LONDON - Iran's new ballistic missile is more likely to be a long-range surface-to-surface weapon than a satellite launcher as Tehran claims, a leading defense analyst said on Tuesday.

Clifford Beale, editor of the prestigious Jane's Defense Weekly journal, said U.S. intelligence officials had told him that Iran's new Shehab-4 was largely derived from the obsolete Soviet SS-4 ballistic missile.

"My understanding is that if the missile really is a SS-4, you can't launch a very big satellite with that. In order to launch a payload into orbit you need a substantial rocket," Beale told Reuters.

"One has to question whether this would be a commercially useful satellite launcher...what it does do is give Iran a base to learn how to build rockets."

Beale noted the SS-4 had a range of 2,000 km, which meant it could hit parts of western Europe from Iran.

"The Shehab-4 gives Iran a wider footprint, more flexibility. These are political weapons and confer great diplomatic and political power," Beale said.
 

Economic Reform Is Iran's Biggest Challenge, Reuters, February 15

TEHRAN - With its oil revenue halved and its currency sliding, Iran is in desperate need of reforming its state-dominated economy.

But the power of conservative Shi'ite Moslem clerics and the constraints of the Islamic Republic's 1979 constitution pose daunting challenges.

"The economy is in very bad shape indeed," said a senior Western diplomat. "It's 70 percent bad luck due to the oil price collapse, but the rest is because they have failed in the 20 years since the revolution to get to grips with modernizing the economy."

Cushioned by healthy oil income, Iran's economic policy has been based on three pillars: maximum subsidies, minimum taxes and maximum state control.

Now the crunch has come. The government has to cut subsidies on basic goods, collect taxes from the sprawling revolutionary foundations, which bankroll the conservative clerics, and start privatizing thousands of inefficient state firms.

It faces stiff resistance from vested interests in the Islamic system and must tread carefully because of the risk that rising unemployment and galloping inflation could spark popular unrest.
 

Iranians Protest Student Beatings, Associated Press, February 14

TEHRAN - About 1,000 students and professors demonstrated in the Iranian city of Isfahan, protesting the beating of university students at a rally earlier this month, the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported Sunday.

Protesters at the Isfahan University of Technology on Saturday criticized the "negligence of the law enforcement personnel," who apparently did not intervene to break up a scuffle, in which a student was stabbed, the agency said.

[A statement by the National Council of Resistance of Iran quoting reports from Iran said ""The students at Isfahan University clashed with the Revolutionary Guards and club-wielding hooligans to prevent them from attacking female students. A student was severely injured in this clash, promoting the students to stage a strike on campus which still continues."]
 

Mullahs' Terrorist Attack, Iran Zamin News Agency, February 12

Terrorists dispatched by the mullahs' regime attacked and wounded a peshmarga (fighter) of the Organization for a Nationalist and Islamic Struggle in Iranian Kurdistan (Khabat) on Wednesday, February 10, reports say.

The Iranian Resistance strongly condemns this latest terrorist attack and calls on the international community to take tough action against the religious, terrorist dictatorship ruling Iran.
 
 

Press Suffers Setbacks, DPA (German Press Agency), February 9

TEHRAN - Many Iranian journalists are frustrated, their hopes for press freedom fading after the closure of several dailies.

Several dailies as well as weekly and monthly magazines have been closed down, including the daily Toos which was known to reflect Khatami's policies.

The latest victim was the cultural monthly Adineh.

Even the daily Zan (Woman), run by Faezeh Hashemi, a member of parliament and daughter of former president Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani, was closed down for two weeks.

The closures were ordered by press or public courts on charges such as "threatening national security", "dissemination of lies and corrupt articles" or "insults" to state officials or revolutionary values.

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