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<channel>
	<title>FrontPage Magazine &#187; Mahmoud Ahmadinejad</title>
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		<title>Ahmadinejad: “Raise the Flag of Martyrs Over the White House.”</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/ahmadinejad-raise-the-flag-of-martyrs-over-the-white-house/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=ahmadinejad-raise-the-flag-of-martyrs-over-the-white-house</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/ahmadinejad-raise-the-flag-of-martyrs-over-the-white-house/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 04 Apr 2014 14:22:14 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Iran]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Mahmoud Ahmadinejad]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=222714</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[This was Ahmadinejad’s first political comment after a long silence]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Mahmoud-Ahmadinejad-at-th-001.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-222715" alt="Mahmoud-Ahmadinejad-at-th-001" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Mahmoud-Ahmadinejad-at-th-001-450x270.jpg" width="450" height="270" /></a></p>
<p>The whole Mahdi thing doesn&#8217;t seem to have worked out for him, but <a href="http://freebeacon.com/national-security/ahmadinejad-urges-iranians-to-raise-the-flag-of-martyrs-over-the-white-house/">Ahmadinejad is back and giving speeche</a>s. And he appears to have the support of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, arguably the true government in Iran.</p>
<blockquote><p>Former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad emerged from hiding on Wednesday to deliver a rare public speech in which he told Iranians, “We can rest the day that we raise the flag of martyrs over the White House,” according to an independent translation of Persian language media reports.</p>
<p>Ahmadinejad, most notorious for his Holocaust denial and militaristic rhetoric, visited war zones in southern Iran just a week after Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei made a similar visit to the region.</p>
<p>The comments were initially reported by Iran’s Basij News Agency, an official state organ controlled by the country’s powerful Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).</p>
<p>Ahmadinejad’s reappearance on the public stage comes as Iran continues to negotiate with Western powers over its contested nuclear weapons program. The former president’s violent rhetoric is being viewed as a sign that Iranian hardliners are making a political comeback in Tehran.</p>
<p>“This was Ahmadinejad’s first political comment after a long silence, more importantly it is reported by a news agency controlled by [Iran’s] powerful Basij forces, the Iranian version of SS forces,” Saeed Ghasseminejad, cofounder of Iranian Liberal Students and Graduates, told the Washington Free Beacon.</p>
<p>“Ahmadinejad also got the chance to sit close to Khamenei, as Khamenei’s website and IRGC-run Fars News reported,” Ghasseminejad said.<br />
This may be seen as “a significant sign in Iran’s politics showing that Ahmadinejad’s relation with Khamenei is improving,” he said. “It seems that Khamenei and powerful forces in his office have decided not to keep Ahmadinejad totally out of the loop.”</p></blockquote>
<p>Despite his delusions, Ahmadinejad can be useful. Khamenei can play &#8216;good Jihadist&#8217; and &#8216;bad Jihadist&#8217; using Rouhani and Ahmadinejad, punishing and rewarding the West by elevating or diminishing the so-called hardliners.</p>
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		<title>So Long, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/majid-rafizadeh/so-long-mahmoud-ahmadinejad/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=so-long-mahmoud-ahmadinejad</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/majid-rafizadeh/so-long-mahmoud-ahmadinejad/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 31 Jul 2013 04:23:43 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Majid Rafizadeh]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Anti-Semitism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hassan Rouhani]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Iran]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Mahmoud Ahmadinejad]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[president]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Zionism]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=198822</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A look back at the Iranian president's legacy of fanaticism and Jew hatred. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/iran12n-1-web.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-198823" alt="iran12n-1-web" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/iran12n-1-web-450x337.jpg" width="270" height="202" /></a>In less than a week, on August 3<sup>rd</sup>, the Iranian people will bid farewell to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who will be replaced by Hassan Rouhani, another regime-insider. The mainstream perception, and the argument supported by many analysts, is that next week will mark the end of Ahmadinejad’s political career. This argument is inaccurate due to the fact that the clerics and political figures in Iran’s gilded circle routinely continue their anti-Western, anti-U.S., and anti-Semitic statements and policies either through regime politics or behind the geopolitical and media scenes.</p>
<p>Ahmadinejad himself publicly stated that he does not intend to retire from politics after leaving office. As a result, Ahmadinejad and his anti-Semitic, incendiary, and inflammatory beliefs will continue to guide and shape Iran’s policies. In addition, according to the laws of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ahmadinejad can even run for presidency again in four years and win the votes of the hardliners, Basij, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps, and the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Furthermore, president-elect Hassan Rouhani – an insider and founding father of Iran’s repressive theocratic regime who is well-known for being a “wolf in sheep’s clothing” – will continue Ahmadinejad’s policies.</p>
<p>Yet, it is crucial to reflect on Ahmadinejad’s eight years in office and presidential legacy, as some of Ahmadinejad’s most incendiary, anti-Semitic, inflammatory and provocative policies are a strong representation of the beliefs, policies, and political stance of the Iranian regime:</p>
<ul>
<li>The most outrageous, history-defying, and anti-Semitic announcement was publicly released during Ahmadinejad’s speech in Tehran. In reference to his argument that the Holocaust did not occur, Ahmadinejad explained, “They [Western governments and Israel] launched the myth of the Holocaust. They lied, they put on a show and then they support the Jews. The pretext for establishing the Zionist regime is a lie … a lie which relies on an unreliable claim, a mythical claim, and the occupation of Palestine has nothing to do with the Holocaust.&#8221;</li>
<li>The second belief includes an insult to the American people and those families who lost their loved ones in the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Ahmadinejad repeatedly declared that the American government orchestrated the attacks to kill its own people. In one of the speeches to the United Nations in September 2010, Ahmadinejad stated, “Some segments within the American government orchestrated the attack to reverse the declining American economy and its grips on the Middle East in order to save the Zionist regime… The majority of the American people, as well as most nations and politicians around the world, agree with this view.&#8221;</li>
<li>The next anti-Semitic belief includes the repeated threats of wiping Tel Aviv off the world map. In a speech to the World Without Zionism student conference in Tehran, October 2005, Ahmadinejad stated, &#8220;Anybody who recognizes Israel will burn in the fire of the Islamic nation&#8217;s fury.&#8221; In other statements and comments to reporters in Tehran, April 2006, he further stated, &#8220;We say that this fake regime [Israel] cannot logically continue to live … Open the doors [of Europe] and let the Jews go back to their own countries.&#8221; In addition, in his comments on Israel’s 60th anniversary celebration, May 2008, Ahmadinejad stated, “Those who think they can revive the stinking corpse of the fake Israeli regime by throwing a birthday party are seriously mistaken.&#8221;</li>
<li>Ahmadinejad also reiterated the Iranian regime’s policy of creating and utilizing suicide bombers. In his comments during a visit to a training camp, April 2007, Ahmadinejad stated that &#8220;Iran can recruit hundreds of suicide bombers a day. Suicide is an invincible weapon. Suicide bombers in this land showed us the way, and they enlighten our future.&#8221;</li>
</ul>
<p>The list of Ahmadinejad’s anti-Semitic, incendiary, and Islamist remarks and beliefs go on. However, there are also domestic repressive policies. In addition to the aforementioned foreign policies, Ahmadinejad strengthened the power of the Basij, Iran’s militia organization, the intelligence Etela’at, the “moral” police, and Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps by passing more rigid, constraining, and Sharia-based laws. Freedom of speech, press, and assembly were completely confined under Ahmadinejad’s eight years of presidency. The number of political prisoners exponentially increased, more journalists and activists were arrested, the extent of torture, rape, discrimination and executions heightened (according to Human Rights Watch), and oppositional newspapers were shut down.</p>
<p>Ahmadinejad is also notorious for his denial of human rights – such as when he denied that a gay population existed in Iran – turning him into one of the most ridiculed presidents of his time. In a speech at Columbia University in New York, September 2007, Ahmadinejad claimed, &#8220;In Iran, we don&#8217;t have homosexuals like in your country … In Iran we do not have this phenomenon. I don&#8217;t know who&#8217;s told you that we have this.&#8221;</p>
<p>The crucial point is that – although some liberals would argue that the aforementioned beliefs are only limited to Iran’s hardliners – these ideologies are strongly held across the Islamic Republic of Iran’s political spectrum, including by moderates, reformists, and centrists. Any political figure or party that wishes to survive in Iran’s theocratic politics and any political party or figure that is allowed to hold positions in Iran has already proved their loyalty to and support for the regime’s fundamental anti-American, anti-Semitic, and Sharia law-based beliefs.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Iranian Lobbyist Now Works for Organization that Oversees American Nuclear Weapons</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/iranian-lobbyist-now-works-for-organization-that-oversees-american-nuclear-weapons/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=iranian-lobbyist-now-works-for-organization-that-oversees-american-nuclear-weapons</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/iranian-lobbyist-now-works-for-organization-that-oversees-american-nuclear-weapons/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 20 May 2013 00:50:28 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Mahmoud Ahmadinejad]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[NIAC]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=189920</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Disney met with Ahmadinejad and wrote that, "I saw a man wholly convinced of the righteousness of his actions, not cynical in the least." ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/AHMADINEJAD-NUCLEAR.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-189921" alt="AHMADINEJAD NUCLEAR" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/AHMADINEJAD-NUCLEAR-442x350.jpg" width="442" height="350" /></a></p>
<p>Come on. <a href="http://freebeacon.com/unusual-adviser/">What&#8217;s the worst that could happen</a>?</p>
<blockquote><p>A former senior official at a pro-Iran activist group has been a member of the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) since June 2012, sparking concern among proponents of a tough U.S. policy stance toward Tehran.</p>
<p>Patrick Disney worked as an assistant policy director at the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), an Iranian-American advocacy group long suspected of lobbying on behalf of the Iranian regime.</p>
<p>Disney sought to accommodate Tehran’s nuclear ambitions and later became enmeshed in a lawsuit that raised questions about the group’s potentially illicit lobbying activities during his two-year tenure with NIAC.</p>
<p>Now Disney is working for the NNSA, which overseas “the management and security of the nation’s nuclear weapons, nuclear nonproliferation, and naval reactor programs,” according to its website.</p></blockquote>
<p>Disney met with Ahmadinejad and wrote that, &#8220;I saw a man wholly convinced of the righteousness of his actions, not cynical in the least. His combination of earnestness and cleverness convinced me of the need for the United States to drastically alter its current approach.&#8221;</p>
<p>And then Patrick Disney went to sleep with a photo of Ahmadinejad under his pillow. A long time ago, in a saner world, having ties to enemy countries would disqualify you from any position this close to the sphere of defense. But that was a pre-Obama world.</p>
<blockquote><p>“Putting an alumni of NIAC on a nuclear policy desk is the domestic policy equivalent of having David Duke monitor civil rights,” said Michael Rubin, a former Pentagon adviser on Iran and Iraq.</p>
<p>Disney—who has personally met with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad—could be privy to classified information in his new role at NNSA, and he is likely offering top NNSA brass advice on Iran.</p>
<p>Critics called this situation dangerous given Disney’s past advocacy work and sympathetic writings on Iran.</p>
<p>“This is one of the single most bizarre appointments I’ve ever seen and I’ve been around a long time,” said one former senior Capitol Hill aide with personal knowledge of Disney.</p></blockquote>
<p>But Disney is small potatoes when you have NIAC buddy Chuck Hagel as Secretary of Defense.</p>
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		<title>Video: Understanding UN Bias Against Israel</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/frontpagemag-com/video-understanding-un-bias-against-israel/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=video-understanding-un-bias-against-israel</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/frontpagemag-com/video-understanding-un-bias-against-israel/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 11 Apr 2013 04:06:58 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Frontpagemag.com]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ahmadinejad]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Anti-Semitism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jew-Hate]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Mahmoud Ahmadinejad]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[U.N. Durban Review Conference]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=185030</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Unveiling the false accusations.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/frontpagemag-com/video-understanding-un-bias-against-israel/united-nations-2/" rel="attachment wp-att-185196"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-185196" title="united-nations" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/united-nations-420x350.jpg" alt="" width="294" height="245" /></a>The United Nations has made the democratic State of Israel the target of incessant condemnation while neglecting its mandate in challenging the oppressive regimes around the world. The following film clip uncovers the factors behind the UN&#8217;s bias against Israel. We encourage you to view the clip, forward to friends, and partner with us to counter the hypocrisy and expose the truth:</p>
<p><iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/j7Mupoo1At8" frameborder="0" width="425" height="325"></iframe></p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank">Click here</a>.  </strong></p>
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		<title>Who&#8217;s Ready For Another Crazy Iranian Election?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/whos-ready-for-another-crazy-iranian-election/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=whos-ready-for-another-crazy-iranian-election</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/whos-ready-for-another-crazy-iranian-election/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 22 Feb 2013 02:36:41 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Iran]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Iran Election]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Mahmoud Ahmadinejad]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=178567</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Ahmadinejad has already threatened to cancel the election before it happens. As part of his non-election, which he may try to cancel, he has kicked off what he declares is a "Viva Spring"]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/whos-ready-for-another-crazy-iranian-election/c44a7d88-f07f-4b26-a0a4-be660efe4fa6_w640_r1_s_cx0_cy0_cw100/" rel="attachment wp-att-178568"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-178568" title="C44A7D88-F07F-4B26-A0A4-BE660EFE4FA6_w640_r1_s_cx0_cy0_cw100" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/C44A7D88-F07F-4B26-A0A4-BE660EFE4FA6_w640_r1_s_cx0_cy0_cw100-450x253.jpg" alt="" width="450" height="253" /></a></p>
<p>The good news is that Ahmadinejad won&#8217;t be running in this election. The bad news is that Ahmadinejad intends to keep on running things through a handpicked puppet president. The good news is that all the infighting is tearing the Iranian regime apart.</p>
<p>Ahmadinejad has already threatened to cancel the election before it happens if his puppet, Esfandiari Rahim Mashaei, isn&#8217;t approved as a presidential candidate. It&#8217;s not clear if he will actually be allowed to do that, but political disputes in Iran get settled by whoever has custody of the Revolutionary Guard.</p>
<p>As part of his non-election, which he may try to cancel, Ahmadinejad has kicked off what he declares is a &#8220;Viva Spring&#8221;. That apparently consists of him releasing tapes of his opponents engaging in corruption. His opponents have been releasing tapes and videos of his cronies engaging in corruption. The tape releases are meant to restore Ahmadinejad&#8217;s image as a reformer, but they are infuriating the Iranian establishment, such as it is.</p>
<p>Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who in theory runs the country, has blasted Ahmadinejad for his antics, but can&#8217;t remove him because he declared that the rigged election last time around was Allah&#8217;s work. And you can&#8217;t talk back to Allah when he steals an election. The ridiculous side of this is that the same establishment which brutally murdered and tortured its own people to protect Ahmadinejad&#8217;s stolen election are desperately trying to get rid of him.</p>
<p>Khamenei is calling for unity in the face of the Great Satan, the Medium Satan and the Little Satan, but no one is paying attention to him. The actual outcome of the election probably rests with Revolutionary Guard generals and may  come down to a question of which side can offer the biggest bribes.</p>
<p>Meanwhile Ali Fallahian is the establishment&#8217;s likely next choice to be the President of Iran. Ali Fallahian makes Ahmadinejad look like a sane and reasonable moderate. Ali Fallahian specialized in terrorism and is wanted by Interpol for the bombing a Jewish community center in Argentina. He&#8217;s wanted by a German court for restaurant assassinations and by Switzerland for a murder over there.</p>
<p>Fallahian will be running on a platform of turning Iran into an &#8220;Advanced Islamic Country&#8221; and improving relations with the United States.</p>
<p>Naturally.</p>
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		<title>Ahmadinejad Also Expects Obama to be More Flexible After the Election</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/dgreenfield/ahmadinejad-also-expects-obama-to-be-more-flexible-after-the-election/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=ahmadinejad-also-expects-obama-to-be-more-flexible-after-the-election</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/dgreenfield/ahmadinejad-also-expects-obama-to-be-more-flexible-after-the-election/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 01 Oct 2012 21:22:54 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Barack Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Iran]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Mahmoud Ahmadinejad]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=146175</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Ahmadinejad said meetings over Iran’s nuclear program will result in “a very important decision” following the U.S. November election. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/obama-and-ahmadinejad-2.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-146176" title="obama-and-ahmadinejad-2" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/obama-and-ahmadinejad-2-300x214.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="214" /></a></p>
<p>Wonder if Obama wasn&#8217;t just passing along &#8220;Flexibility&#8221; mash notes to Vladimir, but maybe to dear old Mahmoud as well.</p>
<blockquote><p>Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said talks over his country’s development of enriched uranium will be more productive after the U.S. election and expressed optimism the two sides will “be able to take some steps forward.”</p>
<p>Ahmadinejad, who is completing his second and last term as president, said meetings over Iran’s nuclear program with the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, plus Germany, will result in “a very important decision” following the U.S. November election.</p></blockquote>
<p>It&#8217;s like he knows what&#8217;s coming. But surely Obama wouldn&#8217;t? He couldn&#8217;t? You might as well claim that he&#8217;ll get up at the UN and announce, &#8220;The future does not belong to those who slander the Prophet of Islam.&#8221;</p>
<p>But as Obama and every Democrats from senator to dogcatcher tells us, the way to stop Iran is with sanctions. It worked in North Korea. It worked in Iraq. It worked in Gaza. It&#8217;s bound to work in Iran.</p>
<blockquote><p>Foreign investment in Iran jumped 83 percent to $6.8 billion in the first half of the current Iranian year, which began on March 20, the Tehran Times reported Sept. 27, citing Deputy Economy Minister Behrouz Alishiri.</p></blockquote>
<p>Okay. Well I&#8217;m sure Obama knows what he&#8217;s doing. Just like in Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan and Ohio.</p>
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		<title>Obama, Like Carter, Will Not Act Against Iran</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/joseph-puder/obama-like-carter-will-not-act-against-iran/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obama-like-carter-will-not-act-against-iran</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 23 Jul 2012 04:05:35 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Joseph Puder]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ayatollah Khomeini]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Carter]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Iran]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[khamenei]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Mahmoud Ahmadinejad]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=138094</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[How the president is reviving the U.S.'s "paper tiger" image. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/obama_carter.gif"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-138117" title="obama_carter" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/obama_carter.gif" alt="" width="375" height="242" /></a>President Barack Obama is hoping that the P5+1 talks with Iran can stave off Iran’s quest for a nuclear bomb. But, those recently held in Moscow (June 18-19, 2012), with the participation of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany and Iran, like previous talks in Istanbul (April 14, 2012) and Baghdad (May 23-24, 2012) have produced little beside “feel good” sentiments among the participants.  The Islamic Republic of Iran is poised to develop a nuclear bomb and the means to deliver it with long-range missiles that can hit the U.S. (short and medium range missiles that can hit Israel and <a href="http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/dotmil/2012/02/16/intel-official-iranian-missiles-could-hit-nearby-us-targets-europe">Europe</a> are already available to Iran ).  While the talks ensue, the centrifuges spin and give Iran the time they need to bring them to the point of no return.</p>
<p>The world powers, while seemingly standing by the demands for Iran to halt uranium enrichment before it reaches the 20% level needed to make an atomic bomb, have been unwilling to make their demand a reality with a determined threat of military action.  Russia and China will not permit the military option.  The real question, however, is why the U.S. and its Western allies have not either.</p>
<p>The reluctance of President Obama to consider military action against the Iranian regime is reminiscent of President Jimmy Carter’s inaction when faced with the revolutionary Islamic Republic of Iran invading the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and taking 52 American diplomats hostage; an action which constituted an act of war against the U.S.  The invasion, on November 4, 1979, was executed with the blessings of the Ayatollah Khomeini &#8211; the then new leader of Iran.</p>
<p>Ahmed Khomeini, the Ayatollah’s son, charged with serving as a liaison between the regime and the “students” occupying the embassy would later reveal in his writings that his father expected “thunder and lightening” from Washington &#8211; a decisive military operation that would free the hostages and punish the Iranian regime’s terrorist action.   Instead, the Carter White House displayed weakness with its half-hearted statements, among which included a plea to release the hostages on “humanitarian grounds.”  President Carter showed no interest or intent in using military action.</p>
<p>Khomeini recognized Carter’s weakness and mocked his administration as acting “like a <a href="http://mikesamerica.blogspot.com/2006/08/why-iran-does-not-fear-us.html">headless chicken</a>.”  Moreover, Carter wrote a personal letter to Khomeini in longhand pleading with an appeal from &#8220;one believer to a man of God.&#8221; Khomeini’s reaction was &#8220;we shall cut off America’s hands.&#8221;</p>
<p>Obama’s June 4, 2009, <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Remarks-by-the-President-at-Cairo-University-6-04-09/">Cairo speech</a>, pleaded with the Muslim world and Iran in a similar manner. “In Ankara, I made clear that America is not, and never will be at war with Islam…Rather than remain trapped in the past, I&#8217;ve made it clear to Iran’s leaders and people that my country is prepared to move forward.  The question now is not what Iran is against, but rather what future it wants to build. I recognize it will be hard to overcome decades of mistrust, but we will proceed with courage, rectitude, and resolve.  There will be many issues to discuss between our two countries, and we are willing to move forward without preconditions on the basis of mutual respect.”</p>
<p>Obama continued, “I understand those who protest that some countries have weapons that others do not.  No single nation should pick and choose which nation holds nuclear weapons.  And that&#8217;s why I strongly reaffirmed America’s commitment to seek a world in which no nations hold nuclear weapons.  And any nation, including Iran, should have the right to access peaceful nuclear power if it complies with its responsibilities under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.  That commitment is at the core of the treaty, and it must be kept for all who fully abide by it. And I&#8217;m hopeful that all countries in the region can share in this goal.”</p>
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		<title>The Venezuelan Missile Crisis</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/david-meir-levi/the-venezuelan-missile-crisis/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-venezuelan-missile-crisis</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/david-meir-levi/the-venezuelan-missile-crisis/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 24 Jan 2012 04:10:52 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[David Meir-Levi]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hugo Chavez]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Iran]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Mahmoud Ahmadinejad]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[missiles]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[sanctions]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Venezuela]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=120019</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Iran's carefully crafted alliance may prove useful sooner than later. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/article-2084428-0F651FB300000578-407_634x5001.gif"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-120114" title="article-2084428-0F651FB300000578-407_634x500" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/article-2084428-0F651FB300000578-407_634x5001.gif" alt="" width="375" height="258" /></a></p>
<p>Iran initiated a close relationship with Venezuela when Venezuela’s president, Hugo Chavez, hosted the 2000 OPEC meeting in Caracas. (Shireen T. Hunter, <em>Iran&#8217;s Foreign Policy in the Post-Soviet Era: Resisting the New International Order</em> [Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2010], p. 233, not available on line, <a href="http://www.nti.org/country-profiles/venezuela/">quoted here</a>.)  Since then, Iran and Venezuela have consorted with Cuba and Colombia to create terrorist havens and missile bases with missiles capable of carrying nuclear payloads in South America that have the southern half of the USA in their range.  Thousands of Arab and Iranian terrorists have infiltrated our southern border for a decade and reside among us, undetected, as sleeper agents.</p>
<p>How have decades of American Presidents allowed this to happen? &#8212; not for lack of knowledge.</p>
<p>In July 2003, <em>A Report Prepared under an Interagency Agreement by the Federal Research Division</em>: <a href="http://www.loc.gov/rr/frd/pdf-files/TerrOrgCrime_TBA.pdf"><em>Terrorist and Organized Crime Groups in the Tri-Border Area (TBA) of South America</em></a> (Library of Congress, July 2003, now published <a href="http://www.amazon.com/TERRORIST-ORGANIZED-TRI-BORDER-AMERICA-ebook/dp/B004XZW7FY">in e-book form</a>, and <a href="http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=11889">summarized here</a>) alerted us to the threat of Arab and Iranian terrorist camps in South America where, since the early 1980s, Arab terrorists have been sending thousands of their cohorts to the almost inaccessible jungle and mountain region between Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay (known as the TBA, Tri-Border Area or <em>La Triple Frontera</em>).</p>
<blockquote><p>Terror training camps and arsenals have been established, virtually out of the reach of local law enforcement or defense forces; and elements from Hezbollah, al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya, Islamic Jihad, al-Qaeda, Hamas, and the Lebanese drug mafia operate in partnership, freely and openly in conjunction with local organized crime and corrupt government officials.</p>
<p>The TBA has become a virtual haven for Islamic terror groups and a base for terror operations against South American targets. The large and growing Arab population of these states (in excess of 750,000 by local estimates) provides a community highly conducive to the establishment of Islamic terrorist sleeper cells throughout the area.</p></blockquote>
<p>On <a href="http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/993592/posts">October 6, 2003, U.S. News and World Report</a> alerted the world to a rising new star in the galaxy of anti-American terror-supporting nations: Venezuela. Unlike the TBA where Iranian and Arab terror organizations operate despite efforts of the host nations, Middle Eastern terrorists in Venezuela have the full support and collaboration of Hugo Chavez.</p>
<blockquote><p>Thousands of terrorists now occupy an unknown number of camps in (northwestern Venezuela), and move about with the support and collaboration of the Venezuelan government. President Hugo Chavez plays host to a growing horde of Middle Eastern terrorists from some of the USA’s most notorious enemies, including Libya, Saddam’s Iraq, Syria, Egypt and Pakistan…These terror groups are known to work in conjunction with the Colombian anti-government insurgency group, FARC (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia = Colombian Armed Revolutionary Forces). They offer FARC terrorists safe haven in mountainous and unpatrolled regions of Northeastern Venezuela.</p></blockquote>
<p>Chavez by then was America&#8217;s newest nemesis, with close ties with Cuba&#8217;s Castro and alliances with some of America&#8217;s most notorious enemies in the Middle East.</p>
<p>In July 2004 a small local Arizona weekly newspaper, the <a href="http://www.stevequayle.com/News.alert/04_Terror/040802.Tumbleweed.html"><em>Tombstone Tumbleweed</em></a><em>,</em> reported that two groups of Middle Eastern infiltrators were caught by the Border Patrol (originally <a href="http://www.loc.gov/rr/frd/pdf-files/TerrOrgCrime_TBA.pdf">here</a>. Now no longer available on line, but reproduced <a href="http://forums.anandtech.com/archive/index.php/t-1368197.html">here</a> and <a href="http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1180864/posts">here</a>).  The <em>Tumbleweed</em> verified that a flood of Middle Eastern males were caught entering Arizona illegally from Mexico.  A Border Patrol officer reported that since October 1, 2003, agents in the Tucson sector apprehended 5,510 illegals from countries other than Mexico, Central or South America, including large groups of non-Spanish speaking males.  About two-thirds of these were of Middle Eastern origin and spoke Farsi or Arabic. A large number of these, and other groups of similar ethnicity, escaped capture and disappeared into the United States.</p>
<p>Legal entry into the USA is <a href="http://www.saudigazette.com.sa/index.cfm?method=home.regcon&amp;contentID=20110615103060">very easy for citizens of Saudi Arabia</a>, and normal legal channels are open for citizens of most Arab countries. So why sneak in illegally via Mexico if you are in the USA on legitimate business? It seems more than likely that some are terrorists who, once they have eluded the Border Patrol, can connect with established contacts in the American Muslim community and become sleeper agents preparing for future terror attacks within this country.</p>
<p>In December 2004, US concerns about security south of the border were heightened when <a href="http://www.jihadwatch.org/2004/12/explosives-laden-canadian-owned-ship-arrested-in-honduras-us-investigates.html">a Libyan-flagged cargo ship</a> with an Egyptian captain and Sudanese first officer was seized in Honduras, carrying 900 tons of unreported explosives.  The ship was bound for Venezuela.</p>
<p>Concerns were ratcheted even higher when an al-Qaeda agent, captured in 2004, revealed <a href="http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101041122-782068,00.html">an al-Qaeda plot </a>to move nuclear materials into cooperative South American countries for future nuclear attacks on the USA.  In chilling corroboration of this report was the theft, just a month earlier, of a crop-duster in Mexico, which disappeared into the United States.  The suspected thief, <a href="http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1478282/posts">Adnan ash-Shukrijumah</a>, is one of the world’s <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s/adnan_g_el_shukrijumah/index.html">most wanted terrorists</a> and a <a href="http://www.hanford.gov/c.cfm/oci/ci_terrorist.cfm?dossier=86">high-ranking official in al-Qaeda</a>.  He trained as a pilot in flight schools in Florida and Oklahoma, and shortly after 9/11 he trained as a nuclear technician, along with three other al-Qaeda sleeper agents, at McMaster University (Hamilton, Ontario, Canada).  While there he stole 180 pounds of nuclear waste from McMaster’s nuclear reactor.  Nuclear waste can be used to create nuclear “dirty bombs.”  Later he was singled out by bin Laden to serve as the field commander for the next terrorist attack on U.S. soil, a nuclear attack code-named &#8220;the American Hiroshima.&#8221;  Attempts by American law enforcement agencies to access information on him from McMaster University have been rebuffed on the basis of student confidentiality. The latest <a href="http://www.fbi.gov/wanted/wanted_terrorists/adnan-g.-el-shukrijumah">“FBI Most Wanted”</a> reports (1/19/2012) indicate that he is still at large, with his crop-duster.</p>
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		<title>Iran, Venezuela, Cuba and the Cyber Threat</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2011/ryan-mauro/iran-venezuela-cuba-and-the-cyber-threat/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=iran-venezuela-cuba-and-the-cyber-threat</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 23 Dec 2011 04:35:42 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ryan Mauro]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Cuba]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Cyber attacks]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hugo Chavez]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Iran]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Mahmoud Ahmadinejad]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Venezuela]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=116955</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The unholy alliance conspires to wage deadly cyber attacks on America.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/photo-1.gif"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-116980" title="photo-1" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/photo-1.gif" alt="" width="375" height="268" /></a></p>
<p>Cuban, Iranian and Venezuelan officials have been caught actively considering cyber attacks on the U.S., including ones that would be “worse than the World Trade Center.” In the frightening <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmM5zkMFtME">documentary</a>, the U.S.-based Spanish language <em>Univision</em> also exposes subversive operations by Iran in Latin America.</p>
<p>The undercover operation began after a former computers instructor at Mexico’s National Autonomous University was recruited by another professor in 2006 for a cyber terror plot requested by the Cuban embassy in Mexico City. The instructor, Juan Carlos Munoz Ledo, turned the tables on the Cuban government and later, its Iranian and Venezuelan allies. He said he’d go along with the plot and get some students involved to carry it out. In reality, he and his partners were starting a seven-month investigation that would expose the evils contemplated by these governments against the U.S.</p>
<p>Ledo and his team approached Mohamed Hassan Ghadiri in 2007, who was then Iran’s ambassador to Mexico. They discussed a plot to hack into American computer systems at nuclear power plants, the White House, the CIA, the FBI, the NSA and other critical sites from Mexico. A “digital bomb” would be implanted that would be “worse than the World Trade Center.” The footage of Ghadiri shows his excitement over the plot. He emphasized that the hackers should retrieve classified information because Iran needed to know if the U.S. was planning an attack.  Ghadiri admits to having met with the students but claims that the Iranian regime rejected their offer to attack the U.S.</p>
<p>In 2008, the team approached Livia Acosta, the cultural attaché of the Venezuelan embassy in Mexico City. Like Ghadiri, she was interested in the cyber plot. She promised to put any information they provide into the hands of Hugo Chavez. She was particularly pleased when the team claimed it could access the computers of nuclear power plants, <a href="http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&amp;pageId=378109">specifically</a> Florida’s Turkey Point and Arkansas’ Nuclear One.</p>
<p>The documentary also revealed covert Iranian activities in Latin America. The journalists obtained footage from a failed terrorist attack against New York’s JFK Airport in 2007. It is widely known that Al-Qaeda was tied to the plot, but the <a href="http://www.hudson-ny.org/2217/iranian-terror-plot-jfk-airport">involvement</a> of Iran and Venezuela is less known.</p>
<p>The film <a href="http://www.hudson-ny.org/2662/iran-cyber-attack-against-us">reveals</a> that the Iranian regime is still using Edgardo Ruben Assad, an operative involved in the 1992 bombing of Israel’s embassy in Argentina that killed 29 and the 1994 bombing of a Jewish cultural center in Argentina that killed 85. Ghadiri worked to try to get this terrorist operative into Mexico. One team member was recruited by Ghadiri to go to Iran to study Islam for two months so he could come back and preach the regime’s ideology. He bravely went there and he met Muslim converts from Venezuela, Ecuador, Argentina and Bolivia who all arrived for the same reason.</p>
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		<title>Iran’s Thugocracy Attacks Again</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2011/kenneth-r-timmerman/iran%e2%80%99s-thugocracy-attacks-again/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=iran%25e2%2580%2599s-thugocracy-attacks-again</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 16 Nov 2011 04:15:05 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Kenneth R. Timmerman]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ahmad Rezai]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ayatollah Khomeini]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Iran]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Mahmoud Ahmadinejad]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Mohsen Rezai]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[murder]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=112445</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Murder in Dubai, a prelude to war?]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/aaaRezaeiFatherAndSon.gif"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-112477" title="aaaRezaeiFatherAndSon" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/aaaRezaeiFatherAndSon.gif" alt="" width="375" height="252" /></a></p>
<p>The 35-year-old son of the former commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps, Gen. Mohsen Rezai, was found dead in a luxury suites hotel in Dubai on Sunday, a death his family deemed “suspicious.”</p>
<p>Ahmad Rezai had gone to Dubai on September 8 to visit his family, who maintain a residence in Dubai. He has been unable to travel to Iran since he was released from house arrest by the regime on May 1, 2008.</p>
<p>According to the <em><a href="http://www.tehrantimes.com/index.php/politics/92522-mohsen-rezaiis-son-found-dead-at-a-hotel-in-dubai-">Tehran Times</a></em>, the younger Rezai “died after receiving an electric shock.” An opposition Iranian source told me he was followed back from Tehran by two members of the Quds Force who may have carried out the hit.</p>
<p>The younger Rezai’s murder was discovered just hours after a series of explosions rocked the main depot for the Revolutionary Guards stockpile of Shahab-3 missiles in the southwestern suburbs of Tehran, killing one of Iran’s top missile experts, <a href="http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2099376,00.html">Brig. Gen. Hassan Moghadam</a>.</p>
<p>It’s unclear if the two events are related, as many bloggers have been <a href="http://www.newenglishreview.org/blog_display.cfm/blog_id/39000#CurDomainURL%23/blog.cfm">suggesting</a>. However, Gen. Mohsen Rezai commands a substantial following within the IRGC even today, fourteen years after he was replaced as IRGC commander. The murder of his son by another faction of regime thugs will surely have repercussions inside Iran.</p>
<p>To me, this feels like the murder of Ahmad Shah Massood in Afghanistan on Sept 9, 2001. I can still remember hearing of Masood’s murder and thinking at the time: this is the beginning of something really bad.</p>
<p>By the very fact that he lived in the United States and had U.S. citizenship, Ahmad Rezai gave his father an “American connection” the regime jinned up into a massive conspiracy. The fact that they couldn’t prove any of their allegations against him, despite many years of efforts, only convinced them further that father and son constituted a threat to the regime.</p>
<p>Combine this murder with the missile base explosion, the latest IAEA report that reveals ongoing nuclear warhead work – despite the CIA’s 2007 National Intelligence Estimate to the <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2011/11/10/connecting-the-nuclear-dots-on-iran/">contrary</a> – and the intense factional warfare inside the regime that is pitting Ahmadinejad against Khamenei and splitting the IRGC into multiple, mutually-hostile factions – and you’ve laid the table for a dramatic series of events. Something bad is going to happen. And the target is likely to be Israel.</p>
<p><strong>Family background</strong></p>
<p>Gen. Rezai has twice run for president, both times against Ahmadinejad. After the stolen election of June 2009, he joined the other failed candidates, Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karrubi, in calling for a full investigation of election fraud.</p>
<p>But as street protests in Tehran and elsewhere intensified, Rezai caved into pressure from Ayatollah Khamenei – including threats to his family – and retreated to Mashad for several months where he lectured at the local university. (He holds a PhD in economics.)</p>
<p>Khamenei also threatened the family of Rezai’s boss at the Expediency Council, former president Ali Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani.</p>
<p>Rafsanjani’s daughter, Faezeh Hashemi, was arrested after the election on allegations of failing to pay import duties on large quantities of green “mantos” – the head to toe covering, usually in black, that Iranian women are forced to wear in public – she was planning to distribute thanks to grants from NGOs with ties to George Soros and his Open Society Institute.</p>
<p>Rafsanjani’s son, Mehdi Hashemi, was planning to return to Iran from London after the election, but was ultimately warned away from returning by Ahmad Rezai, who learned that the regime had issued an arrest warrant for Hashemi and fully intended to carry it out if he came to Tehran.</p>
<p>Ahmad Rezai has been in the gunsights of the regime ever since he defected to the United States in 1997 at the age of 22.</p>
<p>I first interviewed him in Los Angeles the following year, when he blasted the regime for carrying out terrorist attacks, including the Khobar Towers bombing.</p>
<p>&#8220;Three persons sign off on every order to commit a foreign terrorist action: Ayatollah Khamene&#8217;i, Rafsanjani, and Khamene&#8217;i&#8217;s chief of staff, Hojjat-ol eslam Mohammadi-Golpayegani,&#8221; he told me in that <a href="http://www.iran.org/tib/public/4901.htm">interview</a>.</p>
<p>In 1999, his father dispatched two people to lure Ahmad away from Los Angeles, where he had obtained political asylum, to the estate of a wealthy Iranian businessman in Costa Rica, on the pretext that Iranian agents in Los Angeles were trying to kill him.</p>
<p>Gen. Rezai was trying to get Ahmad to return to Iran, where he thought he could get the regime to “forgive” his outspoken radio and television interviews. At the time, President Khatami was leading a reformist movement that included a loosening up of the regime’s intelligence apparatus. Gen. Rezai was working with Khatami at the time.</p>
<p>In the end, the younger Rezai managed to return to the United States from Costa Rica, with help from the Foundation for Democracy in <a href="http://www.iran.org/tib/public/5610.htm">Iran</a>, which I founded in 1995. He learned English in my basement by watching Jackie Chan movies for three months while getting resettled into the United States.</p>
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		<title>Case Closed: Iran Trying to Make Nuclear Missile</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2011/ryan-mauro/case-closed-iran-trying-to-make-nuclear-missile/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=case-closed-iran-trying-to-make-nuclear-missile</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 09 Nov 2011 04:43:08 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ryan Mauro]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ayatollah Khomeini]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[international atomic energy agency iaea]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Iran]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Mahmoud Ahmadinejad]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Nuclear Weapons]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=111780</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[“Most damning report ever published by the IAEA,” official says]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/ahmadinejad_iran-nuclear.gif"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-111796" title="ahmadinejad_iran-nuclear" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/ahmadinejad_iran-nuclear.gif" alt="" width="375" height="249" /></a></p>
<p>The International Atomic Energy Agency has just released what is being called “the most damning report ever published” by the U.N. watchdog. The <a href="http://www.jpost.com/IranianThreat/News/Article.aspx?id=244833">evidence</a> in the report shows that Iran has a secret enrichment program, is simulating nuclear explosions, working on nuclear triggers, and developing a nuclear warhead. The report even says that Iran has made preparations for an underground nuclear test.</p>
<p>The IAEA report focuses on the <a href="http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/world/iran/parchin-2.htm">Parchin military base</a> 30 kilometers southeast of Tehran. The base has hundreds of buildings, tunnels and bunkers and IAEA inspectors are not allowed to visit. It is here that Iran is carrying out tests to simulate nuclear explosions. In 2003, one large test of high-explosives was done to assist with the development of a nuclear warhead that can be fitted onto a Shahab-3 ballistic missile. There is a chamber designed for a test of up to 70 kilograms of high explosives, a suitable amount for a nuclear explosion.</p>
<p>Iran has obtained the designs for a nuclear weapon and is actively working on a warhead. As of 2006, it was <a href="http://blogs.voanews.com/breaking-news/2011/11/08/iaea-credible-information-iran-worked-on-nuclear-weapon-design-2/">working</a> on neutron initiators, often referred to as the “nuclear trigger” for setting off a nuclear explosion. There is no civilian application for this device. In 2008 and 2009, Iran was researching how to make the core of a warhead where the bomb fuel is stored. There have also been computer simulations of nuclear explosions. A Russian scientist named Vyacheslav Danilenko taught the Iranians how to develop nuclear triggers, test nuclear weapons and develop a warhead from 1996 to 2002.</p>
<p>The IAEA also discloses Iran’s  “Green Salt Project,” a secret uranium enrichment project hidden from U.N. inspectors. The program’s objective is to acquire uranium in order to create the nuclear warhead. The underground Fodor site near Qom, which was revealed in 2009, is part of this project. The mountain-based site is designed to hold 3,000 centrifuges, far from what is necessary for a domestic energy program but enough for nuclear bomb production. The report says at least 412 centrifuges have been installed there and it also houses a stockpile of low-enriched uranium.</p>
<p>Iran is even <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov/08/iran-reasearch-nuclear-warhead-watchdog?newsfeed=true">preparing</a> for an underground nuclear weapons test. The IAEA has obtained Iranian government documents in Farsi discussing the necessary logistics for such a test. One document from 2008 mentions the existence of a 400 meter shaft about 6 miles from the “firing control point.” The report <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2059147/The-U-N-nuclear-atomic-energy-agency-admit-fear-Irans-nuclear-arsenal.html">concludes</a> that Iran could make a nuclear bomb in the matter of months.</p>
<p>The IAEA’s revelations come shortly after a former member of the Revolutionary Guards who spied for the CIA, Reza Kahlili, brought renewed attention to reports that Iran already has a nuclear arsenal.</p>
<p>Yossef Bodansky, who served as the Director of the U.S. Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare from 1988 to 2004 and authored “Bin Laden: The Man Who Declared War on America,” presents the most detailed account of Iran’s alleged acquisition of nuclear weapons. In his book, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/High-Cost-Peace-Washingtons-Vulnerable/dp/B0001Q5U58/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1320722596&amp;sr=8-1">&#8220;The High Cost of Peace,&#8221;</a> he alleges that in the summer of 1991, the Iranian regime ordered its intelligence service to scour the former Soviet Union to search for nuclear weapons. It made contact with officials in Kazakhstan, and the Iranians sent a delegation to the country in early September.</p>
<p>The Kazakhs agreed to provide disassembled nuclear weapons and a team to help reassemble them after their arrival in Iran. The deal was finalized in December 1991, with Iran agreeing to purchase two 40-kiloton nuclear warheads, one aerial nuclear bomb for a MiG-27 and one 152-mm nuclear artillery shell. These weapons arrived in Iran and became operational by mid-1992. The aerial bomb was stored at the Shahid Babai Base in Isfahan. Bodansky claims that the Iranians envisioned using it in a nuclear suicide attack on a U.S. carrier by a North Korean-trained pilot. The two warheads went to a base in Lavizan in Tehran.</p>
<p>According to an account in Ken Timmerman’s <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Countdown-Crisis-Coming-Nuclear-Showdown/dp/1400053684">&#8220;Countdown to Crisis,&#8221;</a> Iranian Revolutionary Guards Major-General and future presidential candidate Mohsen Rezai led the delegation to Kazakhstan. His story likewise states that the weapons were disassembled and brought to Tehran, but that key parts were missing. The Iranians reached out to North Korea for help in filling the gaps, which proved more difficult than anticipated to fill.</p>
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		<title>Khamenei, Ahmadinejad Rift Deepens</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2011/rick-moran/khamenei-ahmadinejad-rift-deepens/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=khamenei-ahmadinejad-rift-deepens</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 17 Oct 2011 04:11:20 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Rick Moran]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ayatollah Kohmeini]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Iranian Revolutionary Guards]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[islamic republic of iran]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Mahmoud Ahmadinejad]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[power struggle]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=109028</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Allah's deputy on Earth warns there's "no problem" with scrapping the president. ]]></description>
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<p>The ongoing feud between Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2011/10/16/world/meast/iran-politics/">escalated </a>on Sunday when Khamenei, in a speech to students, hinted at <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/16/us-iran-president-khamenei-idUSTRE79F19620111016">future changes </a>in Iran&#8217;s electoral laws that would allow parliament to choose the president. Such a move would <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/may/09/ahmadinejad-iran-ayatollah-khamenei">emasculate the powers of the presidency</a> since members of the parliament, or Majlis, are all vetted for office by the powerful Guardian Council, which is completely under the control of the Supreme Leader.</p>
<p>Khamenei&#8217;s suggestion, couched in terms that suggested the change would occur sometime in the future, nevertheless was a challenge to Ahmadinejad&#8217;s power and fed the growing rift between the two leaders.</p>
<p>The power struggle had <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/World/terrorism-security/2011/0921/Iran-releases-US-hikers-on-eve-of-Ahmadinejad-s-UN-speech">an impact</a> on the endgame that resulted in the release of the American hikers who had spent 3 years in prison after authorities accused them of being spies. And there has been <a href="http://the-diplomat.com/2011/10/13/was-khamenei-reckless-or-set-up/">some speculation</a> in the US government that the quarrel may have played a role in the recent plot to kill the Saudi ambassador.</p>
<p>The feud may have burst into the open relatively recently, but the tension between Khamenei and Ahmadinejad has been <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/may/09/ahmadinejad-iran-ayatollah-khamenei">simmering for months</a>. Ahmadinejad and his loyalists <a href="http://mideast.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/05/10/Rooting_for_Khamenei">wish to reduce</a> the tremendous influence of the clerical establishment on his decision making as president, making Iran more nationalistic and authoritarian, while giving a bigger role to the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC). Khamenei, as the Supreme Leader, is the nominal head of the clerical establishment, although he is <a href="http://www.insideiran.org/news/khamenei-seeks-rehabilitation-in-qom/">not respected</a> as an expert on the Koran or Islamic law. However, to guard their prerogatives, the clerics are supporting him in the feud down the line. This includes the extreme conservative Ayatollah Yazdi who has been Ahmadinejad&#8217;s <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/may/09/ahmadinejad-iran-ayatollah-khamenei">biggest booster </a>among the clerics in the past, but who has sided with Khamenei in the dispute.</p>
<p>As Supreme Leader, Khamenei commands the Guard, but Ahmadinejad is the first president with an <a href="http://mideast.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/05/10/Rooting_for_Khamenei">independent power center</a> within the IRGC. The Iranian president was a <a href="http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/iran/ahmadinejad-bio.htm">senior commander </a>of the Qods Force, the extra-territorial arm of the IRGC, and has given numerous <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jul/27/iran-revolutionary-guards-opec-rostam-ghasemi">economic opportunities</a> to key members of the Guard during his terms as president. There are <a href="http://mideast.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/05/10/Rooting_for_Khamenei">many in the Guard </a>who share Ahmadinejad&#8217;s ideology and believe in his confrontational approach in dealing with Israel and the the US. Khamenei, on the other hand, has not let his hatred of Israel and the West affect his more secretive attitude in foreign affairs.</p>
<p>The real challenge to Khamenei&#8217;s authority came last April when Ahmadinejad dismissed a crony of the Supreme Leader&#8217;s, Heydar Moslehi, who was serving as intelligence minister. Within hours of the announcement of Moslehi&#8217;s resignation, Khamenei reinstated him &#8212; despite the fact that the Iranian constitution gives the president the power to hire and fire ministers. This infuriated Ahmadinejad who went to Khamenei and threatened to resign unless Moslehi was sacked. Khamenei called Ahmadinejad&#8217;s bluff, telling him, in effect, to go ahead, but Moslehi was going to stay.</p>
<p>In protest, the Iranian president absented himself from cabinet meetings for two weeks and when he came back, refused to allow Moslehi to attend cabinet meetings. Finally, after the Iranian Majlis threatened to impeach him, he relented and gave in to Khamenei&#8217;s demands. As a result of his opposition, 29 of his confidantes <a href="http://www.aei.org/outlook/101051">were arrested</a>. Suitably chastened, Ahmadinejad explained his actions in the context of wanting what was best for Iran. &#8220;I am convinced that a strong and powerful president would lead to dignity of the Leadership and especially the nation. A strong president can stand firm as a defensive shield, advance affairs of the state, and bring dignity upon it,&#8221; <a href="http://www.aei.org/outlook/101051">he said </a>in a statement upon his return.</p>
<p>In this particular dust up, and in other conflicts between the president and the Supreme Leader, Khamenei holds most of the cards. He is seen as <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/may/09/ahmadinejad-iran-ayatollah-khamenei">Allah&#8217;s representative </a>on earth and going against him as Ahmadinejad did was considered a shocking transgression. Ayatollah Yazdi remarked that disobeying Khamenei was akin to &#8220;apostasy from God&#8221; &#8212; a sentiment echoed by senior leaders of the IRGC.</p>
<p>What is behind Ahmadinejad&#8217;s &#8220;apostasy&#8221; is nothing less than a struggle for the future of the revolutionary Islamic Republic. In the past, Ahmadinejad has chafed at ministers who have been imposed on him by not only Khamenei, but also former president Ali-Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and the cagey parliamentarian, Speaker of the Majlis Ali Larijani. In response, Ahmadinejad <a href="http://www.aei.org/outlook/101051">has fired </a>a record 11 ministers during his term of office, replacing them largely with cronies and loyalists who may not have been the best qualified applicants to manage the ministries for which they were chosen to run.</p>
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		<title>Fighting Jewish Genocide</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2011/giulio-meotti/fighting-jewish-genocide/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=fighting-jewish-genocide</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 28 Apr 2011 04:00:36 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Giulio Meotti]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[apartheid]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[blood]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[elders of zion]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[genocide prevention]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[harvard law professor]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[islamic]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[jewish genocide]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[law]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Mahmoud Ahmadinejad]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Muslim]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=91384</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[When will the West stand up against the genocidal incitement against Jews?]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/gen.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-91386" title="gen" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/gen.jpg" alt="" width="408" height="267" /></a></p>
<p><strong>Reprinted from <a href="http://www.ynetnews.com">Ynetnews.com</a>.</strong></p>
<p>Only  one nation on this planet is regarded as virtually having no civilians:  Israel. Back in the 1970s already, international law expert Yoram  Dinstein argued that according to UN definitions, terrorism and  incitement against Israelis constitutes genocide.</p>
<p>David Ben-Gurion’s famous statement “Oom, Shmoom,” meaning “The  UN &#8211; who cares?” summed up Israel’s indifference to world opinion in the  past. It has been a failed policy as Israel’s enemies are now using all  global means at their disposal to undermine the Jewish State.</p>
<p>In a few days, Israel will mark Holocaust Commemoration Day.  There is no better time to support the historical battle just initiated  by the Hebrew University-Hadassah Centre for Violence and Genocide  Prevention and backed by former US ambassador to the United Nations John  Bolton and Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz.</p>
<p>The campaign takes aim at Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Islamic religious  leaders and the media for “inciting to commit genocide&#8221; and fomenting  lethal anti-Jewishness reminiscent of the 1930s. The Jews are demonized  using accusations of conspiracy and thirst for blood or power.</p>
<p>The Jews are described as sub-humans by expressions like “pig,”  “cancer,” “filth”, “microbes” or “vermin”; hate material such as the  Protocols of the Elders of Zion or school maps without Israel are being  disseminated; the Jewish right to self-determination is denied, by  claiming that Israel’s existence is “racist” and akin to “apartheid”;  comparisons are drawn between Israeli policy and the Nazis; world Jewry  is being held responsible, collectively for the actions of Israel.</p>
<p>The legal basis for this  anti-genocide campaign is the Convention on the Prevention and  Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, ratified on January 12, 1951 by 138  states including Iran. At this time, Tehran calls for Israel’s  destruction and dehumanization, denies the Holocaust denial and incites  to commit mass murder.</p>
<p>An upcoming example of incitement is the UN&#8217;s “Durban III”  conference in September 2011. Israel will be declared an “apartheid” and  “criminal” state, and the Jews will be slammed as inveterate racists.</p>
<p>The first Durban conference was held in South Africa in 2001,  where well-known NGOs such as Amnesty International and Save the  Children attached their names to the racist parade. NGOs distributed  leaflets with a portrait of Hitler and the inscription: “What if Hitler  had won? There would be no Israel, and no Palestinian bloodshed.” Three  months later the second Intifada broke out, with 1,500 Jewish civilians  subsequently slaughtered in terror attacks.</p>
<p>Iran is not unique in inciting a new Jewish bloodbath. Another  example of incitement is the fatwa issued by Muslim Brotherhood’s guru,  Yusuf al-Qaradawi, permitting the killing of Jewish fetuses, on the  logic that when Jews grow up they might join the Israeli army.</p>
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		<title>Paying Palestinians Not To Work With Jews</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/dov-fischer/paying-palestinians-not-to-work-with-jews/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=paying-palestinians-not-to-work-with-jews</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 04 Jun 2010 04:03:45 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Dov Fischer]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Abu]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[american tax dollars]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Christian]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[denying the holocaust]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Judea]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[mahmoud abbas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Mahmoud Ahmadinejad]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Yasser]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[Why be in contact with apes and pigs when you can live in a refugee camp at home?]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/abbas.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-62076" title="abbas" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/abbas.jpg" alt="" width="400" height="300" /></a></p>
<p>Mahmoud Abbas and his Palestine Authority, we are told, comprise the moderate Palestinian alternative to the Hamas-driven vision of mayhem and terror in Gaza.  This assurance is repeated despite Abbas’s well-established biography as <a href="http://www.tomgrossmedia.com/mideastdispatches/archives/000032.html" target="_blank">someone antipathetic to Jews</a> as a people.  In his doctoral thesis, written at Moscow’s Institute  of Oriental Studies, Abbas presaged Mahmoud Ahmadinejad by <a href="http://www.wymaninstitute.org/articles/2003-03-denier.php" target="_blank">denying the Holocaust</a>.  As a top lieutenant to Yasser Arafat – <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yasser_Abbas" target="_blank">he named a son “Yasser” for his mentor</a> – he was a terrorist leader, even sporting a <em>nom-de-guerre</em>:  Abu Mazen.  In his prominent role within <em>Al-Fatah</em>, <a href="http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/si_online/news/2002/08/20/sb2/" target="_blank">Abbas provided the funds that Abu Daoud used to perpetrate the 1972 massacre of eleven Israeli athletes at the Munic Olympic Games. </a> During the period Abbas has headed the Palestine Authority on <a href="http://old.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-fischer052302.asp" target="_blank">the land that Arabs call the “West Bank” and Jews call “Judea and Samaria,”</a> he has honored mass murderers by <a href="http://www.jpost.com/MiddleEast/Article.aspx?id=171031" target="_blank">naming town squares for them</a>, has permitted <a href="http://97.74.65.51/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=32924" target="_blank">mass media under his control</a> to savage Jews as people, and even has allowed anti-Jewish vituperative to be taught in the <a href="http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=4&amp;x_outlet=28&amp;x_article=94" target="_blank">curricula of his schools</a>.</p>
<p>Now comes word that his Government – ever on the international prowl with outstretched hand seeking <a href="http://english.pnn.ps/index.php?option=com_content&amp;task=view&amp;id=3315&amp;Itemid=49" target="_blank">hundreds of millions</a> of dollars and euros to cushion <a href="http://www.arabianbusiness.com/485586" target="_blank">its bankrupt economy</a> – has found <a href="http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Palestinians-plan-fund-to-apf-614993593.html?x=0&amp;.v=1" target="_blank">$50 million to fund a new initiative</a>.  The Palestinian Authority will pay Arabs not to accept employment in Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria.</p>
<p>Will American tax dollars indirectly be financing this “fund”?  Inexorably so. Only last year we <a href="http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/middle_east/jan-june09/gazaaid_03-02.html" target="_blank">pledged the Palestinian Authority and Gaza $900 million</a>, then rushed them another <a href="http://www.india-server.com/news/us-transfers-200-mn-as-palestinian-aid-9576.html" target="_blank">emergency infusion of $200 million as</a> their economy crumbled.  Yet, while the Palestine Authority may not be wealthy, their sense of irony is rich: If Israelis hesitate to employ Palestinian laborers, sincerely <a href="http://www.vosizneias.com/37989/2009/09/07/ramat-gan-israel-religious-jew-stabbed-to-death-by-fired-arab-worker/" target="_blank">fearing terrorism</a> in their midst, <a href="http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m66218&amp;hd=&amp;size=1&amp;l=e" target="_blank">they are berated as “racist” and “apartheid.” </a> Now, in the face of tens of thousands of Palestinians working amicably with Jews, Mahmoud Abbas will pay them to revert to unemployed rather than to accept employment within Judea and Samaria.</p>
<p>More than 20,000 Palestinian Arabs now work at the industrial parks and construction sites that employ them throughout Judea and Samaria.  Despite continual efforts by Mr. Abbas and Israel’s haters throughout the world to slander Israel as an “Apartheid” entity, the reality is that Arabs often earn from their Jewish employers twice the income they command within Mr. Abbas’s polity.  These are good salaries, and those wages support large families. The people whose lives would be affected by the cynicism – the workers in the industrial parks – do not want to give up those jobs.  The <a href="http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Palestinians-plan-fund-to-apf-614993593.html?x=0&amp;.v=1" target="_blank">Associated Press interviewed</a> Suhail Jaber, who supports his family of eight by working in a picture frame company in the community of Barkan in Samaria, an industrial park employs some 5,000 Arabs. Jaber told the AP that, if forced by Abbas to quit without being assured a new job, he might turn to stealing to feed his family.  Another employee, Samer Awad, “said he would sleep in Barkan&#8217;s furniture factory to avoid detection by Palestinian law enforcement, rather than quit.”</p>
<p>This is the season when pockets of Western campus radicals enjoy proclaiming on their respective campuses their annual day or <a href="http://www.msuuci.com/?p=2098" target="_blank">week of anti-Israel hate</a>.  (They mark May 15, 1948 as the “Day of Catastrophe” because Israel was proclaimed into existence as the Middle East’s first democracy on that day.) Curiously, the anti-Zionists actually are half-correct when they bewail the presence of Apartheid segregation and <a href="http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/9623" target="_blank">Nazi-like hatred in the Middle East</a>.  <em>There really is “Apartheid in Palestine.”</em> <em>There really is “Nazi-like hate” in the Middle East.</em> The only tweak on those <a href="http://www.msuuci.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/IAW_FRONT.jpg" target="_blank">anti-Israel posters</a>, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqNhbSaf8ik" target="_blank">Jew-hating sloganeers</a>, and haters <a href="http://videos.mensup.fr/youtube/video/QLvfX_SGcAA/malik-ali-at-uci-51310.html" target="_blank">who call Israel-supporters the “new Nazis</a>,” is that the Apartheid and venom of Nazi-like hatred in Palestine <em>is perpetrated by the Palestinian Arabs</em>.  It is their unbridled insistence on demographic separation – complete, utter separation from Jews – and their concomitant dehumanization and demonization of Jews that sees them refuse to coexist permanently with a Jewish state next door or anywhere in the Middle East.  This social pathology mirrors the Apartheid and Nazi-like vitriol that sees the <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703745904575248301172607696.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTTopOpinion" target="_blank">Coptic Christian minority persecuted in Egypt</a>, the <a href="http://www.persecution.org/Countries/algeria.html" target="_blank">Berber minority persecuted in Algeria</a>, the <a href="http://www.persecution.org/suffering/countryinfodetail.php?countrycode=23" target="_blank">Christian minority persecuted in Saudi Arabia</a>, African <a href="http://www.persecution.org/suffering/countryinfodetail.php?countrycode=11&amp;PHPSESSID=dfd140dfe1541bd582dda6205d6ad0e1" target="_blank">Christians persecuted in the Sudan</a>, the <a href="http://news.bahai.org/story/413" target="_blank">Baha’i persecuted in Iran</a>, <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/slaughter-of-kurds-genocide-court-rules/2005/12/24/1135353171483.html" target="_blank">Kurds mass-murdered in Iraq</a>, and even Shiites persecuted in Sunni Muslim lands and Sunnis persecuted by Shiites. The <a href="http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/muftihit.html" target="_blank">affinity with Hitler’s Nazi paradigm of mass-murder and Jew-hatred</a> may be traced back to the father of Palestinian nationalism, the <a href="http://www.palestinefacts.org/pf_mandate_grand_mufti.php" target="_blank">Grand Mufti of Jerusalem</a>.</p>
<p>This pathological hatred of Jews <a href="http://www.patrobertson.com/PressReleases/bushresponse2.asp" target="_blank">transcends the worst images of Hitler’s <em>Mein Kampf</em>. </a> At the core of Scripture, in its chapter five (“The Table”), Surah 5:57-62, the Koran discusses the “People of the Book,” portraying Jews as sub-human, despicable animals: “Believers, do not seek the friendship of the infidels and those who were given the Book before you . . . . Say: ‘People of the Book, do you hate us for any reason other than . . . that most of you are evil-doers?’. . . .You see many of them vie with one another in sin and wickedness . . . . Evil is what they do.”  Thus, Allah will lay his “worst reward” on the Jews, “transforming them into apes and pigs.”   The vicious ape/pig demonization of Jews recurs throughout the Koran (see, e.g., “The Cow,” 2:64-65), and that vicious imagery – a veritable Blood Libel – has been a central message <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DaB5n8Az984" target="_blank">propagated by the Palestine Authority</a> in its mass media <a href="http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/arabs/sermons.html#_ednref21" target="_blank">for years</a>, even as it is a <a href="http://www.imra.org.il/story.php3?id=20108" target="_blank">recurring Friday sermon topic</a> telecast on Palestine Arab television – the literal demonizing of Jews as blood brothers or children of apes and pigs.</p>
<p>For all the hatred, perhaps nowhere in the world is Apartheid in Palestine more pernicious than . . . within the Palestine Authority.  Only within the Arab world do we find civilian populations in their thousands consigned to “refugee camps” for sixty years.  This perpetual consignment – indeed, virtual internment – constitutes one of the worst crimes against humanity we have witnessed in the modern era: the concerted persecution of Palestinian Arabs by cynical Arab regimes who have planted them in “refugee camps.”  Nowhere is the cynicism more manifest than it is within the Palestine Authority, which maintains <a href="http://www.unrwa.org/etemplate.php?id=118" target="_blank">“refugee camps” in cities like Jenin. </a> Consider: If those denizens indeed are Palestinian Arabs, and if the Palestine Authority oversees the homeland of the Palestinians, then <em>how in the world can people living in their own land, under a government freely elected by their own people, be deemed “refugees”?</em></p>
<p>Those “refugee camps” are historical anomalies, thoroughly anachronistic. Their residents are dumped onto international welfare rolls, under the rubric of a cynically anti-Jewish United Nations agency, the “<a href="http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/001/213cgjov.asp" target="_blank">United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East</a>” (UNRWA), which runs the camps and their schools.  The UNRWA has a vested interest – namely, preserving their own existence, preserving their own continued employment and pay checks, preserving their jobs –  in perpetuating the historical crime of refusing to let the residents be absorbed into their local environments.</p>
<p>During the last century, the world has seen so many tragically painful “population exchanges” play themselves out on the world stage. Greek ethnics were forced out of Bulgaria and into Greece, while Bulgarian ethnics were forced from Greece into Bulgaria. In 1922, under the League of Nations, 1.25 million Greek Orthodox ethnics were transferred from Turkey, and half a million Moslems were transferred reciprocally to Turkey from Greece. Fridtjof Nansen, who oversaw the population exchange, was awarded the <a href="http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1922/nansen-bio.html" target="_blank">1922 Nobel Peace Prize</a> for his effort. In 1940, under the Treaty of Craiova, there was a massive population exchange: 80,000 Romanian ethnics were forced into Bulgaria, and 65,000 Bulgarian ethnics forced out of Romania. After World War II, between 14-16 million ethnic Germans were transferred out of Central and Eastern Europe, and into Germany. Poland and the Soviet Union exchanged populations: between 1944 and 1946, some 2 million people, Polish ethnics sent to Poland from the Ukraine and Ukrainians sent out of Poland, were transferred. More than 5 million Hindus and Sikhs were forced to India from the regions that became Pakistan, and more than 6 million Moslems were pushed from India into Pakistan.</p>
<p>Where are the languishing Bulgarian refugee camps? Greek refugee camps? Romanian/ Polish/ German/ Ukrainian/ Hindu/ Sikh refugee camps? Where are the Bosnian Moslem refugee camps?  Why is there no massive international welfare apparatus in the rubric of a United Nations Relief and Works Agency for any of these  refugees? <em>How is it that no one even thinks to ask?</em></p>
<p><strong><strong><em> </em></strong></strong></p>
<p>Maybe, as Mr. Abbas directs $50 million to pay Palestinian Arabs to leave their jobs alongside Jews, and to return to the squalor of his homespun “refugee camps,” it is time for Americans to ask that question – before we write him our next billion-dollar check.</p>
<p><em><em>Dov Fischer is a legal affairs consultant and adjunct professor of the law of civil procedure and advanced torts. He was formerly Chief Articles Editor of UCLA Law Review and writes extensively on political, cultural, and religious issues.  He is author of general Sharon’s War Against Time Magazine and blogs at <a title="http://www.rabbidov.com/" href="http://www.rabbidov.com/" target="_blank">www.rabbidov.com.</a></em></em></p>
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		<title>The Toothless Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/joseph-klein/the-toothless-nuclear-nonproliferation-treaty/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-toothless-nuclear-nonproliferation-treaty</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 17 May 2010 04:00:03 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Joseph Klein]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[How Obama's useless nuclear disarmament endangers us all.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/iran-nuclear-testing-wide-horizontal.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-60332" title="Iran nuclear facility" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/iran-nuclear-testing-wide-horizontal.jpg" alt="" width="480" height="302" /></a></p>
<p>Every five years or so the United Nations hosts a foreign minister level conference to review the implementation of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT).  The United Nations has been hosting the latest such review conference this month.</p>
<p>This year, Iranian strongman Mahmoud Ahmadinejad decided to join the party.  He delivered, on the first morning of the review conference, his customary condemnation of Israel and of the United States while defending his country’s nuclear program.</p>
<p>Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke later the same day, accusing Iran of being the only country attending the UN review conference that is acting with impunity when held to account by the International Atomic Energy Agency and Security Council.  Iran, she said, is consistently violating its obligations under the NPT.   That was a good start, but then she rhetorically crouched into a defensive position.</p>
<p>Clinton said that President Obama had come to office with “an open hand” extended to the Iranian regime.  We “reached out” in many ways, she said, without elaborating and without acknowledging the fact that we have wasted over a year in this futile exercise while Iran marches on towards developing nuclear weapons.</p>
<p>Then, in order to show how transparent the United   States really is, Clinton announced that the Obama administration had decided to unilaterally reveal the number of nuclear arms in our arsenal.  She reiterated Obama’s unilateral pledge to develop no new nuclear weapons.  And, in an implied threat to Israel, Clinton said that the United States was &#8220;prepared to support practical measures&#8221; towards the objective of a nuclear-free Middle East – a stalking horse pushed by Egypt and other Muslim countries in the region to force Israel to give up its suspected nuclear arsenal without any means of assuring that Iran or the other Islamic countries would desist from pursuing their own nuclear arms ambitions.  This was not just feel-good rhetoric.  U.S. officials are reportedly in talks with Egypt over a plan to make the Middle East a nuclear-free zone.</p>
<p>Some have criticized Israel for not joining the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and refusing to declare its suspected nuclear arsenal.  However, Israel has observed the conduct of rogue states that have joined the NPT like North   Korea, which quit the treaty once it had successfully tested nuclear weapons, and Iran which regularly flouts its NPT obligations.  Faced with existential threats from Iran and its armed terrorist surrogates, Israel is correct in asserting that there must be real peace in the Middle  East before agreeing to any nuclear-free zone.</p>
<p>Hillary Clinton also mentioned in her speech at the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty review conference that the Obama administration would submit Protocols to the Senate for ratification regarding nuclear-free zones in Africa and the South Pacific.  However, our Secretary of State said nothing about maintaining a nuclear-free zone in Latin America even though there is a real threat of the spread of nuclear arms technology from Iran and North   Korea to Venezuela.  The reason for Clinton’s silence on Latin America, I believe, was not to embarrass Brazil, whose foreign minister addressed the UN conference immediately after Clinton.</p>
<p>Brazil, according to some reports, is busy moving forward with its own nuclear development program.  It has already had three secret military nuclear programs between 1975 and 1990, and is now embarking on the building of nuclear-powered submarines.  During his election campaign, Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva criticized the NPT, calling it unfair and obsolete.  Although Brazil has signed the treaty, it has placed restrictions on inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency and has defended Iran’s nuclear program.</p>
<p>President Obama has called Lula, as the Brazilian president is called, “my man.”  Obama said he “loved this guy,” calling him “the most popular politician in the world.” Yet Lula is the same man whose pals include Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez.  He is the same man who said that there was “no fraud in the Iranian election,” congratulating President Ahmadinejad on his stolen election.   He is the same man who decided to open a Brazilian embassy in North Korea shortly after Kim Jong Il’s missile testing. And he is the same man who laid flowers in the terrorist Yasser Arafat’s grave, but refused to follow the custom of other visiting presidents to Israel of laying down flowers in the grave of Theodor Herzl, revered in Israel as its founder.</p>
<p>Obama loves Lula and trusts him more than he trusts the leader of one of our closest allies, Israel.  He is willing to press Israel to give up its nuclear deterrent in pursuit of a nuclear-free Middle East that Iran is certain to ignore, while giving Lula (not to mention Hugo Chavez in Venezuela) a free pass to possibly pursue a nuclear arms capability.</p>
<p>Hillary Clinton’s speech to the UN Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty review conference was yet another demonstration of the appeasement policies that the Obama administration is recklessly pursuing.  It wants to show the world the virtues of nonproliferation by unilateral actions that put our security at risk.</p>
<p>The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty is ineffective and Clinton even admitted in her speech that it would not be fixed anytime soon to give it the enforcement teeth that it would need.  Yet the treaty appears to be a centerpiece of President Obama’s nuclear disarmament policy along with unilateral actions he is taking.</p>
<p>Not once did we hear Clinton mention the only multilateral mechanism that has proven effective in preventing dangerous nuclear proliferation &#8211; the Proliferation Security Initiative.  This Bush administration initiative involved naval surveillance and interdiction to stop the transport of nuclear arms materials and missile technology to and from states and non-state actors of proliferation concern.  It was used successfully, for example, to effectively end Libya’s nuclear ambitions.</p>
<p>President Obama has expressed support for enhancing the PSI, but there is scant evidence to date that he means it.  Instead of emphasizing muscular diplomacy to stop dangerous nuclear proliferation backed by a credible threat of interdiction, Obama wants to lead the way to total nuclear disarmament.  He may lead the way, but the world’s dictators who get their hands on nuclear materials will surely not follow.</p>
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		<title>Ahmadinejad Swaggers at the UN</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/robert-spencer/ahmadinejad-swaggers-at-the-un/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=ahmadinejad-swaggers-at-the-un</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 04 May 2010 04:10:09 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Robert Spencer]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[And we have Barack Obama to thank for it.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/ahmad.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-59471" title="ahmad" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/ahmad.jpg" alt="" width="375" height="234" /></a></p>
<p>Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was back in New York Monday, continuing his effort to intimidate and shame Barack Obama into dropping his policy of retaining first-strike capability against rogue states such as Iran. For 35 minutes at the UN, Ahmadinejad did his best impression of an anti-nuke crusader, working to eradicate these weapons for humanity’s sake. Behind his peacenik façade (which is sure to take in many on the Left), however, lurks a reality that couldn’t be more contrasting.</p>
<p>“The possession of nuclear bombs isn’t a source of pride,” Ahmadinejad intoned piously, sounding like a spokesman for Greenpeace. “It is disgusting and rather shameful. And even more shameful is the threat to use or to use such weapons, which isn’t even comparable to any crime committed throughout the history.”</p>
<p>And of course top on the Iranian President’s list of “disgusting” and “shameful” countries was Israel: “While the Zionist regime has stockpiled hundreds of nuclear warheads…it enjoys the unconditional support of the United States government and its allies and receives, as well, the necessary assistance to develop its nuclear weapons program.”</p>
<p>Referring to Obama’s reservation of first-strike capability, Ahmadinejad said that signers of the Non-Proliferation Treaty should consider “any threat to use nuclear weapons or attack against peaceful nuclear facilities as a breach of international peace and security,” and punish the offenders accordingly.</p>
<p>Delegates from the U.S., Britain and France walked out of the UN General Assembly during Ahmadinejad’s speech. Perhaps they didn’t relish having to sit through the absurd charade of a ruthless despot, the president of a country that gives aid to the jihad terror groups Hamas and Hizballah and yearns to wipe Israel off the map, being allowed to enter the United States and accuse it of being a terrorist state &#8212; all the while defending his nuclear program.</p>
<p>This was the same Ahmadinejad, after all, who just weeks ago warned Israel not to attack the jihadists in Gaza who still shoot rockets into Israel and plot the destruction of the Jewish State: “An attack on Gaza would not make you mightier,” he said, addressing the “Zionist entity,” “and would not restore your damaged prestige. And you should know that an attack on Gaza will end your inauspicious and filthy life.”</p>
<p>What could end Israel’s “inauspicious and filthy life” except…a nuclear attack?</p>
<p>These are favorite themes of Ahmadinejad’s public utterances. In mid-March, he declared: “Today, it is clear that Israel is the most hated regime in the world&#8230; It is not useful for its masters [the West] anymore. They are in doubt now. They wonder whether to continue spending money on this regime or not. But whether they want it or not, with Allah’s grace, this regime will be annihilated and Palestinians and other regional nations will be rid of its bad omen.”</p>
<p>How will Israel be “annihilated,” except by…a nuclear strike?</p>
<p>Iranian Major General Hassan Firouzabadi declared in early April: “If America presents Iran with a serious threat and undertakes any measure against Iran, none of the American soldiers who are currently in the region would go back to America alive.”</p>
<p>Not one? Not even one? How could the Iranians possibly accomplish that, except with&#8230;nuclear weapons?</p>
<p>Ahmadinejad mocked Obama’s impotence, telling him in an April 7 address that, faced with Iran’s nuclear program, American leaders who were “bigger than you, more bullying than you, couldn’t do a damn thing, let alone you.”</p>
<p>And indeed, the thuggish Iranian president is probably right about that. Barack Obama’s wrongheaded and weak policy of “engagement” has put a swagger in Ahmadinejad’s step. Besides funding Hamas and Hizballah and egging on their genocidal intentions toward Israel, Iran is training the Taliban in Afghanistan in the most effective use of roadside bombs, and continuing to meddle in Iraq.</p>
<p>For all this we have one man to thank above all: Barack Obama. After a year of Obama’s dogged wooing of the Iranian mullahs, his scandalous refusal to support the anti-regime protestors in Iran, and his abject failure to do anything effective to counter the Iranian nuclear program, which even his own Secretary of State now acknowledges is working toward developing nuclear weapons, the only thing the president has to show for his policy is an increasingly confident, belligerent and assertive Iran.</p>
<p>It was good that the Americans left the General Assembly hall while Ahmadinejad was speaking Monday. Now they should back this up by changing course, and showing more spine in the face of Iran’s bullying. But there is no sign that that is going to happen.</p>
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		<title>Obama&#8217;s Israel Crisis</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/davidhornik/obamas-israel-crisis/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obamas-israel-crisis</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 16 Mar 2010 04:05:07 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[P. David Hornik]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=54635</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[America's enemies get courted, while allies get the squeeze. ]]></description>
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<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/obamais.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-54637" title="obamais" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/obamais.jpg" alt="" width="450" height="329" /></a></p>
<p>Israel Apartheid Week hadn’t yet run its course when Israel came in for a barrage of hostile characterizations also from the Obama administration. In the same brief time span there was also <a href="http://matzav.com/ahmadinejad-israel-is-worlds-most-hated-state">Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad</a>—“The Zionist regime is the most hated regime in the world…. with Allah’s help, this regime will be annihilated.” All this came hard on the heels of a wave of <a href="../2010/03/01/israel%E2%80%99s-latest-sin%E2%80%94honoring-its-heritage/">international outrage</a>, and violent attacks by Palestinians, over Israel adding shrines in Hebron and Bethlehem to a list of national heritage sites.</p>
<p>If it seems like a lot of negative attention for one small, constantly pressured country, it is. Reacting to an announcement by the Israeli Interior Ministry on plans to build 1600 housing units—for Jews (if they had been for Arabs, no one would have protested)—in Jerusalem, Vice-President Joe Biden, who was in Israel for a visit, <a href="http://www.politico.com/blogs/laurarozen/0310/What_Biden_told_Netanyahu_behind_closed_doors_This_is_starting_to_get_dangerous_for_us.html#comments">reportedly</a> told Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, “This is starting to get dangerous for us. What you’re doing here undermines the security of our troops who are fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. That endangers us and it endangers regional peace.”</p>
<p>Netanyahu apologized and, by Thursday last week when Biden’s visit ended, apparently thought the matter had been handled. But on Friday,  Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called Netanyahu and gave him a 45-minute harangue in which she told him, as State Department spokesman P. J. Crowley <a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35838282/ns/politics/">put it</a>, that “the United States considered the announcement a deeply negative signal about Israel’s approach to the bilateral relationship,” that “this action had undermined trust and confidence in the peace process and in America’s interests,” and that “she could not understand how this happened, particularly in light of the United States’ strong commitment to Israel’s security.”</p>
<p>Further harsh remarks came from Obama adviser David Axelrod, who <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/ThisWeek/week-transcript-wh-senior-advisor-david-axelrod-sen/story?id=10085253&amp;page=4">called</a> the announcement about the residential units for Jews an “affront” and an “insult” and said it “seemed calculated to undermine” indirect Israeli-Palestinian talks—this after Biden had accepted Netanyahu’s explanation that the announcement was bureaucratic happenstance. And Israeli ambassador to the U.S. Michael Oren received <a href="http://www.jpost.com/MiddleEast/Article.aspx?id=170999&amp;utm_source=twitterfeed&amp;utm_medium=twitter">“the same message of American disapproval and outrage”</a> from Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg—it being clear by now that the anger was being “managed” from the top, that is, by President Obama himself.</p>
<p>The totally unwarranted nature of this anger was well summarized in a <em><a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704416904575121710380216280.html">Wall Street Journal editorial</a></em>, which noted that “this particular housing project… falls within Jerusalem’s municipal boundaries and can only be described as a ‘settlement’ in the maximalist terms defined by the Palestinians.” Indeed, when in November Netanyahu announced a ten-month construction freeze in the West Bank that did not include any part of Jerusalem, Clinton praised the move as “unprecedented.” As the <em>Journal</em> concluded: “this episode does fit Mr. Obama’s foreign policy pattern to date: Our enemies get courted; our friends get the squeeze. It has happened to Poland, the Czech Republic, Honduras and Colombia. Now it’s Israel’s turn.”</p>
<p>Still, whatever slights and betrayals those countries have suffered, Anti-Defamation League director Abraham Foxman was more on the mark when he <a href="http://www.adl.org/PresRele/IslME_62/5717_62.htm">stated</a>, “We cannot remember an instance when such harsh language was directed at a friend and ally of the United States.” The United States could, for instance, well blame other NATO countries for sending only tiny, token forces to Afghanistan; or Germany for its ongoing thriving commerce with Iran. Yet such a public dressing-down of these allies as Israel gets for apartments in Jerusalem would be, of course, inconceivable.</p>
<p>What motivated the administration’s outburst? Speculations have focused on attempts to intimidate Israel out of attacking Iran; or to force Netanyahu to choose between his right-wing coalition partners and going along with the administration’s notion of a “peace process”—or even pressuring his government into a collapse. Neither aim would be logical: making Israel feel isolated and abandoned by the U.S. would increase the chances of a move against Iran; and the right to build in Jerusalem is not a “right-wing” but, rather, a consensus position in Israel that has a unifying rather than fragmenting effect.</p>
<p>Since the anti-Israeli rancor stems from Obama himself, speculation could also focus on his personal motives: an ongoing identification with Palestinian positions; poor personal chemistry with Netanyahu and an inclination to blame him; or, on a less personal basis, animosity toward Netanyahu as an Israeli leader who is perceived as “hard-line” and obstructing peace no matter how many concessions he makes; adherence to a mistaken belief that Middle East-wide instability stems from Israeli-Palestinian tensions; all or some of the above mixed with frustration at the difficulty of the “peace process” that Obama adopted so resolutely as a goal at the start of his term; or he could be motivated by whatever it is that makes the Jewish state the target of so much special malice and denigration.</p>
<p>Whatever stands behind this crisis, which Ambassador Oren has <a href="http://www.jpost.com/International/Article.aspx?id=171036">called</a> “the worst with the U.S. in 35 years,” Netanyahu appears to be reacting at this point by holding his ground, having <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Israel/Article.aspx?id=171050">stated</a> on Monday that “Construction in Jerusalem will continue in any part of the city as it has during the last 42 years…. In [that period], there was no [Israeli] government that limited construction in any Jerusalem area or neighborhood. Establishing Jewish neighborhoods did not hurt Jerusalem’s Arab residents and was not at their expense.”</p>
<p>Although Biden, in his <a href="http://blogs.jta.org/politics/article/2010/03/11/1011046/bidens-speech">speech</a> in Tel Aviv on Thursday, spoke of “an ironclad commitment to Israel’s security,” for this administration that does not include refraining from further vilifying Israel at a time of obsessive worldwide opprobrium and existential danger. As Washington pushes Israel to the brink of losing its autonomy as a state, Netanyahu knows there is a limit, a point at which Israel will have to stand up for itself and look out for itself.</p>
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		<title>Manufacturing Consent in Iran</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/jlaksin/manufacturing-consent-in-iran/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=manufacturing-consent-in-iran</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/jlaksin/manufacturing-consent-in-iran/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 12 Feb 2010 06:36:09 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jacob Laksin]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ahmadinejad]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=49996</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[On the anniversary of the 1979 Revolution, staged rallies of supporters and a new crackdown on democratic protestors. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/IN11_AHMADINEJAD_31240f.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-49998" title="IN11_AHMADINEJAD_31240f" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/IN11_AHMADINEJAD_31240f.jpg" alt="" width="509" height="339" /></a></p>
<p>Iran – or more accurately the Iranian government – this week celebrated the 31<sup>st</sup> anniversary of the 1979 Islamic revolution. In preparation for the tightly orchestrated event, the government unleashed the full might of its security forces – including riot police, the Revolutionary Guard and the Basij, the civilian militia corps – to suppress the opposition protestors who have poured onto Iran’s streets since last summer’s fraudulent election.</p>
<p>Armed with live ammunition, knives and teargas, the security forces set upon anyone identified as opposition protestors. When not resorting to violent repression, the government tried to thwart the opposition by disrupting internet, telephone and text messaging service inside the country. For propaganda purposes, the government also staged its own mass rally in Tehran’s Freedom Square, an occasion capped by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s defiant declaration that Iran is now a “<a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1250127/Iran-Revolution-day-protests-Islamic-Republic-nuclear-state.html#ixzz0fEV1nsnR">nuclear state</a>,” capable of producing its own weapons-grade uranium.  </p>
<p>To discuss this week’s events and the state of the Iranian opposition movement, <em>Front Page</em> turned to exiled Iranian dissident Amir Abbas Fakhravar. Jailed for five years in Iran’s notoriously brutal Evin Prison after participating in anti-government student riots in 1999, Fakhravar now heads the Confederation of Iranian Students, an organization committed to non-violent regime change in Iran.</p>
<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/art_amir_fakhravar_cnn.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-50002" title="art_amir_fakhravar_cnn" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/art_amir_fakhravar_cnn.jpg" alt="" width="292" height="219" /></a></p>
<p><strong>FP</strong>: The government clearly tried very hard this week to deter opposition protestors from making themselves heard. Instead, it has put on a mass rally, <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1250127/Iran-Revolution-day-protests-Islamic-Republic-nuclear-state.html#ixzz0fEV1nsnR">complete with Iranian flags pro-government pro-Khameini signs</a>, to create the illusion of national unity. What can you tell us about these “pro-government” demonstrations?</p>
<p><strong>Fakhravar:</strong> The government knew that there was a plan from the protest movement to hold demonstrations in Tehran on the anniversary of the Islamic revolution, so they spent money to bring in about 200,000 Basij from cities all across Iran on the night before the anniversary celebration. The Basij – these are the <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8509765.stm">masses</a> of men and women you see attending the pro-government protests – were paid $250 each to show up at the demonstrations, which is a lot of money in Iran, when you consider the bad state of the economy. They spent all night covering Freedom Square with the Basij. The government also spent a lot of money on propaganda. They printed posters of Ayatollah Khameini; they even gave the Basij frozen chicken after the demonstration was over.</p>
<p>But that didn’t stop the opposition protestors from showing up. If the government can get 200,000 people out of the 70 million in Iran, that means nothing. Across Iran, I believe there were some 2 million people who showed up to protest the government. And the protestors will come back stronger and stronger. The reason is this: The Basij fight for their salary; the people fight for their freedom. That’s why, on Tuesday, when Ahmadinejad gave his big speech, you could hear chants of “Death to the Dictator!” coming from a distance.</p>
<p><strong>FP</strong>: Reports in the foreign press have portrayed this week’s events as a defeat for the reform movement and a victory for the government. In their accounts, the protestors were overwhelmed by the security forces and outnumbered by the pro-government demonstrators. What do you think explains the slant of this coverage?</p>
<p><strong>Fakhravar:</strong> First, I want to correct you. This is not a reform movement. This is an opposition movement, a revolution against the government. The people want regime change. That is why in front of the Basij and the Revolutionary Guard you heard chants of “Death to the Dictator” and “Death to Khameini.” That is also why the most popular chant was “Referendum.” By this the protestors mean a referendum on the Iranian government. The last time Iran had a referendum was when the Islamic republic came to power in 1979. Referendum means they want regime change. The people are saying to Khameini, “We don’t want an Islamic republic anymore!”</p>
<p>As for the coverage, it may be explained by the fact that the government invited 300 reporters from foreign countries to cover the pro-government demonstration. Yet, they didn’t let them go anywhere. They were only allowed to watch the main demonstration at Freedom Square in Tehran – nowhere else. They never saw the side streets where the opposition protests were taking place.</p>
<p>It should also be noted that the strength of the pro-government rallies is overstated. You can tell the opposition protestors from the government demonstrators because only the protestors carry handmade signs. The Basij carry the posters of Kahmeini or other placards that are printed and distributed by the government. Because all the print shops in Iran are under government control, and are carefully monitored, it’s not easy for protestors to print signs. All the people holding up the printed signs are paid by the government to hold them up. (We have a joke that if you see an ugly woman at an Iranian demonstration, she is with the Basij.) When the demonstrations are over, they just drop the signs and walk over them.</p>
<p><strong>FP</strong>: The government seems to fear the protestors’ use of new media like Facebook and Twitter to organize their movement. Hence the regime’s attempts to restrict internet and text messaging and its announcement this week that it will <a href="http://www.examiner.com/x-14552-Social-Media-Examiner~y2010m2d10-Iran-bans-Google-mail-permanent-suspension-of-Gmail-in-effect">permanently ban Google mail</a> in favor of a “national email service for Iranians.” What do you make of this clampdown on new media, and how big of a threat is it to the opposition movement’s ability to mobilize against the government?</p>
<p><strong>Fakhravar: </strong>The government’s primary goal was to shut down YouTube, but they were not successful. The intelligence services called in protestors to tell them that they were being watched and that they should not participate in the anniversary day protests. But we still get hundreds of videos from Iran. That means the government has failed to shut down the new media.</p>
<p>There are some 30 million Iranians who have access to the internet and the new media. Just a few months ago, it was 17 or 20 million. This is a sign that, right now, people are hungry for information from the internet. One of the most useful things that the U.S. could do to help the opposition movement would be to support new media and alternative media, whether it’s the internet or satellite services.</p>
<p><strong>FP</strong>: How would you describe the Obama administration’s position? Has it done anything to aid the opposition movement?</p>
<p><strong>Fakhravar: </strong>The Obama administration’s approach seems to be to keep an eye on the protestors to see if they keep coming out on the streets even amidst the government repression. That’s wrong. It’s also wrong for the administration to continue to pursue diplomatic negotiations with the Iranian government. The government has no legitimacy inside Iran; it has no legal standing with the Iranian people. The people are saying, “This is not our president,” but Obama is saying, “I want to talk to him.” I don’t understand why the Obama administration would want to give legitimacy to a regime that has no legitimacy in the eyes of the Iranian people.</p>
<p><strong>FP</strong>: Perhaps the most notable incident from this week’s pro-government rally in Tehran was Ahmadinejad’s boast that Iran was now a full-fledged nuclear power. What has been the reaction to his remarks inside Iran and why do you think he chose to make the announcement?</p>
<p><strong>Fakhravar: </strong>There were several reasons he said that. First, he wanted to distract attention from the counter-protests and the opposition movement. It is also the government’s way of telling some of the stupider people in Iran, “If we spend a lot your money, eventually we will get what we want!”</p>
<p>For most Iranians, though, Ahmadinejad’s speech was a cruel joke. The funniest part was when he bragged that the regime successfully sent some animals – roaches, worms, mice and turtles – into space. This <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/meast/02/03/iran.space.satellites/index.html">actually happened last week</a> and the government had a lot of propaganda about it. Ahmadinejad was trying to show that Iran was very successful and that the world covets our technological knowledge. But most Iranians cynically said, okay, we sent animals into space – Thank God we’re not hungry or anything.  </p>
<p><strong>FP</strong>: What’s the best thing that the United States and the international community can do to support the Iranian protest movement?</p>
<p><strong>Fakhravar: </strong>It’s very simple: Stop buying oil from the mullahs. If you cut off their oil funds with sanctions, they won’t have money to pay the Revolutionary Guard, or to buy friends in Latin America Russia and China, or to sponsor Hezbollah, or to continue the nuclear program. That would solve the problem.</p>
<p><strong>FP:</strong> What’s next for the Iranian opposition movement?</p>
<p><strong>Fakhravar: </strong>The next step in a protest is March 16, which is the last Wednesday in the Persian calendar. I am optimistic. I’ve lived in Iran all my life and I’ve never seen this much courage from the Iranian people. This is their last chance for freedom and they don’t want to give it up.</p>
<p><strong>FP:</strong> Amir, thank you very much for joining us.</p>
<p><strong>Fakhravar: </strong>Thank you for the interview.</p>
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		<title>Iran Revolution day protests: Islamic Republic now a nuclear state &#8211; Mail Online</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/jlaksin/iran-revolution-day-protests-islamic-republic-now-a-nuclear-state-mail-online/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=iran-revolution-day-protests-islamic-republic-now-a-nuclear-state-mail-online</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 11 Feb 2010 17:11:52 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jacob Laksin]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=49905</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Iran is now a &#8220;nuclear state,&#8221; President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced this morning. As Gordon Brown warned that the world&#38;apos;s patience is wearing thin, Ahmadinejad told scores of cheering Iranians that the Islamic Republic is capable of producing weapons-grade uranium. He spoke as tens of thousands of people took to the streets in Tehran to mark [&#8230;]]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1250127/Iran-Revolution-day-protests-Islamic-Republic-nuclear-state.html#ixzz0fEV1nsnR"><img src='http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/article-1250127-083D8D8B000005DC-913_306x464.jpg' alt='' /></a></p>
<p>Iran is now a &#8220;nuclear state,&#8221; President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced this morning.</p>
<p>As Gordon Brown warned that the world&amp;apos;s patience is wearing thin, Ahmadinejad told scores of cheering Iranians that the Islamic Republic is capable of producing weapons-grade uranium.</p>
<p>He spoke as tens of thousands of people took to the streets in Tehran to mark the 31st anniversary of the Islamic revolution.</p>
<p>Despite fears of violence, opposition supporters found themselves largely overwhelmed by the clerical regime and pro-government demonstrators.</p>
<p>The massive security clampdown appeared to succeed in preventing protesters from converging into a cohesive demonstrations.</p>
<p>Large numbers of riot police, members of the Revolutionary Guard and Basij militiamen, some on motorcycles, deployed in back streets near key squares and major avenues in the capital to move against protesters.</p>
<p>via <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1250127/Iran-Revolution-day-protests-Islamic-Republic-nuclear-state.html#ixzz0fEV1nsnR">Iran Revolution day protests: Islamic Republic now a nuclear state | Mail Online</a>.</p>
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		<title>Exalting Khomeini’s Legacy</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/lisa-daftari/exalting-khomeini%e2%80%99s-legacy/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=exalting-khomeini%25e2%2580%2599s-legacy</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/lisa-daftari/exalting-khomeini%e2%80%99s-legacy/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 11 Feb 2010 05:03:14 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Lisa Daftari]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[Iran’s leaders try to reignite the cultish reverence for a bloody despot.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/ahmadinejad_khomeini.jpeg"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-49730" title="ahmadinejad_khomeini" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/ahmadinejad_khomeini-300x238.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="238" /></a></p>
<p>Most Iranians can remember the exact moments in their lives when they discovered that the Ayatollah Khomeini had died. For many Iranians, this was a joyous occasion and the cause of days of partying, drinking champagne and fanciful thinking about the fate of their country.  Schools were closed for forty days, and Iranians abroad remained attached to their television sets wondering if they would touch the soil of their homeland once again. Khomeini’s name was synonymous with the Revolution, the precarious social ambiance and the severe impact that Islamic ideology had on the country.  The root of that influence was now gone.</p>
<p>Khomeini, best known to the rest of the world as the founder of modern Islam, the supporter of the Hostage Crisis and the man who issued a fatwa (death decree) on the head of author Salman Rushdie, represented for the Iranian people a central chapter of their modern history that is both complicated and tragic. In the roughly ten years that he reigned, over 100,000 Iranians were executed. The Iran-Iraq war futilely dragged on for almost a decade, and persecuted Iranians across a multicolored Iranian population wondered what the Revolution had achieved.</p>
<p>Looking back at that time makes it difficult to understand how Islamic Republic leaders are now bringing back a cultish reverence for the Khomeini era. Since the post-election protests, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and likewise, reformist Presidential candidates Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karoubi have made serious efforts to revive a faux nostalgia for the late Ayatollah among the opposition.</p>
<p>On the part of the current regime, uniting their modus operandi with that of Khomeini’s gives them a legitimate claim to the Islamic Republic.  Recalling that period reminds Iranians of a time when they were curious to see what the Ayatollah Khomeini could offer them.</p>
<p>For the reformists, who are proposing ‘change,’ they are motivated to do so within the confines of the regime, making respect and support for the Khomeini camp a prerequisite to remain part of and function within the Islamic Republic. As a matter of fact, Mousavi and Karoubi have been quick to use Khomeini’s legacy to strengthen their constituency, alleging that the Ayatollah was a more righteous leader, and that Khamenei’s government has severely deviated from the principles initially set forth.</p>
<p>Besides bearing such resemblances in surnames, Khomeini and Khamenei share similarities beyond the superficial. Both support mass executions, terrorism, and a fundamentalist Islamic ideology. Khomeini was famous for the words, “We do not worship Iran.  We worship Allah. For patriotism is another name for paganism. I say let this land [Iran] burn. I say let this land go up in smoke, provided Islam emerges triumphant in the rest of the world.” To spread Islam and its influence was his agenda, not much different from the current regime. So inherent is Khomeini’s role in the Islamic Republic landscape that to eradicate his influence from the movement is to study the establishment of the American government system without George Washington, or better yet, to assess Nazism absent Adolph Hitler.</p>
<p>The cleansing of Khomeini’s image became en vogue under former President Mohammad Khatami, who sought to salvage the late Ayatollah’s bloody reputation and in effect absolve the regime, beginning at its very roots. It is said that Khatami began his campaign to change the then dull and disillusioned mood during his presidency and to purify Iran’s modern history.  It also might have to do with the fact that Khatami and Khomeini were related. Khatami’s brother, Mohammad Reza, is married to Khomeini’s granddaughter, Zahra Eshraghi.</p>
<p>Incidentally, the intricate web of marriages within the handful of regime dynasties does not stop at the Khatami and Khomeini families. Most staggeringly, the fathers of Mousavi and Khamenei are brothers, making them first cousins. The unions demonstrate how far the inner circle of the regime will go to preserve their stronghold.</p>
<p>Under every IRI leader since Khatami, there has been a push to glorify the name and legacy of Khomeini, a move the leaders believe will sustain the Islamic Republic. For the current government it relies on erasing a very recent history, and for the reformists, it means tying themselves to a retrospectively more ‘benevolent’ supreme leader, in order to say that not everything about the Islamic Republic is corrupt; it had its glory days too.</p>
<p>Making such a claim relies entirely on pandering to a population of Iranians under the age of 30, who do not clearly remember Khomeini’s track record. Or maybe they do remember it and choose not to. It is clearly more pleasant to remember a peaceful history rather than one dotted with executions, stonings and lack of human rights. The leaders may take advantage of the people’s yearning for a united Iran, albeit one that chooses to forget its own history and thus remains under the grips of an Islamic Republic.</p>
<p>When Khomeini’s picture was rampantly burned in the streets of Iran in early December during National Students’ Day, many believed that was, at the very least, a clear and overt indication that the unrest was certainly not just over a fraudulent election. More profoundly taken, burning the picture of the founder of the Islamic Republic represented a denunciation of a theocratic regime and a manifestation of a movement pro-secular.</p>
<p>Yet when the government announced that those in violation are deemed “moharreb,” or Enemies (of God), and subsequently blamed Mousavi and Karoubi for instigating the event, the reformist leaders then in turn blamed the government for staging the incident it in order to discredit the opposition as irreverent and sacrilegious. Subsequently, the Green party urged the opposition to carry pictures of Khomeini to demonstrations in reverence and to never burn or disrespect the late Ayatollah again. In the end, Khomeini actually emerged more popular and even more of a central player in the backdrop of the movement.</p>
<p>It is still not clear who was behind the original burning of the pictures, but the more poignant revelation was how radical the Iranian momentum has become. So incendiary was this incident that it triggered a fad across several continents of posting videos of burning Khomeini’s picture. There are dozens of such groups on Facebook and Youtube created for the cause. Groups such as “I burned Khomeini’s picture” on Facebook has almost 2,000 members. There is even a video capturing a “Burning Khomeini’s picture party” that takes place in Europe, that shows a large group of expatriate Iranians burning the Ayatollah’s picture.</p>
<p>These cyber campaigns, seeking to eradicate Khomeini’s legacy, were created in reaction to the regime’s campaign to exalt it. Freedom-seeking Iranians are warning their countrymen of what can happen if Iranians fail to recall history and fall into the trap of the regime once again.</p>
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