 A veteran Iranian diplomat based in Norway has resigned from his post, denounced his government and urged colleagues around the world to do the same after the regime’s brutal suppression of huge opposition demonstrations last month. Mohammed-Reza Heydari, Iran’s consul in Oslo, is the first Iranian diplomat to publicly quit and condemn the regime.
He revealed that it sought to lure him back to Tehran after rumors of his defection surfaced last week. At the time, the Iranian Foreign Ministry insisted that the rumors were baseless. In an interview with the Norwegian television channel NRK, Heydari said that he decided to resign after Iranian security forces killed a dozen demonstrators on Dec. 27. “I hope my friends and colleagues in other parts of the world who see and hear me now and know me will move in the same direction as their people. I hope they will manage to sacrifice some personal interests and rather think of what is in the interest of their people and their nation,” he said. Heydari said that he did not fear for his life, but in the past the regime has arrested the relatives of those, such as Shirin Ebadi, the Nobel peace laureate, who criticize it from abroad. Opposition Web sites said that Heydari’s brother was a well-known Iranian television presenter. More on this story from the Times of London. Fox News
 WASHINGTON: The Obama administration is readying sanctions against elements of the Iranian government, including those involved in the deadly crackdown on Iranian protesters, marking a shift to a more aggressive US posture towards the Islamic republic, reports said yesterday. Ten months after US President Barack Obama set a year-end deadline for Iran to engage with world powers on its nuclear program, the government in Tehran has failed to respond. The Obama administration now wants to carefully target sanctions at the regime - both to avoid alienating the Iranian public and to keep the door ajar to a resolution of the struggle over Iran's nuclear program, US officials told The Washington Post. The aim of the sanctions would be to force the Tehran government to the negotiating table, rather than to punish it for either its apparent push to develop a nuclear weapon or its treatment of its people, the report said. "We have never been attracted to the idea of trying to get the whole world to cordon off their economy," a senior US official told the paper. "We have to be deft at this, because it matters how the Iranian people interpret their isolation - whether they fault the regime or are fooled into thinking we are to blame." Authorities also arrested the sister of Nobel peace laureate Shirin Ebadi as the embattled regime stepped up efforts to suppress a resurgent opposition yesterday. Unable to arrest Dr Ebadi - who regularly denounces the regime from exile in Europe - the regime sent four intelligence agents to seize her sister, Nooshin, a doctor, from her home. Mr Obama and British Foreign Secretary David Miliband signalled strong support for Iranian demonstrators. Mr Obama's comments were his strongest words of support yet for the protesters. Until now, the Obama administration, along with other Western powers, has kept criticism muted so as not to further complicate the nuclear talks. The biggest roadblock in the negotiations has been Tehran's refusal to agree to an International Atomic Energy Agency-brokered deal to ship much of Iran's uranium to Russia, where it would be further enriched and sent back for use in a medical-research reactor. After Iranian negotiators appeared to agree to the deal, Iranian officials baulked at signing, issuing a series of sometimes-contradictory demands for alterations. Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki yesterday said his country was willing to produce and enrich the uranium needed for the medical reactor itself. Appearing to turn the tables on Western powers, he said it was Iran that was waiting for a response to its counterproposal to the IAEA-brokered proposal. The Australian
 TEHRAN, Iran — Iran on Tuesday accused Western countries of fomenting deadly anti-government protests in the capital this week and said it was summoning Britain's ambassador to file a complaint. The comments by Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mahmanparast added to growing tensions between Iran and the West, which is threatening to impose tough new sanctions over Iran's suspect nuclear program and has criticized the violent crackdown on anti-government protesters in Tehran. Iran has said as many as eight people were killed in Sunday's clashes in Tehran. There was no serious violence reported Tuesday, but opposition Web sites said several activists were arrested, including a prominent journalist and the sister of Nobel peace laureate Shirin Ebadi. Speaking to reporters, Mehmanparast said the deadly clashes in Tehran were the work of a tiny minority, and he accused outside countries, including the U.S. and Britain, of "miscalculating" by siding with the protesters. "Some Western countries are supporting this sort of activities. This is intervention in our internal affairs. We strongly condemn it," he said. "In this regard, the British ambassador will be summoned today." He gave no further details, and there was no immediate reaction from Britain. Britain, France, Germany and the U.S. have all criticized Iran's violent response to the protests, the bloodiest confrontations between the government and reformist activists since June's disputed presidential election. On Monday, President Barack Obama praised "the courage and the conviction of the Iranian people" while condemning Iran's Islamic government for attacking demonstrators with "the iron fist of brutality." Traveling with Obama in Hawaii, U.S. National Security Council chief of staff Denis McDonough also said the White House is reaching out to international partners to build support for a new round of sanctions against Iran. He said the U.S. was exploring both unilateral or U.N. sanctions. The sanctions are to punish Iran for its refusal to halt uranium enrichment and accept a U.S.-backed plan to curb its nuclear program. The West suspects Iran is trying to build a nuclear bomb — a charge Tehran denies. More at Foxnews 
 FACING an uncrushable opposition and imploding economy, Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is playing the nuclear card in an attempt to rally his fractured nation. By defying the West, rejecting talks and issuing scarcely credible promises to build 10 new uranium enrichment plants, he is hoping to whip up a nationalist fervour that will distract attention from Iran's deepening domestic troubles. It is a high-risk strategy, not least because Iran's opposition politicians are as committed to the nuclear program as he is.
Iran's nuclear program is popular, even among the country's Western-minded urban elite, though the question of whether it is for civil power or weapons is seldom discussed openly.
To most Iranians, the program is a source of national pride and a sovereign right that offers reassurance to a nation that feels isolated and vulnerable.
Iran is a Farsi-speaking Shia Muslim state in a region dominated by Arab countries with Sunni majorities. It is surrounded by US forces in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Gulf and threatened by Israel's nuclear arsenal. Above all, it recalls vividly how the West backed Saddam Hussein in the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, despite his use of chemical weapons. Internal competition over the nuclear issue is in grave danger of escalating Iran's confrontation with the West. It may backfire domestically, too. Circumstances have changed dramatically in Iran this year and the nuclear card may well have lost its domestic potency. Iranians are questioning the cost of the program as unemployment and inflation are soaring, factories are closing and industrial unrest is spreading. Their economic hardship will become much worse if Ahmadinejad proceeds with his plan to save $US100 billion ($109.7bn) a year by cutting subsidies on petrol, electricity, water, food, health and education. Some, including Ahmadinejad himself, argue that imposing sanctions over Iran's nuclear program will serve only to unite the Iranian people. The Australian
 Once again, the courageous people of Iran have been demonstrating that, despite arrests, imprisonment, beatings, torture and state murder their spirit remains unbroken. Once again, there were protests against the regime yesterday at universities throughout Iran. Potkin Azarmehr reports: The most predominant chant was specifically directed against the Supreme Leader. It was amazing the regime had gone out of its way to prevent any information from coming out of Iran. Apart from the usual tricks, they had banned the press permits for all foreign correspondents for three days and even the public phone boxes around the universities were wrapped in black plastic bags to stop eyewitnesses reporting from the scene, yet once again they failed miserably. As Moussavi aptly said ‘They are trying to put up a barbed wire to stop a flood’. A translated report from Die Tageszeitung, published by Planet Iran, observes: Once again the Iranian opposition showed on Monday that it is not willing to give up the resistance against the clerical dictatorship. Thousands of arrests, torture and rape in prisons, which has claimed so far seventy-nine deaths caused by the long prison sentences, many show trials and forced confessions; the whole apparatus of repression has had its effect. The critics however cannot be intimidated. The regime in Tehran has largely lost its base. All propaganda attempts to attacks ‘foreign enemies’, appealing to so-called nationalist sentiment among the masses remain without response. The balance of power in the Islamic state, which so far despite the rivalries and conflicting opinions always acted consistently against ‘internal and external enemies’, no longer works. Not only the reformers have long since turned away from the governance, also formed in the conservative camp, a new front against the Ahmadinejad administration and especially against the supreme leader Ali Khamenei. In other words, the resistance of the people is continuing to weaken the Iranian regime.
The Iranian people are therefore still the west’s best hope of toppling that regime. As I have said before, it is therefore not just appalling but incomprehensible that western leaders do not support the Iranian people in this heroic resistance. In the Wall Street Journal today, Emanuele Ottolenghi makes a very sharp suggestion for what Obama should do with his Nobel Peace Prize which he receives in Oslo this week: he should give his medal to a far worthier recipient, Shirin Ebadi, the 2003 Nobel Prize laureate and Iran’s foremost human rights advocate who was recently robbed of her medal, alongside several other prizes (including the French Legion d'honneur) by order of Tehran’s Revolutionary Court. Ottolenghi writes: President Obama is the leader of the free world—though his tepid support for Iran's beleaguered pro-democracy movement may suggest he is uncomfortable with this role. Ms. Ebadi is the symbol of defiance against a liberticidal regime, which, to use the President's own words, represents a ‘common challenge of the 21st century,’ and one which the president still must confront.
They have the Nobel Prize in common. Let it be a way to bridge the gap between the president’s ill-fated efforts to engage Ms. Ebadi’s oppressors, and America’s historic commitment to liberty abroad. And let it be a way to turn the Nobel Prize Committee's choice into a powerful message in the service of peace—for the best way to promote peace is to champion freedom. The president's engagement strategy with the Islamic Republic has so far yielded little progress on Iran’s nuclear program, but offered much cover to Iran's regime. Clearly, internal repression is not Mr. Obama’s fault—but his premature award and his pledge to use it as an encouragement to future worthy endeavours offer him an opportunity, after past equivocations, to let Iranians know where he truly stands on the critical issue of their freedom. Alas, I think we all now know just where he stands on the issue of freedom in Iran and elsewhere. Melanie Phillips
 Maybe I’m taking this too personally, but that’s what blogs are for, right? But the revolting action by the fascist Iranian thugocracy in breaking into Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi’s safe deposit box in Tehran and stealing her Nobel prize symbolizes all that is petty, ugly, sinister and repulsive about the Iranian dictatorship. It’s not just a violation of her person; it’s a violation of all who believe in human rights. Shirin Ebadi, one of the bravest women in the world, won the Nobel in 2003 for her work as a human rights lawyer defending victims of Iranian regime. When I say I take this theft personally, it’s because two years later I was honored to be in a room with Shirin Ebadi — and it just happened to be the same night and in the same room in which I met the love of my life. It was at a gathering my book editor gave to celebrate the American publication of Shirin Ebadi’s memoir. I think it was the only time I’d been in the same room as a Nobel Prize winner, and I was awed by proximity to someone of such courage, by the quiet dignity and strength of her words. And now the cowardly woman-hating, freedom-crushing creeps and bullies who pass for a regime in Iran (may the nuclear laboratories they lie about blow up in their faces) have stolen the symbol of something they could never hope to aspire to — indeed, even understand — in their evil ignorant fanaticism. They’re nothing more than scummy crooks degrading religious piety everywhere with their travesty of it. More at Pajamas Media
 IRAN has confiscated the Nobel peace medal and diploma of Shirin Ebadi, the human rights lawyer who is one of the hardline regime's most outspoken critics. Her bank account has also been frozen on the pretext that she owes almost £250,000 in tax. The seizure of the award, unprecedented in its 108-year history, caused outrage in Olso, where the Nobel Peace Committee is based.
The Norwegian Government summoned the Iranian envoy to protest, and the committee said that it would make a formal complaint.
"Such an act leaves us feeling shock and disbelief," said Jonas Gahr Store, the Norwegian Foreign Minister.
Geir Lundestad, secretary of the committee, said that Iran's action was unacceptable. "A laureate has never been treated like that. Even political dissidents such as [Andrei] Sakharov and [Lech] Walesa were better treated in their countries," he added, referring to the Russian dissident and the Polish trade union leader, both of whom won the prize while living in the Soviet bloc.
 Kareem Shaheen A Nobel Peace Prize winner yesterday called on women in the UAE and wider Arab world to fight for “economic independence” and equal political rights.
Dr Shirin Ebadi, the Iranian Nobel laureate and human rights activist, said a key first step was raising “the awareness of women in the Arab world, and then they have to encourage women to go in search of work and leave their homes to work”. That would better enable women to venture into the marketplace, she told The National.
“Then [comes] the economic independence of women. And I’m saying economic independence that they get from working, not from inheriting some money from their fathers.”
Dr Ebadi was in Abu Dhabi for the Festival of Thinkers, organised by the Higher Colleges of Technology and in which The National is a partner. She delivered the keynote address at the Emirates Palace hotel on Monday. The event ends today. In the UAE, Dr Ebadi said, “women are allowed to have an education. They go to school and even university, but it’s a very low percentage of these women who enter the work market and become active. Therefore the situation is discriminatory”. She said the lack of female empowerment in the Middle East was evident in the low number of women holding key leadership posts.
“Polygamy still exists,” said Dr Ebadi. “The political rights of women are not equal to the political rights of men. “You don’t see any women who are holding senior positions, political or economic.
“In Saudi Arabia, women aren’t even allowed to drive their own cars, let alone be engaged in political and cultural activities, whereas in other Islamic states, such as Indonesia, Pakistan and Bangladesh, for many years women have been able to work in political fields and even become prime ministers.
“Behind all this thinking, ideology, it is not Islam, because Islam respects the rights of women.” The differences between Islamic countries were the result of different degrees of patriarchal culture, Dr Ebadi said. “So this culture gives an interpretation of Islam which suits their patriarchal culture. And that is why we see how the situation of women is different from one Islamic culture to the other.”
But the blame laid with both genders, she said. “Although the women are victims of this culture, they’re also the carriers and promoters of this culture. Don’t forget that any man who is a bully has been raised by a woman, and it’s only women who can stop this wrong culture, that does not believe in the equality of mankind, from being carried on and promoted.”
The UAE and the Arab world could learn from Iran’s growing feminist tradition, Dr Ebadi said, where women actively engaged in the post-election protests.
In addition, “many of our women are professors and lecturers, we have many women who are engineers, doctors, and have senior administrative positions”, she said, pointing out that even Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran’s president, appointed a female adviser and a female minister. “There is a saying, ‘Modernity is born in the streets’. And a woman who leaves her home for work gradually becomes modernised.” Source: The National
 "The letter went out yesterday," United Nations deputy spokeswoman Marie Okabe said. She stressed that this was a "customary letter" sent to leaders after they are elected or re-elected and that it did not represent an endorsement of Mr Ahmadinejad. The Iranian president was declared the winner of the June 12 election, despite claims of vote rigging from supporters of his defeated rivals that generated massive street demonstrations against the Islamic regime. Ms Okabe said Mr Ban's letter seized on Mr Ahmadinejad's inauguration, which took place last week, to "express the hope that Iran and the United Nations will continue to cooperate closely in addressing regional and global issues". Mir Hossein Mousavi, who was Mr Ahmadinejad's closest rival in the vote but lost heavily according to surprise official results, has dismissed the incoming government as "illegitimate".
Iranian Nobel peace prize winner Shirin Ebadi yesterday called for intensified world pressure to help her country democratise and denounced the crackdown on opposition protesters. "I oppose military and economic sanctions against Iran, as they will aggravate the situation," Ms Ebadi was quoted as saying in an interview with South Korea's Chosun Ilbo newspaper.
"However, intensified international public opinion will contribute to Iran's democratisation." Ms Ebadi, a lawyer and human rights defender who won the Nobel prize in 2003, arrived in Seoul on Sunday for a six-day trip to receive this year's Manhae Peace Prize, named after a 20th century Korean Buddhist reformer. Source: The Australian
 By Azadeh Moaveni
The last time I saw Shirin Ebadi in Tehran, the government devoted at least perfunctory attention to her safety. Two state-appointed bodyguards stood watch outside her house, and even accompanied us to dinner. They carefully looked on as we ate under the stars, interrupted every few moments by effusive Iranians who recognized their country's 2003 Nobel Peace Prize winner and paused to press her hands in thanks.
That was back in 2005, on the eve of the fateful presidential election that brought Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to power. Ms. Ebadi viewed his election with trepidation, nervous that he would reverse the state's tacit tolerance of her work -- the defense of women, children and political dissidents before the Islamic Republic's pitiless courts. Many considered her anxieties exaggerated. But, as in so many cases, her instincts were exactly right.
Last Thursday, local police stood by and allowed a group of "demonstrators" -- most likely thuggish young men dispatched by the regime's hard-line Basij militia -- to attack her home and office. It was the most alarming act of violence the state has permitted against her in nearly two decades of intimidation and threats. In late December, the authorities closed her Center for Defenders of Human Rights on the grounds that it was operating without a permit. Government agents raided her private office, seizing her computers and files. Though the government has long viewed Ms. Ebadi uneasily, it has been forced to abide her in recent years because of the popular base of her support. Until now, the state has bullied her only discretely, and the timing and hostility of the present moves against her say a great deal about both her influence and where Iran stands today. ... Source: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123120656371156129.html H/T: Gramfan
The charge has been prompted by an accusation issued by official sources, saying that the Nobel laureate has become Bahai. For the Iranian criminal code, this makes her worthy of death, and if someone were to kill her he would not be punished. Tehran (AsiaNews) - The life of Shirin Ebadi, Nobel peace prize winner in 2003, is in danger. Ebadi has been fearless in denouncing the oppression of human rights in her country. The alarm has been raised by Rooz, a website for Iranian exiles, which deduces it from the "charge" made a few days ago by the official news agency IRNA, saying that Ebadi and her daughter, a student at McGill University in Canada, have become members of the Bahai religion. The Bahai are considered a heretical Islamic group, and are persecuted.
The accusation, according to Rooz, is a sham set up to disguise the intention of having the woman killed, or at least of frightening her to the point of making her stop her activities in favor of human rights, or leave the country.
The explanation has been given on the basis of the Iranian criminal code. Article 226 stipulates that the killing of a person is subject to 'Ghesas', or retaliatory punishment, "only if the victim did not deserve death based on the Sharia, and if the victim deserved death the murderer must prove that in court, according to set criteria". According to Islamic law, apostasy, or abandoning Islam, is worthy of death. And her conversion to the Bahai faith puts Ebadi in this position.
As if that were not enough, a supplement to article 295 in the same criminal code stipulates that if a person kills another because he suspects that the victim deserves death, and this is proven in court, the killing is considered accidental homicide, and the author must only pay "blood money" to the victim's family. But if the killer proves that the victim deserved death, he doesn't even have to pay the "blood money", and will not face any penalty.
It is in the light of these laws that the article deduces in the first place that "they want to convince ignorant forces that Shirin Ebadi's death is necessary. Any Muslim who takes her life is not punished, and perhaps goes to heaven". In the second place, "they want to frighten her to abandon all human rights-related activities or even leave the country". Source: Asia News
 By Wajahat Ali and Omid Safi For Americans, an Iranian human rights activist seems like the greatest oxymoron since military intelligence. However, Shirin Ebadi was awarded the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize precisely due to her unflinching and indefatigable commitment in advocating human rights and progressive reform on behalf of women, children and political dissidents. The 61-year-old Ebadi was the first Muslim woman and first Iranian to be honored with the prestigious prize. Recently, she was named one of the top 100 public intellectuals alive by Foreign Policy, and their reader poll, which brought in nearly 500,000 global votes, placed her at number 10 on the same list. Despite her international influence and highly effective advocacy, Ebadi remains a controversial figure in Iran, primarily earning the ire of the current government due to her human rights complaints on behalf of political dissidents and minorities, such as members of the Ba’hai faith. Despite threats and some hostile opposition, Ebadi soldiers on. Read more ...Source: AltMuslim
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A veteran Iranian diplomat based in Norway has resigned from his post, denounced his government and urged colleagues around the world to do the same after the regime’s brutal suppression of huge opposition demonstrations last month. 
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