BRIEF ON IRAN	 
	Representative Office of 
	The National Council of Resistance of Iran           
	
	No. 490	
	Wednesday, September 4, 1996 
 
 
 
3421 M Street NW #1032, Washington, DC 20007 



Rafsanjani Visits Africa To Counter U.S. 
Sanctions, Reuters, September 1 
 
	Iranian President Akbar Hashemi 
Rafsanjani begins a tour of six African states on 
Monday to boost economic ties in the face of a U.S. 
campaign to isolate the Islamic republic. 
	Rafsanjani will visit Kenya, Uganda, South 
Africa, Zimbabwe, Tanzania and Sudan over a 
period of up to 12 days, a spokesman at the 
president's office said. 
	The tour comes less than a month after 
U.S. President Bill Clinton tightened sanctions 
against Iran by signing a law which penalizes non-
U.S. firms that invest $40 million or more a year in 
the oil and gas sectors of Iran or Libya.... 
	Tehran has doubled the number of its 
embassies in Africa to about 23 since its 1979 
Islamic revolution and Iranian state radio has 
launched daily broadcasts in Hausa and Swahili.... 
 
 
Political Prisons Moved To Avoid Family Visits, 
Radio Israel, September 3 
 
	Today, Ayatollah Mohammad Yazdi, head 
of Islamic government's judiciary, announced that 
the Evin and Qasr prisons, which are believed to 
hold the most important political and security 
prisoners in Iran and thousands of the regime's 
opponents have been executed there, will be moved 
to outside of Tehran.  
	According to daily Resalat, Ayatollah 
Yazdi said the reason for the move is to avoid 
visitation of the prisoners' families in those areas of 
Tehran. He provided no further explanation. 
 
 
"Safest Country in the World?", Iran Zamin News 
Agency, September 2 
 
	In the southern city of Shiraz, a young 
man was publicly hanged in Moallem Circle. 
According to regime's officials, the young man was 
arrested during an armed conflict with regime's 
guards. There had been no prior news of the arrest. 
	In the city of Bushehr, a Revolutionary 
Guard drew his pistol and killed one of his relatives 
which was a woman. The reason for her death is 
reported to be family differences. 
	In Esfahan, a Pakistani trader was attacked 
in Sajjad street. The citizens of Esfahan point to the 
regime's agents in bazaar as the perpetrators of the 
attack... 
	During the past two weeks, Rafsanjani and 
other regime's officials have repeatedly described 
Iran as the safest country in the world. 
 
 
Mullahs Harsher Laws, Associated Press, 
September 2 
 
	Having learned to live with the strict 
guidelines of the Islamic revolution, Iran's talented 
filmmakers have been winning international 
acclaim for their work. One film, "The White 
Balloon," even won an Oscar nomination this past 
year. 
	But the Ministry of Culture and Islamic 
Guidance has struck again, setting down new 
censorship rules. 
	Among them: no close-ups of women, no 
makeup and no traditional Muslim names like 
Mohammed, Ali, Hassan or Hussein for unsavory 
characters. And one more thing - women should not 
be filmed running lest their bodies be too 
accentuated.... 
	Iran swerved back toward tighter rules in 
the spring, diplomats and Iranians say. In hotly 
contested parliamentary elections, religious hard-
liners defeated so-called pragmatists.... 
	Bearded militiamen have stepped up 
enforcement of the Islamic dress code for women 
that remains the most visible symbol of the 
revolution... 
	A remarkable feature of Iran's government 
is that religious leaders often disagree on the most 
basic issues - the application of Islamic law, for 
instance.  In the run-up to the election to replace 
President Hashemi Rafsanjani, who must step down 
after his second four-year term, those divisions are 
becoming more pronounced as candidates search 
for allies. 
	The leading hopefuls appear to be hard-
liners like Parliament Speaker Ali Akbar Nateq-
Nouri. They tend to put greater emphasis on 
religious morality, animosity to the West and 
censorship of art and media they deem un-Islamic 
than on the economic reforms considered crucial by 
Rafsanjani and others. 
	The infighting has scuttled any coherent 
plan to deal with inflation running at 50 percent a 
year, diplomats say.... 
	But while Iranians on average are one-
third poorer than they were before the revolution, 
newspapers, legislators and clergy argue whether 
single, female students should receive scholarships 
to study abroad.  Or whether women should be 
allowed to ride bicycles in public. 
	In recent weeks, much noise has been 
made about "Islamizing" universities - a surprise to 
most Iranians who thought that had been taken care 
of long ago. Some professors see it as an attempt to 
force out academics opposed to the regime....