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;void(0)) IRAN . . . Iran under the great leadershop of the Shah is an island of stability in one of the most troubled areas of the world. This is a great tribute to you, your Majesty, and to your leadership and to the respect, admiration, and love which your people give to you. --Jimmy Carter (1924- ) American Democratic statesman, President [1977-1981], toasting the Shah a year before he was deposed, Tehran [31 December 1977] Last month, several thousand women took to the streets of Tehran protesting their unequal status under a constitution which gives them no right to divorce and deems the value of a woman's testimony in the courtroom as half of a man's. --Roya Hakakian "The Real Iranian Threat" _The Wall Street Journal_, July 15, 2006 The entire Iranian nation which is proud to live under the holy banner of Islam, expresses its hatred of any yielding or recourse to foreigners regardless of the bloc or group to which they belong. --AyatolIah Kashani [13 July 1951] in James A. Bill & William Roger Louis (eds.) _Musaddiq, Iranian Nationalism and Oil_ [1988] p.180. Are we to be trampled under foot by the boots of America simply because we are a weak nation and have no dollars? ... Let the American President know that in the eyes of the Iranian people he is the most repulsive member of the human race today because of the injustice he has imposed on our Moslem nation. Today the Koran has become his enemy, the Iranian nation has become his enemy. Let the American government known that its name has been ruined and disgraced in Iran ... All of our troubles today are caused by America and Israel. Israel itself derives from America; these deputies and ministers that have been imposed upon us derive from America - they are all agents of America, for if they were not, they would rise up in protest. --Ayatollah Khomeini (1900?-1989) speech [27 October 1964]. in in M.J. Cohan and John Major {eds.} _History in Quotations_ [2004] p. 939 Cohan & Major explain: The Shi'ia fundamentalist Iranian religious leader Khomeini was exiled from Iran after making this inflammatory speech. His return in 1978 sparked the revolution that forced out the Shah in Jan. 1979 and put American interests under immediate threat. - Within a week of each other, two earthquakes struck on opposite sides of the world -- an earthquake measuring 6.5 on the Richter scale in California and a 6.6 earthquake in Iran. But, however similar the earthquakes, the human costs were enormously different. The deaths in Iran have been counted in the tens of thousands. In California, the deaths did not reach double digits. [...] There is another side to the story of these two earthquakes and their consequences. It gives the lie to the dogma being propagandized incessantly, from the schools to the media, that one culture is just as good as another. It is just as good to lose tens of thousands of lives as not to? What hogwash! It is just as good to lack modern medicine, modern transportation, and modern industry as it is to have them? Who is kidding whom? --Thomas Sowell, "Two Earthquakes And Their Results Under Two Different Social Systems", [Dec, 2003] - As the late Shah of Iran observed in exile, "Ingratitude is the prerogative of the people"--a remark so full of rueful wisdom you'd think he'd been in vaudeville. Right now, the people's ingratitude to their Islamic Revolutionaries is near unanimous: Even the Christian Science Monitor's mullah-friendly coverage concedes that, according to recent "polls," 90 percent of Iranians "want change." If I were one of the A-list ayatollahs, I wouldn't bet on many of that last 10 percent hanging tough when push comes to shove. --Mark Steyn, "May the ayatollah go the way of Saddam" http://www.suntimes.com/output/steyn/cst-edt-steyn22.html - One reason to get on board with these guys is because it would be best for all of us if the theocracy fell quickly. The former Soviet republic of Georgia has had its scientists beavering away on Iraq's nuclear program for several months. Yes, folks, it's WMD all over again! And maybe they don't exist any more than the Iraqi ones do, according to the Dems and the Europeans. But I'm happy to take Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani at his word. He's Iran's former president and now head of the Expediency Council, which sounds like an EU foreign policy agency or a State Department think-tank but is, in fact, Iran's highest religious body. Rafsanjani said last year that on the day the Muslim world gets nuclear weapons the Israeli question will be settled forever "since a single atomic bomb has the power to completely destroy Israel, while an Israeli counter-strike can only cause partial damage to the Islamic world." Oh, my. But what about the Palestinian right of return? --ibid. - Iran and Diplomacy The Wall Street Journal August 22, 2005 For two years now, the Bush administration has willingly taken a back seat to European diplomacy to induce Iran to abandon its nuclear-weapons program. In the last few weeks, the world has been able to see what this non-cowboy strategy has achieved: • Iran's new president has called for "a wave of Islamic revolution." Only a few years ago, this new world statesman was running gangs of street thugs who harassed anti-government demonstrators. His political rise was engineered by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khameini, who barred 1,000 reformist candidates from the recent parliamentary elections. • Last week, Iranian police opened fire on a peaceful demonstration of Iranian Kurds in the city of Mahabad, reportedly killing four of the protestors. Meanwhile, dissident journalist Akbar Ganji is on his 75th day of a prison hunger strike, and prosecutors are now threatening his family. • On the nuclear issue, Tehran has resumed an early-stage uranium enrichment process at its nuclear site in Isfahan. And it has denounced as "unacceptable" a European offer to provide security and economic favors in exchange for Iran dropping parts of its nuclear program that have bomb-making uses. Memri, which translates Middle East broadcasts from their native languages, recently captured Iran's chief nuclear negotiator, Hosein Musavian, on Iranian TV: "Thanks to the negotiations with Europe, we gained another year, in which we completed" Isfahan. Iran suspended enrichment "in Isfahan in October 2004, although we were required to do so in October 2003. ... Today we are in a position of power. We have a stockpile of products, and during this period we have managed to convert 36 tons of yellowcake into gas and store it." • Then there is Iranian assistance for terrorists in Iraq. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has publicly accused Iran of "allowing" weapons to move across its Western border, and U.S. troops have captured explosives shaped for destructive terror use with Iranian pedigrees. Time magazine, no friend of the U.S. effort in Iraq, recently published a report, "Inside Iran's Secret War for Iraq." This is all especially notable because advocates of courting the mullahs often warn that a harder line against Tehran could invite Iranian meddling in Iraq. But that meddling is a reality under current Iran policy, and it is killing American soldiers. [. . . ] No one can plausibly claim that this Iranian hardline has been inspired by U.S. saber-rattling. Since including Iran in the original "axis of evil" in 2002, Mr. Bush has softened his rhetoric on Iran to a near-whisper. The administration agreed to European mediation efforts in October 2003, and agreed again in 2004 after Iran cheated on its initial commitments by secretly enriching uranium. Then the U.S. agreed again to another try earlier this year, this time offering World Trade Organization membership. Tehran's response has been evident the last few weeks. - One reason the U.S. is having a hard time winning global sanctions on Iran over its nuclear work is evident at a company in Tehran called Iran Khodro Co., a big vehicle manufacturer. The company is cutting deals in China, France, Germany and Russia -- key players in the tussle over what to do about Iran's nuclear ambitions. In February the company, called IKCO, agreed to buy 10,000 trucks from a Chinese maker in a $350 million deal. This month, IKCO said it will start selling to Russia cars that it builds in Iran in cooperation with France's PSA Peugeot-Citroën. [ . . . ] With other countries backing off the sanctions threat in favor of more diplomacy, the U.S., too, has had to soften its stance in recent days. President Bush yesterday threw his support behind yet another European-led effort to talk Iran into suspending its enrichment work as a precursor to wide-ranging negotiations. If Iran continues to stall, Mr. Bush told reporters, then the Security Council would proceed with "some kind of sanction program." America severed political and most commercial ties with Iran 26 years ago, after it let a mob hold U.S. diplomats hostage for more than a year. Through July of this year, the U.S. imported a minuscule $99 million of goods from Iran, mostly rugs, nuts and juice, while shipping to Iran $55 million of goods, nearly all of it cigarettes, pharmaceuticals and wood pulp. The other Security Council members have seen their business with Iran increase. Their total trade with Iran is on track to top $22 billion this year, up from $18 billion in 2005. While part of the growth reflects the higher cost of Iran's oil, the trade is broader: Iran buys German steel, French cars, Russian armaments and Chinese air conditioners. The European Union accounts for more than a third of Iran's total trade with the world. China's exports to Iran have tripled in four years. [ . . . ] German and French exports to Iran slipped slightly in the first half, but remain large. Germany is Iran's largest supplier of foreign goods, with exports last year of more than $5.4 billion. German engineering giant Siemens AG is providing huge generators for a power plant. Auto maker DaimlerChrysler AG is moving ahead on plans to build Mercedes-Benzes in Iran, in partnership with IKCO. [ . . . ] This month, Germany's chamber of commerce released an estimate that blanket sanctions on Iran could cost Germany 10,000 jobs. It was an effort at a "wake-up call" about what is at stake, said spokesman Felix Neugart, who added that chamber officials meet regularly with the government on the issue. French exports to Iran totaled $2.33 billion last year. Auto makers Renault SA and Peugeot-Citroën are heavily involved through local partners. Auto imports to Iran now are falling sharply because Western companies build more cars in Iran, to feed a fast-growing market. --"Nations' Rich Trade With Iran Is Hurdle For Sanctions Plan" by Neil King Jr. and Marc Champion _The Wall Street Journal_ [20 September 2006] - We have advised the Europeans that the Americans are far away, but you are the neighbors of the nations in this region. We inform you that the nations are like an ocean that is welling up, and if a storm begins, the dimensions will not stay limited to Palestine, and you may get hurt. It is in your own interest to distance yourself from these criminals (Israel). . . . This is an ultimatum. --Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad [20 October 2006] end page | ABORTION - ARABS | ANTI-AMERICANISM | ANTI-SEMITISM | BALI - BUSH | CAPITAL PUNISHMENT - CLINTON (HILLARY) | ELECTION [AMERICAN PRESIDENTIAL - 2004] & FOX NEWS | GLOBAL WARMING & GUANTANAMO | GUN CONTROL & GUNS | HEALTH CARE (CANADIAN) - HOMOSEXUALS | HURRICANE KATRINA | IRAN | IRAQ 1 | IRAQ 2 | ISLAM - ISRAEL v. PALESTINE | LEFTISTS | MEDIA (THE) & MEDIA BIAS | MOORE (MICHAEL) & NEW YORK TIMES | NORTH KOREA - PATRIOT ACT | RADICAL THOUGHT | RAP MUSIC | STEM CELL RESEARCH | TERRORISM 1 | TERRORISM 2 | TERRORISM 3 | TERRORISM 4 | TERRORISM (PREVENTING) | UNITED NATIONS | | Return Home | The Credits | The Cast | Act 1 | Act 2 | Act 3 | The End | The Reviews | Photos | |
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