Why Shahram Amiri is hotter than Anna Chapman

There is perhaps only one thing that remains clear in the international furor over the defection/kidnapping of the Iranian scientist Shahram Amiri: getting another country's nuclear scientist on the rolls is the greatest coup that a spy agency can achieve. It's certainly more valuable than implanting a photogenic "illegal" into another country, as Russia's cover operators did in America with their undercover spy, Anna Chapman.

But the excitement of the chase can quickly fade, leaving a generation of atomic defectors feeling a bit jilted as they struggle to make a life for themselves in their new country. "Freedom can be harsh," Charles Duelfer, who led the CIA inquiry into Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, told Turtle Bay. "The U.S. government's interest wanes pretty quickly once fully debriefed. Then what do you do? Can't work on the U.S. nuclear program. Write a book? Then what?"

As long as there have been nuclear programs, there have been nuclear spies. In 1942, before he created James Bond, Ian Flemming, then a 34-year-old commander in the Royal Navy's volunteer reserve, toiled away in a naval intelligence unit and devised and realized a plan to create an elite unit of intelligence commandos who would cross enemy lines to capture vital enemy secrets, according to Sean Longden's history of the squad, T-Force: The Forgotten Heroes of 1945. Under Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, the team uncovered many of Nazi Germany's nuclear secrets and captured prominent German nuclear scientists, including Willem Groth and Otto Hahn.

More than half a century after the dawn of the atomic era, nuclear scientists have maintained their staying power as a high-value intelligence target, garnering large sums for their country's nuclear secrets. American and European sleuths have aggressively pursued nuclear scientists in Iraq, Iran, Pakistan and beyond in an effort to ensure the safety of friendly countries' nuclear stockpiles or to unlock the key to an enemy's most treasured security secrets.

It remains unclear why Amiri decided to leave. A senior U.S. official told the Washington Post that Amiri possessed valuable insights into Iran's nuclear program and that he was paid $5 million to share them with American debriefers -- money he may no longer be able to access. But the official also suggested the U.S. had got what it needed: "We have his information, and the Iranians have him."

But U.S. specialists who have sought to help other nuclear defectors settle in the United States say the Amiri case highlights the challenges in recruiting foreign scientists. The CIA, they say, has often failed to provide the transplants with adequate career prospects or guarantees for the safety of relatives. Some U.S. officials said Amiri, who claims he was kidnapped by American authorities, may have returned because of concerns over the well-being of his family.

"This is a real problem," said David Albright, a nuclear scientist who heads the Institute for Science and International Security. Albright said that the CIA has provided top scientists that have outlived their usefulness with little support and menial careers. Perversely, he said, the approach has encouraged defectors to ply their handlers with exaggerated claims or to provide their services to the next highest bidder. The most notable case involved Rafid Ahmed Alwan, dubbed Curveball by the CIA, who claimed to have been a chemical engineer in a secret mobile biological weapons plant. His assertion, which provided a critical rationale for the U.S. invasion of Iraq, was later disproved by the CIA's Iraq Survey Group, which was led by Duelfer. "The incentive structure encourages these guys to exaggerate their technical qualifications and their knowledge of what's going on in a secret nuclear program," Albright said. "When they drain them dry, their value drops dramatically."

Khidhir Hamza, a former Iraqi nuclear scientist who defected to the United States in 1994, was considered a valuable catch, prompting the CIA to mount a secret operation to spirit his family out of the country, according to Albright. The following year, a more valuable defector, Saddam Hussein's brother in law, Hussein Kamal, fled Iraq for Jordan, providing detailed briefing of Iraq's weapons programs to CIA and U.N. specialists. The defection prompted Iraq to provide greater details about its chemical, biological, and nuclear programs; it also undercut Hamza's value, who was subsequently set up to operate a BP gas station in Fredericksburg, Va. A couple of years later, Hamza approached Albright for a job and helped provide insights into Iraq's nuclear program. But he was also drawn to the Iraqi exile Ahmad Chalabi, together with whom he played a role in exaggerating the threat of Iraq's nuclear program. "He went on to become their biggest nuclear exaggerator," he said.

The United States also assembled a series of task forces in Baghdad to search for high value nuclear operators. One CIA team quickly located Mahdi Obeidi, an Iraqi expert on nuclear centrifuges, who hid a trove of documents and centrifuge parts in his rose garden. The materials, which were buried in the early 1990s, provided a blue print of Iraq's nuclear program. Obeidi told the Americans that the materials had not been touched since then, and that he had ended his work in the nuclear weapons field.

Albright said that U.S. authorities initially offered to allow Obeidi to defect to the United States, but that he would have to leave his family behind. The CIA relented after CNN approached the CIA for comment on the scientist's predicament, according to Albright. "I can tell you it is very, very difficult to get the U.S. government to approve taking in someone," said Duelfer, who urged the White House to allow Obeidi to flee to the United States. "It always amazed me that it is so hard to get approval to bring in someone who may well have risked their life for us." The Russian illegals, he noted, had little trouble getting U.S. residency. "But that's the way it is," Albright says.

Duelfer said the United States "is a difficult place to adjust, especially if you come from circumstances of prestige and assured income...you can do what you want, but you may go broke." Returning home, he said, is not so unusual. Hussein Kamal was lured back to Iraq, where Saddam Hussein had him executed for his treachery. Mordechai Vanunu, an Israeli nuclear technician, was drugged and abducted by Mossad agents in 1986, after telling British reporters about the existence of an Israeli plutonium separation plant. Vitaly Yurchenko, a KGB colonel who defected in 1985, walked away from his CIA handler in Georgetown after being spurned by his mistress, who told him she fell in love with a KGB officer, not a traitor. Like Amiri, Yurchenko told the press he had been kidnapped and tortured.

"We could do better," said Duelfer. "Still, there are reasons we do it badly." He cited the massive costs, political and bureaucratic constraints, and "every imaginable weirdness you can think of from multiple wives and girlfriends to illness and criminal backgrounds."

The Fatwa- Ayatollah Khomeini and the legacy of the Salman Rushdie affair.

A frail old man, wearing a black turban and ankle-length robes, stepped out of an Air France 747 into a chill February morning. His back hunched, he clutched the arm of a steward as he took faltering steps down a portable ramp to touch Iranian soil. After 15 years in exile, Ruhollah Khomeini had come home, the 78-year-old spiritual leader of a popular revolution that had toppled the shah of Iran and humbled SAVAK, his American-backed secret police force. Several million people from all across the country thronged into the capital to welcome the ayatollah, lining the 20-mile route out to Behesht-Zahra cemetery, where many of the martyrs of the revolution were buried. "The holy one has come!" they shouted triumphantly. "He is the light of our lives!" At the cemetery Khomeini prayed and delivered a 30-minute funeral oration for the dead. Then a boys' chorus sang, "May every drop of their blood turn to tulips and grow forever. Arise! Arise! Arise!"

In the decade between Khomeini's return to Tehran and the imposition of his fatwa on Salman Rushdie's novel The Satanic Verses -- and it was almost 10 years to the day that the one followed the other -- Islamism mutated from being a minor irritant to nationalist regimes in Muslim countries into a major threat to the West. The Rushdie affair, and the fatwa in particular, seemed like a warning that the seeds of the Iranian revolution were being successfully scattered across the globe, not least into the heart of the secular West.

And yet the fatwa was an expression as much of the failure of radical Islam as of its success. In 1989, the radicals in Tehran were on the defensive. Iran had been forced, the previous year, to abandon a bitter and bloody eight-year war against Iraq that cost the lives of up to a million Iranians. Khomeini was facing increased domestic opposition from reformers such as the speaker of the parliament, Ali Hashemi Rafsanjani, who had condemned the "shortsightedness" of Iranian foreign policy for "making enemies without reason" and was pushing for improved relations with the West.

The fatwa was an attempt by the radicals to regain the initiative. And it set a template for what was to happen over the next two decades: the political failure of radical Islam matched by an increasing turn toward violence and terrorism -- and matched, too, by exaggerated fears in the West about the threat it was facing.

Through the 1990s, Islamist parties grew in influence in Turkey, Palestine, and elsewhere, shaking the very foundations of secular government. In Algeria a vicious and bloody civil war broke out in 1991 between the Groupe Islamique Armé and the secular military government, a war that spilled over into acts of terror in France. The Taliban imposed its medieval rule on Afghanistan. The creation of Hamas in Palestine and Hezbollah in Lebanon posed a mortal threat not just to Israel but also to secular organizations such as the PLO. Radical groups like Hizb ut-Tahrir gained a foothold within Muslim communities in Western Europe. And terror worked itself into the political landscape, from suicide bombings in Palestine and Lebanon, to bombings on the Paris Métro, the attack on American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and eventually the horror of 9/11.

While all this was happening, the Berlin Wall collapsed, and with it the vision of global socialism. Many young Muslims who had previously been attached to left-wing radical movements were now left politically homeless and searching for new ideological shelter. The collapse of the Soviet Union had also opened the way for the umma physically to extend its reach beyond the old Iron Curtain to embrace the new Muslim states of Central Asia, the Caucasus, and the Balkans.

Many analysts expected Islamists to sweep to power across the world. The former U.S. ambassador to Algeria, Christopher Ross, who in the wake of 9/11 would become a "special coordinator for public diplomacy and public affairs," declared in 1993 that the Middle and Near East were "fated to witness a wave of Islamist revolutions, successful or failed, over the next decade." A decade later, a CIA report predicted that Islamists would "come to power in states that are beginning to become pluralist and in which entrenched secular elites have lost their appeal."

It never happened. There was no second Iranian revolution. In places like Egypt, Jordan, and Malaysia, where the Islamists once held high hopes of repeating Khomeini's success, their influence has been curtailed, admittedly often through brutal repression. Outside of the rare cases where social convulsions shaped the political landscape for a short period, such as in Algeria in 1991, when elections took place on the eve of civil war, and with the single exception of Hamas in Gaza in 2006 (and the disputed Iranian elections of 2009), no Islamist party has ever won more than 20 percent of the popular vote. Parties that have broken through the 20 percent barrier (in Algeria, Tunisia, and Turkey, for instance) have done so largely by shedding their Islamist trappings, renouncing their dreams of a caliphate, and becoming ordinary political parties with Muslim leanings -- and in the process often becoming better democrats than the secularists they toppled.
We are left, then, with a paradox. On the one hand, Western societies have become increasingly fearful of Islamic terror, and politicians and commentators often talk as if the West is under siege from radical Islam. From the Rushdie affair to the electoral success of Hamas in Gaza, from the worldwide protests over the Danish cartoons to the increasing calls for the introduction of sharia law not just in Muslim countries but in secular Western nations too, Muslims seem increasingly drawn to radical arguments. On the other hand, not only has Tehran failed to export its revolution, but Islamist parties have mostly failed to win mass support. "For all its political successes in the 1970s and 1980s," Gilles Kepel writes in Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam, "by the end of the twentieth century the Islamist movement had signally failed to retain political power in the Muslim world, in spite of the hopes of supporters and the forebodings of enemies."

How can we explain this paradox? Terror is an expression of the impotence of Islamism; unable to win for themselves a mass following, jihadists have become impresarios of death, forced into spectacular displays of violence to gain the attention they cannot win through political means. Nothing reveals the moral squalor of radical Islam better than its celebration of the suicide bomber. Traditional political and military movements nurtured as their greatest asset the people who supported them. For jihadists, people are like firecrackers to be lit and tossed away.

And yet this weakness has been transformed into strength by the political uncertainty and self-doubt that has seeped into Western societies. The key question, as Bill Durodie, senior fellow in Human Security at Singapore's S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, writes in a 2007 essay, is not "what it is that attracts a minority from a variety of backgrounds, including some who are relatively privileged, to fringe Islamist organizations, but what it is about our own societies and culture that fails to provide aspirational, educated, and energetic young individuals with a clear sense of purpose."

The initial campaign against The Satanic Verses had minimal impact and drew little support from Muslim communities beyond Britain and the Indian subcontinent. It was Ayatollah Khomeini's fatwa that drew global headlines. But the fatwa itself was a sign of weakness rather than of strength, an attempt by Khomeini to distract attention from defeat in the war with Iraq and the erosion of political support at home. In the West, it was not theological distress about blasphemy but political despair about belongingness and identity that stoked up anti-Rushdie sentiment.

One of the myths of the Rushdie affair is that the anti-Rushdie campaigners were all male, middle aged, poorly-educated, badly integrated, and devout to the point of blindness. Many were indeed like that. But many, equally, were young, left-wing, articulate, educated, and integrated. Few of these were religious, let alone fundamentalist. They were more familiar with the pub than with the mosque, had probably read Midnight's Children with more interest than they had the Quran, and were more likely to be clutching a packet of Durex than the Holy Book. Many had, like me, been involved in anti-racist campaigning in the 1980s. Many, indeed, had been my friends. And for many, Salman Rushdie had been a hero: In the early 1980s Rushdie was better known for his anti-racist rhetoric than for his incendiary assaults on Islam.

So why were people like this drawn to the anti-Rushdie campaign? Partly because of anger at the level of racism they faced. Partly because of disenchantment with the left with which many were involved. And partly because of the growth of multiculturalism as an official political policy. Multicultural policies suggested the inability, even unwillingness, of British politicians and institutions to reach out to young Asians as citizens rather than as members of a "community of communities." It suggested, too, the abandonment by many politicians of basic liberal notions of equality, individual rights, and freedom of expression. The reluctance of politicians to speak to their resentments, the aversion of many to a language of common citizenship, and the willingness to appease Islamist sentiments in the name of multiculturalism, inevitably pushed many young Muslims toward an Islamist identity, even if there was little within that identity to pull them in.

What is true of the response to the fatwa is equally true of the response to the jihad. On 9/11, the hijacked planes tore into the fabric, not simply of the World Trade Center and of the Pentagon, but also of Western self-assurance. "If a flight full of commuters can be turned into a missile of war," observed the New York Times, "then everything is dangerous." This erosion of self-belief, as much as the reality of the threat facing the West, has created a culture of fear, connecting the burning of Rushdie's book to the burning towers in Manhattan. Islam, as Olivier Roy has written, "is not the cause of the crisis" in the West; it is rather "a mirror in which the West projects its own identity crisis."

An assertive, self-confident society that possessed moral clarity about its beliefs would have little trouble dealing with the claims of fundamentalists, and indeed with the acts of terrorists. The insecurities of Western societies about the worth of basic liberal values and the emergence of fear as a dominant sentiment, have, however, made Islamists appear more potent than they are. "Vulnerability is never the best proof of strength," as the Muslim philosopher, and spokesman for the anti-Rushdie campaigners, Shabbir Akhtar put in his book Be Careful with Muhammad, mocking the doubts of Western liberals. From fatwa to jihad, Western politicians and intellectuals have not only exaggerated the threat facing their societies but have also lacked the moral and political resources to respond to it. That is the real lesson of the past two decades.

Terroracracy- How Iran Legitimises Its Domestic and Foreign Policies

BY-Tahirih Danesh, Senior Research Associate, FPC & Wahied Wahdat-Hagh, Senior Fellow, European Foundation for Democracy

The late Ayatollah Khomeini and Ayatollah Khamenei, the two Supreme Leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran, are among defenders and admirers of the late Navab Safavi. Safavi founded Fadayan-e Islam, a radical organisation established in 1946 in Iran and responsible for a number of key assassinations during the Pahlavi era.
Like other radical Islamists, Safavi wanted to cleanse the society by eliminating those whom he considered as corrupt, a concept not far from the current practice used by the Iranian judicial system: execution based on the charge of corruption on earth.1 For the past three decades, goals and ideals originating with Safavi and his allies have been propagated through the Islamic Republic of Iran--a government that is neither Islamic nor a republic, but one that has rendered Safavi, a radical terrorist, the status of a hero.
With the establishment of the Islamic Republic based on ideals and practices espoused by figures such as Safavi, Khomeini and Khamenei, the concept of terrorism is deeply embedded in Iran‟s post-revolution constitution:
The Constitution, having regard to the Islamic contents of the Iranian Revolution, which was a movement for the victory of all the oppressed over the arrogant, provides a basis for the continuation of that revolution both inside and outside the country. It particularly tries to do this in developing international relations with other Islamic movements and peoples, so as to prepare the way towards a united single world community ("Your community is one community, and I am your Lord who you are to worship") Quotation from the Arabic and to the continuation of the progressive struggle for the rescue of deprived and oppressed nations throughout the world.“
The above reference coupled with Ayatollah Khomeini‟s revolutionary doctrine points to an obvious conclusion: that the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran mandates the continuation and export of Iran‟s regime to the global community through collaboration with like-minded movements. This is the foundation of Iran‟s policy and its practice of supporting militant terrorist organisations in the Near East such as Hamas and Hezbollah. According to the above, the aim of this collaboration is the all-important notion of creating a “single world community” based on Iran‟s definition of an Islamic nation.
It is important to note that the methodology employed by the Iranian authorities pivots around permanent struggle, a Marxian idea that regards violence as the engine of history. As the records of post-revolutionary Iran show, the Islamic Republic‟s permanent struggle leads to a future far from peaceful. This is a strong signal to “deprived and oppressed nations” not to follow the example of Iran‟s catastrophic revolution.

Iran’s Brand of Terrorism: A Double-Edged Sword

Since the earliest days of the revolution, Iran‟s government made it abundantly clear that it was committed to establishing their version of Islamic rule through war.
On 27 February 2010 the leaders of Hamas (Khaled Mashaal), the Palestine Islamic Jihad (Ramadan Abdullah Mohammad Shallah) and the People‟s Front for the Liberation of Palestine-GC (Ahmed Jibril) attended a conference hosted by Iran‟s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki and former Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Velayati. Such a gathering indicates that the Iranian regime does not consider these—or similar organisations—as being engaged in what the rest of world considers to be terrorism.3 Rather, they are viewed as mere freedom fighters who are paving the way for a better future for the world.
Such a future, according to the Islamic Republic, is only possible once Israel, the agent of Imperialist Britain and the Great Satan (U.S.A.) no longer exists. According to Ayatollah Khamenei the leaders of these organisations will ensure that the “spirit of resistance will be strengthened among the population. The only way for Palestine is resistance and armed conflict.”4 These, as well as his recent statements, echo the words of Ayatollah Khomeini who, during a sermon as far back as February 1979, referred to Israel as a form of cancer.
Iran also continues to misuse the eschatological teachings of Islam. It does so as a means of reinforcing a culture of oppression. In light of the fact that the position of the Vali-e Faqih is one that exists during the occultation of Imam Mahdi, both Khomeini and Khamenei advocate a culture of violence and combat with Westoxification7 as an essential step in preparing the world for the coming of the promised Imam, a concept known as Mahdaviyyat. Twined with Iran‟s pursuit of nuclear energy, the concept of Mahdaviyyat in Iranian foreign policy reinforces the self-identity of certain members of the Iranian leadership as harbingers of the Day of Judgement and establishers of Islamic rule throughout the planet. The father of the revolution, Khomeini, in his first book, Kashf al-Asrar--a booked based on his understanding of Islamic teachings--advocated that all Muslim men (who are not physically challenged) must prepare to conquer other countries. He emphasised: “there are hundreds of other ayat [Qur'anic verses] and hadith urging Muslims to value war and to fight. Does all that mean that Islam is a religion that prevents men from waging war? I spit upon those foolish souls who make such a claim.”
In parallel with this process is an invasive Iranian strategy employing modern instruments to eliminate a culture of human rights, freedom and democracy among Iranians. In addition to the recent acts of injustice carried out against Iran‟s citizens, including the execution of five human rights activists (including Farzad Kamangar) under unknown circumstances; the repeated attacks on women‟s rights and student rights activists and the government‟s inexcusable failure in observing the due process of law in the case of the seven Baha‟i Yaran, the Iranian officials are taking unimaginable steps to suffocate those in favour of rights and democracy. While Iran packages itself as a theocracy based on the Vali-e Faqih's interpretation of Islamic Sharia, the fact remains that the very foundation of the state is based on pursuing a culture of terror, resulting in a state more appropriately termed a terroracracy.
Within Iran‟s borders, the Islamic Republic has imprisoned, tortured and executed thousands of innocent Iranians.10 With complete disrespect for its citizens‟ rights, the Iranian judicial system operates based on a wide range of fabricated rules far removed from the due process of law. Over the past 31 years thousands of Iranians whose beliefs and ideas are dissimilar to those in charge of the state are considered criminal, are forced to face imprisonment, torture and even execution based on vague charges including “corruption on earth”11--an offence punishable by death according to the Supreme Leader‟s interpretation of Sharia laws. Additionally, outside of Iran‟s borders key dissidents or their family members have been threatened, terrorised and assassinated on the same basis of spreading corruption on earth.
In the online world, a special unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps is mandated to block Iranian democratic movements abroad. In 2008 Iran considered introducing the death penalty for what was termed “internet crimes” which included blogging. A year later, following Iran‟s Twitter revolution, hundreds of bloggers and journalists were placed in prison.13 An increasing number of those who use the Internet to voice their support for democracy and human rights in Iran face interrogations and are charged as criminals. In March 2010 alone, the IRGC admitted it had defaced or attacked 29 websites run by the Iranian Diaspora.14 Furthermore, a number of human rights activists and members of minority groups residing overseas have received threatening messages on Facebook advising them to keep quiet or face the consequences.
On the other hand, pro-IRI sites engaged in spreading propaganda and their brand of intellectualism are on the rise. Coupled with Iran‟s plans to launch its own email network,16 this points to the fact that the Islamic Republic is not anti-Internet but rather that it views the Internet as a tool for exporting its brand of justice outside Iran‟s borders. In April 2010, for instance, Justice Minister Morteza Bakhtiari announced plans to set up a court for Iranians living abroad. According to Radio Farda, this would serve as a threat “against Iranian expats for their show of solidarity with the opposition street protests in Tehran” following the June 2009 presidential elections.
Since the inception of the Islamic Republic, state-sponsored propaganda and defamation campaigns have continued to smear the name and reputation of leading Iranians. Media outlets such as Kayhan Newspaper and Press TV regularly engage in character assassination by spreading false information against leading dissidents and human rights figures. In addition, the Iranian intelligence forces have harassed, abducted, detained, tortured and murdered Iranians, their colleagues, or family members.
According to a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, interviews with dozens of average Iranians living abroad revealed consistent patterns of threats and harassment among those who criticise the Islamic Republic—whether online or in traditional media and both inside and outside the country.Another article quotes an anonymous source in Iran pointing to the government‟s efforts to monitor email as portrayed in an intimidating television series called “Black Wisdom.”
Former detainees report that during interrogations they were shown pictures and reports of activities of their family members living overseas, a move most likely intended to demonstrate the long arm of Iran‟s judicial system abroad. Furthermore, many former detainees refuse to speak of their experiences while in custody, a sign that they have been threatened with a return to prison, or worse, should they speak about these experiences. Others who do speak up confirm this suspicion. Just prior to his release, Islamic Republic agents reassured Maziar Bahari “we can get you anywhere. And bring you back in a bag."
Increasing numbers of Iranians face difficulties while travelling to or from Iran. Many are asked to reveal their Facebook password or log into their account as part of security checks. Difficulties do not end there. Records show that the Islamic Republic‟s culture of paranoia is not limited to individuals and extends to institutions. Iran spends millions to influence Western academic institutions by funding academic chairs and sending students to study—and influence—Western academic circles. Iran has also placed sixty international organisations--including councils, think tanks, institutes, foundations and even Yale University--on a black list21 in an effort to further terrorise and intimidate students and academics. This black list may be the basis for imposing travel restrictions, interrogations and even detention of Iranians or Westerners who may have any involvement with the listed organisations. Threatening students of outspoken academics outside of Iran and imprisoning scholars such as Emadodin Baghi and Kian Tajbakhsh further discourages others from travelling to Iran.
Threatening Iranians as part of Iran‟s official state policy to eliminate dissent is not a new phenomenon. In the early 1990s the international community learned of a secret document known as the “Golpayegani Memorandum”. This memo recorded the views of top officials of the regime and was co-signed by the Supreme Leader. The document outlined the general, educational, cultural, legal and social „status‟ of Baha‟is as second-class citizens. It indicated that Baha‟is—rather than having rights—were subject to a large set of restrictions, going so far as outlining the necessity of planning “to fight and to destroy their cultural roots abroad.”
Experts familiar with other state policies designed to eliminate specific populations have referred to Iran‟s policies on Baha‟is as genocidal.24 Iran‟s Golpaygani Memorandum cites a number of government policies, which are identified in the Rome Statute25 as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.”
Ironically, Iranian officials view themselves as the saviour of the global community and the „standard bearers of human rights„ while they continue to make moves that undermine the authority of the United Nations and relevant international mechanisms such as the Universal Periodic Review of February 2010. Iran circumvents covenants to which it has committed, seeks membership in key bodies as a means of infiltration and routinely ignores objections and appeals from the global community. President Ahmadinejad has gone so far as referred to the UN veto power as a „satanic‟ mechanism employed by the West for the sole purpose of „oppressing‟ the global community.
Finally, Iran‟s efforts to influence other countries‟ foreign policies must not be overlooked. Contrary to popular belief, Iran is not seeking to become a regional power alone. Its umbrella of foreign influence reaches much further. Vietnam, Brazil, Venezuela, Kazakhstan, Russia, Armenia, China, Bangladesh, Bolivia and Algeria are among countries whose voice at the UN in other international fora have changed because of Iran‟s influence.
Such instances and others can signal Iran‟s tendency to legitimise its policies by pursuing terror; it uses terror as the means of “salvation”—wanted or unwanted—for “all the oppressed… both inside and outside the country.” The use of terror was, is, and will continue to be the founding principle of what Iranian officials have chosen to falsely call a theocracy.