French researcher Clotilde Reiss, 24, sits in a Tehran courtroom where she is being tried on charges of plotting to overthrow the Islamic Republic. In the background to the left is defendant Ahmad Zeidabadi, a prominent critic of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. (Fars News Agency)

  PARIS —After a mediation by Syria , The French academic who is part of a mass trial in Iran has been freed from prison on bail and turned over to the French embassy in good health, French leaders said Sunday, urging that charges against her be dropped.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy said “that nothing can justify” the case against Clotilde Reiss, 24, and an embassy employee, who are accused of fanning a revolt aimed at bringing down Iran’s Islamic rulers.

The president spoke with Reiss as soon as she left Tehran’s Evin prison and reported that she was in good health and spirits, his office said in a statement.

Sarkozy “noted the dignity and courage with which Clotilde Reiss has faced this challenge,” the statement said.

Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner later said on the iTele TV station that bail was paid but that the sum was “not enormous.”

While she stays at the embasssy, Reiss will prepare her defense “to make her innocence known,” Kouchner said in a statement. Like Sarkozy, he reiterated that the charges against her and the French-Iranian embassy employee, Nazak Afshar, are “unfounded.”

Reiss was arrested July 1 and jailed after attending a postelection demonstration at the end of a five-month teaching job in the city of Isfahan. Reiss and Afshar went on trial Aug. 8 alongside more than 100 others. All were charged with fomenting revolt following Iran’s disputed presidential elections.

Sarkozy credited the European Union and Syria for helping obtain Reiss’ release, echoing language he used when Afshar was let out of prison on Aug. 11. She also still faces charges.

He thanked them for “the solidarity and support they have brought us and will continue to bring until our two compatriots have recovered their full freedom.”

Since taking office in 2007, Sarkozy has worked to bolster ties with Damascus, which is a strong ally of Tehran and is trying to emerge from its diplomatic isolation in the West.

Sarkozy has backed a go-between role for Damascus to bring across Western demands on Tehran. He met with President Bashar Assad in January as part of an international bid at the time to stop an Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip, and Assad was a guest of honor at France’s July 2008 Bastille Day parade.

The weekend edition of the French daily Le Monde, quoting Syrian sources, said that Assad could travel shortly to Tehran to meet the Iranian president but would use the visit to use his influence to help gain full freedom for the French women.

Obtaining freedom for Reiss has become a cause celebre in France, and authorities have worked hard to obtain her release.

Reiss and Afshar both apologized before the court for attending at least one demonstration, saying she did so because she was curious. She has been charged with acting against national security by joining protests, gathering information, taking photos and sending them abroad during postelection unrest in Iran.

AP and Aleppous

AP -BEIRUT – Syria’s leader sent a July 4 message full of praise to President Barack Obama on Friday and invited him to visit Syria — the latest signs Damascus is hedging its bets in Mideast politics, warming up to its rival the United States at a time when its longtime ally Iran is in turmoil.

The United States and its Arab allies have been hoping to pull Syria out of the fold of Iran and Islamic militant groups in the region.

Damascus so far appears unlikely to take such a dramatic step, but it does appear worried about Iran’s reliability and the long-term impact of that country’s postelection unrest. Also, its Lebanese ally Hezbollah suffered a setback when its coalition failed to win June parliament elections, beaten out by a pro-U.S. bloc.

Syrian President Bashar Assad has been expressing hopes for better ties with Washington for months. But the latest developments may make dialogue look even more attractive.

Assad sent a telegram to Obama on the occasion of the July 4 Independence Day holiday, saying, “The values that were adopted by President Obama during his election campaign and after he was elected president are values that the world needs today.”

“It is very important to adopt the principle of dialogue in relations with countries based on respect and mutual interest,” Assad said in the telegram, which was carried by state-run news agency SANA.

In an interview with Britain’s Sky News, Assad invited Obama to visit Damascus to discuss Mideast peace.

“We would like to welcome him in Syria, definitely. I am very clear about this,” Assad said in English. Asked whether such a visit could take place soon, Assad said: “That depends on him.”

He added with a smile, “I will ask you to convey the invitation to him.” The last time a U.S. president visited Syria was a 1994 trip by Bill Clinton.

For the U.S., even pulling Syria only partly away from Iran and its militant allies would represent a major shift and could help ease Mideast crises. The U.S.-Syrian rivalry has fueled instability in Lebanon, and the U.S. and Israel say Syria’s backing of the Palestinian Hamas undermines the Arab-Israeli peace process. Syrian cooperation could make Obama’s fresh push for a peace deal take off.

The Obama administration has stepped up its wooing of Syria. The U.S. is sending back its ambassador to Damascus after a four-year break over terrorism accusations. Obama’s special Mideast peace envoy, George Mitchell, became the highest-level U.S. administration official to visit Damascus since 2005, and he acknowledged Syria’s clout, declaring Damascus has a key role to play in forging Mideast peace.

In a separate interview with Sky News, Assad’s wife, Asma, said she believed the Syrian and American leaders could work together.

“The fact that President Obama is young — well President Assad is also very young as well — so maybe it is time for these young new leaders to make a difference in the world,” she said.

In one sign of Syrian cooperation on regional issues, Damascus is believed to have played a behind-the-scenes role in ensuring Lebanon’s elections remained peaceful.

Damascus likely won’t move away from its Iran alliance easily. Iran’s regional clout has been key to boosting Syria’s status in the Middle East, and Tehran gives considerable financial and military backing. Assad was the first Arab leader to congratulate Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for winning the disputed presidential election.

But Iran is now mired in the fallout from that election, following the widespread protests that erupted amid claims Ahmadinejad’s victory in the June election was fraudulent. A heavy crackdown has largely quelled the protests, but the show of anger has raised questions over Ahmadinejad’s long-term legitimacy.

“All the world around Syria on which it built its policy is falling apart,” said Sateh Noureddine, managing editor of the Lebanese As-Safir daily, which tilts toward Syria’s Lebanese allies.

“Hezbollah lost the election in Lebanon, Hamas is being subjected to unprecedented attrition and Iran is drowned in its internal crises,” he told The Associated Press. “All the elements of strength they (Syrians) built on their foreign policy are collapsing, so for certain they are going to reassess and look for alternatives, without abandoning their past.”

Writing in the Saudi-owned daily Al-Hayat, Saudi analyst Dawood al-Shirian urged Syria to “take this opportunity and rid itself of having to pay a price for the Iranians’ reputation.”

U.S. ally Saudi Arabia — one of the bitterest rivals of Syria in the region since 2005 — has been working in recent months to thaw ties with Damascus in hopes of drawing it away from Iran.

The oil powerhouse sent a senior envoy to Damascus on June 28. Assad and Saudi King Abdullah have twice met in recent months in Riyadh and Kuwait, and there has been persistent media speculation that Abdullah will visit Damascus in July — perhaps as early as next week — to crown the renewed relationship.

Assad and Jordan’s king have also recently exchanged visits for the first time in several years.

Syria has several long-term aims in any reconciliation with the U.S. Assad has said he wants the U.S. to mediate Syrian-Israeli negotiations, in which Damascus seeks the return of the Golan Heights, which Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast war.

Syria also wants U.S. economic sanctions lifted and foreign investment, particularly Gulf Arab money for its economy. It is also wary of an international tribunal set up to try the perpetrators of the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in Beirut at a time when Syria controlled the country.

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
President Obama called on the Iranian government to allow protesters to control the streets in Tehran. Would Obama or any US president allow protesters to control the streets in Washington, D.C.?
There was more objective evidence that George W. Bush stole his two elections than there is at this time of election theft in Iran. But there was no orchestrated media campaign to discredit the US government.
On May 16, 2007, the London Telegraph reported that Bush regime official John Bolton told the Telegraph that a US military attack on Iran would “be a ‘last option’ after economic sanctions and attempts to foment a popular revolution had failed.”
We are now witnessing in Tehran US “attempts to foment a popular revolution” in the guise of another CIA orchestrated “color revolution.” It is possible that splits among the mullahs themselves brought about by their rival ambitions will aid and abet what the Telegraph (May 27, 2007) reported were “CIA plans for a propaganda and disinformation campaign intended to destabilize, and eventually topple, the theocratic rule of the mullahs.” It is certainly a fact that the secularized youth of Tehran have played into the CIA’s hands.
The Mousavi protests have set up Iran either for a US puppet government or for a military strike.
The US intervention and the orchestrated disinformation pumped out by the western media are so transparent that it is impossible to believe than any informed person or government is taken in. One cannot avoid the conclusion that the West wants the 1978 Iranian Revolution overthrown and intends to use deception or violence to achieve that goal.
It has become increasingly difficult to believe that facts and truth motivate the western news media. For the record, I would like to point out a few of the most obvious oversights, to use an euphemism, in the Iran reporting.
According to a wide variety of news sources (for example, London Telegraph, Yahoo News, The Globe and Mail, Asbarez.com, Politico), “Before the polling closed Mr. Mousavi declared himself ‘definitely the winner’ based on ‘all indications from all over Iran.’ He alleged widespread voting irregularities without giving specifics and hinted he was ready to challenge the final results.” Other news sources, which might not have been aware that the polls were kept open several hours beyond normal closing time in order to accommodate the turnout, reported that Mousavi made his victory claim the minute polls closed.
Mousavi’s premature claim of victory before polling was over or votes counted is clearly a preemptive move, the purpose of which is to discredit any other outcome. There is no other reason to make such a claim.
In Iran’s system, election fraud has no purpose, because a small select group of ruling mullahs select the candidates who are put on the ballot. If they don’t like an aspiring candidate, they simply don’t put him on the ballot.
When the liberal reformer Khatami ran for president, he won with 70 per cent of the vote and served from 1997-2005. If the mullahs didn’t defraud Khatami of his win, it seems unlikely they would defraud an establishment figure like Mousavi, who was foreign minister in the most conservative government, and is backed by another establishment figure, Rafsanjani.
As Mousavi was seen as Rafsanjani’s man, why is it “unbelievable” that Ahmadinejad defeated Mousavi by the same margin that he defeated Rafsanjani in the previous election?
Neoconservative Kenneth Timmerman let the cat out of the bag that there was an orchestrated “color revolution” in the works. Before the election, Timmerman wrote: “there’s talk of a ‘green revolution’ in Tehran.” Why would protests be organized prior to a vote and announcement of the outcome? Organized protests waiting in the wings are not spontaneous responses to a stolen election.
Timmerman’s organization, Foundation for Democracy, is funded by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) for the explicit purpose of promoting democracy in Iran. According to Timmerman, NED money was funneled to “pro-Mousavi groups who have ties to non-governmental organizations outside Iran that the National Endowment for Democracy funds.”
The US media has studiously ignored all of these highly suggestive facts. The media is not reporting or providing objective analysis. It is engaged in a propagandistic onslaught against the Iranian government.
We know that the US funds terrorist organizations inside Iran that are responsible for bombings and other violent acts. It is likely that these terrorist organizations are responsible for the burning buses and other acts of violence that have occurred during the demonstrations in Tehran.
A writer on pakalert.wordpress.com says that he was intrigued by the sudden appearance of tens of thousands of Twitter allegations that Ahmadinejad stole the Iranian election. He investigated, he says, and he reports that each of the new highly active accounts were created on Saturday, June 13th. “IranElection” is their most popular keyword. He narrowed the spammers to the most persistent: @StopAhmadi, @IranRiggedElect, and @Change_For_Iran. He researched further and found that On June 14 the Jerusalem Post already had an article on the new twitter. He concludes that the new Twitter sites are propaganda operations.
One wonders why the youth of the world, who do not protest stolen elections elsewhere, are so obsessed with Iran.
The unexamined question is Mousavi and his motives…… Why would Mousavi unleash demonstrations that are obviously being used by a hostile West to discredit the government of the Iranian Revolution that overthrew the US puppet government? Are these the actions of a “moderate”? These are the actions of a disgruntled man who kept his disaffection from his colleagues in order to gain the opportunity to discredit the regime with street protests? Mousavi is being manipulated by organizations funded with US government money.
John Bolton laid out the US strategy….. First we try to destabilize the regime. …. Failing that, we strike them militarily. As this strategy unfolds, Iranians will pay in lost independence or in blood for the naiveness of its secularized youth and for the mistake the mullahs made in trusting Mousavi.
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration.

Mustafa Hamido| 24/06/2009| mustafahamido@gmail.com  

The happiness of some of “moderate Arab states ” about what is happening in Tehran and the arise of the opposition against the regime there and which is reflected on their media is not understood. They consider the protestors there as “warriors for democracy ” . What they are trying to hide and is clear for every one is the ideological background for those or at least for a part of them which want to overthrow “the Islamic Republic ” regime.

It is clear that the biggest part of them is either nationalists or Liberals. In both cases the Arabs are the losers.

(1)

Arab states and a wide spectrum of its people consider the current regime as the problem of this region. They used to call it ” The Mallaly’s Regime “. They had pushed Saddam to fight Iran to ” Save The Arab Eastern Gate”. This was popular in the Arab media literature in 1980’s. That war put the end of Saddam’s regime. It was a disaster for Saddam and the region.

Iraq has been debited and the region has collapsed after Saddam’s adventure in Kuwait. We should know here that the Iraqi’s invasion of Kuwait was a consequence of the 10 years war between Iran and Iraq. Kuwait has debited Saddam to help him in his war and ask for its debit directly after the end of the War although it was eulogizing him and describing him as ” the Arab hero ” and “The Arab Defendant “. It was an ugly years. Some of Arabs want to regain that period. What they lack is a character like Saddam who is ready to kill his people for his own fake glory.

Those who are describing themselves the “Moderate Arabs” are not ready to fight by themselves. They used to deploy intermediates to fight for their account and to use their fight and blood in compromise.

(2)

The Shah of Iran was ruling the Persian Gulf region during the 1960’s and 1970’s . He was the king of the region taking the advantage of the western support for him and his nation. He was the sincere guard for the western interests in the region. The west was in no need to use his direct force to save these interests. The Shah huge military force was enough. It seems that Arabs are really favoring that period. We should remember here that Saudi Arabia wasn’t a key player in the region as it is now. Although it has played a certain rules, however, it was totally controlled by a tight system taking in its consideration some Arab sensitivities toward Iran and its clear coalition with Israel, the x-enemy of the moderate Arabs and the enemy of the most of Arabs.

(3)

The Arab Moderate states don’t know its real interests. It had been used to overthrow Saddam Hussein and it is in a real need for some one to play his rule nowadays. Iraq which they were considering him the defender of their interests opposite the Iranian spread has been lost and become split between either an Iranian loyalty or an American one without a real key rule for those “the Moderate Arabs” .

Loosing Iraq has not awakened them. They are blind followers for the Americans, favoring the American Interests over their own interests. Wes should know her some fake facts, which they used to propagate as real ones. The problem of the moderate Arabs with Iran is not in fact with the current Iran . It is a historical clash between the uncivilized Bedouin who were living on the southern coast of Iran and on the southern coast of the Persian Gulf . As tribes, those Bedouins have given their loyalties for those who are paying . Some time they were loyal to Portuguese and sometimes to British and some times to the Iranians themselves. The rule was : The more you pay , the more loyalty you get . According to those historical events, we can find easily immigrations between the northern and southern coast of the Persian gulf. The Moderate Arab Media is focusing on the Emirates three Islands, which are occupied by Iranians from early 1970’s. These Islands has been occupied during The Shah period . It is not an occupation by the current Iranian regime. It is a historical matter can be solved easily .I can’t see a real Arab interest in antagonizing Iran . What they say about spreading the Shiites in the region is a way of trying to persuade Arab people that there is a real danger from Iran on their faith. Those who are worries on Sunnis are in fact neither Sunnis nor Shiites. They have their own believe and almost they are anti-religions and extremist seculars .

(4)

The last note here is a trial to clarify. The Iranian nationalists are in fact anti-Arabs and even in some times anti- Islam. They have their own view for the region excludes the Arab states, which they in fact don’t consider them as real states. They consider it as followers for the strongest in the region. One of the candidates to the last election blamed Ahmadinajad , the Iranian elected president , for his visit to UAE and participating in the Arab Gulf states council summit.

Moon of Alabama

There is a full effort of the “western” media and some expatriate Iranian organizations to de-legitimize the Iranian election despite the absence of any real evidence of voting fraud. These events show all characteristics of an engineered “color evolution”. 

As said before I find the reelection of Ahmadinejad quite plausible. He has done a lot for the poor and the elections were for a decent part class based. As Robert Fisk relates from someone not-regime-friendly in Tehran:

But I must repeat what he said. “The election figures are correct, Robert. Whatever you saw in Tehran, in the cities and in thousands of towns outside, they voted overwhelmingly for Ahmadinejad. Tabriz voted 80 per cent for Ahmadinejad. It was he who opened university courses there for the Azeri people to learn and win degrees in Azeri. In Mashad, the second city of Iran, there was a huge majority for Ahmadinejad after the imam of the great mosque attacked Rafsanjani of the Expediency Council who had started to ally himself with Mousavi. They knew what that meant: they had to vote for Ahmadinejad.”

My guest and I drank dookh, the cool Iranian drinking yoghurt so popular here. The streets of Tehran were a thousand miles away. “You know why so many poorer women voted for Ahmadinejad? There are three million of them who make carpets in their homes. They had no insurance. When Ahmadinejad realised this, he immediately brought in a law to give them full insurance. Ahmadinejad’s supporters were very shrewd. They got the people out in huge numbers to vote – and then presented this into their vote for Ahmadinejad.”

The myth in the “western” media is that Ahmadinejad is a “right-wing hardliner”. While he asserts nationalism and sovereignty as any president should do, in interior politics and economics, dominant in elections everywhere, his position is more to the left of the typical “western” right-left scale.

The argument favored by Juan Cole and others that high inflation and high unemployment numbers should have favored Mousavi and the ‘reformers’ backed by Iran’s richest man Rafsanjani. But those numbers, as asserted in the “west”, are not what they are said to be.

Unfortunately the myth that is currently created, will likely be used to favor the agenda of the war mongers. We will all be in trouble if their argument wins. This whole issue will do wonders for oil speculators and thereby snuff up any “green shots”.

• Blog Refernce:

For more about Iranian election and for More Info visit: http://djavad.wordpress.com/

From the Editor

We can’t describe what is happening in Iran as a protest against the regime. It is just a real democracy in a region lacks such these practicing and stands surprised about the flexibility of the Iran way of ruling. Some of western commenter are not believing what they see. They are trying to go back to the stereotype and the brain washing which the western media is doing and try to compare between what they are seeing on the ground and what they have heard from their media. It is a totally different image.  We , in this site, published yesterday an opinion of an American commenter describing Iran as one of the most development nation in the Middle East and try to say the the brainwash which the western Media is doing is similar to that it did to the USSR during the Cold War.

He tried to find a similarities between Iran and USSR from the ideological strong base for both regimes , however , he admits that as a nation he describes Iran as a developed state.

the protest in the streets of Tehran is a normal symptoms of democracy . It is an opposition when it feels that its candidate has failed . all democracies have the same symptoms with differences in severity. ere in the middle East our symptoms are acute . We are still beginners in the Democracy as a way of  living.

By Colin Freeman in Tehran
Published: 10 Jun 2009 | The Daily Telegraph

Yet as evening fell, the 100,000 seater stadium played host to what promised to be a crucial event in the run-up to Friday’s election campaign – Iran’s World Cup qualifier match against the United Arab Emirates.

Seldom can the outcome of a game of football have had such potential geopolitical consequences: If Iran won, they were still in with a chance of qualifying for the tournament after last week’s defeat in the “Axis of Evil” special against North Korea.

But if they lost, they would be knocked out – a devastating blow to national morale that would almost certainly translate into punishment for President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Friday’s polls, and possibly usher in a reformist government.

“If we lose this game, I think about half the people in this stadium will no longer vote for Ahmadinejad,” fretted a nervous Mahmoud Arjomandi, 38, a shoemaker and Ahmadinejad supporter from Iran’s western province of Lorestan, as supporters banged drums and played loudhailers. “Iranians will be devastated to be knocked out of the World Cup, and many people will certainly blame the president.”

Just like New Labour politicians in Britain, Mr Ahmadinejad has always done his best to portray himself as a lover of the beautiful game. He regularly poses for pictures with the national team, and was recently presented with his own personalised strip with “Ahmadinejad” written on the back.

But just like many of his other attempts at the populist touch, it has tended to backfire. When he turned up to watch halfway through a World Cup qualifier against regional rivals Saudi Arabia in March, the Iranian team’s fortunes promptly about turned, squandering a 1-0 lead to lose 2-1. And his recent reshuffle of the directors of Tehran’s two government-owned teams, Persepolis and Esteghlal, has been cited by election rivals as indicative of his autocratic management style, which has also seen him replace numerous government ministers with idealogues.

Given the stakes involved, security outside the game was tight, with soldiers and riot police banning campaign flags for either Mr Ahmadinejad or his main reformist rival, Mir-Hossein Mousavi.

But once on the terraces, the supporters quickly showed their respective political colours again. “Bye bye Ahmadinejad,” cheered the Mousavi supporters. “He hasn’t had a shower for two weeks,” they added, a cruel reference to the Iranian leader’s alleged personal hygeine problems.

The crunch game came as the Iranian election build-up showed a growing amount of dirty play off the pitch. In an unprecedented move, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a former president, sent an open letter to the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, complaining about “insults, lies and false allegations” made against him in televised debates by Mr Ahmadinejad. The letter, an implicit criticism of the Ayatollah’s endorsement of Mr Ahmadinejad, was seen as showing the growing cracks within the country’s leadership.

But could a simple football game really influence the outcome of a national election as important as this? Mr Arjomandi feared so. Combining the obsessive football fan’s love of statistics with a dab of amateur psephology, he had already done the maths. Defeat for Iran, he estimated, would cost Mr Ahmadinejad about three million floating voters nationwide, enough to prove crucial in a contest that is already neck and neck between the president and Mr Mousavi.

Much to his relief, Iran won 1-0. But even now, Mr Ahmadinejad’s fate remains linked to the football team’s. The election is widely predicted to end up in a tie between Mr Ahmadinejad and Mr Mousavi, necessitating a second-round vote a week on Friday. And once again, next Wednesday evening, less than 48 hours before the vote, Iran will play yet another World Cup qualifier, this time against South Korea.

For Mousavi supporters, it is a situation that defies regular footballing cliches. Yes, at the end of the day, it is of course the result that counts. The question, though, is which result is more important?

“Of course I don’t to see Iran knocked out of the World Cup,” said Mohammad Kerbashi, 26. “But I would also like to see Ahmadinejad lose. I don’t know what to hope for.”

KUWAIT, May 11 (Reuters) – Kuwait’s Mobile Telecommunications Co (ZAIN.KW) is in talks with Iran for the country’s third mobile licence, a spokesman said on Monday.

The Iranian news agency reported earlier on Monday Emirates Telecommunications Corp (ETEL.AD) (Etislat) had been eliminated.

“We have been notified by the Iranians and as soon as practical we will meet with them to see the new terms and conditions,” Ibrahim Adel told Reuters.

Zain, as part of a consortium, was the next bidder, Adel said.

Etisalat executives were not immediately available for comment.