Back to Brief on Iran
The National Council of Resistance of Iran issued a statement on Wednesday indicating that: British officials have been quoted by news agencies as saying that investment in the new tone of Iran is a correct policy and that they must try to encourage "Iranian moderates." Similarly, the British Foreign Secretary has been quoted as saying that he wished to encourage the United States government to lift the embargo against the religious, terrorist dictatorship ruling Iran and adopt a more flexible policy towards that regime.
The NCR said that it regards these remarks as a policy doomed to failure. They will only encourage the mullahs in domestic repression and export of terrorism, and run counter to the best interests of the Iranian people.
The stated positions are in diametric contrast to the positions of the majorities of the representatives in the British House of Commons and the US House of Representatives who condemned, last October and July, the Khomeini regime for its export of terrorism and violations of human rights, and called for imposing full sanctions against the regime.
The NCR statement added that: As Khatami pointed out in his interview with the CNN, it is a "wrong interpretation" to divide the leaders of the regime into moderates and conservatives. There are no moderates in the mullahs' medieval regime and all the regime's factions enjoy common interests in suppression and export of terrorism.
Khatami's hollow gestures and "the new tone" adopted by the criminal mullahs' are but the demagoguery of a crisis-riddled regime which seeks economic concessions and a maneuvering ground to continue its past policies.
Women Remain Unequal to Men by Mullahs' Law,
BBC World Service, January 5
The Iranian parliament has rejected by a big majority a bill which would have allowed women the same inheritance rights as men.
A conservative deputy Mohammad Reza Faaker said the proposal was contrary to Islamic law, which stipulated that a woman's share could be only half that of a man.
The BBC Iranian Affairs correspondent says the vote comes as a big disappointment to women's groups which have been conducting a long campaign to have the inheritance law changed….
Export Fine, The Associated Press, January 14
NEW HAVEN—An airplane equipment company has been fined $3 million for exporting plane seats to Iran while the United States had a trade ban in effect.
Senior U.S. District Judge Ellen Bree Burns on Tuesday ordered Florida-based BE Aerospace to pay $2.5 million in fines and $500,000 in civil penalties to the U.S. Commerce Department….
Under the law, BE could have been fined
up to $15 million.
Khatami's Audacity!, Wall Street Journal, European Edition Editorial, January 12
Whatever else you think of him, it's hard to deny Iranian President Mohammed Khatami has audacity. It takes audacity, for one, to call for a cultural dialogue with a country your government--or Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei anyway--still considers the "Great Satan."
It takes even more gall for a leader of a government convicted last spring of assassinating Kurdish dissidents in Berlin to call Israel "a racist terrorist regime."…
Virtually all Mr. Khatami's statements evoke such mixed feelings. It was good, for example, to see him praise the Pilgrims, spiritual founders of the American civilization… But it was telling that he ignored the problem (for Iran, anyway) of how that works in a theocratic state. Similarly, it was heartening to hear him denounce terrorism. But his claim that Muslims can't be guilty of it because the Koran forbids murder is absurd. (The first of the Ten Commandments doesn't, in his mind, seem to exonerate the Israelis.) And the claim that people fighting for their land--an obvious reference to the Palestinians--cannot be considered terrorists was disturbing.
Moreover, many of the most important issues were overlooked entirely….
Continued support for Hezbolla guerrillas? Ignored. The ongoing Fatwah against Salman Rushdie? Apparently unworthy of comment. The murder and kidnapping of dissidents, and verdict in the Berlin Mykonos trial? Also unimportant. The purpose of Iran's ballistic missile program if it intends to abide by its arms control agreements and, as Mr. Khatami says, does not "intend" to become a nuclear power? Unaddressed.
In other words, it is Iran's current behavior, not an old vendetta, that explains American reluctance to consider it a normal state…
Mr. Khatami surely intended his description of American policy as stuck in a "Cold War mentality" as a put down. But it is worth remembering that the original Cold Warriors were right about the nature of the Soviet regime and right in thinking that it could not be changed, and ultimately toppled, by making soft compromises.