Death of leading opposition cleric could spark new unrest in Iran

Sunday's death of reform-minded Shiite cleric Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, the most senior member of Iran's religious establishment, plunges the conservative government in Tehran into perhaps its most precarious state since the 1979 revolution that brought Islamic fundamentalists to power. Tens of thousands of supporters of Montazeri, 87, a founder of the modern Islamic republic who later broke with inspirational leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini over policy, are expected to converge on the holy city of Qom for his funeral next week over the objections of the government in Tehran. Coming just months after the disputed presidential election in June that resulted in street protests, mass arrests and charges of mistreatment against authorities, Montazeri's funeral could pose a direct challenge to the rule of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Prime Minister Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, according to the New York Times. The government was said to be preparing for a showdown by dispatching legions of riot police to the Qom area and closing the main highway from Tehran. Opposition leaders, such as former presidential candidates Mir Hossein Moussavi and Mehdi Karoubi, urged mourners to travel to Qom for the funeral, just days before a national day of protest planned for the Moslem holiday of Ashura on Dec. 27, the Times said. Montazeri, known throughout Iran as the plain-spoken cleric, had become an outspoken critic of the regime. He criticized Khameini and Ahmedinejad's government as non-Islamic and non-democratic, and accused the Basij militia, which has violently suppressed street rallies, of forsaking the "path of God" for the "path of Satan." Montazeri also has apologized for the 1979 sacking of the U.S. embassy in Tehran and the holding of 53 hostages for more than a year, an event celebrated by the current government. “A political system based on force, oppression, changing people’s votes, killing, closure, arresting and using Stalinist and medieval torture, creating repression, censorship of newspapers, interruption of the means of mass communications, jailing the enlightened and the elite of society for false reasons, and forcing them to make false confessions in jail, is condemned and illegitimate,” Montazeri wrote. Montazeri is considered the father of the concept of clerical rule, an idea he later said was misinterpreted by Iran's leaders, and was placed under house arrest in 1997 for criticizing Khamenei. The house arrest was lifted in 2003 after legislators appealed to then-president Mohammed Khatami, who also was a reformer, the Times said.

Doubts about Iran's intentions increase after IAEA censure

So, what is Iran thinking now? Today's announcement that the Islamic republic plans to build 10 new uranium enrichment plants to add to its known facilities at Natanz and Qom can only be seen as a rebuke, even if a petulant one, to Friday's censure by the International Atomic Energy Agency. But why? Does Iran think it is impervious to international economic sanctions, or to military action if it starts developing nuclear weapons? Is it? The UN's nuclear monitoring agency voted 35-0 to condemn Iran for secretly building an underground enrichment facility near Qom, including votes from usual Tehran supporters Russia and China, according to the Reuters international news service. The existence of the plant, which apparently had been suspected by Western countries' spy agencies for some time, was revealed by Iran in September and discussed publicly for the first time in October by U.S. President Barack Obama at a conference in Geneva. The revelation added renewed urgency to Western nations' effort to prevent Iran, the world's fifth-largest oil exporting nation by volume, to develop nuclear weaponry, because the enrichment plant is not suitable for civilian nuclear power, Tehran's stated intention. Iran has backed away from an agreement with Western nations to surrender its uranium stockpiles in exchange for a guaranteed supply of low-level enriched uranium to power a medical research reactor, adding to Western suspicions. "We have a friendly approach toward the world but at the same time we won't let anyone harm even one iota of the Iranian nation's rights," Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad said Sunday, Reuters said. Ahmedinejad maintains Iran has a right to the peaceful use of nuclear energy. But Ahmedinejad does not discuss why a major oil producer like Iran would even need nuclear power for electricity when it has such an abundant supply of petroleum, a safer fuel. The head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization, Ali Akbar Salehi, told Iran's Mehr News Agency that "10 new enrichment plants will be built," Reuters said, and that locations for five of them had already been decided. The 10 proposed enrichment plants would be the same size as the facility at Natanz, Iran's main enrichment site.

Islamic cleric's anti-government views achieve new stature in Iran

From Iran comes word that a high-ranking Islamic cleric once close to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the inspiration of the 1979 revolution, has emerged as the spiritual leader of ongoing opposition to the reigning government in Tehran. Followers of Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, regarded as the most knowledgeable Islamic scholar in the country of 66 million, could pose a real threat to the Shiite theocracy headed by current Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and to the conservative government of Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, Iran's president. Montazeri has long been critical of Khamenei in his religious edicts but has stayed out of trouble during the post-election crackdown, probably because of his religious credentials and his role in the 1979 revolution, the New York Times said Saturday. Montazeri, now in his 80s, was seen as Khomeini's successor following the revolution that toppled the U.S.-backed Shah of Iran. But the two had a falling out over what Montazeri saw as as abuses of power by the Islamic government during a series of executions of political prisoners in 1988, the Times said. The crackdown on opposition following the June election, in which Ahmedinejad claimed to have been re-elected but his chief opponent, former prime minister Mir Hussein Moussavi, alleged a fraudulent ballot count, has refocused the country's attention on Montazeri. Thousands have been arrested and many executed, and those imprisoned have complained about terrible treatment by authorities. "A political system based on force, oppression, changing people’s votes, killing, closure, arresting and using Stalinist and medieval torture, creating repression, censorship of newspapers, interruption of the means of mass communications, jailing the enlightened and the elite of society for false reasons, and forcing them to make false confessions in jail, is condemned and illegitimate,” Montazeri said in written comments posted on Web sites since the election, the Times said. Mehdi Kalaji of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and a former seminary student in Qom, said Montazeri is the leading cleric criticizing the theocracy from a religious perspective. “We have many intellectuals who criticize this regime from the democratic point of view,” Khalaji told the Times. "He criticizes this regime purely from a religious point of view, and this is very hurtful. The regime wants to say, ‘If I am not democratic enough that doesn’t matter, I am Islamic.’ He says it is not an Islamic government.” Montazeri's contentions also make sense to the West, where political observers wonder about religion's role in the Iranian government's excesses, including its apparently single-minded pursuit of nuclear weaponry.

Why does Iran need more time to decide if it will fulfill its nuclear obligations?

Monday's report from Vienna that a top U.S. diplomat said Iran should get more time to decide whether to fulfill the obligation to give up most of its nuclear fuel under a deal negotiated in Geneva in September does not make sense unless something else is going on that has been left out of the public record. Iran agreed to the deal to secure enriched uranium for its nuclear medicine facility and avoid stepped-up economic sanctions by the United States and other world powers; if Tehran wants out of the agreement, it should drop pretending and continue on the road to pariah statehood. "There have been communications back and forth. We are in extra innings in these negotiations. That's sometimes the way these things go," said Glyn Davies, the U.S. ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations-sponsored entity that monitors on nuclear activity worldwide. "We want to give some space to Iran to work through this," Davies said. "It's a tough issue for them, quite obviously, and we're hoping for an early, positive answer from the Iranians." But the Iranians have a history of stalling for time to continue developing their offensive capacities, and not to contribute to peaceful resolution of ongoing disputes. Iran contends its nuclear development is intended for peaceful purposes, despite its huge oil reserves and the revelation in September that it was building a secret enrichment plant at a military base near Qom. U.S. experts say the plant could not have enriched enough uranium for a civilian nuclear power plant and was almost surely designed for nuclear weaponry. Turkey has offered to mediate the international dispute, but it is apparent that Tehran is not willing to halt its activities despite the risk of sanctions. That's why Iran has not yet offered a formal reply to international demands that it comply with the agreement, and why it doesn't make sense to give the Islamic republic even more time to stall. If the international community's patience is "not infinite," as Germany's chief negotiator said the other day, it's time to bring on the "consequences" that U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned of in Berlin. There is no reason to wait until the end of the year. Iran can continue to protest diplomatically all it wants, but it should do so without its stash of nuclear fuel and without its ability to threaten nearby countries.

Nuclear deal with Iran faces crucial test tomorrow

Iran's effort to forestall tightening international economic sanctions over its nuclear program faces its first major test tomorrow when UN inspectors are scheduled to enter its formerly secret uranium enrichment facility near Qom. Nobody except the Iranians even knows if the experts from the International Atomic Energy Agency will actually be admitted to the site, even though Iran agreed to that in Geneva last month under pressure from Western nations, according to the Washington Post. The meeting was noteworthy for several developments, including the first public announcement of the existence of the enrichment plant and the highest-level official contact between Iran and the United States since 1979. Iran acknowledged the plant's existence in a letter to the IAEA last month, just before the Geneva conference. Tehran insists it has no designs on nuclear weapons but is merely developing nuclear power for electricity, which it insists it has a right to. But the plant, still under construction on the side of a mountain at a military base yet apparently known about for years by intelligence agencies worldwide, only is suitable for weapons development, the Post said. Iran plans to place only 3,000 centrifuges at the site, which is not enough to enrich uranium for a civilian nuclear plant, the Post said citing expert sources. Analysts say it would take Qom's centrifuges at least 20 years to produce enough uranium to power a 1,000- megawatt nuclear power reactor for a year. But the equipment could produce enough enriched uranium to build three nuclear bombs annually, the Times said. "There is no Iranian document saying the facility is designed for a military program, but what else can it be good for?" a senior Middle East-based intelligence official who studies Iran told the Times. In fact, the Qom plant has forced the United States to reconsider the 2007 conclusion of its intelligence agencies that Iran had halted nuclear weapons research in 2003. "Qom changed a lot of people's thinking, especially about the possibility of secret military enrichment" of uranium, another former officials told the Times. The revised assessments are classified, the Times said. But the public revelations about the plant do raise obvious questions about Iran's intentions, despite its protestations to the contrary. Of course, it never made sense that Iran needed to pursue civilian nuclear energy when it sits atop a sixth of worldwide oil reserves. If Russia and China are sufficiently alarmed, Qom could be the catalyst for further tightening of worldwide economic sanctions, just when it seemed Iran wanted to rejoin the nations trying to figure out how to live in peace.

Iran tries to make nice with West by releasing Newsweek reporter

Iran's efforts to get along with Western nations continued yesterday when a Newsweek correspondent jailed four months ago during massive protests that followed the disputed June presidential election was released on bail. A pro-government news agency in Tehran said Newsweek reporter Maziar Bahari, an Iranian-Canadian, was freed on nearly $300,000 bail after confessing to charges of propagandizing against Iran and other charges, according to Cable News Network (CNN). Bahari was among 1,000 arrested in the protests that erupted after Iran's election commission said incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad had been overwhelmingly re-elected. Ahmedinejad's main challenger, Mir Hussein Moussavi, claimed the results were fraudulent, prompting the demonstrations. Bahari was one of 100 journalists, reform leaders and former ministers who went on trial in Iran's Revolutionary Court in August, CNN said. Iran's crackdown on the protests was consistent with its belligerence toward Western nations accusing Tehran of trying to develop nuclear weapons under the guise of a civilian nuclear power program. Suspicions about Iran's program were heightened last month, despite the country's denials, when the United States revealed the existence of a secret nuclear enrichment facility near the holy Shiite city of Qom, in north-central Iran west of Tehran. But Iran abruptly changed course on its nuclear program, agreeing to allow international inspectors into the Qom facility and to export nearly all of its nuclear fuel for processing. Newsweek, which has denied that Bahari was engaged in anything but reporting, said Saturday that Iranian authorities did not give a reason why the journalist was released but that "humanitarian considerations were presumed to have played a role in the decision." Bahari, 42, is expecting his first child Oct. 26 and the mother has suffered "health complications," Newsweek said. The magazine also said on its Web site that Bahari's case was raised at recent talks between the United States and Iran in Geneva that resulted in the Qom agreement. Other charges filed against Bahari by Iranian authorities included favoring opposition groups, sending foreign reports to foreign media, disturbing the peace and possessing confidential documents, the Fars news agency reported, CNN said.

IAEA plans inspection of Iran's formerly secret uranium enrichment facility

News that Iran has actually scheduled a team of experts from the International Atomic Energy Agency to inspect a formerly secret uranium enrichment facility being built near Qom appears to be a clear signal that the Islamic republic has changed course and decided to cooperate with the world community on nuclear proliferation. Iran agreed last week to permit inspectors to tour the underground facility, which previously had been kept secret in violation of IAEA notification requirements, according to the Reuters international news service. "IAEA inspectors will visit Iran's new enrichment facility, under construction in Qom, on 25th of October," said Mohammad ElBaradei, the director of the International Atomic Energy Agency said at a news conference with Ali Akbar Salehi, the head of Iran's nuclear effort. "It is important for us to have comprehensive cooperation over the Qom site. It is important for us to send our inspectors to assure ourselves that this facility is for peaceful purposes." Details of the inspection will be worked out at a meeting on Oct. 19, Reuters said. Western nations believe Iran is covertly developing nuclear weapons and has imposed a series of international trade sanctions against the country to force it to end or curtail its program. Tehran insists its nuclear work is aimed at the peaceful development of nuclear power for electricity, even though Iran's underground oil reserves are among the world's largest. But Iran has not exactly been truthful over the years, probably because of suspicions about the United States, which it regards, along with Israel, as its enemy. So, the disclosure of the secret facility caused an international furor culminating in last week's meeting in Geneva between Iran and the world's six strongest military and economic powers -- the permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany. The plant is not expected to be operational for 18 months. The Geneva meeting, at which Iran also agreed to send most of its nuclear material to France and Russia for processing, was the highest-level diplomatic contact between the United States and Iran since the 1979 revolution that overthrew the U.S.-backed Shah and brought religious leaders to power. U.S. President Barack Obama's top adviser on national security, James Jones, said Iran did not appear to be closer to having a nuclear weapon, contradicting a New York Times report on Saturday that a separate IAEA assessment had concluded Iran's program had advanced sufficiently to begin building a nuclear weapon.