Back to Brief on Iran
[Excerpts from an article by Arnold Beichman, a research fellow at the Hoover Institute]
Right after World War II, there arose, out of policy-making necessity, a political science sub-discipline called "Sovietology"…
Today we have a new "-ology," Tehranology, in which we're all trying to figure out who's on first among the ayatollahs and if there really is a rising wind of democratic change in Iran. Is there an Islamic Gorbachev inside Iran… Khatami signaling wildly to be let out? Is Mr. Khatami telling the powerful Iranian clergy that it's time for Iran's revolution to settle down and, if so, will they listen to him?… To none of these questions arising out of the Jan. 7 CNN interview with President Khatami is there a definite answer because thus far it's been all words… no action…
The U.S. signal, described as a "goodwill gesture" to Iran, was Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's issuance of a list of what she described as 30 foreign terrorist groups. Including in this list for the first time was the… People's Mujahedeen [of Iran], which has maintained for a decade a military force on the Iraqi border. While the State Department had never looked kindly on the People's Mujahedeen , its leaders had won a surprising amount of support in Congress while some of them maintain contact with Pentagon. And as for being terrorists, hundreds of People's Mujahedeen followers in Europe had been assassinated over the years. A German court last April 10 found that Iran's highest authorities had ordered assassinations of Iranian opposition leaders living in a European exile. So blatant was Iran government terrorism that European governments acting in concert several years ago withdrew their ambassadors from Tehran.
Three months almost to the day of the Albright signal, President Khatami uttered his few friendly words... There are now three schools of Tehranologists - (a) those who think that President Khatami is powerless… (b) those who think Iran is on the road to democratization… (c) those who think wait-and-see policy is more than justified.
What should we regard as an important clue to Iran's intention? Let's take a small thing - lifting the fatwa against Salamn Rushdie… More important would be whether the Iranian theocracy proposes to disband its terror squads under the control of the little-known Qods Force…
There is another problem with Iran. Potentially one of the richest countries in the Middle East, it has wasted its resources on costly armaments…
Perhaps at this time, the only logical conclusion can be: Watch what
they do, not what they say.
What Change in Iran?, The Jerusalem Post, January 22
Iranian president Mohammed Khatami told CNN Iran had no interest in nuclear weapons. Iran's foreign minister, Kamal Kharrazi, last week denied his country was developing weapons of mass destruction…
Khatami's predecessor, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, when interviewed by Time in May 1993, said that nuclear weapons "are in no one's interest, I don't know what the American people think of the calamity of Hiroshima, but no one wants that experience to be repeated…"
However, in October 1988 (shortly after the Iran-Iraq war ended) when he was still speaker of the Majlis, Rafsanjani did not make a secret of Iran's desire to develop weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear weapons… No wonder Rafsanjani after becoming president made mass destruction weapons programs, including a nuclear weapons development program, his first priority….
Witnessing Iran's present massive effort to advance their long-range Ballistic missile development program with Russian, Chinese and North Korean assistance, there can be little doubt that Khatami follows in Rafsanjani's footsteps in regard to WMD and ballistic missile programs, despite his public statements…
Incidentally, has anyone noticed any change in Iranian behavior Regarding killing of dissidents outside Iran (eight cases reported since Khatami Came into office) and the sponsoring of and engaging in terrorism and Subversion now that the notorious Ali Fallahian has been replaced by a supposedly reformist intelligence minister?…
Before rushing to do business with Iran and investing billions of dollars in its oil and gas industry, European leaders should think it over once again.…
Mullahs' Parliament Allocate Fund to Counter U.S.
"Plots", Reuter, January 25
Iran's parliament on Sunday approved for the third consecutive year a fund for countering alleged U.S. "plots" against the Islamic republic, state-run Tehran radio said.
It said deputies voted to allocate half of the fund to the Intelligence (internal security) Ministry and to give President Mohammad Khatami control over the rest of the budget which is to be used to "uncover and neutralize the American government's plots and interference in Islamic Iran's internal affairs."…
The measure passed on Sunday said some of the money would be used to bring suits against Washington at international bodies and to fight a "U.S. cultural invasion," Iran's term for Western cultural influence particularly among Iranian youth.
Some of the money would also go to the Islamic Propagation Organization, a state-affiliated body which sends Shi'ite Moslem preachers abroad, deputies said…