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Weekly Commentary
Making a Stand
for Liberty
It is not every week that the cause of democracy and freedom in
Iran gets back to back boosts. Last week was an exception,
however.
On Wednesday, a U.S. congressional committee approved
legislation which seeks to increase pressure on Iran's
government over its weapons of mass destruction program, and to
provide greater support for Iranian democracy groups. This was a
welcome, however long overdue Iran initiative from the House.
Appropriately called Iran Freedom Support Act, the legislation
was approved last Wednesday by the House Middle East
Subcommittee chaired by Florida Congresswoman Ileana
Ros-Lehtinen. It calls for a U.S. policy in support of human
rights and pro-democracy forces who are struggling against the
ruling tyranny in Iran.
The following day, delegations of Iranian-Americans from across
the United States took part in the “2005 National Convention for
a Democratic, Secular Republic in Iran” in Washington’s
Constitution Hall.
It ratified its four key platforms including support for a U.S.
policy toward Iran which, in their word, rejected both a policy
of appeasement of the ruling regime and a foreign military
intervention. The convention called for “democratic change in
Iran by the Iranian people and the organized resistance.”
Considering the immediate and clear threats posed by Tehran to
the well being of Iranians and the security and stability in the
region, this option offers the most viable and effectual
approach to eliminate those threats.
The impetus for the Convention’s policy endorsement was the
initiative, widely known as the “third option”, first introduced
by Maryam Rajavi - the leader of Iran’s major coalition
opposition, the National Council of Resistance of Iran – when
she addressed the European Parliament in December.
According to media reports, in a strong show of American backing
for the “third option”, an array of bi-partisan Congressional
speakers joined former US government officials and military
officers to declare their support for “the third option.”
Agence France Presse wrote, “Iranian opposition leader Maryam
Rajavi, addressing the convention in a video link from France,
called on the United States and the European Union to end its
appeasement of the Tehran regime and recognize her National
Council of Resistance of Iran as an Iranian
government-in-exile.”
"Just as the time has come to abandon the appeasement of
tyrants, so the time has come to remove the ominous legacy of
that policy, namely the terror label against the Iranian
resistance," AFP quoted Rajavi as saying.
Representative Tom Tancredo (R-CO), who called Rajavi "an
extraordinary individual," said the Iranian people "can't have
any better spokespeople than all of you here," AFP added.
According to The New York Sun “Lieutenant Colonel Thomas
Cantwell, the former military police commandant of Camp Ashraf,
a facility in northern Iraq where some 4,000 fighters associated
with the MEK (Iranian Mujahedeen) are under military
supervision, expressed solidarity with fighters he used to
guard. To cheers of support, he told the audience, "If there is
a terrorist group in Ashraf, where are the terrorists?"
The strong showing of Iranian
Diaspora - representing a wide range of backgrounds - only a few
blocks from the White House - sent a timely message to
Washington’s policy-making circles while the debate about the a
new Iran policy continues.
The Iranian expatriates are generally viewed as suffering from
many of the same problems many other immigrants do:
assimilation, indifference, endless bickering and disunity. But
the hundreds of Iranians-Americans at the convention had a clear
sense of where the US policy toward Tehran should be headed.
From a policy point of view, the Convention’s platform about
human rights, terrorism, nuclear threat, and US Policy, made a
lot a more sense than some policy papers put out in recent
months by several well-established policy institutions.
In particular their “No to appeasement, No to War, Yes to
Democratic Change by the Iranian People and the Resistance”
provided an indigenous Iranian solution to the global and
regional menace posed by regime in Tehran.
In his 2005 State of the Union Address President Bush pledged,
“And to the Iranian people, I say tonight: As you stand for your
own liberty, America stands with you."
Inspired by more than two decades of Iranian people’s resistance
against one of the most brutal tyrannies of our times, the
Iranian-Americans’ convention made a strong stand for liberty in
their homeland a day after a Congressional Sub-Committee in the
House did its job. The ball is now in the White House’s court
and the rest of Congress.(USADI)
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The Washington Times
April 13, 2005
Iranians inspired
Iranian exiles plan to hold a constitutional convention in
Washington tomorrow, inspired by the stirring words of President
Bush from his State of the Union speech and from America's own
such convention more than 200 years ago.
Zari Sariri, the convention director, said the meeting beginning
at 1 p.m. at DAR Constitution Hall was conceived "mainly because
of President Bush's speech." In his February address to
Congress, Mr. Bush sent a message to the Iranian people.
"As you stand for your own liberty, America stands with you,"
Mr. Bush said.
Mrs. Sariri yesterday said she hopes those few words will spark
an Iranian revolution from within the country to replace a
brutal theocracy with a democratic government.
The organizers expect members of Congress and members of the
Canadian and European parliaments to address Iranian exiles in
America from more than 30 states. Speakers also include
terrorism specialist Neil Livingstone.
Mrs. Sariri explained that the convention aims to deliver a
message to the Bush administration and to the European Union.
She hopes a demonstration of a massive support for democracy
will persuade Washington to remove the Iranian resistance from a
list of terrorist organizations. The Clinton administration
placed the National Council of Resistance of Iran and its armed
wing, the People's Mojahedin, on the black list when it was
trying to improve relations with the Iranian government.
"The important thing is to give the resistance legitimacy," she
said.
The message to Europe is to stop "appeasing the mullahs" with
"vain attempts" to get the Iranian government to give up its
nuclear program, Mrs. Sariri added.
"The Iranian people and the resistance can do the rest," she
said.
Mrs. Sariri said contacts in Iran report growing protests
against the regime. She cited 1,500 pro-democracy demonstrations
over the past year…
In December, Maryam Rajavi, president of the Iranian resistance,
delivered a similar message to Europe when she addressed
supporters in the European Parliament.
"Appeasement is not the way to contain or change the regime,"
Mrs. Rajavi said, calling the Iranian government a "medieval
theocracy."
"Appeasement only emboldens the mullahs. The answer to
fundamentalism is democracy."
Struan Stevenson, the Scottish member of the European Parliament
who hosted Mrs. Rajavi, warned that Europe would be within range
of a nuclear weapon in the hands of the Iranian regime.
"The threat is not only the complete destabilization of [the
Middle East], the threat is to us, to the rest of the world," he
said.
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Reuters
April 18 2005
Iran stalls in
probe of nuke smuggling - diplomats
VIENNA - 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 program 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.
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 defense industry.
"They think it was a camouflage organization. These were
civilians but it was a dummy organization," a diplomat said.
One diplomat said the IAEA's nuclear safeguards inspectors were
convinced that meeting was military related.
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Reuters
April 18, 2005
200 Arrested in
Iran Ethnic Unrest, Jazeera Closed
TEHRAN -- Iran said Monday some 200 people were arrested in
ethnic unrest in its southwest in recent days and closed the
offices of the Arab language Al Jazeera television channel,
accusing it stirring up trouble.
At least one person died after Arab-Iranians went on the rampage
in the city of Ahvaz, near the border with Iraq, on Friday and
Saturday, smashing and setting fire to police cars, banks and
government buildings and clashing with police.
Government officials have said the violence in Iran's
traditional oil-producing heartland was sparked by a forged
letter, supposedly penned by a senior government official,
discussing the idea of relocating ethnic Arabs from the area.
The Tehran bureau of Qatar-based Al Jazeera television was later
closed, said a senior Culture and Islamic Guidance Ministry
official in charge of supervising the foreign press.
"Until further investigation about the role of this channel in
the recent protests in Ahvaz, its offices will be closed,"
Mohammad Hussein Khoshvaght told Reuters. The channel was closed
"for their coverage of these demonstrations which possibly
provoked bandits in southwestern Iran."
Broadcast media in Iran are in the hands of the state, but many
Iranians tune in to foreign channels via illegal satellite
dishes.
Some Iranian lawmakers also called for the expulsion from Iran
of Al Jazeera.
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