PARIS - Mr. Massoud Rajavi, President of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, described the return to Tehran of European Union ambassadors as emboldening the theocracy ruling Iran to continue its suppression, export of terrorism and enmity to peace.

He noted: The decision comes despite the fact that two weeks ago, 2,000 MPs, including majorities in the parliaments of Italy, Britain and Luxembourg, condemned the mullahs' crimes and called on their respective governments to sever or limit diplomatic and trade relations with this regime and exert pressure on the clerics to end repression and export of terrorism, and rescind the fatwa against Salman Rushdie.

Attackers Smash Offices of Critical Iran Students, Reuter, November 15 

TEHRAN - Unidentified assailants on Saturday rampaged through the offices of a vocal Islamist student group that has criticised top Iranian leaders, Iran's official news agency IRNA said.

It quoted the group as saying that its secretary-general Heshmatollah Tabarzadi and several members of staff were injured in the attack by about 40 people.

The student group last month held a rally at Tehran university to demand legal limits on the powers and length of term of Iran's supreme spiritual leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Originally hardline Islamists, Tabarzadi's group has in the past year stepped up its criticism of conservatives and moved closer to backers of President Mohammad Khatami.

Russia Arrests Iranian Diplomat for Arms Spying, The Washington Post, November 15  

MOSCOW - Russia arrested an Iranian today who it said was caught "red-handed" trying to buy missile designs.

Russia's NTV commercial television network said the man was an Iranian diplomat in Moscow who was deported immediately after his arrest for trying to lure Russian experts into taking missile blueprints to Iran...

The television report said Russian security agents followed the diplomat for two weeks before arresting him and established that he was contacting employees of Russia's defense design bureaus and inviting them to visit Iran on lecture tours...

Overview

Death to America!" the roar went up outside the former U.S. Embassy in Tehran last Tuesday, 18 years after Islamic militants stormed the compound and took 52 Americans hostage. Several thousand demonstrators shook their fists and waved their placards (America Can't Do A Damn Thing!); some carried effigies of Uncle Sam…

It's the Iranians who are hostages now, prisoners of the tired revolutionary rhetoric that most of them long to discard. [Khatami’s] election raised hopes that the United States and Iran might finally be able to sit down together at peace talks in Paris. But Iranians are beginning to fear that their new president is too weak to break free of the radicals who have built their careers on anti-American sloganeering. "Khatami is in a box with very little room to maneuver," says an Asian diplomat in Tehran.

Intrigued by Khatami and his mandate, Washington has made a few tiny overtures. Last month the State Department put an Iranian-exile group called MKO, based in Iraq and dedicated to overthrowing the Tehran regime, on its official list of terrorist organizations. After insisting for two years that no outside investors should finance Iran's energy sector, the White House quietly agreed last summer to let a Western consortium build a natural-gas pipeline across Iranian territory. And though the embargo law requires sanctions against any company investing more than $40 million in Iran, the Clinton administration is not expected to ultimately penalize Total SA, a French oil company, for a big gas project off the Iranian coast. Some European countries complain that Washington hasn't done enough to encourage Khatami--but this is the most significant public message the White House has sent since the revolution.

If Bill Clinton made a bigger gesture, could Khatami respond? Wags in Tehran's affluent northern suburbs call their president "Saint Diana" because he visits the poor and comforts the afflicted--but doesn't have a shred of power. Khatami skipped the anniversary demonstrations. His predecessor, ex-president Ali Akbar Rafsanjani, meanwhile, seems unwilling to relinquish control. In fact, he's set up a new office, the Expediency Council, on the grounds of the presidential compound and taken some of his old ministers with him to form a kind of shadow cabinet. Iran's spiritual leader, Ali Khamenei, wields ultimate authority in the country. That makes Khatami a weak third in the power lineup...

Back to Brief on Iran