[Mb-civic] FW: Several articles of interest

[Golsorkhi]

------ Forwarded Message
From: Samii Shahla <shahla at thesamiis.com>
Date: Mon, 27 Feb 2006 12:03:52 -0500
Subject: Several articles of interest



Begin forwarded message:
> Iran determined to acquire nuclear bomb know-how
> 
> Feb 27, 2006
> http://www.iranian.ws/iran_news/publish/article_13612.shtml
> <http://www.iranian.ws/iran_news/publish/article_13612.shtml>   
> Iran is determined to acquire nuclear know-how based on diplomatic norms and
> the nation's will, mullahs' envoy said on Saturday.
> 
> Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister for Europe and American Affairs, Saeed Jalili,
> currently in Switzerland at the invitation of Swiss officials, met with
> chairman of of Switzerland's Parliamentary Foreign Policy Commission.
> 
> He pointed to Iran's confidence-building measures, saying, "Unfortunately, all
> these measures have been ignored."
> Molotovs at Embassy
> 
> February 27, 2006
> Agence France-Presse
> Hong Kong Standard
> 
> link to original article
> <http://www.thestandard.com.hk/news_detail.asp?we_cat=6&art_id=12940&sid=68387
> 77&con_type=1&d_str=20060227>
> 
> The British embassy in Teheran was attacked with gasoline bombs and rocks as
> hundreds of Iranian militiamen protested over the bombing of one of Shiite
> Islam's holiest shrines in Iraq. Some 700 protesters, mainly from the student
> wing of the official Basij militia, scuffled with anti-riot police after
> lobbing Molotov cocktails and rocks at the walls and gate of the already
> battered city-center compound.
> 
> They chanted slogans including "Death to Britain," "Shut down the spy den!"
> "Expel the British ambassador" and "Bring down the flag."
> 
> The US flag was also torched, as were the flags of several European nations.
> Some 200 police quickly extinguished any flames on the walls of the mission
> before dispersing the rally.
> 
> The British embassy is a frequent target of protests by regime supporters.
> Iran's arch-enemy, the United States, has no embassy inIran, leaving the
> British to bear the brunt of anti-Western sentiment.
> 
> Iran marchers vow to kill Blair, hurl bombs at embassy
>  
> Tehran, Iran, Feb. 26 ­ Hard-line Islamists staged two demonstrations outside
> the British embassy in Tehran on Sunday, hurled stones and petrol bombs at the
> compound and set fire to British, American, Israeli and Danish flags, as they
> accused London of being behind the bombing of a revered Shiite Muslim shrine
> in the Iraqi city of Samarra.
> 
> ³By the blood of our martyrs, we will kill you, Blair², the radical Islamists
> chanted, as they trampled on an effigy of British Prime Minister Tony Blair. A
> similar slogan was chanted against U.S. President George W. Bush.
> 
> The government-owned news agency, Fars, put the number of protesters at 2,000
> and said they were all university students. Eye-witnesses said there were
> about 500 demonstrators in the first rally and had the appearance of belonging
> to Ansar-e Hezbollah, a government-organised group of radical Islamists who
> are used for attacks on dissident rallies.
> The second demonstration was larger, but many in the crowd had been seen in
> the earlier protest.
> 
> Marchers chanted, ³Death to America², ³Death to Zionists², and ³Death to
> Britain², and hurled stones at the embassy compound in downtown Tehran.
> 
> The British embassy has been the target of numerous violent demonstrations,
> attempted seizures, and even drive-by shootings by radical Islamists in recent
> months.
> 
> The marchers demanded the closure of the embassy and the expulsion of the
> British ambassador from Iran. Several protesters who had thrown petrol bombs
> at the embassy were briefly held by the police, Fars news agency reported.
> 
> A mob leader shouted through a megaphone that the marchers would do everything
> in their power to harm Western political and economic interests in Iran.
> 
> ³The agents of Global Arrogance should know their security and political and
> economic interests will be in danger², he shouted.
> 
> ³In particular, the ambassador of this corrupt embassy will not be safe in our
> streets², he added.
> Today¹s demonstration follows several days of escalating attacks on the
> British government by Iran¹s hard-line press. Kayhan,Iran¹s largest daily with
> close ties to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has been calling on the
> government to retake possession of Bagh-e Gholhak, a sprawling, leafy compound
> north of Tehran that was once the summer residence of British ambassadors to
> Tehran. The land was donated to the British embassy by Nasseroddin Shah, a
> nineteenth century monarch from the Qajar dynasty.
> 
> Earlier this month, Kayhan published a letter from Revolutionary Guards
> General Mir-Faisal Bagherzadeh to the country¹s Chief State Prosecutor, in
> which the General demanded, in the name of the Revolutionary Guards¹
> Foundation for Preservation of the Values of Sacred Defence, that the Gholhak
> compound be taken away from the British.
> 
> ³In view of the fact that after the dissolution of the Qajar dynasty, the
> contract by which the land was donated to Britain became null and void, the
> foundation urges the State Prosecutor to take steps to cut the hands of the
> usurping British government from this land on the basis of Islamic and legal
> standards², the general, a member of the IRGC high command, wrote.
> 
> Iran¹s Supreme Leader Khamenei and hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
> have both accused ³the occupiers of Iraq and the Zionists² of carrying out the
> attack on the Shiite shrine in Samarra.
> 
> Analysts saw the escalating attacks on the British government by the Iranian
> theocracy as Tehran¹s bid to press London to distance itself from the United
> States on Iran¹s nuclear program.
> 
> ³The Supreme Leader and his entourage see the British as the key link in the
> united Western position on Iran¹s nuclear program², said Ahmad Hashemi, a
> university professor and political analyst. ³They feel that if they force
> London into making concessions, Western unanimity on Iran¹s nuclear file will
> evaporate².
> 
> In recent weeks, Islamist ³students² have attacked European embassies in
> Tehran in response to newspaper cartoons that first appeared in Denmark,
> depicting the Prophet Mohammad. Independent analysts in Tehran have noted that
> with security being as tight as it is in the Iranian capital, such attacks
> could not have been carried out without official connivance.
>  
> Iran-inspired Muslim revival worries West ­ general
>  
> Tehran, Iran, Feb. 25 ­ A senior commander of Iran¹s Islamic Revolutionary
> Guards Corps (IRGC) said that the West was worried by the rise of Islamic
> militancy around the world that has been inspired by Iran and that the
> confrontation between the Muslim world and the West was now at an
> ³epoch-making stage², Iran¹s government-owned press reported on Sunday.
> 
> Speaking at a naval parade in Tehran, Brigadier General Yadollah Javani,
> director of the IRGC political bureau, said that the West was using terrorism
> and Iran¹s acquisition of nuclear technology as pretexts in its confrontation
> with the Muslim world.
> 
> ³The victory of Hamas and the global reaction to the insult against the holy
> visage of the Prophet showed the West how strong the Muslim reawakening is.
> This has frightened world powers², Javani said.
> 
> Javani said the West¹s strategy was to force Tehran to beat the retreat with
> regard to its nuclear program. He added, however, thatTehran had the necessary
> capacity to withstand such global pressure.
> 
> ³Right now, American analysts are saying that America¹s biggest problem is
> that Iran is not paying any attention to their threats. They cannot do
> anything in the face of our resistance², he said.
> 
> ³By influencing the world opinion, they are trying to create the circumstances
> for Iran to retreat on the nuclear issue, but the reality is that the will of
> the Islamic Republic will prevail over these pressures².
>  
> Iran, Iraq Hamas make a crisis year
>  
> Morton Kondracke
> Columnist
> 2/27/06
>  
> http://www.joplinglobe.com/story.php?story_id=231091&c=96
> <http://www.joplinglobe.com/story.php?story_id=231091&c=96>
>  
> It¹s a good thing that President Bush has a small-bore domestic agenda this
> year ‹ because the stakes could not be higher in theMiddle East.
> This is the year when his policy in Iraq either succeeds or fails, with
> Republican control of Congress and, possibly, the prospect of impeachment
> hanging on the outcome.
> This is the year when Iran either is stopped from developing nuclear weapons
> or succeeds in demonstrating that the world community, led by the United
> States, is utterly feckless.
> And it¹s the year when a terrorist group, Hamas, takes over control of the
> Palestinian Authority and the world, again led by theUnited States, decides
> whether to force the new regime toward peace or let it consolidate and prepare
> for war. 
> The good news, perhaps, is that Bush has changed foreign policies in his
> second term and is now less isolated from other countries. The danger is that
> multilateral diplomacy will bog down and let enemies like Iran carry the day.
> It¹s too much to say that Iran has replaced Iraq as the central crisis point
> for the administration, but it has achieved almost equal status.
> That¹s because Iran¹s extremist government is not only defying the world
> community in developing nuclear weapons, but is highly influential in Iraq, is
> allied with Hamas and will try to undermine whatever economic pressure the
> United States tries to bring to force accommodation with Israel.
> Iran¹s radical Islamist president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, traveled to Syria in
> January and not only sealed an alliance with that terrorist-aiding regime, but
> also met with leaders of Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for
> the Liberation of Palestine.
> There¹s no way to know whether worldwide rioting over European cartoons
> depicting the Prophet Mohammed emerged from those meetings, but there¹s little
> doubt that Iran and Syria encouraged them. The worst outbreaks occurred in
> countries where their influence and the terrorist apparatus are strongest:
> Iran, Lebanon, Syria, Afghanistan, Sudan and Pakistan.
> If Iran develops nuclear weapons with radical Islamists at the helm, there is
> every danger that it will actually use them against Israel ‹ a country that
> Ahmadinejad has said should be wiped off the face of the earth ‹ or employ
> them to intimidate neighbors and deter retaliation for terrorist activities or
> aggression, or hand them off to a terrorist group. It¹s the world¹s most dire
> nightmare. 
> The Bush administration is operating on the assumption that Iran is still
> ³years² away from having deliverable nuclear weapons, although International
> Atomic Energy Agency Director Mohammed El-Baradei said it would be ³months²
> once Iran begins enriching uranium.
> Bush clearly has adopted a different foreign policy approach in dealing with
> Iran from the one that led to the Iraq war ‹ from one dominated by
> ³neo-conservatives² to one led by ³neo-realists,² as the Wall Street Journal
> dubbed them. 
> With Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in the lead, the administration is
> pursuing multilateral diplomacy, not unilateral action, in its efforts to
> contain Iran. 
> Remarkably, Rice earlier this month got Russia and China to join the United
> States and Europe in referring Iran to the United Nations Security Council ‹
> the first step toward imposing sanctions on Iran if it persists in violating
> the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
> After years of being battered by Democrats for being ³unilateralist² and
> ³arrogant² toward allies, the administration got hit by Sen. Hillary Rodham
> Clinton, D-N.Y., for ³outsourcing² Iran diplomacy. Clinton obviously is
> running for president in 2008 by trying to move to the right of the Bush
> administration and others in her party.
> The administration seems to believe that diplomacy can bring Iran to heel,
> either through the threat of sanctions or sanctions themselves. It¹s banking
> on Iran¹s economic dependency on foreign investment and gasoline imports, its
> reluctance to be internationally isolated ‹ and the world¹s willingness to
> actually get tough on Iran.
> If diplomacy fails, the administration will be forced to decide whether to use
> military force against Iran¹s nuclear facilities or allowIsrael to use
> U.S.-supplied F-16s and bunker-buster bombs to do so. The consequences could
> be $100-a-barrel oil, rampant terrorism and a demand from Iraq¹s
> Shiite-dominated government that U.S. troops leave the country.
> Democratic critics charge that because U.S. forces are tied down in Iraq, they
> can¹t credibly threaten Iran. But it¹s also plausible that Bush¹s invasion of
> Iraq demonstrates U.S. willingness to use force when it has to.
> Diplomacy would seem to be necessary in Iran¹s case to build a case for
> military action, because Iran has not been subject to the decade of sanctions
> that were applied to Iraq prior to the 2003 invasion.
> In the meantime, Iraq still does not have a government, insurgents are
> crippling reconstruction and incidents of violence seem to be rising. White
> House officials acknowledge that developments in Iraq dominate the public¹s
> attitude toward Bush, creating gloom even about a robust economy.
> Bush has no large domestic initiatives on tap for this year such as Social
> Security reform. That¹s good. This year, his presidency is riding on foreign
> policy.
> 
> Morton Kondracke is executive editor of Roll Call, the newspaper of Capitol
> Hill.
>  
> Iran wants to turn Hamas into Hizbullah
>  
> Herb Keinon, THE JERUSALEM POST
> February 26, 2006
> http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1139395494147&pagename=JPost%2FJPAr
> ticle%2FShowFull 
> <http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1139395494147&pagename=JPost%2FJPA
> rticle%2FShowFull>
> Iran wants the same control over Hamas it has over Hizbullah, an organization
> that is nothing less than a "delivery system" for Iranian weapons, Henry A.
> Crumpton, the State Department's counterterrorism coordinator, told the
> Jerusalem Post.
> Crumpton, who last week held a joint counter-terror dialogue with Israel, said
> that while most pundits think in terms of missiles when talking about Iranian
> delivery systems, Hizbullah - which he said is "just an extension of the
> Iranian government" - must be thought of in these terms as well. (The full
> text of the interview will appear in Tuesday's Jerusalem Post.)
> "You combine the Iranian nuclear weapons program with Hizbullah, and that is a
> pretty nasty mixture," he said.
> Crumpton said that while Iran does not yet have that kind of control over
> Hamas, "it is clearly an objective. The Iranians would love to have another
> proxy like that."
> Asked what will keep Hamas from gaining such control, Crumpton said, "I hope
> the Palestinian people; and I hope the leadership of Hamas, if they are going
> to be responsible or courageous enough."
> Crumtpon, a 20-year CIA veteran and highly respected former spy master, has
> been credited with coming up with the US strategy after the September 11, 2001
> terrorist attacks to use elite intelligence and military officers together
> with elements of Afghani society to oust the Taliban.
> Faint echoes of a partnership strategy can be heard when he talks about the
> how the international community and US should be acting vis- -vis Hamas.
> While the two situations are markedly different - primarily because while the
> Taliban was foisted on the Afghans, the Palestinians voted for Hamas
> themselves - Crumpton said the similarity is that "Israel and the US cannot
> impose our will, force our will on the Palestinian people, they have to be a
> part of this."
> The soft spoken Crumpton "starred" in the US's National Commission report on
> 9/11 as the person known simply as "Henry" who pressed the CIA to do more in
> Afghanistan to hunt down Osama bin Laden before the attacks in the US, but who
> had two of his key proposals rejected.
> He also figured prominently in Bob Woodward's book on the war in Afghanistan,
> Bush at War, this time as the CIA operative "Hank" who - among other things -
> understood the importance of money and aid in gaining the support of Afghan
> warlords.
> "This is not about us versus them," Crumpton said about Hamas and the PA. "It
> is about the Palestinian people working with foreign partners -the US, Europe
> and Israel - to persuade the new Hamas government to be responsible, or if
> not, then eventually get a new government in there."
> While he did not say that the goal was to economically destabilize the PA so
> that the population would turn on Hamas, he did say the US was not interested
> in giving Hamas a "free ride."
> "This is not about destabilizing the PA, it is about providing humanitarian
> assistance to the Palestinian people while not supporting Hamas, and giving
> the Hamas the political opportunity to step forward and become responsible
> leaders," Crumpton said.
> He was not, however, starry eyed about the prospects of Hamas rising to the
> occasion by recognizing Israel, accepting previous agreement with it, and
> renouncing terrorism.
> "I think it will be tough," he said. "I think that they will have to make some
> bold decisions, and fundamentally change the way they look at Israel and the
> world. It won't be easy for them; I'm not kidding myself about this. To a
> large degree violence is part of their identity, it defines who they are. But
> change is not impossible."
> Things are not being made any easier, he said, by the fact that countries such
> as Russia and Turkey are relating to Hamas as a legitimate actor, "when they
> are clearly not. It is a problem. We have communicated this. We have told the
> Russia and others that this is not helpful."



------ End of Forwarded Message

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.islandlists.com/pipermail/mb-civic/attachments/20060227/9aa95cbe/attachment-0001.htm 
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 1884 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://www.islandlists.com/pipermail/mb-civic/attachments/20060227/9aa95cbe/attachment-0001.jpeg