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Experts say report of badges for Jews in Iran is untrue

Chris Wattie, National Post
Published: Friday, May 19, 2006

Several experts are casting doubt on reports that Iran had passed a law requiring the country�s Jews and other religious minorities to wear coloured badges identifying them as non-Muslims.

The Iranian embassy in Otttawa also denied the Iranian government had passed such a law.

A news story and column by Iranian-born analyst Amir Taheri in yesterday�s National Post reported that the Iranian parliament had passed a sweeping new law this week outlining proper dress for Iran�s majority Muslims, including an order for Jews, Christians and Zoroastrians to wear special strips of cloth.

According to the reports, Jews were to wear yellow cloth strips, called zonnar, while Christians were to wear red and Zoroastrians blue.

The Simon Wiesenthal Centre and Iranian expatriates living in Canada had confirmed that the order had been passed, although it still had to be approved by Iran�s �Supreme Guide� Ali Khamenehi before being put into effect.

Hormoz Ghahremani, a spokesman for the Iranian Embassy in Ottawa, said in an e-mail to the Post yesterday that, �We wish to categorically reject the news item.

�These kinds of slanderous accusations are part of a smear campaign against Iran by vested interests, which needs to be denounced at every step.�

Sam Kermanian, of the U.S.-based Iranian-American Jewish Federation, said in an interview from Los Angeles that he had contacted members of the Jewish community in Iran � including the lone Jewish member of the Iranian parliament � and they denied any such measure was in place.

Mr. Kermanian said the subject of �what to do with religious minorities� came up during debates leading up to the passing of the dress code law.

http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/story.html?id=6626a0fa-99de-4f1e-aebe-bb91af82abb3

[igotthisguitar]

Neocon Foreign Policy Architect Richard Perle
Reveals US War Plans in the Iranian Theater

As a former assistant Secretary of Defense under President Ronald Reagan, Perle is still considered an influential adviser in U.S. conservative circles. Perle, a Bilderberg insider, once advised Rumsfeld and remains a close friend.

By Dr. Michael Carmichael
GlobalResearch.ca
June 7, 2006

Related: World's elite gather to brainstorm in secret

"I think of war with Iran as the ending of America's present role in the world. Iraq may have been a preview of that, but it's still redeemable if we get out fast. In a war with Iran, we'll get dragged down for 20 or 30 years. The world will condemn us. We will lose our position in the world." � Zbigniew Brzezinski, Vanity Fair, 2006.

ONE US carrier task force is already in position in the Persian Gulf. Two more task forces are moving swiftly to take up their positions in the Iranian theatre.

The controversial neoconservative American bureaucrat, Richard Perle, visited Britain on the eve of the papal audience between Prime Minister Tony Blair and Pope Benedict XVI. Earlier in the same week, the Iranian Nobel Laureate for Peace, Dr. Shirin Ebadi, was in Britain to voice her concerns about a confrontation between the west and Iran. In London, Metropolitan Police swooped down on two suspected Islamist terrorists believed to be in the process of building a chemical bomb. Summertime tensions are building.

In bland remarks delivered to a small audience of students at the Oxford Union, Richard Perle outlined the Bush administration�s response to the crisis of 9/11 and the neoconservative doctrines of pre-emptive war. In a droning monotone designed to anaesthetize his keen academic audience, Perle explained the need for an invincible American military apparatus and a foreign policy predicated on the Bush Doctrine of pre-emptive war permitting direct and simultaneous interventions into multiple theatres.

While Perle stated his hope that the need for military interventions would be minimal, he left the impression that his definition of excessive use of military power might well differ from that of the average American or European citizen. Perle is on the public record advocating pre-emptive strikes against North Korea, Syria, Iran and a list of other countries. Some of his critics accuse Perle of darkly malignant machinations. (Richard N. Perle, Sourcewatch)

Citing Iraq as a glowing example of an obvious need for direct intervention, Perle admitted that he had long advocated military solutions for regime change in that "theatre". In his talk, he reminded us that President Bush had launched the invasion on the basis of several triggering factors including Nigerian yellow cake, WMDs, terrorist connections, democracy-building and humanitarian issues.

Thus, Perle was finally reduced to justifying the Iraq War as a humanitarian crusade � a theme that struck hollow in the midst of reports of civil war, torture and US war crimes against innocent civilians in Haditha.

Questioned by a largely supportive audience of admiring students willing to attend a late lecture on a Friday night, Perle touched upon the diplomacy between the West and Iran in the most insipid terms he could muster. Taking into account the latest diplomatic developments, he gave his Oxford audience the impression that the outcome remains obscure in spite of the fact that he is one of the principle architects � and the sternest - of the Iran negotiations.

Perle emphasised that President Ahmadinejad holds fanatical religious beliefs involving the necessity for an Armageddonite conflict to trigger the return of the Hidden Imam at the end of the world in the Shiite tradition for the Last Judgement and the Islamic Apocalypse.

Perle singled out the fanaticism of Islamic terrorism as the most serious threat to international security, and he praised the Israeli air-strike against Saddam�s nuclear reactor in 1981 as a model of pre-emptive military intervention. In his view, the threat of precision air-strikes against the nuclear infrastructure of Iran constitute the best negotiating option.

An Iranian student asked Perle whether he considered the Mearsheimer and Walt paper, �The Israel Lobby,� to be, �anti-Semitic.� Castigating the eighty-five page paper as, �bad scholarship,� Perle admitted that he did not know what he was talking about when he confessed that he had not read it in its entirety.

This question put Perle on the defensive, and he asserted that there was no secret agenda amongst America�s plethora of, �Jewish groups,� that sought to place the national security of Israel above that of the United States

In the limited time available, no one was able to follow up Perle�s pregnant point about the non-existence of a secret agenda with a question about the Israeli spy scandal that shook his own office at the Pentagon, when Larry Franklin was discovered to be the conduit between the Office of Special Plans and two Israeli officials who were later identified as espionage agents assigned to the embassy. Neither was he questioned about the incident that took place in 1970, when an FBI wiretap revealed that Perle discussed classified intelligence with an official at the Israeli embassy. Washington insiders have long considered Perle to be, �an Israeli agent of influence.�

Another fact fuels these suspicions swirling around Perle since he serves as a director of Hollinger International which owns the Jerusalem Post. Perle has been paid millions for his �work� for Hollinger even though he is the only �outside� director on the Executive Committee. Perle�s complicated business dealings have brought him under suspicion for conflicts of interest and the charge that he is attempting to profit from wars that he was strenuously working to create and implement through his official capacity in the Department of Defense. In 2004, Perle�s conflicts of interest resulted in his resignation from the Defense Policy Board. (ibid)

When a perceptive student asked about his preferences for the next president of the United States, Perle made some riveting remarks. He immediately stated his hope that Senator Joseph Lieberman would be the Democratic candidate. Failing that miracle, Perle hopes former Governor Mark Warner will win the Democratic nomination. Perle warmly praised both right-leaning Democrats who are doyens of the Democratic Leadership Council. Richard Giuliani is Perle�s favourite Republican. When asked about potential presidential candidates who would cause him concern, Perle swiftly reeled off a long list of Democrats led by Governor Howard Dean, followed closely by Senator John Kerry, former Vice President Al Gore, former Senator John Edwards, and he finished his list of neoconservative hate figures with a revealing comment about Senator Hillary Clinton.

It is hardly secret that Senator Clinton has attempted to appeal to the Israeli right. When she visited Israel, she condemned the Palestinians, but Perle was not impressed. Quite the contrary, Perle said that while she had made some smart moves in her attempt to appeal to the right, the left did not believe her. This comment gave the clear impression that Perle did not believe her, either. Criticizing other Democrats, Perle said that Senator John Kerry, �did not understand power,� and was not able to perform the duties of the president of America. In his form of damnation by faint praise, Perle said that Howard Dean was a much nicer man off the podium than on it � and he gave him pride of place at the top of his most worrisome Democratic politicians.

The love affair between Perle�s base in Likud on the hard line Israeli right and the neoconservatives of both US political parties is alive and kicking. Perle has long been associated with Likud that has been reduced to a weak rump huddling around Benjamin Netanyahu in the new Knesset. As a close associate of Netanyahu, Perle is seen as Likud�s top-ranking advocate in Europe and America with his tentacles into both political parties, the Bush White House, the Pentagon and many other leading institutions. Next year, it would not be surprising to find Perle�s name on contributors lists to Giuliani, Lieberman and Warner.

Last week, Ray McGovern, a former high-ranking CIA intelligence analyst, appeared on the Alex Jones Show where he expressed his fears that staged terrorist attacks in Europe and America are being prepared to pave the way for public approval of pre-emptive air-strikes against Iran. McGovern said,

�There is already one carrier task force there in the Gulf, two are steaming toward it at the last report I have at least - they will all be there in another week or so. The propaganda has been laid, the aircraft carriers are in place, it doesn't take much to fly the bombers out of British and US bases - cruise missiles are at the ready, Israel is egging us on."

( Former CIA Analyst Says Iran Strike Possibly Set For June Or July )

McGovern predicted dire consequences would result from Bush�s policy of pre-emptive war. In McGovern�s opinion, Iran would retaliate with a cruise missile attack against the US fleet then launch a military invasion of Iraq and simultaneously activate a world wide ring of terrorists that would make Al-Qaeda look like, �a girls netball team.�

McGovern�s predictions may be unfolding already. The London police raid that coincided with Perle�s visit to Britain netted two men suspected of terrorist plotting to build a massive chemical bomb. But, after four days of excruciating forensic examination of their premises, the police found no evidence of bomb-building activities. Whether this �swoop� was staged or not remains to be seen, but this episode resonates with an official campaign to ratchet up the public concern about terrorism. The non-productive raid has produced a predictable backlash among the local residents who are demanding some form of official confirmation that the raid was based on credible evidence rather than a melange of Islamophobic paranoia.

Last week in Wales at the annual literary festival at Hay-on-Wye, Dr Shirin Ebadi, the Iranian Nobel Laureate for Peace in 2003, explained her opposition to western military intervention in Iran.

�America says that Iran would pose a threat if it gains access to nuclear weapons because it is not a democratic country, and because its government is fundamentalist, and this could pose a danger to the whole region, but America has forgotten that Pakistan has nuclear weapons, and Pakistani Muslims are much more fundamentalist than Iranian Muslims, and Pervez Musharraf did not come to power as a result of an election. The only difference between Iran and Pakistan is that Pakistan is friendly towards America and obeys America, while Iran does not obey America. This double standard is something that the Iranian people cannot understand."

Exactly as Richard Perle intimated to the BBC, the world is witnessing the machinations in a game of geopolitical poker. The stakes are high. In spite of his perceived weakness, George Bush holds a very strong hand, The White House, the Pentagon, the Supreme Court and both houses of Congress.

Yet his political weakness with the American public is the primary factor motivating him to launch a pre-emptive attack against Iran.

With his approval rating falling into the low 30s, Bush has too little � if anything - to lose to worry about current public opinion.

Because of his chronic unpopularity, Bush is already in a complicated political predicament. Bush is facing the loss of his American political hegemony in the midterm elections this November. If Bush loses even one house of Congress, he will face the immediate threat of official probes led by partisan special prosecutors and a rising demand for his impeachment. In his game of poker with Ahmadinejad, Bush has nothing to lose by upping the ante and wrapping himself in the American flag while dropping a massive bombardment onto the primary vortex of his Axis of Evil, Iran.

However, if Bush were to attack Iran, he would instantaneously transform Ahmadinejad into the most powerful figure in the increasingly Anti-American world. With that transfiguration, Ahmadinejad would have nothing to constrain him from launching attacks not only against American targets as Ray McGovern suggests, but the Iranian Prime Minister would be free to join forces with Hizbollah and Islamic Jihad in an attack against America�s primary ally in the region, Israel. Bristling with potential targets from its vulnerable nuclear facility at Dimona as well as its major population centers including Tel Aviv, Haifa and Elat, Israel would be in the frontline of any potential counter-attack by Ahmadinejad.

With leaders like Bush, Ahmadinejad, Blair, Olmert and Benedict XVI there can be little wonder why the world � driven by achingly inept religious fundamentalists holding the reigns of power in Washington, London, Tehran, Rome and Tel Aviv - is lurching forward into battle toward what can, indeed, be called a new Perle Harbor.

Iran is a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty a distinction not shared with three nuclear states, India, Israel and Pakistan, who have declined to sign the document

[Kuros]

Frustrated world powers send Iran to the UN

[bucheon bum]

Iran should be bombed due to what's going on in Lebanon. Teach those guys a lesson.

[Gopher]

[Nowhere Man]

[bucheon bum]

Well I did a little on another thread. I think we should bomb a couple key military facilities in Iran and show them we won't let them get away with supporting terrorism any more.

Both the Iranian president and Ayatollah Khameini are fully aware of Iran's past actions and the lack of response by the US gov't. That is why the President can be so bombastic and openly confrontational: he knows the US nor the West has the will to launch an attack of any kind against Iran. Taking out a military target would show Iran we mean business and we have a new philosophy. I wouldn't be surprised if things in Iraq would slightly improve too if we launched such an attack. And if Israel did the same against Syria? Even better. There is no way Syria would hit Israel back; it simply does not have the strength.

[ddeubel]

[Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee]

Why doesn't Iran just give up their war? If they dont' then the US doesn't have to accept it. It would be really good if the international community would take a stand against Iran , sadly too many nations in the world support Iran or at least will protect it from sanctions that would really hurt in part because of oil but more often because it is an enemy of the US and they don't want Iran's government taken down because that would leave the US better off.



DD

[laogaiguk]

[Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee]

Yep to spite the US. They think the US is too powerful already. They don't want to see it any more powerful.

Same reason that many nations were mad that Saddam was taken down.

They saw one super power fall at the end of the cold war , they don't like the idea of there being any hyperpower.

Sorry but that the way the world is.

Why do you think that Russia and China support North Korea, because of lucrative trade?

Venezula's entire foreign policy is basically to seek out enemies of the US and develop friendships with them.

[Nowhere Man]

[bucheon bum]

[Gopher]

...or encouragement or even explicit direction.

We just do not know. And we should not rule out anything at present, particularly in light of the Iranian regime's rhetoric with respect to Israel.

Why does the Iranian regime not declassify and publish all of its documents relating to its foreign policy and diplomacy in the Middle East and beyond from 1979 to the present?

[igotthisguitar]

What Retirement? Mike Wallace Gets Scoop In Iran
By Paul J. Gough
Thu Aug 10, 2:32 AM ET

NEW YORK (Hollywood Reporter) - "60 Minutes" veteran correspondent Mike Wallace may have retired last March but that hasn't stopped him from scoring an exclusive interview with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.



And that fact wasn't lost on his subject, who halfway through Tuesday's interview asked Wallace: "I thought you had retired."

Wallace's interview will appear on the "CBS Evening News" on Thursday night and on Sunday's "60 Minutes."

The 88-year-old Wallace, who has interviewed almost every notable person in his nearly 40 years on "60 Minutes," said Wednesday that he wasn't going to let a little matter such as retirement stop him from doing a story about one of the biggest "gets" these days. After getting word two weeks ago from CBS's liaison in Tehran, Sia Zand, that Ahmadinejad would be willing to talk, Wallace hopped a plane to Paris and then Tehran with producer Bob Anderson and associate producer Casey Morgan.

But when they got there they were told that the Iranian president was very busy and may not get to talk to them. The CBS crew cooled their heels, so to speak, in Tehran's 100-degree heat in a hotel without air conditioning.

"We waited, and they said, 'he's still busy, he doesn't know, he hasn't decided,"' Wallace said. "We were scheduled to return. If he hadn't talked to us by late Tuesday we were going to get on the plane. All of the sudden word came through he was going to talk."



The 3:30 p.m. interview didn't come off until 5 p.m., but Wallace said their talk stretched for an hour and a half. "We went on and on," Wallace said. "We were told we were going to get 30 minutes."

Wallace has spent a lot of time in Iran over the past four decades, interviewing the Shah, former President Hashemi Rafsanjani and, most famously, the 1979 sitdown with the Ayatollah Khomeini who asked the Iranian leader what he thought of Anwar Sadat's description of him as a lunatic.

There wasn't any of that this time. Wallace dismissed the common perceptions of Ahmadinejad.

"He's actually, in a strange way, he's a rather attractive man, very smart, savvy, self-assured, good looking in a strange way," Wallace said.

"He's very, very short but he's comfortable in his own skin."

Despite problems with translation -- there was only one translator for a time during the interview -- Wallace said Ahmadinejad was patient.

"He couldn't have been more accommodating. He had a good time doing the interview," Wallace said. And he believes that it was Ahmadinejad's idea to do the interview. He acknowledged that he had become a much-desired interview subject but told the veteran CBS journalist that he remembered a discussion the two had over a year ago when Ahmadinejad was in New York.

"I don't know if you remember this or not but you and I had a talk over breakfast at the United Nations," Ahmadinejad told Wallace. "Do you remember that you asked me at the time if I would sit down with you ... and I said by all means, let's do it." Wallace said he was surprised that Ahmadinejad had remembered.

As for retiring, Wallace said that he isn't having a happy retirement because he likes the job. He does acknowledge, particularly in this last voyage, that the airplane travel is "interminable" and the major reason why he wanted to retire in the first place. But he said there were other stories that he wanted to do.

"When you love what you do, it's not work," Wallace said.

Reuters/Hollywood Reporter