(Juan Cole | Informed Consent | 28 November 2009) – The board of the United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency on Friday condemned Iran for secretly building a new nuclear enrichment facility at Fordo near Qom, and called on it to mothball the new site. The resolution was backed by the permanent members of the UN Security Council, including China and Russia, as well as Germany.

Fully 25 of the 35 nations on the nuclear board voted for the resolution, India joined the consensus condemning Iran, though New Delhi issued a statement saying its vote did not signal openness to the imposition of further sanctions on Iran. Only Cuba, Venezuela and Malaysia voted against the text, with 6 others abstaining and one absent. Brazil was among those abstaining. And its abstention spells future trouble for US policy toward Iran, since President Lula da Silva appears to fear that if Iran’s right to enrich is withdrawn, it could have implications for countries such as Brazil. Iran has been wooing Brazil and other Latin American countries, with some success, on anti-imperialist grounds, as WaPo rightly says.

The text (see below) affirmed Iran’s right to enrich uranium for fuel under the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, but nevertheless insisted that it cease its enrichment activities. The position of the IAEA and the UN Security Council that Iran’s secret experiments before early 2003 and its refusal to be bound by the safeguards provisions of the Non-Proliferation Treaty have the effect of making its enrichment activities illicit. The UNSC demands that they cease until Iran allows full and completely transparent inspections. The document also said that the secret nature of the Fordo plant raised questions about whether there were other concealed sites. (In fact, outgoing IAEA head Mohammed Elbaradei confirmed that all inspectors found at Fordo was ‘a hole in the ground,’ not a real facility.)

Iran replies that its preference for working in secrecy was the result of military threats against its right to enrich, as enshrined in the NPT. It has allowed UN inspections, and these have never found a weapons program. Moreover, the text of the NPT (Article IV, Para. 1) explicitly says, “Nothing in this Treaty shall be interpreted as affecting the inalienable right of all the Parties to the Treaty to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes without discrimination and in conformity with Articles I and II of this Treaty.”

Even the safeguards system, the more recent and robust version of which Iran’s parliament declined to ratify, specifies inspections of fissile material, whereas Iran does not appear even to have any of the latter or to be capable of producing it for a decade or more.

Iranian leaders say that nuclear weapons are contrary to the Islamic law of war, that they do not want them and could not legally deploy them. They hold that the enrichment facilities are intended to produce fuel for a string of nuclear reactors that will keep Iran from having to use its precious petroleum, a key earner of foreign exchange and guarantor of national independence, for domestic power generation. Russia is building nuclear plants for Iran at Bushehr.

My own position is that, in addition, Iran’s leadership is seeking whatis sometimes called the “Japan option” or a “rapid breakout capability.” Unlike North Korea, India and Pakistan, I think Tehran genuinely does not want to actually construct and detonate a nuclear device. India and Pakistan are such large and important countries that they defied the First World nuclear club successfully and so joined it. North Korea, much smaller, weaker and poorer, has made itself an international pariah in this way, and is suffering more and more severe UN sanctions. I think most senior Iranian leaders wish to avoid those heavy sanctions, having seen what they did to Iraq.

But having a rapid breakout capability– being able to make a bomb in short order if it is felt absolutely necessary to forestall a foreign attack– has a deterrent effect. So Iran would have the advantages of deterrence without the disadvantages of a bomb if it could get to the rapid breakout stage.

My theory has the advantage of explaining everything about Iran’s behavior– its condemnation of the Bomb as incompatible with Islamic law, its willingness to offer fair cooperation with UN inspectors, the repeated inability of US intelligence and of the IAEA to find any trace of a weapons program, and yet Iran’s frustrating lack of complete transparency and its penchant for building secret enrichment sites. You can’t retain a credible rapid breakout capability, or “nuclear latency,” if your enrichment facility can be destroyed by air strikes. Repeated Cheneyite and Israeli threats to attack the enrichment plant at Natanz near Isfahan are what I believe drove Iran to construct the Fordo site inside a mountain, in hopes that this step would make it impossible for an outside power to use military might to wipe out Iran’s nuclear latency.

The US and Western Europe and Israel interpret Iran’s secrecy as a sign that nefarious secret weapons programs are being pursued. But this conclusion is riddled with difficulties. A weapons program uses enormous amounts of water and electricity and would be very difficult to conceal nowadays from US satellite and electronic surveillance. The US knew about Fordo as soon as work began on it.

A desire on the part of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Commanders to retain the soft deterrence of a rapid breakout capability probably explains Iran’s waffling on the deal tentatively adopted at Geneva on October 1. That agreement would have had Iran send 2600 pounds of its 3200 pounds of low enriched uranium (enriched to less than 5 percent) to Russia for processing, so that it could be used in Iran’s small medical research reactor, and used to produce medical isotopes. In this way, the LEU, the seed stock for any potential bomb, would get used up. It would have taken Iran a couple of years to replace that LEU, reassuring Western hawks in the meantime that Iran’s weapons-making capability had been temporarily blunted. But when Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s representative brought this deal back to Tehran, I believe that the IRGC commanders vetoed it because they want to retain a rapid break out potential and did not want the LEU seed stock to be lost.

That the hawks were able to veto the representative of Supreme Leader Khamenei lends credence to Gary Sick’s argument that the Revolutionary Guards have carried out a soft coup behind the scenes and Iran looks more and more like a military junta.

I personally suspect that most Western officials involved in this matter know perfectly well that Iran does not have a nuclear weapons program and does not want an actual bomb. I think the Western leaders do not want Iran to have nuclear latency, either, because it would change the balance of power in the Middle East and would take forcible regime change off the table as an option for the West.

Although some observers are wondering if Friday’s vote is a prelude to stricter UN Security Council sanctions on Iran, Howard LeFrachi at [the] C[hristian] S[cience] M[onitor] rightly points out that China does not want more sanctions. China was essentially blackmailed into voting for Friday’s resolution, according to the Washington Post, by an Israeli threat to start a war, conveyed by Dennis Ross, a prominent member of the US Israel lobbies who also has a position in the Obama administration. But voting for an IAEA text is different from actually imposing sanctions that might hurt the Chinese economy.

Moreover, Russian Prime Minister and eminence grise Vladimir Putin is against a tightening of sanctions. India announced its opposition to a tougher economic boycott even as it voted to condemn Iran.

The reason for the reluctance of the BRIC states (Brazil, Russia, India and China) to push Iran harder economically is that they have an interest in Iran’s resources not being closed off to their exploitation. Reuters just reported that: “Indian state explorer Oil and Natural Gas Corp (ONGC.BO) is seeking a 20-25 percent stake in a $7.5 billion phase-12 project of Iran’s South Pars gas field, media reports said on Friday.” India is growing 7 and 9% a year and has relatively little energy of its own, and so is very hungry for Iranian natural gas.

So far the US has managed to strongarm India into backing off, by threatening Treasury Department third-party sanctions. But it is entirely possible that Indian energy hunger will cause its firms to write off the $14 trillion US market and to partner with Iran. After all, the world economy is now about $60 trillion, and united Europe’s economy is as big as that of the US. If India has a choice of seeing its growth strangled for lack of electricity to run its factories and being excluded from 23% of the world economy, it may decide that the 77% is enough of a market. The importance of the US economy as a proportion of the global whole will likely rapidly decline over the next four decades.

The same considerations affect China. Russia is different because it is an energy producer. But in a world where demand for hydrocarbons is rapidly growing, there is enough demand to go around, and Russia’s economy is sufficiently diversified that it views Iran as a market and an investment opportunity. Harsher UNSC sanctions on Iran would backfire on BRIC, and therefore short of egregiously bad behavior on Iran’s part (discovery of an actual, dedicated weapons plant, e.g.), the BRIC countries will likely seek to block them.

Bottom line: Friday’s vote was likely symbolic and a signal to Iran from the international community that there is discomfort with its secretiveness and lack of transparency, and that many are suspicious of its motives. In China’s case, it may have been a warning against actions that could harm the Middle Kingdom’s burgeoning economy.

What it likely was not was a harbinger of tougher international sanctions against Tehran or a sign that BRIC is softening on that issue.

Many observers see Iran’s new proposal package as a way to freeze the clock on further sanctions. Will Tehran in the end bow to growing international pressure? Would sanctions work? And will the proposal help end Iran’s isolation?

(Al Jazeera English | Inside Edition | 10 September 2009) - Manouchehr Mottakir, Iran’s foreign minister, has submitted his government’s latest proposals to the envoys of the six countries involved in nuclear talks. The proposal comes as Tehran has been threatened with harsher sanctions over its nuclear ambitions. Diplomats will be studying the Iranian message for signs that Tehran is really interested in taking up the offer of economic and political concessions in return for a halt to its uranium enrichment programme.  The proposal is not expected to lead to a breakthrough in the nuclear dispute.  Many observers see Iran’s new proposal package as a way to freeze the clock on further sanctions. Will Tehran in the end bow to growing international pressure? Would sanctions work? And will the proposal help end Iran’s isolation?

This episode of Inside Story airs from Thursday, September 10, 2009 at 1730GMT and 2230GMT, with repeats on Friday at 0430GMT and 1030GMT.

Iran’s internal affairs: Keep the U.S. out

Submitted by Shervin Boloorian on July 22, 2009 on the FORpeaceBlog.

As Congress prepares to consider more Iran sanctions, it should also consider that confrontational U.S. policies have come nowhere close to changing Iran’s behavior in the last 30 years. On the other hand, in reaction to a contested election, the Iranians have formed an unprecedented home-grown movement for political expression through their own resources, their own desire for democratic progress, and their own sacrifices.

No coercive American government policy — be it threat of force or punitive sanctions or negative broadcast propaganda — is responsible for the wave of mass public protest that has taken Tehran by storm and split its political and religious establishments over the last month.

Even still, Democrat and Republican House and Senate members alike still believe (remarkably) that more U.S. sanctions or anti-government broadcasts will somehow help improve the situation. According to activists in Iran, so long as these programs are backed by the U.S. government, they stand to backfire and do more harm than good, and we should resist the urge to support them.

It’s true that the violence from the government crackdowns has been brutal and appalling but, as Stephen Kinzer noted in a recent article, the U.S. government simply lacks the moral authority to intervene in Iran’s internal affairs.

This harsh reality may anger some people, but it’s difficult to dispute that we have a poor track record when it comes to “imposing democracy” in Iran and the Middle East, and that an aggressive reaction to the Iranian government’s practices has historically proven dangerous.

Nobel Laureate Shirin Ebadi’s call for a United Nations human rights monitor to Iran is one option that seems to make sense. This would be a multilateral measure that should put pressure on the Iranian authorities while also placating those who say that the U.S. should do more to help Iran’s people. Of course, it will not placate everybody.

As historic as the current situation is inside Iran, it is also our best opportunity as Americans to do what we have seldom done with respect to Iran — and that is to pause and listen to the will of seasoned civic leaders working tirelessly within the current political system to develop change. Ebadi is a human rights leader and an established and respected name among Iranians as well as the international community. She understands what is needed and I trust that she knows better than certain Iranian exiles, who have not been to Iran in decades.

Iran is one of the founding members of the U.N. and wants to avoid further international fallout. By backing Ebadi’s call for an envoy and not pushing for more coercion, the Iranian government would be placed on the defensive and our message to the Iranian people would be clear — we want to help but we first accept that Iranians should be the masters of their own destiny; democracy in Iran should come from within; it is not and should not be the American government’s struggle. The American people stand in solidarity with your cause, and we accept that it is not our place to dictate the terms of democratic change.

Such gestures may also help reverse years of Iranian disdain and mistrust of America and its intentions in Iran. The Iranian people must believe that coerciveness is not the goal in Washington, and that people working intelligently within the establishment can be more nuanced in their approach to Iran. As an American of Iranian descent, I believe Iranians deserve to see that the American policy world can get it right and that America’s values, goals, and aspirations for peace and progress do not depend on Iran’s surrender.

As has been demonstrated in protests in Washington D.C. and elsewhere in the country, there are a growing number of Americans who genuinely care about the nonviolent struggle for change in Iran, and showing concern and unity of purpose is good. Still, the best bet for our government is to heed the advice of Iran’s civil society until we can redefine the wounded U.S.-Iran relationship through sorely needed trust-building. The belief that America can listen to Iranians within Iran, rather than add to a laundry list of demands and punitive actions, can help rescue this relationship.

Americans can further do their part by asking Congress not to continue the policies of overreaction and intimidation during this delicate time. Asking Congress to reconsider new sanctions legislation and ignore those who would see Iran’s present condition as a weakness to be exploited for self-interest is particularly essential.

Iranian protestors have gained fierce admiration for their courage. Shirin Ebadi and other activist leaders within Iran have been preparing their people for this moment for years. They deserve our attention now more than ever.

Shervin Boloorian is an Iranian American based in Washington DC. Mr. Boloorian just completed a two-year appointment as Washington representative of the Global Security Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists.  Prior to that position, he worked as a legislative coordinator for the National Iranian American Council.

_____________

If you want to support just US foreign policy towards Iran, let the White House know by signing this petition.

Already starting to change colors right before our eyes? Well one isn’t quite sure yet. But how utterly and typically “political” this most recent stunt has made Obama appear. He failed to have either the knowledge or the courage – right now we aren’t sure which – to remind the crowd that Iran is legally entitled under international law to be working on researching nuclear energy under the Nuclear Proliferation Act – they currently have approximately one-hundred and twenty-thousand citizens employed and working at various plants around their country in this program – nor did he mention that they were given authorization from and originally purchased their nuclear energy knowledge and many materials to do so from the United States as far back as the Eisenhower administration.

How on earth can this man be talking about more sanctions against Iran and trying to stop them from enriching uranium when it is absolutely none of his business is the question that is begged to be answered here.

And also, even more questionable, is how can a man who clearly owes his rise to power to the peace-card carrying doves of the left already be making right-wing hawkish threats against a country who are clearly only growing in strength and power and in political unions all over the globe every year as the United States continues to grow weaker and less threatening to a world who is waking up to some obvious cracks in the once-great nation’s armor? Windbag rhetorical threats are the last thing any candidate needs to be showing us as we continue to interview the applicants for the job. We’ve already had plenty of that from the last assholes that we hired to fill the position.

Either 1, Barack is just kowtowing to AIPAC to win Jewish votes (which means he lacks integrity by not just being honest with how he really feels), or 2, he is ignorant about how ignorant it is for him to be making such statements that it is somehow the US Government’s right to try to stop another country from harnessing nuclear energy, or 3, he is just ignorant as to how arrogant and erroneous it is for one country to attempt to stop another country from harnessing nuclear energy for the betterment of their own people — especially when all American Intelligence reports clearly show that they STOPPED working on nuclear WEAPONS research 4 years ago.

So which is it?

I have said from the beginning and I will say it again here: I lean neither left nor right but straight down the middle – I am a member of the “human being” party. You might have heard of it. It means that I care not to be placed in a box and slapped on the back with any labels but purely and simply care about all human beings on planet earth. Period. I’m too old now to believe that either party gives a shit about what they promise, nor has the power to do anything about it, before they get into office. What I am concerned with is how humane that particular job applicant appears to be. After all, the most important aspect of his job is in essence to secure another few years of our survival as a species – in this case collected under the banner of the United States. If we were in France, it would be under the banner of France. Etc ad nauseum.

Again, lest we forget the endless replies I have already given to the thousands of comments on YouTube and various other social networking sites around the world over the years accusing me of not being a “proud enough American,” one could have just as easily barraged me with such accusations during Hitler’s Germany, during Napoleon’s France, during Great Britain’s brutal fight against “colonial” India, during Nero’s Rome, or even during America’s attempted occupation of Vietnam. People still even do it today under Bush’s America, which is to say the least just plain sad.

But again for the record I will state that “nationalistic pride” is something I gave up, or grew out of, long, long ago — as far back as my teenage years. It only took a few years of studying history to realize that it was a useless, short-sighted, and often dangerous stance. Instead, I pledge allegiance to the united state of HUMANITY. And to the safety and security of every human being on the planet today and tomorrow.

Regarding our current dilemma as to which of the two men we should hire in the short term for what in the most ideal case should be a very noble position – that being the president of our beloved company, or country, however you want to look at it, as always we are faced with the same tough issues. Neither of them we know well enough. And no single human being should be expected to fill that role perfectly. Over the last 200 years we have clearly been shown this fact, if nothing else.

At least with Senator John McCain we know he is a patriotic man. We also know that he is not entirely partisan. And we know who he is and what he stands for. He is clearly an honest man who tells us what he really believes. In the case of Iran, Mr. McCain suffers from both maladies number 2 and number 3 above. Both ignorance and arrogance. A little something called “too much nationalistic pride and jingoism” and not enough knowledge (or wisdom gained) from studying history – not quite yet realizing that number one, the USA has only been a world super-power for a few short 60 years at best, and number two, that we are very close to losing this dubious title because the rest of the world has caught up to and are well ahead of us economically, the American dollar doesn’t carry much leverage anymore, threatening to blow someone up with a nuclear weapon as a means of frightening them into submission (which used to be the USA’s big “ace in the hole” for the last fifty years) has flown out the window since we now have NINE countries with nuclear weapons including China and Russia, and the US military is stretched so thin that it is obvious that Iran isn’t even frightened of the US government anymore since they continue to fund groups fighting directly against us such as Hezbollah.

The question that we should all be asking ourselves at this point is when are we going to hire someone to sit in that coveted chair (remember WE the people HIRE the president – he is nothing – absolutely nothing – but our EMPLOYEE) who is smart enough to realize that the days of stomping around the earth like giant idiot-minded dinosaurs threatening other countries to “do what they’re told” are OVER?

Obama? McCain? It all sounds the same to me if they are going to keep on making ignorant and arrogant threats against other nation-states around the world and poking their noses around where they don’t belong. What we need is an applicant for this JOB that we are offering who is smart enough and understands history well enough to realize that it is DIPLOMACY not THREATS that we need in the case of Iran, and in regards to many other countries around the world at this tenuous time in our nation’s history.

As for the historical significance of Obama being the first black person to ever come this far in the race to be president of the United States, let us celebrate it surely as it is indeed a major winning event in our history and in our efforts on behalf of civil rights through the years; but once we get the celebrating out of our systems let us not forget that what we were fighting for in regards to civil rights all these years was to see BEYOND color. So the fact that Barack Obama happens to be a man of color is a non-issue now. That part of the play is over. The applause has died down and we should get back to our seats and prepare for Act II. Let us now move beyond that issue and see who the man really is. Just as we will need to do with Senator McCain.

Obama can be black, brown, white, yellow, red, or even purple as far as I’m concerned and it matters not. (He actually appears to be more of a “tan” if you ask me.) What matters is what’s on the inside. Lest we forget this important fact, all we need to do is look to our fellow brothers and sisters in Africa to see plenty of black men who have failed miserably as “presidents” just as we have seen plenty of white and yellow ones do the same through the years.

Hope? Sure. I’ve got hope. I’ve got hope that one day we will meet a man, or a woman, who wants this job and actually walks their talk and doesn’t just talk it. I’ve got hope that one day a man such as Gandhi or Martin Luther King Jr. or Nelson Mandela or even a woman such as Mother Theresa or Oprah will walk in one day and say something like “about that job application I noticed in the paper the other day…. you know, I might be interested if the price was right…” That person, if one exists at all in this day and age, is not going to THREATEN – as Obama did the other day at his speech before AIPAC – but they are going to ENLIGHTEN.

That person, should they exist…. They are going to be above threatening. Above imperialism. Above bullying. Above “spin.” Above kowtowing and above lobbying. They are even, dare I say, going to be above “God and country” — and instead be joyously and wholeheartedly on the side of Humanity itself and nothing more nor less. For in the end, we are human beings knowingly or unknowingly disguising ourselves beneath various different masks of religions and nationalities.

What we need to do now is begin to slowly and cautiously pull down our masks and reveal what is really underneath – human faces. Gorgeous and beautiful living breathing human faces of all different colors and ethnicities. If we are going to bring religion into this matter at all, and time has already told that it is a place where it simply does not belong, but if we are, then let us pray that one day this person will grace us with their humble presence at the doorsteps of our office and say “hey, maybe I’ll give it a whirl if you’ll have me.” And for THIS I will pray everyday. THIS is my hope.

LONDON — After a seven-year legal battle, Britain’s Court of Appeal ruled
Wednesday that the British government was wrong to include an Iranian
resistance group, the People’s Mujahedeen of Iran, on its list of banned
terrorist groups. Lord Corbett, left front, urged celebrating People’s Mujahedeen backers to
sit down Wednesday.

Spokesmen for the group, whose name means People’s Holy Warriors, said the
ruling appeared to leave Britain’s interior minister, Home Secretary Jacqui
Smith, with no further legal recourse but to order Parliament to strike the
group from a list of more than 20 proscribed terrorist organizations under
Britain’s Terrorism Act.

The court’s ruling denied the government’s bid to carry the appeal further,
seemingly closing off recourse to Britain’s supreme appellate body, the
so-called Law Lords. But the British government did not say what it planned
to do.

The People’s Mujahedeen has roots that go back to the Iranian resistance to
Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi’s rule in the mid-1960s. After the 1979
revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini turned against the group, executing
many of its members and driving others into exile. It regrouped in Iraq in
the 1980s and was listed as a terrorist group by the United States in 1997
and the European Union in 2002.

In 2002 the People’s Mujahedeen provided intelligence on Iran’s secret
efforts to enrich uranium that led to United Nations sanctions against Iran
and a confrontation with the West that continues today. But the group also
has a record of unverifiable or erroneous claims.

The Iranian Foreign Ministry condemned the verdict as a “political ruling
that lacks legal basis.”

“Senior British authorities must explain the reason behind this ruling,” a
ministry spokesman, Mohammad Ali Hosseini, said in a statement faxed to news
organizations. He referred to the group’s armed attacks on Iranian officials
and said the ruling “would only propagate terrorism and violence.”

Amid jubilant celebrations by the Iranian group’s supporters in London,
Paris and Iraq, where 3,800 members have lived since 2003 under American
military guard at a vast desert encampment outside Baghdad, the group said
it would seek to overturn a similar proscription as a terrorist group by the
27 nations of the European Union. Spokesmen for the group said that there
was no further justification for the European ban, because it was imposed on
the basis of the 2001 British finding against the group.

A three-judge panel led by Nicholas Phillips, Britain’s lord chief justice,
said in a written ruling that there was “no reasonable prospect of success”
for the home secretary in proceeding with the government’s appeal of a
November 2007 finding by the Proscribed Organizations Appeal Commission, a
quasi-judicial body that rules on appeals by banned groups.

In effect, the appeals court upheld the claims by lawyers for the group that
it had complied with its own renunciation of violence in 2000, when it
announced that it would no longer carry out terrorist attacks and would
concentrate on peaceful opposition to the government in Tehran.

“The only conclusion that a reasonable decision maker could reach,” the
court said, was that since American forces disarmed the People’s Mujahedeen
and allied groups in Iraq in 2003, the group “has not taken any steps to
acquire or seek to acquire further weapons or to restore any military
capability in Iraq.”

The People’s Mujahedeen, the judges said, “has not sought to recruit
personnel for military-type or violent activities,” nor engaged in
“military-type training of its existing members” or sought to support other
groups in attacks on Iranian targets.

“To the extent that the P.M.O.I. has retained networks and supporters inside
Iran since, at the latest, 2002,” the judges said, using the abbreviation
for the group’s full name, “they have been directed to social protest,
finance and intelligence gathering activities which would not fall within
the definition of ‘terrorism’ for the purposes of the 2000 Act.”

The People’s Mujahedeen is also on the United States’ list of banned terror
groups, and Bush administration officials have said in the past that they
have no plans to lift the ban. But if Britain and the Europe Union lift
their bans, the group would be able to use its legalization as a basis for
raising money and organizing resistance to the ruling ayatollahs in Iran.

Spokesmen for the People’s Mujahedeen in London and Paris demanded after
Wednesday’s ruling that the British authorities, and the European Council of
Ministers, act promptly to remove the “terrorist label” from the group,
allowing it to resume normal activities. The group says it is committed to
restoring democracy in Iran and opposes any attempt by Iran to acquire
nuclear weapons.

At least 400 dissidents, activists and intellectuals--a number far larger than previously reported–were murdered in Iran during a wave of officially sanctioned, government death-squad activity that ended in 1999, according to Shirin Ebadi, Nobel Prize-winning human rights lawyer who is currently on a speaking tour in the United States. But Ebadi insists that US threats against Iran and rhetoric about regime change could make things worse, giving Iran’s leaders an excuse to intensify repression.

In an interview with The Nation, Ebadi said that she has documentation for one-third of those killings, and that information about the rest comes from the personal testimony of a man who admitted his role in the November 1998 murders of Darioush and Parvaneh Forouhar, who were hacked to pieces in their Tehran home. The Forouhars, critics of the Iranian regime, were part of the coalition that supported Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh, the nationalist leader who was toppled by a CIA-backed coup d’état in 1953.

Ebadi, a Tehran-based attorney and former judge who has battled the government over human-rights abuses for years, says that what she calls the pattern of “chain murders” has halted since then. But she warns that the human-rights situation in Iran remains grave. On April 2, Ebadi herself received an anonymous threat in a letter delivered to her office that read: “Your death is near.”

Chillingly, she said that Ghorbanali Dorri-Najafabadi, the minister of intelligence under whose authority the hundreds of murders were carried out, was never punished–merely shifted to another top position. Today, Dorri-Najafabadi is the head of Iran’s Supreme Administrative Court. “For years I’ve been receiving threats, either on the phone or in written form,” she says. “Those who write me these letters oppose my opinions and my mentality, and they want to threaten and intimidate me.”

Ebadi is not intimidated, and she continues to represent dissidents and others caught up in the labyrinthine Iranian court system. But she warns that threats and bellicose rhetoric from American leaders and politicians is not helping matters. “The most important thing is not to militarily attack Iran, or to threaten to attack Iran militarily,” she says. “Even the language of some of the candidates in the United States threatens Iran.”

In addition, Ebadi is highly critical of the Bush Administration’s efforts to promote democracy in Iran, particularly the creation of a multimillion-dollar fund to assist Iranian activists. “When the United States says that it has allocated $70 million for democracy in Iran, whoever speaks about democracy in Iran will be accused of having accepted part of that money, and of being on the US side,” she says. “It gives Iran an excuse for what it does.” All credible Iranian activists have refused to accept American funding, and most of the money has been funneled into radio broadcasts and other US propaganda.

Ebadi also dismisses the notion that economic sanctions will affect Iran’s behavior. “Sanctions damage the interests of the people, and they’re not going to topple the government of Iran, because the government has a lot of income from the price of oil because the price is so high.” The only sort of sanctions she is willing to support are direct, political sanctions that target Iran’s leaders, from those involved in the Iranian nuclear program to the country’s highest officials. Such sanctions, she suggests, could restrict these officials’ travel abroad and could order the seizure of privately held assets. In addition, Ebadi believes, the world’s countries could collectively shun the Iranian state. “What I mean is that all the countries of the world should reduce or lower the level of their political relations with Iran, so that they convince Iran to improve the situation of human rights. This was you can isolate the government of Iran without really damaging the people,” she says.

But the best course is one of dialogue. “The political sanctions should be used as a last resort,” she says. “Dialogue has to take place at three levels: at the level of people and civil society, among members of parliament of both countries, and by heads of government of both countries. And negotiations have to be direct and public.”

Within Iran, support for the regime is sagging, says Ebadi. Though opinion polls can be unreliable, she cites recent election numbers to tell the story. “When [reformist President] Khatami was elected to the presidency, he got 22 million votes. But when Ahmadinejad was elected…he only got 14 million votes. Do these numbers speak to you?” In fact, millions of Iranians boycotted the elections, which were widely seen as fraudulent.

The 2005 election of Ahmadinejad and the March, 2008, parliamentary elections gave near-total control to hardliners in Iran, and Ebadi is not hopeful that the pendulum will swing back quickly, especially without concerted international efforts. “When we speak about reform, we are speaking about the gradual improvement of society,” she says. “If something changes overnight, then that is called revolution, it is not called reform. And I think that the time for revolution has passed. So we need to speak about gradual change.” Originally published in www.thenation.com/doc/20080512/dreyfuss