Elaine Sciolino reported from Paris for this article, and William J. Broad from New York. Helene Cooper contributed reporting from Washington.

Call for probe of police beating Iran protesters

http://www.iranmania.com/News/ArticleView/Default.asp?NewsCode=43666&NewsKind=Current%20Affairs

LONDON, June 15 (IranMania) - Human Rights Watch said that Iranian police beat hundreds of women during a demonstration in Tehran and urged the government to set up a full investigation, according to an AFP report.

The New York-based rights watchdog cited eyewitnesses as saying police and intelligence agents were deployed at the location of Monday's demonstration even before it began.

As the protestors assembled, the security forces immediately started to beat them with batons and spray them with pepper gas, the eyewitnesses said.

"The Iranian government has again shown its utter contempt for basic freedoms like the right to peaceful assembly," said Sarah Whitson, director of the Middle East and North Africa division of Human Rights Watch.

"The authorities should free those arrested at once and find out whos behind the police violence," Whitson said.

According to Justice Minister Jamal Karimi-Rad, 70 people, including 42 women, were arrested during the protest which demanded reforms in Iran's legal code and the removal of discriminatory clauses against women.

Karimi-Rad said Tuesday that the reports of demonstrators being beaten would be looked into.

Iran Consulate Attacked Over TV Show

By SINAN SALAHEDDIN , 06.14.2006

http://www.forbes.com/business/manufacturing/feeds/ap/2006/06/14/ap2816332.html

About 500 followers of a radical Shiite cleric attacked the Iranian consulate in Basra on Wednesday, throwing stones and setting fire to a building in anger over an Iranian television program they said insulted their leader.

The program ran over the weekend on Al-Kawthar, a state-owned Iranian satellite TV channel that broadcasts in Arabic and has a wide audience among Iraq's Shiites.

Viewers in Iran and Iraq said a talk show guest on the channel Saturday criticized Mahmoud al-Hassani, a fiercely anti-American cleric whose followers have battled in the past with U.S. and other coalition troops in Iraq. The guest, Shiite cleric Sheik Ali Kourani, said al-Hassani was not a real cleric and Israel was using him to tarnish Islam, according to the viewers.

Many of al-Hassani's supporters took the criticism as an accusation that the cleric was an Israeli agent, Basra police Capt. Mushtaq Khazim said.

Enraged al-Hassani followers attacked the Iranian consulate in Basra, Iraq's second largest city. They broke the main gate and threw stones at the building. They also set fire to an annex used as a reception room and destroyed a car belonging to the consulate, an Associated Press reporter on the scene said.

One climbed onto the building's roof and pulled down the Iranian flag, raising the Iraqi flag in its place.

The Iranian Embassy in Baghdad confirmed the attack on its consulate in Basra, 340 miles southeast of Baghdad. No casualties were reported.

Al-Hassani's office issued a statement asking the Iranian government to apologize or "we will leave it to our people to decide what is suitable to defend their religious leader."

Iran, a majority Shiite Muslim country, has close links to Iraq's Arab Shiite majority and the Shiite parties that now dominate the government. In past months, it has increased Arabic-language TV broadcasts in an attempt to further boost its influence in neighboring Iraq.

Al-Kawthar, which has a mix of religious and political programming, often with an anti-American tone, is the second largest Iranian station seen in Iraq, after al-Alam television.

A spokesman for the station in Tehran declined to comment on the program.

The fiercely anti-American al-Hassani is believed to have several thousand followers and emerged after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

Relatives of arrested women rally outside Iran’s infamous prison

Tehran, Iran, Jun. 14 – Relatives of several hundred people arrested during a peaceful anti-government demonstration by women on Monday gathered on Tuesday outside a court in Tehran and the city’s notorious Evin Prison demanding the release of their loved ones.

One of the protests took place outside a court in Moalem Street.

At least 41 of the women arrested during Monday’s demonstration have been transferred to Evin Prison.

At least 400 people were arrested during the rally held in 7 Tir Square, according to a statement emailed to Iran Focus by one of the women’s groups that had originally sponsored the protest.

Iranian officials routinely play down the scope of anti-government protests and deflate the number of those arrested.

Evin Prison was built by the Shah’s regime as a maximum security prison to house political dissidents, but it became the Islamic Republic’s most dreaded gulag and the site of thousands of political executions.

Iran police beat women activists

Police in Iran have beaten a small group of women activists trying to hold a protest for greater legal rights in the biggest square of the capital.

Several people were arrested by the security forces who moved in almost as soon as activists started gathering.

About 20 women sat on the grass in Haft-e Tir Square in central Teheran and began to sing a feminist song.

They were calling for equal divorce and custody rights and a ban on polygamy.

The police who massively outnumbered the protestors, almost immediately started beating the women to disperse them.

The viciousness of the police attack caused men who were passing by in the street to protest, our correspondent says.

"These are our sisters, how can you do this?" passers-by shouted at police.

The women then gathered again on the other side of the square, but the police used pepper spray against them and onlookers.

As the police started making arrests members of the public who had nothing to do with the protest repeatedly shouted: "Leave them alone."

One man screamed at the police, saying: "Why do you take money from the government to beat women like this?"

The women activists had advertised their action in advance on the internet where they said they were calling for an end to Islamic laws they believe are discriminatory.

CHINA SANCTIONED FOR ARMS TO IRAN

http://www.menewsline.com/stories/2006/june/06_15_2.html

WASHINGTON [MENL] -- The United States has renewed sanctions on China for arms exports to Iran.

The Bush administration has determined that four Chinese companies continued to supply technology and components to Iran's military and strategic programs. All of the companies have already been sanctioned by the United States.

"The companies targeted today have supplied Iran's military and Iranian proliferators with missile-related and dual-use components," Treasury Undersecretary Stuart Levey said.

On Tuesday, the Treasury Department reported sanctions on Beijing Alite Technologies Co., LIMMT Economic and Trade Co., China Great Wall Industry Corp., and China National Precision Machinery Import/Export Corp. Under an executive order issued in 2005, the federal government would freeze the U.S. assets of these Chinese companies and ban Americans from dealing with them.

At least 400 arrested in women’s demo – report

Tehran, Iran, Jun. 13 – At least 400 people were arrested during a peaceful anti-government demonstration by women in Tehran on Monday, according to a statement emailed to Iran Focus by one of the women’s groups that had originally sponsored the protest.

Mohammad Torang, the spokesman for the State Security Forces in the Iranian capital, said on Tuesday that all those arrested during Monday’s protest had been handed over to the Ministry of Intelligence and Security, Iran’s dreaded secret police.

Iran’s Justice Minister Jamal Karimi-Rad said on Tuesday that 70 people had been arrested during the protest. “42 of those arrested were women and 28 were men. They were charged with taking part in an illegal demonstration”, Karimi-Rad said.

Iranian officials routinely play down the scope of anti-government protests and deflate the number of those arrested significantly.

Meanwhile, a hard-line female Majlis deputy claimed on Monday that the female protestors took part in the rally in order to win human rights awards.

“These women gathered out of recreation to sweeten themselves in the eyes of groups and organisations affiliated to the United Nations to win awards”, Eshrat Shayeq told the government-owned website Aftab.

Security forces used truncheons and teargas to attack the several thousand women who had gathered in 7 Tir Square demanding equal rights, sources said.

“Put an end to misogyny”, the women chanted. There were also chants of “freedom, freedom”, “we are human beings but have no rights”, and “we want equal rights”.

Hundreds of young men took part in the rally and clashed with the agents of the SSF.

Iraqi official complains about Iran regime's meddling

Firms Charged With Selling Missile Parts to Iran

Companies' assets, transactions can be frozen under US WMD restrictions

http://www.caltradereport.com/eWebPages/front-page-1150290287.html

WASHINGTON, DC - 06/14/06 - Five companies - four from China and one based in Southern California - have been charged by the US Treasury Department with allegedly supplying Iran's military with missile-related and dual-use components.

According to the Treasury Department, the components and technology supplied to Iran were to be used for missiles with a range of up to 500 miles and the capability of carrying chemical warheads.

The companies involved are Beijing Alite Technologies Company Ltd. (ALCO); LIMMT Economic and Trade Company Ltd.; China National Precision Machinery Import/Export Corporation (CPMIEC); China Great Wall Industry Corporation (CGWIC), and G.W. Aerospace Inc., CGWIC's US representative office in the Los Angeles suburb of Torrance.

G.W. Aerospace Inc. did not respond to several telephone calls from the CalTrade Report seeking comment on the charges. 

The five companies were charged under Executive Order 13382, an authority aimed at financially isolating "proliferators of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), their supporters and those contributing to the development of missiles capable of delivering WMD."

Designations under the executive order, which are administered by the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control, prohibit all transactions between the designees and any US person, and freeze any assets the designees might have under US jurisdiction.

The US government has applied various sanctions against the four Chinese companies in the past.

In 2004, the US State Department imposed sanctions against all four pursuant to the Iran Nonproliferation Act of 2000 for transferring equipment and technology to Iran that was either controlled under multilateral export control lists or which had the potential to make a material contribution to WMD. 

Since 2003, CPMIEC has also been subject to an import ban under another directive, Executive Order 12938, as amended.

"Governments worldwide are urged to take appropriate measures to ensure that their companies and financial institutions are not facilitating Iran's proliferation activities," said Stuart Levey, under secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence (TFI) at the Treasury Department, in a press statement announcing the action.

The White House issued Executive Order 13382 on June 29, 2005.

Recognizing the need for additional tools to combat the proliferation of WMD, President Bush signed the executive order authorizing the imposition of strong financial sanctions against not only WMD proliferators, but also against entities and individuals that provide support or services to them.

In the annex to Executive Order 13382, the president identified eight entities operating in North Korea, Iran, and Syria for their support of WMD proliferation. 

The order authorizes the Secretary of the Treasury, in consultation with the secretary of state, the attorney general and other relevant agency heads, to designate additional entities and individuals providing support or services to the entities identified in the annex to the order.

In addition to the eight entities named in the annex of Executive Order 13382, the Treasury Department has designated 16 entities from North Korea, Iran, Switzerland, and China and one Swiss individual as proliferators of WMD.

Iran: 23 teenage boys decided to commit mass suicide

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Iranian President's Got Game. But Which Game?

June 14, 2006
FOX News
John Moody

link to original article

TEHRAN, Iran -- In his soccer-playing youth, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was renowned for two valuable skills: speed, and his ability to fake out an opponent with fancy footwork. Of course, he mostly played indoor, or salon soccer, on a smaller-than-normal field. Today, the fleet-footed footballer-turned-president of Iran is using the same tools in his war of wills with the United States. There are many within Iran, however, who suspect that “the monkey,” as the bearded president is known among detractors, is playing a game whose rules he does not understand, on a playing field too vast for his skill set.

“He can’t comprehend the situation he’s facing, and he can’t even understand the consequences he’s talked himself into,” said Ebrahim Yazdi, a former foreign minister who now heads the Freedom Movement of Iran, a leading opposition group.

Speaking at his home, where songbirds lighten the mood outside, Yazdi, who served as foreign minister in the first days after Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini returned to Iran in 1979, suggested that Ahmadinejad might not be able to serve out his full four-year term, which ends in 2009.

“He is not competent for the job he holds, and more people are saying it out loud,” said Yazdi, who remains under investigation by the government for his outspokenness and, until recently, his frequent trips to the United States.

Yazdi says he is no longer welcome in America, where his grown children live. Instead, he whiles away the days in his pleasant Tehran villa, fielding calls from fellow opponents of the conservative regime, and worrying about the outcome of Iran’s cat-and-mouse game with the U.S.

CountryWatch: Iran

While Ahmadinejad and President Bush circle warily around the issue of Iran’s insistence on enriching uranium, ordinary Iranians — like their American counterparts — are more worried about climbing prices and unemployment. Unofficially, inflation is on course to reach above 100 percent this year, and joblessness is estimated to be 20 percent.

With the price of oil at record highs, Iranians openly resent their economic plight. The United States under Jimmy Carter suffered from stagflation. Iran has mad-flation.

Particularly hard hit is the 70 percent of the population under the age of 30 — a generation that has known nothing but rule by the Islamic Revolution that swept the clergy into power in 1979. At a high-rise apartment complex just off Afriqa Boulevard, where kids from wealthy families congregate in designer jeans and the mandatory hijab, or headscarf, for women, the rituals are similar to the U.S. — not-so-subtle flirting, regularly interrupted by the squeal of cell phones and the tinkle of text messages — and almost no attention paid to the regime’s claim that nuclear technology is every Iranian’s birthright.

Equally striking are the looks of incredulity when asked if they want Iran to have a nuclear bomb. “We don’t need any more weapons,” they say almost unanimously. Instead, they are frightened by what they consider the bellicose anti-Iran tone from Washington.

Last March, Tehran was swept by rumors that an American rocket attack was imminent. In response, a brigade of willing would-be martyrs was formed to defend the homeland. In Iran, martyrdom is the new patriotism.

“If America would listen to what we are saying, instead of simply deciding that we are bad people, we could resolve this conflict,” says Rafat Bayat, one of 12 female members of Iran’s parliament. Bayat adds, not bashfully, that it would all be a lot easier if women were doing the negotiating.

Nearly all Iranians insist that the Americans have missed, or have chosen not to notice, Iran’s overtures over the last few years. After the 9/11 terror attacks in 2001, Iran’s leadership sent an official message of condolence. Last month, Ahmadinejad sent a rambling letter to Bush in which he discussed religion, politics and philosophy. The White House dismissed the letter as not substantive.

Ahmadinejad came to power last year bringing his own brand of reckless talk about Israel and Iran’s right to acquire nuclear technology. It is widely believed that in so doing, the president was ignoring the advice of his own government and even some of the ayatollahs who hold supreme power.

If so, Ahmadinejad was demonstrating the same crowd-pleasing theatrics that made him a popular mayor of Tehran until he became president. While educated, wealthier citizens of the sprawling capital dismiss him as a buffoon, the president has rallied support among the poor, disenfranchised millions in other parts of the country.

Ahmadinejad is fond of descending on a provincial town with little notice, assembling a crowd, and asking if their municipal services are working satisfactorily. When he hears the inevitable shouts of “No!” he has the local official in charge hauled before him for a tongue-lashing. It is a tactic borrowed from Reza Shah, the father of the monarch who was deposed by the revolution in 1978.

Since the poor and uneducated know they cannot influence the debate on Iran’s nuclear ambitions, they have chosen to see it in positive terms — as a signal that the country is emerging from 30 years of economic stagnation and international opprobrium.

Neither they, nor the rest of the world, can tell if Ahmadinejad is preparing to change course unexpectedly, as he once did on the soccer field, or if he is determined to drive Iran toward his nuclear goal.

The Weight of Introspection

June 14, 2006
Guardian
Ian Black

link to original article

Javier Solana, the European Union's energetic foreign policy chief, was entrusted with an unusually delicate mission when he flew to Tehran to deliver a new international package deal that attempts to defuse the looming crisis over Iran's nuclear ambitions.

Basking in the limelight as he met the top leadership of the Islamic Republic, the Spanish envoy was representing not only the EU, but also the US, Russia and China - which are trying to engage with Iran over this highly sensitive issue.

Even if he was only playing postman for the five permanent members of the UN security council, Solana was still in a better position than in late 2003, when the European "troika" of Britain, France and Germany, then led by Jack Straw, launched its first Iranian initiative without even bothering to tell him what they were up to.

That move by Europe's three biggest countries was a painful blow to the idea that the EU, so often seen as an economic giant but a political and diplomatic dwarf, could perform more effectively on the world stage if only it could speak with one voice.
Now, with the security council's "big five" formally backing a new package of trade, economic and political incentives - and crucially holding off the search for punitive action against Iran at the UN - the stakes could hardly be higher.

Solana had big ambitions for his job - the cumbersome formal title is "high representative for the common foreign and security policy" - when he began work in 1999. The 15-member EU was then on the brink of its biggest expansion and it had managed to remain united (avoiding a bust-up with the US) throughout the Kosovo crisis.

This affable former Spanish foreign minister and Nato secretary-general has been trouble-shooting ever since - heading off conflict in Macedonia as well as soothing relations between Serbia and Montenegro in the EU's volatile Balkan backyard.

He has also ventured into the minefield of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, where the EU is the biggest single donor but has little clout to show for the millions of euros it has spent.

Since Solana's role is to represent the governments who sit in the EU's council of ministers, the Iraq crisis effectively put him out of a job. With France and Germany on one side of a bitter argument, and Britain, Spain and Italy on the other, the union had no policy at all on the burning global issue of the day, and no role. Brussels had nothing to say at all about what was happening in Baghdad.

These national disagreements were deep and divisive enough. But the problem was also an institutional one. The complicated architecture of the EU meant that foreign policy remained the jealously-guarded preserve of the member states, with only a limited role for the supranational European commission, despite it having a dedicated commissioner for external relations (a job filled for five years by the talented Chris Patten).

This messy Heath Robinson arrangement made it frustratingly hard for the outside world to understand how it all worked, and harder still to answer Henry Kissinger's old question of who exactly spoke for Europe in a crisis.

That is why an important part of the EU's new constitution, designed for a union of 25 countries and 450 million people, was devoted to this question. Its answer was that the parallel and overlapping jobs in the commission and the council would be merged into one. Solana would become commission vice-president, with the title EU foreign minister, and a European diplomatic service created to work under him.

Last summer's defeat of the constitution in the referendums in France and the Netherlands put all that, and much more, into the deep freeze. Without the constitution Solana remains outside the commission, with limited financial resources, and cut off from direct access to its far larger staff, representations abroad and a 6bn euro external aid budget.

Jose Manuel Barroso, the commission president, warning gloomily of a "spectre of Europessimism" haunting the continent, argues that this situation is doing serious damage to Europe's performance. "Unsatisfactory coordination between different actors and policies means that the EU loses potential leverage internationally, both politically and economically," he reported.

Proposals for improved foreign policy coordination - quickly dismissed by one critic as a "sticking plaster" solution - are to be put to the Brussels summit this week, but there is little likelihood of change as long as the wider constitutional deadlock cannot be resolved. Few believe that is possible until Germany is running the union's rotating presidency, and Jacques Chirac steps down next summer. It may well take even longer.

Javier Solana meanwhile, is still waiting anxiously for news from Tehran about the next step in the nuclear drama. A positive response to the incentives package he delivered with such fanfare will be good for him and for the EU's tired diplomatic profile. But if Iran says no and the crisis escalates again, he could yet regret having played the postman.

How Does That Translate in Persian?

June 14, 2006
National Review Online
Kathryn Jean Lopez

link to original article

On May 31, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announced that the United States would negotiate with Iran if they agreed to stop uranium enrichment. If Iran did not agree to the sit-down on those conditions, there would be sanctions from the likes of Europe, Russia (who adamantly have not been fans of sanctions against Iran)—and the United Nations. President Bush seemed hopeful, confident that “this problem can be solved diplomatically.”

We really have no business negotiating with the leader of a nation who considers us an enemy and wants one of our dearest allies in the Middle East wiped off the map. However, reasonable people must debate these proposed diplomatic tactics. There really are no easy answers when it comes to Iran. But one cannot help but wonder: How was Rice’s announcement received by the oppressed of Iran?

Most likely as confusion.

As our new Iranian policy was announced (immediately available in Persian translation on the State Department’s website ) the human-rights group Reporters Without Borders released an alert that it was “very worried” about the well-being of one particular student blogger in Tehran. Abed Tavancheh had been unreachable by his family and friends after pro-democracy demonstrations on his campus. On his blog, translated as “in the name of man, justice, and truth,” Tavancheh often posts photos from these daring protests. The last post before Reporters Without Borders announced their concern included the text of a letter by an imprisoned lawyer who unwisely spoke out on behalf of families of journalists and others killed in a 1998 crackdown by the Iranian regime.

For folks like Tavancheh and his family, the offer from Washington had to sound like the rhetorical and moral equivalent of a punch in the gut — nd thus a crushing blow to our eyes and ears on the inside. Tavancheh and other democracy activists may be our best hope in Iran and the region, so crucial to fighting the war on terror. Like Lech Walesa and Solidarity in Poland before the fall of the Soviet Union, many experts point to Iranian labor unions and largely pro-Western students—in a country where about 70 percent of the population is under 30—as the soldiers of a democratic revolution. They’re the Iranians we want to be negotiating with, lending a hand to.

The Bush administration has had a somewhat consistently confusing policy regarding Iran—in the first term, one senior State Department official inexplicably publicly referred to the oppressive regime as a “democracy” — which it is most definitely not. But with the high-on-freedom talk the president used to ring in his second term, and this administrations occasional messages and commitments to dissidents, there has been reason for Iranian people to believe they had a friend in America. Just last year, President Bush proclaimed, “All who live in tyranny and hopelessness can know: the United States will not ignore your oppression, or excuse your oppressors. When you stand for your liberty, we will stand with you. Democratic reformers facing repression, prison, or exile can know: America sees you for who you are: the future leaders of your free country.” But with America’s policy concerning negotiations with Iran in constant flux, some oppressed future leaders must wonder what exactly friends are for.

It’s not just Iranian dissidents who got punched in the gut by Secretary Rice’s announcement. In Egypt, blogger Alaa Seif al-Islam sits in jail for criticizing the government there. What does America’s agreement to negotiate with a regime that clearly does not stand with us say to voices for freedom like him? Our words and policies can have a chilling effect on world events—and on the hearts of true freedom fighters, the type of person who is willing to put his life at risk to blog or otherwise tell some truth about the regime he suffers under, giving support to his fellow dissidents, and clueing the rest of us in.

In the days after his second inaugural address, even conservative supporters of President Bush criticized him for being a bit too pie-eyed in his freedom talk. The least we could be doing, however, is lending more support, rhetorical and otherwise to our real friends. The continued mixed signals, however, that negotiation offers to a regime of terror masters, is not the way to contribute to any freedom project.

- Kathryn Jean Lopez is the editor of National Review Online.

Omar, Bravo!

June 14, 2006
National Review Online
Michael Ledeen

link to original article

The mullahs have had a lot of bad news in recent days — news with a particularly sinister aura, in fact. So sinister that they must be asking themselves what they have done to incur the Divine wrath.

I kid you not.

First is the loss of one of their terrorist stars, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the deus ex machina of the terror war against us in Iraq. Not only does that deprive the mullahs of a prime instrument for generating civil war — his constant incitement to the Sunnis to rise up against the Shiites was the cutting edge of their three-year program to turn major Iraqi ethnic and religious groups against one another — but it is a serious blow to recruitment throughout the terror network. It is as bad for them as the beheading videos were good. Potential jihadis want to do the beheading, not suffer the consequences of 500-pound bombs. The quick Iranian deception, pretending they were pleased at the death of Zarqawi, shouldn’t fool anybody. They have lost a basic building block of the terror structure.

Second is the worldwide campaign against terror cells, many of which were linked to Zarqawi, or to Iran itself. Some of the Canadians now in jail in Ontario had been in contact with Zarqawi, and the cell in Sarajevo had longstanding ties to Tehran.

Third is this ominous line from al-Reuters on the occasion of President Bush’s jaunt to Baghdad:

BAGHDAD, June 13 - U.S. President George W. Bush told Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki in Baghdad on Tuesday Iran’s “interference” in Iraq must end, said Iraqi government sources who attended the talks.

Can it be that, at long last, we are going to take steps against the mullahs to save the lives of our fighters and the Iraqi civilians who have been targeted by the terrorists who are armed and manipulated by the Iranians and the Syrians? Faster, please.

But that is nothing compared to the clear message from On High on the soccer fields of Germany. No, I’m not talking about the demonstrations against President Ahmadinejad, I’m talking about the Mexican victory over Iran in the first round of the World Cup.

With the game tied 1-1, a Mexican player named Omar Bravo scored for Mexico, which went on to win 3-1. That name, Omar Bravo, sends chills down the spines of the mullahs. “Bravo” is a universal plaudit, enthusiastic praise for the person to whom the “bravo” is directed. And Omar? Well...Omar is the most hated name in the Shiite lexicon, the symbol of the forces of evil, the incarnation of satanic influence on earth.

And why? Because after the death of the Prophet, Mohammed’s son in law, Ali (the husband of Mohammed’s daughter Fatima) was fighting to become the leader of all Muslims. Ali lost out to Omar Bakr and to Omar, his close adviser and successor as Caliph. To this day, the Shiites believe that Abu Bakr and Omar usurped Ali’s rightful inheritance as ruler of Islam. Not only that, but during the succession struggle Omar burst into Ali’s house, crushing the pregnant Fatima behind the door, leading to the stillbirth of her son. And although Ali formally accepted the elevation of Abu Bakr, and then Omar, the Shiites still speak of Omar with intense hatred. In Iran today, one of the harshest things you can say about another person is Iaanat be’Omar, cursed by Omar.

To a devout Shiite of the sort that governs Iran today, the defeat of the Iranian national team by somebody named Omar Bravo cannot be easily dismissed as a random event. It cannot possibly be a coincidence (it is hard for Iranians to believe that anything is a coincidence), and it is most certainly a terrible augury. Many Iranians will interpret it as a message to the mullahs: just as Ali was defeated by Omar, so your doom has been signaled by a modern Omar. And that “bravo,” can it be an accident? No way.

As I said, tough times for the mullahs. Very tough.

— Michael Ledeen, an NRO contributing editor, is most recently the author of The War Against the Terror Masters. He is resident scholar in the Freedom Chair at the American Enterprise Institute.

Bubba Dubya?

June 12, 2006
The Weekly Standard
Michael Rubin

link to original article

On September 20, 2001, President George W. Bush put the world on notice. "We will pursue nations that provide aid or safe haven to terrorism. Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists." Unanimously, senators and congressmen gave Bush a standing ovation.

Now, faced with falling poll numbers, and wanting the affirmation of the foreign policy elite here and abroad--from the Quai d'Orsay to Ausw䲴iges Amt and Turtle Bay--the president seems to have reversed course. He still speaks about democracy and the war against terror, but increasingly his administration charts the path of least resistance and paper compromise so dominant during the Clinton years. This may please diplomats, but it does not ensure national security. It's d骠 vu all over again in the White House.

Reviving the North Korea Model

On May 31, 2006, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice reversed U.S. policy toward Iran. "We are agreed with our European partners on the essential elements of a package containing both the benefits if Iran makes the right choice, and costs if it does not."

Her announcement delighted European diplomats and validated former Clinton administration officials. An April 26 statement signed by former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and five European former foreign ministers had advised, "We believe that the Bush administration should pursue a policy it has shunned for many years: attempt to negotiate directly with Iranian leaders about their nuclear program." Sandy Berger, Clinton's second-term national security adviser, applauded the move: "[Rice] has done a very effective job in the last year and a half of consolidating foreign policy back in the State Department." To Albright and Berger, 1990s-style diplomacy, with its emphasis on multilateralism and consensus over substance, is an end in itself.

In the wake of Rice's announcement, senior U.S. diplomats and European officials speaking on background outlined the proposed carrots and sticks: If Tehran promises to suspend uranium enrichment, sits down, and talks, it will receive light water nuclear reactors. If Tehran refuses to talk, Europe, Russia, and perhaps even China will discuss sanctions at the U.N. Security Council. There is no consensus about what these sanctions would constitute, nor is there a timeline. Just two days after Rice's concession, her Russian counterpart hinted at just how flaccid the proposed sticks were. Speaking in Vienna, Sergei Lavrov commented, "I can say unambiguously that all the agreements from yesterday's meetings rule out in any circumstances the use of military force."

Precedent gives little ground for optimism. What Bush offered Tehran mirrors what Clinton gave Pyongyang. On October 21, 1994, Ambassador Robert L. Gallucci signed the U.S.-North Korea Agreed Framework. In exchange for a freeze of the Stalinist dictatorship's nuclear program, Washington offered to supply Pyongyang with two light water nuclear reactors and a basket of additional incentives. Clinton explained, "North Korea will freeze and dismantle its nuclear program. South Korea and our allies will be better protected. The entire world will be safer as we slow the spread of nuclear weapons."

But North Korea did not freeze its nuclear program, and the world did not become safer. In 1998, Pyongyang signaled its renewed belligerence when it launched a nuclear-capable Taepodong-1 missile over Japan. It continued to enrich uranium and later withdrew from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. The Central Intelligence Agency now estimates North Korea has a couple of bombs; the Stalinist state claims to have more. The idea that Clinton's deal was a success is revisionist nonsense. It is a model only for the triumph of appearance over substance. Kim Jong Il played Clinton; Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is playing Bush.

Terror Training Camps

It is not just the actions of the Bush administration that recall the Clinton years, but also the inaction. The Clinton administration knew that Afghanistan played host to terror training camps. The 9/11 Commission detailed the Clinton administration's decision to trust diplomacy. A declassified December 8, 1997, State Department cable detailed high-level talks between Assistant Secretary Karl F. Inderfurth and a Taliban delegation. The Taliban promised to "keep their commitment and not allow Bin Laden and others to use Afghanistan as a base for terrorism." The State Department lauded its own success. "We believe our message . . . came through loud and clear." It didn't.

On August 7, 1998, al Qaeda attacked the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Thirteen days later, Clinton ordered a retaliatory missile attack on a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan and on Zhawar Kili, a terrorist training camp in Afghanistan. International reaction was tepid at best. While Prime Minister Tony Blair stood by Clinton, most European allies were lukewarm. U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan expressed "concern" and the Kremlin denounced U.S. actions.

Clinton valued international affirmation. The symbolic Tomahawk strike complete, he sought to assuage allies with renewed commitment to international multilateral diplomacy. Both Clinton and the Taliban reverted to business as usual. Sensing weakness, al Qaeda accelerated its training program. In March 2000, I spent three weeks in the Taliban's Afghanistan. In Kabul, shopkeepers described meeting Arabs and Filipinos training for jihad. While the Taliban denied hosting terror training camps, residents near Rishkhor, a camp just a few kilometers from Kabul, spoke of continued activity. Eighteen months later, graduates from Afghan camps like these brought down the World Trade Center.

Today, the location is different, but the White House's desire to turn a blind eye is the same. In the 1990s, Afghanistan was a forgotten backwater; this decade, it is Somalia. Terrorists love a vacuum. On June 5, the Islamic Courts Union, an Islamist group affiliated with al Qaeda, seized Mogadishu, Somalia's capital. Both journalists and policymakers were underwhelmed. Perhaps, some mused, this radical Islamist gang could restore order. Reporting was similarly blas頷hen the Taliban seized Kabul just under a decade ago.

The Islamic Courts Union and the terrorist threat they pose did not materialize out of thin air; rather, they are a product of Bush administration neglect. Somalis living in Mogadishu speak of terrorist training camps established in the Lower Juba region, along the Kenyan border. According to Somali officials, the camps are not indigenous, but are run by Palestinians and Syrians. Senior U.S. military officials acknowledge the growing al Qaeda presence, but say they are forbidden to intervene. Not only has the Bush administration long nixed U.S. military action against terror training camps but now also forbids the U.S. military from filling the vacuum in still stable regions of the country, such as Somaliland and Puntland.

As the Bush administration wishes the problem away, rich Saudi and Persian Gulf financiers work to consolidate the region as a jihadist base. While Clinton did little to stop the capital flow from Gulf Arab sheikhs into the Taliban's Afghanistan, today the Bush team ignores the almost daily flights from Dubai to the Somali airfield at Baledogle, about 70 miles northwest of Mogadishu. Here, chartered jets bring men and materiel for al Qaeda affiliate al-Ittihad al-Islami and the Taliban-like Islamic Courts Union, which is slowly consolidating its control over Mogadishu.

Clinton Redux

In 1993, Bill Clinton came to the White House without foreign policy experience. He followed the advice of professional diplomats and, for eight years, did what was short-term popular, but long-term unwise.

He trusted U.S. security to the goodwill of international organizations. The intellectual elite applauded, even as Saddam Hussein, for example, exploited the United Nations for financial gain, the European Union funded Palestinian terrorists, and Iran developed secret nuclear facilities under the nose of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

He let public opinion polls determine national security. After a disastrous October 3, 1993, raid in Mogadishu, he ordered U.S. troops to evacuate the country, mission incomplete, a key factor, Osama bin Laden later said, in bolstering al Qaeda's confidence.

Bush's recent about-face also seems driven more by public relations than strategy. Bush administration figures once said they would not replicate Clinton's mistakes. On March 18, 2004, Rice told CNN interviewer John King that a proper U.S. response to 9/11 was "an American strategy that is bold and decisive and takes the fight to [the terrorists]" and not Clinton's laid-back, law-enforcement approach that "led to September 11." Four days later, Vice President Dick Cheney reiterated the message and then, on March 23, 2004, so did Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

Today, the Bush administration is in full retreat from that high ground. The Iranian president can threaten war, but if nuclear reactors are what it takes to get the United Nations to promise to consider whether to discuss talking about the possibility of taking action, then Bush is willing to agree. Meanwhile, authorities in Turkey complain that Central Intelligence Agency officers meet with representatives from Kurdish terrorist groups, former CIA officers meet with Hezbollah, and the State Department plays a shell game with Hamas, withholding money on one hand, but dispensing the same funds through the United Nations Refugee Works Administration with the other. Rice now even hints at scaling back U.S. opposition to the International Criminal Court. Like Clinton before him, Bush is being tempted by the siren song of international peer affirmation.

During his September 20, 2001, speech before the joint session of Congress, Bush declared, "We will not tire, we will not falter, and we will not fail." Increasingly, though, the administration seems to be tiring and faltering. And if it retreats to the policies that led to 9/11, it will fail.

Michael Rubin is a resident scholar at AEI.

Iranian Consulate Attacked in Iraq

June 14, 2006
The Associated Press
Yahoo News!

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About 500 followers of a Shiite cleric attacked the Iranian consulate in the southern Iraqi city of Basra on Wednesday, throwing stones and setting fire to a building in the diplomatic complex.

The Iranian Embassy in Baghdad confirmed the attack on its consulate in Basra, Iraq's second-largest city, about 340 miles southeast of Baghdad, but said it had no idea who was behind the violence. It said no casualties were reported.

The crowd was composed of followers of Shiite cleric Mahmoud al-Hassani and apparently was protesting a program shown on Iranian television that accused him of being an Israeli agent, police Capt. Mushtaq Khazim said.

The protesters broke the main gate and threw stones at the building. They also set fire to an annex used as a reception room and destroyed a car belonging to the consulate, according to an Associated Press reporter on the scene.

One Iraqi climbed to the building's roof and pulled down the Iranian flag, raising the Iraqi flag in its place.

The Mental Path to Appeasement

June 14, 2006
The Washington Times
Tony Blankley

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The Western response to the threat of Iran gaining nuclear weapons is tracking dangerously toward appeasement and failure. It is not yet inevitable -- President Bush has insisted in two State of the Union addresses and currently that he will not permit it to happen. But most government officials in Europe and here, and of course the dominant media, are already deeply into resignation, rationalization and denial. Indeed, in the last couple of years, the absolute exclusion of a military option has become the only "respectable" posture amongst both European and American officials and senior media personages.

This rationalizing mentality was epitomized by the statement of Gen. Barry McCaffrey on "Meet the Press" last Sunday. The general is a usually levelheaded and deeply experienced senior statesman. He has criticized Bush's policies where he disagrees with them, but he is not anti-Bush. His statement is worth reading carefully.

"Mr. Russert: 'So it's inevitable they get the nuclear bomb, in your opinion?'

"Gen McCaffrey: 'I think so. I think they're going nuclear five, 10 years from now. We'll be confronted. And that's not a good outcome. That argues that perhaps Saudi money and Egyptian technology gets an Arab Sunni bomb to confront the Persian Shia bomb. None of us want to see proliferation in the Gulf. This is a time for serious diplomatic interventions.'"

The last sentence calling for diplomacy is such a feeble, mantra-like invocation of a hopeless solution when preceded by his confident statements that he thinks they want the bomb and will get it. Virtually no one believes Iran only wants peaceful nuclear generation. Neither do serious people believe that enactable economic and diplomatic sanctions will deflect the Iranians from their objective.

Thus, the offer on the table -- to give them peaceful nuclear technology or threaten them with non-military sanction -- suffers from providing a "carrot that is not tempting and a stick that is not threatening." (Ian Kershaw's "Making Friends with Hitler.")

This evolving mental path to appeasement mirrors in uncanny detail a similar path taken by the British government to Hitler in the 1930s.

Contrary to popular history, the British government was under little illusion concerning Hitler's nature and objectives in the early 1930s. Those illusions only emerged as mental rationalizations later in the 1930s.

In April 1933, just three months after Hitler became chancellor of Germany, the British government presciently assessed the man and his plans. The outgoing British ambassador to Germany, Sir Horace Rumbold, who had been closely observing Hitler for years, reported back to London in a special dispatch to the prime minister on April 26, 1933. He warned his government to take "Mein Kampf" seriously.

Rumbold assessed that Hitler would resort to periodic peaceful claims "to induce a sense of security abroad," and Hitler planned to expand into Russia and "would not abandon the cardinal points of his program," [but would seek to] lull adversaries into such a state of coma that they will allow themselves to be engaged one by one." Rumbold was sure that "a deliberate policy is now being pursued, whose aim was to prepare Germany militarily before her adversaries could interfere." He also warned that Hitler personally believed in his violent anti-Semitism and that it was central to his government policy.

Back in London, Maj. Gen. A.C. Temperley briefed the prime minister on the Rumbold dispatch that if Britain did not stop Hitler right away, the alternative was "to allow things to drift for another five years, by which time . . . war seems inevitable." In the event, general war in Europe came in six years, not five.

But because the British people, still under the sway of their memory of WWI, were against military action, and because the politicians wanted to spend precious tax revenues on domestic programs, they walked away from their own good judgment.

The unpleasantness of dealing with Hitler and the public's abhorrence of another war led the new British ambassador to Germany, Sir Eric Phipps, responding to the Rumbold dispatch, to argue in that fateful month of April 1933 that: "We cannot regard him solely as the author of "Mein Kampf," for in such a case we should logically be bound to adopt the policy of preventive war." So, he argued, "The best hope is to bind him, that is, by a [disarmament] agreement bearing his signature freely and proudly given. ... By some odd kink in his mental makeup he might even feel compelled to honor it."

Here we have the 1930s version of Gen. McCaffrey's statement. Ambassador Phipps first states the obvious: To wit, if Hitler is as the government believes him to be, logic requires a preventive war. But they don't want to do that, so he hopes Hitler isn't as they know him to be, and they seek a diplomatic agreement, which even Phipps recognized was unlikely to be honored.

Just so, Gen. McCaffrey, representing the overwhelming view of government officials and major media in the West, first states the obvious: Iran will get the bomb. Then he ends with: So let's just do diplomacy.

In fact, Western leaders are resigned to Iran getting the bomb. The diplomacy is understood to be as pointless as getting Hitler to honor a disarmament treaty. But "leaders" have to be seen to be doing something -- even if they know it is futile.

This defeatist attitude exists largely because with the Iraq war as bad precedent -- just as WWI was a bad precedent for another war in 1933 -- military action has been placed, as an emotional response to unpleasantness, out of the question by a weary Western elite.

That is where we are today: about four-fifths down the mental path to appeasement. As unpleasant as dealing with Iran today is, it will be incomparably nastier in a few years when they have the bomb operational. Where are the cold-eyed realists when we need them?

Unlikely Pair Emerges as Foe Of Iran Regime

June 13, 2006
The New York Sun
Eli Lake

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Two scions of the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran are emerging as emboldened opponents of the regime in Tehran, reviving the prospect that the son of the former shah may collaborate with the grandson of the ayatollah who deposed him.

In a reversal of historical roles, it was Reza Pahlavi, heir to the Peacock Throne, who was last week in Paris - the safe haven of Ayatollah Khomeini immediately before the 1979 revolution - drumming up support from French legislators for his plan of nonviolent regime change.

Meanwhile, at the spiritual center of Iran's Shiite theocracy, Qom, the grandson of Khomeini, broke a near three-year silence in the press, and publicly gave his support for a Western armed intervention in his country.

The public statements from Hossein Khomeini are especially relevant given the recent unrest in Iran. In the last two months, the ruling mullahs have had to contend with a rash of demonstrations from ethnic Azeris, disgruntled students, and now women's groups. Yesterday about 200 women from a group called the Labor and Communist Party staged a demonstration in Tehran Square at which 20 of the demonstrators were detained, according to the Associated Press.

Meanwhile, dissident journalist Akbar Ganji is scheduled to visit Italy and France this week on a tour of the West in which he has been urging newspapers, activists, and other civil society groups to step up their solidarity with Iran's nonviolent opposition.

Yesterday the Middle East Media Research Institute translated an interview Mr. Khomeini gave on May 31, the anniversary of his grandfather's death, to the Arabic satellite station, al-Arabiya. In it he did not mince words.

"My grandfather's revolution has devoured its children and has strayed from its course," he said. "I lived through the revolution, and it called for freedom and democracy - but it persecuted its leaders."

Mr. Khomeini then noted the fate of Ayatollah Mahmoud Taleqhani, who was driven into hiding after the revolution, despite his opposition to the Shah.

Hossein Khomeini emerged in the fall of 2003 as one of the least likely enemies of the Islamic Republic that his famous grandfather helped create in 1978 and 1979 during the country's revolution, when he visited Washington and New York in September and October to give speeches and interviews calling for an armed intervention to depose the ruling clerics. But soon after his visit to America, the young cleric went back to Iran at the urging of his family and kept his thoughts on regime change at least to himself.

When Mr. Khomeini returned to Iran, many of his close followers had assumed that he had been lured back to the country for the safety of his family. A senior researcher yesterday at the London based Center for Arab-Iranian Studies who has been in touch with the grand ayatollah's grandson, Alireza Nourizadeh, said he was able to return safely to Iran only after Khomeini's widow and Hossein's grandmother, Batol Saqafi Khomeini, sent a stern warning to Iran's supreme leader.

"She sent a message to the director of Ayatollah Khomeini's personal office, a man named Mohammadi Golpaygani. The message was, 'My grandson is going to come back. If anything happens to him, even if he has been taken for questioning, I will not be silent,'" Dr. Nourizadeh said.

Dr. Nourizadeh added that Mr. Khomeini lived with his grandmother in Tehran for three weeks upon returning to Iran and then began a mentorship with Iran's most senior cleric and a harsh critic of the mullahs, Ayatollah Ali Montazeri.

The tutelage of Mr. Montazeri has not tempered the opinions of the young Khomeini. When asked by al-Arabiya about his earlier calls for America to invade, he said, "Freedom must come to Iran in any possible way, whether through internal or external developments. If you were a prisoner, what would you do? I want someone to break the prison."

By contrast, the son of the Shah, Reza Pahlavi, is not such a hardliner. In this week's issue of Time Magazine's European edition, Mr. Pahlavi said he could not imagine an American invasion of Iran. "I cannot foresee any military action which could be feasible," he said. "The thought of foreign tanks rolling into Tehran is beyond imagination. No Iranian could tolerate an invasion. It would be an attack on our homeland. Even limited air strikes: If you want to alienate people, strike the first blow."

Mr. Ganji and several student leaders have also come out recently against a foreign invasion or aerial bombing campaign against Iran.

One question that emerged three years ago among the opposition is whether Mr. Pahlavi, who has endorsed nonviolent civil disobedience as the best means of toppling the mullahs, could work with Mr. Khomeini, who told this reporter in 2003 that if the Iranian people ever were to rise up, they would kill the country's current rulers.

During Mr. Khomeini's 2003 visit to Washington he asked author and columnist, Christopher Hitchens, to inquire of Mr. Pahlavi whether he would renounce his claim to the throne in Tehran.

Mr. Hitchens yesterday said Mr. Khomeini "said he heard nice things about him, that he would be ready to work with him on a democratic secular outcome on condition that he renounced the Pahlavi claim to the Iranian throne. And so I put this to young Reza and he would not do that. It was quite clear, he said he did not claim to be the Shah of Iran. But that's not what the message inquires. He wants to know if you renounce the claim."

Mr. Hitchens remembers pressing Mr. Pahlavi on the specific point of renouncing the throne, and Mr. Pahlavi would not abdicate, nor would he criticize some of the human rights abuses of his father's old regime.

Khamenei Urges Saudi-Iran Effort to Unite Muslims

June 14, 2006
Agence France Presse
Arab News

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TEHRAN -- Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has called for “strategic cooperation” with Saudi Arabia including help in resolving Sunni-Shiite tensions in Iraq, official Iranian media reported yesterday.

In a meeting on Monday with visiting Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal, Khamenei also called for Islamic nations to support the Hamas-led Palestinian government.

“Iran and Saudi Arabia should take steps to establish strategic cooperation to solve the Islamic world’s problems and make efforts to unite Muslims,” Iran’s all-powerful leader was quoted as saying.

“Our countries can have good cooperation with regard to the Iraq issue and to prevent enemies from sparking differences between Shiites and Sunnis,” Khamenei added.

“Islamic countries should help the Hamas government because this government can give great services to the future of Palestine,” Khamenei was quoted by the local press as saying.

Prince Saud delivered a message from Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah to Khamenei, the content of which was not revealed.

Stir Over Iran President's Trip to 'Terror' Conference

June 13, 2006
The Financial Times
Geoff Dyer in Shanghai and Andrew Yeh in Beijing

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A central Asian summit to discuss security issues is likely to be overshadowed by the presence of Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad, the controversial president of Iran, who arrives in Shanghai on Wednesday. He will be an observer at Thursday’s summit of the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation. The five-year-old grouping is one of China’s first attempts at playing a bigger diplomatic role in the region but it is prompting growing concern in the US.

Much attention will be focused on how China and Russia behave towards Iran and whether the countries discuss Iran’s nuclear fuel programme on the sidelines.

China and Russia, both members of the United Nations Security Council, have been much less keen than the US or European governments to seek tougher action against Iran’s nuclear programme.

China has been trying to build closer relations with a number of Middle Eastern countries, including Iran, because of its ever-growing demand for oil. Iran provides about 13 per cent of China’s imports of oil and Beijing has signed a deal to buy liquefied natural gas from Iran and to allow a Chinese company to exploit the Yadavaran oilfield in Iran.

However, China will be keen not to let the presence of Mr Ahmadi-Nejad eclipse a diplomatic event that has been meticulously planned and which is one of its main strategies for projecting political influence in Asia.

Analysts in the US had already expressed concern that the SCO was becoming a bulwark against US interests in the region, even before Mr Ahmadi-Nejad’s visit was announced.

In addition to China and Russia, other SCO members are Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. India, Pakistan and Mongolia have observer status. The organisation was designed to combat terrorism in the region and claims not to be a military alliance, although the member countries have conducted joint military exercises.

But at a conference in Singapore last week, Donald Rumsfeld, US defence secretary, said it was strange that China and Russia would invite “a leading terrorist nation” to “an organisation that says it is against terror”.

In the run-up to the meeting, there has been speculation that Iran will be offered permanent membership of the SCO.

However, in recent days officials have played down the prospects of new members joining this week. Li Hui, China’s assistant foreign minister, said a number of countries had applied to join but there were several obstacles, including the absence of a clear application procedure.

Yang Guang, head of a Middle East research institute under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, a state think-tank, said Iran’s attendance at the SCO was normal and a chance for more diplomatic progress on the nuclear issue. But he said now might not be the time to allow Iran permanent member SCO status.

In his first visit to China since being elected last year, Mr Ahmadi-Nejad is scheduled to meet President Hu Jintao.

Azerbaijan 'Betrays' Ethnic Cause

June 13, 2006
AFP
iafrica.com

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The alleged deportation from Azerbaijan of an ethnic Azeri Iranian dissident leader was an "unforgiveable betrayal" by the government, the dissident's supporters charged here on Tuesday. Mahmoud Chahraganly, leader of the National Awakening Movement of Southern Azerbaijan, a group opposed to Persian rule in majority ethnic Azeri parts of Iran, was allegedly deported from Azerbaijan three days earlier, after arriving from Turkey where he was also expelled.

"This is an insult and an unforgivable betrayal," Agry Garadagly, a spokesperson for the movement's Baku office, told AFP.

Several opposition newspapers reported that Chahraganly had been "deported" by authorities in Azerbaijan while other newspapers said that the Iranian dissident had "departed" from Azerbaijan under unclear circumstances immediately after arriving there from Turkey.

Although strategically-located Azerbaijan has good relations with the United States, it also sits on Iran's northern border and is anxious to maintain friendly ties with Tehran as well.

Authorities in Baku admitted that Chahraganly had left Azerbaijan but denied he had been forced out.

"This is a very sensitive issue and it needs to be addressed delicately," Ali Akhmedov, the executive secretary of Azerbaijan's ruling Yeni Azerbaijan Party, told AFP.

Disregard for Azeris?

"The official version is that Chahraganly wanted to leave for the US with his family of his own accord," he added.

The opposition Popular Front party, strongly opposed to the rule of President Ilham Aliyev, condemned the alleged expulsion of Chahraganly, saying it was an indicator of Baku's disregard for the fate of Azeris in Iran.

"These events have shown that despite promises the head of state made to defend the rights of all Azeris, today thousands of Azeris are subject to violent pressure," the party said in a statement.

Garadagly, who said he was with Chahraganly when he was detained in Baku, described how the Iranian dissident leader was forced into a vehicle by armed, plain-clothed Azerbaijani security officers who spirited him off to the airport where he was put on flight to the United States.

The controversy over the ethnic-Azeri leader comes just weeks after Iranian authorities put down protests in the country's East Azerbaijan province that erupted after a racist cartoon was printed in a local newspaper.

Up to 26 million Iranians are ethnic Azeri, dwarfing the ethnic Azeri population of Azerbaijan itself, which numbers around eight million people. Azeris speak a language close to Turkish, but as Shiite Muslims they also share a religion with Iran's Farsi population.

Garadagly said Azerbaijani authorities deported Chahraganly under pressure from Iran, which borders Azerbaijan to the south and supplies an Azerbaijani exclave with natural gas.

Iranian officials have blamed the West for stoking tensions between Iran's Farsi and Turkic-speaking populations.

Relations between Baku and Tehran have not always been smooth because Azerbaijan receives military aid from the United States, while hosting scores of Western oil companies developing its Caspian Sea oil deposits.

US Cites China Firms for Supporting Iran Military

June 13, 2006
Reuters
Yahoo News!

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The U.S. Treasury Department on Tuesday named one U.S. and four Chinese companies as supporters of Iran's military and Iranian weapons programs. The designation, under an executive order issued by President George W. Bush in 2005, freezes those companies' U.S. assets and outlaws U.S. firms or people from doing business with them.

The Chinese companies are Beijing Alite Technologies Co. Ltd., LIMMT Economic and Trade Co. Ltd., China Great Wall Industry Corp., and China National Precision Machinery Import/Export Corp.

The U.S. company, G.W. Aerospace Inc. of Torrance, California, is the representative office of China Great Wall Industry.

The Treasury Department designates firms or people under a range of executive orders and laws in an effort to stop flows of financing to countries, groups, or individuals it says are engaged in weapons proliferation, terrorism, or other illicit activities.

The executive order used in Tuesday's announcement is aimed at choking off funding for weapons programs in North Korea, Iran, and Syria.

"Governments worldwide are urged to take appropriate measures to ensure that their companies and financial institutions are not facilitating Iran's proliferation activities," Treasury Undersecretary Stuart Levey said in a statement.

The companies were named as the United States, Russia, France, China, Britain and Germany seek to pressure Iran to drop its nuclear program with the promise of rewards if it does so and sanctions if it does not.

U.S. officials have said they will continue to pursue financial and defensive restraints on Iran regardless of how Tehran responds to the offer.

The Treasury Department said the companies it designated helped or were trying to help Iranian companies that Bush has cited for involvement in Iran's missile program, including the Aerospace Industries Organization and the Shahid Bakeri Industrial Group.