US Alliance for Democratic Iran

Back in July 2005, just a few days after “selection” of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as president by the mullahs’ Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, we commented that the well-organized political coup “engineered by the notorious Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), cements the dominance of the ultra-conservative faction of the ruling regime over all key levers of power in Iran."

We added that “The ruling regime has just gone through its most drastic political shake-up since its coming to power in 1979. With failure of the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s 16-year attempt at cohabitation with his powerful, yet rival partners, chief among them former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, major power realignment was completed when Ahmadinejad became President. … Rafsanjani had become a liability, rather than an asset, in the face of mounting challenges by a restive society and growing international pressure. The state as whole could no longer absorb a schism at the top.

We warned that “Ahmadinejad’s win also serves as a wake-up call that we are indeed dealing with an irreformable fundamentalist regime that has all centers of theocratic power, the judiciary, the Parliament and now the presidency” under Khamenei’s control” and that “The ruling regime is incapable of change... Only when Iran tyrants are unseated by the Iranian people, this growing regional and global menace will be neutralized.”

And we predicted that “the political coup launched by the office of Khamenei and executed by the IRGC to bring Ahmadinejad out of the ballot box could very well turn out to be the mullahs' unraveling under the mounting weight of domestic and international pressure.”

On June 12, the factional coup culminated, as we had expected, in total purge of the rival factions when Ali Khamenei in collision with the Council of Guardians and the feared Revolutionary Guards declared Ahmadinejad the winner. Unable to resolve the rift without weakening his own leadership position, Khamenei instead opted to end the bleeding by getting rid of the rivals. Although in 2005 Khamenei dealt a sever blow to Rafsanjani’s faction by placing the until-then obscure Ahmadinejad at the presidential helm, he failed to end it. In June 2009, Rafsanjani came back with a vengeance to severely weaken Khamenei by defeating his hand-picked president. With an eye on position of Supreme Leadership, he put all his resources behind Mirhossein Mousavi and brought him back to the political arena after almost twenty years of hiatus.

In summer of 2007, observing a trend in the rise of public acts of dissent in all walks of life particularly among women, students and workers, we concluded that Iran rulers were sitting on sea of popular discontent which could explode at any moment. We commented that “Without gallows and public hangings, without TV “confession” travesty, without kidnapping and torture of dissidents, the tyrant mullahs would not be able to keep their house of cards. Without a reign of terror, they would not be able to quell the rising opposition to their nuclear program and financing of terrorism in Iraq using the oil revenue while more than half of Iran’s population lives in poverty.”

Ayatollahs’ own analysts had a similar view. In June 2007, just a few days after major uprisings sparked by sudden announcement of rationing fuel shook Iran, a major state-run daily, Etemad, acknowledged that there are mounting economic, health, transportation and bread and butter issues that have turned the society into a barrel of explosives where anything could ignite it. “It does not matter what the event is; it could be the loss of the national soccer team, sudden loss of electricity, the cutting off of the drinking water, or the sudden and unexpected rationing of the fuel... They all can spark a riot... Although most of these riots are put down after the security and military agencies intervene, every act of riot adds to the collective memory of the people who will use it as capital or a learned experience for the next uprising.”

Reflecting the mullahs’ fear of the enemy within, Newsweek reported in June of 2007 that “In the name of national security and what they call ‘public order,’ Iran's hard-liners are frantically lashing out at anyone they imagine might somehow pose a challenge to their increasingly unpopular rule.” It added that the mullahs are “especially fearful of feminists, trade unionists and the like... The big fear is a repetition of the people-power uprisings that toppled antidemocratic regimes a few years ago in the former Soviet republics of Georgia and Ukraine...”

And in August of 2007, we commented that “As mullahs are skillfully exploiting this paralysis, a close look at Iran’s internal dynamics, on full display in a series of anti-government demonstrations since April, provides all the tell-tell signs of a tyranny in the existential fear of its own people.”

Now on eve of the 10th anniversary of the 1999 student uprising which shook the foundations of the ruling mullahs to the ground, millions of Iranian, not just women and students, are in the midst of a brave uprising with chants of “death to Khamenei”. After events of the past ten days, there is no turning back for either side. Khamenei gambled big and has hastened his regime’s ultimate downfall.

Dictatorships’ demise often begins or speeds up when they experience rifts at the top of their pyramid of power. These regimes rule through fear and terror and any rift at the top emboldens the subjugated populace and public acts of dissent become rampant. This in turn deepens the split at the top when it is so deep that it can no longer patched up even for the sake of survival of the whole ruling system. This is the case in Iran and it is even more pronounced since its system of governance is a theocratic tyranny and the religious aspect of it causes a much more sever unraveling.

This uprising is still in its infancy and has a way to go to topple the clerical rule. It has to find a competent and unwavering leadership, develop organization and find ways to overcome the mullahs’ horrific multi-layered security apparatus. The movement, however, has the core component of a viable movement for change: Iranian women and men who are willing to sacrifice for the cause of freedom.

We salute them and bow our heads to their awareness, courage, and steadfastness. (USADI)

Iran Uprising

Iran’s Children of Tomorrow
The New York Times

By ROGER COHEN
June 23, 2009

TEHRAN — They are known mockingly as the “Joojeh Basiji” — the “chicken Basiji.” These are the militia scarcely old enough to manage more than a feeble beard. Teenagers, brainwashed from early childhood, they have been ferried into the capital in large numbers, given a club and a shield and a helmet and told to go to work.

I saw them throughout downtown Tehran on Sunday, seated in the back of grey pick-ups. I saw them, sporting sleeveless camouflage vests, in clusters on corners, leaning on trees, even lolling shoeless on the grass in the central island of Revolution Square.

They were far from alone in a city in military lockdown. Elite riot police with thigh-length black leg guards, helmeted Revolutionary Guards in green uniforms and rifle-touting snipers composed a panoply of menace. The message to protesters was clear: Gather at your peril.

That threat had already been rammed home Saturday evening, when a student named Neda Agha Soltan was killed by a single shot. Her last moments were captured on video that has gone global. Martyrdom is a powerful force in the world of Shia Islam. Mourning on the 3rd and 7th and 40th days after a death form a galvanizing cycle.

Neda is already another name for the anger smoldering here, whose expression, in my experience, has been bravest, deepest and most vivid among women. She could become Iran’s Marianne.

Tehran, cradled in its mountainous amphitheater, is holding its breath. Sunday was quiet and Monday dawned quiet but between them the defiant cries of “Death to the dictator” and “Allah-u-Akbar” reverberated between high-rises once again.

In this pregnant lull, I keep hearing three questions: Will Mir Hussein Moussavi lead? How powerful are the internal divisions of the revolutionary establishment? And what is the ultimate goal of the uprising? On the answer to them will hinge the outcome of this latest fervid expression of Iran’s centennial quest for pluralistic freedom.

After the shootings Saturday that took several lives, Moussavi seemed absent. The bespectacled revolutionary leader thrust now into defiance was silent. People risking their lives craved guidance. Disappointed in 1999 and 2003 by the legalistic kowtowing of the reformist former president, Mohammad Khatami, they feared resignation redux.

Then, early Monday, Moussavi spoke. “Protesting to lies and fraud is your right,” he said, referring to the preposterous manipulation of the June 12 election and laying down the gauntlet again to the once sacrosanct pronouncements of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader invested by the Islamic Revolution with an authority close to the Prophet’s. Last Friday, Khamenei said: “I want everyone to end this sort of action.”

Khamenei also said, “Trust in the Islamic Republic became evident in these elections.”

In fact I believe the loss of trust by millions of Iranians who’d been prepared to tolerate a system they disliked, provided they had a small margin of freedom, constitutes the core political earthquake in Iran. Moderates who once worked the angles are now muttering about making Molotov cocktails and screaming their lungs out after dusk.

Moussavi is trying to calm their rage and coax the multiple security forces to his side. Restraint was the core appeal of his Monday statement. He urged his followers to avoid violence and adopt parental forbearance before the “misbehavior” of security forces — an appropriate reference given all the teenage thugs out there.

I think Moussavi is right to avoid extreme positions even as Khamenei has deliberately radicalized the conflict. He’s right because his moderation fans internal divisions that seem rampant. Any counterrevolutionary stance, at least at this point, would have the opposite effect.

Which brings me to the fight within. On Sunday, I saw Mehdi Hashemi Rafsanjani, the son of the establishment’s embittered éminence grise, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. He told me his father, who despises President Mahmoud Adhmadinejad, is fighting a furious rearguard action to have the election annulled by the Guardian Council, the 12-member oversight body that will pronounce this week on the election’s legality.

The ruling had seemed a formality, given Khamenei’s summary dismissal of a recount and the loyalist composition of the body, but the Council is now talking about irregularities in 50 cities and discrepancies that could affect 3 million votes. Out of a total of 40 million votes, that’s a significant number.

There are rumblings from the influential parliamentary speaker, Ali Larijani, who is close to Khamenei but not Ahmadinejad. With Rafsanjani, Khatami and the defeated conservative former Revolutionary Guard leader, Mohsen Rezai, the dissenting front has breadth. Rezai, who officially won 680,000 votes, says more than 900,000 voters have written to him with their ID numbers saying they cast their ballot for him.

The third question — the strategic goal of the uprising — is increasingly fraught. Khamenei said, “The dispute is not between the revolution and the counterrevolution,” and that all four electoral candidates “belong to the system.” He was right, if his words had been spoken the day after the vote.

Ten days on, however, the brutal use of force and his own polarizing speech have drawn many more Iranians toward an absolutist stance. Having wanted their votes counted, they now want wholesale change. If Moussavi wants to prevail, he must keep his followers tactically focused on securing a new election. That’s essential because it’s the one position the opposition within the clerical establishment will go along with.

Whatever happens now, all is changed utterly in Iran. Opacity, a force of the Islamic Republic, has yielded to a riveting transparency in which one side confronts another. The online youth of Iran will not be reconciled to a regime that touts global “ethics” and “justice” while trampling on them at home.

I received this from an anonymous Iranian student: “I will participate in the demonstrations tomorrow. Maybe they will turn violent. Maybe I will be one of the people who is going to be killed. I’m listening to all my favorite music. I even want to dance to a few songs. I always wanted to have very narrow eyebrows. Yes, maybe I will go to the salon before I go tomorrow!”

And she concludes: “I wrote these random sentences for the next generation so that they know we were not just emotional under peer pressure. So they know that we did everything we could to create a better future for them. So they know that our ancestors surrendered to Arabs and Mogols but did not surrender to despotism. This note is dedicated to tomorrow’s children.”

I bow my head to the youth of Iran, the youth that is open-eyed, bold and far stronger and more numerous than the near-beardless vigilantes.

Iran Uprising

Tehran dispatch: "The revolution had begun."
The Boston Globe Website
June 17, 2009

(J. Shams has been providing on-the-ground updates to the Globe's Washington Bureau since Iran's disputed presidential election last week. He filed this report after covering a mass protest on one of the Iranian capital's main thoroughfares. For his safety his full name has been omitted. BG)

By J. Shams
Globe Correspondent

TEHRAN _ The noise of the crowd was the first thing to hit me. I had been among demonstrators before, but I had never actually heard an angry crowd before.

The noise was powerful and full of fury. As I approached the street, I distinguished what they were chanting: "mikosham, mikosham, aanke baradaram kosht: I shall kill, I shall kill, he who killed my brother."

My wife, who was among the crowd, had told me that several people had been killed by riot police. I quickened my pace and approached the street. As if in sync, hands bearing stones and bricks were pumping into the air. "I shall kill, I shall kill..." I burst into tears.

The next thing I noticed surprised me: the crowd did not consist of young men, but housewives, seniors, businessmen wearing suits, even children. There was blood on many of them. They were walking downhill towards the Interior Ministry, determined and in force. The wave that had taken over Iran and partied in the streets into the morning for the last few weeks was now an army on the move. As I stood in place trying to figure out what I was seeing, I noticed shopkeepers shutting down and joining the flock. People were also chanting on the sidelines, "down with the dictator," referring to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, while the crowd chanted "join us proud Iranians, join us, join us." The crowd was growing by the moment.

I had walked with them for a few minutes when I saw the riot police in the distance. The crowd had managed to catch one of them and stones were raining down on him, and his head was beaten out of shape. His motorcycle was in flames in the middle of the road. As I passed the burning motorcycle, I noticed two more stacked on one another approximately 100 meters away, also burning. Bloodstains on the asphalt were abundant. I turned around and ran to my car to catch up at the Interior Ministry.

All of the routes to the ministry had been blockaded. Riot police were pouring in, armed with batons, rubber bullets, and tear gas canisters. I couldn’t drive any closer than half a mile from the Interior Ministry. Black smoke was rising from the approximate location of the Ministry. I had picked up my wife and a few friends we had by then, and we parked in an alley and set off towards the Ministry. Walking among the flocks of people, I noticed how quiet they were, and the fear that had covered everyone like a blanket. We walked past a police blockade; apparently pedestrians were free to move but cars were being kept out of the square.

We had been walking for approximately twenty minutes when we saw a flock of people running towards us. The noise of the revving motors of the riot police filled the street, and a group of maybe twenty of them could be seen in the distance approaching quickly. Batons raised and dropped, raised and dropped. We turned around and ran with the crowd. My wife turned into an alley, to distance herself from the incoming motorcycles. I screamed don’t go that way, as I assumed that we’d be safer if we didn’t break off from the flock. She kept running, and I ran after her.

A group of motorcycles turned into the street, beating the people left and right. I picked up my pace and ducked under a banner remaining from the elections. I turned and saw that my wife had fallen behind. A riot police motorcycle reached me and aimed for my legs with his baton. I jumped out of his path and sprinted down the street. Running with all my might, I reached the end of the alley and turned into the sidewalk on the main street; and found myself in the middle of a group of both riot police and so-called "Basijis" who were lashing out at whomever they could reach.

The Basij are the remnants of the voluntary forces that assisted the army during the Iran – Iraq war. Following the war, they maintained their organization and are known by all Iranians by their attire of white untucked shirt, long beard, and gray pants. Their unofficial role allows them to skirt the limits of the law, and they are usually responsible for the dirty work that officials prefer to avoid.

By means of luck or agility, I was able to avoid most of their blows, but was hit in the face by a chain-wielding Basiji. I realized that if I continued running in the same direction, I’ll be beaten by every single weapon being swung on the sidewalk, so I changed course and sprinted towards the street.

Once in the street, I was one of the many others fleeing the officers, and relatively safe. A truck passed filled with young men waving a green flag. I turned back into the alley, now relatively calm, looking for my wife. A boy in the street said that she got away without being harmed, as the men had shielded the women and the weaker ones with their bodies. I found her amongst a crowd shortly later and we managed to get back to our car without other incidents.

The city had been laid to ruin. Motorcycles and garbage dumpsters were burning at every corner. In Kuye Daneshgah Avenue, where the main dormitory of Tehran University is located, a bank had been set on fire. Most of the windows of the cars that passed us had been shattered.

At Parkway, which is a main intersection in Tehran, people had blocked the main routes to the intersection and were tearing down everything they could, from guardrails to billboards. The people lit fires on both sides of a pedestrian bridge over the highway and were flinging stones at a group of riot police that were stuck on the bridge. Tear gas was everywhere, and battles were going on between police and civilians at every corner.

In the early hours of the next morning we were on our way home when we saw that the road was blocked by a group of demonstrators -- women and men and children you’d see everyday walking down the street -- chanting “down with the dictator."

We stepped out of the car and joined them. A dumpster burst into flames next to me. The revolution had begun... Read More

Iran Election

Iran's Potemkin election
Only candidates vetted by the ruling clerics have been allowed to stand

The Wall Street Journal
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
By CON COUGHLIN

After suffering three decades of international isolation and unremitting Islamic revolution, millions of pro-democracy voters in Iran were supposed to have the opportunity in this Friday's presidential election to express their disenchantment with religious dictatorship. It is not to be. The guardians of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's revolution will remain deeply entrenched.

The leading candidate is the current president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. He was a founding member of the Revolutionary Guards and got to know Khomeini during the American embassy siege (he was not directly involved in the hostage-taking itself). Meanwhile, the country's all-powerful supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was installed directly at the behest of Khomeini to be his successor shortly before the latter's death in June 1989.

Khomeini's heirs have maintained their iron grip of power, which has enabled them to uphold his guiding principles as well as export the Iranian revolution to places such as Lebanon, Gaza and Iraq. They are also pressing ahead with the development of a controversial nuclear program... Read More

Iran Election

Huge Opposition Campaign Rally Snarls Tehran
The New York Times

Tuesday, June 9, 2009

TEHRAN, Iran — A pair of sprawling demonstrations brought the capital virtually to a standstill on Monday, with followers of president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his main electoral challenger struggling to demonstrate their street following ahead of Friday’s presidential elections.

Mr. Ahmadinejad’s campaign organized a huge rally in a prayer hall in central Tehran Monday afternoon, where tens of thousands of chanting supporters gathered in an apparent effort to match the raucous street rallies that are being held nightly by followers of Mir Hussein Moussavi, his leading challenger for the presidency.

But the president’s rally was overmatched in turn by a larger, simultaneous demonstration by Mr. Moussavi’s followers, with a human sea of people that blocked traffic for miles along one of Tehran’s main boulevards.

The rallies underscored the unusual passions being aroused by the campaign, in which the leading candidates have been exchanging accusations that are extraordinarily fierce for Iranian politics. There have been scattered street clashes in recent days, but the police have generally not intervened, in part — analysts say — because they do not want to unleash protests by the unruly and mostly young crowds.

The street rallies appear to have surprised and unsettled the authorities, and Iran’s supreme leader, in a message broadcast on state television, warned against any further escalation.

“I don’t want to comment about people coming onto the streets, but they should not turn into confrontation or clashes between supporters of the candidates,” said the leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Iranian elections always bring a loosening of the rules on public speech and behavior, but many say this year’s election is different, in part because of the social crackdown of the past four years under Mr. Ahmadinejad.

“What’s happening now is more than what should happen before an election,” said Mashalah Shamsolvaezin, a political commentator and former director of several reformist newspapers. “This is an expression of protest and dissatisfaction by people. They are venting their frustration and feeling very powerful.” ... Read More

Internal Protest

Student Protesters Arrested In Iran
Reburial of War Dead On University Campus Called a Political Ploy
The Washington Post
February 25, 2009

TEHRAN, Feb. 24 -- Dozens of Iranian students were arrested Monday after they protested a government decision to rebury troops who died in the Iran-Iraq war on the grounds of a Tehran university, Iranian student Web sites reported. The semiofficial Fars News Agency said that "a few people tried to create problems and prevent the burying of the martyrs" but did not mention arrests.

Students said 70 people were arrested in the altercation at Amirkabir University of Technology. Cellphone clips posted on YouTube show the reburial ceremony and two groups of people shouting and shoving.

Protesters say they fear that the government will use the presence of war graves on campuses as a pretext for official suppression of demonstrations, political or otherwise.

According to Fars News, the leaders of the protest had links to a student group that has organized demonstrations in the past, calling for more democracy but also better living conditions on the prestigious university's campuses.

Student protests have become rare since Mahmoud Ahmadinejad became president in 2005 and measures were imposed under which students can be suspended or expelled from state-funded universities if they participate in activities -- such as demonstrations -- that are deemed "against the system." There are about 2 million university students in Iran.

On Monday night, friends and family members waited in front of the police station where many of the arrested demonstrators had been brought.

"We were filmed first, and many of us were arrested while leaving the university campus," said a student who was waiting for a friend's release, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

Amirkabir University's news Web site, AUTnews.com, which is controlled by the students who organized the demonstration, said that 20 students were transferred to Tehran's Evin Prison and that the others had been released overnight. It also reported the arrests of five student leaders Tuesday... Read More

News Analysis

U.S. now sees Iran as pursuing nuclear bomb
The Los Angeles Times

February 12, 2009

In a reversal since a 2007 report, U.S. officials expect the Islamic Republic to reach development milestones this year.

Washington -- Little more than a year after U.S. spy agencies concluded that Iran had halted work on a nuclear weapon, the Obama administration has made it clear that it believes there is no question that Tehran is seeking the bomb.

In his news conference this week, President Obama went so far as to describe Iran's "development of a nuclear weapon" before correcting himself to refer to its "pursuit" of weapons capability.

Obama's nominee to serve as CIA director, Leon E. Panetta, left little doubt about his view last week when he testified on Capitol Hill. "From all the information I've seen," Panetta said, "I think there is no question that they are seeking that capability."

The language reflects the extent to which senior U.S. officials now discount a National Intelligence Estimate issued in November 2007 that was instrumental in derailing U.S. and European efforts to pressure Iran to shut down its nuclear program.

As the administration moves toward talks with Iran, Obama appears to be sending a signal that the United States will not be drawn into a debate over Iran's intent... Read More

Commentary

Iran Buries the Past
February 12, 2009
The Weekly Standard

The Islamic republic bulldozes the mass graves of political victims.

As preparations begin in Iran for the festivities marking the Islamic republic's 30 year anniversary, another somber Iranian anniversary is commemorated. Twenty years ago, some 10,000 political prisoners and regime opponents were brutally killed following a fatwa from then supreme leader Ayatollah Khomeini. The executed, some as young as 15 or 16 years old, were buried in mass graves. Many of the political prisoners were affiliated with radical left-wing groups and the Mujahadeen-e-Khalq (aka People's Mujahedin of Iran). Some of the prisoners were only a few weeks away from finishing their sentences and regaining their freedom when Khomeini gave his fatwa.

This year, the families' twenty-year-old wound was repopened. To celebrate the start of its fourth decade, the Islamic republic decided that it is time to erase its bloody past. Government bulldozers razed the mass grave of Khavaran, where the majority of the massacred prisoners were buried and where families had placed make-shift memorials for their loved ones. Reportedly some trees were planted over the site... Read more

Commentary

Iran — Too little learned
The Washington Times

October 10, 2008

Twenty-five years ago, several hundred U.S. Marines were stationed in Beirut on a peace-keeping mission. On Sept. 26, 1983, an official with the Iranian Intelligence Service in Tehran phoned the Iranian ambassador in Damascus and issued an order to have them killed. Twenty-eight days later, at 6:22 a.m. Sunday, Oct. 23, two suicide bombers struck.

The death toll: 241 troops, "the highest loss of life in a single day since D-Day on Iwo Jima in 1945," retired Col. Timothy J. Geraghty, who was the Marines' commanding officer, recently noted.

We know about the phone call because, as Mr. Geraghty also noted, it was intercepted by the National Security Agency. Unfortunately, this was an occasion — neither the first nor the last — when vital intelligence was collected but not translated, analyzed and acted upon in time... Read more

Outside Commentary

Stakes high for Obama on Iran
BBC World Service

January 14, 2009

President-elect Barack Obama's nominee as Secretary of State, Hilary Clinton, made it clear in her confirmation hearings that the new US administration will seek a policy of engagement with Iran.

Nobody here, though, is hugely hopeful that this will necessarily secure an agreement by Tehran to halt its uranium enrichment programme.

"The efforts by the US and its European allies over the past several years to pressure Iran to suspend its enrichment programme have been a complete failure," says Gary Samore, a proliferation expert at the Council on Foreign Relations.

"Iran has simply ignored the international pressure, including a series of [UN] Security Council resolutions," he says.

Iran has made considerable technical progress. It has mastered the centrifuge technology that it acquired from Pakistan some 20 years ago and Iranian scientists are operating the centrifuge machines at a respectable rate of efficiency.

Mr Samore says the focus of the programme at this point is on installing additional centrifuge machines in order to increase their enrichment capacity.

"And over the course of the next year or two, they will reach the point where they will have at least a theoretical option to produce significant amount of weapons grade uranium should they make a political decision to do so," he adds... Read More

Outside Commentary

What Tehran fears most
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
January 8, 2009

By Hamid Irani, a London-based researcher and expert on Iranian affairs
When Iranian foreign policy is mentioned, one image that immediately comes to mind is of the brash rantings of radical fundamentalist President Mahmud Ahmadinejad. But one of Tehran's major foreign-policy priorities that is rarely mentioned publicly is to perpetuate the blacklisting by the West of the principal Iranian opposition force.

European Union officials make no secret of the fact that it was at the request of the Iranian government that they branded the People's Mujahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI, aka Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization) a terrorist organization in 2002. "The Wall Street Journal" reported in October 2008 that Tehran has made securing the blacklisting of the PMOI as a terrorist organization a diplomatic priority.

In a report released in March 2008, the Foreign Affairs Committee of the British Parliament said that member of Parliament (MPs) who visited Iran in November 2007 were struck by the number of times that Iranian officials raised the issue of the PMOI. Those MPs formed the impression that the PMOI had almost become an "obsession." "It was on their program, they wanted us to talk about it, and they raised it in lots of contexts," the report said.

The question thus arises: what is it about the PMOI that Ahmadinejad's regime fears?

The PMOI is unquestionably the best-organized opposition movement to the ayatollahs' regime. Some 4,000 PMOI members, men and women of all ages, are currently based in Camp Ashraf in Iraq. Over the past three decades, Tehran has executed 120,000 of the group's members. A fatwa issued by then-Supreme Leader Ruhollah Khomeini in the summer of 1988 and later made public by his chief deputy led to the execution of over 30,000 political prisoners because of their membership of the PMOI... Read More

Outside Commentary

President Obama:
What to do about the Iranian threat
The Chicago Tribune

November 7, 2008

By Alireza Jafarzadeh

A multitude of foreign policy challenges, perhaps chief among them how to deal with the ayatollahs' regime in Iran, awaits President-elect Barack Obama.

The global consequences of a nuclear-armed theocratic regime with an extremist, expansionist ideology were not lost on candidate Obama. He expressed a keen awareness that as president he must confront Tehran's quest for nuclear weapons, subversion and terrorism in Iraq and strategy of regional domination. In July he said: "We cannot tolerate nuclear weapons in the hands of nations that support terror. Preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons is a vital national security interest of the United States."

In March 2007, in an address in Chicago, Obama called Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad "reckless, irresponsible and inattentive" to the needs of the Iranian people. The U.S., he said, must engage in "aggressive diplomacy combined with tough sanctions" to defuse Tehran's nuclear threat.

U.S.-Iran policy has been described as the "Bermuda Triangle" of U.S. presidents since 1979. What are the mistakes the next administration cannot afford to repeat?

Negotiation, while clearly the most desirable means of resolving international conflict, has time and again proven futile in the case of Tehran. Iran's rulers consider their supreme leader as God's regent on Earth. Successive American administrations and their European allies have been down that road, each time only to reach a dead end.

These failures have legitimized the theocratic regime, emboldening more rogue behavior and demands. Even worse, they have given Tehran time to advance its nuclear weapons program... Read More

Outside Commentary

Stopping A Nuclear Tehran
October 23, 2008
The Washington Post
Daniel R. Coats and Charles S. Robb

It is likely that the first and most pressing national security issue the next president will face is the growing prospect of a nuclear-weapons-capable Iran. After co-chairing a recently concluded, high-level task force on Iranian nuclear development, we have come to believe that five principles must serve as the foundation of any reasonable, bipartisan and comprehensive Iranian policy.

First, an Islamic Republic of Iran with nuclear weapons capability would be strategically untenable. It would threaten U.S. national security, regional peace and stability, energy security, the efficacy of multilateralism, and the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) regime. While a nuclear attack is the worst-case scenario, Iran would not need to employ a nuclear arsenal to threaten U.S. interests.

Simply obtaining the ability to quickly assemble a nuclear weapon would effectively give Iran a nuclear deterrent and drastically multiply its influence in Iraq and the region. While we would welcome cooperation from a democratic Iran, allowing the Middle East to fall under the dominance of a radical clerical regime that supports terrorism should not be considered a viable option.

Second, we believe the only acceptable end state is the complete cessation of enrichment activities inside Iran. We foresee no combination of international inspections or co-ownership of enrichment facilities that would provide sufficient assurances that Iran is not producing weapons-grade fissile material... Read More

Outside Commentary

Everyone Needs to Worry About Iran
September 22, 2008

The Wall Street Journal

By RICHARD HOLBROOKE, R. JAMES WOOLSEY, DENNIS B. ROSS and MARK D. WALLACE

Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad visits the United Nations in New York this week. Don't expect an honest update from him on his country's nuclear program. Iran is now edging closer to being armed with nuclear weapons, and it continues to develop a ballistic-missile capability.

Such developments may be overshadowed by our presidential election, but the challenge Iran poses is very real and not a partisan matter. We may have different political allegiances and worldviews, yet we share a common concern -- Iran's drive to be a nuclear state. We believe that Iran's desire for nuclear weapons is one of the most urgent issues facing America today, because even the most conservative estimates tell us that they could have nuclear weapons soon.

A nuclear-armed Iran would likely destabilize an already dangerous region that includes Israel, Turkey, Iraq, Afghanistan, India and Pakistan, and pose a direct threat to America's national security. For this reason, Iran's nuclear ambitions demand a response that will compel Iran's leaders to change their behavior and come to understand that they have more to lose than to gain by going nuclear... Read More

The US Alliance for Democratic Iran (USADI), is a US-based, non-profit, independent organization, which promotes informed policy debate, exchange of ideas, analysis, research and education to advance a US policy on Iran which will benefit America’s interests, both at home and in the Middle East, through supporting Iranian people’s aspirations for a democratic, secular, and peaceful government, free of tyranny, fundamentalism, weapons of mass destruction, and terrorism.

USADI supports the Iranian peoples' aspirations for democracy, peace, human rights, women’s equality, freedom of expression, separation of church and state, self-determination, control of land and resources, cultural integrity, and the right to development and prosperity.

The USADI is not affiliated with any government agencies, political groups or parties. The USADI administration is solely responsible for its activities and decisions.