BRIEF ON IRAN No. 429 Friday, June 7, 1996 Representative Office of The National Council of Resistance of Iran 3421 M Street NW #1032 Washington, DC 20007 Iran Spending $14 Million to Fight U.S. "Plots," Reuters, June 6 TEHRAN - Iran has earmarked more than $14 million to counter U.S. "plots" against it and raised its yearly defense budget by 30 percent, Tehran radio said on Thursday. It quoted vice-president Hamid Mirzadeh as saying "25 billion rials ($14.3 million) has been earmarked to counter America's plots...(and) the defensive budget has been increased by 30 percent to reinforce defensive potential" in the Iranian year which started on March 20.... It was not clear if the $14.3 million was separate from a $20 million budget approved by the Iranian parliament in January to match dollar-for-dollar a reported covert action plan against Iran discussed by the U.S. Congress. Iran's defense budget was expected to be increased by 30.7 percent to 5.8 trillion rials ($3.31 billion), Defense Minister Mohammad Forouzandeh has said.... Problematic Iranian Rebels in Bosnia, Associated Press, June 6 Nearly all foreign Islamic fighters have left Bosnia and President Alija Izetbegovic pledged Thursday to expel the few who remain, the State Department said.... "We know who these people are, we have identified them for the Bosnian government, we've given them the names of these individuals," the U.S. official said in relating a conversation U.S. Ambassador John K. Menzies had in Sarajevo Thursday with Izetbegovic.... U.S. intelligence officials have complained that some of the Islamic fighters burrowed into Bosnian society, making their expulsion difficult.... James Pardew, director of the U.S. program to help arm and train an integrated Bosnian military, told reporters at a breakfast meeting that "the Iranians are very aggressive. "The Bosnian border is largely an open frontier, certainly not controlled by the federation and the Iranians have their own interest in trying to perpetuate their existence."... Mullahs Looking for Foothold in Central Asia's Tajikstan, Reuters, June 5 DUSHANBE - Tajikistan's Moscow-backed government and Islamic rebel forces blamed each other on Wednesday for an escalation of fighting in disputed central Tajikistan and published conflicting casualty figures.... "The government forces, because of their peaceful and humanitarian goals, are carrying out only defensive operations," Saidov told Reuters. "But we have enough strength to destroy all opposition strongholds and air forces." It was the first official acknowledgment that Islamic rebels - driven from Tajikistan after a 1992 civil war but now fighting back - have air forces at their disposal.... The rebels, loyal to leaders in Afghanistan and Iran, won a foothold in Central Tajikistan last year and have since advanced to cut off the isolated eastern Pamir region, bordering China.... Watching Iran's Role in Caspian Oil, Reuters, June 5 BAKU - A top U.S. energy official said on Wednesday that Washington was waiting to see if Iran would leap into more Caspian energy deals, but industry sources said that Tehran would not become a high-rolling Caspian investor soon. U.S. Deputy Energy Secretary Charles Curtis told a briefing at an international oil and gas exhibition in the Azeri capital that Washington wanted to see the Caspian oil region develop quickly but without the participation of neighboring Iran.... "Iran has enough investment shortages at home and enough stuff to explore on their own shelf," said Jean-Christophe Fueg of Geneva- based Petroconsultants. "I think Iran is here mostly to have a political foothold."... OnNewsLine … Dow Jones News, June 6, The official Islamic Republic News Agency quoted an unidentified official of the German Credit Institute as saying that under an agreement, 42 German banks will provide loans for Iranian development projects to be underwritten by Germany's state-owned Hermes insurance company. … Iran Zamin News Agency, June 6, Japanese police on Wednesday said that in an unprecedented discovery, they have confiscated 38 Kg of marijuana and have arrested an Iranian and a Japanese, Associate Press reported. Police said the narcotics were discovered on Friday in a container that was shipped from Iran via Singapore. Unveiled Threat [The following is excerpts from an article in the British Times Magazine published on June 1, 1996] AUVERS-SUR-OISE is a pretty village just outside Paris - the place where Van Cogh spent his last months painting whirling suns and poplars. In an elegant villa there, Maryam Rajavi welcomes me into her salon with its Persian rugs. Someone brings us tea in China cups, with two chocolates on each saucer. I settle back into the sofa, we chat, and soon she passes me a coffee-table book filled with photographs. "This book was compiled in atmosphere of absolute oppression. It was so risky to gather information that some of those who helped were eventually arrested and executed," says Rajavi. "Of course it lists only 16,000 of those political prisoners who have been executed under the Khomeini regime. We estimate the real figure is nearer to 100,000."... Maryam Rajavi is the head of the Iranian resistance abroad, president of the country's parliament-in-exile. Daily the fax hums in her office with reports of new executions or arrests in her former homeland. "Also in this list is my brother, a writer who was executed. He was 29."... In the 17 years since the Shah fell to the fundamentalist Muslim regime of the Ayatollah Khomeini, those questioning the regime have consistently come to a bloody end. Public resistance can now only be conducted off Iranian soil. The largest and richest opposition group, the National Council of Resistance, which is the political arm of the People's Mujahidin Organization of Iran, has been led by 43-year-old Rajavi for the past three years... In dissident magazines, she is constantly pictured. People in the National Council for Resistance talk about her with whispered awe, as a soldier and as a politician. Her husband, Massoud, is the Mujahidin's military commander, running what appears to be the well-equipped National Liberation Army on the Iraq side of the Iran border.... ... There are hundreds of offices worldwide, supported intellectually by exiled academics and financially by "businessmen." They have their own investments and are cagey about their sources of funding.... They have a television station which beams uncensored news into western Iran and 24-hour radio on ten frequencies. Tiny color magazines, which can be concealed in the hand, are reproduced and distributed underground in Iran. Although they are Muslim, the Mujahidin claim they are not fundamentalist, and they believe in the equality of women. "If the humanity of women is not recognized, then there can never be real democracy and peace," says Rajavi confidently. The Mujahidin's primary goal is to overturn the present regime and force free and democratic elections in Iran.... Thus Maryam and Massoud Rajavi are more than an irritation to the regime - they are top of the assassination list.... In the way few people do, she gives an impression if great strength. She can look beautiful when animated under her purple headscarf, which carefully matches her suit. The men around treat her with great respect, as though she were a queen. Which leads us to the question: what on earth is a Muslim movement doing with a woman at its fore? Rajavi says the position of women in the resistance really began to change in the early Nineties, when they formed separate combat units in the liberation army. "Then we formed mixed units with men or women in charge...." She has shored up her power by appointing and training women at all levels under her, a backup that women leaders of Muslim countries or groups often miss. More than half the 560 members of the parliament-in-exile are women, and many head some of the 25 "shadow cabinet committees" on everything from education to defense. Rajavi plays politics, internal and external, adeptly. Indeed, she was recently listed in The Times's list of the world's 100 most powerful women.... On a March morning I went to Pere-Lachaise cemetery to witness the funeral of Zahra Rajabi, a member of the Mujahidin leadership. On a trip to Istanbul to investigate Iranian refugee conditions she was shot dead.... ... Muslim prayers wailed incongruously over the tree-lined avenues, and a former mullah stood back in his black robes while, for the first time, a woman read the blessing.... It was both a moving funeral and a glimpse of a curious, modern, tolerant version of Islam.... [Maryam Rajavi's] experiences, and information coming from those who have recently escaped from Iran, have led her to believe the European policy of "critical dialogue" with Iran will never work... ... Rajavi says the fatwa [against Salman Rushdie] was "inhuman and plainly anti-Islamic. There is no such thing in Islam that when one does not agree with another's ideas he should be punished by death."... Whether or not the Mujahidin present an answer to Iran's dreadful problems may be debatable, but Rajavi's assessment of the situation after 17 years is spot-on: "There are 70 million Iranians who have been humiliated and brutally oppressed for 17 years. They have lost all hope. They are despondent. The first task if the present regime fell would be to try to revive a sense of hope, faith, trust and love of life in Iran. That's something they have lost."