Iranians are uniting behind a demand for truly free and fair elections.
Download the complete study on the Criteria for Free and Fair Elections
by the Inter-Parliamentary Union here
Nov. 17: FDI joins
Larry Klayman and Freedom Watch to examine policy options for the
incoming 112th Congress toward Iran.
From left to right: FDMI President Kenneth R. Timmerman,
FDI Advisory board member Reza Kahlili, Larry Klayman (speaking), FDI
advisory board member R. James Woolsey
FDI briefs incoming House intelligence
committee member Rep. Michele Bachmann on Iran.
(l-to-r: FDI president Kenneth R.
Timmerman, FDI Sec/Treasury Bill Nojay, Rep. Bachmann, FDI Advisory
board member R. James Woolsey)
e
Dec. 26, 2012 - Pastor Yousef back in jail.Iranian media sources
are reporting that Pastor Yousef Naderkhani, who was released in
September after nearly two years in jail, was rearrested on Christmas
Day by the authorities in Rasht. Pastor Yousef's attorney has also been
jailed and has been in Evin Prison for the past three months.
Dec. 20, 2012 - Pro-Tehran group seeks an end to sanctions.
The National Iranian-American Council, NIAC, which has consistently
lobbied the U.S. government to end sanctions and engage in direct
negotiations with the Tehran regime,
has sent a letter to President Obama signed by 24 U.S. and European
"experts," arguing that sanctions will not compel the regime to halt
its nuclear weapons program. NIAC's goal, once again, is to get U.S.
sanctions lifted and to provide "cover" to the Obama administration for
its efforts to craft a "grand bargain" that would guarantee U.S.
recognition for the Islamist regime in exchange for window-dressing
concessions by Tehran. According to Hassan Daioleslam, who won a
landmark defamation suit against NIAC earlier this year (see our Sept
20, 2012 entry, below), this latest NIAC letter received a "warm
reception in Tehran," where a group of former regime diplomats
reported on the NIAC effort with the title, "Did the Iran Lobby
Speak Out?"
Dec. 19, 2012 – American Pastor Arrested,
Held in Evin Prison. An Iranian-born American pastor,
Saeed Abedini, has been arrested in Iran and is being held in Evin
Prison on unknown charges. Abedini fled Iran with his Iranian-born wife
in 2005 after threats of persecution because of his work with the
underground “house” church movement in Iran.
Abedini converted to Islam at the age of 20 after falling into
depressing during forced recruitment by the regime to become a suicide
bomber. “Christianity saved his life,” his wife said. "When he became a
Christian, he became a criminal in his own country. His passion was to
reach the people of Iran.”
The State
Department needs to instruct all US diplomats to name Pastor Saeed and
other prisoners of conscience in Iran in ALL encounters with Iranian
officials, and demand their release. This is what Reagan did – and it
works.
The “Supreme
Leader” of the Islamic Republic today boasted about opening a Facebook
page, the BBC reported. Many outraged Facebook users have already
“liked” the page, hoping in that way to post negative comments.
FDI urges supporters to take a different approach, and to use Facebook’s own reporting feature
to demand that the page be taken down. We've posted the steps you can
take right here. It's as simple as 1-2-3-4!
Just last month, the regime jailed and then murdered Sattar Behesti for
blogging and and posting to Facebook comments that were critical to the
regime. He was arrested by the regime’s “cyber police” for “actions
against national security on social networks and Facebook.”
Khamenei should not be given the courtesy of exploiting Facebook for
cynical purposes when his regime mercilessly murders activists who use
it as a vehicle of political expression. "Democracy is a two-way
street," says former student leader Roozbeh Farahanipour, founder of
Marzeporgohar. "They can't have it both ways."
Please
report the Khamenei page to Facebook NOW and demand that it be taken
down. Not only is it offensive to all freedom-loving
individuals, it is in clear violations of U.S. sanctions.
Dec. 12, 2012: FDI’s Director
of
Strategic Information reveals Tehran’s latest terror plot. In
collaboration
with World
Net
Daily, FDI’s Director of Stategic Information, Reza Kahlili,
today revealed the latest plot by the Islamic Republic of Iran to
conduct terror attacks on U.S. soil. The plot involves highly-trained
Iranian regime agents, most of whom are already in the U.S., who have
recruited local assets and are being funded by an Iranian-American
businessman who travels frequently to Tehran. All logistics are being
handled directly by the commander of the Revolutionary Guards Qods
Force, General Qassem Soulemani. Targets are being cleared with Supreme
Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. U.S. law enforcement and intelligence
officials have been made aware of the plot and are working to thwart it.
While FDI does not take a position on domestic Iranian political
issues, we feel strongly that Iranians need to have these debates, and
we will continue to use our good offices as honest broker to generate
this type of honest and forthright discussion. From our many years of
experience in these debates, however, one word of caution: little is to
be gained by using “hot words” (such as “separatist”) to condemn
the parties who feel passionately about these issues. Kurds, Azeris,
Balouchis, Lurs, Bakhtiaris and others are just as Iranian as those
Iranians who identify themselves as Persians.
Nov. 29,
2012: FDI discloses 2nd new nuclear site
As part of its Strategic Information Project (SIP), FDI works with
sources inside Iran, former intelligence officers, defectors and other
sources to
expose the secrets of the Iranian regime. The Strategic
Information Project is led by Reza Kahlili, the pseudonym for a former
CIA officer who worked under cover for more than a decade inside the
Islamic Republic Revolutionary Guards Corps on behalf of the CIA.
In partnership with WorldNetDaily, the premier investigative news site,
FDI today
disclosed
a 2nd secret nuclear weapons-related site in
Iran, following on the heels of earlier revelations of a facility
used
to develop the neutron initiator for a nuclear weapon.
The new site, code-named “Fateh-1,” appears to include extensive
underground laboratories hidden beneath above ground facilities, and is
located outside the small city of Shahrokhabad in Kerman Province in
southeastern Iran. The plant is engaged in transforming uranium ore
into yellowcake. Kahlili hints at the possibility that the underground
part of the facility could be a secret centrifuge enrichment plant.
You can support FDI’s Stategic Information Projects and our other
programs by making a tax deductible contribution. Email us for further
information.
Oct. 21,
2012: What of Obama's "October Surprise?" Michael Ledeen calls
it, “a
big
nothingburger” - talks about more talks with Iran. But in what
bore all the hallmarks of an orchestrated White House leak, the
NY
Times on Saturday revealed that the senior Obama administration
officials “have agreed in principle for the first time to one-on-one
negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program.”
FDI has consistently argued that only regime change can resolve the
nuclear standoff between the West and the Islamic Republic of Iran. As
the latest roundup of Christians shows (see below), the regime will
cynically dangle sketchy “progress” on the nuclear issue in front of
the United States, while arresting, torturing, and murdering its own
people with impunity. FDI President Kenneth R. Timmerman, now a
candidate for Congress, has issued a separate
political
statement on this latest development.
Oct. 19,
2012: Hundreds of Christian House Church members rounded up. As
the Iranian regime faces economic collapse because of its mismanagement
of the nation’s vast economic and natural resources, it once again is
attempting to find scapegoats for its failures. This week, it sent the
secret police to found up hundreds of members of Christian house
churches, apparently in an effort to intimidate former Muslims who have
become Christians.
Firouz Khandjani, a council member of the ‘Church of Iran’ house church
movement, told reporters earlier this week that “ at least 100, but
perhaps as many as 400 people, have been detained over the last 10
days” in Tehran and at least three other cities.
"We know that many have been forced to say they will no longer attend
church services in exchange for freedom,” he
said.
When Ahmadinejad first took office in 2005, he announced that one of
his priorities would be to “crush” the house church movement in Iran.
FDI calls on supporters of freedom in Iran to pray for imprisoned
Christians and to lobby their governments to demand that the Iranian
regime release these and other prisoners of conscience.
Oct 18 – Pressure mounts against
EU parliament trip to Tehran. Pressure mounted this week to
cancel the five-member EU Parliamentary delegation planning to visit
Tehran on Oct. 27. On Oct 17, Bnai
B’rith
called on the EU to cancel the trip, noting that “it would
be counterproductive to the efforts being made to isolate Iran.” Also
on Thursday, the EU Parliament’s Vice President, Alejo vidal-Quadras,
called for the trip to be cancelled. “Such visits would give credit to
the mullahs and is [sic] completely for the benefit of the Iranian
regime to justify the repression, violation of human rights and export
of fundamentalism and terrorism,” he
said in Brussels.
Sept. 26,
2012: Statement from FDI
President Kenneth R. Timmerman on the de-listing of the MEK
(Mujahedin-e Khalq) by the State Department:
FDI has long advocated for keeping the MEK on the State
Department’s list of international terrorist organizations because of
its proven involvement in the murder of U.S. military officers and
defense industry officials in Iran in the late 1970s. We also believe
that the MEK operates as a cult, and that its brand of Islamic Marxism
offers little real change from the Islamic Republic.
That battle is now over. The State Department and the Obama
administration have decided to impose a statute of limitations on
murdering Americans overseas. This sets a very dangerous precedent and
endangers all Americans, not just our diplomats and military.
Delisting the MEK does not mean, however,
that the
group should get a free pass or that the FBI should abandon ongoing
investigations into alleged money-laundering and racketeering charges
against MEK members here in the United States.
Going forward, FDI believes that the
Treasury Department should also remove the Free Life Party of Iranian
Kurdistan, PJAK, from its list of international terrorist
organizations.
Unlike the MEK, PJAK has never murdered Americans, has never advocated
murdering Americans, and has strongly supported the United States. PJAK
is a strongly secular group that stands as a bulwark against Islamist
ideology. It also rejects separatism or any assault on Iran’s
territorial integrity.
In addition, FDI believes Congress should investigate groups such as
the National Iranian American Council, NIAC, to determine whether it is
operating as an unregistered foreign agent in its advocacy for
pro-Tehran positions.
Sept. 20,
2012: Judge vindicates Hassan Dai. The Free Beacon newspaper in
Washington, DC wrote a
detailed account of NIAC’s failed lawsuit against Iranian-American
human rights activist Hassan Daioleslam. FDI president Kenneth R.
Timmerman, now a candidate for Congress in Maryland, who is quoted in
the article, pledged to conduct a Congressional investigation into
NIAC’s alleged ties to the Iranian regime and for potential violations
of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, FARA.
Sept 14,
2012: The End of NIAC as we know it. A federal judge in
Washington, DC on Thursday dismissed the long-standing NIAC lawsuit
against Iranian-American activist Hassan Daioleslam, who has claimed in
numerous news articles and opinion pieces that NIAC founder Trita Parsi
acts as a “lobbyist” for the the Islamic Republic of Iran. You can download the
judgment here. Judge Bates also ruled that
NIAC was liable to pay Dai seventy percent of his expenses, which could
amount to several million dollars. This will effectively bankrupt NIAC–
unless,
of course, his masters decide to foot the bill. Parsi has
become the darling of the George Soros Left. Since President Obama took
office, Parsi has been invited to the White House and to private
dinners with Sec/State Hillary Clinton.
It may be no
coincidence that, as
Mark
Langfan argues in this compelling analysis, the Obama
administration seems to have developed a tragic new concept of “red
lines” when it comes to dealing with a nuclear-armed Iran: “Let's
wait
to attack Iran until Iran actually builds a nuclear bomb, and then
we can't attack Iran because Iran has the nuclear bomb. “ Drawing on
the unclassified annual “721 report” the CIA presents annually to
Congress on the WMD capabilities of rogue states, Langfan argues that
the overwhelming majority of Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium was
produced since 2009, “so Obama can't blame Iran's U235 enrichment on
Bush. The 721 reports prove Iranian
enrichment happened on Obama's "watch."
In his opinion, Judge Bates cites email exchanges between
Hassan Dai and FDI founder and CEO Kenneth R. Timmerman (NIAC tried
unsuccessfully as part of its harassment campaign to compel Timmerman’s
testimony in the case). Judge Bates noted on p 14 that “Timmerman
pushed [DAI] to muster more factual support for his allegations…In
other words, Timmerman asked precisely the sorts of questions that an
editor should, and defendant apparently responded to them
appropriately.”
Timmerman commented: “I am pleased that I
was able to assist Hassan Dai in firming up his important research into
the lobbying activities of Trita Parsi and NIAC, which always seemed to
correspond to the letter to the policy goals of the Islamic Republic of
Iran.”
Sept 2,
2012: Why NIAC and IRI apologists are mobilizing against Ken Timmerman.
Please
read
this important post by FDI advisory board member, Dr. Arash
Irandoost, regarding malicious, defamatory emails being circulating by
NIAC sympathizers in Texas.
Aug 30, 2012: FDI joins letter to Rep.
Rohrabacher. FDI CEO Kenneth R. Timmerman has joined
Iranian-Americans and other activists in
a
letter to Rep. Rohrabacher that sets out the history of
Azeribaijan's ties to Iran. The letter ends with an exhortation to Mr.
Rohrabacher to avoid the mistakes made by Obama, who ignored the cries
of the Iranian people in June 2009 and turned a deaf ear to the murder
of Neda.
- Ban Ki Moon: UN supports freedom in
Iran. After being roundly criticized for lending legitimacy to
the regime by traveling to Tehran for the Non-Aligned Movement summit,
UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon gave
a
brilliant speech to Iranian academics calling for greater freedom
and respect for human rights by the regime. We have our serious
concerns on the human rights abuses and violations in this country," he
told the group. Ban also warned the regime to loosen its stranglehold
on political dissent. "Restricting freedom of expression and
suppressing social activism will only set back development and plant
the seeds of instability," he said. It is especially important for the
voices of Iran’s people to be heard during next year’s presidential
election. That is why I have urged the authorities during my visit this
time to release opposition leaders,
human rights defenders, journalists and social activists to create the
conditions for free expression and open debate." Surely not the music
the regime had been expecting!
Aug. 29, 2012: Iranians join on-line
petition against Rohrbacher letter. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher's
July 26 letter to Sec/State Hillary Clinton (see below) has ignited a
firestorm within the Iranian-American community. FDI invites our
supporters to sign
an
on-line petition calling on Mr. Rohrabacher to retract his
letter. "Any calls for separatism, such as the statement from Rep.
Rohrabacher, are dangerous, ill-informed, and contrary to the expressed
desires of the overwhelming majority of the people of Iran," said FDI
founder and president Kenneth R. Timmerman, who has signed the petition.
Aug. 27, 2012: Iranian defector blasts
Fakhravar. Former Iranian intelligence officer Hamid Reza
Zakeri released a second
document purporting to be an MOIS letter granting a passport to
self-styled "student" leader, Amir Abbas Fakhravar, for use in overseas
operations.Zakeri explains
his allegations on Mardom TV (starting at 1h:15min in the program.
Aug. 24, 2012: No Political Prisoners? Iran has "no political
prisoners," according to Mohammad Javad Larijani, secretary to
the judiciary's so-called "human-rights committee." Read Washington
Institute analyst Mehdi Khalaji's excellent
Wall
Street Journal oped about the "human rights opening" in Iran."
Meanwhile, this week Supreme Leader freed 130 "political prisoners"
from jail as part of an annual amnesty to coincide with the Eid el-Fitr
celebrations. So which is it?
Aug. 23, 2012: Women barred from science, industry. Nobel peace
prize laureate Shirin Ebadi sent a letter to the United Nationsl
today complaining that the regime has decided to bar women from
studying dozens of subjects, including nuclear physics and materials
engineering, both key for the oil industry. Also closed to women
starting this year are computer science, civil engineering, English
translation, and chemistry. "For the coming academic year, 36
universities have closed 77 academic fields to women," she
said.
Aug. 22, 2012: Christian pastor
faces new charges. In their ongoing persecution of Christian
pastor Youcef Naderkhani, the regime appears to have dropped apostasy
charges, but now plans to try him for "banditry
and
extortion." This is yet another outrage from a regime that has
vowed to "break" the effervescent house church movement inside Iran.
Naderkhani's lawyer, who was disbarred by the regime earlier this year,
will apparently be allowed to attend his trial in the coming days,
although he was told international human rights groups that he is "not
aware" of the new charges against his client.
In comments broadcast by the regime’s English language network, Press
TV, Gen. Hajizadeh threatened nuclear retaliation. “If the loud cries
of the leaders of the Zionist regime are materialized, it would be the
best opportunity for obliterating this fake regime from the face of the
earth and dumping it into the dustbin of history,” Hajizadeh said.
Aug. 16, 2012: MOIS Defector releases document on Fakhravar. A
defector from the Islamic Republic’s Ministry of Intelligence,
Hamid Reza Zakeri, has released a series of documents revealing alleged
operational ties between a self-styled “student” leader, Amir Abbas
Fakhravar, and MOIS.
The third of five documents, released today, purports
to
be a letter from September 2004, signed by an MOIS official named
Heshmatollah Mahdavi, giving instructions to a judge to release Fakhravar from prison, where the letter states he was
serving time for illegally excavating and selling antiquities. In the
letter, stamped TOP SECRET, Mahdavi asks the court to waive the rest of
Fakhravar’s prison sentence “in exchange for pending service to the
ministry in a classified operation” that Mahdavi will describe to the
chief of the Revolutionary court in person.
After Zakeri began releasing earlier documents in this series,
Fakhravar allegedly sent him a number of Facebook messages, including
these,where he threatened “to cut” Zakeri’s wife and child, an MOIS
euphemism for “murder.”
Fakhravar has denied the authenticity of these documents, and FDI is
not in a position without seeing the originals to determine their
authenticity.
Fakhravar is a divisive figure who burst on the scene in the United
States in 2006, miraculously “escaping” from Iran on a fresh Iranian
passport by flying to Dubai, where he was met by supporters who
arranged for him to come to the United States.He has claimed to be a leader of
the student uprising of 1999, although he has told FDI that he was then
serving as a medic in a local police hospital where he helped treated
student casualties, or (in another version) as a law student.
Several people who later got to know Fakhravar when he was transferred
from the criminal Qasr prison to the political wing in Evin prison have
provided testimony shedding doubt on his claims to be a political
dissident. Interviewed in different countries over a period of several
years, they all pointed to his close ties to the prison warden, his
ability to acquire street clothes, a cellphone, and other amenities
forbidden political prisoners.
Fakhravar's supporters have swept aside this testimony as rumor and
hearsay from his political enemies and have provided an
extensive account of his counter-claims. For additional background,
see
this
Nov. 2011 article in the New English Review.
Last September, a group of 102 former student activists and leaders
wrote a confidential letter to the Library of Congress, claiming that
the student organization Fakhravar claims to head is a fake. “The
student confederation you refer to is a small group in [the]
Washington, DC area that has no base among the Iranian students within
the country or other locations in the world,” they wrote.
Aug 15, 2012: NIAC lobbies candidates and incumbents. In a
brazen lobbying email sent to Members of Congress and candidates, the
National Iranian American Council (NIAC) and its left-wing allies
offered an “off-the-record policy and messaging webinar” on Iran
policy, featuring NIAC president Trita Parsi, to be conducted on Sept
12 at 2 PM Eastern time.
NIAC and its associates have consistently sought to lobby Congress and
the executive branch to remove sanctions on Iran and negotiate with the
Iranian regime. During the 2008 election campaign, NIAC blasted
the outgoing Bush administration for failing to “reach out” to Tehran,
despite the fact that the U.S. held no fewer than 28 high-level
negotiating sessions with Iranian regime officials from 2001-2008, to
no avail.
Aug. 13, 2012: War by Oct. 1? The next IAEA report is expected
to detail new progress by the Iranian regime in uranium enrichment. According
to
Debkafile, the report will show that Iran will have 250
kilograms of 20-percent enriched uranium by October 1. This is enough
to make a 1945-generation nuclear device – and enough for several more
sophisticated weapons. Debkafile believes Israel will be compelled to
launch military strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities after the U.S.
national political conventions at the end of this month – and at the
latest by October 1.
July 26, 2012: Rep. Dana Rohrabacher calls
for U.S. to back Azeri separatist movement. In a bizaare move,
California Republican Dana Rohrabacher has written to
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, urging the United States to support
the "reunification" of Iranian Azeris with Azerbaijan. This is
precisely what the Soviet Union tried to do in 1947 when it backed a
breakaway Azeri Republic in Iran - a move that led President Truman to
threaten the use of nuclear weapons against the Soviets at the very
start of the Cold War. "The people of Azerbaijan are geographically
divided and many are calling for the reunification of their homeland
after nearly two centuries of foreign rule," Rohrabacher wrote. "Aiding
the legitimate aspirations of the Azeri people for independence is a
worthy cause in and of itself," he
added.
FDI has consistently supported the rights of ethnic minorities in Iran
in their quest for political freedom and human rights, and we have
moderated a number of workshops and conferences where various forms of
federalism or confederation within the confines of a united Iran were discussed. In his understandable desire to make life
more difficult for the ruling Islamic Republic, however, Rep.
Rohrabacher is openly advocating separatism, a stance that only plays
into the hands of the Tehran regime.
June 4,
2012: Iranian-Americans urge
California legislature to adopt sanctions. In
a letter to California state Senator Samuel Blankesless, a group of
Iranian-Americans urged the adoption of S.R. 29, which would require
the St.ate of California to impose tough new sanctions against the
Islamic Republic of Iran.
June 2, 2012: Iranian regime allows Nazi Propaganda website to go live.
In a country where the state strictly controls Internet
access, it is no accident when an
outrageous
Nazi propaganda website suddenly goes on line, praising
Hitler for transforming Germany. Meanwhile, in the U.S., Code
Pink
and 1970s feminist Gloria Steinem shower the Tehran regime
with praise. No surprise there.
May 25, 2012: FDI CEO Kenneth Timmerman column on Iran negotiations. In
a
column with the Daily Caller, Timmerman warned of the dangers of
phony negotiations with the Islamic Republic leadership over their
nuclear program. In the lead-up to yet another round of negotiations
with U.S. and Western government representatives in Baghdad, Timmerman
warned that the regime's goal was to keep on "talking
about
talks, not about substance," all the while buying more time
so the uranium enrichment centrifuges could keep spinning.
May 5, 2012: Iranian-Americans protest appearance by pro-Tehran
lobbyists Trita Parsi in Sweden. More than 1,400 Iranian-Americans
signed a letter to the Swedish Foreign Ministry to protest their
hosting an event with Parsi in Stockholm, one month after a U.S. court rejected
NIAC
defamation experts in their harrassment lawsuit against Hassan
Dai.
April 17, 2012: Iranian regime says it "will not tolerate" fall of
Assad. Syria's Assad has been a staunch ally of the Tehran
regime since the earliest days of the revolution, and Tehran is backing
him to the hilt as he brutally suppresses protestors. Now the Islamic
Republic claims to have established a "joint
war
room" with the Syrian leadership, while ordering Hezbollah into
action to defend Assad.
March 8, 2012: Ten minutes to midnight on
the Iran War clock. FDI is happy to to take part in the Iran
War
Clock project of the Atlantic Monthly, even though it includes
many "experts" we don't consider experts on Iran, as well as some
people we normally wouldn't exchange greetings with. The conclusions
are a mathematical averaging of our views, not a consensus. For
example, FDI's view is that there is an 85% chance of war - why? Mainly
because of the appeasement policies of Obama and the pro-mullah regime
lobby, which is also represented on this panel, and their acolytes in
Congress.
Feb. 28, 2012: Your letters count. Regime
appears to back down on Pastor Youcef death sentence. The
international outcry against the death sentence handed down last week
against pastor Youcef Nadarkhani for "apostasy" - that is, for becoming
a Christian and refusing to recant his faith - appears to be having an
impact. FoxNews reported yesterday that despite official statements
from the regime that Pastor Youcef's was "immanent," as of Sunday he
was still alive and in good spirits. FDI President and CEO Ken
Timmerman will talk about what you can do to help Pastor Youcef tonight
on the Michael Savage show at
around 8:30 PM Eastern. The American Center for Law and Justice has set
up a special website with
activists' tools - twitter, facebook, on-line petitions - so you
can add your voice to the outcry to set free this prisoner of
faith. In addiiton, Representatives Trent Franks, Frank Wolf, Joe
Pitts and Keit Ellison are sponsoring H.Res.
556 that condemns the Iranian regime for its ongoing oppression
of religious minorities. Ahmadinejad pledge when he took office in 2005 to "break"
the underground church in Iran, and has relentlessly persecuted house
churches and Muslim converts to Christianity. On Monday, a court in
Kermanshah, in Western Iran, condemned
schoolteacher
Masoud
Delijani to three years in prison, solely
because of his Christian faith. Arrests of Christians in Kermanshah has
intensified following an
edict
from
the intelligence services on November, calling on the
police to monitor the activities of foreigners, Christians and other
minorities.
Feb. 19, 2012: Former Mossad operative:
Thailand hit team fit Iranian government M.O. Apologists
for the Iranian regime say Iran couldn't possilby have been behind the
recent spate of anti-Israeli attacks around the world because of the
amateur-ishness of the would-be bombers. But former Mossad operative
Michael Ross says otherwise in
this
piece
from Canada's National Post. Face of an
alleged terrorist?: One alleged member of the Bangkok hit squad
escaped and fled back to Tehran, a woman named Leila Rohani. FDI sources have provided us with a copy of
what purports to be her oficial passport.
Feb. 17, 2012: Iranian regime bombers in
Thailand. Authorities in Thailand yesterday released
this
photographof three Iranian-born
bomb suspects partying with local Thai women in Pattaya, during a stay
in the resort town shortly before an aborted terror spree in Bankok.
Israeli officials believe was the Bangkok hit team was part of a
worldwide series of Iranian-government attacks on Israeli diplomats.
Masoud Sedaghat Zadeh, left, was arrested in Malaysia, Mohammad
Khazaei, center, was detained at Suvarnabhumi Airport, and Saied Moradi
was lost a leg when a grenade he tossed at police bounced back at him.
The day before their arrest, other terrorist cells believed
to
be
tied to Tehran attacked Israeli embassy personnel and their
families in India and Georgia.
Feb. 12, 2012: Day of Infamy in Iran.
For some two million Iranians who fled tyranny in their country and
came to America to embrace our freedoms, February 12 will forever
remain a day of infamy. FDI has been
dedicated to helping the pro-freedom movement in Iran. Read
executive director Kenneth R. Timmerman's commemoration of this day of infamy, and his message to the
Iranian people. "We must finally understand that it’s not the
behavior of the regime that poses a threat to world security; it’s the
very existence of this regime," Timmerman writes.
Feb. 11, 2012: Internet going down in Iran.
How you can help. The Tor Project, a non-profit venture that
provides anti-censorship proxy tools free of charge to users in
countries such as Iran, just announced a crash effort to circumvent
newly-erected cyber-walls around local ISPs, as the regime attempts to
erect a CyberCurtain around Iran in the approach to next month's
parliamentary elections. TOR is asking users with spare computer
capacity in the West to set up "obfuscated bridge" servers. "This kind
of help is not for the technically faint of heart but it's absolutely
needed for people in Iran, right now. It's likely that more than
~50,000 - ~60,000 Tor users may drop offline," Tor Project's Jacob
Appelbaum said. Technical
instructions
are
here, and more complete information is available
at Tor-talk.
CNET
is
reporting that Internet-savvy users in Iran also are
circumventing the blackout using VPN - virtual private networks - in
addition to TOR and similar tools, CNET is
reporting.
Jan. 16, 2012: Iranian-American
researcher
murdered in Houston
-
the
intel wars begin? According to initial police reports,
someone walked up to Gelareh Bagherzadeh's car as she was about to park
by her parents home in Houston, and shot her three times in the head
through the window. They excluded robbery as a motive, since the
assassin made no attempt to steal her purse, which was sitting on the
front seat.
Gelareh had been photographed taking part in anti-regime
demonstrations organized by Sabz
Iran, a pro-green movement group in Texas, but so far the FBI has not
opened an investigation - just as they have never opened an
investigation into the alleged "suicide" of Ahmed Rezai, son of former
Rev. Guards commander Gen. Mohsen Rezai, in Dubai on Nov. 12.
Jan.
13,
2012: "War or regime change," financial analyst says. In
a
refreshingly clear-headed
exchange
on
Bloomberg television, financial analyst and author
James Rickards examined recent talks between U.S. Treasury Secretary
Timothy Geitner and the Chinese authorities and said they were all
aimed at warning the Chinese that U.S. sanctions would be imposed on
Chinese companies if they continued trading with Iran, and reassuring
China that it would get the oil it needs to drive its economy. "It's
about making sure they get replacement oil," Rickards said.
War with Iran "began two years ago," he said. "2010 was the year of
cyber warfare. 2011 was the year of special operations," with the
assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists and sabotage of facilities.
"2012, it's a full scale financial war." How Iran responds to the
mounting pressures against it will determine the outcome. "Either
there's going to be a regime change in Iran, or the Iranians will steer
away from their nuclear program, or there's going to be a shooting war
in Iran. It will be one of those three options."
Rickards didn't hold out much hope that Iran would back off its nuclear
ambitions, and at the end of the program shortened his short list: The
"divide and conquer game has been going on for three years. It's
over... It's going to be war or regime change."
Jan. 4, 2012: Grover Norquist, Mullah's
Ally. Anti-tax campaigner Grover Norquist has
used the resources of his Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) organization
to help hard-left and pro-Tehran groups lobby against U.S.
sanctions on Iran, a new report reveals. Norquist ally, Michael Ostrolenk (see photo),
offered the ATR office suite to host a meeting to establish an
anti-sanctions lobbying coalition in November 2007 that was spearheaded
by Trita Parsi and his
National Iranian-American Council (NIAC). Ostrolenk's group, the
American Conservative Defense Alliance (ACDA) was "a founder and
leader" of the anti-sanctions effort, known as Campaign for a New
American Policy for Iran (CNAPI), the report
states.
Norquist appears to have understood he was skating on thin ice, and
never publicly signed on to CNAPI's pro-Tehran lobbying campaign, even
though he allowed them to use the ATR office for organizational
meetings. As Parsi himself pointed out in an email to other
members of the anti-Bush administration alliance, Norquist was a big
get. "He exemplifies not just a powerful voice in the Republican Party,
but also an important figure that can provide transpartisan legitimacy
to our efforts," Parsi wrote.
CNAPI's efforts against U.S. sanctions on Iran were supported in part
by George Soros through his Open Society Institute, which paid the
salary of a CNAPI staffer. The coalition included the hard-left
Institute for Policy Studies; the Council on American Islamic Relations
(CAIR), J Street, and the Campaign Against Sanctions and Military
Intervention in Iran (CASMII) .
"The founder of NIAC, Trita Parsi is an unpopular figure within the
Iranian-American community, as can be seen from his high disapproval
ratings in a July 2011 poll of over 1800 Iranian Americans taken by the
Pro-Democracy Movement of Iran," writes
Iranian-American
activist
Manda Zand Ervin. "If Mr. Norquist is
supporting these apparently unabashed lobbyists out of a humanitarian
concern for the people of Iran, he should know that a large majority of
Iranian people have no problem with economic sanctions if they result
in the removal of this illegitimate, dictatorial regime," she added.
• Iran again asks Germany to expel German
citizen...! During a meeting with German parliamentarians in
Tehran on Wednesday, the head of the Iranian majles Human rights
commnission asked Germany to expel PJAK leader Abdulrahman Haj Ahmadi,
on allegations of terrorism, Fars
News agency reported. Zohreh Elahian demanded that extradite Ahmadi
to Iran, neglecting to mention that he has been a German citizen for
decades.
The Iranian regime
has repeatedly demanded that the EU arrest and deport Ahmadi, and at
one point managed to get Interpol to issue a Red notice for his arrest,
as we reported last year. This latest Iranian demand comes less than
one week after PJAK forces kileld 8 IRGC members and local Kurdish
militiamen working for the IRGC during a clash near the Iranian Kurdish
city of Baneh on Dec. 28. In its version of events, PJAK claims the
regime is trying to violate the 5-month old ceasefire in Kurdistan and
pin the blame on PJAK. If the regime continues these attacks, "we will
use the right of self defence and respond to them as we did in July
last year," a PJAK spokesman in Europe told FDI.
Jan. 3, 2012: Tabarzadi's Video
from
Prison. A former student leader who has been in and out of jail
for years managed to send an unusual 15-minute cellphone video message
to the outside world and get it posted on YouTube.
Heshmatollah
Tabarzadi
apparently filmed the message from Rajayishahr
prison, where he predicted that the regime's attempts to silence
dissent would fail. "I believe freedom is the essence of being human,"
he said. "Without freedom, choice has no meaning." The Tabarazadi
video and an earlier one of prominent political prisoners taken inside
Gohardasht prison are "example[s] of social media providing Iranian
activists a platform on which they can express themselves more freely
than through other, frequently heavily censored media," Radio
Free
Europe/Radio
Liberty commented.
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Technology Freedom
Project
The “Supreme
Leader” of the Islamic Republic today boasted about opening a Facebook
page, the BBC reported. Many outraged Facebook users have already
“liked” the page, hoping in that way to post negative comments. 
Jamshid Charlangi interviews
FDI
president Kenneth R. Timmerman.
Iranian-born
bomb suspects partying with local Thai women in Pattaya, during a stay
in the resort town shortly before an aborted terror spree in Bankok.
Israeli officials believe was the Bangkok hit team was part of a
worldwide series of Iranian-government attacks on Israeli diplomats.
Masoud Sedaghat Zadeh, left, was arrested in Malaysia, Mohammad
Khazaei, center, was detained at Suvarnabhumi Airport, and Saied Moradi
was lost a leg when a grenade he tossed at police bounced back at him.
The day before their arrest, other terrorist cells believed
to
be
tied to Tehran attacked Israeli embassy personnel and their
families in India and Georgia.
Houston
-
the
intel wars begin? According to initial police reports,
someone walked up to Gelareh Bagherzadeh's car as she was about to park
by her parents home in Houston, and shot her three times in the head
through the window. They excluded robbery as a motive, since the
assassin made no attempt to steal her purse, which was sitting on the
front seat. 
-Tehran groups lobby against U.S.
sanctions on Iran, a new report reveals. Norquist ally, Michael Ostrolenk (see photo),
offered the ATR office suite to host a meeting to establish an
anti-sanctions lobbying coalition in November 2007 that was spearheaded
by Trita Parsi and his
National Iranian-American Council (NIAC). Ostrolenk's group, the
American Conservative Defense Alliance (ACDA) was "a founder and
leader" of the anti-sanctions effort, known as Campaign for a New
American Policy for Iran (CNAPI), the report
states.
e 