Fars News reported today that seven to ten policemen involved in the Kahrizak prison abuse cases have been arrested. Police Chief Brigadier General Ismail Ahmadi Moqaddam announced the arrests, but also argued that the magnitude of human rights violations were “exaggerated and magnified in the media.” The timing of the arrests and General Moqaddam’s statement seem to be timed to take the sting out of any accusations of human rights abuses during the upcoming negotiations.
General Moqaddam’s statement contains a disturbing implication: can human rights violations such as rape, torture and murder actually be exaggerated? How would a person go about exaggerating them? The general, however, may have been referring to the number of abuse cases which were reported by various news outlets. Arguing that fewer people were tortured than was originally reported is never a valid defense (as many Americans have become familiar with of late). The number of people who are subjected to government torture simply isn’t an excuse.
A recent New York Times article highlighted the treatment of one prisoner, who later fled to Turkey. Ibrahim Sharifi was arrested on June 22nd, and taken to the bloody Kahrizak prison facility. Mr. Sharifi says he was repeatedly beaten over the course of four days. On the fourth day, Mr. Sharifi told a prison guard that,
“he should go ahead and just kill me if he wanted to,” he said, breaking into tears. “Then he called another guard and said ‘Take this bastard and impregnate him.’ ”They took him out of the cell to another room where they pushed him against a wall that had handcuffs and two metal hooks to keep his legs open. The guard pulled down his underwear, he said, and began raping him.
“He laughed mockingly as he was doing it and said that I could not even defend myself so how did I think that I could stage a revolution.
“They wanted to horrify and intimidate me,” he said, weeping.
Human Rights Watch has vouched for the story’s veracity, and says Mr. Sharifi’s statements are consistent with other reports coming out of Iran. The absolute horror of this account suggests that the number of people who have been subjected to this type of treatment is meaningless. People who debate the issue based on amounts are either missing the point or trying to obscure it by playing a blame game.
Iran seems to be attempting to use these arrests to take the sting out of any accusations made by opposing parties during the upcoming negotiations. It should not be allowed to blunt a confrontation over its human rights abuses by arresting low-level participants in the post-election government abuse scandal.
In the most recent issue of Foreign Affairs (Sep/Oct 2009), Deepak Malhotra wrote an interesting essay, “Without Conditions,” which discusses the problems with setting preconditions for diplomatic negotiations. While neither the P5+1 countries nor Iran have set actual preconditions for the Geneva talks with Iran, which Malhotra did warn against, his arguments can still be applied. Malhotra correctly suggests that:
Preconditions are appropriate only when they satisfy both criteria: the opponent is capable of meeting them, and doing so will not weaken its future leverage. Otherwise, they will serve no purpose except to create the impression that the other side has thwarted diplomatic efforts. Demands that ignore these criteria suggest either a flawed strategy or an attempt at political gamesmanship–or perhaps both.
Both sides of the upcoming talks have set implicit and mental preconditions for the talks and on themselves. Iran has refused to discuss its nuclear program, which is the 600-pound gorilla that Europe and the United States want to seriously talk about. The P5+1 countries have refused to not discuss Iran’s nuclear program, and seem to have made sanctions a moral imperative. Those positions make the results of the talks a foregone conclusion: sanctions by the West and the continuation of Iran’s nuclear program. Read the rest of this entry »
In a statement made to CNN-IBN, Mohamed El Baradei said of the recently revealed nuclear facility in Iran near Qom:
“Iran was supposed to inform us on the day it was decided to construct the facility. They have not done that. They are saying that this was meant to be a back-up facility in case we were attacked and so they could not tell us earlier on.”
“Nonetheless, they have been on the wrong side of the law, you know in so far as informing the agency about the construction and as you have seen it, it has created concern in the international community.”
The size of the facility appears to be inconsistent with the contention that it is for an exclusively civilian nuclear program. It is thought to be capable of housing 3,000 centrifuges according to the IAEA (4300 according to ACW)–potentially enough for manufacturing material for weapons use, but insufficient to power a reactor.
El Baradei, however, also stated:
“Whether they have done some weaponization studies as was claimed is still an outstanding issue. But I have not seen any credible evidence to suggest that Iran has an ongoing nuclear program today.”
In March 2007, Iran unilaterally withdrew from obligations under their subsidiary agreement to their NPT safeguards. The IAEA contested Iran’s withdrawal as illegal, but also said this:
Given the fact that Article 42 [of Iran’s Safeguards Agreement] is broadly phrased and that the old version of Code 3.1 had been accepted as complying with the requirements of this Article for some 22 years prior to the Board’s decision in 1992 to modify it as indicated above, it is difficult to conclude that providing information in accordance with the earlier formulation in itself constitutes non-compliance with, or a breach of, the [NPT-related] Safeguards Agreement as such.
In any case, the existence of an undeclared nuclear facility near Qom is the opposite of what Iran has needed to do for some time: build confidence in its negotiating partners that it is not seeking a weapon.
The situation has changed significantly since the Obama administration’s initial offer to talk with Tehran. The post-election protests this summer and the regime’s subsequent crackdown have undermined whatever merit the administration may have once seen in a realpolitik negotiations strategy. With the talks looming, the United States cannot pretend that the violence in the streets never happened, but neither can Washington be seen to fold. In fact, it should raise the stakes by broadening the agenda to include human rights. Read the rest of this entry »
Today at Tehran’s Sharif University, students protested the visit of Science Minister Kamran Daneshjou, (whom we’ve reported on extensively, and who was appointed with the new Ahmadinejad cabinet). (see video in earlier post). It is the second demonstration at a major university in two days, showing the persistence and resolve of the green movement in the face of government intimidation. Student Advarnews is cited as a source for reports of the protests in the New York times. Previous demonstrations include one on Sunday against Parliament member Gholam Ali Hadad Adel’s speech and another on Monday which forced Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to cancel a scheduled appearance.
Radio Liberty reports chants of “Death to the Dictator” and “Political Prisoners Must Be Released” heard among the hundreds at the anti-government demonstration.
Students also expressed support for Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, Ayatollah Yusef Sanei, and opposition leaders Mehdi Karroubi and Mir Hossein Moussavi who have spoken out against the government’s postelection clampdown on Iranian civil society protest.
The New York Times reports:
“Student leaders do not have a formal presence,” said Ali Afshari, a former student leader who is currently in Washington and is still in touch with students in Iran. “They have all been summoned and threatened. But the frustration is very widespread and the government can only shut down the universities if it wants to stop the protests.”
The protest movement, which has produced some of the nation’s worst unrest in 30 years, emerged as a response to a widespread belief that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had falsified election results in his favor. Universities have often been the site of protests, partly because of a student pro-democracy network, the Office for Consolidating Unity, and a law that bans police officers from entering the campus.
The Office for Consolidating Unity, which once had offices on nearly every campus but has been decimated by government pressure since Mr. Ahmadinejad took power in 2004, issued a statement on Tuesday saying the protest movement was a result of years of frustration with the government and that the students would remain part of it. The statement urged students to refrain from violence and pursue their demands in a “peaceful and civil” manner.
The disclosure of a secret nuclear facility near Qom last week apparently had the effect of convincing people that Iran is not only working towards building nuclear weapons, but is quite close to achieving that goal. But the fact is that all sixteen agencies within the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) still believe that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003 and has yet to restart it.
As a result of this position, the IC has been criticized by commentators who point toward German, French and Israeli intelligence reports that claim Iran never stopped its weapons program. Today’s New York Times article by David Sanger suggested that the IC is being overly cautious, overcompensating for the WMD intelligence debacle that helped launch the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
“Some Israeli and European officials say the Americans are being overly cautious, having been stung by the Iraq intelligence debacle. The Americans deny this, insisting they are open-minded. One American intelligence official said the view of Iran’s weapons design program, “like every analytic judgment, is constantly checked and reassessed in light of new information, which comes in all the time.”
The article’s authors and European and Israeli officials, however, seem to have forgotten that in 2003 IC analysts were plenty cautious about stating that Iraq’s stockpile of WMDs was a number greater than zero. They didn’t rush into a judgment, nor were they intent on pushing biased intelligence. Until, that is, the White House put a great deal of pressure on the IC to “sex up” its threat assessment of Iraq.
It was as a result of White House pressure that the IC changed its assessment of Iraq’s WMD program. Intelligence reports went from initially wary about the danger of Iraq’s WMD program, to absolutely certain (a “slam dunk”) that Iraq possessed WMDs.
This is not meant to be a blind defense of the IC (which wasn’t blameless for the Iraq war), but instead a refutation of arguments that dismiss a guarded intelligence assessment in favor of evaluations that can be used to support a more bellicose, confrontational approach. The intelligence reports that the leaders of the P5+1 countries take to heart before negotiations could greatly affect the outcome of the talks.
Unfortunately, neoconservatives and Iran hawks in the US have spent the last two years trying to discredit the 2007 NIE which stated that Iran halted its weapons program in 2003. The orchestrated campaign to attack the consensus assessment of US intelligence is nothing more than a repeat of the Bush administration’s cooked-up push for a justification to go to war in Iraq. While the “clock is ticking” on Iran’s nuclear program, as people often say, this repeat of history can only hasten a confrontation.
If the German, Israeli and French intelligence assessments are given priority, then there will be a greater sense of urgency to Thursday’s meeting with Iran. On the other hand, if the IC’s reports are believed, then there is certainly time to work on diplomacy before “crippling” sanctions are warranted.
The talks on October 1st should be treated by all parties involved as a soft opening for the second round of talks scheduled for October 6th. On Thursday, members of the P5+1 and Iran can raise the issues that are important to them, but no party should be overly rigid in its stance. The door to discussion should be left wide open, since everyone will be back at the table again in five days.
Before even sitting down for talks with the P5+1 on Thursday, Iran is reportedly planning to allow IAEA inspections at the newly-revealed enrichment facility near Qom.
Iran says it will soon inform the International Atomic Energy Agency of a timetable for inspection of its recently-announced nuclear facility.
Head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization Ali Akbar Salehi broke the news in an exclusive interview with Press TV late on Monday.
Iran has informed the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that the new plant will produce enriched uranium of up to 5 percent, consistent with its nuclear energy program.
Salehi noted that the plant is under construction within the framework of the IAEA regulations, saying “Iran has taken all the precautionary steps to safeguard its nuclear facilities.”
The Iranian nuclear chief said the attacks and accusations leveled by the United States and its Western allies during last week’s summit of the G-20 in Pittsburgh were pre-planned.
He also accused the major powers of politicizing Iran’s nuclear activities.
Salehi’s claim had to have been met with laughter among Washington policymakers and the IAEA alike, given that the bedrock of nuclear “safeguards” is a stringent inspections regime. Constructing a facility in secret and not declaring it open for IAEA inspectors can hardly be characterized as “taking all the precautionary steps.”
The Etemad-e-Mobin consortium, which is reportedly connected to the Revolutionary Guard (though details are scarce about the exact nature of the relationship), bought a 50% plus one share of the Telecommunications Company of Iran on Sunday, worth $7.8 billion. Two of the three companies that comprise Etemad-e-Mobin are reportedly controlled by the IRGC.
The New York Times reports:
The telecom share sold Sunday is part of the government’s project to privatize sectors still in state hands. But reform-minded politicians, and even some conservatives, have complained that institutions affiliated with the ruling system are being awarded stakes in the privatized firms, while the private sector is left out.
…[IRGC] finances are not on the government budget, and are free from any state oversight. The guard is accountable only to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the final say on all state matters in Iran.
The move extends the IRGC’s already tremendous influence across political, economic, and social spheres in Iranian society. It is said to control a large portion of the 70% or so of the Iranian economy that is state-run, which has enormous implications for US sanctions measures, given the IRGC’s skill at operating on the black market.
The reformist Presidential candidate turned opposition leader Mir-Hossein Mousavi has officially spoken out against further economic sanctions. He joins the outspoken Mehdi Karroubi, who came out against sanctions earlier this month.
“We are against any sanctions against our nation,” Mousavi said in a statement posted on Rouydadnews reformist website.He said sanctions “will impose agonies on a nation who suffers enough from miserable statesmen.”
He added: “The country is on the verge of crises which will mostly hurt the poor as a result of wrong and adventurous foreign policies of the government from which our people suffer.
“We might have simplistically thought this is an advantage for our green movement, but it is not,” said Mousavi, who along with his green-wearing supporters regard President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s re-election as “illegitimate.”
“Which one of them can be expected to care about the agony their behaviour imposes on people?” he asked of Iran’s current leaders. “If we don’t care about what harms those living in this land, nobody will.”
Human rights advocates like Shirin Ebadi have argued that any new sanctions imposed against Iran should be targeted specifically at Iranian government officials, not Iran’s general population. Unfortunately, the primary tool the US Congress is considering is a refined petroleum embargo — just in time for winter. The IRGC probably won’t have any trouble getting gasoline or heating oil, but what about Iran’s poor and middle class, many of whom are out risking their lives to protest against the government?
The US should stand in solidarity with the Iranian people, not stand on their backs.
Students in Iran have demonstrated against the government at Tehran University on the first day of the new academic year.
Footage posted on websites showed several hundred people chanting slogans against President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Eyewitnesses said students were not allowed into an official ceremony attended by a government minister to mark the start of term.
Reports say a large number of police officers were in the area.
One eyewitness, Mehdi, told BBC Persian that around 200-300 people had gathered in Tehran university by 1030 local time.
“Demonstrators were holding up green balloons and chanting slogans such as ‘Government of the coup, resign! Resign!’ and ‘Down with the dictator’,” he said.
Post-election violence
A counter demonstration was staged by supporters of the president, who was re-elected in a disputed election in June.
There were no reports of clashes between the two factions.
Sahimi: "The campaign against NIAC and Parsi by the Israel lobby and the
neocons, aided by Iranian monarchists and... http://fb.me/3RBd7Gg --15 hours ago
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Fars News 
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