Behrouz Souresrafil, 22 January

Behrouz Souresrafil, a well-known Iranian commentator broadcasting in Persian by satellite on PARS TV from Winnetka California, continued yesterday with some of his perennial themes, including hatred for the Islamic Repubic of Iran for ruining the country and oppressing its people, contempt for the USA's incompetence dealing with it and mistrust of the Iranian expatriate opposition, which he considers corrupt and halfhearted.

Souresrafil sets the tone for his program each day with a Zoroastrian admonition and prayer, then a self-introduction: "Listen to the best words with the ears of the soul, and observe with clear thought. Then each man and woman of you must choose between the two good and bad paths. O wise God! I ask you, with the good and pure deeds you perform with wisdom and fine knowledge, to make the world prosperous and the people happy. Dear viewers, I am Behrouz Souresrafil, a small soldier working to liberate Iran from the humiliation and evil of living under the domination of the Islamic Republic of Iran's usurper regime, this shameful regime that arose from the evil and disastrous Islamic revolution led by Seyyed Ruhollah Khomeini, that sick, backward psycho and anti-Iranian terrorist, who has brought nothing to Iran since he first set filthy foot on the pure soil of our land other than shame, evil, calamity, backwardness, defeat, bankruptcy and every other imaginable form of loss of face for kingdom and nation in this world."

Nouri Al-Maliki

Yesterday Souresrafil said Iraq's current prime minister Nouri al-Maliki was chosen by Syria and Iran, and that all the members of the current Iraqi government are beholden to and chosen by outsiders. He added that this has been true since the US first invaded Iraq in 2003. He also recalled that when the Iranian revolution began it was welcomed by the Carter administration, which provided it with aircraft fuel. Noting that the US makes a speciality of being deceived, he also recalled that Fidel Castro was once a popular romanticized figure in the United States.

Souresrafil said Nouri al-Maleki's recent appeal to the US for arms is an event in this category, and predicted that this heralds the formation of another anti-American government in Iraq. He asked rhetorically why it is that the Americans have never chosen sound people for their political relationships.

Moqtada Sadr

As examples, he cited the US choice of the Mojahedin-e Khalq as allies in its efforts to deal with the Islamic Republic and the recent call by some Americans for negotiations with Iran. He added that it is clear that al-Maleki's sympathies lie more with Moqtada Sadr's Mahdi Army and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards than with the US. He elaborated on this point by mentioning the large numbers of Parliamentary deputies and cabinet members who are loyal to Sadr's group.

Continuing his theme that the IRI is gaining power in the region due to US neglect or ineptitude, Souresrafil said Moqtada Sadr was personally responsible for killing the son of Ayatollah Khoei by stabbing him in the stomach, and recalled Sadr's background of activity in the Iranian city of Qom. He noted that when Paul Bremer was governor of Iraq he had ordered the CIA to arrest Sadr, but this did not happen and now Sadr has become a powerful anti-American figure with many allies in the current Iraqi government.

Souresrafil said if he were a Sunni in Iraq he would join the fight against the Shia there as soon as possible to prevent the spread of Iranian influence, and he said the American notion of elections in Iraq is misplaced because democracy will not work in a nation that lacks the required institutions and attitudes. Democracy is one of the best human prerogatives, but elections in Iraq are like giving a gift of a goldfish without the bowl or the water! They have no context in which to function.

Irbil Arrests

Regarding the recent arrest of five Iranians (whom he called murderers and terrorists) in the Iraqi city of Irbil, Souresrafil said mockingly that the Iranians were in Iraq with the consent of president Jalal Talibani, whom he called a "servant" of the Islamic Republic of Iran. He added that the Iraqi government itself has admitted that these Iranians were not diplomats and the building in which they were arrested was not a consulate. Souresrafil said these Iranians ought be brought to the US for trial and there ought to be a Pentagon public relations effort to explain why they were arrested. In this context Souresrafil recalled the 1984 abduction in Lebanon of US CIA station chief William Buckley, whom he said was taken to Tehran to be tortured and killed, and added that the US has done the worst imaginable job of presenting to the public the rationale for its actions in Iraq. Souresrafil said President Bush has lost the war, but he did not lose it in Iraq; he lost it in Washington.

Dan Halutz Resignation

At the end of the program, Souresrafil responded to a fax from a viewer in Iran named Omid, whom he called a hezbollah agent of the Islamic Republic. Omid asked for comment on the resignation of Israeli Defense Force Chief Dan Halutz. Souresrafil said Halutz had resigned because he knew the Israeli public held him responsible for Israel's failure to achieve the desired result in the 33-day summer war in Lebanon against the Hezbollah. He said this should be compared to the case of Mohsen Rezai, who as head of the Revolutionary Guard had admitted that his mistakes as commander were responsible for the Iranian failure to win the war with Iraq, but remained in government service and continued to sell out the country instead of resigning, as did Ali Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani despite his disastrous mistakes as president. Souresrafil concluded by saying that Iranians must remove the government of the IRI themselves, and that this is doable now.