Team Agonist
Update January 16
Iran confident after key UN nuclear inspection
AFP – Iran said it was confident that UN inspectors would disprove US allegations that it is conducting secret nuclear weapons work, and said its negotiations with the Europeans on the issue were “on a good track”.
A team of inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on Thursday visited the previously off-limits Iranian military site of Parchin, near Tehran.
“They visited, they took some samples from the open area and they returned home. We know what the results are because we have no illegal activity,” foreign ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi told reporters. “After they study the results they can confirm our position,” he added Sunday.
Also see: Nobel laureate Ebadi ordered to Iranian court
Please post all Iran related news in this thread. This thread is for discussion and posting of Iran related news. We have this thread so we can try to keep the Iran news grouped. Major events can still be posted as separate stories.
Links to Bulletin Board Compilation:
IRAN and AL QAEDA: What is the deal? (latest…)
July 23, 2003
http://discuss.agonist.org/yabbse/index.php?board=1;action=display;threadid=12759
IRAN: the Nuke Treaty, US Relations….
September 09, 2003
http://discuss.agonist.org/yabbse/index.php?board=1;action=display;threadid=9977
IRAN REFORMERS BARRED” crisis: breaking news and comment
January 11, 2004
http://discuss.agonist.org/yabbse/index.php?board=1;action=display;threadid=16257
that you can’t get much understanding from individual articles on most Iran news, you must read them over time and compare and contrast different statements–the reports are manipulated by the sources much too much–you can’t blame anyone in the media for that, really, it’s a necessity because of the both the lack of press freedom in Iran and the lack of formal diplomatic relations between U.S. and Iran, hence information comes from either press conferences or third parties with agendas.
Reza Pahlavi of Iran discusses the Persian Gulf with the National Geographic
Washington | December 6
PRNewswire – Reza Pahlavi of Iran was received, on Friday, December 3rd, by John M. Fahey, Jr., President and CEO, of the National Geographic Society for the purpose of bringing clarity to the issue of National Geographic’s recent usage of a secondary name (Arabian Gulf) for the Persian Gulf.
“The meeting with Mr. Fahey was an in depth and thoughtful discussion of the historic and academic facts regarding the Persian Gulf,” said Reza Pahlavi of Iran. “It was an opportunity to unequivocally express, on behalf of my compatriots, our unwavering national position on the sole usage of the name Persian Gulf.”
more at link
Iran’s conservatives seen tightening power in republic
by Robin Wright @ WaPo 12/5
including as a comment
LA Times’ 1/5
On the MEK in US + elsewhere as a pitiful movement:
U.S. Hopes of Iran Change Have Little to Hang On
http://scoop.agonist.org/story/2004/12/5/10641/3279
Arms Inspectors Said to Seek Access to Iran Sites
posted by Seen and Heard on 12/01/2004 11:11:17 PM EDT
7 comments, all stories, through 12/5
http://scoop.agonist.org/story/2004/12/1/20648/1101
Group Says Iran Has Secret Nuclear Arms Program
posted by Raja on 11/16/2004 09:36:50 PM EDT
4 comments (0 new)
http://scoop.agonist.org/story/2004/11/16/183650/19
Analysis: Iranian Mujahedin Face Uncertain
posted by candy on 11/18/2004 08:14:37 PM EDT
attached to Special Report – The Iran Connection
http://scoop.agonist.org/story/2004/11/16/132657/50
The way that Iran comes and goes in the news makes it hard to to follow everything going on. We will still post breakthrough stories to the front page when warranted. Members can also submit summary/update posts with links, this will help give context to other members who don’t follow daily Iran events.
INTERNATIONAL / MIDDLE EAST | December 6, 2004
Iran Hints It Sped Up Enriching Uranium as a Ploy
A move meant to gain an advantage in negotiations with the U.S.
By NAZILA FATHI (NYT) News
EHRAN, Dec. 5 – Iranian officials have hinted in recent days that they sped up their enrichment of uranium in the past year to put Iran in a better position to negotiate with the West.
In a rare admission, Sirous Nasseri, a member of Iran’s negotiating team with three European countries over its nuclear program, was quoted Sunday in the daily newspaper Shargh as saying that Iran had mastered the nuclear fuel cycle since last year, when it came under international pressure to abandon its uranium enrichment program.
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“We are in a better negotiating position for political work than last year,” the daily quoted him as saying.
Ali Akbar Salehi, Iran’s former ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency, told students at Ferdowssi University in Mashhad on Wednesday that the government of President Muhammad Khatami had, for the first time, allocated money and facilities to make “advanced centrifuges” for uranium enrichment, Shargh also reported.
Iran has taken the position that….
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/06/international/middleeast/06iran.html
(no archive url available so far; I tried.)
for Open Threads and Compile Threads+
did a very weak push for that in maybe July, because my gut reaction is, unless you are the type of Agonist who starts out from recent comments rather than /right after the FP, these threads are never going to be visible.
I know there were some technical issues (threads come and go), but they aren’t created in an overwhelming number- so I guess I should ask again, why they can’t tecnically have qa scroll bar like New Blogs.
I don’t know who is handling the technical end right now. Is it still qb?
AFP | Tehran | December 06
Most off-limits firms are field leaders
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=3&article_id=10709#
———————————————
A number of key Iranian businesses have been excluded from privatization by the top decision-making Expediency Council, only weeks after the council decided to end constitutional barriers to large-scale sell-offs, state television reported Saturday.
The Expediency Council announced that seven major state-held banks, including the Central Bank of Iran and the National Bank of Iran, would not be open to privatization.
Also on the list were the main electrical power, transportation, telecommunications and mail services, the Iran Civil Aviation Organization and the Iran Ports and Shipping Organization.
In October, the Expediency Council ruled that the reformist government could privatize previously protected sectors, namely banking, transport, downstream oil and gas production, insurance, telecommunications and shipping.
For those companies open to privatization, the council has authorized the sale of up to a 65 percent stake of “each state-run business to the public, cooperative and private sectors.”
However, the companies and organizations that have been excluded from privatization are – for the most part – leaders in their fields.
Privately owned banks and insurance companies still have a long way to expand, while private power and telecoms companies are still to be founded.
The privatization drive is enshrined in Iran’s fourth five-year economic plan (2005-2010), which has met stiff opposition in Parliament since hard-liners took control in May.
Copyright (c) 2004 The Daily Star
Khatami: Iran’s Democratic Reforms Failed
ALI AKBAR DAREINI | TEHRAN | Dec 6
AP – Iran’s embattled President Mohammad Khatami conceded Monday he had failed to implement his democratic reform program, claiming he had bowed to the will of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his hard-line allies to avoid riots and preserve the ruling Islamic establishment.
“If I retreated, I retreated against the system I believed in,” said Khatami to Tehran University students — some openly angry with the man they once saw as the best hope for democracy in Iran. “I considered it necessary to save the ruling establishment.”
Focus: Iranian Nuke Pact May Boost U.K. Energy Deals
Sally Jones | TEHRAN | Dec 6
Dow Jones – Trade incentives linked to Iran’s nuclear pact open opportunities for new UK-Iranian business deals, especially in energy, Iranian and western political and industry sources said Monday.
British, French and German diplomats expect to hammer out a long-term agreement with Iran that guarantees the Islamic Republic access to nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.
tx candy for posting them…am I bombarding you too much?
http://www1.voanews.com/Editorials/article.cfm?objectID=8A4926FB-B97F-4CD9-8B5C140423344D1E&titl
e=12%2F5%2F04%20%2D%20IRAN%20BANS%20COMMEMORATION%20
The ban on publicly commemorating the 1998 murders of Iranian dissidents comes as Iran’s extremist Muslim clerical rulers are cracking down hard again on debate and dissent. Journalists and student activists are being arrested, and dissident web sites and opposition newspapers are being closed down.
State Department deputy spokesman Adam Ereli says the U.S. supports basic democratic rights for all Iranians:
“That includes freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, and freedom for participation in the political process. When there are cases of shutting down newspapers, or prosecuting journalists or prosecuting other activists, we speak out against that. . . . People hold their governments accountable and we think that’s the basis of democracy, and should be encouraged and respected, wherever it takes place, in Iran as in the United States.”
I’m glad for all the submits. Iran is easier to follow when the articles are grouped together. Its very similiar to North Korea news that way. Little shifts and language changes will also be easier to spot with the articles together. This is will also make it easier to go back and find an older article. That is much easier than using search.
If you check out our links after the jump you can see what we were following. We just became very lazy and forgetful and never set up a thread.
Tue 7 Dec 2004
printer friendly
5:15pm (UK)
Egyptian Charged with Spying for Iran
“PA”
Egypt’s general prosecutor said today an Egyptian was arrested and charged with spying for Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guard and providing them with information to carry out terrorist attacks in Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
Mohammed Eid Dabous gave Iran’s Revolutionary Guards “the best locations to carry out assassinations and terrorist operations in Egypt,” said general prosecutor Mahir Abdel Wahid. He said Dabous gave the information to a former Iranian employee in Iran’s diplomatic office in Cairo who is now on the run from Egyptian authorities.
Dabous was also accused of providing the Revolutionary Guard with information about foreigners living in Saudi Arabia to help carry out terrorist attacks against them. Islamic militants have carried out several attacks against Westerners in Saudi Arabia, including yesterday’s attack on the US consulate in Jeddah.
more
http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=3854680
Iran sentences Al-Qaeda members after secret trial
12-07-2004, 12h36
- (AFP/File)
TEHRAN (AFP) – Iran confirmed that it has tried and sentenced fugitive members of Al-Qaeda detained on its soil, but maintained a tight secrecy over which members of Osama bin Laden’s network were in the Islamic republic.
“The sentences have been pronounced,” a Tehran justice department official told AFP on Tuesday, confirming a report from the semi-official Fars news agency that all Al-Qaeda detainee cases had been treated in Tehran by a “special judge”.
But the official refused to say who the accused were, how many of them there were, nor what verdicts were reached or sentences handed out.
“The verdicts will be made public when the legal obstacles related to such an announcement are lifted,” added the official.
Quoted by Fars, the head of Tehran’s judiciary Abbas Ali Alizadeh said the “judgements pronounced conform totally to the law and the top officials of the regime are satisfied by the sentences.”
No further details were immediately available.
more
http://www.turkishpress.com/world/news.asp?id=041207123619.wyzytmmi.xml
Iran, EU nuclear talks to begin next week: official
By :
Date : 08 December 2004 0254 hrs (SST)
URL : http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_world/view/121139/1/.html
TEHRAN : Negotiations between officials from Iran and Britain, France and Germany aimed at building on the Islamic republic’s agreement to freeze sensitive nuclear work are to start next week, a senior Iranian official said.
Iran’s top national security official and nuclear negotiator Hassan Rowhani said the first round of the dialogue was likely to involve himself, the foreign ministers of the EU’s “big three” — Britain’s Jack Straw, France’s Michel Barnier and Germany’s Joshka Fischer — as well as EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana.
Rowhani said the talks would take place sometime next week in “one of Europe’s capitals”. Officials had already slated December 15 as the approximate starting date.
He also said the director of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Mohamed ElBaradei, had asked to take part in the meeting.
An EU source in Brussels confirmed that a meeting would “in all likelihood” take place Monday or Tuesday, in Brussels or another European capital.
“The Iranians have asked for the first meeting of the steering committee (overseeing the nuclear agreement with Iran) to take place at ministerial level” in order to give it “better visibility,” the source said.
“We do not have a problem with that in principle,” added the source, who also confirmed that Solana was slated to take part in the talks.
more
http://www.payvand.com/news/04/dec/1054.html
Judiciary’s Secret Squads Whitewash Repression, Incriminate Political Detainees
Evidence obtained by Human Rights Watch confirms that secret squads of interrogators–primarily former intelligence officers purged in the late-1990s by President Mohammed Khatami but now employed by the judiciary–forced the detainees to write these “confession letters” under extreme pressure as a condition for their release on bail. In an attempt to cover up the government’s illegal detention and torture of detainees, interrogators have coerced them to write self-incriminatory letters that describe detention conditions as satisfactory and confess that civil society organizations are part of an “evil project” directed by “foreigners and counter-revolutionaries.”
Iran expresses concern over human rights situation in Europe
05-12-2004 , 06:05
Iran is “seriously concerned” about the human rights situation in Europe, said Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi in Tehran Sunday, responding to an EU letter recently sent to Iran on its alleged human rights violations.
Speaking during his weekly briefing, Asefi told reporters, “human rights are not a one-sided issue, Iran, too, is seriously concerned about human rights situation in Europe.”
“Unfortunately,” regretted the spokesman, “anti-Islamism is
increasingly growing in Europe and Europeans should consider necessary
measures to prevent further violations of (religious) minorities
rights and those of Muslims in particular, in all European countries.”
Asked on the date of resumption of Tehran’s talks with Europe
under the Paris agreement, Asefi said that serious talks would start
“next week,” according to IRNA news agency.
He added that a number of “working groups” are currently being
formed to work on the materialization of agreements in different fields.
Asked if there was a guarantee for Europeans to fulfill commitments they had made in relations to Iran, Asefi said, “Their words are their guarantee.”
“If they (Europeans) fail to keep their words and fulfill their
commitments, then the Islamic Republic will no longer be faithful to
its commitments, too,” Asefi said.
© 2004 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
http://www.albawaba.com/en/news/178156
increase pressure on Iran
By Warren P. Strobel
Knight Ridder Newspapers
[...]
Officials in the White House and the Defense Department are developing plans to increase public criticism of Iran’s human rights record, offer stronger backing to exiles and other opponents of Tehran’s repressive theocratic government and collect better intelligence on Iran, according to U.S. officials, congressional aides and others.
[...]
However, with the U.S. military now stretched thin by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the new campaign may be intended not to build support for military action against Iran, but to pressure Iran to change its behavior so military action isn’t necessary.
[...]
The new, more aggressive tack is said to have the backing of secretary of state-designate Condoleezza Rice, Bush’s national security adviser.
Among the steps under consideration, the officials said, are stronger public condemnations of Iran’s human rights practices and treatment of women; increased U.S. broadcasting into the country; and financial backing for pro-Western groups.
[...]
The United States already operates a Persian-language radio service, Radio Farda, which broadcasts to Iran 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
More U.S. broadcasting to Muslim audiences was one of the recommendations of the bipartisan Sept. 11 Commission.
The administration was never able to agree on an Iran policy during Bush’s first term. The State Department favored engagement and international action, while officials in the Defense Department and Vice President Cheney’s office proposed backing the MEK and considering military action against Iran’s nuclear facilities.
[...]
A limited U.S. air strike on Iran’s far-flung nuclear facilities would cause worldwide outrage, could endanger U.S. troops in Iraq and would have no assurance of success. European allies favor diplomacy to curb Iran’s nuclear program.
However, top Bush administration officials are now hinting that the White House is eager to start withdrawing troops from Iraq by the middle of next year. One rationale, a senior administration official said, is to give the president greater flexibility in dealing with Iran.
[...]
http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/10361796.htm
Bush administration planning to increase pressure on Iran
By Warren P. Strobel
Knight Ridder Newspapers
12/07/04
WASHINGTON – As 150,000 U.S. troops battle to stabilize Iraq, some officials in the Bush administration are already planning to turn up the heat on another member of the president’s axis of evil.
Officials in the White House and the Defense Department are developing plans to increase public criticism of Iran’s human rights record, offer stronger backing to exiles and other opponents of Tehran’s repressive theocratic government and collect better intelligence on Iran, according to U.S. officials, congressional aides and others.
Iran has embarked on a nuclear program that some specialists fear cannot be prevented from producing an atom bomb; is trying to extend its influence in Iraq and remains a prime sponsor of Hezbollah and other international terrorist groups. U.S. intelligence officials also believe some top lieutenants of Osama bin Laden have sought refuge in Iran.
However, with the U.S. military now stretched thin by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the new campaign may be intended not to build support for military action against Iran, but to pressure Iran to change its behavior so military action isn’t necessary.
It’s far from clear, however, whether a more aggressive U.S. campaign to condemn the Iranian regime and court pro-Western forces would have any effect. The major Iranian opposition group, the Iraq-based Mujahedeen Khalq (MEK), remains on the State Department’s list of foreign terrorist groups, but it’s provided much of the intelligence about Iran’s weapons programs.
The new, more aggressive tack is said to have the backing of secretary of state-designate Condoleezza Rice, Bush’s national security adviser.
Among the steps under consideration, the officials said, are stronger public condemnations of Iran’s human rights practices and treatment of women; increased U.S. broadcasting into the country; and financial backing for pro-Western groups.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they aren’t authorized spokesmen and, in some cases, because final decisions haven’t been made.
Rice previewed some of the ideas during a White House meeting last week with leaders of major Jewish-American groups, according to one individual who was present and others who were briefed on the session.
“We have to do more to help the human rights community and the dissidents inside Iran,” Rice told the group, according to one participant’s notes of the meeting, which also focused on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
An administration official, asked about Rice’s reported comments, said they reflected a “heightened attempt” to expose Iran’s behavior. “We’re trying to make plain for the international community the strategic challenge that Iran poses,” he said.
http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/10361796.htm
more at link
damn, it took me twelve minutes to post that?
An al-Qaeda trial shrouded in mystery
By Golnaz Esfandiari
PRAGUE – The head of Tehran’s Justice Department told the semi-official Fars news agency on Monday that Iran had tried several alleged members of terrorist network al-Qaeda.
Abbas Ali Alizadeh said a special judge had handled the matter. But he refused to give any further details, including the trial’s date, verdict, or the number and identity of the convicted.
Paul Wilkinson, chairman of the Center for the Study of Terrorism at St Andrews University in Scotland, said that given the vague nature of the Iranian announcement, it is practically impossible to determine the identity of those members of al-Qaeda who Iran says have been convicted.
“We have to admit that there is no clue here as to who these persons might be. They could be relatively low-level people who have ended up in Iranian hands,” Wilkinson said. “We can’t be sure of that because the Iranians have not given any details whatever of the precise charges or the names of the individuals. And we don’t have the verdicts, so we don’t have a guide to how serious the crimes might have been. It might be they’re given very token sentences for minor infractions.”
In fact, the story has only grown murkier.
On Wednesday, Intelligence Minister Ali Yunesi was quoted by Fars as saying that Alizadeh may have been talking about al-Qaeda “sympathizers” – not members. Yunesi added that Iran is still examining the cases of al-Qaeda members in its custody.
Washington has periodically accused Iran of providing a safe haven to al-Qaeda members. Tehran strongly rejects that charge, saying it has arrested and deported hundreds of al-Qaeda militants who arrived after the fall of the Taliban in neighboring Afghanistan in late 2001.
Last year, Yunesi said Iran would try some unidentified al-Qaeda members whose native countries had revoked their citizenship. Last June, Hossein Mousavian, secretary of the foreign-policy committee of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, said the suspects were middle-ranking members of Osama bin Laden’s terrorist network.
But many Western media reports suggest that top al-Qaeda officials, such as Saif Adel, are in Iran. Adel, an Egyptian, is widely believed to have taken charge of al-Qaeda operations after Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, the suspected mastermind of the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, was captured in Pakistan.
But these reports, as Wilkinson noted, cannot be verified. “There are speculations about Adel …There are speculations about bin Laden’s son, of course. But as far as I know that is still speculative,” Wilkinson said. “We don’t know quite the whereabouts of Saad [bin Laden] and it’s a mystery who actually has still been using Iran as a base.”
more at:
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/FL10Ak01.html
LA Times
Iranians Unite Behind Nation’s Nuclear Plans
By Megan K. Stack, Times Staff Writer
TEHRAN — From this country’s divisive political sphere to its disaffected streets, one thing binds Iranians of all ideologies: a fervent belief in the Islamic Republic’s right to its nuclear program.
Even Iranians who oppose weapons development, including some members of the government, insist that the nation has a right to the technology. In a country that still tends to think of itself as a superpower, nuclear capabilities represent progress and modernity to a people hypersensitive to any perceived inequities.
“Iran has paid dearly, really dearly, to prove its independence internationally,” said Ali Akbar Salehi, Iran’s former representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog agency. “Maybe we made mistakes in the past, but we want to decide our own destiny. We don’t want others to decide for us.”
While Iran’s nuclear negotiations with Britain, France and Germany dragged on at the IAEA’s Vienna headquarters in recent weeks, student organizations and hard-line political parties staged angry pro-nuclear demonstrations on the streets of Tehran. Conservative newspapers ran menacing editorials warning negotiators against caving in to Western demands.
“Depriving Iran of a nuclear fuel cycle,” warned an editorial in the Kayhan newspaper, “is not a forgivable sin.” The message to negotiators was plain: Iran was no mood to relinquish its nuclear research. Any Iranian agreement to relinquish nuclear research or uranium enrichment would spark political uproar at home, analysts here say….
continued @
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-nuclear10dec10,0,5058113.story?coll=la-home-head
lines
Substantive Iran, EU nuclear talks to start next week: Tehran
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=1515&e=3&u=/afp/20041210/wl_mideast_afp/
irannucleariaeaeu_041210160923
Analysis: Few options on Iran
http://about.upi.com/products/perspectives/UPI-20041209-094056-5995R
Iran’s need to find good jobs for youth discussed; Powell, Kharazi hold ‘good talk’
http://www.arabtimesonline.com/arabtimes/world/Viewdet.asp?ID=3684&cat=a
Iran to establish news agency for nuclear affairs
10 December 2004
BRUSSELS/TEHERAN – Iran is to establish a special news agency for covering nuclear affairs with talks next week between Teheran and the European Union’s so-called big three big – Germany, France and Britain – likely to be one of the service’s first new reporting jobs.
Sources said the news agency was initiated by the Strategic Institute which is affiliated with the Expediency Council, a state body in charge for settling legislative disputes. The body is headed by former President Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani.
The aim of the agency will be a transparent and accurate news coverage of technical and political angles of nuclear
issues under the direct supervision of related officials such as chief nuclear negotiator Hassan Rowhani.
The sources added that the nuclear issue is expected to become a major criterion to judge Irans standing in the international community and official believe that it should therefore be handled quite professionally and without any ambiguities.
More than 20 journalists, most of them with relevant technical qualifications, will be working for the nuclear news agency which will be available on internet free of charge
more at http://www.expatica.com/source/site_article.asp?subchannel_id=52&story_id=14911&name=Iran+to
+establish+news+agency+for+nuclear+affairs+
New Persian Empire: Iran Strengthens Its Hand Amid War On Terror
http://news.pacificnews.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=a25d126d76de17e057fd69dfdea80976
This article is just the sort of article that confuses the words of Persian with other things. Shiites have nothing to do with the Persians as such. If anything whatever, or whenever the words Shiites appear, they are used in contexts where Islam is destroying Iran.
It is a crazy world. The world messes around with all the wrong terms, and confuses our history with Arabs. How will we get all this sorted out?
Either way ignore this type of statement from these paranoid Arabs. The people of Iran have nothing in common with the monkeys in Iran who have hijacked the country and should be sent to Najaf and Karbela, where they all came from in the first place.
Iran Acknowledges Having Convicted Some Iranians for Al-Qaida Ties.
By Nasser Karimi Associated Press Writer
Published: Dec 12, 2004
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) – Iran acknowledged for the first time Sunday that it has convicted some Iranian nationals of supporting al-Qaida, saying the number was fewer than five.
The United States has accused Iran of harboring al-Qaida operatives, with some U.S. counterterrorism officials alleging hard-line elements within the Iranian regime may have developed working relationships with some senior al-Qaida officials who fled to Iran after the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan. Iran has rejected the accusations.
“A few pro-al-Qaida Iranian nationals have been tried and convicted,” Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi told reporters.
Their number, he said, is less than “the fingers on one’s hand,” he said, according to the official Islamic Republic News Agency.
He did not give details, including when they were convicted, what sentences they had received or what sort of support they had provided Osama bin Laden’s terror network.
more at: http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGBBZEY8N2E.html
Excellent summary articles today in NYT on what is really going on. Highly recommended reading both if you want to have a good understanding of the wire news that comes out:
WASHINGTON | December 12, 2004
The U.S. vs. a Nuclear Iran
Print Headline:
U.S. Wants to Block Iran’s Nuclear Ambition, but Diplomacy Seems to Be the Only Path
Blurb:
A well-hidden chain of arms facilities does not make a good military target.
By DAVID E. SANGER (NYT) News
This article was reported by Thom Shanker, Eric Schmitt and David E. Sanger, and was written by Mr. Sanger.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/12/politics/12nuke.html?ex=1260507600&en=958b47810d0bcf95&ei=
5090&partner=rssuserland
Excerpts
….Yet, though President Bush threatened Iraq before the war there, he has said almost nothing about the possibility of resorting to military action in Iran.
That may reflect the fact that Pentagon war planners, reviewing available options, say there are no good options for Mr. Bush – or for Israel, which has expressed even greater alarm about a nuclear-armed Iran if negotiations fail.
Almost unanimously, these planners and Pentagon analysts say there are no effective military ways to wipe out a nuclear program that has been well hidden and broadly dispersed across the country, including in crowded cities. Confronted with intelligence evidence, Iran admitted to inspectors last year that it had hidden critical aspects of its civilian program for 18 years, and even today there are questions about whether all of its nuclear-related sites are known…
The Bush administration has talked about the possibility of going to the United Nations to seek sanctions against Iran if a recent accord with the Europeans falls apart, as a similar agreement did last year. But the Iranians themselves are aware of the whispers about military strikes, many of them fueled by Israeli officials who view the threat as much more urgent than the Europeans do.
“There’s no big war plan on the shelf,” said one administration official involved in the planning process.
….whether it is a civilian program or something more nefarious, Iran is using an approach to developing nuclear fuel through the enrichment of uranium that is far easier to hide than the approach that Iraq took two decades ago.
So there is no central plant like Osirak to bomb….
—–
WASHINGTON | December 12, 2004
U.S. and Europe Are at Odds, Again, This Time Over Iran
By STEVEN R. WEISMAN (NYT) News
Blurb:
At issue are how many and what size carrots to offer Iran.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/12/politics/12diplo.html
Excerpt (note: no archive url available at this time)
….To get American involvement in the next phase of negotiations, European envoys said they told Iran that if it failed to comply with its agreement, they would join with the United States in referring the Iranian issue to the United Nations Security Council for possible further actions, including economic punishments.
To some American officials, the European attitude may be well intentioned but also naïve and based on a fundamental misreading of Iran’s intentions. What is needed, they contend, is a unified willingness to demand action and to threaten sanctions against Iran…..
INTERNATIONAL | December 12, 2004
Iran Acknowledges Terror Convictions
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS (AP) News
Filed at 9:37 a.m. ET
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran acknowledged for the first time Sunday that it has convicted some Iranian nationals of supporting al-Qaida, saying the number was fewer than five.
The United States has accused Iran of harboring al-Qaida operatives, with some U.S. counterterrorism officials alleging hard-line elements within the Iranian regime may have developed working relationships with some senior al-Qaida officials who fled to Iran after the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan. Iran has rejected the accusations.
“A few pro-al-Qaida Iranian nationals have been tried and convicted,” Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi told reporters.
Their number, he said, is less than “the fingers on one’s hand,” he said, according to the official Islamic Republic News Agency….
continued
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Iran-Al-Qaida.html
Iran knows that the U.S.is tied down in Iraq. They are going to help keep us there as long as possible, To buy as much time as they need.
NYT 12/13
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
Foxes in Iran’s Henhouse
The Revolutionary Guard are a threat to the clerics.
The key to the nuclear dispute in Iran will be exploiting the power struggle between the clerics and the military.
By VALI NASR and ALI GHEISSARI
Vali Nasr is a professor of national security affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif. Ali Gheissari is a professor of history at the University of San Diego.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/13/opinion/13nasr.html?ex=1260680400&en=5568aeb6f638b451&ei=5
090&partner=rssuserland
excerpt:
….Now, guard commanders are showing readiness to assume large civilian roles, somewhat as Pakistani generals did before taking power from the country’s civilian leaders in the 1990′s: promising order, stability and prosperity. Some senior commanders are now sporting stylishly trimmed beards, flaunt newly acquired graduate degrees, and prefer to be called “doctor” rather than “general.” At least one, Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, is being mentioned as a contender for next May’s presidential election.
Most important for America, the guards hold the key to nuclear dispute. They control both the Shahab missile program and vital parts of the nuclear technology effort. The guard corps’ current commanders were greatly affected by Iraq’s use of chemical weapons in the 1980′s and Scud missile attacks against Iranian civilians. This experience drives their insistence that Iran needs a deterrent that will prevent any future attack on its soil. The greater presence of American troops in the Persian Gulf area only intensifies their concerns.
Yet the guard leaders oppose strengthening Iran’s regular military forces. This is for two reasons: they know that their conventional forces would never be strong enough to combat a determined America, and they fear that a strengthened regular army might challenge the corps’ current status and drive for power. Thus they see nuclear weapons as the sole means of ensuring their survival and projecting their power in the region.
What does all this mean for Washington? First, if America is going to change Iran’s nuclear goals, it must influence decision making not only among the clerical leaders but also in Revolutionary Guards. This is why simply using a big stick – possible economics sanctions and military threats – won’t work; that approach would only lead the guards to dig in their heels, and would strengthen their political position by allowing them to play to nationalist sentiments.
The situation calls for a more nuanced policy, one that will complement the fitful negotiations on nuclear policy led by our European allies. The objective should be first to slow down Revolutionary Guards’ monopolization of power and, second, to strain their alliance with the religious leadership. A key will be gaining more international support for democracy in Iran, strengthening reformist forces and nongovernmental groups that continue to resist authoritarianism and can drive a wedge between the guards and the mullahs.
On the other hand, we must get the European countries with extensive commercial ties with Iran to use sticks as well as carrots. They must put pressure on the Revolutionary Guards’ considerable business interests in a way that will enlarge fissures between the guards, the clerical elite and the various social groups that are tied to them through patronage.
Iran may be America’s most intractable problem of the post-cold-war era. But in foreign policy it is always easier to deal with a divided opponent than a united one.
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Pragmatism in the Midst of Iranian Turmoil (Diaries, All Topics)
posted by Haven on 12/13/2004 11:37:55 AM EDT
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A Transatlantic Strategy on Iran’s Nuclear Program (Diaries, All Topics)
posted by Haven on 12/13/2004 11:28:46 AM EDT
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EU and Iran begin difficult talks on nuclear programme
posted by candy on 12/13/2004 11:50:03 AM EDT
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U.S. Options Few in Feud With Iran (USA: Global Relations, All Topics)
posted by Nick on 12/13/2004 12:16:31 AM EDT
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IAEA Leader Mohamed ElBaradei’s Phones Tapped by US (USA: Intel and Policy, All Topics)
posted by candy on 12/12/2004 03:49:41 AM EDT
http://scoop.agonist.org/story/2004/12/11/22576/794
Mentally-ill girl who was sold for sex faces death penalty in Iran
By Angus McDowall in Tehran
14 December 2004
A teenage girl with a mental age of eight is facing the death penalty for prostitution in Iran. The trial comes only four months after the hanging of another mentally ill girl for sex before marriage in a case that has prompted a human rights lawyer to prepare a charge of wrongful execution against the presiding judge.
The girl, known as Leyla M, is in prison while the Supreme Court decides on her “acts contrary to chastity”, among the most serious charges under Iranian law. Under the penal code, girls as young as nine and boys as young as 15 can be executed.
In an interview on a Persian-language website, the 19-year-old says she was forced into prostitution by her mother at the age of eight. Amnesty International refers to reports that say she was repeatedly raped, bore her first child aged nine and was passed from pimp to pimp before having another three children.
She told the website: “The first time I was taken to a man’s house by my mum I was eight. It was a horrible night and I cried a lot but then my mum came the next day and took me home. She bought me chocolate and cheese curls.”
Iranian press reports say Leyla was charged with controlling a brothel, having sex with blood relatives and bearing an illegitimate child. Amnesty says the court refused to admit social workers’ evidence of her young mental age and convicted her on the basis of confessions
more at:http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=592910
Iran and Europeans Open a New Round of Negotiations
By ELAINE SCIOLINO
Iran and its European partners pledged to work to overcome their differences as they began negotiations for a long-term agreement on nuclear, economic and security cooperation.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/14/international/europe/14nuke.html
Iran hints it’s ready to negotiate with U.S.
Ali Akbar Dareini | Teheran | December 14
AP via CNEWS – The (Iranian) government is willing to talk with the United States about a nuclear program that Washington alleges is aimed at secretly acquiring the bomb, Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi said Monday.
“If negotiations are on the basis of equality and mutual respect in the same way we are talking to Europeans now, there is no reason not to talk to others,” Kharrazi said when asked whether Tehran was also willing to talk to the United States about its nuclear program.
The White House made plain it has no intention of joining the talks.
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Analysis: Iran’s Reformers Lack Viable Candidate
By Bill Samii
Iranian governmental bodies are locked in a dispute over when to hold the country’s next presidential election — in May or in early June — but three conservative figures have already declared their intention to be candidates.
Such eagerness stems from the conservatives’ lopsided domination of the February 2004 parliamentary polls and their belief that they can duplicate these results. The country’s reformist organizations — known as the 2nd of Khordad Front after the date of President Hojatoleslam Mohammad Khatami’s May 1997 election — are less sanguine, and they appear to have lost what little unity they once had. To date, therefore, no viable reformist candidate has stepped forward.
Indeed, some reformist leaders reportedly are backing the candidacy of Expediency Council Chairman Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani, who is usually seen as a favorite of the center-right or the “pragmatic conservatives.” A 4 December editorial in “Farhang-i Ashti” said that reformists such Mashallah Shamsolvaezin and Sadeq Zibakalam openly support Hashemi-Rafsanjani, and the Mujahedin of the Islamic Revolution Organization and the Islamic Iran Participation Party support him implicitly. The editorial ascribed the support for the ex-president to age-cohort divisions within the reformist front, and added that the younger reformists favor Hashemi-Rafsanjani. The “middle-aged reformists” oppose a Hashemi-Rafsanjani candidacy.
more at: http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2004/12/cc3e5908-ccd5-489b-a9a0-71a4cc3ee8ea.html
How Iran will fight back
By Kaveh L Afrasiabi
TEHRAN – The United States and Israel may be contemplating military operations against Iran, as per recent media reports, yet Iran is not wasting any time in preparing its own counter-operations in the event an attack materializes.
A week-long combined air and ground maneuver has just concluded in five of the southern and western provinces of Iran, mesmerizing foreign observers, who have described as “spectacular” the
massive display of high-tech, mobile operations, including rapid-deployment forces relying on squadrons of helicopters, air lifts, missiles, as well as hundreds of tanks and tens of thousands of well-coordinated personnel using live munition. Simultaneously, some 25,000 volunteers have so far signed up at newly established draft centers for “suicide attacks” against any potential intruders in what is commonly termed “asymmetrical warfare”.
Behind the strategy vis-a-vis a hypothetical US invasion, Iran is likely to recycle the Iraq war’s scenario of overwhelming force, particularly by the US Air Force, aimed at quick victory over and against a much weaker power. Learning from both the 2003 Iraq war and Iran’s own precious experiences of the 1980-88 war with Iraq and the 1987-88 confrontation with US forces in the Persian Gulf, Iranians have focused on the merits of a fluid and complex defensive strategy that seeks to take advantage of certain weaknesses in the US military superpower while maximizing the precious few areas where they may have the upper hand, eg, numerical superiority in ground forces, guerrilla tactics, terrain, etc.
According to a much-publicized article on the “Iran war game” in the US-based Atlantic Monthly, the estimated cost of an assault on Iran is a paltry few tens of millions of dollars. This figure is based on a one-time “surgical strike” combining missile attacks, air-to-surface bombardments, and covert operations, without bothering to factor in Iran’s strategy, which aims precisely to “extend the theater of operations” in order to exact heavier and heavier costs on the invading enemy, including by targeting America’s military command structure in the Persian Gulf.
~~~~
At times, notwithstanding a media campaign in the US, particularly by the New York Times, through news articles carrying such provocative titles as “US versus a nuclear Iran”, the US continues its hard-power pre-campaign against Iran unabated, in turn fueling the national security concern of those groups of Iranians contemplating “nuclear deterrence” as a national survival strategy.
Concerning the latter, there is a growing sentiment in Iran that no matter how compliant Iran is with the demands of the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency , much like Iraq in 2002-03, the US, which has lumped Iran into a self-declared “axis of evil”, is cleverly sowing the seeds of its next Middle East war, in part by leveling old accusations of terrorism and Iran’s complicity in the 1996 Ghobar bombing in Saudi Arabia, irrespective of the Saudi officials’ rejection of such allegations totally overlooked in a recent book on Iran, The Persian Puzzle by Kenneth M Pollack (see Asia Times Online, The Persian puzzle, or the CIA’s?, December 3.)
lots more: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/FL16Ak01.html
Iran not off the hook yet
By Ritt Goldstein
Speculation on potential US or Israeli military action has surrounded tense negotiations regarding Iran’s nuclear program and ambitions. In light of the realities currently dominating US and Iranian politics, separate interviews with three leading American defense experts foresee the likelihood of either overt or covert US action against the Islamic Republic, questions of geopolitical power eclipsing those of nuclear and energy security.
When asked what he envisaged would be the Bush administration’s eventual answer to Iran’s nuclear facilities, John Pike, president of the noted Washington-area defense think-tank Global Security, told Asia Times Online,* “I think we’re going to blow them up.” He added that he believed the effort would be some time before the 2006 US elections.*
At the end of November, Britain, Germany and France – the “Big 3″ – on behalf of the European Union succeeded in securing an agreement with Iran that it would voluntarily suspend uranium enrichment and other sensitive nuclear pursuits. Iran is seeking a package of incentives on security, trade and technology in return, and negotiations with the three are scheduled to resume some time this week.
This is the second agreement reached between Iran and Europe, the first widely said to have foundered through US efforts. At issue are Iran’s efforts to expand its nuclear capabilities vastly through the pursuit of new reactors and the creation of a self-sufficient nuclear fuel cycle, to which it is entitled under international treaty. But substantive questions of weapons ambitions exist, and elements within the administration of President George W Bush have proved problematic in finding an accommodation.
“I think, in fact, the administration policy is designed to kill the agreement between Europe and Iran,” a former US Energy Department official and current associate director of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s non-proliferation program, Jon Wolfsthal, told this journalist. He pointedly added that “the deal will collapse and elements within the administration will get the confrontation with Iran that they desire”.
On December 12, the New York Times headlined, “US and Europe are at odds, again, this time over Iran”.
As of late 2002, Iran sat atop roughly 9% of the world’s known petroleum reserves and concurrently held the planet’s second-largest deposits of natural gas. A “who’s who” of leading EU energy firms has established themselves in Iran, a country whose energy resources were long US-dominated, particularly from the 1953 Central Intelligence Agency-sponsored coup ousting Iranian leader Mohammed Mossadegh, installing the Shah … until the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
After the 1979 revolution, US sanctions precluded a return of the US energy industry’s dominance. Beyond EU energy firms, China’s Sinopec has recently completed extraordinarily sizable energy agreements with Iran for liquefied natural gas and oil. The agreements are variously estimated as worth between US$90 billion and $200 billion, and come at a time when Chinese oil imports have doubled within the past five years and risen 40% during the first eight months of 2004.
An interview with the United States’ leading authority on resource conflict, security-studies Professor Michael Klare of Hampshire College, substantively added dimension to the relationship between Iran’s energy and ongoing events.
Klare told this journalist that “the world is approaching a global energy crunch, right now”. On December 8, Klare published an article titled “Looming energy crisis overshadows Bush’s second term”, also warning that “competition among major consumers for access to the remaining supplies will grow increasingly more severe and stressful”.
In reply to whether the administration was seeking confrontation with Iran for its energy assets, Klare said, “It’s all about power, and the oil of the Persian Gulf is the most important geopolitical focus of power in the world.”
Klare defines control of the Persian Gulf as control of the global economy. He believes the Bush administration isn’t necessarily pursuing Iran’s resources for its own use, but to control them in order to “have the veto power over the allocation of Persian Gulf oil”.
more at: http://atimes01.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/FL15Ak01.html
December 17: Xinhuanet European Union (EU) leaders Friday expressed their readiness to explore ways of further developing political and economic cooperation with Iran providing Iran maintains full suspension of all uranium enrichment programs.
The “Presidency Conclusions” issued during the second day of the ongoing EU summit here said the European Council (the EU leaders at the summit) welcomed the agreement reached Nov. 15 between Iran and the EU’s “big three” — France, Germany and Britain — on suspension of Iran’s nuclear fuel program.
The council also supported further efforts towards reaching agreement with Iran on long-term enrichment suspension.
Egypt’s Mubarak warns U.S. against attacking Iran
REUTERS
7:06 a.m. December 18, 2004
BERLIN – The United States would be making a catastrophic mistake if it attacked Iran to destroy the country’s nuclear programme, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was quoted as saying on Saturday.
“If the U.S. were really to attack Iran it would be a mistake of catastrophic proportions. Then terror and violence on a scale that put what we have seen so far in the shade would spread over the Middle East and soon after to the whole world,” Mubarak told the German magazine Der Spiegel.
“I hope it does not come to that,” he added.
more at: http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/world/20041218-0706-iran-usa-egypt.html#
Sat Dec 18, 2004 05:36 PM GMT
TEHRAN (Reuters) – An Iranian official says he is waiting for orders on whether to stone or hang a woman convicted of adultery, the latest in a chain of death sentences passed against women for “fornication”.
Human rights groups urge Britons to help save abused women from execution by hanging and stoning
David Smith
Sunday December 19, 2004
The Observer
Two women convicted of crimes against morality in Iran are facing imminent execution, one by being buried up to her chest and stoned, Amnesty International said last night.
One of the women, a 19-year-old with a mental age of eight who was forced into prostitution by her mother, is to be flogged and executed. An official said yesterday he was waiting for orders on whether to stone or hang her. The other woman was convicted of adultery and is due to be stoned to death this month in accordance with Iran’s severe penal code.
Amnesty issued an urgent warning that time was running out for both women and urged the international community to tackle Iran over its executions of women and child offenders. In August another mentally ill girl, 16-year-old Atefeh Rajabi, was hanged in a street for having sex before marriage.
The 19-year-old, known as ‘Leyla M’, was a prostitute by the age of eight and was raped repeatedly, according to a Tehran newspaper report. She gave birth when aged nine and was sentenced to 100 lashes for prostitution at about the same time. When she was 12 her family sold her to an Afghan to be his ‘temporary wife’, while her mother became her new pimp, ‘selling her body without her consent’, the report said.
….
For details of how to help stop the executions, visit: http://www.amnesty.org.uk/action
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1376877,00.html
I thought you might be interested in reading this web page: http://www.daneshjoo.org/cgi-bin/messageboard/ikonboard.cgi?act=ST&f=1&t=2488
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4114621.stm
The UN General Assembly has censured Iran for human rights violations, in a relatively close vote.
By 71 votes to 54, with 55 abstentions, the assembly on Monday said Tehran restricted free speech, used torture, and persecuted dissenters.
The resolution is not legally binding but is an expression of world opinion.
Meanwhile, Amnesty International says it fears an Iranian woman convicted of adultery may be buried up to her chest and stoned to death on Tuesday.
The human rights group has urged the Iranian authorities to grant a last-minute reprieve to the woman, Hajieh Esmailvand.
‘Serious concern’
The UN resolution condemning Iran was sponsored by Canada – whose relations with Iran have suffered since Canadian photojournalist Zahra Kazemi died in Iranian custody in June 2003.
The resolution expressed “serious concern” about the “continuing violations of human rights” in Iran – including restrictions on freedom of expression.
It said the persecution of those peacefully expressing political views had increased, citing “crackdowns by the judiciary and security forces against journalists, parliamentarians, students, clerics and academics; the unjustified closure of newspapers and blocking of Internet sites”.
The resolution also expressed concern at:
Meanwhile, Amnesty International says time may be running out for Ms Esmailvand, the Iranian woman feared to be facing death by stoning on Tuesday.
She is thought to be have been imprisoned in the north-western city of Jolfa since 2000.
Amnesty says she was sentenced to five years in prison, followed by execution, but adds that the Supreme Court has brought forward the execution to 21 December.
‘Maximising suffering’
The group also highlighted the case of another woman, “Leyla M”, thought to be facing imminent execution for “acts contrary to chastity” in the city of Arak.
Iranian law is extremely specific about how a stoning sentence should be carried out, says Amnesty, ordering that men be buried up to their waists and women up to their chests.
The stones used must be small enough not to kill instantly, it says.
This specificity “leads you to believe that the punishment is designed to maximise suffering”, Amnesty International’s Steve Ballinger told the BBC.
The group says there were documented cases of 108 people being executed in Iran last year – making Iran second only to China in the rate of executions.
Iran atomic work breaks spirit of accord-diplomats
21 Dec 2004 15:13:14 GMT
Source: Reuters
(Adds details, paragraph 2, diplomat 4)
By Louis Charbonneau
VIENNA, Dec 21 (Reuters) – Iran’s decision to keep preparing raw uranium for enrichment, a step on the way to making nuclear weapons, breaks the spirit though not the letter of its pledge to freeze all such activity, diplomats said on Tuesday.
Under a deal Iran reached with three EU nations to freeze all enrichment activity as of Nov. 22, preparing “yellowcake” uranium for enrichment is strictly prohibited. But the accord allowed Iran to finish some limited uranium conversion work that it had already begun before the suspension took effect.
But Iran will now continue enrichment-related work until February, Western diplomats told Reuters.
more at: http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L21513093.htm
Iran: Rights Groups Shine Spotlight On Capital Punishment In Iran
http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2004/12/35b1e0c4-7bb5-48c3-93c9-76080467c6fd.html
An Iranian official has confirmed reports published by some media as well as Amnesty International that the country’s Supreme Court has approved the death sentence against a woman convicted of adultery. A judiciary spokesman, Jamal Karimirad, has told Reuters that the judiciary must still decide whether the woman will be stoned or hanged. The news follows reports that another woman — a mentally disabled 19-year-old — faces imminent execution for “acts contrary to chastity.”
Prague, 21 December 2004 (RFE/RL) — Along with China and the United States, Iran has one of the highest execution rates in the world.
In the last two decades, thousands of political prisoners, drug traffickers, and drug addicts have been executed in the Islamic Republic.
In 2003, more than 100 executions were recorded in Iran. Human rights groups, however, say the real number of people put to death is much higher.
“Unfortunately, every year there are some 300 to 400 executions in Iran,” said Abdolkarim Lahiji, vice president of the International Federation of Human Rights Leagues (IFHRL). “When we look at a number of executions, we have to consider it in proportion with the population of that country. Considering the population of China and the U.S., I have to say that Iran is on top of the list.”
Death sentences have also been issued for women convicted of adultery and minors.
In recent months, several cases have sparked national and international indignation. Last August, a 16-year-old girl, Atefeh Rajabi, was hanged in public in the town of Neka for having “illegitimate sexual relation.”
Now, human rights groups are expressing concern over the possible execution of two other women in Iran. Hajieh Esmailvand and a woman identified only as Leila M. both face morality-related charges.
“Hajieh Esmailvand was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment and the Supreme Court then said that the sentenced should be followed by execution through stoning,” said Nicole Choueiry, Middle East press officer for Amnesty International. “The reason for this, as the court says, is caused by adultery with an unnamed man who committed the adultery when he was 17 years old. We know that she was imprisoned in the town of Jolfa since January 2000.”The European Parliament has strongly condemned the execution of children in Iran and called on the Iranian authorities to halt the practice of stoning.
The Supreme Court reportedly ordered Esmailvand’s stoning sentence to be carried out before 21 December. However, a judiciary spokesman told Reuters on 18 December that there have been no orders yet to carry out the sentence. He added that the sentence could still be suspended by the head of the judiciary.
Leila, 19, was sentenced on charges of having had intercourse with blood relatives and giving birth to an illegitimate child. Reports say the mother of Leila, who has the mental age of an 8-year-old, forced her into prostitution as a child.
Leila is now in prison, awaiting her fate. But as Amnesty’s Choueiry notes, the Supreme Court has yet to approve her death sentence.
“Since the death sentence against Leila M. has not been passed yet, we think there is also some room for changing the death sentence and this is why we’ve been urging the Supreme Court not to pass and to confirm this sentence,” Choueiry said. “Three women this year have been sentenced to death in Iran with regards to execution of minors. We have many concerns because Iran has executed at least three child offenders in 2004.”
Choueiry says Amnesty is hoping to raise international attention on the two cases in a bid to prevent the death sentences from being carried out.
“Amnesty international would like to appeal to the Iranian authorities to reconsider their sentence against against both Leila M. and Hajieh Esmailzad because there is still a way for saving their lives, we equally call on our members on people all over the world to pressure the Iranian government to do the same,” Choueiry said.
According to Amnesty, 10 minors have been put to death in Iran since 1990.
In October, some 20 Iran-based human rights groups, including the Center of Human Rights Defenders founded by Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Shirin Ebadi, called on the head of Iran’s judiciary (Aya Shahrudi) not to sentence minors to death.
The IFHRL’s Lahiji notes that Iran condemns young alleged offenders to death and then executes them when they turn 18.
“According to our figures, 25 teenagers under the age of 18 who have been sentenced to death are awaiting their unfair sentences to be applied,” Lahiji said.
Last fall, the European Parliament strongly condemned the execution of children in Iran and called on the Iranian authorities to halt stoning and to prevent any further application of the death penalty to minors.
Iran’s judiciary recently announced that it has sent a bill to parliament that, if approved, would scrap the death penalty and lashings for offenders under the age of 18.
Despite the heightened concern over juvenile execution in Iran, Lahiji say the number of executions overall has decreased in recent years. He cites two reasons for this. “First, as [the authorities] say, they are trying to “legitimize” the executions,” Lahiji said. “In that regard, the death sentences have to be approved by the Supreme Court in Tehran. And the other reason is international pressure and the struggle by human rights organizations under which political executions have very much decreased in Iran. ”
Amnesty calls the death penalty the most inhumane punishment of all, one that violates the right to life as proclaimed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Iran producing uranium metal, but not violating pledges
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=517458&contrassID=1&subContrassID=8&am
p;sbSubContrassID=0&listSrc=Y
Iran is continuing with a key process used to enrich uranium, which can be used to make nuclear weapons, diplomats said Tuesday. But they said that because of a loophole in a deal it made to stop such activities, the Islamic republic is not violating the agreement.
The diplomats told The Associated Press that Tehran is still turning tons of raw uranium into uranium metal. The metal is a precursor of uranium hexafluoride – a substance that can then be used to produce weapons-grade uranium.
Concerns about Iran mushroomed after revelations in mid-2002 of two secret nuclear facilities – a uranium enrichment plant at Natanz and a heavy water production plant near Arak. That led to a subsequent IAEA probe of what turned out to be nearly two decades of covert nuclear activities, including suspicious “dual use” experiments that can be linked to weapons programs.
Iran agreed last month to stop enriching uranium while it negotiates with France, Germany and Britain on the terms of a long-term deal that will provide the country with technological help in creating a peaceful nuclear program and other forms of aid.
The Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency agreed to police the agreement and has placed seals on feed points at Iran’s enrichment plant at Isfahan, meant to prevent new material from being introduced into the facilities.
Demanding anonymity, a senior diplomat familiar with Iran’s nuclear dossier said those seals remained in place Tuesday, meaning Iran was only converting raw “yellowcake” uranium already in the pipeline into uranium metal.
That, he said, was allowed under the terms of the agreement reached between the Europeans and Tehran, which permits Iran to convert all of the 37 tons of yellowcake that was already being converted when the deal was struck into a “stable state.”
Much of those 37 tons was in the form of a liquid, and the immediate next step would be to turn it into the more “stable state” of uranium metal, said the diplomat.
“All of it was already in the pipeline,” he said.
A diplomat from the European Union, which was also party to the deal negotiated by France, Germany and Britain, said Tuesday that the Europeans were reserving judgment on Iran’s move but it appeared not to be in violation of the suspension agreement.
About three tons of this amount already was fully converted in November into the end product of uranium hexafluoride – the gas that is enriched into fuel- or weapons-grade uranium. At the time, that move raised doubts about how serious Iran was about reaching a deal on suspension.
Nuclear experts say that when fully processed, the 37 tons of yellowcake can theoretically yield 100 kilograms (more than 200 pounds) of weapons-grade uranium, enough to make five crude nuclear weapons.
The issue of enrichment is extremely sensitive as the international community tries to determine if Iran is using its nuclear program for peaceful purposes only, as Tehran insists, or trying to make weapons.
The United States says Iran is working to produce nuclear weapons – something Tehran denies, saying it looks to atomic power purely as an energy source.
Iran agreed to suspend its enrichment program last year, in an effort to build international trust. But that commitment eroded over the subsequent months – until the new agreement in November on suspension.
sadly it started off very overcast but the sun has now burnt off the cloud and it is hot!
http://agonist.org/comments/2004/12/9/7033/65098/5#5
Ex-MKO Members Return Home
TEHRAN, Dec. 21–A group of former members who deserted the terrorist Mujahideen Khalq Organization (MKO) returned to Iran on Monday in coordination with the International Committee of the Red Cross.
According to IRNA, these people separated from the group due to their problems with the leadership.
A security official at Mehrabad International Airport said these people will be able to join their family after undergoing medical examination.
Behrouz Soltani, one of the former MKO members who returned home, said the MKO is currently in a bad situation.
“Some 600 members of the group have problems with the leadership and are waiting to return home,” he saied.
He expressed satisfaction for quitting the MKO and returning to Iran.
Massoud Tanhaei, another former MKO member, said, “Currently 150 other members of the group have voiced their readiness to return home. We prefer to live in our own country instead of leading miserable lives with the MKO.”
Foreign Ministry Spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi on Sunday appreciated the endeavors of the International Committee of the Red Cross for facilitating the return of disgruntled MKO members.
more at: http://www.iran-daily.com/1383/2170/html/
Tehran confirms woman’s death sentence
Associated Press in Tehran
Thursday December 23, 2004
The Guardian
Iran yesterday confirmed that a court has sentenced a 21-year-old woman to death for prostitution, but denied reports that she had a mental age of eight
~~~
Yesterday, Muhammad Pourianmehr, a judicial official, said Ms Mafi was in full mental and physical health and had confessed. Ms Mafi started working as a prostitute when she was 14, he said, and had two children, now in a state orphanage.
Amnesty said that as a party to the international convention on civil rights, Iran had promised not to execute anyone for crimes committed while they were under 18.
Mr Pourianmehr said Ms Mafi had been working as a prostitute as an adult.
Last summer, a 16-year old girl, widely said to be suffering from a psychological disorder, was executed in Neka, in northern Iran, on charges of having an illegal sexual relationship.
Under Iranian law, girls over the age of nine and boys over 15 face execution if they commit crimes punishable by death, such as murder and rape. Under certain conditions, capital punishment is imposed for those engaging in an illegal sexual relationship
http://www.guardian.co.uk/iran/story/0,12858,1378857,00.html
Iranian Minister in Syria Challenges Accusers to Provide Evidence of Meddling in Iraq
By Albert Aji Associated Press Writer
Published: Dec 23, 2004
DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) – Iran’s foreign minister challenged U.S. and Iraqi officials Thursday to prove their allegations that his country is meddling in Iraqi affairs.
Kamal Kharrazi, speaking to reporters during a visit to Syria, which has faced similar charges from Washington and Baghdad, said such accusations were meant to “evade reality instead of discussing the crisis and trying to find solutions for it.”
“Those who release accusations should give evidence,” Kharrazi said.
more at: http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGBYTY4333E.html
http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/1229/p08s02-comv.html
Iran’s restless youths want rights as well as jobs
With the US and Europe fixated on Iraq, where insurgents are trying to stop the masses from adopting democracy, next door in Iran a parallel struggle for democracy remains largely unnoticed. It shouldn’t, especially given the West’s concern over Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
Young Iranians, who make up more than half the population and are restless from massive unemployment, have been pushing for Western-style political and social reforms for nearly a decade. But they’ve been losing ground to the conservative ruling clerics, especially over the last year, and need discreet international support.
The West has an imminent opportunity to assist them. On Jan. 12, a fresh round of talks will be launched between Iran and a trio of leading European nations. The goal is to strike a grand bargain: In return for a host of economic benefits, Iran will guarantee that its nuclear-power program will not be used to develop nuclear weapons.
Powder keg under the clerics
Why are the ruling mullahs even negotiating? They know that they must create jobs soon if they want to prevent the youths’ restlessness from erupting into a rebellion. That gives them an incentive to provide guarantees for cooperating on nuclear issues.
But Western countries, rightly concerned about Iran’s nuclear ambitions, should not be content to open their markets and offer other benefits in exchange for security assurances alone. A more fundamental concern must also be addressed: Iran’s human rights record.
A government that rules its people with arbitrary interpretations of law and restricts civic freedoms when they interfere with its agenda is unlikely to make a reliable diplomatic partner. Case in point: Iran reneged on previous nuclear agreements.
Thus, in these coming negotiations, the three European Union nations – Britain, France, and Germany – should more strongly insist that improved human rights and basic liberties be part of any final deal.
The struggle for democracy in Iran has reached a critical stage. It’s been a quarter century since the Islamic Revolution of 1979 replaced an autocratic secular leader with a cleric-controlled, limited democracy. Under this government, all was (and is) subject to approval by unelected ruling clerics.
By the 1990s, many Iranians were disillusioned by this dubious experiment of imposing Islamic authority over a democracy. In response, they elected reformist cleric Mohammed Khatami to the presidency, much to the surprise of Iran’s hard-liners. But despite his early progress, the clerics soon stymied Mr. Khatami’s reforms, clamped down on the press, and blocked reform politicians from office.
This crackdown has worsened in recent months, causing the UN General Assembly to pass a new resolution criticizing Iran’s human rights record. The world body cited in particular “increased persecution for the peaceful expression of political views, including arbitrary arrest and detention without charge or trial.” It also noted some positive developments in Iran’s human rights record, however – among them an April announcement of a ban on torture.
But this fall, nearly two dozen Iranian journalists and activists held at a secret detention center were tortured and kept in solitary confinement, according to a Human Rights Watch (HRW) statement released last week.
More recently, two Iranian women were sentenced to death for adultery. One of the women was to hang, while the other was to be stoned. After human rights groups launched protests, both cases were suspended.
Stoning is a legal form of execution for adulteresses in Iran. But the practice has been used rarely since 2002. The change is widely speculated to be the result of pressure from the EU, which has emphasized human rights in trade talks with Iran.
Making an offer Iran can’t refuse
The EU trio should be encouraged by that progress and strengthen their call for better human rights for Iranians. They need to be clear that economic benefits will come to Iran only in proportion as it values its people, granting them due process of law and letting them decide the future of their country.
The clerics, squeezed between this international pressure and the restlessness of its young masses, will have little choice but to move Iran forward.
December 19: Reuters – Iranian woman faces noose or stoning – An Iranian official says he is waiting for orders on whether to stone or hang a woman convicted of adultery, the latest in a chain of death sentences passed against women for “fornication”.
Discuss here.
Update December 20:
Iran Shows Persian Gulf Historical Maps- Iran unveiled a collection of historical maps on Sunday in a bid to prove the legitimacy of calling its neighboring sea the Persian Gulf instead of the “Arabian Gulf” as it also is listed in the new world atlas by National Geographic.
Last month, Iran banned the sale of National Geographic Society publications to protest the “Arabian Gulf” inclusion. The issue also has caused widespread protests by intellectuals, historians, students across Iran, formerly Persia.
Identification of the Gulf region and various parts within it has long been a sensitive topic for Iran, which believes that there has been a pan-Arabist campaign since the 1950s – led by late Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser and followed by deposed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein -to call the sea the “Arabian Gulf.”
Update December 21:
UN chides Iran over human rights
The UN General Assembly has censured Iran for human rights violations, in a relatively close vote. By 71 votes to 54, with 55 abstentions, the assembly on Monday said Tehran restricted free speech, used torture, and persecuted dissenters. The resolution is not legally binding but is an expression of world opinion.
Meanwhile, Amnesty International says it fears an Iranian woman convicted of adultery may be buried up to her chest and stoned to death on Tuesday. The human rights group has urged the Iranian authorities to grant a last-minute reprieve to the woman, Hajieh Esmailvand.
hattip alimostofi
Update December 22:
Iran Has Detained Over 10 on Spy Charges
Iran has arrested more than 10 people on charges of revealing its nuclear secrets to Israeli and U.S. intelligence agencies, Intelligence Minister Ali Yunesi said. Yunesi said the 10 were detained in Tehran and in the southern Hormozgan province during the Iranian year that began March 21, the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported.
“These people were spying for Mossad and CIA,” IRNA quoted Yunesi as saying. He was referring to the Israel’s external secret service and the Central Intelligence Agency.(AP)
Update December 23:
Possible attack on nuclear sites
Daily Times(Pakistan) – The Iranian air force has been ordered to stand ready to defend the country’s nuclear sites in case of attack, army chief
“All our forces including land forces, anti-aircraft, radar tactics … are protecting the nuclear sites and an attack on them will not be simple,” the general said. American newspapers and the regional press have speculated over a possible US or Israeli attack on the nuclear sites of Iran, which the Jewish state and Washington suspect of working to develop the bomb. US and Israeli officials have denied any such plans. hattip chickadee
Update: Israeli Defence Minister calls for calm over rumoured attack on Iran.
Personally I am a pacifist and I believe in a democratic constitutional monarchy for Iran. From my perspective, the future of Iran will not be in the hands of another bunch of killers. It is bad enough having one lot of madmen executing people in the name of dogma. The MKO were part of the mayhem in the wake of the death of His Imperial Majesty Shahanshah Aryamehr of Iran. At no time did Iran have the intolerance that it has now. The future of Iran will be in a new modern Iran that condemns capital punishment and accepts international law. The women of Iran that I know do not accept any form of Islam. They know that their own culture had more advanced and liberal philosophies in the form of Zoroastrianism that spread and released freedom in western cultures. Almost all the youth of Iran believe in a secular form of government for Iran.
Much appreciate anything you can contribute here on Agonist, as I have checked out your user info. link and see that you have in-depth knowledge. Always interested in getting analysis of input on the news stories we all post, from all different angles.
They look like adult women to me. Calling them girls demeans them as humans. Let’s call them women, eh?
Frankly, if Islamic law treats women as described in the articles about stoning, etc., then it is a bankrupt and wholly hateful religion. There is NO excuse for a double standard in any religion. Where are the penises of men who raped these women? Still attached to the perpetrators, which is too bad. If the women must be stoned, then their rapists should be castrated and the offending members thrown at the feet of the hateful mullahs who perpetuate this ugly stain on a culture.
But of course they won’t. It’s easier to kill the victims than hold men accountable for their crimes because their crimes are a symbol of the worst excesses of their culture and the patriarchal society that holds that Islam calls for women to be hated and destroyed. There is NO honor in what they do in the name of Allah.
Never seen the movie and comic stripTank girl ?. Also, the first two word of the paper are “These women”.
tired old Gen X stuff?
How about “The Guerilla Girls”?
(their current slogan:
“reinventing the “f” word: feminism”):
http://www.guerrillagirls.com/
Or even how about another kinda ‘girl’?
http://agonist.org/comments/2004/12/29/223132/77/1#1
P.S. won’t bring up “girly men” right now–would complicate matters greatly!
The comics strip were great, the drawing were fashion starter … but the movie … omigod ….
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=1515&e=5&u=/afp/20050101/wl_mideast_afp/
iranvotepolitics_050101123619
TEHRAN (AFP) – The date for Iran’s presidential elections has been fixed for Friday June 17, state media reported.
The date was approved by the Guardians Council, a conservative-controlled oversight body that vets legislation, candidates for public office and elections.
The Council had rejected earlier proposals from the interior ministry for the vote to be held in mid-May.
Several prominent conservative politicians have already entered the race to replace incumbent reformist President Mohammad Khatami (news – web sites), who has served two consecutive terms as president and is barred by the constitution from standing again.
Long-serving former foreign minister Ali Akbar Velayati, now a top advisor to supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has announced he intends to stand, as has Mohsen Rezai, a former head of the Revolutionary Guards and Ali Larijani, the longtime boss of Iran’s state broadcast media.
Iran top national security official and nuclear negotiator Hassan Rowhani has confirmed he was considering joining the fast growing list of candidates, while influential former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani has also been openly mulling participation but has yet to declare his intentions.
On the reformist side, former higher education minister Mostafa Moin has been nominated as the candidate of the Islamic republic’s main reform party, the Participation Front (IIPF), while incumbent Vice President Mohsen Mehr-Alizadeh has also stepped in.
Another potential reformist candidate, former parliament speaker Mehdi Karoubi, has yet to state whether he will stand.
http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=42225
Posted: January 3, 2005
9:20 p.m. Eastern
© 2005 WorldNetDaily.com
WASHINGTON – U.S. military warplanes flew over Iranian air space, raising Tehran’s concerns preparations are being made to knock out its nuclear facilities, according to Iranian news media reports.
The U.S. jets reportedly flew out of bases in Afghanistan and Iraq, with the latest coming Saturday when a fighter buzzed at low altitude an area in the northeastern province of Khorrasan, which borders Afghanistan.
Other reports of overflights cited intrusions by F-16 and F-18 fighters over the southwestern province of Khuzestan, which borders southern Iraq. Papers said the planes appeared to be spying on nuclear sites.
The U.S. military was silent on the veracity of the reports. However, one source said he would not be surprised if the reports were accurate, given the building international tensions over the state of Iran’s nuclear weapons program. “The circular maneuvering of the two American fighters indicated them as carrying out spying sorties and controlling the borders,” said an Iranian official.
Less than a week earlier, Iranian air force chief Brig. Karim Qavami was quoted as having ordered his forces to open fire and shoot down any unidentified aircraft violating the country’s airspace.
“Given that the intrusion of enemy aircraft over Iran’s airspace is possible, all fighter jets of the country have been ordered by the army chief to shoot them down in the event of sighting them,” he said.
In August, five U.S. warplanes entered Iranian airspace from the southwestern Shalamcheh border and overflew Khorramshahr. Iranian military specialists believe the intrusions are designed to assess the capabilities of Iran’s anti-aircraft defenses.
The Iran Factor in Iraq’s Vote
http://agonist.org/comments/2004/12/24/71619/383/67#67
Sorry I did not post this before it went to archive, as it served as a good instructive example; suffice it to say that to many, including me, the word “girl” no longer has negative connotations, as a matter of fact, it has taken on connotations of strength and power to most. (Mho, kudos is due to feminist-oriented culturalists worldwide for accomplishing this!)
NYT
THE ARTS/CULTURAL DESK | December 28, 2004, Tuesday
Girl Power Fuels Manga Boom in U.S.
By GEORGE GENE GUSTINES (NYT) 1104 words
Late Edition – Final , Section E , Page 1 , Column 1
DISPLAYING FIRST 50 OF 1104 WORDS – Look out, boys. There’s a new kid in town. … Sales of Japanese comics — more familiarly known as manga (pronounced MAHN-gah) — are exploding in the United States, and much of the boom is due to efforts by comic book publishers to extend their reach beyond young male readers. Beyond all males in fact.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F30D10FE3D5D0C7B8EDDAB0994DC404482&incamp=archive
:search
“The Iranians are playing a shrewd game of giving international opinion just enough to keep the wolves at bay,” said Ashton B. Carter, co-director of the Preventive Defense Project, a study group at Harvard and Stanford Universities, and a former assistant secretary of defense during the Clinton administration. “At least they are showing a sensitivity to the perception they create, even though I don’t believe that instinct will be enough to turn around Iran’s nuclear ambitions.”
from
WASHINGTON | January 6, 2005
Iran Agrees to Inspection of Military Base
By DAVID E. SANGER (NYT) News
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/06/politics/06nuke.html
Update: January 6:
Iran OKs Access to Suspected Nuclear Site
AP – Iran has agreed to grant access to a military site the United States links to a secret nuclear weapons program and the first U.N. inspectors could arrive “within days,” the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency said Wednesday.
In an interview with The Associated Press, Mohamed ElBaradei also criticized reported U.S. bugging of his phone conversations, saying such actions cripple his agency’s ability to act independently of national agendas.
And in comments sure to annoy the United States, which insists Iran is trying to develop nuclear weapons, ElBaradei suggested the time was approaching to wind down 2 1/2 years of intense focus on Iran’s activities and treat Tehran as just another IAEA member.
Update: January 4:
US aircraft violating Iranian airspace:
Tehran | January 5
AFP – US warplanes flying out of bases in Afghanistan and Iraq have committed a string of violations of Iranian airspace, Iranian press reports said Monday. (submitted by stonehouse)
Update December 30:
Tank girls: the frontline feminists
The Independent -
These women have come from around the world to bring down Iran’s ayatollahs. So why were they bombed by the West? Christine Aziz visits their desert HQ.
The NLA is the military wing of the National Council of the Resistance of Iran (NCRI), a female-dominated, Iranian parliament-in-exile whose aim is to topple the Islamic fundamentalist regime and replace it with a secular, democratic government. The NCRI is led by a charismatic Iranian, Maryam Rajavi, 53. Security around her is tight for fear of assassination attempts, and she very rarely appears in public. Her organisation has kept a low profile until it recently started sharing intelligence reports on Iran’s nuclear programme with America and Europe.
Update December 28:
Iran’s restless youths want rights as well as jobs
CSM – Young Iranians, who make up more than half the population and are restless from massive unemployment, have been pushing for Western-style political and social reforms for nearly a decade. But they’ve been losing ground to the conservative ruling clerics, especially over the last year, and need discreet international support.
The West has an imminent opportunity to assist them. On Jan. 12, a fresh round of talks will be launched between Iran and a trio of leading European nations. The goal is to strike a grand bargain: In return for a host of economic benefits, Iran will guarantee that its nuclear-power program will not be used to develop nuclear weapons.
I don’t get this “legally” at all. Sanctions do not work this way for Cuba. Once an American company is the owner, no foreign subsidiary can make a deal.
See:http://agonist.org/story/2005/1/2/201930/2140
No freighter that visits a Cuban port may dock in the US for the next six months. For a Cuban product to reach US companies, the makers have to prove a “compelling national interest” to the US Office of Foreign Assets Control.
Consolidation in the drug industry has made things worse, says Ismael Clark, president of the Cuban Academy of Sciences. “You’d have a supplier for several years, and suddenly you’d get a letter from the company saying, ‘We can’t supply you anymore because our firm was bought by an American transnational.’”
Halliburton wins Iran gas contract despite sanctions
U.S. firm seals deal through subsidiary company
Tender for drilling South Pars phases 9 and 10 is worth some $310 million
Agence France Presse |Tehran | January 11
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=3&article_id=11695
TEHRAN: Iran said Monday that U.S. oil giant Halliburton had won a major contract to drill for gas, despite U.S. sanctions against foreign investment in the country’s energy industry.
”Halliburton and Oriental Kish [an Iranian company] are the final winners of the tender for drilling South Pars phases 9 and 10,” Pars Oil and Gas Company managing director Akbar Torkan said, according to state television.
An unidentified Pars company board member said the deal for the gas fields in the Gulf off the south coast of Iran was worth about $310 million. He said Halliburton had not directly signed the contract but that it had offered its services via Oriental Kish.
Under a law introduced in 1996, the United States threatens sanctions on both American and foreign companies investing more than $40 million in Iran’s petroleum industry.
Halliburton, once chaired by US Vice President Dick Cheney, has come under investigation in the United States for its dealings with Iran through a Cayman Islands subsidiary.
The U.S. broke diplomatic ties with Tehran after Iranian university students stormed its mission in Tehran in 1980 and took diplomats hostage for 444 days. The United States also accuses Iran of covertly trying to develop nuclear weapons, a charge vehemently denied by Tehran.
Iran, OPEC’s second largest oil exporter, also has the world’s second largest gas reserves. Phases 9 and 10 of South Pars, operated jointly by South Korean and Iranian companies, are expected to produce 50 million cubic meters of natural gas, 80,000 barrels of condensates and 400 tons of sulfur a day.
In addition, the phases are expected to produce each year one million tons of ethane for petrochemical feedstock and 1.05 million tons of liquefied petroleum gas for export. Iran hopes to boost gas output from 110 billion cubic meters a year in 2000 to 292 billion cubic meters in 2010. Gas accounts for about one third of Iran’s domestic energy consumption. -
AFP
…is apparently above the law. And this is done so openly that it’s easy to see they fear no retribution. I’d say it seems obvious that they know their political backs are covered.
Sounds to me like advice from a P.R. firm was involved on this one. Really. Just call it outreach work to the West-i.e., we are reasonable and civilized, see? You can trust us. (We’re not the illogical monsters like dose guys at the NYPost says we are?)
BBC News
Iran denies execution by stoning
Jamal Karimirad said stoning sentences were no longer carried out
Iran has fiercely denied that it executes juvenile criminals or stones people to death, as some human rights groups have alleged.
“In the Islamic republic, we do not see such things being carried out,” said judiciary spokesman Jamal Karimirad.
He described reports that such punishments were continuing as foreign propaganda against the Iranian state.
The UN General Assembly recently censured Iran for “continuing violations of human rights”.
It condemned the country’s record on torture, public executions, floggings and discrimination against women.
Last month, Amnesty International said it feared Iran was about to carry out a sentence of stoning against a woman convicted of adultery.
‘Distorting Iran’s image’….
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4166137.stm
Iranian woman faces noose or stoning
Sat Dec 18, 2004 05:36 PM GMT
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TEHRAN (Reuters) – An Iranian official says he is waiting for orders on whether to stone or hang a woman convicted of adultery, the latest in a chain of death sentences passed against women for “fornication”.
The official from Iran’s conservative judiciary said on Saturday that Hajieh Esmailvand’s prison sentence, that began in January 2000, would end in less than a month — a jail term in the northern city of Jolfa that was always intended as a precursor to execution.
“Her (death) sentence is approved by the Supreme Court, but there are no orders to carry out the sentence. We do not yet know if it is by stoning or hanging,” he told Reuters.
Judiciary spokesman Jamal Karimirad said the death sentence could still be quashed by the special authority of Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi-Shahroudi, head of the judiciary.
more at:
http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=640723
also posted earlier in this thread
Jan 13, 2005
Halliburton coy on Iran gas deal
By Andrew Tully
WASHINGTON – Details of the gas agreement are sketchy, but it likely involves a Halliburton subsidiary based outside of the United States and the Iranian companies Oriental Kish and Pars Oil and Gas.
Halliburton spokeswoman Wendy Hall on Monday appeared to distance the company from the deal. She was quoted as saying Oriental, not Halliburton, signed the main contract. Halliburton, in turn, would likely provide sub-contracting services. This would be through a Halliburton subsidiary registered in the Cayman Islands as Halliburton Products and Services.
Akbar Toran, managing director of Pars Oil and Gas, said Halliburton and Oriental Kish were awarded the development contracts for Phase 9 and Phase 10 of South Pars. The deal was estimated at US$310 million. A Pars Oil executive quoted by the Iranian daily Shargh said Halliburton did not formally participate in the tender. Instead, Halliburton operated through Oriental Kish.
When the gas field becomes fully operational, it is expected to generate 50 million cubic meters of treated natural gas per day for domestic use, 80,000 barrels of gas liquids per day for export and a million tons of ethane for the petrochemical industry.
Such an arrangement would not necessarily contradict US law. The United States has tough rules against companies doing business in Iran, which it accuses of sponsoring terrorism. But companies are permitted to deal through their subsidiaries as long as the work is kept separate from the parent company.
Analysts say that the agreement may be more than just business and part of a larger diplomatic effort to convince Iran to abandon plans it may have to develop nuclear weapons.
Sean Murphy, a law professor at George Washington University, told RFE/RL that US laws that prohibit firms from working in certain countries usually allow for exceptions to serve diplomatic ends. He said the US may be using the Halliburton deal to send a positive signal to the Iranians.
“The way these sanctions regimes are set up, you ban a scope of activity, but then you give the executive branch the ability to carve out exceptions as needed – typically on national security grounds. That makes sense, if you’re talking about certain types of aid that might be provided or if you’re trying to do ‘carrots and sticks’. That is the way that statute is structured,” Murphy said.
While there has been no official confirmation of this, Murphy said Halliburton or its subsidiary could serve as a conduit for back-channel contacts between Washington and Tehran. “There’s probably some kind of ‘dance’ going on here relating to the nuclear issue. The Europeans, as you know, have been at the forefront of negotiating that with Iran. The US has been pretty hostile generally and has been more interested in wielding the stick rather than the carrot. But there’s all kinds of discussions, I am sure, going on behind closed doors – you know, the Europeans, the US, and Iranians,” Murphy said.
more at:
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GA13Ak02.html
TEHRAN, Iran – A woman sentenced to death for killing a police official who tried to rape her has been pardoned by the victim’s family, a judiciary official said Wednesday, a welcome resolution to a 7-year-old case that had garnered intense interest at home and abroad.
The family of Behzad Moghaddam has agreed to monetary compensation of $62,500 rather than seeking the execution of Afsaneh Nowrouzi, the official said.
Nowrouzi, now 34, stabbed Moghaddam to death in 1997, cutting off his penis and placing it on his chest. She said she was defending herself against rape by Moghaddam, the police chief on the tourist island of Kish in the Persian Gulf.
In Iran, a married woman who is raped can be convicted of adultery and sentenced to death. If she kills the attempted rapist, she can be tried for murder and sentenced to death.
Iran warns UN atomic watchdog not to spy on military sites
By :
Date : 13 January 2005 0216 hrs (SST)
URL : http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_world/view/127065/1/.html
TEHRAN : Iran warned it would not allow UN nuclear inspectors to “spy” on a suspect military site which the United States claims may be involved in covert nuclear weapons activities.
It also said it planned to resume soon the enrichment of uranium despite a deal hammered out last year with the European Union under which it agreed to freeze the controversial activity.
A team from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) arrived in Tehran Wednesday to carry out inspections at the Parchin military facility which Iran had long kept off limits to the UN nuclear watchdog.
“We are watchful. We have allowed inspections into our military installations but we will not allow any espionage or the theft of information from our military sites,” Hossein Mousavian, the spokesman for Iran’s nuclear negotiations team, said in remarks carried by the Mehr news agency.
“It is not necessary for the inspectors to enter the installations. They are authorized to take samples outside (the buildings) using their equipment.”
According to student news agency ISNA, the IAEA team is due to stay in Iran for a week and start taking environmental samples from Parchin on Thursday.
more at link
UN nuclear team visits Iran
United Nations nuclear inspectors have visited the suspect military site of Parchin in Iran, which the United States claims may be involved in covert nuclear weapons work, an International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) spokesman said.
“I confirm that a team of IAEA inspectors is today conducting an inspection at Parchin, including the taking of environmental samples,” spokesman Mark Gwozedecky said in a statement released to the press by e-mail.
Environmental samples are swipes taken to check for radiation. Results from such sampling are available after about a month of laboratory analysis.
Iran had warned Wednesday that it would not tolerate “spying” at the Parchin military facility, which had previously been off limits to IAEA inspectors.
The IAEA visit coincides with the resumption of EU talks in Brussels on a trade accord with Iran, 18 months after they were suspended due to concerns about Tehran’s nuclear plans.
The negotiations on a trade and cooperation agreement were restarted after Iran agreed to suspend uranium enrichment, the crucial part of the nuclear fuel cycle which can also make material for atomic bombs, in an accord thrashed out following intense pressure, notably from the US.
But the resumption was clouded by a reported announcement from Tehran that Iran plans to resume uranium enrichment soon.
Iran has consistently claimed it is only giving up enrichment voluntarily as a confidence-building measure and reserves the right to enrich uranium when it wishes.
The IAEA team arrived in Tehran Wednesday and is due to stay in the country for a week, student news agency ISNA reported.
Tehran gave permission for inspectors to take environmental samples from the massive Parchin site, around 30 kilometres south-east of Tehran, in order to disprove US allegations of secret weapons-related activities.
Washington has voiced concern that the Iranians may be working on testing high-explosive charges with an inert core of depleted uranium at Parchin as a sort of dry test for how a bomb with fissile material would work.
more at:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200501/s1281608.htm
http://www.hrw.org/english/docs/2005/01/13/iran9803.htm
Respect for basic human rights in Iran, especially freedom of expression and opinion, deteriorated in 2004. Torture and ill-treatment in detention, including indefinite solitary confinement, are used routinely to punish dissidents. The judiciary, which is accountable to Supreme Leader Ali Khamene’i rather than the elected president, Mohammad Khatami, has been at the center of many serious human rights violations. Abuses are carried out by what Iranians call “parallel institutions”: plainclothes intelligence agents, paramilitary groups that violently attack peaceful protests, and illegal and secret prisons and interrogation centers run by intelligence services.
Freedom of Expression and Opinion
The Iranian authorities systematically suppress freedom of expression and opinion. After President Mohammad Khatami’s election in 1997, reformist newspapers multiplied and took on increasingly sensitive topics in their pages and editorial columns. Prominent Iranian intellectuals began to challenge foundational concepts of Islamic governance. In April 2000, the government launched a protracted campaign to silence critics: closing down newspapers, imprisoning journalists and editors, and regularly calling editors and publishers before what became known as the Press Court. Today, very few independent dailies remain, and those that do self-censor heavily. Many writers and intellectuals have left the country, are in prison, or have ceased to be critical. Days after the visit of the Special Rapporteur for freedom of opinion and expression, Ambeyi Ligabo, in late 2003, one of the student activists with whom he spoke was re-arrested. In 2004 the authorities also moved to block Internet websites that provide independent news and analysis, and to arrest writers using this medium to disseminate information and analysis critical of the government.
Torture and Ill-treatment in Detention
With the closure of independent newspapers and journals, treatment of detainees has worsened in Evin prison as well as in detention centers operated clandestinely by the judiciary and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Torture and ill-treatment in detention has been used particularly against those imprisoned for peaceful expression of their political views. In violation of international law and Iran’s constitution, judges often accept coerced confessions. The use of prolonged solitary confinement, often in small basement cells, has been designed to break the will of those detained in order to coerce confessions and provide information regarding associates. This systematic use of solitary confinement rises to the level of cruel and inhuman treatment. Combined with denial of access to counsel and videotaped confessions, prolonged solitary confinement creates an environment in which prisoners have nowhere to turn in order to seek redress for their treatment in detention. Severe physical torture is also used, especially against student activists and others who do not enjoy the high public profile of older dissident intellectuals and writers. The judiciary chief, Ayatollah Mahmud Hashemi Shahrudi, issued an internal directive in April 2004 banning torture and inhumane treatment of detainees, but as of yet no enforcement mechanisms have been established.
Parallel Institutions
“Parallel institutions” (nahad-e movazi) is how Iranians refer to the quasi-official organs of repression that have become increasingly open in crushing student protests, detaining activists, writers, and journalists in secret prisons, and threatening pro-democracy speakers and audiences at public events. These groups have carried out brutal assaults against students, writers, and reformist politicians, and have set up arbitrary checkpoints around Tehran. Groups such as Ansar-e Hizbollah and the Basij work under the control of the Office of the Supreme Leader, and there are many reports that the uniformed police are often afraid to directly confront these plainclothes agents. Illegal prisons, which are outside of the oversight of the National Prisons Office, are sites where political prisoners are abused, intimidated, and tortured with impunity. Over the past year politically active individuals have been summoned to a detention center controlled by the Department of Public Places (Edareh Amaken Umumi) for questioning by “parallel” intelligence services. According to journalists and student activists who have undergone such interrogations but not been arrested or detained, these sessions are intended to intimidate and threaten students and others.
Impunity
There is no mechanism for monitoring and investigating human rights violations perpetrated by agents of the government. The closure of independent media in Iran has helped to perpetuate an atmosphere of impunity. In recent years, the Parliament’s Article 90 Commission (mandated by the constitution to address complaints of violations of the constitution by the three branches of government) has made an admirable effort to investigate and report on the many complaints it has received, the Commission lacks any power to enforce its findings and recommendations. The Commission repeatedly called for a thorough investigation of the judiciary’s violations of the law, but thus far this has not happened. In October 2003 the Article 90 Commission presented a public report on the death in custody several months earlier of Iranian-Canadian photojournalist Zahra Kazemi. The report placed responsibility for her death squarely on agents of the judiciary. In a bizarre development, the judiciary accused a low ranking official of the Intelligence Ministry, Reza Ahmadi, of killing Kazemi. Despite a strong rebuke from the Intelligence Ministry, the judiciary proceeded with a hastily organized trial held in May 2004 in which Reza Ahmadi was cleared of the charges. The judiciary has taken no further steps to identify or prosecute those responsible for Kazemi’s death.
The Guardian Council
Iran’s Guardian Council is a body of twelve religious jurists: six are appointed by the Supreme Leader and the remaining six nominated by the judiciary and confirmed by Parliament. The Council has the unchecked power to veto legislation approved by the Parliament. In recent years, for instance, the Council has repeatedly rejected parliamentary bills in such areas as women’s rights, family law, the prohibition of torture, and electoral reform. The Council also vetoed parliamentary bills assenting to ratification of international human rights treaties such as the Convention against Torture and the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination against Women.
The Council also has the power to vet candidates for elected political posts, including the presidency and the national parliament, based on vague criteria and subject only to the review of the Supreme Leader. The Council wielded its arbitrary powers in a blatantly partisan manner during the parliamentary elections of February 2004 when it disqualified more than 3,600 reformist and independent candidates, allowing conservative candidates to dominate the ballot. The Council’s actions produced widespread voter apathy and many boycotted the polls. Many Iranians regarded the move as a “silent coup” on behalf of conservatives who had performed poorly during previous elections in 2000. The Council also disqualified many sitting parliamentarians whose candidacy had been approved by the same Council in 2000.
Minorities
Iran’s ethnic and religious minorities remain subject to discrimination and, in some cases, persecution. The Baha’i community continues to be denied permission to worship or engage in communal affairs in a public manner. In a rare public protest, eighteen Sunni parliamentarians wrote to the authorities in July 2003 to criticize the treatment of the Sunni Muslim community and the refusal to allow construction of a mosque in Tehran that would serve that community. The Baluchi minority, who are mostly Sunni and live in the border province of Sistan and Baluchistan, continue to suffer from lack of representation in local government and have experienced a heavy military presence in the region. In December 2003, tensions between the local population and the Revolutionary Guards led to large demonstrations in Saravan, in Baluchistan province. In the ensuing clashes between demonstrators and the police at least five people were killed.
Key International Actors
The European Union has increased both economic and diplomatic ties with Iran. The E.U. has pledged to tie human rights standards to this process, but so far with little impact. Australia and Switzerland have also initiated “human rights dialogues” with Iran, but benchmarks have not been made public, making it unlikely that these will have any greater impact than the dialogue conducted by the E.U.
Iran issued a standing invitation to thematic mechanisms of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights in 2002. Since then, the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention and the Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression have visited the country and issued reports critical of government practices in these areas. The government, however, has failed to implement the recommendations of the U.N. experts, and there were reprisals, such as re-arrest, against witnesses who testified to the experts. Since then, Iran has not responded to requests by the U.N. Special Rapporteurs on Torture and on Extra-Judicial Executions to visit the country.
Relations between the United States and Iran remain poor. The Bush administration has publicly labeled Iran as part of an “axis of evil.” Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, in October 2003, said that the U.S. was not pursuing a policy of “regime change” towards Iran, but persistent reports from Washington indicate that the administration remains divided on this point. The U.S. continues to oppose loans to Iran from international financial institutions.
NYT
An Iranian Cleric Turns Blogger for Reform
By NAZILA FATHI
Published: January 16, 2005
TEHRAN, Jan. 15
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/16/international/middleeast/16iran.html?ex=1263531600&en=7ca5a40d
dda27656&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland
photos on page
excerpt, but recommend reading whole thing:
When he began his Web site, he declared that he was going to be “Mohammad Ali Abtahi only,” without standing on ceremony as a government official.
He wrote he was starting his Web log because he had taken amusing photographs of other officials with his new cellphone, equipped with a camera, and he wanted to share them with others.
But he has strayed into deeply serious subjects. At a time when telling the truth can result in a prison term, Mr. Abtahi wrote recently on his Web site about what happened to journalists and bloggers who were jailed for a period in the fall. They were beaten so severely that the nose of one woman was broken, and they were put in solitary confinement for most of their detention, he wrote.
Then he wrote that at a meeting with two of the released detainees, which a hard-line Tehran prosecutor, Saeed Mortazavi, also attended, two journalists had revealed such horrifying details that their account brought tears to the eyes of others in the room.
“We had to give them water so that they could get hold of themselves and continue,” wrote Mr. Abtahi, who attended the meeting as Mr. Khatami’s representative.
Mr. Mortazavi had warned the released detainees not to talk about their experience, and Mr. Abtahi was summoned to the Special Court of Clergy shortly after he wrote about the meeting.
But after Mr. Abtahi wrote about it, Mr. Khatami and the chief of the Iranian judiciary, Ayatollah Mahmoud Shahroudi, personally promised to follow up on the accusations.
“Without Mr. Abtahi and his Web log we would not have had the courage to reveal what had happened to us,” said Mr. Mirebrahimi. “He met with them before we saw them and prepared them for what we were going to tell them. Otherwise they would not have believed us.”
Not everyone, even among the reformists, is pleased with Mr. Abtahi’s Web log. Ataollah Mohajerani, a reformist who is the former minister of culture and Islamic guidance, scolded Mr. Abtahi and said that what he was doing was “cheap.”
Mr. Abtahi dismissed the comments and pointed out that Mr. Mohajerani had a Web site, too, but that he neither had a camera to take interesting photos nor knew the language of the youth to chat with them.
Update January 13
Analysis: A Look At Iran’s Sponsorship Of Terror Groups
RFL/RE – The Iranian Constitution states that in order to attain its objectives the country’s foreign policy must be based on “Islamic criteria, fraternal commitment to all Muslims, and unsparing support to the freedom fighters of the world” (Article 3). Furthermore, “[Iran] supports the rightful struggle of the oppressed people against their oppressors anywhere in the world” (Article 154). These requirements, as well as a desire to export the revolution, are a primary factor behind Iran’s support for what the United States identifies as terrorist organizations. Iran’s more recent reliance on asymmetric warfare in its military doctrine, furthermore, underscores that such support will continue.
The U.S. State Department first identified Iran as a state sponsor of terrorism in January 1984, and it has borne that designation every year since despite Iran’s denials of involvement. The State Department currently views Iran as the leading state sponsor of terrorism, according to its annual “Patterns of Global Terrorism” report (http://www.state.gov/s/ct/rls/pgtrpt). While Iran does not have an official “Ministry of Terrorism,” the State Department report notes the involvement of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) and the Intelligence and Security Ministry (MOIS) in terrorist activities, although it does not single out any individuals for involvement.
Update January 12
EU revives negotiations with Iran after WMD commitment
The Guardian – The EU will today defy the US and resume trade talks with Iran in the hope of opening up one of the world’s fastest-growing countries to greater foreign investment.
The talks, broken off 19 months ago, are being revived after the agreement between Iran and Britain, France and Germany that the Islamic republic would suspend its uranium enrichment and reprocessing activities for military purposes.
Update January 10:
Iran Says IAEA Can Take Environmental Samples, Not Inspect Equipment at Suspect Military Complex
Tehran, Iran – AP – Iran will allow U.N. nuclear experts to take environmental samples at a military site the United States links to an alleged nuclear weapons program but won’t allow them to inspect military equipment, the foreign ministry spokesman said Sunday.
The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei, said last week that Iran had agreed to grant access to the site at Parchin, just southeast of Tehran, and that his inspectors could arrive soon. The IAEA had pressed Tehran for months to be allowed to inspect the military complex, long used to research, develop and produce ammunition, missiles and high explosives.
Update Jan 7:
IRAN’S NUCLEAR ASPIRATIONS
RFL/RE via Asia Times – US Secretary of State Colin Powell recently put Washington’s position toward Iran’s nuclear activities in very clear terms.
The evidence that has been put forward so far demonstrates clearly that Iran has been moving in the direction of creating a nuclear weapon. And that is why the International Atomic Energy Agency [IAEA] got so involved, why the Russians have been careful about providing fuel for the new reactor at Bushehr, and why the European Union sent their three foreign ministers in to get the Iranians to stop.
But Iranian officials, including President Mohammad Khatami, say that Tehran is only interested in nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. “We have made our choice: peaceful nuclear technology – yes. Atomic weapons – no. Not ‘no’ only for ourselves – no [nuclear weapons] for the region, no [nuclear weapons] for the world,” Khatami said.
So who is right?
(PART 2: Two-track weapons program)
(PART 3: In search of the ‘grand bargain’)
(PART 4: Iranians state their case)
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/printedition/bal-te.journal16jan16,1,6779302.column?coll=bal-pe-ase
ction
By Megan K. Stack
Among Iran’s youth, lives adrift
Apathy: Drugs, political disappointments and a dearth of jobs have left many without direction.
January 16, 2005
TEHRAN, Iran – Their cheeks were bitten by the threat of snow, but the sisters had no where else to go. They’d coated their faces with makeup and painted their eyelashes until they looked too heavy to blink, gaudy faces to offset drab denims and black coats. This afternoon, their spirits hung as low as the brooding clouds over the mountains.
It was Friday afternoon, time for prayers in the Islamic Republic, but the hundreds of young Iranians trekked into the mountains on the outskirts of Tehran, the capital, instead. Droves of people in their 20s flooded the rocky paths as if they were going somewhere in particular – a concert or a rally. But there was nothing at the top; they were simply climbing their way out of the smoggy urban mazes.
The mountains were alive with hormones and direction-less potential. Forget black robes and beards; Iran’s almost-adults dressed as if they had just come from a rave, with faded running shoes and aviator glasses shoved high into their hair. They slouched along, glassy-eyed and smoking cigarettes. Many of them looked stoned. Boys and girls held hands. The winter light slanted through the dying trees. The mood was nihilistic.
“I think the government wants the youth to be on drugs so they keep quiet,” said a 17-year-old high school student who gave only her first name, Mona. “They say it’s a problem, but they’re the ones importing it.”
The youth of Tehran move through the months as if dreaming, passing moodily from pop culture to Persian traditions, groping for their place in the world. Conversations with dozens of teens and young adults in Tehran in recent weeks painted an overwhelming picture of a generation disaffected and stained by longing.
Like many young Iranians, Mona and her 23-year-old sister chafe at a strict Islamic government but drop into lethargy when it comes to politics.
The previous night, they’d been kicked out of a shopping center by a government morality squad. Run-ins with police are common; the two say they use their pocket money to bribe their way out of trouble.
A quarter of a century ago, Iran’s fiery youth drove a revolution in the name of Islam and anti-imperialism. But those students grew up, and their zeal faded as they softened into graying bureaucrats. The babies they birthed en masse at the feverish urging of the mullahs have inherited a legacy of high unemployment, widespread drug addiction and gnawing religious disillusionment.
“There aren’t any jobs for us,” complained Rahim Keab, a 21-year-old soldier in a dirty khaki coat who made his way across a city park. He and four friends drifted to Tehran months ago from a farming village in the southwest. Now they are languishing. Keab doesn’t know what he will do when his military service is over.
“Young people want to get married, but first they need work,” Keab said. “So instead they start to smoke [opium], and they get addicted. The government hasn’t done enough for us.”
This apathetic, youthful mass is a powerful, albeit untapped, force: Three-quarters of the population is younger than 35. They are enough to shape an election; in a truly representative system, they would decide their government.
But few young people are expected to go to the polls in the spring presidential election. Reformists say they will shun the polls if the conservatives once again ban reformist candidates from running, as they did in parliamentary elections this year.
“When I was a youth, we were revolutionaries, and we were ready to pay the price,” said Hamid Reza Jalaipour, a 46-year-old sociologist and one-time student activist who now runs reformist newspapers. “These days the youth are not ready to pay. They prefer to depoliticize, and the conservatives are very happy about that. They are looking for passive masses.”
Even the Islamic Republic’s legendary student movements have fallen silent. It was the students who swept President Mohammad Khatami into office in 1997, heady with his promises of reform and progress. But Khatami proved weak, and the reforms never came.
So the students lost patience. But when they smashed through the streets in the large demonstrations of 1999, they were arrested and tortured. Bit by bit, the fire faded from the campuses.
“Our language used to be more courageous,” said Majid Haji Babaei, a 31-year-old doctoral student and a leader at the Student Unity Office. “But we were beaten up and even thrown out of windows, we were suppressed, and many went to jail. Naturally, some students felt disappointed, and the risk of political involvement also got higher.”
Many Iranian youths yearn for a better life elsewhere but are hard-pressed to articulate where, or how. They resent their own government but complain that they have been unfairly stigmatized by the West. They speak like people drained of politics and religion.
“Everybody believes in God, but now there is a big gap between us and God,” said Majid Ghanbari, a 28-year-old film buff, music enthusiast and malcontented entrepreneur with floppy hair and rumpled jeans. “The government tried to force people closer, but instead they sent us further away.”
Ghanbari owns Video Home, a gaudy and improbable outlaw’s den tucked into a corner of a shopping mall in the sandy urban jungles of western Tehran. Its walls are festooned with the bright covers of bootleg movies and albums. He’s pushing pop hits from America alongside Iranian films. He hunches over his computer all day long, burning CD after CD.
How about DJ Maryam, the mysterious singer who runs her voice through a computer so it sounds like a robot croaking, the one who is rumored to have been jailed because in Iran it is illegal for women to sing? Her identity is secret, but her albums are everywhere.
Two schoolgirls slipped into his shop, swathed in hip-hop gear. They were looking for the latest bootleg Iranian music from Los Angeles, and they weren’t disappointed. Ghanbari reached beneath his mouse pad, as if he had been waiting for them, and handed over a CD.
As the girls slumped back into the crowds, Ghanbari sighed. How long will it be, he wondered, before the police return to shutter his shop for selling illegal CDs? It happens every few months.
“And then I get nervous and feel really bad. Every time I think, ‘I should do something, I should leave this country. What kind of life is this?’” he said, shaking his head. “But then they open the shop again, and I have my job, I have my life. And I am Iranian, I love Iran. I forget about it until the next time.”
The Los Angeles Times is a Tribune Publishing newspaper.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4180087.stm
January 17
US commandos are operating inside Iran selecting sites for future air strikes, says the American investigative reporter Seymour Hersh.
In the New Yorker magazine, Hersh says intelligence officials have revealed that Iran is the Bush administration’s “next strategic target”.
Hersh says that American special forces have conducted reconnaissance missions inside Iran for six months.
But the White House has described his article as “riddled with inaccuracies”.
Potential targets include nuclear sites and missile installations, he says.
The New Yorker journalist adds that President Bush has authorised the operations, defining them as military to avoid legal restrictions on CIA covert intelligence activities overseas.
They constitute a revival of a form of covert US military activity used in the 1980s, notably in support of the Nicaraguan Contras.
‘Working with Pakistan’
The task force has been penetrating eastern Iran from Afghanistan and leaving remote detection devices known as sniffers capable of testing for radioactive emissions in the atmosphere, Hersh says.
He reports as well that American special forces units have been authorised to conduct covert operations in as many as 10 nations in the Middle East and South Asia.
He quotes one senior intelligence official as saying a force in Pakistan is working with scientists who have had dealings with Iranian colleagues.
But the price for co-operation, the official said, was a US assurance that Islamabad would not have to hand over AQ Khan, the father of the Pakistani nuclear programme who last year admitted to illegally transferring nuclear secrets to Iran, North Korea and Libya.
‘Riddled with inaccuracies’
Hersh bases his claims on anonymous sources, including former intelligence officials and consultants with links to the Pentagon.
One such consultant is quoted as saying that the civilians in the Pentagon wanted to go into Iran and destroy as much of the military infrastructure as possible.
There have also been calls from Pentagon hawks to use a limited attack on Iran to topple the country’s religious leadership, one of Hersh’s sources said.
The article has already drawn fire from the White House: the communications director, Dan Bartlett, called it “riddled with inaccuracies”.
“I don’t believe that some of the conclusions he’s drawing are based on fact,” Mr Bartlett added.
He said the diplomatic approach was still the priority.
“No president, at any juncture in history has ever taken military options off the table,” he said. “But what President Bush has shown is that he believes we can emphasize the diplomatic initiatives that are under way right now.”
The BBC’s Justin Webb in Washington says that while Hersh could be wrong he has a series of scoops to his name, including the details of the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal last year.
His track record suggests that he should be taken seriously, our correspondent says.
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?050124fa_fact
as an individual story; waiting on it to be posted–just a head’s up for anyone else so they don’t spend the time on a dupe.
IAEA Has Iran Site It’d Like to Check
Tuesday January 18, 2005 8:01 PM
Associated Press Writer
VIENNA, Austria (AP) – The U.N. nuclear watchdog agency is pushing for a fresh look at an Iranian military complex linked by the United States to possible atomic arms research just days after being granted limited access, diplomats said Tuesday.
The International Atomic Energy Agency is interested in testing another part of the sprawling Parchin complex just outside Tehran in its search for radiation that could point to such research, the diplomats said.
The Bush administration has accused Iran of being part of an “axis of evil” with North Korea and prewar Iraq. The United States alleges Iran may be testing high-explosive components for nuclear weapons, using an inert core of depleted uranium at Parchin as a dry run for a bomb that would use fissile material.
The request by the Vienna-based IAEA comes just days after its inspectors were given partial access to the site and were allowed to take environmental samples for analysis in the agency’s European laboratories.
The diplomats, who are familiar with the agency’s investigation of Iran’s nuclear programs, said that as far as they knew the IAEA experts were not impeded beyond the limitations placed on where they could take their samples.
But one of the diplomats said the fact that the agency had requested fresh access to another part of the site suggested there are continued open questions about the nature of the work conducted at Parchin.
“The inspectors want to go back to another explosives bunker” that they apparently were not granted access to last week, the diplomat said on condition of anonymity.
In leaks to media last year, U.S. intelligence officials said a specially secured site at Parchin may be used in research for high-explosive components of nuclear weapons.
Iran asserts its military is not involved in nuclear activities, and the IAEA has found no firm evidence to the contrary. The agency also has not been able to support U.S. assertions that nearly two decades of covert nuclear programs discovered 2 years ago were aimed at making nuclear weapons and not at generating electricity, as Tehran claims.
But an IAEA report in October expressed concern about published intelligence and media reports relating to equipment and materials that could serve military purposes.
At the time, diplomats said the phrasing alluded to Parchin.
As part of his investigation into Iran’s nuclear activities, IAEA head Mohamed ElBaradei has produced a series of reports for guidance by the IAEA board on what to do about Iran’s nuclear activities.
His refusal to declare Iran in breach of the Nonproliferation Treaty has angered U.S. officials by derailing their drive to have the U.N. Security Council examine Iran’s nuclear dossier.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Tuesday he has no reason to suspect that Tehran is seeking the capacity to develop nuclear weapons, the Interfax news agency reported.
European Union officials also said they hope to convince President Bush during his Feb. 22 visit to EU headquarters that only diplomacy can solve the standoff.
Luxembourg Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn, whose country holds the EU presidency, said the “military option” was something the EU “would not endorse
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-4740801,00.html
Iranian envoy admits Kazemi was killed
OXFORD, England * Iran’s ambassador to Britain yesterday admitted that Canadian photojournalist Zahra Kazemi was murdered by Iranian security officials — radically reversing the official position of the Iranian judiciary, which has said her death was an accident.
also:
http://www.radiocanada.ca/url.asp?/nouvelles/Index/nouvelles/200502/09/006-GB-Kazemi.shtml
and gets what he wants
Europeans are ecstatic that Bush is backing their Iran strategy. But in the end, it is the American approach to Iranian uranium enrichment that received the biggest boost. Negotiations are bound to fail, which would pave the way for UN sanctions — and for a re-definition of the Nonproliferation Treaty.
Where is all the optimism coming from? Last week, it finally became clear that United States President George Bush’s newfound friendly tone and diplomatic charm, exhibited late last month during his visit to Europe, may actually be more than just show. In order to create a strong alliance with Europe, he even appears ready to come to a compromise on his own ideological beliefs and to clamp down on the hardliners within his government. Or at least he is willing to give the Europeans the first shot at solving the Iran crisis.
The mullah regime in Iran encapsulates the exact opposite of what Bush’s liberated vision of the Middle East should look like: It is repressive, advocates the destruction of Israel and, in the eyes of the Americans, supports terrorists. The mere thought of the mullahs causes Bush to shudder. Nonetheless, he has decided to support the European plan to negotiate with Iran in the hope of preventing the country from getting its hands on nuclear weapons. It’s a policy U-turn that has irritated and unnerved conservatives in the US. But Bush seems to be following a more nuanced path this time around, one that involves heavy doses of both idealism and realism.
The truth is that the European troika — made up of Britain, France and Germany — doesn’t have much to offer the Iranians at the next negotiating session in Paris. Perhaps a few spare parts for the aging airliners that the Shah once bought in the United States and maybe the promise not to block Iran’s attempts to get into the World Trade Organization. But few believe such a paltry tray of treats will be tempting enough to dissuade the mullahs from their nuclear dreams.
A common trans-Atlantic front
Symbolically, however, Bush’s agreement to support the Europeans is enormous and the old continent is even beginning to believe that Bush is serious about improving trans-Atlantic relations. The hawks in the US government will now have to realize that this means investing heavily in diplomacy, at least as a first step. For their part, the clerics in Tehran now know that they can no longer rely on trans-Atlantic rancor to prevent severe sanctions from eventually being considered against their country.
[...]
http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/0,1518,346591,00.html
Ukraine Says Missiles Smuggled to Iran
Fri Mar 18, 2005 11:42 AM ET
KIEV (Reuters) – Ukraine said on Friday cruise missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads had been “smuggled” out of the country to Iran, but denied a report they had been exported with official sanction.
The country’s new liberal government, swept to power in January on pledges to stamp out high-level corruption and forge closer ties with the West, said it would tighten controls on the export of technology with military use.
Britain’s Financial Times<follows this article> newspaper quoted Ukraine’s prosecutor general on Friday as saying Kiev authorities had sold missiles to Iran and China.
~~~
EU IN SIGHTS
It said two Russians were being sought and the extradition had been requested of a third held in the Czech Republic.
A Czech court is due to hear arguments on whether Russian entrepreneur Oleg Orlov can legally be extradited to Ukraine. Orlov was arrested at Prague airport in 2004 while in transit.
Foreign Minister Borys Tarasyuk, speaking in Belarus, said the government in power after mass “Orange Revolution” protests “can only denounce past unauthorized transfers of arms.”
“Ukraine’s president and government have drawn conclusions and want to reorganize the system of export controls.”
The Financial Times quoted the U.S. embassy in Kiev as saying it was “closely monitoring” a Ukrainian government investigation into the case.
The Western diplomat said: “What we know to be true is that there are credible reports of a sale or transfer of Kh-55 missiles to China or Iran. But we don’t know if they are true.
“There have been problems in the past with Ukraine’s exports of weapons of mass destruction or advance weaponry. The dialogue with the previous government was not quite satisfactory.”
Washington alleged for a time that Kuchma’s government had sold an aircraft detection system to Iraq while Saddam Hussein was in power. Kuchma denied the charge.
New liberal President Viktor Yushchenko wants to steer Ukraine toward membership of the European Union, which expects to lift an arms embargo against China by the end of June.
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=TL5RWWLE0IL0QCRBAEOCFEY?type=topNews&storyID
=7946499&pageNumber=1
Ukraine admits exporting missiles to Iran and China
By Tom Warner in Kiev
Published: March 18 2005 02:00 | Last updated: March 18 2005 02:00
Ukraine has admitted that it exported 12 cruise missiles to Iran and six to China amid mounting pressure from other countries to explain how the sales occurred.
Svyatoslav Piskun, Ukraine’s prosecutor-general, told the FT that 18 X-55 cruise missiles, also known as Kh-55s or AS-15s, were exported in 2001. None of the missiles was exported with the nuclear warheads they were designed to carry. However, Japan and the US say they are worried by what appears to have been a significant leak of technology from the former Soviet Union’s nuclear arsenal.
The X-55 has a range of 3,000 km, enough to put Japan within striking range of the Asian continent or to reach Israel from Iran.
The US embassy in Kiev said it was “closely monitoring” the investigation and wanted the findings of a secret trial made public. The US is critical of European diplomatic efforts to prevent Iran developing nuclear weapons.
Japan fears it could be vulnerable to a nuclear strike from the Asian mainland if the Ukrainian missiles fall into Korean hands.
Kishichiro Amae, Japan’s ambassador in Kiev, said he was hopeful that the new Ukrainian government, which took over in January, would explain the case but so far he had received no information.
Mr Amae said the new Ukrainian government had shown its readiness to investigate the previous government’s misdemeanours when it indicted three high-ranking interior ministry officers this month for the murder in 2000 of journalist Georgy Gongadze. But he said the cruise missile case was more serious. “If it is handled in secrecy, the new government will lose the confidence of the world.”
Mr Piskun’s admission that Ukraine sold the missiles is the first confirmation by a government official that the exports occurred. The case was made public last month by a member of Ukraine’s parliament, whose account Mr Piskun largely confirmed.
The acquisition by Iran of cruise missiles, if proved, would heighten concerns about its nuclear weapons programme.
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/abf8cc64-9753-11d9-9f01-00000e2511c8.html
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=TL5RWWLE0IL0QCRBAEOCFEY?type=topNews&storyID
=7946499&pageNumber=1
U.S. sanctions not important for us: Total director in Iran
Tehran Times Economic Desk
TEHRAN – Director for France’s oil giant Total in Iran Pierre Fabiani said that Total would continue its cooperation with Iran despite pressures from the United States, Iranian Students News Agency reported here on Monday.
He also said that Total is a professional company and does not meddle in the problems existing between the two countries – Iran and the U.S. – adding, “For us, it is a problem between Iran and the United States, at the first place we are a French company and at the second, Total is a European company and at the third, it is an international company and it only follows the sanctions imposed by France, European Union and the United Nations, other sanctions are not important for us.”
The oil expert also said that Iran’s investment risks have decreased in recent years and Total is ready to invest in all economically feasible energy projects in the Islamic Republic. He said, “Total is willing to invest, particularly, in Iran’s gas and oil production as well as energy development projects.”
more
http://www.tehrantimes.com/Description.asp?Da=4/19/2005&Cat=9&Num=033
Iran stalls in probe of nuke smuggling -diplomats
18 Apr 2005 17:00:07 GMT
Source: Reuters
By Louis Charbonneau
VIENNA, April 18 (Reuters) – Tehran is not cooperating fully with a probe by the U.N. nuclear watchdog into Iranian officials’ meetings with smugglers who had links to Pakistani atom bomb-maker Abdul Qadeer Khan, diplomats said on Monday.
The diplomats said the meetings in 1987 and 1994 were key to help determine whether Iran’s programme was originally intended to produce electricity, as Tehran insists, or to make bombs, as Washington maintains.
Iran’s failure to cooperate fully with the United Nations on the issue worried the European Union’s “big three” powers, the diplomats said. Britain, France and Germany resume nuclear talks with Iran in Geneva on Tuesday.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, several Western diplomats familiar with the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) investigation said Iran appeared to be withholding information about the two meetings, both of which took place in Dubai.
“They are not cooperating on this issue,” said one diplomat. He said there was a lack of documentation and there were inconsistencies in the Iranian accounts of the meetings with people known to be part of Khan’s network that supplied Iran and Libya with sensitive atomic technology.
Sirus Naseri, one of Iran’s senior nuclear negotiators in talks with the EU aimed at resolving the standoff over Iran’s nuclear plans, declined to comment, as did the IAEA.
Iran first acknowledged the 1987 meeting earlier this year.
According to the IAEA’s deputy director general, Pierre Goldschmidt, Iran showed the IAEA a one-page offer for centrifuges that resulted from that meeting. Such machines are used to enrich uranium for use in atomic power plants or arms.
In a speech to the IAEA board of governors last month, Goldschmidt called on Tehran to produce “all documentation relevant to the offer” that came out of the 1987 meeting.
Iran had not done this, the diplomats said.
The IAEA believed civilians at the meetings in Dubai worked for a front company that might have been intended to mask their relationship with the Iran’s defence industry.
“They think it was a camouflage organisation. These were civilians but it was a dummy organisation,” a diplomat said.
more
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L18709624.htm
Iran Says Slain Journalist’s Case Still Open
Washington, 18 May 2005 (RFE/RL) — Iranian judiciary spokesman Jamal Karimi-Rad said in Tehran yesterday that the dossier of Canadian photojournalist Zahra Kazemi, who was killed in state custody in Tehran in June 2003, remains open and would be reexamined on 25 July, Radio Farda reported.
The announcement comes a day after a court examined the case in camera for an hour, without reaching a conclusion.
Lawyers for Kazemi’s family rejected the initial acquittal, for insufficient evidence, of the only defendant charged with her killing, and want a court to summon two key witnesses: Tehran chief prosecutor Said Mortazavi, who may have participated in her interrogation, and Health Minister Masud Pezeshkian, who saw her corpse, Radio Farda reported.
Separately, Canada, which is angered by Iran’s handling of the case, announced on 17 May that it will restrict for now its contacts with Iran to three subjects: the Kazemi case, “Iran’s human rights record, and…nuclear nonproliferation,” AFP quoted Foreign Minister Pierre Pettigrew as saying. No “visits or exchanges by Iranian officials to Canada will be permitted, nor will Canadian officials engage with Iran, except relating to these issues,” Pettigrew added.
http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2005/05/9f0d57be-8534-45e5-8905-345ea9b1dd01.html
6/8/05
Tehran “Flower Clock” rivals Big Ben
Photos: ISNA
Tehran, June 7, IRNA-The world’s biggest clock was installed at Abbasabad district of Tehran on Tuesday in a ceremony attended by a number of urban officials. `Flower Clock’ which measures 15 meters in diameter and weighs 750 kgs was installed at a cost of six hundred million rials.
http://www.payvand.com/news/05/jun/1045.html
better pics at link, heavy wattage tho
US dismisses Iran election as rigged
(AFP)
11 June 2005
WASHINGTON – The United States has not waited for the first ballot to be cast before dismissing Iran’s presidential election as rigged and exhorting the Iranian people to rise up for democratic reform.
US officials took no pains to hide their concern after Iran’s hardline clerical regime barred more than 1,000 hopefuls from next Friday’s poll and narrowed the field to a handful of mostly conservative candidates.
“There are questions about an election where it’s the mullahs, the unelected few, who are really the ones that make the decision about who can actually run,” State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Friday.
Iran, a member of President George W. Bush’s famous “axis of evil,” has long been in the US cross-hairs for its alleged support of terrorism and suspected plans to develop nuclear weapons.
But in recent months the Bush administration has stepped up its rhetoric over Iran’s domestic situation, lambasting the mullahs as unyielding despots and coming close to advocating regime change.
Bush raised eyebrows in February when he used his State of the Union address to address a message directly to the Iranian people: “As you stand for your own liberty, America stands with you.”
Having cut off diplomatic relations and virtually all economic ties since the US hostage crisis in Tehran a quarter century ago, the Americans have little leverage with the Iranian government.
But US officials said they were moving quietly since late last year to provide some 4.5 million dollars in aid to opposition and pro-democracy groups outside Iran while boosting broadcasts into the country.
A million dollars was given to a US-based human rights group compiling a data base on abuses in Iran. Another 500,000 dollars for data gathering was channeled through the National Endowment for Democracy set up by Congress.
The US government has authorized a further three million dollars to spread the word and is currently reviewing proposals submitted by dozens of groups, officials said.
Gregg Sullivan, spokesman for the State Department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, said the United States was taking care not to establish direct links with any particular people or organizations inside the Islamic Republic.
“For the US to embrace any viewpoint regarding events inside of Iran is essentially tantamount to labeling the Iranian ahderents of the same viewpoint agents of the Great Satan,” Sullivan told AFP.
He said this would “basically put bullseyes on their heads and label them for arrest, harassment, intimidation, possibly even death. It’s a very dangerous game and we know that.”
Some analysts such as Michael O’Hanlon of the Brookings Institution, also suggested that even reform-minded Iranians might resent any preaching from the United States.
“Iranian voters, Iranian citizens, are fairly pro-US but I am not sure that means they need Mr. Bush’s rhetoric or that it really helps,” O’Hanlon said.
US officials have little rooting interest among the eight candidates vying to replace President Mohammad Khatami, whose reform efforts over eight years in office were largely thwarted by the conservative clerics.
They said so-called centrists such as the frontrunner Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani were moderate only in Iranian terms and would be unlikely to buck the mullahs for real change.
One official said administration analysts were struggling to develop a policy line on the election, which comes 16 months after parliamentary polls that excluded thousands of would-be reform candidates.
“The debate that continues to rage is whether there is any other outcome that can be viewed as advantageous short of a complete opening of the political system,” said the official, who asked not to be named.
One possibility, he added, was to hope for a low turnout to send a signal that a sizeable chunk of the Iranian electorate saw the exercise as meaningless and change impossible under the existing structure.
Washington has already been drawing a contrast with the Iranian elections and democratic developments in neighboring Iraq and Afghanistan as well as the Palestinian territories.
“The world needs to recognize and needs to say to the Iranians that they are thoroughly out of step with what’s going on in the larger region,” Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Thursday.
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticle.asp?xfile=data/middleeast/2005/June/middleeast_June278.xm
l§ion=middleeast&col=