LCCC ENGLISH DAILY NEWS BULLETIN
May 19/08

Bible Reading of the day.
Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint John 3,16-18. For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him will not be condemned, but whoever does not believe has already been condemned, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.

Free Opinions, Releases, letters & Special Reports
Standing Against the Mullahs. By: Dan Rabkin 18/05/08
Recent Show of Force Carries Shiite Group To Forefront of Power-By:Anthony Shadid/Washington Post 18/05/08
Hezbollah's power play-Washington Times 18/05/08
Hezbollah’s Actions Ignite Sectarian Fuse in Lebanon-New York Times 18/05/08

Latest News Reports From Miscellaneous Sources for May 18/08
Doha Talks: Progress in Election Law, Difficulties in New Government, Slow Down in Hizbullah Arms-Naharnet
Raad Tells World: Hizbullah Arms Non-Negotiable-Naharnet
Bush Attacks Hizbullah for Turning on 'Its Own People'-Naharnet
Dublin Conference Aimed at Banning Cluster Bombs-Naharnet
Israeli Troops Exercise Near Lebanon Border-Naharnet
Gen. Suleiman: Resistance Weapons in Internal Fighting Serve Israel-Naharnet
U.S. Vows it Won't Interfere in Lebanon Talks in Qatar-Naharnet
Lebanese leaders make some progress at Qatar talks-Reuters
Doha talks hit arms hurdle-GulfNews
High-level Lebanese talks in Qatar-The Associated Press
Recent Show of Force Carries Shiite Group To Forefront of Power-Washington Post
Fearful Arabs’ slammed-Ynetnews
Lebanese migrants rally for peace-Sydney Morning Herald
The limits of war in Lebanon-Boston Globe
Bush Urges Mideast Nations to Isolate Iran, Syria-Naharnet
Radical Islamists Gain in Kuwait's Parliamentary Elections-Naharnet
Lebanese leaders tackle core issues at Qatar talks-AP
Progress’ in Doha talks on Lebanon-Gulf Times
LEBANON: Protestors warn politicians they're fed up-Los Angeles Times
Positive atmosphere" prevails in Doha talks (Extra)Monsters and Critics.com
Inter-Lebanese dialogue in Doha: a "neutral ground"?AsiaNews.it
Report: US backs Israel-Syria talks-Jerusalem Post
FACTBOX - The main players in Lebanon's crisis-Reuters
Hizbullah Arms Dominate First Round of Lebanese Dialogue-Naharnet
Franjieh Has hopes on Doha Talks-Naharnet
Gen. Suleiman: Resistance Weapons in Internal Fighting Serve Israel-Naharnet
U.S. Vows it Won't Interfere in Lebanon Talks in Qatar-Naharnet
No Bush-Saniora Meeting to Take Place-Naharnet
Geagea to Hizbullah: Don't Expect Too Much-Naharnet

Bush Attacks Hizbullah for Turning on 'Its Own People'
Naharnet/U.S. President George Bush has attacked Hizbullah for turning its guns against the Lebanese while reiterating support for Prime Minister Fouad Saniora.
Speaking in Egypt, where he is on the final leg of a Middle East tour Saturday, Bush said: "We are concerned about radical elements undermining the democracy."
"It is clear that Hizbullah, which has been funded by Iran, can no longer justify its position as a defender against Israel when it turns on its own people," he added.
"This is a defining moment; it's a moment that requires us to stand strongly with the Saniora government and to support the Saniora government," stressed Bush.
Beirut, 18 May 08, 09:08

Doha Talks: Progress in Election Law, Difficulties in New Government, Slow Down in Hizbullah Arms
Naharnet/On their second day in Qatar, rival Lebanese leaders agreed to form a joint committee to address the issue of a new electoral law as difficulties in the formation of a new government have reportedly popped up with the question of Hizbullah arms slowing down. The daily An Nahar on Sunday said a six-member committee was tasked with tackling the elections law. It said that the committee, which has held three sessions already, agreed to adopt the Qadaa-based elections law while re-considering the policy on the distribution of constituency seats in accordance with the 2005 law. The committee was expected to complete its mission on Sunday, according to An Nahar.It said discussions will continue until agreement on a national unity government has been reached between the pro-government ruling March 14 coalition and the Hizbullah-led opposition. Meanwhile, bickering politicians asked Qatar to come up with a proposal on the thorny issue of Hizbullah arms during Arab-brokered talks aimed at ending the long-running political crisis that drove the country to the brink of a new civil war.
Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassem bin Jabr al-Thani "offered to come up with a proposal on the Hizbullah weaponry issue and present it to the two parties," a pro-government delegate told AFP."The two sides have agreed to that," he added following the first session of Arab-mediated talks by 14 leaders or representatives of the pro-Western government and the Hizbullah-led opposition, backed by Syria and Iran.
Host Qatar made the offer after leaders of the ruling parliamentary majority initially insisted without success on including the arms question on the agenda, said the delegate, requesting anonymity. Another delegate from the group later said it has succeeded in including on the agenda a "demand for guarantees against resorting again to arms."He told AFP the bloc "insists on debating the issue of arms in two stages."
The first stage should include "guarantees not to use arms (against other Lebanese parties) for whatever reason," while the "future of Hizbullah arms to be dealt with in the second stage, after electing a president."After 65 people were killed in nearly a week of fighting and Hizbullah and its allies temporarily took control of a large part of west Beirut, the two sides agreed on Thursday to a national dialogue aimed at breaking an impasse over electing a new president and forming a unity government. The Qatari hosts will be working against the backdrop of two United Nations Security Council resolutions calling for the disarmament of all militias in Lebanon. Resolution 1559, adopted in 2004 called, among other things, for the "disbanding and disarmament of all Lebanese and non-Lebanese militias."
Resolution 1701, which brought an end to the 2006 war between Israel and Hizbullah, called for there to be "no weapons or authority in Lebanon other than that of the Lebanese state." Both sides have already agreed on army chief Michel Suleiman to succeed Damascus protégé Emile Lahoud, who stepped down as president in November at the end of his term. Parliament has failed to convene to elect a successor, exacerbating a crisis that began in late 2006 when six pro-Syrian ministers quit the cabinet of Prime Minister Fouad Saniora.
On June 10, it is due for the 20th time to meet to elect a president. Among those attending the meeting are Saniora, parliamentary majority leader Saad Hariri and a key government ally, Druze leader Walid Jumblat. Hizbullah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah is not attending, reportedly because of security concerns, and is represented by Hizbullah MP Mohammed Raad. Also attending on behalf of the opposition are parliament speaker Nabih Berri and Free Patriotic Movement leader Michel Aoun. Hopes of a Lebanon deal rose on Wednesday after Saniora's government cancelled measures against Hizbullah that had triggered the unrest.
It rescinded plans to probe a private Hizbullah telecommunications network and reassign the head of airport security over allegations he was close to the group.
Meetings were believed to be going on behind closed doors on Saturday night, and there was no indication of when another formal session might be held.(Naharnet-AFP) Beirut, 18 May 08, 07:48

Raad Tells World: Hizbullah Arms Non-Negotiable
Naharnet/MP Mohammed Raad, Hizbullah's representative to the Arab-sponsored inter-Lebanese talks in Qatar, said Sunday the issue of the resistance and Hizbullah arms is non-negotiable. "We are negotiating the world … the resistance and its weapons are not included in the Doha talks," Raad told Al Manar TV.
"Hizbullah adheres to its fundamental principles," he added. Beirut, 18 May 08, 11:12

Dublin Conference Aimed at Banning Cluster Bombs
Naharnet/Envoys from around 100 countries are to gather in Dublin on Monday for a 12-day conference aimed at clinching an international treaty banning cluster munitions. Israel's widespread use of cluster bombs during the 2006 war in Lebanon caused more than 200 civilian casualties in the year following the ceasefire, the Cluster Munitions Coalition (CMC) said. The negotiations should hammer out a wide-ranging pact that would completely wipe out the use, production and stockpiling of cluster bombs by its signatories. But notable absentees from the Dublin Diplomatic Conference on Cluster Munitions, which concludes on May 30, include China, India, Israel, Pakistan, Russia and the United States: all major producers and stockpilers.
Following meetings in Lima, Vienna and Wellington, the Dublin gathering will thrash out a definitive agreement, to be signed in Oslo on December 2-3. Signatories would then need to ratify it. The process, started by Norway in February 2007, has taken the same path as the landmark 1997 Ottawa Treaty ban on anti-personnel landmines: going outside the United Nations to avoid vetoes and seal a swift treaty. Cluster munitions are among the weapons that pose the gravest dangers to civilians. Dropped from planes or fired from artillery, they explode in mid-air, randomly scattering bomblets. Countries are seeking a ban due to the risk of civilians being killed or maimed by their indiscriminate, wide area effect.
They also pose a lasting threat to civilians as many bomblets fail to explode on impact. "The use of these weapons has terrible humanitarian consequences," said new Foreign Minister Michael Martin of hosts Ireland. "It is my sincere hope that the outcome will be a convention prohibiting the use, production, transfer and stockpiling of cluster munitions that cause unacceptable harm to civilians." The conference is being staged at Croke Park, Ireland's largest stadium and the 82,300-capacity home of Gaelic sports. "It will be the biggest disarmament and humanitarian treaty to be signed in more than a decade," said Thomas Nash, coordinator of the CMC, an umbrella group of non-governmental organizations. "We will be preventing the sort of crisis that emerged from landmines before it even happens," he told AFP. "Rather than only being able to respond to problems, we're taking decisive steps to prevent catastrophe when we see it coming."
The draft convention obliges that signatories never:
"(a) Use cluster munitions;
"(b) Develop, produce, otherwise acquire, stockpile, retain or transfer to anyone, directly or indirectly, cluster munitions;
"(c) Assist, encourage or induce anyone to engage in any activity prohibited to a state party under this convention."
Signatories would have six years to destroy their stockpiles.
It also includes provisions for the welfare of cluster bomb victims and for cleaning up affected areas.
Some countries are looking to water down the wording, chiefly Britain, Nash said. Denmark, France, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, Sweden and Switzerland are among the other states seeking amendments.
Various states are seeking exemptions on certain types of cluster weapons, more time to dismantle their arsenals, looser language on assistance -- for example in joint military operations -- or transition periods in which they could still be used.
"As it stands, the draft treaty is a strong, comprehensive ban. Any attempts to water it down should be rejected completely," said Steve Goose of the Human Rights Watch organization.
"Those kinds of revisions will only undermine the intended purpose of the ban, which is to save lives."
The CMC hopes the ban would stigmatize the use of cluster munitions by non-signatories -- as has happened with landmines -- and thus increase pressure on those countries to reduce or stop using them themselves.
Cluster munitions caused more civilian casualties in Kosovo in 1999 and Iraq in 2003 than any other weapon system.(AFP) Beirut, 18 May 08, 09:00

Israeli Troops Exercise Near Lebanon Border
Naharnet/Israeli troops carried out limited war games off Lebanon southern Borders on Saturday, Local reporters observed.
They said at least six Israeli vehicles, including three tanks, took part in the exercise near the wire fence separating northern Israel from south Lebanon.
The exercise, according to the reporters, did not include using fire arms and it appeared aimed at deploying a rapid-deployment force to engage a suspected squad of fighters on a cross-border raid. Three Israeli helicopter gun ships also hovered over the terrain during the exercise that lasted nearly two hours, the reporters added. Beirut, 17 May 08, 20:59

Bush Urges Mideast Nations to Isolate Iran, Syria
Naharnet/U.S. President George Bush called on all nations in the Middle East to "confront Hamas" and to stop Iran and Syria from "supporting terrorism."
"We must stand with the good and decent people of Iran and Syria, who deserve so much better than the life they have today. Every peaceful nation in the region has an interest in stopping these nations from supporting terrorism," Bush said in remarks prepared for a speech in Egypt.
"And every peaceful nation in the region has an interest in opposing Iran's nuclear weapons ambitions. "To allow the world's leading sponsor of terror to gain the world's deadliest weapon would be an unforgivable betrayal of future generations. For the sake of peace, the world must not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon," he said. "All nations in the region must stand together in confronting Hamas, which is attempting to undermine efforts at peace with continued acts of terror and violence," Bush added, referring to the Palestinian Islamist group which controls Gaza.(AFP) Beirut, 18 May 08, 11:43

Gen. Suleiman: Resistance Weapons in Internal Fighting Serve Israel
Naharnet/Army Commander Gen. Michel Suleiman said the involvement by Hizbullah's resistance in internal fighting is a "clear favor for the Israeli enemy."
Suleiman made the remark while inspecting his troops deployed in south Lebanon. Suleiman said that the army refrained from "resorting to the cannon during the recent incidents and this does not mean that the army was neutralized, but it aimed at averting more bloodshed and further cracks in national ranks."
"Experience proved that stability cannot be achieved without entente," he concluded. Beirut, 17 May 08, 20:19

Lebanese leaders tackle core issues at Qatar talks
Module body
Sat May 17, 12:35 PM
By Nadim Ladki
DOHA (Reuters) - Rival leaders tackled divisive issues at the heart of Lebanon's political crisis on Saturday at Qatari-mediated talks aimed at pulling their country back from the brink of civil war. Government and opposition leaders left a conference room separately in the morning, after 90 minutes of tense talks on ending a standoff that has paralyzed the government for 18 months and left Lebanon with no president since November. Delegates said a six-member committee established at that session and asked to create a framework for a new election law had already made progress. Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jabr al-Thani is holding consultations to bring rival leaders closer to a deal on the framework for a new government. "The impression, thank God, from the session, shows the desire among all the factions to reach an understanding ... that will bring us to the beginning of a solution to this crisis," Prime Minister Fouad Siniora told Voice of Lebanon radio.
"We have to have faith and trust that we will do the impossible until we find solutions to this difficult stage that Lebanon has faced the past two weeks."
On Thursday, Arab mediators reached a deal to end Lebanon's worst internal fighting since the 1975-1990 civil war and pave the way for the talks hosted by Qatar. The clashes killed 81 people and worsened sectarian tensions between Shi'ites loyal to Iranian-backed Hezbollah and Druze and Sunni followers of the U.S.-supported ruling coalition. Washington blames Syria and Iran for Hezbollah's brief seizure of parts of Beirut last week which forced the government to rescind two decisions that had triggered the escalation.
U.S. President George W. Bush said on Saturday the United States would stand by Siniora's government against Hezbollah and accused "radical elements" of trying to undermine democracy. "It's a defining moment," he told reporters on a visit to Sharm el-Sheikh. The opposition has demanded more say in a cabinet controlled by factions opposed to Syrian influence in Lebanon. The ruling coalition's refusal to yield to the opposition's demand for veto power in cabinet triggered the resignation of all Shi'ite ministers in November 2006, crippling a political system build around the delicate sectarian balance.
Power-sharing in a new government and the basis of an election law are the core issues on the agenda. The ruling coalition also raised the matter of Hezbollah's weapons after the anti-Israel group turned its guns against political rivals. Bush said Hezbollah had abused its position. "It is clear that Hezbollah, which has been funded by Iran, can no longer justify its position as a defender against Israel when it turns on its own people," he said. Delegates said politicians from the Western-backed camp and Hezbollah had got into a heated debate over the prickliest issue and the one that led to the recent clashes -- Hezbollah's arms.
Sheikh Hamad intervened to end that debate, which he said should be postponed until after a deal is clinched to end the political stalemate and allow for the election of a president. Hezbollah says its arms are meant to protect Lebanon against its Israeli foe. Opponents, trounced in the fighting, argue they undermine the sovereignty of the state. "There is a real will on all sides; everyone lost with what happened. The winner (Hezbollah) is the bigger loser, because it opened up the important issue of the use of weapons," said Michel Pharaon, a minister in the U.S.-backed government.
"It is imperative that there be discussions on the sovereignty of the state ..."There has been no deadline set for the talks but some politicians said a deal could be reached within a few days. "The issue is not simple," government minister Ahmad Fatfat said. "Everyone will work day and night to reach a solution."
Syria, which backs the opposition and is an ally of Iran, said it supported the Qatari-led Arab League initiative. The anti-Damascus factions have long accused the opposition of seeking to restore Syrian domination over Lebanon, which ended in 2005 when Syria withdrew its troops in the face of international pressure and Lebanese protests. Saudi Arabia, a strong backer of the ruling coalition, also stated its support for the deal. A deal would lead to the election of army commander General Michel Suleiman as president. Both sides have accepted his nomination for a post reserved for a Maronite Christian in Lebanon's sectarian power-sharing system. (Additional reporting by Yara Bayoumy in Beirut; writing by Nadim Ladki and Lin Noueihed; editing by Philippa Fletcher)

Progress’ in Doha talks on Lebanon
Published: Sunday, 18 May, 2008, 01:43 AM Doha Time
Lebanese Christian Forces party MP and government supporter Antoine Zahra (left, seated) talking with Hezbollah deputy Hussein al-Hajj Hassan (right) during a break from a round table meeting between various Lebanese leaders in Doha yesterday
LEBANON’S rival leaders managed to achieve some “progress” on their first day of talks that started yesterday in Doha regarding a national unity government and a new electoral law. “We cannot say that all the problems are solved, there are progress in some issues, but we have not yet reached a full positive progress on all issues,” Telecommunication Minister Marwan Hamadeh, said. “We came here with a deep wound and we have a serious issue to discuss, which is the arms of some organisations,” Hamadeh was referring to the arms of the Hezbollah movement. “The issue of the Hezbollah weapons caused some difference between the Hezbollah delegates and members of the majority, which prompted the Qatari hosts to intervene and stop the bickering inside the hall,” the delegate, who requested anonymity, said. Prime Minister HE Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jabor al-Thani “offered to come up with a proposal on the Hezbollah weaponry issue and present it to the two parties,” a pro-government delegate said. “The two sides have agreed to that,” he added following the first session of Arab-mediated talks by 14 leaders or representatives of the pro-Western government and the Hezbollah-led opposition, backed by Syria and Iran.
After 85 people were killed in nearly a week of fighting between the opposition led by Hezbollah and the Western-backed majority, the two sides agreed on Thursday to a national dialogue to try to break the impasse on electing a new president and forming a unity government.
Hezbollah was the only group that did not have to hand over its guns to the government following the 1989 Saudi-brokered Taif agreement to end the 1975-1990 civil war, because it was fighting the Israeli occupation of south Lebanon and “was considered a resistance against an occupation.”
Israel pulled its troops out of Lebanon in 2000. According to a source, despite disagreement over the arms of the Lebanese Shia movement – which is backed by Iran and Syria – the delegates did agree on forming a committee of three members from each side to address the issue of a new electoral law for parliamentary polls due next year. Despite the differences over the Hezbollah arms, sources close to the Shia House Speaker Nabih Berri, who is a member of the opposition, said a “positive atmosphere” is prevailing at the talks.
“All parties are working hard to reach an agreement with positive intentions,” the source said. “If all continues like this, we will be able to elect a president by next week.” Both sides have already agreed on army chief Michel Suleiman to succeed Emile Lahoud. Lebanon has been with no president since pro-Syrian Lahoud stepped down in November 2007. Parliament has failed to convene to elect a successor 19 times. It is to make its next attempt when it meets on June 10.
According to a delegate at the Doha talks, “the leaders are close to agreeing on a new formula to form a national unity government.”
The delegate at the talks in Qatar added that the committee which was formed yesterday in Doha from six members of the Lebanese rivals has agreed on adopting a new election law. “The committee has mainly agreed on adopting Lebanon’s 1960 electoral law with some amendments regarding the city of Beirut,” a Lebanese delegate at the talks said. – DPA

Hizbullah Arms Dominate First Round of Lebanese Dialogue
Naharnet/Bickering Lebanese politicians postponed the thorny issue of Hizbullah's weapons on Saturday at talks in Qatar aimed at ending a feud that drove their country to the brink of a new civil war. Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassem bin Jabr al-Thani "offered to come up with a proposal on the Hizbullah weaponry issue and present it to the two parties," a Lebanese delegate told AFP. "The two sides have agreed to that," he added following the first session of Arab-mediated talks by 14 leaders or representatives of the government and the Hizbullah-led opposition, backed by Syria and Iran.
Host Qatar offered to come up with a compromise after leaders of the March 14 parliamentary bloc insisted on listing Hizbullah's arms on the agenda of the dialogue, said the delegate, requesting anonymity. After 65 people were killed in nearly a week of fighting, the two sides agreed on Thursday to a national dialogue aimed at breaking an impasse over electing a new president and forming a unity government.
The Qatari hosts will be working against the backdrop of two United Nations Security Council resolutions calling for the disarmament of all militias in Lebanon.
Hizbullah was the only group that did not have to hand over its guns to the government following the 1989 Saudi-brokered Taef agreement to end the 1975-1990 civil war, because it was fighting the Israeli occupation of south Lebanon. However, Israel pulled its troops out of Lebanon in 2000.
Resolution 1559, adopted in 2004 called, among other things, for the "disbanding and disarmament of all Lebanese and non-Lebanese militias."
Resolution 1701, which brought an end to the 2006 war between Israel and Hizbullah, called for there to be "no weapons or authority in Lebanon other than that of the Lebanese state."Despite disagreement over the arms question, the delegates did agree to form a committee of three members from each side to address the issue of a new electoral law for parliamentary polls due next year, the delegate said.
No time has been fixed for the next session, said a source in the Arab League, which is sponsoring the crisis talks, but bilateral meetings were expected to be held on the sidelines of the gathering. In addition to the electoral law, the leaders are expected to discuss a proposed unity government.
Parliament has failed to convene to elect a successor, exacerbating a crisis that began in late 2006 when six pro-Syrian ministers quit the cabinet of Prime Minister Fouad Saniora. On June 10, it is due for the 20th time to meet to elect a president. The talks officially started on Friday evening with a brief opening session chaired by Qatar's emir, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani. Mediation continued overnight with the emir shuttling between rival parties, according to the Lebanese pro-government newspaper An-Nahar. Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah is not attending, reportedly because of security concerns, and is represented by Hizbullah MP Mohammed Raad. Also attending on behalf of the opposition are parliament speaker Nabih Berri and Christian leader Michel Aoun. The dialogue is linked to a six-point plan agreed following Arab League mediation led by the Qatari premier. Under the deal the rivals undertook "to shore up the authority of the Lebanese state throughout the country," to refrain from using weapons to further political aims and to remove militants from the streets.(AFP-Naharnet) Beirut, 17 May 08, 07:03

Dr. Walid Phares calls for Civil Resistance to Terrorism in Lebanon
 Dr. Walid Phares's message to Cedars Revolution Radio from Washington
Washington DC
May 17/08
In an commentary aired by the Cedars Revolution Radio from Washington, Dr Walid Phares said the international community will support a civil resistance against Terrorism in Lebanon under Lebanese and international laws. He said "Lebanese citizens have the fundamental right to resist Hezbollah's Terror and invasion of West Beirut, the Mountain and the North. Phares, a Senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said "all efforts by Lebanese citizens to oppose Terrorism and in defens of Democracy will be endorsed worldwide." He said the Lebanese cabinet of Fuad Seniora will continue to receive backing from the international community as long as it represents the Lebanese people but at the same time it bares the responsibility of not requesting the help of the United Nations against Terror and for not requesting the activation of Chapter 7 of the UN Charter.
Phares added that the Lebanese Army is a central institution which has been supported by the international community and by the United States in particular but that the command of this institution has allowed the forces of Hezbollah to invade the capital Beirut and attack the Mountain. "This is a dangerous situation, and it should be addressed by the international community." Phares asserted that the crisis in Lebanon is not between an opposition and loyalists, "this is not reality. Facts are that this is Terrorism against Democracy. Hence the next stage should be a civilian resistance against Terrorism."
"The Lebanese Government must withdraw its recognition of Hezbollah's militia as a resistance movement and call on the international community to help restoring the sovereignty of the country under Chapter 7." Phares said "the present Arab initiative under the Qatar regime will not provide a solution as long as Qatar do not recognize the right of the Lebanese Government to resist Terrorism. They see Terrorism and civil society as equal, and that is against international principles. What is needed now is to move towards the international institutions such as the UN and work with allies as the United States, France and the moderate Arab Governments. to help Lebanon."

Sen. Kennedy hospitalized with symptoms of stroke
By DAVID ESPO, Associated Press
Sat May 17,
Kennedy, 76, has been in the Senate since election in 1962, filling out the term won by his brother, John F. Kennedy.
In October, Kennedy had surgery to repair a nearly complete blockage in a major neck artery. The discovery was made during a routine examination of a decades-old back injury. The hour long procedure on his left carotid artery — a main supplier of blood to the face and brain — was performed at Massachusetts General. This type of operation is performed on more than 180,000 people a year to prevent a stroke.
The doctor who operated on Kennedy said at the time that surgery is reserved for those with more than 70 percent blockage, and Kennedy had "a very high-grade blockage." Kennedy is the lone surviving son in a famed political family. His eldest brother, Joseph, was killed in a World War II airplane crash. President John Kennedy was assassinated in 1963 and his brother Robert was assassinated in 1968. HIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below. WASHINGTON (AP) — Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts was hospitalized in Boston Saturday after suffering stroke-like symptoms, according to a knowledgeable official. There was no immediate word on his condition. The official who provided the information declined to be identified by name, citing the sensitivity of the events. Hyannis Fire Lt. Bill Rex told the AP a 911 call came in from the Kennedy compound at 8:19 a.m. EDT A male was transported to Cape Cod Hospital and was transferred by med flight at 10:10 a.m. from Barnstable Municipal Airport to Massachusetts General Hospital. Kennedy, 76, has been in the Senate since election in 1962, filling out the term won by his brother, John F. Kennedy. Copyright © 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.

Lebanese leaders aim to end political crisis
By HUSSEIN DAKROUB, Associated Press Writer Sat May 17, 7:30 AM ET
Leaders of Lebanon's U.S.-backed government and the Hezbollah-led opposition met behind closed doors in Qatar on Saturday for the highest-level talks so far in the country's 18-month-long political crisis, which turned violent a week ago. The Doha-hosted meeting on forming a national unity government and electing a president was agreed under a deal, mediated by the Arab League, to end Lebanon's worst violence since the 1975-1990 civil war.
But the government raised the stakes on the talks Saturday, insisting they must also tackle the issue of the weapons used by the Iranian-backed militant Hezbollah, which the U.S. considers a terrorist group. Telecommunications Minister Marwan Hamadeh told The Associated Press from Qatar that leaders would discuss "Hezbollah's use of its weapons to achieve internal political aims" in the wake of recent violence.
Hamadeh said he expects "three critical days" before the sides reach any sort of compromise on the standoff that has pushed Lebanon to the brink of an all-out conflict. Lebanon's crisis has paralyzed the country and left it without a president since Emile Lahoud's term ended last November.
A week ago, the standoff dissolved into violence when the government passed measures to rein in Hezbollah, whose fighters then responded by overrunning neighborhoods of west Beirut in clashes that left 67 people dead and more than 200 wounded. The violence eventually forced the government to revoke the measures. The move was a major victory for Hezbollah and indicated that the militant group had gained the upper hand in the power struggle.
The feuding Lebanese factions arrived in Qatar Friday, where Emir Sheikh Hamad Bin Khalifa Al-Thani welcomed them saying he hoped the Lebanese would come to an agreement and prevent further clashes in their country.
Hardline Christian pro-government politician Samir Geagea warned Hezbollah that the talks would fail if the group sticks to keeping its arsenal in defiance of state authority. "We can no longer accept Hezbollah as it is," Geagea told the Qatari-based pan Arab Al-Jazeera television.
The opposition, represented by Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri and three Hezbollah lawmakers, had no immediate comments.
Under a deal brokered by Arab League mediators, the talks in Doha would lead to the election of compromise candidate Michel Suleiman, the army chief, as Lebanese president.
They also will focus on the formation of a national unity government and a new election law, along with ways to guarantee the "security of the state and the citizens" — a reference to military activities of the Hezbollah and other armed groups.
Lebanon's crisis, sparked by the Cabinet resignations of six Hezbollah ministers in November 2006, has wider regional implications.
Washington and Saniora's faction have accused Iran and Syria of seeking to undermine the government and Middle East stability, while Hezbollah accuses the prime minister and his allies of toeing the pro-American line. President Bush and Saudi King Abdullah shared their concerns over the Lebanon violence during a meeting Friday in Riyadh, Bush's national security adviser Stephen Hadley told reporters. The two were concerned the Lebanon events would "embolden Iran," Hadley said, adding that the U.S. and Saudi Arabia both condemn "what Hezbollah did in bringing pressure on the duly elected government of Lebanon."
Copyright © 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.

LEBANON: Protestors warn politicians they're fed up
Los Angeles Time
Think Americans have it bad with their elected leaders?
Consider the Lebanese, whose politicians have somehow managed to bring the country back to the brink of civil war 18 years after the end of the last one.
On Friday, as Lebanon's political leaders headed to the recently reopened airport to fly to Qatar and attempt to resolve their differences, a group of disabled Lebanese, many of them disfigured in the last civil war, gathered at the airport to greet them with a blunt message: If they don't work out a new power-sharing deal, they should just stay away.
"If you don't agree," said signs held up by the demonstrators, "don't come back!!!"
Many Lebanese are fed up with the country's politicians, whether Sunni, Shiite, Christian or Druze. Lebanon's pols have a lot of flair. They tend to dress impeccably and drive eye-catching late-model sedans and SUVs. Even Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah wears his black turban with style.
Many have been around forever. Take Walid Jumblatt, who has over the decades transformed himself from playboy to warlord, from Syrian ally to Syrian enemy and from anti-American Arab nationalist celebrating the crashing of the Space Shuttle Columbia to a U.S. ally conspiring with the State Department to fight America's enemies in Lebanon.  But when it comes to handling minute matters of state, even politicians admit they ill-serve their constituents. Corruption is rife in Lebanon and public infrastructure rots. A rain-soaked country criss-crossed by rivers, Lebanon suffers chronic water shortages. The country produces a bountiful annual harvest of world-class engineers and scientists, but most Lebanese only get about 18 hours of electricity a day.
Given all that, one can understand why protesters greet their leaders with blunt warnings instead of wishes of good luck.
-- Borzou Daragahi in Beirut

Hezbollah’s Actions Ignite Sectarian Fuse in Lebanon
Associated Press
By ROBERT F. WORTH and NADA BAKRI
Published: May 18, 2008
MENIEH, Lebanon — For two and a half days, Hussein al-Haj Obaid lay on the floor of a darkened warehouse in west Beirut, blindfolded and terrified. Militiamen loyal to Hezbollah had kidnapped him at a checkpoint after killing his nephew right in front of him.
Bryan Denton for The New York Times
Hussein al-Haj Obaid, a Sunni Muslim, was abducted and tortured by gunmen loyal to Hezbollah, the Shiite militant group. “The blood is boiling here,” he said.
Throughout those awful days, as his kidnappers kicked and punched him, applied electrical shocks to his genitals and insulted him with sectarian taunts, he could hear the chatter of gunfire and the crash of rocket-propelled grenades outside, where Hezbollah and its allies were taking control of the capital.
He returned to this northern village only after family members won his release just over a week ago by threatening the kidnappers with retaliation. By that time Mr. Obaid, a Sunni Muslim, had gained a whole new way of seeing his Shiite countrymen and his native land.
“We cannot go back to how we lived with them before,” he said as he sat with relatives and friends at home here. “The blood is boiling here. Every boy here, his blood is boiling. They push us, they push us, they push us.”
Those feelings are being echoed throughout Lebanon. After almost a week of street battles that left scores dead and threatened to push the country into open war, long-simmering Sunni-Shiite tensions here have sharply worsened, in an ominous echo of the civil conflict in Iraq.
Hezbollah’s brief takeover of Beirut led to brutal counterattacks in northern Lebanon, where Sunni Muslims deeply resented the Shiite militant group’s display of power. The violence energized radical Sunni factions, including some affiliated with Al Qaeda, and extremist Sunni Web sites across the Arab world have been buzzing with calls for a jihad to avenge the wounded pride of Lebanese Sunnis.
Although the crisis eased Thursday after Arab diplomats brokered a deal to restart political talks among the factions, the questions that have crippled the government for 18 months remain unresolved. It is not yet clear that enough international consensus exists among the key powers involved in Lebanon — Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia and the United States — for a durable power-sharing agreement.
Meanwhile, many Lebanese agree that the hardening of Sunni-Shiite animosities — reminiscent of the Muslim-Christian fault line during the country’s 15-year civil war — is likely to make any future conflict here more violent.
“The Sunni-Shiite conflict is in the open now, it’s been triggered and operationalized,” said Paul Salem, director of the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut. “This is a deep wound, and it’s going to have serious repercussions if it’s not immediately and seriously addressed.”
Lebanese political leaders have tried hard to avoid stirring sectarian sentiment, emphasizing the religious diversity of both the governing coalition and the Hezbollah-led opposition movement. In a speech delivered the day before Hezbollah supporters seized the capital, the group’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, went out of his way to deny that Sunni-Shiite tensions were an issue.
But after Hezbollah supporters humiliated Lebanon’s main Sunni political leader, Saad Hariri — crushing his weak militia, forcing his party’s television station off the air and burning two of his movement’s buildings — many of Mr. Hariri’s supporters were enraged, and they said they would look to another Sunni leader who would help them fight back.
That sentiment has stirred fears that moderate, secular Sunni leaders like Mr. Hariri could lose ground to more radical figures, including the jihadists who thrive in Lebanon’s teeming Palestinian refugee camps. Fatah al Islam, the radical group that fought a bloody three-month battle with the Lebanese Army in a refugee camp in northern Lebanon last year, issued a statement Thursday condemning Hezbollah’s actions. The group also gave a warning: “He who pushes our faces in the dirt must be confronted, even if that means sacrificing our lives and shedding blood.”
A New Kind of Conflict
The Sunni-Shiite conflict is relatively new in Lebanon, where the long civil war that ended in 1990 revolved mostly around tensions between Christians and Muslims, and their differences over the Palestinian presence in the country. But after Iran helped establish Hezbollah in the early 1980s, Lebanon’s long-marginalized Shiites steadily gained power and stature. They have also grown in numbers. Although there has been no census since 1932, Shiites are widely believed to be more numerous than Sunnis or Christians, the country’s other major groups.
Tensions began to rise in 2005 after Syrian troops ended their long occupation of Lebanon, leaving the country’s factions to broker a power-sharing agreement. Hezbollah established a crucial alliance with Michel Aoun, a former general and one of the country’s most powerful Christian leaders, to oppose the Western-backed government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, a Sunni.
In late 2006, sectarian street battles began taking place in mixed Sunni-Shiite neighborhoods, mostly among young followers of Mr. Hariri’s Future Movement and the Amal Party, a Hezbollah ally. The fighting was prompted by hard feelings after Hezbollah’s withdrawal from the cabinet and its subsequent campaign to bring down Mr. Siniora, who refused to step down despite the resignation of all the cabinet’s Shiite ministers.
During a funeral procession in a Sunni neighborhood of Beirut on May 10, a clash erupted between Sunni mourners and a Shiite shopowner, who fired into the crowd. Two people were killed.
By Thursday, the crisis had eased, and the cleanup was under way in Beirut.
As the conflict grew worse, there were rumors that Mr. Hariri was training a Sunni militia to counter Hezbollah, and even cultivating links with jihadists.
But when the battle finally broke wide open just over a week ago, a different reality emerged.
Hezbollah and its allies, angered by government decisions that threatened the group’s communication network, sent their fighters into the streets, blocking crucial roads and skirmishing with Sunni militia fighters. Mr. Nasrallah had labeled the government’s actions a declaration of war, but it was a war only one side was prepared for.
A Terrifying Ordeal
Mr. Obaid was one of many Sunni men who drove to Beirut after hearing that Hezbollah was attacking the offices of his political patron, Mr. Hariri. On arriving in the city, he stopped at a checkpoint, where militiamen asked him where he was from.
He barely had time to answer, he said, before the men — who recognized him as a Sunni from his northern accent — opened fire on the car, riddling it with bullets and killing Mr. Obaid’s young nephew, Abdo.
Mr. Obaid got out and tried to run, but the men caught him and took him to a warehouse, where he endured two and a half days of torture. He took off his shirt to show a reporter the fresh scars.
“They gave me a hard, hard time, brother,” said Mr. Obaid, who speaks English with a strong Australian accent, a legacy of 13 years he spent in that country.
“They did not even ask for my ID card, they just hear my voice,” Mr. Obaid said. “They treated us like animals, like animals.”
Battling in the Streets
Meanwhile, as the street fighting went on in west Beirut on May 8 Mr. Hariri’s Sunni militia had proved to be largely mythical: its fighters were quickly thrashed. Some were given orders not to fight, so as to avoid a massacre.
The next day, as Hezbollah fighters and their allies were taking control of west Beirut, one Sunni fighter ran up to a group of young men in the Sunni stronghold of Tarik Jadideh and told them it was over.
“Hurry up, run away, it is over, there is nothing left,” the gunman said, before running off himself. “They are coming after us, and this time with shoes, not weapons, to humiliate us even more.”
Before long, a sense of communal victimhood and rage spread. On the way to a funeral on May 10 for one of the young Sunni men killed during the battles, mourners walked in a procession while chanting, “Shiites are the enemies of God.”
As the pallbearers approached a store owned by a Shiite man, some mourners rushed in and urged the man to close it out of respect. He refused, and the mourners began smashing his windows with rocks and chairs. Enraged, the man got his AK-47 assault rifle and began firing into the crowd, killing two mourners and wounding others.
As terrified mourners ran from the scene, the funeral procession turned into a sectarian riot, with Sunnis angrily destroying every store owned by Shiites in the neighborhood.
At one point, as the rioters reached an abandoned juice shop, they stopped to eat kiwis, strawberries and carrots. But one angry mourner turned on them in rage.
“What are you doing?” he shouted. “You can’t eat these fruits, they are forbidden. They were bought with Shiite money.”
Solidifying Hatred
After the extent of Hezbollah’s victory dawned on May 9, revenge attacks began taking place outside the capital. In the mountains east of Beirut, Druse militiamen kidnapped three Hezbollah members, and the bodies of two of them were soon found outside a hospital, shot and stabbed. In northern town of Halba, an angry mob set fire to the offices of a militia allied with Hezbollah and killed 11 of its members.
Much of this violence began along factional lines, with some Sunni opposition members fighting alongside Shiites in the opposition militias.
But with Christians on both sides sitting out the violence, the battles took on an increasingly sectarian tone. And when Hezbollah fighters drove up into the mountains, many of their Druse allies deserted them or even changed sides, preferring to fight alongside their fellow Druse against the Shiite invaders.
As the violence ebbed, rumors of sectarian massacres began to spread, adding fuel to the wounded pride of Lebanese Sunnis and posing a new challenge that Lebanon’s weak state is ill prepared to deal with.
“Rumors of these violations are spreading like wildfire and solidifying communal hatred,” said Nadim Houry, a researcher on Lebanon and Syria for Human Rights Watch. “This will lead to acts of revenge if the state does not act quickly to hold perpetrators accountable.”
In the meantime, as Lebanon’s leaders meet in Qatar for their latest efforts to hammer out a compromise, Lebanese television stations affiliated with the opposed political camps are replaying taped segments that underscore a sense of communal grievance. In one of them, Sahar Khatib, an anchor for the television station that was forced off the air during the conflict, addresses Hezbollah supporters in a long, anguished tirade.
“This grudge against us, why?” Ms. Khatib shouts, staring angrily at the camera. “I am someone who believes in God, not sects. Now you have awakened this sectarianism in me. Look at your victims, victims like me, one after another.”

Hezbollah's power play
THE WASHINGTON TIMES EDITORIAL
May 18, 2008
There are four major goals behind Hezbollah's recent display of raw military power in Lebanon, in which at least scores of people have been killed. First, there was the Shi'ite terror group's determination to settle domestic Lebanese political scores with its enemies, in particular Sunni Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, and Progressive Socialist Party chief Walid Jumblatt. The second is to give Iran and Syria more military options in their struggle with Israel. The third is to embarrass the United States — in particular President Bush, who this week is visiting the Mideast. The fourth objective is to intimidate and embarrass relatively moderate Arab nations with ties to the United States like Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. In effect, Hezbollah has staged a de facto coup, making it — and by extension its supporters in Tehran and Damascus — the dominant force in Lebanon.
As we went to press, the Lebanese cabinet was expected to cancel a series of May 8 decisions that Hezbollah objected to when it blockaded the Beirut Airport and took up arms against the government. Specifically, Beirut had decided to rotate Brig. Gen. Wafiq Choucair, a Hezbollah sympathizer and Lebanese armed forces officer in charge of the airport, to a new position. Also, fearful that Hezbollah was preparing to drag Lebanon into another war with Israel, the government declared "illegal" a Hezbollah military communications network that extended to the heart of Beirut. But, in the wake of Hezbollah's strategic blitzkrieg against its fellow Lebanese, the Beirut government yesterday decided to cancel the orders.
The events in Lebanon are a blow to the Bush administration's foreign policy credibility. The Lebanese military, which stood on the sidelines as Hezbollah went on its rampage, has received nearly $250 million in assistance from the United States since 2006. President Bush is scheduled to meet today with Mr. Siniora in Egypt. In the interim, we fully expect to hear plenty of tough talk from the Bush administration about the malevolence of Iran and Syria. But it is highly doubtful that anything can be done in the short term to reverse the Hezbollah coup that has just taken place or the fact that it gives Hezbollah free reign in northern and eastern Lebanon.
The U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon is deployed south of the Litani River. To circumvent this, Hezbollah has been rebuilding a series of military bases and tunnels north of the river since the 2006 war with Israel. Its expanded presence there provides it with the opportunity to set up an expanded northern confrontation front against Israel. It sends a message aimed at deterring both the United States and Israel against taking military action against Iranian weapons facilities — should they do so, Tehran and its allies would be able to target Israel from bases in Lebanon.
Hezbollah's victory is also an embarrassment to the Arab League, and in particular, the Saudis. Riyadh was reportedly involved in financing Sunni militias in Beirut that were supposed to be able to combat Hezbollah militarily; but the Sunnis were routed by Hezbollah. Right now, the Arab League is engaged in trying to "mediate" between Hezbollah and the Lebanese government — which is a very diplomatic euphemism for establishing the terms of Beirut's surrender to Hezbollah.

Lebanese leaders make some progress at Qatar talks
Sun 18 May 2008,
DOHA (Reuters) - Rival Lebanese leaders made some progress on the third day of talks in Qatar on Sunday but tough obstacles remained before a deal could be clinched to pull Lebanon back from the brink of a new civil war.
Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jabr al-Thani held intensive meetings with leaders of the U.S.-backed ruling coalition and Iranian and Syrian allies in the opposition to try to end a crisis that has paralysed the government for 18 months and left Lebanon with no president since November.
But Sheikh Hamad had yet to win final approval from both sides on one of the prickliest issues on the agenda -- the shape of a new government, delegates said. The Qatari leader's latest proposal suggested dividing cabinet seats three ways equally -- a third for each side and a third for the new president.
Delegates said the opposition had agreed to the proposal but the ruling coalition was still waiting for agreement on other issues before giving a final answer.
A six-member committee created on Saturday to lay the framework for a new election law made progress early on but was later stuck on how to divide Beirut electorally. The Lebanese capital is a stronghold of the ruling coalition but its Sunni Muslim supporters have been on the defensive since Hezbollah briefly seized parts of the city in the worst internal fighting since the 1975-1990 civil war. Officials from the governing coalition were also demanding clear guarantees that Hezbollah would not turn its weapons against them again and that the fate of its arms would be discussed soon, delegates said.
"There has been some progress here and there, but some major issues remain," one senior delegate said.
DEFINING MOMENT
Washington blames Syria and Iran for Hezbollah's offensive last week which forced the government to rescind two decisions that had triggered the escalation.
Arab mediators clinched a deal on Thursday to end the fighting and pave the way for the talks in Doha.
But the violence, which killed 81 people, has deepened mistrust among rival politicians and exacerbated sectarian tensions between Shi'ites loyal to Hezbollah and Druze and Sunni followers of the ruling coalition. President George W. Bush said on Saturday the United States would stand by the Lebanese government against Hezbollah and accused "radical elements" of trying to undermine democracy. "It's a defining moment," he told reporters in Sharm el-Sheikh during a visit to Egypt.
There has been no deadline set for the talks but diplomats say that unless some progress is made in the next day or two then a deal might prove tough to reach.
Power-sharing in a new government and the basis of an election law are the core issues on the agenda. The Hezbollah-led opposition wants more say in a cabinet controlled by factions opposed to Syrian influence in Lebanon.
The ruling coalition's refusal to yield to the demand for an effective veto power in the cabinet triggered the resignation of all Shi'ite ministers in November 2006, crippling a political system built around the delicate sectarian balance. Election laws have always been a sensitive subject in Lebanon, a patchwork of religious sects where redrawing constituencies can have a dramatic impact on voting results. A deal would lead to the election of army commander General Michel Suleiman as president. Both sides have accepted his nomination for a post reserved for a Maronite Christian in Lebanon's sectarian power-sharing system.
(Writing by Lin Noueihed; editing by Sami Aboudi)

Doha talks hit arms hurdle
Agencies
Published: May 18, 2008,
Doha: Bickering Lebanese politicians postponed the thorny issue of Hezbollah's weapons on Saturday at talks in Qatar aimed at ending a feud that drove their country to the brink of a new civil war.
Qatari Prime Minister Shaikh Hamad Bin Jasem Bin Jabr Al Thani "offered to come up with a proposal on the Hezbollah weaponry issue and present it to the two parties," a Lebanese delegate told reporters. The proposal came after leaders of the pro-government parliamentary bloc insisted on listing Hezbollah's arms on the agenda of the dialogue, said the delegate, requesting anonymity. "The two sides have agreed to that," he added following the first session of Arab-mediated talks by 14 leaders and representatives of the pro-Western government and the Hezbollah-led opposition, backed by Syria and Iran. Hezbollah was the only group that did not have to hand over its guns to the government following the 1989 Saudi-brokered Taif agreement to end the 1975-1990 civil war, because it was fighting the Israeli occupation of south Lebanon. 'Defining moment' Despite disagreement over the arms question, the delegates did agree to form a committee of three members from each side to address the issue of a new electoral law for parliamentary polls due next year, the delegate said.
No time has been fixed for the next session, said a source in the Arab League, which is sponsoring the crisis talks, but bilateral meetings were expected to be held on the sidelines of the gathering. In addition to the electoral law, the leaders are expected to discuss a proposed unity government.
"The impression, thank God, from the session, shows the desire among all the factions to reach an understanding ... that will bring us to the beginning of a solution to this crisis," Prime Minister Fouad Siniora told the Voice of Lebanon radio. "We have to have faith and trust that we will do the impossible until we find solutions to this difficult stage that Lebanon has faced the past two weeks." As the crisis talks progressed, US President George W. Bush said Lebanon was facing a "defining moment" and pledged that the US would stand by the government against Hezbollah. Speaking to reporters on a visit to Sharm Al Shaikh, Bush accused "radical elements" of trying to undermine the Lebanese government. "It's a defining moment," he said.

Hezbollah Emerges in Forefront of Power in Lebanon
Recent Show of Force Carries Shiite Group To Forefront of Power
By:Anthony Shadid/
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, May 18, 2008; Page A16
BEIRUT -- Time haunts Lebanon.
At the entrance to Hamra, once the cosmopolitan heart of the capital, a billboard reads 1,188, the number of days since former prime minister Rafiq al-Hariri was assassinated in 2005, plunging the country into a crisis that persists today. A mile or so away, another marker stands frozen at one year since Hezbollah and its allies erected a tent city, occupying Beirut's tony downtown. No one has updated it for the past 168 days.
But in the span of just eight days, some of the most tumultuous since the end of the civil war in 1990, the Shiite Muslim movement has refigured, both through its own actions and the repercussions that ensued, the arithmetic of politics in a country once hailed as a centerpiece of the Bush administration's now-tattered vision of a new Middle East.
Hezbollah today stands unquestioned as the single most powerful force in Lebanon. By routing government-allied militiamen in hours last week, as the army stood by, it proved it can occupy Beirut at will. Its show of strength forced the government into a humiliating retreat from decisions that targeted the group. And the group itself has ensured that the independence of its sprawling military, political and social infrastructure -- deemed a state within a state by its opponents -- will remain untouched for the foreseeable future.
By doing so, Hezbollah, once a shadowy, Iranian-inspired band born in the civil war, has decided a question that has divided Lebanon since Hariri's death: whether it would embrace a culture of accommodation with Israel, as a mercantile Mediterranean entrepot, or one of confrontation that Hezbollah and its Iranian patrons exalt.
"In this war, over a span of a few days, Hezbollah was able to translate a minor military victory into a major political achievement. It has succeeded in breaking the deadlock and achieving the aims the opposition has been calling for for two years," said Amal Saad-Ghorayeb, an analyst at the Beirut Center for Research and Information.
But the new calculus in Lebanon, where tension is combustible and diversity is claustrophobic, may prove that Hezbollah's victory was Pyrrhic, as it inherits a country whose sectarian and political contradictions suggest another civil war ahead.
Even its supporters cringed at the sight of Shiite militiamen sipping coffee at Starbucks, their rocket-propelled grenade launcher resting in a chair. Tension between Sunnis and Shiites echoes the sectarian divide in Iraq. And across Lebanon, a crisis that remains unresolved even now has inspired revulsion in a country that has only rarely been a state over its short, often nasty, usually brutish history.
"The old Lebanon cannot be at all rebuilt or mended the way it was," said Assem Salam, an 83-year-old architect and scion of one of Beirut's most prominent Sunni families. "It's become more and more difficult to piece Lebanon back the way it was."
"I'm very worried," he said. He paused, smoking a cigar, then repeated the words.
A Cost to Its Image
Yahya Thibyan, a member of Lebanon's small Druze community, populating the Chouf Mountains outside Beirut, said scouts had borrowed his Russian-made telescope to watch for the arrival of Hezbollah's fighters. At 7:30 p.m. last Sunday, he said, they came.
Hezbollah and its allied militiamen had already briefly occupied predominantly Muslim West Beirut, cutting off the airport and seaport. The effective surrender of their opponents illustrated the new balance of power in the capital. Within days, the government repealed decisions aimed at Hezbollah's telecommunications network and reassigned the chief of security at the Beirut airport, a Hezbollah ally. A day later, government supporters agreed to a dialogue in Doha, Qatar, almost completely on Hezbollah's terms, to decide on a cabinet, a law for parliamentary elections and a president
Hezbollah made clear that it will be here, it will be independent, it will be an army and it will not tolerate any Lebanese government doing anything about it," said Paul Salem, the director of the Carnegie Middle East Center. "That's a no-go zone."
But a different dynamic emerged in the Chouf, whose picturesque terrain was some of the most blood-soaked in the 15-year civil war. There, Hezbollah's fighters met far fiercer resistance from the Druze who populate those mountains. While Hezbollah has long guarded a vaunted reputation won by success in ending Israel's occupation in 2000 and fighting it to a draw in 2006, this time Shiite fighters shed their old image of guerrillas for a new one of invaders.
"I know my land better than they do," Thibyan said simply.
Residents there said two convoys of Hezbollah fighters passed the village of Niha along a road that Israeli forces had built during their invasion of Lebanon in 1982. The first had 13 vehicles -- motorcycles and pickups with guns mounted in back. A half-hour later, 22 more vehicles followed, heading on a 25-mile trek to Maasar Chouf, a village on the road to Mukhtara, the feudal residence of Walid Jumblatt, the Druze leader.
At 9:30 p.m., residents said, Hezbollah's fighters were ambushed by Druze villagers in their heartland, some of whom, until that moment, had stood on opposite sides of the 18-month-long crisis, divided by politics and leadership. For perhaps the first time in Hezbollah's history, it had deployed as an army of conquest rather than an insurgent band, fighting Israel, that could exploit its own terrain and the support of its people.
Two hours later, residents said, its fighters were trapped on the Israeli-built road. Furious mediation secured their release, and, by 4 a.m., they began withdrawing.
"We're going to die in our village. We're never going to leave it," said Nadia Assaf, a 22-year-old resident of Niha, surveying the scene of the battle from a Druze shrine for the prophet Job. "It learned the lesson that it'll be defeated on our land."
The words were the same as those uttered by countless Shiite villagers in the 2006 war with Israel, when it invaded Hezbollah's stronghold in southern Lebanon.
Few missed that irony: "Hezbollah may gain a lot in terms of power. It certainly has the upper hand," said Salem, the analyst. "But it has lost a lot in terms of image."
Increased Sectarian Strife
In a land of contested martyrs, Mohammed Shamaa is one of the newest.
On Thursday, the 22-year-old resident of a Beirut Sunni neighborhood known as Tariq Jdeideh left his wife, five months pregnant with his son, at his in-laws'. He visited his mother, asking her to bless him. She did, then took two pictures with her cellphone that she downloaded to her computer.
A half-hour later, at midnight, he was dead. A bullet had pierced his left eye. His friends say he was unarmed, caught in crossfire between Sunnis and Shiites that raged from evening into the early morning. A poster of Shamaa now hangs on walls, and a banner across the street of Beirut's most ardent Sunni neighborhood commemorates his death.
He was martyred, they read, "by hatred and betrayal."
"That was the key to opening the door of civil war," said Ahmed Farran, a 23-year-old resident who carried his rifle to the clashes and said he saw Shamaa's death.
In Sunni neighborhoods, even among residents who long dismissed the seeming pettiness of sectarian differences, the words dignity, honor and insult are often repeated these days. They underline a growing sense of Sunni disempowerment that may prove a decisive legacy of Hezbollah's brisk victory.
"In a million years, I won't put my hand in their hand," Emad al-Laham, a 45-year-old resident, said of his Shiite neighbors as he shopped at a fruit stand. "I'd shake hands with an Israeli first."
Here, in Tariq Jdeideh, residents have aimed their frustrations and humiliation inward as well, at Saad Hariri, who inherited the mantle of Sunni leadership from his slain father and has sought to mobilize Sunni support during the crisis. Speculation swirls through Beirut and elsewhere that the perception of his weakness and capitulation to Hezbollah will give weight to more radical, religious elements of the Sunni community, a warning that Hariri has voiced in past days.
"You're on your own, and we're on our own," Ali Mohieddin, a 43-year-old resident, said, rhetorically addressing Hariri. "He's not the man his father was, not even 1 percent. He's not like him in any way whatsoever. He's like a child."
Farran's friends, gathered at a nearby street corner, said they wouldn't wait for Hariri to supply the guns and ammunition they feel that he failed to deliver last week.
"We have to have weapons," said Ali Qubeisi, a 24-year-old resident. "Not to attack anyone, but to defend ourselves. Nothing has finished yet. Maybe there's a truce, maybe not. But what else are we going to do when they enter our streets again."
'Is Lebanon Really Viable?'
Assem Salam was a young man when a Sunni Muslim and Maronite Catholic politician forged a compromise that inaugurated modern Lebanon in 1943. Shiites were hardly a factor.
An iconoclast for a man who hails from one of the country's best-known Sunni families, he said he would now welcome a Hezbollah victory, as long as it meant stability. "I really don't care anymore," he said.
But he was disgusted with a country blessed with talent and resources that, he said, could only adapt to change through civil war, occupation and force of arms. He wondered whether the Lebanon that Hezbollah may inherit was really a state after all.
"Is Lebanon viable anymore?" he asked. "Is Lebanon really viable?"
"Frankly, 40 years of my life have been wasted. Fifteen years of civil war, 15 years of Syrian domination and now we've come to something worse," he said, growing angry. "I've lost 40 years of my life in this stupid country. It really is a stupid country. I have nothing good to say about it anymore. I'm disgusted by what's taken place."
He dragged on his cigar, as he sat in his stately villa in Zqaq al-Blatt, enveloped by a scourge of concrete cluttering the neighborhood. Light reflected faintly from stained-glass windows of red and blue, resting under graceful Levantine arches.
"I wish I was born in Syria. Or that I was born in Egypt. Can you imagine living in a country that has gone through 30 years of this? What kind of country is this?"
He shook his head, his anger giving way to dejection.
"There's something wrong here," he said, "something wrong."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/17/AR2008051701292.html

Standing Against the Mullahs
By: Dan Rabkin
16 May 2008
http://www.analyst-network.com/article.php?art_id=2077
Soona Samsami, a leading Iranian women’s rights and pro-democracy activist, joins me for an interview. She is the Executive Director of Women’s Freedom Forum and was the U.S. Representative of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) until its U.S. offices were closed by the State Department in 2003. It was during Ms. Samsami's tenure that the NCRI was the first to expose to the world the true intentions and purposes of Iran’s nuclear program by revealing the existence of a secret uranium enrichment facility in Natanz and a heavy water facility in Arak. Her work has appeared in numerous media outlets including the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, Fox News, CNN, the Los Angeles Times, the National Journal, C-SPAN, and the Boston Globe. Additionally, her advocacies have led to numerous actionable items for the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency and the U.N. Special Rapporteur on trafficking in persons and violence against women in Iran.
Rabkin: Soona Samsami, thank you very much for joining me today.
Samsami: Thank you for giving me this opportunity Dan. I’d also like to send my sincerest greetings to all women in the world, including the women of Iran who have persevered against all odds and resisted oppression, misogyny, and gender discrimination.
Rabkin: Can you start off by telling us a bit about your background and your role in the Iranian opposition?
Samsami: I was born in the city of Isfahan, Iran and am a graduate of Michigan State University. Currently, I serve as the executive director of Women's Freedom Forum. WFF is an organization that has networks with women in Iran and Iraq that confront fundamentalism and champion women's rights. In line with that objective, I represented 15 exiled Iranian women’s organizations in the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, China. In 1998, I was also appointed the U.S. representative of the National Council of Resistance of Iran. The NCRI is an assembly that works to establish a secular and democratic government in Iran.
Rabkin: Could you please comment on the plight of women inside of Iran today? Why do you think so many Western women’s organizations stay silent on this crucial matter?
Samsami: First of all, I think the most important factor in the silence is the West’s policy of appeasement towards the Iranian regime. This appeasement has prepared a climate where brutality is ignored and oppressors are legitimized. Secondly, the Iranian regime has exhausted enormous capital, in terms of both money and propaganda, to cover its tracks. Thirdly, the Islamic Republic has tried to frame the mistreatment of women within the context of Sharia law and by perverting cultural norms. Collectively, this has led to a misinformed international psyche on the true plight of Iran’s women. The daily discrimination against women and the suffering of these women is, therefore, not heard in its totality within the Western women’s movement.
Islamic fundamentalism is a medieval phenomenon with monopolistic, suppressive, dogmatic, misogynous, and terrorist characteristics which works to preserve and expand the velayat-e-faqih (absolute rule of the clergy). A significant pillar of this school of thought is gender distinction and discrimination against women. Iran is a unique country because it is the first country where fundamentalists managed to attain absolute power and were able to institutionalize their perverted worldview in all social, political, and cultural spheres.
Rabkin: In your mind, what is the best way to bring real change to Iran?
Samsami: It is important to mention here that for 30 years the Iranian people have been protesting and demonstrating to do just that. In 2007 alone, there were some 5,000 demonstrations in Iran by students, workers, teachers, bus drivers, women, and others. All of this signifies enormous potential for democratic change within Iran.
Presently, the least costly and most effective way to bring about change in Iran is to rely on the strength of the Iranian people and their organized resistance. Over 60% of university students in Iran are women. The Iranian resistance is also led by women and is capable of galvanizing the enormous potential of the Iranian people. This is the only way to ensure democratic change in Iran.
In the past 100 years, there have been 3 popular uprisings against tyranny in Iran: We had the constitutional movement in 1906, and then the rise of the nationalist movement led by Dr. Mohammad Mossadeq who became Prime Minister in 1951, and finally the 1979 revolution which ousted the Shah and his secret police, SAVAK, but was unfortunately hijacked by Khomeini. Therefore, the Iranian people have experience and are capable of bringing about a democratic government today.
Presently, and against all odds, over 3,400 members of the Iranian resistance live under the protection of coalition forces in Ashraf City, Iraq. They have been instrumental in exposing Tehran's destructive influence across the border. Ashraf residents continue to play a significant role in promoting reconciliation in Iraq and they continue to help in the formation of a front against Iranian extremism. I must mention that nearly 1,000 of these Ashraf residents are women. Their triumph against Iranian led terrorism continues to inspire the students in Iran that are rising against the regime.
Sadly, misconceptions and erroneous analysis of the relevant circumstances by Western policy makers have led to a tendency towards either appeasement or war. The fact is that appeasement policies have facilitated Iran’s nuclear weapons program. Others, on the other hand, think that they can bring about change in Iran by relying on foreign intervention. Both are wrong.
In a speech delivered at the European Parliament, Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, President-elect of the NCRI, said that neither war nor appeasement of the regime in Iran is the answer. She called for a “third option” of “democratic change in Iran by the Iranian people and their organized resistance.”
As I just mentioned, appeasing the dictators essentially whitewashes their crimes and, indeed, even empowers them. Western nations’ policies towards Iran have failed because they are centered on placating the regime. In 1997, when the State Department designated the main Iranian opposition group, the Mujahedin-e Khaq (MEK), as terrorist, it was done, as conceded by a senior Clinton Administration official, "as a goodwill gesture to the Iranian regime and its newly elected moderate president Mohammad Khatami." That misguided policy did not moderate Tehran's behavior. Instead, it heightened Tehran's drive to acquire nuclear weapons and eventually led to the rise of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as president. If such a policy continues the outcome will further embolden Tehran in its pursuit of nuclear weapons and exporting Islamic extremism to the wider Middle East.
Rabkin: Why do you think the U.S. and Europe continue to keep the NCRI and MEK on the terror list? (In Europe the MEK is designated, while the NCRI is not; in the U.S. both are.)
Samsami: To answer your question, Dan, I need to point out a few facts.
First, two competent European courts, the U.K.’s Proscribed Organisations Appeals Commission (POAC) and the E.U.’s Court of First Instance, have ruled that the terror listing of the MEK has no legal justification and should be annulled. Their findings have confirmed that the terror listing of Iran’s largest opposition group has no legal or factual basis.
Second, since 2003 Iranian opposition members living in Ashraf have been protected by coalition forces. A detailed 16-month investigation by several U.S. government agencies found no MEK member, living in Ashraf, to be in violation of American law. All Ashraf residents were granted protected persons status under the Fourth Geneva Convention.
As I stated earlier, MEK members in Ashraf played a significant and constructive role in the battle against Iranian fundamentalist influence in Iraq. In addition to exposing Iran’s nuclear weapons program, the MEK has made public valuable information on the violent activities of the Qods Force in Iraq as well.
Many members of Congress, from both sides of the aisle, argue that if the 1997 designation of the MEK was meant to appease Khatami - to no avail - then the continued designation of the MEK is politically counterproductive because the appeasement policy has been a failure. These members of Congress believe that the State Department has yet to give up hope on this policy of appeasement and, due to that, continues to keep the MEK on the terror list, in addition to renewing its packages of incentives for the Iranian regime.
History has provided plenty of guidance on the topic of appeasement. Before World War II, and as Churchill cautioned against appeasement of Hitler’s regime, many, including Neville Chamberlain, advocated engagement with Germany. Britain ultimately signed an agreement with Hitler. This agreement allowed Hitler's expansionist machine to prepare before he violated the agreement and launched his aggression on Europe.
The principal problem is still the incorrect and naive understanding of Tehran's malign intentions by the West, as well as its gravitation towards maintaining the status quo. This is happening despite proof of Tehran's unreformable and expansionist ideology as seen in the streets of Baghdad and Basra. In Iraq, and with regards to its nuclear weapons program, Iran has exploited the West’s inability to adopt a decisive policy.
Having said that, the limitations placed on the Iranian resistance, as a result of the terrorist designation, have acted as the main obstacle in facilitating democratic regime change in Iran. To correct this mistake, the State Department should adopt a neutral attitude towards the Iranian resistance.
Rabkin: I have spoken to many of your colleagues from the various organizations that make up the Iranian opposition. A few of them have said that while the Iranian people are vastly young, freedom-seeking, and pro-American, the NCRI and MEK are unpopular inside of Iran. Due to that, I was told that supporting the NCRI and MEK could end up backfiring. What are your thoughts on that argument?
Samsami: In November 2003, NCRI President-elect Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, who by the way has lost two sisters to the last two dictatorships in Iran, called for a referendum on regime change in Iran. Her proposition is the best way for changing the current regime of religious dictatorship.
The ballot box is the only criterion for legitimacy and would solve the multitude of issues that have arisen as a result of the mullahs’ illegitimate rule. Unfortunately, the regime does not have the legitimacy or capacity to allow a referendum to take place. Otherwise, the people of Iran would have already answered your question.
Mrs. Rajavi has repeatedly stated that the Iranian resistance only asks that the West take a neutral stance towards it and stay out of the people’s path to democratic change in Iran. Neither the NCRI nor the MEK have asked for explicit U.S. backing. The central point is not support but interference. Current U.S. policy actively inhibits their activities against the mullahs via the terror listing - this is wrong.
As your War with Iran II article correctly pointed out, hundreds of members of the U.S. Congress have called the NCRI a “legitimate resistance” working to overthrow the regime in Iran. The European Parliament has also echoed this sentiment.
When Ahmadinejad came to New York in 2006, some 20,000 NCRI supporters gathered in front of the U.N. to protest his presence on American soil. Over 50 media outlets covered this event. In June 2007, according to several media reports, as many as 50,000 Iranians gathered in Paris to express support for Mrs. Rajavi and the NCRI.
This all shows that Iran has a viable, organized, and self sufficient resistance which has had 120,000 of its members executed. Thousands more are also imprisoned in the mullahs’ prisons. The people of Iran have already attested to their popularity with blood and tears.
Rabkin: Realistically speaking, if the MEK and NCRI do get delisted from the terror record and are free to pursue their agenda against the mullahs, how would they bring about regime change?
Samsami: Excellent question Dan.
Let’s first look at this question from reverse. Blacklisting an organization is meant to demolish its structure, destroy or limit its activity, freeze its assets, and restrain its members from travel. In other words, the purpose of the designation of the PMOI/MEK, by the West, was to assure Tehran that its main legitimate opposition would be restrained from threatening its theocratic rule and establishing a secular democratic system in that country.
Let me remind everyone that in October 1997, the Los Angeles Times quoted a senior Clinton administration official who said that the designation of the PMOI/MEK was done as a “good will gesture” to the Iranian regime. This blacklisting legitimized the arrest and execution of hundreds of thousands of pro-democracy youth activists for their association with the PMOI/MEK within Iran.
Additionally, millions of dollars of the resistance’s assets were confiscated by governments curtailing the resistance’s activities abroad. Even the NCRI’s US assets were frozen.
In other words, in designating the PMOI/MEK, the West essentially sided with the regime against its democratic opponents. But, despite the repression inside Iran and all of the restrictions imposed on it abroad, the resistance has never lost touch with the Iranian people. To this day, it serves as a counterforce to the regime’s brute force. The movement has maintained its structure, its supporters inside Iran and abroad, and its networks in Iran, enabling it, for example, to expose the regime’s secret nuclear program with intelligence from sources inside Iran.
If it was able to accomplish all of this in shackles, imagine what it is capable of achieving unobstructed. And if you have any doubts about the resistance’s ability to change this regime, just ask the ayatollahs! At any negotiation abroad, at any forum, in any circumstance, the first and foremost demand of Tehran’s rulers is for harsh restrictions against the PMOI/MEK.
Delisting the MEK would send a strong message to the Iranian regime: Its bullying of the global community will no longer be tolerated. Delisting the MEK, the main engine for change in Iran over the past 3 decades, will also send a strong signal to Iranian youth, and the rest of the defiant population there, that their efforts to affect change are welcomed. Delisting the MEK will significantly empower that group and increase its potential which, already at this point, has created immense fear amongst the mullahs.
Let me add a few additional points here:
As the international community’s psyche increasingly finds Iran’s rulers illegitimate, it must also recognize the legitimacy of its democratic alternative. Doing so will demoralize and weaken an important pillar of the regime’s stability: The Revolutionary Guards.
Delisting the MEK and NCRI will also foretell the final end of the West’s appeasement policies. The Iranian regime will also no longer be able to execute MEK members with impunity under the pretext of fighting “terrorism,” when it is the world’s top sponsor of real terrorism.
One must honestly ask this question: How can any opposition group, be it inside or outside of a democratic system, mount a nationwide campaign? Is it not true that it requires resources in terms of both money and people? Is it not true that it requires legitimacy and credibility in the eyes of the international community?
As I have noted earlier, the NCRI and MEK have both credibility and legitimacy with the Iranian people. Recognition of that legitimacy by the United States and Europe is what is needed now because that will enable the NCRI and MEK to intensify their efforts to bring change within and outside of Iran.
Earlier, I also mentioned that there were 5,000 protests within Iran in 2007. In addition to the regime’s brutality, a lack of adequate organization can be blamed for the lack of an even more cohesive protest against the regime within Iran. The MEK, by all accounts, has this desperately needed organization.
Despite all of the limitations placed upon it, the MEK has been able to inform the international community about Iran’s nuclear program. At the same time, the MEK works politically to inform Western policy makers about all of the problems the mullahs are causing around the world. The ability to know about Iran’s most secret nuclear projects is a vivid example of the MEK’s capabilities within Iran. The international response to that secret information, and the three U.N. Security Council resolutions because of it, all attest to the worldwide credibility the MEK has.
Rabkin: I understand that the MEK received some very good news recently. Could you please comment on the U.K. Court of Appeal’s recent ruling in favor of the MEK?
Samsami: On May 7th, Britain’s Court of Appeal affirmed a lower court ruling that ruled that the PMOI/MEK should not be listed as a terrorist organization. The three judges that make up the C.O.A. rejected an appeal by the government to that lower court ruling from last November. This ends a seven-year long legal battle and is an indication of the legitimacy of the resistance, and its activities that have been waged against the regime in Iran.
After the ruling, Mrs. Rajavi said, “The ruling proves the terror label against the PMOI was unjust” and that “Western governments and the UK owe the Iranian people and the resistance an apology for this disgraceful labeling.”

On May 8th, the New York Times wrote: “To the extent that the PMOI 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.”
After all of that, a spokeswoman for the U.K. Home Office said, “the government would delist the MEK.”
The C.O.A. had seen all of the classified materials with respect to the MEK and ruled that there was no evidence that they had been involved in terrorism, and that the PMOI no longer satisfied any of the criteria for appearing on the blacklist.
It is important to note here that the petition to delist the MEK/PMOI was brought forward by 35 distinguished British politicians. With their support of the Iranian resistance, they have acted as the aware conscience of the people of Britain.
This ruling will hopefully have an effect on future U.S. policy as well. On May 7th, the Wall Street Journal quoted a U.S. official who said, “The MEK’s listing will have to be reassessed during the current calendar year, as under State Department guidelines, the designations have five-year life spans.” The official also added, “It’s something we’ll have to deal with.”
I believe that the United States should take into account the findings of the U.K. high court and indeed remove the MEK and NCRI from the U.S. list of terrorist organizations.
Encouraged by the ruling in the U.K., numerous members of Congress, who have on a number of occasions called for the removal of the MEK from the terror list, renewed their efforts to finally overturn the terror tag. Congressman Bob Filner said, “I support the decision of the British Court to recognize the legitimate nature of the MEK.” Congressman Tom Tancredo also noted, “I am confident that if the U.S. State Department looks objectively at these same facts, they will come to the same conclusion.”
Such a delistment is the best way America can promote democracy in Iran and avoid the necessity of a military conflict.
Rabkin: As someone who is very familiar with the intricacies of Iran’s nuclear weapons program, what kind of a timeline do you put on Iran going nuclear? What will be the consequences of an Iran with nuclear weapons?
Samsami: Following the release of the latest (November 2007) National Intelligence Estimate (claiming Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003), the NCRI issued a statement warning the international community about the regime’s deceptions and concealment. The statement also noted that the regime "probably would use covert facilities - rather than its declared nuclear sites - for the production of highly enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon.”
Remarkably, in February 2008, relying on intelligence from MEK sources in Iran, the NCRI revealed that Iran was in fact engaged in covert “uranium conversion and uranium enrichment activity." The information suggested that Iran was actively pursuing the production of nuclear warhead in an area called Khojir. Additionally, the NCRI report identified previously undeclared nuclear command and control sites. Collectively, these revelations point to an expedited Iranian nuclear project. Clearly, as long as this regime is in power, the threat of it obtaining nuclear weapons will be constant and imminent for the Iranian people and the world.
To answer your second question Dan, as the world’s number one state-sponsor of terrorism, a nuclear armed Iran would be a disaster for mankind. Currently, Iran actively uses terrorism as leverage in conducting foreign policy. Armed with a nuclear arsenal, Iranian mullahs will waste no time in bullying their way to regional and international hegemony. Moreover, the Iranian people will have to continue to suffer under the ayatollahs’ brutal rule for years to come.
Increased international pressure on Iran is a positive development and should continue. However, as I have previously noted, the best way to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon is to empower the Iranian people and their most organized resistance movement, in parallel with stepping up international pressure against the regime. Iranians know the mullahs best and are the only ones capable of uprooting this barbaric, extremist, and medieval regime.
Rabkin: You have said that neither appeasement nor war are good policies with respect to the Iranian regime. However, if there is actionable intelligence indicating that Iran is on the brink of acquiring nuclear weapons what should be done?
Samsami: As I have noted earlier, Iran’s nuclear threat is imminent. We are already in the very critical time horizon you are referring to. This regime is an entrenched regime and can only be brought down by people who have roots within the fabric of Iranian society and have the capability to organize the people against the regime.
The clock is ticking Dan. The United States and Europe cannot waste time. A policy of decisiveness and firmness towards the mullahs must be adopted. Additionally, they must reach out to the Iranian people and their leading opposition groups who are already calling for regime change.
Rabkin: Hopefully, the Iranian people and their opposition groups get the support they need to finally overturn their regime and send the mullahs to the bone yards of history. Ms. Samsami, thank you again for joining me.
Samsami: I hope so too Dan. It was my pleasure to join you today.