Iran Freedom Project

Iran's Jews spurn cash lure to emigrate to Israel - Guardian UK

2007-07-19T09:34:00.000-07:00

In the face of so many invaders and occupiers we Iranians have been able to separate their various faiths and beliefs from their Iranian heritage. This Iranian heritage is so strong that it has kept a diverse country such as Iran for thousands of years. Whether Turk or Armenian, Baloch or Arab, Jew or Christian, Muslim or Zoroastrian, we are Iranian and we were the first true multi-cultural country. This I am truly proud of. I congratulate the leaders of the Jewish communities in Iran for standing with their country. We will succeed, hand-in-hand, to free our country and make it great once again.

Marg Bar Jumhurieh Eslaamee!
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Iran's Jews have given the country a loyalty pledge in the face of cash offers aimed at encouraging them to move to Israel, the arch-enemy of its Islamic rulers.

The incentives - ranging from £5,000 a person to £30,000 for families - were offered from a special fund established by wealthy expatriate Jews in an effort to prompt a mass migration to Israel among Iran's 25,000-strong Jewish community. The offers were made with Israel's official blessing and were additional to the usual state packages it provides to Jews emigrating from the diaspora.

However, the Society of Iranian Jews dismissed them as "immature political enticements" and said their national identity was not for sale.

"The identity of Iranian Jews is not tradable for any amount of money," the society said in a statement. "Iranian Jews are among the most ancient Iranians. Iran's Jews love their Iranian identity and their culture, so threats and this immature political enticement will not achieve their aim of wiping out the identity of Iranian Jews."

The Israeli newspaper Ma'ariv reported that the incentives had been doubled after offers of £2,500 a head failed to attract any Iranian Jews to leave for Israel.

Iran's sole Jewish MP, Morris Motamed, said the offers were insulting and put the country's Jews under pressure to prove their loyalty. "It suggests the Iranian Jew can be encouraged to emigrate by money," he said. "Iran's Jews have always been free to emigrate and three-quarters of them did so after the revolution but 70% of those went to America, not Israel."

Iran's Jewish population has dwindled from about 80,000 at the time of the 1979 Islamic revolution but remains the largest of any country in the Middle East apart from Israel. Jews have lived in Iran since at least 700BC.

Hostility between Iran's government and Israel means Iranian Jews are often subject to official mistrust and scrutiny.

Original Article

Tomb of Firuzan (Abu-lolo) in Kashan to be Destroyed

2007-07-12T09:55:00.000-07:00

Source: CAIS NEWS

The tomb of Firuzan commonly known as Emāmādeh Abu-lolo (or Abu Lulu) in Kashahn, Isfahan province is being locked to visitors, it is announced there is a plan the shrine to be destroyed by the order of the Islamic Regime.

A large crowd of Iranians however, have gathered outside the governor's office on Tuesday, June 26th, to voice their objection regarding the closure and possible destruction of the Iranian heritage, and a shrine which was one of the symbols of Iranian resistance against the Arab invaders in 7th century CE, and to some, a Shia and a revered Sufi.

Umar al-Khattab, the second Moslem Caliph was put to death by Firuzan in 645 CE. It is said that Firuzan was a POW captured after the fall of Ctesiphon in what is today known as Iraq, and sold as a slave. A parvenu Arab leader called Mughira ibn Shu’ba bought him and took him to Medina in Arabia for slavery work.

Most probably Firuzan was a Zoroastrian (by some accounts he was a priest), as the majority of Iranian were at the time of Arab occupation of Iran in 7th century.

“His [Firuzan] action was in response to atrocities that were committed by Arab-Muslim invaders in Iran, which resulted in massacre, rape, looting of our country – we Iranians never forgot nor forgive their crimes against us”, said one of the protestors.

Some Arab, as well as committed Muslim historians, in order to undermine Firuzan’s bravery and heroism have claimed (ultimately all derived from Ibn Shihab account) that he murdered Umar after an argument over the tax levy.

During the Safavid era and the rise of Shia Islam to power, the dynasty named him Bābā Shojā ul-Din (the one who is brave in the cause of religion) and claimed that he was a devout Shia and a martyr.

Another angry protester said: "they say he is not buried here - or some say he wasn't Muslim at all - so what? - as far as we concern this edifice represents him, our faith and resistance against the uncivilised invaders" - and another one added: "if Abu Lolo was an Arab, they would have erect a golden dome on top of his shrine, rather than destroying it - but no, no - they destroy his shrine, just because he was an Iranian - a noble Iranian - this is an insult to Iranian nation".

Mohammad Salim Al'awa, the Secretary-General of the International Union for Muslim Scholars (IUMS), who believes God have "created women for pregnancy and childbirth" purposes speaking to Al-Arabiat New-agency said: "the request for its destruction was delivered to Iran by a group of Arab representatives a few months ago, after the Doha assembly at the beginning of the year. At the assembly a large number of Sunni scholars asked Iran for the total destruction of the tomb".

"Imagine the Germans asking Britain to destroy the graves of the brains behind the British plan to kill Hitler [Operation Foxley] during WWII, sine it is considered an insult to Protestants - would the British accept that? - the murder of Omar by Firuz[an] wasn't to do with religion, it was simply removing a despot and a tyrant from the face of the earth - as the British wanted to do the same with Hitler", said N. one of the protestors outside the governor's office in Kashan.

Firuzan mausoleum located on the road from Kashan to Fins, constructed in an eleventh century distinctive Persian-Khwarezmian dynastic architectural style, consisted of a courtyard, porch and conical dome decorated with turquoise coloured tiles, and painted ceilings. The Original date of it's construction is unknown, but in second-half of fourteen century it was fully restored and a new tombstone was placed over his grave.

SOMEONE USING MY NAME: RUZBEH HOSSEINI

2007-03-18T21:15:00.001-07:00

It has been brought to my attention that someone has been posting trash on the interent with my name. This terrible article has been reproduced in full below. IT DOES NOT REPRESENT THE VIEWS OF MARZE POR GOHAR PARTY, NOR DOES IT EXPRESS THE VIEWS OF RUZBEH HOSSEINI IN ANY WAY.

Do the enemies of freedom really think they can crush us like this? They need to do better then that. All authentic articles are posted on this blog and/or on the Marze Por Gohar website. All articles that use my name shall be verified on this blog from this day forth. All others shall be considered false.

Sincerely,

Ruzbeh Hosseini

Original
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Great article written by a pro western Iranian .. defeckted and shae be prepared for an education this was taken from a Iranians for a free Iran.. This are the types of Muslims that will defeat jihadists but they need our support as do the Sinoira govt in lebanon does...

Iran Is at War with Us, Someone Should Tell the U.S. Government

Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, is dying of cancer. But he is convinced that his legacy will be glorious. He believes that thousands of his Revolutionary Guards intelligence officers effectively control southern Iraq, and that the rest of the country is at his mercy, since we present no challenge to them — even along the Iraq/Iran border, where they operate with impunity. They calmly plan their next major assault without having to worry about American retribution.

The mullahs have thousands of intelligence officers all over Iraq, as well as a hard core of Hezbollah terrorists — including the infamous Imadh Mughniyah, arguably the region’s most dangerous killer — and they control the major actors, from Zarqawi to Sadr to the Badr Brigades.

Khamenei and his top cronies believe they have effectively won. They think the U.S. is politically paralyzed, thanks to the relentless attacks of President Bush’s opponents and the five-year long internal debate about Iran policy, and thus there is no chance of an armed attack, even one limited to nuclear sites. They think Israel is similarly paralyzed by Sharon’s sudden departure and the triumph of their surrogate force, Hamas, in the Palestinian elections. They despise the Europeans, and hardly even bother to pretend to negotiate with them any more. They believe they have a strong strategic alliance with the Russians and they think they have the Chinese over a barrel, since the Chinese are so heavily dependent on Iranian oil. Recent statements from Beijing and Moscow regarding the chance of U.N. sanctions will have reinforced the Supreme Leader’s convictions.

Hapless in the Beltway
Above all, Khamenei believes he has broken the American will, for which he sees two pieces of evidence. The first is that there seems to be very little American resolve to do anything about punishing Iran for the enormous traffic of weapons, poisons, and terrorists into Iraq from Iran. Khamenei must inclined to believe that the Bush administration has no stomach for confrontation.

We have done nothing to make the mullahs’ lives more difficult, even though there is abundant evidence for Iranian involvement in Iraq, most including their relentless efforts to kill American soldiers. The evidence consists of first-hand information, not intelligence reports. Scores of Iranian intelligence officers have been arrested, and some have confessed. Documentary evidence of intimate Iranian involvement with Iraqi terrorists has been found all over Iraq, notably in Fallujah and Hilla. But the "intelligence" folks at the Pentagon, led by the hapless Secretary Stephen Cambone, seem to have no curiosity, as if they were afraid of following the facts to their logical conclusion: Iran is at war with us.

In early March, to take one recent example, several vehicles crossed from Iranian Kurdistan into Iraqi Kurdistan. The Iraqis stopped them. There was a firefight. The leader of the intruding group was captured and is now in prison, held by one of the Kurdish factions. The Kurds say that the vehicles contained poison gas, which they have in their possession. They say they informed the Turks, who said they did not want to know anything about it (the Turks don’t want anything to do with the Kurds, period, and they shrink from confrontation with the mullahs).

The Kurds holding this man say that he confessed to working for the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. Apparently they have his confession. They say they are willing to make him available to U.S. military personnel. But the Pentagon, which has all this information, has not pursued the matter. This is just one of many cases in which the Iranians believe they see the Americans running away from confrontation.

The second encouraging sign for Khamenei is the barely concealed delight in Washington, including Secretary Rice’s recent statement at a press conference, that we will soon be negotiating with Iran about Iraq. This mission has been entrusted to Ambassador Khalilzad, who previously worked with the Iranians when he represented us in Kabul. It is a bad decision, and it is very hard to explain. The best one can say is that Khalilzad speaks Farsi, so he will know what they are saying, and it is probably better to have public dealings than the secret contacts this administration has been conducting all along. But those small bright spots do not compensate for the terrible costs the very announcement of negotiations produces for us, for the Iranian people, and for the region as a whole.

Talk Does Not Thwart
Iran has been at war with us for 27 years, and we have discussed every imaginable subject with them. We have gained nothing, because there is nothing to be gained by talking with an enemy who thinks he is winning. From Khamenei’s standpoint, the only thing to be negotiated is the terms of the American surrender, and he is certainly not the only Middle Eastern leader to take this view; most of the leaders in the region dread the power of the mullahs — now on the doorstep of nuclear military weapons — and they see the same picture as Khamenei: America does nothing to thwart Iran, and is now publicly willing to talk. In like manner, many Iranians will conclude that Bush is going to make a deal with Khamenei instead of giving them the support they want and need to challenge the regime.

If this administration were true to its announced principles, we would be actively supporting democratic revolution in Iran, but we do not seem to be serious about doing that. Yes, Secretary Rice went to Congress to ask for an extra $75 million to "support democracy" in Iran, but the small print shows that the first $50 million will go to the toothless tigers at the Voice of America and other official American broadcasters, which is to say to State Department employees. The Foreign Service does not often drive revolutionary movements; its business is negotiating with foreign governments, not subverting them. There were whispers that we were supporting trade unions in Iran, which would be very good news, but such efforts should be handled by private-sector organizations, not by the American government per se.

Yet this seems a particularly good moment to rally to the side of the Iranian people, who are known to loathe the regime of Ayatollah Khamenei, and who are showing their will to resist in very dramatic fashion. About ten days ago, seventy-eight regime officials were killed or captured in Baluchistan when a convoy (including the chief of the region’s Revolutionary Guards Corps and the regional governor) was attacked. Some of the captives have been shown on al-Jazeera, pleading for cooperation from the regime, and supporting their captors’ demands that five Baluchi prisoners be freed. The regime has responded by accusing the United States and Britain of masterminding the operation, which is the second such strike in the past six months. In addition to calling for the release of Baluchi prisoners, the insurgents are calling for the toleration of Baluchi Sunnis, the appointment of locals (instead of Persian Shiites) to govern the region, and the use of local radio and television.

Caring about Carnage
The situation in Kurdistan is likewise extremely tense. The city of Mahabad is now surrounded by the regime’s military and paramilitary forces, following the eruption of anti-regime demonstrations on the occasion of Persian New Year’s celebrations on March 20. It is impossible to get precise figures — Western journalists don’t seem to be able to cover such events — but dozens of Kurds were arrested and many more were beaten up in the streets.

Worst of all is the ongoing campaign of ethnic cleansing directed against the Ahwaz Arabs in Khuzestan, where up to three divisions of the army, the Revolutionary Guards, and the infamous thugs of the Basij have been deployed, following the sabotage of a major oil pipeline by anti-regime dissidents. Radio Farda, our official Farsi-language station, quoted a local journalist, Mr. Mojtaba Gehestani, who says that 28,000 Ahwazi Arabs have been jailed in the past ten months, hundreds have been summarily executed, and many corpses have been fished out of the Karoon River, with telltale marks of torture.

Nonetheless, the regime’s interior minister recently announced that there is no "ethnic problem or issue" in Iran today. But he has quite clearly failed to convince President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that all is well. The president cancelled trips to the region four times in the past few months.

He and his cronies have a lot to worry about, because the Iranian people, in the face of a vicious wave of repression that recalls the worst moments of this dreadful regime, are showing themselves prepared to stand against it, and to move to remove it. Lacking a full picture, we should base our judgment at least in part on the behavior of the mullahs, and their dispatch of so many armed forces to three different regions suggests they are profoundly worried. This is not a good time to throw the mullahs a diplomatic lifeline. We should instead show them and their democratic enemies that the tide of history is running against them.

It’s time to take action against Iran and its half-brother Syria, for the carnage they have unleashed against us and the Iraqis. We know in detail the location of terrorist training camps run by the Iranian and Syrian terror masters; we should strike at them, and at the bases run by Hezbollah and the Revolutionary Guards as staging points for terrorist sorties into Iraq. No doubt the Iraqi armed forces would be delighted to participate, instead of constantly playing defense in their own half of the battlefield. And there are potent democratic forces among the Syrian people as well, as worthy of our support as the Iranians.

Once the mullahs and their terrorist allies see that we have understood the nature of this war, that we are determined to promote regime change in Tehran and Damascus, and will not give them a pass on their murderous activities in Iraq, then it might make sense to talk to Khamenei’s representatives. We could even expand the agenda from Iraqi matters to the real issue: we could negotiate their departure, and then turn to the organization of national referenda on the form of free governments, and elections to empower the former victims of a murderous and fanatical tyranny that has deluded itself into believing that it is invincible.

Original Article
by Ruzbeh Hosseini

Pulitzer Prize-Winning Photographer Who Documented the Truth!

2006-12-05T10:18:00.000-08:00

Iranian photographer Jahangir Razmi, left, took 70 pictures of an execution in Kurdistan on Aug. 27, 1979. One picture (No. 20) won the Pulitzer Prize. It was, however, awarded to an unnamed photographer -- the only anonymous recipient in the 90-year history of the award. Mr. Razmi preserved 27 of the photos on a contact sheet and stowed it away in his home. Follow the link the to the Wall Street Journal where these photos have been made public for the first time.

Marg Bar Jumhurieh Eslaami!

Islamic Regime Test Fires Missiles on Heels of U.S. War-Games

2006-11-02T13:08:00.000-08:00

Sixth Issue of Underground Paper Posted in Iran!

2006-10-31T06:39:00.000-08:00

MPG Underground Paper Posted!

2006-08-31T13:57:00.000-07:00

Click Pictures to Enlarge

US hails Iran's 100th anniversary of constitutional revolution - AFP via Yahoo!

2006-08-07T03:33:00.000-07:00

-The United States hailed Iran's Constitutional Revolution that occurred one-hundred Years ago as of this past Saturday. After reading the comments that were made by representatives of the American administration I found myself happy at the acknowledgement, but betrayed at the same time. Our constitutional Revolution was a huge step in the history of our nation. However, that same step towards democracy and openness brought undemocratic and corrupt responses by Western nations that eventually lead to the Islamic Republic of 1979. It was the West, in particular Britain, that helped the Shah at the time of the Constitutional Revolution betray his own people and regain control of the country. It was Britain again that helped the Shah hunt down the fathers of that revolution so that democracy would not flourish. It was the United States in conjunction with Britain that sought the coup of The Great Prime Minister Mossadegh. Finally it is the West, in particular the European Union that supports the dirty mullahs that rule over our beloved country today.

So while I thank the United States for acknowledging our Constitutional Revolution of one-hundred years ago, it is only a small expression of gratitude. It is time that the Western nations put aside their interests in short term gain for the long term assets that can only come with an open and honest relationship with the Iranian people. It is time that the West stops its animosity towards an open and democratic Iran and starts supporting the true grass-roots democratic movements that are emerging in our country.
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The United States hailed Iran's constitutional revolution on its 100th anniversary as a defining but short-lived advance toward democracy, and voiced support for Iranians it said who still hoped for an open society.

The August 5, 1906 decree, which called for the creation of an elected parliament, the Majlis, "serves as a defining political moment for advancing the democratic ideas it represented," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said in a statement released Friday.

"Iranian nationalists set forth a powerful and revolutionary concept: a written constitution founded on the rule of fair and just laws, providing for a free press and respect for individual rights," McCormack said.

"This short-lived but noble constitutional movement was a significant victory for Iranian democracy and for the cause of freedom in the Middle East."

Since then, McCormack said, Iranians have continued the struggle against unchecked power, corruption and wide disparities in wealth.

"The United States supports the aspirations of the Iranian people for an open society that encourages debate, allows for freedom of the press, champions human dignity and ensures justice, the rule of law and government accountability," he said.

The State Department message aimed at Iranians came against a backdrop of mounting tensions over the Iranian government's nuclear program and its support of the Shiite militia Hezbollah, based in southern Lebanon and currently engaged in fighting with Israel that has killed more than 900 people, mostly civilians, since July 12.

Earlier Friday, the United States issued a new rebuke to Iran and Syria, accusing them of directing Hezbollah to attack Israel.

"Iran created Hezbollah in 1982. Iran has funded Hezbollah and Iran has provided the long-range rockets that are raining down on the northern part of Israel right now," Nicholas Burns, under secretary of state for political affairs, said in a CNN interview.

"Iran is acting in a way that is fundamentally contrary to the hopes of all of us for stablility and peace in the Middle East."

On Monday the UN Security Council adopted a resolution calling on Iran to freeze sensitive nuclear work by the end of the month or face possible sanctions.

Tehran contends that its nuclear program is for civilian purposes but the US and other countries suspect it is a cover to develop nuclear weapons.

Original Article

The Untimely Death of Akbar Mohammadi - The Iranian

2006-08-02T02:17:00.000-07:00

-It is a shame that the Islamic Republic took the life of another brave Iranian struggling to bring freedom to the only country he loved. I don't have much to say because talking about this man will never bring him back. The time for talk is over. We must stand up and fight the Islamic Republic who has terrorised our people for so long! We must seek revenge on the murderers of our political prisoners. The Islamic Republic has been killing our free thinking youth since its inception and Mr. Mohammadi is the latest victim of the Islamic Republic's tyranny. He will never be forgotten for his sacrifices and I sincerely believe that his death should be brought two-fold upon the Islamic Republic's head. It is time to use the Qur'an's own teachings on the Islamic Republic - an eye-for-eye. This is the only language the susk-maar-khor mullahs understand.

Marg Bar Jumhurieh Eslaamee!
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For six long years, Akbar Mohammadi endured harsh interrogation and unbearable torture at the hands of those who have made Iran into a vast prison for all its citizens

It is with great sorrow and total grief that I am writing these few lines. Ever since I heard the news of Akbar Mohammadi’s untimely death in prison, on July 30th, I have only cried at the thought of how a young man’s life has been taken so tragically; how he will be missed by his mother and father and his sisters and brother; how his prison mates will miss him. He was innocent and only drawn into a life that he had not anticipated. He was a student at Tehran University who became caught up in the Events of 18 Tir; He was arrested and imprisoned, interrogated and tortured. He lost the best years of his life during which he, like many fellow students, still had dreams for a future, his own and that of his country.

The men who tortured him took away his life, his youth and his future. They were men who are clinging to power out of greed and for self preservation, who have appropriated everything for themselves while leaving nothing for others. Akbar Mohammadi lost his life because he believed in freedom and the struggle for the preservation of what is noble and sacred to all of us: the freedom of humankind, love for others and the belief that all human beings are created equal.

I had the privilege of translating his prison memoirs recently. As I read through the one hundred or so pages, I came to know a young man who was innocent, pure of heart, someone from a small town in Mazandaran who became active in the political scene because he saw the injustice of his society and wanted to make a difference. For six long years, Akbar Mohammadi endured harsh interrogation and unbearable torture at the hands of those who have made Iran into a vast prison for all its citizens.

He wrote:

My name is Akbar Mohammadi. I am sure you have heard of my name either on the radio or on television, and/or have read about me in newspapers, of my continuing struggle against the Islamic Republic; I am not sure, though, if you have any idea what happened to me in the prisons of the regime.

For this very reason, I want to write my story and let all my compatriots know what took place. By writing this memoir, I intend to document everything in the archives of history which will one day expose the true nature of Iran’s present rulers.

I was born into a middle class family in Amol, in the luscious greenery of the beautiful province of Mazandaran, in the land of Maziar, adjacent to the land of Babak Khoramdin.

In 1994, after finishing high school, I came to Tehran. After passing the entrance exam for the university, I was admitted to the school of Health and Human Resources at Tehran University, to study to become a social worker.

As a freedom loving student, I saw the injustice and the lack of freedom prevailing in society; thus I began my political activities. What changed me was the tragic death of the Forouhars in 1998, the exposure of these murders in the newspaper Salaam, and the paper’s subsequent closing. This tragic event had an enormous impact on many of us.

My older brother Manouchehr Mohammadi and I were arrested during a peaceful student demonstration, which began in the universities on 18 Tir/8 July 1999, starting in Tehran and subsequently spreading to many other cities, and which was broken up by the regime’s security guards.

It is ironic that I was kicked out of the University on the 27th of Khordad 1382 (June 2003) because of my long absence (I was in prison!!). What you will read in the following pages are the events that led to my arrest (after 5 days) by the security forces and all that happened to me while in custody. I must add that all the pain and suffering which I endured are not all spelled in this memoir as I have tried to forget most of it...

The Basij militia had come from other parts of Iran to Tehran to suppress the dissent. They were youngsters, who had become pawns. They acted from pure conviction and most were from the rural areas and poor families. They had told them that the folks in Tehran and university students were anti-religious and anti-Islam.

They were brainwashed thinking that we wanted to do away with Islam. They were told that we wanted to spread prostitution and corruption throughout Iran. Since most of these young people loved guns and wanted to see the capital city, they had come to Tehran, where they were given guns to suppress the students, many of whom had also come from the same rural areas where the students had come from.

His final words were:

This is a token of what happened to me in the last few years in the horrific prisons of the Islamic Republic; I can’t recall everything. I just hope that one day, the dark shadow that is taken over our country, the dark shadow of dictatorship, injustice and oppression will be replaced by the light of democracy, freedom on the plateau of Iran. I hope we will never see a single political prisoner, the reign of terror, torture, oppression and fear.

Until that day... I say,

Long live freedom, End to tyranny, Long live Iran. -- Akbar Mohammadi, Ideas and lashes: The prison diary of Akbar Mohammadi

Original Article

The passing away of Akbar Mohamadi - MPG

2006-08-01T12:42:00.000-07:00

The Islamic Republic has yet again managed to silence another voice of resistance.

Akbar Mohamadi, who had been jailed due to his activities relating to the July uprising of 1999, died on Sunday July 31, 2006 as a result of his hunger strike in the infamous Evin prison in Tehran.

The Marze Por Gohar Party would like to express it’s deepest condolences to Akbar Mohamadi's family.

Original Article

White House Invites Separatist Hate-Monger!

2006-07-23T18:54:00.000-07:00

Mr. Rahim Shahbazi, a known hate-monger and separatist, has apparently been extended a warm welcome from the Bush administration. This is a very disconcerting turn of events. It is alarming that people such as Rahim Shahbazi are being invited at the highest levels of the US administration. I have forwarded two letters (see below at end of e-mail) that were drafted in protest against the decision to invite Shahbazi to the White House.

Shahbazi regularly uses profanity to address fellow Iranians and is a fanatic Azeri seperatist and follower of Grey Wolf-Pan-Turkic racialism - see links:

Website One

Website Two

It would seem that Shabazi is being promoted by Michael Ledeen.

Ledeen's support for the separation of Azerbaijan is becoming more open. See the "open letter" by Ayshin Mousavi (A follower of Azeri seperatists) to Michael Ledeen:

LETTER

You must scroll down a lot to see the letter. Note that the entire site is very anti-Iran. Note the logo of the Azerbaijan chapter of the Grey Wolf movement:

The webiste is also very proud that Turkey is sponsoring an anti-Iran seperatist Azerbaijani TV station named Gunaz (Guney Azerbaijan - South Azerbaijan). Grey Wolf pan-Turkic racism is being actively funded in propagated in Iranian Azerbaijan. Note the picture of a Grey Wolf rally taken during a celebration of a Babak Khorramdin's rebellion against the Arab caliphate - they are flashing the Grey Wolf salute popular among Grey Wolf followers in Turkey:

These participants have been brainwashed by pan-Turkic/Grey Wolf ideology to think that Babak was an anti-Persian seperatist. They also believe that Sattar Khan was fighting in the name of Azerbaijan's separation from Iran.

Note also the map below showing Turkey having absorbed Iranian Azerbaijan and the Republic of Azerbaijan - this was posted by an individual named "Oslonor":

Few seen aware that such ideas are common in Turkey. Inexplicably, this person's writings are regularly posted on the Persian Journal website.

Regards
Kaveh Farrokh

In a message dated 7/23/2006 3:17:59 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time, retebar@cox.net writes:

Dear Mr. President

On July 20, 2006, a briefing on the future of democracy was held at the White House.

Among the distinguished panelists a despicable character by the name of Rahim Shahbazi was also in attendance.

This individual is not only an Azari (Iranian Turk) separatist but also a racist hate mongerwho addresses Persians by vulgar profanity.

Errors of this nature certainly damages the American good will and intentions as an individual who denies being an Iranian (and is insulting his compatriots) is invited as a participant on the future of democracy for our homeland.

For background information on Shahbazi please note the following links:

Background One

Background Two

For the future please note that Inviting separatists to a round table discussion about the future of Iran,

will only create division among Iranian opposition. The most important factor for a patriot is his/her Iranian nationality that comes before ethnicity, religion, color or creed. Any discussions of jeopardizing Iranian territorial integrity will divide the Iranian opposition and cause the Iranians inside the country to rally behind the Mullahs.

Your attention and cooperation regarding this sensitive issue among Iranians is much appreciated.

Sincerely Yours,

Ramin Etebar, M.D.

Letter to Mr. Burns and Mr. Abrams by Professor Manouchehr Ganji former Iranian Minister of Education:

The Honorable Nicholas Burns
Under Secretary, Political Affairs

US Dept OF State

The Honorable Elliott Abrams

National Security Advisor

White House

Dear Sirs

I want to congratulate both of you for having invited a group of my compatriots to participate in a gathering of pro-democracy activity at the White House on July 20, 2006. The hope by both of you expressed at the meeting for the people of iran to achieve their goal of democratic Iran is heartwarming.

The only suggestion I wish to make for the success of your future endeavor in this respect is to better study The background and credibility of those you are inviting. For instance Mr. Rahim Shahbazi, one of your participants, by looking at his background on the web, I really wonder whether he should have been invited. How do you think Iranians are going to view such gestures by the White House and the U.S. Government to the people like him.

Do you really understand the meaning of “……”,”…….” and “…….” (Farsi profanities were deleted by RE) the language used by him which appears on the web under his name. Of course you did not. On the web he uses such profanity against the Persians as “Persian Aryan Punks” ,”Persian Jackass” , “Fu..ing Persian Language”.

Mr. Michael Ledeen knows all of this. I brought it to his attention eight months ago. For the future I think both of you have to be more careful about who you are inviting to the White House meetings. Remember, we Iranians have sensitivities too.

Please accept the assurances of my highest considerations.

Sincerely Yours,

Manouchehr Ganji

Iran Awaits Liberation - The American Thinker

2006-07-23T07:48:00.000-07:00

-This article expresses what I have been pleading for a long time. The Arab-parast susk-marar-khor mullahs of Iran have been sacrificing our beloved Iran for the Arabs for 27 years. They have driven our country into the ground for their own pockets and our neighbours without any regard for the starving people in our home country. The young people of Iran can't afford to attend university let alone milk and bread! People have to work 2 or 3 jobs in order to survive. Many of our countrymen and women have been tempted with social ills such as prostitution and drug abuse because of a lack of opportunity to better themselves. In fact, with respect to prostitution many of the kaseef mullahs have encouraged such behaviour from our population by allowing people to obtain a "seegheh" (a form of marital union in Islam) in order to make the selling of a woman's body "legal." Disgusting.

The Mullahs of Iran have done enough damage. They have made our country bankrupt by seeking to better the Arabs and themselves instead of the great Iranian people. They have mismanaged every aspect of Iranian society. The under-compensation of Iranian workers has brought poverty and misery to the Iranian people while the over subsidization of commodities has brought waste. The spending of millions, if not billions, on an unneeded nuclear program and bombs for Hezbollah have diverted much needed funding for social programs for Iranians. ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!

The Iranian people must stand up and take matters into their own hands. The Iranian people need to tell this regime and those that will come after it that the welfare of the Iranian people comes first. It is the duty of every government to work of its people. It is the duty of every government to listen and obey its people. As the saying goes, "the government must fear its citizens; the citizens must not fear their government." The mullahs of Iran will finally get this message when the people of Iran rise up and rip the bones of Khomeini out of the ground.

But it is not only time for the Iranian people to rise up and reclaim their right to self-determination. It is also the time for the world to stand with the Iranian people. Let it be known that it is not a matter of if, but when the real revolution comes to Iran. We, the Iranian people, will remember those who stood with us in our time of need and those who decided to stand with our occupiers. Those countries that support the mullahs of Iran are forewarned.
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The red warning flags have been flying high far too long. Since the emergence of the Islamic Republic inside Iran there has been nothing but turbulence throughout the world and since its inception it has had time to propagate and mastermind some of the most evil deeds. The world’s casual approach of doing business as usual with the Islamic Republic for 27 years has come at a grave cost.

And so it begins. Tehran’s arrogance towards the international community and Ahmadinejad’s call to wipe Israel off the map have been the neon writing on the wall. If there is one thing the turbaned tyrants of Tehran have been successful at it has surely been in tactfully playing the diversion game.

Toying with international leaders over its “clandestine” atomic weapons program, denying the Holocaust, orchestrating frantic protests over cartoons and now as it rejects Security Council’s demands and the EU deadline, Tehran’s clerics seem to be trying to evade the threat of consequential sanctions by declaring war on Israel via its ambassador Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah.

Violence is how they came to rule and it is through violence they continue to preserve their dictatorship where the policy of this regime has always been devout to instigating terror both domestically and internationally dominating world politics by supporting, funding and harbouring terrorists. They have provided the pistol and the terrorists have simply pulled the trigger.

Even perhaps more significantly the battlefield in Lebanon will also divert attention from the Mullahs’ heinous domestic issues, from both the international community and also from the Iranian people themselves, a population of almost 70 million who have been suffering their own injustice since the terrorists took power in 1979 with the help of their imported Palestinian fighters who rode around on motorbikes in the streets of Tehran wearing red armbands and harassing women into wearing veils. Since then there has been a growing opposition movement, consisting of students who make up to 70% of the population, the labour force, women’s freedom movement and religious /ethnic minorities. If one does the math, this would incorporate the greater part of the population – and the Achilles heel of the Mullahcracy.

As the people’s hunger for freedom and democracy has given them an appetite for boldness and disobedience against their hijackers, the demonstrations have been escalating weekly, filling cities from Azerbaijan to Baluchestan, shouting slogans such as “We don’t want nuclear energy” and “Forget Palestine-think of us”. Although the regime is cracking down on all anti-government demonstrations, imprisoning, torturing and murdering innocent Iranians it is noteworthy to point out that a few thousand Mullahs, Revolutionary Guards and Basiji have increasingly found controlling the remaining millions of discontented people a growingly strenuous burden.

The clerical regime knows that unless it destroys its political opponents, then they will destroy the regime.

Hence the Holocaust-denying provocateur Ahmadinejad would welcome a war with Israel as he would strategically exploit it to arouse nationalistic and patriotic emotions of the forsaken Iranians with a view to rally them around the Mullahs thus repressing the opposition movement, at the same time taking the heat off its nuclear programme.

Israel may be facing one of its greatest challenges yet. She is surrounded. Encircled by the fearsome foursome, Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria and the Islamic regime and a weakened Lebanese government, whose democracy would benefit from the exit of Hezbollah, there is no doubt that it will be a formidable challenge.

Meanwhile the Iranian people continue their own challenging battles with the Islamic Republic.

Hope springs eternal. This recent conflict has overshadowed discussions at the G8 Summit and although members have expressed a “common and unified” position, President Bush has acknowledged that the “root causes of this conflict must be removed”.

There is a window of opportunity to thwart Tehran’s trickery and weaken the Mullahs’ stronghold from within thus removing the root causes of the current conflicts.

Regardless of how much the mainstream media has failed to report the true Iranian domestic issues, one must appreciate the Iranian people’s fight for freedom and democracy, thus proportionately making the support for democracy advocates all the more effective in their endeavours as well as eliminating the root cause of terrorism.

In such vulnerable times one must ponder on what this could signify for the future of stability in that region and international security.

Everyone’s eyes are on the Middle East. Hour by hour news agencies and journalists are reporting to the world. The Iranian people can be easily mobilized if they knew that this time they have the full backing of the free world. Whilst Ahmadinejad has been preparing for his Holy war the Iranian people have been preparing for the demise of this Islamic theocracy.

There are methods and resources. The international community is not completely powerless to support this in some other effective and tactical way. An amalgamation of the external pressure working with the internal force of the people would weaken and undermine the clerical government enormously, whilst alleviating Israel’s burden. Despite the Islamic Republic’s efforts to try to stop the spread of information, there still remain other methods of communicating to the people and arousing an atmosphere of opportunity. The leaflets dropped from planes in Beirut proved to be an effective way to connect. The Iranian people have been waiting for those leaflets for freedom, for 27 years. Time is short

Original Article

The Islamic Republic is attempting to draw Iran into a war - MPG

2006-07-20T12:21:00.000-07:00

-There is no doubt that the Islamic Republic has, since its founding, intended to wipe out our proud and distinct Iranian culture. From the time that the kasseef mullahs came to power they have tried desperately to make our country arabic. They banned our sports like varzesh-eh baastaanee and tried to make all of our zoroastrian holidays illegal. In fact, the kaseef mullahs even tried to change the meaning of No-rooz, claiming that the day coincided with an event surround Mohammad. Rediculous. The Mullahs of Iran will not succeed in their treason. Indeed, their treachery has caused the exact opposite effect. The Iranian people are more in touch with their historic past then ever before. We remember the great achievements of our forefathers in establishing Iran as the first world super-power. Our achievements in science and literature are rivaled by none. We have merely entered a dark period in our history. All cultures inevitably do. But I am confident that we will emerge from the darkness and once again claim our rightful place in history.

Payandeh IRAN!
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The Marze Por Gohar Party is appalled by the Islamic Republic's overt gestures in dragging Iran into a military confrontation in the greater Persian Gulf region for a cause that has nothing to do with Iran's best interest and in fact serves to harm it.

When Iran's territorial integrity, culture and history are being compromised by foreign entities the Islamic Republic stays silent and in fact even abets. However, as soon as an Arab entity is prodded to act in a civilized manner, the clerics proclaim that an attack on them translates to an attack on Iran. Iran and Arab states have virtually nothing in common as Iran's history will easily attest to. Therefore, any correlation of interests that the Islamic Republic is attempting to draw between Iran and their Arab brethrens is purely fictional.

The Islamic Republic gained valuable insight during the Iran-Iraq war with regard to how military conflict can be used to one's advantage. During the war the Iranian opposition had to put aside its hatred for the theocracy and instead focused on fighting against the bigger enemy, Saddam Hussein. While Iranians were defending Iran, the Islamic Republic conveniently began its campaign of cleansing Iran of political dissidents. It's therefore very odd to fathom why some are clamoring for military action against Iran, knowing that it will only benefit the very same people the military action is supposed to inflict harm on.

Military action against Iran will force every genuine Iranian opposition organization to vigorously voice support for the defense of the motherland, very similar to the current situation except, we will have two foreign enemies to fight against: the Islamic Republic and whatever other state(s) that is attacking Iran. Iran's territorial integrity is paramount to all other factors and concerns and thus any element(s) seeking to infringe upon Iran's territorial integrity either directly or by proxy will be deemed as an enemy of Iran.

The international community has had ample time to formulate a solution towards the removal of the Islamic Republic. Instead, the world embraced the notion of "Islamic Democracy" and "reforms." Even now we still hear terms such as "un-elected clerics" as if the Islamic Republic's "elections" are genuinely free. Unfortunately Iran is now being made to pay for powerful states' miscalculated policies, such as the engagement policy towards the theocracy that was being constantly preached by the EU, and may face military intervention.

MPG maintains that a people's revolution to establish a secular republic is still the only viable path towards properly disposing of the Islamic Republic that bears the smallest price for all parties involved. The window of opportunity however is closing fast.

Down with the Islamic Republic

Long Live Iran

Compiled by the Foreign Policy Council of the Marze Por Gohar Party

Original Article

Iran: Arbitrary arrest/prisoner of conscience/ fear of torture and ill-treatment: Mohammad Majzadeh Ghaemmaghami (m)

2006-07-19T13:28:00.000-07:00

ATTENTION: A new political prisoner has been taken hostage in Iran by the Islamic Government. We need the help of everybody to make this arbitrary detention public. Please read the description below and sign the petition.

Marg bar Jumhurieh Eslami va Aakhoondhaayeh Kasseef!
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Mohammad Majzadeh Ghaemmaghami is in EVIN prison political ward 209 after being arrested Monday for participating in a labor demonstration and pro-democracy demonstration. He is a physics major at the University of Tehran. Thus far he has been arrested 3 other times for his political activities. His mother has pledged 10 million tomans ($10,000) for his release.

We hope that he will be in jail for long, or until an agreement has been reached. However, we need the help of the general public.

You can read (in Farsi) about his situation at
http://www.komitegozareshgar.blogfa.com/ OR http://www.sharghnewspaper.com/850427/html/polit.htm

The more public we can make his case the more Mohammad will have a chance. Please sign this petion and send it out to as many people as you can. There are over 30,000 political prisoners in Iran right now- wrongfully arrested for speaking out against the brutal and repressive regime.

Please Sign the PETITION

Original Article

MPG Presentation to Members of Congress

2006-07-19T13:20:00.000-07:00

-Slowly but surely we are working to free our beloved Iran from the arab-parast mullahs who seek to destroy it. Below are the transcripts of the speeches that were made by members of Marze Por Gohar and its supporters to Congress. I wanted to thank the speakers and especially Mr. Farahanipour for working tirelessly for such a noble cause. Enjoy.
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Roozbeh Farahanipour:
I’m happy to be given the opportunity to talk about Iran, the United States and the Islamic Republic. I prefer to speak in mother tongue Persian, however seeing that I’m a guest here, out of respect I will make my brief comments in English.

This year marks the 7th anniversary of the uprising of 1999, which I along with other members of the Marze Por Gohar Party and other nationalistic organizations such as Hezbe Mellate Iran, led. Unlike others who claim to have organized and or headed the protests even though they were either out of the country or in cushy jail cells, my fellow comrades and I were on the streets leading protests.

However I don’t join you today to commemorate this anniversary, rather I’ve come to inequitably reiterate that regime change, just as was the case during the uprising, is still the only realistic policy of securing stability in the greater Persian Gulf region.

It should be obvious that neither the balkanization of Iran nor normalization of ties between the United States and the Islamic Republic will not provide the world the long-term stability it seeks in the region.

Iran can only be stable when its citizens have sole sovereignty, and thus we must overthrow the theocratic Islamic Republic and establish a secular republic by means of a people’s revolution. We are genuinely relieved that other Iranian organizations have finally accepted that a revolution is the only path forward, and perhaps this can serve as point of unity for opposition groups.

A revolution is the least costly and viable option that is left for Iranians and the world in general. Certainly the eminent revolution will have a price, after all freedom is not free, however the alternatives to a revolution such a military confrontation, will bear a much higher price for Iran and the international community.

To achieve our goal we must organize the Iranian youth that according to some estimates accounts for as much as 70% of the population, journalists, workers, unions, brothers, sisters, aunts, grandpas and every other Iranian.

Marze Por Gohar from the day of its inception has been secular, and it should be noted that Iran is the only country in the greater Persian Gulf region whose population base is becoming more and more secular, not more religious. The international community must support this trend of greater secularization in Iran, instead of constantly espousing the virtues of religious democracy. The United States in particular must take concrete steps to provide support for Iranians who are quite arguably the most pro-US population in the region.

Our window of opportunity to organize a revolution is very small, and I hope the international community will lend a helping hand to us in riding Iran of the Islamic Republic and the establishment of secular democracy.

Lisa Daftari:
I was reading Nobel Prize nominee Kenneth Timmerman’s book on the imminent dangers of Iran’s Nuclear Proliferation program when I first came across Roozbeh Farahanipour name. At the end of his book, Timmerman cited an episode in very recent history that may have been more significant than many of us gave notice. He spoke of the student uprisings in Tehran in July of 1999. More interesting for me, a student journalist, always hungry for local news stories that no one has scraped up yet…Timmerman wrote that Roozbeh Farahanipour, the organizer of the protests and head of the political organization responsible for the uprising was now living in Los Angeles. I had to get the story.

As I conducted my pre-interviews with Farahanipour I realized how much we have in common…we live in the same zip code, work out at the same gym, both have journalism backgrounds…but there is one major difference…he is a revolutionary. While I am busy chasing down the next local news story, only down the street… he is attempting to bring down a regime thousands of miles away that does not believe in human rights, stones their women and persecutes their religious and cultural minorities.

Unfortunately the LA Times had beat me to the story. But there was still more to uncover. The training I had in my journalism classes taught me that the best stories talk about what is to come, rather than report what has already happened. So instead of writing a newspaper piece like I had originally intended, I pitched the deeper story I could tell in documentary format for my master’s thesis. The film runs 24 minutes. It describes Farahanipour’s story and his political party’s ongoing fight to present themselves as a viable option for regime change. It takes a close look at how this youth movement took shape. From their organization of the student uprisings in 1999, credited as the most significant uprising in the last 27 years, to the torture, imprisonment and their final escape fro Iran to the U.S. only a few years ago. The film focuses in on their goals, accomplishments and the obstacles that stand in the way of an opposition group striving to bring secularism to the region.

It has been both a fortunate and rewarding experience to work on a subject so integral to our current global agenda. I thank you all for giving me the opportunity to share my first film with you.

Faryar Nikbakht:
Religious intolerance and extremism are at the root of today’s intolerance of political and philosophical ideas inside Iran as well as the ideological explanation for the aggressive tendencies of the Islamic Republic of Iran internationally.

At this time we are witnessing various efforts on the part of the Islamic Republic who forces the minority representatives inside Iran to speak out on their behalf about the ideal and perfect situation of minorities under the current regime. We are also reading on occasion, misleading reports by misinformed or sympathetic journalists who re-iterate the same theme, trying to portray the regime in Iran as a tolerant and democratic one, closing their eyes on an ongoing and gradual religious cleansing process in order to promote their temporary political agenda.

The fact that the majority of non-Muslims have left Iran speaks for itself; but the issue of the remaining minorities inside Iran rather than being misinterpreted and misrepresented as evidence of the benevolence of the regime, must be seen as an example of human survival efforts by the last remainders of mostly ancient cultures and communities who hope to outlast the current adversities and indignities, as they witness more and more members of their communities emigrate to free countries, their heritage being destroyed and their children growing up with hidden identities and dual personalities into a dark future. This is also a testimony to the enduring historical bonds between the minorities and Muslim Iranians who in spite of the situation have kept their humanity and affection alive. The minorities, also called “Infidels under Contract” or the Dhimmi Kuffar , who share all the good and bad of the Iranian society with their Muslim countrymen, suffer under specific additional laws and practices, ethnic as well as religious humiliation and discrimination.

Policy of Planned Extinction of Non Muslims

The Islamic Republic of Iran has knowingly and systematically attempted to decimate the non-Muslim communities in Iran, by forcing them to emigrate, convert or submit to their interpretation of Islam, even advocating the same fate for the whole world population declared in IRI Constitutional articles and official statements and letters of IRI high officials.

By introducing discriminatory laws and adopting threatening and humiliating practices, the Islamic Republic has reduced the minority citizens of Iran into demoralized, inferior second class citizens.

By means of expropriations of much of their personal and community assets and by systematically preventing them from engaging freely and with equal opportunity, in all sectors of economic and social activity, the Islamic Republic has sapped the legitimate economic potentials of Iranian non-Muslims, reducing their chances to survive as communities, cultures and religions.

By means of systematic hysterical anti Jewish and anti Bahaii propaganda, the Islamic Republic has created the potential of mass extermination of these minorities at the hands of fanatic extremists at a moment’s notice. This is a fact that on many occasions has been communicated as a threat to these minorities by intelligence officials and fanatic militias.

By means of periodical arrests, executions and assassinations, the Islamic Republic has tried to confine the Jews, Christians and Bahaiis under absolute submission, in an atmosphere of fear, totally dependent upon the mercy of the most merciless elements within the Islamic Regime.

By legitimizing discriminatory laws and practices, the IRI regime has sanctioned the ongoing destruction of many Sunni and Sufi Muslim centers or places of worship, and by preventing all minorities from free practice of faith and advocating their beliefs, they try to realize an irreversible and rapid numeric decline of non Muslims and the migration of non-Shiites out of major cities.

Is Iran Losing Touch? - Die Welt

2006-07-17T08:56:00.000-07:00

- The Islamic Regime has been playing the "super-power" game ever since the Islamic Revolution. It reminds me of a statement a mullah made at a funeral during the Islamic Revolution. An acquitance of mine had attended the gathering and he happened to overhear a mullah tell another fellow that the Islamic Regime would "make the world theirs." The bold statement was shocking at that time and maybe almost amusing. How could the mullahs of Iran believe that they had the ability to take on such a large endeavour? Was it even possible to think such a thing? Iran, who was the first world power, hasn't been in that position for a VERY long time. It seemed like a very odd statement; however, if it seemed like one mullah's dream at the time, the actions of the Islamic Republic in the region has shown that it was anything but a dream.

The Islamic Regime has been trying to influence events in the middle east for twenty-seven years. The Regime not only openly supports Hezbollah and Hamas, but ever since the regimes of Afghanistan and Iraq were overthrown the Islamic Regime has been dealt a very powerful hand. Both the former Taliban regime of Afghanistan and Saddam Hussein of Iraq were mortal enemies of the Islamic Regime. Iran waged a bloody eight year war with Hussein's regime and almost entered into armed conflict with the Taliban after two diplomats were murdered in Kabul. The Islamic Regime had very little say, if any, in these two countries while these regimes were in power. However, the events of 9/11 changed all of this. The United States' toppling of the Taliban and Saddam Hussein has allowed the Islamic Regime of Iran to extend its influence even further in the region. In both Afghanistan and Iraq the rebuilding of the respective governments has seen people who are freindly to the Islmamic Regime gain a hold of top positions. Furthermore, the Islamic Regime's proxys, such as the shiite Mehdi Army in Iraq, have gained extensive ground in both southern Iraq and Afghanistan.

What the West is doing in the middle east is allowing the Islamic Regime to hold onto power even longer. If the west is serious about peace in the middle east then it must help the Iranian people seek freedom. The Iranian people want the Islamic Regime gone. They want peace and they want prosperity. The Western countries must stand with the Iranian people and help them achieve what they have been striving to achieve for over 100 years.
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A suicide bomber was nabbed in Jerusalem today, a few hundred yards from Ben Yehuda street. It's the last piece in the puzzle. Gaza, Hizballah and now the West Bank.

Meanwhile the world waits and watches as Israel takes on all comers. It's a bizarre scenario.

New supplies for Hizballah are thought to be coming in from Syria through smuggling routes in the northeast border region. Debka notes also that this is where Iranian military advisors are also coming into Lebanon. That's why the Israeli airforce is focusing there as well as on the launch sites and stockpiles of Hizballah's missiles.

These have been striking Israel in regular volleys. More than 1,200 rockets have been fired at Israel since the start of the offensive last week. While down south over 20 Qassams were fired during the night at Sderot, Nahal Oz, and Ashkelon.

Today Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki came to Damascus for talks with President Basher Assad and Foreign Minister Walid Moallem. Iran has managed to persuade Syria to raise the level of its rhetoric: any attack would be met by "a firm and direct response whose timing and methods are unlimited."

A little tame besides Iran's threat of "unimaginable damage" to Israel if Syria were to be attacked. But then Assad may be perfectly happy to see Lebanon levelled and Hizballah do his fighting for him. Much to Iran's frustration it seems.

'President al-Assad receives a massage from Iranian counterpart', reports the Syrian news agency in a delightful Freudian slip.

Actually Mottaki has been hinting at ceasefires and prisoner exchanges. Is it possible the current campaign isn't going to plan? It can't be in the mullahs' interest to see their precious bombs used up and destroyed on the ground, not to mention the imposition of a new no man's land along Israel's northern border.

Perhaps Israel's reluctance to attack Syria is spoiling their plot, and they're beginning to lose control of events - if they had any in the first place.

They've been encouraging Hizballah all along, but they have no way to stop the war short of telling Hassan Nasrallah to surrender - which is the last thing on his mind.

If Hizballah evaporates, Iran will only have Syria, and they're the very slipperiest of allies. Ask anyone in the Middle East.

Original Article

Protests mark anniversary of student unrest in Iran - Iran Focus

2006-07-10T18:25:00.000-07:00

A large number of students from several universities in the Iranian capital staged anti-government protests on Sunday which marked the seventh anniversary of a nationwide student uprising that rattled the ruling theocracy, according to dissidents.

The largest of the protests took place in the vicinity of the University of Tehran, where there was heavy police presence.

Agents of the paramilitary State Security Forces (SSF) sealed off streets next to the campus. There were several hit-and-run clashes between students and security forces which were assisted by a hard-line Islamist mob.

On 9 July, 1999, Iran was taken by storm as thousands of students from across the country poured out into the streets and took part in violent anti-government demonstrations. The unrest began following a crackdown on student dormitories in Tehran when at least one student was killed after being thrown out of the window.

In the same month, current Mayor of Tehran Brigadier General Mohammad-Baqer Qalibaf and 23 other Revolutionary Guards commanders wrote a letter to former President Mohammad Khatami, urging him to “use every available means” to put down a nationwide protest movement led by pro-democracy students or “they would take matters into their own hands”.

http://www.iranfocus.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=7857

The Ganji phenomenon - Iranian

2006-07-04T07:51:00.000-07:00

Ganji must now use the international tribune to clearly outline his position about Khomeini and Political Islam

Akbar Ganji is one of the most famous deserters of the Islamic Republic of Iran. He started his political activities when he was a teenager in the Islamist milieus, with whom he worked during and after the revolution of 1979 for the repressive organs of the regime -- the Revolutionary Guards and the Ministry of Islamic Culture and Guidance.

As a functionary of the Iranian consulate in Istanbul, he was a colleague of brutal Manoocheher Mottaki, the Ahmadinejad’s foreign minister. The consulate was in this time a centre of Islamist terrorism against Iranian dissidents in Turkey.

The flagrant and notorious degree of the brutality and political failures of the IRI has contributed to grow incertitude among some self-identified as reformers. The reformers or so-called the movement of second Khordad view their mission to be the revival of Khomeini’s path. Ganji started his opposition career by approaching to these people. Later, he distanced himself from them when he realised the clique could not reform the IRI.

After being disappointed with any reform within the IRI, Ganji started his new struggles. Asan investigative journalist, he proved that the death of a few dissident was plotted by some IRI’s senior officials. Ganji had to bear a high price for his discovery -- his fabricated imprisonment was in fact the personal retaliation of these IRI’s officials, especially of the Supreme Leader, Khamenei.

His revelations about political murders were positive. They had an impact on the political consciousness of the society to better know the real face of the IRI, especially denounced by one of its ex-devotees. The ruling class of the IRI could not compel Ganji express remorse on television. He resisted any psychological pressure. Ganji was released after 6 years, though under the IRI, many thousands leftistsand Mojaheds have been immediately executed for possessing or reading an “illegal” book.

Ganji alleged that during his imprisonment, he had time to write a two parts pamphlet entitled “Manifesto for Republicanism” and smuggled them from his prison cell. It would be however difficult to imagine that as a prisoner of the brutal IRI, he could have convenient time and materials to write such intellectual writings. It seems to be more likely that his alleged Manifesto had been a reminder of his or their ideas when Ganji was working for the regime (eventually in the Ministry of Culture and Guidance). These previous ideas might have been modified, actualised and renamed as “Manifesto”.

Ganji’s pompous Manifesto, which is a big number for him, is a collection of other thinkers. It dose not separate Ganji from his Islamist past. He had better off express his own ideas about Khomeini, Political Islam and the legitimacy of any form of Islamic regime instead of borrowing ideas from other thinkers.

While Ganji boasts about the philosophy and values of human rights, his extensive quotations from Khomeini, his belief in his legitimacy and his long silence on the abominable crimes committed under and with direct order of Khomeini all remain as the little secrets of Ganji-phenomenon. These questions raise many looming questions about Ganji’s past and his political aims.

It is true that no political figure in Iran today dares challenge the regime as openly as Ganji does. Nevertheless, the secular and democratic activists have been long executed or forced to leave the country. Ganji knows that he would have been already dead, if he had been considered by the IRI a “profane” leftist or a “hypocrite” Mojahed.

For the average Iranians, who emotionally accept any protest against the hateful regime, Ganji is a hero of people. For Ganji’s brothers, who are still looking for reforms within the regime, he is too radical. They brotherly advise him that reality is too rough and unnecessary to be looked at. For people, who have the dream of having a secular and democratic Iran, expect Ganji initially break up with his Islamism and his Islamist fellows then truly give all information he knows about the all crimes of the IRI in any time. Other wise, he can keep passing his “Golden Pen” on Hajarian or on other IRI’s officials.

Ganji is an intellectual of the generation of the post-Islamists. Like any Islamist, he was long trying to ignore the discrepancy between the experience of the IRI and the realities of the societies. He finally came to the conclusion that the IRI is not reformable and called it a “Sultanate”, but Ganji’s concept from democracy and secularism remains controversial.

On his current trip, Ganji pushed recently a new courageous move; he finally condemned the prison-purge of sommer1987, but as a former functionary of the IRI, he gives no information about the culprits, collaborators, reasons and many more thousands crimes which have been systematically committed before this massacre.

Ganji must now use the international tribune to clearly outline his position about Khomeini and Political Islam. It is time that he tells the whole truth about immoral crimes of the IRI in anytime before he refers to the Immananuel Kant’s moral or boasts about the values of human rights. It will be a grateful step from his part, if he namely presents the idea, culprits and circumstances of the political crimes under the direction of Khomeini.

Ganji’s split personality characterises his phenomenon; his true face was more obvious before than today. For example:

he rejects today any violence against the IRI, but both as a revolutionary guard and a functionary of the Ministry of Islamic Culture and Guidance, he was using and theorising violence against people;
he is not today against a secular democracy, but he thinks of Khomeini as a saviour of Iran and as a guide of his thoughts;
Ganji speaks of social justice, but he is an unconditional supporter of liberalisms.
Ganji is not a product of secular and democratic movement, such a movement does not exist in Iran. Ganji-phenomenon is an inside product of any totalitarian regime

This is due to the nature of totalitarian system that can always create insider dissidents.

But for Ganji, as an offshoot of a revolution, the non-violence has another advantage. He cannot support a revolution or rebellion which is oriented to overthrow his ex-ideal state and consequently his own previous involvements. Therefore, he should look for a “velvet” or moderate political transformation in which his own past would not suddenly endanger his future. His fears from his controversial past make our ex-revolutionary guard so alien with the value of revolution that he prefers to forget that dissidents can displace or overthrow the established regime by broadly variable forms of struggle, including a revolution or even popular armed struggles.

Of course, dissidents with a revolutionary calibre are severely punished in Iran. Another hand, nobody wants bloodshed as uniquely revolutionary means. There are many models of struggles in anytime and anywhere. A categorical reject of revolution, as one of these logic models, is a reactionary dogma. The rejection is what any totalitarian regime wants too. A revolutionary opposition may more effectively challenge such a regime and the lack of it can leave the regime alone to massacre people, as it was the case under Stalin or Pol Pot. A totalitarian regime does not kill to only defend its existence; it kills also to impose its ideology and its way of life. In the case of the IRI, the totalitarian Islamic regime kills to impose its offensive Islamist ideology.

But when Ganji says “I am against revolution and view myself as a reformist”, he implicitly means that he is against his people’s revolution to topple the IRI. Ganji knows that there are different ways to win freedom, but he stresses on his pacifist ways by holding on non-violent struggles. He should tell us in which side he will ultimately stand, if the angry people march though Tehran’s streets, revolting against the IRI.

Ganji-phenomenon likes to argue that it is enough to change the present Iranian theocracy that rules. He knows that a radical change of the whole IRI carries risks for people like him. He knows that a revolutionary new regime in Iran is not against one or few Mullahs, but will sweep away all forms of Islamism.

Today, in the Iranian opposition groups abroad, the current Ganji’s tour implicitly evokes the question of his possible role in an Iranian democratic movement. As I expressed myself in my previous articles, an Iranian democratic movement of course needs the organised structures and a solid leadership to topple the IRI and open the way for a democratically elected government. All freedom-loving Iranians are welcome to support such a movement. However, such a movement is supposed to be led by a purely secular leadership. Not only must the leaders be secular in act and idea, but also in background. Therefore, a bearded deserter of the IRI like Ganji cannot dream of becoming a position in the leadership.

Furthermore, in a leadership of post-Islamic regime, there is no place for people like Hamid Karzai or a bearded Shiite PM (as in Iraq). Iranians will bring all relics of the IRI before an international courtfor their crimes or collaborations. Even if Ganji is not charged by such a court, forgiven because of his fight against some IRI’s officials, his collaboration with some other IRI’s officials will never be forgotten.

This article is not against the person of Ganji. All Iranians respect his heroic fights against some IRI’s officials. However, I cannot imagine that a bearded ex-pasdar, who still quotes from Khomeini, is enough democrat and secular to become a leading position in a secular democratic movement. It is like saying that a secular person leads an Islamic movement!

Ganji-phenomenon belongs to those dissidents whose aim is to change the government, but not the ruling class of the regime entirely. At the best, they like to impose some “harmless” changes on the established regime like a change or modification of the constitution, reducing the power or dissolving the supreme Leader“Sultan” and reforming the state institutions.

At the best, Ganji can tell all the truth about all the crimes of the IRI in anytime under any condition, but Ganji-phenomenon is a product of the IRI and does not belong to the future leadership in Iran. Comment

Original Article

SMCCDI Note: Ex-student hailed as Iran's 'hope' - Telegraph

2006-07-04T07:46:00.000-07:00

SMCCDI Note:

The above referenced individual can't be qualified as Iranians' hope nor as a legitimate representative of Iranian students. Many beleive of him as just an opportunist adventurer who's using the name of Iranian students in order to obtain power, even at the price of destroying Iran.

The latter has been the subject of sharp critisisms, made by many Iranians, for his controversial stands and some of his past actions. Questions are posed, regularly, by callers who are participating in most of the LA based Iranian radio and TV networks, on how the individual was able to exit Iran, by flying directly from Tehran's Airport to Dubai while claiming to have been on a 'murder' list?

Others question his successive "leave of prison" while genuine opponents do not benefit of such favor.

It's to note that while most Iranians hate the Islamic regime and are well known for their pro-US and Israel sentiments, they reject any call for military action or the efforts of some American groups to create an ethnical problem in Iran.

Such misguided and short term oriented efforts will only fuel the propaganda machine of the Islamic republic in its effort to undermine the US popularity and President Bush's respectability among Iranians.
___________________________________________
Title: Ex-student hailed as Iran's 'hope'
Source: Telegraph

An Iranian student leader who was imprisoned and tortured before fleeing to the United States in May is to meet Vice-President Dick Cheney and deliver his message about the need for "regime change" in Teheran.

Amir Abbas Fakhravar, 30, has become the poster child of some of the leading neo-conservatives in Washington and, less than two months after leaving Iran, the former medical student who spent five years in jail and still bears the scars on his youthful face, is being championed as the person who can unite his country's fractious opposition.

He is adamantly opposed to nuclear negotiations with Teheran, which were offered by President George W. Bush in a policy U-turn last month after Condoleezza Rice, the Secretary of State, prevailed over Mr Cheney.

"The world has to do something - whatever it takes - so that [President] Mahmoud Ahmadinejad does not become another Hitler," Mr Fakhravar told The Sunday Telegraph in his office at the Foundation for the Defence of Democracies in Washington.

When asked whether military action would be desirable, he replied: "Whatever the world does against the Iranian regime, the Iranian people will be supportive."

Mr Fakhravar's most prominent sponsor is Richard Perle, a former Reagan administration official who later served as chairman of the Pentagon's defence policy board.

Mr Perle was among figures who once hailed Ahmed Chalabi, leader of the Iraqi National Congress, as the natural successor to Saddam Hussein. However, Mr Chalabi later fell out with the Bush administration amid allegations of links to Iranian intelligence.

Mr Perle met Mr Fakhravar in Dubai in May after the latter had left Iran, fearing that he was about to be murdered. The Iranian, leader of the Confederation of Independent Iranian Students, was guest of honour at a recent American Enterprise Institute (AEI) lunch attended by key Pentagon and State Department officials.

The AEI, a conservative think-tank, has helped to develop many of the foreign policy positions adopted by the administration and was a major voice calling for Saddam to be toppled.

Michael Ledeen, an AEI scholar and Iran expert who co-hosted the lunch with Mr Perle, said of Mr Fakhravar: "He's a unifying figure. He's strong physically and psychologically. I think he's extraordinarily smart. He's one of the few Iranian opposition figures I've met who can think through the way Westerners look at Iran and help them understand."

Others who are said to have been impressed by his credentials are Professor Bernard Lewis, the Middle East historian, and James Woolsey, a former CIA director.

Prof Lewis, whose arguments helped to underpin the neo-conservative philosophy of spreading democracy, supporting Israel and projecting American power in the Middle East, is understood to have encouraged Mr Cheney to meet Mr Fakhravar. The former student walks with a slight limp, the result, he said, of being viciously kicked in the left knee by the judge who sentenced him to eight years in 2002 for criticising Iran's supreme leader in his novella This Place is Not a Ditch.

Mr Fakhravar has ambitious plans to bring the larger Tahkim Vahdat student organisation, which favours reform rather than regime change, under his group's wing and also to find common cause with the broader opposition movement.

But some Iran hardliners in Washington have distanced themselves from Mr Fakhravar. "This is no Ahmed Chalabi," said one. "I know that my well-intentioned friends are desperate to find a single figure to rally around but it's not the same as Iraq. It won't work."

Mr Fakhrahar said ordinary Iranians had become increasingly pro-American and even pro-Israeli because of Mr Ahmadinejad's bloodthirsty rhetoric about both countries. "They are growing to like Israel now. It's natural to feel the opposite of what he says."

Original Article

'Iran's Jews don't recognize Israel' - Jerusalem Post

2006-07-02T14:25:00.000-07:00

- While reading this article I couldn't help but wonder how well the Islamic Republic is able to spread complete and utter falsity with a straight face. The people of Iran have a long and proud history with the Jewish people. For 2,500 years we have been friends and partners and it is one of the largest misfortunes that the last twenty-seven years have severly damaged a relationship that has lasted for millenia. When an Iranian of Jewish faith is quoted by the Islamic Republic News Agency that Israel is not recognized his/her respective population it is a LIE. It is a lie not only because everything that comes out of the mouth of the Islamic Republic is a lie, but also because every respectful individual in this world recognizes the right of his fellow man to exist. The Jewish population in Iran are not allowed to express their political will just like the rest of the population. Every Iranian whether Muslim, Jewish, Christian, or Zoroastrian is oppressed. The are oppressed by a very small population of murderous crooks.

Iran will be freed and then we will hear the truth from those in the Jewish, Muslim, Christian, and Zoroastrian populations about the freedom they had under the Islamic Republic. Until then, all the information that comes out of the Islamic Republic should be taken with two or three grains of salt.

Long Live Iran
_________________________________________
Iran's Jews do not recognize the legitimacy of the state of Israel, a senior Iranian Jewish leader reportedly declared on Sunday.

According to the Islamic Republic News Agency, the Iranian state's official news organ, Haroun Yashai, head of the Committee of Teherani Jews, made the statement to the Russian daily Gazetta.

The report quoted Yashai as saying that "We [Jews] are citizens of the Islamic Republic of Iran." Yashai ruled out allegations that religious minorities were deprived of their rights in Iran.

"Foreign journalists usually think that our comments on the good condition of religious minorities in Iran are false" and "expressed on the call and under pressure of Iranian officials." According to the report, Yashai said this belief was "wrong," and added that Jews were free to react to some government policies and even to write to government officials on the issues.

In addition, Yashai said, Jews were free to perform their religious duties and say their prayers in the "Jewish language."

Yashai added that 23 of Iran's 40 synagogues were active, and said that Jews had been observing their customs and had been living in Iran for 2,500 years, since Cyrus the Great ruled the country, and that today's Jewish population - quoted at 25,000 in the IRNA report - lived mostly in Teheran, Shiraz, and Isfahan.

Original Article

Nearly 500 anti-government protests in Iran in past month - Iran Focus

2006-06-28T12:24:00.000-07:00

-We must continue to beat on the door of the Islamic Republic until we break it down. There is no doubt in my mind that we will make these murderous tyrants crumble. It's only a matter of time before thousands of protesters turn into millions. Once we reach that point we will have won the battle. Time is ticking Khamenei... We are comming after you.
______________________________________________
London, Jun. 28 – There have been some 480 anti-government protests in Iran since in the Iranian calendar month ending June 21, according to a tally provided to Iran Focus by Iranian dissidents.

Students were the most politically active group in the past month, having organised at least 136 demonstrations, sit-ins, gatherings, and strikes.

Workers took part in some 60 protests.

Among the month’s major protests was a 100,000-strong anti-government rally by ethnic Azeris in the city of Tabriz against the publication of an insulting cartoon in the official daily Iran.

Subsequently, thousands took part in often violent anti-government demonstrations in the towns of Orumieh, Zanjan, Marand, Naqadeh and Ardebil. At least nine people were killed by government forces in the course of clashes with the protestors.

Several hundred people were arrested during a major demonstration by Iranian women on June 12.

There were also several demonstrations by students in four of Tehran’s universities.

Dissidents accuse the government of imposing an atmosphere of repression in Iran in order to terrorise citizens and dissuade them from taking part in protests.

At least five women and two 18-year-olds were executed in Iran in the past month alone.

Original Article

More than 20 killed in Iran crash - BBC

2006-06-26T14:58:00.000-07:00

-Iranian roads are some of the deadliest in the world. The reason for this is simple: Those who are charged with the security and safety of the Iranian people are too busy arresting, torturing, and killing innocent people than keeping them safe. Why is it that we constantly have to hear about tens of people dieing on the roads of Iran? Instead of beating up women because they don't have a headscarf on, the government has a duty to make sure that roads are built properly and that people are following the law. It's a shame that this many people have to die for no reason. This is one of many examples where the Islamic Regime has failed miserably.
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Twenty-two people have been killed and about 20 injured in Iran when a bus crashed head-on into a truck on a highway between Birjand and Nahbandan.

The accident occurred in the early hours of Monday in the province of South Khorasan.

Police said the truck had drifted into the lane of the oncoming bus.

Iran has one of the worst traffic safety records in the world, with many thousands killed each year on the country's roads.

The accidents are blamed on poor police supervision, reckless driving and badly maintained roads and vehicles.

Original Article

MPG Underground Paper Posted in Iran

2006-06-25T06:47:00.000-07:00

-Here are 3 images of Marze Por Gohar's fourth underground publication that was posted in Iranian streets. Our brave compatriots in Iran are working hard to educate and empower the people so that they may free themselves from the murderous grip of the mullahs.

Stronger and Stronger We March Towards Freedom

2006-06-24T14:41:00.000-07:00

-This is a call to all those who love peace and freedom. We need all those who are willing to put minimal time and effort in order to some good in this world. Iran will be freed. It will be freed because the people of Iran want to live in a democratic and prosperous Iran. This is an invitation to all those who want to make a difference. Iranians and non-Iranians alike are encouraged to contact our offices abroad and get involved. If each of us put in a couple hours a week to fight these mullahs they won't stand a chance.

Long Live Iran
_____________________________________________
Source: Iranian.com
Title: Marze Por Gohar Party

The first shot fired shattered the kitchen window. The second hit closer to the door and after a few more aimless shots attempting only to announce their arrival, the Revolutionary guards shot off the lock on the door and forced their way in. They entered through the neighbor’s yard and surrounded the house. The thumping sound of their boots running through the yard resembled a scene from the movie Rambo and was disturbing enough to make their 3-year-old neighbor who was playing in the yard, swallow the last bite of her peach together with the pit.

The guards poured in sadistically elated to find all their targets in one place. Farahanipour and his friends were in the middle of a meeting, deciding what steps to take next. They remained seated around a round table in the dining room. The first guard approached the group and suddenly kicked one of the young girls in the face. Stunned by his audacity, Farahanipour and the rest of his friends were roused. One of the young men began to speak up, “Leave her alone!” They lifted him out of his seat by his shirt collar. A punch in the jaw hurled him onto the couch. Now they felt they had to comply. Government officials ransacked Farahanipour’s house, collected most of his personal belongings and handcuffed him and his friends. When they ran out of handcuffs they began using telephone wires to tie their hands behind their backs and violently threw them in the back of an unmarked van.

They raided Roozbeh Farahanipour’s house the day after he and his friends organized a student uprising at Tehran University July 9, 1999. They were arrested and badly tortured. They had hopes of toppling the Islamic Republic or at least letting the world know that they were anything but idle; or so that’s how Farahanipour, now sitting in a small garden office in Westwood, likes to describe actions that may seem futile and rebellious to many but not to him.

“We never thought we’d get the kind of turnout that we did, but it only confirmed how fed up everyone was,” he says trying to remember more specific events of the day. “I liked the feeling of solidarity, running through the streets and chanting slogans at the clerics. ‘Khamenei, be a man, be a man and free the land!’” That was the only non-profane slogan he could think of. While the translation works, the slogan means more in Farsi.

He masks a lot of the events with a smile as he retells them. The masking becomes a challenge when he begins to talk about the torture, the beating and the uncertainty of making it through another day.

They asked him his name. He answered, “Roozbeh Farahanipour.” Suddenly, they hurled a chair in his direction, aiming for his head. The head guard screamed, “Roozbeh is dead! From now on you are number 607.” That was his cell number.

The prison heads were particularly fixated on beating his hands; poetic justice for a writer. They’d whip him until he bled, bruised, and they’d do it all over again. At times, he says, his hands became so numb; he couldn’t tell if they were still attached to his body. They tried to break as many fingers as they could, succeeding with three over the course of his imprisonment.

Every time that piece of wood would come down in flogging action against his hands, Farahanipour would close his eyes, hold his breath and prepare for another. They were relentless, hitting the students’ backs and soles of their feet. As they hanged from metal beams across the ceiling, they would be beaten until the guards saw the first signs of blood. Sometimes they wouldn’t even stop at that. But Farahanipour says he and the others would try to show strength and resilience so they would start singing the Iranian national anthem -- the same anthem banned by the Islamic Republic and replaced with an Islamic version. The singing would only cause the guards to hit them harder. Their screams echoed in the prison.

He now sits by the window in his office looking out at a tailor shop and laser hair treatment spa going through a box of mostly old photographs that sits on his lap. He takes out a yellow blindfold decorated with royal blue flowers and puts it on the table. Hesitating to take his eyes off the blindfold, he reaches back into the box. One by one he takes out the photographs and with a look of discomfort he peppers the table with reminders of his past. “They killed this man,” he says pointing to a man standing on the side of his fourth grade class picture. “He was a priest.” With less deliberation this time, he hurries to put his hands back in the box. He takes out a couple more. The one on top is of him and four friends sitting with a chocolate cake. It is his 20th birthday. “This girl,” he says, forced to stop, take a partial breath and stroke his hand through his thick black hair. “This girl was arrested a few weeks after this photo was taken and beaten to death.”

Thirty-four-year-old Farahanipour resembles his childhood pictures. He still has that baby face with two big, black eyes that turn almond-shaped when he smiles. He’s not so tall, and not so short, but his lofty yet eloquent Farsi rhetoric gives him a tall stature.

By training, he is a journalist and a lawyer, and ashamed to admit that he now has to host tables at Shamshiri, a Persian restaurant on Westwood Boulevard, in order to pay the bills.

Things haven’t changed that much for Farahanipour absent the beating and torture. Now they have an American twist. Farahanipour runs his political party Marze Por Gohar, MPG or Glorious Frontiers Party out of Los Angeles, sometimes called Irangeles, the closest place to home. Their platform has stayed the same. They are still in search of a way to bring down the Islamic Republic and to replace them with a secular and democratic alternative. They lobby in Washington D.C., organize rallies and protests, speak at universities and publish a monthly magazine in hopes of educating and “awakening” Iranians living in Iran and abroad.

Prior to the protest he worked as the publisher and chief editor of a popular monthly dedicated to Iranian studies. The journal was quickly banned by the Islamic Republic when Farahanipour attempted to publish the names of 57 individuals murdered by the government.

Farahanipour was prevented from publishing again and determined to get freedom of speech rights for journalists. In1998, Farahanipour along with some of his colleagues organized The National Society of Journalists. They quickly realized that, when dealing with the Islamic Republic, the only way to get things done was to enter the political arena. From then the journalism society became known as the Marzeh Por-Gohar political party.

Farahanipour’s political inclinations started when he was young. He was only in the second grade when he says he committed his first “political act.” It was right after the Revolution when Muslim clerics dismissed a popular children’s television host, Ehteram Boroumand, who had refused to wear the Islamic veil on television. Farahanipour objected to her dismissal, so he led his classmates to the yard and staged a protest, chanting, "We want Mrs. Boroumand now (yaallaa)". He also remembers receiving his first beating from the school headmaster, who used a heavy, wooden ruler.

Among the dusty pictures is a wrinkled copy of the last magazine Farahanipour had published. On the cover it says in Farsi, “If you speak you will die. If you remain quiet you will die. Why not speak and die?”

Farahanipour chuckles in a matter-of-fact way, as though he was entrusted with this duty and has no option but to carry it out. “If I were going to be scared, nothing would ever progress,” he says as he describes a new batch of death threats he received on the internet this week. “They said in three weeks we will find you and kill you.” He shrugs. “I’ve heard a lot of this before.”

It is all too familiar for Farahanipour who says he’s been on the Islamic Republic’s radar even before the protest. The government referred to MPG as an “illegal party” and called Farahanipour a “leader of the unrest” from the start. So when he was arrested with several others, he knew his punishment would be worse. The blindfold gave it all away.

When they arrived at the prison all the students were forced to change into prison uniforms. Farahanipour kept thinking about the girls in the group who were asked to undress in front of the guards just the same. He knew that their modesty, which is so revered in Persian culture, wouldn’t be respected. Then they were all blindfolded with standard grey blindfolds. Farahanipour’s was different. “They wanted me to be easily distinguishable,” he says, recalling the ridicule, name calling and abuse.

Despite all the abuse, Farahanipour says his mother suffered the most. As she saw the men entering their home, her first reaction as a typical Iranian woman was to run to the kitchen to bring them some tea. Farahanipour laughs as he describes his mother’s naïveté. She saw no difference between her son and these young men. To her, they were all Iranian children. When she brought out the tea, she was surprised to find that they wouldn’t drink it. The guards of course, figured she was trying to poison them. When she realized what was actually going on and that her son was taken away, she began to panic, but severe anxiety consumed her only after she received a fake call from the prison saying they had killed her son. Another student’s father died of a heart attack when he got that same call. Ironically his son lived to hear about it.

After 11 months of interrogations, he was released on 50,000,000 Rials bail, around $10,000, paid with the deed to a friend’s house. As much as he loved his country he says, he knew if he stayed he’d be killed. He quickly gathered whatever personal belongings the guards hadn’t seized and escaped to Turkey.

While the tortures and abuses of the Islamic Republic are over for him, Farahanipour says they are still watching, citing an instance not too long ago when he found that his office was bugged. Around that time, Farahanipour noticed a van that would park outside the office frequently. He reported it all to the FBI and soon after, the van disappeared. “Let them watch me,” he says, open about his political views and convinced that the days of the Islamic Republic’s reign in Iran are numbered. He laughs, remembering times when, knowing his lines were tapped, he would answer the phone, “good day to all our listeners.”

Now, Farahanipour can’t shake the streets of Tehran with his messages and hopes for reform, but he hasn’t given up hope of shaking them from afar. “If I didn’t think I could make a difference living here, you can rest assured I’d never be here,” he says. To an outsider, Farahanipour seems like he’s settled well in Los Angeles. He works out of a nice office, has his group of friends, works a steady job and most importantly enjoys American freedoms. Despite his acknowledgement of it all, when people ask how he likes living in the United States, he most often says, “It’s a nice home. But it isn’t my home.”

After a short stay in Turkey, he arrived in the U.S. in 2000. Since then, Farahanipour has spent most of his time educating and familiarizing others with his party. Even though Farahanipour and most expatriate Iranians have been against the idea of an Islamic Republic – having a formerly secular country like Iran in the hands of clerics -- the number of dissidents who have adopted a voice has increased as current President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s extreme views such as taking Israel off the map and Holocaust denial have become public. Farahanipour and his party have never felt a better opportunity to push for a free Iran.

The environment in Iran is perfectly set up to support a revolution, he says citing that more than 2/3 of the country’s population is under the age of 30. Young Iranians are completely westernized. They love Ipods, extreme sports and, unfortunately, illegal drugs.

“This is the ideal time,” says University of Southern California Professor of political science Eliz Sanasarian. “If the opposition to this regime is serious about what it hopes to accomplish, then this is the time for them to come together, to unify and to connect with the population inside the country.”

“There is a sufficient middle class that will welcome a revolution, and if it’s accompanied by economic changes, the other classes will go along with it as well,” Sanasarian says, pointing to various conditions that make it an opportune moment for a revolution such as the country’s love for modernization and a high unemployment rate.

One of the obstacles opposition groups have faced in recent years is unity. There are many groups who oppose the Islamic Republic garnering support both inside and outside Iran, yet they do not necessarily agree with one another. There are the monarchists who favor the return of the monarchy overthrown in 1979 under the Shah’s son now living in Virginia. There is also the Mojahedin-e-Khalgh or MEK who believe in an Islamist Marxist government. Incidentally, the MEK is listed as a terrorist organization with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

Dissatisfaction with the post-Revolutionary government has been high since its start, but Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is considered to be the extreme. He is a radical conservative with Islamist and populist views, catering mostly to Iran’s conservative religious and lower economic classes. While the Islamic Republic has never seen eye-to-eye with the United Nations, or with the United States for that matter, Ahmadinejad’s outlandish comments and refusal to cease nuclear proliferation has put the country in the international spotlight.

Last September, shortly after elections in Iran made Ahmadinejad the sixth president of the Islamic Republic, he was scheduled to fly into New York to be at the United Nations. Farahanipour helped organized the rally of thousands that appeared in front of the U.N., protesting not only his welcome in the U.S. but his position as president of Iran. With help from his supporters, Farahanipour chartered an airplane to take protesters to New York. He says that while people came from as far as Norway and from several U.S. cities including Denver and Jacksonville, the media failed to grant the event the coverage it deserved.

Tight-knit networking and intelligence have been cited as the reasons behind the Islamic Republic’s success. Farahanipour also blames the media. Only recently has there been any coverage on Iran, but that’s just politics. There are seldom reports on the people of Iran. “If the world understood how people are living, how they are treated, what poverty is like in certain places, and contrast that with the amount of money these mullahs pocket or hand out to terrorist organizations to carry out suicide bombings, then they’d be more inclined to push for regime change,” Farahanipour says.

What he tries to stress most in his political campaign is the vast difference between Iranians and their government, which he refers to as a “foreign import” from the Arab world. After the people of Iran revolted against their monarch Shah Reza Pahlavi, Farahanipour says the replacement, religious cleric Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini was able to turn one of the most progressive and westernized countries in the Middle East into a religious third world country which coincidentally possesses oil. Women went from wearing miniskirts to covering everything from their heads to their toes. They went from taking pride in their westernized cities to taking pride in their religious and undeveloped rural areas.

“When Khomeini was entering the country they asked him a very important question. He had been in exile for 15 years and they asked him how do you feel about entering Iran again and he answered, ‘I have no feeling.’ That was obvious that this regime is anti-Iranian. Their actions prove to us that they are looking to spread the influences of Islam and Arabic, there’s nothing Iranian about that”

But the people of Iran have not changed. They wear their miniskirts under their cloaks. They wear the latest styles and makeup. Plastic surgery is as common as anything. They throw parties in their homes, take lavish trips to ski resorts and soak up the sun in nearby Dubai. For the most part, they are still Iranian nationalists who strongly oppose the fundamentalist mentality of their government. Most importantly, their kindness hasn’t changed. It was the kindness and compassion of fellow Iranians that allowed Farahanipour to eventually escape the country in 2000. A bus driver and several passengers helped him hide between the luggages stowed beneath a bus in route to Istanbul, Turkey.

“You can’t say that because someone is living in Iran, they are supporters of the regime. It’s not like that,” especially when you consider the number of religious and cultural minorities that have trouble getting clearance to leave the country. Others are loyal to their country, despite the hands, or claws rather, that currently hold it. They put up with the government to stay on Iran’s soil and refuse to be buried anywhere else.

“Our difficulty is organization. Organization, organization, organization. There you go. Three solutions for Iran’s future. We are in a bad situation right now with the election of Ahmadinejad, Iran’s nuclear proliferation and the supporting of terrorist actions around the globe. If the people of Iran make an effort to topple their government, the world would no longer recognize the Islamic Republic.”

As American political and possible military confrontation with Iran becomes almost inevitable, Farahanipour says Iranians are losing time. Although the Iranian government has persuaded its citizens that another revolution is too costly, Farahanipour says the price of a revolution is better than a war on Iranian people and our homeland.

“This is a historical moment. We have to make world powers and the people of Iran aware. So this is our problem. We have to awaken America and other foreign powers. We have to be the messengers. These are tough things to do considering the financial limitations that opposition groups are faced with. But if someone loves his country, this might be the last chance. Maybe our country is testing us to see how whether we will put aside our lives, our money and anything we have to defend what’s most valuable to us.”

Original Article

REGIME CHANGERS SHOUT, "VIVA IRAN" - The New Republic

2006-06-24T14:35:00.000-07:00

Simon Etehad tipped me off to Coffee Zinio in Westwood--a small Iranian cafe run by a friend of his--but let it be known that, even though the gathering was being sponsored by the Marze Por Gohar Party (Iranians for a Secular Republic), I wouldn't find him there. Simon was completely incredulous back in January 2000 when friends wanted to organize a caravan to the Rose Bowl to watch the Iranians take on the US team in a friendly. "How can you root for a country that throws you out, that takes everything you own, even executes you?" With the election of Ahmadinejad, Simon's stance had hardened, even if his friends in the MPG would be waving the old Shir-o-Khorshid flag rather than the current Islamic Republic design.

Zinio is a throwback to a time when the coffeehouse was a laboratory of political association rather than a place to buy Cranium. There was a flyer placed prominently on the wall that reads, "Islamic Fundamentalist is the Worst Weapon of Mass Destruction," and another one that says, "We strongly condemn Germany's release of Islamic Republic terrorists and murderers of innocent Iranian dissidents." Unlike Simon, the crowd at Zinio Â– largely friends of MPG--delineated between Iran and the Islamic Republic. The latter never circumscribes the former.

Babak Namdar, MPG's Director of Foreign Policy, insisted that place transcends politics. "This is the national team, not the government's team." He recounted an episode prior to my arrival early this morning that Lisa Daftari repeated later of an Iranian woman walking by the cafÃ© making a stink that Zinio was flying the Shir-o-Khorshid. "This is not the real flag," she wailed. Namdar conceded that there were a fair number of Iranians in southern California--particularly in Orange County--who are "pro-regime."

Like Etehad, Daftari is an Iranian Jew. Daftari maintained that secularists who support Team Meli, "culturally still believe in the people of Iran." Sepehr Aryannia, MPG's L.A. branch coordinator, agreed. "Since you can't make statements of political expression, this is how you blow off steam," according to Namdar. "The sport helps bring people together. After the games, people will go out and associate."

For Aryannia, soccer--like political association -- is good for secularism.

Original Article

Iran Intelligence

2006-06-07T06:50:00.000-07:00

Here is a link to a website that is dedicated to collecting information on members and supporters of the Islamic Regime world-wide. If anybody has any information, including pictures, of people who have supported the Islamic Republic please send the information by using the link below. All the information you give is totally confidential and the information that you give will be used to bring these criminals to justice.

Iran Intelligence

The Moral Imperative of Freedom in Iran - Front Page Magazine

2006-06-02T08:27:00.000-07:00

- This is a well written article by a friend of the Iranian people, Mr. Kenneth Timmerman. I am posting this article one day late, but better late than never as I always say!
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Author: Kenneth R. Timmerman

Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice threw down the gauntlet on Wednesday, offering the Iranian regime a clear choice between confrontation and accommodation with the West.

If Iran immediately suspends all uranium enrichment activities in a transparent, verifiable manner, she said, “the United States will come to the table with our EU-3 colleagues and meet with Iran’s representatives.”

If not, then the U.S. and its partners have agreed on a package of “progressively stronger political and economic sanctions” that will inflict “great costs” on the Tehran regime.

Rice took great pains to spell out clearly the types of rewards a compliant Iran could expect if it chooses to “persuasively demonstrate that it has permanently abandoned its quest for nuclear weapons.”

The U.S. will back Iran’s civil nuclear energy aspirations, and gradually could expand economic cooperation. Ultimately, this could lead to “a beneficial relationship of increased contacts in education, cultural exchange, sports, travel, trade, and investment,” she said.

At first blush, it would appear that Rice has acceded to those who have been urging the administration to offer a “grand bargain” to Iran.

Among the many advocates of doing business with the Tehran regime are U.S. oil giant CONOCO, Boeing, and any number of trade associations, whose interests are obvious.

Their views have been packaged and given a policy veneer by the likes of Brent Scowcroft and Zbigniew Brzezinski, who urged the Bush administration in a 2004 Council on Foreign Relations paper to lift U.S. trade sanctions and seek an accommodation with the mullahs in Tehran.

Ka-ching! as my friends at CNBC would say.

I have always taken issue with the economic arguments of the policy “realists,” because we are not dealing with a realistic regime.

For the past eleven years, this regime in Tehran has endured sanctions. U.S. efforts to block foreign investment, while not entirely successful, have prevented Iran from enjoying the fruits of the oil boom, which are so immediately obvious to Iranians who travel to neighboring Dubai.

Why should a regime that is on the verge of fulfilling a long-standing effort to acquire nuclear weapons, pursued at great cost, now abandon that effort just because we say please and offer a few goodies?

Former German foreign minister Joschka Fisher offered a more Faustian argument for accommodation with Tehran.

Writing in the Washington Post on May 29, Fisher abandoned the niceties of the lobbying crowd and got right to the point. “There can no longer be any reasonable doubt that Iran’s ambition is to obtain nuclear weapons capability,” he said.

That is precisely why the West should offer the mullahs in Tehran a “grand bargain,” he argued – if by so doing we can prevent the regime from acquiring a nuclear weapon and using it to “become a hegemonic Islamic and regional power.”

As part of the “grand bargain,” Fisher believes the United States and its European partners must offer Iran “binding security guarantees,” including a permanent recognition of the regime. The “horrible consequences” of war “must force the United States to abandon its policy of no direct negotiations and its hope for regime change.”

Joschka Fisher is right about one thing. Legitimacy is the only currency the regime in Tehran truly covets, because U.S. support for their opposition is the only threat they truly fear.

For the United States to acknowledge the legitimacy of the regime of velayat-e faghih – absolute clerical rule – would be taken as a great victory in Tehran.

It would sound the death knell to the aspirations of the Iranian people to freedom, and would remove whatever restraints still remain on the barbaric behavior of a regime that continues to stone women to death, rape children in jails, and pursue Christians and Jews and Bahais and others because of their religious beliefs.

This is a regime that throws students out of third-floor dormitory rooms, for the “crime” of demanding freedom.

This is a regime that murders freedom in Iraq, and boasts of recruiting thousands of suicide bombers to launch against America.

Unlike Fisher, Condoleeza Rice acknowledged a moral component to American foreign policy

"The nuclear issue is not the only obstacle standing in the way of improved relations," Rice said. She cited the regime's support for terror, its involvement in violence in Iraq, and its efforts to violate Lebanon's sovereignty as additional “barriers to a positive relationship.”

More importantly, she refused to offer the regime any guarantees. And that is why the regime will make the wrong choice (as far as its survival is concerned), and refuse this last best offer from the United States and the international community.

President Ahmadinejad has said repeatedly Iran has a “sacred right” to nuclear technology, and has no intention of abandoning its efforts to enrich uranium. He revels in defying the international community.

The state-run Islamic Republic News Agency noted just hours after Rice made her offer public that Iran considered it “a propaganda move.”

IRNA quoted Kazem Jalali, a spokesman for the Foreign Policy and National Security Committee of Iran’s Islamic Consultative Assembly as noting that the regime “has announced repeatedly that suspension of uranium enrichment is not in Iran’s agenda.”

The hard work begins tomorrow, or next week – whenever Iran makes its refusal known officially and our European partners finally recognize that it’s all over.

It is not yet time to unleash the dogs of war. It is time instead to help the Iranian people to achieve their freedom.

Given the high stakes, we have a moral imperative to attempt what no American administration has attempted before: to give the Iranian people the means they need to build a massive non-violent movement, well-coordinated and well-organized, to challenge the clerical tyranny that is bent on leading Iran to devastation.

Because devastation is the only alternative future for this regime, for the Iranian people, and for the entire region, should the United States fail to lead and fail to accept the moral imperative of freedom.

Original Article

Iran Azeris protest over cartoon - BBC

2006-05-28T07:27:00.000-07:00

- I encourage all Iranian Azeris to go out into the streets and protest not only against this cartoon, but also the complete inability of this regime to administer the country and the despicable acts of the Regime security forces that lead to several people dieing during these protests. No government is allowed to kill people over differences in opinion and expressions of disapproval. The Iranian people deserve the freedom to express their dislike of any regime in Iran and those government officials may not so much as lay a finger on them.

The Iranian people will teach the mullahs and those corrupt and murderous administrators that are under them that it is the job of the government to do the people's bidding. A government should be scared of its people, not vice versa.
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There have been demonstrations in several parts of north-west Iran, with thousands of ethnic Azeris protesting at a newspaper cartoon.

Azeris said the cartoon, which was published earlier this month, compared them to cockroaches.

Reports from the cities of Ardebil, Naqadeh and Meshkin Shahr say Iranian security forces fired on demonstrators, killing at least five people.

Dozens of others were injured and hundreds arrested.

It showed a succession of people attempting to talk to a cockroach in Persian.

Each time, the insect responded by saying, in Azeri: "What do you mean?"

Azeris are the largest ethnic minority in Iran, and the cartoon caused outrage among those who believed it suggested that all Azeris were stupid.

Thousands of people took to the streets in protest and, shortly afterwards, the newspaper was shut down and its editor arrested.

But that did not quell the anger. In the latest protests on Saturday, government buildings were targeted, and a number of banks and television stations burnt down.

What is ironic is that the man who drew the original cartoon is also an ethnic Azeri. He too has been arrested.

Original Article

Riots in Tehran Universities: 'We Don't Want Nuclear Energy' - The Middle East Media Research Institute

2006-05-26T04:56:00.000-07:00

- The occupiers of Iran can not quell the Iranians' thirst for freedom and democracy. We will achieve our goals and the leaders of the Islamic Republic will pay for their crimes against the Iranian people. I praise the brave students who are standing up to this brutal regime. Each one of them are the heart and sole of Iran and their country and is forever indebted to them for their courageous efforts. The entire Iranian community stands with them and we are all working to end the rule of this despotic regime.

Marg bar Jumhurieh Eslaami!
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Via: Iran va Jahan

Several media outlets in Iran reported, albeit in a restricted and censured fashion, that there has been rioting on several university campuses in Tehran for the past four days. The reformist Internet daily Rooz reported that over 500 members of riot-control units have besieged the Tehran University campus, and that there have been clashes between rioting students and Basij and police forces.

The riots broke out following a student protest over what appeared to be a purge of the academic faculty of Tehran University. This coincided with the marking of the "Second of Khordad," the day of the Persian month of Khordad on which Mohammad Khatami was first elected president of Iran (May 23, 1997).

During the riots, eight student leaders were arrested, and, according to eyewitnesses quoted in Rooz, 25 of those under siege in the campus were wounded, five of them severely. Eyewitnesses reported that students were chanting anti-regime slogans, such as "We don't want nuclear energy" and "Forget Palestine - think of us."

The eyewitnesses also reported that Iranian security forces fired live bullets, and that shots were fired at homes outside the university. One of the students told Rooz: "The university campus is on fire, raids are being conducted throughout the campus, and the students are in fear and anxiety... Gunfire is heard from all directions... There is blood everywhere." The university's telephone lines were reported to have been cut.

According to other eyewitnesses, "police riot-control units entered the campus with helmets, shields, and clubs, and beat students so severely that many can't even walk." A campus security guard told a Rooz reporter: "We were told that we were permitted to use violence against the students, but not to hit them on their heads or their faces, in order to avoid leaving marks. We were told not to be respectful towards any student, unless he is a member of the Basij student union."

One of the students said: "They are sending more riot-control forces [into the campus]. I estimate that they are about 3,000 strong... There is also an intensive presence of Ansar-e Hizbullah forces in vehicles or on motorcycles. They have also brought in several fire trucks [to disperse the students]..." One of the reporters said: "Reporters who came to cover the events were stopped by university security guards, and none were permitted to enter [the campus]."

Local police claim that only 100 students were involved in the riots, but according to eyewitnesses quoted by Rooz, the riots involved some 3,000 of the 4,000 students attending the main campus, and another 2,000 from the law and political science campus.

The ultra-conservative daily Kayhan, which is close to Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, called the student leaders "American representatives of the [U.S.] Congress in Tehran University," and reported that "yesterday afternoon, illegal forces demonstrated in the [university] classrooms after several faculty members were forced to retire." According to Kayhan, the demonstration organizers are not even students but are from outside the university.

Morteza Talai, commander of the Tehran Metropolitan Police, told the Iranian Students News Agency (ISNA) that "at 9:30 PM, 100 students gathered at the campus gates, and 20 or 30 of them started throwing stones, sticks and firebombs at homes in the area." The report continued: "[Talai said that] the police reacted with restraint, and, until 5:30 AM, made efforts to curb the demonstrators throwing the firebombs... but [the students] paid no heed... Only in the morning did the police raid [the campus], and by 7:00 AM, it had made arrests and cleared the area, with the help of municipal forces... During this activity, three students were injured while attempting to climb onto the roof of the dormitory building."

Original Article

Determined Foes Mount Challenge To Iran's Mullahs - NY Sun

2006-05-26T04:53:00.000-07:00

While foreign ministers met in London to finalize measures to persuade the Iranian regime to suspend uranium enrichment, the country's ruling clerics will be facing the most determined opposition they have seen in three years.

In Tehran, university students staged a second day of strikes over the firing of eight professors and the new policies enacted by Tehran University's president.

In Tabriz, the regime tried to quell riots earlier this week over a cartoon depicting members of the Azeri minority as cockroaches.

In Qom, the theocracy was absorbing the aftershocks of a candid interview from Grand Ayatollah Montazeri, who told an Iraqi news agency that the current Islamic Republic has failed to deliver the democracy it promised in the 1979 revolution.

The stirrings inside Iran are the most serious challenge to befall the mullahs since the protests that accompanied the 2003 commemorations of the July 9, 1999, Tehran University student rebellions. They also suggest the regime that America and Europe are now hoping to cajole into suspending its nuclear program may be more fragile than intelligence agencies recognize.

One of the steering committee members of Iran's largest student organization chapter at Tehran Polytechnic University, Abbas Hakim Zadeh said in an interview from Tehran Tuesday that his organization was now 90% in favor of rejecting slow reform in favor of nonviolent resistance.

"About nine years ago, the reformist movement under Khatemi took place, but Khatemi could not deliver and the Iranian people have no longer any faith in the reformist movement," he said.

Those words should come as no surprise to observers who have followed the intellectual evolution of dissident journalist Akbar Ganji, who was released from Evin Prison in April and is the author of a manifesto rebuking the reform movement for its timidity and calling for direct elections of the supreme leader.

But Mr. Zadeh's comments could be shocking to diplomats in Western capitals and analysts in Washington pressing for negotiations with Iran in part because it would re-empower the political movement of President Khatemi, the reformer to whom Mr. Zadeh was referring.

Yesterday, Mr. Zadeh said the country's largest student organization, Takhim Vahdat, rejected any direct talks between America and Iran if the negotiations centered around security guarantees in exchange for promises on nuclear enrichment.

"If there is any dialogue and conversations or negotiations between the Islamic Republic and the international community, whether the United States or other countries individually or collectively, if it is around the nucleus of human rights, democracy and the openness in Iran, it is something worthwhile to consider," he said.

"However if the idea is for Iran to get security guarantees embedded in it that the regime can suppress the human rights and the will of the people, that is something the Iranian student movement, the Iranian labor movement and the Iranian women's rights groups reject firmly and totally."

The atmosphere at Tehran University was tense as student protesters entered into the second day of a strike designed to oust the school's president appointed by President Ahmadinejad, Amid Zanjani.

In an interview on the Voice of America's Persian service, a student activist at Tehran University, Mohsen Sabri, said he estimated that 1,200 students were clashing with security officers. His colleague and a member of the national steering committee for Takhim Vahdat, Ali Nekomesbati, estimated that 15 students have been kidnapped since the sit-in strike began and another 70 have been injured.

The fracas at Tehran University flared as Iran's president took measures this week to calm tensions in Tabriz after hundreds of Azeris began burning parts of the city to ostensibly protest a state-run newspaper that ran a cartoon depicting Azeris as cockroaches.

The protests this week are a direct rebuke to Mr. Ahmadinejad. While Iran's president does not command the military or have final say on domestic and foreign policy decisions, he does have the power to appoint personnel in government agencies.

Since assuming power in August, Mr. Ahmadinejad has stacked the security services, universities, prison warden system, and social service departments with ideological allies from the ranks of the paramilitary group he is associated with, the Basij.

A colleague of Mr. Zadeh at Tehran Polytechnic University, Bijan Pouryousefi, said yesterday that Iran's student movement was reaching out to form a more unified front with labor unions and women's groups.

"The civil struggles of the Iranian people for democracy and human rights is alive, but it is fragile," he said. "You see this with the women's groups, the labor unions and this as a whole. We need the support of the international community by supporting democracy, and other organizations can provide the basis for the support of our movement."

But Mr. Pouryousefi was careful to say that at least Takhim Vahdat would reject direct funding from America or any foreign government. "When you talk about money, we will have our character assassinated. There are human rights organizations that can defend the rights of the individuals. The subject of the money is separate," he said.

Takhim Vahdat was created in the late 1970s to support Ayatollah Khomeinei and the 1979 Islamic Revolution. In recent months, the regime has tried to restrict the organization's ability to elect a national coordination committee by attempting to appoint students who favor the regime. Last summer the organization led the fight to release Mr. Ganji from jail and encouraged students to boycott elections that resulted in Mr. Ahmadinejad assuming the presidency.

Original Article

Iran tests missile - News 24

2006-05-24T20:27:00.000-07:00

- Once again the Islamic Regime believes that it is more important to test old and out-dated missile technology than give Iranians what they really need. If the Islamic Regime is so concerend with Iran's security why does it test-fire missiles rather than empower its own people. For years now, the Islamic Regime has been complaining that the United States is closing in on its borders. Supposedly, the United States is the big bad enemy of the Islamic Republic, but what the mullahs of Iran fail to mention is that their real enemies are already all around them; the Shahab missile will not help the Regime when the Iranian people stand up and assert their independence. Just like the Soviet Union, the Islamic Regime suffers from a false sense of security that more weapons translates into more time in power. If the Soviet Union fell with all of its nuclear weapons, then the Islamic Republic does not stand a chance. So have your out-dated Russian technology Mr. Khamenei. It won't do you any good when the real revolution comes knocking on your door.

Long Live Iran
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Washington - Iran fired a medium-range Shahab-3 missile on Tuesday night in a test, a US defence official says.

The missile test has not been announced by Tehran.

"It can always help Iran increase its confidence in the programme," said another defence official without commenting on whether a test had taken place.

The test comes amid a mounting diplomatic confrontation with Iran over a uranium enrichment programme that the United States insists is part of a secret effort to develop nuclear weapons.

Iran insists its nuclear programme is for peaceful purposes but has refused international appeals to stop.

The Shahab-3, which is modelled on the North Korean No-Dong missile, has a reported range of about 1 300km - putting Israel, Afghanistan and US military installations in the region within reach.

Iran is reported to be working on extending the missile's range.

An Iranian general in January said that the Shahab-3 was capable of striking targets 2 000km away.

This would be the about the ninth flight test of the missile since 1998, according to experts who have tracked the programme.

Original Article

MASOUR OSANLO AFTER HIS TORURE BY THE IRAN'S REGIME - Price of the Freedom

2006-05-21T16:44:00.000-07:00

This is a video of an interview that was conducted with Mansour Osanlo showing the injuries that he was left with after his torture. Mr. Osanlo is the leader of the nearly 500 bus drivers that were imprisoned by the Islamic Regime.

Link

Woman Walks Without Oppressive Islamic Headscarf

2006-05-16T20:52:00.000-07:00

- Here is a woman who is brave and willing to do what is necessary to stand up to the tyranny of the Mullahs. I feel awkward posting this picture on the internet because the more these pictures get passed around the more likely it will be that this brave woman will be identified. I am only doing this in the hope that it will inspire more Iranian women to follow in her foot-steps. I hope that all women will be able to walk free in the streets of Iran soon.

Original Source

EU promises "generous, bold" Iran nuclear offer - Swiss Info

2006-05-15T06:00:00.000-07:00

-The Europeans are so desperate to hold on to the Islamic Republic that they will do almost anything to appease the Mullahs. Europe has invested billions in the oil and gas sector in Iran and they have also invested heavily in goods-production as well. The Europeans do not want regime-change in Iran because that will mean an end to their contracts and competition with the United States who currently does not do any business in Iran.

But the Europeans are dreaming if they think that they can prevent Iran from becoming free and democratic. We will achieve our goals in Iran and it would be wise for the Europeans to be on the side of the Iranian people and not this brutal and corrupt regime.
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The European Union pledged on Monday to make Iran a generous offer of technology, economic and other incentives but stressed Tehran must comply first with international demands to halt sensitive nuclear activities.

The 25-member bloc wants to present Iran with a stark choice of accepting the offer, expected to be delivered around the end of the month, or risk seeing international support grow for a U.N. resolution that would pave the way for possible sanctions.

"It will be a generous package, a bold package that will contain issues related to nuclear, economic matters and maybe if necessary security matters," EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana told reporters before a meeting of EU foreign ministers.

A draft statement for Monday's EU meeting obtained by Reuters stated the EU could help Tehran develop "a safe, sustainable and proliferation-proof civilian nuclear programme" while stipulating it halt all enrichment activities on its soil.

"If they (the Iranians) do come back into compliance, people will work hard to help them achieve what they really need, or say they need, which is access to civil nuclear power," Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett told reporters.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Sunday Iran would not accept any EU offer if it included a demand that Tehran stop what he called peaceful nuclear activities.

Solana gave no details of the package but said the EU wanted to present it to Iran in the coming weeks simultaneously with the approval of a U.N. resolution calling on Tehran to halt enrichment of uranium or face consequences.

Efforts to agree a U.N. resolution last week stalled in the U.N. Security Council amid opposition from Russia and China.

"A MATTER FOR AMERICA"

Iran, the world's fourth-largest oil exporter, insists its nuclear plans are purely to make electricity. Solana said Tehran's affirmations that it would reject any demand to stop peaceful nuclear work were a misunderstanding of EU policy.

"We have said over and over again that we have nothing against Iran having nuclear capabilities if they are strictly devoted to the production of energy," he said.

But Iranian demands to be allowed to conduct enrichment for research purposes were still "something that at the moment we (the EU) cannot accept", he said.

The United States made clear on Sunday it had no intention of holding direct talks with Iran on the nuclear issue despite a letter to President George W. Bush last week from Ahmadinejad -- the first direct communication between the two countries' leaders for more than two decades.

Germany has called publicly for Washington to engage Iran directly. France and Britain, the other two major EU powers, have not joined the call publicly.

"That's a matter for America and Iran themselves," Beckett said. "What is important is that there is a clear, strong and consistent message coming from the international community."

French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy, who skipped the EU meeting on Iran to attend a cultural event in Paris, told reporters: "The best of the solutions, and even, the only solution today is of a diplomatic nature."

Original Article

Translation of Aghmagh-nejaad's Letter to President Bush - Le Monde

2006-05-09T13:14:00.000-07:00

Here is the English translation of the Aghmagh-nejaad letter that was sent to President Bush. Suffice it to say that it was garbage from beginning to end, but everyone should have the opportunity to make up their own minds. Let me give my two-cents:

First I want to start by commenting on Mr. Aghmaghnejaad's thoughts on the "undeniable contradictions" that exist in the world. Aghmagh-nejaad is the president of a Regime that favours only those close to it. Government contracts and the best jobs are only given to those who support the Regime and not to those who best fit the work to be accomplished. Is that not a contradiction? Here is a man who talks about human rights but had, himself, overseen the killing of countless innocent free thinkers before becomming president. Here is a man that is so obsessed with the existence of Israel that he fails to mention his own "blood-staned hands." Specifically he complains that the Israeli regime shows no mercy "even to kids." Was it not the Islamic Republic that recently killed several minors? Did they not hang these minors and show no mercy even when the Iranian people pleaded for it? Did they show mercy to the over 9,000 people they have murdered in the name of their religious rule?

Who does Aghmagh-nejaad think he is when he questions the coup of 1953! Does this murderer believe that he is on par with Dr. Mossadegh? Nobody in the Iranian community can ever think of comparing themselves to that great man, but even if they could Aghmagh-nejaad and his cronies would be last on that list!

Aghmagh-nejaad's lesson the Mr. Bush on lies is pleasantly amusing. He tells Bush that he lied with respect to WMD's in Iraq. But, once again, he fails to mention the lies he tells the Iranian people on a daily basis. The mullahs of Iran came to power in Iran because they promised freedom. They promised prosperity and free gas and petrol. They promised everything under the sun, but the Iranian people got nothing. Recently, the Islamic government promised that they would develop the Iranian economy. Instead, the mullahs of Iran, who are now the richest in the world, have pulled out 200 billion out of the Iranian economy. They Promised to fight the huge drug problem in Iran, but it has only gotten worse. There are credible stories that it is the Mullahs themselves who are profitting from the drug trade. No wonder Rafsanjani is one of the world's richest men.

When Aghmagh-nejaad speaks of security, has he forgotten about prostitution in Iran? Somebody should ask Aghmagh-nejaad who profits from exporting the women of Iran to prostitute themselves in foreign countries! I don't think these women feel very secure! I really could go on and on about this, but it's really not worth the time or effort.

READ THIS LETTER CRITICALLY. Everything he accuses the American government of doing he has done himself. He has killed, he has tortured, he has jailed, he has lied, he has STOLEN!

This man must think the people of the world are as stupid as he is ugly if he believes this letter will cause the Iranian people and the world to change their minds on whether the IRI should be toppled!

Long Live Iran

Several wounded in blast at government building in southwest Iran - USA Today

2006-05-08T12:01:00.000-07:00

-Shame on the IRI for pushing the people of Iran to such an extent that they have turned to bombing buildings and killing people in order to have their voices heard. Shame on this regime for turning our people to these desperate methods. The mullahs will soon find out that they can never repress speech. The more they opress the people of Iran, the more likely it is that this expression will find its way out in violent ways. Here is proof!
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TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Two bombs that exploded minutes apart Monday ripped through government offices in Kermanshah, a city with a large Kurdish population in southwestern Iran, the state news agency reported. Six people were wounded.

The blasts followed shelling by Iranian forces against Kurdish rebel positions inside Iraq last week and came shortly after Turkey's deployment of thousands of troops on Iraq's northern border to try to block Kurdish guerrillas from crossing over.

No one claimed responsibility for the afternoon blasts at the governor's office and the province's trade and commerce office in the city 280 miles southwest of Tehran and 90 miles east of the Iraqi border.

Kermanshah is normally quiet. But Kurdish rebels to the north have increasingly reactivated their drive to consolidate their autonomy gains inside Iraq after the ouster of Saddam Hussein. Their long-term goal is an independent homeland that includes heavily Kurdish regions in Iran and Turkey as well as Iraq.

Iranian and Turkish troops reportedly have penetrated into Iraqi Kurdish areas, and the Iranians shelled border positions inside Iraq twice last week, causing no casualties but uprooting residents. The Iranians launched a similar barrage April 21.

Rebels seeking self-rule in Kurdish areas of Iran have been operating from Iraqi territory, mounting attacks against Iranian army and Revolutionary Guard posts. Turkey meanwhile has been fighting a Kurdish insurgency that has killed thousands in the southeast of the country.

Last month, Turkey deployed more than 30,000 additional troops in its Kurdish southeast and along its border with Iraq and Iran to fight Kurdish guerrillas and stop them from crossing the frontier.

That came after Kurdish rebels reportedly killed two Turkish soldiers and wounded a third, raising the number of Turkish troops killed this year to at least 17. More than 40 Kurdish guerrillas also have been killed in clashes in the same period.

Iran also has a large Arab population along its southern border with Iraq and there have been a series of deadly bombings in the region's largest city, Ahvaz, which Tehran has blamed on the United States and Britain.

Those attacks, however, are most likely the work of Arab nationalists in the region that was semiautonomous after the collapse of the Ottoman empire at the end of World War I and before it was annexed by Iran.

Original Article

The Islamic Republic is Getting Desperate!!

2006-05-08T11:35:00.000-07:00

- Isn't this the same regime that refused to talk to anybody regarding anything with regard to Iran. In fact, they made it a point time and time again that they saw no reason to talk to the United States. Instead of begging for clemency in America, they should be begging the Iranian people for mercy! The reason why Aghmagh-nejaad wrote the letter is because they see no way out. The IRI is losing power day-by-day and this letter shows the deperation in the regime.

Le Monde has reported that Bush has refused any negotiations with the Regime. However, I don't know if it is with regard to the Aghmagh-nejaad letter. Good for you Mr. Bush. You now see what the Iranian people see. The Regime is trying desperately to buy time. It won't work; time is running out!
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Title: Iran sends letter to Bush, but tone remains unclear
Source: Reuters via Yahoo!

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran's president sent an unprecedented letter to President Bush on Monday, but it was unclear whether its contents offered any practical solution to a stand-off over Tehran's nuclear program.

Past Iranian public messages to the United States have been sharp rebukes, accusing Washington of bullying over Tehran's nuclear program and of imperialistic intervention in Iraq.

Government spokesman Gholamhossein Elham said the letter from President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad broached the nuclear dispute but declined to say whether it mentioned the possibility of direct talks with the United States.

"In this letter, he has given an analysis ... of new ways of getting out of the current delicate situation in the world," he told a weekly news conference.

Iran has been referred to the UN Security Council over fears it is building nuclear arms, a charge Iran denies. Washington says it would prefer a diplomatic solution to the crisis but that sanctions and military strikes are options.

Ahmadinejad's letter is the first publicly announced personal communication from an Iranian president to his U.S. counterpart since the 1979 Islamic revolution.

But its significance hinges on whether Iran changes chastising rhetoric which Washington habitually spurns.

Analysts thought there was little chance that Ahmadinejad would suggest that Iran could stop making nuclear fuel, the move which the United Nations has demanded and that Western diplomats see as the only way to defuse the atomic crisis.

On the contrary, they said Ahmadinejad was most likely to address the United States from a position of strength. After announcing that it had enriched uranium, Iran has increasingly styled itself as a regional heavyweight.

"It is a sort of announcement or approach from a position of power, that Iran is a global power to be reckoned with," Tehran-based political analyst Mahmoud Alinejad said.

FOLLOWING KHOMEINI

Ali Ansari, a specialist in Iran at Scotland's St Andrew's University, said the letter could be Ahmadinejad's attempt to follow in the footsteps of revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

"I suspect he may be trying to emulate Khomeini's letter to (Mikhail) Gorbachev. He gave him a lesson in international politics and told him if he carried on the Soviet Union would collapse... (Khomeini) told him to embrace Islam," he said.

The United States and Iran severed diplomatic ties in 1980, after radical students stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran and seized 52 Americans. They were held hostage for 444 days.

Iranian and U.S. officials met secretly many times in the 1980s, famously during the "Iran Contra" scandal when Washington sold Iran arms for help freeing U.S. hostages in Lebanon.

President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani made an open overture to the United States in 1995, offering U.S. firm Conoco a $1 billion natural gas deal. President Bill Clinton rebuffed him.

U.S. officials often cite Iran's implacable hostility toward Israel as a key obstacle to restoring ties.

More than any of his recent predecessors, Ahmadinejad has raised hackles in the United States, by asserting that Israel should be "wiped off the map." Bush told Germany's Bild am Sonntag newspaper such comments should be seen as a serious threat to Israel and other countries.

Israel lies within range of Iranian ballistic missiles.

Ahmadinejad also said the Holocaust, in which six million Jews were killed by the Nazis, was a myth.

U.S. and Iranian officials have said they are willing to hold talks focusing solely on co-operation to end the bloodshed in Iraq. But Ahmadinejad has said such talks are not needed.

(Additional reporting by Parinoosh Arami and Edmund Blair in Tehran, and Dominic Evans in London)

Original Article

I wonder how long it took them to rehearse...

2006-05-05T07:41:00.000-07:00

-In the clip below, the Islamic Republic put on a public event to commemorate the Regime's nuclear capabilities. Take a look at the little theatrical production that takes place while the commentator is talking. I don't know about you, but I thought it was quite amusing. Aside from the terrible artistic work, the Islamic Republic believes that it can convince the Iranian people their freedom and prosperity is a small price to pay for nuclear capabilities. At one point the commentator says to the viewers: "Are you not saying Allah Akbar?" - As if to mean that if you are not chanting blindly with the rest of us, then you are a traitor!

This is why the Islamic Republic will fall. It is so consumed and obsessed with its own ideology and rhetoric that it is completely clueless on the everyday problems of the Iranian people. Our nations is sliding backwards every day because of this corrupt, despotic, and murderous regime. Now we can add clueless to the description.

Video

UPDATE: Top Scholar Detained Without Charge

2006-05-05T07:15:00.000-07:00

-The Iranian Scholar who was detained in Iran was detained because he openly disagreed with Aghmagh-nejaad on whether the holocaust did in-fact happen. Can you believe it? The Islamic Republic is so brazen as to arrest a world renowned scholar because he expressed the obvious - It's not even a matter of opinion. The holocaust did happen and Jews, Serbs, Homosexuals, the Mentally Ill, etc… were all slaughtered by the Nazis. Here is more proof of the inhumanity of this regime.

Link To Article

Iran: Top Scholar Detained Without Charge - Reuters

2006-05-04T13:38:00.000-07:00

-Looks like the Islamic Republic is getting nervous. Once they start arresting intellectuals at random, you can assume that the government is scared of something. In fact, the Islamic republic has had a long history of detaining and even murdering its intellectuals. But then againm what do you expect from this government.
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One of Iran's most prominent scholars, Ramin Jahanbegloo, is being held in Tehran's notorious Evin prison, where he is at risk of being tortured, Human Rights Watch said today. Iranian authorities must immediately release Jahanbegloo, who is being held without charge after nearly a week in incommunicado detention.

A prominent philosopher who has written extensively on cultural and philosophical topics, Jahanbegloo is director of Contemporary Studies at the Cultural Research Bureau, a private institution in Tehran. His academic writings include more than 20 books in English, French and Persian. He has also written for newspapers and magazines in Iran and abroad.

"The arbitrary arrest of Ramin Jahanbegloo shows the perilous state of academic freedom and free speech in Iran today," said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. "This prominent scholar should be celebrated for his academic achievements, not interrogated in one of Iran's most infamous prisons."

The authorities detained Jahanbegloo at Tehran Airport on or around Thursday, April 27. Officials refused to acknowledge his detention until Wednesday, May 3, when Tehran's deputy prosecutor general, Mahmoud Salarkia, confirmed Jahanbegloo's detention in an interview with the Iranian Students News Agency.

Also on Wednesday, the Fars News Agency quoted the chief of prisons in Tehran Province, Sohrab Soleimani, as saying that Jahanbegloo is being held in Tehran's Evin prison. Neither official gave any reason for Jahanbegloo's arrest. An unnamed Judiciary official told the daily Etemad-e Melli that charges against Jahanbegloo "will be announced after the interrogations."

"Iran's Judiciary is notorious for coercing confessions by means of torture and ill-treatment," Stork said. "We hold the Iranian government entirely responsible for Jahanbegloo's well-being."

Original Article

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

2006-04-28T07:56:00.000-07:00

- 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

The Nuclear Bunker Buster - Union of Concerned Scientists

2006-04-26T14:39:00.000-07:00

- 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.

Nuclear Bunker-Buster Demontration

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

2006-04-26T10:59:00.000-07:00

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

It's Official, Ebadi is a Mullah!

2006-04-22T16:56:00.000-07:00

-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

The Last Mistake? - MPG

2006-04-21T10:33:00.000-07:00

- 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

The State Department’s Dead Parrot - FrontPage Magazine

2006-04-20T10:11:00.000-07:00

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

2006-04-20T08:48:00.000-07:00

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

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

2006-04-19T13:35:00.000-07:00

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

2006-04-19T07:56:00.000-07:00

- 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

US planned Iran invasion since 2003: analyst - Independent Online

2006-04-17T10:37:00.000-07:00

- 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

Tens injured in Esfahan's students' dorm - SMCCDI

2006-04-16T18:58:00.000-07:00

- 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

2006-04-16T06:08:00.000-07:00

- 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

Here Goes Aghmagh-nejaad Shooting His Mouth Off Again!

2006-04-15T13:00:00.000-07:00

- 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

Western Plans to Split Iran

2006-04-14T18:55:00.000-07:00

- 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!

2006-04-14T07:44:00.000-07:00

- 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

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

2006-04-12T14:35:00.000-07:00

- 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

Interview: Promoting Democracy In Iran Successfully - Radio Free Europe

2006-04-11T18:01:00.000-07:00

-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

2006-04-11T16:53:00.000-07:00

- 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

2006-04-11T09:42:00.000-07:00

- 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

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

2006-04-10T06:10:00.000-07:00

- 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

2006-04-10T05:51:00.000-07:00

- 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

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

2006-04-08T06:31:00.000-07:00

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):

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.
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.
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

The Greater Iran - We Will Unite You Again!

2006-04-06T12:56:00.000-07:00

(Click on Picture)

Nuclear Jihad - AEI Online

2006-04-06T11:45:00.000-07:00

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

You think Rafsanjani was aroused?

2006-04-04T08:45:00.000-07:00

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)

Appology for my Absence

2006-04-03T11:07:00.000-07:00

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

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

2006-04-02T06:36:00.000-07:00

- 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

Iranian Militiamen Were Brought in by Britain - The Times

2006-04-01T05:46:00.000-08:00

Militiamen from an Iranian-backed force were deliberately recruited by Britain to join the new Iraqi security services after Saddam Hussein was overthrown, the Government has admitted.

The sectarian Badr organisation, trained in exile by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, is suspected of violently pursuing its own agenda after being allowed to enlist in national units. John Reid, the Defence Secretary, disclosed in a Commons written answer to the Plaid Cymru MP Adam Price that it had been official policy to welcome the Shia gunmen. “Following the end of the conflict in Iraq, the Coalition Provision Authority sought to reintegrate militia members into civil society,” Mr Reid said. “This process included members of the Badr organisation, formerly known as the Badr Corps, among others.”

Sunnis have accused the Badr organisation of torturing prisoners, a claim rejected by the Shia-dominated Government. Bayar Jabor, the Interior Minister, was a member of the militia. The organisation’s stronghold is southern Iraq, where British troops have been based since the war.

Original Artilce

US Encouraged by Tehran's Enemy Within - The Guardian

2006-04-01T05:40:00.000-08:00

Increased repression and unrest affecting Iran's numerous ethnic and religious minorities are providing new opportunities for the US as it steps up efforts to destabilise and if possible bring down the hardline Islamic government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Kurdish sources say persecution of Iran's estimated six million Kurds, who mostly live in western provinces bordering Turkey and Iraq, has intensified since Mr Ahmadinejad came to power. Weeks of turmoil followed his election last July - and is continuing. Ten Iranian Revolutionary Guards were killed in the latest clashes this week in Salmas and Kelares, according to Iranian and Kurdish reports.

Although groups such as the Kurdistan People's Democratic party have renounced violence, the Kurdistan Free Life party, affiliated to the Turkish separatist PKK, has carried on the fight. More than 120 members of the security forces are said to have died in the past year.

"The Kurdish population has long been viewed with suspicion by the Iranian authorities and has experienced decades of official neglect," Amnesty International reported in February.

"The months since Ahmadinejad came to power have seen no improvement. On the contrary, there have been signs ... of a further harshening of repression.

"Despite constitutional guarantees of equality, individuals belonging to minorities, believed to number about half Iran's population, are subject to an array of discriminatory laws and practices, including restrictions on social, cultural, linguistic and religious freedoms which often result in human rights violations."

Ibrahim Dogus of Halkevi, a Kurdish and Turkish community organisation, said Kurdish leaders wanted international support to end human rights abuses. But any regime change in Tehran should "come from the bottom" rather than be imposed from outside, he said.

Ethnically Arab Khuzestan province, in south-west Iran, has witnessed several recent bomb attacks, including a rumoured attempt to assassinate Mr Ahmadinejad in Ahvaz in January. The attacks have been attributed to separatists. But Iranian officials blame Britain, whose troops occupy adjacent areas of south-east Iraq, and its US ally for instigating the violence.

Coincidentally or not, "British intelligence" was also officially accused of colluding with "bandits" in Sistan-Baluchestan this month after 21 government officials were shot dead. Like separatists in Khuzestan, the south-eastern province's large ethnic Baluchi Sunni population has long protested about discrimination by the Persian Shia majority.

Iran's leaders also face stirrings of discontent in the north-east, home to two to three million ethnic Turkmen. According to Muhammad Tahir of the Institute for War and Peace Reporting, Turkmen say the Persian language, dress codes and customs are being forced on them. "Sunni Muslims in a theocratic Shia state, they feel disadvantaged for both ethnic and religious reasons."

Government fears about the "enemy within" may have been reflected in a recent move to further pressure Iran's Baha'i community, which is not allowed to practice its faith and has often been subject to persecution at times of national strain. The UN condemned the move as "impermissible and unacceptable interference with the rights of religious minorities". A renewed crackdown on student groups has also been launched.

External pressure from non-Persian and mostly non-Shia minorities is being applied via the exiled Congress of Iranian Nationalities, which issued a manifesto in London last year. The congress demanded a federal Iran, separation of religion and state, and an end to all forms of discrimination.

President George Bush's national security strategy, published this month, again urged Iranians to rise up against their "oppressors". But whether the US can or should try to exploit Iran's ethnic and religious fault-lines is a matter of debate in Washington. Officialdom is split between those who fear triggering an uncontrollable, Iraq-style disintegration; and those, notably in the Pentagon, who think they see a way of dishing the mullahs where snail-paced UN diplomacy and high-risk military threats have so far failed.

Iranian officials say western attempts to divide the Iranian nation, forged in revolution and a bloody war with Saddam Hussein, are bound to fail. They are especially scornful of regional Arab and Iranian diaspora hopes of encouraging change from without. But nerves are jangling all the same.

Today will see the beginning of Noble Prophet, a large-scale Iranian military exercise along the length of the Gulf, the area where any future military attacks might be expected.

Rear-Admiral Morteza Saffari said the wargames would start with the firing of a Shahab-2 medium-range missile. The launch of this formidable weapon, he told an Iranian news agency, was intended as "a message of peace and friendship" to all Iran's neighbours. The admiral's grimly ambiguous greeting conveyed a blunter warning: Keep Out.

Original Article

Iran Is at War with Us, Someone Should Tell the U.S. Government - Michael Ledeen

2006-03-28T08:55:00.000-08:00

Source: National Review Online

Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, is dying of cancer. But he is convinced that his legacy will be glorious. He believes that thousands of his Revolutionary Guards intelligence officers effectively control southern Iraq, and that the rest of the country is at his mercy, since we present no challenge to them — even along the Iraq/Iran border, where they operate with impunity. They calmly plan their next major assault without having to worry about American retribution.

The mullahs have thousands of intelligence officers all over Iraq, as well as a hard core of Hezbollah terrorists — including the infamous Imadh Mughniyah, arguably the region’s most dangerous killer — and they control the major actors, from Zarqawi to Sadr to the Badr Brigades.

Khamenei and his top cronies believe they have effectively won. They think the U.S. is politically paralyzed, thanks to the relentless attacks of President Bush’s opponents and the five-year long internal debate about Iran policy, and thus there is no chance of an armed attack, even one limited to nuclear sites. They think Israel is similarly paralyzed by Sharon’s sudden departure and the triumph of their surrogate force, Hamas, in the Palestinian elections. They despise the Europeans, and hardly even bother to pretend to negotiate with them any more. They believe they have a strong strategic alliance with the Russians and they think they have the Chinese over a barrel, since the Chinese are so heavily dependent on Iranian oil. Recent statements from Beijing and Moscow regarding the chance of U.N. sanctions will have reinforced the Supreme Leader’s convictions.

Hapless in the Beltway
Above all, Khamenei believes he has broken the American will, for which he sees two pieces of evidence. The first is that there seems to be very little American resolve to do anything about punishing Iran for the enormous traffic of weapons, poisons, and terrorists into Iraq from Iran. Khamenei must inclined to believe that the Bush administration has no stomach for confrontation.

We have done nothing to make the mullahs’ lives more difficult, even though there is abundant evidence for Iranian involvement in Iraq, most including their relentless efforts to kill American soldiers. The evidence consists of first-hand information, not intelligence reports. Scores of Iranian intelligence officers have been arrested, and some have confessed. Documentary evidence of intimate Iranian involvement with Iraqi terrorists has been found all over Iraq, notably in Fallujah and Hilla. But the "intelligence" folks at the Pentagon, led by the hapless Secretary Stephen Cambone, seem to have no curiosity, as if they were afraid of following the facts to their logical conclusion: Iran is at war with us.

In early March, to take one recent example, several vehicles crossed from Iranian Kurdistan into Iraqi Kurdistan. The Iraqis stopped them. There was a firefight. The leader of the intruding group was captured and is now in prison, held by one of the Kurdish factions. The Kurds say that the vehicles contained poison gas, which they have in their possession. They say they informed the Turks, who said they did not want to know anything about it (the Turks don’t want anything to do with the Kurds, period, and they shrink from confrontation with the mullahs).

The Kurds holding this man say that he confessed to working for the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. Apparently they have his confession. They say they are willing to make him available to U.S. military personnel. But the Pentagon, which has all this information, has not pursued the matter. This is just one of many cases in which the Iranians believe they see the Americans running away from confrontation.

The second encouraging sign for Khamenei is the barely concealed delight in Washington, including Secretary Rice’s recent statement at a press conference, that we will soon be negotiating with Iran about Iraq. This mission has been entrusted to Ambassador Khalilzad, who previously worked with the Iranians when he represented us in Kabul. It is a bad decision, and it is very hard to explain. The best one can say is that Khalilzad speaks Farsi, so he will know what they are saying, and it is probably better to have public dealings than the secret contacts this administration has been conducting all along. But those small bright spots do not compensate for the terrible costs the very announcement of negotiations produces for us, for the Iranian people, and for the region as a whole.

Talk Does Not Thwart
Iran has been at war with us for 27 years, and we have discussed every imaginable subject with them. We have gained nothing, because there is nothing to be gained by talking with an enemy who thinks he is winning. From Khamenei’s standpoint, the only thing to be negotiated is the terms of the American surrender, and he is certainly not the only Middle Eastern leader to take this view; most of the leaders in the region dread the power of the mullahs — now on the doorstep of nuclear military weapons — and they see the same picture as Khamenei: America does nothing to thwart Iran, and is now publicly willing to talk. In like manner, many Iranians will conclude that Bush is going to make a deal with Khamenei instead of giving them the support they want and need to challenge the regime.

If this administration were true to its announced principles, we would be actively supporting democratic revolution in Iran, but we do not seem to be serious about doing that. Yes, Secretary Rice went to Congress to ask for an extra $75 million to "support democracy" in Iran, but the small print shows that the first $50 million will go to the toothless tigers at the Voice of America and other official American broadcasters, which is to say to State Department employees. The Foreign Service does not often drive revolutionary movements; its business is negotiating with foreign governments, not subverting them. There were whispers that we were supporting trade unions in Iran, which would be very good news, but such efforts should be handled by private-sector organizations, not by the American government per se.

Yet this seems a particularly good moment to rally to the side of the Iranian people, who are known to loathe the regime of Ayatollah Khamenei, and who are showing their will to resist in very dramatic fashion. About ten days ago, seventy-eight regime officials were killed or captured in Baluchistan when a convoy (including the chief of the region’s Revolutionary Guards Corps and the regional governor) was attacked. Some of the captives have been shown on al-Jazeera, pleading for cooperation from the regime, and supporting their captors’ demands that five Baluchi prisoners be freed. The regime has responded by accusing the United States and Britain of masterminding the operation, which is the second such strike in the past six months. In addition to calling for the release of Baluchi prisoners, the insurgents are calling for the toleration of Baluchi Sunnis, the appointment of locals (instead of Persian Shiites) to govern the region, and the use of local radio and television.

Caring about Carnage
The situation in Kurdistan is likewise extremely tense. The city of Mahabad is now surrounded by the regime’s military and paramilitary forces, following the eruption of anti-regime demonstrations on the occasion of Persian New Year’s celebrations on March 20. It is impossible to get precise figures — Western journalists don’t seem to be able to cover such events — but dozens of Kurds were arrested and many more were beaten up in the streets.

Worst of all is the ongoing campaign of ethnic cleansing directed against the Ahwaz Arabs in Khuzestan, where up to three divisions of the army, the Revolutionary Guards, and the infamous thugs of the Basij have been deployed, following the sabotage of a major oil pipeline by anti-regime dissidents. Radio Farda, our official Farsi-language station, quoted a local journalist, Mr. Mojtaba Gehestani, who says that 28,000 Ahwazi Arabs have been jailed in the past ten months, hundreds have been summarily executed, and many corpses have been fished out of the Karoon River, with telltale marks of torture.

Nonetheless, the regime’s interior minister recently announced that there is no "ethnic problem or issue" in Iran today. But he has quite clearly failed to convince President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that all is well. The president cancelled trips to the region four times in the past few months.

He and his cronies have a lot to worry about, because the Iranian people, in the face of a vicious wave of repression that recalls the worst moments of this dreadful regime, are showing themselves prepared to stand against it, and to move to remove it. Lacking a full picture, we should base our judgment at least in part on the behavior of the mullahs, and their dispatch of so many armed forces to three different regions suggests they are profoundly worried. This is not a good time to throw the mullahs a diplomatic lifeline. We should instead show them and their democratic enemies that the tide of history is running against them.

It’s time to take action against Iran and its half-brother Syria, for the carnage they have unleashed against us and the Iraqis. We know in detail the location of terrorist training camps run by the Iranian and Syrian terror masters; we should strike at them, and at the bases run by Hezbollah and the Revolutionary Guards as staging points for terrorist sorties into Iraq. No doubt the Iraqi armed forces would be delighted to participate, instead of constantly playing defense in their own half of the battlefield. And there are potent democratic forces among the Syrian people as well, as worthy of our support as the Iranians.

Once the mullahs and their terrorist allies see that we have understood the nature of this war, that we are determined to promote regime change in Tehran and Damascus, and will not give them a pass on their murderous activities in Iraq, then it might make sense to talk to Khamenei’s representatives. We could even expand the agenda from Iraqi matters to the real issue: we could negotiate their departure, and then turn to the organization of national referenda on the form of free governments, and elections to empower the former victims of a murderous and fanatical tyranny that has deluded itself into believing that it is invincible.

Original Article

Aghmagh-Nejaad does it again!

2006-03-27T08:09:00.000-08:00

- It's official ladies and gentlemen! Ahmadinejad is really dumber than he looks. If this regime really believes that the people of Iran will do whatever the Regime says they are on a collision course with Karma. Last time I checked this wasn't 1979 and the people of Iran have tasted bits and pieces of freedom for approximately 10 years. If the ahmadinejaad thinks that he can "purge" Iranian society of good people and replace them with his hooligans he has another thing comming. The Iranian people need to stand up and say "enough is enough."

No government has the right to tell its people what to think, say, or do. No government should instill fear in the lives of its citizens. It is the other way around! The regime must always fear its people. It is time for the Iranian people to show this regime and the others that will come after it that it is not the place of government to tell the people what is right. To the contrary, it is the people that will decide that. The government is there only to serve. If it can't do that then it must leave. This regime has shown 100% that it is not able to govern effectively or efficiently. It has stolen billions from the pockets of the Iranian people and when it has sought to implement infrastructure projects in Iran they have been notoriously inefficient and costly.

Just look at the nuclear plant. How many times has it been delayed?

Down with the Islamic Regime!

Read the Article Below. There is also a link to another article that I thought very interesting

__________________________________________________
Title: Iranian Hawk Swoops on Universities to Crush Dissent
Source: The Guardian

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is cracking down on Iran's universities in an effort to crush a student pro-democracy movement and strengthen the hardliners' grip on power. Leading student activists have been jailed or expelled from their studies, and lecturers have been sacked, while the government has proposed subjecting academics to strict religious testing.

The authorities have also begun a programme of burying the bodies of unknown soldiers on campus grounds in what student leaders say is a thinly disguised attempt to bring religious extremists into the universities on the pretext of holding "martyrs' ceremonies". Students fear that such a presence will be used to violently suppress their activities.

In one recent incident students at Tehran's Sharif University were attacked by plain-clothed Basij (religious volunteers) during an unsuccessful attempt to prevent the burial of three soldiers from the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war inside the campus mosque. The incident was overseen by Mehrdad Bazrpash, a close aide to Mr Ahmadinejad and a former Basij leader.

The event took place against a backdrop of speeches by Mr Ahmadinejad, a former university lecturer, stressing the need for "martyrdom" in Iran's confrontation with the west over its nuclear programme.

Student leaders say the developments amount to a takeover of the universities by Mr Ahmadinejad's ultra-conservative forces. The campuses were hotbeds of pro-democratic protest during the presidency of the former, reformist leader, Mohammad Khatami. "They want to gain hegemonic control over the universities, which have always been important in influencing the social and political atmosphere and which normally support pro-democracy rather than authoritarian forces," said Abdollah Momeni, an activist appealing against a five-year sentence imposed for leading a student protest.

"Through burying martyrs on campus they open the doors for the entry of armed militias and thus add the universities to their fiefdoms."

Other activists have had their studies terminated after the intervention of Iran's intelligence services. Students also say they have been denied permission for low-level political activities that were allowed during Mr Khatami's presidency.

The purge has extended to academics and university administrators. One political science lecturer was dismissed for belonging to a human rights group.

The chancellor of Tehran's Science and Industry University resigned in protest at government interference. Mr Ahmadinejad has also been accused of overturning an established practice of appointing chancellors and faculty heads from academic staff in favour of trusted cronies. A radical cleric was recently appointed to head Tehran University.

Original Article

Here is another article to show how disgraceful this regime is.

Ottawa deports Iran-native despite torture fears - CTV

2006-03-27T06:37:00.000-08:00

A former Saint John resident who was convicted nine years ago in the vicious beating of his then-girlfriend has been deported to Iran despite his claims he would be tortured or killed if sent back.

Mostafa Dadar, 55, was deported Sunday, two days after a Federal Court judge refused to stop his removal.

He was expected to arrive in Frankfurt before boarding a plane to Iran on Monday.

Dadar was convicted in 1997 of beating 41-year-old Lynn Landry.

Landry had been living with Dadar for about two weeks before the May, 1996, beating.

She was found naked and unconscious, suffered brain damage and spent weeks clinging to life in hospital.

He has maintained his innocence, but unsuccessfully appealed his conviction to the New Brunswick Court of Appeal. The Supreme Court of Canada refused to hear his appeal.

Dadar's lawyer Richard Albert Richard Albert criticized Ottawa for not stepping in to prevent his deportation.

"This is the first time that Canada has chosen to defy a decision of the UN Committee Against Torture," Albert told the New Brunswick Telegraph-Journal.

In November 2005, the UN committee concluded there were substantial grounds to believe Dadar "may risk being subjected to torture if returned to Iran."

Last week, Albert attempted to bring information to the deportation review to argue evidence used in the aggravated assault case was tampered with.

Ken Fitch, a private investigator and former RCMP officer, said in a sworn affidavit that photographs and videotapes taken by local police showed additional pieces of evidence at the crime scene the second time officers visited.

But Justice Carolyn Layden-Stevenson said Friday she could not accept the affidavit because she was only authorized to review the deportation order.

Dadar was a pilot with the Imperial Iranian Air Force during the reign of the Shah of Iran and actively participated in a failed coup d'etat against the successor regime in 1982.

He said he was imprisoned and tortured before escaping to Pakistan in 1987. The United Nations High Commission for Refugees granted him status as a convention refugee and referred him to Canada.

Canada granted Dadar and his now estranged wife were granted status as permanent residents in 1988. They settled in Saint John, where they had two children.

Original Article

Here comes England pushing the world towards war - What else is new?

2006-03-22T07:50:00.000-08:00

Title: Britain Pushes for Military Option to Restrain Tehran
Source: The Times

Britain is pressing for a United Nations resolution that would open the way for punitive sanctions and even the use of force if Iran were to refuse to halt its controversial nuclear programme.

In a confidential letter obtained by The Times, a leading British diplomat outlines a strategy for winning Russian and Chinese support by early summer for a so-called Chapter VII resolution demanding that Iran cease its nuclear activities.

If the Government in Tehran refused to comply with such a resolution, the UN Security Council would be legally compelled to enforce it.

The strategy marks a significant hardening of the Government’s position. It contrasts with public statements by Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, this month. On March 13 he insisted that military action was “inconceivable” and that the dispute with Iran “has to be resolved by peaceful democratic means”.

The confidential letter was written only three days later by John Sawers, the political director at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and sent to his American, French and German counterparts.

“They (the Iranians) will need to know that more serious measures are likely,” wrote Mr Sawers, in a letter first leaked to the Associated Press. “This means putting the Iran dossier on to a Chapter VII basis.”

He suggested making a suspension of all uranium enrichment by Iran “a mandatory requirement of the Security Council, in a resolution we would aim to adopt, I say, early May”.

Mark Fitzpatrick, an expert on nuclear proliferation at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said that securing a Chapter VII resolution would provide the international community with a “stick” it could use against Iran. “It would be an important breakthrough,” he said. “It would open the door to sanctions and other measures.”

Before wielding any stick, however, Mr Sawers proposed that the international community give Iran a final chance in the form of a “revised offer” of incentives as a face-saving solution to allow it to back down peacefully.

The two-track diplomacy was devised by the British in an attempt to reach a compromise between the five permanent members of the UN Security Council: America, China, Britain, France and Russia.

The US favours moving straight to a tough resolution that would punish Iran if it failed to halt its nuclear programme. Russia and China, which both have important commercial ties with Iran, favour a slower, less confrontational approach handled by the International Atomic Energy Agency, the nuclear watchdog.

“We are not going to bring the Russians and Chinese to accept significant sanctions over the coming months, certainly not without further efforts to bring the Iranians around,” Mr Sawers wrote.

“In parallel with agreeing a new proposal, we will also want to bind Russia and China into agreeing to further measures that will be taken by the Security Council should the Iranians fail to engage positively,” he wrote.

But the British initiative has so far failed to bring the parties together. On Monday Mr Sawers hosted talks at the UN between the five permanent members and Germany which broke up without agreement.

The US refused to take steps that would reward Iran or ease pressure on the regime. Russia, which has billions of pounds in contracts to supply Iran with civilian nuclear technology and sophisticated arms, and China, which has multibillion-pound deals to import Iranian oil and gas, rejected any move that could lead to punitive action. Yesterday follow-up talks at the UN were postponed.

Mr Sawers anticipated the hurdles in his letter. “I suspect we will need a meeting at ministerial level anyway to get agreement to this sort of approach, including an early Chapter VII resolution,” he wrote.

Nevertheless the international community will have to reach agreement if it hopes to halt Iran’s uranium enrichment work, which it resumed in February at Natanz.

Original Article

MPG Distributes Second Volume of Underground Paper!

2006-03-20T15:16:00.000-08:00

MPG has successfully continued its distribution of an underground paper inside Iran. Such independant news papers are illegal in Iran as all media must be filtered through the Islamic Republic's censors. With the successful distribution of these papers we hope to bring our beloved country of Iran one more step towards freedom. I have tried to post images of the paper on my blog all day, but the site is giving me a hard time. You can access the images by going to the Marze Por Gohar website.

Images of the first publication may be accessed here.

Marg Bar Jumhurieh Eslami!
Long Live Iran

Interview: Israeli President Discusses Iran Nuclear Standoff - Radio Free Europe

2006-03-20T15:07:00.000-08:00

On March 18-19, Radio Farda broadcast an exclusive two-part interview with Israeli President Moshe Katzav by journalist Farnoush Ram. In the interview, Katzav states that the international community will not allow Iran to acquire nuclear weapons and urges the Iranian government to adopt a course of negotiation and integration with the global community. "If Iran does not change its policies in the near future, it won't be able to integrate into the international community and will become even more isolated than it is now, which likely will have a negative impact on the Iranian people," Katzav said.

Question: In several interviews you gave in the last year, you emphasized that Iran is on the brink of a catastrophe and that the Iranian people may find themselves in a disastrous situation. What exactly did you mean?

Moshe Katsav: The internal conditions in Iran are worsening in all aspects. Poverty and unemployment are becoming more severe, despite the fact that Iran has turned into a developed and industrialized country. There are severe limitations on civil rights, limitations from which citizens of all layers of the society suffer.

In the international arena, Iran is turning into an isolated country, and the international community is becoming more hostile toward it. The international community is unwilling to accept the policies of the Iranian regime, which gives financial support to terrorist organizations all over the world, denies the Holocaust, and calls for the wiping the state of Israel from the map, while developing long-range missiles and trying to obtain nuclear weapon. These aggressive and irresponsible steps endanger the peace and stability of the world, and the international community feels the need to protect itself from Iran.

Consequently, I believe that if Iran does not change its policies in the near future, it won't be able to integrate into the international community and will become even more isolated than it is now, which likely will have a negative impact on the Iranian people.

Question: The state of Israel and you, Mr. President, have campaigned strongly to deal with Iran's nuclear intentions in the UN's Security Council. Now that this objective has been achieved, what lies ahead for Iran in your opinion?

Katsav: In the last year Iran misjudged the willingness of Europe and the international community to reach understandings with it, taking it as a manifestation of weakness and indecision. The fact that the Security Council decided to deal with Iran's nuclear intentions is essentially a message to Iran from the international community that it will not be willing to tolerate an Iran with a nuclear capability and an Iran that collaborates with terrorist organizations. In the past there were various suggestions in the framework of financial and other agreements to benefit with Iran. But Iran interpreted those suggestions in a mistaken way and deceived the international community on several occasions. Apparently Iran thinks that it can continue to deceive the world in order to reach its goals.

However, it has to understand that the standards of the international community manifest firmness and that in that regard there will be no concessions or willingness to compromise. Iran has no need for long-range missiles or to collaborate with terrorist organizations all over the world. Iran stands behind a substantial number of terrorist actions against us, together with Hizballah and the Islamic Jihad. It pretends to care for the Palestinians more than the Palestinians' own leaders and acts against the interests of [Palestinian Authority President] Mahmud Abbas, who was elected in democratic elections to be the leader of the Palestinians.

Question: How do you view the recent visit of Khalid Mish'al to Iran?

Katsav: It once again demonstrates how fundamentalist governments and organizations endanger stability in the world. The Hamas organization is unwilling to honor the obligations that the Palestinian Authority has signed. The bond of Khalid Mish'al with the Syrian regime, with Hizballah, and with Iran raises real concerns not only here in Israel, but also in Europe and in the UN.

The international community and Israel have the same opinion regarding the Hamas government. We don't say we are going to boycott it forever. What we say is that the Hamas government must abide by the obligations the Palestinian Authority has signed, and it must stop all terrorist activity against Israel and accept its right to exist. This is the opinion not only of Israel, but of the whole international community. The collaboration of Khalid Mish'al with the Iranian fundamentalist regime is very dangerous, and the world is very concerned about that.

Question: If eventually Israel attacks Iran's nuclear facilities, what will happen in the Middle East?

Katsav: I don't think that Iran with a nuclear capability will be just the problem of the state of Israel. It is true that [Iranian President Mahmud] Ahmadinejad calls for the destruction of Israel and if he had nuclear weapons, it would put us in an inconvenient situation, but this is a matter that concerns the whole world. When a totalitarian regime that has contacts with terrorist organizations tries to obtain nuclear weapons, it is a matter of concern not only to Israel. The international community is united in its refusal to allow Iran to have a nuclear capability. Even Russia and China, which were considered more moderate in regard to their dealings with Iran, strongly oppose a nuclear Iran. It is one of those rare occasions when the world is united against Iran, since the Iranian regime isolated its country. Iran needs to read the writing on the wall, and instead of acting against the international community, it should try to integrate with it.

Question: You are citizen No. 1 in Israel, but you were born in Iran, in the city of Yazd. What are your memories from Iran and what do you feel toward the Iranian people and culture? What reminds you of Iran?

Katsav: I am proud to be the president of the state of Israel. Thanks to the democratic values that exist in Israel, I was able to reach the high position of president of the state of Israel. At the same time, I have strong sentiments toward Iran, since I distinguish between the Iranian regime and the Iranian people. I highly esteem Iranian music and culture and hope for the day when I will be able to visit Iran, since I believe that Iran is one of the most beautiful countries in the world. Persian social manners are well known, and there is no other society that can compete with them. Unfortunately, the Iranian regime sets a high wall around Iran so the world cannot see its beauties. Naturally, I would like to visit the city of Yazd -- my homeland -- where my eldest brother and my grandfather are buried. Our family has lived in Iran for 2,500 years, and Iranian Jewry has the long history in that land.

Question: Are your words in this interview directed solely to the Iranian people, or do you have also a message to the Iranian regime?

Katsav: The Iranian regime doesn't express the wishes and values of the Iranian people. I am sure the majority of Iranians want a peace agreement with Israel and want Iran to integrate with the international community and accept its universal values. It would be wise of the Iranian regime to change its policies toward the world. I have no doubt that eventually universal values and fraternity among nations will defeat Ahmadinejad's fanatical and dangerous regime.

Orginal Article

Iranian New Year Starts! - SMCCDI

2006-03-20T14:35:00.000-08:00

The Iranian New Year started at 09:55':35" PM (Iran's local time) on Monday March 20, 2006 (the official 30th Esfand 1384). This precise timing is based on the start of Spring and to one full cycle made by the Earth around the Sun.

Peoples of Iranian descent call such a yearly moment of celebration as Nowrooz (meaning New Day). This event is a sign of the resilience of tradition amongst all people of Iranian descent, such as, Afghans, Azaris, Balootchs, Kurds, Persians and Tajiks who are deeply attached to their ancient roots.

The roots of Nowrooz date back to long ago. Historians trace it to pre-Islamic Iran. Some connect it to Jamshid Shah Jam, one of the epic kings of Persia (Iran). The engravings of Persepolis show, according to some historians, signs that the Achemenid dynasty celebrated Nowrooz more than two thousand and five hundred years ago.

Nowrooz is a relic of ancient times. A memory of old tales and epics, a celebration of rebirth and rejuvenation. Spring has arrived and the previous year with all its events, good or bad, has passed. Renewed hope anticipates new achievements. This event signifies the celebration of nature through culture. It heralds re-birth and announces the coming of the new. The dark has passed and the light of hope shines in people's hearts.

The current practice of Nowrooz, is an amalgam of many centuries of cultural influence. The Haft-seen (made up of seven symbols of life and the interaction of human beings with nature), visiting elders, giving gifts, special foods, house cleaning, wearing of new clothes, forgetting old grudges and embracing new things all make up different aspects of Nowrooz.

There is no doubt that this ancient way of celebrating the new year in Iran and its former territories have endured and adapted through many centuries of history-- surviving the Arab invasions and the forced conversion of all Iranians to Islam. Nowrooz-Nameh, which many attribute to the poet, Omar Khayyam, adapted this event to the solar calendar and preserved it for future generations.

The official year 1385 is based on a Muslim event rather than a genuine Iranian basis. But an increasing number of Iranians are seeking a calendar based on Iran's long history and rich culture rather than the travel of Islam's Prophet from one Arabic peninsula's city to another which happened fourteen centuries ago. They do believe in the Iranian New Year 2565 which is the year of foundation of Iran by Cyrus the Great.

Even many of the dogmatic Islamist clerics who tried, upon the victory of their revolution, to ban such important cultural heritage and deep popular believe, have had to accept defeat. They're more and more endorsing Nowrooz while trying desperately to build baseless analogies with Islamist texts.

Most Iranian political prisoners celebrated the start of the New Year by setting the traditional "Haft-Sin". They wrote slogans against the regime and its leadership on the traditional colored egs and wished for an end to the misery of the Iranian Nation. Their families' members will gather, on Tuesday morning, in front of the Evin Political jail's doors.

Original Article

Norouz and Its Symbolism - Iran va Jahan

2006-03-20T10:24:00.000-08:00

Today, earth enters into the vernal equinox and thus spring begins. Iranians all over the world, irrespective of their religious creed or ethnicity, celebrate Norouz which literally means the dawn of a new day. Norouz, considered the most important celebration of the year, is the greatest symbol of a cultural identity which has outlived all adversities and adversaries.

The Norouz Table: Haft Seen

Every house gets a thorough cleaning before the arrival of Norouz and wheat, barley or lentils are grown so that the sprouts are three to four inches in height by Norouz.

A table is laid. It has a copy of a sacred book (either religious or poetry like Divan-e Hafez or Shahnameh of Ferdowsi), a mirror (reflecting our past and showing us our present so that we can thoughtfully plan our future), candles (symbolizing enlightenment, warmth, and energy to lead a righteous life that would, in turn, radiate light, give warmth, and provide energy for others), a Seville orange floating in a bowl of water represents the earth floating in space, a brazier for burning wild rue ,a sacred herb whose smoldering fumes ward off sickness and evil spirits, a flask of rose water known for its magical cleansing power, bowl of water with live gold fish (symbolizing a happy life, full of activity and movement), the plates and vessels with green sprouts, flowers, fruits, coins, bread, sugar cone, various grains, colourfully painted boiled eggs (symbolizing productivity) and above all, seven items beginning in Persian with the letter "S" (seen). The number of the items however can be higher. These are:

Serkeh (vinegar), symbolizing age and patience;
Somagh (sumac), its red colour represent the color of sunrise; with the appearance of the sun, Light replaces Darkness and Good conquers Evil;
Seer (garlic), symbolizing pacification and peace;
Samanu a sweetish paste, symbolizing sophistication. Samanu is made when common wheat sprouts are transformed and given new life as a sweet, creamy pudding and represents the ultimate sophistication of Persian cooking;
Sib (Apple), symbolizing the healthy and beautiful fruits of our world, both literally and allegorically;
Senjed (the dry fruit of the lotus tree), which represents love. It has been said that when lotus tree is in full bloom, its fragrance and its fruit emanates love;
Sabzi (sprouts), symbolizing new growth;
Sekkeh( coins), symbolizing prosperity;
Sonbol (hyacinth), symbolize natural beauty and aroma.
The whole table which energizes and involves all our senses symbolizes all that is Good: light, reflection, warmth, life, love, joy, production, prosperity, and nature.
The Sabzeh (sprouts) are kept until Sizdeh-beh-dar, the 13th day of the New Year when families picnic out in the nature. It is on that day that Sabzeh should be thrown in running water, so that lethargy, lassitude and wariness are washed away.

Original Article

Saleh-no Omad!

2006-03-20T04:58:00.000-08:00

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

I wish everyone a happy and prosperous year-to-come.

Hopefully we will all be celebrating in Iran next year.

What does Ganji's release mean? - Not Much

2006-03-18T08:09:00.000-08:00

Unlike other countries around the world, Iranians have historically looked to, and allowed themselves to be lead by, one person in the political realm. This reliance on high-profile people who can bring "quick fixes" has generally had terrible results. With the exception of Dr. Mohammad Mossadegh, the Iranian people's reliance on the "one-person fix" has brought the likes of Khomeini and even to some extent the deposed Shah Reza Pahlavi. My conversation with a compatriot a few days ago characterizes this. As we were chatting over the phone, our conversation turned to the attitudes of Iranians towards politics and their unfortunate habits of being followers rather then leaders. Specifically, our conversation turned to Dr. Mossadegh and how the people had been in the streets chanting "Ya Mossadegh" in unison one day and then chanting Shah Reza Pahlavi's name the very next day that he gained power.

This unfortunate attribute has not dimished. The two-year term of Khatami that slowed the regime's fall from power was brought about because the people of Iran were overwhelmingly duped into believing that Khatami, a person who believed in the overall appropriateness of an Islamic Republic in Iran, would be able to "reform" it into something else. Khatami's term in office also brought the likes of Ms. Shirin Ebadi whose high-profile Nobel Prize award lead Iranians, once again, to flock to someone - anyone - who could bring the quick fix. As all of you know, the reliance on Khatami and Ebadi didn't go exactly as planned. Khatami proved that he was simply a good actor and Ebadi showed her ability to denounce human rights abuses on the one hand and support the Islamic Republic in Iran on the other.

With the recent release of Ganji from prison, the question that is undeniably being asked by many Iranians is "what happens now?" There are those of us who are once again going to flock to Mr. Ganji in the hopes that he will be able to say a couple magic words that will have the people all over Iran rise up and burn the Mullahs to dust. Then there are those of us who know better. There is no doubt that Mr. Ganji has suffered in Jail. However, there are thousands of people who have suffered and continue to suffer at the hands of the Islamic Republic. Arguably, the jail term of Mr. Ganji has done more harm then good to the dissident movement in Iran because his story has been used to overshadow serious abuses of other jailed dissidents being held in Evin Prison.

There is no doubt that Mr. Ganji was once a great supporter of the same people who jailed him. There is also no doubt that he has suffered at the hands of those same people that he once supported. The question that the people of Iran need to ask themselves is whether this man - just one man - can give the Iranians what they want. Although Mr. Ganji has become very popular in his harsh citicisms of the Regime, I have not heard Mr. Ganji reject the Islamic Republic in Iran as a proper form of government. Thus, is Mr. Ganji like Khatami who believes in the overall goodness of an Islamic system, or is he like the other jailed dissidents who are working for regime change? Is Mr. Ganji willing to place his life on the line and probably die in order to effect regime change? These questions need to be asked and answered by him. The question is not whether he suffered in jail or whether he believes that the actions taken by the regime are right and just. What needs to be asked and subsequently answered by Mr. Ganji is: DO YOU SUPPORT THE REGIME?

What Iranians need to learn is that there can never be one person who will bring about the changes people are looking for. Iran is a country of nearly seventy-million people and there are probably seventy-million different ideas on how the country should be run and what it should look like. Iranians need to stop putting all their eggs in one basket and start becomming their own leaders. As people in Western countries will tell you, one needs to stand up and fight for his/her individual rights because nobody will ever do it for you. I don't know if the Iranian people as a whole have learned that yet. Until they do, people like Khatami, Ebadi, and Ganji will come and go and the end result will be that nothing will ever change.

Marg Bar Jumhurieh Eslami
Long Live Iran

Freed Iranian journalist remains defiant - Times Union

2006-03-18T08:06:00.000-08:00

TEHRAN, Iran -- An Iranian dissident journalist freed after spending most of his six-year prison term in solitary confinement vowed Saturday to keep criticizing the hard-line clerical regime.

Akbar Ganji, 46, appeared gaunt and considerably older, with a long beard, as he received friends and family at his Tehran home a day after being released.

"My views have not changed at all. Jail and pressures never forced me to change my views. Today, I'm more determined to say what I said six years ago," said Ganji, who was on a hunger strike for about three months last year.

"My imprisonment was unjust and will remain a great injustice forever," he added to applause from his audience.

Ganji was jailed in 2000 after reporting on the killings of five dissidents by Intelligence Ministry agents. Authorities said the articles he wrote violated the law and insulted the authorities.

He became a hero to the country's reformists for standing up to hard-line clerics.

Many world leaders, including President Bush and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, called for Ganji's release because of his deteriorating health, but Iran's hard-line authorities rejected those demands.

A statement by Iran's judiciary said Ganji was freed on leave for Nowruz, the Persian New Year holiday beginning Tuesday. The holiday runs until April 3, and the statement said his prison sentence officially ends March 30, so it appeared unlikely Ganji would be taken back into custody.

Ganji's wife, Masoumeh Shafiei, said she was worried about his health. She said some of his friends initially had difficulty recognizing him.

"My husband is so weak physically now. He is just 49 kilograms (108 pounds)," she said handing out drinks to their guests. "But I'm happy he is back home."

Ganji came to prominence after his investigation of the 1998 murders of five dissidents by Intelligence Ministry agents.

The Intelligence Ministry blamed the killings on "rogue agents" within the secret service. But Ganji's articles in the newspapers Sobh-e-Emrouz, Khordad and Fath said the killings were ordered by senior hard-liners in the ruling Islamic establishment, including former Intelligence Minister Ali Fallahian.

Fallahian has denied any involvement.

Ganji's imprisonment coincided with a massive media crackdown by hard-liners against the reformist press when former President Mohammad Khatami's reformist agenda threatened the power of the unelected hard-liners.

Iran's hard-line judiciary has closed down more than 100 pro-democracy publications in the past five years, including the papers Ganji wrote for, on vague charges of insulting religious sanctities and top clerics.

In his writings, Ganji said Iran needs to stop granting absolute rule to a top cleric, currently supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the final say on all state matters.

Original Artilce

Iran's top dissident released from jail - Reuters

2006-03-18T07:58:00.000-08:00

Iran's most prominent political dissident, Akbar Ganji, has been released from prison after six years behind bars for criticising some of the most powerful figures in the Islamic Republic.

Ganji, a journalist, was jailed in 2000 after writing articles linking senior officials to the serial killings of political dissidents in 1998.

His articles particularly targeted powerful cleric Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, Iran's president from 1989 to 1997.

A cheerful but thin and heavily-bearded Ganji welcomed reporters into his Tehran apartment. He stuck to pleasantries and sidestepped politics.

"Thanks for coming," he said, grinning. "I am so sorry it is such a small place."

Lawyer Youssef Mowlaie told Reuters Ganji had been released late on Friday evening. He predicted a legal wrangle over whether Ganji would have to return to Tehran's feared Evin prison for a few more days.

Mowlaie said he reckoned his client's jail term ended on March 17, but a senior judiciary figure disagreed.

"Currently, he is on leave and his sentence will end on March 30," Mahmoud Salarkia, deputy prosecutor-general for prison affairs, told the official IRNA news agency.

Salarkia said Ganji was allowed to return home for seven days to celebrate the Iranian New Year holiday which starts on Monday night. However, Ganji's wife insisted her husband was staying at home for good.

Ganji spent stints in solitary confinement and fell gravely ill in July, weakened by a hunger strike aimed at persuading authorities to release him. The reporter's case sparked outrage from the United States and European Union.

Ganji, born in 1959, was a devoted follower of the 1979 Islamic revolution and served in the hardline Revolutionary Guards. He has been criticised for his propaganda work and his surveillance of Iranian student activities in Turkey.

However, his political views changed sharply and his letters from prison broke two of Iran's biggest taboos, both criticising the system of clerical rule and levelling personal attacks on Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Original Article

Students Strong Warning to “Inexperienced Ahmadi Nezhad” - IPS

2006-03-16T10:17:00.000-08:00

TEHRAN, 15 Mar. (IPS) In the wors[t] student protest action against an Iranian government in the past eight years, anti-riot units of the revolutionary guards, backed by special units from the Interior Ministry, the basij volunteers and plainclothes men clashed with students of the Sharif Polytechnics University of Tehran, according to eyewitnesses and communiqués from the protesters.

The violence, that students sources described as “very brutal” started four days ago after the authorities approved a scheme aimed to bury in the grounds of the University’s mosque the remains of three “unknown martyrs”, a decision that the students denounced as an attempt by the authorities to “open their campus to militaries and abuses by elements hostile to students”.

“The attack on the students (opposed to the decision to burry martyrs in the University’s ground) was unprecedented in the past eight years by its violence and brutality to the point that even the Dean was wounded” a communiqué by the Office of Consolidating Unity (OCU), the largest organization of Iranian students reported on Tuesday, accusing the attackers of using tear gas, opening fire on the students and arresting several protesters.

Not only the government banned the press about reporting on the violent clashes that made several wounded among the students, but it also banned using the word “plainclothes men” on the pretext that it would “undermine the moral of the security forces”, the independent internet newspaper “Rooz” (Day) said on Wednesday 15 March 2006.

For its part, pro Government media accused the protesting students of "deliberate, provocative actions aimed at breaking the unity and solidarity of the peaple with the government at a time that the regime faces growing pressures from the enemies".

The initiative taken almost a month ago by the basiji students (pro-Khameneh’i students on the government’s payroll) and employees as well as some hard line religious committees of the Sharif Industrial University confirmed by the Supreme Council on Cultural Revolution had followed an earlier decision of the Government of fundamentalist President Mahmoud Ahmadi Nezhad to burry the remains of one hundred martyrs (of the 1980-1988 devastating Iran-Iraq War) in public places of the Capital.

From the outset, the move was opposed by several members of the Islamic Association of Students, suggesting a vote on the issue with the approval of the University’s directorate.

But the day after, the religious students backed by security forces that had closed all the University’s doors, started to dig emplacements for the martyrs.

Infuriated at the news, other students marched towards the mosque, invaded the ground and demonstrated peacefully as at the same time some hundred men dressed in black and carrying coffins entered the University from a back door, protected by a cordon of security forces that immediately assaulted the protesters.

Angered by the violation of the campus by the police, Mr. Soharabpour, the aged Dean of the University called for calm and the evacuation of the university by the intruders, but he was suddenly attacked by a mob of religious students, according to the OCU’s communiqué.

“When unwise, inexperienced, arrogant people come to power, one can not expect justice”, the communiqué said criticizing severely the Higher Education Minister “who not only was approved by the Majles with the least votes, but also is praised for having cleansed the universities from their best elements”.

“Appointing uneducated clerics who can barely read and write, expelling the best professors is one example of the numerous mistakes committed by the Minister, creating huge problems, creating an atmosphere of fear and revenge while the inexperienced cabinet of Ahmadi Nezhad who has failed in solving the nation’s slightest problems and has isolated the nation on the international scene find no better way out but engaging and menacing the students”, the communiqué added.

This latest crackdown on students but also on the press and on the dissidents coincides with the humiliating defeat Iranian fanatic President Ahmadi Nezhad suffered at the International Atomic Energy Agency when its Board decided last week to report Iran’s controversial nuclear issue to the United Nations Security Council, according to political analysts.

As the five permanent members of the Security Council are debating a statement calling on Tehran to stop all atomic activities and resume negotiations with the European Troika, Ayatollah Ali Khameneh’i, who as the absolute leader of the regime has the last word on all key subjects ruled out any back stepping on the nuclear issue.

"The Islamic Republic of Iran considers retreat over the nuclear issue as breaking the country's independence which will impose huge costs on the Iranian nation", Mr. Khameneh’i told Iranian envoys abroad, adding forcefully that "This path is irreversible and the foreign policy establishment has to bravely defend the legitimate rights of Iranian people and Government".

“The use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes is a necessity for the nation’s future. Every step back in the present circumstances would trigger and endless chain of further pressures and further retreat. Therefore, this path is irreversible”, he stressed, dashing all hopes for an amiable, diplomatic, negotiated solution to the Iranian nuclear crisis.

Likewise, the authorities arrested five young Iranians guilty of attending a recent meeting in the Persian Gulf city of Dubai, United Arab Emirate, they thought was organised by an international NGO while in fact it was sponsored by the United States and attended by some Los-Angeles-based Iranian exiles and Serbs teaching them regime change methods, informed sources reported. ENDS STUDENTS POLICE CLASH 15306

Original Article

Jack Straw Gets Lesson in Chooneh-Zadan! - Reuters

2006-03-16T09:15:00.000-08:00

VIENNA -- Negotiating with Iran over its nuclear programme is the toughest test in diplomacy, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said. Likening discussions with Tehran to bargaining in a bazaar, Straw said negotiators were never certain what deal they had reached. "You agree with them about buying a table and when the table is delivered you find out that it has no legs and that you have to pay extra for the legs," he was quoted on Thursday as telling the Austrian daily newspaper Die Presse.

"Whatever. That's Iran. And we will continue to negotiate with them," he said.

Original Article
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- This case has absolutely no political significance, but I thought it was amusing. It's amazing that the Mullahs believe that they can use the same tactics in selling a carpet in negotiations with the world over our nuclear program. Aside from such negotiating tactics being exceptionally embarassing for Iran, it reflects even worse on the Mullahs. I hope that the world leaders who have supported this brutal regime for 27 years understand that you can't support a regime that takes the affairs of its people on the same level as the selling of pistachios.

Coherence in Washington, Disarray and Confusion in Tehran - Iran Press Service

2006-03-15T10:47:00.000-08:00

PARIS -- As for the first time since it came to power the Bush Administration is addressing seriously and concretely ways and means of bringing a change in the Iranian clerical-led leadership – and it starts to bring fruits --, the political atmosphere in Tehran is full disarray and chaos.

According to an article in the “Washington Post”, the Administration is summoning scholars for advice, creating an Iran Office at the State Department, biffing up the number of the Iran Desk from the present two persons to ten, allocating a 75 to 85 million dollars for helping Iranian opposition inside and outside as well as increasing the power of Iranian media beamed to Tehran.

Probably, one of the best ideas is about to form a team of “ayatollahologues” like the kremlinologues” that existed during the cold war to understand to working of the mind of the ayatollahs.

“The key word of the regime change programme by peaceful and democratic means is “separation of the people from the regime”, the article says.

“This point is very important as the Iranian propaganda is playing more and more on the nationalist string of the Iranians, sending Islam in the backbench, as they always do when they feel real danger approaching”, said one Iranian political analyst.

As an example, he said while 90 per cent of the Iranians are in favour of IRAN possessing an atomic weapon, the same percentage is against THE ISLAMIC REPUBLIC having it, the emphasis being on the difference the Iranians makes between a nationalist, secular, democratic Iranian nation and government they would like to have with this theocratic regime the majority of them considers as stranger.

"Amrican leaders must all the time stress on that important point that America is a friend of the Iranian people, that if they are taking strong actions against the regime is because their leaders are belligerants, refusing detente and friendship, exactely what President Bush and Secretary of the Statre are doing now", he added.

Contrary to Washington, were activities about Iran is getting more coherent and centralized, in Tehran; the decision-making is in full confusion.

On Sunday, Hamid Reza Asefi, the official senior spokesman of the Foreign Affairs Ministry made headline telling the semi-official Students News Agency ISNA that the Russian proposal (for enriching uranium for Iran in Russia) is “no more on the table”.

He was immediately badly reprimanded by his minister, who, like other high-ranking officials, assured that the project is “still being studied by Iran”.

Even this proposal is hotly debated in Iran, with some among both the more radicals and the more pragmatics considering continuing dancing with Moscow might be the Mollahrchy’s last change to avoid possible sanctions by the United Nations Security Council, others, also from both camps, think this is a catastrophe for Iran as it would place the country at the mercy of the Russians.

Also last week, the Interior Minister, Hojjatoleslam Mostafa Pourmohammadi indirectly but quite explicitly hinted that the Islamic Republic might use its oil as a weapon if thing get serious at the Security Council.

Such a threat had been raised before by Mr. Javad Va’idi, one of the senior Iranian nuclear negotiators after the International atomic watchdog decided to refer Iran’s nuclear case to the Security Council.

But both were immediately contradicted by other officials, including the Oil Minister and some members of the Supreme Council on National Security assuring that Tehran is not – at least for the time being – considering such possibility.

Mr. Hoseyn Shari’atmadari, an intelligence officer specializing in the interrogation of dissident intellectual and politicians appointed as the Executive Editor of the radical daily “Keyhan” by Ayatollah Ali Khameneh’i and considered as one of the most influential brains of the ruling conservatives continue to urge the government to get out of the Non Proliferation Treaty and follow the example sat by the Stalinist regime of North Korea, Mr. Ali Larijani, the Secretary of the SCNS who is the coordinator of he nuclear issue and Mr. Manouchehr Mottaki, the Foreign Affairs Minister are saying not only Iran would continue its membership of the NPT, but is still looking to renew talks with the European Troika.

“One reason for this unprecedented chaos is that for the first time, signals coming from Washington are clear. The Office of the Leader, where all key decisions are taken, for the first time feels with no ambiguity that after years of indecision, wrong decisions, incoherence, feuding between different departments and a staggering lack of understanding and wrong appreciation of the clerical leadership, the Bush Administration is taking the right direction about Iran”, the analyst pointed out, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Original Article

MPG co-sponsors event with keynote speaker Congressman Brad Sherman

2006-03-15T09:37:00.000-08:00

Please note this event will take place in the Los Angeles region.

Congressman Brad Sherman will address what the United States and the International Community is, and should be, doing to respond to Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

He serves on the Committee on International Relations and is a ranking member in its Subcommittee on International Terrorism and Nonproliferation. Congressman Sherman is an outspoken advocate on the issue of what it means if and when Iran attains nuclear capability.

Call Michael Jeser, JCC Director of Development and Community Affairs at 818-464-3300 or email mjeser@jccatmilken.org to reserve your seats.

Iranians defy the regime by massive participation in banned event - SMCCDI

2006-03-14T08:29:00.000-08:00

An increasing number of Iranians are coming, at this time (19:15 Iran Local Time), into most Iranian avenues and streets in a flagrant sign of defiance to the Islamic regime. Most cities, such as, Tehran, Esfahan, Shiraz, Hamedan, Kermanshah or Oroomiah (former Rezai-e) are affected by the move.

In many places, security forces are just contenting to watch the crowd as knowing that an incident put turn the page. In some places and already at the start of a long evening, several security patrol cars have been damaged due to hand made explosive devices.

Even some isolated security posts, such as, the one located isnide Tehran University has been damaged by masked young Iranians who threw explosive devices inside the facility by forcing the usually feared Bassij Para-Military agents to run out.

Noise of fire crackers and hand made explosive devises are echoing in the cities, where, in most areas any car or motorbike circulation has been forbidden.

Public buildings have been placed under intense surveillance by fear of a sudden popular take over. Gas stations have been closed and most cities look likes war zone.

The Islamic regime and its leadership made the most tactical mistake ever, this year, by qualifying the Iranian Cultural Heritage events as "haram" and created de facto a clear line up from which it's coming as the end looser.

The night would be a very long one and in few hours bushes will be set on fire all across Iranian cities.

Original Article

Iranians Are Preparing to Turn a National Ceremony(Chahar Shanbe Sori چهارشنبه سوری) to a Protest Against the Regime

2006-03-12T10:17:00.000-08:00

See the Article in Persian ديدن مقاله به فارسي

According to an Iranian Based Blog چهارشنبه سوری Many in Iran this year are trying to turn Chahar Shanbe Sore( The last Wednesday of the year in the Persian calendar which is a Fire Festival for and it is been cherished as part of the Persian culture for thousands of year ) which is on March 14/ 24 Esfand in Persian calendar to a protest against the dictator regime of Iran.

On this Blog we read about the times and the places for the demonstrations also the bloger is alsking from every one to spread the word on this event also the freedom movements in Iran!

Meanwhile According to a pool conducted inside of Iran(See the Link ) Many in Iran also do not support the Nuclear path that the regime of Tehran is taking.

This information was taken from http://blogersinjail.blogspot.com/

Violent clashes rock the western City of Piranshar - SMCCDI

2006-03-12T08:23:00.000-08:00

Violent clashes rocked, yesterday, the western City of Piranshahr as angry residents attacked official buildings, banks, security patrol cars and trucks. The riot took place following the murder of a resident, by Islamist Militiamen, and the refusal of the local authorities to restitute the body of the victim to his family.

Security forces closed all accesses to the Governor's Office and resorted to shooting when facing an increasing number of demonstrators. Several demonstrators were injured and one has been reported in critical conditions.

Additional troops were sent from the neighboring cities in order to control the situation which remains tense. The residents are requesting the public trial of agents involved in the murder and the shooting.

The [attempt] of [a] take over of the popular action, by individuals affiliated to some separatist groups, was a main reason that residents stopped their riot but they're requesting the public trial of agents involved in the murder and the shooting.

The area was also scene of other clashes, last year, but again, the opportunist try of separatist groups, such as the so-called Democratic Party of Kurdistan 'of Iran',(PDKI) to claim leadership of the situation brought the local residents to stop their protest actions.

While some foreign circles are evaluating a possibility to create ethnic unrest in Iran, in order to harm the Islamic regime, the reality is that such wrong tactic helps the Islamists to stop popular actions in Iran's border zones. Most Iranians, of every ethnicity, are profoundly attached to Iran and its territorial integrity and the regime plays such nationalistic feeling in its own favor.

The Bush Administration which has correctly understood such sentiment and George W. Bush, the US President, declared last July about the "necessity to respect the territorial integrity of Iran". Such positive and unprecedented statement resulted, few days later, in consecutive unrests in Iran's western border zones, but which stopped, few days later and as soon as, some meaningless separatist groups, helped by foreign circles, tried to claim the ownership of the situation.

Regime forbids sell of gasoline in containers - SMCCDI

2006-03-12T08:21:00.000-08:00

The Islamic regime has forbidden the sell of gasoline in containers in an effort to limit subversive activities, at the occasion of the banned "Tchahar-Shanbe Souri" (Fire Fiest) on March 14th.The move intends to limit the fabrication of Molotov-Cocktails and has become a subject of mockery, as many Iranians are showing their cars' reservoirs as an alternative to use gasoline for other purposes than driving.

The Islamic regime which feels its lack of power in order to stop the preparation of the Fire Fiest celebration/demos, qualified as "pagan" and "un-Islamic", has increased its repressive measures and is arresting young Iranians or sellers of fire crackers and explosive ingredients.

More Bassij military force members have been transferred to main cities and contingency plans have been studied by the regime's National Security Council.

Unfortunately, the sudden interruption of NITV's Satellite programming - due to financial problems – is not helping thousands of Iranians which are using this main communication tool for a better coordination of the Fire Fiest Movement. NITV’s Management hopes to resume its satellite programming, from Monday, in case of collecting necessary financial support from individual donors.

VIDEO: Women's Day Deomontration in Tehran

2006-03-11T14:03:00.000-08:00

Here is a direct link to video footage that I stumbled across as I was casually surfing the web. the footage was found on Iran Focus which is a mouthpiece for the MKO (although you would never know it when visiting the site).

Here is the link:

Women's Day Video

Iran: Death penalty/fear of imminent execution - Amnesty International

2006-03-11T08:56:00.000-08:00

Dr Awdeh Afrawi (m), aged 52
Nazem Bureihi (m)
Aliredha Salman Delfi (m)
Ali Helfi (m)
Ali Manbouhi (m)
Jaafar Sawari (m)
Risan Sawari (m), teacher
Mohammad Ali Sawari (m), teacher
Moslem al-Ha’i (m)

The nine men named above, all members of Iran's Arab minority, have reportedly been sentenced to death for their alleged involvement in bomb explosions in the city of Ahvaz, in Khuzestan province, which took place in October 2005. It is not known exactly what they were convicted of, but they are feared to be in imminent danger of execution. Two other men have already been executed. Seven have been shown "confessing" on local television, with one other mentioned as a participant in the bombings, and another reportedly convicted of the same offence.

According to the Minister of Justice, 45 people have been arrested in connection with the October explosions. On 14 February, the Minister of Justice told the state news agency IRNA that seven of them had been convicted on charges including "enmity with God (mohareb, for which the penalty is death), corruption on earth and murder" and that their sentences would be announced shortly. On 20 February, the Prosecutor General reportedly said that "some of those convicted in this case have been sentenced to death, including the two main culprits, whose presence in the recent Ahvaz incidents was proved and their execution verdict is definite". On 21 February, in a statement to IRNA commenting on this report, the Minister of Justice stated that only two had been sentenced to death and these sentences were under review by the Supreme Court. He noted that "the seven convicts have not all committed crimes that call for the death penalty."

Although seven men were said to have been convicted of involvement in the October bombings, nine men were shown "confessing" on Khuzestan Provincial TV on 1 March. Among them were Mehdi Nawaseri and Ali Awdeh Afrawi, who were hanged in public the following morning; Dr Awdeh Afrawi (father of executed Ali Awdeh Afrawi); Aliredha Salman Delfi; Ali Manbouhi; Jaafar Sawari; Ali Helfi, Nazem Burehi, and Risan Sawari.

Ali Manbouhi, Ali Helfi and Nazem Bureihi have reportedly been in custody since 2000, when they were arrested on charges of "insurgency" and each sentenced to 35 years’ imprisonment. However they also featured in the "confessions" footage. There are unconfirmed reports that they may soon face a retrial on charges of mohareb and murder.

Dr Awdeh Afrawi is a psychologist at Ahvaz's Shahid Chamran hospital. He and and his son were reportedly arrested in Ahvaz shortly after the October 2005 explosions. Risan Sawari was reportedly arrested in April 2005, released and arrested again in September. Jaafar Sawari and Aliredha Salman Delfi were reportedly arrested in September 2005. Mehdi Nawaseri was reportedly arrested on 19 October and Mohammad Ali Sawari on or around 4 November. Moslem al-Ha’i was mentioned during the "confessions" as a participant in the bombings, but it is not known when he was arrested.

BACKGROUND INFORMATIONIran's Arab community live mainly in the Khuzestan region, which borders Iraq. It is strategically important because it is the site of much of Iran’s oil reserves, but the Arab population does not feel it has benefited as much from the oil revenue as the Persian population. Historically the Arab community has been marginalised and discriminated against. Tension has mounted among the Arab population since April 2005, after it was alleged that the government planned to disperse the country's Arab population or to force them to relinquish their Arab identity. Hundreds have been arrested and there have been reports of torture. Following bomb explosions in Ahvaz in June and October 2005, which killed at least 14 people, and explosions at oil installations in September and October, the cycle of violence in Khuzestan province has intensified, with hundreds of people reportedly arrested. Further bombs exploded on 24 January 2006, killing at least six people and were followed by further mass arrests.