet, the State Department, through lack of imagination or its atavistic tendency toward blind man’s bluff, refuses to recognize it.

Like Monty Python’s dead parrot, the State Department Iran “experts” have nailed the reform movement to the perch, and keep selling it again and again, pretending that it’s alive.

But no matter how they dress it up, it’s still a dead parrot.

Or, as the Monty Python character put it, “This parrot is no more!… 'E's kicked the bucket, 'e's shuffled off 'is mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin' choir invisibile!! THIS IS AN EX-PARROT!!”

Alas, not in Washington.

Original Article

Mass Execution At Evin Prison - SMCCDI

Reports are stating about a mass execution that took place, today, at the infamous Evin jail located in North Tehran.

9 un-identified victims were hanged in the facility in which tens of political activists are being held including several student activists.

Several other executions are to take place, in the days ahead, according to an intelligence plan to spread more fear among the population and especially among the exasperated Iranian youth. An increasing number of Islamic regime's agents, its supporters and their interests are becoming the nightly targets of underground groups having lost any hope for a peaceful change in Iran.

Armed attacks, acts of sabotage and arson have been in sharp raise in most Iranian cities despite the very well known consequences if the authors are caught.

The Islamic regime murdered, in 1987, several thousands of inmates following a quasi defeat in the war against Iraq. Most political activists were liquidated following speedy trials in which the current Ministry of Interior, Poor Mohammadi, played a major role.

Original Article

Wednesday, April 19, 2006

Rafsanjani's wet dreams about the Imam - Iranian.com

I don't normally post stuff like this, but I just couldn't resist...


Translation:

Khordad 3 (24 May 1989): I left at 9 am to visit the Imam (Khomeini) at the hospital. I saw him for a few minutes. He's improving. I spoke a few words. He said he had a little bit of pain. I put my hand slowly on the Imam's hand. It was hot; the heat warmed my entire body. My love for the Imam made me restless. I wanted to kiss the Imam's dry, shriveled lips. I felt shame. I put my lips on a hairless part of his head where it was also hot and moist. Without thinking, I licked off some of the moisture. The Imam rewarded me by pressing my thumb in his hand. The doctors expressed satisfaction..

Original Article

Cited in IPC

The Islamic Regime Continues to Falter - Renault is Shaking its Head

- The last part of the article below that is highlighted in RED is very pertinent.

Developing countries such as Iran rely heavely on foreign investment for two reasons. The first reason is that these countries simply don't have the capital to invest in whatever industrial projects they wish to engage in. The second and more pertient reason with regard to Iran is that even if the developing country had the required capital, it generally won't have the technological know-how to proceed. Thus, developing countries rely on foreign investment, particularly from the West, in order to advance.

This is particularly true with regard to two recent economic success-stories: South Korea and China. Both countries have relied heavely on foreign investment in their industrial development. In South Korea, this was particularly the case with respect to its automobile manufacturing . Up until recently, the Korean car manufacturers relied heavily not only on direct foreign investment (Daewoo), but also on the purchase of Western services with regard to R&D and design. They relied on these services because they simply didn't have the knowledge or the experience. However, as the Korean economy grew and its companies became larger and larger, the country was able to stop outsourcing its R&D and design work. Thus, car manufacturers like Hyundai have started to to all of this work themselves. The same is true for China.

This is in direct contrast to Iran which has not achieved the same level of economic development. Iran still relies heavely on foreign know-how and it simply cannot perform the work itself without it. This is particularly true with regard to Iran's car industry. Even the Samand, which was largely touted as an entirely "Iranian car," was largely designed with the help of European design firms.

So what should the Iranian government be doing? Well, it should be doing everything in its power to attract foreign investment. When Western companies set up shop in Iran they hire Iranian workers and labourers. Later, they hire Iranian designers and engineers that are trained to think and question they way products are designed. This experience begins to increase the country's collective knowledge with regard to technological know-how. Once the country has used this foreign investment to increase its own knowledge base, it can go off on its own and use that knowledge to produce products that compete with Western products and, thus, furhter increase its economic strength.

So the Iranian government should be welcoming foreign investment with open arms. Instead, it signs a binding contract with Renault and continuously breaches its agreement! This isn't the first time that the regime has expressed second thoughts about its agreement with Renault. Is this how you attract foreign investment? If the Iranian government felt that the terms of the contract with the French firm were not fair, then it should have cuntinued to bargain. It can't sign a binding contract and then decide to do what it wants. No foreign company will be attracted to Iran if it feels that the agreements it enters into have no wieght or effect. They simply won't come!

The Islamic Regime has done this on a number of issues recently. The first was with regard to the services that were to be provided to the new airport in Tehran. The government signed a binding contract with a Turkish firm and then capitulated to the demands of the ARMY to breach the contract. The same result occurred with the Turkcell agreement where the government entered into a binding agreement with that firm, but then ignored its commitments and went to MTN.

The Islamic Regime may think that what it is doing is a service to the people of Iran. However, what they are really doing is a lot of damage because foreign companies will be thinking twice before they decide whether to do business in Iran. Furthermore, if they do decide to do business they will surely demand a higher price or less favourable contract terms in order to reflect the risk involved in doing business in Iran.

Such actions only harm the Iranian people.
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Title: Iran suspends Renault car project (Update 2)
Source: Reuters

TEHRAN, April 18 (Reuters) - Iran has suspended a joint venture project to produce the L90 or Logan car with French automaker Renault in the Islamic republic, a government official said on Tuesday.

Analysts said the move would be a further blow to foreign investment in Iran, seen as crucial for creating jobs for the country's young population. It also comes at a time of increasing international tension over Iran's nuclear programme.

A dispute over exports of the no frills car appears to be at the heart of the dispute.

"Iran's industry and mines minister has ordered the suspension of the L90 project until Renault company considers this ministry's views regarding the project," said Mohammad Karimi, a spokesman for the ministry.

An official for the L90 project in Iran said that Renault had accepted that 60 percent of the car should be built inside Iran, the car's platform could be used to build other models and that the L90 would not enjoy a monopoly in its class of car in Iran.

But he said: "the main problem remains where Iran wants to have a share of this company's (Logan) exports".

Renault said it was working with Iran to find a solution to the dispute.

"The (Iranian) government wants to put the emphasis on exports, we are studying together all possible solutions," Renault spokesman Stephane Farhi told Reuters.

He said there was no timetable for the discussions.

Renault has said it had set up a joint venture with an Iranian partner to produce the L90 in Iran from 2006.

The L90 is better known as the "Logan", a car that Renault already produces in Romania and which forms a key part of its strategy to boost sales in emerging markets.

Saeed Leylaz, an analyst who has close links to people involved in the project, said the decision would send a bad signal to international investors.

"It is a very bad sign to the world community. It shows they can't trust us again," Leylaz said, adding that it will also have a major impact on the local car parts industry.

He said that the joint venture company had signed contracts worth about $800 million with local firms to supply parts. These contracts were now being threatened, he added.

Leylaz pointed to a previous dispute in which Iran threw out a Turkish operator of a project to run a new Iranian airport, saying it had already damaged Iran's international commercial reputation.

"In this case, we are losing our internal reputation because hundreds of suppliers are involved in this project," he said.

Original Article

Monday, April 17, 2006

US planned Iran invasion since 2003: analyst - Independent Online

- Here we go again... Reports of planning by the United States to attack Iran are rife these days. As I have said before, Iranians must use the help of the United States and other countries to free Iran. Why? Because we simply don't have the resources to do it effectively. Revolutions aren't cheap and they certainly aren't easy to plan. In fact, the United States recieved help from the French in order to gain its independence. But recieving help from the Western powers does not mean that we can trust them. This is the crucial difference between seeking help and selling your soul.

Reports of U.S. plans to attack Iran shouldn't scare us. The United States has plans to attack many countries. In fact, the author of an article I read a while back was shocked to find that the Pentagon had plans to attack Canada. Why would he be shocked? If the United States didn't have plans to attack, it would be neglectful at best on the part of its military planners. Furthermore, there is a difference between having a plan in place and an intent to imminently act on those plans.

These reports on US plans to attack Iran shouldn't induce apprehension. Instead, it should be a motivation for us to get off of our butts and save our country from the Mullahs before the West decides that is has enough of a pretext to attack!

I hope that we can save our country soon.
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Washington - A former US intelligence analyst says the United States began planning a full-scale military campaign against Iran to establish control over the Strait of Hormuz even before the March 2003 invasion of Iraq.

William Arkin, who served as the US Army's top intelligence mind on West Berlin in the 1970s and accurately predicted US military operations against Iraq, said the plan was known in military circles as TIRANNT, an acronym for Theater Iran Near Term.

The plan includes a scenario for a land invasion of the country led by the US Marine Corps, a detailed analysis of the Iranian missile force and a global strike plan against any Iranian weapons of mass destruction, Arkin wrote. He said the US and British planners had already conducted a Caspian Sea war game as part of these preparations.

"According to military sources close to the planning process, this task was given to army general John Abizaid, now commander of CENTCOM, in 2002," Arkin wrote, referring to the Florida-based US Central Command.

But preparations under TIRANNT began in earnest in May 2003, when modellers and intelligence specialists pulled together the data needed for Theatre-level warfare analysis for Iran, Arkin said.

Meanwhile, Iran has formed battalions of suicide bombers to hit American and British targets if its nuclear installations are attacked, London's Sunday Times newspaper said.

According to Iranian officials, 40 000 trained suicide bombers were ready to strike.

Iran is in a stand-off with the West over its nuclear programme, which the Islamic republic insists is entirely for peaceful purposes.

Original Article

Sunday, April 16, 2006

Tens injured in Esfahan's students' dorm - SMCCDI

- This sounds like the hand of the Islamists. This is exactly the kind of thing that happened directly before and during the revolution. In one instance, Islamists had set fire to a movie theatre in Tehran while people were inside. They locked all the exits and let the people burn alive. Nice people, huh?

These are the same people that ended up running Iran. They are a bunch of crminals and murderers. So of course they would do it again - a time when they are vulnerable. It seems the Islamists are very good at making enemies for themselves.

I wish all those who were injured my deapest sympathies.
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Tens of female students were injured following a mysterious fire at the students' dorm in the central City of Esfahan. Several students have been hospitalized due to critical conditions.

Several emergency exits were 'somehow' locked and te fire is believed to be of criminal origin.

Original Article

Disarm Iran - without force - New York Daily News

- Amen to this article. This is what I've been saying the whole time. If I were Bush, I would want to think up the most humiliating punishment for Aghmagh-nejaad. The best punishment for that bozo would be fermenting a people's revolution. This so-called president of Iran will be taken from power and then forced to live out the rest of his days doing the most humiliating kinds of work. As I said below, because Aghmagh-nejaad can't take a joke I strongly believe that his best punishment should be putting him in a cage, preferably in a public park, and having men and women of all ages walk by and poke fun.
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My 444 days of captivity under Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini taught me plenty about the terrorist ambitions of a theocracy flailing away at international law.

So, when Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced Tuesday that Iran had successfully enriched uranium for the first time, I was among those who feared the nation could supply Al Qaeda or Hezbollah with a bomb.

But let's get real about what happened, how it happened, and how, using smart diplomacy rather than force, we can prevent still worse from happening now.

Make no mistake. The news out of Iran is a setback for the longstanding attempt to dissuade the country's officials from expanding the scale of its uranium enrichment program. But Ahmadinejad's bluster was more a political statement than a big step toward an atomic bomb.

And we arrived at this point because Secretary of State Rice failed to get the UN Security Council to step up and impose heavy sanctions on Iran.

The council criticized the Iranian nuclear program - but the statement was a watered-down compromise because Russia and China said they had no interest in imposing sanctions on Iran.

Now, the Iranian president's nationally televised stage show needs to be challenged - but not by bunker-busting bombs from the American military. This demands a reinvigorated and unrelenting UN Security Council program of aggressive diplomatic intervention that steadfastly supports the human rights movement in Iran.

This is the key to isolating the regime, weakening its totalitarian hold over the Iranian people and creating a united front of Iranians calling for a more open society.

Far more than military threats from a hated superpower, that would be Ahmadinejad's worst nightmare.

Ahmadinejad ran for the presidency of Iran on a platform of rejuvenating the revolutionary period of the Khomeini era. His nuclear sideshow is a convenient ploy to distract the unemployed poor from their own serious needs. Rattling sabers about using force - or actually using it before absolutely necessary - would only strengthen that ploy.

Alternatively, imagine the progress we could make by supporting human rights in Iran and exerting consistent diplomatic pressure. Think of Ahmadinejad in Tehran watching the U.S. surround Iran with a satellite Afghanistan on its east side, a destabilizing force (Iraq) on its west side and an American Navy constantly breathing down his throat in the Persian Gulf. While he is probably pleased to see the "world-eating" Americans are getting "their due," thanks to Iran's support of the Iraqi insurgency and its meddling in Shiite politics of Iraq, he can't help but feel growing unease in his own political living room.

Iran is not the first country to defy America by joining the nuclear club; the best recent example is North Korea. We don't like it, but we are living with it, as are its closest neighbors - the South Koreans, the Japanese and the Chinese. What we have to realize is that we are unable to control the world with our weaponry. Unless we use diplomacy and other forms of social, economic and diplomatic pressure more effectively, the best we can expect is the status quo.

Original Article

Saturday, April 15, 2006

Here Goes Aghmagh-nejaad Shooting His Mouth Off Again!

- It amazes me how Aghmagh-nejaad constantly shoots his mouth off in order to get negative reactions from the West. The childish and unprofessional conduct of this so-called "president" is doing nothing except furthering the isolation of the regime and the Iranian people who are ruled by it. Has anybody asked why Aghmagh-nejaad is so focued on Israel? What have the Jewish people done to us exactly that the regime finds it justified to threaten them on a weekly basis? The Jewish people are our natural allies!

This regime is trying desperately to provoke a war. They need it. They want it badly. You know why? Because that's the only way they can justify their existence. Without war or an enemy the only thing they have to show after twenty-seven years of power in Iran is mismanagement and corruption. That's it. So the regime is doing what it can trying to provoke a giant like the USA to attack.

Here's a news flash Aghmagh-nejaad: IT WON'T WORK; and if you do succeed in provoking the West, then you will answer to the Iranian people. Your job is to administer the country, not drive it into a head-on collision with the world's only super-power. In fact, as my previous post shows the West already has plans to divide our country. SO WHY ARE YOU GIVING THEM A REASON TO?! You are as incopetent as you are ugly. If the West decides that you have given them enough of an excuse to attack our homeland, it won't be the West that will be held accountable. No sir. It will be YOU.

Instead of protecting the Palestinians, maybe you should look at the mess you have created in your own backyard. It's not the Palestinians that need fair treatment. It's the Iranian people that require justice and respect. You jail, murder, and steal from your own people and then talk about the rights of the Palestinians? What a joke. I think the they would be better off if they didn't have your "help."
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Title: Israel will be 'annihilated,' says Iran's president
Source: CBC


Iran's outspoken president on Friday called Israel a "rotten, dried tree" that was "heading toward annihilation."

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made the comments during a three-day conference in Tehran in support of Palestinians. Members of Hamas, the militant group that runs the Palestinian government, are at the conference.

"Like it or not, the Zionist regime is heading toward annihilation," Ahmadinejad told the conference.

"The Zionist regime is a rotten, dried tree that will be eliminated by one storm."

Since Hamas formed the Palestinian government, a number of Western nations have cut financial support for the Palestinian Authority. Hamas has long disputed Israel's right to exist. Iran had earlier promised to give money to the Palestinian Authority, replacing some of the lost funding.

It's not the first time the hardline Iranian leader has made headlines for his anti-Israel stance.

Ahmadinejad drew international criticism last year for telling a conference Israel should be "wiped off the map." He later said the Holocaust didn't happen and suggested Israel should be moved to Europe.

Again in his comments on Friday, Ahmadinejad questioned whether the Holocaust happened.

"If such a disaster is true, why should the people of this region pay the price? Why does the Palestinian nation have to be suppressed and have its land occupied?" he asked.

"Believe that Palestine will be freed soon," he told the audience of 900 people.

He also said Israel was a threat to the Middle East.

"The existence of this (Israeli) regime is a permanent threat" to the Middle East, he added. "Its existence has harmed the dignity of Islamic nations."

Earlier this week, Ahmadinejad raised Western fears by announcing Iran had successfully enriched uranium for the first time.

The United States has accused Iran of running a program aimed at developing nuclear weapons, but Tehran insists it is building an energy program.

Original Article

Friday, April 14, 2006

Western Plans to Split Iran

- This is to all of you who have deluded yourselves into believing that the Western countries will help us in our quest for freedom. Make no mistake; the only people that can free Iran are Iranians! We must use the West to achieve our goals, but we must never trust them. Since the colonial powers stepped foot in Asia they have done everything to undermine our rights. Our beloved Iran was carved up once by England and resulted in the so-called countries surrounding Iran.

Now they plan to do it again and we must not let them. Iran is the Great Iran. We are the world's oldest culture and the world's first super-power. Iran is the birth place of civilization and is sacred. Let that be a warning to those in the West who think they can do to us what they did to Yugoslavia and the artificial states of the Middle East. Iran may be weak now, but such will not always be the case. Iran will unite and all its lost children will come back to it one day. God Willing.


Annexing Khuzestan; battle-plans for Iran

Heard the One About the President? Ouuuu... Aghmagh-nejaad got mad!

- It looks like Aghmagh-nejaad can't take a joke. That's too bad because one of the hallmarks of a good leader is his calm and professionalism in the face of jokes and criticism. The fact that Aghmagh-nejaad feels it necessary to clamp down on free speech shows his insecurity with respect to his hold on power. If the regime was truly representative of the people and stable, they wouldn't need to spend PUBLIC MONEY on the monitoring of SMS messages to make sure nobody insults the president. You know, one word comes to mind when I think of the president fuming over jokes about him: LOSER. You're a loser Aghmagh-nejaad and we will show you just what kind of a loser you are in due time. When that time comes, you will have to walk the streets of Iran and take the jokes and finger pointing like a real man. In fact, that should be your punishment. We'll put you in a cage like the dog that you are and have people point their fingers and make fun of you.

I bet that the joke wasn't even "misdirected." I bet someone sent that joke to Aghmagh-nejaad on purpose. Now THAT IS FUNNY
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The misdirected email or text message is a hazard of our age. It can sour relationships and upset the closest of our friends. But now a stray electronic missive has been blamed for a spate of arrests, a national scandal and a very grumpy president of Iran. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Islamic nation's firebrand leader, has taken umbrage at an unwelcome text received on his mobile phone. According to whispered accounts in the Iranian capital, his ire was stirred when someone sent him a joke suggesting he didn't wash regularly enough.

Although officials claim he possesses a lively sense of humour that belies his rather hairshirt image, on this occasion it suffered a serious failure. Realising the joke was doing the rounds of Iranian mobile phones, the notoriously temperamental president lodged an official complaint with Iran's judiciary department.

That in turn has acted as a pretext for an official purge of the SMS system in the country. Mr Ahmadinejad has since told his staff to pay close attention to all jokes circulating about him by text.

An anti-regime website called Rooz Online claims that under the crackdown the head of the country's mobile phone company has been sacked and four people arrested and accused of colluding with the Israeli foreign intelligence service, Mossad.

But poking fun at the president has becoming a national pastime in Iran. In a fusillade of seditious traffic, the regime's senior figures and its most sacred policies are all fair game - with Mr Ahmadinejad a particular target.

One joke tells of a man who has died and gone to hell, where he sees the famously strait-laced Mr Ahmadinejad dancing with the Hollywood star Jennifer Lopez. "Is this Ahmadinejad's punishment?" he asks.

"No," goes the reply. "It is Jennifer Lopez's punishment."

Another recent joke poked fun at Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, listing characteristics he supposedly inherited from five prophets: Muhammad, Moses, Jesus, Noah and Solomon. Insulting the supreme leader - or the prophets - is a jailing offence in devoutly religious Iran.

Others concentrate heavily on sex, another taboo with Iran's religious hierarchy. One purports to reveal official statistics of what men do after sex: "2% eat; 3% smoke; 4% take a shower; 5% go to sleep: 86% get up and go home to their wives."

The previous assumption was that this exchange of bawdy jibes and political satire could be made without detection. But now senior police officers have announced that they are acutely aware of it and say jokes intercepted could be treated as criminal behaviour.

Particular attention is being paid to jokes comparing Iran's nuclear programme with sex. Several people are widely believed to have received court summonses for sending nuclear-related jokes.

"While the outcome of the recent arrests in connection with SMS messaging is not clear yet, what is certain is that SMS jokes have already put some people into serious trouble," wrote the website Rooz Online.

The clampdown is in line with the authorities' uncompromising stance on the internet and bloggers. Wary of modern communications as a means of spreading political dissent, Iran is second only to China in the number of websites it filters - using technology made in America.

Large numbers of the nation's estimated 70,000 to 100,000 bloggers have faced harassment or imprisonment. The regime has acknowledged monitoring text message traffic. It first admitted it had access to text traffic last December when a military plane carrying more than 100 journalists crashed shortly after take-off at Tehran airport.

The communications minister said text messages were kept by the government for six months and that messages sent by those on board in the moments before the crash could be used to investigate its causes.

The first arrests over text messaging were made in the run-up to last year's presidential election when several anti-regime student leaders were detained for urging a boycott of the poll after the regime had declared voting to be an Islamic duty. "I was arrested for one evening and they made it clear they knew every SMS I had sent and received," said Muhammad Hashemi, leader of the Tahkim Vahdat student movement.

Original Article

Wednesday, April 12, 2006

Iran’s Ahmadinejad calls on “corrupt powers” to disarm - Iran Focus

- In the article below, Ahmadi-nejaad addressed the West as "lying and corrupt powers." I wonder if he has ever asked Rafsanjani how he was ever able to become one of world's most richest men. I bet it wasn't a gift from Allah. The Islamic Republic has managed to make Iran one of the most corrupt countries on the planet. The only consolation is that it is not as bad as Nigeria. But then again, no country is. The Nigerians have held the top spot for a while now.

The leaders of the Islamic Republic have turned the misuse of vocabulary into an art-form. Someone needs to ask how Ahmadi-nejaad has come to the conclusion that the West is corrupt. Then maybe someone should remind him of his own mess that he helped to create in Iran.
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Tehran, Iran, Apr. 12 – Hard-line Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad demanded on Wednesday that the world’s “lying and corrupt powers” disarm their nuclear arsenals, the state-run news agency Fars reported.

“We demand a nuclear disarmament of lying and corrupt powers. We have suggested this to the United Nation”, Ahmadinejad said at a rally in the eastern town of Torbat-e Jam.

On Tuesday, Ahmadinejad declared that Iran had joined the Nuclear Club.

“I officially announce that Iran has joined the world’s nuclear countries”, Ahmadinejad said in a speech that was broadcast on state television.

The UN Security Council adopted a “Presidential Statement” unanimously on March 29 giving Iran 30 days to suspend all of its uranium enrichment activities and resume its cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Original Article

Tuesday, April 11, 2006

Interview: Promoting Democracy In Iran Successfully - Radio Free Europe

-Please Read This Interview

The person being interviewed makes some very important points. The part I thought that was really important was the last question and subsequent answer that is highlighted in RED. The Islamic Regime is very good at disinformation. As Mr. Milani states, the Regime has a monopoly on the media. What the dissident organizations (with the help of the United States) need to do is show the Iranian people that there are two sides of the story. I have tried to do this in my blog. In otherwords, it is not enough to simply post the news over and over. Rather, we have to confront the mullahs head on and MAKE THEM ACCOUNTABLE for their actions. We have to ask them the tough questions that will make their lives much harder then it is now. If we can effectively question the mullahs at every step, we will be that much closer to democracy.
______________________________________________________

U.S. media and opinion makers have devoted much comment to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's proposal to provide $85 million in assistance to help promote democracy in Iran. One of these opinion makers is Dr. Abbas Milani, director of the Iranian Studies Program at Stanford University and co-director of the Iran Democracy Project at the Hoover Institution, who has spoken out about the U.S. government's proposal in articles published in "The Wall Street Journal" and elsewhere. In an exclusive interview with RFE/RL's Radio Farda, Milani discusses his views concerning the promotion of democracy in the Middle East and Iran.

Radio Farda: In your recent article with the interesting title of "Checking Account for Democracy," you welcomed the Bush administration's allocation of $85 million for the promotion of democracy in Iran. But in the article you don't sound very optimistic that this move will have a significant impact on the democracy movement in Iran. Why?

Abbas Milani: I think that if it's well spent -- in other words, if it is not squandered on things that cannot be done and it is not given to groups that cannot manage it wisely -- then it can be very effective, particularly if it is used primarily to create something like a surrogate radio and a surrogate television. Something that would be the equivalent of what an Iranian television and radio would have been, had Iran been a democratic society. I think, if Iran had such a media outlet a few years ago, for example, I think things would have been very different in Iran today. And I think they will be very different in a few years once such an institution is created with the help of this money.


Long Democratic Tradition

Radio Farda: Do you think the United States and the West have been successful at promoting democracy in the Middle East and in Iran? And if you think they have not been successful, what do you think is the reason?

Milani: The chance of promoting democracy, successfully, in Iran is greater than anywhere else in the Middle East for two very, very prominent reasons. One is, the Iranian society has an indigenous, powerful, now 100-year-old democratic movement. This is not something that has to be created ex nihilo, from nothing. This is something that is there; the United States doesn't have to create it.

Secondly, the United States faces in Iran a reality that is the opposite of every other Middle Eastern country with the exception of Israel, and that is that the government talks anti-American rhetoric, but the people, the street, is predominantly pro-American. What you have in the rest of the Middle East is that the government is trying to be, at least ostensibly are, pro-American, but the people, often influenced by advertisements in the media of those very countries, are anti-American. So in the case of Iran, you have a democratic movement that exists, that has made great strides in the past (it is now in a period of relative retreat because of the [former President Mohammad] Khatami defeat, the disappointment that came as a result of Khatami, but those forces there, they haven't gone away), and the population is predominantly pro-American. In other words, they will listen. It is not like they will not listen to something that is openly, transparently American.

Radio Farda: You said it is easy to promote democracy in Iran, but I also asked whether you think the United States has been successful in promoting democracy. If not, what has been at fault?

Milani: The problem in Iraq, the reason that democracy promotion in Iraq has not been successful is because in the case of Iraq there was not [an] indigenous democratic movement. The United States decided to invade Iraq, and that created a Pandora's box that some scholars had anticipated but many planners did not anticipate, in other words, the emergence of this kind of insurgency and all of the other things that have happened.

But at the same time, if you look at the Middle East today and compare it with 15 years ago, you, I think, have to admit that there are more democracies in the Middle East than there were. The Palestinians just had the freest elections in the history of probably any Arab country. In Lebanon, the people succeeded in pushing out Syria. There is a very viable democracy in Kurdistan, in the British part of Iraq. There is at least the possibility of democracy coming to Egypt; at least flickers of it are on the horizon, at least [Egyptian President] Hosni Mubarak knows the old trick of saying, "If you push me, you will get Islamic radicalism" is no longer enough to dissuade the U.S. from pushing for democracy. There have been failures in the other places, or small successes as in the case of Iraqi Kurdistan.

What has happened in Kurdistan is truly incredible. It's a very viable, democratic part of Iraq that thrives. But there, the U.S. had to face the problem that it was working in a milieu, in an atmosphere, which was very, very anti-American. And it had to face the reality that there wasn't much of a democratic movement in these countries to begin with.

The U.S. had to sort of force democracy on these societies, and that can't be done. You can't force societies to become democratic. Democracy needs a lot of things. It needs civil society, it needs a middle class, it needs a technocratic class, it needs a culture of tolerance. And these things are beginning to exist on a very extensive basis in Iran. In the case of Iran, I think if there was a television and radio station that was doing this kind of a promotion of democracy, I think it would be a very different story.


Helping Iranians Help Themselves

Radio Farda: You wrote that this help can be used by those who are denouncing violence in their fight for democracy in Iran. As you have indicated, U.S. financial support for Iran-based democrats is a sensitive issue. So how can these forces be helped by the U.S. without being hurt?

Milani: Fist of all, several things have to be very clear. One is that the U.S. is not looking for a [exiled Iraqi opposition leader Ahmad] Chalabi in Iran. Second, that the U.S. is not trying to decide who the next ruler of Iran will be. Third, that the U.S. will not support any group that has a history of terrorism, a history of violence, a history of oppression. Fourth, that the U.S. will not help movements that want to dismember Iran, that are trying to break Iran apart.

The U.S. could be tempted to do that, and it would be easy because there is a lot of national resentment among Kurds, among Turks. The U.S., I think, has to say clearly, categorically, unmistakably: "We won't do this. We won't support terrorists. We won't support anyone who is advocating the violent overthrow of the government. And we don't plan to force a solution on Iran."

The only thing that the U.S. should say it wants to do is to help the Iranians themselves in this process. That's a very crucial thing. That's a big difference between Iran and Iraq. In Iraq, the U.S. essentially went in, occupied the country, ran the country for a while, and then said, "OK, let's see if you can have a democratic government here." That's hard to get. But my suggestion is that that should be avoided in Iran, and a different path can be tried. And I think that if it is tried and if it is made clear that the U.S. respects the rights of Iranians to determine their own future, then you will get a different result, and you will get a good result.

Radio Farda: Regarding your suggestion of the creation of an American visa office in Tehran, how should we imagine this? How realistic is this idea?

Milani: Well, as I said there, I don't think the Islamic regime will allow it, but the U.S. should make the offer. It should be clear to the Iranians, who now are forced to go to Turkey and Dubai and Germany and to spend a lot of money and wait in a lot of lines and be humiliated to get a passport, that this is essentially the fault of the regime. It's the fault of Mr. [President Mahmud] Ahmadinejad's rhetoric.

It is crucial, I think, for the U.S. to separate the Iranian people from this regime, to speak to the Iranian people and say: "Look, we don't have any problem with you. We respect your right to develop a nuclear program within the existing laws. But the problem is with this regime, and if we don't give you visas, it's because the regime doesn't allow us to have a visa office there."

It must be made clear who is responsible for the problems that the people of Iran face. Because it has a monopoly on the media, the regime has very successfully told people a lot of stories. They have sold the nuclear issue as a David and Goliath story. America, they have tried to sell -- tried, they haven't been successful -- as being a bully, singling Iran out and denying Iran its rights. It must be made clear that it is the regime's irresponsible rhetoric and its action, its lying and betraying the trust of the Iranian people and of the global community, that has gotten Iran into the current impasse. It has to be made clear to the Iranian people that the U.S. is willing to work with them. A truly, editorially independent media would go a long way in doing that.

Original Article

Iran joins world nuclear technology club - IRNA

- Now that the Islamic Republic has squandered countless sums of money the enrichment process, maybe they can spend some money on other areas that are more useful to the everyday people of Iran.
  • How about a free or subsidized healthcare system (at least for the poor);
  • A more efficient public transportation (to get rid of smog);
  • Enforcement of environmental laws (to keep the environment clean);
  • Investment in technologies that can be used in CONSUMER GOODS (so the country can sell something useful on the open market);
  • Less red-tape so that small businesses can thrive (oh that's right, you don't want Iranians to own private businesses - I forgot)
  • A crack-down on government corruption that is rife in Iran (that would mean cracking down on yourself);
  • Should I go on?

I guess the Islamic Regime is expecting the Iranian people to go out into the streets and hand out flowers out of joy for the government's success. I didn't see anyone in Tehran doing that. I wonder why?...

I know my dissent probably makes you mad Mr. Mullah, but that's what freedom of speach is all about. I can say what I want and you have to swallow it. It's too bad for you that you can't jail or kill me for expressing my views. I'm here and you're all the way over there - for now.

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President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said here Tuesday that Iran has joined the world's nuclear countries.

The president said that Iran has completed production of the nuclear fuel cycle on laboratory scale and produced enriched uranium with the purity needed for a nuclear power station on April 9, this year.

The president reiterated that Iran favors peace and justice for the entire humanity and stressed that Iran's nuclear technology will serve peaceful purposes.

The president said, "We have announced time and again that our nuclear technology is at the service of peaceful purposes. We announce that those (countries) need weapons of mass destruction that are in the mentality of 50 years ago and those who imagine that they can change world political, cultural and economic equations in their own favor by stockpiling weapons of mass destruction.

"The Iranian nation does not take its might from nuclear arsenals and the origin of our nation's strength lies in its deeply-rooted religious faith."

Original Article

Iran Asks Russia to Help Send Man Into Space: Expert - Mosnews.com

- Here is another example of incompetence. Big toys are for big boys. If Iran's economy is depressed and people have to work three jobs in order to barely stay afloat, then the government has no business wasting national resources. Once Iran is a successful and prosperous country then, by all means, send a man to Mars if you want. But when children are forced to go out into the streets in order to bring money home to the family you, as a government, are accountable to them first.

If the Islamic Republic is a "democratic country" then maybe they should submit this to the people of Iran and see if the majority accepts this as a proper expenditure of money. It is the people of Iran that decide where the government's concentration is to be placed. In no democratic nation does the government have a free hand to do what it pleases simply because it is in power. If Ahmadi-nejaad was really elected, did he run on a platform of space exploration? Was this decision ever brought to the people? Do you think the people would approve if this ever was brought to the people? The Islamic Republic's bravado recently would be comical if it wasn't so sad.

I don't even get angry anymore when I read stories like this. I only feel sorry for the administrators of this regime because they are desperately looking for reasons to justify their power. They have failed in every respect when it comes to the economical, social, and cultural administration of Iran. Thus, they are forced to point to nuclear enrichment and space exploration to validate their existance. Very sad.

THE QUESTION IS NOT WHETHER IRAN HAS THE RIGHT TO NUCLEAR ENRICHMENT OR SPACE EXPLORATION. RATHER, THE QUESTION IS WHETHER THE COUNTRY IS IN A POSITION WHERE IT CAN AFFORD IT.


Revolution is nearing. Long Live Iran.
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Iran wishes to send a man into space. The country plans to ask Russia for help and Russia is not opposed to the idea, a Russian expert said on Tuesday.

“The idea of the first spaceflight by an Iranian is very attractive to Iran in the light of the country’s ambitions to become a key state not only in the region but in the whole Islamic world,” the director of the Russian Centre for Modern Iranian Studies, Rajab Safarov, was quoted by RIA-Novosti as saying while on a visit to Tehran.

Safarov said “the Russian side does not object” to helping Iran. He added that the Iranian leadership would put the proposal to Russia “in the very near future.”

Original Article

Monday, April 10, 2006

Iran ex-minister wanted by Swiss in murder of exiled opposition leader - Khaleej (Pars) Times

- This murderer is not the only one that will face justice. Hey Ahmadi-nejaad, Rafsanjani, Khamenei, Khatami where are you going to go when the regime falls? You know just as well as we do that the time is comming closer. At least when the Shah's regime fell he had options on where to be exiled. The only area where you have succeeded in the last 27 years is in making enemies for yourselves all over the world. Not even Afghanisatn will take you! You can be sure that even if you do find exile in another country we will chase you everywhere that you go. The criminals of the Islamic Regime will pay for their crimes against the great people of Iran.
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A Swiss investigator has issued an international arrest warrant for a former Iranian minister for his alleged involvement in the slaying of an exiled Iranian opposition leader, a Swiss newspaper reported yesterday.

Le Matin Dimanche reproduced part of the document in which Jacques Antenen, an investigative magistrate in the Swiss canton (state) of Vaud, requested Swiss federal authorities to demand the arrest of Ali Fallahian, Teheran’s hardline former intelligence minister.

The Lausanne-based newspaper reproduced the beginning of the “strictly confidential” document, which it said was sent March 20 to the Swiss Federal Justice Ministry — which is responsible for transmitting the document internationally — requesting the arrest on grounds that Fallahian “decided and ordered the execution of Kazem Rajavi,” who was shot to death near his suburban Geneva home in 1990. The ministry declined to say whether it received the warrant or had acted on it.

“We never confirm whether there is an international arrest warrant or not, because searches under such a warrant are confidential,” ministry spokesman Folco Galli told The Associated Press.

Antenen, who has been in charge of the investigation since 1997, could not be reached for comment yesterday. Rajavi, a member of the Mujahedeen Khalq resistance movement, obtained political asylum in Switzerland in 1973 and publicised human rights violations in Iran.

He was killed in the Lake Geneva town of Coppet, 11km east of Geneva, when his car was sprayed by machine gun fire.

Dozens of dissidents and other Iranians, considered to be enemies of Iran’s government, have been assassinated since the 1979 Islamic revolution.

Original Article

Iran to launch women-only buses - Iran Focus

- This news shows just how inflexible and foolish the Islamic Regime really is. The regime knows very well that the people of Iran want jobs and opportunities. They don't care about islamic distinctions between men and women. Instead of focusing their energies on increasing the wealth and prosperity of the nation, the incompetent administrators of the Islamic regime are busy seperating men and women in public transportation!

Ahamdi-nejaad! There are people who are starving in our country. If your religion is so important to you then by all means practice it in your own home. Nobody has the right to impose their views on other people. Not the president of Iran and not God. The Islamic Regime has shown time and again that it couldn't care less about the people of Iran. This is especially true for Mr. Ahmadi-nejaad whose first acts in government was the purging of the administrators in Tehran's university, the jailing of 500 bus drivers (who are poor), and the increased repression of women! Shame on you! Those who betrayed the Iranian people will see justice served. I will fight for this with the last drop of my blood. I guarantee that to you!
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Tehran, Iran, Apr. 10 – Iran is set to launch a sex-segregated bus service in Tehran in the coming months, a semi-official daily reported on Monday.

The hard-line daily Kayhan wrote that special 11-seater minibuses will be set up “in the near future” to transport women only.

The report quoted the head of the Tehran Bus Company Mohammad Ahmadi-Bafandeh as saying that the minibuses owned by private companies would be driven by women.

“By introducing these companies, female drivers will be able to use these vans to transport women, thus making transport easy for women”, Ahmadi-Bafandeh said.

He added that in accordance with instructions by the Mayor of Tehran, the new women-only buses were expected to start running in as early as the latter half of June.

Sex segregation was given a boost when hard-liner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad became President in 2005. Prior to his rise to the presidency, Ahmadinejad was the Mayor of Tehran. One of his first decisions in the city hall was to order gender segregation on elevators.

In August, Iranian official announced plans to set up a sex-segregated park in the north-eastern city of Mashad.

Original Article

Saturday, April 08, 2006

The Point of No Return: Iran's Path to Democracy - The Washington Institute for Near East Policy

Author: Mohsen Sazegara

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The conflict between modernity and tradition during the last two centuries in Iran is an unresolved problem. Its most important aspect isthe conflict between democracy and despotism. The nation of Iran has tried on numerous occasions and through various means to solve this problem but has yet to succeed.

Iran’s Islamic Revolution is the latest mistake. The regime that resulted from this revolution, the Islamic Republic of Iran, has been defeated in many respects. It has failed not only in the economic domain but also in its cultural, social, and political accomplishments. The defeat of this regime has been not simply the defeat of an ideological, revolutionary, maximalistic version of Islam, but also the defeat of all the revolutionary products of Iranian intellectualism of the 1960s, whether Muslim or Marxist, secular or religious.

The present regime is in the midst of a legitimacy crisis. The regime has tried unsuccessfully to reform itself. It conspicuously lacks popular legitimacy and finds itself unable to address the problems of the country and the people or even its own problems. In addition, the reform movement that aimed to change the regime from within has been defeated. The combination of an illegitimate regime and a lack of prospects for internal change has put the country on the razor’s edge.

CHANGING SOCIETY
To understand where the country is headed requires examining how Iran has changed since 1979 during the course of the Islamic Republic. Many transformations have evolved from within Iranian society, such as spreading urbanism, improved literacy, increased involvement of women in social and economic affairs, growth of industry, and intensification of international relations. Among their other effects, those changes have had a profound political effect: each one has pushed the society toward democracy.

Along with these societal transformations, elites and intellectuals have changed their ideas. No longer are revolutionary ideas the dominant theme. Indeed, a new paradigm of liberalism and democracy is apparent in Iran. Members of the young Iranian generation, who form an absolute majority of the country, appreciate this new paradigm and reflect those changes within society more than other social groups.

In addition to the changes within Iran, foreign and internal changes in the policies of other countries toward democracy have affected Iranian society. The role of the United States has vastly increased, particularly after its interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq. The democratic changes in Turkey, one of Iran’s closest neighbors, have also been very influential.

The changes taking place within opposition groups provide another force for democracy. Contrary to Iran’s Islamic Revolution and overthrow of the shah, in which none of the main opposition groups had democratic ideals, most of the groups opposing the Islamic Republic support democracy.

CHANGING REGIME
On the other side of this equation is the regime itself. The Islamic Republic of Iran has passed
through three stages (or republics):
  1. The republic of revolution and war - from the successful revolution until the end of the Iran-Iraq war and the death of Ayatollah Khomeini (1979–1989). In this period, all of the revolutionary ideas were applied. The result was a disaster and complete defeat for the Iranian people.
  2. The republic of terror (1989–1997). In this period, economic policies began to change, but because of poor policies in cultural, social, and political affairs, such economic reforms were not successful.
  3. The republic of reform (1997–2004). In this period, democracy, human rights, civil society, and good international relations were the goals of the reformists. However, it became quickly apparent that reaching those goals within the framework of the present constitution was impossible.

The third republic has now ended. The country is on the path toward a fourth republic, which will not be an Islamic republic. Though Iran’s leader and some Islamists wish to return to the policies and values of the first republic, this retreat is not possible. The conflict between the majority view—which desires democratic governance and freedom— and the current leadership is leading to a crisis in the nation. The changes that have already occurred within Iran have set the country on a path toward democracy from which there is no turning back, no matter what the temporary setbacks.

Full Article

Thursday, April 06, 2006

The Greater Iran - We Will Unite You Again!

(Click on Picture)

Nuclear Jihad - AEI Online

Suppose, reader, that you were a mad Iranian mullah determined to obtain nuclear weapons at the earliest opportunity. Would you brag and boast and taunt the West--before you had actually finished your work? Or would you keep very still and quiet, denying everything until you had the bomb safely in your clutches?

The choice seems obvious, right? And yet the Iranian mullahs consistently choose option 1--with all the risk of provoking an air war against a nuclear program they must certainly greatly value. Why?

Three possibilities present themselves.

FIRST: The Iranians are so confident in their own defenses that they think they can defeat or deter an allied air strike.

This very week for example they announced that they had obtained a powerful new torpedo from an unnamed second country, presumably Russia--implying that Iran might try to close the Straits of Hormuz if attacked from the air.

But can the Iranians really believe that their capacity to inflict pain on the United States is greater than America’s capacity to inflict pain on them? Their boasts about their torpedo (for example) are hollow, even absurd. They say their torpedo can attack “groups of warships”--but only a nuclear-tipped weapon could do that, and not even the Russians would sell the Iranians such a thing.

More generally, the more violent any US-Iran conflict becomes, the more certain Iran is to lose. Perhaps Iran can cause even more trouble in Iraq than it is causing now (although it may already have reached its limits). Perhaps it can push up the price of oil. But the US can smash the foundations of Iranian military power and the repressive capacity of the Iranian state. It hardly seems a trade even the most apocalyptic mullah would wish to make.

SECOND: The Iranians believe that American willpower has been so weakened by Iraq that the United States will not dare to attack them, despite American military superiority.

And certainly the Iranians have often professed to believe this. In August 2005, newly elected Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad sent the Iranian parliament a policy document that declared Iran a “sunrise” power and America a “sunset” power, “in its last throes.”

But even still--even if the mullahs do believe this--why hasten to a confrontation with the declining power before you can face it on equal terms? Whatever fantasies Ahmadinejad may delude himself with about the world of 10, 20, or 30 years from now, surely even he understands that if conflict erupts tomorrow, the result would be unfavorable to Iran, to put it mildly?

Which leaves this THIRD possibility: The mullahs do not want war--but they do want this confrontation. For some reason of their own, they believe they profit from prolonged, bitter, fruitless negotiations with the West.

If so, we have to wonder--are these endless negotiations truly in the interests of the West. Are we not giving the Iranian rulers all the internal political benefits of intransigence and extremism--without any of the costs?

Is there any reason to think that the Iranian population would welcome a true crisis, with all its attendant hardship and danger? We are often told that in such a crisis, the Iranian people would rally to their corrupt and oppressive leaders--but there is little evidence for such assertions, and much evidence against it.

What we do know is that the current path is working very well for the rulers of Iran. They are moving steadily toward a bomb while impressing the most radical constituencies within their own society.

The present path, however, is signally failing to work for the West.

We are watching Iran move closer to nuclearization--and our restraint is making us no new friends.

Is it not past time to try something new?

Original Article

Tuesday, April 04, 2006

You think Rafsanjani was aroused?

On April 1, 2006 China held a swimsuit design contest as part of its Fashion Week. One display included models wearing bikinis that included the respective flags of the particiapting countries in the World Cup. Look at the model in the middle!


(AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)

Monday, April 03, 2006

Appology for my Absence

As the end of the semester has approached the level of work load has increased dramatically. Unfortunately, I have not been able to be as involved with this blog as I should have been. I just completed the rough draft of a major paper that needs to be completed in order to graduate. Thus, I will be able to increase my focus on keeping this blog up-to-date from now on.

Thank you for visiting my blog and contributing.

Sincerely,

Ruzbeh Hosseini

Sunday, April 02, 2006

"The Iranian government is strong. But not that strong." - The Kurdistani

- It is stories like this that bring hope that Iran will be free and united. Iran will not be free unless the people from all parts of Iran fight. The Kurdish people of Iran are known to be honourable and hard working. Their loyalty to the Iranian homeland is admirable especially because of the suffering they have endured over the many years.

In the article, the PJAK mentions that they have had contacts with the MEK. If this is true, which it definately is, then this may signal a change in attitudes of the Iranian resistance from working alone and independantly to cooperation and brotherhood. I hope this is true. This is also a signal to other political parties to get on the ball. The best way that we can keep Iran together is if we work with each other, especially those groups that represent the ethnic minorities, so that we may topple this regime. I am calling for other political groups to contact organizations like the PJAK so that we may all work together.
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In the mountains with a Kurdish opposition group trying to bring democracy to Iran.

KANDEEL, Iraq—The simple, cinderblock and sod-roof, dwellings of the Party for Free Life in Kurdistan (PJAK) don't look much different from those of the surrounding villages in Iraq's Zagros mountains. The plumbing is outdoors and the water comes from mountain streams. Nor do the men and women in the village look much different from those elsewhere in the region—most wear traditional Kurdish clothing, baggy coveralls sashed at the waist, and it's not uncommon to see people with Kalashnikovs slung over their shoulders.

It's only in conversation that the men and women of the PJAK camp, most of whom hail from Iran, begin to distinguish themselves from Iraqi Kurds, who tend to be subsistence farmers with little education. My first night in the PJAK camp, I was treated to a broken-English crash course in the group's ideology—a variant of democratic socialism combined with a call for the Iranian government to adhere to the European Union's convention on human rights.

The group has been exiled to the mountains of northern Iraq during its struggle to bring democracy to Iran, but the members of PJAK remain surprisingly optimistic. They began organizing underground cells and demonstrating in Iran in the mid-1990s, but after facing persecution by the Tehran government in 1999, many members fled and set up a base in Kandeel. In 2004, the group began carrying out small-arms attacks inside Iran against military targets, in response to Iranian aggression against Kurds in the country's western provinces. BBC Persia reported that PJAK killed 120 Iranian police officers during a six-month period in 2005. It is currently one of the largest—if not the largest—Iranian opposition group, claiming 4,000 members in Kandeel and thousands more inside Iran.

PJAK claims that its numbers have risen steadily since its formation, and that its existence is convincing many of Iran's approximately 3.7 million Kurds—about 7 percent of the country's total population—that the theocratic government in Tehran can be challenged both militarily and politically.

"The Iranian government is strong," says Akif Zagros, 28, a former journalist and a founding member of PJAK. "But not that strong."

Since the creation of modern Iran, the Kurdish minority inside the country has endured oppression—as have Kurds in neighboring countries. The Islamic Revolution in 1979 initiated a jihad by the Shiite government against the Sunni Kurds. Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, declared that Kurds were not autonomous and had no reason to seek cultural rights. Such discrimination continues to this day. Kurds in Iran, for instance, are not allowed to receive Kurdish-language education in school—as was the case in Saddam Hussein's Iraq and, until 2004, in Turkey.

In addition to cultural discrimination, Iranian Kurds complain that they do not receive the same services—such as petrol subsidies—as Iranians in other parts of the country, and that the Kurdish provinces, despite being oil-rich, are economically depressed.

Iran's previous president, Mohamed Khatami, attempted to reverse some of this discrimination by including Kurds in the government, authorizing the creation of Kurdish-language chairs at universities, and easing restrictions against Kurdish political activity. But these small steps have been reversed with the election of hardline president Mahmoud Ahmedinejad last year.

PJAK's location in Kandeel is remote—to get to the leadership, one must ride to the end of a two-track road accessible only by 4x4, and then hike for a few hours. But that has not discouraged many young Iranian Kurds from seeking refuge here.

"If I hadn't left Iran, I might have been hanged," says 24-year-old Karwan Agri, a computer engineering student from Markezi in western Iran. Agri says he was part of a PJAK cell at his university, and decided to flee Iran and travel to Kandeel two months ago, after Ahmedinejad's election and a subsequent increase in crackdowns on members of Kurdish political parties. PJAK in particular has received much attention because of its latter-day militancy.

"After Ahmedinejad's election, the situation changed. Freedoms that had existed in Iran before, under Khatami, disappeared. There is now an atmosphere of violence. Eighty percent of university students are opposed to Ahmedinijad's ideology. I know more than 100 students who have left to the mountains since his election."

Zagros says PJAK's armed operations only target the Iranian military and police in response to aggression against Kurds. (To date, there is no evidence that the group ever engages in terrorism against civilians.)

"Defense takes two forms. Some of it is organized here, some of it is organized spontaneously by people in Iranian Kurdistan," he says.

PJAK isn't seeking independence for Iran's Kurdish provinces; rather, the group is calling for an end to the rule by mullahs in Tehran. It is the only Kurdish group in Iran calling openly for the government to reform, although Zagros says his group would negotiate with the mullahs if the latter were willing to end Iran's discrimination against its Kurdish population.

"If the Iranian government accepts our demands, we are ready to talk to them," he says.

In the meantime, the group is focusing on assisting and empowering the Iranian population.

"PJAK supports helping people get off heroin," said Diller, a Kurd from Mariwan, a western Iranian city where PJAK is active. (There are currently an estimated three-to-four million heroin addicts in Iran.) Diller, who is not a member of PJAK, works on the dangerous smuggling route from Iraq to Iran, carrying contraband alcohol across the border because, he says, there is no other employment. "The Iranian government doesn't care about Kurds. They don't supply our cities with the same services they do for the Shiites."

Like the better-known Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in Turkey, which advocates for an independent Kurdish homeland, and which has used these mountains as a base since 1991 in a guerrilla war against the Turkish government that has claimed more than 30,000 lives, a major component of PJAK's fight is for women's rights.

"Our aim is to be an alternative to the leadership of Iran, and we organize women toward this aim. The Iranian government deprives women of their freedom," says 26-year-old Golistan Dugan, a female member of the group's leadership council. "Here in the mountains the women are organized."

Dugan left Iran in 1999, in the wake of Kurdish nationalist demonstrations following the arrest of PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan in Turkey. The protests provoked crackdowns by Tehran.

PJAK members claim 45 percent of their membership is female.

"We want not only to include Kurdish women but also Iranian women," Dugan says.

Women in PJAK receive the same political education and military training that the men do, and "daughter guerillas" have participated in the attacks against Iran that began in 2004.

According to the group's charter, 12 of the 21 members of PJAK's elected legislative council must be women; as well, three of the seven members of the leadership council, selected from the legislative council, are women. The group also has three educational subcommittees—focusing on secular democratic education for youth, democracy, and women.

"We send [the people we train] back to Iran to organize underground among the women, young people and university students," Zagros says.

Many of the group's members say they are inspired by Ocalan, and pictures of him and his wife—as well as those of Vian Jaff, a PKK member who recently self herself on fire in Turkey—adorn the walls of PJAK dwellings. But unlike the PKK, the members of PJAK eschew Kurdish nationalist rhetoric, and would prefer a democratic Iran to the formation of a greater Kurdistan. Ocalan is a controversial figure—during his rule of the PKK he was so intolerant of dissent that he sentenced his first wife to death for disagreeing with his policies—but PJAK points to his Declaration of Democratic Confederalism in Kurdistan, released last year, in which Ocalan professed to switch from an autocratic ideology to a democratic one.

Zagros says the PJAK, which counts membership abroad in the Kurdish diaspora in Europe and Russia—which is a major source of the group's funding—has had contact with other Iranian dissidents, including the Mujahideen e-Khalq (MEK), a communist opposition group whose members inside Iraq continue to languish in U.S. custody at Camp Ashraf near the Iranian border, where they have been since shortly after the invasion.

"There is just talk, a primitive agreement, but in our plan there is a widening agreement," Zagros says, declining to elaborate further.

Both the MEK and the PKK remain on the State Department's list of terrorist organizations, but the Iranian government has accused the U.S. of supporting PJAK. Zagros denies this, saying the group has had no contact with the US military or diplomats.

"Our demand is democracy—we accept and welcome [American] support," Zagros says. "But only in accordance with the interests of Kurdish people."

At a PKK base on the other side of the mountain, Abdul Rahman Chaderchi, a member of the PKK's political council, confirms the PKK's support for PJAK and decries the U.S. government's hypocrisy in supporting autonomy for Iraq's Kurds but not for other groups.

"We want the U.S. to see all Kurds with the same eyes," he says.

Kandeel is essentially under PKK control—as one gets deeper into the mountains, checkpoints manned by the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, the party loyal to Iraqi president Jalal Talabani, give way to PKK outposts. The PUK avoids putting pressure the PKK because of both local sympathies for Kurdish national groups and the fact that it wants to avoid sparking armed conflict. PJAK says they have no relationship with the PUK, and Zagros criticized the autocratic nature of Iraq's Kurdish parties.

"This ideology is opposite to ours," he says.

The PJAK leadership would like to receive the same level of support from the United States that the PUK enjoys, although the specter of an American military intervention in Iran makes some PJAK members uneasy.

"Outside intervention is not good for Iran right now, because the people are not ready for it, and it might be damaging," says Agri, the former computer-engineering student.

Regardless of what happens on the international stage, however, Zagros says that, for now, the group is planning a response to the arrests of Kurds in Iran during Nowruz—the traditional Zoroastrian new year, celebrated by Kurds and Persians on the vernal equinox on March 21.

"The party is allowed to respond to the blood of a martyr," Zagros says.

Original Article