Chemical warheads to confront Resistance

Mojahedin statement, Paris, Mar. 10 - Reports received by the Mojahedin indicate that Ali Khamenei, the mullahs' leader, has assigned the regime's organization of military industry since some time ago to seek help from foreign experts and equip short and medium-range missiles with chemical warheads. The regime will thus be able to strike its targets with weapons of mass destruction.

Arrests on pretext of narcotics rise three-fold

NCR secretariat, Mar. 12 - In a meeting with Hashemi Rafsanjani, Ali Mohammad Besharati, the regime's Interior Minister, stated that in the first 11 months of the current Iranian year (March 20, 1996 - February 1997), some 120,000 people had been arrested on narcotics charges.

Previously, the regime had announced 55,000 arrests on the same charges for the first eight months of the year. In other words, in December, January and February, 65,000 or on the average 730 people have been arrested every day on the pretext of drug trafficking. This shows a 200 percent increase in arrests relative to earlier in the year.

The astronomical rise in arrests is part and parcel of the regime's unprecedented campaign to suppress, intimidate and terrorize the public in a bid to thwart spreading uprisings and the general public's support for the Iranian Resistance.

FOREIGN

Shameless justification

French weekly, Express, Mar. 8 - Deputy Foreign Minister of Iran, Mahmoud Va'ezi, in his visit to Greece was asked why the bounty on Rushdie's head was increased to $2.5 million. He responded: "I do not know anything in this regard. It may be that the inflation has been taken into account."

Mullahs find fertile soil for seeds of terror

Sunday Telegraph, Mar. 9 - Iran has launched a secret diplomatic initiative to persuade the Muslims of Africa to accept the fundamentalist principles of the ayatollahs' Islamic revolution.

The Iranian scramble for Africa, which will cost millions of dollars over the next five years, is being spearheaded by President Hashemi Rafsanjani. This follows his two-week tour last autumn of six African countries....

As The Telegraph disclosed at the end of last year, Iranian intelligence officials took advantage of President Rafsanjani's presence in South Africa to negotiate a cooperation pact with the People Against Gangsterism and Drugs (Pagad) vigilante group in Cape Town.

...Iran has established a bridgehead among the Arab nations of North Africa. Sudan's hardline Islamic regime provides vital terrorist training at camps on the outskirts of Khartoum, while Iranian agents are suspected of helping to train, equip and finance Islamic terror groups in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia and Algeria. Iran's intelligence establishment has persuaded President Rafsanjani to authorize an initiative to disseminate the principles of Teheran-style Islamic fundamentalism throughout the rest of Africa. The idea originated at the offices of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's spiritual leader and ideological heir to Ayatollah Khomeini....

The plan was unanimously approved, and a budget of $9 million has been set aside this year for Iranian intelligence operations in key areas in Africa. Units of the Revolutionary Guards have been seconded to assist in the initiative, which is being coordinated by the government's Office for Islamic Culture and Guidance in Teheran.

In a speech to Shi'ite Muslims in Tanzania last year, President Rafsanjani revealed that the Iranian government wanted to help oppressed African Muslims....The Iranians are using this argument as a cover for more insidious activities, namely establishing a network of terror cells throughout Africa which can be activated at any moment to launch terrorist attacks, particularly against Western targets....

After establishing important bases in North and South Africa, the Iranians are turning towards the continent's eastern and western regions.... Iran's intelligence ministry is interested in building a terrorist network throughout Africa for strategic reasons and because it believes there are many "soft" Western targets. The Iranian authorities are also aware that the West, pre-occupied with the European, American and Asian trading blocs, has lost interest in Africa.

FEATURE

Seven-Day Session of National Council of Resistance of Iran NCR statement, Mar. 6 - Iran's parliament-in-exile, the National Council of Resistance, held its full session for the first time in the presence of the Council's President-elect, Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, at Baharestan Hall in one of the Iranian Resistance's bases in Iraq. 487 members of the NCR, including the chairpersons of NCR committees and delegations representing member organizations, attended the seven-day session.

In the opening session, NCR President Massoud Rajavi presented his report to the Council. The parliament-in-exile then deliberated the recent domestic, regional and international developments. Following an assessment of NCR's activities, the session made a number of necessary decisions.

The NCR President said opinion polls conducted inside Iran showed that the Resistance's President-elect enjoyed the support of more than two-thirds of the Iranian people. If the clerical regime doubts this reality, he said, it could test its chances in a free elections under the supervision of the United Nations. Such an election would prove the accuracy of the Resistance's polls, Mr. Rajavi said, adding that the regime would never submit to the Iranian people's free choice and must therefore be overthrown by the National Liberation Army of Iran with the backing of the people of Iran.

The session referred to Rafsanjani's imminent removal from power, which would exacerbate factional feuding within the regime, thus weakening it much more. The session declared that this suppressive regime's various factions were not different from one another. The NCR emphasized that the mullahs' sham presidential elections bore no legitimacy whatsoever in the eyes of the Iranian people. As in previous cases, the Iranian nation will stage a decisive, nationwide boycott of the bogus elections.

The parliament-in-exile noted the remarkable rise in the activities of Resistance forces throughout Iran, including Tehran and the provinces of Isfahan (central Iran), Baluchistan (south-east), Mazandaran (north), Khuzistan (south-west), Kermanshah and Ilam (west). Expressing confidence in the fact that the majority of the people of Iran support the Resistance's President-elect, the NCR concluded that the time has come to further combine the military element embodied by the National Liberation Army and the social element inside Iran. The NCR emphasized that it regarded the National Liberation Army of Iran as the main and most credible instrument for the overthrow of this regime. The NCR also considered it a patriotic duty for all Iranians to support the NLA and join its ranks in ever-greater numbers.

Noting the escalation of conflict between the citizenry and the regime in different arenas, the NCR session concluded that in order to continue its rule, the regime had stepped up blatant suppression and violence, increased pressures on youths and women, physically eliminated or intimidated intellectuals and writers, and even cracked down on some of the clerics. In applying such repression, the session affirmed, the Intelligence Ministry recognized no bounds in utilizing the facilities and resources of all government organs and institutions or those affiliated with the government in or out of Iran. But, the session stressed, public hangings, the attack against the Mojahedin office in Baghdad with 320-mm super guns and the assassination of Iranians around the world had only strengthened the Iranian people's resolve in their resistance against this regime. Fearing the activities of Resistance forces in recent months, the regime had put its forces along the border region on alert 135 times in January alone. At the same time, scores of "urban exercises" have been staged by the Revolutionary Guards in different parts of the country with the aim of further terrorizing the public.

The session also condemned the export of terrorism and fundamentalism as the regime's main foreign policy instrument. It noted that the European Union's policy of "critical dialogue" was doomed to failure. Events such as the Mykonos trial and the increase in the prize money for Salman Rushdie by the mullahs' regime have aroused the European nations' outrage against this policy. The NCR stated the view that Mrs. Rajavi's endeavors in previous years to expose the mullahs' religious, terrorist dictatorship and to introduce the democratic visage of the NCR had had a profound impact on the rise of the Iranian Resistance's political standing, and superbly unmasked before the world community the danger posed by Islamic fundamentalism whose heart beats in Tehran.

Mr. Rajavi described the council's commitment to democratic and nationalist principles as the secret to its perseverance. He said that the coming together of different intellectuals, various professionals, and renowned experts, artists and athletes in the NCR was an obvious indication of democratic pluralism which represents the post-theocracy Iran.

In the session, Mr. Rajavi introduced Ms. Fereshteh Yeganeh, Chairwoman of the NCR's Committee on Education, as the council's new general secretary. He also introduced Ms. Soheila Sadeq as the new Chairwoman for the Committee on Education. Mr. Rajavi also announced the formation of the Sub-committee on Youth within the Committee on Education. Moreover, he introduced the council's new representatives in Germany, Great Britain, the United States, Italy and the Netherlands, who will serve in their posts for two years. NCR members were unanimous in paying tribute to Ms. Mahvash Sepehri, the Council's outgoing general secretary, for her untiring efforts during her term of office. Those taking part in the session from different countries across the globe watched a live-fire exercise by an armored brigade of the NLA near the Iran-Iraq border. They also spoke at one of the NLA camps with a group of volunteers who had recently come from Iran. A number of families of the martyrs, Iranian personalities living abroad and renowned artists took part in the session as observers.

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