Mortar 'Made in Iran' Killed British Soldier : Stewart Payne

A British soldier was killed by insurgents in Iraq by a mortar bomb manufactured in Iran, an inquest was told yesterday. Cpl Matthew Cornish, 29, of 1Bn The Light Infantry, died during an attack on a coalition base in Basra last August. The revelation that an Iranian bomb had been used in the attack comes two days after Lt Col Patrick Sanders, who planned the recent withdrawal of British troops from Basra Palace, said UK forces were fighting "a proxy war" with Iran. Speaking after the inquest, Cpl Cornish's father Robin said: "I do not think there is any doubt that Iranians are involved. "It is also just as likely that the insurgent who fired the mortar was not from Iraq either." A fragment from the high-velocity 60mm mortar round hit his son, a married father of two from Otley, West Yorks, in the head. Andrew Walker, the assistant deputy coroner for Oxfordshire, gave the cause of death as shrapnel wounds to the head and recorded a verdict of unlawful killing. He described the incident as a terrorist act. As the war had officially ended, Cpl Cornish's death is being treated as murder by military police. Warrant officer Steven Gelston, an ammunition expert with the Royal Logistics Corps, told the hearing that scientific analysis of the mortar's tailfin had proved "beyond doubt that it originated inside Iran". Cpl Cornish had just returned from routine patrol when the former state buildings used as a military base came under attack. He was dragged to an accommodation block where he was treated by medics. He was evacuated by helicopter to a field hospital where he died three hours later. The coroner was told that mortar attacks on the base were a regular occurrence. Capt Andrew Child, second in command of the 1Bn The Light Infantry, said they came from buildings surrounding the base. "People can walk out of a house, fire, and walk back inside again and we would not know where they had come from," he told the court. Mr Cornish said he did not hold anyone responsible for his son's death. "My son was a soldier in the Army and died as a soldier in the British Army," he said. He added that he felt for the families of insurgents killed in the conflict. "Matthew told me he had shot insurgents and was very affected by it," he said. "This is a war on terror. The people there (in Iraq) are very religious, very committed to what they believe, and although I hate it and oppose it, you have to accept that we in the West are imposing our standards on their countries." Cpl Cornish leaves behind his wife Abby, daughter Libby and son Ethan.

Khamenei is Right to Worry : Al-Hayat : Elias Harfouche
Ali Khamenei, Supreme Leader of the Iranian Revolution, has announced that the commentary on Rafsanjani's narrow victory and appointment as head of the Assembly of Experts is "misguided." He also claims it to be exploiting "natural differences" among Iran's leadership. Two inferences may be made from these statements: Firstly, that Khamenei follows (or has others do so for him) the commentary of the foreign press as the sole source of insight into what is happening in his own country, given the approach taken by Ahmadinejad's government towards any form of dissent in Iran. Second, that Khamanei does not deny the possibility of differences in opinion, and considers such differences as normal and acceptable. Neither explanation, however, has dispelled Khamenei's anxieties over the victory of his 'opponent.' For he has warned the Iranian press against "antagonistic" explanations of Rafsanjani's win, adding that the Assembly of Experts should not become an arena for internal disputes, given its enormous responsibilities. Khamenei is right to worry, for he can no longer ignore the position Rafsanjani now occupies in the Iranian power structure. He is now head of the Assembly of Experts in addition to being head of the assembly of Discerning the State Interest [is there a formal term for this?] He has also announced his intention to have the Assembly of Experts play a more active role in overseeing state affairs - and his belief that it has the constitutional right to do so. This implies that the policies of Khamenei and Ahmadinejad will be subject to the scrutiny of the Assembly, whose main purpose is to oversee the head of state and to decide on his successor. Thus, the stage is set for a deep internal debate in Iran and a reconsideration of its regional aspirations and true national interest. For Rafsanjani is known for his pragmatism and his willingness to go to great lengths to help his country avoid disaster. He therefore has deep reservations about the path of isolation on which Iran has found itself due to its nuclear and regional adventures. Rafsanjani will need a foreign policy that supports his pragmatic domestic agenda. To the extent that recent Western hostility to Iran presents an existential threat to the Iranian regime and not merely an effort to resolve the nuclear dispute in a mutually beneficial manner, Iran's policy of aggression may continue. The ethos of the current regime - through which it has also pursued its internal policy of repression - is that any concession to the West - be it over nuclear issues or others - would pose a threat to the Iranian Revolution itself. This was the rationale behind the vocal announcements of enrichment, at a time when experts - including the IAEA - were attributing it more to domestic political calculations than to nuclear ambitions. That is not all. For this 'enrichment' was used to block all calls for economic or social reform. This led directly to the recent dire economic situation in Iran and drove officials from the Ministers of Industry and Petroleum to the governor of the central bank to tender their resignations. It was not too long ago that we witnessed the fate of President Mohamad Khatami at the hands of a shortsighted U.S. policy towards Iran and ignorance in economic policy - the fate on which Ahmadinejad would base his battle against reformers. But Rafsanjani is not Khatami, despite their belonging to the same general camp. His relations with the bazaaris are stronger and his political acumen deeper. What would harm Rafsanjani is a continuation of America's shortsighted policy towards Iran. This would be Khamanei's only source of comfort and strength in the coming domestic showdown.

Iran: Muscle Power vs. Brain Power : Asharq Alawsat Amir Taheri

What are the duties of a true believer on the first night of his burial? How did Ayatollah Dast-Ghayb achieve martyrdom? What was the name of the lion who cried over Imam Hussein's martyred corpse in the desert of Karbala? These are some of the questions that young Iranians must answer before gaining admission to higher education. The new interview system is part of a project designed by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to "cleanse" Iranian higher education from what he regards as "the polluting influence of the Infidel". He says he wants to create "a truly Islamic university." One may wonder why the Islamic Republic, established 28 years ago, has not already done so. During the past quarter of a century an estimated 10 million Iranians, including Ahmadinejad, have graduated from the nation's 170 universities and centres of higher education. Should we regard them as products of the "satanic culture of the West"? The radical president refers to his "academic cleansing" policy as " The Second Islamic Cultural Revolution." The first "Islamic Cultural Revolution" was launched in 1980 by Khomeini who closed all centres of higher education for two years. A committee was created to "cleanse" the universities. Its members included the current "Supreme Guide" Ali Khamenehi, and former presidents Hashemi-Rafsanjani and Muhammad Khatami. Its secretary-general was one Abdul-Karim Sorush, subsequently recast as the" Martin Luther of Islam". The committee purged over 6000 university professors and lecturers, virtually destroying the Iranian academia. Dozens of academics were executed as hundreds fled into exile. The committee also expelled thousands of students on charges of monarchist or Marxist tendencies. It also censored or totally re-wrote dozens of textbooks to conform to the Khomeinist ideology. When the universities were reopened two years later, the committee tried to fill them with students and teachers sympathetic to Khomeinism. The trick was to allocate special places for members of The Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) and children of families believed to be loyal to the regime. Further, it established a black list of authors and writings that has since become longer each year, reminding one of the worst days of the Inquisition in medieval Europe. The madness of censorship, supervised by the so-called Ministry of Islamic Orientation and Culture, reached a new peak this week when a new volume of Rafsanjai's memoirs was banned! The lesson is simple: if you ban someone, someone will ban you! (I must acknowledge a personal interest: my name and all my books are on the black list!) However, more than two decades of purges and "cultural cleansing" did not prevent Iranian universities from becoming major bastions of opposition to the Khomeinist ideology. Under Khatami's presidency, Iran experienced the largest and longest student revolt in its history. Khatami crushed the revolt through the IRGC with mass arrests and the expulsion of thousands of students. Ahmadinejad launched his second "Islamic Cultural Revolution" last year by appointing a semi-literate mullah as Chancellor of Tehran University, the first time that a cleric was put in charge of the nation's oldest and largest centre of higher education. According to Ghulam-Hussein Hadad-Adel, Speaker of the Islamic Majlis, Iran's ersatz parliament, "the enemies of Islam are targeting the universities" with a view to encouraging reform. The ruling establishment is clearly nervous about what would happen at universities when the academic year begins this month. The purge ordered by Ahmadinejad started last July with the replacement of over 20 college deans. In almost every case, a bona fide academic was pushed out in favour of an IRGC member. According to reports, scores of professors and lecturers have been told that their services are no longer required. The purged teachers include individuals who had previously served as members of the Islamic Majlis or, in two cases, as ministers in pre-Ahmadinejad Cabinets. At the same time, dozens of academics have been arrested, including some returning from scientific conferences abroad. Among the latter are professors Hussein Bashiriyeh, Saeed Shahandeh and Hadi Samati. An unknown number of students have been arrested throughout the country. In Tabriz, capital of the East Azerbaijan province, all seven members of the students union were picked up and taken to an unknown destination last month. The families of two of them Goshtasp Vaseqi and Muhammad Aslani claim that they may have died under torture. In Tehran over 150 student activists have been "disappeared" in recent weeks. As part of the purge, 30 privately owned colleges have been shut and their assets seized. Thirteen others are under investigation. The moves could affect some 100,000 students whose studies will be interrupted. Serving notice that any protest on the campus will be crushed, a special force, known as the Ashura Brigade, commanded by IRGC veteran General Qassem Kargar, has been assigned the task of "ensuring a peaceful atmosphere" at centres of higher education. Ostensibly mandated to enforce the Islamic Dress Code, enacted in May 2006, armed guards are posted at all centres of higher education to prevent anti-regime demonstrations. "Cleansing" the universities through expulsions and arrests may be easy for a government prepared to use force against un-armed civilians. However, when it comes to the content of education, things are not as easy as the Tehran radicals might wish. A report prepared for Ahmadinejad claims that at least 40 per cent of the textbooks in use in Iranian universities do not conform to Khomeinist dogma. The problem for the authorities is that it has alienated the Iranian intellectual elite. No Iranian author, academic or scientist of note would be prepared to participate in the so-called "Islamic Cultural Revolution." Efforts to find somebody to prepare a cursus on Khomeini's supposed "philosophy" have provoked only derision among intellectuals approached to assume the task. After months of efforts to prepare a special course on Ahmadnejad's denial of the Holocaust, the committee charged with the task has produced nothing but a slim pamphlet that consists almost entirely of translations from Western "negationist" writers. Iran today is a society whose "muscle" power is at war against its "brain" power. Hadad-Adel says the Islamic Republic must prevent "dangerous thoughts and ideas". But, who decides what is dangerous? In fact, the central role of the university is to allow dangerous thoughts and ideas to be expressed and measured against other thoughts and ideas. The imposition of a uniform mode of thought and prefabricated ideas is better suited to a concentration camp than a university campus. The first "Islamic Cultural Revolution" failed to subject generations of Iranians to mass brainwashing in the name of education. The second one will also fail. One national characteristic of Iranians is curiosity, and a taste for different and dangerous thoughts and ideas.