IRANIANS IN THE US FULLY SYMPATHISES WITH VICTIMS OF TERRORIST ATTACKS
WASHINGTON-TEHRAN 15 Sept. (IPS) As mosques are reported to be attacked and ordinary Muslims, particularly Arabs and Afghanis being beaten up in many American cities by mobs angry by the 11 September suicide operations, Iranian expatriate sources in the United States said they felt "much safer" than other immigrants from Muslim and Arab countries, let alone Afghanistan.
Thousands of Americans were reported killed and wounded when suicide terrorists, reported to be Arabs and believed to be linked to Mr. Ossama Ben Laden, the Saudi anti-American crusader, crushed three Boeing planes into the World Trade Center twin towers in New York and the Pentagon in Washington D.C., killing and wounding thousands of people, most of them white collars.
Though in his speeches, President George W. Bush has urged his countrymen not to take aim at American-Arabs and Muslims, yet there are confirmed reports of widespread attacks on them and their mosques by ordinary Americans.
Eyewitnesses reported case of an Arab being almost loynched in a gymnasium in San Francisco and two Afghan female students beaten up in a Los Angeles street.
An estimated one million Iranians fled their native Iran after the victory of Islamic revolution in 1997 and emigrated to the United States, with a majority of them living in Los Angeles, many of them bright intellectuals, wealthy businessmen and bankers, respected scholars, doctors and scientists.
"There are many Iranians of all faiths, offering blood, raising funds for the families of the victims, sending messages of sympathy by e-mails and offering their services to them", an Iranian journalist told Iran Press Service, adding however that in the 20 years he lives in the States, he had never seen such an "angry" mood among the Americans.
The difference is that this time, the Americans have felt the effect of terrorism themselves, in their bone and chair, and realised how vulnerable they are face of this phenomenon", he said, asking for anonymity.
Iran’s President Hojjatoleslam Mohammad Khatami was one of the first Muslim leaders to condemn the unprecedented terrorist operation and offer his sympathies to the families of the victims and the American nation.
But Iranian analysts regretted that he nor any other official did not went further and include the American government in their message of sympathy, probably of the fear of the powerful conservatives, including the regime’s leader, the staunchly anti-American Ayatollah Ali Khameneh’I, they said.
The United States would like to build on Iran's sympathetic response to the attacks in New York and Washington, a U.S. official said on Friday, diplomats said in Washington, visibly surprised at the strong condemnation, by most Iranian officials from left and right of the terrorist attacks.
Washington cut relations with the Islamic Republic after revolutionary students, some of them now in prison and others turned reformists, stormed the American embassy in Tehran taking 55 American diplomats as hostage for 444 days.
Alongside North Korea, Sudan, Cuba, Libya, Syria and Iraq, the Islamic Republic is on the US black list of states supporting terrorism.
Ties between Iran and the United States improved dramatically after the landslide victory of Hojjatoleslam Mohammad Khatami in the 1997 presidential elections, as he encouraged "people-to-people" approache, that saw a multiplication of exchanges between Iranian and US scholars, sportsmen and intellectuals.
On Friday, Ayatollah Mohammad Emami Kashani, a conservative cleric, said, "no muslim could approve of such actions where innocent, defenceless people, women and children, are killed", but at the same time he singled out Israel as the "prime terrorist state country of the world", adding that the western powers, especially the
US, should reconsider their policies in the Middle East.Also for the first time in the past 22 years, the Friday priers all over the country were held without the now traditional chants and slogans of "death to America".
Iranian and Bahraini soccer players observed a minute's silence before starting their match on Friday in Tehran's Azadi Stadium to honour the victims of the terror attacks in the United States.
It came after around 200 young Tehranis held a silent, candle-lit gathering in Tehran on Thursday evening, many wearing black shirts in a sign of mourning during gathering.
"We wanted to show our solidarity with the American people which is in pain," one of the demonstrators, 19-year-old Rostam, told AFP. "It's the first time in my life that I have been able to show such a feeling."
Parisa, another Iranian born after the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran, said: "We feel close to the victims' families, but there is nothing political about this, nor is this any form of support for the American government.
"This is a gesture towards the American people."
The State Department official, who asked not to be named, said: ''We have seen a surprisingly positive response from Iran. As we go forward this could be built on''.
Asked if the United States might go as far as inviting Iran into an alliance against the perpetrators, he said: "Very few countries would be 'redlined out' of a coalition. But a framework of agreement? I don't think we're there yet".
Iran's main reformist party earlier Thursday condemned the string of deadly terror attacks in the United States and called for a "global campaign" against terrorism.
"Tuesday's attacks achieved the greatest disaster that terrorism could inflict on humanity," the Islamic Iran Participation Front (IIPF) said, expressing sympathy with the victims' families.
However, and like other Iranian officials, the party also criticised Washington for its "supports the greatest sponsor of terrorism, Israel" and said the terrorist attacks should lead to a "new global campaign against all types of terrorism".
On Thursday, Iran's Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi said Israel is trying to exploit the terrorist attacks in the U.S. for purely provocative purposes, referring obviously to a report by the Israel Radio Persian service saying that Ayatollah Kashhani had reserved most of his speech to condemn Israel, without mentioning his condemnation of the attacks.
Mr. Kharrazi also warned that in the light of the complex regional situation, Israeli behaviour would have "negative consequences" in the minds of world Muslims and Muslim nations.
Muslims from different nationalities in different cities in the U.S. held gatherings on Friday to pray for the victims of the terrorist attack. Ambassadors from Muslim to the United Nations, including the Iranian Envoy, Hadi Nezhad-Hosseinian, and different Islamic groups also participated in mourning ceremonies held in New York.
Iran and the United States are both opposed to the Afghan Taleban who rule Afghanistan with an Islamic iron fist and supports the anti-Taleban forces of Northern Alliance, led by the ousted president Borhaneddin Rabbani and Commander Ahmad Shah Mas’ood.
Badly wounded last Sunday, the charismatic Mas’ood was confirmed dead late Friday, after two Arabs, believed to have been linked to Ossama ben Laden and enjoying collaboration from Pakistan army’s ISI, denoated a photo camera filled with explosive while interviewing Mas’ood in his Khajeh Baha’oddin office.
U.S. authorities have confirmed exiled Saudi dissident Osama ben Laden is the chief suspect. They are seeking Pakistan's cooperation in dealing with him, who lives in neighboring Afghanistan, enjoying protection from the ruling Taleban, themselves supported by Pakistan.
Informed Afghan sources told IPS that both Ben Laden and Mollah Mohammad Omar, the supreme leader of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan have fled to hiding in mountainous region of the country while the Taleban are evacuating to safety their heavy armaments.
Pakistani President Parvez Mosharraf offered collaboration with Washington following a meeting with top military officers Friday to consider a U.S. request for help in hunting down ben Laden, a government spokesman said.
"While Pakistani officials have to choose between the Americans masters and their Afghan Taleban protégés, Iranians might observe neutrality, in the much likely case that Afghanistan is attacked by the Americans, as they did during the operations against Iraq in 1990 and by doing so, improving somehow their relations with Washington, the journalist commented.
In a rare speech from the state-run Radio Shari’a, Mollah Omar told his nation that Ossama did not have any means to mount the kind of operations the American were blaming him of and warned Pakistan giving any help to the United States in their expected attack on Afghanistan. ENDS IRANIANS US ATTACKS 15901