Sex in Ayatollah's country

If, as the poet Philip Larkin observed, sex began in 1963, it has finally reached Iran over the last year. True, girls and women can still be imprisoned for going out without proper Islamic dress. But young people are completely redefining such dress so it heightens sex appeal instead of smothering it. Women are required to cover their hair and to wear either a chador cloak or an overcoat, called a manteau, every time they go out, and these are meant to be black and shapeless. But the latest fashion here in Shiraz, in central Iran, is light, tight and sensual. ''There are some manteaus with slits on the sides up to the armpits,'' said Mahmoud Salehi, a 25-year-old manteau salesman. ''And then there are the 'commando manteaus,' with ties on the legs to show off the hips and an elastic under the breasts to accentuate the bust.'' Worse, from the point of view of hard-line mullahs, young women in such clothing aren't getting 74 lashes any more -- they're getting dates. ''Parents can't defeat children,'' Mr. Salehi mused. ''Children always defeat their parents.'' And that's what Iran's baby boomers, a wave of 18 million people 15 to 25 years old, are doing. They will transform their country, just as baby boomers in the West changed America and Europe. I don't think Iran's theocracy can survive them, for I've never been to a country where young people seem more frustrated. The regime's problem is that Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini exhorted Iranians to have more children, and they responded -- today, 60 percent of the country's population was born after his Iranian revolution. And these young people are determining social mores and carving out a small zone of freedom for themselves. In one sense, the relaxation in clothing requirements is superficial, and some Iranian women have scolded me for asking them about head scarves when they are more angry about discrimination in divorce, child custody and inheritance rules. But the clothing rules affect every woman every day and raise the central question in Iran's future: should a few aging male mullahs still determine the most basic and intimate elements of every Iranian's life? From that vantage point, it looks to me as if the revolution is sputtering. The mullahs are refusing to accept real democracy, but they are giving in to popular pressure in some areas. The draft is immensely unpopular among young men, for example, so this year the hard-liners shortened the service requirement. More important, individual Iranians are reclaiming their individuality and their autonomy -- and how they dress is the best measure of that. The morals police no longer order women to cover up stray hairs. These days, the fashion is for brightly colored, glittery see-through scarves, worn halfway back on the head. ''It's possible head scarves will be gone in another year or two, the way things are going,'' said Amir Suleimani, a scarf salesman in the Tehran Bazaar. ''God willing.'' No wonder conservative newspapers in Tehran denounce Iranian women for strolling around ''nude.'' The baby boomers include Saghar Tayebi, a 17-year-old in Isfahan who wore a tight manteau with high slits, embroidered jeans and a red headband. Her mascara was hefty and her lipstick bold, and her sleeves were rolled up to reveal lots of bracelets. Lots of hair escaped her scarf. But when I asked her whether she dreamed of wearing Western-style skimpy clothing, she looked aghast. ''We totally reject that,'' she said indignantly. ''We don't want that freedom.'' Conversations with young people like Saghar suggest that youths want to remain good Muslims, and that some are happy enough in an Islamic republic -- but that, above all, they want to laugh and love. Many are not overtly political, nor sure exactly what kind of government they want, but they do know that this isn't it. ''We want fun,'' declared Tannaz Haj Hosseini, a 20-year-old university student who was out with her boyfriend in Tehran. ''There's no joy here.'' I protested that her nail polish and see-through scarf -- not to mention the boyfriend -- underscored the progress in Iran. A few years ago, she would have been lashed ''I don't compare myself with 10 years ago,'' she said. ''I compare myself to what I could have and don't.'' Ayatollahs, look out

Iran asks Japan to pay for oil with yen, not dollars

Iran has asked Japanese oil wholesalers to pay for their oil purchases in yen instead of dollars, which are currently used for most transactions, industry sources said Saturday.

The request by the National Iranian Oil Co. is believed to be part of Iran's efforts to increase oil transactions denominated in currencies other than the dollar to avoid a possible seizure of its assets by the U.S. government amid tensions over its nuclear development program.

The Iranian state-owned oil company sent letters to Japanese oil wholesalers requesting them to pay in yen, the sources said, adding some companies received such requests through trading houses.

"We have yet to decide how to respond," said an official at one wholesaler. "We cannot find any advantage in switching to yen-based transactions."

Late last year, Iran sounded out Japanese oil firms about switching their payments to the yen or the euro, the sources said.

Tokyo has been reducing its Iranian oil imports amid the nuclear standoff. Still, Japan imported about 28 million kiloliters of crude oil from Iran, which accounted for about 11 percent of Japan's total oil imports, in 2006.

Tehran has refused to halt its uranium enrichment program, despite the threat of U.N. sanctions, saying it only wants to produce electricity. The U.S. accuses Iran of trying to develop nuclear weapons.

Iran has already taken other measures to reduce its dependence on the U.S. currency. Earlier this year, Tehran announced it had started pulling its foreign currency accounts out of European banks to protect its assets from possible sanctions.

Iranian exile speaks out against militia he once supported

Amir Farshad Ebrahimi

Amir Farshad Ebrahimi, a former child fighter and political prisoner, says Iran's bloody crackdown on protesters prompted him to 'out' ex-colleagues in Ansar-e Hezbollah who took part in the beatings.

By Borzou Daragahi / Los Angelese times
July 09, 2009




After eight months, he was dropped off in downtown Tehran, but his freedom was short-lived. Ebrahimi was again arrested, tried and sentenced to prison, shuttling from Tehran's infamous Evin Prison, where demonstrators today are being taken, to other facilities in and around the capital for three years.
Even when he was free again, Ebrahimi was a marked man, prohibited from leaving the country and facing years of scrutiny by security forces.
He had a choice: stay and fight it out with authorities in Iran, or make a run for it. 
The hike across the mountainous border with Turkey was long and dangerous. In Ankara, the Turkish capital, the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees accepted Ebrahimi's application for asylum. He enrolled at a university, fell in love and moved to Germany, joining the many Iranian dissidents carving out lives abroad.
It was 2007, and Ebrahimi was at a conference of Iranian dissidents in southern Spain when a man claiming to be with the CIA showed him a photocopy of a check made out to Hezbollah and supposedly signed by Khamenei. 
Ebrahimi thought the man, who gave his name as David Coberly, was testing him by showing him bogus intelligence. Who would believe that Khamenei, whom Iranians regard as God's representative on Earth, would make a check out to Hezbollah, like a guy paying for new kitchen cabinets? 
"Is this a joke?" Ebrahimi recalled asking. 
It wasn't a joke, he soon learned, but it was symptomatic of America's misunderstanding of Iran, or maybe its willingness to welcome faulty intelligence in order to make a case against the country. 
Ebrahimi had embraced the life of an activist in exile, becoming a valuable asset for Western intelligence agencies and analysts seeking insight on the Islamic Republic. He was in regular contact with Western officials and a circle of neoconservative activists. 
He and other Iranian and Western activists enticed Iranian officials to defect to the West. The group played a key role in the defection of Brig. Gen. Ali Reza Asgari, a former deputy defense minister who left via Turkey, taking a trove of secrets about Iran's weaponry and technology with him. 
But feeling adrift in the life of an exile, Ebrahimi grew homesick. Last year, he and his parents made plans for a rendezvous in Istanbul, Turkey, hoping it would be a fun-filled holiday.
Once again, he found himself locked up, alone with his thoughts in a windowless gray tomb.
They refused to tell him. But he had his suspicions, confirmed hours later when he overheard an Iranian Consulate official outside the door vowing to take him back to the Islamic Republic for his role in the defection of the military commander.
"I was very afraid," Ebrahimi recalled. "I was scared like I've never been scared before." 
Then Ebrahimi realized that Turkish authorities had forgotten to take away his cellphone. Quietly, he began calling people abroad: his wife, well-connected Iranian dissidents in the United States. 
"I was personally on the phone for several hours that night trying to gain his release," said Kenneth Timmerman, a neoconservative activist who heads the Washington-based Foundation for Democracy in Iran. "Other people were involved pulling political strings. There was a lot of heavy lifting being done in Washington."
Time was ticking away. Once, as Ebrahimi was being taken to an interrogation room, the Iranian official patted him on the back. 
"I'll see you in Tehran," he told Ebrahimi.
Early the next morning, an official who said he was from the consulate of a Western government showed up at the airport and demanded to see Ebrahimi. 
The Westerner was firm. He had orders from his capital. Ebrahimi was to be placed on a plane back to Germany. 
These days, Ebrahimi spends his time writing his blog and working on a memoir he hopes to sell to Western publishers, stepping out occasionally from his ground-floor apartment for a quick smoke.
Recently, he wrote an open letter to his old friend Mojtaba Khamenei, who is said to be the driving force behind the military-led crackdown on the protest movement. 
"We have defended our country, rifle in hands, and have killed to save our country from deterioration," he wrote. "In those days neither you nor I ever imagined standing up against our own people, unlike what seems to be your cup of tea these days."
Ebrahimi described the photograph of Neda Agha-Soltan dying in the street last month near a demonstration in support of opposition leader Mir-Hossein Mousavi. 
"It reminded me of one of our martyred friends during the war," he wrote. "Don't you see how the nation is being crushed? Don't you see the blood in the streets? How can you watch and not speak a word of protest?" 

Israeli claim: Iran elite forces killed in Gaza War

The Israeli sources said the military killed an unspecified number of advisers from Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps during the 22-day war with Hamas, which ended on Jan. 18. They said the IRGC officers helped the Hamas regime and Islamic Jihad fire BM-21 Grad rockets from urban areas.

"We believe there were dozens of IRGC personnel in the Gaza Strip during the war," an Israeli source said. "Some were killed; others went into hiding, and others escaped."

The sources said IRGC sent officers to the Gaza Strip to help Hamas improve the range and accuracy of missiles and rockets. IRGC was also authorized to help establish facilities to produce the Grad and other extended-range Katyusha-class rockets in the Gaza Strip.

Israel: Hamas killing Gazan children

An Israeli government spokesman says Hamas has been killing Palestinian children in the Gaza Strip to make the Israeli army look bad. Mark Regev, the spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, said in a BBC interview that it is not clear how many of the children killed in Israel's military offensive on Gaza "were killed by Israeli forces, how many were killed by Hamas forces." Regev made the remarks when asked whether he was personally "proud" with the outcome of the war on Gaza considering the massive number of civilian casualties in the densely-populated area. Tel Aviv launched Operation Cast Lead on December 27 to put an end to rocket attacks against southern Israeli towns. Hamas, the democratically-elected ruler of the coastal region, demands a cessation of the Israeli blockade before its fighters suspend rocket attacks.  At least 1,300 Palestinians have been killed and some 6,000 others have been reported wounded. According to Gaza medics, 411 of the dead are children and 98 are women. Regev's response prompted a shocked Gavin Estler, the News Night presenter, to ask him, "You are not serious that Hamas is killing Palestinian children, are you?" The Israeli spokesman responded, "I am a 100 percent very serious and this has been documented and I am sure more information will be coming out. And we have no doubt that Hamas ordinance was responsible for many of the deaths." He added that the Israeli military is convinced that "a large number of civilian casualties were caused by Hamas." Regev said if a "sustained period of quite" follows the military campaign in Gaza, Tel Aviv would consider the operation as "a job well done."

 

Alavi Foundation and the Iranian regime’s web of influence in US

On December 19, 2008, Farshid Jahedi, the president of the Alavi Foundation was arrested by Federal agents. He is charged with obstruction of justice for allegedly destroying documents required to be produced under a grand jury subpoena concerning the Alavi Foundation’s relationship with Bank Melli Iran and the ownership of a Manhattan office building.

The Alavi Foundation is the successor organization of the Pahlavi Foundation founded by the Shah of Iran in the 1970s. The Foundation constructed an office tower at 650 Fifth Avenue, New York, which was financed by a substantial loan from Bank Melli Iran a state-owned bank in Iran. The loan was later changed to a %40 share in the ownership of the building. As the federal agents are looking deeper into the activities of this foundation, the Iranian community wonders if the time has finally come to examine and scrutinize the Iranian regime’s activities in the US. For almost three decades, Alavi has granted tens of millions of dollars to groups and individuals in the US.

For example, in the past 3 years, this Foundation has granted several hundred thousands of dollars to Rutgers University’s Hooshang Amirahmadi operation. Amirahmadi is the president of Middle Eastern Studies in Rutgers. Interestingly, he also founded the American Iranian Council in 1997 and launched a large scale lobby and campaign to lift the pressure off the Iranian regime. Meanwhile, Amirahmadi also bid for the Iran’s presidency.

In November 2008, Amirahmadi traveled to Tehran and demanded increased support from the government. Openly and unequivocally he admitted to lobbying for the Iranian regime. He told the Iranian governmental newspaper Etemad , taken by Emrooz, Nov. 12, 2008 ( Persian ) .

There is clash between various regional [Middle East] lobbies. Israelites will fast gather around Obama. Arabs will also spend their money to get close to Obama. Unfortunately, Iran is very lonely in Washington, and those few, like us, who defend the Iranian rights, are subject of unkind hostility in Tehran. These gentlemen [in Iran] do not truly understand what they do, and how they weaken our position. As a result the field is left wide open for Israelis and Arabs and enemies of Iran. Firstly, Iran should realize that, and empower its friends in Washington, especially in the next one to two months, which is the time [to do it].

Iranian leaders should pay attention to what is going on, and strengthen their friends. They [Iranian leaders] should have confidence in, energize, and trust their friends [in Washington] so they enter the arena. This is very important. Therefore the next two or three months are the time to conquer Obama’s heart and mind and that of his teams. Anyone who acts faster will rest trouble free for the next 8 years. Anyone who does not go to that bazaar [marketplace] now, will have a tough time entering that bazaar in future.

Is there a relation between Alavi foundation’s generosity and Amirahmadi’s lobbying for the Iranian regime? There are many questions which have remained unanswered for long time. The time has come to investigate the Iranian regime’s web of influence in the US.

From her lips to God's ear: The fury of a bereaved Palestinian mother captures evil of Hamas in Gaza

The collateral damage that has been inflicted on the residents ofGaza is a sorrowful consequence of living under the rule of rocket-firing fanatics. It is because of Hamas, and only Hamas, that Palestinians are suffering. At least some of them know the identity of their tormentors. A New York Times dispatch captured an excruciating moment that took place in a hospital morgue, where a mother had just found half of the body of her 17-year-old daughter. "May God exterminate Hamas!" screamed the woman in crystal-clear understanding that the terrorist band's reckless, inhuman actions had brought death to her child. There will likely be more tragedies as Israel presses an assault on Hamas by air and, now, on the ground. Each will trace to Hamas' refusal to desist, once and for all, from raining rockets onto Israeli soil. And, perversely, each will increase pressure on Israel to stand down prematurely. Calls for a truce have mounted with the European Union, the secretary general of the UN, Arab countries and others urging both sides to come to an immediate ceasefire. Both sides? Let's start with one: the bad actor. All the world knows that Israel would give up the fight in the event Hamas stopped firing and agreed to verifiably disarm. Those terms are both the short-term fix and the long-term solution that the international community should be demanding. Lacking either one, Israel is waging a high-risk, highly skilled operation to destroy Hamas' capacity to lob missiles at will into Israeli territory, some with a range of 25 miles. The group's arsenal is formidable. More than 3,000 rockets hit Israel in 2008. More than 500 have struck since Hamas ended a "truce" on Dec. 19. And, 10 days into the offensive, Hamas was still able yesterday to fire several dozen, including one that blasted an empty kindergarten. The weapons stores must be dismantled and Hamas' supply routes - tunnels into Gaza from Egypt - must be shut, with oversight to prevent Hamas from rearming. Israel and the U.S. are properly seeking such terms. Hamas' unending barrage had forced hundreds of thousands to live in fear, yet the onslaught drew barely a fraction of the outrage now directed at Israel's exercise of self-defense. French President Nicolas Sarkozy went so far as to say, revoltingly, that Israel had hurt the cause of peace in the Mideast by sending ground troops into Gaza. There had been no peace - and there will be no peace until Hamas lacks the will and/or the way to attack. Given no choice but to push in that direction, the Israeli military has done an extraordinary job of targeting Hamas fighters and arms in crowded environments - while holding down civilian casualties. It is up against demented enemies who sacrifice their own people.

DO NOT LET THIS BEAUTIFUL SOUL BE EXECUTED BY THE ISLAMIC REGIME IN IRAN!

Farzad Kamangar is a 33-year-old teacher, human rights activist and journalist.

He was a teacher in rural areas of Iranian Kurdistan. Prior to his arrest in August 2006, he taught in the town of Kamyaran, Kurdistan. He has been subjected to the most brutal physical and emotional tortures since his arrest. Farzad Kamangar has been accused of "endangering national security" and "belligerence against God", prefabricated charges the Islamic regime in Iran brings wholesale against almost all rights activists. So far, sixteen members of the Kamangar’s extended family have been executed by the regime for their political activities. Farzad Kamangar was sentenced to death by hanging on February 2008 after a sham trial. The following is his letter from death row to the clergyman, Qolaam-Hosyn Ezhei, Islamic regime's Minister of Intelligence. It has been translated and distributed by International Committee Against Executions.

Let my heart keep beating!I have been in prison for many months now. Prison was supposed to crush my will, my love and my humanity. It was supposed to tame me. I have been detained in a ward with walls as tall as history, continuing to eternity itself. They were supposed to separate me from my beloved people, from the children of my land. But I travelled through the tiny window of my cell to far away places everyday and felt myself amongst them and like them. They, in turn, would see the reflection of their grievances imprisoned in me. Prison thus deepened our bonds. The darkness of prison was supposed to erase the very meaning of the sun and light from my mind, but I have witnessed the growth of pansies in the darkness and silence. Prison was supposed to force my mind to consign time and its value to oblivion. I have, however, relived the moments outside prison, and given birth to a new "me" in order to choose a new path.

I have also, like prisoners before me, wholeheartedly embraced every degradation, insult and cruelty that came my way, hoping to be the last person of a tormented generation who has had to endure the darkness of imprisonment in the fervent hope of seeing a new dawn.

One day, I was labeled "belligerent" for having waged war against their “God.” The noose of justice was thus woven, ready to take my life. And since that day I have been unwillingly awaiting my execution.

But I have decided, with all my love for my fellow human beings, that if I am to lose my life, let all my organs go to those who may find life receiving them. And let my heart, with all the love and passion in it, be donated to a child. It makes no difference where s/he might be: on the banks of the Kaaroon, slopes of Mount Sabalaan, fringes of the Eastern Desert; or to a child that beholds the sun rise from the Zagros Mountains. All I want is that my rebellious, restive heart may keep beating in the chest of a child who would, more rebelliously than I, reveal his/her childhood wishes to the moon and the stars, and hold them witness so that s/he may not betray them later as an adult. All I want is that my heart may keep beating in the chest of one who loses patience over the children who go to bed hungry; one that would keep the memory of Haamed – my sixteen-year-old student – alive in my heart who wrote, "even my smallest wish won't come true in this life," and hanged himself.

Let my heart keep beating in someone's chest, no matter what language s/he might speak. All I want is for her/him to be the child of a worker with calloused hands whose coarseness would keep the sparks of rage against inequalities alive. Let my heart keep beating in the chest of a child who may be a rural teacher in a not-so-distant future, whom the children would greet every morning with their delightful smiles, and with whom they would share all their joys and games. Then the children might not know the meaning of such words as poverty and hunger, and the terms "prison," "torture," "oppression" and "inequality" might be devoid of all meaning in their world. Let my heart keep beating in a tiny corner of your immense world. Only be careful with it, for it is the heart of a person full of untold stories of the people of his land, whose history abounds in pain and suffering. Let my heart keep beating in the chest of a child so that one morning I can cry at the top of my lungs and in my mother tongue [Kurdish]: I want to become a breeze carrying the message of love of all humanity to all corners of this immense world.

Farzad Kamangar

Patient in the Infectious Diseases Ward

Rajaa'i Shahr Prison, Karaj28 December 2008

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Please send protest letters to:

President Islamic Republic of Iran

His Excellency Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

Palestine Avenue, Azerbaijan IntersectionTehran 13168-43311

Islamic Republic of Iran

E-mail: dr-ahmadinejad@president.ir

Chief of State

His Excellency Ayatollah Sayed Ali Khamenei,

The Office of the Supreme LeaderIslamic Republic

Street - Shahid Keshvar Doust Street,Tehran

Islamic Republic of Iran

E-Mail: info@leader.ir

Fax: +98-21 649 5880 (unreliable)

Minister of JusticeAyatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi

Office of the Head of JusticePasteur

St. Vali Asr Ave., South of Serah-e Jomhouri

Tehran 13168-14737

Islamic Republic of Iran

E-Mail: info@dadgostary-tehran.ir

Fax: +98-21 879 6671/640 4018 or 4019 (unreliable)

Please copy your letter to the Iranian embassy in your country as well (in some countries, like the USA, the Embassy of Pakistan looks after the interests of the Islamic Republic of Iran) .