Back to Brief on Iran
[Excerpts from an article by Harry G. Summers Jr., a distinguished fellow of the Army War College]
… Meanwhile a secular Iranian resistance movement, the People's Mujahideen, had been building in the Iran-Iraq border areas. Led by a woman, President-elect Maryam Rajavi, the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCR) presented a modernist democratic alternative to the totalitarian medieval theocracy of the ayatollahs, especially their repressive policies toward women. With 40,000 soldiers armed with tanks, and artillery, cross-border raids, radio and television broadcasts in Iran, its encouragement of internal dissent and work abroad to call into question the legitimacy of the ayatollahs' regime, the NCR is a genuine threat to the Tehran government.
Most recent was the NCR's September 1998 organization of a 10,000- strong demonstration at the United Nations headquarters in New York to protest the appearance of the Iranian president, the Ayatollah Mohammed Khatami. "The theme of the massive protest," said the Associated Press, "was that Khatami, who was widely described as a moderate when he came to power 13 months ago, has proved as uncompromising and brutal towards the mullahs who ran Iran for the previous 18 years.
It is a threat the Tehran regime takes most seriously, as evidenced by the execution of Mujahideen supporters within Iran and the repeated assassinations of NCR representative's abroad. From the Iranian government's own testimony, there is no question for the United States the NCR and their People's Mujahideen qualify as "an enemy of my enemy." Yet instead of embracing them as an ally against a common foe, last year the State Department added the People's Mujahideen to its list of terrorists organizations. As the Oct. 9.1997 Los Angeles Times noted "One senior Clinton administration official said inclusion of the People's Mujahideen was intended as a goodwill gesture to Tehran and its newly elected moderate president."
Appeasement is alive and well in the State Department. On June 17, 1998, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright called for improvement relations with Iran. "As the walls of mistrust come down," she said "we can develop with the Islamic Republic, when it is ready, a road map leading to normal relations." What she got in return was a slap in the face. The offer was rebuffed with accusations that the United States "still maintained an outdated policy of hostility" toward Iran.
But not everyone in Washington has lost his common sense. On Sept. 16, 1998, 220 members at the House of Representatives signed a "Statement of Iran's Deeds" condemning the Tehran regime and calling on the removal of the People's Mujahideen from the State Departments terrorist list. As Rep. Robert Menendez, New Jersey Democrat, said: "We should not tie our interests and our future relations with the people of Iran to the destiny of the clerical regime. This is a recipe for a disaster."
Congress made it clear that "the enemy
of my enemy is my friend." Congress' challenge is to get the State Department
to agree as well.
Mullahs' Leader Denounces Peace Accord, Associated Press, October 30
TEHRAN - Iran's spiritual leader on Friday denounced Yasser Arafat as a "disgraceful ... traitor," heaping on the Palestinian leader some of the worst insults he has faced for signing a peace accord with Israel.
"He is an abject, treacherous person, a person who is deeply immersed in the filth of selfishness and worldliness," Ayatollah Khamenei said in a highly-publicized sermon at Tehran University.
Khamenei was interrupted by chants of "no compromise, no surrender, combat Israel" by the hundreds of thousands of worshipers hearing him.
Most top Iranian officials including President Mohammad Khatami, Cabinet ministers, Parliament members and military officers were present.
In Gaza, a senior aide to Arafat rebuked Khamenei, saying he had "no right to make this kind of a statement."
"We call upon the Iranian leadership to stop playing games in the Palestinian field because the (Palestinian) Authority will not allow Khamenei or anyone else to make the Palestinian land a new Afghanistan in which people like him and his mercenaries intervene with their corruption, sedition and conspiracies against the interests of the Palestinian people," Tayab Abed Al-Rahim said in a statement.
Hizbollah Leader Tells Palestinians to Kill Arafat, Reuters, November 1
BEIRUT - Lebanon's radical Hizbollah group Sunday called on the Palestinians to kill President Yasser Arafat for signing an interim peace deal with Israel last month.
Speaking at a mass rally to denounce the U.S.-brokered Wye Plantation interim deal, the pro-Iranian group's leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah branded Arafat a traitor and told the Palestinians to attack Israelis to foil the accord.
His comments were a hard-line version of the stinging rebuke Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei delivered Friday to Arafat for signing the Wye accord.