Week in Review

DoctorZin provides a review of this past week's [10/16-10/22] major news events regarding Iran. (The reports are listed in chronological order, not by importance)

Ahmadinejad's Administration.

• Kamal Tehrani, Rooz Online reported that Iran's government seeks agreement with 12th Imam - in hiding since 13th century?
• Iran Press News reported that the Ahamdinejad administration has declared illegal the budgets for the two organizations established by Khatami, the ex-president of Iran.
• Iran Press News reported that two and a half months after Ahmadinejad's installment to presidency, the policies for a new cinema for the Islamic Republic were announced.
• BBC News reported that Iran's authorities have banned imported films promoting secularism, feminism, unethical behaviour, drug abuse, violence or alcoholism.
• Iran Press News reported that one of Ahmadinejad's biggest supporters who wished to remain unnamed said: We're worried sick that he (Ahmadinejad) would not be able to keep his promises.
• Iran va Jahan reported that an international corruption-monitoring organization has reported that businesspeople and analysts both in and outside Iran see the country as profusely corrupt.
• Iran Press News reported that Ahmadinejad's own site reported that a high ranking official of the regime has provided foreign intelligence with approximately 10 years worth of the most classified information.
• Iran Press News reported that Ahmadinejad said: Political pressure on us might increase but ultimately Westerners are forced to accept our stance ... Westerners do not have the heart to take us on ... Putting the centrifuges to work will change all the equations and it will allow us to take over the world and will give us supremacy.

Iran's Nuclear Program.

• BBC News reported that US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is due to meet Tony Blair on Sunday for talks over Iran.
• Colin Freeman, The Telegraph UK reported on the Iranian regime's effort to use music to build support for its nuclear policy. Sounds like they think they need help.
• Iran Focus reported that a key Majlis (Parliament) committee approved a resolution demanding Iran end its cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) under the Additional Protocol of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
• Voice of America News reported that U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and British leaders have discussed efforts to convince Iran to abandon its nuclear program.
• Khaleej Times Online reported that US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Sunday gave full backing to Washington’s key ally London over its handling of Iran.
• Claire Bigg, Radio Free Europe reported that no country, including the United States, will force Russia to abandon its nuclear commitment to Iran, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
• MOS News reported that Kostantin Kosachyov, chairman of the State Duma International Affairs Committee denied recent reports of a possible Russian/North Korean cooperation and mediation in Iran’s missile technology sector.
• Iran Focus reported that Iran's Supreme Leader hints at a nuclear breakthrough in their technology.
• Iran Press News reported that Ali Larijani, the secretary of the High Council of National Security of Iran, traveled to South Africa for talks on the nuclear issue.
• Iran Press News reported that Iran's Supreme Leader identified the nuclear program as "science" and nuclear weapons as "military might,” continued: We must obtain 'the might.
• Newindpress reported that Iran was stepping up its diplomacy a month ahead of the second crucial vote in Vienna, by inviting New Delhi for a second meeting on the proposed India-Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline project.
• Louis Charbonneau, Reuters reported that the IAEA is unlikely to refer Iran to the U.N. Security Council when the U.N. agency's board meets next month.
• Khaleej Times Online reported that Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has vowed that Iran will continue with its controversial nuclear program.
  

Iranian Dissidents.

• Morteza Abdolalian, Iran Watch Canada reported that Ganji was finally permitted to meet with his defense lawyer in prison.
• Iran Press News reported that blogger, Omid Sheikhaan was sentenced to prison but first 2 lashes!
• Iran Press News reported on the hearing for the investigation of charges of "Dereliction" against a student of the Shareef Industrial University completely committed to Democracy.
• Adnkronos International reported that more journalists in Iran are falling victim to Iran's war on the media.
• Noticias.info said Reporters Without Borders today condemned the 18-month prison sentence that was passed on Mohammad Sedigh Kabovand.
• Iran Press News reported that a group of journalists were first verbally abused and then physically intimidated by Ahmadinejad's security detail.
• Iran Press News reported that Seyed Ahmad Seyed Seraajee imprisoned blogger who is currently being detained at the Tabriz prison, will receive 30 lashes.
• The Committee to Protect Bloggers reported that Omid Sheikhan has been sentenced by the Iranian court to one year in prison and 124 lashes.

Who's Who in Iran.

• Rooz Online published a conversation with former president Khatami’s foreign policy architect about the U.S.
  

The Unrest Inside of Iran.

• SMCCDI reported that a young man was killed, with a shot to the head, by the local militia. They young man was after angry at the regime's humiliating parade of young dissidents.
• SMCCDI reported that tens of inmates have been wounded and reportedly some killed in a bloody clash at the Adel-Abad ('Just' Place) Prison located in the central City of Shiraz.
• SMCCDI reported that an informant was gunned down in the Iranian Capital.
• SMCCDI reported that another young man was killed by the Islamic regime's security forces in the Greater Tehran area, Friday.
• SMCCDI reported that a riot took place, on Saturday, in the Island of Gheshm located in the Persian Gulf.
• Agence France Presse reported that witnesses claim, Iranian police shot and killed a motorist after he failed to stop when spotted eating during holy month of Ramadan.Winston, The Spirit of Man reported on the IRGC units nightly live fire exercises in the mountains of eastern Tehran.
• Iran Press News reported that Revolutionary Guard commander Ahmadi-Moqadam reported the regime is preparing a new way to deal with social corruption and said: This plan will be soon implemented all over Iran.
• Iran Press News reported that a member of the Islamic Parliament's Assembly, representing the city of Sanandadj said: The Kurds and Sunnis in the Province of Kurdistan have had it... their patience has been tested and will not stand for a non-Kurd, Shiite Governor.
• Iran Focus reported that in some regions of the country, Iran’s para-military police, the State Security Forces (SSF), have been given unlimited powers to raid and search premises.
• TurkishPress reported that Iranian police said they had defused a large bomb planted under a bridge in the restive southwestern city of Ahvaz.
• Shahram Rafizadeh, Rooz Online reported that Iran is preparing to block SMS (Short Message Service) fearing it can be used by the government's critics and opposition groups.
• Middle East Newsline: Iran has disclosed a plan to create a huge Islamic volunteer force to protect the regime. Under the plan, the Basij would have more than 1 million men under arms.
  

Iran's troublemaking.

• Iran Focus reported that senior Iranian government officials will attend a ceremony honoring volunteers for suicide bombing operations.
• Iran Press News reported that with the creation of the squads of women terrorist martyrdom-seekers, a new independent organization has begun encouraging men to do the same.
  

U.S. Policy.

• The Voice of America News reported that White House spokesman Scott McClellan says U.S. policy "is only toughening when it comes to Iran" and "It is now up to Iran to demonstrate that it wants to reverse the course that it is currently on."
• Middle East Newsline reported that the United States has sought Turkish cooperation to use of Turkey as a base for American military operations for reconnaissance and intelligence missions in Iran and Syria.
• Forbes reported that the White House said that Iran must return to negotiations.
• The Associated Press reported that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice refused to rule out the use military force against neighboring Syria and Iran.
• The LA Times reported that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice today said the Bush administration was considering opening direct contact with Iran.
• The Associated Press, China Daily reported that a senior U.S official said Iran has been "fairly isolated" and must return to negotiations with European countries.

The Iranian Military.

• Con Coughlin, Telegraph reported that the Russians help Iran with missile threat to Europe.
• Yahoo News reported that Russia will put Iran's first ever satellite into space next week.
  

The Economy.

• Shahram Rafizadeh, Rooz Online reported that the Iranian government has offered a new bill to the parliament (Majlis) to increase the price of gasoline which if passed will lead to civil unrest.
• Iran Press News reported that the regime-run site, AFTAB expressed anxiety that economic sanctions against the regime which will mean that the sale of refined gas to Iran will be prohibited and that people are in no shape to put up with anything like this and it will lead to bedlam.
• Iran Press News reported that according to the Deputy of the Food and Drug Ministry of the regime: Most of the food and drug products imported to Iran are counterfeit.
• Iran Press News reported that several campaign supporters of Rafsanjani's presidential campaign, whose campaign financed loans for advertisement, etc. have not been reimbursed, are claiming bankruptcy.
• Iran Daily reported that the governor of the Central Bank of Iran said he is hopeful that the stock market situation will return to normal and that contrary to earlier reports that the country has not severed trade ties with Britain and South Korea.

Human Rights/Freedom of the press inside of Iran.

• Iranian.ws reported that the European Union severely criticised Iran's human rights record.
• Reporters Without Borders accused the Iranian government of seeking to increase its control of the Internet, with more sites banned and an overhaul of filtering system planned.
• Folkpartiet reported on member's of the Swedish Parliament support of political prisoners in Islamic Republic prisons.
• ICFTU Online reported that the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions reported on repression and violence in Iran.
• Iran Press News reported that out of fear of being arrested many Iranians have begun to remove their own satellite dishes.
• Iranian.ws provided a detailed explanation for Iran's internet surfers on how to find their way to restricted or censored Iranian sites.

Protests inside of Iran.

• Iran Press News reported on the protest and conflict at Najafabad University. A first hand account.
• Iran Press News reported that students from the Abbasspour University for Water and Power Industry protested against the regime's guards in their university.
• Iran Press News reported that an angry mob, protesting the violent and oppressive actions of the disciplinary forces of the regime, attacked governmental bureaus in the Province of Qeshm.
• SMCCDI reported that drivers of many Iranian Collective Buses refused to validate passenger's tickets, today, in order to protest against their poor conditions.
• SMCCDI reported that dozens of Iranian women gathered at the "Enghelab" square in order to protest peacefully against the social and poor economic conditions in Iran.
• SMCCDI reported that hundreds of students of Beheshti University of Tehran protested, yesterday night, against the repressive measures and poor conditions.
• Iran Press News added that the Beheshti University students then set their dorm on fire. ISNA published photos.
• Iran Focus reported that students from a female dormitory of Shahid Beheshti University in Tehran started another protest.
• Iran Press News reported that prisoners of Adelabad prison in Shiraz protested their horrible conditions and brutal treatment.
• Iran Press News reported that a group of teachers this time from the provinces of Fars and Kermanshah, gathered today in protest in front of the main gates of the Islamic Parliament's Assembly.
• Iran Press News reported that orderlies from medical centers and hospitals around the township of Baabol (Mazandaraan/Capsian Province) gathered to protest 6 months non-receipt of their wages and their benefits.
• Iran Press News reported that the Workers of Kurdistan have reported on the 3 week long strike by the Kurdish Textile workers and that the workers show up to work but they simply refuse to work.
• Iran Press News reported on a clandestine strike and work stoppage under way in the Ministry of Oil.

Iran and the International community.

• The Conservative Voice reports on the troubling alliance of Venezuela’s Marxist president, Hugo Chavez with Iran, North Korea and others.
• BBC News reported that British officials in Iran have denied claims of UK involvement in two bomb attacks which killed at least four people in Ahwaz, Iran.
• The Telegraph UK reported that Foreign Secretary Jack Straw spoke about Iran's hand in bomb attacks on British troops in Iraq, saying: We look to the Iranians to desist.
• Iran Press News reported that Iranian TV used the funerals of the victims of the recent Ahvaz bombing to stir anti-Britain sentiments.
• Iran Press News reported that 15 Iranians have been arrested in the mountains of Turkey and charged with transport of smuggled petrol into Turkey.
• The Washington Times reported that the Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk Sharaa "erred twice" in his eulogy of Interior Minister Ghazi Kanaan calling the suicide an "assassination."
• Winston, The Spirit of Man discussed the lack of coverage in the Iranian media of the Syrian Minister's death.
• The Financial Times reported that Syria's fractious opposition groups joined forces to release the "Damascus declaration" which calls for ending all forms of political repression.
• CBC reported that more than 20 suspects have been detained for bombings in southwestern Iran and Iran's president accused Britain of being behind the bombings.
• Reuters reported that Iran appears to have imposed a ban on South Korean imports in retaliation for Seoul backing a U.N. nuclear agency resolution against it.
• Dan Plesch, The Guardian asked: Are we Going to War with Iran?
• Agence France-Presse reported that Iran sent its own indictment against Saddam Hussein to Iraq's government.
• Reuters reported that Iran's leading hardline newspapers called for the cutting of diplomatic ties with Britain.
• Anton La Guardia, The Telegraph UK reported that Iran decideds to punishes Britain with a ban on imports.
• Iran Press Service reported that MKO dissidents are demanding that the MKO Leader also be put on trial in Iraq.
• Iran Press News reported that the German Newspaper Die Welt criticized the irresponsible comments of the Islamic Republic of Iran's authorities regarding the suspicious explosions in Ahvaaz, adding that: Ahmadinejad is either simple, arrogant or both.
• IranMania reported that the MEK remained on the EU's list of terrorist organizations.
• USA Today reported that the Iranian Leader claimed the U.S. wants to establish a world-wide empire.
• Radio Free Europe reported that Iran said it will not engage in direct contact with the United States to discuss Iraq.
• The Washington Post reported that a report by the United Nations that compellingly links the Syrian government to the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri provides the Security Council has a rare opportunity to enforce consequences for a state-sponsored act of political murder.

Insight into the Iranian people.

• Nicole Sadighi, Javanan Magazine reported on the play “Beneath the Veil” which provides a provocative and spine chilling portrayal of the true lives of women in the 21st century who have been forced to cover their faces in public along with those who freely choose to wear the veil.
• Iran Press News reported that in Iran one of the most important factors for the death of newborn babies is the mothers' illiteracy.
• Iran Press News reported that 53,000 Iranian students have no school buildings to attend school in; but are forced into tents and shipping containers as makeshift classroom space.
  

Can You Believe This?

• Iran Press News reported that the commander of the new suicide team in Esfahan, Revolutionary Guard Jafari, a disciple of Messbaah-Yazdi, stated that: anyone in any position or 'robe' who dares to speak against this illustrious Islamic figure (Messbaah-Yazdi) has acted against Islam and we are duty-bound to avenge the insult.
• Iran Press News reported a new phenomenon in parts of Iran: baby-selling rings.
• Alan Peters reported that Iran's Supreme Leaders aircraft is grounded in France.
  

Must Read reports.

• Glenn Reynolds, MSNBC reported that Iraq is becoming a quagmire for the terrorists.
• Tim Russert, MSNBC released a transcript of his in-depth conversation Louis Freeh on Clinton, the Khobar Towers attack and Iran. Well worth reading.
• Winston, The Spirit of Man asked will Iran disintegrate after the fall of the regime?
• Thomas Joscelyn, The Weekly Standard reported on Mullah Chávez.
• Jamie Glazov, FrontPageMagazine.com published an interview with Ryan Mauro discussing the secrets of terror.
• The Telegraph UK discussed bringing democracy to Syria and Iran.
• New York Review of Books provided excerpts of the Soldiers of the Hidden Imam, by Timothy Garton Ash. A Must Read.

The Experts.

• Steven Greenhut, The Orange County Register reported that recent news accounts continue to make the thesis of Ilan Berman's new book all the more compelling.
• Amir Taheri, The NY Post argued that with the latest vote in Iraq we should now prepare for the real fight.
• Michael Ledeen, National Review Online published one of his famous interviews with the deceased "James Jesus Angleton" on the Zawahiri-Zarqawi letter.
• Victor Davis Hanson, The National Review examinied the unjustified negativity on the war in Iraq.
• Amir Taheri, Benador Associates takes a close look at the Anti-Americanism involved in the Nobel Peace Prizes.
• Amir Taheri, Arab News examined the challenges facing Musharraf.

And finally, The Quote of the Week.

Iran Press News published comments by Iran's Supreme Leader, Khamenei on Iran's nuclear program:

"We will stand firm till our last breathe and we will give our last drop of blood though we are certain that it will not take that. We must impel a showdown with the false foundations of all these satanic forces.

We must obtain 'the might.' If the Islamic Iran can talk 'science' on the first-world level, it will all be doable from there, as 'science' will bring us wealth and power."

Sunday's Daily Briefing on Iran

DoctorZin reports, 10.22.2005:

Ahmadinejad's own site: “More and more classified intelligence escapes the country”

Iran Press News: Translation by Banafsheh Zand-Bonazzi

According to Ahmadinejad's own site, FARDA (named as such in order to confuse people with Radio Farda which is the Persian Broadcast of Radio Free Europe) the ever increasing amount of classified intelligence and information escaping Iran has become a major source for worry and anxiety for the Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) of the regime. It is rumored that during the recent months, more than ever, the regime's intelligence service has lost the equivelant of approximately 10 years worth of the most classified information.

Based on unconfirmed reports, it has come to the regime’s attention that a significant amount of said information and intelligence was removed by a high-ranking official of the regime itself, who was taking a trip abroad in order to report to foreign intelligence officers.

A political analyst claimed: "one of the ways to obtain intelligence and information about the goings on inside Iran, for foreign intelligence organizations or opposition groups is contact between directors, experts and officials inside Iran. Unfortunately several of the middle-management types of the regime do not heed the warnings and due to inexperience and guilelessness, they make the mistake of thinking that everyone in the world is as kind, innocent and well meaning as the authorities of our regime (!). They are then tricked by deceitful foreigners into parting with the classified intelligence and high-level security information.”

Great News!

Here are a few other news items you may have missed.

• Iran Press News reported that Seyed Ahmad Seyed Seraajee imprisoned blogger who is currently being detained at the Tabriz prison, will receive 30 lashes.
• Iran Press News reported that orderlies from medical centers and hospitals around the township of Baabol (Mazandaraan/Capsian Province) gathered to protest 6 months non-receipt of their wages and their benefits.
• Iran Press News reported that out of fear of being arrested many Iranians have begun to remove their own satellite dishes.
• Iran Press News reported that 53,000 Iranian students have no school buildings to attend school in; but are forced into tents and shipping containers as makeshift classroom space.
• Iran Press News reported that the Workers of Kurdistan have reported on the 3 week long strike by the Kurdish Textile workers and that the workers show up to work but they simply refuse to work.
• Iran Press News reported that according to the Deputy of the Food and Drug Ministry of the regime: Most of the food and drug products imported to Iran are counterfeit.
• Iran Press News reported that several campaign supporters of Rafsanjani's presidential campaign, whose campaign financed loans for advertisement, etc. have not been reimbursed, are claiming bankruptcy.
• Iran Press News reported that Ahmadinejad said: Political pressure on us might increase but ultimately Westerners are forced to accept our stance ... Westerners do not have the heart to take us on ... Putting the centrifuges to work will change all the equations and it will allow us to take over the world and will give us supremacy.
• Iran Press News reported on a clandestine strike and work stoppage under way in the Ministry of Oil.
• Iran Press News published a collection of clippings and new items from the regime's own media.
• Iranian.ws provided a detailed explanation for Iran's internet surfers on how to find their way to restricted or censored Iranian sites.
• The Committee to Protect Bloggers reported that Omid Sheikhan has been sentenced by the Iranian court to one year in prison and 124 lashes.
• The Telegraph UK discussed bringing democracy to Syria and Iran.
• Iran Daily reported that the governor of the Central Bank of Iran said he is hopeful that the stock market situation will return to normal and that contrary to earlier reports that the country has not severed trade ties with Britain and South Korea.
• The Washington Post reported that a report by the United Nations that compellingly links the Syrian government to the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri provides the Security Council has a rare opportunity to enforce consequences for a state-sponsored act of political murder.
• The Associated Press, China Daily reported that a senior U.S official said Iran has been "fairly isolated" and must return to negotiations with European countries.
• Amir Taheri, Arab News examined the challenges facing Musharraf.
• And finally, New York Review of Books provided excerpts of the Soldiers of the Hidden Imam, by Timothy Garton Ash. A Must Read.

Soldiers of the Hidden Imam

New York Review of Books: Volume 52, Number 17 · November 3, 2005

Soldiers of the Hidden Imam
By Timothy Garton Ash

Carved high in the towering rock of Naqsh-e Rostam, gazing out across the desert, are the tombs of the great Persian emperors from two and a half millennia ago: Darius, Xerxes, Artaxerxes. Lower down the cliff face of this imperial Mount Rushmore you see a dramatic stone relief, shimmering in the heat. It shows a later Shah of all the Shahs, Shapur I, accepting the surrender of the Roman emperor Valerian, in the year 260 AD according to the Christian calendar. The conqueror, on horseback and gloriously accoutred, towers over the unmounted, swordless, vanquished Caesar.

"What happened to Valerian?" I asked my Iranian companion.

"Oh, he was killed, of course."
1.

Early this autumn, as today's Iranian rulers defied the new Rome by pressing ahead with their nuclear program, I traveled for two weeks through what is now the Islamic Republic of Iran. In the year of their Lord 1384, I talked to mullahs armed with laptops, regime supporters in the religious hotbed of Qom, and Islamic philosophers highly critical of the regime. I met intellectuals of all stripes, artists, farmers, politicians, and businesspeople. Most memorably, I had long, intense conversations with some of the young Iranians who make up the majority of the country's population.

I see their earnest faces before me as I write, especially those of the women, framed in the compulsory Islamic head scarf, the hijab, which they somehow manage to convert into an accessory of grace and quiet allure.

At a rooftop restaurant in the wondrous city of Esfahan, I witnessed the continuity of Persian culture, with a singer chanting verses from the fourteenth-century poet Hafez while local diners peered up at the blue, cream, and turquoise dome of the Sheikh Lotfallah mosque, illuminated against the night sky. (You do not often hear verses from Chaucer being sung in an English pub.) More typically, I was plunging through the heat, dust, eye-stinging pollution, and kamikaze traffic of Tehran, that anarchic city of 12 million people, whose drivers treat every traffic circle as an invitation to play the American game of chicken, only swerving to avoid one another's fenders with millimeters to spare. Or sometimes not swerving.

I also got a taste of life behind the high garden walls of the houses of the middle and upper class, where the hijab immediately comes off and opinions are scathingly contemptuous of the aging revolutionary Islamic zeal of the country's new president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Within minutes of my arrival at one such house, bikini-clad women were teasingly inviting me to come naked into the swimming pool, while the men offered me a drink from a bottle marked "Ethanol 98% proof."

These encounters illustrated a trait, apparently of long pedigree, to which my Iranian interlocutors constantly drew my attention: the contrast between what Iranians say outside and what they say inside those high walls. Double-talk as a way of life. I have never been in a country where so many people told me I should not believe what people said. (Taken strictly, a self-defeating proposition.) Again and again they pointed to the Shiite custom of taghiye, by which believers are entitled to lie in defense of their faith. Today's nonbelievers have their own taghiye.

Iranians also warned me that theirs is a country rich in superstition— sometimes conveyed by very modern means. In the middle of a Tehran traffic jam, my driver received a text message on his cell phone. It asked him urgently to pray for the return of the hidden imam, the Shiites' twelfth imam or mahdi, who supposedly went into hiding some 1127 years ago. A secular intellectual wondered aloud whether a society so rife with mendacity and superstition is at all susceptible to understanding through reason.

Amid this wild medley of ancient and modern, I sought answers to one crucial question: How might Iran's post-revolutionary Islamic regime be transformed, whether gradually or suddenly, by social and political forces inside that country? And I added a second: How might the policies of Europe and the United States, which fortunately do not at the moment include an Iraq-style attempt to impose "regime change" by military occupation, affect those domestic forces? READ MORE
2.

The political system of the Islamic Republic of Iran is at once fiendishly complex and extremely simple. Most of the Iranians I met preferred to stress the complexity. The country has at least two governments at any one time: a semi-democratic formal state structure, now headed by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and a religious-ideological command structure headed by the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. There are numerous shifting formal and informal power centers, including political parties in parliament, ministries, rich religious foun- dations, the Revolutionary Guards, and the multimillion-man Basij militia, whose mobilization helped Ahmadinejad to get elected. There are also backroom ethnic or regional mafias, and numerous competing intelligence, security, and police agencies—eighteen of them according to one recent count. No wonder Iranian political scientists reach for terms like "polyarchy," "elective oligarchy," "semi-democracy," or "neopatrimonialism."

Yet the longer I was there, the more strongly I felt that the essence of this regime remains quite simple. At its core, the Islamic Republic is still an ideological dictatorship. Its central organizing principle can be summarized in four sentences: (1) There is only one God and Muhammad is his Prophet. (2) God knows best what is good for men and women. (3) The Islamic clergy, and especially the most learned among them, the jurists qualified to interpret Islamic law, know best what God wants. (4) In case of dispute among learned jurists, the Supreme Leader decides.

This is the system which its inventor, Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, justified by radically reinterpreting the Islamic concept of velayat-e faqih, usually translated as the Guardianship of the Jurist. This system is not Islam; it is Khomeinism. It would not exist without that one old man, whose grim portrait still stares out at you everywhere in Iran, though now usually flanked by the bespectacled figure of his successor and epigone, the current Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei. If you ever doubted the importance of the individual in history, consider the story of Khomeini.

I visited his childhood home in the provincial market town of Khomein— ayatollahs generally take an honorific name from their home town, so Khomeini means "of Khomein." It's a substantial, rather handsome, yellow-brick house, with the traditional outer and inner courtyards, and an inscription celebrating the "birthplace of the Sun of Khomein." His father was murdered when he was four months old, his mother died when he was fifteen, and he was given over to the theological schools that trained him to be a cleric. If even one of his parents had lived, might this have been a different story? Outside, a billboard describes him, justly enough, as "the revivor of religious government in [the] contemporary world."

Khomeini was both the Lenin and the Stalin of Iran's Islamic revolution. The system he created has some similarities with a communist party-state. In Khomeinism, the Guardianship of the Jurist is an all-embracing political principle that is the functional equivalent of communism's Leading Role of the Party. Here, too, you have parallel hierarchies of ideological and state power, with the former always ultimately trumping the latter. The Islamic Republic's ideological half is almost entirely undemocratic: the Supreme Leader is assisted by a Guardian Council, an Islamic judiciary, and an Assembly of Experts. All of them are dominated by conservative clerics.The state institutions are more democratic, with a genuine if limited competition for power. However, the Guardian Council arbitrarily disqualifies thousands of would-be candidates for parliament, the regime controls the all-important state television channels, and security forces like the Basij militia can both mobilize and intimidate voters, so one cannot seriously talk of free and fair elections.

As in communist party-states, there is intense factional struggle, which Western observers sometimes mistake for pluralism. Unlike in communist party-states, factions actually appeal to voters to strengthen their position. Thus Ahmadinejad successfully presented himself to voters as a kind of plain man's puritan outsider to the system, yet he is now wholly of it, working closely with Khamenei and the Guardian Council. His rival in the second-round presidential runoff, former president Hashemi Rafsanjani, was discredited as being too much part of the resented group of mullahs in control: "A stick would have won against Rafsanjani," an Iranian politician told me. Rafsanjani now tactically criticizes Ahmedinejad's Islamic revolutionary– style speech to the United Nations as being undiplomatic. Yet he himself remains head of the powerful Expediency Council, which mediates between the undemocratic ideological hierarchy and the semi-democratic parliament. It was Rafsanjani who this summer declared that "the system [nazam] has decided" on the resumption of uranium reprocessing. When leaders use that specific term nazam, "the system," everyone knows they mean the ideological command hierarchy right up to the Supreme Leader—God's representative on earth.

In a communist party-state, the party line was to be found in the pages of Pravda or Neues Deutschland. In the Islamic mullah-state, the "imam line" is handed down through Friday prayers, two sessions of which I attended, first at the gorgeous Pattern-of-the-World mosque in Esfahan and, the next week, in a closely policed compound at Tehran University. In both places a high-ranking Islamic clergyman—the chair of the Guardian Council, at my Tehran session—delivered a fulminating political homily, denouncing in particular America and Britain. The political message was sandwiched between conventional Muslim prayers, like a kebab wrapped in nan bread. In Tehran, the final prayers ended with an orchestrated crowd chant: "Down with America! Down with Israel! Down with the enemies of the Guardianship of the Jurist!"
3.

How can such a regime be transformed, or, as many still prefer to say, reformed? I heard the word "reform" innumerable times as I traveled around Iran. I soon realized that it meant several different things. First, there's an ideological debate among Islamic intellectuals, turning on what in the communist world used to be called "revisionism"—that is, attempts to revise the ideology on which the state is built. As the views of revisionists in, say, 1950s Poland were also part of a wider debate about international communism, so the views of these Iranian revisionists have significant implications for international Islam.

I was impressed by the liveliness of this debate. While many Iranians are clearly fed up with Islam being stuffed down their throats as a state religion, I found no sense that Islamic ideology is a dead issue, as, for example, communist ideology had become a dead issue in Central Europe by the 1980s. Far from it. In Khomeini's theological capital of Qom, now home to some two hundred Islamic think tanks and institutions of higher education, I met with a research group on Islamic political philosophy. Why should Islam not be compatible with a secular, liberal democratic state, I asked, as is increasingly the case in Turkey? "Turkey is not Qom," said Mohsen Rezvani, a young philosopher wearing the robes and turban of a mullah, to laughter around the table. Islam, Rezvani said, is "anthropologically, theologically, and epistemologically" incompatible with liberal democracy. Anthropologically, because liberal democracy is based on liberal individualism; theologically, because it excludes God from the public sphere; and epistemologically, because it is based on reason not faith. Then they handed me an issue of the Political Science Quarterly—not the American journal but their own Qom-made version. Here I read an English-language abstract of an admiring article by Rezvani about Leo Strauss.

"So you're a neoconservative!" I teased him.

Oh no, he replied, the American neoconservatives don't properly understand Leo Strauss.

I could see at once, even before I had the full article translated for me, what a conservative Iranian mullah would find to admire in Strauss: the insistence that there is a single truth in a classic text, and that the intentions of the author (e.g., God, in the case of the Koran) are best interpreted by a neo-Platonic intellectual vanguard (for the Koran, the Islamic jurists whose ranks Rezvani aspires to join). Yet this Wolfowitz of Qom was immediately contradicted by others at the table, citing Islamic modernists such as Abdolkarim Soroush who maintain that Islam is compatible with a secular state.

Back in Tehran, I met a most impressive Islamic revisionist, Professor Mohsen Kadivar, a smiling, learned, and courageous mullah. One reason the Iranian Islamic debate is so lively is that the Shiite tradition not only permits but encourages spirited disagreement between the followers of rival grand ayatollahs of the highest category, those who have earned the title marja-i taqlid, or "source of imitation." Professor Kadivar is a disciple of the Grand Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri, who was to have been Khomeini's successor as Supreme Leader until the father of the revolution disinherited him and put him under house arrest in Qom.

A few years ago, Kadivar took the bold step of arguing that the Guardianship of the Jurist has no sound basis in the Koran or mainstream Islamic thought, and is incompatible with the essence of a true republic. He also questioned the Islamic rectitude of condemning people (e.g., Salman Rushdie) to death in their absence, and suggested in a newspaper interview that today's Iran reproduces characteristics of the Shah's monarchic rule: "People made the revolution so that they could make decisions, not so that decisions would be made for them." He paid for his intellectual honesty with eighteen months in prison.

So that's what the regime's cheerleaders mean when they chant at Friday prayers, "Down with the enemies of the Guardianship of the Jurist!" Direct criticism of the Guardianship of the Jurist, and of the "sultanic" rule of the Supreme Leader, is also the unforgivable offense of the country's most prominent political prisoner, the journalist Akbar Ganji—once, like Kadivar, an enthusiastic supporter of the Islamic revolution.[*]

I quoted to Kadivar the observation of the Polish philosopher Leszek Kol/akowski, himself a former communist revisionist, that the idea of democratic communism is like fried snowballs. "Exactly!" cried Kadivar. Democratic Khomeinism is like fried snowballs.

That is emphatically denied by another group, also known as "Islamic reformists," who used to be Kadivar's comrades in the revolution. What we might call "in-system" reformers have been in government for the last eight years, under the state president Mo-hammad Khatami. Their hope was precisely that they could reform and partially democratize the Islamic Republic, while leaving unchallenged the central pillars of Khomeinism. They failed. Many people who supported President Khatami and his fellow reformists in the late 1990s told me they are bitterly disappointed.

I talked to one of the in-system reformers' most influential strategists, Saeed Hajjarian, a former head of counterintelligence who in 2000 was shot through the neck, probably by an assassin from a competing secret service connected to the Revolutionary Guards. We met in his spartan, neon-lit office-cum-sickroom in a dreary, stale-smelling, unmarked building, which turned out to belong to the intelligence service of the state presidency. On his bare office wall was an image of Ayatollah Khomeini—Imam Khomeini, as he is officially called in the Islamic Republic—hovering miraculously above his own tomb. On the desk below was a large pile of photocopied articles from Western academic journals, analyzing transitions to democracy.

Perhaps only in Iran could you sit inside a secret service building with a mystical image of the Ayatollah Khomeini gazing down on a pile of Western articles about transitions to democracy. But how on earth would these elements combine? As a result of the assassination attempt, Hajjarian, a frail, yellow-faced figure in a fawn-colored tracksuit, can barely move his body and his speech is slurred. Yet his pithy answers conveyed a sharp political intelligence. He spoke, until he grew tired, of how the reformists could recover, rebuilding popular support through more professional organization and better use of the press and television. They should, he suggested, raise more funds from business and appeal to ordinary people's everyday material concerns, as Ahmadinejad successfully had in his campaign. But I came away from this encounter feeling that the prospects of a full recovery for the in-system Islamic reformists are little better than Hajjarian's own.
4.

That skepticism is shared by the outspoken journalist Emadeddin Baghi, a former Islamic reformist who was jailed for more than two years because of his critical writing. Sitting in the neat, modern office of the nongovernmental organization that he has founded for the defense of prisoners' rights, Baghi, a dark-bearded, courteous man in early middle age, told me that what is needed now is not reform from above, within the mullah-state—as Hajjarian still ad- vocates—but organization from below, in civil society. I was reminded of Central European dissidents after the failure of the Prague Spring and Dubcek's "socialism with a human face." Like them, Baghi believes that the way forward is not ideological revisionism or in-system reform—former President Khatami's failed Khomeinism with a human face—but people organizing themselves in society independently of the state.

Although I found his general argument convincing, it struck me that Baghi, who still has a one-year suspended prison sentence hanging over his head, was talking about very modest attempts at social organization. He said plainly that such efforts should be confined to what the mullah-state would not find politically threatening. He knows very well that even prominent activists like himself and, more recently, close colleagues of the Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi can be locked up at any moment. And he knows that critical journals and newspapers are often simply shut down, as his own newspaper was.

Almost everyone I have mentioned thus far—from top officials of the current regime like President Ahmadinejad, through critics such as Hajjarian, Kadivar, and Baghi, to political prisoners like Akbar Ganji—was once an active participant in the Islamic revolution. They are the children of the revolution. However, there are also many secular leftists and liberals who opposed the Shah but never participated in the Islamic revolution, and now work in NGOs, in publishing, in the universities, or in cultural life, including the country's often electrifying moviemakers. One secular liberal especially well known in the West is Dr. Ramin Jahanbegloo, the author of a book of conversations with Isaiah Berlin, who has brought thinkers such as Jürgen Habermas, Richard Rorty, and Antonio Negri to lecture to passionately interested audiences of up to two thousand people in Tehran.

Yet whether secular or Islamic, the room for maneuver of those working in what they like to call "civil society" is quite limited. All NGOs, for example, have to be officially registered, and their permits renewed each year. Galley proofs of books have to be submitted for censorship by the Ministry for Culture and Islamic Guidance, and the censored pages must then be typeset again so that readers cannot tell where something has been excised. Universities are tightly controlled. Theoretical discussion of the merits of democracy is possible; practical criticism of the Guardianship of the Jurist is definitely not.

The very fact that the system has several centers of power adds an extra element of uncertainty. For example, I talked to one dissident student who was released by the official state security service only to be rearrested a few months later by the Revolutionary Guards. No one knows exactly where the limits are. As a result, there is both a remarkable freedom of intellectual debate and a permanent undercurrent of fear.

For someone who has studied the ways post-totalitarian or authoritarian dictatorships, whether in Europe, Latin America, or South Africa, have gradually become less oppressive states, and eventually democracies, the main question about Iran is therefore this: What forces inside its society might help to increase peaceful social pressure for gradual regime change?

Industrial workers in Iran have so far shown no signs of organizing themselves, as Poland's did in the Solidar-ity movement twenty-five years ago. Among farmers there is much rural unemployment and some discontent. In a sun-baked mountain village, I talked to shepherds who told me that half their fellow villagers were unemployed. Many came out to the fields at night to take drugs. Yet the main response to rural misery is to migrate to the towns. There they swell the numbers of the urban poor who, rather than contributing to a political opposition, are more likely to be recruited as thugs or mobilized in the streets by the regime's Basij militia.

What of the rich, Westernized business leaders? The ones I talked to are witheringly critical of the regime in private, but dependent on it for their businesses. Some have formed commercial partnerships with leading mullahs. They would probably be willing to support an opposition movement at the moment of decisive change, like the oligarchs in Serbia and Ukraine, but not before. Anyway, they themselves point out that most of the Iranian economy is still in the hands of the traditional merchants of the country's teeming bazaars, the bazaaris, who range from tiny stallholders to big-time export-import operators. In Iran, the bazaaris have traditionally been allies of the Islamic clergy, the ulama, and so far there are few signs of their changing sides.

Meanwhile, the regime has major assets for preserving its power. With oil at more than $60 a barrel as I write, its oil revenues have within six months covered the entire state budget for the current accounting year. The government can generously subsidize basic foodstuffs—bread, tea, sugar, rice— and keep the price of fuel extremely low for the country's manic drivers. When I was there, gasoline cost an astonishing thirty-five cents a gallon. A quarter of the workforce are state employees, dependent on the authorities for their jobs. The numerous security services are well provided for. Less than thirty years after an initially peaceful revolution that turned violent and oppressive, most people old enough to remember have little appetite for another revolution. And if the United States and Britain, the Great Satan and Perfidious Albion, try to increase the pressure from outside, Iran can make life more difficult for the foreign occupiers in the Shiite parts of Iraq, where the influence of the Islamic Republic continues to grow.

What, then, has this regime to fear? Only one thing, I conclude, but that a very big one: its own young people, the grandchildren of the revolution.
5.

Iran is a remarkably old country, with some 2,500 years of continuous history. It is also a remarkably young country. Two thirds of its 70 million people are under thirty years of age. This is at least partly the result of deliberate policy: in the 1980s, the first decade after the revolution, the mullahs encouraged a baby boom, denouncing the decadent Western practice of birth control and calling for mass procreation to replace the country's million martyrs in the Iran–Iraq war. Patriotic couples who produced five or more infants were given a free building plot. The regime's propaganda called these children "soldiers of the hidden imam."

To turn these young people into good Islamic citizens, the mullahs opened a nationwide network of new universities, called the Islamic Free University, complementing the existing ones. According to the Iranian statistical yearbook for 1382 (i.e., 2003– 2004), there are some two million students currently enrolled in higher education across Iran, roughly half of them women. And one should add to the brew more millions of recent graduates.

So now you see them everywhere, these "soldiers of the hidden imam," talking on their cell phones or flirting in the parks, the girls' hijabs a diaphanous pink or green, pushed well back to reveal some alluring curls of hair, while their rolled-up jeans deliberately show bare ankles above smart, pointed leather shoes. In the cities, the supposedly figure-concealing long black jackets that were previously required have often been replaced by skimpy, figure-hugging white or pink versions. In a teahouse under the arches of a seventeenth-century brick bridge in Esfahan, I met a beautiful young woman, heavily made up and wearing perfume, who was flaunting a good four inches of bare calf above ankles decorated with costume pearl bracelets. Yes, she giggled, there's a rumor that under the new government they'll be introducing a fine of 25,000 tomans (about $27) for each centimeter of exposed flesh—but she didn't care. Even in the provincial birthplace of the Sun of Khomein, young women were wearing Western-style jeans and shoes under their close-fitting jackets.

The clothes worn by men have a less familiar symbolic language. A law student came to see me dressed in a dark suit and tie. At first, I thought he must be a young fogey; but I could not have been more wrong. Because the regime's regulation dress for men is strictly tie-less (as was President Ahmadinejad when he addressed the UN), to wear a suit and tie is a mark of brave nonconformity. Another student, who had been imprisoned several times for dissident activity, told me, "The tie is a sign of protest!"

Often, their protest takes unpolitical forms. Many want to emigrate and join the millions of Iranians already living abroad. I was repeatedly told of this generation's hedonism; of wild parties behind the high walls of apartment buildings in prosperous north Tehran, with Western pop music, alcohol, drugs, and sexual play. One T-shirt I spotted in the Tehran bazaar said, "Wanted: Meaningless Overnight Relationship." If they can afford it, they slip over to Dubai for a few days, where the young women can tear off the hijab and jive as they please.

Yet for long and memorable hours I met with many serious-minded, impressive young people, most of them well informed about their own country and keen to improve it. They can learn a lot from the local press, if they read carefully. They listen to Western radio stations (the BBC's Persian service or the US-backed Radio Farda), and they watch satellite television, which, though officially prohibited, is accessible to an estimated one in four Iranians. They use the Internet very inventively. Some politically or morally suspect Web sites are blocked on Iranian servers—that of the dissenting Grand Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri (montazeri.com), for example, or, rather curiously, that of the University of Virginia. (The experienced Iranian Web-surfer who alerted me to this suggests that the Islamic censors' automatic search engines must have detected the word "virgin" in Virginia.) But they have ways of getting around the blocks.

Iran also has at least 50,000 bloggers. One student explained that since these blogs are often anonymous, people can speak their minds freely, in a way they generally don't dare to even in circles of student friends, since among those friends might be a regime spy. Alluding to the regime's own euphemistic description of its intelligence agents as "unknown soldiers of the hidden imam," students call them, with heavy irony, "soldiers of the hidden imam." Which is, of course, what they themselves were supposed to be.

The regime has spent twenty-five years trying to make these young Iranians deeply pro-Islamic, anti-American, anti-Western, and anti-Israeli. As a result, most of them are resentful of Islam (at least in its current, state-imposed form), rather pro-American, and have a friendly curiosity about Israel. One scholar, himself an Islamic reformist, suggested that Iran is now—under the hijab, so to speak—the most secular society in the Islamic world. Many also dream of life in America, sporting baseball caps that say, for example, "Harward [sic] Engineering School." Quite a few young Iranians even welcomed the invasion of Iraq, hoping it would bring freedom and democracy closer to them. Seeing how the US invasion has benefited the Shiites in southern Iraq, they joke that President George W. Bush is "the thirteenth imam."

These 45 million young people are the best hope there is of peaceful regime change in the Islamic Republic of Iran. Their "soft power" could be more effective than forty-five divisions of the US Marines. One positive legacy of the eight years of Khatami's reformist presidency is that this generation has grown up with less fear than its predecessors. The students at Tehran University launched a large-scale protest in summer 1999. They will never forgive Khatami for allowing it to be suppressed. Each year since, a small number of them have tried to mark the anniversary with demonstrations, which have been broken up by the police. Repression is fierce: as I write, a well-known student leader has just been condemned to six years in prison. Yet the impression I got from those I talked to is that they intend to struggle on, perhaps with subtler and more inventive forms of protest.

The potential of what I came to think of as Young Persia is huge. These young Iranians are educated, angry, disillusioned, impatient, and when they leave college most of them will not find jobs appropriate to their training. Given time and the right external circumstances, they could take the lead in exerting the kind of organized social pressure that would allow —and require—the advocates of reform, even of transformation, to gain the upper hand inside the dual state.

The United States would, however, be making a huge mistake if it concluded that these young Iranians are automatic allies of the West—and, so to speak, soldiers of the thirteenth imam. Their political attitudes toward the West are complex, often deeply confused, and volatile. Unlike in neighboring Turkey, even the most outspoken would-be democratizers don't envisage their country becoming part of the West. They seek a specifically Iranian version of modern society. If they see their ancient civilization in a wider regional setting at all, they call it the Middle East or Asia. "We Oriental people," one student activist prefaced his remarks. Moreover, they are as ill-informed about Western policies and realities as they are well-informed about Iran's.

What of Iran's nuclear program? That was not a pressing concern for the young people I met. None of them raised the issue in conversation with me. When I asked them about it, they fell into two groups. The first group felt that Iran, a proud but insecure nation flanked by neighbors already possessing nuclear weapons, has a right not just to civilian nuclear power but also to nuclear weapons. The second felt that a democratic Iran should undoubtedly have such a right, but they would rather this repressive regime did not obtain nuclear weapons. Yet both insisted with equal vehemence that an American or Israeli bombing of nuclear installations, let alone an Iraq-style invasion, would be a wholly unacceptable response to Iran's nuclear ambitions.

"I love George Bush," said one thoughtful and well-educated young woman, as we sat in the Tehran Kentucky Chicken restaurant, "but I would hate him if he bombed my country." She would oppose even a significant tightening of economic sanctions on those grounds. A perceptive local analyst reinforced the point. Who or what, he asked, could give this regime renewed popular support, especially among the young? "Only the United States!"

If, however, Europe and the United States can avoid that trap; if whatever we do to slow down the nucleariza-tion of Iran does not end up merely slowing down the democratization of Iran; and if, at the same time, we can find policies that help the gradual social emancipation and eventual self-liberation of Young Persia, then the long-term prospects are good. The Islamic revolution, like the French and Russian revolutions before it, has been busy devouring its own children. One day, its grandchildren will devour the revolution.

—October 6, 2005

A valuable read for those seeking a better understanding of the competing ideas and movements inside of Iran. A must read.

30 Lashes for a blogger in prison in the northern city of Tabriz

Iran Press News: Translation by Banafsheh Zand-Bonazzi

Tabriz News - Human Rights Service: Seyed Ahmad Seyed Seraajee imprisoned blogger who is currently being detained at the Tabriz prison, will receive 30 lashes. Seraajee, in a short phone conversation told the Tabriz News Human Rights Service: "Branch 7 of the enforcement task force of the Judiciary of Tabriz has applied for me to receive the 30 lashes that I was sentenced to."

The Tabrizi blogger who was arrested on June 28th of this year has been charged with "campaigning against the order/regime." Seraajee was first arrested in 2003 and held on the very same charges; he was sentenced to 6 months in prison by branch 3 of the primary revolutionary court of Tabriz; his appeal was granted however and he was released. Since his arrest in June, he spent most of this detention in the temporary jail with addicts, murderers, thieves and smugglers; before he was transferred to another ward, he was attacked and severely beaten by inmates who threatened to cut his throat during the night, while he was asleep, making it look like Seraajee had committed suicide.

Hospital orderlies gather in protest

Iran Press News: Translation by Banafsheh Zand-Bonazzi

According to the regime-run site, AFTAB, orderlies from medical centers and hospitals around the township of Baabol (Mazandaraan/Capsian Province) gathered on Thursday morning, Oct. 2nd to protest 6 months non-receipt of their wages and their benefits. They also demanded that their case be immediately investigated.

The authorities of the Baabol health and welfare office who listened to these grievances announced that they would immediately look into each case and asked that the orderlies return to work quietly. They did; as of yet there has been no word or results.

Ahmadinejad's own site: “More and more classified intelligence escapes the country”

Iran Press News: Translation by Banafsheh Zand-Bonazzi

According to Ahmadinejad's own site, FARDA (named as such in order to confuse people with Radio Farda which is the Persian Broadcast of Radio Free Europe) the ever increasing amount of classified intelligence and information escaping Iran has become a major source for worry and anxiety for the Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) of the regime. It is rumored that during the recent months, more than ever, the regime's intelligence service has lost the equivelant of approximately 10 years worth of the most classified information.

Based on unconfirmed reports, it has come to the regime’s attention that a significant amount of said information and intelligence was removed by a high-ranking official of the regime itself, who was taking a trip abroad in order to report to foreign intelligence officers.

A political analyst claimed: "one of the ways to obtain intelligence and information about the goings on inside Iran, for foreign intelligence organizations or opposition groups is contact between directors, experts and officials inside Iran. Unfortunately several of the middle-management types of the regime do not heed the warnings and due to inexperience and guilelessness, they make the mistake of thinking that everyone in the world is as kind, innocent and well meaning as the authorities of our regime (!). They are then tricked by deceitful foreigners into parting with the classified intelligence and high-level security information.”

Great News!

Satellite, Satellite, DAMN your trickery!

Iran Press News: Translation by Banafsheh Zand-Bonazzi

As the disciplinary forces in several townships and small religious villages have begun to confiscate antennae and satellite dishes, others, out of fear of being arrested have begun to remove their own. Recently however, the regime's elements, for intimidation purposes, gather in areas, where satellite dishes can still be seen chanting anti-Satellite slogans, to terrorize people into dismantling them!

Girls and boys classes in huts and tents!

Iran Press News: Translation by Banafsheh Zand-Bonazzi

According to a report from regime-run news agency ILNA, 53,000 students have no school buildings to attend; instead they study in huts and tents. The Executive Director of Education and Training while confessing to the miserable and haphazard condition of the country's educational institutions added that other than huts and tents, they have resorted to holding classes in shipping containers and the back of large freight trucks and in many cases there is only one teacher who instructs the various educational curricula simultaneously to students of different age groups. He also announced that 91% of the classes that are held in huts are boys and girls mixed but that most important factors is the enforcing of Islamic law by separating the boys from the girls, putting them in different tents. He did mention that at this time, there seems to be no budget for such a project however.

Kurdish Textile workers are still on strike

Iran Press News: Translation by Banafsheh Zand-Bonazzi

The representative of the Workers of Kurdistan, reported on the 3 week long strike by the Kurdish Textile workers; he said that the workers show up to work but they simply refuse to work. READ MORE

According to a report by the regime-run news agency ILNA: "Mohammad Sadiq-Karimi stressed that the Kurdistan Textile Company which employs 407 workers belongs to the Bonyaadeh Mostaz'afeen va Jaanbaazaan (The Foundation of the Disinherited and the Disabled Veterans) and that the employment hierarchy in the Kurdistan Textile Company is not observed.

*Foundation of the Disinherited and the Disabled Veterans is an institution was set up in the aftermath of the revolution to manage the expropriated or unattended properties of those who fled the country According to official sources, it has assets of more than $20,000 million including farmland (about 100,000 hectares), land in urban areas (300 hectares), 850 companies and 50 agro-industrial complexes. Its main duty is to arrange the sale of its holdings to the public. The employed has also embezzled approximately $20,000 from the company's coop as well that he refuses to reimburse.

Counterfeit food and drugs imported to Iran

Iran Press News: Translation by Banafsheh Zand-Bonazzi

According to a report by the regime-run news agency, FARS, the Deputy of the Food and Drug Ministry of the regime announced: "Most of the food and drug products imported to Iran are counterfeit. We are sadly, witness to the smuggling of food and drug products that are nothing more than fakes into Iran. Unfortunately this market has skyrocketed, putting the lives of the people who purchase these products in danger. Smuggling is clearly illegal and it's the stuff that profiteers are made of and though there are many disciplinary and security forces manning the borders, we have had to demand that they act more diligently in controlling the border traffic where contraband is imported. Our job is to inform people not to purchase unlabeled food products however these smugglers have begun falsifying labels and standard approval stamps as well."

A collection of clippings and new items from the regime's own media

Iran Press News: Translation by Banafsheh Zand-Bonazzi

Friday Prayer Leader of the town of Khomein: "The lack of medical specialists in our province is horrifying"

The Friday Prayer Leader of the town of Khomein, Seyed Ali Hosseini said: "Due to the lack of any medical specialist in this province, people are very agitated. Though our member of parliament, the area commander, the Director of the center for health have been warned time and time again, this problem continues to persist. The area hospital’s lack of doctors has sent sick people from our town wandering aimlessly and desperately to other regions seeking medical care." (ILNA news agency)

40,000 people in the ARSBAARAAN area live under the poverty line

The Public and Revolutionary Prosecutor of Ahr, Khayrollah Taymouri, said: "40,000 people of the residents of the ARSBAARAAN are unemployed and living under the poverty line. Arsbaaraan is 95 kilometers from the city of Tabriz, the capitol of Western Azerbaijan." (ILNA news agency)

75 tons of drugs per year, used in the province of Khoraasaan

The addicts of the province of Khoraasaan use 75 tons of drugs per year, which makes up 10% of the entire country's annual drug use. The Secretary of the Assembly of Concordance for the combat against drugs in Khoraasaan said: "This amount of drugs is used by 200,000 addicts throughout the province; these addicts mainly use Opium which makes up for 80%; the rest are Morphine, Hashish and Heroin." (MEHR news agency)

28,000 orphans are waiting for benefactors

The General Director of the Committee for assistance of the Imam in the Province of Khoraasaan said: "The amount of financial aid to 28,000 orphaned children [in Khoraasaan] who are waiting for "benefactors" is $928. per month." (MEHR news agency)

Farda (Ahmadinejad's site): "Some of Rafsanjani's campaign supporters announce bankruptcy"

Iran Press News: Translation by Banafsheh Zand-Bonazzi

According to a report in Ahmadinejad's own site, FARDA (named as such in order to confuse people with Radio Farda which is the Persian Broadcast of Radio Free Europe) several campaign supporters of Rafsanjani's presidential campaign, whose campaign finance loans for advertisement, etc. have not been reimbursed, are claiming bankruptcy. Some of these financiers who paid out thousands of dollars are planning to lodge complaints in court against Rafsanjani's campaign authorities. The plaintiffs are mainly financiers from the greater provinces and have not as of yet been able to collect on monies owed to them. They are each now facing serious financial troubles. READ MORE

Several days after the elections, in Tehran, a large number of creditors from the Rafsanjani campaign gathered in front of the campaign headquarters to protest, demanding that they be reimbursed. The majority of these creditors were either workers or contractors who had been gathered to work for the campaign in installing publicity posters among other services.

One of the financiers who lost his money in this deal said: "Unfortunately during the campaign, based on the orders of Rafsanjani's campaign I printed up in excess of $16,000 worth of printed material which I have yet to be paid for. They keep telling me, today, tomorrow or they hand me off to talk to yet another individual in their entourage in Tehran. I have written out checks that have now been returned for lack of funds and I truly fear that any day now, I will be arrested and taken to prison, for writing bad checks and bankruptcy."

There are many more, like this man in provinces all around Iran who invested and are being stonewalled as well as driven to bankruptcy. Some unconfirmed news indicates that Rafsanjani's debts have climbed to the $2,200,000 mark. Rafsanjani who left the campaign issues in the hands of his friends and relatives (including members of the Party of Experts and the Party of Temperance) started up large campaign branches that cost a lot to establish. One of the reasons for the refusal to reimburse the creditors is that many of Rafsanjani's own influential supporters, financiers and guarantors backed out of their hefty campaign promises after Rafsanjani lost the elections.