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Pre-2001 postings

Dec. 22, 2000: "Three targets for an activist foreign policy." FDI Director Timmerman urges President-elect Bush to promote freedom and the rule of law in Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan.

Oct. 18, 2000: The Wall Street Journal details the record of secret U.S.-Russia deals on Iran in a lead editorial, Gore's Secret Pact, quoting FDI Executive Director Kenneth Timmerman.

Oct. 15, 2000: Read Ken's oped from today's Washington Times, exposing the Clinton-Gore record of weakness in the Middle East. "Wobbly policies invite terror."

Oct. 11, 2000: The U.S. Senate votes to approve the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Act of 2000 (HR 3244), which includes the Justice for Victims of Terrorism Act, a measure which orders to the U.S. Treasury to pay out compensatory damages to the families of Americans killed in acts of state-sponsored terrorism. The bill was sparked by the family of 20-year old Brandeis University student Alisa Flatow, who was murdered in Gaza in April 1995 when a Palestinian suicide bomber rammed into a public bus. In its original form, it would have taken Iranian government assets frozen in the United States and distributed them to the families of the victims. As amended, it puts a cap on payments, and only allows for certain of Iran's frozen assets to be garnished. Click here to read the Conference report on the final bill.

10/4/2000: Learn more about the Iran-U.S. Claims Tribunal. The Iran Brief has compiled a special page with U.S. Government reports, Iranian statements, and other documents to help researchers track ground-zero of the U.S.-Iran relationship.

9/25/2000: Kenneth Timmerman starts unmasking Clinton's October Surprise, a package deal with the government of Iran aimed at giving Clinton his "legacy" in foreign affairs and helping Gore win the presidency. Ken's report is being serialized over the coming week by WorldNetDaily.com.

Part 1 (9/25): Clinton, Iran plan election-eve coup; Part 2 (9/26): Secret spy deal, US, Iran, Israel; Part 3 (9/27): Clinton sought dirt on W's Dad; Part 4 (9/28): Clinton shields Iran from U.S. justice; Part 5 (9/29) Clinton betrayed anti-terror pledge; Part 6 (10/4): Iran's hidden U.S. cash stash; Part 7 (10/6): Global settlement with Iran imminent; Part 8 (10/16): Iran deal collapses: Support for Mideast terror jeopardizes Clinton legacy.

September 21, 2000: A coalition of Iranian associations in Los Angeles has called a demonstration at UCLA this afternoon at 2 PM to protest the University's decision to allow Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi address a closed-door session with pro-regime lobbyists and oil company representatives.FDI Executive Director Kenneth R. Timmerman, writing in WorldNetDaily.com, explains what's behind the Clinton administration's decision to allow Kharrazi to travel across America on a lobbying cum-public relations tour. As Timmerman points out, this is the first time an Iranian cabinet officer has been allowed to travel outside of the metropolitan areas of New York and Washington, DC since the 1979 revolution.

Kharrazi plans to meet privately with leaders of the Iranian-American Jewish Federation to enlist their aid in removing U.S. sanctions on Iran, as a Revolutionary Court in Shiraz is expected today to announce reduced sentences against ten Iranian Jews jailed since last year on trumped up charges of spying for Israel. (The Iran Brief reported on the secret contacts last year). The main lawyer for the 13 in Iran, Esma'il Naseri, told the Persian-language service of Radio France International on Tuesday that he had recently received death threats from government officials because of his defense of the Jews. Officials from the judiciary had threatened him with "assassination, cancellation of [his] law license, removal from office" and even charges of "collaboration with the Israeli enemy" if he and his colleagues failed to denounce their clients as "true spies," he said.

June 13, 2000: Join FDI Executive Director Kenneth R. Timmerman on Pars TV in Los Angeles, commenting on the death of Syrian President Hafez al Assad and the situation in Iran. This live call-in show begins at 5-6PM Pacific time. Studio line: 818-708-6666.

May 20, 2000: FDI Executive Director Timmerssman explains his proposed "Iran Asset Recovery Act" to a conference in Los Angeles on Human Rights Violations in Iran, sponsored by MEHR Iran (Mission for the Establishment of Human Rights in Iran).

April 24, 2000: Press closures and arrests show limits of Khatami reforms. See also the commentary by FDI Director and former U.S. Senate candidate Kenneth Timmerman on Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's recent opening toward the Islamic Republic that appeared in the April 14 edition of The Forward.

January 16, 2000: Selections from the December issue of The Iran Brief are now available on-line. Highlights: An analysis of contradictory moves by the U.S., as President Clinton seeks to open relations with the Islamic Republic as part of his "legacy" as president; new information on the 1998 "serial murders" of Iranian dissidents; Europe takes the lead in criticizing Tehrarednew.gifn for jailing reformist cleric Abdallah Nouri; evidence of recent Iranian government terrorism; and a blocked shipment of weapons production gear from China.

January 10, 2000: The Foundation for Democracy in Iran is in mourning over the death yesterday in Paris of board member Mehdi Rouhani, from pancreatic cancer. Ayatollah Rouhani, the leader of the Shiite Muslim community in Europe and an outspoken opponent of the Tehran regime, was 67. He died at home, surrounded by his immediate family.Over his long and distinguished career, Dr. Rouhani constantly emphasized religious tolerance, and sought to build bridges among the world's great Monotheistic religions.

Dec. 9, 1999: Selections from the November issue of The Iran Brief are now available on-line. Highlights: President Khatami's deal-signing trip to France; U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Martin Indyk's critical speech of Iran to the Asia Society, and U.S. intelligence reports on new Russian and South African nuclear sales to Iran

Nov. 21, 1999: Today we commemorate a sad day in Iranian history, with the first anniversary of the brutal murders of the most prominent leaders of the secular opposition in Iran, Parvaneh and Darioush Forouhar. FDI urges all lovers of freedom, regardless of their creed, to say a prayer today for the Forouhars and their quest for freedom in Iran. We pray that their deaths may have not been in vain, but will serve the great cause of freedom and democracy for all Iranians.

Nov 11, 1999: Selections from the October issue of The Iran Brief are now available on-line. Our top story: U.S. talks to Iran. A senior U.S. official has held talks with an "authorized representative" of the government of Iran; and so far, news of the meetings has failed to set off a firestorm in Tehran. We also cover the arrest of Hamas leaders in Jordan, the visit of the Greek defense minister to Iran, and the cancellation by Canada of the sale of a fusion reactor, only days after the proposed sale was revealed by The Iran Brief.

Oct. 7, 1999: Now available: Kenneth Timmerman's testimony before the House International Relations Committee on how a top U.S. government official, Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott, allowed Russia to help build Iran's missile programs. At the same time, we've added other links to earlier testimony, and to a profile of Strobe Talbott from the American Spectator.

Oct. 5, 1999: Selections from the September issue of The Iran Brief are now available on-line. Our top story: Iran to buy nuclear fusion plant from Canada.: Why is Iran spending close to $50 million to buy a research reactor that has no commercial use? We also detail back-room negotiations by an Iranian Jewish intermediary in London, Hamid Sabi ("Plot Thickens around Iranian Jews"),and more. Also check out our Books & Articles section for new articles on China, and U.S. export control policy.

Sept. 20, 1999: Just four days later the European Parliament calls for the suspension of all high-level visits to protest the death sentences against pro-democracy students and against Iranian Jews, Austrian president Thomas Klestil arrives in Tehran to sign new commercial contracts with the regime.(Iran Brief subscribers will find more in our Oct. 1999 issue.)

Sept. 13, 1999: Forty-nine persons were convicted in a secret trial for their role in the student riots that rocked Tehran in July, and four of them were sentenced to death, the head of the Revolutionary Court said in a statement released to the hard-line Jomhouri-e Eslami daily on Sept. 13.

Sept. 9, 1999: Selections from the August issue of The Iran Brief are now available on-line. Our top story is a round-up of the latest news: Regime cracks down on pro-democracy protests. See also excerpts from our report on U.S.-Russia nuclear talks, and our prediction, published in early August, that Vladimir Putin would become President Yeltsin's latest Prime Minister (He was appointed less than one week later).

August 9, 1999: Fom the July issue of The Iran Brief. We carried an exclusive investigation exposing Mujahedin fund-raising in Holland, and recent MEK campaign to buy influence in the U.S. Congress. We continued coverage of the Forouhar murders with a report on the death of Saed Emami: Forouhar assassin gets suicided (Emami shod shahid vajebi).

August 5, 1999: Writing in today's Wall Street Journal Europe, FDI Executive Director Kenneth Timmerman tells the astonishing story of how President Khatami abandoned the very people who voted for him, putting survival of the regime of absolute clerical rule ahead of freedom.

July 23, 1999: FDI has issued an Action Memorandum, calling on the Islamic Republic authorities to immediately and unconditionally release student leaders Manouchehr Mohammadi and Gholamreza Mohajeri-Nezhad and all others arrested during the recent protests. FDI believes that without coordinated international pressure the regime will be encouraged to arrest more student leaders, and calls on freedom-loving people everywhere to unite in protesting these arrests.

July 16, 1999: A Washington Times op-ed urges Congress to take action against the Russian Space Agency for its assistance to Iran's long-range missile programs.

Click here to see a picture of the first confrontation between pro-Democracy protesters in Tehran and riot police.

Read an FDI chronology of the student protests

July 15, 1999: FDI Director Kenneth R. Timmerman says the pro-democracy protests are "the beginning of the beginning of the end" of absolute clerical rule in Iran in today's Washington Times Read the slogans of the Iranian students. In the Washington Post, former Tehran University professor Azar Nafisi explains to an American audience why President Khatami is no friend of the pro-democracy movement, and has joined forces with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamene'i against the students. Meanwhile, in a new statement from London Amnesty International calls on the Tehran authorities to "guarantee fundamental rights" of all Iranians, and to "investigate fully and partially" the killing of students by pro-regime militias and law enforcement forces.Human Rights Watch has also written to Ayatollah Khamene'i, condemning the assault on Iranian students.

July 14, 1999: In testimony before the Space and Aeronautics subcommittee of the House Science Committee, Kenneth R. Timmerman reveals the existence of Iran's latest missile, the multi-stage, nuclear-capable Kosar, which could give Iran the capability of reaching the continental United States for the first time. Read the Washington Times and the Reuters reports on the Kosar missile.

July 6, 1999: The Iranian Student Movement for Democracy (formerly known as the Islamic Student Movement) called a demonstration beginning at 2PM local time today in front of the United Nations office in Tehran, to protest the arrest of Heshmatollah Tabarzadi and Hossein Kashani. They also condemned the crackdown on the press and the failure of President Khatami to oppose it. Read the Amnesty International appeal regarding the Tabarzadi and Kashani arrest here. According to a fax received from the group in Tehran, three of the demonstration leaders were immediately arrested by the authorities and taken to an unknown location. They were identified as: Mohamad Massod Salamati, Seyed Djavad Emamil, and Parviz Safari. Reports indicated that several other students, as well as a reporter trying to take pictures of the arrests, were also seized.

Tabarzadi's former newsletter, Payam-e Daneshjou, earned the ire of IRI leaders by exposing some of the regime's dirtiest secrets. See "Rulers of Rafsanjan," from The June 1996 issue of The Iran Brief.

June 7, 1999: U.S. partially lifts sanctions. The State Department announced in May that it was exempting food and medicine from the Iran trade embargo, but on the same day denied a license to Mobil to carry out oil swaps. While seeking to loosen trade restrictions, the Clinton administration is carefully weighing its overtures to Tehran. See the May 1999 issue of The Iran Brief. Note: Iran Brief postings on this site are delayed by 30 days, since the newsletter is reserved for commercial subscribers. See also "Is Iran-Saudi Détente Underway," from the Wall Street Journal, May 20, 1999.

May 14, 1999: Change in Iran and Challenges for U.S. policy makers, a presentation at the Library of Congress, January 8, 199; May 5, 1999 article on Iran's new sea-launch missiles from the Washington Times; April 18, 1999 article on former Defense Secretary William Perry and his dubious ties to the Chinese communist government; "Destroy His Weapons, Then Oust Saddam," Boston Globe, Nov. 14, 1998. Also see Florida Splendid China, from the March 1999 issue of The American Spectator..

April 5, 1999: Mujahedin visa fraud ring. Exclusive: court documents filed in Los Angeles expose a massive alien smuggling ring and a document forgery shop apparently run by the opposition Mujahedin-e Khalq. Computer records seized at the MEK's document shop showed they had brought in 22,000 Iranians since 1983.

March 8, 1999 Showdown in Tehran: Khatami plays his cards. Exclusive Iran Brief sources reveal the inside workings of Khatami's sweeping victory in the Feb. 26 local council elections, and the ongoing showdown with hard-liners.

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