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Aug 28, 2008 at 12:00 AM |
By: Alireza Jafarzadeh
Over the weekend, in a knockout punch to the fanciful myth of a rupture between Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei and his hand-picked president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the mullahs’ top leader not only defended his embattled president, he endorsed him for a second term. So much for the much-touted schism and preposterous inferences shaping policy toward Tehran. Is Denver listening?
In what Ahmadinejad’s allies have described as a ''conclusive statement'' on Saturday, 23 August, 2008, Khamenei ordered the former Qods Force commander-turned-president to plan on keeping his post for a second four-year term. According to the state-run Fars News Agency, he said, "Do not think that this year is your last year as head of the government. No. Act as if you will stay in charge for five years." He added ''Imagine that this year, plus the four that follow, you will be in charge, and plan and act accordingly.''
Many proponents of incentive-centric dialogue with Tehran have reasoned that since Ahmadinejad has less than a year left in office and the ''pragmatist radicals'' within the ruling security-military faction are supposedly on the rise, Washington and its allies should just wait and work with the next cabinet. Khamenei’s Saturday statement has scuttled this preposterous policy which, if pursued, would effectively let Tehran continue its nuclear drive and terrorist meddling in Iraq.
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Jul 04, 2008 at 12:00 AM |
By: Alireza Jafarzadeh
As policy-makers on both sides of the Atlantic continued to tear their hair at the Iran policy impasse, the clearest call yet for a viable approach to Tehran came over the weekend, not from Washington or London, but from Paris. According to Agence France Presse, “More than 70,000 supporters of Iran's opposition protested near Paris on Saturday,” June 28, to challenge Tehran's unabated nuclear drive and the escalating crisis between Iran and the international community.
They called on the United States and European Union to adopt a new approach toward the ayatollahs' regime by empowering the Iranian people in their struggle for a secular, democratic, and non-nuclear Iran. The Iranians from across Europe and North America rejected both a military invasion and preserving the status-quo, as at best ineffectual in resolving the current crisis.
The unprecedented gathering was held on the eve of France's assumption of the EU's rotating presidency, and just days after Gordon Brown's government removed the main Iranian opposition, the People's Mujahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK) from the UK's list of banned organizations. Now the European Union must review its blacklisting of the MEK, since the EU's designation was based solely on the group's UK status.
The keynote speaker was Maryam Rajavi, the President-elect of Iran's Parliament-in-exile, the National Council of Resistance of Iran. Calling the blacklisting of Iran's most organized and largest democratic opposition “unjust,” she said: "The Iranian Resistance has never called on the US or any other country to send their sons and daughters to fight a war with the mullahs…If you stand with the Iranian people as they stand for liberty, then end the terrorist designation of their Resistance movement. This is a resistance with 120,000 martyrs lost to the cause of freedom. Do not deprive the world of the most effective counterweight to fundamentalism and terrorism."
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Jun 15, 2008 at 12:00 AM |
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By: Alirezah Jafarzadeh
 While we bicker, Tehran is sprinting towards its nuclear arms goal in defiance of United Nations Security Council resolutions. Most recently, in May, the International Atomic Energy Agency voiced its "serious concerns" about the regime's nuclear ambitions. Tehran's terrorist proxies continue to incite violence in Iraq. All this begs the question: isn't there a better way out of the current deadlock? The answer is "yes."
Tehran's main fear is that the US might go for a option besides air strikes - reaching out to Iranian resistance groups for help. Although not yet contemplated by the administration, this option enjoys strong bipartisan support from members of Congress.
Several years ago, in an effort to placate the ayatollahs in exchange for short-lived benefits, the Clinton administration and later the EU blacklisted Iran's largest and most active opposition group, the People's Mujahedin Organization of Iran, or MEK. Needless to say, they got nothing in return.
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May 07, 2008 at 12:00 AM |
By: Alireza Jafarzadeh
Almost a week after the U.S. Department of State branded the ayatollahs’ regime in Iran as the “most active state sponsor of terrorism,” there are reports from Baghdad that the Hezbollah of Lebanon has been training Iraqi terrorists at camps near Tehran. Tehran’s Terror Inc. certainly knows a thing or two about the art of outsourcing.
According to the New York Times, “the account of Hezbollah’s role was provided by four Shiite militia members who were captured in Iraq late last year” after they had returned from training in Iran., In a training program described, according to the Times, by the American officials as “training the trainers,” the captured terrorists were part of a “class of 16 militants who crossed into Iran from southern Iraq and were taken to a camp near Tehran.”
While these reports corroborate with the information I revealed in January and March of 2007, they are far from the whole story. Last year, I received a number of intelligence reports from my sources inside the Tehran government and affiliated with the underground network of Iran’s main opposition, the People’s Mujahedin of Iran (MEK/PMOI), about an extensive, elaborate program to train large numbers of Iraqi terrorists in Iran.
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May 07, 2008 at 06:33 PM |
 WASHINGTON (AFP) — The United States will be under pressure to stop banning an Iranian opposition movement as "terrorist" following a court ruling Wednesday in Britain, a former opposition spokesman said. The Court of Appeal ruled there were "no valid grounds" to contend that a British panel made legal errors when it ordered the People's Mujahedeen Organization of Iran (PMOI) to be removed from a terrorist blacklist.
Encouraged by the ruling was Alireza Jafarzadeh, who was spokesman for the National Resistance Council of Iran (NRCI), the PMOI's political wing, until the State Department banned both as a "foreign terrorist organization" in 2003. Jafarzadeh said the State Department will have to weigh the ruling in London when it conducts its scheduled five-year review of the terrorist designation for the Iranian opposition movement in October 2008.
"It's clear pressure because here's a credible court that looked at things and said this group -- we're talking about the same group, the same activities, everything -- this group is not engaged in terrorism," he told AFP. The State Department will have to weigh what he said was a 22-page ruling by the Cour of Appeal as well as a 144-page ruling by a previous court which acted in favor of the Iranian group, he said.
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