Line Drawn In The Sand: Countries Begin Evacuating Their Citizens From Iran

[Pastor Dale Morgan]

*Perilous Times*

Mar 27th, 2007 9:03 AM

*Line Drawn In The Sand: Countries Begin Evacuating Their Citizens From
Iran*

World Powers Prepare to Evacuate Their Citizens from the Country

This weekend the United Nations Security Council unanimously adopted a
resolution imposing harsh sanctions against Iran. The resolution gives
Tehran two months to cease its nuclear program, but hopes that the
ultimatum will be heeded are almost nonexistent. Instead, the world is
bracing for the increasing likelihood of a military strike against Iran.
Kommersant has learned that Russian companies working in the country are
already working on plans to evacuate their employees, and Russian
diplomats also acknowledge that preparations to evacuate Russian
citizens from the country are underway and that evacuations could begin
as early as May.

The Exit is Near

Rumors that almost all of the world's leading powers are concerned about
an upcoming evacuation of their citizens from Iran were flying at the
end of last week even before the adoption in New York of UN Security
Council resolution #1747. The first to spread the story was the
Associated Press, which quoted unidentified European diplomats and
American officials as saying that Moscow is bringing home all Russian
citizens currently working on the construction of the Bushehr nuclear
power plant in Iran. Reports of preparations for evacuation were sharply
denied at an official level by the Russian nuclear agency Rosatom and by
Atomstroiexport, the company that manages all Russian-led nuclear power
plant construction projects abroad. "These rumors are completely
groundless," said Atomstroiexport spokeswoman Irina Yesipova. "What is
happening is the normal process of rotating specialists at the
construction site: some specialists are leaving, while others are
arriving. There are currently around 2,000 people working at the site;
last year there were moments when there were more – up to 2,500 people
when the work was progressing particularly intensively – and there were
times when their number shrunk to 1,500," she said. According to Ms.
Yesipova, 100 to 150 Russian specialists will leave the Bushehr plant
this month, while around 60 will arrive to replace them.

However, an official source in Rosatom confirmed for Kommersant that
evacuation plans are being prepared in earnest. "Naturally, means of
evacuating [Russian citizens] are being considered – after all, if the
Bushehr site is hit with sanctions by the UN, then we will need to
recall a large number of people within the month. Another difficulty is
that, if that happens, the Iranians probably will not allow people to be
taken out by plane directly from Bushehr, so we will need to organize
some kind of ground transport to Tehran, etc. So all of this needs to be
thought out in advance," emphasized Kommersant's source.

Employees of various Russian companies who are working in Iran also
confirmed that preparations for evacuations have already begun. For
example, according to information obtained by Kommersant, the company
Interenergoservis has circulated a memo among its employees warning them
that they may soon be forced to flee the country in Russian Emergencies
Ministry planes.

In the wake of the adoption of the resolution by the UN, the subject of
emergency evacuations from Iran was also taken up by the Israeli
Jerusalem Post, which reported that foreign embassies in Tehran are
preparing plans to evacuate their citizens and are beefing up their own
security measures. European diplomatic sources told Kommersant that such
preparations are necessary and that they may take several months to
complete.

Kommersant sources in the Russian diplomatic mission in Tehran said that
the situation appears calm so far, but they are also preparing for
several possible courses of events, depending on how Iran reacts to the
adoption of the resolution by the UN Security Council. For example, the
Iranian authorities may take offense at Moscow's support for the
anti-Iranian resolution, which could have an impact on Iran's welcome
for Russian citizens traveling to the country. A Russian diplomatic
source in Tehran predicted that tensions are likely to rise within the
next two months.

The Russian Foreign Ministry's deputy press and information secretary,
Andrei Krivtsov, told Kommersant that he has investigated the claims of
evacuation preparations in response to requests from journalists. "So
far I have found no confirmation of such [preparations]," he told
Kommersant. However, an anonymous Kommersant source in the Russian
Foreign Ministry reported that plans to bring Russian citizens out of
Iran are in the works, although the lead figure in such a situation is
the Emergencies Ministry, not the Foreign Ministry, and final decisions
about any further steps will be made at a higher level than in the
ministries.

War in the Movies and in Reality

While Russian diplomats are bracing themselves for a tense situation in
Tehran, their British colleagues are already facing a crisis. Last
Friday the Iranian Navy seized 15 British naval personnel in the
boundary waters of the Shatt al-Arab river, a disputed waterway between
Iran and Iraq, and despite demands from the British Embassy, there has
been no further word about their whereabouts. The British government,
including Prime Minister Tony Blair, maintains that the naval personnel
were in Iraqi waters when they were seized and that they had not
violated the Iranian border. According to the Iranian media, however,
"the British aggressors, armed and in full uniform, encroached on
Iranian territory." The Iranian Fars news agency reported that the 15
Britons have already confessed in interrogations that they entered Iran
illegally. British diplomats have not been allowed to meet with the sailors.

The seizure of the sailors took place not long before the sanctions
resolution was adopted by the UN Security Council, and it is clear that
the burgeoning scandal is directly linked with preparations for the
vote: the Iranian authorities knew that the document would be approved,
and they decided to add their own fuel to the fire. Iran's top spiritual
leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said in a speech last Wednesday that "if
they (the countries of the West) want to take the path of threats and
violence, the people and leaders of Iran will use all means at their
disposal to strike at the enemy aggressor." The arrest of the Britons
was obviously Tehran's first retaliatory strike.

Moreover, according to Ayatollah Khamenei Iran's war with the West has
already begun: this confrontation already includes "psychological
warfare, economic warfare, and opposition to the development and
improvement of Iranian science," he said, adding that "psychological
warfare is the most important component of the enemy's plan."

Tehran believes that one of the facets of the psychological war being
waged by the West against Iran is the new Hollywood film "300," which
tells the story of a contingent of 300 heroic Spartans (the bearers of
democratic values) battling a hoard of villainous and treacherous
Persians at Thermopylae in 480 B.C. According to Gholam-Hossein Elham,
an official spokesman for the Iranian government, the blockbuster is
nothing more than propaganda against Persian values. "Of course, no
nation can stand that. It is a hostile act, a psychological and cultural
war." In an official protest lodged by Iran with the UN Security
Council, the film is referred to as "a rude attempt to present Persians
as a source of evil and moral decay." The Iranian authorities maintain
that the film is designed to prepare Westerners for the upcoming war and
to explain to them that even the ancestors of today's Iranians were
hostile to Western civilization.

Iran is also preparing itself for actual war. At the end of last week,
the Iranian Navy launched a massive program of military exercises in the
Persian Gulf. The commander in charge of the training exercises, Admiral
Mortaza Saffar, announced before the exercises began that "if the US
starts a war against Iran, it will not finish it."

In fact, military exercises have been ongoing in Iran practically
nonstop for the last several months, and even before they began Iranian
officials were asserting that they do not fear an American invasion,
because the Iranian army is ready to repulse any assault. Meanwhile,
negotiations have been limping along, attended by weak promises to
resolve the crisis peacefully. Even though they approved the last
anti-Iranian resolution, Russia and the West are continuing to say that
the door is open for negotiations to be opened and that the crisis can
be resolved. However, it is becoming more and more difficult for them to
hide the fact that no one is holding out any hope for a peaceful outcome.

Mikhail Zygar and Alena Kornysheva
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