BRIEF ON IRAN, No. 312
        Representative Office of
        The National Council of Resistance of Iran
        Wednesday, December  13, 1995



        3421 M Street NW #1032, Washington, DC 20007


Senate Panel Approves Iran Sanctions, United Press
International, December 12

        WASHINGTON - A Senate panel Tuesday approved a
bill broadening U.S. economic sanctions against Iran to
include foreign companies that do business with Tehran to
punish the government for its alleged support of
international terrorism.
        The Iran Foreign Oil Sanctions Act gained bipartisan
support and passed the Banking, Housing and Urban
Affairs Committee without opposition after measures were
added giving the Clinton administration discretion over
how to impose the sanctions.
        The bill would harm foreign companies that do
business with Iran by restricting their access to U.S.
financing and essentially placing them under a federal
blacklist of "sanctioned persons."
        "The purpose is to let the Iranians know that if they
continue to support terrorism the economic pressure on
them will continue to mount," committee chairman Sen.
Alfonse D'Amato, R-N.Y., said during the brief passage of
the bill.
        Democrats on the committee promised the measure
had broad support and could pass the full Senate this
month. Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., said the Clinton
administration had indicated to her that it would support
the bill.
        The amended bill contains few of the toughest
measures proposed by D'Amato in September. It
essentially gives the administration a menu of four actions
that it could take, while eliminating such proposals as
banning imports from sanctioned companies and banning
U.S. visas for company executives.
        Clinton will be given the discretion of choosing one
or all four measures to bolster a ban he imposed on U.S.
companies doing business with Iran in May.
        The bill specifically targets foreign oil companies and
attempts to restrict them from investing in Iran's lucrative
oil industry, which needs billions of dollars in foreign
capital to improve production....
        A senior D'Amato staffer summed up the bill's effect
on foreign companies, "You can trade with us, or you can
trade with them. It will be their choice," he said.
        The bill is unlikely to receive any opposition in the
House, which has encouraged tougher action against Iran
including a proposal by Speaker Newt Gingrich to fund a
covert program to overturn the Iranian regime.


Italian Reporter Condemned to Death for Writing
"Dictatorship Rules Iran", Il Giornale, Dec. 12

        He is condemned to death just like Salman Rushdie,
the Indian-born author of "Satanic Verses."
        This time, the Iranian fundamentalists' rage landed
on a young freelance reporter, Enrico Maria Ferrari, 29,
correspondent of Rome's tourism magazine, Master
Voyage.
        In a fax message sent from Tehran, Ferrari is
accused of writing "an insulting and malicious" article....
        He published his report from Tehran in this week's
issue of the above-mentioned magazine; the report was
not liked by fanatic mullahs at all and they issued his
death edict by fax....


Iranian Police Bust Village Satellite Club, Reuters,
December 11

        TEHRAN - Islamic militiamen have uncovered a
village club using banned satellite equipment to show
"depraved foreign films" in remote rural northeast Iran, a
newspaper said on Monday.
        The daily Hamshahri said Basij paramilitary
volunteers, set up to enforce Islamic rules of conduct,
uncovered the illegal club in the village of Esfidan and
seized a satellite dish receiving 16 foreign channels, and
several television sets.
        The report was the first of its kind dealing with a
largely underdeveloped area of Iran.
        In April, Iran ordered all satellite television
equipment to be dismantled after banning them earlier in
the year to combat what it termed a Western cultural
invasion.
        Residents said some of the estimated 250,000 dish
owners have in the past few months put them back up on
the roof, often camouflaging them as air conditioners or
other equipment.
        Under the ban, illegal users of satellite dishes face
fines of three million rials ($1,000 at the official exchange
rate) and confiscation of equipment.