AVOID MUSLIM IRAN
Book Review: "Living in [Iranian] Hell" by Gazal Omid
Larry Kelley
- 1/1/2006
Ghazal Omid, Iranian expatriate author of Living in Hell, a newly
published autobiography and political memoir, has caused quite a stir in
conservative Iranian society with her taboo-breaking style. She receives hate
mail in the “God will send you to the devil and you will roast in hell.” vein.
Her response, “I’ll be sure to pay you a visit.” She established her website,
www.livinginhell.com, not just to promote her book but also her cause—the
liberation of Iran. The Iranian government is retaliating by denying Iranians
access to her website and succeeded in temporarily shutting it down completely.
Test
A disturbing truth about Ghazal Omid’s life is that it is the story of millions
of Muslim women. Her book begins with an account of her mother being sold by her
family, at age 14, into a loveless marriage to a heroin addict for $4000.
Abandoned after the wedding night, she was able, after one year, to secure a
divorce but her parents, Ghazal’s grandparents, “…treated her (mother) as an
outcast and would rather have seen her dead than divorced.”
Her story progresses to her roots and her mother’s second forced marriage, at
age 16, to a wealthy, middle age stranger who became her biological father. In
an almost poetic way she speaks of her own future and others like her, making
the point that little can be expected from a generation whose fate and abuse was
pre-ordained. Her father was a man with a dark secret. He not only didn’t
divulge that he had another wife and seven kids but had also raped his sister,
resulting in her death; a secret confessed by his own mother, on her death bed,
to Ghazal’s mother.
When Ghazal was twelve years old, she too was molested for over a year by the
youngest of her three adult brothers. Her mother blindly loved her deviant son,
refusing to learn of her daughter’s torturous molestation. Ghazal explains her
own helplessness, “She wouldn’t have believed me and could have killed me in an
“honor killing,” This level of male domination and cruelty meted out against
women and female children is still in practice, not only in Iran, but much of
the Middle East.
Astonishingly, despite the torment Ghazal went through, although she lost her
faith in God once, she returned to Islam. Now she is a defender of true Islam
and condemns its perversion as seen in many Islamic countries, including Iran.
She survived the Islamic revolution and the eight-year Iran/Iraq war. With her
home in a prime Iraqi target area, she and her mother would go to bed at night
expecting to be killed in bombing raids. She grew up in an oppressed society
that taught children to hate people of different cultures but refused to hate
someone she didn’t know. Because of her Islamic education and curious mind she
was not poisoned by the propaganda of a government that was imprisoning and
killing its opponents by the thousands.
Ghazal, an outspoken woman at early age, was branded a subversive at her
mullah-controlled university because, like Rosa Parks, she refused to sit at the
back of the classroom and refused to be silent. During her university years, she
was abducted by the secret police from the streets of Isfahan, the nuclear plant
city. She escaped, temporarily, by jumping from the speeding kidnap car.
Seriously injured, she was rescued by people on the street but, soon afterwards,
was taken to prison and given a Hobson’s choice; sign a document stating the
abduction never happened or remain in prison until she did. She describes the
fetid prison conditions in which women and babies were being held indefinitely.
As Ghazal signed the document, she recalled that when Galileo was forced to
recant his theories about the universe, he left prison declaring that, despite
what he had just said, the earth was not flat and still revolved around the sun.
Ghazal vowed she would inform the world about a regime that has killed more than
130,000 of its citizens attempting to silence them. After the kidnapping, she
received threatening letters and was watched constantly.
Realizing she was marked for an orchestrated death sentence on trumped up
charges, a common occurrence, she fled Iran, thru France to Holland from where,
using a fraudulent Algerian passport, she flew to refugee status in Canada;
arriving alone, penniless and without language in an alien land. She describes
her life in Canada, her personal growth and learning North American culture to
bridge the gap between East and West.
She explains, without excusing, the origin of terrorism, its root in poverty and
cultural ignorance created by lack of education, resulting in misguided suicide
bombers.
Her experiences are important for everyone to know about because one incident in
particular shows that the enemy we fear is already living among us and we would
not know it if 9/11 had not occurred. Ghazal describes her meeting with a
Canadian member of an al Qaeda sleeper cell. Near the end of Ramadan 2004, from
her adopted home in British Columbia, while sending out drafts of her now
published book, she received a peculiar instant message from a total stranger
asking her, in Arabic, if she were a Muslim, explaining that he was from India
but was Muslim and asked if he could meet her. After several days and much
persistent e-mail, she agreed.
Her mysterious dinner companion turned out to be a burly, well-dressed, six-foot
man with closed cropped beard and shaved head. He told her that he was an
engineer, owned a condo in Montreal and was traveling west for business. She
writes:
I sensed that he was not just a guy but also a guy with a big secret. Finally,
our conversation came around to politics. I must have looked stunned when he
said he had worked with Bin Laden when Russia occupied Afghanistan. He quickly
added that Bin Laden could not have had any part in 9/11. I asked him how he
could know that.
“I know the guy. He gave up his own life to help others,” he told me.
“At this point, I had a sensation as if my hair were standing on end. I thought,
my Lord, I have just allowed myself to be manipulated into meeting with an al
Qaeda member. As he continued to talk about Bin laden, his face turned a reddish
hue as he defended him with passion and anger in his eyes.
Next, I asked, “So who do you think was behind 9/11?” He said that it was all
CIA, trying to frame this wonderful man.
“What would you do if he ordered you to kill Americans or Canadians?” I asked.
He said with conviction and no hesitancy, “If Bin Laden ordered me to kill all
the Canadians or Americans I would do it.”
Ms. Omid has become an important spokesperson is in the vanguard of Iranian
heroines living in the West; women who openly advocate revolution and regime
change in Iran. This is a dangerous business, as the author’s meeting
illustrates.
I found Living in Hell an in-depth, enriching read with great descriptions of
history and culture and voluminous research that makes this book a must-read
political memoir. It is not only informative; it is painfully truthful. North
Americans will appreciate the freedom they have and what it is like to live in
Iran, as a woman. As we follow Ghazal’s struggle for survival and freedom, we
cannot help but become her allies. Her story transcends religion and ethnic
differences and connects the reader with the essence of human existence and it
is endearing because westerners are largely altruistic.
Iran's president: Israel must be 'wiped off the map'
The Associated Press
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran's hard-line president called for Israel to be "wiped off the map" and said a new wave of Palestinian attacks will destroy the Jewish state, state-run media reported Wednesday.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad also denounced attempts to recognize Israel or normalize relations with it.
"There is no doubt that the new wave (of attacks) in Palestine will wipe off this stigma (Israel) from the face of the Islamic world," Ahmadinejad told students Wednesday during a Tehran conference called "The World without Zionism."
"Anybody who recognizes Israel will burn in the fire of the Islamic nation's fury, (while) any (Islamic leader) who recognizes the Zionist regime means he is acknowledging the surrender and defeat of the Islamic world," Ahmadinejad said.
Ahmadinejad also repeated the words of the founder of Iran's Islamic revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who called for the destruction of Israel.
"As the imam said, Israel must be wiped off the map," said Ahmadinejad, who came to power in August and replaced Mohammad Khatami, a reformist who advocated international dialogue and tried to improve Iran's relations with the West.
Ahmadinejad referred to Israel's recent withdrawal from the Gaza Strip as a "trick," saying Gaza was already a part of Palestinian lands and the pullout was designed to win acknowledgment of Israel by Islamic states.
"The fighting in Palestine is a war between the (whole) Islamic nation and the world of arrogance," Ahmadinejad said, using Tehran's propaganda epithet for the United States and Israel. "Today, Palestinians are representing the Islamic nation against arrogance."
Iran does not recognize the existence of Israel and has often called for its destruction.
Israel has been at the forefront of nations calling and end to Iran's nuclear program, which the United States and many others in the West say is aimed at acquiring weapons of mass destruction. Iran says the program is for generating electricity.
White House press secretary Scott McClellan said Ahmadinejad's comment "reconfirms what we have been saying about the regime in Iran. It underscores the concerns we have about Iran's nuclear intentions."
French Foreign Minister Jean-Baptiste Mattei condemned Ahmadinejad's remarks "with the utmost firmness."
Harsh words for Israel are common in Iran, especially at this time of year, the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. In Iran, this Friday — the last Muslim day of prayer in the Ramadan holiday — has been declared Quds Day, or Jerusalem Day. Rallies were slated in support of Palestinians — and against Israel's occupation of parts of the city and other Palestinian lands.
Other Iranian politicians also have issued anti-Israeli statements, in attempts to whip up support for Friday's nationwide Quds Day demonstrations.
But Ahmadinejad's strident anti-Israeli statements on the eve of the demonstration were harsher than those issued during the term of the reformist Khatami and harkened back to Khomeini's fiery speeches. Ahmadinejad was a longtime member of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards, which even operates a division dubbed the Quds Division, a rhetorical reference to Tehran's hopes of one day ending Israel's domination of Islam's third-holiest city.
After his election, Ahmadinejad received the support of the powerful hard-line Revolutionary Guards, who report directly to supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Last year, a senior member of the guards attended a meeting that called for and accepted applications for suicide bombers to target U.S. troops and Israelis.
Iran announced earlier this year that it had fully developed solid fuel technology for missiles, a major breakthrough that increases their accuracy.
The Shahab-3, with a range of 810 miles to 1,200 miles, is capable of delivering a nuclear warhead to Israel and U.S. forces in the Middle East.
Iran bans foreign
films
Staff and
agencies
Wednesday October 26, 2005
A committee of Islamic clerics in Iran, led by the country's new hardline president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, this week banned foreign films in an effort to wipe out what they called "corrupt Western culture".
Elements that were specifically named as affronts to the government's vision of Iran's Muslim culture included alcohol and drugs, secularists, liberals, anarchists and feminists.
The ban, which follows Mr Ahmadinejad's campaign promise to promote Islamic culture and confront what he called a cultural invasion by the west, aims to distance the state from the open cultural policies undertaken by former reformist president Mohammad Khatami that encouraged cultural coexistence and dialogue among civilisations.
Many experts and officials say the ban will only cause Iranians to turn to the black market for western videotapes or to foreign satellite television broadcasts. It is understood that the ban will have little effect on cinemas where few Western films play anyway, but it could dramatically change television, where all channels are controlled by the state and overseen by religious hardliners.
State-run television has hitherto shown foreign films after censoring many scenes deemed immoral or offensive. Films considered hostile to the Islamic values preached by the ruling establishment are already banned altogether.
"This new ban appears to be part of a campaign to push Iran back to the 1980s and to impose the same restrictions that were only just eased under Khatami. But it will be impossible to take Iran back to the 80s again," said international relations professor Davoud Hermidas Bavand.
Under President Khatami, Iran's 70 million citizens, more than half of whom are under 30, enjoyed growing social and political freedoms and were exposed to western popular culture through satellite television. The dishes are officially banned but tolerated by authorities. Many residents in Tehran hide them under tarpaulins or disguise them as air-conditioning units.
Western music, films and clothing are widely available in Iran, and hip-hop tunes can be heard on Tehran's streets, blaring from car speakers and music shops. Bootleg videos and DVDs of films banned by the state are widely available on the black market.
Already, the state-run television station in the holy city of Mashhad in north-eastern Iran has reported that police closed several video clubs last week on grounds that they were offering films inconsistent with Islamic culture.
Iran blasts Muslim countries for ties to Israel
Friday, 7th October 2005
Iran Focus
Tehran, Iran, Oct. 07 – A senior Iranian cleric blasted on Friday fellow Muslim
countries for having ties to the state of Israel, accusing them of “betraying
Islamic people and society”.
At the Tehran Friday prayers sermon, Guardian Council chief Ayatollah Ahmad
Jannati vowed that Tehran would continue to stand against the “Jewish enemy”.
“Today, Israel calls on them (Muslim countries) to make their relations public
and they are in this path. The vulgar action of the Pakistani President in
America was for this purpose”, Jannati, who heads the country’s top vetting
organ, said.
“I believe that the development is the publicising of [their] relations. The
only country that can stand up to Israel and the plundering, evil forces, and
fight against injustice and violation of values and the Holy Quran is the
Islamic Republic of Iran, and I am sure that such a thing is possible”, the
Guardian Council chief added.
He called on Muslims to rise to Jihad, adding that the Islamic Republic must
never give in or appease the “enemy”.
Iran police kill Ramadan offender
Monday October 17, 2005
TEHRAN - Iranian police
have been accused of shooting and killing a motorist after he failed to stop
when spotted eating during the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, a press report
said.
The victim, identified as 22-year-old Seyed Mostafa, was shot dead in Tehran on
Saturday.
He was also playing loud music with his car stereo, the government Iran
newspaper said.
"Even if the police claim is right, is eating during the fasting month
punishable by death?" the victim's brother was quoted as saying.
The report did not say if the family would press charges against the police, who
have been actively enforcing a dawn to dusk Ramadan ban on public eating,
drinking and smoking as well as a wider campaign to crack down on "lawless
elements".
Iran's Final Solution Plan
by Daniel Pipes
New York Sun
November 1, 2005
"Iran's stance has always been clear on this ugly phenomenon [i.e., Israel]. We have repeatedly said that this cancerous tumor of a state should be removed from the region."
No, those are not the words of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, speaking last week. Rather, that was Ali Khamenei, the Islamic Republic of Iran's supreme leader, in December 2000.
In other words, Ahmadinejad's call for the destruction of Israel was nothing new but conforms to a well-established pattern of regime rhetoric and ambition. "Death to Israel!" has been a rallying cry for the past quarter-century. Mr. Ahmadinejad quoted Ayatollah Khomeini, its founder, in his call on October 26 for genocidal war against Jews: "The regime occupying Jerusalem must be eliminated from the pages of history," Khomeini said decades ago. Mr. Ahmadinejad lauded this hideous goal as "very wise."
In December 2001, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a former Iranian president and still powerful political figure, laid the groundwork for an exchange of nuclear weapons with Israel: "If a day comes when the world of Islam is duly equipped with the arms Israel has in possession, the strategy of colonialism would face a stalemate because application of an atomic bomb would not leave anything in Israel but the same thing would just produce minor damages in the Muslim world."
In like spirit, a Shahab-3 ballistic missile (capable of reaching Israel) paraded in Tehran last month bore the slogan "Israel Should Be Wiped Off the Map."
The threats by Messrs. Khamenei and Rafsanjani prompted yawns but Mr. Ahmadinejad's statement roused an uproar.
The U.N. secretary-general, Kofi Annan, expressed "dismay," the U.N. Security Council unanimously condemned it, and the European Union condemned it "in the strongest terms." Prime Minister Martin of Canada deemed it "beyond the pale," Prime Minister Blair of Britain expressed "revulsion," and the French foreign minister, Philippe Douste-Blazy, announced that "for France, the right for Israel to exist should not be contested." Le Monde called the speech a "cause for serious alarm," Die Welt dubbed it "verbal terrorism," and a London Sun headline proclaimed Ahmadinejad the "most evil man in the world."
The governments of Turkey, Russia, and China, among others, expressly condemned the statement. Maryam Rajavi of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, a leading opposition group, demanded that the European Union rid the region of the "hydra of terrorism and fundamentalism" in Tehran. Even the Palestinian Authority's Saeb Erekat spoke against Mr. Ahmadinejad: "Palestinians recognize the right of the state of Israel to exist, and I reject his comments." The Cairene daily Al-Ahram dismissed his statement as "fanatical" and spelling disaster for Arabs.
Iranians were surprised and suspicious. Why, some asked, did the mere reiteration of long-standing policy prompt an avalanche of outraged foreign reactions?
In a constructive spirit, I offer them four reasons. First, Mr. Ahmadinejad's virulent character gives the threats against Israel added credibility. Second, he in subsequent days defiantly repeated and elaborated on his threats. Third, he added an aggressive coda to the usual formulation, warning Muslims who recognize Israel that they "will burn in the fire of the Islamic umma [nation]."
This directly targets the Palestinians and several Arab states, but especially neighboring Pakistan. Just a month before Mr. Ahmadinejad spoke, the Pakistani president, Pervez Musharraf, stated that "Israel rightly desires security." He envisioned the opening of embassies in Israel by Muslim countries like Pakistan as a "signal for peace." Mr. Ahmadinejad perhaps indicated an intent to confront Pakistan over relations with Israel.
Finally, Israelis estimate that the Iranians could, within six months, have the means to build an atomic bomb. Mr. Ahmadinejad implicitly confirmed this rapid timetable when he warned that after just "a short period … the process of the elimination of the Zionist regime will be smooth and simple." The imminence of a nuclear-armed Iran transforms "Death to Israel" from an empty slogan into the potential premise for a nuclear assault on the Jewish state, perhaps relying on Mr. Rafsanjani's genocidal thinking.
Ironically, Mr. Ahmadinejad's candor has had positive effects, reminding the world of his regime's unremitting bellicosity, its rank anti-Semitism, and its dangerous arsenal. As Tony Blair noted, Mr. Ahmadinejad's threats raise the question, "When are you going to do something about this?" And Mr. Blair later warned Tehran with some menace against its becoming a "threat to our world security." His alarm needs to translate into action, and urgently so.
We are on notice. Will we act in time?
12-08-2005
TEHRAN (AFP)
Iran's hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad triggered new international outcry by saying the "tumour" of the state of Israel should be relocated to Europe.
His remarks were greeted with outrage from Germany, Austria, Israel and the United States, at the forefront of an international campaign to prevent the Islamic regime from acquiring nuclear weapons.
Ahmadinejad, who in October said arch-enemy Israel must be "wiped off the map", said that if Germany and Austria believed Jews were massacred during World War II, a state of Israel should be established on their soil.
"You believe the Jews were oppressed, why should the Palestinian Muslims have to pay the price?" he asked in an interview with Iranian state television's Arabic-language satellite channel, Al-Alam.
"You oppressed them, so give a part of Europe to the Zionist regime so they can establish any government they want. We would support it," he said, according to a transcript of his original Farsi-language comments given to AFP.
"So, Germany and Austria, come and give one, two or any number of your provinces to the Zionist regime so they can create a country there... and the problem will be solved at its root," he said.
"Why do they insist on imposing themselves on other powers and creating a tumour so there is always tension and conflict?"
Ahmadinejad, a straight-talking former commando who swept to the presidency after a shock election win in June, is no stranger to controversy.
"Unfortunately this is not the first time that the Iranian leader has expressed outrageous and racist views towards Jews and Israel," said Israeli foreign ministry spokesman Mark Regev.
"I hope that these outrageous remarks will be a wake-up call to people who have any illusions about the nature of the regime in Iran."
Israel's views were echoed by the United States, its closest ally.
"It just further underscores our concerns about the regime in Iran. And it's all the more reason why it's so important that the regime not have the ability to develop nuclear weapons," said White House spokesman Scott McClellan.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Ahmadinejad's combative suggestion that Israel was "totally unacceptable" and Austrian Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel, speaking after a meeting with US President George W. Bush, called the remarks "an outrageous gaffe, which I want to repudiate in the sharpest manner."
German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said the EU's nuclear diplomacy is "not made easier by the fact that Mr Ahmadinejad comes up with new ideas, that the people of Israel could move to Germany and Austria, to resolve the Middle East problem".
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi also condemned the remarks.
In Ahmadinejad's interview, he referred to the Holocaust as a matter of belief, and raised the issue of revisionist historians -- who attempt to establish that figures on the number of Jews killed by the Nazis are wildly exaggerated -- being prosecuted in Europe.
"Is it not true that European countries insist that they committed a Jewish genocide? They say that Hitler burned millions of Jews in furnaces... and exiled them," he said.
"Then because the Jews have been oppressed during the Second World War, therefore they (the Europeans) have to support the occupying regime of Qods (Jerusalem). We do not accept this."
The Holocaust was Nazi Germany's systematic slaughter of an estimated six million Jews between 1933 and 1945.
Official Iranian media frequently carry sympathetic interviews with Holocaust revisionists, and the regime itself also refuses to recognise Israel.
Ahmadinejad also proposed "a referendum in Palestine for all the original Palestinians" to decide on the future of what is now Israel, the Gaza Strip and West Bank.
But he said "the best solution is resistance so that the enemies of the Palestinians accept the reality and the right of the Palestinian people to have land."
He was speaking in the Muslim holy city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia where he was attending a summit of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference.
After calling for Israel to be "wiped off the map" in October, Iran was chastised by the UN Security Council and drew fierce condemnation from the West -- already alarmed over Iran's nuclear ambitions and ballistic missile programme.
A scheduled visit to Iran by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan was also called off as a result of the remark.
Ahmadinejad's tone has also been a major departure from his pro-reform predecessor Mohammad Khatami, who had eased anti-Western rhetoric and sought to bring Iran out of international isolation by calling for a "dialogue among civilisations".
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -- Hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has banned Western music from Iran's radio and TV stations, reviving one of the harshest cultural decrees from the early days of the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Songs such as George Michael's "Careless Whisper," Eric Clapton's "Rush" and the Eagles' "Hotel California" have regularly accompanied Iranian broadcasts, as do tunes by saxophonist Kenny G.
But the official IRAN Persian daily reported Monday that Ahmadinejad, as head of Iran's Supreme Cultural Revolutionary Council, ordered the enactment of an October ruling by the council to ban Western music.
"Blocking indecent and Western music from the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting is required," according to a statement on the council's official Web site.
Ahmadinejad's order means broadcasters must execute the decree and prepare a report on its implementation within six months, according to the newspaper.
"This is terrible," said Iranian guitarist Babak Riahipour, whose music was played occasionally on state radio and TV. "The decision shows a lack of knowledge and experience."
Music was outlawed as un-Islamic by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini soon after the revolution. But as the fervor of the revolution started to fade, light classical music was allowed on radio and television. Some public concerts reappeared in the late 1980s.
Western music, films and clothing are widely available in Iran, and hip-hop can be heard on Tehran's streets, blaring from car speakers or from music shops. Bootleg videos and DVDs of films banned by the state are widely available on the black market.
After eight years of reformist-led rule in Iran, Ahmadinejad won office in August on a platform of reverting to ultraconservative principles promoted by the revolution.
Since then, Ahmadinejad has jettisoned Iran's moderation in foreign policy and pursued a purge in the government, replacing pragmatic veterans with former military commanders and inexperienced religious hard-liners.
He also has issued stinging criticisms of Israel, called for the Jewish state to be "wiped off the map" and described the Nazi Holocaust as a "myth." (Full story)
International concerns are high over Iran's nuclear program, with the United States accusing Tehran of pursuing an atomic weapons program. Iran denies the claims.
During his presidential campaign, Ahmadinejad also promised to confront what he called the Western cultural invasion and promote Islamic values.
The latest media ban also includes censorship of content of films.
"Supervision of content from films, TV series and their voice-overs is emphasized in order to support spiritual cinema and to eliminate triteness and violence," the council said in a statement on its Web site explaining its October ruling.
The council has also issued a ban on foreign movies that promote "arrogant powers," an apparent reference to the United States.
The Associated Press.
Europeans Oppose 'Scientific' Debate on Holocaust: Iran
2005-12-18 CRIENGLISH.com
Hardline Iranian President
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's view that Jews were never massacred during World War II is
"scientific", Iran's foreign ministry has insisted.
"The type of response from the Europeans to the theoretical and scientific
debate of Mr Ahmadinejad has no place in the civilised world and is totally
emotional and illogical," foreign ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said
Sunday.
"What Mr Ahmadinejad expressed was scientific debate, and the reaction surprises
me," he told reporters. "The reaction from European officials is a sign of their
total, blind support for the Zionists."
Ahmadinejad has caused international outrage with a series of anti-Israeli and
anti-Jewish remarks, in the course of which he has said Israel was a "tumour"
that should be "wiped off the map" or moved to Europe.
On Thursday he said the Holocaust -- during which an estimated six million Jews
were killed under Nazi Germany -- was a "myth", and that Israel should be moved
as far away from the Muslim world as Alaska.
"The Europeans should get used to hearing other opinions, even if they don't
like them," Asefi said.
(Source: AP)
Cradle of the apocalypse
TODAY The Sun brings you a chilling frontline report from deep inside the nuclear powderkeg of Iran.
Chief Foreign Correspondent Nick Parker and photographer Ray Collins secretly slipped into a country that is defying the world in its determination to develop nukes.
They found ordinary Iranians terrified at the prospect of fanatical president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad getting his hands on the bomb.
Our men also got close to the secret complex that has sparked world outrage — the uranium enrichment plant at Isfahan.
By
NICK PARKER
Chief Foreign Correspondent
IN Iran's bleak and forbidding landscape Iranians fear their fanatical leader is plotting a nuclear apocalypse.
Yesterday I got within a mile of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s doomsday factory — and found a nation filled with dread.
In the capital Tehran, one woman shuddered at the prospect of the zealot getting his hands on a nuclear bomb.
The 35-year-old bookseller warned: “He could soon have his finger on a nuclear button.
“We all tell ourselves the unthinkable could never happen — and that he is not lying when he says Iran has no need of nuclear weapons.
“But how can we trust a man who has told the world he is on a mission from God?” A former soldier sipping tea in a café put it more bluntly.
The former lieutenant declared: “We fear we have elected a madman.”
The white-haired 55-year-old — a veteran of the bloody war with Iraq — said: “He won the election promising us better everyday lives.
“But now he seems obsessed with provoking America and the West.
“Many ordinary people are worried by his religious mania — he can’t wait for the apocalypse.”
Blacksmith’s son Ahmadinejad, 49, has declared Israel must be wiped off the map. He has told followers to prepare the way for the return of the revered “Hidden Prophet” — known as the Mahdi.
According to Islam, the Mahdi will bring justice to the whole world.
But he will not come back until the earth is rocked by a period of terror and catastrophe.
Many in Iran fear their president is out to cause just that.
He has already triggered global outrage by breaking UN seals on his uranium enrichment plant at Isfahan. Ahmadinejad claims Iran simply wants nuclear fuel.
"Most people here — especially young people like me — want to forget the past and build better relations with other nations.
“But we’re heading back to the dark ages now.”
Photographer Ray Collins and I got within a mile of the top secret Isfahan nuke base after sneaking into Iran as tourists.
Our driver was too terrified to take us all the way. He explained: “This is as far as anyone dare go. Any further and we might not come back.” In the distance the base’s stark 10ft high perimeter fence was clearly visible.
Troops regularly patrol the wasteland around the complex.
Yesterday grey unmarked trucks rumbled along the track leading to the plant, which is close to a peak called Shah Mohammad.
Our driver told us: “The nuclear base workers and its scientists never come into the local town.They live and work on the base. Its secrets stay behind the wire.”
The plant lies just six miles from the historic city of Isfahan — an architectural gem with glittering mosaic-covered mosques and minarets.
Its citizens are proud of their centuries-old record of religious tolerance. Armenian Christians and even a community of 3,000 Jews live in relative peace among the Muslim majority.
But these days, despite the smiles of conscript soldiers we spoke to, a tangible sense of foreboding grips the city.
One Jewish trader — a 50-year-old who gave his name as Isaac — said: “Our greatest fear is a strike on the nuclear plant by America or Israel.
“It could contaminate the whole city. Ahmadinejad is risking all our lives by taunting his enemies.”
Armenian Christian Vahick, 42, who runs a souvenir stall across the Zeyandeh river, said: “We all have much to fear from this man.
Muslim hotel boss Shah, 58, said: “A lot of people here are terrified by what Ahmadinejad is doing because the nuclear site is so close to the city.
“If his enemies bomb the place who knows what could be released into the air.”
Israel — which bombed Iraq's French-built Osirak nuclear reactor in 1981 — has already warned a similar strike on Iran may be ordered.
But destroying the nuke site will not be easy. Locals said much of it has been built deep underground to protect it from even the most powerful “bunker buster” bombs.
Experts fear Iran could develop a nuclear weapon within two years. That would leave the region at the mercy of a maniac who first paraded his fanaticism in a bizarre maiden speech to the UN General Assembly last September.
In it, Ahmadinejad appealed to God to “hasten the emergence of your last repository, the promised one, the perfect human being, the one that will fill this world with justice and peace.”
He later declared that he felt himself surrounded by a radiant light during his rambling address begging for the Mahdi’s return.
And in a video distributed two months later on an Iranian website, he said: “For 27 to 28 minutes all the leaders did not blink.
“It’s not an exaggeration because I was looking.”
In reality UN delegates had simply been left agog at his crackpot performance. Recently Ahmadinejad’s rantings have taken an ever more sinister twist.
When 108 people died last month on a military plane which crashed in Tehran, he gave a clue to the extent of his fanaticism. He said: “What is important is that they have shown the way to martyrdom which we must all follow.”
In Isfahan — which has seen its tourist trade plummet — hotelier Shah told how he feared for his family’s safety.
He said: “It is ironic that a place in Iran where Jewish people can live in peace is at the centre of this international crisis.
“We are praying to all our Gods that Ahmadinejad stops this madness.”
· An Israeli MP has called for Iran to be banned from soccer’s World Cup in Germany after Ahmadinejad claimed the Holocaust was myth.
Iran opens exhibition mocking Holocaust
TEHRAN, Iran -- An exhibition of cartoons about the Holocaust opened this week, reflecting Iran's response to last year's Muslim outrage over a caricature of the Prophet Muhammad in a Danish newspaper.
The display, showing 204 entries from Iran and abroad, was strongly influenced by the views of Iran's hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who drew widespread condemnation last year for calling the Holocaust a "myth" and saying Israel should be destroyed.
One cartoon by Indonesian Tony Thomdean shows the Statue of Liberty holding a book on the Holocaust in its left hand and giving a Nazi-style salute with the other.
Masoud Shojai, director of the host Caricature House, said a jury looked through 1,200 entries received after the contest was announced in February by the co-sponsor, the Iranian newspaper Hamshahri.
It came following worldwide protests by Muslims against the Muhammad cartoons published by the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten. Many Muslims considered the cartoons a violation of traditions prohibiting images of their prophet.
Hamshahri said it wanted to test the West's tolerance for drawings about the Nazi killing of 6 million Jews in World War II. The entries on display came from nations including United States, Indonesia and Turkey.
About 50 people attended the exhibition's opening on Monday.
"I came to learn more about the roots of the Holocaust and the basis of Israel's emergence," said 23-year-old Zahra Amoli.
The exhibition runs until Sept. 13 and the winner will receive $12,000. The exhibition hall is next to the Palestinian Authority's embassy, which was Israel's diplomatic site in Iran before the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Iran Near Bottom Of Religious Freedom Ranking
The U.S. State Department's annual report on religious report says Iran is "of particular concern," criticizes Uzbekistan and Afghanistan, but reserves some praise for Turkmenistan.
PRAGUE, September 16, 2006 (RFE/RL) -- For the seventh year in a row, the U.S. State Department's annual report on religious freedom around the world, designates Iran a "country of particular concern" for imprisonment and harassment of people based on their religious beliefs.
John Hanford, the State Department's ambassador at large for religious freedom, said at the launch of the report, on September 15, that the purpose of the report is to "spur debate in other countries, hold governments accountable to their international commitments, speak out on behalf of the persecuted, and in the end, provide a sense of how well we are living up to our own ideals."
The report says that the eight "countries of particular concern" -- countries that in Washington's view are the worst violators of religious freedom -- are Myanmar, China, North Korea, Iran, Sudan, Eritrea, Saudi Arabia, and Vietnam.
Considered slightly better are 12 other countries where religious freedoms are far from secure. They are Afghanistan, Brunei, Cuba, Egypt, India, Israel and the occupied territories, Laos, Pakistan, Russia, Sri Lanka, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.
Uzbekistan is faulted for "outrageous" crackdowns on Muslims, which Hanford says included a further tightening of a religious law and increased harassment of worshipers.
"Such abuses are particularly unfortunately where, as in Uzbekistan, they undermine a long-standing societal tradition of religious harmony," Hanford said. "Uzbekistan also provides an example of how governments often choose to use repressive registration laws as a means of restricting non-approved religions or simply to outlaw certain faiths entirely."
While the situation in neighboring Turkmenistan is also seen as grave, Hanford did note a modicum of progress. He said that "where previously only two religious groups were allowed legal status, we've now seen nine new religions and denominations allowed to register, an opening upon which we hope that government will continue to build."
Attitudes in Russia toward Jews and Muslim ethnic groups have become more negative in the past year, the State Department says. But Moscow is also praised for reacting quickly to an attack on a Moscow synagogue this January.
In Afghanistan, the report says decades of war and years of Taliban rule have contributed to a conservative culture of intolerance.
Nonetheless, Hanford says the government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai is "seeking to uphold constitutional guarantees of religious freedom, despite a long-standing culture of intolerance."
The State Department's annual review of religious freedom around the world is required by the U.S. International Religious Freedom Act. In all, the survey covers 197 countries and territories. Countries in the lowest ranking may be hit with U.S. sanctions if they do not improve.
The Iranian authorities on September 16 dismissed the report as "political" and "lacking legal proof."
In a statement, Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini also said the report "pursues a U.S. foreign policy agenda and is of no value."