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The Iranian human rights lawyer Shirin Ebadi talks to David Batty about the regime’s abuse of its population - and how the west needs to abandon the threat of war if it wants to win over Iran’s people and bring change
David Batty
guardian.co.uk, Friday June 13 2008
Shirin Ebadi at a media forum in Germany this month. Photograph: Felix Heyder/EPA
The Iranian human rights lawyer Shirin Ebadi is not a woman easily stopped in her tracks - she has been held in jail and faced repeated death threats, but continues to speak out against the abuses of the theocratic regime. On the doorstep of the BBC’s Bush House in central London, though, an American tourist waves the Nobel peace laureate and her entourage aside, complaining loudly: “Do you mind? We’re trying to take a picture!”
It serves, perhaps, as a reminder for Ebadi - who has spent the day being treated like a VIP by the BBC World Service - of the challenge she faces in attracting western interest to her cause.
With the international community fixated on Iran’s nuclear ambitions, Ebadi says there is dwindling scrutiny of human rights in her homeland, and the hardline president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has taken advantage of this to increase repression.
“Since the world started focusing on the nuclear programme, the human rights situation in Iran has worsened every day,” says Ebadi, who won the Nobel prize in 2003.
Several Reports Surfacing regarding Dick Cheney’s recent banter on national media regarding Iran’s so-called “nuclear enrichment” — evidently he is psychic since no one else has observed this activity — either that or he is just hoping that the American people and the media will not bother to verify the facts — as he clearly saw in the faked facts and figures and reasons he gave for invading Iraq five years ago.
Dick Cheney has his sights set on Iran
To the Editor:
Dick Cheney is making the same type of broad accusation that he made in the run-up to the Iraq war. This time, his target is Iran: “Obviously, they’re also heavily involved in trying to develop nuclear weapons enrichment, the enrichment of uranium to weapons-grade levels,†he said during an interview in Turkey on Monday with ABC’s Martha Raddatz.
Cheney’s statement contradicts the findings of the International Atomic Energy Agency and his own intelligence agency’s reports. One can be sure that he is working behind the scenes, imploring the intelligence community to come up with some piece of information — no matter how small or suspect — that supports his contentions.
We’ve seen it all before.
From India eNews.com
By Ria Novosti. Moscow, Russia, 10:32 PM IST
Moscow, March 27 (RIA Novosti) Russian military intelligence services are reporting a flurry of activity by US Armed Forces near Iran’s borders, a high-ranking security source said Tuesday.
‘The latest military intelligence data point to heightened US military preparations for both an air and ground operation against Iran,’ the official said, adding that the Pentagon has probably not yet made a final decision as to when an attack will be launched.
He said the Pentagon is looking for a way to deliver a strike against Iran ‘that would enable the Americans to bring the country to its knees at minimal cost.’
He also said the US Naval presence in the Persian Gulf has for the first time in the past four years reached the level that existed shortly before the invasion of Iraq in March 2003.
Colonel-General Leonid Ivashov, vice president of the Academy of Geopolitical Sciences, said last week that the Pentagon is planning to deliver a massive air strike on Iran’s military infrastructure in the near future.
A new US carrier battle group has been dispatched to the Gulf.
The USS John C. Stennis, with a crew of 3,200 and around 80 fixed-wing aircraft, including F/A-18 Hornet and Super hornet fighter-bombers, eight support ships and four nuclear submarines are heading for the Gulf, where a similar group led by the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower has been deployed since Dec 2006. The US is also sending Patriot anti-missile systems to the region.
