Weekly Commentary

A Rude Awakening

A note to those Washington “realists” who are still pushing for the expansion of US diplomatic contacts with Tehran: How about a little douse of reality?

Iran’s new president, the former assassin and terrorist mastermind Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has vowed that both United States and Israel must be wiped out. Although these “realists” are notorious for their willingness to make a deal with rouge regimes, Ahmadinejad’s venomous diatribe should make even them to shiver. At least one hopes so.

Wednesday’s headlines on Iran were all about how Ahmadinejad “wants Israel wiped out”. According to a more detailed translation of his speech, however, Ahmadinejad was also putting the Unites States at the cross hair of his regimes’ rogue rising. His speech at the “World without Zionism” was indeed a declaration of war on the “World Arrogance” or the United States.

“This occupying country [Israel] is in reality the staging-ground of the World Arrogance in the heart of the Islamic world… The war that is presently going on in Palestine is the frontline of the war of destiny between the Islamic world and the World Arrogance,” the former commander of Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps told the seminar.

Ahmadinejad stressed that having a world without the United States and “Zionism” is indeed a goal “which is attainable and could definitely be realized”.

This comes on the heel of several other developments all pointing to the main pillar of Ahmadinejad’s presidency: Escalation of terrorist operations by Tehran or its proxies throughout the globe.

A day before Ahmadinejad’s statement, the United Press International reported that “Iranian Intelligence agents have entered the United States” from “Toronto, Canada, using Dutch and British passports.” UPI quoted Iran Policy Committee as saying that agents are in the country as "a disinformation ploy mounted by the new president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who is mobilizing Iranian intelligence services in a world-wide series of probes against the United States."

The IPC which advocates a coherent firm US policy in support of democratic change in Iran and has made a strong and sound case for the removal of terror designation from Iran’s main organized opposition, the People’s Mujahedin (MEK), said “Just as Ahmadinejad's intelligence activities came before insurgent attacks in Iraq, so Iranian intelligence actions in the United States may signal terrorist attacks on the American homeland."

According to UPI, the Committee has named three individuals so far by the names of Karim Haqi residing in the Netherlands and holding a Dutch passport, Mahrukh (Parvin) Haji residing in Canada and Amir-Hossein Kord Rostami, residing in Canada and a member of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps since 1979.

But what could these agents be doing in the States and why now? We must realize that the terrorist campaign to recruit, train and provide indoctrination to suicide bombers is the flip side of the well-engineered “complex and multi-layered plan” by the IRGC to propel Ahmadinejad to the office of presidency.

In Spring of 2004, the IRGC’s top official Hassan Abbassi, a confidant of Ahmadinejad and head of “Center for the Doctrine of Security Without Borders," spoke at an event held by “the Headquarters for Commemoration of Martyrs of Global Islamic Movement” entitled, "First International Commemoration” of suicide bombers.

In his speech, “Suicide Operations: The Last Resort,” Abbassi, who also advises Khamenei on “asymmetric warfare”, explained, “If Muslims create fear in the heathen world, this fear is sacred; it is not terrorism or violence.”

Abbassi’s most chilling admissions however were uttered a month earlier. In a seminar at the Technical College of Tehran, he had boasted that: “We have identified some 29 weak points for attacks in the U.S. and in the West. We intend to explode some 6,000 American atomic warheads. We have shared our intelligence with other guerilla groups and we shall utilize them as well…”

There you have it. The war has been declared, the targets have been identified, and agents have been dispatched, some of them already making it into the United States. And this is all happening while some bureaucrats on the State Department's sixth floor are still drafting policy papers proposing expansion of ties with Ahmadinejad and opening an Interest Section in Tehran staffed by Americans.

The bitter reality is that the theocratic tyranny ruling Iran, sensing the policy paralysis in Washington and the pre-occupation with Iraq, has been trying to make its gains in Iraq and in the nuclear stand-off irreversible. Ahmadinejad and his lieutenants have been beating the drums of “asymmetric warfare”, talking and acting as a bully because their intransigence has gone unanswered. Some say Tehran is over-playing its hand. That may be true but not when everybody else lacks the spine to call its bluff by presenting a cohesive, robust, and practical policy.

The war that the clerical regime declared on Iranian people more than two decades ago has now spilled over its borders and is now targeting the United States and its allies. It is now and here that we must rise to the occasion and stop this aggression in its tracks. The only viable option is to support the democratic change in Iran by the Iranian people who seek to unseat the regime. Appeasement is futile and disastrous; foreign military intervention is ineffectual. The time to recognize Iranians and their organized resistance as the only viable force for real democratic change has arrived. (USADI)
 

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Miami Herald
October 28, 2005
Take Iran leader's threat seriously

So, another Muslim fanatic has just called for the destruction of Israel. Big deal. Another day, another genocidal anti-Semite. That might have been the reaction of some at news of the Iranian president's declaration on Wednesday that Israel must be “wiped off the map.” Look more closely, however, and this is not your everyday spewing of poisonous extremism. Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has shown his cards and the world may live to regret its passivity if it fails to take him seriously.

The statement did not come from some masked teenage radical or from a fringe shadowy group. And the call to arms did not urge forcing Israel to withdraw from occupied territories or even for regime change. This was the president of a country, the man who recently represented his nation at the U.N. podium, urging his followers to obliterate another country from the face of the Earth.

As it happens, Ahmadinejad is not just the president of any country. He leads a nation that much of the world believes is actively working to arm itself with nuclear weapons.

For those who find solace in his threat to destroy only Israel, the Iranian president predicted, “We shall soon experience a world without the United States.”..

Ahmadinejad's speech comes a couple of days after the respected Jane's Defense Weekly reported details of an agreement between the governments of Iran and Syria. According to Jane's, Iran will work with Syria to help it establish four or five facilities dedicated to the production of chemical weapons.

Iran could hardly find a more suitable partner. The Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad has just been found guilty by a U.N. investigator of plotting and carrying out the assassination of a former Lebanese prime minister..

While Iran and Syria act, the international community mostly talks. To their credit, Western governments did react promptly (with words, of course) to diplomatically protest Ahmadinejad's statements.

The West, however, has shown little backbone in standing up to these thoroughly thuggish and extremely dangerous regimes. European leaders continue to insist on negotiating a deal to end Iran's illegal nuclear projects, even with Iran calling for the destruction of other countries and actively arming militia groups dedicated to turning its vision of doom into reality.

Last August, the chief Iranian negotiator in the nuclear talks told an audience on Iranian television: “Thanks to the negotiations with Europe, we gained another year, in which we completed the (nuclear reprocessing plant) in Isfahan.”

For Europeans who may take comfort that Iran's vision only includes a world without Israel and the United States, Ahmadinejad had another little hint of his worldview, saying he sees relations between the two sides as part of the ''historic war'' between Islam and the West. Iran's cards are now plainly open and on the table. The West has the next play.

By Frida Ghitis who writes about world affairs.
 

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Adnkronos International
October 26, 2005
Iran: Islamic Army Death Threats For 210 Journalists

Tehran, 26 Oct. (AKI) - A self-styled Islamic Army in Iran has said it would like to elminate 210 journalists in the country. The list, recently circulated in Tehran, includes almost all the independent journalists who have not been recognised by the new government of hardline president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

In the few lines preceding the long list of dissident journalists, the authorities promise "to liberate the Islamic revolution" of Ayatollah Khomeini, which has been "taken hostage by the hacks who are in the service of the enemies of Islam." Anyone mentioned in the list "is worthy of death as much as enemies of Allah and his word."…
 

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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.

The USADI is not affiliated with any government agencies, political groups or parties. The USADI administration is solely responsible for its activities and decisions.