Shiite party Hezbollah slammed on Friday two Arab satellite providers for dropping a television channel from predominantly Shiite Iran as a "violation of freedom of speech and opinion." Violation of freedom of speech and opinion, ya say? Mr. Black Pot, meet Mr. Black Kettle. How do you do?
"Hezbollah condemns Arabsat and Nilesat's decision to stop broadcasting the channel Al-Alam, a decision made on political grounds," the party said in a statement about the Arabic-language channel.
"Hezbollah declares its solidarity with the channel and considers this a violation of freedom of speech and opinion," the statement said. And what is the basis of the freedom of speech and opinion? Allen? The US Constitution? Pray tell us.
Arabsat and Egyptian Nilesat this week stopped broadcasting Al-Alam on the grounds it was in breach of contract, the press reported.
But Al-Alam's Beirut bureau chief, Atef Moussawi, said the decision was as punishment for the channel supporting Hezbollah.
"Al-Alam is paying the price for its support of the resistance in Lebanon and Palestine," Moussawi said in a television interview. The arabs are not exactly enamored with Iran.
Iran, along with ally Syria, is a major backer of Hezbollah.
Continued on Page 47
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
11/08/2009 20:59 ||
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They of course mean Hezbollah's freedom of speech and opinion.
From Geostrategy Direct, subscription.
Irans government continues to face problems with controlling the population following the riots that broke out earlier this year over the disputed election that returned Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to the post of president, according to Iranian dissident sources.
The opposition extends beyond the business and cultural elites and includes nascent opposition forces within the military, the intelligence services and even the Islamist shock troops that are the main power in Iran, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, according to the sources who were recently been inside the country.
Despite the growing opposition, the Obama administration recently cut off support for anti-regime opponents as part of its new initiative to seek a diplomatic solution to Irans refusal to halt its illicit uranium enrichment program.
The cutoff of U.S. support for several opposition groups was one of Tehrans conditions for engaging the Obama administration. So the Obama administration conceded to the MMs in the naive or delusional hope of halting uranium enrichment......and got absolutely nothing in return. And he sent a message to the opposition to the oppressive regime: Under the bus w/ye. This is somewhat old news, but it points out the moral bankruptcy of this administration. Continued on Page 47
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
11/08/2009 11:04 ||
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If unrest grows into a full-fledged revolution the people will become afraid. This fear will be jumped on by the hardliners and a new president will come to power, one that will ease his people's fears by using their (by then) full nuclear arsenal as a kind of national pride. Then Iran will actually use it. The End.
Posted by: Yo Adrian ||
11/08/2009 12:08 Comments ||
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A senior Iranian politician said Saturday the country would not ship low-enriched uranium out of the country, which is a major part of a pending nuclear deal between Iran and international powers, according to semiofficial state media.
Alaeddin Boroujerdi, chief of Iran's Parliament National Security and Foreign Policy Commission, said the proposed deal to send uranium out of the country is "called off," Iran's semiofficial news agency ISNA reported.
This issue is part of a deal being negotiated by a U.N. nuclear watchdog agency. The draft agreement has been supported by the United States, France and Russia.
It calls for Iran to ship low-enriched uranium outside the country, possibly to Russia, to be converted into fuel rods.
The material then would be shipped back to the Tehran research reactor that produces isotopes for use in medical treatments.
The U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency said under the deal, Iran would get the converted fuel back by the end of 2010.
But Boroujerdi, an influential member of the parliament, said he does not see the uranium shipment happening.
"Iran is not to give any of its 1,200 kilograms fuel to the other party to receive 20 percent (enriched) fuel and whether gradually or at once, this will not be done and is called off," he told ISNA.
Continued on Page 47
[Dawn] The Iranian authorities have released two German nationals and a Canadian arrested on the sidelines of rallies in Tehran this week, state-run IRNA news agency reported on Friday.
IRNA, quoting Tehran prosecutor Abbas Jaffari Doulatabadi, said Iran was also examining the cases of AFP journalist Farhad Pouladi and a Danish journalist who were also detained after Wednesday's rallies.
Fars news agency reported earlier that a Japanese and two Canadian journalists had been arrested along with an Iranian working for 'satellite channels,' because they were reporting without permission on the rallies.
'Three foreign nationals, two Germans and a Canadian, arrested on Wednesday have been freed,' the prosecutor said, according to IRNA.
'Other people arrested (Wednesday) were released on Friday, half of them women,' he said without giving further details.
Concerning Pouladi, the prosecutor said he was waiting to examine a certain number of documents before taking a decision.
'We have asked the competent authorities to tell us about this journalist's work permit. When we get the reply, an adequate decision will be taken concerning him and the Danish national,' he said.
Pouladi was detained on Wednesday morning by three security personnel, two in uniform and one in plain clothes, witnesses said.
AFP has asked the Iranian authorities for the immediate release of Pouladi and is protesting his arrest and continued detention.
'We are worried for our journalist. We still don't know exactly where he is being held,' AFP chairman Pierre Louette said on Thursday.
'We strongly protest his detention and we demand that he be released without delay,' he added.
Iran's ministry of culture and Islamic guidance, which regulates the activities of the foreign press, told AFP on Thursday that Pouladi would not be released before the weekend.
'I am told that he definitely will not be released today or tomorrow. His case is being considered. Maybe he will be released on Saturday or Sunday,' a ministry official said.
The Danish union of journalists said earlier on Friday that a Danish journalism student had also been arrested in Iran after reporting on the rallies.
Niels Krosgaard, a 31-year-old student, was freelancing in Iran for a project related to his studies, a union official said.
The annual commemoration of the November 4, 1979 storming of the US embassy by Islamist students was overshadowed by a counter-demonstration by critics of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's June re-election.--
Tehran says Tel Aviv spread 'false' claims about seizing a ship with Iranian ammunition to sway attention away from the Goldstone report on Israeli war crimes.
"We strongly reject such claims. Israel has made this accusation to distract the international community's attention away from the investigating committee's report on atrocities it committed in Gaza," Iran's UN mission said in a statement.
On Wednesday, Israel alleged that it had seized a huge cache of weapons when raiding an Antigua-flagged vessel around 100 nautical miles from its shores.
Tel Aviv said the "hundreds of kilograms of Iranian-made arms" were destined either for Hezbollah or Syria, a claim that quickly drew rejections from Iran, Syria and Hezbollah.
Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Muallem said that contrary to Israel's claims, "the ship was not carrying Iranian-made weaponry for Syria or Lebanon", but was in fact carrying Syrian-made items for consumption in Iran.
As the UN general assembly was busy reviewing the Goldstone report, Israel's UN mission submitted a letter to the Security Council accusing Iran of violating Resolution 1701, which was issued to stop Tel Aviv's 2006 offensive against Lebanon.
Iran's responded to the allegation by reminding the Zionist regime that Tel Aviv has breached "not one but several" UN Security Council resolutions, including that very same motion.
[Iran Press TV Latest] Russia has spoken out more strongly than ever against Iran, warning that it may consider tougher sanctions against the country should it fail to accept a Western-backed nuclear proposal.
In an interview with the German weekly Der Spiegel on Saturday, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said that, much to his reluctance, he would be forced to sign off on US-led sanctions on Iran.
"I do not want that all this ends up with the adopting of international sanctions because sanctions, as a rule, lead in a complex and dangerous direction," AFP quoted Medvedev as saying.
"[But] if the Iranian leadership takes a less constructive position, then in theory anything is possible," he added.
"If there is no movement forward then no one is going to exclude such a scenario."
Medvedev added that he thoroughly discussed the issue with US President Barack Obama on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly meeting in New York in September.
The comments were released by the Kremlin only hours after a leading Iranian lawmaker, Alaeddin Boroujerdi, ruled out an IAEA-brokered proposal to export low-enriched uranium (LEU) abroad for further refinement.
"(Iran) is not going to give the other side any of the produced 1,200 kilograms of its fuel to receive 20-percent fuel. (The shipment) will not be sent, either in stages or altogether [a single batch], and it is ruled out," said Boroujerdi, who chairs the Parliament (Majlis) National Security and Foreign Policy Committee.
Tabled by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the proposal requires Iran to ship as much as 70 percent of its LEU out of the country for processing into fuel for the Tehran research reactor.
Iranian officials have welcomed foreign cooperation on fuel supply, but have rejected the idea of sending out the bulk of its uranium stock in one batch, saying there are no guarantees that Western countries would keep their end of the bargain.
In the early 1970s, Iran made a deal with France under which it was expected to receive around 50 tons of UF-6 gas, which can be turned into enriched uranium.
France, however, later reneged on the deal and to this day has refused to deliver the uranium-hexafluoride to Iran.
Moreover, Iran, has a 10-percent stake in France's Eurodif nuclear facility and is entitled to the plant's output, but has never received any nuclear material.
"Iran is a sleeping partner in Eurodif [and has] never received a single gram of enriched uranium from France," said a spokesman for the state-controlled nuclear reactor builder Areva that owns the remainder of the Eurodif plant.
[Al Arabiya Latest] Iran's former crown prince backed a campaign of "civil disobedience and non-violence" Saturday to oust the government in Tehran and urged Western support, but warned against any armed intervention.
"The end of the apartheid regime in South Africa, of military juntas in South America, of the former Soviet Union -- all of it came at the hands of the people of those nations themselves," Reza Pahlavi told the Daily Telegraph.
" None of this could have happened without foreign support, but that is not the same as an occupying army that comes in and changes a regime -- I don't see how that can ever be legitimate "
Reza Pahlavi
"None of this could have happened without foreign support, but that is not the same as an occupying army that comes in and changes a regime -- I don't see how that can ever be legitimate."
The son of the late shah added: "Change must come to Iran by civil disobedience and non-violence, I stress that. We can't have change at any cost... what happens must be the will of the people."
Pahlavi left Iran a year before his father, Shah Mohammad Reza, was ousted in the 1979 Islamic revolution, and has lived in the United States since 1984.
BEIRUT (Reuters) Lebanon's opposition, including Hezbollah, agreed on Friday to join a national unity government proposed by Prime Minister-designate Saad al-Hariri, a senior opposition source said.
"The Lebanese opposition has approved the proposed unity government," the source told Reuters after opposition leaders held a late-night meeting.
The source said the opposition would officially inform Hariri of its decision on Saturday and expected the new government to be formed in the coming two days.
Hariri's spokesman was not immediately available to comment on the report.
Hariri, who is backed by the United States and Saudi Arabia, was nominated as prime minister-designate after he led his anti-Syrian coalition to victory in parliamentary election in June.
He has spent more than four months trying to broker a deal with the opposition to join a unity cabinet. A warming of ties between the two sides' main backers Syria and Saudi Arabia in recent weeks helped ease the rift in Beirut and led eventually to the breakthrough.
Hezbollah is rapidly rearming in preparation for a new conflict with Israel, fearing that Benjamin Netanyahu's government will attack Lebanon again prior to any assault on Iran's nuclear facilities.
Last week, Israeli commandos seized a ship in the Mediterranean loaded with almost 400 tonnes of rockets and small arms -- which Israel claimed was being sent from Iran to its Hezbollah allies. In dramatic further evidence of growing tensions, the Observer has learned that Hezbollah fighters have been busy reinforcing fixed defence positions north of the Litani river. Having lost many of its bunkers in the south, Hezbollah is preparing a new strategy to defend villages there.
Although the organisation denied last week that the weapons were intended for its use, senior commanders have done little to disguise the scale of rearmament. "Sure, we are rearming, we have even said that we have far more rockets and missiles than we did in 2006," said a Hezbollah commander, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The 2006 war between Hezbollah and Israel began after an ill-advised operation by to kidnap two Israeli soldiers, prompting a massive Israeli response that lasted 34 days and killed more than 1,000 people.
"We had to blow up or leave some of our bunkers and fighting positions, but we still have plenty of capabilities in the south. We expect the Israelis to come soon, if not this winter, then they will wait until spring, when the ground isn't too soft for their tanks."
It was expected that the ceasefire would neutralise Hezbollah military efforts along the Lebanon-Israel border, as a newly bolstered United Nations peacekeeping force and the Lebanese army took up positions.
Expected by who, exactly ...
Instead, based on dozens of interviews and multiple trips into the country's south, it is clear that Hezbollah believes it would face different challenges. It has been forced to abandon the line of deeply entrenched static positions on the border with Israel and withdraw most of its men and weaponry to clusters of Shia villages.
"It's clear that Hezbollah no longer controls the border, due to the presence of Unifil [United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon] troops," said Andrew Exum, a military expert on Hezbollah at the Centre for New American Security. "They appear to be hardening the villages for this next round of fighting, while pushing their fixed positions north away from Unifil to protect the approaches to Beirut and the Bekaa Valley."
Sorta like how the Syrians would do it if they were in charge ...
Israel and the United States have long assumed that any military action against Iran's nuclear programme would draw a muscular response from its close allies in Hezbollah. According to Israeli military and intelligence analysts, any move against Iran would require a move first against Hezbollah's capability to disrupt life in northern Israel with its rockets.
Tel Aviv seems unlikely to commit the same mistakes it did in 2006, when the plan was for air strikes to disrupt and confuse Hezbollah's military command, while minimising the use of ground troops. Israeli military sources have said that they are preparing for a potential new conflict.
Cruising through the serene green wadis that connect south Lebanon to the Litani river to the north, the commander explains what happened at the end of the last war. "We knocked out three of their tanks on the first day, as they tried to enter," he explained at a turn-off by the village of al-Qantara. "But after they entered the wadi, we knew they were going for the river and had to be stopped. So we called out to all the special forces anti-tank teams in the area. And they all swarmed the wadi. Boys would set up and wait for the tanks, fire off their rounds and then pull back. Then they would pull back a kilometre or so down the wadi and wait for them again."
According to Israeli military reports, after the first and last tanks were hit by rocket fire or mines, killing the company commander, the 24 tanks were essentially trapped inside a valley, surrounded on all sides and pinned down by mortars, rockets and mines. Eleven tanks were destroyed and the rest partially damaged and Israel lost at least 12 soldiers.
As unlikely as the Israelis might be to repeat these mistakes, they must figure out how to get their heavy armour past the Hezbollah teams that still lurk in the hills and valleys in the next round of fighting, if and when it comes.
Didn't India put up a spy satellite for Israel some time ago? One would hope Israel has been watching Hizb'allah's preparations and already has the missile/artillery coordinates programmed. And one would think Bibi Netanyahu won't unnecessarily restrain the IDF, unlike his predecessor. Hizb'allah's version of having the second best navy...
Posted by: Steve White ||
11/08/2009 00:00 ||
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Few iff any doubt that LEBANON won't be a viable STRATEGIC FRONT for IRAN in any ISRAELI-IRAN WAR, which is also why the geopol outcome of the SAUDI fight in YEMEN, EGYPT vs MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD, etc. is also important for Israel.
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Hezbollah is rapidly rearming in preparation for a new conflict with Israel, fearing that Benjamin Netanyahu's government will attack Lebanon again prior to any assault on Iran's nuclear facilities.
