BRIEF ON IRAN No. 489 Tuesday, September 3, 1996 Representative Office of The National Council of Resistance of Iran 3421 M Street NW #1032 Washington, DC 20007 Rafsanjani Says God Exposes U.S. as Bullying "Monster", Reuters, August 30 TEHRAN - Iranian President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani said in Friday Moslem prayers that God had exposed the United States as an "ugly monster" trying to devour Iran. "God has bestowed his grace on us by making peoples of the world aware that America is resorting to bullying...and is an ugly-faced monster trying to devour an oppressed nation," Rafsanjani said in the sermon broadcast on Tehran radio.... "God has thus exposed America and made its friends say to it that it was acting like a bully...They are defending their own rights and we are benefiting from it," Rafsanjani said.... Clerics' Agents Stormed German Diplomat's Home, Reuters, August 31 BONN - Iranian security forces burst into the home of a German cultural attaché in Tehran a month ago and seized his guests for questioning, Bonn's foreign ministry said on Saturday. A spokesman said he could substantially confirm a report in the news weekly Der Spiegel, which said Iranian secret police burst in while attaché Jens Gust was entertaining six Iranian writers and their wives. Gust was threatened with violence, then locked into a room to be interrogated on suspicion of "promoting activities hostile to the state" while his guests were taken away, the magazine said.... German prosecutors have already accused Iran's intelligence minister Ali Fallahiyan of ordering the killing of the Kurdish leaders.... News Overview Dealing with Iran Wall Street Journal, August 29 The following is excerpts from an article by Peter W. Rodman, director of national security programs at the Nixon Center for Peace and Freedom an a senior editor of National Review. As in 1992, this year's presidential campaign seems to be focusing almost exclusively on domestic policy> But foreign dangers may yet disturb our tranquillity. One of the biggest dangers, of course, is Iran... ... What's surprising is that when Washington escalated the pressures with the recently enacted Iran-Libya Sanctions Act, Israel stepped in as a seeming vindicator of the European approach... The occasion was the trade, in mid-July, of several dozen Lebanese Hezbollah prisoners held by Israel for the bodies of two Israeli soldiers held by Hezbollah in Lebanon. The exchange was negotiated over several months through Iranian and German mediation.... This was not the first time Israel has engaged the Germans in such mediation... Mossad, Israel's intelligence agency, made a discrete inquiry to German Chancellor Helmut Kohl's intelligence coordinator, Bernd Schmidbauer, to see whether Bonn's contact with Iran could provide any information about an Israeli air force navigator shot down over Lebanon in 1986. To the Israelis' surprise and consternation, Mr. Schmidbauer invited the architect of Iranian state terrorism, Minister of Intelligence and Security Ali Fallahian Khuzestani, to visit Bonn, where Mr. Fallahian was lavishly received... The Europeans seem beyond embarrassment in their devotion to the "critical dialogue." Not Iran's continuing military buildup, nor its active support for terrorism, nor its pursuit of weapons of mass destruction, nor its active hostility toward Arab-Israeli diplomacy has dampened Europe's enthusiasm... The Germans' honored guest, Mr. Fallahian, is now the subject of an arrest warrant issued by a German court... The embarrassment continues. This April an EU troika of foreign ministers visited Tehran hoping to obtain an official statement from the Islamic Republic condemning terrorism. They came home disappointed... The new Israeli government is rapidly becoming disillusioned with the German policy, despite Mr. Netanyahu's initial enthusiasm for the prisoners-for-bodies swap... Tel Aviv newspaper Ha'aretz, warned that these MIA negotiations, by undercutting the U.S. in its dispute with Europe, were "an essential contradiction of strategic policy,"... The U.S. should stick to its guns. The Europeans have no idea how absurd they look from across the Atlantic as they defend, as if it were the highest moral principle, their right to treat with most despicable thug regimes on the planet.... ... The squeeze is working. Analysts of Iran, even those unsympathetic to American policy, are increasingly struck by the internal dissension and demoralization in Iran and now speak openly of the possible eventual collapse of the regime. All this is a vindication of the American policy of maximizing all pressures. If the West stands firm together, as we did against Soviet communism, we may not have to wait 74 years for this revolutionary movement to run out of steam.