Back to Brief on Iran
NICOSIA - A minister from Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority has met the leader of the main armed Iranian opposition group, the People's Mujahedeen, in Baghdad, the group said Saturday.
The minister for public services Azzam al-Ahmad told Massud Rajavi that "the recent position of the Tehran regime's leaders against the people and government of Palestine clearly show that there has been no change in the clerical regime whatsoever," it said in a statement.
Ahmad said Tehran's priorities remained the "export of crisis and meddling in the internal affairs of Arab and Moslem governments" and described the People's Mujahedeen as "the only alternative for Iran and a guarantee of friendship and fraternity in the region," the statement said.
Rajavi told Ahmad the "anti-Arafat statements and positions of the mullahs' regime" were "a blatant affront to the people of Palestine," the People's Mujahedeen statement said.
He "condemned the enmity of the leaders of the clerical regime to peace and freedom, and expressed pleasure that their terrorist conspiracies against Mr. Arafat's life have been foiled."
The People's Mujahedeen maintains thousands of fighters in bases on Iraq's border with Iran. It also maintains offices in Europe and North America from which it runs a sustained publicity campaign against the Tehran government.
The reported meeting came after Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei attacked Arafat as a "traitor and a lackey of the Zionists" last month for signing the Wye River peace accord with Israel.
Following Khameini's attack, the Palestinian leadership accused Tehran of sponsoring a hardline faction within the main Palestinian militant group HAMAS.
It charged that the Iranian-backed faction was responsible for a bomb attack which killed an Israeli soldier in the Gaza Strip last month and for a recent threat of violence against the Palestinian Authority sent to news organizations in Jerusalem in the name of HAMAS's armed wing.
The Palestinian Authority also accused Tehran of plotting the assassination of its officials as part of its plans to sabotage implementation of the latest US-brokered peace agreement.
Britain’s Collusion With Mullahs Over Human Rights, Iran Zamin News Agency, November 6
According to a statement by the NCR, the clerical regime has vigorously tried in the past few days to alter the text of UN General Assembly’s resolution condemning violations of human rights in Iran. To this end, it has negotiated with a number of European Union countries, particularly Britain, and offered them political and economic concessions.
The statement reports that, for their part, Britain and several other European countries have drafted a resolution which condemns some aspects of the crimes committed by the theocratic regime ruling Iran, but welcomes a number of bogus developments such as the "political will to move the Iranian society to a more tolerant and peaceful state."
Mr. Mohammad Mohaddessin, NCR’s Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman, described these paragraphs of the draft resolution as fallacious, contradictory and unrealistic.
The interim report of the Special Representative underlined that the situation of human rights has deteriorated in the past six months, he said, adding that such concessions would only assure the clerical regime of the world community’s indifference towards human rights abuses in Iran.
Iranian Currency Continues to Plunge, Agence France Presse, November 8
TEHRAN - Iran's currency, the rial, took another dive yesterday against the dollar, continuing its declining trend of past weeks, foreign exchange dealers here said.
The "unofficial" exchange rate in Tehran on Sunday morning stood at 6,900 rials to the dollar, compared to 6,800 on Saturday.
Iran's currency has steadily fallen from around 6,200 rials to the dollar in mid-October to the current rate, both abroad and on Tehran's unofficial but barely controlled money market.
The dollar has risen against the Iranian currency as Iran's oil revenues have continued to fall, forcing the government to adopt emergency austerity measures in the face of a 6.3 billion dollar budget deficit this year.
Tehran: An Army of 500,000 Unemployed, State-Controlled Daily Akhbar, October 29
The general manager of Tehran Province's Social Affairs and Employment is quoted as saying that more than 534,000 have registered in the province's unemployment offices. This number of unemployed high school graduates is unprecedented in the past three years.