BRIEF ON IRAN Representative Office of The National Council of Resistance of Iran No. 378 Wednesday, March 27, 1996 3421 M Street NW #1032, Washington, DC 20007 Price Hikes Continue, Agence France Presse, March 25 According to the press, the Iranian government has decided to increase the cost of being admitted to a hospital bed by 75 to 100 percent. The decision made by the ministers' council includes all public hospitals and private clinics.... Khamenei Says Iran Will Not Change Middle East Policy, Agence France Press, March 23 Ali Khamenei said his country will not submit to the pressures of the West and will not surrender its opposition to the Middle East Peace Process. The Iranian television quoted Khamenei's speech in Mashhad as saying, "Iran is not a country which could be forced into changing its positions by pressure and intimidation."... NATO Says It Has Evidence Iran Is Training Bosnian Arm, Associated Press, March 26 SARAJEVO - NATO said it has evidence that Iranians are still training soldiers of the Muslim-dominated Bosnian government despite a long-passed deadline for their departure. The NATO-led peace force insists that Iranians and other foreigners who joined the Bosnians' war against rebel Serbs must be expelled.... Under the U.S.-brokered Dayton peace accord, all foreign military forces not connected with the peace force were to leave Bosnia by Jan. 19. But in mid-February, French troops in the peace force raided a military training camp in central Bosnia, arresting three Iranians and confiscating weapons and explosives.... FEATURE Maryam Rajavi: A Revolutionary View of Islam, [continued from BOI 377], British Gemini News Service, March 15 Speaking informally to dinner guests at her residence in the French village of Auvers-sur-Oise, the final home of Dutch artist Vincent Van Gogh, Rajavi explained her crusade against the "misogynist" mullahs, who saw women as the "embodiment of evil" and insisted that "women must be covered and controlled". She believes that "gender-based discrimination" against women "does for fundamentalists what the notion of racial supremacy did for German dictator Adolf Hitler's National Socialist ideology." It creates "hatred for women", a reason to dictate how women (and men) should behave and the mechanisms of repression which are used against both sexes.... But, she contends, these theories and policies "run counter to Islamic thinking", the Koran and the teachings of the Prophet Mohammed, who was a revolutionary reformer in his time.... Rajavi calls for the opening wide of these doors, so that Muslim thinkers can re-interpret Islamic thought to cope with the concerns of the 2lst century. "I reject [the fundamentalist] interpretation and want to see it replaced with new precepts more compatible with Islam's ideal society." By taking this line she becomes the most revolutionary of today's Muslim thinkers, and the most controversial. She has put her reforms into practice in the Mujahedin, where the entire 12-member leadership council is female, and the NCR, where half the posts are held by women. The process of handing over responsibility to women, which began in 1984, has, she says, created "a revolution in our thinking and transformed our value system". "It was a painful process both for men, who were reluctant to shed their positions of responsibility, and for women, who were reluctant to assume responsibility." Mujahedin members proudly proclaim that the experiment has worked: men are relieved of the pressure of full responsibility they once felt, and women have become equals in all spheres. Rajavi believes women's liberation must precede national liberation and that the equality of women in the liberation struggle is "the best guarantee of democracy" in the future. The challenge to Teheran mounted by Rajavi has been met by a rising toll of assassinations of Mujahedin members abroad.... Rajavi counters by stepping up radio and television broadcasts into Iran, seeking to capture hearts and minds as a first stage in the democratic revolution she seeks to foment.