Only four candidates now remain: Ahmadinejad, a former prime-minister-turned-“reformer” Mir Hossein Moussavi, former Revolutionary Guard commander Mohsen Rezai, and former parliamentary speaker Mehdi Karoubi.

These “Four Horsemen” are true icons of conquest, war, famine, and death. They all share a common denominator, symbolizing their antagonism towards the Iranian people and vice versa. In fact, they all owned up to a small portion of their thefts and crimes when they threw pies at each other’s faces during recent televised debates. The otherwise dry and denounced state-run programming got a ratings boost when eager Iranians tuned in to watch officials of a widely reviled theocracy smacking each other in the face, revealing the state's secrets, which the Iranian opposition had already exposed in the years past.

Moussavi admitted that Iranians have a great dislike for the clerical regime: “What evil have we done against our people, that wherever I go I am greeted with protests?”
 
Ahmadinejad reminded everyone that during Moussavi’s tenure as prime minister, security forces instituted “Islamic” dress codes and even used scissors to cut men’s ties in government offices. Ahmadinejad also said his other rival, Karoubi, accepted a $300,000 bribe a few years ago, and ran secret prisons in the headquarters of the "martyrs' foundation" -- of all places-- in the 1980s. Karoubi returned the favor by accusing Ahmadinejad of offering a $700 million gift to his cohorts.

The extent of the crimes and corruption were, of course, greatly diminished. But, the severity of the public accusations was unprecedented and tells the tale of a faltering theocracy.

Indeed, it would be highly disingenuous to believe that these elections are little more than a charade. The most powerful authority in the regime is actually the Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, who makes the final decisions on all-important state matters.

The Guardian Council (IRGC), whose six mullahs are handpicked by Khamenei, towers over an obedient parliament and screens all candidates. Elections in Iran are simply a veneer to veil a monumental power grab by the mullahs from millions of Iranians.

Moussavi, for example, was one of the founders of the Islamic Republican Party, which in the 1980s unleashed paramilitary forces on the streets to terrorize political opponents. As prime minister, he was a strong proponent of the war with Iraq, and was involved in the 1988 massacre of more than 30,000 political prisoners.
 
As the IRGC commander for 16 years, Rezai vociferously campaigned for the escalation of the regime’s secret nuclear weapons project as a strategic imperative. In November 2007, Interpol issued a warrant for his arrest because of his role in the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires.

Karoubi, a Khomeini protégé and self-made billionaire, has also been involved in appalling state decisions as the regime’s parliamentary speaker. Among many other instances of exporting terrorism abroad, he had a role in the chaos initiated by the regime during the Haj pilgrimage of 1987 in Mecca, leading to the death and injury of several hundred people.

Khamenei has already implicitly endorsed Ahmadinejad for a second term. As recently as May 12, he declared, “We should elect those who have popular support and who live in a simple and modest way,” a clear reference to Ahmadinejad. Moreover, last August, he ordered Ahmadinejad’s cabinet to proceed with making “plans for the next five years.”

Even if Ahmadinejad is defeated, however, the winner is simply going to continue to execute the Supreme Leader’s decisions on the nuclear weapons program, meddling in Iraq, and other important strategic policies. These candidates have a proven track record in every single one of these fields. They have also expressed total allegiance to Khamenei, who is the cornerstone of their collective rule.

Instead of pinning hope on the candidates who will in the end hardly be different, Washington should consider reaching out to Iranian opposition groups. As a first step, it should follow Europe's lead in removing the terror label against the main Iranian opposition group, the Mujahedin-e Khalq (PMOI/MEK).
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Since the 2003 U.S.-led war on Iraq, Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Qods Force has been steadily fueling the insurgency by providing arms, funds, and ideological and military training to thousands of young Iraqi Shiites angry with the U.S. presence on their soil.

In recent months, the ayatollahs in Iran have been paying special attention to the situation of some 4,000 of their opponents in Iraq's Diyala province.

The People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI), the main group within the democratic coalition working to replace the current theocracy, has been instrumental in mobilizing Iraqi Shiites and Sunnis to recognize the Tehran regime as the mainthreat to the future of their country. Most of the 95,000 Sunnis who joined the Sons of Iraq movement and are currently providing security to their fellow citizens, pledged allegiance to the establishment of a free and democratic unified Iraq only after being convinced by the PMOI that Tehran – not the United States – is their strategic enemy.

As a Shiite group espousing secularism, the PMOI has managed to win over the hearts and minds of Iraqi Shiites who otherwise risked becoming pawns in Tehran's strategic conflict with the United States. Some 3 million Shiites endorsed the PMOI's accomplishments in a petition in June which was made public at the group's main base Camp Ashraf in Diyala. The petition rattled the regime in Tehran, coming on the back of a June 2006 declaration by 5.2 million Iraqis in support of the PMOI's presence in Iraq.

In response, Iran's unelected Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has put immense pressure on the administration of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to expel the PMOI, and on June 17 the Iraqi government ordered the United States to hand over protection of Camp Ashraf so that it could expel all PMOI members from Iraq.

This directive violates the Geneva Conventions and the "Principle of Non-Refoulement."

PMOI members have resided in Diyala for over 20 years, and since 2004 the U.S. military determined that they were all "protected persons" under the Fourth Geneva Convention. This determination was made after extensive screening of all PMOI personnel by seven different U.S. agencies including the FBI and State Department. The Geneva Conventions prevent the extradition or forced displacement of protected persons.

Regrettably there are reports that the U.S. authorities in Iraq have agreed in principle to hand over security of Ashraf to Iraqi forces despite the Iraqi government's June 17 announcement. Such a handover would itself violate the "Principle of Non-Refoulement," which is enshrined in international law and international humanitarian law. It would also send all the wrong signals to Tehran which would interpret it as a further sign of U.S. impotence in countering its nefarious outlaw activities in Iraq. Both democratic-minded Sunnis and Shiites would see the handover of Ashraf to the regime's proxies as a sign of U.S. abandonment of its promises of creating a stable and democratic Iraq in which law and order is observed.

The United Nations has condemned Iran on no less than 54 occasions for flagrant human rights abuses, which include the execution of over 120,000 PMOI sympathizers. Handing over the 4,000 brave men and women of Ashraf to the Iraqi administration as Tehran desires is tantamount to sending them to their slaughter – a stain that no U.S. administration should tolerate on its record.

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon should now compel the George W. Bush administration not to succumb to Tehran's unlawful demand.

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David Drew is a Member of Parliament in the United Kingdom from the Labour and Cooperative Party.

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Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the mad man terrorist president of Iran, accuses Israel of racism and claims that Israel’s establishment made a whole country homeless. “Following the WWII, they resorted to military aggressions to make an entire nation homeless under pretext of Jewish sufferings. And they sent migrants from Europe, the United States and other parts of the world in order to establish a totally racist government in the occupied Palestine. And in fact, in compensation for the dire consequences of racism in Europe, they helped bring to power the most cruel and repressive racist regime in Palestine,” said Ahmadinejad at the UN conference against racism. As this terrorist madman president was spewing this BS, many world leaders left. It’s so ridiculous for the UN to allow Ahmadinejad to speak at the conference against racism. In fact, he’s part of a regime that is “the most cruel and repressive racist regime in” Iran. He’s part of a “totally racist government” in Iran that was set up by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1979. It’s disgraceful that the UN conference allows a terrorist Holocaust denier who called for Israel to be “wiped off the map” to speak at there. There are many racist regimes around the world, including as I said, in Iran.

In Iran, women and minorities including Arabs are persecuted. In Israel, the Arab minority has equal rights and unlike the Jewish majority, aren’t drafted into the IDF [but are allowed to serve in the IDF since there are plenty of Arabs in the Israeli army]. In fact, let’s see what the Israeli Declaration of Independence, which was read by the first Prime Minister of Israel David Ben Gurion when he declared the establishment of the Jewish state in May 14, 1948, says:

WE APPEAL - in the very midst of the onslaught launched against us now for months - to the Arab inhabitants of the State of Israel to preserve peace and participate in the upbuilding of the State on the basis of full and equal citizenship and due representation in all its provisional and permanent institutions.

WE EXTEND our hand to all neighbouring states and their peoples in an offer of peace and good neighbourliness, and appeal to them to establish bonds of cooperation and mutual help with the sovereign Jewish people settled in its own land. The State of Israel is prepared to do its share in a common effort for the advancement of the entire Middle East.

Wow Ahmadinejad, that sounds racist to me, not! Was it Israel that invade five Arab countries? No. It was five Arab countries Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Egypt that invaded Israel, with the Arab League Secretary-General Azzam Pasha admitting that [when the Arab armies start invading Israel] that the 1948 war is “a war of extermination and a momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the Crusades.” Those Arab armies invaded Israel one day after its establishment, when Israel made it clear that not only will the Arab minority get “full and equal citizenship and due representation in all its provisional and permanent institutions,” but Israel will offer the Arab governments and peoples “peace and good neighbourliness.” Israel made it clear that she will “do its share in a common effort for the advancement of the entire Middle East.” The Arabs should’ve embraced Israel. It was built by hardworking people [even by some Arabs who helped the Jews build the thriving democracy] on land that Mark Twain visited [prior to the establishment of the Jewish settlements] and described as “the prince” out “of all the lands there are for dismal scenery.” The people who built Israel changed that and made a thriving democracy in an area full of tyrants. Ahmadinejad mentions none of this and twists what happened on its head in order to bash Israel.

Now I will focus the racism in Ahmadinejad and the rest of the regime in Iran. For example, Iran is persecuting their Arab minority. Here’s the San Francisco Chronicle has to say:

For decades, the Persian shahs and ayatollahs of Iran have uprooted Ahwazi Arabs from their oil-rich region in the southwest corner of the country, forcing an estimated 1.5 million people off the land where their families have lived for generations.

The result, Ahwazi activists say, is the occupation of an Arab homeland in the heart of the Middle East that almost nobody knows about — an occupation, Ahwazis contend, that has stripped Arabs of more land than is at issue in the dispute between Israel and the Palestinians.

“They came at me like a pack of wolves,” said Abu Tarek, who asks that his family name be withheld out of concern for his safety.

Abu Tarek is a native of the region that borders Iraq, Kuwait and the Persian Gulf, once known as Arabistan after its ethnic majority but renamed Khuzestan by the Iranian government. As a campaigner for the rights and autonomy of Ahwazis, Khuzestan’s Arab-majority population, he was considered a grave threat to Iran’s national security.

“For a year, they blindfolded me, electrocuted my hands, beat my pe*is and smashed my head against the wall,” he said, describing his torture at the hands of Iranian security during 1987, a year before the end of the Iran-Iraq war. “One time, I fell unconscious for two days, and when I woke up, I couldn’t see out of my left eye.”

So it seems to me that Arab Iranian activists fighting for their rights in Iran view themselves as worse off than the Palestinians living under Israel.

Let’s also focus on Iran’s persecution of its Jewish minority. This is what Jewish Virtual Library says about the Jews living under the Khomeinist regime, which Ahmadinejad is part of:

Again, the Jews live under the status of dhimmi, with the restrictions im posed on religious minorities. Jewish leaders fear government reprisals if they draw attention to official mistreatment of their community. Iran’s official government-controlled media often issues anti-Semitic propaganda. A prime example is the government’s publishing of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a notorious Czarist forgery, in 1994 and 1999.2 Jews also suffer varying degrees of officially sanctioned discrimination, particularly in the areas of employment, education, and public accommodations.

Jewish Journal reports that:

But Jews are not the only victims of the Iranian government’s tyranny. Other religious minorities including Christians, Zoroastrians and Bahais are also prime targets for the fundamentalist Islamic strongmen in Iran’s government. According to Frank Nikbakht, director of the L.A.-based Committee for Minority Rights in Iran, non-Muslims who convert to Islam are not abused but Muslims who convert to Judaism, Christianity, or the Bahai faith face execution for doing so. “Many converts and the advocates of conversion such as Christian priests and Bahai leaders have been executed,“ said Nikbakht in a recent interview with me. Nikbakht added; “however during the past 10 years, in order to avoid international pressure for executing religious minorities, Iran’s Islamic Republic has done the following:

1) Closed down whole operations such as churches and imprisoned church or Bahai leaders.

2) Condemned to DEATH, several priests and Bahais leaders, but not carried out the sentences until their cases were forgotten.

3) Assassinated the person converting Muslims in a Muslim ritual manner by means of multiple stabbings the person in the chest or cutting their throat and dropping their body in front of his/her house where others can see. The government has giving media coverage to these crimes but not arresting anyone of them.

Hundreds of Bahais and dozens of Christians have been executed or killed in these ways. It is happening right now, perhaps two or three every year in order to keep everyone in line”.

Now if these laws and actions toward Jews and religious minorities in Iran are not signs of a totalitarian inhumane regime, then in the world has truly gone mad by not recognizing such evil.

What that article was talking about was how Iran was forcing Jewish leaders there to say that life for Jews in Iran is good in order to not have bad coverage.

Here’s what the Investigative Project on Terrorism [IPT] said:

Two Iranian women have been jailed for practicing Christianity in the Islamic Republic, a Washington, D.C. watchdog group that monitors persecution of Christians reports.

The women were arrested by state security officials March 5, the International Christian Concern reported in a news release.

Alireza Jafarzadeh’s book “The Iran Threat” states that:

Journalists, bloggers, the homeless. ethnic minorities, peaceful Sufi mystics, young people at parties with both genders in the same room, bus drivers who go on strike for better wages_anyone who does not comply with the regime’s hardline fanatic Islamic policies is in danger of arrest, torture and execution in Iran [page 34].

Iran also has a modesty police that harasses women for not being dressed like how the regime wants them to dress.

Ahmadinejad has a history of being a terrorist for the Iranian regime. His call for Israel’s destruction and his Holocaust denial are well-known. But what’s not well known is that Ahmadinejad, during the 1980’s worked as a torturer for the notorious Jihadist Supreme Leader of Iran Ayatollah Khomeini. Ahmadinejad was also involved in the IRGC [Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps] terrorist activity. Here’s what Iran Terror reports:

In the early 1980s, Ahmadinejad worked in the “Internal Security” department of the IRGC and earned notoriety as a ruthless interrogator and torturer. In 1981, Ahmadinejad, along with a number of “the Line of the Imam [Khomeini] students, began working in the Prosecutor’s Office and in Evin Prison, where he collaborated with .Mohammad Kachui (Warden of Evin) and Assadollah Lajevardi (Tehran Prosecutor General), both notorious henchmen in Evin Prison. As a vicious torturer, Ahamdinejad led firing squads in early 1980s and personally fired coup de grace at executed prisoners.

In 1986, Ahmadinejad became a senior officer in the Special Brigade of the Revolutionary Guards and was stationed in Ramazan Garrison near Kermanshah in western Iran. Ramazan Garrison was the headquarters of the Revolutionary Guards’ “extra-territorial operations”, a euphemism for terrorist attacks beyond Iran’s borders.

In Kermanshah, Ahmadinejad became involved in the clerical regime’s terrorist operations abroad and led many “extra-territorial operations of the IRGC”. With the formation of the elite Qods (Jerusalem) Force of the IRGC, Ahmadinejad became one of its senior commanders.

The book “Iran Threat” also reported that:

Women, who already had few rights and suffered tragic abuses in Iran, also became a target in Ahmadinejad’s government. A typical example was the violent showdown of a peaceful demonstration in Tehran’s Daneshjoo park on International Women’s day in March 2006. One thousand women gathered at the park to stage a sit-in and hold banners with slogans about women’s rights, and they were met by busloads of police, Bassij militia, and antiriot units. When the women refused to leave, the forces began beating them_even elderly women_with batons and kicked them. That is what International Women’s Day taught the world about the lives of women in Ahmadinejad’s Iran.

Ahmadinejad also put pressure on authorities to demand a stricter Islamic dress code, which compelled the courts to announce some new penalties. In Isfahan, for example, the courts proclaimed that Women who did not wear the Islamic hijab head covering would be punished by lashing [page 34].

Under Ahmadinejad’s presidency, the repression in Iran continued. The fact is that the accusations Ahmadinejad accused Israel of is accurate when it comes to the Iranian regime including himself. Ahmadinejad says at the UN conference against racism,”It is all the more regrettable that a number of western governments and the United Stats have committed themselves to defend those racist perpetrators of genocide.”

Israel’s government is not the “racist perpetrators of genocide.” The ones who called for genocide are supported by Iran. Hassan Nasrallah, leader of Iran’s terrorist proxy group Hezbollah, said,”If all the Jews gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide.”

The Hamas charter says:

The prophet, prayer and peace be upon him, said:

The time will not come until Muslims will fight the Jews (and kill them); until the Jews hide behind rocks and trees, which will cry: O Muslim! there is a Jew hiding behind me, come on and kill him! This will not apply to the Gharqad, which is a Jewish tree (cited by Bukhari and Muslim)

Iran backs the genocidal terrorist struggle against Israel. Azzam Pasha was right to call the 1948 Arab invasion of Israel “a war of extermination.” In fact, that’s what the terrorist struggle against Israel, backed by Islamo-fascist terrorists like Ahmadinejad and the radical Islamic Mullahs in Iran, is.

On the other hand, Israel is not calling for genocide, but seeks to protect itself from Palestinian terrorism and is perfectly happy with a Palestinian state that coexists peacefully with Israel. Israel even trains its soldiers not to target innocent civilians. The Purity of Arms, which is in the IDF doctrine says:

“Purity of Arms” (Morality in Warfare) - The soldier shall make use of his weaponry and power only for the fulfillment of the mission and solely to the extent required; he will maintain his humanity even in combat. The soldier shall not employ his weaponry and power in order to harm non-combatants or prisoners of war, and shall do all he can to avoid harming their lives, body, honor and property.

The IDF code of conduct, which Israel, at the request of America, translated for how American soldiers should behave in Iraq, says:

** Military action can only be taken against military targets.

** The use of force must be proportional.

** Soldiers may only use weaponry they were issued by the IDF.

** Anyone who surrenders cannot be attacked.

** Only those who are properly trained can interrogate prisoners.

** Soldiers must accord dignity and respect to the Palestinian population and those arrested.

** Soldiers must give appropriate medical care, when conditions allow, to oneself and one’s enemy.

** Pillaging is absolutely and totally illegal.

** Soldiers must show proper respect for religious and cultural sites and artifacts.

** Soldiers must protect international aid workers, including their property and vehicles.

** Soldiers must report all violations of this code.

Does that sound like”racist perpetrators of genocide” to you? To me, if it is, then I don’t know what isn’t “racist perpetrators of genocide.”

This is not the first time that the UN conference against racism was turned into a bash Israel summit. In 2001, the UN conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance in Durban also turned into a bash Israel summit, while the 2001 UN conference was silent about the disgraceful human rights records of Cuba, Syria, Iran, China, Saudi Arabia, North Korea and other dictatorships.

The fact that Ahmadinejad, a mass-murdering terrorist who has a history of torture and killing speaks at the UN conference against racism is a disgrace. In fact, him bashing Israel there is already a disgrace. Ahmadinejad is guilty of aggression. He, alongside with the rest of the Iranian regime, fight to impose their same oppressive form of Islam that they imposed on Iran on the world and supports radical Islamic terrorist groups. Iran also closed down a newspaper for publishing an article that condemns Hamas’ practice of hiding themselves and their terrorist infrastructure in civilian communities and for calling Hamas a “terrorist organization.” Iran is building nuclear weapons in order to wipe out their enemies. In fact, Ahmadinejad seeks to speed up the process for the 12th imam to come out by starting a global apocalyptic conflict with nuclear weapons.

Boycotting the UN conference against racism is one thing the Obama Administration did that I agree with because it’s basically a speech by the Holocaust denting terrorist madman president Ahmadinejad slandering Israel, the country that he vowed to “wipe off the map.” The world leaders were right to leave when Ahmadinejad spewed his anti-Israel BS at the UN conference against racism.