Proper response to Tehran's challenge is urgent adoption of sanctions, support for democratic change by the Iranian people and Resistance

NCRI - Ali Asghar Soltanieh, the Iranian regime's representative to the IAEA in Vienna, confirmed today that the regime "will soon install 50,000 centrifuges in the Natanz facility for enrichment of [UF6] gas." Tehran also informed the IAEA in a formal letter that it would halt cooperation with the agency and demanded the removal of surveillance cameras at nuclear sites in Iran.

The remarks are a blunt admission to the veracity of revelations by the Iranian Resistance from a year ago, exposing a ploy by Tehran of simultaneously negotiating with the Europeans and continuing to develop and complete its nuclear projects, including the large-scale construction of centrifuges.

The formal announcement of resumption of enrichment activities by the clerical regime is in clear defiance of its obligations to the international community. The move underlines the necessity of urgent Security Council action to impose comprehensive oil, arms, technological, and diplomatic sanctions against the regime.

The Security Council should also review the regime's record in sponsoring terrorism and systematically violating the human rights of the Iranian people. The clerical regime's declaration of war on the world community is concurrent with its intensified suppression of the Iranian people. The leaders of the medieval theocracy must be brought before an international tribunal for their crimes against the Iranian people.

The ultimate solution to deal with Tehran's increasing threats is democratic change in Iran as was articulated by Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, President-elect of the Iranian Resistance. This change cannot be achieved by appeasing the mullahs or by external war. The Iranian people and their organized Resistance, which has fought for liberty and democracy in Iran for over a quarter century, hold the key to change. To achieve democratic change, the main obstacle to it, namely the terror label against the People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran, the main component of the Resistance, must be revoked and the National Council of Resistance of Iran must be recognized as the Iranian people's legitimate resistance movement.

Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran

February 7, 2006

Iran Focus– Iran’s former President Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani accused the West on Tuesday of carrying out the work of Satan after cartoons depicting the prophet Mohammad negatively were published in European dailies.

Speaking to a gathering of senior clerics in Tehran, Rafsanjani, who currently chairs the State Expediency Council, said that Western interpretations of freedom of press were false.

“Insulting the prophet of peace and freedom under the pretext of freedom of thought and expression is a satanic conspiracy which without doubt will be disclosed as before with the presence of Muslims everywhere”, he said, the state-run Fars news agency reported.

The powerful cleric said that the West’s goal for publishing the cartoons was “clear” and encouraged Muslims everywhere to rise up against such “plots”.

Iran Focus– Iranian authorities hanged three men in the north-eastern town of Sabzevar, Khorassan Razavi province, a state-run daily reported on Monday.

The three, dubbed “trouble-makers”, were charged with threatening national security, the hard-line daily Khorassan wrote.

The charge “acting against national security” is a vague term which encompasses virtually all forms of social protests or actions against the ruling clerical authorities.

In January, Iran’s State Security Forces (SSF) arrested hundreds of individuals in the province of Khorassan Razavi as part of a crackdown of “trouble-makers”.

Agents of the SSF and VEVAK, Iran’s notorious secret police, arrested 770 individuals as part of the second phase of the “Plan to Combat Trouble-makers”, code-named “Zafar 2”, meaning victory.

Close to 300 of those arrested were to be formally tried in special Islamic courts set up to deal with the “trouble-makers”.

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 were arrested within a period of several months on various charges such as “racketeering” and “loansharking”.

Iranian officials often refer to millions of unemployed young men, who are largely beset by frustration and despair, as “trouble-makers”.