Livni: World must stop Iran's quest for the bomb

Founder of Confederation of Iranian Students tells opposition leader that younger generation aims for democracy.

By BEN HARTMAN
Tzippi Livni 311 (photo credit: Marc Israel Sellem)
Tzippi Livni 311
(photo credit: Marc Israel Sellem)
Opposition leader and Kadima party head Tzipi Livni called for tougher sanctions against Iran on Saturday, saying that it is the responsibility of the entire world to stop Tehran’s quest for the bomb.
Livni’s statement came during a meeting she and Kadima MK Nachman Shai held with Amir Abbas Fakhravar and Saghar Erica Kasraie of the Confederation of Iranian Students in Tel Aviv.
The two came as a delegation from the CIS, which describes itself as a pro-Western independent student movement with more than 8,000 members in countries across the world.
Upon meeting Livni, Fakhravar quipped that he was happy to meet the head of the Israeli opposition, adding that in a democracy like Israel, being in the opposition doesn’t mean jail and torture.
“It’s a different sort of torture,” Livni joked in response.
Livni, who was presented with a green ribbon symbolizing the pro-democracy Green Movement, expressed her belief that diplomatic relations should be between the peoples of different countries.
Fakhravar told Livni that the main goal of the younger generation in Iran is to achieve democracy, and added that Israel “has suffered a great deal to have a democracy, the only democracy in the Middle East.”
Like Livni, Fakhravar also emphasized the importance of tougher sanctions on Iran’s energy industry, aimed at stopping the Islamic Republic from attaining a nuclear weapon.
The CIS describes its main objective as working towards supporting pro-democracy, human rights and freedom in Iran, “the constitutional foundations of a new free, secular and democratic Iran.”
They also describe themselves as “the action arm of the Iranian Freedom Institute, a private, nonpartisan, not-for-profit,” a 501(c)(3) establishment dedicated to education and research in the fields of human rights and democracy.
Fakhravar, the CIS founder and president of the Iranian Freedom Institute in Washington, DC, spent five years in Iranian prison for participating in July 1999 student riots, and defected to the United States in 2006.
In addition to the meeting with Livni, Fakhravar and Kasraie have planned to meet with other MKs, academics and think tanks.