Rooyesh

A nuclear cooperation pact Iran struck with the International Atomic Energy Agency has “real limitations” and Tehran should stop trying to manipulate the IAEA to dodge harsher U.N. sanctions, a senior U.S. envoy said. Washington was not impressed by Iran’s transparency promise — hailed as a “milestone” by the IAEA on Tuesday — to allay suspicions it is secretly seeking atomic bombs, and would still pursue talks on more U.N. sanctions against Tehran, the U.S. envoy to the U.N. nuclear watchdog, Gregory Schulte, said.

The IAEA declined comment on Schulte’s criticism. A diplomat close to the agency said Schulte’s remarks “shows a deliberate campaign to derail this process.” Schulte said Washington welcomed any progress in resolving troubling questions about Iran’s nuclear activities. “But we understand there are real limitations with the plan, including Iran’s continued refusal to implement the IAEA’s Additional Protocol,” he told reporters by conference call. He was citing a measure allowing inspectors to conduct spot checks at sites not declared to be nuclear but regarded as important to resolving four-year-old IAEA investigations into the scope and nature of Iran’s atomic program. Tuesday’s agreement, which has an undisclosed timetable, is meant to resolve IAEA concerns about intelligence indicating possible illicit military involvement in Iran’s declared drive for peaceful nuclear energy and to improve access for U.N. inspectors to its underground uranium enrichment plant.

Western diplomats believe Iran is making a display of cooperation to split key world powers over the need for stiffer sanctions — Russia and China are reluctant — and wants to buy time so it can master enrichment capability. Schulte said Iran’s suggestion it would not implement the transparency plan unless the U.N. Security Council shelved steps to intensify the mild sanctions imposed on the Islamic Republic over its refusal to stop enrichment was unacceptable. “If Iran’s leaders truly want the world’s trust, they would stop trying to manipulate the IAEA, start to cooperate fully and unconditionally, and suspend activities of (world) concern. “I don’t think the Security Council will be distracted (by the IAEA-Iranian accord).” The diplomat close to the IAEA told Reuters that Schulte’s comments were “very unhelpful” … Such immediate downplaying of this development is disingenuous.” “To expect Iran now to comply on the whole package of demands by the Security Council, all at once, when they remain under sanctions, is unrealistic,” the diplomat said. Tehran said it was “serious” about implementing the plan. Western powers suspect Iran’s declared goal to refine uranium for electricity so it can export more of its oil is really a cover for perfecting the means to make nuclear bombs. France said Iran could not restore international confidence just by a pledge to open its books to IAEA sleuths.

“Iran must accept a suspension of its sensitive activities, failing which the international community will have no option but to maintain its attitude of firmness, including by passing a third sanctions resolution…,” French Foreign Ministry spokesman Denis Simonneau said at an on-line news conference. European diplomats cast doubt on the timing of Iran’s move and said only Iranian actions would matter. A similar timetable for transparency, in 2004, came to nothing. Gary Samore at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York said Iran retained an edge in its standoff with the West. “The U.S. is bogged down in Iraq, other big powers are loath to impose significant economic penalties on Iran. But Iran will have to do enough so this process doesn’t look like a charade, and make it hard for Russia to argue it should be given time.”

Source: Reuters

An Iranian-American scholar recently released from a notorious prison in Iran still faces charges she endangered the country’s national security and has no passport with which to travel abroad, her lawyer said Wednesday. Although Haleh Esfandiari has the legal right to leave the country, no new passport has been issued since authorities seized hers, attorney and Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi told The Associated Press. “The next stage is that a date will be set for the trial.

I … will defend her in court,” said Ebadi. “I’m certain that my client is innocent and she must be acquitted of the charges.” Esfandiari, director of the Middle East program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, had been held in Evin prison since early May after months of interrogation. Her 93-year-old mother used the deed to her Tehran apartment to post bail late Tuesday, relatives said. Esfandiari, 67, was in solitary confinement during her four months in the prison and was not allowed access to a lawyer, Ebadi said. Ebadi said she already has filed a complaint with the U.N. Human Rights Council against what she called the “arbitrary” arrest of Esfandiari. Esfandiari is one of a handful of Iranian-Americans detained or facing security-related charges, adding to the already high tensions between the United States and Iran. The Iranian Intelligence Ministry had accused Esfandiari and her organization of trying to set up networks of Iranians with the ultimate goal of creating a “soft revolution” in Iran. Her husband, Shaul Bakhash, and the Wilson Center denied the allegations.

Esfandiari, who only weighed 105 pounds to begin with, appeared to have lost weight and had faced significant mental stress while being held, said Lee Hamilton, the head of the Wilson Center. Her family was not allowed to deliver her medicine, and during brief calls to her mother, Esfandiari said she suffered from arthritis and pain in her eyes, her daughter said. “Her physical and mental well-being is now the urgent priority,” Hamilton said. Esfandiari told Iranian television Tuesday that she was happy to be released. “I thank all those who made efforts to make it possible for me to go home,” Esfandiari said. The footage showed her walking out of the prison and meeting family members in a car on a nearby street. Esfandiari was detained Dec. 30 after three masked men holding knives threatened to kill her on her way to Tehran’s airport to fly back to the U.S., according to the Wilson Center. The men took her U.S. and Iranian passports, making her unable to leave the country, the center said. For several weeks, she was interrogated for up to eight hours a day about the activities of the Middle East Program at the Wilson Center, the Washington-based foundation said.

Iran charged Esfandiari in May. Hamilton said he was not sure what prompted Esfandiari’s release but that he had recently received a written response from Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s office after sending him a letter appealing for her freedom. Khamenei said he was pleased that Hamilton had expressed a desire for peace and justice and added he had given instructions to “deal with this issue” and that “necessary measures” would be taken, Hamilton said. Iran has charged three other Iranian-Americans with security-related offenses: Parnaz Azima, a journalist for U.S.-funded Radio Farda; Kian Tajbakhsh, an urban planning consultant with the Soros Foundation’s Open Society Institute; and Ali Shakeri, a founding board member of the Center for Citizen Peacebuilding at the University of California, Irvine. Shakeri and Tajbakhsh are in prison; Azima is free but barred from leaving Iran.

Source: The Associated Press

The Revolutionary Guard is at war with the United States. Why not fight back?Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps is a sprawling organization involved in myriad activities, including guarding borders, pumping oil, operating ports, smuggling, manufacturing pharmaceuticals, building Iran’s nuclear program — and supplying the weapons that are killing a growing number of American soldiers in Iraq. According to the Pentagon, one-third of the U.S. troops who died in Iraq last month — 23 soldiers — were killed by “explosively formed penetrators,”

In effect, the Revolutionary Guard, a radical state within Iran’s Islamic state, is waging war against the United States and trying to kill as many American soldiers as possible. In response, the Bush administration is considering categorizing the Guard as a “specially designated global terrorist” organization under a post-Sept. 11 executive order aimed at blocking terrorists’ access to their assets. The measure is reportedly part of a package the administration is considering to increase pressure on Iran at a time when it is defying U.N. orders to freeze its nuclear program and is showing no hint of flexibility in talks with the United States and the European Union.

This seems to be the least the United States should be doing, given the soaring number of Iranian-sponsored bomb attacks in Iraq. What’s puzzling are the murmurs of disapproval from European diplomats and others who say they favor using diplomacy and economic pressure, rather than military action, to rein in Iran. So far, the diplomacy and sanctions haven’t been working: Iran has been unresponsive to extensive European deal-making efforts and hasn’t taken up a year-old U.S. offer of across-the-board negotiations in exchange for stopping its uranium enrichment. The sanctions have been too weak to cause the regime serious discomfort, and tougher measures are being blocked in the U.N. Security Council by China and Russia.

Increased economic pressure could be the main byproduct of designating the Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization. The designation could cause banks and exporters in Europe and Asia that do business with Guard affiliates to pull back. So what’s the objection? Some European diplomats say they fear that an escalating confrontation between the United States and Iran will end in war. But sanctions are the alternative to war — Iran already rejected initiatives aimed at ending its nuclear program by offering economic concessions and other carrots.

Others suggest that the administration’s labeling of a principal arm of the Iranian regime as a terrorist group would contradict its recent embrace of bilateral talks with Tehran about Iraq. Yet that contradiction, if it exists, seems puny compared with that of a regime that participates in those discussions while escalating its surrogate war against American troops. If Iran chooses to fight as well as talk, the United States should not shrink from fighting back with all the economic weapons it can muster.

Source: Washington Post’s editorial

By the grisly standards of war-torn Iraq, fighting yesterday in the mountains in the northern part of the country was a mild affair. Iranian artillery shelled villages in the Qandil mountains that are home to various Kurdish militant groups, one of which — the Party for a Free Life in Kurdistan (PEJAK) — is waging a guerilla insurgency against the Iranian government. Though hundreds of villagers fled their homes and two women were wounded, such cross-border violence is becoming a regular feature of life in the north. But yesterday’s attack could also be a prelude to a larger struggle.

Iraqi Kurdish media are reporting that the Iranian military is massing at the main border crossing into northern Iraq, possibly for an incursion against PEJAK. Clashes between PEJAK and the Iranians have been increasing steadily, and Iraqi Kurdish officials say that about 40 Iranian soldiers were killed on Saturday.

Whether or not the Iranians attack, the timing of the buildup is ominous. Last week, the United States announced that it may list Iran’s Revolutionary Guard — a branch of the country’s military — as a terrorist organization for supplying explosives to Shi’ite militias in Iraq for use against American soldiers. The statement was part of a growing White House campaign aimed at either intimidating the Iranian regime, or at building a case for an American strike against Iran. In that light, yesterday’s shelling is a reminder that Iran has the ability to confront the U.S. not just on the streets of Baghdad but also in the one part Iraq so safe that there are hardly any American soldiers: Iraqi Kurdistan.

But Iraq’s Kurdish region — the country’s only success story — is looking increasingly beleaguered. Besides the Iranian army, the Turkish army is also massed at their border with northern Iraq, threatening an invasion if Iraq’s Kurds don’t do something about another Kurdish radical group, the PKK, which is fighting its own insurgency against the Turkish state. The ruling Kurdish parties of northern Iraq say there is little they can do about these radical groups. Not only are the PKK and PEJAK hardened guerilla fighters in formidable terrain, but the Iraqi Kurds’ own security forces are stretched pretty thin keeping their territory safe from Arab terrorists in the rest of the country. That threat is as real as ever. The official death toll from last week’s suicide attacks against several towns near Iraqi Kurdistan has risen to over 400 and continues to climb.

Iraq’s Kurdish leaders have long been trying to steer a course between their patrons in Washington and their powerful neighbors in Tehran. Though they have America to thank for freeing them from the genocidal grip of Saddam’s regime, many Iraqi Kurdish political parties took refuge in Iran during those grim years. This spring, Kurds protested vigorously when American soldiers captured several Iranian agents posing as diplomats in the Kurdish regional capital of Arbil. An Iranian incursion into Iraqi Kurdistan would be a poor way of saying thanks.

But these days Iraq’s Kurds aren’t feeling the love from anyone. Last week, America’s ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker said he didn’t think that it would be possible to hold a referendum on the status of Kirkuk this year. Iraqi Kurds consider the oil-rich city of Kirkuk — which is currently under control of the central government of Baghdad — to be the “Jerusalem” of Kurdistan, stolen from them by a Ba’athist ethnic-cleansing campaign in the 1980s. The Kurds have made the return of Kirkuk a central precondition to their participation in a federal Iraq, and will regard any delay as a betrayal. But then again, they are used to betrayal. As the saying goes, the Kurds — a small ethnic group living in the shadows of great empires — have never had any true friends but the mountains.

Source: Time

Reports that the Bush Administration will put Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps on the terrorism list can be read in one of two ways: it’s either more bluster or, ominously, a wind-up for a strike on Iran. Officials I talk to in Washington vote for a hit on the IRGC, maybe within the next six months. And they think that as long as we have bombers and missiles in the air, we will hit Iran’s nuclear facilities. An awe and shock campaign, lite, if you will. But frankly they’re guessing; after Iraq the White House trusts no one, especially the bureaucracy.

As with Saddam and his imagined WMD, the Administration’s case against the IRGC is circumstantial. The U.S. military suspects but cannot prove that the IRGC is the main supplier of sophisticated improvised explosive devices to insurgents killing our forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. The most sophisticated version, explosive formed projectiles or shape charges, are capable of penetrating the armor of an Abrams tank, disabling the tank and killing the crew.

A former CIA explosives expert who still works in Iraq told me: “The Iranians are making them. End of story.” His argument is only a state is capable of manufacturing the EFP’s, which involves a complicated annealing process. Incidentally, he also is convinced the IRGC is helping Iraqi Shi’a militias sight in their mortars on the Green Zone. “The way they’re dropping them in, in neat grids, tells me all I need to know that the Shi’a are getting help. And there’s no doubt it’s Iranian, the IRGC’s,” he said.

A second part of the Administration’s case against the IRGC is that the IRGC has had a long, established history of killing Americans, starting with the attack on the Marines in Beirut in 1983. And that’s not to mention it was the IRGC that backed Hizballah in its thirty-four day war against Israel last year. The feeling in the Administration is that we should have taken care of the IRGC a long, long time ago.

Strengthening the Administration’s case for a strike on Iran, there’s a belief among neo-cons that the IRGC is the one obstacle to a democratic and friendly Iran. They believe that if we were to get rid of the IRGC, the clerics would fall, and our thirty-years war with Iran over. It’s another neo-con delusion, but still it informs White House thinking.

And what do we do if just the opposite happens — a strike on Iran unifies Iranians behind the regime? An Administration official told me it’s not even a consideration. “IRGC IED’s are a casus belli for this Administration. There will be an attack on Iran.”

Source: Time

A top State Department official said Monday that it was “absolutely unacceptable logic” to suggest that a renewed Iranian willingness to work with United Nations atomic energy officials was grounds to delay a new push for sanctions against Tehran. He urged U.S. allies to crack down severely on trade with that country. The comments, from Under Secretary of State Nicholas Burns, came as the United States and some of its allies are preparing for a major effort next month at the UN to secure tougher sanctions to punish Iran for continuing work that much of the world believes could lead to a nuclear weapon.

“We intend to push it very, very hard,” Burns said. He predicted a “harder-edged, tougher diplomacy” in dealing with what he called “the most radical and dangerous government in the Middle East.”

The Iranians, after years of failing to cooperate with the International Atomic Energy Agency to its satisfaction, said last month that they were ready to answer questions on past nuclear experiments, and to open a heavy-water reactor to inspection.

But the United States, as Burns made clear, sees this as yet another delaying tactic by a government considered to have mastered the technique.

“It’s obvious what the Iranians are up to,” Burns said in a small meeting with journalists at the offices of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in Washington. “It’s totally transparent.”

“They have this dalliance with the IAEA right now,” he said, that was clearly meant to buy time and undercut the U.S.-led sanctions effort. “Iran should have answered these questions years ago.”

Burns urged other countries to stop their dealings with Iran. Although he said Russia had mostly been helpful - he called Moscow’s repeated delays in moving forward with a nuclear project with Iran “interesting” - he then said that it was “inconsistent for Russia to sell arms to Iran.”

He was even more blunt in denouncing the government of Austria, which, he said, had “blithely supported a major energy deal with the Iranians.”

“That was wrong,” Burns said.

Despite his exasperation with Iran, Burns made it clear that the United States remained determined to find a diplomatic solution to the nuclear tensions, not to follow the military route feared by some. “Our strategy is a diplomatic one,” he said. “We should exhaust diplomacy. Nobody should doubt that we’re focused on diplomacy.” Still, as the administration has consistently done, he said that even military options would remain on the table.

He underscored that the United States had nothing against a civilian nuclear energy program in Iran - which is what Tehran says it is building.

Burns said that talks with Iran aimed at improving security in Iraq would continue “as long as they’re useful,” but that the United States was frustrated that Tehran had not been more forthcoming, or more cooperative about blocking what the Pentagon says has been particularly lethal cross-border aid to extremists and insurgents in Iran.

“Frankly, I don’t think we’ve seen the type of response from the Iranian government we would’ve wanted,” he said.

Burns was asked as part of a multi-part question whether the United States planned, as reported last week, to declare Iran’s Revolutionary Guard a terrorist group. He did not reply.

Source:Herald Tribube

As the zealous enforcers of Iran’s Islamic revolution, they are at pains to be seen living humbly, maintaining homes in the crumbling Soviet-style slums of downtown Teheran and driving modest, imported Korean cars. But for many commanders of the Revolutionary Guards, the force allegedly responsible for ordering attacks on British and US forces in Iraq, life is rather more luxurious than they want it to appear.

Behind the façade of a simple, pious existence, they live in mansions in the exclusive hills of northern Teheran with the latest model of BMW or Mercedes Benz in the garage, luxury hand-woven rugs on the floor, wardrobes full of designer clothes and a safe packed with diamond and gold jewellery.

Such men have grown rich as the Guards have extended their role from imposing religious rectitude at home and exporting Iran’s revolution, to playing a huge role in the country’s economy. From the oil and gas industries to chicken farms and apiaries, the Guards have used their power and muscle to take control of major areas of business in Iran.

Now, though, their burgeoning economic empire is the focus of White House moves to classify the regime’s 125,000-strong praetorian Guard as a “terrorist organisation”.

Under plans disclosed last week, the Bush administration is expected to announce the classification in coming months in response to the Guards’ alleged role in terror attacks in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as in Iran’s disputed nuclear programme.

The listing would allow the US to freeze or block bank accounts and business involved with the Guards, although the immediate impact would be limited as the US already has an almost complete trade embargo on Iran. But the designation could be more than symbolic if US diplomats can encourage European states and companies to follow suit by persuading them that trade with Iran is effectively trade with the Guards.

General Yahya Rahim Safavi, the leader of the Guards, responded defiantly yesterday. “America will receive a heavier punch from the Guards in the future,” he said. “We will never remain silent in the face of US pressure and we will use our leverage against them.”

Under the presidency of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, himself a former Guards commander, the organisation has aggressively expanded its business empire as part of his strategy of placing hardliners in key positions of power.

The National Council of Resistance of Iran, the exile opposition movement which revealed the existence of Iran’s secret nuclear programme in 2002, has tracked the explosion of the Guards’ economic operations. “The country’s economy and politics is now under the command of veteran Guards commanders and senior officials of the security and intelligence apparatus,” it concludes in a dossier on the Guards’ activities.

Maryam Rajavi, the leader of the council, which Iran itself regards as a terrorist organisation, said: “The designation of the Guards will have been long overdue. The UK and EU should adopt similar measures without delay.”

Teheran would doubtless counter that the council’s armed wing is itself listed as a terror organisation by the US - the council’s supporters claim that designation was made as a bargaining chip when the Clinton administration attempted rapprochement with Iran.

One former Guards commander to have benefited is Sadeq Mahsouli, 47, an Ahmadinejad confidant. He spent much of his career in the military and security apparatus before using his guards contacts and credentials to build a business in construction and oil trading.

Indeed, when he was nominated to be oil minister in 2005, his wealth even raised opposition in the parliament, where one legislator called him a “billionaire general”. Mr Mahsouli acknowledged he was a rich man but was quoted by the state-run newspaper Hammiyan as saying: “What Imam [Ayatollah Khomeini] has prohibited is the attitude and demeanour of living in palaces, not living in palaces itself.”

They may not technically be palaces, but his six mansions and estates are estimated to be worth £10 million while his total worth could be as much as £86 million, according to Iranian media reports.

Several Iranian businessmen, speaking anonymously, have detailed how the Guards have used force and intimidation to grab business. “If you enter the economy using a gun and handcuffs, it is much easier to deal with competitors and to win the most lucrative contracts,” said Mohsen Sazegara, who co-founded the organisation in 1979 but then turned against the regime and was jailed before going into exile in America in 2003.

He claimed the Guards had turned into a “corrupting” and “mafia-like” organisation, which was heavily involved in smuggling goods for the thriving black market. These include alcohol, which is supposedly forbidden but is widely consumed at private parties frequented by the Iranian elite. Much of the smuggling is done through Guards-controlled airports.

Even as Teheran suffers an economic slump, which is undermining Mr Ahmadinejad’s popularity, jewellery boutiques and luxury furniture are doing a booming trade thanks partly to patronage from the Guards, who have also been investing heavily in property.

The real “fat cats”, however, are funnelling their money abroad into the Gulf states, most notably Dubai. Such investment could also provide a foreign bolthole if the regime falters in the future.

Source: Daily Telegraph