A shortened version of this piece is now available at another website. But here, with the permission of the authors, is a Jihad Watch exclusive: the full story of tomorrow's demonstrations and the latest on the extraordinary democracy movements that are making the Iranian mullahs nervous. "All eyes on Iran please" by Banafsheh Zand-Bonazzi & Elio Bonazzi:
As July 8th approaches, Iranians everywhere prepare to display their hatred for the un-elected Mullahs dominating Iran. These demonstrations have become a sort of national duty for all Iranians; this year marks the 5th anniversary of the brutal University Student dorm massacres of 1999. That was the year that Khatami showed his true colors by siding with the Supreme Leader, abandoning the promised reforms and the people of Iran who voted for him. What started out as a reaction to the utter brutality of the fossilized establishment by young Iranian students, has turned into a milestone that the world should acknowledge and encourage.Iranians inside Iran take to the streets for weeks every June and July, in order to defeat the fiendish forces that now also threaten the rest of the world; however not one western politico, speaking of freedom, human rights and democracy is willing to embrace these genuine, tireless and fearless movements in order to promote or even address what Iranians are now doing, literally for the safety of the world!
On June 17th, Hassan Abassi, head of the Revolutionary Guards' Center for Doctrinaire Affairs of National Security Outside Iran, stated that: "We [Islamic Republic of Iran] have a strategy drawn up for the destruction of the Anglo-Saxon civilization." However the West (and particularly the E.U.) continues depending on the dangerously under-qualified foreign policy of an apprehensive character such as Jack Straw, the current British Foreign Secretary who was Home Secretary in the Labour government of 1997-2001 and expected to become Transport Secretary after the 2001 UK general election. He was surprisingly appointed Foreign Secretary and was almost immediately confronted by the September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attack, having little or no experience in dealing with a menace of such magnitude. As the architect of the policy of dialogue and engagement with a state (Iran) that sponsors terrorism, Jack Straw fails to realize that in the eyes of the Mullahs, dialogue, engagement and forgiveness is a sign of weakness. In spite of threats such as Abbassi's however, Mr. Straw chose yet again to employ soft diplomacy in handling the recent capture of British navy vessels from the Shat-al-Arab waterways by Iranian military. After the parading of the blindfolded British sailors on Iranian TV and the Mullah's refusal to promptly return the naval equipment back to Britain, Jack Straw persistently refused to honor the wishes of several Tory and Liberal Democrat MPs who vociferously insisted that the Mullahs apologize or deal with the consequences.
Iranians have acted responsibly as citizens of the global village, in passing on 25 years worth of experiences with the Islamist cancer and their roving apparatchiks. This year again people in cities, towns and villages all over Iran will rise and in solidarity with them, Iranians outside Iran have organized demonstrations in 24 cities around the world and counting. Now if the west is completely unwilling to listen to facts and figures stated over and over again by Iranians, warning them of the terror that lurks in the heart of the Mullahs, it will have been no one's fault but that of the western powers themselves.
The Student Movement Coordination Committee for Democracy in Iran has received reports from inside Iran, stating that the Mullah regime, spearheaded by the 3 ruling clerics, Khamenei, Rafsanjani & Khatami has officially banned any gathering or demonstration. Plans for mobilizing thousands more troops and foreign mercenaries in order to quash any popular action or uprising have been in the works for months now. The governors of Esfahan and various other cities have declared their firm intention to oppose any and all action taken to ignite widespread demonstrations.
Reports from sources within the regime's revolutionary guards and ministry of information [who keep their jobs just so they can act as informants for freedom fighters], are stating that specific orders have been given to use lethal force against anyone opposing the Islamic State's directives. Hundreds of checkpoints have been created in every city and militiamen are ordered to search cars or arrest "suspicious-looking" residents under various charges in order to increase the popular fear. Also militiamen who pour into people's homes by force are confiscating Satellite dishes and receivers around the country. Rumor's of a deal made by the regime with the Castro's government in order to jam, once again, radio and TV programming by opposition or Iranian services broadcast from abroad into Iran is running rampant. Kamal Kharazi, IRI foreign minister who spent last week in Cuba was assigned to deliver this request to the Cuban authorities that organized that same level of interference during last year's June/July demonstrations. This favor is of course repaid by promises of big economic incentives helping Castro's regime.
The parallax error is the incorrect representation of a situation due to not perceiving it from a straightforward and objective angle. Western societies have been built on the concept of broad-mindedness and tolerance and this is an approach that simply cannot be applied to the Iranian Mullahs' way of thinking. Therefore, at some point the Western world must mend its ways, put things in perspective and act with self-preserving determination.
Frankly, I hold little hope for Iran--even if I wish her well. The alternative to the Qom Deadheads seems to be groups like the Mujaheddin-e-Khalq, who follow a doubly unholy mix of Marxism and Islam. Also, the remnants of the Tudeh will probably try to stage a comeback.
Oh Persians,
how bad do you want to be free?
Freedom is not easily won
but when one is ready
it will come.
With a brave heart,
with great determination,
and unceasing desire,
you will light the fire
that will burn your bindings to ashes,
and from ashes to ashes, dust to dust,
follow your heart as you must,
and you will see,
you will be Free.
You will join the rest of humanity.
Iran is sending hundreds of jihadists to Iraq in an attempt to destroy another country. Yet there is no pressure from the American government on Iran and no help being sent to the Iranian rebels.
Muqtada al-Sadr should have been captured or killed, instead the US wants to negotiate with him. A vicious, murdering, anti-American holyman with probable ties to the Iranian mullahs gets offers of negotiation while the brutally oppressed Iranians are snubbed.
On the eve of 9-11 there was one Muslim country where candlelight vigils were held to mourn for the Americans that died in the Towers - that country was Iran. Defying the authorities these people risked beatings and imprisonment to demonstrate their support for us. We owe them, and justice requires that we pay our debt NOW.
Demand from your congressmen that (1) the US prevent the jamming of Iranian broadcasts and provide offshore relaying of these programs to Iran (2) provide secure satellite phones to the rebels so that they can communicate with each other safely and (3) help them get tapes in and out of Iran so that the mullahs cannot act in secret.
For less than the cost of one day of military expenses in Iraq we can provide the Iranians with technical help to bring down the mullahs. But more important, we can provide them with the knowledge that we know how they suffer and that they have at least one friend in the outside world. Three years ago they risked life and limb to let us know that. It requires far less from us to return the favor.
Oh Persia, we all want your freedom.You need something more than words to fight these wicked, fanatical old men who grind their heel on your beautiful country and people.We will demonstrate and inform the world too.But stay careful and alive so you will see FREEDOM.Remember these mad Mullahs are old while you are young and they can't keep you enslaved forever.As for Jack Straw he is aptly named and will go out with Blair at the next election, God willing.
If the 'Revolutionary' Guards move to attack the protestors we should intervene. Without these goons, there will be a snap revolution as quick and hopefully as bloodless as the collapse of the Shah.
Forget the election cycle. Regime change now!
Freedom is not Free!!
In Americas history many a good people have died to Fight for Freedom and if the Iranis want Freedom they will have to Fight for it?
They fought to have this islam rule years ago and now they have it.
If you don't like you Bed change it!!!
Part of the American Tribe
God Bless the USA and her Fighting Forces and All who Fight with her give them Strength and Courage to stay the course to Freedom Amen
When I was in Iran more than thirty years ago, there was a veneer of Westernization on the main streets of its biggest cities, but three or four blocks away from the paved, lit road, and virtually everywhere else - where the masses dwell in poverty and oppression - it was like travelling to an earlier era - and not a nicer one. (But not so far the supreme filth and violence of Pakistan!)
The capital, Tehran, home to more than five million people nowadays, is built in the desert, on the plain inside and along the inner slopes of a horseshoe-shape of mountains: the poor mass lives packed in ramshackle slums on the flat space below, the rich chiefly had their parks, palaces, mansions and villas on the higher ground - cooler in the baking heat of Summer.
All publications were regulated by the Shah, wielding his SAVAK, an extensive network of secret police and informers. Every available item in print had to’ve been approved, city maps included. These showed the upper-echelon suburbs in fine detail, but totally omitted the rest. Curious, I was told by a contact there that “those who live there don’t need maps, they know their way around”, asking why would anyone want to go there anyhow.
However, who imagined then that the Shah would be overthrown by a Shi’ite Theocracy, of all things? In spite of SAVAK, there had been Communist activity in Iran for years - mainly the Moscow-line Tudeh Party, though there was a pro-Peking faction as well and several splinters.
The Tudeh survived to participate in the 1979 Revolution, but then was soon largely liquidated by the Ayatollahs. During the Cold War, had there been a COMMUNIST Revolution in Iran, as had been long feared, the USA would’ve been much more disposed to intervene - as it did in 1953 against the Socialist government of Mohamed Mossadeg - aware of the links between much of the Iranian Left and the Kremlin. (Though, with Jimmy Carter in the White House….)
(Like the “sudden” success of the Communists in China in 1949, the 1950 offensive on South Korea by the North and the subsequent entry of Red Chinese “volunteers” into the conflict, the toppling of the Shah was a tremendous intelligence failure for the CIA, followed by many years of American policy failures vis-à-vis Iran. The bid which was made to rescue the hostages from Tehran was tragically abortive; when Ronald Reagan’s “boys in the basement” were transferring items to Iran - strategically, to protract the Iran-Iraq War - it turned into a debacle.)
Iran’s been on America’s “unfinished business list” since 1979, no wonder it was included in Mr Bush’s “Axis of Evil”! Today, the Ayatollahs are supporting international terrorism and they’re assembling nuclear weapons, fancying that because they’ve been getting away with their bad behaviour for almost a quarter of a century, fully cost-free, things’ll continue to be so forever.
They could be in for a surprise. The question’s rudimentary: what comes first, régime-change - for the better - in Iran, or the construction of operable nukes for the Grand Council of Islamic Guidance? Their initial warhead is assessed to be ready within 12 months.
A “nuclear war-fighting capability”, however, calls for more than a lone device, so Tehran’s built itself (with assistance from Russia, France and nations of the EU, China and Pakistan) the capacity to produce three to six more A-bombs annually.
So, how many payloads constitute a “war-fighting ability” for Iran? Not less than a dozen, and to be on the safe side, at least a score. Here’s the calculus: from today, to make twelve will take it between three and five years and for twenty, five to eight years.
The clock’s ticking. Lacking a crystal ball to foresee the outcome of these demonstrations, one can but hope that they lead to the prompt ouster of the Ayatollahs, though my intuition points to them being summarily crushed by the reactionaries, if they draw big crowds at all. The result of such repression’s unpredictable - it could ignite a Revolution or it could not, and even if it does, it need not halt the work of the atomic armaments industry, should it not succeed IN TIME.
Accordingly, alternate means of shutting it down ought to be found, before it grows too late.
I personally believe that the Israelis are all over this, and that no matter what is happening in Iran internally, they won't let the "nuclear option" emerge, but will act decisively to eradicate that threat. Indeed, their very survival depends on it. World opinion will not matter.