B a h r a m e r a d: Islamic Republic of Iran Campaign of Terror Against the Opposition

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Islamic Republic of Iran Campaign of Terror Against the Opposition : February 20, 2008 Global Politician Ghazal Omid

The Iranian regime celebrated its 29th anniversary in January 2008 for a two week period called Fajar or Victory. No doubt the revolution has been a victorious event for the IRI government but it is an entirely different story for the Iranian people.For three decades, the Iranian regime has repeatedly broken international laws, the 1979 US hostage crisis for example. Ahmadinejad denies the Holocaust and the right of the state of Israel to exist. However, nothing IRI has done to other countries is remotely comparable to the pain caused the citizens of Iran. For millions of self-exiled or politically displaced Iranians outside Iran, the interminable duration of the IRI is agony. Equally unbearable to watch is the slandering of the great Iranian nation in the name of Islam. Every average Iranian longs for a better life, or death, to escape the IRI.This regime has done nothing positive in the past three decades and nothing is more sickening than recent public Hamas style executions by masked men of Sepah Passdarn, the regime’s special army.

Attack Iran, With Words
For those who believe — as I do — that the clerics who rule Iran must never have an arsenal of nuclear weapons, the United States’ course of action ought to be clear: The Bush administration should advocate direct, unconditional talks between Washington and Tehran. Strategically, politically and morally, such meetings will help us think more clearly. Foreign-policy hawks ought to see such discussions as essential preparation for possible military strikes against clerical Iran’s nuclear facilities. more By The New York Times

Israel and Iran, After the NIE“Iran is today the world’s leading state-sponsor of terror,” declared President George W. Bush in a speech given in Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates, during his January trip to the Middle East. “Iran's actions threaten the security of nations everywhere. So the United States is strengthening our long-standing security commitments with our friends in the Gulf—and rallying friends around the world to confront this danger before it is too late.” more By Scoop

Ahmadinejad In New Attack On "Savage Animal" Israel
TEHRAN -- Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Wednesday launched a new strongly-worded attack against Israel, describing the Jewish state as a "dirty microbe" and a "savage animal". "World powers have created a black and dirty microbe named the Zionist regime and have unleashed it like a savage animal on the nations of the region," he told a rally in the southern city of Bandar Abbas broadcast on state television. more By AFP

Iran's Parliamentary Elections: Assured Victory for the Supreme Leader
As Iran's March 14 parliamentary elections approach, the prospects for the reformist / technocratic coalition are predictably bleak. Yet, President Mahmoud Ahmadinezhad is expected to lose ground as well. Although his conservative critics are likely to pick up a significant number of seats, the big winner will be Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, whose role as arbiter and decisionmaker will be reinforced even more. more By The Washington Institute for Near East Policy

Mr. President, Don't Forget IranDear Mr. President: A few months ago, it became possible to hear members and supporters of your administration going around Washington and saying that the question of a nuclear-armed Iran "would not be left to the next administration." As a line of the day, this had the advantage of sounding both determined and slightly mysterious, as if to commit both to everything and to nothing in particular. more By The Wall Street Journal

Beware of Iran's trap
LONDON -- The issue of Iran and the threat that it poses has been argued in public by two major groups. On the one hand we have had the anti-war lobby, with the neo-cons embracing the other extreme. These arguments have gone back and forth over whether Iran has a nuclear capability, whether it is carrying out terrorist actions and whether the human-rights abuses carried out in Iran should be of concern to us in the West. more By United Press International

Brains Drained
U.S. policy towards Iran’s rockets, reactors, and Russia. more By National Review Online

Iran Sentences Journalist to Death on Terrorism Charge
TEHRAN, Iran -- Iran said Tuesday that it had sentenced an education activist and journalist to death for his alleged involvement in terrorism.

France Backs Sanctions On Iran: Kouchner
France will back international sanctions against Iran if it does not halt its programme of uranium enrichment. "We are united for sanctions on Iran, but we support the start of discussions," Kouchner said after talks with Israeli President Shimon Peres. Israel and Western nations led by the US accuse Iran of seeking to develop the atomic bomb, a charge which Tehran rejects, insisting that its nuclear activities are peaceful

The Increasing Encirclement Of Iran
In his testimony McConnell emphasizes Iranian attempts to enrich uranium as well as Iran's capacity to fire long-range weapons. The combination of these two are now being presented at the highest levels of power as the central argument for branding Iran as a danger to world peace. As if the National Intelligence Estimate never even existed.

Iran's vetting body reinstates candidates
Feb 19 2008 - An Iranian hardline vetting body has reinstated another 250 candidates who had been barred from running for the country's March parliament election, the official IRNA news agency reported

Five killed in Baghdad rocket barrage : 02-18-2008, BAGHDAD (AFP)

The deaths and injuries of the civilians occurred when Katyusha rockets crashed into a workers' housing complex within the perimeter of the airport, residents said. They said women and children were among the dead and injured. Many houses were damaged. "Eight Iraqis, including six children, were taken to a coalition force medical clinic for treatment," the US military said in a statement. It said rockets also struck areas of Camp Victory US military base adjoining the airport. Six suspects were arrested in the immediate aftermath of the attack, the military said.
"Coalition and Iraq security force quick reaction teams swept the area and captured several insurgents at the scene of the rocket launch," the statement said. "Six suspects were taken into custody for questioning and one unexploded rocket was recovered." Mortar and rocket attacks are usually blamed by the US military on Iranian-backed Shiite militias it terms "special groups." US military spokesman Real Admiral Gregory Smith told reporters on Sunday that "special groups" were increasingly using stocks from hidden caches to target US and Iraqi forces. "What we're seeing is an increase in the use of weapons by Iranian-backed special groups," he said. The military uses the term special groups to describe what it says are "rogue elements" in the Mahdi Army militia of radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr who are ignoring his ceasefire order given almost six months ago and which expires at the end of February.

US military engineers move into place concrete barriers as they construct a fortified combat outpost in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, on February 17. A barrage of rockets slammed into Baghdad's international airport and an adjoining US military base Monday, killing five civilians and wounding 16, including two US soldiers, officials and witnesses said. (AFP/File)
A barrage of rockets slammed into Baghdad's international airport and an adjoining US military base Monday, killing five civilians and wounding 16, including two US soldiers, officials and witnesses said.

'Rogue' leader held in swoop
BAGHDAD: US troops yesterday captured a breakaway Shi'ite militia leader suspected of being a powerful criminal boss and providing Iranian weapons to fighters in western Baghdad, the military said. The arrest occurred a day after a US military spokesman said that Iraqi and US forces had captured 212 weapons caches around the country, with growing evidence of an Iranian link. "This is a significant capture of a top 'special groups' leader," said a military spokesman. "Special groups" is a term the US uses to describe Iranian-backed Shi'ite militias it says have broken with anti-US cleric Moqtada Al Sadr and refused to follow his cease-fire order.
The military said that intelligence reports led troops to the suspect, who was not identified, and he and another suspect were arrested without incident. The main suspect was reportedly in charge of all Shi'ite militia fighters in western Baghdad. The military said the suspect was responsible for providing weapons to militia members, including armour-piercing bombs known as explosively formed penetrators, which US officials say come from Iran. Tehran denies the allegations. The man also allegedly selected fighters for paramilitary training and was an associate of other senior criminal leaders involved in attacks on US and Iraqi security forces. Meanwhile two former Iraqi health ministry officials Hakim Al Zamili and Brigadier General Hamid Al Shammari went on trial yesterday over accusations that they allowed Shi'ite death squads to use ambulances and hospitals to carry out kidnappings and killings. Meanwhile three people were killed and 15 wounded when a barrage of mortars landed near Baghdad's international airport yesterday, the Iraqi military said. It was one of the deadliest mortar bomb attacks on a residential area in months. Spokesman for the military said the bombs hit an area in the mainly Sunni Khadhra district to the west of the airport. Officials said five suspects were arrested.