Iran, like the West, has a drugs problem

By Fredrik Dahl
Tue May 22,

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Young Iranians queue for methadone to help end years of drug addiction. Elsewhere in the building, a pale, bearded man lies motionless on a bed, his eyes closed, after starting detoxification.

In the yellow brick building in downtown Tehran, an Iranian non-governmental organization is helping people kick the habit and fighting narcotics abuse that blights hundreds of thousands of Iranians' lives, and wrecks families.

The scale of drug abuse in Iran, which straddles a major smuggling route, is a problem the conservative Islamic state shares with the United States and its other Western foes -- and one that seems to be growing.

"We are very busy here," said nurse Mariam Zahab, preparing small packets of white methadone powder for those waiting for their weekly dose of heroin or opium substitute in the clinic run by the Aftab (sunshine) Society.

"It is a big problem and it is growing, we see it, we experience it," said the middle-aged woman dressed in a loose-fitting hijab, sitting behind a wooden desk in Aftab's spartan premises.

Iran shares a 900-km (560-mile) border with Afghanistan, the world's number one producer of the opium poppy which is the key ingredient for heroin. Opium production there rose by as much as 50 percent last year to supply more than 90 percent of global heroin, according to a United Nations estimate.

One of Aftab's patients said it was now easier to find narcotics in Tehran than alcohol -- also banned in Iran.

"I've used drugs for 18 years -- cannabis, opium and heroin," said Vahid, 35, like others here wary of giving his full name. "It is very cheap."

NUMBERS UP, AGES DOWN

The United Nations' top anti-drugs official in Tehran said an estimated 1.2 to 2 million people from a total population of 70 million in Iran take drugs.

"Iran is experiencing increased pressure from traffickers," said Roberto Arbitrio, representative in Iran of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

Thousands of Iranian police have been killed in clashes with heavily armed smugglers since Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution, but heroin and opium keep flowing across the eastern border.

Experts say availability and affordability -- coupled with a lack of jobs and poor economic prospects for many among Iran's growing young population -- are factors fuelling consumption.

"This is very dangerous; the statistics go up, and the ages go down," said Aftab head Parviz Maleki.

The authorities are signaling determination to crack down, fortifying the remote frontier with Afghanistan and Pakistan by building long embankments of rock and earth and digging deep ditches in an attempt to stop the criminal gangs.

"For years ... we have witnessed an increase in drug smuggling," a senior official at the Iranian prosecutor's office, Nasser Seraj, told the Mehr news agency.

As part of another campaign, addicts who do not turn themselves in for voluntary treatment will be rounded up and taken to camps in Tehran and elsewhere, Iranian media reported.

Arbitrio said Iran was stepping up its anti-drugs efforts and had developed relatively advanced strategies for prevention and treatment, a system supported by a network of non-governmental organizations like Aftab.

"POCKET-MONEY TO BUY OPIUM"

Established in 1998, Aftab says it was the first Iranian NGO set up against narcotics use after the revolution 28 years ago. It has several branches in Iran, with volunteers including doctors and psychologists.

It receives funding from Iranian government-run charities and also charges patients what it describes as a small fee which, it says, deters them from relapsing.

Still, the number of people it treats -- over 900 last year -- represents only a fraction of Iranian addicts.

"We've had many successes but, sure, it is not enough," Maleki said.

Hamid, Vahid's younger brother, said a friend of his father gave him drugs for the first time in the early 1990s. "I was 14. I was curious," he said.

"I used pocket-money to buy opium, spending 70,000 rials (about $8) a week," said the fit-looking 29-year-old, his fresh face showing little sign of the abuse.

That amount quickly adds up in a country where a school teacher may earn just $300 a month.

Fear of the future, parental pressure and lack of money led the brothers to quit a few months ago after several failed attempts.

But still they prefer to spend time at Aftab to stay away from temptation on the streets of the Iranian capital. "It was very hard to stop and every day is a struggle," said Vahid.

Doctor Mohammad Ali Shahraki said most of his patients at Aftab were between 15 and 25 years old, many of them using relatively new drugs in Iran such as crack and ecstasy.

"Stigma and guilt make addiction complicated and difficult to fight," he said. "We cannot overcome this problem. Our goal is to reduce the harm and prevent dangerous side effects such as
HIV."

U.S. urges complaint against IAEA chief

By GEORGE JAHN,
Associated Press Writer
Tue May 22,

VIENNA, Austria - The United States wants its allies to join in a formal protest against the head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency for suggesting that Iran be allowed to keep some elements of its uranium enrichment program, diplomats said Tuesday.


They said Washington fears the comments from the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency could undermine U.N. Security Council's effort to pressure Tehran into fully scrapping enrichment.

The Americans apparently are concerned Mohamed ElBaradei's statements could exacerbate traditional splits between Russia and China and the United States, Britain and France, the three other permanent Security Council members.

While the Western council members have traditionally pushed for tough sanctions on Iran, opposition by Moscow and Beijing has led them to settle for watered-down sanctions less rigid than they originally proposed since the first set was agreed on Dec. 23.

The U.S. mission to the IAEA had no immediate comment beyond confirming that mission head Gregory L. Schulte was in Washington for "consultations."

Diplomats, who insisted on anonymity because of the delicate nature of the issue, spoke to The Associated Press before the release of a report from ElBaradei that could act as a trigger for a third set of Security Council sanctions on Iran.

Their revelations exposed a hardening of positions on how to deal with Iran's enrichment program, which potentially could produce material for nuclear bombs. Iran denies that is its goal, saying it wants only to produce fuel for nuclear reactors that generate electricity.

In public remarks over the past two weeks, ElBaradei said he feels it is too late to force Tehran to scrap its enrichment program as demanded by the Security Council and argued instead for implementing inspection safeguards to prevent an expansion of the program.

"I believe that (U.N.) demand has been superseded by events," ElBaradei told the Spanish newspaper ABC. Instead, he said, "the important thing now is to concentrate on Iran not taking it to industrial scale."

Iran's ultimate stated goal is running 54,000 centrifuges to churn out enriched uranium — enough for dozens of nuclear warheads a year.

Some members of the IAEA's decision-making 35-nation board share ElBaradei's view. But the U.S. and its closest board allies, including Britain, France, Australia, Canada and Japan, fear such comments could weaken Security Council resolve on punishing Iran for defying the U.N. demand.

Agency officials refused to comment on details of the report ahead of its release to board members and the Security Council. But it was expected to confirm information leaked over the past weeks that Iran has demanded the demand for a suspension of enrichment and expanded that work.

With the council's deadline for Iranian compliance coming Thursday, the report could set the stage for further sanctions against the Islamic republic.

Despite Iranian insistence its nuclear program has only peaceful intentions, it has been hit with two sets of U.N. sanctions because of suspicions bred by nearly two decades of Tehran's clandestine nuclear activities, including questionable black-market acquisitions of equipment and blueprints that appear linked to weapons plans.

The diplomats said Tuesday that the IAEA's report would likely confirm that Iran has assembled more than 1,600 centrifuges at its underground facility at Natanz and is running about 1,300 of them, producing small amounts of uranium enriched to about 5 percent.

While that level is far below the 90 percent needed to produce weapons, the number of centrifuges running — and producing enriched material — is grounds for concern for the Security Council because it documents an expanding and functioning program.

The last report from ElBaradei three months ago put the number of connected centrifuges at around 1,000 and said no enrichment had begun.

One of the diplomats said the report would additionally likely suggest that Iranian experts had ironed out many of the glitches hamstringing enrichment efforts only a few months ago that had caused breakdowns in experimental, smaller-scale centrifuge operations.

"This is a program that is well on its way to full development," he said. "And if they can enrich to 5 percent, there is no potential limit to how high they can enrich.

Iran's secret plan for summer offensive to force US out of Iraq

Simon Tisdall
Tuesday May 22, 2007
The Guardian


US soldiers visit an Iraqi army base in Amiriya, a Sunni neighbourhood in west Baghdad. Photograph: Sean Smith

Iran is secretly forging ties with al-Qaida elements and Sunni Arab militias in Iraq in preparation for a summer showdown with coalition forces intended to tip a wavering US Congress into voting for full military withdrawal, US officials say.

"Iran is fighting a proxy war in Iraq and it's a very dangerous course for them to be following. They are already committing daily acts of war against US and British forces," a senior US official in Baghdad warned. "They [Iran] are behind a lot of high-profile attacks meant to undermine US will and British will, such as the rocket attacks on Basra palace and the Green Zone [in Baghdad]. The attacks are directed by the Revolutionary Guard who are connected right to the top [of the Iranian government]."

The official said US commanders were bracing for a nationwide, Iranian-orchestrated summer offensive, linking al-Qaida and Sunni insurgents to Tehran's Shia militia allies, that Iran hoped would trigger a political mutiny in Washington and a US retreat. "We expect that al-Qaida and Iran will both attempt to increase the propaganda and increase the violence prior to Petraeus's report in September [when the US commander General David Petraeus will report to Congress on President George Bush's controversial, six-month security "surge" of 30,000 troop reinforcements]," the official said.

"Certainly it [the violence] is going to pick up from their side. There is significant latent capability in Iraq, especially Iranian-sponsored capability. They can turn it up whenever they want. You can see that from the pre-positioning that's been going on and the huge stockpiles of Iranian weapons that we've turned up in the last couple of months. The relationships between Iran and groups like al-Qaida are very fluid," the official said.

"It often comes down to individuals, and people constantly move around. For instance, the Sunni Arab so-called resistance groups use Salafi jihadist ideology for their own purposes. But the whole Iran- al-Qaida linkup is very sinister."

Iran has maintained close links to Iraq's Shia political parties and militias but has previously eschewed collaboration with al-Qaida and Sunni insurgents.

US officials now say they have firm evidence that Tehran has switched tack as it senses a chance of victory in Iraq. In a parallel development, they say they also have proof that Iran has reversed its previous policy in Afghanistan and is now supporting and supplying the Taliban's campaign against US, British and other Nato forces.

Tehran's strategy to discredit the US surge and foment a decisive congressional revolt against Mr Bush is national in scope and not confined to the Shia south, its traditional sphere of influence, the senior official in Baghdad said. It included stepped-up coordination with Shia militias such as Moqtada al-Sadr's Jaish al-Mahdi as well as Syrian-backed Sunni Arab groups and al-Qaida in Mesopotamia, he added. Iran was also expanding contacts across the board with paramilitary forces and political groups, including Kurdish parties such as the PUK, a US ally.

"Their strategy takes into account all these various parties. Iran is playing all these different factions to maximise its future control and maximise US and British difficulties. Their co-conspirator is Syria which is allowing the takfirists [fundamentalist Salafi jihadis] to come across the border," the official said.

Any US decision to retaliate against Iran on its own territory could be taken only at the highest political level in Washington, the official said. But he indicated that American patience was wearing thin.

Warning that the US was "absolutely determined" to hit back hard wherever it was challenged by Iranian proxies or agents inside Iraq, he cited the case of five alleged members of the Revolutionary Guard's al-Quds force detained in Irbil in January. Despite strenuous protests from Tehran, which claims the men are diplomats, they have still not been released.

"Tehran is behaving like a racecourse gambler. They're betting on all the horses in the race, even on people they fundamentally don't trust," a senior administration official in Washington said. "They don't know what the outcome will be in Iraq. So they're hedging their bets."

The administration official also claimed that notwithstanding recent US and British overtures, Syria was still collaborating closely with Iran's strategy in Iraq.

"80% to 90%" of the foreign jihadis entering Iraq were doing so from Syrian territory, he said.

Despite recent diplomatic contacts, and an agreement to hold bilateral talks at ambassadorial level in Baghdad next week, US officials say there has been no let-up in hostile Iranian activities, including continuing support for violence, weapons smuggling and training.

"Iran is perpetuating the cycle of sectarian violence through support for extra-judicial killing and murder cells. They bring Iraqi militia members and insurgent groups into Iran for training and then help infiltrate them back into the country. We have plenty of evidence from a variety of sources. There's no argument about that. That's just a fact," the senior official in Baghdad said.

In trying to force an American retreat, Iran's hardline leadership also hoped to bring about a humiliating political and diplomatic defeat for the US that would reduce Washington's regional influence while increasing Tehran's own.

But if Iran succeeded in "prematurely" driving US and British forces out of Iraq, the likely result would be a "colossal humanitarian disaster" and possible regional war drawing in the Sunni Arab Gulf states, Syria and Turkey, he said.

Despite such concerns, or because of them, the US welcomed the chance to talk to Iran, the senior administration official said. "Our agenda starts with force protection in Iraq," he said. But there were many other Iraq-related issues to be discussed. Recent pressure had shown that Iran's behaviour could be modified, the official claimed: "Last winter they were literally getting away with murder."

But tougher action by security forces in Iraq against Iranian agents and networks, the dispatch of an additional aircraft carrier group to the Gulf and UN security council resolutions imposing sanctions had given Tehran pause, he said.

Washington analysts and commentators predict that Gen Petraeus's report to the White House and Congress in early September will be a pivotal moment in the history of the four-and-a-half-year war - and a decision to begin a troop drawdown or continue with the surge policy will hinge on the outcome. Most Democrats and many Republicans in Congress believe Iraq is in the grip of a civil war and that there is little that a continuing military presence can achieve. "Political will has already failed. It's over," a former Bush administration official said.

A senior adviser to Gen Petraeus reported this month that the surge had reduced violence, especially sectarian killings, in the Baghdad area and Sunni-dominated Anbar province. But the adviser admitted that much of the trouble had merely moved elsewhere, "resulting in spikes of activity in Diyala [to the north] and some areas to the south of the capital". "Overall violence is at about the same level [as when the surge began in February]."

Iranian officials flatly deny US and British allegations of involvement in internal violence in Iraq or in attacks on coalition forces. Interviewed in Tehran recently, Mohammad Reza Bagheri, deputy foreign minister for Arab affairs with primary responsibility for Iran's policy in Iraq, said: "We believe it would be to the benefit of both the occupiers and the Iraqi people that they [the coalition forces] withdraw immediately."