Back to Brief on Iran
CIA Director George Tenet told Congress yesterday that Russian technology transfers to Iran greatly boosted Tehran's medium-range missile program and shortened the time needed before such weapons can be deployed.
"When I testified here a year ago, I said that Iran, which had received extensive missile assistance from North Korea, would probably have medium-range missiles capable of hitting Saudi Arabia and Israel in less than 10 years," Mr. Tenet told a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing.
"Since I testified, Iran's success in gaining technology and material from Russian companies, combined with recent indigenous Iranian advances, means that it could have a medium-range missile much sooner than I assessed last year."
The medium-range missiles can hit targets throughout the region.
In wide-ranging testimony on threats around the globe, the CIA director also said:
…Iran will be the greatest U.S. challenge in the coming year…
The threat to U.S. citizens from international terrorist attacks around the world "remains high," and the incidents are becoming deadlier. …
Mr. Tenet declined to elaborate on how soon Iran could deploy its medium-range missiles when pressed by lawmakers.
But a classified U.S. intelligence report, based on U.S. and Israeli sources and obtained by The Washington Times, concluded last year that Iran is expected to field the first prototype of its Shahab-3 and Shahab-4 missiles within 18 months….
Opposition in Exile Releases Videos of Tehran Stonings,
Agence France Presse, January 29
LONDON—Iran's opposition in exile on Thursday released a videotape showing what it said was the execution of four men by public stoning and a public flogging in a military camp in Tehran.
The 15-minute film, smuggled out of Iran and put on show simultaneously in several capitals around the world, shows what appeared to be four soldiers trussed up with sheets and rope being buried in the ground up to their waist before being stoned by a crowd of hundreds shouting "God is great."…
One of those shown can be seen shouting and struggling for at least five minutes before finally succumbing as the white sheet around his head turns blood red….
The NCRI said stones used in the executions were chosen for their size -- big enough to inflict damage but not too big so as to prolong death -- in line with Iran's penal code….
The NCRI added that the official number of executions in Iran had risen to 200 in 1997, twice the number of the previous year, of which seven had been stonings.
Seventy percent of the executions had been carried out since President Mohammad Khatami came to power, it said.
In October 1997, Maurice Danby Copithorne, special representative of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights released a report expressing "deep concern" at continuing reports of stonings and demanding "urgent reform."
Amnesty International "Alarmed" at Death Sentence
for Iranian Editor, Agence France Presse, January 29
The international human rights group Amnesty International said it was "alarmed" Thursday by reports from Tehran that Iran had sentenced a newspaper editor to death for spying for a foreign country.
Amnesty expressed concern that the report carried by the official news agency IRNA Monday did not say where or when Morteza Firouzi had been tried or specify for which country he was alleged to have spied.
Firouzi, the then editor of the English-language daily Iran News, disappeared last June although his arrest was never reported in Iran. His name was dropped from the list of the paper's staff in October….
Amnesty said the Firouzi case was the latest in a "pattern of human rights violations ... in Iran relating to the non-violent activities of journalists and writers."…
The editor's arrest and death sentence has shaken Iranian journalists hoping for greater freedom under Khatami, who took office in August….
Iranian Bus And Acid Truck Collide, Killing 33,
Reuter, January 29
TEHRAN—Thirty-three people were killed and 13 injured when their bus collided with a lorry carrying acid in western Iran, the official Iranian news agency IRNA said on Thursday….
IRNA said many of the victims suffered acid burns, as did several rescue workers.
The injured were in critical condition,
IRNA said, but gave no more details.