Back to Brief on Iran
In Strasbourg the European Parliament, listing a series of executions,
stonings, torture and persecution of religious and ethnic
minorities, thought differently.
It asked the EU's Council of Ministers "in the absence of positive
steps by Teheran to elaborate ways and means of bringing
increased and progressively stronger pressure to bear upon the authorities
in Teheran."
The opposition National Council of Resistance of Iran presented deputies this week with a list of 199 people executed in the country in 1997.
Deputies also pointed to the continuing "fatwa" on British author
Salman Rushdie and the death sentence imposed on a German national for
having sexual relations with an Iranian woman. The woman, the Parliament
said, had been sentenced to 99 lashes.
Russia Expanding Role in Iranian Power Plant,
The Washington Post, February 22
MOSCOW, Feb. 21—Russia has decided to expand its role in building
a controversial nuclear power station in Iran, despite objections from
the United States and Israel that the technology could be useful in creating
a nuclear weapons program.
At issue is Russia's $780 million contract to build a 1,000-megawatt
light-water reactor at Bushehr on the Persian Gulf coast,
finishing a project started by Germany in 1979 and later suspended.
The United States has sought to thwart completion of the atomic power
plant. Iran and Russia have denied that it could provide Iran with nuclear
weapons technology....
Iran Says Non-Oil Exports Stagnating, Reuter,
February 19
TEHRAN - Iran's exports of agricultural and non-metal exports
have been stagnating in the past year, falling about 30 percent below forecasts,
Iranian officials were quoted saying on Thursday.
The remarks came weeks after Iran took measures to counter a serious
fall in oil income, due to low crude prices, by boosting sagging non-oil
exports through the suspension of tough foreign exchange rules.
Commentary
Yet Kobra isn't from a liberal Western country - she's a Muslim from Iran, one of the most oppressive countries in the world. A division commander in the National Liberation Army (NLA), a formidable resistance movement opposed to the theocratic Iranian government, Kobra commands hundreds of men and women. Her division forms part of a 30,000-strong army, most of whom are female officers and soldiers....
Despite the rigors of military life, there is no shortage of women eager to join the NLA. Many are multilingual, university educated and have traveled to Europe and the US. Standing by her tank, Fahimah Bodaghi, 27, explains why she joined the women's army. Arrested as a teenager for sympathizing with the People's Mujaheddin of Iran, a group formed in the early '60s in opposition to Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, she was assaulted in prison.
"They abused me physically and mentally," she says. "They would flog us, even stage mock executions. They'd put us in graves on very dark nights, then they'd tell us the ghosts would be coming to take us. Many girls would faint, others became mentally disturbed, some even went insane and became a strain on the other inmates."...
But the most prominent figure behind the transformation of women's roles
in Iran is Maryam Rajavi herself. Now 44, with a
degree in metallurgical engineering, Maryam began her political activities
by recruiting members in the post-Shah era...
She has become a symbol of unity for the movement. "It's
her ability to motivate people," says Shahin Gobadi, a member of the NCR's
Foreign Affairs Committee. "It is her dedication that commanded men
and women to follow suite."...
In many of her speeches, she calls on women to take the initiative in
forming a united front against the country's fundamentalist
rulers, whom she relentlessly accuses of oppression. Addressing
a gathering of her supporters in London, she told her female audience:
"It is you who will propel human history into the golden age of equality,
peace, democracy and development. Victory lies before you, it belongs
to you, awaits you. Indeed, the oppressed of today are the victors
tomorrow."...