USADI Commentary

EU at a Policy Crossroads

The upcoming nuclear talks between Tehran and the European Union’s Big-3, France, Germany, and Britain, would perhaps set the tone for the overall EU Iran policy in the aftermath of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s presidency. One only hopes it would be a reversal of its failed engagement policy.

The ruling regime has just gone through its most drastic political shake-up since its coming to power in 1979. With failure of the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s 16-year attempt at cohabitation with his powerful, yet rival partners, chief among them former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, major power realignment was completed when Ahmadinejad became President.

The ascension of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), manifested in gaining full control over all branches of the government, put to rest once and for all the myth of moderation from within the ruling theocracy.

Make no mistake. Rafsanjani was a pillar within the clerical hierarchy, whose most prominent contribution, ironically, was to propel Khamenei to the position of the Supreme Leader immediately after Ayatollah Khomeini died. Far from being a moderate of pragmatist, Rafsanjani's penchant for liquidating the opponents of the state in and out of Iran makes him a prime suspect in crimes against humanity. Still in the mullahs’ survival calculus, Rafsanjani had become a liability, rather than an asset, in the face of mounting challenges by a restive society and growing international pressure. The state as whole could no longer absorb a schism at the top.

Indeed, with Ahmadinejad in the office what you see is what you get from the regime in Iran. A trusted former IRGC commander, Ahmadinejad’s credentials as a planner and executor of extra-territorial terrorist operations, as an interrogator and assassin, while invoking a fake populist image, made him uniquely qualified for becoming the chief executive. In form and substance, he truly symbolizes the murderous mullocracy. The EU could not possibly be suggesting that the Ahmadinejad would be the agent of change in Iran?

Noting that its European interlocutors have yet to recover from the shock of being broadsided by election outcome, Tehran is now sending policy talking points to the EU. In a recent report by the state-run news agency, IRNA, Tehran went even as far as shedding crocodile tears for the EU unenviable position.

Rejoicing that the EU was “in deep crisis following the rejection of the European Constitution by France and the Netherlands” which “dealt a severe blow to the EU's global image”, the report asserted that “only a success on Iran's nuclear program would repair some of the damage and enhance the role of the EU as an important player on the world stage.”

In a bid to capitalize on the trans-Atlantic rift over the nuclear crisis, the mullahs brazenly invited the Europeans to stay the course in order “to prove to the Americans that their policy of engagement and dialogue in the end is the right way to resolve international issues instead of the use of force, sanctions and boycotts.”

Translation: We intend to milk this engagement folly as long as we can. We also know that our case eventually will end up at the Security Council. With the IRGC and Ahmadinejad at the helm, we could not have cared less.

IRNA also applauded Tehran's windfalls from EU's appeasement. It wrote, “In significant moves to soothe Tehran, in May 2002, the EU declared the Iranian Mujahideen Khalq Organization a terrorist group and has not tabled in the UN a resolution criticizing the human rights situation in Iran in order to give the EU-Iran human rights dialogue a chance.” This is the most dramatic admission yet that the EU's blacklisting of Iran's main opposition group was part of the policy of placating Tehran.

In a startling admission to Iran’s nuclear cheat-and-negotiate tactics, chief nuclear negotiator Hassan Rowhani told the conservative daily Kayhan that the clerical regime had succeeded in building a "considerable" number of sophisticated uranium enrichment centrifuges before suspending the work.

He told the pro-Khamenei daily that Iran had "corrected many failures" in its nuclear work, but that until the November freeze "we continued to manufacture and assemble centrifuge machines." Rowhani, indeed, has inadvertently made a compelling case why appeasement of rogue regimes is always futile.

Without question, the EU’s case for engaging the mullahs has completely collapsed. The IRGC is practically in charge of all affairs of the state, nuclear and otherwise. Its hold is guaranteed now that a loyal former commander is president and IRGC block dominates the rubber-stamp parliament.

The EU should end its appeasement of Iran and instead move to engage the Iranian people by supporting their morally and politically legitimate quest for regime change. This is a good policy, it is good for the Iranians and it is good for the Europe. It is good for all of us. (USADI)

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Iran Focus

July 20, 2005

Supreme Leader’s confidant gets Iran’s top security post

Tehran, Iran - Jul. 20 – The appointment of Ali Larijani as the new secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, the country’s top decision- making body on security-related issues, has been confirmed by the cabinet selection committee, an influential daily reported on Wednesday.

“The cabinet selection committee has approved the appointment of Dr. Ali Larijani as the next Minister of Foreign Affairs, but even though his appointment as the secretary of the Supreme National Security Council has been finalized, it is not yet certain that he will get the Foreign Ministry portfolio at the same time”, the ultra-conservative daily Kayhan’s Wednesday issue quoted “an informed source” as saying..

Ali Larijani is widely seen as a favourite son of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. He was handpicked as the unique candidate of the ultra-conservative camp, but his aloof style and dismal public performance meant that he had no hope of becoming president..

Since leaving his post as director-general of the state-run Islamic Republic Broadcasting Corporation, Larijani sat on the SNSC as Ayatollah Khamenei’s personal representative. Now he will replace Hassan Rowhani as the secretary of the powerful council, which puts him in charge of Iran’s nuclear talks with the European trio.

Larijani was a senior commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) His brother, Sadegh Larijani, is a cleric who is a member of the powerful Guardian Council. Another brother, Mohammad-Javad, is regarded as a top ideologue of the Khamenei faction.

As the Deputy Minister of Revolutionary Guards in the 1980s, Larijani was involved in the sponsorship of terrorist activities by Iran’s surrogates in Lebanon and elsewhere in the Muslim world.

In Ali Akbar Rafsanjani’s administration in the 1990s, Larijani became a key member of the secretive committee set up by Ayatollah Khamenei to “thwart the cultural onslaught on the Islamic Republic”. The other members of the gang were then-Deputy Minister of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) Saeed Emami and Revolutionary Guards Deputy Commander Baqer Zolqadr.

The committee planned and carried out the chain murder of dissidents in Iran and several assassinations abroad. It also ordered the production of several television programs that were jointly produced by IRIB and MOIS to discredit the opponents of the clerical regime..

In 2003, Larijani set up two Arabic-language television stations, al-Alam and Sahar, and a 24-hour external radio network, as part of a program to introduce Islamic values to Middle Eastern audiences. The stations have been blamed by Iraqi authorities for instigating violence. France has since banned Sahar because of its “fundamentalist ideology” and anti-Semitic propaganda.. 
 

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Agence France Presse

July 23, 2005
Iran talks up nuclear centrifuge work before suspension

TEHRAN - Iran succeeded in building a "considerable" number of sophisticated centrifuges used for uranium enrichment before suspending the work under an agreement with the European Union in November, chief nuclear negotiator Hasan Rowhani said in comments published Saturday.

"Today, the number of centrifuge machines manufactured and ready to function is considerable," Rowhani told the conservative daily Kayhan without giving a number.

"Apparently, we have accepted the suspension of our activities for one year and nine months (since November 2003), but actually during this period we corrected many failures in our work.

"Until the Paris agreement (of November 2004), we continued to manufacture and assemble centrifuge machines," he said.

"It is true that between February and June 2004, there was an interruption ... but after June, we redoubled our efforts to compensate for wasted time."..

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Reuters

July 22, 2005
Germany tells Iran: don’t lecture us on democracy

BERLIN — Germany accused Teheran of impertinence on Wednesday for presuming to lecture it on democracy, an unusually sharply worded response to Iranian comments that were critical of Interior Minister Otto Schily.

“It is tough to beat this kind of impertinence, considering it comes from a country where human rights are regularly violated, where women are flogged after dubious trials and where critics of the regime are taken into custody for months without legal recourse,” a German Interior Ministry spokesman said.

“If there is a need to respect democratic principles, as our colleague from the Iranian Foreign Ministry says, then I would advise him to focus on his own country.” The comments were unusual because Germany, alongside France and Britain, is currently in talks with Iran to persuade it to abandon its nuclear ambitions. European diplomats have grown pessimistic about their chances of success in the negotiations following the election of hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

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The US Alliance for Democratic Iran (USADI), is a US-based, non-profit, independent organization, which promotes informed policy debate, exchange of ideas, analysis, research and education to advance a US  policy on Iran which will benefit America’s interests, both at home and in the Middle East, through supporting Iranian people’s  aspirations for a democratic, secular, and peaceful government, free of tyranny, fundamentalism, weapons of mass destruction, and terrorism.

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