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The Iranians condemn any government or entity that supports the tyrant IRI regime!
Photos of the Regime's security forces intimidating citizens
For more info
http://www.brwska.com/dec-05/25-33.htm
Iran Focus
Tehran, Iran, Dec. 31 – Some 200 workers from the Miral glass factory held a demonstration and set fire to tyres south of Tehran Saturday morning in protest to their employers’ refusal to pay their overdue salaries.
The glass workers gathered outside the site of their factory near the Tehran-Saveh Highway
They complained that despite five to 25 years of service, many of the workers had not received their wages for the past 10 months.
State Security Forces were called in when the protestors blocked traffic on the road by burning tyres.
London (KurdishMedia.com) 31 December 2005: The first Swedish passenger plane landed in Sulemani, southern Kurdistan on Friday, reported local Kurdish media.
A Swedish passenger aeroplane with 40 Kurdish passengers landed in the Sulemani International Airport. The aeroplane took off from Stockholm to land in Sulemani with all its Kurdish passingers. It took 32 Kurdish passengers back with itself to Stockholm. This is the first Swedish aeroplane ever landed in Sulemani.
It was also reported that in a very near future the flights between London and Sulemani and between Frankfort and Sulemani will be operating.
Sweden is one of the European countries that have a high number of Kurdish populations. The Kurds have well integrated into the Swedish society. Kurds occupy some high positions within the government and public sectors, including members of parliament.
AKI - Amid rising tension in Iranian Kurdistan, prisoners in Urumieh prison in western Iran are rioting over the imminent hanging of one of their fellow detainees - a Kurd named Massoud Shokkehi - and the hanging in recent days of another Kurd being held in Sagghez prison, also in Iranian Kurdistan. A total 51 Kurdish militants have been summoned to appear before the Revolutionary court in Sanandaj, accused of sedition. They face the death penalty if convicted.
On Thursday, violent protests broke out when police officers came to take Shokkehi away for execution, together with another Kurdish prisoner, Salah Mohammadi Guylani, being held in another prison. Shokkehi had been in Urumieh for nine years.
A young Iranian Kurd was hanged in Sagghez on Wednesday. Farhad Salehpour, 19, was arrested some 12 months ago and sentenced to death for killing a Islamist militiaman. A member of a separatist Kurdish group, Salepour spent eleven months in Sagghez on death row before being executed. Also on Wednesday, four more Kurds who allegedly took part in unrest earlier this year were re-arrested. They had been released conditionally earlier this month.
There have been violent protests in many cities in Iranian Kurdistan in recent months, and the situation remains tense.
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia's foreign ministry confirmed on Friday that a top envoy had talked to Iranian officials to discuss a Russian proposal to enrich uranium for the Islamic Republic, Itar-Tass news agency reported.
According to the agency, Security Council Secretary Igor Ivanov discussed "regulation of the situation around the Iranian nuclear programme".
"The telephone conversation occurred at the request of the Iranian side," the agency quoted a ministry spokesman as saying.
A spokesman declined to confirm the report when asked by Reuters. Tass quoted him as saying "discussion of these themes will continue".
An Iranian diplomat on Thursday said Ivanov, who acts as a Kremlin envoy for unofficial contacts on controversial issues, and Iran's chief nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani had agreed to hold talks on the proposal in a telephone conversation.
The proposal, which is backed by Washington and the European Union, involves the creation of a joint Iranian-Russian company to enrich uranium in Russia.
The plan has been put forward by Moscow in a bid to allay international concerns that Iran could manufacture highly enriched uranium on its own soil to build atomic weapons.
Iran says it wants to enrich uranium only to a low grade, suitable for use in atomic power reactors.
Iranian officials had previously said they would reject any plan that denied Iran the right to build its own uranium enrichment facilities.
But, in a sudden change of tone, a senior official said on Wednesday Tehran would "seriously and enthusiastically" study the Russian plan.
Call on UN Secretary General to form committee to identify and prosecute those responsible for suppression and massacre of Iranian freedom activists
Iranian political prisoners in several prisons throughout Iran (Evin Prison in Tehran, Rajai-Shahr Prison in Gohardasht, and prisons in Semnan, Bandar Abbas, and Birjand), who are on hunger strike, have issued a declaration calling on human rights organizations and the UN and its Secretary General to form an international fact-finding committee to identify and arrest those responsible and involved in the massacre and suppression of freedom activists in Iran in the last 27 years of theocratic rule in Iran.
Some of these prisoners, who have ties to the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI) and other dissident groups, have been on hunger strike for six weeks and some others have joined the strike in the past two weeks. The prisoners stressed in their declaration they would continue their hunger strike until the formation of a fact-finding committee. The declaration states: “The responsibility for our well-being rests directly with Mr. Kofi Annan and other heads of human rights organizations that are charged with the defense and protection of the rights of peoples throughout the world.”
The clerical regime’s prison guards have transferred the group of political prisoners to a unit where ordinary criminals are held as a way of forcing them into submission. They are also denied medical attention for injuries suffered under torture and for other medical needs.
The Iranian Resistance appeals to all human rights organizations throughout the world to support the Iranian political prisoners on hunger strike in Iran and calls on the Secretary General of the United Nations to urgently respond to their request.
Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran
December 29, 2005
http://ncr-iran.org/content/view/790/69/
Iran Focus:Iranian authorities hanged two young men in public in the cities of Ilam, western Iran, and Taibad, eastern Iran, the official news agency reported.
Yar-Mohammad Samadi, 20, was hanged in a public square on Wednesday after being convicted of committing murder in 2003.
A second man, Eskandar Morajei, 30, was hanged in public at dawn on Thursday in the city of Ilam. He was also accused of murder.
ISTANBUL (DIHA) - Lawyers who went to Gemlik in order to see their client Öcalan were not taken to İmralı because of weather opposition. Mustafa Eraslan, one of the lawyers, saying that the attitude towards their client have become an administrative practice, said: 'He is not allowed to see his family and not given enough time to see his lawyers. In the days to come, some matters concerning these will be the subject matter of new cases.'
Kurdish People's Leader Abdullah Öcalan's lawyers Ibrahim Bilmez, Ayse Batumlu and Mustafa Eraslan went to Gemlik in the morning to see him in İmralı for weekly meeting. The lawyers who applied to Gemlik Gendarmerie Communication Office were said by the authorities that they could not go to İmralı because of the weather opposition.
'There is discrimination against Öcalan'
Lawyer Mustafa Eraslan, who said that Öcalan's lawyers met with same things, said 'information from the Meteorology says that the intensity of wind will be at 5th and 7th level. It is clear that the vehicle appropriated for us can not even resist to 3rd level. The captain said that he could not depart in such conditions. Our client is discriminated against by isolation in İmralı Island in country surrounded by water on three sides because of his legal position. Our client is treated in another way than others. He is not allowed to see his family. He is not given enough time to see his lawyers.'
'This is illegal'
Eraslan, saying that all those were not legal, spoke: In the days to come, some matters concerning these will be the subject matter of new cases. We will not go to Bursa Chief Public Prosecutor, because he is always doing the same thing. This has become an administrative practice.'
The lawyers, who were not allowed to see their client, left Gemlik to go back to İstanbul.
HEWLER (DIHA) - Instructor Dr. Kemal Seid Qadir, condemned to 30-year imprisonment because he criticised Barzani family in Hewlêr town of Iraq Federal Kurdistan, was reported to be suffering from ill health as he has been on a hunger strike.
Dr. Kemal Seid Qadir, arrested during a visit to Federal Kurdistan and condemned to 30-year imprisonment, was allowed for the first time in prison to see his family. His family, who gave information about his health after the union, said that Dr. Qadir had been on a hunger strike for 4 days with demand of release and that he was suffering from ill health. They said that Dr.Qadir had gone on hunger strikes many times and given up when prison authorities agreed to his demands, and spoke: 'He is very resolute this time. He says that he would strike until he is released. He also said that he was deceived many times, they said.
Meanwhile, news online that Dr. Qadir would be released within a month was denied by his family.
Reporters Without Borders today deplored the banning of satellite TV station Saba TV by Iran’s Supreme National Security Council as one more example of the battle by the country’s media for freedom of expression.
The Council has declared the Dubai-based station “illegal” after trying to stop its launch, announced last summer as imminent. The national constitution forbids any independent radio or TV station. Saba TV decided to delay its launch as a result of the ban.
The worldwide press freedom organisation said it hoped Saba TV would be allowed some day soon to broadcast freely in Iran.
The station was set up by Hojatoleslam Mehdi Karoubi, a pro-reform religious figure and ex-speaker of parliament, as the first satellite TV station founded by a former Iranian politician and aiming to provide “objective and unbiased news” about Iran to Farsi-speaking people everywhere.
The station said on 26 December it would file a complaint against the Council’s secretary-general, Ali Larijani, for banning the station. The Council forbade the Iranian media to give news or publish ads about the station’s impending launch. The authorities, backed by the regime’s hardliners, have attacked Karoubi for being “anti-nationalist” and “favouring Westerners.”
The Council recently banned newspapers from printing news about the crash of a C-130 Hercules military plane in Teheran on 6 December in which 84 journalists died. It has also forbidden the media to mention the country’s nuclear capacity. The Council is appointed by the country’s Supreme Guide, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and chaired by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=16043
In a public letter, Ms Shafiee, the wife of imprisoned journalist and writer Akbar Ganji has called the statement of Mahmud Salarkia, the deputy prosecutor of Tehran to be laughable. She warns that all those involved in her husband’s case will one day be tried by the public, to whom they are accountable.
The following are excerpts of her letter.
In an interview with ISNA, Iran's student's news agency, Mr. Salarkia, Tehran's deputy prosecutor claims that Ganji is no visitation bans, hat he could be visited on the request of his attorney and family members and the approval of the prosecutor, and that there has been no visitation request from the attorney or the family members during this period.
To this I would like to respond by saying that this is the most laughable excuse ever, because as officials have repeatedly said that when a prisoner is seeing his term, as is Mr. Ganji, every one of them has a weekly meeting with designated family members or his attorney, can go on leave and can have daily telephone conversations, can have medical treatment, etc. Based on article 9 and 10 of the prison regulations, every prisoner who has been in prison for one fifth of his term is to be transferred to the general open ward, where he shall spend the rest of his term. This contrasts with the situation Mr. Ganji is in. While he only has 3 months left of his 6 year prison term, he continued to be held in solitary confinement. Based on which regulations and rules, I ask? Iran 'entire judicial system will halt if judiciary officials had to review visitation requests every week for every prisoner in prison. This is discriminatory, inhumane and illegal mistreatment imposed on Ganji. Does ‘general open ward” mean solitary confinement? Do family members of every prisoner in prison request to meet with their prisoner every week, or is this automatic and they only appear on the designated dates? Do these families go to the prosecutor’s office every week and hear threats, insults and humiliation? Not only is Mr. Ganji not treated according to the regulations and rules government prisons, he is treated discriminatorily when compared with other political prisoners.
Today is exactly 112 days that he has been in Evin’s Guantanamo-type cell, under very difficult conditions. I have no news from him for 37 days now. Our children, his mother and I are all under severe psychological pressure. Which law sanctions such mistreatment of a prisoner who has spent 6 years of his life in prison?
Salarkia says Ganji has no specific problems and is in good physical condition. When Ganji was forced to break his long hunger strike, severely tortured by Tehran prosecutors' agents who brutally hurt his left shoulder and was deprived of food and medical treatment, Mr. Soleimani, the director of Tehran prisons said Ganji was in his best shape. So when Salarkia says that Ganji is in a ‘relatively good’ condition, he must be in a horrendous situation.
In my last visit, Ganji weighted around 50 kg and his body was cold due to his low blood pressure. He continues to be seriously deprived of food and medicine. The world should be aware that this is a gradual and silent death. They are so scared of Ganji and so ashamed by this scandalous mistreatment that they do not allow anyone to see him.
Any official who is directly or indirectly involved in Ganji's case will soon have to face people in a people’s court. The forgiveness that today’s victims may provide at that time may not be of any use to the officials then.
http://r0ozonline.com/11english/012897.shtml
Iran Focus: Dozens of young men have been arrested in the northern province of Golestan as part of a nationwide crackdown on “trouble-makers”, state-run dailies reported on Wednesday.
The deputy chief of intelligence of the State Security Forces (SSF) in Golestan was quoted as saying that under the plan codenamed Zafar (Victory), 61 individuals were arrested by special police patrols and handed over to the judiciary for prosecution.
Zafar, otherwise known as the Plan to Combat Trouble-makers, was initially launched in Tehran in September and soon spread to cities and towns across the nation. Under the scheme, thousands of young men have been arrested within a period of several months on charges such as “indecent behaviour” and “bullying”.
Iranian officials often refer to millions of unemployed young men, who are largely beset by frustration and despair, as “trouble-makers”.
Iran Focus: Two men were hanged in public in the volatile city of Ahwaz, southwest Iran, the official state news agency reported on Wednesday.
The two men, identified only by their first names as Naeem-Abdollah and Jaleel, were accused of being “mohareb”, or waging war on God.
The two men were hanged at dawn in one of the city’s main squares.
In the past, Iran’s judiciary has executed political opponents of the Islamic Republic on the charge of being a mohareb.
Ahwaz, provincial capital of Khuzistan, is home to Iran’s ethnic Arab population and has been a hotbed of anti-government demonstrations. Throughout the months of April and July, the city was the scene of large-scale clashes between people and government forces
Iran Focus
Iranian authorities flogged three men in public in the southern town of Jahrom, a state-owned daily reported on Wednesday.
The three unnamed men were flogged 300 times for “drinking” and “unruly behaviour”, according to the daily Etemaad.
The sentence was carried out in the town’s Velayat Square in the presence of a number of judiciary officials.
By: Mohammad Mohaddessin
Democracy in the Middle East and the Islamic world has been taken hostage by Islamic fundamentalism whose heart beats in Tehran under the clerical rule. Making use of its economic, political, diplomatic and terrorist leverage, the mullahs are taking advantage of the religious sentiments of Muslims around the world to derail the democratic processes in their communities and impose their brand of Islamic fundamentalism in those countries.
The Iranian Resistance has repeatedly warned of this threat over the past decade. This phenomenon had a premature and aborted emergence in Algeria, Jordan, Egypt and other Moslem countries in the past, but the clerical regime's active meddling in Iraq and unimaginable rigging in the recent elections in that country attest to this reality.
By exploiting the current situation in Iraq, Tehran has been trying to ensure the victory of its own candidates as part of an effort to establish a fundamentalist state in that country. The clerics look to Iraq as a spring board to dominate the Middle East and the Islamic world.
Having failed to achieve this goal in the eight-year war with Iraq, which left at least a million Iranian casualties, the mullahs are now making use of democratic and electoral process brought about by the U.S. and the coalition to achieve their goal.
This is while the Iranian regime and its agents are extremely detested by a vast majority of Iraqis. Contrary to what some say, pro-Tehran candidates would not be in a position to influence the political life in Iran without the Iranian regime's interference. Iranians notwithstanding, no other nation has suffered more than the Iraqis from an Iranian style Islamic rule.
The mullahs’ meddling in Iraq has not been a secret and in the 33 months since the downfall of the previous Iraqi government. Right from the start, Iran regime’s officials openly claimed to be the winners of the war. They said that the U.S. had paved the way for the mullahs into Iraq by removing its old enemy, the Baathist regime in that country and neutralizing its main opposition, the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI).
Tehran is convinced that the West, in particular the U.S., is doomed to accept the regime's nuclear ambitions because failure to do so it would make it more vulnerable in Iraq in face of Tehran's influence in that country.
Democracy and peace are an anathema to the Islamic fundamentalism. The ruling fundamentalist regime in Iran relies on the absolute rule of the clergy on the one hand and the idea of an Islamic empire and export of terrorism and fundamentalism on the other.
As such, so long as the mullahs’ are in power in Tehran, they will neither allow the realization of democracy in Iraq and peace in the Middle East. Recent remarks by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad against Israel are consistent with Tehran's policy of inciting chaos in the Middle East. But for geopolitical, strategic and religious reasons its domination of Iraq lies at the core of the regime’s policy for it would expedite its advance in other areas.
Inaction vis-à-vis Islamic fundamentalism and ignoring its threat, particularly to Iraq, is a recipe for a disaster; it would increase the chances of Tehran acquiring nuclear weapons. It is therefore crucial today, as never before, to form a united front comprising all democratic forces to counter the threat of religious fascism to peace and democracy in the region and the Islamic world.
Mohammad Mohaddessin, Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the National Council of Resistance of Iran
http://ncr-iran.org/content/view/784/1/
The state-run daily Iran reported that a man involved in human trafficking of young Iranian girls, each sold in Arab countries for over 50 million rials (US$4,600), received a prison term of three to five months. An appeals court, however, overturned the ruling and released the smuggler and ordered him to pay a fine of just US$275.
The Iranian regime has executed minors on much lesser charges and continues to issue stoning to death verdicts. But the regime’s judiciary deals quite leniently with networks of human traffickers of young Iranian girls and women, since the ring leaders of such networks are mostly linked to the ruling mullahs who profit from the illicit trade.
On rare occasions when one of these ring leaders is arrested, they eventually walk free after paying less than 6% of what they earn from selling a single woman. Iranian state-run newspapers have reported that hundreds of girls and women are smuggled and sold in Persian Gulf states and Pakistan every month.
Ms. Sarvnaz Chitsaz, Chair of the Women’s Committee of the National Resistance Council of Iran, called on all women’s rights and human rights organizations, and also all relevant international bodies in the United Nations, Council of Europe, European Union, Organization of Islamic Conference, and the Arab League to condemn the trafficking of young Iranian girls by Iran's fundamentalist regime. She demanded urgent regional and international action to stop the continued victimization of Iranian girls and women.
Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran
http://ncr-iran.org/content/view/783/69/
Iran Focus
Iran’s State Supreme Court has upheld the death sentence for a teenage woman accused of murdering another woman despite her repeatedly denying that she had committed the crime, according to a wire report from the country’s State Security Forces (SSF).
The 19-year-old woman, only identified by her first name Del-Ara, was accused of stabbing to death a relative in the year 2003 when she was 17 years old.
Del-Ara denies she committed the murder, insisting that she had originally taken responsibility for her boyfriend’s crime after he had told her that girls who are minors could not receive the death sentence.
Upon learning that her boyfriend, Amir-Hossein, had lied to her, she withdrew her statement to the SSF.
According to Del-Ara’s account, the pair had planned to rob her father’s cousin. Amir-Hossein had asked her to bring a knife which she did since she was under the influence of drugs given to her by Amir-Hossein at the time. He then used the knife to repeatedly stab the victim to death.
The report said that Amir-Hossein had accepted the charge of assisting in a murder and his sentence of 10 years behind bars.
Iranian authorities hanged a young man in the Kurdish town of Saqqez, a Persian-language opposition website reported on Tuesday.
Hambastegi Meli reported that 23-year-old Farhad Saleh-Pour was hanged in the restive town.
Last week, Iran executed a Kurdish political prisoner who had been jailed since 1996 for allegedly killing an agent of the notorious Ministry of Intelligence and Security.
The man known as Aziz was a Kurdish activist held in Orumieh Prison.
Aziz was originally from a village called Biouran in the western province of Kurdistan.
Kurdistan Province has been a hotbed of anti-government protests and clashes over the past year. Iranian authorities have launched a crackdown in Kurdish areas to quell the unrest.
Iran Focus
Iran’s State Supreme Court upheld stoning and amputation sentences for four men and jail terms for several dozen other members of a gang in the north of the country, according to a report in a semi-official daily.
The men, who had been arrested in January in the town of Nowshahr in the northern province of Mazandaran, were all part of a gang called the “Wild West”, the hard-line daily Jomhouri Islami reported in its Sunday edition.
Three of the men – Eskandar M. (also known as Abbasi), Jamshid E., and his unnamed brother – were each given two death by hanging sentences and one death by stoning sentence.
Another man, identified only as Afshin R., was sentenced to have his fingers amputated and receive prison time.
Abbasi’s brother, son, and father were sentenced to five, seven, and one year in prison respectively.
Altogether, some 40 members of the gang were sentenced from one to 15 years prison time.
The report quoted the top religious judge from the town of Sari, Hojjatoleslam Moussavi, as saying that the State Supreme Court had upheld all the sentences and that they were all “definite”.
The men were accused of armed robbery and murder among other charges.
Earlier this month, an Islamic court in Tehran sentenced a woman to stoning for adultery in the town of Varamin.
Iran’s Islamic Penal Code is very specific about the manner of execution and types of stones which should be used for stoning sentences. Article 102 states that men will be buried up to their waists and women up to their breasts for the purpose of execution by stoning. Article 104 states, with reference to the penalty for adultery, that the stones used should “not be large enough to kill the person by one or two strikes, nor should they be so small that they could not be defined as stones”.
The Jerusalem Post
Jpost Staff and AP
"Iran is one to two years away, at the latest, from having enriched uranium," said Mossad Chief Meir Dagan during his annual report to the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee late Tuesday morning. "From that point, the completion of their nuclear weapon is simply a technical matter. If Iran goes undisturbed, they will reach technical nuclear development independence in the coming months," said Dagan.
The comments echoed those of IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Dan Halutz, who earlier this month said it is possible that Iran would be able to complete building a bomb as early as 2008 or as far as 2015.
Just last week it was reported in the Jerusalem Post that Iran recently acquired 12 cruise missiles with a range of up to 3,000 kilometers. OC Intelligence Maj.-Gen. Aharon Ze'evi (Farkash) noted the missiles had the ability to carry a nuclear warhead.
Also on Tuesday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that Iran was undermining Russia's attempts to engage in dialogue regarding its nuclear program.
Iran had denied on Sunday that it had received from Russia a proposal for moving its uranium enrichment facilities to Russian territory, a compromise Europe is seeking to resolve controversy over Iran's nuclear program.
Russia announced a day earlier that it had formally put the proposal to Teheran. Iran has so far insisted it would not agree to moving enrichment abroad, and it was not clear if Teheran's denial was an attempt to gain time without directly rejecting a proposal from Moscow, a longtime ally.
"We have not received any particular plan yet," Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi told reporters. "It's quite clear that Iran will positively look at any proposal that recognize right of having nuclear enrichment on its soil."
Asefi underlined that Iran and Russia enjoy positive mutual relations and understandings in many fields.
Uranium enrichment is a key step in the nuclear process, producing either fuel for a reactor or the material needed for a warhead. The Europeans want enrichment moved to Russia to ensure Iran cannot divert uranium for a weapons program.
AFP
The Peninsula
TEHRAN -- The managers of a reformist-funded satellite television channel are to take legal action against Iranian authorities for allegedly banning their activities and broadcast, a company executive said yesterday. Saba TV’s managing director said they came to understand that their station was being banned by the government days after Iranian security agents tried to confiscate a tape from a network official at Dubai airport.
“We realise that the Supreme National Security Council has asked the newspapers to avoid publishing Saba TV advertisements and news of Saba TV (and said) this network’s activities are illegal in Iran,” Behrouz Afkhami said in a statement.
Afkhami said the managers intended to file a legal complaint against Ali Larijani, head of the Supreme National Security Council, who has allegedly ordered the ban.
Funded by Mehdi Karoubi, a reformist cleric and failed presidential hopeful, Saba TV was scheduled to make its first broadcast from Dubai at midnight Wednesday.
But when an Iranian airliner carrying Saba’s production manager arrived in the Gulf emirate of Dubai, Iranian security agents tried to confiscate the tape and prevented him from getting off the plane, Afkhami said.
Iran’s constitution does not allow any radio or television stations to operate outside state control.
With a start-up budget of $330,000, its aim was “to provide objective and unbiased news about Iran to Persian-speaking viewers all over the world”. “Mr Larijani, does your interpretation of the radio and TV monopoly include the Persian speaking media outside Iran?” asked Afkahmi, a well-known movie director and former reformist MP.
By Bill Frist
BILL FRIST (R-Tenn.) is Senate majority leader.
Los Angeles Times - Iran's ruling mullahs have waged a 26-year campaign to suppress dissent, support terror and pursue a nuclear weapons program. In recent weeks, it has become clear that international efforts to stop Iran's atomic program have failed to bear fruit. Unless we act quickly, the United States will have a nuclear crisis on its hands.
Today's Iran presents a sharp contrast between a ruling class hostile to the world and a populace ready to rejoin the global community. The Iranian people's desire for freedom, however, hasn't stopped the nation's leaders from trying to build a fearsome arsenal.
Iran already has missiles capable of striking Israel, parts of Europe and American forces in the Middle East. It also appears that rogue Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan has given Tehran's ruling clerics the blueprints for a nuclear warhead. Veteran Iran-watchers believe that the nation could soon use its supposedly civilian nuclear program to produce weapons-grade fissile material.
The world's democracies largely agree that a nuclear-armed Iran presents a threat to Middle East stability and world peace. Meetings between the United States and the other 34 members of the International Atomic Energy Agency's governing board have produced resolutions but no final agreement to end Tehran's illicit nuclear program. Several IAEA board members have blocked serious action out of fear that Iran will pull out of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, suspend international energy sales or even lash out militarily.
Late last month, the Bush administration went along with a European recommendation to delay asking the IAEA board members to refer Iran to the United Nations Security Council for action. The nonproliferation treaty calls for such referrals when countries violate their international obligations, and Iran has violated them more than a dozen times.
In this case, there may be a good reason to wait: Permanent Security Council members Russia and China have significant commercial and strategic interests in Iran and would probably block U.N. action against the regime. Going ahead with a referral now could drive away allies whose help we will need to stop Iran's nuclear program.
Although we should continue IAEA discussions with Iran — a process that has given us insights into its nuclear program — we need to explore other measures. In particular, we should ask allies who trade with Iran to join a sanctions campaign against Tehran.
For years, the U.S. has maintained sanctions on Iran that prohibit most trade, investment and assistance. And because Iran is on our list of state sponsors of terrorism, U.S. law requires the president to oppose all multilateral assistance to Iran in international forums and impose sanctions on those who aidits weapons programs or invest in its energy sector. Now, we should persuade other countries to follow our lead. Aside from those covering food and medicine, we shouldn't rule out any type of sanction.
A multinational sanctions regime might begin with an embargo on technologies that Iran can use in its nuclear program. If these initial sanctions prove ineffective, the program might escalate in stages to include a ban on arms sales and penalties for suppliers.
Further sanctions could include limits on the export of civilian technologies, such as machine tools, that have military applications, and, eventually, the full spectrum of measures the U.S. has in place to isolate Iran and persuade its rulers to give up their nuclear ambitions.
If we let Tehran develop nuclear weapons covertly while IAEA negotiations slog forward, Iran's theocrats will have little reason to negotiate with anyone. The U.S. needs to act before a regime that has denied the real Holocaust unleashes another.
NCRI - The Iranian Resistance urged residents of Tehran, and in particular workers and wage-earners, to support the strike of Tehran bus drivers and their just demands. The Resistance called on all workers and residents in Tehran to resist the ploys and repressive measures undertaken by the clerical regime to suppress the protest.
Workers at Tehran’s Sherkat Vahed (Tehran’s bus company) have for years suffered from economic hardships, low wages, difficult working conditions, and lack of minimum professional bonuses as a consequence of the Iranian regime’s repressive policies. The situation has deteriorated considerably for bus drivers in recent months, especially after Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has taken office as the new president of the clerical regime.
Authorities in the Iranian regime have attempted in recent months to sow division within the ranks of the company’s workers and have delayed responding to their just demands, held back on wage payments, and attempted to prevent workers’ protests and strikes.
The regime’s repressive security forces have in recent weeks arrested a number of the workers. Some of those arrested are being held in Evin prison in Tehran and others at the Intelligence Ministry prison. Authorities in the regime have also shut down the Internet website belonging to the workers and actively prevent the formation of any independent workers union or association.
Anti-labor councils called Islamic Workers Councils form part of the repressive apparatus of the clerical regime against workers. Workers Houses are also under the control of such councils.
The Iranian Resistance calls on labor unions and international advocates of workers’ rights to condemn the Iranian regime’s anti-labor and repressive policies. The Resistance also calls on the International Labor Organization to review the situation of Iranian workers in its next conference in Geneva.
Iran has executed a political prisoner who had been jailed since 1996 for allegedly killing an agent of the notorious Ministry of Intelligence and Security
The man known as Aziz was a Kurdish activist being held in Orumieh Prison.
Aziz was originally from a village called Biouran in the western province of Kurdistan.
He was hanged inside the prison on 18 December 2005 .
Bus drivers in the Iranian capital, Tehran, went on strike today to protest against their wages and conditions of work, as they had warned earlier.
The drivers have been calling for improvement of their working conditions and higher wages to meet with rising inflation but their demands have been refused by the clerical regime.
Today’s strike has brought further chaos to the streets of capital making it even more difficult for commuters to move around in the city.
A few months ago,
