[Note by Tom Gross]

REFORMIST AND CONSERVATIVE STUDENTS CLASH AT IRANIAN UNIVERSITIES

Iranian university campuses have been the scene of violent clashes between reformist and conservative students in recent days. This has barely been reported in the western media.

The reformists are protesting a number of recent laws that they claim illustrate the lack of freedom in Iran. Among these is the recent measure against those wearing clothing deemed to be immodest.

At Teheran’s Amir Kabir Polytechnic, at least 10 students were hospitalized with stab wounds and other injuries. Clashes also took place at Lorestan University, in the Zagros Mountains.

AHMADINEJAD ACCUSED OF IMMODESTY

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been accused of “indecency” after he publicly embraced and kissed the hand of an elderly woman who used to be his schoolteacher. The kiss and hug were filmed by Iranian state media at a ceremony prior to Iranian teachers’ day.

The ultra-conservative Hezbollah newspaper, (which is not connected to the terror group in Lebanon by the same name) criticized the Iranian president on its front page: “The Muslim Iranian people have no recollection of such acts contrary to Sharia law during Islamic rule [since the 1979 revolution]… This type of indecency progressively has grave consequences, like violating religious and sacred values.”

Even though the elderly woman was wearing gloves and a headscarf, so Ahmadinejad avoided any skin contact with her, he was criticized since Iran’s Sharia law forbids a man having any physical contact with a woman who is not a relative.

This is not the first time Ahmadinejad has been criticized by those even more extreme than himself. Last year he was attacked for not severely punishing one of his vice presidents who had allegedly watched a woman dance at an official ceremony in Turkey.

HOLOCAUST-DENIAL DOCUMENTARY SERIES ON IRANIAN TV

On May 2, on Capitol Hill in Washington, MEMRI hosted an event for congressmen on Holocaust denial in the Arab and Iranian media. (MEMRI President Yigal Carmon and other senior MEMRI staff are longtime subscribers to this email list.)

Among the material shown were translated segments from a 13-part Iranian documentary series titled “Merchants of the Myth,” which ran on Iranian TV’s Channel 4 from October 2006 through January 2007. The series featured notorious Holocaust deniers, including French writer Georges Thiel, also known as Gilbert Dubreuil, and French revisionist “historian” Robert Faurisson.

Among the lies broadcast on Iranian TV:

* “Today, 70 percent of the press is in the hands of the racist Jewish bankers such as Robert Murdoch.” [By Robert, they presumably mean Rupert – TG]

* “Hollywood is a great machine for producing and distributing Holocaust productions. Most of the films, such as Schindler’s List, are created in order to spread this myth.”

* “The film Schindler’s List is based on a novel of that title. What is interesting about this book is that in the first edition, on one of the first pages, it says: ‘The plot of Schindler’s List is imaginary and fictitious.’ In subsequent editions, however, this key sentence was removed.”

* “Fred Schuster, an American gas chamber engineer, chose locations in Auschwitz where gas chambers were said to have existed, in order to conduct his experiments. He proved that this place was not used for this purpose. Not a trace of the cyanide compound could be found on the walls at Auschwitz.”

* “The German Nazi regime would have had to last 75 years in order to kill six million Jews.”

IRANIAN AUTHORITIES ARREST FORMER NUCLEAR NEGOTIATOR

Hossein Mousavian, a former Iranian nuclear negotiator, has been arrested. According to the semi-official Fars news agency (which is close to the elite Revolutionary Guards), Mousavian could face espionage charges. He has been taken to the notorious Evin prison in Teheran.

An unidentified official was quoted as saying that “The probable charge of espionage activities may be raised against him... Mousavian was arrested because of connections and exchange of information with foreign elements.”

Mousavian was part of the Iranian nuclear negotiating team until 2005 and prior to that served as Iran’s ambassador to Germany. Ahmadinejad replaced the nuclear negotiating team when he came to power two years ago.

He was a close ally of former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, considered Ahmadinejad’s main rival within Iran. The arrest may be part of a larger power struggle.

A few days ago, Ahmadinejad told a crowd in Kerman, about 650 miles southeast of Teheran, that “Our nation will not give up its right even an iota... the important nuclear issue.”

REPORT CLAIMS PAKISTANI SCIENTIST HELPED IRAN

The London-based think tank, the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), has claimed in a new report that Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan “provided Iran with centrifuges, technical designs, components, and an ‘address book’ of suppliers” and also says that parts of Khan’s network could still be in operation.

Iran has denied that Pakistani nuclear scientists aided its nuclear program. The report suggests that “at least some of Khan’s associates appear to have escaped law-enforcement attention and could, after a period of lying low, resume their black-market business.”

Khan, who is still a national hero in Pakistan, publicly confessed to running a nuclear proliferation network three years ago. The report accuses Khan of selling and trading nuclear weapons technology to Iran, North Korea, and Libya, as well as offering information to Iraq in 1990.

“Some details concerning exactly what Iran received [from Khan] are still uncertain. What is clear is that Khan’s sales helped Iran to make significant advances in its clandestine nuclear programme,” said IISS’ executive director John Chipman, in the introductory statement to the report, titled “Nuclear Black Markets: Pakistan, A.Q. Khan and the rise of proliferation networks.”

The report also adds that Iran “remains the most active customer in the international nuclear black market.”

IRANIAN FILM RESPONDS TO “INSULTING MOVIE” 300

The following note is an update to the first article contained in the dispatch Islamic fury at Palestinian lesbian conference in Haifa (& Arab praise for kidnapped BBC man) (March 14, 2007).

The new Iranian documentary, “Glory of Persepolis,” has been hailed in Iran as a film that reflects the dignity of Persepolis, and that it is an appropriate response to the “insulting” Hollywood movie “300”.

The film is aimed at informing visitors about the ancient monument of Persepolis. Film critic Reza Dorostkar, who attended one of the first screenings of the new film, said “Today, we need to produce films aiming to revive our historical monuments that will provide the opportunity to observe historical facts and at the same time get introduced to the history.”

Iran has claimed that the movie “300” was an insult to Persian civilization. The Hollywood move is a film adaptation of the novel of the same name by Frank Miller. It is a fictionalized retelling of the Battle of Thermopylae.

IRAN BANS WESTERN HAIRCUTS

Iranian police have ordered barbers not to offer Western-style haircuts to their male customers. They have also been warned not to pluck men’s eyebrows.

The news was splashed across the front page of the reformist daily Etemad: “Western hairstyles... have been banned.”

Many hairdressers for men in Teheran offer cuts in the style of Hollywood movie stars and western pop stars. Those who do not follow the new rules face closure for a month and could lose their operating licenses.

In recent weeks Iranian police have clamped down on the growing number of women wearing skimpier clothing to suit the springtime weather. Under Iran’s Sharia law, imposed after the 1979 Islamic revolution, women have to cover their hair and wear long, loose-fitting clothes. Women that do not obey can receive fines, prison terms and lashes of the whip.

For more on the dress code crackdown, see here.

IHT SEES NOTHING WRONG IN RUNNING IRANIAN GOVERNMENT ADVERT TO BUILD NUCLEAR REACTORS

I attach two articles below. The first, from Reuters, reports that Iran has “defended its plan to repatriate one million Afghans living illegally in the Islamic Republic and said 50,000 had been sent home since the campaign was launched.”

The Afghan government has urged Iran to suspend the move because it lacks the resources to resettle so many people. The mainstream Western media have been almost silent on this development.

The second article, from the Jerusalem Post, is an update to the dispatch, NY Times-owned Herald Tribune runs Iranian government advert to build nuclear reactors (May 1, 2007).

The International Herald Tribune has defended its acceptance of an advertisement seeking bids for two large-scale nuclear reactors in Iran which appeared in its April 20 edition. (The ad also ran in the Financial Times on April 25.)

Asked whether accepting such an advert was appropriate, an IHT spokesman wrote: “We believe that advertising should be as free and open as the dictates of honesty and decency allow. In our view, advertising is an essential ingredient in the broad concept of a free press.”

This is ironic as The New York Times, owner of the IHT, has on several occasions refused to run ads by pro-Israel groups.

-- Tom Gross