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July 07, 2004, 3:30 p.m.
All Eyes on Iran
In pursuit of freedom.
By Banafsheh Zand-Bonazzi & Elio Bonazzi
As July 8 approaches, Iranians all over the world are preparing to display as they do each year during this week their hatred for the mullahs dominating Iran. This year, the annual demonstrations mark the fifth anniversary of the brutal university massacres of 1999. That was the year President Khatami showed his true colors, abandoning both his promised reforms and the people who voted for him. What started out as a reaction to the utter brutality of the fossilized establishment by young Iranian students has turned into a freedom movement the world should acknowledge and encourage. And yet, no Western politico has embraced the annual protest, a sign of a people's love for freedom, human rights, and democracy, within the confines of a tyrannical, dangerous regime.
On June 17, Hassan Abassi, head of the Revolutionary Guards' Center for Doctrinaire Affairs of National Security Outside Iran's Borders stated: "We [Islamic Republic of Iran] have a strategy drawn up for the destruction of the Anglo-Saxon civilization." But the West (particularly the E.U.) continues to depend on the dangerously inadequate foreign policy of, say, Jack Straw, the British foreign secretary....
...Inside Iran, that is no routine or safe endeavor. Reports indicate that the regime has banned July 8 gatherings. Plans for mobilizing thousands more troops and foreign mercenaries in order to quash any popular action or uprising have been in the works for months now. Reports from sources inside the regime's revolutionary guards and ministry of information say orders have been given to use lethal force against anyone opposing the Islamic state's directives. Checkpoints have reportedly been created in Iranian cities and militiamen have been ordered to search cars and arrest "suspicious-looking" residents under various charges in order to create a climate of fear....
