The Right side News
Photo of document :Flyer distributed in Iran by the Mullahs calling upon girls and women to join the brothel

from the Weekly Blitz!
According to Shia version of Sharia law, marrying a girl [either adult or infant] is legitimate in Iran. Any male can marry a girl or woman in that country, which is under the cruel grips of Mullacracy for decades, simply by performing a religious ritual, which takes less than a minute. In most cases, such 'Marriage for Minutes' or 'Mut'ah Marriage' take place to meet mere sexual desires of the men.
First of all, let us have a glimpse on the existing marriage law in Islamic Republic of Iran. In Iran, marriage law has become extremely complicated, confusing and mostly against the rights of women. Let me begin with a quote from a fatwa by the late and unlamented Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran, where the readers will possibly understand the state of mind of the Islamist clergies on this particular issue:
"A man can marry a girl younger than nine years of age, even if the girl is still a baby being breastfed. A man, however is prohibited from having intercourse with a girl younger than nine, other sexual acts such as foreplay, rubbing, kissing and sodomy is allowed.
A man having intercourse with a girl younger than nine years of age has not committed a crime, but only an infraction, if the girl is not permanently damaged. If the girl, however, is permanently damaged, the man must provide for her all her life. But this girl will not count as one of the man's four permanent wives. He also is not permitted to marry the girl's sister."
Other forms of sexual abuse inflicted on children by Muslim clergies include fondling of genitals, coercing a child to fondle the abuser's genitals, masturbation with the child either as participant or observer, oral sex, anal or vaginal penetration by penis, finger or any other object.
Another technique used by Muslim clergies is called "thighing". The child's legs are pressed together and the abuser inserts his penis between the thighs of the little boy or girl. This was approved of by Ayatollah Khomeini who in his Little Green Book asserted "It is not illegal for an adult male to 'thigh' or enjoy a young girl who is still in the age of weaning; meaning to place his penis between her thighs, and to kiss her."
Full text of ruling by Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini on marriage:
"A woman may legally belong to a man in one of two ways; by continuing marriage or temporary marriage. In the former, the duration of the marriage need not be specified; in the latter, it must be stipulated, for example, that it is for a period of an hour, a day, a month, a year, or more."
"A man can marry a girl younger than nine years of age, even if the girl is still a baby being breastfed. A man, however is prohibited from having intercourse with a girl younger than nine, other sexual act such as foreplay, rubbing, kissing and sodomy is allowed. A man having intercourse with a girl younger than nine years of age has not committed a crime, but only an infraction, if the girl is not permanently damaged. If the girl, however, is permanently damaged, the man must provide for her all her life. But this girl will not count as one of the man's four permanent wives. He also is not permitted to marry the girl's sister."
"A father or a paternal grandfather has the right to marry off a child who is insane or has not reached puberty by acting as its representative. The child may not annul such a marriage after reaching puberty or regaining his sanity, unless the marriage is to his manifest disadvantage."
"Any girl who is of age, that is, capable of understanding what is in her own best interest, if she wishes to get married and is a virgin, must procure the authorization of her father or paternal grandfather. The permission of her mother or brother is not required."
"A marriage is annulled if a man finds that his wife is afflicted with one of the seven following disabilities: madness, leprosy, eczema, blindness, paralysis with after-effects, malformation of the urinary and genital tracts or of the genital-tract and rectum through conjoining thereof, or vaginal malformation making Coitus impossible."
"If a wife finds out after marriage that her husband is suffering from mental illness, that he is a castrate, impotent, or has had his testicles excised, she may apply for annulment of her marriage."
"If a wife has her marriage annulled because her husband is unable to have sexual relations with her either vaginally or anally, he must pay her as damages one-half of her Mehryeh [her price] specified in the marriage contract. If the husband or wife annuls the marriage for any of the above-mentioned reasons, the man owes nothing to the woman if they have had sexual relations together; if they have not, he must pay her the full amount of the dowry."
"A Moslem woman may not marry a non-Moslem man; nor may a Moslem man marry a non-Moslem woman in continuing marriage, but he may take a Jewish or Christian woman in temporary marriage."
"A woman who has contracted a continuing marriage does not have the right to go out of the house without her husband's permission; she must remain at his disposal for the fulfillment of any one of his desires, and may not refuse herself to him except for a religiously valid reason. If she is totally submissive to him, the husband must provide her with her food, clothing, and lodging, whether or not he has the means to do so."
"A woman who refuses herself to her husband is guilty, and may not demand from him food, clothing, lodging, or any later sexual relations; however, she retains the right to be paid damages if she is repudiated."
"If a man who has married a girl who has not reached puberty possesses her sexually before her ninth birthday, inflicting traumatisms upon her, he has no right to repeat such an act with her."
"A man who has contracted a continuing marriage may not leave his wife for so long a time as to allow her to question the validity of the marriage; however, he is not obligated to spend one night out of every four with her."
"A husband must have sexual relations with his wife at least once in every four months."
"A woman who has been temporarily married in exchange for a previously established dowry has no right to demand that her daily expenses be paid by her husband, even when she becomes pregnant."
"A temporary marriage, even though only one of convenience, is nevertheless legal."
"A man must not abstain from having sexual relations with his temporary wife for more than four months.
"If a father [or paternal grandfather] marries off his daughter [or granddaughter] in her absence without knowing for a certainty that she is alive, the marriage becomes null and void as soon as it is established that she was dead at the time of the marriage."
"To look upon the face and hair of a girl who has not reached puberty, if it is done without intention of enjoyment thereof, and if one is not afraid of succumbing to temptation, may be tolerated. It is however recommended that one not look upon her belly or thighs, which must remain covered."
"To look upon the faces and hands of Jewish or Christian women, if this is not done with intention of enjoyment thereof, and if one does not fear temptation, is tolerated."
"A woman must hide her body and her hair from the eyes of men. It is highly recommended that she also hide them from those of pre-pubic boys, if she suspects that they may look upon her with lust."
"If a man is called upon, for medical reasons, to look upon a woman other than his wife and to touch her body, he is permitted to do so, but if he can give such care by only looking at the body he must not touch it, and if he can give it by only touching, he must not look at it."
"A woman who becomes pregnant as a result of adultery must not have an abortion. If a man commits adultery with an unmarried woman, and subsequently marries her, the child born of that marriage will be a bastard unless the parents can be sure it was conceived after they were married."
"A child born of an adulterous father is legitimate."
"The best person to breast-feed a newborn baby it its own mother. It is preferable that she not ask to be paid for such service, but that her husband pays her for it of his own free will. If the sum the mother asks for is greater than that charged by a wet nurse, the husband is free to take the child from its mother and turn it over to the wet nurse."
"A man who repudiates his wife must be of sound mind and past the age of puberty. He must do so of his own free will and without any constraint; therefore, if the formula for divorce is spoken in jest the marriage is not annulled."
"A woman temporarily married, say, for a month or a year, has her marriage automatically annulled at the end of that time, or at any other time when the husband releases her from the balance of her engagement. It is not necessary for this that there be any witnesses, or that the woman has had her period."
"A woman who has not yet reached the age of nine or a menopausal woman may remarry immediately after divorce, without waiting the hundred days that are otherwise required."
"A woman who has had her ninth birthday, or who has not yet entered menopause, must wait for three menstrual periods after her divorce before being allowed to remarry. If a woman who has not reached her ninth birthday or who has not entered menopause gets temporarily married, she must, at the end of the contract or when the husband has released her from part of it, wait two menstrual periods or forty-five days before marrying again."
"If the father or paternal grandfather of a boy has him marry a woman for a temporary marriage, he may prematurely cancel it in the boy's interest, even if the marriage was contracted before the boy reached the age of puberty. If, for example, a fourteen-year-old boy has been married off to a woman for a period of two years, they may return her freedom to the woman before this time has run its course; but a continuing marriage cannot be broken in this way."
"If a man repudiates his wife without informing her of it, and continues to meet her expenses for a period of, say, a year, and at the end of that time informs her that he got a divorce a year earlier and shows her proof of it, he may require that she return to him anything he has bought or given her during that time, provided that she has not used it up or consumed it, in which case he cannot demand its return."
"If a child dies within the mother's womb and it is a danger to her life to leave it there, it must be extracted in the easiest way possible; it can. if need be, cut into pieces; this should be done by the woman's husband or a midwife."
"A woman who wishes to pursue her studies toward the end of being able to earn her living through respectable work, and who has a male teacher, may do so if she keeps her face covered and has no contact with men; but if-that is inevitable, and religious and moral tenets are thus undermined, she must give up her studies. Girls and boys who attend coeducational classes in grammar schools, high schools, universities, or other teaching establishments, and who, in order to legalize such a situation, wish to contract a temporary marriage may do so without the permission of their fathers. The same applies if the boy and girl are in love but hesitate to ask for such permission."
Continued oppression by Mullah Regime in Iran is pushing the entire nation into severe poverty, unemployment as well as numerous social problems. Taking the advantage of such situation, many of the wealthy males in Iran are continuing to buy girl children under 'Marriage for Minutes' contract. Moreover, people in administration, inside Revolutionary Guards as well as judiciaries are also hunting female flesh either with the trap of such temporary marriage or simply by blackmailing socially oppressed women. In Iran, obtaining a divorce certificate by most of the women is only possible, if she would offer sexual company to the judges in Sharia courts.
Members of intelligence agencies as well as Revolutionary Guards would use blackmailing tactics by putting adultery allegation on any woman, they target for meeting sexual desire. In most cases, such women being falsely labelled with adultery accusations are forced to give sexual company to these intelligence or Revolutionary Guard men to avert death by stoning.
Such situation inside Iran is forcing many of the sexually abused women and girls into prostitution. Especially situation of the girl children are real vulnerable.
Though Iranian official sources figure the number of prostitutes in Tehran only at 84,000, it is believed that the real number is exceeding two hundred thousand. While Mullahs continue to claim that prostitution is very much confined within authorized 'Comfort Houses' in the Islamic Republic, it is well known to many that, in today's Iran, women and girls are offered to potential overseas customers at various so-called five star hotels as well as restaurants with 'Islamic Cabins'. Each of such cabins measuring approximately 50 square feet is surrounded by 10 feet wooden walls and a door. Inside is a so-called dinning table, which is basically used for sexual purpose. A man can spend one hour inside this Islamic Cabin with a female by spending roughly US$ 40. At the front portion of such so-called restaurants, number of females will be seen sitting wearing Islamic veils, which will be ready to give company to the potential customer. Once the woman is selected, the restaurant manager, a clergy will perform rituals of the Marriage for Minutes, before the 'couple' would enter the cabin.
Women are offered to guests in a number of hotels in Iran by the room-service staffs. There are prayer rooms in each of the hotels, where rituals of Marriage for Minutes take place. Most of the large hotels in Iran are operated by Revolutionary Guards. And most importantly, every day once or twice, rooms will be searched by members of Revolutionary Guards, while there are hidden cameras inside each of the rooms. But, when a customer will take a 'wife' from the hotel management under Marriage for Minute contract, the hidden cameras will be covered as well searches will be paused. In other words, prostitution is rather promoted by the Mullah Regime in Iran.
While Islamist apologists may argue that sex slavery exists around the world, exploiting innocent girls, women, boys and men, the fact will remain that in these Muslim nations this human-rights abuse has become institutionalized, with government-run brothels in Iran, for instance, offering what is called Mut'ah [Marriage for Minutes allowed by Shia version of Islam] or a temporary contract that allows men to "marry" for sexual purposes women other than the four concurrent wives. Many of these brothels are near "holy sites," so that male pilgrims can "relieve their urges" while on a "religious" pilgrimage.
There are roughly 300 brothels only in Tehran. Head of Iran's Interpol bureau believes that sex trade is one of the most profitable activities in Iran today, which continues very much within the knowledge of ruling clergies, government officials, and members of Revolutionary Guard.
There is sex trade in Iran even in an open manner, where owners of brothel would circulate flyers drawing attention of the 'virgins' in offering 'noble service'.


And here is the extract from one of such flyers, which I discovered, while researching the issue:


"Bismellah Her Rahmanir Rahim

Temporary Marriage

In order to elevate the spiritual atmosphere, create proper psychological
conditions and tranquility of mind, the Province of the Quds'eh-Razavi of
Khorassan has created centers for temporary marriage [just next door to the
shrine] for those brothers who are on pilgrimage to the shrine of our eighth
Imam, Imam Reza, and who are far away from their spouses.
To that end, we
call on all our sisters who are virgins, who are between the ages of 12 and 35
to cooperate with us. Each of our sisters who signs up will be bound by a two
year contract with the province of the Quds'eh-Razavi of Khorassan and will be
required to spend at least 25 days of each month temporarily married to those
brothers who are on pilgrimage. The period of the contract will be considered as
a part of the employment experience of the applicant. The period of each
temporary marriage can be anywhere between 5 hours to 10 days. The prices are as
follows:
5 hour temporary marriage - 50,000 Tomans [$50 US]
One day
temporary marriage - 75,000 Tomans [$75 US]
Two day temporary marriage -
100,000 Tomans [$100 US]
Three day temporary marriage - 150,000 Tomans [$150
US]
Between 4 and 10 day temporary marriage - 300,000 Tomans [$300 US]
Our
sisters who are virgins will receive a bonus of 100,000 Tomans [$100 US] for the
removal of their hymen.

After the expiration of the two year contract, should our sisters still
be under 35 years of age and should they be so inclined, they can be added to
the waiting list of those who are seeking long-term temporary marriage.
The employed sisters are obligated to donate 5% of their earnings to the
Shrine of Imam Reza. We ask that all the sisters who are interested in applying,
to furnish two full-length photographs [fully hijabed and properly veiled],
their academic diplomas, proof of their virginity and a certificate of good
physical and psychological health which they can obtain through the health and
human services of the township of their residence. Please forward all compiled
material and send to the below address by the 31st of the month of Ordibehesht,
1389 [May 21st, 2010].

Attention: For sisters who are below 14 years of age, a written consent
from their fathers or male guardian is required
.

Address: Mash'had, Shrine of Imam Reza, Shaheed Navab-Safavi, Kossar
passage, Bureau of Temporary Marriages or call Haji Mahmood Momtaz:
98-511-222-5790.For further information, please refer to the Quds'eh Razavi
website http://www.aqrazavi.org/"

The Sunday Telegraph
The Prince of Wales is being asked to intervene to prevent Iran building a brand new embassy and Islamic cultural centre next to a historic church in one of Britain's most expensive neighbourhoods.


By Robert Mendick
The new building, whose modern design has appalled wealthy residents and heritage experts alike, is located several hundred yards from Iran's existing embassy, made famous by the siege which took place there 30 years ago.
The Islamic Republic's proposed new embassy is expected to cost tens of millions of pounds to build and is a bold, futuristic building set among Victorian mansion blocks and Georgian terraces in west London.
Designed by an Austrian-based architect, the plans were lodged as far back as January with the local council, but residents have claimed that they only learned of the development in July – and a fortnight after public consultation closed.
They are now calling on Prince Charles to use his influence to try to stop the Iranian embassy being built before it is too late.
The prince was successful last year in securing the scrapping of a modernist development on the site of Chelsea Barracks, only two miles away, which had been proposed by members of Qatar's ruling family.
It is not known if plans for a new embassy on such a scale would have been shown to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran's authoritarian president, for his approval.
The proposed building, designed by Daneshgar Architects in Vienna, is five storeys high and will be sited on a corner currently occupied by an open air car park.
The plot of land, which is owned by the Iranian government, is close to the Natural History Museum in South Kensington.
Clad in marble and stone, the embassy – comprising what could best be described as an overarching rhomboid with a bright yellow square structure beneath – is less than 20ft from St Augustine's Church, a grade II*-listed church designed by William Butterfield, the renowned Victorian architect.
Citing security issues, the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea has broken with normal policy and refused to post any details of the plan on its website.
Members of the public must instead visit the town hall where they will only be shown the plans – which run to almost 200 pages and which cannot be copied – provided they bring a passport or other photo ID.
Sir Simon Jenkins, the writer and architectural expert, said: "I know the site well. It is totally inappropriate to locate such a strident modern building in such a sensitive conservation area, directly next to a magnificent listed church."
He said it was wrong that the plans had not been made more easily available to the public and pointed to the full and public consultation undertaken by the US government over its proposals for a new embassy in south London.
Sir Simon added: "If the security-obsessed Americans can plan a new embassy openly and publicly, there is no excuse for Kensington council to collude with the Iranians."
Ian Dungavell, director of the Victorian Society, said: "This looks like an attention-seeking piece of architecture. From the single image I've seen, I am worried about how it will affect the setting of St Augustine's Church.
"The Victorian Society is also concerned whenever local residents feel that they have not been properly consulted about planning applications which affect them, especially when the sites are within conservation areas."
Residents are only now starting to campaign to stop the embassy. Maria von Moltke, 74, who lives about 100 yards away, is writing to Prince Charles, pleading with him to help.
Mrs Moltke, who claims she only became aware of the plans after the official consultation closed, said: "The building is just catastrophic. If you compare it to the wonderful terraces around it, which are beautiful and intact, this is all the more hideous.
"I will be writing to Prince Charles to ask for his help in intervening. We haven't been given any notice about this and no time to even form a protest group."
One local estate agent estimated a new Iranian embassy could knock almost 20 per cent off the prices of neighbouring houses. Town houses in the area are typically worth £3.5 million and above.
It is not clear what the Iranian government will do with its current embassy in Prince's Gate, which was the scene in 1980 of a dramatic siege and subsequent storming of the building by the SAS.
The drama, played out live in front of television cameras, brought the SAS to wider public attention. In all, five of the six gunmen were killed along with one hostage.
In a telephone call, a spokesman for the Iranian embassy said he was not aware of the plans to move the embassy but said a colleague might have some knowledge.
The telephone call was then cut off and The Sunday Telegraph was unable to reach the spokesman again.
Armin Daneshgar, the architect, was unavailable for comment.
Council planning officers have yet to decide whether to recommend the plan for approval. The proposals will later be voted on by the planning committee. A decision is expected in the autumn.
A council spokesman defended the decision not to post any details on the internet, suggesting that the same procedure was followed over the planning application for a new Israeli embassy.
The spokesman added that police had requested no images or details be posted.
Since being approached by The Sunday Telegraph, the council has posted online a series of computer-generated images of the building – which were already freely available on the architect's website.
The council has denied the public was not properly consulted.
The spokesman said 115 households immediately surrounding the new embassy site had received letters informing them of the application and inviting them to the town hall to see it.
Clarence House said that the Prince would wait for the residents' letter to arrive before responding.

Iranfocus


Nearly a million Iranian children - mostly girls - are married due to provisions in Iran's Islamic marriage laws which allow the existence of child wives, according to an official with knowledge of the matter. "Official sources put the number of child spouses in the country at between 900,000 to 950,000.


This violates the international Convention on the Rights of the Child", Mohammad Bonyazadeh, a member of the Cultural Association in Support of Working Children, told the semi-official news agency ILNA on Thursday. Children as young as 15 can legally go into full-time employment in Iran, Bonyazadeh said.


"On the one hand the law recognises anyone under the age of 11 as a child, who lacks the thinking capacity, wisdom, and decision-making ability to vote in an election, but on the other hand it defines the legal age for marriage as 9 (for girls) and 13 (for boys)", he said, adding that the legal age for voting in Iran is in line with international standards.


"Unfortunately, instead of enjoying their youth, playing sports and getting some education, the country's young girls who are married, are forced to play the role of a wife and accept all its difficult responsibilities, such as running household chores. This dangerous experience forced upon the children at this age has many dire and harmful repercussions on them and even on their children".



Photo

from Archives

Aug. 1 - Anti-riot units and Special Forces barged into Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison after learning that prisoners in Ward 350 had staged a mass hunger strike, the Arabic-language satellite channel, Al-Arabiya, reported on Sunday. Human rights activists have urged the UN Secretary General and human rights organisations, including Amnesty International, to intervene to save the lives of the prisoners. A prominent political prisoner in Ward 350, Jafar Kazemi, 47, is facing imminent execution as Iran’s Court of Appeals upheld his death sentence after he was charged with ‘Moharebeh’ (waging war on God). Kazemi’s son, Behrouz, is in Camp Ashraf, Iraq, home to members of the main Iranian opposition group, the People’s Mojahedin Organisation of Iran

FOCUS(Article sent by our reader S.B)


The German weekly Focus revealed in its latest issue on July 26 that the German intelligence agency has identified an agent of the Iranian regime’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security, “Arhan R,” who was involved in espionage against the main opposition, People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK), ending the operative’s activities.
According to the weekly, “Arhan R. used to send first-hand reports about the Iranian opposition group PMOI and leftist groups. But, according to an analyst, all the information was meant to be misleading.”
Focus weekly adds, “The MOIS, the mullahs’ suppressive apparatus, continues to target opposition forces residing in Germany. There are information in these documents about operations that will continue to remain confidential. The case of Arhan R. is one of them. He misled several secret agents. The Office for the Protection of the Constitution in the city of Cologne has discovered that the said individual met with several Iranian regime operatives after meeting with Potsdam’s Office for the Protection of the Constitution.”
It is worth noting that security services in European countries have repeatedly stated that the most important mission of the Iranian regime’s espionage activities is the vilification of the PMOI and divulging misleading information about the organization while setting the stage for carrying out terrorist operations against the mullahs’ opponents.
On this basis, the European Union has in a resolution called on national governments to expel and prevent the entry of the Iranian regime’s agents to Europe.

Story recommended by our readers :


In 2007, U.S. intelligence said Iran had stopped its nuclear weapons program. Analyst policy bias and disinformation from Iranian double agents may explain the mistake.

Wall Street Journal - In a stunning departure from a decade of assessments, the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran declared: "We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program," including "nuclear weapon design and weaponization work" and covert uranium enrichment.


Even more astonishingly, it attributed this change to "increasing international scrutiny and pressure resulting from exposure of Iran's previously undeclared nuclear work." In other words, the threat of sanctions had ended that country's surreptitious effort to obtain nuclear weapons. This assessment suggested that further action against Iran was unnecessary.

Unfortunately, as the Obama administration has now acknowledged, the NIE's conclusion was dead wrong, costing us precious time in dealing with a serious threat.The question remains, what caused such a disastrous mistake?In 2007, there was still much the same mountain of evidence that led U.S. intelligence to conclude in the 2006 NIE with equally "high confidence" that Iran was secretly engaged in a nuclear weapons program.

This evidence included verified reports that Iran had experimented with Polonium 210, a key ingredient in the trigger of early-generation nuclear bombs. And documents recovered from a stolen Iranian laptop described its efforts to fit a warhead in the nose cone of its Shahab 3 missile that would detonate at an altitude of 600 meters, which is too high for anything but a nuclear warhead to be effective.


The CIA had learned that Iran had most likely acquired a digital copy of a Chinese nuclear warhead design from the A.Q. Khan network. It also had monitored Iran's crash program at Natanz to build a nuclear enrichment plant that could house up to 50,000 centrifuges.


Taken individually, these secret activities might have a nonnuclear explanation. For example, Iran claimed the purpose of its Polonium 210 experiments was merely to find a power source for an Iranian spacecraft (though Iran had no known space program at the time).


Taken together, however, these efforts added up an inescapable conclusion: Iran was going nuclear.What helped change this conclusion, in addition to the reorganization of U.S. intelligence following the report of the 9/11 Commission, was the receipt of new secret intelligence from Iran.

This intelligence included convincing evidence that the facilities of the weapons-design program (code named "Project 111") revealed on the stolen laptop had been closed down in 2003. Satellite photographs showed that buildings involved in the program had been bulldozed, communications intercepts indicated that scientists were no longer at the location, and a high-level defector from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, Ali-Reza Asgari, reported that Project 111 had stopped functioning.


Since the Iranians knew that we knew about Project 111 in 2004—the CIA had released technical drawings from it to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)—it was not surprising that the Revolutionary Guard, which runs Iran's nuclear activities, shut it down.


The issue was how to interpret the closure. Had the weapons-design work been quietly moved to avoid further scrutiny? Had it been closed because the warhead design had been solved with the acquisition of the digital blueprints of the Chinese nuclear weapon? Or had Iran abandoned its quest for a nuclear weapon?Deciphering a government's intentions is no easy task.


It is especially difficult in a closed and terrorized society in which the U.S. has no diplomatic relations and little direct access. So it came down to espionage to illuminate the intentions behind the shut-down of Project 111.Over the years, the CIA had recruited a network of Iranian agents who had, or claimed to have, access to the thinking of Iran's governing elite.


These agents were in a position to cast light on Iranian nuclear intentions, and presumably they provided reports that supported the thesis that Tehran decided to end its nuclear weapons program.

In any event, the authors of the 2007 NIE cited secret evidence to support the conclusion in its publicly released summary document that "Tehran's decision to halt its nuclear weapons program suggests it is less determined to develop nuclear weapons than we have been [previously] judging."As we now know, the Revolutionary Guard was secretly completing the construction of new facilities in 2007.


For example, at Fordo, 20 miles north of the holy city of Qom, it was reinforcing tunnels leading inside a mountain cavern designed to house a new uranium enrichment plant. This underground facility was only disclosed by Iran to the IAEA in late 2009. Clearly, Tehran was not abandoning its nuclear-weapons program.


What may have misled the CIA was a flaw in its espionage system. James Risen, the New York Times's national security reporter, explains in his book "State of War" that since the CIA had no embassy base in Iran, it communicated with its agents through state-of-the-art satellite transmissions, which it assumed were invisible to the Iranian security services.

Then, in 2004, a CIA communications officer accidently included data in a satellite transmission to an agent that could be used to identify "virtually every spy the CIA had in Iran."

This disastrous error was compounded, according to Mr. Risen, because the recipient of the transmission turned out to be a double-agent controlled by the Iranian security service.

So the Iranians knew the identity of all the agents that the CIA had arduously maneuvered into positions of access, and the technical methods by which the CIA communicated with them.


The agents (or their replacements) in Iran would have little choice but to allow the Iranian Security service to control the information they provided the CIA. If so, the CIA may have been vulnerable to receiving misleading secret intelligence that Tehran had abandoned it nuclear ambitions in 2004One Iranian agent who supplied information to the CIA is Shahram Amiri, who defected to the U.S. last year and re-defected back to Iran this month.


He reportedly provided details about the termination of Project 111 that presumably dovetailed with other information we got from the CIA's compromised network. Iran now claims Mr. Amiri was a double agent all along.Whether Iran controlled his secret reports to the CIA will be hotly debated for years to come. But willful blindness on our part should not be ignored. There were high-level people in the newly reorganized U.S. intelligence community who wanted to believe Iran was ending its quest for the bomb, and messages to the CIA from agents inside the country that diplomatic pressure was accomplishing this task fell on receptive ears.


Whether the erroneous conclusions in the 2007 NIE proceeded from Iranian deception or American self-deception, they undercut the case for taking more drastic action against Tehran. To the degree that other countries believed Iran had ended its nuclear program, they had little incentive to join us in imposing further sanctions.


To be sure, Iran could not conceal forever the evidence of its massive increase in uranium enrichment capabilities at Natanz, its missile testing, and its preparation of other underground facilities. In the interim, however, Iran managed to upgrade a large portion of its centrifuges and stockpile enough low-enriched uranium gas to manufacture, if it chose to further process it, the fuel for a nuclear bomb. The moral of this sad spy story is that espionage is by its very nature a two-way game. Spies that are viewed as "assets" in a closed country can turn out to be very risky liabilities.




AFP

July 31 - About 150 people gathered Saturday in Paris to honor victims of repression in Iran in 1988 and those of clashes in Camp Ashraf in Iraq
in 2009, a member of the Iranian opposition in exile
told an AFP journalist over the telephone.

The protesters waved Iranian flags and banners in violet, as well as portraits of Maryam Rajavi, the president-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), whose main component is the People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI). In a message read by a participant, Maryam Rajavi urged the international community "to establish a special tribunal under UN auspices, in order not to leave unpunished those responsible for the massacre of 1988, one of the biggest political crimes since the Second World War.

The former bishop of Evreux, Bishop Jacques Gaillot, also claimed that "justice is done," speaking in front of pictures of dozens of victims of executions.

From August 1988 to February 1989, Iranian authorities conducted mass executions of political prisoners. Nearly 5,000 prisoners were killed, according to Amnesty International. The NCRI evokes the figure of 30,000 deaths.

Demonstrators also paid tribute to victims of clashes in Camp Ashraf, Iraq, which left 11 dead and hundreds injured in July 2009, according to the NCRI. Camp Ashraf, located 80 km north of Baghdad, was built in 1980s and accommodates 3,500 opponents of the Iranian regime
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