Dr. Nourizadeh

We begin tonight’s edition of A Window to the Fatherland with Dr. Alireza Nourizadeh reading one of his poems from the book of his collected works.

Dr. Alireza Nourizadeh:

Today we have a special program to cover the G7summit in France.

There had been talk of Emanuel Macron trying since last month to bring Rouhani to the gathering of the G7 leaders but at the end it proved that it was all a rumor.

However, Javad Zarif came to Paris on Saturday and met with Macron and then again he suddenly turned up in the venue of the G7meetings to put forward the regime’s offers to the summit through Macron.

Who better than our senior foreign correspondent Mohammad Reza Shaheed could update us on the developments in this program or other programs of our TV Station?

But before than we will listen to Khamenei’s comments about Iran’s oil industries and the sanction on them. If we listen to him carefully he claims that we can sell our oil as much as we want to anyone we wish. The same claims that he has been repeating without any substance and then parroted by Rouhani.

Rouhani has gone one step further and claims that since the imposition of oil sanctions Iran has exported 28 billion barrels of oil and Iran has been earning one billion dollars every month from this revenue.

But the question is where has this money gone to and the answer is in the pockets of Khamenei and the regime’s proxies.

The Hezbollah has said that they have downed two Israeli drones but it is reported that the drones had been suicidal ones and had destroyed themselves after accomplishing their mission.

Mohammad Reza Shaheed:

As your program went on air the press conference of Macron and Trump began and the first six minutes of it was about Iran. Theyhave also issued a short communiqué, which says Macron has been actively talking to Trump about Iran in the last few weeks.

The unexpected arrival of Zarif has however complicated the matter but it appears that all Khamenei’s claims that the regime will not under any circumstances negotiate with the US has proved to be false.

We begin tonight’s edition of A Window to the Fatherland with Dr. Alireza Nourizadeh reading one of his poems from the book of his collected works.

Dr. Alireza Nourizadeh:

We continue the program with talking to our special guest Dr Mohammad Sadigh Yazdchi.

My first question to him is why some Iranians who do not have the means of even providing bread for their families walk to Karbala to perform a religious ritual that gives them no security or benefit?

How can we correct this devastated society when some of its members behave in this manner?

Dr Mohammad Sadigh Yazdchi:

We had already discussed about this issue in the previous programs and concluded that the psyche of the Iranians is polluted with many backward religious thoughts and superstition.

The mentality of the modern Iranian is still blended with deep religious beliefs that have continued to be part of our culture for the last fourteen centuries.

It is not an issue that can be tackled over night and requires a new education system that is based on secular and democratic values that separates state from religion.

In democratic countries of the world whatever their responsible leaders do is in line with the interest of their people but in our country the rulers claim to be doing it for the interest of their religious duties.

In a country where half of its population is not even free to choose what they wish to wear in public any talk of having democracy is nonsense.

The first priority that our forefathers wanted in the 1905 Constitutional Revolution was to have a society that works on the principle of the rule of law.

I think more than a century later we are still in search of this noble idea for Iran.

We begin tonight’s edition of A Window to the Fatherland with Dr. Alireza Nourizadeh reading one of his poems from the book of his collected works.

Dr. Alireza Nourizadeh:

We continue the program with talking to our special guest of every Thursday, Dr. Mohsen Sazegara, for his views about news of Iran and the Middle East.

Rouhani yesterday threatened that if Iran is not allowed to export its oil through the Persian Gulf then no other country in the region would be allowed to do it either.

His claim comes at a time when the super oil tanker Grace 1 is still wandering in international waters and while the Revolutionary Guards has said it owns the tanker, Iran’s maritime and shipping authority has said they are the owners of it.

What exactly is going on here?

Mohsen Sazegara:

Rouhani had already said the same thing a few weeks ago and in fact it was his threatening language that led to US despatching its extra naval forces and warships to the region and it is now putting together an international naval force to provide safe passage for tankers that carry more than 32 percent of oil exported to the world through this strategic waterway.

At the same time if the regime is fully cornered by the sanctions it may try to cause turmoil in the region and that would lead to this military alliance to respond and further escalate the crisis.

The regime resorted to causing explosions on the Japanese oil tanker in June but I do not think either Rouhani or the Revolutionary Guards were directly behind the decision for this action and it would have been a tactic by Khamenei and his son Mujtaba.

And now we hear that the Israelis have been behind bombing the bases of the regime’s proxies in the countries of the region in recent weeks but the regime has remained silent so not to lose its face.

Dr. Alireza Nourizadeh:

Rouhani has blasted Ahmadinejad for accusing his government of failing to sort out the problems of the country by saying Ahmadinejad’s administration had wasted 10 years of reaching a nuclear agreement with the world.

Mohsen Sazegara:

It was actually Khamenei who wasted these ten years by ordering Ahmadinejad not to negotiate, but as the sanctions began to etch away the revenues of his own financial empire and cause instability within the regime, it was Khamenei again who this time told Rouhani to start negotiating with the world powers, hence the nuclear deal.

We begin tonight’s edition of A Window to the Fatherland with Dr. Alireza Nourizadeh reading one of his poems from the book of his collected works.

Dr. Alireza Nourizadeh:

In tonight’s program we have Mr Abdullah Mohtadi as our special guest and we would like to hear from him as a leader of an Iranian Kurdish opposition group that is regarded as a major force of opposition to the regime in Iran what changes he himself and his organisation have gone through during the last four decades while subjected to the regime’s repression.

Abdullah Mohtadi:

Naturally when one is in socio-political action one would always make errors and learn from them and we are not an exception.

During the late 1990s it was time for us to review our strategy as well as our ideology.

One of the main issues in the course of our struggle that we had to revise was the way we used to look at the events of 28th of Mordad of the year of 1358 when Khomeini issued a statement and declared a war against the Iranian Kurdish independent organisations that were challenging the religious despotism that the clerical regime was trying to spread across the country.

While the new regime had managed to stifle many secular and democratic groups in many parts of Iran, it had failed to do it in the Kurdish areas of the country.

We had made these areas a truly democratic region within which many political organisations had established a base and were operating free from any restrictions or crackdowns.

We had even helped members of our Bahai communities to find a safe heaven away from the bloody persecutions that they were facing.

Obviously these conditions were not to be tolerated for the despotic regime in Tehran and it waged a bloody war against the Kurdistan of Iran and the opposition groups based in the region.

The consequent atrocities by the regime against our people have been well documented and will be remembered by generations to come.

Nowadays you can see that our struggle for freedom and democracy is in the form of general strikes and through political and cultural resistance.

We now pursue the same objectives via civil rights movements and our fellow Iranians must not listen to the regime’s lies about our struggle.

We begin tonight’s edition of A Window to the Fatherland with Dr. Alireza Nourizadeh reading one of his poems from the book of his collected works.

Dr. Alireza Nourizadeh:

In tonight’s program our senior foreign correspondent Mohammad Reza Shaheed will give us some news about the meeting between Presidents Putin and Macron in the south of France.

Mohammad Reza Shaheed:

They are meeting in Macron’s personal villa on the southern coast of France and enjoying the sun while discussing their relationship and politics.

I think Macron is also trying the mend the US-Russia somehow broken relations. While their meeting lasted only a few hours it is believed they also discussed the possibility of inviting Rouhani to the summit of the seven world leaders.

However, the US has already rejected this idea as they think it would boost both Khamenei’s and Rouhani’s position and will bring about no substantial change as far as Iran’s policies are concerned.

Russia has also been under pressure by France to come clean of its role in the Ukraine crisis and when Boris Johnson comes to France on Thursday the pressure on the Russian president will grow even more.

Putin had never liked Macron’s election but he has gradually adopted to his style of politics.

Dr. Alireza Nourizadeh:

Merkel’s role in the politics of Europe towards Russians is also important and now France seems to have Germany’s support behind him to pursue his European ambitions.

We begin tonight’s edition of A Window to the Fatherland with Dr. Alireza Nourizadeh reading one of his poems from the book of his collected works.

Dr. Alireza Nourizadeh:

Today is the anniversary of the arson fire at Rex Cinema in Iran 40 years ago in which hundreds of innocent people perished.

We will talk about who was behind this crime and what were their sinister aims.

Later we will talk about the comments made by Maziar Ebrahimi who had been forced by the regime to “confess” to the murder of Iran’s nuclear scientists, where it was all a plot to divert the public attention from the truth.

Also, clerics Mohammad Yazdi and Sadeq Larijanihave been openly accusing each other of corruption and Khamenei has been watching with joy his puppets tearing each other apart.

Sadeq Larijani had written a letter to Khamenei and threatened that he will have to migrate to the city of Najaf in Iraq if anyfurther revelations about the corruption by himself and his staff are revealed.

In response Yazdi has told him that he is “nobody” among the ranks of the clerical establishment and he might as well leave the country as his presence benefits nobody.

However, behind the scene of this spat among the regime’s top officials lies the question of the rivalry to succeed Khamenei after his demise.

Sadeq Larijani’s brother Ali had planned that at the end of Rouhani’s tenure with the help of his brother at the helm of the judiciary he would become Iran’s next president and Sadeq could get the job of the chairman of the Expediency Council.

Further more, then the two brothers could easily install Javad Larijani and Iran’s foreign minister.

Iran’s long history shows that clans like the Larijanis have never served our nation and have only acted against the interests of Iran and the Iranians.

We begin tonight’s edition of A Window to the Fatherland with Dr. Alireza Nourizadeh reading one of his poems from the book of his collected works.

Dr. Alireza Nourizadeh:

We continue the program with talking to our special guest, oil expert Mr Khosrow Semnani, who has also written the book “Where is My Oil?”.

Mr Semnani has also done a unique job by following the issue of the strike at Iran’s Haf Tapeh Sugar Refinery and reports its news to international labour organizations in defence of the Iranian workers.

Khosrow Semnani:

The story of Haft Tapeh is a symbol of the problems that Iranian workers and teachers are facing in the country. They are among the hardworking classes of Iran but as the country is engulfed in corruption of its rulers and top officials these lower class sections of the society are economically suffering most and are struggling for justice.

We sincerely hope to be able to help them and as such we employed a committee of lawyers and sent them to Geneva to meet with the representatives of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) to raise the case of Iranianworkers with them.

We also spoke with a delegation of American Workers Unions and asked them to declare their support for the Haft Tapeh striking workers.

Dr. Alireza Nourizadeh:

You use the interesting term of “engineered corruption” in Iran. What do you mean by this description?

Khosrow Semnani:

This engineered corruption is the outcome of what Khomeini said back in 1979 when he declared that oil revenue is not important for the future of Iran and that he wanted his officials to disregard its role in Iran’s economy.

As such, 40 years later we now hear from Iran’s Oil Minister Bijan Zanganeh that the country’s oil industries are operating in “dark rooms”, which means it has lost its revenues and is bankrupted.

In my book “Where is My Oil” I have reflected on this issue by showing how Iran’s natural gas is sold at one fourteenth of its actual market price instead ofcreating real revenue for the nation.

And yet even whatever revenues that the government receives from this extremely low price ends up in the hands of the corrupt officials, their relatives and cronies.

The regime itself has announced that more than $24 billons from the Central Bank’s reserves have disappeared and another $22 billion have gone stray in Chinese banks, but at the same time when 3000 workers in Iran only need $4 million salaries they cannot pay it to them.

More than 51% of Iranians officially live under the poverty line and we hear oiltankers with $100 million worth of Iranian oil disappear on black markets.

We begin tonight’s edition of A Window to the Fatherland with Dr. Alireza Nourizadeh reading one of his poems from the book of his collected works.

Dr. Alireza Nourizadeh:

Tonight our special guest Mr Hassan Shariatmadari will share his views with us about the creation of the Council for Transition of Power in Iran.

Hassan Shariatmadari:

The process of the establishment of the Council is going ahead according to theplan and we expect by the middle of September we should be able to officially launch it through a press conference attended by the media and our members.

However, as for the expansion of this Council we had already been talking to different opposition groups and have indicated that the doors of this Council are open to all those who are struggling to establish a civil society in Iran.

Having said that, our efforts outside Iran can never substitute the heroic struggle of all those men and women who are sacrificing their lives inside Iran itself to achieve this objective.

However, the sporadic struggle of all of us makes us prone to be targeted by the regime’s repressive reactions and disjoin our struggle.

As such, we believe a secure central command office that provides a platform for all of us to share our thoughts and ideas with each other is necessary.

We never claim to be the leader of this freedom movement or represent our entire nation and can say we humbly wish to be at the service of all of our dear and struggling people of Iran and our main task is to remove from their minds the fear as to what happens after the present regime is ousted.

There are questions in their minds that if Iran will be partitioned after this regime is gone or if the clerics leave the scene the Revolutionary Guards might take over.

These are very serious doubts that the middle classes might have and our task is to organize a national freedom movement that could attract international support for its success.

At the same time we want to inform our people that any elections that this regime holds is false and its results are rigged and they must not take part in them as the only one that benefits from such staged elections are the factions of the regime and Iran and the Iranians are the losers.

We begin tonight’s edition of A Window to the Fatherland with Dr. Alireza Nourizadeh reading one of his poems from the book of his collected works.

Dr. Alireza Nourizadeh:

I believe the movement of groups of Iranians announcing their support for theopen letter of 14 civil rights activists that calls on Khamenei to step down and holding a referendum for a new system of governance for Iran, is in fact the continuation of the uprising that swept across more than 130 cities of our country in December 2017.

One of the reasons that the protestors themselves involved in those uprisings pointed out about why their movement died down was because it did not have any clear strategy or manifesto to rally the people around them.

That movement was not just about the increase in the price of bread or the fall in the value of Iran’s currency against the US dollar.

Iranian women have been at the forefront of all social upheavals in the last 40 years.

One of these freedom fighter women whom I have had the pleasure of knowing since she used to work with me in Omide Iran magazine has been the lawyer Giti Pourfazel.

I have now managed to find her after many years and she will now share her views and experiences about the role of Iranian women in freeing our country from its despotic rulers.

Giti Pourfazel:

I am sure you do remember the first act of the present regime in Iran after the revolution was to ban women lawyers from practice.

Ayatollah Mohammadi Gilani wrote an edict on a piece of scrap paper that the 57 womenlawyers in the previous justice department of Iran had no right to continuewith our jobs.

Some 14 years later we decided to appeal against this discriminatory act and renew our license.

However, while a number of our licenses were renewed, those lawyers who had dared challenge the regime by defending their clients still remained banned from practicing their offices.

I was asked by the mother and sister of the late Sattar Beheshti to seek justice for his murder while in detention on charges of insulting the regime’s rules.

You can imagine how they had felt when their son had been arrested on phony charges and the next thing they hear from the authorities after a few days is come and collect the dead body of Sattar.

These women have been very brave by insisting that Sattar has been killed unlawfully and those responsible must be brought to justice.

The interrogator of Sattar, a Mr Akbari, had himself confessed that he had beaten Sattar Beheshti during his detention.

It has now been medically established that sadly Sattar had died after receiving a heavy blow to his brain, which resulted in severe internal bleeding.

We begin tonight’s edition of A Window to the Fatherland with Dr. Alireza Nourizadeh reading one of his poems from the book of his collected works.

Dr. Alireza Nourizadeh:

In my poem tonight I also mentioned a pome by Mohammad Zohali in which he describes how our nation repeatedly falls into the trap of despotism.

Right now the open protest of the original group of 14 civil rights activists has led to other groups of 14 protestors come forward from different section of oursociety and the latest of them is a group of women’s rights activists.

If this protest movement continues to grow I am sure it will oust the regime.

However, some of these protestors including Fateme Sepehri, Mohammad Hossein Sepehri, Mohammad Norizad, Javad Laal Mohammadi, hashem Khastar and Mortazavi have now been arrested.

I believe it is now high time our workers, students and teachers join this movement and I call upon them to wake up from their lethargic state and change Iran’s future now.

We are facing a corrupt regime whose main preoccupation is to suppress our people and steal their wealth and torture and kill anyone who dares challenge its policies.

Further more, the rulers of this regime are in their late eighties and are now transferring their illegitimate power and wealth to their offspring throughcreating many bogus councils and government bodies and handing them over totheir children.

The regime spends millions of dollars in foreign countries for its nefarious acts and deceives masses through superstition and propaganda.

Later in the program we will look at the comments of the former governor of Iran’s central bank who has said that nowadays, Iranian families melt their gold coins and turn them into cutleries because the country’s national currency has collapsed and has no place in trading contracts.

We all know that Iran’s currency before the revolution was one the most valued ones in international trade and it has now become almost redundant as a result of the tyrannical rule of its present regime which is completely corrupt and is not accountable to the nation.