Mullahs Acknowledge Clashes with People and Mojahedin Sympathizers, Reuter, May 17 

TEHRAN - Security forces in central Iran have arrested several members of an Iraq-based armed opposition group for stirring up disturbances, the official Iranian news agency IRNA said on Saturday.

It quoted the top intelligence official in Isfahan province as saying members of a team belonging to the Mujahideen Khalq were arrested on Thursday in Khomeinishahr.

In Paris, the Mujahideen Khalq said in a statement residents in Khomeinishahr had staged large anti-government demonstrations since Tuesday.

The statement said there were many arrests but denied that those detained were members of the group. It said they were ordinary Iranians who sympathized with the Mujahideen.

[In a statement issued from Paris on May 17, the Mojahedin of Iran said that: "... As the People's Mojahedin of Iran announced yesterday, extensive protests against the mullahs' regime have been going on in Sedeh since Tuesday, May 13, where large groups of people took to the streets, chanting slogans against Khamenei and Rafsanjani and in support of the Mojahedin and the Iranian Resistance and confronted the security forces and the Revolutionary Guards."]

 

Fearing Boycott of Election, Rafsanjani Begs People to Vote, Reuter, May 16 

TEHRAN - President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani told Iranians on Friday it was their duty to vote in next week's election to replace him -- even those who do not support the Islamic government...

"Even those who do not support us should know that a high number of votes is to the benefit of the country and the disappointment of our enemies," he said in a 50-minute sermon at the weekly prayer session on the university campus.

 

Khobar Bombing Suspect May Cooperate with U.S., The Washington Post, May 17  

A suspect held in Canada in connection with last summer's deadly bombing attack against American servicemen in Saudi Arabia has expressed interest in cooperating with U.S. authorities, federal law enforcement officials said yesterday...

Because he spent considerable time in Iran, Sayegh may be in a position to provide valuable information regarding possible links between Tehran and the Saudi Shiite Muslim group that Saudi authorities suspect was responsible for the bombing. Sayegh studied in the Iranian religious center of Qom, where U.S. and Arab sources say he first established ties to Iranian intelligence officials.

Overview

Land of Unrelenting Terrorism

The Washington Times, May 18

 

The following is an excerpt of a column by Arnold Beichman, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution.

 

While the world grieves for the stricken people of Northern Iran, let us not forget that their theocratic government is dedicated to terrorism as an instrument of national policy.

Instead of using it vast oil-created assets to benefit the Iranian people, it has wasted those resources on, first, costly armaments like submarines, tanks, jet fighters and bombers, armed personnel carriers, missiles, gunboats, and armies, chemical and biological weapons; second, on a power struggle with the United States; third, on creating a terror machine to kill Iranians in exile living in the West. Potentially one of the richest countries in the Middle East, Iran now begs the industrial countries, whose laws it violates with impunity, for humanitarian help.

By all means, let that help be given. The Iranian people should not be punished for the sins of the Iranian dictatorship, which has incarcerated some 100,000 political prisoners.

Iran, a clerical regime, is on the eve of a political crisis. President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani’s term ends this month. He is to be succeeded in a rigged election May 23 by Ali Akbar Nateq-Noori, speaker of Iran’s mullahs. There is a faint glimmer of hope that with the end of the Rafsanjani regime the new president of Iran will be ready to negotiate an armistice with the West and stop trying to export its inquisitorial revolution to Muslim countries in the Near and Middle East. Once more we will hear, especially in Western Europe, about the conflict between Iranian "pragmatists" and "radicals," between "doves" and "hawks," between "moderates" and "fire-eaters."

Russia and Germany, Iran’s best business and diplomatic friends, will use the new election as an opportune moment to forgive Iran’s past violations of international law even though a German court on April 10 found that Iran’s highest authorities had ordered assassinations of Iranian opposition leaders living in a European exile.

Back to Brief on Iran