The Washington Post reported that the UN nuclear watchdog agency will hand over a report that says Iran has resumed enriching a small amount of uranium to the U.N. Security Council.
The Christian Science Monitor reported that we should expect Thursday's deadline for Iran to stop enriching uranium to pass with more of a whimper than a bang. As the United States experiences what one observer calls "confrontation fatigue," and as international unity against a nuclear-armed Iran threatens to splinter under pressure, quick action against Iran is not likely.
The New York Times reported that with Iran defying a Thursday deadline to halt production of nuclear fuel, the United States and three European allies are assembling a list of sanctions they would seek in the United Nations Security Council, beginning with restrictions on imports of nuclear-related equipment and material.
Rumsfeld warns Iran.
Zaman.com reported that U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld indirectly warned Iran that the U.S. army was capable of waging another war somewhere else. “We are capable of dealing with other problems, were they to occur.”
Iranian journalists put Ahmadinejad on the hot seat.
The New York Times reported that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad faced a freewheeling two-hour news conference and found himself challenged by local reporters who questioned the government’s economic program and its treatment of the press. A must read.
The Islamic Republic asks Jimmy Carter a favor.
The Washington Post reported that former president Jimmy Carter has agreed in principle to host former Iranian president Mohammad Khatami for talks during his visit to the United States.
The National Review Online published an NRO Symposium on Mohammad Khatami’s upcoming visit to the United States.
Iranian intellectual Jahanbegloo freed on bail.
The Washington Post reported that Iran released on bail liberal intellectual Ramin Jahanbegloo, who was accused of working with the U.S. to overthrow the government.
The Boston Globe reported that Iranians have NOT been flocking to the museum in Tehran where 204 winning entries in the ``Holocaust International Cartoon Contest" are on exhibit.
Asian Tribune, in a report published August 12th, claimed that a Voice of America correspondent, Matiur Rahman Chowdhury, called reports that the British foiled a mega terror plot a "game of the British government." Chowdhury made his comments in a local TV interview. Chowdhury went on to accuse "western governments," and in particular the United States and the United Kingdom, of deliberately fabricating the terror plot to deflect world attention from what he called "Hezbollah victories."
VOICE OF AMERICA or VOICE OF ISLAM ??? Only in America could this nutcase nonsense happen with impunity.
Cox & Forkum published another cartoon: Five Minutes to Midnight.
Ahmadinejad challenged Bush to an uncensored debate.
Reuters reported that Ahmadinejad challenged President Bush to a televised debate, saying: "The debate should be go uncensored in order for the American people to be able to listen to what we say and they should not restrict the American people from hearing the truth."
Dow Jones Newswires reported that the White House dismissed the idea of a televised debate between President George W. Bush and Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, as a diversion. A White House spokesman added: "Iran may want to look first to allowing free expression and open debate within its borders, as opposed to the current practice of crushing dissent."
The US issues a visa to Khatami... what are they thinking?
Yahoo News reported that the Bush administration decided Tuesday to allow former Iranian President Mohammad Khatami to visit the United States.
Iran Press News reported that Khatami warned that if he is to be fingerprinted in the US upon arriving he will cancel his trip to the US.
The EU3 are caving into Iran.
Forbes.com reported that the EU's Solana and the French are ready to talk to Iran over its nuclear work.
When have more "talks" with Iran ever worked?
Amir Taheri, Gulf News examined the history of the Islamic Republic's failed "talks" with other nations, from Russia, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan, Turkey and Egypt. In every case the Islamic Republic has interpreted the readiness of an adversary to talk as a sign of weakness and, as a result, has hardened its position.
How the blogosphere is transforming the news.
David Frum, National Post reported that the US dollars Hezbollah has been handing out to Lebanese whose home were destroyed in the conflict are counterfeit.
Caroline Glick, The Jerusalem Post reported on the failure of the mainstream media to critically report the news and lauded the growing role of the blogosphere to correct the record.
Philadelphia Inquirer reported that U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum called Iran the principal leader of the "Islamic fascist movement" that poses the greatest threat to America's freedom and way of life, and said the country must be prevented from developing nuclear weapons
.
U.S.News & World Report published a report on Lebanon and its movement towards becoming an Iran by the sea.
Amir Taheri, Prospect Magazine produced a detailed analysis of the Hezbollah war on Israel and argued that the battle of summer 2006 may be a prelude to a bigger conflict between the US and Iran.
The Japan Times reported that Iran has warned Japan of a possible move to seek joint development of its giant Azadegan oil field with Russia or China if it cannot reach an agreement with Japan by Sept. 15.
MEMRI.org published excerpts from interviews with Iranian army generals on the subject of recent war games. Video.
Cox & Forkum published a cartoon: Militant Message.
Thursday, August 31, 2006
Terrorism Briefs
Two more charged over 'bomb plot' Two more people have been charged with conspiracy to murder and intending to smuggle explosives onto aircraft in the alleged bomb plot thwarted by police. Mohammed Shamin Uddin and Mohammed YasarGulzar were charged late on Tuesday, hours after Nabeel Hussain was charged with the same offences.
***********
Abu Sayyaf chieftain Khadaffy Janjalani and his two Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) terrorist allies have reportedly slipped through a military dragnet in Sulu and are now in Basilan
*************
KABUL, Afghanistan — A homicide bombing ripped through a crowded market in southern Afghanistan on Monday, killing 17 people and wounding 47, a hospital official said.
The homicide bomber carrying explosives walked into the market opposite a police station in Lashkar Gah, the capital of the southern Helmand province, and blew himself up, said Ghulam Muheddin, the provincial governor's spokesman.
Hanif Khan, a local hospital official, said the blast killed 17 persons and wounded 47, six critically. Among the dead were the owner of the market, a former Lashkar Gah police chief; his son; and a nephew, said Hayatullah Khan, a security guard at the scene.
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BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Iraq's Defense Ministry sent reinforcements to the southern city of Diwaniya after weekend clashes between government troops and followers of a radical Shiite cleric left more than 60 dead, Iraqi and U.S. military officials said.
The deployment came as a U.S. commander said members of at least two brigades of Iraqi forces have refused orders to fight outside of their operating areas.
The Diwaniya fighting left 23 Iraqi soldiers and 38 militiamen dead, and 40 wounded, amid conflicting reports of how the clashes began.
The Defense Ministry said the fighting began late Sunday after a large number of gunmen attacked several police stations in the city, taking over many of them. Iraqi soldiers later clashed with those gunmen, the ministry said.
While clashes were going on in parts of the city, the ministry said, the Iraqi army had generally taken control of the situation, including recapturing the police stations that had fallen under control of the gunmen.
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Militants decapitated an Islamic cleric and an Afghan refugeeaccused of spying for U.S. and Afghan authorities in northwestern Pakistan, anintelligence official said Wednesday. The men's beheaded bodies were found early Wednesday in two villages
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NAZRAN, August 30 (RIA Novosti) - Gunmen have wounded an investigator from a prosecutor's office in the latest attack to hit a troubled region in southern Russia, law-enforcement officers said Wednesday.
The incident follows a string of attacks targeting law-enforcement and other officials in the North Caucasus republic of Ingushetia, which borders on Chechnya.
Meanwhile, 50 Chechen rebels laid down their arms in a ceremony last week.
***********
"The Moroccan Ansar El-Mehdi Organization on the Trail of Al-Qa'ida: Pilots' Wives Among the Terrorists"
This group planned massive kidnappings of high level government officials and in the questioning it was discovered that heavy pholosphical classhes are arising pitting socialist dissidents against Islamic groups.
***********
Monday, August 28, 2006
NEWSBRIEFS & COMMENTS
IndianExpress reported that Germany’s Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said Iran wants guarantees that it won’t face UN sanctions before it is prepared to restart negotiations over its nuclear program.
Reuters reported that Russia ruled out any discussion for now of sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program.
Alan note: A Russian team was in Iran last week to finalize the details of the Bushehr nuclear plant Russin is determined to build for Iran.
The West is being low-key in its response to Iran.
The New York Times reported that the formal reaction from the United States and its European allies to Iran’s refusal to suspend uranium enrichment has been decidedly low-key. It is all part of a public relations strategy.
Dow Jones Newswires reported that French President Jacques Chirac said Iran's response to an international package of incentives meant to persuade it to return to negotiations over its nuclear program was a "little ambiguous."
The Iranian negotiators are playing a poor hand well.
The Financial Times reported that whatever else might be said about the Iranian regime, it has played its diplomatic hand adroitly and plays by its own rules.
Amir Taheri, Asharq Alawsat warned that Ahmadinejad is convinced that his strategy of "pre-emptive move" has succeeded and that with the US entering a period of confusion as the Bush presidency draws to its close, the Islamic Republic can and must establish itself as the regional superpower.
The Islamic Republic has found a new job for Khatami.
The New York Sun in an editorial said that an internal fight is under way at the highest levels of the Bush administration over whether to issue a visa to the former president of Iran, Mohammed Khatami, to visit Washington. But argued that his purpose for the visit is to enlist the usual useful idiots to defend his nation's right to nuclear power.
Alan Note: apparently Khatami had already been spirited into the country three days before all this "old news" broke in the Main Stream Media.
Adnkronos International
reported that Khatami, the former President of the Islamic Republic, said: "It is Iran's right to possess nuclear technology, this is not up for debate and the world has to trust us when we say our nuclear program is only intended for peaceful purposes."
Alan Note: like Bill Clinton's "depends on what is...is", Iran's "peaceful" use is linked to shelling the Kurds in the North part of Iran and Iraq, on carrying out their stated aim to wipe Israel off the face of the map, of arming terrorists - with "peaceful means" in the future, etc., etc.
The dissidents: a sad update.
Rooz Online reported that 98 Court summons, temporary detention, disregard for prisoner conditions, closure of newspapers, heavy sentences, forced confessions are only some of the developments in Iran that speak of more human rights violations.
Alan Note: when the "Iranian" Basiji forces, mostly Arab and Sunni mercenaries recently armed with some $250 Million in new equipment and weaponry, with powers of arrest and detetnion and whose ONLY duty is the suppression of activity against the regime, specially in the streets, factories and universities, why would we be astonished at more of the same old same-o!
Rooz Online reported that as the news of Akbar Mohammadi’s death, and the condition of other political prisoners such as Ahmad Batebi, Ali Akbar Mousavi Khoeini, and Ramin Jahanbegloo, among many others, has created a wave of concern. The condition of other political prisoners in the provinces and smaller towns is as bad.
With the refurbishing of the Basijis, suppression has widened down to ever smaller and smaller towns, villages and communities as unpaid wages (often for as long as nine months to a year) and other social ills create seething unrest, which does not have the energy to rise to the surface except in small, occasional bubbles. And is met with extreme torture and death as reprisal for actions we take for granted in the West. None of us would dare to be activists if our local conditions were one tenth of what Iranians face from the regime and the Basijis.
Iran Press News reported that electric company workers of the city of Rasht will take their protest to Tehran.
More arrests, more torture, more indiscriminate reprisals against family and friends and nothing gained except pain and even greater suffering than what the protesters have today.
Why Turkey must not be part of an international force in Lebanon.
The Daily Star reported that with quiet prevailing in Lebanon, the question now is will Turkey take part in the international force to assist in the ceasefire. But warned that a few years ago, Turkish peacekeepers to Lebanon would have been a great idea, today, it is a dangerous one.
Alan Note: with the anti-Jewish and Israeli midsets throughout the UN and their total relutctance and self-admitted inability to disarm the Hezbollah, does it make a difference who is in the "peace keeping forces"?
Charles Krauthammer, The Washington Post argued that the conventional wisdom about President Bush is that the cowboy has been retired. Multilateralism is back. Diplomacy is King. American diplomacy on Iran has, up until now, been defensible.
Alan Note: and Iran will have its nuclear bomb while the Democrat party "wins" its war of character assassination against Bush and then faces the REAL threat of a nuclear Iran when it is far too late. And we all die along with the Nancy Pelosis, the John Murthas, the Edward Kennedys and the John Kerrys. And others like Leach and his ilk.
Rooz Online reported that Kayhan, the leading newspaper of Iran’s fundamentalists published a story claiming Islamic texts prophesied Nasrollah's battle with Israel that has been exposed as fraudulent.
Iran Press News reported that Kayhan, the regime newspaper claimed that following the news of the victory of Hezbollah against the Zionist regime that parents are rushing to the registration offices to change their children’s names to Nasrollah.
Alan Note: forgive them NOT even if they - like the Iranians who the dethroned the Shah and fell into their current deep well of darkness - know not what they do.
Iran Press News reported with the implementation of harsh rules for issuing proper permits for translating, promoting and distribution of books, publishers in Iran have begun to go bankrupt; many writers and translators with considerable backgrounds have also abandoned their craft.
Alan Note: statistics show that the average time an Iranian inside the Islamic regime spends reading a book is about three minutes per year. I'm not sure if this includes Kiran studies.
Iran Press News reported that after months of speculation and fluctuating news, Sheibani, the managing director of the Central Bank, will finally step down.
Ha'aretz reported that the Israel Defense Forces has appointed Israel Air Force Commander Major General Elyezer Shkedy as the IDF's "campaign manager" against Iran.
Dow Jones Newswires reported that lawyers for Romanian oil services company GSP, are on their way to Tehran to negotiate a release of an oil rig that has been taken over by Iranians.
Alan Note: the rig which was taken over by illegal force has been returned to Romanian control.
Iran Daily reported that Iran will now require identification cards be issued for Iranian websites and individuals will be responsible for what they publish on their websites.
More again of the same old same-o repression of the false Islamic regime in Iran.
Reuters reported that Russia ruled out any discussion for now of sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program.
Alan note: A Russian team was in Iran last week to finalize the details of the Bushehr nuclear plant Russin is determined to build for Iran.
The West is being low-key in its response to Iran.
The New York Times reported that the formal reaction from the United States and its European allies to Iran’s refusal to suspend uranium enrichment has been decidedly low-key. It is all part of a public relations strategy.
Dow Jones Newswires reported that French President Jacques Chirac said Iran's response to an international package of incentives meant to persuade it to return to negotiations over its nuclear program was a "little ambiguous."
The Iranian negotiators are playing a poor hand well.
The Financial Times reported that whatever else might be said about the Iranian regime, it has played its diplomatic hand adroitly and plays by its own rules.
Amir Taheri, Asharq Alawsat warned that Ahmadinejad is convinced that his strategy of "pre-emptive move" has succeeded and that with the US entering a period of confusion as the Bush presidency draws to its close, the Islamic Republic can and must establish itself as the regional superpower.
The Islamic Republic has found a new job for Khatami.
The New York Sun in an editorial said that an internal fight is under way at the highest levels of the Bush administration over whether to issue a visa to the former president of Iran, Mohammed Khatami, to visit Washington. But argued that his purpose for the visit is to enlist the usual useful idiots to defend his nation's right to nuclear power.
Alan Note: apparently Khatami had already been spirited into the country three days before all this "old news" broke in the Main Stream Media.
Adnkronos International
reported that Khatami, the former President of the Islamic Republic, said: "It is Iran's right to possess nuclear technology, this is not up for debate and the world has to trust us when we say our nuclear program is only intended for peaceful purposes."
Alan Note: like Bill Clinton's "depends on what is...is", Iran's "peaceful" use is linked to shelling the Kurds in the North part of Iran and Iraq, on carrying out their stated aim to wipe Israel off the face of the map, of arming terrorists - with "peaceful means" in the future, etc., etc.
The dissidents: a sad update.
Rooz Online reported that 98 Court summons, temporary detention, disregard for prisoner conditions, closure of newspapers, heavy sentences, forced confessions are only some of the developments in Iran that speak of more human rights violations.
Alan Note: when the "Iranian" Basiji forces, mostly Arab and Sunni mercenaries recently armed with some $250 Million in new equipment and weaponry, with powers of arrest and detetnion and whose ONLY duty is the suppression of activity against the regime, specially in the streets, factories and universities, why would we be astonished at more of the same old same-o!
Rooz Online reported that as the news of Akbar Mohammadi’s death, and the condition of other political prisoners such as Ahmad Batebi, Ali Akbar Mousavi Khoeini, and Ramin Jahanbegloo, among many others, has created a wave of concern. The condition of other political prisoners in the provinces and smaller towns is as bad.
With the refurbishing of the Basijis, suppression has widened down to ever smaller and smaller towns, villages and communities as unpaid wages (often for as long as nine months to a year) and other social ills create seething unrest, which does not have the energy to rise to the surface except in small, occasional bubbles. And is met with extreme torture and death as reprisal for actions we take for granted in the West. None of us would dare to be activists if our local conditions were one tenth of what Iranians face from the regime and the Basijis.
Iran Press News reported that electric company workers of the city of Rasht will take their protest to Tehran.
More arrests, more torture, more indiscriminate reprisals against family and friends and nothing gained except pain and even greater suffering than what the protesters have today.
Why Turkey must not be part of an international force in Lebanon.
The Daily Star reported that with quiet prevailing in Lebanon, the question now is will Turkey take part in the international force to assist in the ceasefire. But warned that a few years ago, Turkish peacekeepers to Lebanon would have been a great idea, today, it is a dangerous one.
Alan Note: with the anti-Jewish and Israeli midsets throughout the UN and their total relutctance and self-admitted inability to disarm the Hezbollah, does it make a difference who is in the "peace keeping forces"?
Charles Krauthammer, The Washington Post argued that the conventional wisdom about President Bush is that the cowboy has been retired. Multilateralism is back. Diplomacy is King. American diplomacy on Iran has, up until now, been defensible.
Alan Note: and Iran will have its nuclear bomb while the Democrat party "wins" its war of character assassination against Bush and then faces the REAL threat of a nuclear Iran when it is far too late. And we all die along with the Nancy Pelosis, the John Murthas, the Edward Kennedys and the John Kerrys. And others like Leach and his ilk.
Rooz Online reported that Kayhan, the leading newspaper of Iran’s fundamentalists published a story claiming Islamic texts prophesied Nasrollah's battle with Israel that has been exposed as fraudulent.
Iran Press News reported that Kayhan, the regime newspaper claimed that following the news of the victory of Hezbollah against the Zionist regime that parents are rushing to the registration offices to change their children’s names to Nasrollah.
Alan Note: forgive them NOT even if they - like the Iranians who the dethroned the Shah and fell into their current deep well of darkness - know not what they do.
Iran Press News reported with the implementation of harsh rules for issuing proper permits for translating, promoting and distribution of books, publishers in Iran have begun to go bankrupt; many writers and translators with considerable backgrounds have also abandoned their craft.
Alan Note: statistics show that the average time an Iranian inside the Islamic regime spends reading a book is about three minutes per year. I'm not sure if this includes Kiran studies.
Iran Press News reported that after months of speculation and fluctuating news, Sheibani, the managing director of the Central Bank, will finally step down.
Ha'aretz reported that the Israel Defense Forces has appointed Israel Air Force Commander Major General Elyezer Shkedy as the IDF's "campaign manager" against Iran.
Dow Jones Newswires reported that lawyers for Romanian oil services company GSP, are on their way to Tehran to negotiate a release of an oil rig that has been taken over by Iranians.
Alan Note: the rig which was taken over by illegal force has been returned to Romanian control.
Iran Daily reported that Iran will now require identification cards be issued for Iranian websites and individuals will be responsible for what they publish on their websites.
More again of the same old same-o repression of the false Islamic regime in Iran.
Tuesday, August 22, 2006
WHAT THE WEST NEEDS TO KNOW ABOUT ISLAM
Islam: What the West Needs to Know is a controversial documentary film featuring discussions on Islam.
It includes commentaries by Robert Spencer, Bat Ye'or, Walid Shoebat, and Serge Trifkovi .
The film premiered at the American Film Renaissance Festival in Hollywood on January 15, 2006 and had a limited theatrical release on July 7, 2006 in Chicago, Washington DC, and Atlanta.
The film was produced and directed by Gregory M. Davis and Bryan Daly.
Islam: What the West Needs to Know argues that Islam is a violent religion bent on world domination. The documentary uses passages from the canonical texts of Islam as its source material. It is presented in six parts:
1. There is no God but Allah and Muhammad is his Prophet:
In the first part, various commentators argue that Islamic violence stems from the teachings and examples of Muhammad and that the Qur'an prescribes and sanctions violence against non-Muslims.
2. The Struggle: In the second part, Walid Shoebat defines the word "Jihad" to mean the struggle to impose Allah's will over the earth, resulting in holy war against the non-Muslim world in order to bring it under the rule of Islam.
3. Expansion: In the third part, Bat Ye'or describes the expansion of Islam through conquest and presents historical evidence of enslavement and massacres of Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians and Hindus by Muslim invaders.
4. War is Deceit: In the fourth part, Robert Spencer and Serge Trifkovic discuss the Islamic principle of Taqiyya, Islamic dissimulation, which the lecturers argue, enjoins Muslims to deceive non-Muslims in order to advance the cause of Islam.
5. More than a Religion: In the fifth part, the documentary asserts that "Islamic law governs every aspect of religious, political, and personal action, which amounts to a form of totalitarianism that is divinely enjoined to dominate the world, analogous in many ways to Communism ".
6. The House of War: The final part covers the division of the world into Dar al-Islam ("the house of Islam"), the land governed by the Islamic law, and Dar al-Harb ("the house of war"), the land of non-Muslims.
According to the film, Muslims are enjoined to bring the Dar al-Harb under the control of Islam. "Muslims in Western nations are called to subvert the secular regimes in which they now live in accordance with Allah's command".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam:_What_the_West_Needs_to_Know http://www.whatthewestneedstoknow.com/ http://www.q-and-a.org/Transcript/?ProgramID=1086
It includes commentaries by Robert Spencer, Bat Ye'or, Walid Shoebat, and Serge Trifkovi .
The film premiered at the American Film Renaissance Festival in Hollywood on January 15, 2006 and had a limited theatrical release on July 7, 2006 in Chicago, Washington DC, and Atlanta.
The film was produced and directed by Gregory M. Davis and Bryan Daly.
Islam: What the West Needs to Know argues that Islam is a violent religion bent on world domination. The documentary uses passages from the canonical texts of Islam as its source material. It is presented in six parts:
1. There is no God but Allah and Muhammad is his Prophet:
In the first part, various commentators argue that Islamic violence stems from the teachings and examples of Muhammad and that the Qur'an prescribes and sanctions violence against non-Muslims.
2. The Struggle: In the second part, Walid Shoebat defines the word "Jihad" to mean the struggle to impose Allah's will over the earth, resulting in holy war against the non-Muslim world in order to bring it under the rule of Islam.
3. Expansion: In the third part, Bat Ye'or describes the expansion of Islam through conquest and presents historical evidence of enslavement and massacres of Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians and Hindus by Muslim invaders.
4. War is Deceit: In the fourth part, Robert Spencer and Serge Trifkovic discuss the Islamic principle of Taqiyya, Islamic dissimulation, which the lecturers argue, enjoins Muslims to deceive non-Muslims in order to advance the cause of Islam.
5. More than a Religion: In the fifth part, the documentary asserts that "Islamic law governs every aspect of religious, political, and personal action, which amounts to a form of totalitarianism that is divinely enjoined to dominate the world, analogous in many ways to Communism ".
6. The House of War: The final part covers the division of the world into Dar al-Islam ("the house of Islam"), the land governed by the Islamic law, and Dar al-Harb ("the house of war"), the land of non-Muslims.
According to the film, Muslims are enjoined to bring the Dar al-Harb under the control of Islam. "Muslims in Western nations are called to subvert the secular regimes in which they now live in accordance with Allah's command".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam:_What_the_West_Needs_to_Know http://www.whatthewestneedstoknow.com/ http://www.q-and-a.org/Transcript/?ProgramID=1086
Saturday, August 19, 2006
RCI SELECTED NEWS BRIEFS
The war in Lebanon is just the beginning.
Toronto Star reported that an already fragile ceasefire in the Middle East now appears in greater danger of unraveling, threatened by Hezbollah's refusal to disarm and Israeli charges that Iran and Syria are already rearming its enemy. Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said: "This war is not over yet."
TurkishPress reported that Turkey has grounded two Syria-bound Iranian planes over the past month to search for weapons following Israeli intelligence that Iran is supplying rockets to Hezbollah.
Iran Press News reported that the regime-run Fars news agency reported: “The minister of housing and urban development of the Islamic regime announced that he is ready to rebuild Lebanon."
Alan note: meanwhile the $150 million already advanced to Hezbollah to achieve this could be better used - from the point of view of the Iranian populace - to provide essential infrastructure - like clean drinking water. Or any water at all in some areas of the country.
Fox News reported that Iran has been attempting to rearm the Lebanon-based terror network Hezbollah since the U.N.-backed cease-fire.
YNet News reported that Abu Nasser, commander of al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade in Nablus, encouraged by war results said 'Our brothers demonstrated what we have felt in recent years: Israel falling apart. Next time Iran will be in picture with missiles on Tel Aviv and it will be easier'.
The nuclear crisis with Iran is about to enter center stage.
Reuters reported that the United States expects the United Nations to act swiftly next month and consider sanctions against Iran if it does not drop its nuclear program.
Forbes reported that the United States intends to act next month to have the United Nations impose penalties on Iran for refusing to suspend its enrichment of uranium.
Bronwen Maddox, The Times Online reported that the Lebanon crisis has turned up the heat with Iran over its nuclear ambitions. This week has brought new signs that Tehran won’t back down. But Iran has stirred in, too, some mollifying gestures and clearly hopes to play a clever game, one step back from the brink of outright provocation.
Henry Sokolski, National Review Online argued that the nuclear deal Washington is currently dangling before Iran to entice it to halt its declared uranium-enrichment program is a cure nearly as awful as the disease.
Why the West is running out of time in dealing with Ahmadinejad.
Patrick Poole, FrontPageMagazine.com examined Ahmadinejad’s apocalyptic faith. A must read.
Roger Scruton, The Wall Street Journal examined the term "Islamofascism" and that the word provides a convenient way of announcing that you are not against Islam but only against its perversion by the terrorists. But this prompts the question whether terrorism is really as alien to Islam.
Iran is preparing its children for war.
Kenneth R. Timmerman, FrontPageMagazine.com reported that a new study of 115 Iranian school textbooks concludes that Iran is preparing its children for war, and is willing to risk massive casualties for the opportunity to defeat America in a world-wide cataclysmic confrontation.
Forbes reported that Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad's popular support comes from his appeals to social justice and Iranian nationalism. It also reflects working-class anger at the corruption of the past governments. However, the economic news since his election has largely been bad and is likely to cause his support to drop dramatically.
With a contract equal to two years of total oil revenue of Iran being given to the family of the Vice-President and chief advisor of Ahmadi-Nejad, it's not clear how long the "clean" reputation of the current regime will prevail.
Iran Press News reported that the regime-run site Aref News wrote: "Some of the diplomats stationed in the German embassy in Tehran with inauguration of their German language training institute were plotting to exploit possible opportunities."
Cox & Forkum published another cartoon: Undeniable.
Toronto Star reported that an already fragile ceasefire in the Middle East now appears in greater danger of unraveling, threatened by Hezbollah's refusal to disarm and Israeli charges that Iran and Syria are already rearming its enemy. Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said: "This war is not over yet."
TurkishPress reported that Turkey has grounded two Syria-bound Iranian planes over the past month to search for weapons following Israeli intelligence that Iran is supplying rockets to Hezbollah.
Iran Press News reported that the regime-run Fars news agency reported: “The minister of housing and urban development of the Islamic regime announced that he is ready to rebuild Lebanon."
Alan note: meanwhile the $150 million already advanced to Hezbollah to achieve this could be better used - from the point of view of the Iranian populace - to provide essential infrastructure - like clean drinking water. Or any water at all in some areas of the country.
Fox News reported that Iran has been attempting to rearm the Lebanon-based terror network Hezbollah since the U.N.-backed cease-fire.
YNet News reported that Abu Nasser, commander of al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade in Nablus, encouraged by war results said 'Our brothers demonstrated what we have felt in recent years: Israel falling apart. Next time Iran will be in picture with missiles on Tel Aviv and it will be easier'.
The nuclear crisis with Iran is about to enter center stage.
Reuters reported that the United States expects the United Nations to act swiftly next month and consider sanctions against Iran if it does not drop its nuclear program.
Forbes reported that the United States intends to act next month to have the United Nations impose penalties on Iran for refusing to suspend its enrichment of uranium.
Bronwen Maddox, The Times Online reported that the Lebanon crisis has turned up the heat with Iran over its nuclear ambitions. This week has brought new signs that Tehran won’t back down. But Iran has stirred in, too, some mollifying gestures and clearly hopes to play a clever game, one step back from the brink of outright provocation.
Henry Sokolski, National Review Online argued that the nuclear deal Washington is currently dangling before Iran to entice it to halt its declared uranium-enrichment program is a cure nearly as awful as the disease.
Why the West is running out of time in dealing with Ahmadinejad.
Patrick Poole, FrontPageMagazine.com examined Ahmadinejad’s apocalyptic faith. A must read.
Roger Scruton, The Wall Street Journal examined the term "Islamofascism" and that the word provides a convenient way of announcing that you are not against Islam but only against its perversion by the terrorists. But this prompts the question whether terrorism is really as alien to Islam.
Iran is preparing its children for war.
Kenneth R. Timmerman, FrontPageMagazine.com reported that a new study of 115 Iranian school textbooks concludes that Iran is preparing its children for war, and is willing to risk massive casualties for the opportunity to defeat America in a world-wide cataclysmic confrontation.
Forbes reported that Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad's popular support comes from his appeals to social justice and Iranian nationalism. It also reflects working-class anger at the corruption of the past governments. However, the economic news since his election has largely been bad and is likely to cause his support to drop dramatically.
With a contract equal to two years of total oil revenue of Iran being given to the family of the Vice-President and chief advisor of Ahmadi-Nejad, it's not clear how long the "clean" reputation of the current regime will prevail.
Iran Press News reported that the regime-run site Aref News wrote: "Some of the diplomats stationed in the German embassy in Tehran with inauguration of their German language training institute were plotting to exploit possible opportunities."
Cox & Forkum published another cartoon: Undeniable.
Friday, August 18, 2006
SELECTED RCI NEWSBRIEFS
Rooz Online reported the Iranian administration is seeking changes to its election law which would put the relegation of the supervising and even procedural tasks of screening candidates to the Baseej para-military forces that are part of the Passdaran Revolutionary Guards Corps. Amazing.
"Corruption free" Ahmadinejad's administration hands mega-contract to family members.
Iran Press News reported that one of the biggest contracts in the history of the oil and gas industry has become a tug of war between certain families Iranian administration. The contract entitled "NIOC LNG” is considered to be equal to two years of Iran’s oil income and given to nephews of the vice president.
The 60 Minute interview with Ahmadinejad.
Bret Stephens, The Wall Street Journal suggested the questions that 60 Minutes should have asked Ahmadinejad. (Alan note: MUST read)
Bernard Goldberg, The Wall Street Journal reported on the 60 minutes interview with Ahmadinejad and argued that Ahmadinejad is television savvy and understands the media at least as well as Mike Wallace does.
Ahmadinejad's latest boasts.
CNN News reported that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said that Hezbollah has toppled U.S.-led plans for the Middle East.
MyWay News reported that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Iran would not yield to Western pressure to give up its home-grown nuclear technology.
Bush warns Iran.
Reuters reported that President Bush said Iran must stop supporting armed groups trying to derail democracies in Iraq and Lebanon.
How Iran treats its dissidents.
Iran Press News reported that on July 9th on the 7th anniversary ceremonies of the, 1999 Tehran University uprisings, the Islamic regime, attacked and arrested a few of our friends who had gathered in Tehran; they were transferred to an unknown location and they are still in detention.
Rooz Online reported that Ramin Jahanbegloo’s FORCED ‘confessions about his so called role in the velvet revolution of Iran are going to be soon broadcast on national television in Iran.
Iran Press News reported that the Mohammadi family has demanded that the Islamic regime identify all those who had a hand in the murder of their son.
The Jerusalem Post reported that an Iranian hard-line cleric warned Israel that Iran's 2,000-kilometer missiles will land in Tel Aviv if the Jewish state attacks Iran. (See relevant video on my Home page)
Iran Press News reported that American company Halliburton recently instructed its branch offices that they refrain from renewing their contracts with all their employees of Iranian nationality.
Iran Press News reported that Nasrollah Safir, bishop and leader of the Lebanese Maronite Christians, stated that all Lebanese should realize that the greatest danger of all today comes from the regime in Tehran.
Iran Press News reported that 500 workers seeking work have been dispatched to Iraq.
Iran Press News published a photo of a recent sign outside of Tehran.
"Corruption free" Ahmadinejad's administration hands mega-contract to family members.
Iran Press News reported that one of the biggest contracts in the history of the oil and gas industry has become a tug of war between certain families Iranian administration. The contract entitled "NIOC LNG” is considered to be equal to two years of Iran’s oil income and given to nephews of the vice president.
The 60 Minute interview with Ahmadinejad.
Bret Stephens, The Wall Street Journal suggested the questions that 60 Minutes should have asked Ahmadinejad. (Alan note: MUST read)
Bernard Goldberg, The Wall Street Journal reported on the 60 minutes interview with Ahmadinejad and argued that Ahmadinejad is television savvy and understands the media at least as well as Mike Wallace does.
Ahmadinejad's latest boasts.
CNN News reported that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said that Hezbollah has toppled U.S.-led plans for the Middle East.
MyWay News reported that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Iran would not yield to Western pressure to give up its home-grown nuclear technology.
Bush warns Iran.
Reuters reported that President Bush said Iran must stop supporting armed groups trying to derail democracies in Iraq and Lebanon.
How Iran treats its dissidents.
Iran Press News reported that on July 9th on the 7th anniversary ceremonies of the, 1999 Tehran University uprisings, the Islamic regime, attacked and arrested a few of our friends who had gathered in Tehran; they were transferred to an unknown location and they are still in detention.
Rooz Online reported that Ramin Jahanbegloo’s FORCED ‘confessions about his so called role in the velvet revolution of Iran are going to be soon broadcast on national television in Iran.
Iran Press News reported that the Mohammadi family has demanded that the Islamic regime identify all those who had a hand in the murder of their son.
The Jerusalem Post reported that an Iranian hard-line cleric warned Israel that Iran's 2,000-kilometer missiles will land in Tel Aviv if the Jewish state attacks Iran. (See relevant video on my Home page)
Iran Press News reported that American company Halliburton recently instructed its branch offices that they refrain from renewing their contracts with all their employees of Iranian nationality.
Iran Press News reported that Nasrollah Safir, bishop and leader of the Lebanese Maronite Christians, stated that all Lebanese should realize that the greatest danger of all today comes from the regime in Tehran.
Iran Press News reported that 500 workers seeking work have been dispatched to Iraq.
Iran Press News published a photo of a recent sign outside of Tehran.
IRAN THROWS MONEY OVERSEAS WHILE OWN PEOPLE STARVE
Note: the active links to Iran Press News takes you to the Persian/Farsi source articles translated into English by Banafsheh Zand-Bonazzi.
The Minister of housing & development of the Islamic Republic of Iran wants to rebuild Lebanon
The regime-run Fars news agency reported: “The minister of housing and urban development of the Islamic regime announced that he is ready to rebuild Lebanon with the cooperation of the Islamic regime’s ministry of interior.”
Mohammad Saeedi-Kia, speaking on Tuesday, August 15th, in the third conference of the deputies of the construction and development affairs across Iran which took place in the city of Mashhad, told a group of reporters: “A delegation of deputies from the office of construction and development of our ministry has traveled to Lebanon and after an analysis on the reconstruction of the cities, necessary decisions and steps will be taken.”
* EDITOR’S NOTE: According to Hamid-Reza Taraghi
Source English article the director of the MOTALEHFEH political party in the Islamic parliament forty-two million Iranians live under the poverty line; yet the Islamic Regime continues to spend the money gleaned from the sale of Iran’s nationalized natural resources such as oil and gas, which belongs to the people of Iran, in order to strengthen its terrorist strongholds in other countries.
This is their way of tricking the innocent and credulous people of Lebanon into thinking that the Mullahs and their Hezbollah proxies are good Samaritans when all the while they are trying to colonize yet another country for the spread of their terrorism base. Please refer to this previous item
Iranian Populace Reactions (English) in order to read just a few samples of the reactions of the people of Iran to this issue.
http://www.iranpressnews.com/source/015226.htm
Status of 30 big factories in the province of Gilan is critical
The Minister of housing & development of the Islamic Republic of Iran wants to rebuild Lebanon
The regime-run Fars news agency reported: “The minister of housing and urban development of the Islamic regime announced that he is ready to rebuild Lebanon with the cooperation of the Islamic regime’s ministry of interior.”
Mohammad Saeedi-Kia, speaking on Tuesday, August 15th, in the third conference of the deputies of the construction and development affairs across Iran which took place in the city of Mashhad, told a group of reporters: “A delegation of deputies from the office of construction and development of our ministry has traveled to Lebanon and after an analysis on the reconstruction of the cities, necessary decisions and steps will be taken.”
* EDITOR’S NOTE: According to Hamid-Reza Taraghi
Source English article the director of the MOTALEHFEH political party in the Islamic parliament forty-two million Iranians live under the poverty line; yet the Islamic Regime continues to spend the money gleaned from the sale of Iran’s nationalized natural resources such as oil and gas, which belongs to the people of Iran, in order to strengthen its terrorist strongholds in other countries.
This is their way of tricking the innocent and credulous people of Lebanon into thinking that the Mullahs and their Hezbollah proxies are good Samaritans when all the while they are trying to colonize yet another country for the spread of their terrorism base. Please refer to this previous item
Iranian Populace Reactions (English) in order to read just a few samples of the reactions of the people of Iran to this issue.
http://www.iranpressnews.com/source/015226.htm
Status of 30 big factories in the province of Gilan is critical
Gilan is one of the 30 provinces of Iran, with a population of approximately 2 million and an area of 14,700 sq. km. It lies just west of the province of Mazandaran, along the Caspian Sea. The center of the province is the city of Rasht.
Mohammad Yaghoubi, the workers representative in the province of Gilan, in an interview with the reporter from the regime-run news agency, ILNA, said: “The status of 30 big factories in the province of Gilan is extremely critical and over 7000 workers are in limbo and paying for the [regime’s] erroneous policies of privatization. This president who specifically vouched for the restoration of the factories has clearly submitted to the private sector.”
He added: “Thousands of workers are stuck between privatization of various local manufacturing units and have as a result lost their jobs and not a single authority is willing to take action and deal with this situation.”
http://www.iranpressnews.com/source/015439.htm
Three people executed in the Zahedan prison
In typical bloodthirsty form, the Islamic regime once again executed three people on the grounds of the Zahedan prison; the three were hung on Monday, August 14th. The executed were named Abdol-Malek Baghee-zadeh, Sheerdel Sharifi and Hamid-Reza Sawber.
The Islamic regime, in recent months has executed more than 150 people in order to terrorize and intimidate the already exhausted and furious people of the province of Sistan-Baluchestan.
http://www.iranpressnews.com/source/015470.htm
German Embassy’s “illegal” activities in Tehran
The regime-run site Aref News wrote: "Some of the diplomats stationed in the German embassy in Tehran with inauguration of their German language training institute were plotting to exploit possible opportunities.
The actions of the German embassy were unauthorized and their disregard to the residential zoning of the location has annoyed the neighbors. Under the guise of a cultural institutions and educational camouflage they were scheming to gather information and intelligence; this is of course the breeding ground for attracting the cooperation of ‘susceptible’ characters.”
* EDITOR’S NOTE: The Islamic regime’s form of propaganda against those who they wish to castigate and penalize (in this case Germany, for pressing on with the sanctions at the U.N. Security Council) is to always discredit and label them for doing what the Islamic Republic of Iran has in fact been caught doing in other countries time and time again.
It is their way of taking the focus and scrutiny away from themselves. This is a well-known tactic used by the KGB during the Soviet era.
Thursday, August 10, 2006
IRAN NEWS ROUND-UP - English & Links to Farsi
Mansour Osanlou, leader of the Greater Tehran Bus Drivers Union, released from prison
A received report from Tehran: Mansour Osanlou was released from prison at 3:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Aug. 9th. Leaving the prison gates, he was greeted by his entire family, friends and fellow union activists who were waiting for him outside.
After a brief visit and embrace with the well wishers, he headed home with the caravan that had showed up at the prison to salute him. Osanlou appeared tired and weak.
Mansour Osanlou was arrested in December 2005 and without ever really being charged with any concrete or specific charges, spent almost 8 months in prison.
Advaar News reported that Saeed Torabian, member of the board of directors of the greater Tehran bus drivers union said: “Osanlou, the chairperson of the union was arrested directly following the Labor strikes in December last year and was detained in Evin prison’s ward 209 for more than 7 and a half months and was released on $175,000 bail this afternoon at 15:30 from Evin prison.”
Torabian who made the announcement of Osanlou’s release in front of Evin prison added that Osanlou’s freedom is as a result of all of the efforts and assistance of Iranian freedom-lovers. Osanlou in a short interview with the reporter from Advaar News thanked all those who during his detention made every effort t see him released.
http://www.iranpressnews.com/source/015291.htm
Islamic regime plans to dispatch Arabic-speaking Iranians from the city of Ahvaz to Lebanon (Volunteers being recruited from Prisons like in the movies).
According to received reports, the Islamic regime is encouraging young Arabic-speaking residents from city of Ahvaz (Province of Khuzestan*) to participate in the war in Lebanon alongside Hezbollah against Israeli forces. Each person is being offered approximately $10,000.
The Islamic regime has told the volunteers that since they are Arabic-speakers, their presence in Lebanon will not be conspicuous. Volunteers will first go through a short basic training camp in Iran and then will be dispatched to Lebanon.
Previous reports also indicate that the Islamic regime has also granted full pardons to criminals who are either serving life-in-prison or are on death-row in Iran, in exchange for their volunteering to go to Lebanon. The conditions of prisons in Iran is so deplorable that already 400 prisoners have chosen going to war in Lebanon over staying in the regime’s prisons.
* The province of Khuzestan borders on Iraq and a large majority of the residents of that province are bilingual Persian and Arabic-speakers.
Urgent Appeal to All Supporters of Human Rights
By Shadi Sadr, Tehran
As an Iranian lawyer and a human rights defender, I am writing to you to ask you to help me save the life of a woman sentenced to death by stoning! Asharf Kalhori, who is currently in Evin prison in Tehran, is scheduled to be stoned to death by the end of July 2006 for the crime of having "sex".
I am voluntarily representing Ashraf, the mother of four children of ages 9 to 19 to save her from stoning. She had an extramarital affair because she never loved her husband, but her request for divorce had been rejected by the court based on the fact that she had children and, therefore, had to resume living with her husband. Therefore, some women whose divorce requests are denied opt for extramarital affairs.
If you believe that stoning is not an appropriate punishment for a woman having sex with a man other than her husband, if you believe that having sex is not a crime and does not turn a person into a criminal, and if you believe that Ahsraf Kalhori does not deserve to die for having had sex, then please express your opposition to stoning.
Your voice counts! I am asking you to please raise your voice against stoning Ashraf Kalhori by signing the petition addressed to the Iranian Head of the Judiciary and the Iranian Parliament representatives. We can save Ashraf's life and, furthermore, together demand a ban on stoning for ever!
Please sign this petition and let the Iranian Head of Judiciary and the Iranian Parliament know that there exists grand opposition to stoning women for having sex, and that we all appose stoning as the ultimate cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment.
Please forward this letter to others who may be interested.
Shadi Sadr
Attorney at Law
Tehran, Iran
http://www.iranpressnews.com/source/015220.htm
A report on the financial and armament assistance offered to Hezbollah by the Mullahs
This report has been sent to Iran Press News by a reliable insider of the Islamic regime who wishes to remain anonymous:
“As someone who has for years been involved in the financial and armaments dealings of the Islamic regime with the Lebanese branch of Hezbollah, I felt I should impart some of the reliable information. Between the years 2003 and 2004 the equivalent of six billion dollars of income from oil sales went missing and it was not clear how and in what way it had been spent.
After complaints about this matter intensified, in the private meetings of the Islamic regime’s parliament (known as Majles) it was announced that ‘that sum had been set aside as a cash reserve for emergency situations’.
But soon after it came to light that at the order of Mr. Khamenei, $1.5 billion from the total amount had been allotted for buying advanced and modern weapons for the Lebanese Hezbollah.
This amount was poured into an account at the MEAB Bank (bank Middle East and Africa). So far as I personally know this is a violation of the Security Council Resolution 1373 of the United Nations in the ban on aid to organizations that are on the U.N. terrorist list. It is for this reason that the regime’s officials have repeatedly denied this issue.
But if it is proven that the Security Council Resolution 1373 had been violated and the Lebanese Hezbollah had in fact been helped, it can have very serious repercussions for the regime. The regime gave away and gifted billions of dollars to the Lebanese Hezbollah, which I witnessed with my own two eyes but then, in 2004 the regime’s own interior ministry put out an official report that had been prepared for the authorities of the regime that clearly stated that more than 40 million unlucky people in Iran live under the poverty line.
(Hamid-Reza Taraghi, the manager of the MOTALEHFEH political party referring to this report in a February 2004 Jaam’eh-Jam newspaper report, clarified the information and said that in fact the correct statistic was forty-two million people rather than 40 million living under the poverty line).
Hundreds of thousands of educated Iranian youths are unemployed due to lack of sufficient funding for programs to create job opportunities or are not employed in jobs that by no means meet their standard of education. Hundreds of villages and towns and big cities of Iran are deprived of urban facilities such as water pipelines, gas and electricity. Refurbishing roads all over the country, according to officials, will cost all of a half of that $1.5 billion that was gifted to the Lebanese.
The health and medical care conditions in the country can even be sorted out with this same amount. The deteriorating and non-functional foundations of the country’s old telecom system to the chaotic and erratic mobile phone and Internet networks can most definitely be repaired with this amount. While these and thousands of other cases are in dire need of resolving and budgeting, Mr. Khamenei continues to siphon of our money to send money and arms to the Lebanese Hezbollah.”
Anonymous Tehran
http://www.iranpressnews.com/source/015215.htm
Medical report on the hunger strike of Ahmad Batebi
http://sos-batebi.blogspot.com/
Today 15/5/85 (6 August 2006) is the ninth day of the arrest and hunger strike of Ahmad Batebi.
As an independent physician who has been in charge of Ahmad Batebi's health outside of prison, I feel it necessary to note some points about his physical condition:
1- As a result of disk herniation (L4 & L5) due to a blow, Ahmad Batebi is in need of ongoing physiotherapy, medication and further investigation for an operation. If lack of treatment and hunger strike continue, he will face complete physical and sensory paralysis in the lower body.
2- High blood haemoglobin (17 g/dl), which is normally between 12-14 g/dl, will result in arteriosclerosis and an eventual heart attack.
3- High cholesterol, uric acid and triglyceride, which if not treated will irreparably damage his vital organs, namely kidneys, liver and heart.
4- His kidney haemorrhage may possibly be the result of high blood haemoglobin or kidney stone and needs further investigation.
5- Stomach bloating and duodenal ulcer, which can worsen and result in the puncturing of the stomach and/or duodenum, causing internal bleeding.
In light of the above, regarding Mr Ahmad Batebi's many physical ailments, I find it necessary to warn all those responsible and the doctors inside the prison that if his hunger strike does not end and he is not transferred to outside medical care, he will meet the same unfortunate fate of Akbar Mohammadi.
The life of a human being is in danger; his situation needs addressing before another unfortunate incident arises.
Dr Hesam Firouzi
http://www.iranpressnews.com/source/015264.htm
Concerns for a political prisoner with Cancer
According to human rights activists in Iran, political prisoners, Hassan Nahid, a telecommunications engineer who has been detained in Evin prison, suffers from cancer and needs to be under the constant care of specialists to receive treatment for his fatal illness, outside of prison. Nahid has repeatedly visited the Evin prison infirmary for medical help and was recently given pill that have caused him to lose a noticeable amount of weight. When he complained however the Evin prison wardens, in an attempt to humiliate him, said: "You don’t have cancer, you’re just suffering from psychological problems".
Human rights activists in Iran while expressing concerns about the status of Hassan Nahid, call for his treatment in a specialized cancer center and request that all human rights organizations and the United Nations to dispatch their representatives and rapporteurs to the prisons in Iran in order to prevent further violations of human rights by the Islamic regime.
http://www.iranpressnews.com/source/015232.htm
The fate of the Islamic Revolution will be gauged in Lebanon
Saeed Abootaleb, member of the revolutionary guards’ Qods Brigade (aka Jerusalem Brigade) and member of Islamic parliament said: "The fate of the Islamic Revolution will be gauged in Lebanon. If Hezbollah fails, the one hundred-year-old product of our Ulama (Islamic scholar), Faghi (Islamic jurisprudent) and the Islamic dignitaries efforts, will be destroyed. "
Abootaleb spoke to a crowd in the Kerman Province: "War with Lebanon is the facade of a small war with the Islamic Republic. Hezbollah does not fight for the Islamic republic but for our Islamic revolution.”
http://www.iranpressnews.com/source/015238.htm
Anti-Semitic films produced by the Islamic republic on sale in Germany
As the Middle East war rages on, some mosques in Germany show films produced in Iran by the Islamic regime whose subject-matter is about combating Israel. One of these films is entitled “The Children of Al-Aqsa Mosque”, in which it shows Palestinian children being indoctrinated in the struggle against Israel. German intelligence was able to obtain a collection of these films in a mosque in Hamburg. Another of the films in the collection, entitled “Zahra’s Blue Eyes” was produced by the Tehran’s Saba center for the Arts. German intelligence agents say that most of these films produced by the Islamic republic are on sale in mosques and other Islamic centers in Germany.
A received report from Tehran: Mansour Osanlou was released from prison at 3:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Aug. 9th. Leaving the prison gates, he was greeted by his entire family, friends and fellow union activists who were waiting for him outside.
After a brief visit and embrace with the well wishers, he headed home with the caravan that had showed up at the prison to salute him. Osanlou appeared tired and weak.
Mansour Osanlou was arrested in December 2005 and without ever really being charged with any concrete or specific charges, spent almost 8 months in prison.
Advaar News reported that Saeed Torabian, member of the board of directors of the greater Tehran bus drivers union said: “Osanlou, the chairperson of the union was arrested directly following the Labor strikes in December last year and was detained in Evin prison’s ward 209 for more than 7 and a half months and was released on $175,000 bail this afternoon at 15:30 from Evin prison.”
Torabian who made the announcement of Osanlou’s release in front of Evin prison added that Osanlou’s freedom is as a result of all of the efforts and assistance of Iranian freedom-lovers. Osanlou in a short interview with the reporter from Advaar News thanked all those who during his detention made every effort t see him released.
http://www.iranpressnews.com/source/015291.htm
Islamic regime plans to dispatch Arabic-speaking Iranians from the city of Ahvaz to Lebanon (Volunteers being recruited from Prisons like in the movies).
According to received reports, the Islamic regime is encouraging young Arabic-speaking residents from city of Ahvaz (Province of Khuzestan*) to participate in the war in Lebanon alongside Hezbollah against Israeli forces. Each person is being offered approximately $10,000.
The Islamic regime has told the volunteers that since they are Arabic-speakers, their presence in Lebanon will not be conspicuous. Volunteers will first go through a short basic training camp in Iran and then will be dispatched to Lebanon.
Previous reports also indicate that the Islamic regime has also granted full pardons to criminals who are either serving life-in-prison or are on death-row in Iran, in exchange for their volunteering to go to Lebanon. The conditions of prisons in Iran is so deplorable that already 400 prisoners have chosen going to war in Lebanon over staying in the regime’s prisons.
* The province of Khuzestan borders on Iraq and a large majority of the residents of that province are bilingual Persian and Arabic-speakers.
Urgent Appeal to All Supporters of Human Rights
By Shadi Sadr, Tehran
As an Iranian lawyer and a human rights defender, I am writing to you to ask you to help me save the life of a woman sentenced to death by stoning! Asharf Kalhori, who is currently in Evin prison in Tehran, is scheduled to be stoned to death by the end of July 2006 for the crime of having "sex".
I am voluntarily representing Ashraf, the mother of four children of ages 9 to 19 to save her from stoning. She had an extramarital affair because she never loved her husband, but her request for divorce had been rejected by the court based on the fact that she had children and, therefore, had to resume living with her husband. Therefore, some women whose divorce requests are denied opt for extramarital affairs.
If you believe that stoning is not an appropriate punishment for a woman having sex with a man other than her husband, if you believe that having sex is not a crime and does not turn a person into a criminal, and if you believe that Ahsraf Kalhori does not deserve to die for having had sex, then please express your opposition to stoning.
Your voice counts! I am asking you to please raise your voice against stoning Ashraf Kalhori by signing the petition addressed to the Iranian Head of the Judiciary and the Iranian Parliament representatives. We can save Ashraf's life and, furthermore, together demand a ban on stoning for ever!
Please sign this petition and let the Iranian Head of Judiciary and the Iranian Parliament know that there exists grand opposition to stoning women for having sex, and that we all appose stoning as the ultimate cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment.
Please forward this letter to others who may be interested.
Shadi Sadr
Attorney at Law
Tehran, Iran
http://www.iranpressnews.com/source/015220.htm
A report on the financial and armament assistance offered to Hezbollah by the Mullahs
This report has been sent to Iran Press News by a reliable insider of the Islamic regime who wishes to remain anonymous:
“As someone who has for years been involved in the financial and armaments dealings of the Islamic regime with the Lebanese branch of Hezbollah, I felt I should impart some of the reliable information. Between the years 2003 and 2004 the equivalent of six billion dollars of income from oil sales went missing and it was not clear how and in what way it had been spent.
After complaints about this matter intensified, in the private meetings of the Islamic regime’s parliament (known as Majles) it was announced that ‘that sum had been set aside as a cash reserve for emergency situations’.
But soon after it came to light that at the order of Mr. Khamenei, $1.5 billion from the total amount had been allotted for buying advanced and modern weapons for the Lebanese Hezbollah.
This amount was poured into an account at the MEAB Bank (bank Middle East and Africa). So far as I personally know this is a violation of the Security Council Resolution 1373 of the United Nations in the ban on aid to organizations that are on the U.N. terrorist list. It is for this reason that the regime’s officials have repeatedly denied this issue.
But if it is proven that the Security Council Resolution 1373 had been violated and the Lebanese Hezbollah had in fact been helped, it can have very serious repercussions for the regime. The regime gave away and gifted billions of dollars to the Lebanese Hezbollah, which I witnessed with my own two eyes but then, in 2004 the regime’s own interior ministry put out an official report that had been prepared for the authorities of the regime that clearly stated that more than 40 million unlucky people in Iran live under the poverty line.
(Hamid-Reza Taraghi, the manager of the MOTALEHFEH political party referring to this report in a February 2004 Jaam’eh-Jam newspaper report, clarified the information and said that in fact the correct statistic was forty-two million people rather than 40 million living under the poverty line).
Hundreds of thousands of educated Iranian youths are unemployed due to lack of sufficient funding for programs to create job opportunities or are not employed in jobs that by no means meet their standard of education. Hundreds of villages and towns and big cities of Iran are deprived of urban facilities such as water pipelines, gas and electricity. Refurbishing roads all over the country, according to officials, will cost all of a half of that $1.5 billion that was gifted to the Lebanese.
The health and medical care conditions in the country can even be sorted out with this same amount. The deteriorating and non-functional foundations of the country’s old telecom system to the chaotic and erratic mobile phone and Internet networks can most definitely be repaired with this amount. While these and thousands of other cases are in dire need of resolving and budgeting, Mr. Khamenei continues to siphon of our money to send money and arms to the Lebanese Hezbollah.”
Anonymous Tehran
http://www.iranpressnews.com/source/015215.htm
Medical report on the hunger strike of Ahmad Batebi
http://sos-batebi.blogspot.com/
Today 15/5/85 (6 August 2006) is the ninth day of the arrest and hunger strike of Ahmad Batebi.
As an independent physician who has been in charge of Ahmad Batebi's health outside of prison, I feel it necessary to note some points about his physical condition:
1- As a result of disk herniation (L4 & L5) due to a blow, Ahmad Batebi is in need of ongoing physiotherapy, medication and further investigation for an operation. If lack of treatment and hunger strike continue, he will face complete physical and sensory paralysis in the lower body.
2- High blood haemoglobin (17 g/dl), which is normally between 12-14 g/dl, will result in arteriosclerosis and an eventual heart attack.
3- High cholesterol, uric acid and triglyceride, which if not treated will irreparably damage his vital organs, namely kidneys, liver and heart.
4- His kidney haemorrhage may possibly be the result of high blood haemoglobin or kidney stone and needs further investigation.
5- Stomach bloating and duodenal ulcer, which can worsen and result in the puncturing of the stomach and/or duodenum, causing internal bleeding.
In light of the above, regarding Mr Ahmad Batebi's many physical ailments, I find it necessary to warn all those responsible and the doctors inside the prison that if his hunger strike does not end and he is not transferred to outside medical care, he will meet the same unfortunate fate of Akbar Mohammadi.
The life of a human being is in danger; his situation needs addressing before another unfortunate incident arises.
Dr Hesam Firouzi
http://www.iranpressnews.com/source/015264.htm
Concerns for a political prisoner with Cancer
According to human rights activists in Iran, political prisoners, Hassan Nahid, a telecommunications engineer who has been detained in Evin prison, suffers from cancer and needs to be under the constant care of specialists to receive treatment for his fatal illness, outside of prison. Nahid has repeatedly visited the Evin prison infirmary for medical help and was recently given pill that have caused him to lose a noticeable amount of weight. When he complained however the Evin prison wardens, in an attempt to humiliate him, said: "You don’t have cancer, you’re just suffering from psychological problems".
Human rights activists in Iran while expressing concerns about the status of Hassan Nahid, call for his treatment in a specialized cancer center and request that all human rights organizations and the United Nations to dispatch their representatives and rapporteurs to the prisons in Iran in order to prevent further violations of human rights by the Islamic regime.
http://www.iranpressnews.com/source/015232.htm
The fate of the Islamic Revolution will be gauged in Lebanon
Saeed Abootaleb, member of the revolutionary guards’ Qods Brigade (aka Jerusalem Brigade) and member of Islamic parliament said: "The fate of the Islamic Revolution will be gauged in Lebanon. If Hezbollah fails, the one hundred-year-old product of our Ulama (Islamic scholar), Faghi (Islamic jurisprudent) and the Islamic dignitaries efforts, will be destroyed. "
Abootaleb spoke to a crowd in the Kerman Province: "War with Lebanon is the facade of a small war with the Islamic Republic. Hezbollah does not fight for the Islamic republic but for our Islamic revolution.”
http://www.iranpressnews.com/source/015238.htm
Anti-Semitic films produced by the Islamic republic on sale in Germany
As the Middle East war rages on, some mosques in Germany show films produced in Iran by the Islamic regime whose subject-matter is about combating Israel. One of these films is entitled “The Children of Al-Aqsa Mosque”, in which it shows Palestinian children being indoctrinated in the struggle against Israel. German intelligence was able to obtain a collection of these films in a mosque in Hamburg. Another of the films in the collection, entitled “Zahra’s Blue Eyes” was produced by the Tehran’s Saba center for the Arts. German intelligence agents say that most of these films produced by the Islamic republic are on sale in mosques and other Islamic centers in Germany.
Wednesday, August 09, 2006
BBC FINALLY ADMITS MUSLIM EASTERN EUROPE ATROCITIES
CLICK ON TITLE TO GO TO FREE REPUBLIC - MAKE SURE YOU READ THE COMMENTS AS WELL AS THE STORY AND GO TO BBC TO VIEW VIDEOS
BROTHER OF STATE INSPECTOR GENERAL IS DRUG SMUGGLER
CLICK ON TITLE TO GO TO FARSI TEXT ON IRAN PRESS NEWS
Brother of the State Inspector general of the Islamic Republic of Iran turns out to be a heroin smuggler.
Alan's Note: Brother of Former IRGC Commander and Chief of National Police, Ghalibaf, presently Mayor of Tehran - is Iran's largest and most notorious drug smuggler.
Iran has recently tabled a motion in the government to officially open up a transit route for International drug smugglers to receive safe passage on their way to bringing drugs to Europe - as an anti-Western weapon. The Chinese tried something similar by making tar heroin easily and ridiulously available inside the USA to emulate the result of British introduction of opium into China to weaken resistance to British policies.
Advaar News reported: “The brother of Hojjat ol-Islam Niazi (pictured), the State Inspector General and former military prosecutor of greater Tehran was arrested for the possession of 95 kilos of Opium and 45 kilograms of Heroin.”
A day after the regime-run newspaper Kayhan published a proposal that promoted the idea of permitting the transit of drugs through Iran to Europe, as retaliation against the Europeans support of resolution 1696, the website NOSAAZI belonging to the radical disciples of Ahmadinejad, announced the news that Niazi’s brother become the source of serious problems for the inspector general.
According to NOSAAZI, Mr. Niazi’s brother who was traveling between the Kahnooj to Roodon Townships, aroused the suspicion of the police forces leading to an inspection of his vehicle. According to this report the inspection that gleaned 95 kilograms of Opium and 45 kilograms of Heroin led to Niazi’s brother’s arrest. It is important to mention that during interrogation Niazi’s brother confessed to having done this regularly over a long period of time.
Other than his job as the State Inspector General and former military prosecutor of greater Tehran, Hojjat ol-Islam Niazi was also the executive-prosecutor in the bogus investigation of the regime’s own brutal assassinations of a large number of Iranian intellectuals, writers and activists, both inside and outside Iran, in the 90’s, known as the Chain Murders.
MEANWHILE In Mazanderan and elsewhere the stories are like this one: Crisis, Unemployment, Sanctions, Isolation
Brother of the State Inspector general of the Islamic Republic of Iran turns out to be a heroin smuggler.
Alan's Note: Brother of Former IRGC Commander and Chief of National Police, Ghalibaf, presently Mayor of Tehran - is Iran's largest and most notorious drug smuggler.
Iran has recently tabled a motion in the government to officially open up a transit route for International drug smugglers to receive safe passage on their way to bringing drugs to Europe - as an anti-Western weapon. The Chinese tried something similar by making tar heroin easily and ridiulously available inside the USA to emulate the result of British introduction of opium into China to weaken resistance to British policies.
Advaar News reported: “The brother of Hojjat ol-Islam Niazi (pictured), the State Inspector General and former military prosecutor of greater Tehran was arrested for the possession of 95 kilos of Opium and 45 kilograms of Heroin.”
A day after the regime-run newspaper Kayhan published a proposal that promoted the idea of permitting the transit of drugs through Iran to Europe, as retaliation against the Europeans support of resolution 1696, the website NOSAAZI belonging to the radical disciples of Ahmadinejad, announced the news that Niazi’s brother become the source of serious problems for the inspector general.
According to NOSAAZI, Mr. Niazi’s brother who was traveling between the Kahnooj to Roodon Townships, aroused the suspicion of the police forces leading to an inspection of his vehicle. According to this report the inspection that gleaned 95 kilograms of Opium and 45 kilograms of Heroin led to Niazi’s brother’s arrest. It is important to mention that during interrogation Niazi’s brother confessed to having done this regularly over a long period of time.
Other than his job as the State Inspector General and former military prosecutor of greater Tehran, Hojjat ol-Islam Niazi was also the executive-prosecutor in the bogus investigation of the regime’s own brutal assassinations of a large number of Iranian intellectuals, writers and activists, both inside and outside Iran, in the 90’s, known as the Chain Murders.
MEANWHILE In Mazanderan and elsewhere the stories are like this one: Crisis, Unemployment, Sanctions, Isolation
Mazandaran is a province in northern Iran, bordering the Caspian Sea
Alijanzadeh, the governor of Ghaem-shahr in an executive committee meeting with members of Workers House and the association of retirees and pensioners of Mazandaran referring to the 11,000 job applicants in this town, said: "Unfortunately the employment situation in the industrial city of Ghaem-shahr is destroyed and factories and workers are in a very bad situation; unemployment is the biggest concern for the authorities here.”
According to ILNA’s, Alijanzadeh, pointed out that the lack of management in Mazandaran’s industry has been driven to a crisis point. He continued: “It is the duty of the authorities not to sell even one meter of the land that factories stand on.”
Daryabeigi, operations executive of the Workers House in Mozandaran also said: “At present 64 percent workers are contractual and temporary.”
Tuesday, August 08, 2006
RCI SELECTED NEWS BRIEFS
The Times Online reported that Iran is seeking to import large consignments of bomb-making uranium from the African mining area that produced the Hiroshima bomb. A huge shipment of smuggled uranium 238, uncovered by customs officials in Tanzania destined for the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas. (For peaceful purposes of course!)
Iranian dissident Mohammadi's funeral.
SOSIran published a translation of a report on the condition of the body of the Iranian dissident. Graphic language.
Iran Press News published photos of the funeral of Iranian dissident Akbar Mohammadi.
Islamic Regime newspaper: "Open a corridor for the drug trade to Europe".
Iran Press News reported that the regime-run Kayhan newspaper is demanding that a transit for drug shipments from Iran into Europe be opened up.
Russians angry over US sanction on arms deal to Iran.
Mos News reported that Washington imposed sanctions on two of Russia’s leading arms firms over their links with Iran on Friday, a step Moscow said was a “clearly illegitimate” attempt to impose U.S. laws on foreigners.
Hezbollah's training program in Iran.
Iran Press News reported on an interview with Mullah Ali-Akbar Mohtashami-pour, known as "The Godfather" of Lebanon's Hezbollah and also known as one of the leaders of the defeated and now-marginalized band of ex-President Khatami Reformists.
He said: "while I was in Lebanon and Syria myself, we were able to organize at least 30 training sessions and each session was consistent of 300 trainees."
Iran Press News reported that Hezbollah forces are dispatched to Iran in order to receive training by the Islamic regime and are then returned to Lebanon. A 30-member group, who were on a recent training visit to Iran, was instructed on the operations of the “Fajr” Missiles 3 and 5, the Russian-made SAM (Surface-to-Air Missiles) 7 and the Chinese QW1.
US Congress remembers Iran's 100th anniversary of it constitutional revolution. (Alan's note: a revival of this could be used as a basis for a "Government in Exile" in Europe or Canada as a counterpoint to the Islamic Regime and an umbrella under which opposition groups could fucntion)
Yahoo News reported that 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.
Congressman Lantos meets with Iranian ambassador.
(Alan's note: The idea of not having diplomatic relations with Iran means NOT having relations with Iranian ambassadors, Mr. Santos. Like the New York Times you are deciding what is and what is not best for our country and disregarding what you should be doing by law. Your job in Congress is NOT to conduct foreign policy!)
TradeArabia News Service reported that Rep Tom Lantos, an influential lawmaker has met Iran's UN ambassador Javad Zarif at the envoy's New York home twice in 2006.
Iran Press News reported that August 2nd, over 50 workers and activists from the greater Tehran bus drivers Union gathered in front of the labor department in east Tehran and asked that their belated demands be investigated as promised.
Iran Press News reported that the publisher of the economic and cultural publication, Asia was sentenced to 6 months in prison charged with “propaganda for activist groups opposed to the Islamic Republic.”
Michael Ledeen, The Corner commented on our report, where Iran warned that should their nuclear dossier be voted for referral by the United Nations Security all political prisoners will be summarily executed, saying A regime that kills its own citizens will not hesitate to kill its external enemies.
Iran Press News reported that since the Islamic regime was taken off-guard by recent demonstrations and protests by the brave people of Tabriz, they have been displaying their Basiji mercenaries in the streets under the guise of conducting “maneuvers for confronting uprisings and unrest in the cities”, the terrorism-financing Islamic regime aims to strike fear in the hearts of the people.
A Graphic entitled: A love so beautiful...Putin & his Ahmadinejad.
Iranian dissident Mohammadi's funeral.
SOSIran published a translation of a report on the condition of the body of the Iranian dissident. Graphic language.
Iran Press News published photos of the funeral of Iranian dissident Akbar Mohammadi.
Islamic Regime newspaper: "Open a corridor for the drug trade to Europe".
Iran Press News reported that the regime-run Kayhan newspaper is demanding that a transit for drug shipments from Iran into Europe be opened up.
Russians angry over US sanction on arms deal to Iran.
Mos News reported that Washington imposed sanctions on two of Russia’s leading arms firms over their links with Iran on Friday, a step Moscow said was a “clearly illegitimate” attempt to impose U.S. laws on foreigners.
Hezbollah's training program in Iran.
Iran Press News reported on an interview with Mullah Ali-Akbar Mohtashami-pour, known as "The Godfather" of Lebanon's Hezbollah and also known as one of the leaders of the defeated and now-marginalized band of ex-President Khatami Reformists.
He said: "while I was in Lebanon and Syria myself, we were able to organize at least 30 training sessions and each session was consistent of 300 trainees."
Iran Press News reported that Hezbollah forces are dispatched to Iran in order to receive training by the Islamic regime and are then returned to Lebanon. A 30-member group, who were on a recent training visit to Iran, was instructed on the operations of the “Fajr” Missiles 3 and 5, the Russian-made SAM (Surface-to-Air Missiles) 7 and the Chinese QW1.
US Congress remembers Iran's 100th anniversary of it constitutional revolution. (Alan's note: a revival of this could be used as a basis for a "Government in Exile" in Europe or Canada as a counterpoint to the Islamic Regime and an umbrella under which opposition groups could fucntion)
Yahoo News reported that 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.
Congressman Lantos meets with Iranian ambassador.
(Alan's note: The idea of not having diplomatic relations with Iran means NOT having relations with Iranian ambassadors, Mr. Santos. Like the New York Times you are deciding what is and what is not best for our country and disregarding what you should be doing by law. Your job in Congress is NOT to conduct foreign policy!)
TradeArabia News Service reported that Rep Tom Lantos, an influential lawmaker has met Iran's UN ambassador Javad Zarif at the envoy's New York home twice in 2006.
Iran Press News reported that August 2nd, over 50 workers and activists from the greater Tehran bus drivers Union gathered in front of the labor department in east Tehran and asked that their belated demands be investigated as promised.
Iran Press News reported that the publisher of the economic and cultural publication, Asia was sentenced to 6 months in prison charged with “propaganda for activist groups opposed to the Islamic Republic.”
Michael Ledeen, The Corner commented on our report, where Iran warned that should their nuclear dossier be voted for referral by the United Nations Security all political prisoners will be summarily executed, saying A regime that kills its own citizens will not hesitate to kill its external enemies.
Iran Press News reported that since the Islamic regime was taken off-guard by recent demonstrations and protests by the brave people of Tabriz, they have been displaying their Basiji mercenaries in the streets under the guise of conducting “maneuvers for confronting uprisings and unrest in the cities”, the terrorism-financing Islamic regime aims to strike fear in the hearts of the people.
A Graphic entitled: A love so beautiful...Putin & his Ahmadinejad.
Sunday, August 06, 2006
VARIOUS NEWS BRIEFS/REPORTS
Tehran Sends Archterrorist Mughniyeh to Rescue Hizballah
August 5, 2006
In the middle of the fourth week of the Lebanon War, the tide began to turn in Israel’s favor. The battlefield finally responded to the effect of Israel’s air might, its tank columns, the pounding by mobile artillery and naval craft and its repeated armored infantry assaults.
After losing 44 fighting men, more than 30 civilians, many thousands of wounded and billions of dollars of damage, finally, the Israeli military was given the chance to do what it does best: focus its firepower instead of spreading it out thin over too many targets.
The setbacks of the first three weeks were partly due to tactical incompetence and laggard decision-making on the part of prime minister Ehud Olmert and defense minister Peretz.
Israeli troops therefore spent too long in abrading combat against stubborn Hizballah resistance in such places as Maroun er Ras and Bint Jubeil. But as soon as Israeli ground forces shifted to the massive, long-distance firing mode which they knows best, the impact on the warfront was immediate.
The battle went their way with a minimum of casualties. In places where Israeli troops adhered to the close combat tactics practiced in the first three weeks, they continued to suffer high casualties.
Hizballah soon showed signs of distress. Lacking the weapons and resources to stand up to IDF’s precise-shooting juggernaut, their commanders quickly pulled their men out most combat sectors of South Lebanon and ordered them to regroup in five places:
1. The Western Sector and the center of Tyre.
2. The Wadi Hajar pocket east of Tyre.
3. The Central Sector surrounding Bint Jubeil, where the outcome is still unresolved after many days of fighting.
4. The Wadi Saluki area northwest of the northernmost Israeli town of Metullah.
5. The Eastern Sector, including al Khiam, the Shabaa Farms and Mt Dov, which has seen little fighting - although last week Israeli forces began - then stopped - a major offensive before it got underway.
These pockets are now the main launching-pads for rockets fired into Israel. Outside, there is no ground fighting in South Lebanon but for Israeli air strikes.
Hizballah also has also been using the Tapuach and al-Haroub areas south and northeast of Sidon for shooting rockets. It is from this region that Hizballah fired the long-range Khaibar-1 missiles at Hadera Friday night, August 4, which came 45 km short of Tel Aviv.
Saturday morning, Sidon’s 200,000 inhabitants and its outlying villages up to the Zahrani River were warned to leave their homes and head north to escape the coming Israeli air offensive.
Until the Khaibar attack on Hadera, the concentration of Hizballah’s rocket launchers and stores in and around Sidon had been immune from Israeli attack – largely because Olmert and his senior ministers refused to increase the number of ground troops deployed in Lebanon. The military commanders had to do their best with the limited numbers available.
In other words, with the right manpower level, Hizballah’s abilty to fire rockets can be dented, notwithstanding claims by Israel officials and generals that there is no way to do this when most of Hizballah’s 13,000-rocket stockpile remains intact.
But even cutting down on the daily 200-plus rocket blitz on northern Israel is not plain sailing because:
First, neither the Israeli Air Force nor any other air force is capable of completely halting rocket fire from the ground. In the relatively small distances between Lebanon and Israel, the short-range Katyusha rockets have the effect of medium-range weapons, while the short-to-medium range rockets perform like long-range missiles.
Second, Israel does not have enough infantry on the ground to make substantial inroads on Hizballah’s rocket-firing capabilities.
Third, Iran and Syria are constantly restocking Hizballah’s diminishing supplies of rockets of all types, launchers and operating manpower by a round-the-clock airlift from Iran via Syrian military air fields. Some of the incoming supplies are destroyed by Israeli air attacks as they cross into Lebanon, but a substantial part is conveyed to Hizballah by smuggling networks employing mules to traverse Lebanese mountain paths.
Even if 2,000 have been wiped out and a similar amount has been fired, no one knows how many are left in stock because it is replenished. As long as that corridor is not severed by bombing the Syrian stopover air facilities, Iran will continue to top up Hizballah’s stockpile. Therefore, the rocket offensive cannot be reduced by very much.
Fourth, Israeli forces do not operate in all parts of South Lebanon.
Hizballah’s withdrawal to five pockets in South Lebanon affords the IDF certain tactical advantages - although liabilities too.
The Advantages:
It is now possible to carve the region the Israeli army controls into three sections, western, central and eastern, a tactic familiar from the Gaza Strip, for encumbering Hizballah guerrilla movement between the sections. The goal is to confine Hizballah to the five pockets and place them under blockade. They can then be made to capitulate or face liquidation.
The Liabilities:
Leaving the two banks of the Litani River, the Nabatea plain and Hazbaya to the north of the river in Hizballah hands leaves a route open for its reinforcements to come through and to strike Israeli forces from the rear.
Nonetheless, by Thursday, August 3, Hizballah was showing signs of being in trouble.
A) Local Hizballah village commanders signaled repeated appeals for more manpower and ammunition. The appeals were not met because outside forces cannot break through the defense lines held by the advancing Israeli troops. The village commanders were therefore told by their superiors to fight to the last man and last bullet and reserve the last grenade for suicide.
B) Hizballah’s shadowy leader, the long-wanted Imad Mughniyeh, was hurriedly appointed commander of the southern front as a last resort to save South Lebanon from falling to Israel.
Military and counter-terror sources maintain that this appointment raises the conflict to a new and dangerous level on several counts.
Mughniyeh, wanted for a quarter of a century by the FBI for the huge bombing attacks he orchestrated on the US embassy in Beirut and American and French troops, as well as a spate of hijackings and murders, is important enough to take orders from no-one ranking lower than Iran’s supreme ruler, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Those orders come through the Revolutionary Guards commander Gen. Rahim Safavi.
Therefore, placing Mughniyeh at the head of Hizballah forces in South Lebanon confronts prime minister Olmert uncomfortably close to Iran’s supreme leader; ranges defense minister Peretz opposite his Iranian counterpart Mustafa Najer and chief of staff Lt. Gen Dan Halutz opposite Gen. Safavi, while on the warfront, Israel’s war leaders face the formidable Mughniyeh, Tehran’s secret weapon for rescuing Hizballah from collapse.
Informed circles in the West have a high opinion of Mughniyeh’s military, intelligence and tactical skills. His hand was seen in the transformation of al Qaeda’s 2001 defeat in Afghanistan into a launch pad for its anti-US campaign in Iraq and many other ventures in the terror war against America.
After the death of Abu Musab al Zarqawi, Mughniyeh is rated the world Islamic terror movement’s most outstanding field commander.
Therefore, while the appointment is a measure of Israel’s belated military success in the Lebanese war, it also brings the conflict ever closer to two dangerous orbits – Tehran and al Qaeda.
Mughniyeh is the only undercover agent in the Middle East who enjoys the complete personal trust of Khamenei and Osama bin Laden, on both of whom he is in a position to call for aid.
On the diplomatic front, even if the United States and France can get together on a unified UN Security Council ceasefire resolution, military sources report that neither Iran nor Hizballah has any intention of complying with a resolution dictated by the United States, France and Israel.
Iran's Plot to Mine Uranium in Africa
August 06, 2006 Times Jon Swain, David Leppard and Brian Johnson-Thomas
link to original article
Iran is seeking to import large consignments of bomb-making uranium from the African mining area that produced the Hiroshima bomb, an investigation has revealed.
A United Nations report, dated July 18, said there was “no doubt” that a huge shipment of smuggled uranium 238, uncovered by customs officials in Tanzania, was transported from the Lubumbashi mines in the Congo.
Tanzanian customs officials told The Sunday Times it was destined for the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas, and was stopped on October 22 last year during a routine check.
The disclosure will heighten western fears about the extent of Iran’s presumed nuclear weapons programme and the strategic implications of Iran’s continuing support for Hezbollah during the war with Israel.
It has also emerged that terror cells backed by Iran may be prepared to mount attacks against nuclear power plants in Britain.
Intelligence circulating in Whitehall suggests that sleeper cells linked to Tehran have been conducting reconnaissance at some nuclear sites in preparation for a possible attack.
The parliamentary intelligence and security committee has reported that Iran represented one of the three biggest security threats to Britain. The UN security council has given Iran until the end of this month to halt its uranium enrichment activities. The UN has threatened sanctions if Tehran fails to do so.
A senior Tanzanian customs official said the illicit uranium shipment was found hidden in a consignment of coltan, a rare mineral used to make chips in mobile telephones. The shipment was destined for smelting in the former Soviet republic of Kazakhstan, delivered via Bandar Abbas, Iran’s biggest port.
“There were several containers due to be shipped and they were all routinely scanned with a Geiger counter,” the official said. “This one was very radioactive. When we opened the container it was full of drums of coltan.
Each drum contains about 50kg of ore. When the first and second rows were removed,the ones after that were found to be drums of uranium.”
In a nuclear reactor, uranium 238 can be used to breed plutonium used in nuclear weapons. The customs officer, who spoke to The Sunday Times on condition he was not named, added: “The container was put in a secure part of the port and it was later taken away, by the Americans, I think, or at least with their help. We have all been told not to talk to anyone about this.”
The report by the UN investigation team was submitted to the chairman of the UN sanctions committee, Oswaldo de Rivero, at the end of July and will be considered soon by the security council. It states that Tanzania provided “limited data” on three other shipments of radioactive materials seized in Dar es Salaam over the past 10 years.
The experts said: “In reference to the last shipment from October 2005, the Tanzanian government left no doubt that the uranium was transported from Lubumbashi by road through Zambia to the united republic of Tanzania.”
Lubumbashi is the capital of mineral-rich Katanga province, home of the Shinkolobwe uranium mine that produced material for the two atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. The mine has officially been closed since 1961, before the country’s independence from Belgium, but the UN investigators have told the security council that they found evidence of illegal mining still going on at the site.
In 1999 there were reports that the Congolese authorities had tried to re-open the mine with the help of North Korea. In recent years miners are said to have broken open the lids and extracted ore from the shafts, while police and local authorities turned a blind eye.
In June a parliamentary committee warned that Britain could be attacked by Iranian terrorists if tensions increased. A source with access to current MI5 assessments said: “There is great concern about Iranian sleeper cells inside this country. The intelligence services are taking this threat very seriously.”
Iran Plans to Expand Nuclear Activities
August 06, 2006 The Associated Press Ali Akbar Dareini
link to original article
Iran's top nuclear negotiator said Sunday that Iran will expand uranium enrichment, in defiance of a U.N. Security Council resolution giving the Islamic Republic until Aug. 31 to halt the activity or face the threat of political and economic sanctions.
Ali Larijani called the U.N. Security Council resolution issued last week illegal and said Iran won't respect the deadline. "We reject this resolution," he told reporters. "We will expand nuclear activities where required. It includes all nuclear technology including the string of centrifuges," Larijani said, referring to the centrifuges Iran uses to enrich uranium.
He said Iran had not violated any of its obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation treaty, and that the U.N. had no right to require it suspend enrichment. "We won't accept suspension," he said. Larijani said the Security Council resolution contradicted a package of Western incentives offered in June to persuade Tehran to suspend its enrichment activities.
He reiterated that Iran would formally respond to the incentives package on Aug. 22. Iran has said it will never give up its right to produce nuclear fuel, but has indicated it may suspend large-scale activities to ease tensions with the West. Larijani said the world should blame the United States and its allies for acting against their proposed package and seeking to deny Iran its rights under the NPT.
The United States has accused Iran of seeking nuclear weapons. Tehran maintains its program is peaceful and intended to generate electricity. In February, Iran for the first time produced a batch of low-enriched uranium, using a cascade of 164 centrifuges. The process of uranium enrichment can be used to generate electricity or to create an atomic weapon, depending on the level of enrichment. Iran said it plans to install 3,000 centrifuges at its enrichment plant in Natanz, central Iran, by the end of the year.
Industrial production of enriched uranium in Natanz would require 54,000 centrifuges. Hard-liners within Iran's ruling Islamic establishment have called on the government to withdraw from the NPT in response to the U.N. resolution, but the government has not heeded the call. Withdrawal from the treaty could end all international oversight of Iran's nuclear program.
Larijani: Iran Will Reject UN Resolution, Suspension
August 06, 2006 Islamic Republic News Agency IRNA News
link to original article
Iran will reject both the resolution adopted by the United Nations Security Council on Tehran's nuclear case and he suspension of uranium enrichment, said Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) Ali Larijani here Sunday. "The resolution is illegal because we have not made any violation (of the NPT) to suspend our enrichment activities," Larijani told domestic and foreign reporters in a press conference.
Stressing that Iran has always been ready for talks, Larijani said "We announced that if there is any ambiguity for anyone, it can be removed through negotiations and we stick to the same policy."
"The double-standard policy practiced by the Western countries towards Iran's nuclear program has led to a position where they (Western states) have complicated the issue with their own hands," Larijani said. "On the one hand, they offered the package and on the other, issued the resolution. By doing this, they changed the procedure of solving the problem," Larijani stressed.
"They (Western states) should understand that they cannot talk to Iran by the language of force. They have to change their approach if they want the package to survive," Larijani stressed. "I'm not saying that there are no more chances," Larijani added.
Iran: We supplied Zelzal-2 to Hizbullah
August 05, 2006 The Jerusalem Post Jpost.com Staff and Yaakov Katz
link to original article
Iran admitted for the first time on Friday that it did indeed supply long-range Zelzal-2 missiles to Hizbullah. Secretary-general of the "Intifada conference" MohtashamiPur told an Iranian newspaper that Iran transferred the missiles so that they could be used to defend Lebanon, Channel 1 reported.
The extent of Iran's intimate involvement in Hizbullah attacks is starting to emerge. According to the defense establishment, the reason Hizbullah has not fired long-range Iranian-made Fajr missiles at Israel is due to Teheran's opposition. Israel now understands that without direct orders from the ayatollahs, Hizbullah is not allowed to use Iranian missiles in attacks against Israel.
The IDF also believes that it seriously damaged the long-range rocket array in the first night of air strikes almost three weeks ago and impaired Hizbullah's ability to fire the rockets. The longer-range Zelzal missiles, manufactured by Iran and capable of reaching Tel Aviv, have also not been fired at Israel, and the IDF believes this is because it destroyed almost two-thirds of these in the Hizbullah arsenal.
US Hails Iran's 100th Anniversary of Constitutional Revolution
August 05, 2006 Agence France Presse Yahoo News!
link to original article
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.
Moscow Slams U.S. Ban on Russian Arms Sales
August 05, 2006 MosNews mosnews.com
link to original article
Washington imposed sanctions on two of Russia’s leading arms firms over their links with Iran on Friday, a step Moscow said was a “clearly illegitimate” attempt to impose U.S. laws on foreigners, Reuters reports.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement that the State Department had slapped sanctions on state export agency Rosoboronexport and state-owned warplane maker Sukhoi, meaning they could no longer work with U.S. firms.
“This is a clearly illegitimate attempt to make foreign companies work by internal American rules,” the statement said. Russia said the sanctions had been imposed under a U.S. law which penalizes companies for working with Iran in the sphere of weapons of mass destruction.
The U.S. later said it had imposed sanctions on seven companies from North Korea, Russia, India and Cuba for their arms deals with Iran.
Iran and Russia signed a $1 billion defense deal in December, Russian media said at the time.
Russia agreed to supply TOR-M1 ground-to-air missile systems to the Islamic Republic and also agreed to modernize its air force. Russia is also building an atomic power station at Bushehr on Iran’s Gulf coast.
The statement said the sanctions would stop U.S. companies from working with the two Russian firms, a potential blow to the Russian Regional Jet civil aviation project, which Sukhoi is working on with aerospace giant Boeing. A Sukhoi official said it had broken no regulations.
“We have competed on the U.S. market for a long time, we carefully study the laws and have never violated anything and do not intend to,” Alexander Klementev, deputy director of Sukhoi told Ekho Moskvy radio. “Sukhoi has sent absolutely nothing to Iran in the last 6 or 7 years.”
Rosoboronexport is one of the world’s biggest arms sellers, accounting for around 70 percent of Russia’s $6 billion of sales in 2005. It was not clear from the Russian statement whether the sanctions would also cover the two firms’ subsidiaries. If so, they could soon affect U.S. imports of titanium, an important metal in the aerospace sector.
Rosoboronexport is planning to acquire the world’s biggest titanium maker, Russia’s VSMPO-Avisma, which supplies 35-40 percent of Boeing’s titanium as well as 60-70 percent of that used by its European rival Airbus. Aircraft part maker Goodrich Corp. is also a customer.
Rosoboronexport owns Russian carmaker AvtoVAZ, which has a troubled joint venture with U.S. auto giant General Motors, which could also be affected. “The U.S. is punishing its own companies, taking away their possibilities to cooperate with leading Russian companies,” the ministry said.
Washington and Moscow have clashed frequently over trade policy and Iran over the past few years, with U.S. officials angering President Vladimir Putin with criticism of his democratic record and foreign and energy policy.
Iran: Imprisoned Dissident Dies in Custody
August 03, 2006 Human Rights Watch HRW
link to original article
The Iranian government should immediately allow an independent investigation into the suspicious death in prison of student activist Akbar Mohammadi, Human Rights Watch said today.
Human Rights Watch said that if responsibility for Mohammadi’s death in Tehran’s Evin prison on July 30 lies with the prison or other state authorities, the relevant individuals should be identified and prosecuted.
Mohammadi, 38, is the second inmate to die in the notorious Evin prison in the past three years. In June 2003, Zahra Kazemi, a Canadian-Iranian photojournalist, died while in custody there. Iranian authorities arrested her as she was photographing Evin prison.
A few days later, Kazemi fell into a coma and died. According to lawyers for Kazemi's family, her body showed signs of torture. The Iranian authorities have not charged anyone in connection with her death. “Every death in custody must be investigated,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, director of the Middle East and North Africa division at Human Rights Watch. “But the failure to prosecute anyone for Kazemi’s death underlines the need for an independent inquiry into Mohammadi’s death.”
Human Rights Watch called for an independent commission comprised of Iranian lawyers and medical experts to investigate and report publicly on the circumstances resulting in Mohammadi’s death. Human Rights Watch also expressed its serious concern for the health and safety of other prisoners held for their political beliefs inside Iran’s prisons.
The authorities arrested Mohammadi in 1999 following his participation in student protests at Tehran University. He was originally sentenced to death in September 1999, but his sentence was commuted to 15 years in prison in April 2001.
Several sources told Human Rights Watch that after his arrest in 1999, Mohammadi was severely tortured and ill-treated, leading to serious health problems. Ali Afshari, a student leader, was imprisoned in the same wing as Mohammadi in Evin prison from March 2002 to October 2003. Afshari told Human Rights Watch that Mohammadi told him in detail of his torture and beatings.
Another former detainee, who was also imprisoned with Mohammadi in Evin prison, and knew him well, confirmed that Mohammadi had been badly tortured and that his health had deteriorated. Mohammadi’s brother, Reza Mohammadi, also stated that interrogators severely tortured Mohammadi after his arrest in 1999. “He was healthy before his arrest in 1999, but during his detention he developed several complications, including internal bleeding, injury to his spinal cord and lung infection,” Reza Mohammadi told Human Rights Watch.
In July 2004, government medical authorities determined that Mohammadi’s continued imprisonment endangered his health and that he required immediate medical attention. In July 2004, Mohammadi was released on an indefinite medical leave and reportedly underwent at least three major operations. He was receiving medical treatment in his hometown of Amol until June 2006.
On June 11, security agents re-arrested Mohammadi in his home without any warning and put him in Evin prison. The authorities did not provide any reason for his arrest. Mohammadi’s lawyer, Khalil Bahramian, was informed that Mohammadi went on hunger strike on July 25 to protest his return to prison.
He said that, upon learning of his client’s hunger strike, he asked to visit him, but prison officials denied his request. On Monday, July 31, Justice Minister Jamal Karimirad confirmed Mohammadi’s death in custody. He told reporters that “before his death, this prisoner [Mohammadi] was under medical supervision in the prison’s medical clinic and he had stated that he is in good health.”
He added, “Ultimately, we must await the autopsy report by the coroner’s office.”
On the same day, the director of prisons, Sohrab Soleimani, said, “Last night Mohammadi’s conditions deteriorated and he was receiving medical treatment, but he insisted to be returned to his cell. Upon his return, his condition worsened again and he passed away while being transferred back to the clinic.”
Soleimani, who had earlier denied the reports, also confirmed that Mohammadi had been on hunger strike since July 25 and was consuming only water and tea.
On July 25, when news agencies reported Mohammadi’s hunger strike, Soleimani said, “I absolutely deny this news – Akbar Mohammadi is not on hunger strike.”
“Iran’s judiciary is responsible for Mohammadi’s arrest, his torture and now his death in custody,” said Whitson. “Only an independent investigation can establish why he died, and whether he was tortured, beaten or force-fed. Someone must be held accountable for Mohammadi’s death.”
(Alan's Note: For months now, Iran has been quietly killing political prisoners and dissidents,close to two dozen in the past months. Look for other deaths in the near future in keeping with Ahmadi-Nejad's threat to kill all political prisoners if the UN Security Council imposes sanctions on Iran. Ahmad Batebi,the icon of Student unrest, back in prison again, is likely to be one of the next to go.
No Time to Delay on Iran's Threat
Sunday, August 6, 2006; B06
MICHAEL REITER
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/05/AR2006080500719.html
It is about time that the United Nations set a deadline for Iran to suspend its uranium enrichment and nuclear fuel reprocessing activities [news story, Aug. 1]. The deadline has been set for Aug. 31, which although less than a month away, is still too long. Iran has been asking for additional time for a while now, and every moment that passes gives the country further opportunity to develop its nuclear capabilities.
This is a very real and serious problem because Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has already stated his goal of wiping Israel off the map and has also said, "God willing, with the force of God behind it, we shall soon experience a world without the United States."
Iran is (and has long been) the world's largest state sponsor of terrorism, funding such groups as Hamas in the Palestinian territories and Hezbollah in Lebanon. (And sheltering senior Al Qaeda inside Iran).
Sanctions against Iran need to be imposed sooner and include stricter demands or Iran will distribute its new nuclear capabilities to its terrorist pawns, which would spell disaster not only for Israel and the United States but for countless other nations as well.
Iran's Nuclear Threat Must Be Faced
July 31, 2006 Telegraph y Daniel Hannan
link to original article
It won't be a "durable" ceasefire, Condi, and it won't be "sustainable"; not while the ayatollahs are in power in Iran. T
his war isn't about border security, or prisoner exchanges, or the status of the Shebaa Farms. It isn't really about Lebanon at all, for Hizbollah is not, in any meaningful sense, an indigenous Lebanese phenomenon.
The paramilitaries, rather, are creatures of Teheran: the Levantine branch of the Islamic Revolution. The Iranian Hydra has many heads. The mullahs sponsor militias and political movements across the Muslim world, in the old Silk Road Khanates and as far afield as Bosnia. You can lop off the head called Hizbollah. You can even cauterise the wound, by demilitarising southern Lebanon. But, as long as the monster's heart continues to beat in Teheran, the head will grow back.
The Iranian Revolution of 1979 will one day be seen as an epochal event, as significant as the French Revolution of 1789 or the Russian Revolution of 1917. Like those earlier upheavals, it immediately burst out from behind its borders, disregarding all the accepted rules about how states should deal with each other. Like them, it refused to recognise the legitimacy of foreign governments, and sought to replicate itself around the world.
The ayatollahs' contempt for national sovereignty was manifested in the very first act of their regime: the seizure of the US embassy. Diplomatic immunity is the foundation of all international relations.
Even during the Second World War, when irreconcilable ideologies fought to extirpate each other, embassy staff were peacefully evacuated through neutral countries. By seizing sovereign American territory, the revolutionaries were sending out a message: "We do not acknowledge your rules; we despise your notion of territorial jurisdiction". And they got away with it.
Even while the embassy staff were being held hostage, a counter-revolutionary group occupied the Iranian embassy in London. And how did we respond? We secured the building, our SAS men sliding down like spiders on their threads, and we handed it politely back to Teheran with a purse of money to compensate for the damage caused during the assault.
Not unnaturally, the mullahs concluded that they could have it both ways. They could continue to be accorded the privileges of a sovereign state without having to reciprocate. So began a global campaign to spread the revolution. Iranian agents set out to radicalise the Shia populations of Iraq, the Gulf monarchies and the Fertile Crescent.
They sought to reawaken the old faith among people who had long since turned away from it, notably in the Balkans and in Central Asia. Nor did they confine themselves to the Muslim world. In 1989, Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwah against Salman Rushdie. In other words, the leader of Iran presumed to pass sentence on a British subject - a sentence reconfirmed by Khomeini's successor, Ayatollah Khamenei, last year.
In 1994, Iranian extra-territoriality crossed the Atlantic. A bomb in Buenos Aires killed 100 people and injured 250 more, prompting Argentina to issue warrants for a number of Iranian diplomats and politicians. What possible strategic interest did Iran have in destroying a Jewish community centre in South America?
The answer, surely, is that it was precisely the remoteness of the target that made it so attractive. The ayatollahs were again flaunting their ability to act whenever and wherever they chose.
These are the same men, remember, who are three or four years away from developing nuclear weapons. They already have Shahab-3 missiles, which, in their modified form, have a range of 1,500 miles.
But why worry about delivery mechanisms? We have already seen the mullahs' readiness to equip their proxies in Lebanon with rockets, their agents in South America with bombs. Can we be confident that they would not tack on nuclear warheads?
I am no neo-con. I opposed the Iraq war, because I didn't believe that Saddam had WMD. But who can doubt that Iran is developing them?
Indeed, Iran provides the answer to one of the great conundrums of the decade, namely: why did Saddam pretend that he still had weapons stocks when he had in reality destroyed them? The answer, it seems, is that he didn't want the ayatollahs to see how weak he was. (Alan's note: the WMDs were not destroyed but moved, with a similar result as a loss of deterrent for Sadam against Iran but a misinformation for readers).
A legacy of the Iraq war is that it is much harder to make the case for confronting Iran militarily. Still, there are plenty of intermediate steps that we could take: targeted sanctions, seizure of assets, direct assaults on arms facilities - even, in extremis, the kind of siege, complete with a no-fly-zone, that paralysed Saddam between 1991 and 2003.
At the same time, we could sponsor internal dissent. Plenty of groups oppose the mullahs: monarchists, communists, students, secularists. There are Kurds, Arabs, Turkmen and Azeris with little loyalty to the Persian state. There are Iranian Sunnis who are not even allowed a mosque in Teheran (unlike their co-religionists in London).
But we must first recognise the magnitude of what we are up against. The 1979 revolution introduced many Muslims to the novel idea that there was a conflict between their faith and their secular loyalties. When Britain made war on Ottoman Turkey in 1915, a Cabinet memo fretted that "attacking the Caliphate might agitate our Mussulmans in Egypt and India".
In that event, of course, British Muslims volunteered happily to fight for the Crown, seeing no tension between their private devotion and their civic duties. Their sons and grandsons were, for the most part, equally patriotic.
Yet today, some of their great-grandsons are crossing half the world to take up arms against British troops. This is the poisonous ideology that we are fighting.
Our chief purpose in defeating it should not be to restore the comity of nations, nor to bolster Muslim moderates, nor even to bring freedom to the long-suffering Iranian people - though all these would be happy side-effects. Our main object, rather, must be to forestall a nuclear attack.
August 5, 2006
In the middle of the fourth week of the Lebanon War, the tide began to turn in Israel’s favor. The battlefield finally responded to the effect of Israel’s air might, its tank columns, the pounding by mobile artillery and naval craft and its repeated armored infantry assaults.
After losing 44 fighting men, more than 30 civilians, many thousands of wounded and billions of dollars of damage, finally, the Israeli military was given the chance to do what it does best: focus its firepower instead of spreading it out thin over too many targets.
The setbacks of the first three weeks were partly due to tactical incompetence and laggard decision-making on the part of prime minister Ehud Olmert and defense minister Peretz.
Israeli troops therefore spent too long in abrading combat against stubborn Hizballah resistance in such places as Maroun er Ras and Bint Jubeil. But as soon as Israeli ground forces shifted to the massive, long-distance firing mode which they knows best, the impact on the warfront was immediate.
The battle went their way with a minimum of casualties. In places where Israeli troops adhered to the close combat tactics practiced in the first three weeks, they continued to suffer high casualties.
Hizballah soon showed signs of distress. Lacking the weapons and resources to stand up to IDF’s precise-shooting juggernaut, their commanders quickly pulled their men out most combat sectors of South Lebanon and ordered them to regroup in five places:
1. The Western Sector and the center of Tyre.
2. The Wadi Hajar pocket east of Tyre.
3. The Central Sector surrounding Bint Jubeil, where the outcome is still unresolved after many days of fighting.
4. The Wadi Saluki area northwest of the northernmost Israeli town of Metullah.
5. The Eastern Sector, including al Khiam, the Shabaa Farms and Mt Dov, which has seen little fighting - although last week Israeli forces began - then stopped - a major offensive before it got underway.
These pockets are now the main launching-pads for rockets fired into Israel. Outside, there is no ground fighting in South Lebanon but for Israeli air strikes.
Hizballah also has also been using the Tapuach and al-Haroub areas south and northeast of Sidon for shooting rockets. It is from this region that Hizballah fired the long-range Khaibar-1 missiles at Hadera Friday night, August 4, which came 45 km short of Tel Aviv.
Saturday morning, Sidon’s 200,000 inhabitants and its outlying villages up to the Zahrani River were warned to leave their homes and head north to escape the coming Israeli air offensive.
Until the Khaibar attack on Hadera, the concentration of Hizballah’s rocket launchers and stores in and around Sidon had been immune from Israeli attack – largely because Olmert and his senior ministers refused to increase the number of ground troops deployed in Lebanon. The military commanders had to do their best with the limited numbers available.
In other words, with the right manpower level, Hizballah’s abilty to fire rockets can be dented, notwithstanding claims by Israel officials and generals that there is no way to do this when most of Hizballah’s 13,000-rocket stockpile remains intact.
But even cutting down on the daily 200-plus rocket blitz on northern Israel is not plain sailing because:
First, neither the Israeli Air Force nor any other air force is capable of completely halting rocket fire from the ground. In the relatively small distances between Lebanon and Israel, the short-range Katyusha rockets have the effect of medium-range weapons, while the short-to-medium range rockets perform like long-range missiles.
Second, Israel does not have enough infantry on the ground to make substantial inroads on Hizballah’s rocket-firing capabilities.
Third, Iran and Syria are constantly restocking Hizballah’s diminishing supplies of rockets of all types, launchers and operating manpower by a round-the-clock airlift from Iran via Syrian military air fields. Some of the incoming supplies are destroyed by Israeli air attacks as they cross into Lebanon, but a substantial part is conveyed to Hizballah by smuggling networks employing mules to traverse Lebanese mountain paths.
Even if 2,000 have been wiped out and a similar amount has been fired, no one knows how many are left in stock because it is replenished. As long as that corridor is not severed by bombing the Syrian stopover air facilities, Iran will continue to top up Hizballah’s stockpile. Therefore, the rocket offensive cannot be reduced by very much.
Fourth, Israeli forces do not operate in all parts of South Lebanon.
Hizballah’s withdrawal to five pockets in South Lebanon affords the IDF certain tactical advantages - although liabilities too.
The Advantages:
It is now possible to carve the region the Israeli army controls into three sections, western, central and eastern, a tactic familiar from the Gaza Strip, for encumbering Hizballah guerrilla movement between the sections. The goal is to confine Hizballah to the five pockets and place them under blockade. They can then be made to capitulate or face liquidation.
The Liabilities:
Leaving the two banks of the Litani River, the Nabatea plain and Hazbaya to the north of the river in Hizballah hands leaves a route open for its reinforcements to come through and to strike Israeli forces from the rear.
Nonetheless, by Thursday, August 3, Hizballah was showing signs of being in trouble.
A) Local Hizballah village commanders signaled repeated appeals for more manpower and ammunition. The appeals were not met because outside forces cannot break through the defense lines held by the advancing Israeli troops. The village commanders were therefore told by their superiors to fight to the last man and last bullet and reserve the last grenade for suicide.
B) Hizballah’s shadowy leader, the long-wanted Imad Mughniyeh, was hurriedly appointed commander of the southern front as a last resort to save South Lebanon from falling to Israel.
Military and counter-terror sources maintain that this appointment raises the conflict to a new and dangerous level on several counts.
Mughniyeh, wanted for a quarter of a century by the FBI for the huge bombing attacks he orchestrated on the US embassy in Beirut and American and French troops, as well as a spate of hijackings and murders, is important enough to take orders from no-one ranking lower than Iran’s supreme ruler, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Those orders come through the Revolutionary Guards commander Gen. Rahim Safavi.
Therefore, placing Mughniyeh at the head of Hizballah forces in South Lebanon confronts prime minister Olmert uncomfortably close to Iran’s supreme leader; ranges defense minister Peretz opposite his Iranian counterpart Mustafa Najer and chief of staff Lt. Gen Dan Halutz opposite Gen. Safavi, while on the warfront, Israel’s war leaders face the formidable Mughniyeh, Tehran’s secret weapon for rescuing Hizballah from collapse.
Informed circles in the West have a high opinion of Mughniyeh’s military, intelligence and tactical skills. His hand was seen in the transformation of al Qaeda’s 2001 defeat in Afghanistan into a launch pad for its anti-US campaign in Iraq and many other ventures in the terror war against America.
After the death of Abu Musab al Zarqawi, Mughniyeh is rated the world Islamic terror movement’s most outstanding field commander.
Therefore, while the appointment is a measure of Israel’s belated military success in the Lebanese war, it also brings the conflict ever closer to two dangerous orbits – Tehran and al Qaeda.
Mughniyeh is the only undercover agent in the Middle East who enjoys the complete personal trust of Khamenei and Osama bin Laden, on both of whom he is in a position to call for aid.
On the diplomatic front, even if the United States and France can get together on a unified UN Security Council ceasefire resolution, military sources report that neither Iran nor Hizballah has any intention of complying with a resolution dictated by the United States, France and Israel.
Iran's Plot to Mine Uranium in Africa
August 06, 2006 Times Jon Swain, David Leppard and Brian Johnson-Thomas
link to original article
Iran is seeking to import large consignments of bomb-making uranium from the African mining area that produced the Hiroshima bomb, an investigation has revealed.
A United Nations report, dated July 18, said there was “no doubt” that a huge shipment of smuggled uranium 238, uncovered by customs officials in Tanzania, was transported from the Lubumbashi mines in the Congo.
Tanzanian customs officials told The Sunday Times it was destined for the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas, and was stopped on October 22 last year during a routine check.
The disclosure will heighten western fears about the extent of Iran’s presumed nuclear weapons programme and the strategic implications of Iran’s continuing support for Hezbollah during the war with Israel.
It has also emerged that terror cells backed by Iran may be prepared to mount attacks against nuclear power plants in Britain.
Intelligence circulating in Whitehall suggests that sleeper cells linked to Tehran have been conducting reconnaissance at some nuclear sites in preparation for a possible attack.
The parliamentary intelligence and security committee has reported that Iran represented one of the three biggest security threats to Britain. The UN security council has given Iran until the end of this month to halt its uranium enrichment activities. The UN has threatened sanctions if Tehran fails to do so.
A senior Tanzanian customs official said the illicit uranium shipment was found hidden in a consignment of coltan, a rare mineral used to make chips in mobile telephones. The shipment was destined for smelting in the former Soviet republic of Kazakhstan, delivered via Bandar Abbas, Iran’s biggest port.
“There were several containers due to be shipped and they were all routinely scanned with a Geiger counter,” the official said. “This one was very radioactive. When we opened the container it was full of drums of coltan.
Each drum contains about 50kg of ore. When the first and second rows were removed,the ones after that were found to be drums of uranium.”
In a nuclear reactor, uranium 238 can be used to breed plutonium used in nuclear weapons. The customs officer, who spoke to The Sunday Times on condition he was not named, added: “The container was put in a secure part of the port and it was later taken away, by the Americans, I think, or at least with their help. We have all been told not to talk to anyone about this.”
The report by the UN investigation team was submitted to the chairman of the UN sanctions committee, Oswaldo de Rivero, at the end of July and will be considered soon by the security council. It states that Tanzania provided “limited data” on three other shipments of radioactive materials seized in Dar es Salaam over the past 10 years.
The experts said: “In reference to the last shipment from October 2005, the Tanzanian government left no doubt that the uranium was transported from Lubumbashi by road through Zambia to the united republic of Tanzania.”
Lubumbashi is the capital of mineral-rich Katanga province, home of the Shinkolobwe uranium mine that produced material for the two atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. The mine has officially been closed since 1961, before the country’s independence from Belgium, but the UN investigators have told the security council that they found evidence of illegal mining still going on at the site.
In 1999 there were reports that the Congolese authorities had tried to re-open the mine with the help of North Korea. In recent years miners are said to have broken open the lids and extracted ore from the shafts, while police and local authorities turned a blind eye.
In June a parliamentary committee warned that Britain could be attacked by Iranian terrorists if tensions increased. A source with access to current MI5 assessments said: “There is great concern about Iranian sleeper cells inside this country. The intelligence services are taking this threat very seriously.”
Iran Plans to Expand Nuclear Activities
August 06, 2006 The Associated Press Ali Akbar Dareini
link to original article
Iran's top nuclear negotiator said Sunday that Iran will expand uranium enrichment, in defiance of a U.N. Security Council resolution giving the Islamic Republic until Aug. 31 to halt the activity or face the threat of political and economic sanctions.
Ali Larijani called the U.N. Security Council resolution issued last week illegal and said Iran won't respect the deadline. "We reject this resolution," he told reporters. "We will expand nuclear activities where required. It includes all nuclear technology including the string of centrifuges," Larijani said, referring to the centrifuges Iran uses to enrich uranium.
He said Iran had not violated any of its obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation treaty, and that the U.N. had no right to require it suspend enrichment. "We won't accept suspension," he said. Larijani said the Security Council resolution contradicted a package of Western incentives offered in June to persuade Tehran to suspend its enrichment activities.
He reiterated that Iran would formally respond to the incentives package on Aug. 22. Iran has said it will never give up its right to produce nuclear fuel, but has indicated it may suspend large-scale activities to ease tensions with the West. Larijani said the world should blame the United States and its allies for acting against their proposed package and seeking to deny Iran its rights under the NPT.
The United States has accused Iran of seeking nuclear weapons. Tehran maintains its program is peaceful and intended to generate electricity. In February, Iran for the first time produced a batch of low-enriched uranium, using a cascade of 164 centrifuges. The process of uranium enrichment can be used to generate electricity or to create an atomic weapon, depending on the level of enrichment. Iran said it plans to install 3,000 centrifuges at its enrichment plant in Natanz, central Iran, by the end of the year.
Industrial production of enriched uranium in Natanz would require 54,000 centrifuges. Hard-liners within Iran's ruling Islamic establishment have called on the government to withdraw from the NPT in response to the U.N. resolution, but the government has not heeded the call. Withdrawal from the treaty could end all international oversight of Iran's nuclear program.
Larijani: Iran Will Reject UN Resolution, Suspension
August 06, 2006 Islamic Republic News Agency IRNA News
link to original article
Iran will reject both the resolution adopted by the United Nations Security Council on Tehran's nuclear case and he suspension of uranium enrichment, said Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) Ali Larijani here Sunday. "The resolution is illegal because we have not made any violation (of the NPT) to suspend our enrichment activities," Larijani told domestic and foreign reporters in a press conference.
Stressing that Iran has always been ready for talks, Larijani said "We announced that if there is any ambiguity for anyone, it can be removed through negotiations and we stick to the same policy."
"The double-standard policy practiced by the Western countries towards Iran's nuclear program has led to a position where they (Western states) have complicated the issue with their own hands," Larijani said. "On the one hand, they offered the package and on the other, issued the resolution. By doing this, they changed the procedure of solving the problem," Larijani stressed.
"They (Western states) should understand that they cannot talk to Iran by the language of force. They have to change their approach if they want the package to survive," Larijani stressed. "I'm not saying that there are no more chances," Larijani added.
Iran: We supplied Zelzal-2 to Hizbullah
August 05, 2006 The Jerusalem Post Jpost.com Staff and Yaakov Katz
link to original article
Iran admitted for the first time on Friday that it did indeed supply long-range Zelzal-2 missiles to Hizbullah. Secretary-general of the "Intifada conference" MohtashamiPur told an Iranian newspaper that Iran transferred the missiles so that they could be used to defend Lebanon, Channel 1 reported.
The extent of Iran's intimate involvement in Hizbullah attacks is starting to emerge. According to the defense establishment, the reason Hizbullah has not fired long-range Iranian-made Fajr missiles at Israel is due to Teheran's opposition. Israel now understands that without direct orders from the ayatollahs, Hizbullah is not allowed to use Iranian missiles in attacks against Israel.
The IDF also believes that it seriously damaged the long-range rocket array in the first night of air strikes almost three weeks ago and impaired Hizbullah's ability to fire the rockets. The longer-range Zelzal missiles, manufactured by Iran and capable of reaching Tel Aviv, have also not been fired at Israel, and the IDF believes this is because it destroyed almost two-thirds of these in the Hizbullah arsenal.
US Hails Iran's 100th Anniversary of Constitutional Revolution
August 05, 2006 Agence France Presse Yahoo News!
link to original article
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.
Moscow Slams U.S. Ban on Russian Arms Sales
August 05, 2006 MosNews mosnews.com
link to original article
Washington imposed sanctions on two of Russia’s leading arms firms over their links with Iran on Friday, a step Moscow said was a “clearly illegitimate” attempt to impose U.S. laws on foreigners, Reuters reports.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement that the State Department had slapped sanctions on state export agency Rosoboronexport and state-owned warplane maker Sukhoi, meaning they could no longer work with U.S. firms.
“This is a clearly illegitimate attempt to make foreign companies work by internal American rules,” the statement said. Russia said the sanctions had been imposed under a U.S. law which penalizes companies for working with Iran in the sphere of weapons of mass destruction.
The U.S. later said it had imposed sanctions on seven companies from North Korea, Russia, India and Cuba for their arms deals with Iran.
Iran and Russia signed a $1 billion defense deal in December, Russian media said at the time.
Russia agreed to supply TOR-M1 ground-to-air missile systems to the Islamic Republic and also agreed to modernize its air force. Russia is also building an atomic power station at Bushehr on Iran’s Gulf coast.
The statement said the sanctions would stop U.S. companies from working with the two Russian firms, a potential blow to the Russian Regional Jet civil aviation project, which Sukhoi is working on with aerospace giant Boeing. A Sukhoi official said it had broken no regulations.
“We have competed on the U.S. market for a long time, we carefully study the laws and have never violated anything and do not intend to,” Alexander Klementev, deputy director of Sukhoi told Ekho Moskvy radio. “Sukhoi has sent absolutely nothing to Iran in the last 6 or 7 years.”
Rosoboronexport is one of the world’s biggest arms sellers, accounting for around 70 percent of Russia’s $6 billion of sales in 2005. It was not clear from the Russian statement whether the sanctions would also cover the two firms’ subsidiaries. If so, they could soon affect U.S. imports of titanium, an important metal in the aerospace sector.
Rosoboronexport is planning to acquire the world’s biggest titanium maker, Russia’s VSMPO-Avisma, which supplies 35-40 percent of Boeing’s titanium as well as 60-70 percent of that used by its European rival Airbus. Aircraft part maker Goodrich Corp. is also a customer.
Rosoboronexport owns Russian carmaker AvtoVAZ, which has a troubled joint venture with U.S. auto giant General Motors, which could also be affected. “The U.S. is punishing its own companies, taking away their possibilities to cooperate with leading Russian companies,” the ministry said.
Washington and Moscow have clashed frequently over trade policy and Iran over the past few years, with U.S. officials angering President Vladimir Putin with criticism of his democratic record and foreign and energy policy.
Iran: Imprisoned Dissident Dies in Custody
August 03, 2006 Human Rights Watch HRW
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The Iranian government should immediately allow an independent investigation into the suspicious death in prison of student activist Akbar Mohammadi, Human Rights Watch said today.
Human Rights Watch said that if responsibility for Mohammadi’s death in Tehran’s Evin prison on July 30 lies with the prison or other state authorities, the relevant individuals should be identified and prosecuted.
Mohammadi, 38, is the second inmate to die in the notorious Evin prison in the past three years. In June 2003, Zahra Kazemi, a Canadian-Iranian photojournalist, died while in custody there. Iranian authorities arrested her as she was photographing Evin prison.
A few days later, Kazemi fell into a coma and died. According to lawyers for Kazemi's family, her body showed signs of torture. The Iranian authorities have not charged anyone in connection with her death. “Every death in custody must be investigated,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, director of the Middle East and North Africa division at Human Rights Watch. “But the failure to prosecute anyone for Kazemi’s death underlines the need for an independent inquiry into Mohammadi’s death.”
Human Rights Watch called for an independent commission comprised of Iranian lawyers and medical experts to investigate and report publicly on the circumstances resulting in Mohammadi’s death. Human Rights Watch also expressed its serious concern for the health and safety of other prisoners held for their political beliefs inside Iran’s prisons.
The authorities arrested Mohammadi in 1999 following his participation in student protests at Tehran University. He was originally sentenced to death in September 1999, but his sentence was commuted to 15 years in prison in April 2001.
Several sources told Human Rights Watch that after his arrest in 1999, Mohammadi was severely tortured and ill-treated, leading to serious health problems. Ali Afshari, a student leader, was imprisoned in the same wing as Mohammadi in Evin prison from March 2002 to October 2003. Afshari told Human Rights Watch that Mohammadi told him in detail of his torture and beatings.
Another former detainee, who was also imprisoned with Mohammadi in Evin prison, and knew him well, confirmed that Mohammadi had been badly tortured and that his health had deteriorated. Mohammadi’s brother, Reza Mohammadi, also stated that interrogators severely tortured Mohammadi after his arrest in 1999. “He was healthy before his arrest in 1999, but during his detention he developed several complications, including internal bleeding, injury to his spinal cord and lung infection,” Reza Mohammadi told Human Rights Watch.
In July 2004, government medical authorities determined that Mohammadi’s continued imprisonment endangered his health and that he required immediate medical attention. In July 2004, Mohammadi was released on an indefinite medical leave and reportedly underwent at least three major operations. He was receiving medical treatment in his hometown of Amol until June 2006.
On June 11, security agents re-arrested Mohammadi in his home without any warning and put him in Evin prison. The authorities did not provide any reason for his arrest. Mohammadi’s lawyer, Khalil Bahramian, was informed that Mohammadi went on hunger strike on July 25 to protest his return to prison.
He said that, upon learning of his client’s hunger strike, he asked to visit him, but prison officials denied his request. On Monday, July 31, Justice Minister Jamal Karimirad confirmed Mohammadi’s death in custody. He told reporters that “before his death, this prisoner [Mohammadi] was under medical supervision in the prison’s medical clinic and he had stated that he is in good health.”
He added, “Ultimately, we must await the autopsy report by the coroner’s office.”
On the same day, the director of prisons, Sohrab Soleimani, said, “Last night Mohammadi’s conditions deteriorated and he was receiving medical treatment, but he insisted to be returned to his cell. Upon his return, his condition worsened again and he passed away while being transferred back to the clinic.”
Soleimani, who had earlier denied the reports, also confirmed that Mohammadi had been on hunger strike since July 25 and was consuming only water and tea.
On July 25, when news agencies reported Mohammadi’s hunger strike, Soleimani said, “I absolutely deny this news – Akbar Mohammadi is not on hunger strike.”
“Iran’s judiciary is responsible for Mohammadi’s arrest, his torture and now his death in custody,” said Whitson. “Only an independent investigation can establish why he died, and whether he was tortured, beaten or force-fed. Someone must be held accountable for Mohammadi’s death.”
(Alan's Note: For months now, Iran has been quietly killing political prisoners and dissidents,close to two dozen in the past months. Look for other deaths in the near future in keeping with Ahmadi-Nejad's threat to kill all political prisoners if the UN Security Council imposes sanctions on Iran. Ahmad Batebi,the icon of Student unrest, back in prison again, is likely to be one of the next to go.
While reports on how Mohammadi actually died range from choking on his own vomit and internal bleeding while gagged and bound to prevent being noticed by important visitors, to a similar effect of choking on his internal bleeding after his bonds wre removed, one quite possible version was that in the process of trying to feed hi intravenously, an air bubble entered his blood stream and caused the massive coronary given as his official cause of death.
Air bubbles injected into a vein have been a traditional way of killing prisoners "invisibly".
No Time to Delay on Iran's Threat
Sunday, August 6, 2006; B06
MICHAEL REITER
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/05/AR2006080500719.html
It is about time that the United Nations set a deadline for Iran to suspend its uranium enrichment and nuclear fuel reprocessing activities [news story, Aug. 1]. The deadline has been set for Aug. 31, which although less than a month away, is still too long. Iran has been asking for additional time for a while now, and every moment that passes gives the country further opportunity to develop its nuclear capabilities.
This is a very real and serious problem because Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has already stated his goal of wiping Israel off the map and has also said, "God willing, with the force of God behind it, we shall soon experience a world without the United States."
Iran is (and has long been) the world's largest state sponsor of terrorism, funding such groups as Hamas in the Palestinian territories and Hezbollah in Lebanon. (And sheltering senior Al Qaeda inside Iran).
Sanctions against Iran need to be imposed sooner and include stricter demands or Iran will distribute its new nuclear capabilities to its terrorist pawns, which would spell disaster not only for Israel and the United States but for countless other nations as well.
Iran's Nuclear Threat Must Be Faced
July 31, 2006 Telegraph y Daniel Hannan
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It won't be a "durable" ceasefire, Condi, and it won't be "sustainable"; not while the ayatollahs are in power in Iran. T
his war isn't about border security, or prisoner exchanges, or the status of the Shebaa Farms. It isn't really about Lebanon at all, for Hizbollah is not, in any meaningful sense, an indigenous Lebanese phenomenon.
The paramilitaries, rather, are creatures of Teheran: the Levantine branch of the Islamic Revolution. The Iranian Hydra has many heads. The mullahs sponsor militias and political movements across the Muslim world, in the old Silk Road Khanates and as far afield as Bosnia. You can lop off the head called Hizbollah. You can even cauterise the wound, by demilitarising southern Lebanon. But, as long as the monster's heart continues to beat in Teheran, the head will grow back.
The Iranian Revolution of 1979 will one day be seen as an epochal event, as significant as the French Revolution of 1789 or the Russian Revolution of 1917. Like those earlier upheavals, it immediately burst out from behind its borders, disregarding all the accepted rules about how states should deal with each other. Like them, it refused to recognise the legitimacy of foreign governments, and sought to replicate itself around the world.
The ayatollahs' contempt for national sovereignty was manifested in the very first act of their regime: the seizure of the US embassy. Diplomatic immunity is the foundation of all international relations.
Even during the Second World War, when irreconcilable ideologies fought to extirpate each other, embassy staff were peacefully evacuated through neutral countries. By seizing sovereign American territory, the revolutionaries were sending out a message: "We do not acknowledge your rules; we despise your notion of territorial jurisdiction". And they got away with it.
Even while the embassy staff were being held hostage, a counter-revolutionary group occupied the Iranian embassy in London. And how did we respond? We secured the building, our SAS men sliding down like spiders on their threads, and we handed it politely back to Teheran with a purse of money to compensate for the damage caused during the assault.
Not unnaturally, the mullahs concluded that they could have it both ways. They could continue to be accorded the privileges of a sovereign state without having to reciprocate. So began a global campaign to spread the revolution. Iranian agents set out to radicalise the Shia populations of Iraq, the Gulf monarchies and the Fertile Crescent.
They sought to reawaken the old faith among people who had long since turned away from it, notably in the Balkans and in Central Asia. Nor did they confine themselves to the Muslim world. In 1989, Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwah against Salman Rushdie. In other words, the leader of Iran presumed to pass sentence on a British subject - a sentence reconfirmed by Khomeini's successor, Ayatollah Khamenei, last year.
In 1994, Iranian extra-territoriality crossed the Atlantic. A bomb in Buenos Aires killed 100 people and injured 250 more, prompting Argentina to issue warrants for a number of Iranian diplomats and politicians. What possible strategic interest did Iran have in destroying a Jewish community centre in South America?
The answer, surely, is that it was precisely the remoteness of the target that made it so attractive. The ayatollahs were again flaunting their ability to act whenever and wherever they chose.
These are the same men, remember, who are three or four years away from developing nuclear weapons. They already have Shahab-3 missiles, which, in their modified form, have a range of 1,500 miles.
But why worry about delivery mechanisms? We have already seen the mullahs' readiness to equip their proxies in Lebanon with rockets, their agents in South America with bombs. Can we be confident that they would not tack on nuclear warheads?
I am no neo-con. I opposed the Iraq war, because I didn't believe that Saddam had WMD. But who can doubt that Iran is developing them?
Indeed, Iran provides the answer to one of the great conundrums of the decade, namely: why did Saddam pretend that he still had weapons stocks when he had in reality destroyed them? The answer, it seems, is that he didn't want the ayatollahs to see how weak he was. (Alan's note: the WMDs were not destroyed but moved, with a similar result as a loss of deterrent for Sadam against Iran but a misinformation for readers).
A legacy of the Iraq war is that it is much harder to make the case for confronting Iran militarily. Still, there are plenty of intermediate steps that we could take: targeted sanctions, seizure of assets, direct assaults on arms facilities - even, in extremis, the kind of siege, complete with a no-fly-zone, that paralysed Saddam between 1991 and 2003.
At the same time, we could sponsor internal dissent. Plenty of groups oppose the mullahs: monarchists, communists, students, secularists. There are Kurds, Arabs, Turkmen and Azeris with little loyalty to the Persian state. There are Iranian Sunnis who are not even allowed a mosque in Teheran (unlike their co-religionists in London).
But we must first recognise the magnitude of what we are up against. The 1979 revolution introduced many Muslims to the novel idea that there was a conflict between their faith and their secular loyalties. When Britain made war on Ottoman Turkey in 1915, a Cabinet memo fretted that "attacking the Caliphate might agitate our Mussulmans in Egypt and India".
In that event, of course, British Muslims volunteered happily to fight for the Crown, seeing no tension between their private devotion and their civic duties. Their sons and grandsons were, for the most part, equally patriotic.
Yet today, some of their great-grandsons are crossing half the world to take up arms against British troops. This is the poisonous ideology that we are fighting.
Our chief purpose in defeating it should not be to restore the comity of nations, nor to bolster Muslim moderates, nor even to bring freedom to the long-suffering Iranian people - though all these would be happy side-effects. Our main object, rather, must be to forestall a nuclear attack.
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