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Iranian Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi called on the Islamic Republic on Monday to suspend sensitive nuclear activities to avert a ”serious” threat of a U.S. military attack. ”The drum beat of war can be heard very loudly,” Ms Ebadi told a conference of her rights group called ”No to war, Yes to peace and human rights”, urging all Iranians to support a national campaign aimed at preventing possible U.S. military action.

Speculation has grown that the United States may launch air strikes against Iran over its refusal to suspend sensitive nuclear activities, which the West fears is a cover to build nuclear weapons. Iran says its nuclear work is peaceful. ”Iran should respect U.N. Security Council resolutions and it means suspending uranium enrichment and resolving the dispute (on the nuclear issue) through talks,” Ebadi told reporters in Tehran after the conference. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has defied international pressure on Iran to suspend enrichment and branded Iranian critics of his nuclear policy as ”traitors”. Ebadi, a human rights lawyer who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003, warned of an escalating crisis with the international community, saying ”the threat of conflict is serious”.

Her call on the Iranian leadership to review its hardline nuclear policy, echoed similar statements of the growing number of moderate leaders who believe Iran should return to suspending enrichment, the policy under former President Mohammad Khatami. Domestic criticism of the handling of Iran’s nuclear policy is sensitive because it is considered a matter of national security. Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has the last say on all state matters, including the nuclear issue. Iranian officials have dismissed the threat of U.S. military action and Ahmadinejad has called it a U.S. ”dream”.

Iran says it is fully prepared to defend itself, warning Washington of a ”quagmire deeper than Iraq.” Ebadi called on Iranians to join a ”national peace campaign” to stop the war. ”This campaign will pressure the (Iranian) establishment to prevent a war by accepting international commitments … and respecting U.N. resolutions,” she said. ”We should show the world that Iranians are peace-seekers and want to live in peace not war.” Ahmadinejad has called two sets of U.N. sanction resolutions against Iran ”a piece of torn paper”. Ebadi said the government should not ”sacrifice” people’s other rights for Iran’s right to nuclear technology. ”Nuclear technology is Iran’s right. But we have other rights that should be preserved, including living in peace,” she said. Leader of Iran’s Freedom Movement, a banned liberal party, Ebrahim Yazdi, also warned of the consequences of U.S. military action against Iran.

”We should mobilise people against the war and put pressure on the government to change its nuclear policy,” he told the conference. ”By suspending enrichment, we can avoid war.” Yazdi, who was a close aide to the Islamic revolution’s founding father Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and served as foreign minister in the first post-revolutionary government, said enrichment ”was not a matter of national security for Iran”. ”The government should consider people’s will and avoid a war,” he said.

Source: Reuters

Not content with taking on the world, the president picks a few fights at home THE president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has shown no signs of backing off in his confrontation with his critics abroad. Now, it seems, the gloves are off at home as well. 

In recent speeches, Mr Ahmadinejad has not only vowed to pursue Iran’s nuclear programme, despite growing international pressure. He has also dismissed UN sanctions and brushed off the chances of an American attack. Iran’s president has long scorned the reformists who ran the country under his predecessor, Muhammad Khatami, as weaklings who sapped the vigour of the 1979 Islamic revolution. But on November 12th Mr Ahmadinejad lashed out at fellow conservatives too, denouncing those who counsel greater caution as traitors, threatening to “expose” them. And on November 14th the government did just that, openly accusing a former nuclear negotiator, Hossein Mousavian, of spying for the British.

The harsh words and actions appear to come as a response to a groundswell of criticism from powerful establishment figures in Iran. Hashemi Rafsanjani, a former president said to be close to Mr Mousavian, recently gave warning that the danger of American attack was serious. The mayor of Tehran, Muhammad Qalibaf, seen as a likely conservative candidate for presidential elections in 2009, has been even blunter. He has said that officials should act with more “maturity, intelligence and cunning”, adding that the cost of Iran’s diplomatic grandstanding has been unnecessarily high. Given that most Iranians believe that their nuclear programme is peaceful, and that the world treats them unfairly, such sparring may seem to be just a squabble over tactics.

But the factional antagonism runs deeper than the nuclear issue. Ordinary Iranians are painfully aware that the sanctions that have mounted in response to the president’s abrasive rhetoric help fuel inflation that is running at 16%. Businessmen complain that, with foreign banks reluctant to handle Iranian accounts, trade gets more tricky and costly. And while liberals chafe at growing restrictions on individual freedoms, even religious conservatives protest that Mr Ahmadinejad has diverted resources to wasteful projects and replaced competent administrators with ideologues. Mr Ahmadinejad’s tireless speechmaking, religious fervour and nationalism still inspire many poor Iranians. But within the establishment, which is to say among the educated class elevated politically by the revolution, doubts have spread as to whether the president’s hardline populism could lead to a dangerous polarisation. With a combination of business interests and some senior conservatives increasingly ranged against him, the president may feel forced to rely on more repressive tactics.

Source: Economist