US Alliance for Democratic Iran (USADI)

USADI Commentary (2004)

December 23, 2004: Tehran Ends 2004 with a new Record in Rights Abuse: Earlier this week, the United Nations General Assembly denounced Iran for public executions, torture, arbitrary sentencing, flogging, stoning and systematic discrimination against women in law and practice. The resolution expressed concern at the "worsening situation" regarding freedom of opinion and expression, and freedom of the media, "especially the increased persecution for the peaceful expression of political views, including arbitrary arrest and detention without charge or trial."...

December 16, 2004: The Fellowship of Appeasement: Last Monday, in another attempt to promote the policy of appeasing Tehran, former secretary of state Madeleine Albright and six former foreign ministers of major European countries and Canada, co-authored an article in the Washington Post. Recognizing that the European Union had ran out of “carrots” and that Tehran was not showing any sign of abandoning its nuclear weapons program, the authors insisted that the United States should express mail a few “carrots” to the EU to compensate for the latter’s utter lack of diplomatic backbone to stand-up to the mullahs...

December 9, 2004: Preserving a Faltering Tyranny: Last Monday, students at Tehran University gave the mullahs’ embattled president Mohammad Khatami an angry and humiliating reception. He was bombarded with boos and angry slogans reflecting widespread frustration with his utter failure and the incompetence in office. "Khatami, Khatami shame on you", "Khatami we detest you", "Khatami, our votes were wasted on you" and "Where are your promised freedoms?" students chanted....

December 2, 2004: Meanwhile In Iraq…: Just one day after the Champagne toasts at the residence of France's ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency, celebrating the signing of a flawed nuclear accord with Iran, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said "Iran will never halt its nuclear activities under any circumstances." The Following day, Tehran’s top nuclear official, Hassan Rowhani declared victory for his regime and defeat for the United States. When a terror-prone dictatorial regime like the one in Iran wins, it is certain that the Iranian people and the world community lose....

November 11, 2004: Shameless Empowering of Tyranny and Terror: “We cannot sit back and allow this blood-thirsty band of terrorists [ruling in Iran] to grow into a monster too big for anyone to handle,” said former New York Senator Alphonse D’Amato in 1995. Thanks to the masterminds of the disgraced policy of “constructive engagement” in European Union, and their trans-Atlantic allies in Washington, that could soon be the case...

November 4, 2004: A New Beginning in Washington, an Old Menace from Tehran: As several thousands die-hard supporters of the Iranian theocracy were marking the 25th anniversary of taking 52 Americans hostage in Tehran on Wednesday, President George W. Bush was re-elected. The Iranian state-run press decried Mr. Bush’s re-election as a “victory for violence and for Zionists”. A majority of Iranians, however, had a totally different view....

October 28, 2004: Appeasement of Mullahs in Iran: Dangerous and Ineffectual: The European Union’s blatant appeasement of the terrorist regime ruling Iran is deplorable and the nuclear “grand bargain” it has offered Tehran could very well have strategic and regional security repercussions. Striking similar to the Neville Chamberlain’s initiative in 1938 to placate the Nazi Germany, the EU’s “dream offer” to Iran will only embolden the mullahs to demand even more concessions from the EU and continue their rogue behavior....

October 21, 2004: EU’s Iran Nuclear “Grand Bargain” Dead on Arrival: Let’s take a crash course of Iran Theocracy 101. If we don’t understand the basics, as is the case with the European Union, we will end up believing that a nuclear “grand bargain” with Iran, even accepted by the clerical regime, will rid the world from the nuclear threat. Here are the main course outlines.....

October 14, 2004: Wages of Appeasement: For more than two decades the “realists” in the foreign policy establishment have had a huge, and in retrospect negative, influence on the US policy toward Iran. The perilous nuclear brinkmanship Iran has waged on the world is a direct consequence of the appeasement policy. Vacillating between engagement and containment, formulating policy based on the notion of cultivating “moderates” or “pragmatists” and ignoring Tehran’s role in the bombing of the Marine barracks in Lebanon in 1983 and the Khobar Towers in Riyadh in 1996 have contributed to Iran becoming a clear and imminent danger to regional peace and our security.....

October 7, 2004: Freedom: Antithesis to Tehran’s Fundamentalism: The menace of Islamic fundamentalism, which kills, bombs, maims, sows horror and vengeance, has only one antithesis: freedom and democracy. Thus, a meaningful war on terror hinges on the expansion of secular democracies and support for indigenous anti-fundamentalist, democratic forces who are working toward such a goal. Since 1979, the ayatollahs’ Iran has emerged as the heartland of Islamic fundamentalism and terror, and it is where it must first be defeated, a noble goal that Iran's democracy movement is bent on accomplishing....

September 30, 2004: The 1988 Iran Massacre Must not Be Forgotten: Sixteen years ago today, Iran’s fundamentalist regime was carrying out one of the most under-reported political mass killings of our times. In what is now known as “The 1988 Iran massacre,” tens of thousands of political prisoners were summarily executed nationwide in a span of three months, beginning in mid-summer 1988. Many international law experts believe that this heinous atrocity qualifies the current Iranian leadership as a perpetrator of crimes against humanity....

September 23, 2004: How to Counter Mullahs’ Nuclear Calculus: By rejecting the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) latest resolution, Iran’s clerical regime has escalated the nuclear brinkmanship it has waged on the world since revelations about its secret nuclear facilities in August of 2002. Now the question facing Washington and the European Union is whether they have the resolve - and the sense of urgency - to take this issue to the UN Security Council immediately and not let Tehran off the hook with its blatant defiance.....

September 16, 2004: Of Nukes and Mullahs: What to Do?: The report this week about Iran’s Parchin military complex being a possible nuclear weapons site has greatly undermined the rationale of reaching a nuclear “grand bargain” with Tehran. If anything, it should point to the futility of reaching a nuclear deal with an intrinsically terrorist regime whose foremost priority is to reach the nuclear point of no return....

September 9, 2004: Toward a Coherent Policy in Support of Regime Change in Iran: In calling for a strong policy toward Iran, Lt. Gen. McInerney and Maj. Gen. Vallely, two veteran military analysts, wrote in the Wall Street Journal yesterday, “It is imperative… that we immediately and forcefully check Iran, inside and outside of Iraq.” In doing so, they cited the clerical regime’s sinister designs in Iraq. The two added that “the best way to end the threat posed by Iran is end the mullahs' rule of Iran,” and called for removal of the Iranian main opposition organization, the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq from the State Department's list of terrorist organizations, saying that group is "the most organized, disciplined, and popular opposition movement in Iran."....

September 2, 2004: Illusion of a Nuclear “Grand Bargain” with Mullahs: When it comes to ideologically driven terrorist regimes, appeasement, even if billed as “grand bargain,” would be an exercise in futility. If the 1938 Munich experience were not a wake-up call, the 9/11 tragedy should serve as one. , France Germany and Britain, has finally come to a halt. Tehran simply gained a year to advance its nuclear program....

August 26, 2004: Mullahs Commit another Heinous Crime: The Iranian theocracy has been in power for more than two decades. Yet, there seems to be a dangerous misunderstanding as to how this brutal regime has survived so far. The on-again off-again loosening of some social restrictions notwithstanding, the mullahs have used sheer brutality to suppress political dissent. Sponsorship of terror and export of fundamentalism have complemented the domestic crackdown in keeping the mullahs in power....

August 19, 2004: Failure of Diplomacy and Engagement to Halt Iran’s Nuclear Program: The diplomatic track in dealing with Iran’s nuclear threat set in motion last fall following the accord between Tehran and the European Union’s big-3, France Germany and Britain, has finally come to a halt. Tehran simply gained a year to advance its nuclear program....

August 12, 2004: The Rising Nuclear Defiance of Mullahs in Iran:
There were welcome reports of the United States taking a tougher line against Iran’s nuclear defiance last week. President Bush, National Security advisor Dr. Condoleezza Rice and other administration officials told Tehran leaders that their continued push for a nuclear weapon capability would no longer be tolerated....

August 5, 2004: EU’s Nuclear “Direct Dialogue” with Iran: An Exercise in Futility: Ten months ago the European Union’s Big-3, France, Germany, and Britain, signed an agreement with Iran. The EU trumpeted this as sign of success for its traditional soft approach in dealing with rouge states, bragging that diplomacy, and not sanctions, bring results. That was 10 months ago. In the meantime, Iran’s clerical regime has had plenty of time to push its clandestine nuclear weapons program forward and from all indications is very close to the point of nuclear no return...

July 29, 2004: The Emerging Anti-Fundamentalism Front in Iraq: Iran remains “first enemy of Iraq,” so said Iraq's Defense Minister Hazim Shalan in an interview with the Washington Post. He warned that Iran “has taken over Iraqi border positions, sent spies and saboteurs into the country and infiltrated the new government -- including his own ministry.” “Iran interferes in order to kill democracy,” Shalan added. Last week, the Iraqi Interior Minister Fallah Hassan Al-Naqib also accused Iran of being behind terrorism in Iraq. "It must be acknowledged that Iran plays an important part,” he said “in the terrorist and sabotage operations being carried out in Iraq."...

July 22, 2004: Dialogue with Iran’s Tyrants: Time for A Reality Check: It is quite amazing that no matter how many Iranians the mullahs torture and murder, how many suicide bombers they dispatch abroad, how many lies they tell about their nuclear weapons program, how many Americans and foreign national they kill, how many agents they send into Iraq and elsewhere to foment fundamentalism, there are always some pro-appeasement “realists” at work to whitewash the mullahs’ crimes and deceptions. They put the blame for the mullahs’ behavior on everything but the mullahs themselves...

July 15, 2004: Appeasement of Iran and Fantasy of “Engagement”: The sham parliamentary election in Iran last February turned a new page in the country’s political developments as the theocratic regime was working to cope with growing domestic and external challenges. Before the election, the watchdog Guardian Council undertook a major political house-cleaning and disqualified the candidates from the pro-Khatami camp. The move was prompted by the clerics realizing that the old good cop-bad cop game was no longer tenable. The benefits of having a unipolar make-up in the ruling establishment far outweighed the political and diplomatic advantages of having a “reformist” wing...

July 8, 2004: The six days that shook Iran: On July 9, 1999, six days of student-led uprising against the ruling fundamentalists shook the regime to its foundations, marking a new chapter in the history of Iranian people’s two decades of long struggle to overthrow tyranny and establish a democratic and secular government. With the blessing of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and President Mohammad Khatami, uniformed and plain-clothes security forces brutally cracked down on students and thousands of other Iranians who had joined them. Several thousands were arrested and hundreds killed or wounded...

July 1, 2004: Ayatollahs and US Presidential Election: Some observers believe the election season in the United States is forcing the administration to refrain from taking firm action against Iran’s increasingly threatening and rouge behavior. The logic: Any such escalation could lead to a crisis the administration would not welcome. If true, this approach could undermine regional stability and our long term security interests...

June 24, 2004: Mullahs’ Diplomacy: Once a bully, always a bully: It can reasonably be argued that the seizure of eight British servicemen by Iran's Revolutionary Guards in the Shatt-al-Arab waterway Monday has striking similarities with the clerical regime taking 52 Americans hostage in 1979. Parading them on TV blindfolded, forcing them to “apologize” and to say they “understand Islam better” certainly ring a familiar tone. It also seems that Tehran is trying to rip domestic and diplomatic political benefit as it did in 1979. There is, however, a big difference...

June 17, 2004: Mullahs’ NGO of Terror: Non-Governmental Organizations are mostly associated with humanitarian and peaceful advocacy work. They cooperate with international bodies such the United Nations, Red Cross and others to fight hunger, poverty, human rights abuses and underdevelopment. They strive for the rights of women, children, ethnic and religious minorities, expansion of peace and democracy. NGOs are an invaluable part of global campaign against inequality and for improvement in quality of life. So it is not everyday that one would hear that an NGO was in charge of recruiting “suicide volunteers” to combat “World arrogance.”...

June 10, 2004: Requiem for a Failed Dogma: If there was any doubt about the impossibility of any improvement of the Iranian people’s lot under the current theocratic rule, it was put to rest by the report published earlier this week by the US-based Human Rights Watch. Entitled, “Like the Dead in Their Coffins: Torture, Detention, and the Crushing of Dissent in Iran,” the scathing report is a requiem for a failed dogma, the possibility of reform within the clerical system.

June 3, 2004: Clock Is Ticking and Iran’s Nuclear Program Moves Forward: As clock is ticking, Iran’s hide-and-seek game is helping advance its nuclear program to the point of no return. Thanks to Europe’s big three - Britain, France and Germany - which struck an agreement with Iran last October, the mullahs’ nuclear weapons program is moving forward while they play a nuclear shell game with the UN’s nuclear watchdog...

May 27, 2004: Iran Mullahs to Dispatch “Battalions of Suicide Bombers” to Iraq: For the fourth time in little over a week, several hundred “students” demonstrated outside the British embassy in Tehran last Sunday in a government-sanctioned protest against “the actions of U.S.-led forces in Iraq.” The students, who belonged to the paramilitary force, the Bassij, also condemned “damage to a Shiite Muslim shrine in Iraq.”...

May 20, 2004: The Rising Prominence of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards
There are growing indications of the increasing role of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) in government agencies and other centers of power in recent months. Iran’s rulers have been alarmed by rising anti-government sentiments across the country in the past several months and a downward spiral in the economic fortunes of Iranians...

May 13, 2004: The Summer of Discontent Looming in Iran: With summer fast approaching, Iran’s security forces are gearing up to crackdown on anti-government demonstrations which usually escalate in the months of June and July. There have been many protests in Iran’s major cities already. In March, violent anti-government protests erupted in Fereydoun Kenar, Marivan, Boukan, and Isfahan...

May 6, 2004: Torture: A Main Instrument of Iran’s Rulers to Terrorize Restive Population: For those concerned about the abysmal human rights situation in Iran, but unfamiliar with its ruling tyrants’ double-talk and deception, recent news headline from Iran may have appeared comforting. Alas, the reality on the ground demands continued disgust with the way Iran rulers deal with the citizens and political dissidents...

April 29, 2004: EU Nuclear Footsy with Iran Undermining U.S. National Security: As the EU big three - France, Britain, and Germany - are playing footsy with Tehran over its nuclear program, new revelations this week confirmed that Iran’s military is now running the mullahs’ secret nuclear weapons program...

April 22, 2004: Hostage-taking: An Ominous Instrument to Advance Tehran’s Foreign Policy: As military personnel, civilians, journalists, contractors and tourists of various nationalities are randomly abducted, their video-taped images flash across our TV screens. Make no mistake: this is not Lebanon of the 1980s. It is the Iraq of 2004 and Iran’s ruling theocracy is involved in this inhumane practice up to its eyeballs...

April 15, 2004: Despite Appalling Rights Abuse, EU Let’s Iran off the Hook in Geneva: Once again, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights has let Iran off the hook. As the UN body is holding its annual session in Geneva, the EU-led Western block chose not to table a resolution censuring flagrant human rights violations by Iran’s ruling theocracy...

April 8, 2004: Needed: An Anti-fundamentalist Front in Iraq: Iran’s mullahs wrote the book on how to hijack a nation’s long-denied aspirations for liberty and popular governance. Now Tehran and its proxies have put this “how-to” manual into action in Iraq. Twenty five years ago, in the quasi-democratic environment immediately after 1979 revolution, Khomeini-led mullahs embarked on establishing their pillars of power through a vast network of mosques and other religious institutions. As their apparatus of suppression took roots, they eliminated the moderate Shia clerics and liberal politicians, and cracked down hard on the secular, democratic opposition forces. Elections in the absence of democratic participation served only to give fake legitimacy to the ruling theocracy...

April 1, 2004: Twin Pillars of Iran’s Ruling Theocracy: When the Khomeini-led clerics stole freedom from the Iranian people in 1979, they lacked the capacity to lead a nation of 35 million toward democracy, prosperity and progress. Khomeini knew full well that the popularity of his theocratic rule, however vast, was only skin deep, meaning that in an open political environment the genuine democratic forces would flourish and push the clerics into oblivion...

March 25, 2004: Tehran’s double talk and double strategy in Iraq: Iranian President Mohammad Khatami sent a message of "condolence and solidarity" to Spain's King Juan Carlos after the Madrid bombings, pronouncing that "terrorist acts are contrary to religious values.” The same day, Reuters reported that Tehran was delivering more money to Middle Eastern terrorist groups...

March 18, 2004: Fallacy of Normalization with Tehran: Here we go again! Another roadmap to establish diplomatic relations between Tehran and Washington is on the administration’s table according to the Financial Times. This time around though it sounds like a great opportunity since Iran will supposedly stop its sponsorship of terrorism, promote security and construction of Iraq, and halt its nuclear weapons program. (Conspicuously, respect for human rights at home is missing from the list). There have been similar overtures in the past but this one looks different. But does it really?..

March 11, 2004: Democracy, not Theocracy, is the Solution for Iran: The international media has focused on the meeting of the Board of Governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna, which is tackling Iran’s nuclear weapons program. There is no lack of twist and turns there...

March 4, 2004: Refer Iran’s Nuke Breaches to UN Council: On March 8, the board of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) will meet and Iran is top on the agenda. Late last year, after 18 years of deception and double talk, Iran was forced to acknowledge it had been secretly developing a nuclear capability, in violation of relevant non-proliferation protocols. In November, however, in what amounted to be just a slap on the wrist, the IAEA board opted not to sanction Iran for those breaches...

February 26, 2004: Behind Election Low Turnout, a Vibrant Democracy Movement: The biggest story of last week’s sham election in Iran was not the predictably grossly inflated vote tally; it was the non-participation, particularly in Tehran, of the most vibrant segment of Iran’s population, the young people. Buried in many news reports on the election by the mainstream US media was the boycott of the election by Tehran’s youth who openly rejected the ruling regime, including the “reformist” faction...

February 19, 2004: Engage the Iranian People not the Ruling Theocracy: From all indications, the Iranian people will overwhelmingly boycott Friday’s sham Parliamentary election in Iran. For weeks, the walls, billboards and lamp posts in Tehran and Iran’s major cities have been covered with slogans such as: “No to Sham Election” and “Referendum on regime change, this is people’s demand.” ...

February 12, 2004: After 25 years of Theocracy, Iranians Demand a Referendum for Regime Change: Twenty-five years have passed since the Iranian people toppled the shah’s monarchic dictatorship in a popular revolution. The fundamentalists, led by Ayatollah Khomeini, succeeded in hijacking the 1979 revolution which had its roots in the 1953 Anglo-American coup d’etat that brought down the nationalist government of Dr. Mohammad Mossadeq. Decades of political suppression that followed eliminated a genuinely nationalist and democratic alternative to the shah’s regime. The mullahs took advantage of the power vacuum and consolidated their reign...

February 5, 2004: Congressional Trip to Iran: Appeasement of Terror: "Now is a good time," Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA) told the Associate Press last week when explaining the timing of his joint initiative with Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH) to send a congressional delegation to Iran, on February 11, the twenty-fifth anniversary of the mullahs’ rise to power. One cannot but wonder why it is now a “good time” to revive the failed policy of “engagement” towards Iran, “the most active state sponsor of terrorism.” Domestic terror, suppression of political dissent and public executions are still common place in Iran...

January 29, 2004: A Coherent Policy on Iran: Nearly 5,000 Iranian-Americans attended a gala in Washington DC last weekend to express their unity with the people of Iran for one cause – the end of the brutal and theocratic regime. Repeatedly, they called for referendum – a referendum for regime change. The dissident community paid homage to the quake victims and many of their guest speakers blamed the corrupt Tehran regime for the staggering death tolls and massive destruction in Bam. The big turnout was a clear indication that the Iranian community is inclined to join efforts to work for secular democracy in Iran. Acts of defiance by brave Iranians inside Iran mirror those by their compatriots abroad. They are unified in their disdain and disgust for the mullahs and their fundamentalist ideology.

January 22, 2004: Iran’s Hollow “Reformers” and Their Hollow Threat of Resignation: The utterly ineffective “reformist” camp of Khatami has time after time threatened the rival faction with resignation and each time they have withdrawn their threats. It seems, unlike some in Washington, the Iranian people can easily see through these “knights of reform,” riding wooden horses, waving wooden swords, and following their Don Quixote, Khatami...

January 15, 2004: Political Turmoil in Iran: Theocracy vs. Theocracy lite: Iran’s upcoming parliamentary election was further de-legitimized over the weekend when the watchdog Guardian Council disqualified thousands of applicants. The 12-member Council, tasked with vetting candidates for their “heart-felt” and “written” allegiance to the “Supreme Leader”, rejected 80 incumbent parliament deputies including two deputy speakers. The action plunged the ruling establishment into a major political crisis which, regardless of its final outcome, will further undermine an already fragile theocracy...

January 8, 2004: “Earthquake Diplomacy” in Iran: Been There, Done That: A case of de javu, would you not say? After Tehran predictably rebuked President Bush’s attempts to reach out to the Iranian people by sending a humanitarian mission to deliver relief assistance to the victims of the deadly earthquake in Bam, the zealous proponents of the “thaw” between Washington and Tehran must be exhausted from playing this broken record far too many times...

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The US Alliance for Democratic Iran (USADI), is a US-based, non-profit, independent organization, which promotes informed policy debate, exchange of ideas, analysis, research and education to advance a US policy on Iran which will benefit America’s interests, both at home and in the Middle East, through supporting Iranian people’s aspirations for a democratic, secular, and peaceful government, free of tyranny, fundamentalism, weapons of mass destruction, and terrorism.

USADI supports the Iranian peoples' aspirations for democracy, peace, human rights, women’s equality, freedom of expression, separation of church and state, self-determination, control of land and resources, cultural integrity, and the right to development and prosperity.

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