IRAN and terrorists

Is Iran the next US target? Warnings by Rumsfeld and others suggest it is. One pretext is that Iran is harboring al-Qaida terrorists. Iran said it had arrested members of al-Qaida, but none ranked high in the network. US officials say they have intelligence suggesting senior al-Qaida members hiding in Iran had prior knowledge of the 12 May suicide bombings in Saudi Arabia in which 34 people, including eight US citizens, were killed. Leading US lawmakers predicted there would shortly be positive developments regarding al-Qaida in Iran. which said it has deported around 500 al-Qaida members in the last year after they lipped over its borders from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq. Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi said in a French newspaper interview that Iran had done its best to expel al-Qaida operatives and had no interest in supporting the network. "There is no reason for us to help this organization," Kharrazi told Le Figaro. "Our borders with Afghanistan and Pakistan are so long that some al-Qaida members have sought refuge in Iran. We have arrested many of them and extradited them to their country of origin." Iran's ambassador to the UN, Javad Zarif, said Iran was trying to identify a group of al-Qaida suspects in custody and was willing to hand them over to "friendly governments", such as Saudi Arabia. The US, which broke diplomatic ties with Tehran shortly after the 1979 Islamic revolution, has grown more critical of Iran since the end of the Iraq war last month. US officials have accused Iran of pursuing a secret nuclear weapons program, meddling in post-war Iraq and harboring al-Qaida. Iran denies all the charges and insists its has long been ideologically opposed to al-Qaida. The Washington Post (5/25703) reported that the White House was due to consider a Pentagon-backed proposal to destabilize Iran's clerical government through a popular uprising. (Reuters, 5/27/03).

Ronald Hilton - 5/28/03