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Top Stories
WashPost:
"In a speech three months ago, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali
Khamenei repeated his religious edict against nuclear weapons, insisting
that his country would never build them. But a newly published document
suggests that Khamenei hasn't always viewed the bomb as a 'great sin.'
According to an internal U.N. document, Khamenei embraced the concept of
an Iranian nuclear bomb during a meeting of the country's top leadership
more than two decades ago, saying nuclear weapons were essential for
preserving Iran's Islamic Revolution. The 2009 document, prepared for the
International Atomic Energy Agency, is a collection of statements made by
Iranian leaders about nuclear weapons, as gleaned from the nuclear
watchdog's intelligence sources. It cites an April 1984 meeting in which
Khamenei allegedly endorsed a decision by then-leader Ayatollah Ruhollah
Khomeini to launch a secret nuclear weapons program. 'According to
Ayatollah Khamenei, this was the only way to secure the very essence of
the Islamic Revolution from the schemes of its enemies ... and to prepare
it for the emergence of Imam Mahdi,' states the IAEA document, which was
obtained by the Institute for Science and International Security, a Washington-based
nonprofit group that analyzes nuclear weapons programs. In Shiite Islam,
'Imam Mahdi' is the prophesied 12th Imam who will purge the world of evil
in humanity's last days." http://t.uani.com/I7Oqw0
WashPost:
"President Obama will issue an executive order Monday that will
allow U.S. officials for the first time to impose sanctions against
foreign nationals found to have used new technologies, from cellphone
tracking to Internet monitoring, to help carry out grave human rights
abuses. Social media and cellphone technology have been widely credited
with helping democracy advocates organize against autocratic governments
and better expose rights violations, most notably over the past year and
a half in the Middle East and North Africa. But authoritarian
governments, particularly in Syria and Iran, have shown that their
security services can also harness technology to help crack down on
dissent - by conducting surveillance, blocking access to the Internet or
tracking the movements of opposition figures. Obama's executive order,
which he will announce during a Monday speech at the U.S. Holocaust
Memorial Museum, is an acknowledgment of those dangers and of the need to
adapt American national security policy to a world being remade rapidly
by technology, according to senior administration officials familiar with
the plans. Although the order is designed to target companies and
individuals assisting the governments of Iran and Syria, they said,
future executive orders could name others aiding other countries through
technology in crackdowns on dissent." http://t.uani.com/I37Sr5
Reuters:
"Iran's trading partners are looking for ways to avoid being hit by
U.S. sanctions on Iranian oil transactions that take effect mid-year,
with Turkey looking for other suppliers, India exploring options and
smaller Asian countries arguing their imports from Tehran are tiny.
Turkey, the fifth-largest buyer of Iranian oil, has committed to reduce
its crude from Tehran by 10 percent and the country's only refiner,
Tupras, a unit of Koc Holding , has pledged to cut imports by 20
percent... Twelve other countries could eventually be subject to U.S.
sanctions by the end of June. A number of Asian countries, including
South Korea, Singapore and Taiwan, are on Washington's watch list." http://t.uani.com/Iiqzb9
Nuclear
Program & Sanctions
AP: "Iran has disconnected its oil
ministry and its main crude export terminal from the Internet to avoid
being attacked by computer malware, a semiofficial news agency reported
on Monday. Mehr said an export terminal in Kharg Island and other oil
facilities came under attack from malware and hackers but continued their
work as usual." http://t.uani.com/IyZH5S
AP:
"Iran claimed Sunday that it had recovered data from an American spy
drone that went down in Iran last year including that it was used to spy
on Osama bin Laden's house weeks before he was killed by U.S. forces.
Iran also said it was building a copy of the surveillance aircraft. This
type of drone has been used in Afghanistan for years and was used to keep
watch on bin Laden's compound in Pakistan but U.S. officials have said
little about the history of the particular drone now in Iran's
possession. Iran has also been known to exaggerate its military or
technological prowess. Tehran says it brought down the RQ-170 Sentinel, a
top-secret surveillance drone with stealth technology, and has flaunted
the capture as a victory for Iran and a defeat for the United States. The
U.S. says the drone malfunctioned and downplayed any suggestion that Iran
could mine the aircraft for sensitive information because of measures
taken to limit the intelligence value of drones operating over hostile
territory." http://t.uani.com/J3FIcO
Reuters:
"An influential Iranian cleric praised recent nuclear talks between
Iran and world powers on Friday, the latest in a series of positive
statements from senior figures that analysts said could signal Tehran is
softening its stance. Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, secretary of the powerful
Guardian Council, said the talks showed 'success and progress' but added
Tehran would break off the negotiations if Western countries carried on
imposing sanctions while negotiating... Addressing Friday prayers,
Jannati said the talks showed 'success and progress', adding: 'They
(western countries) are ready to accept that enrichment is Iran's right,'
state media reported." http://t.uani.com/I3cvoY
AFP:
"The United Nations has added two Iranians and a company to its
sanctions blacklist over their involvement in arms smuggling through
Nigeria, officials said Friday. All were linked to Iran's Revolutionary Guard,
said which the United States said is 'the group that directs Iranian
support for terrorism and extremism worldwide.' An alleged Iranian
Revolutionary Guard member is on trial in Nigeria over an attempt to
bring in rockets, explosives and grenades falsely declared as building
materials. The arms were seized in October 2010 in Lagos port. The
individuals were named by the UN sanctions committee as Azim Aghajani and
Ali Akbar Tabatabaei, both members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard
Corps' Qods Force. The blacklisted company was named as Behineh Trading
Co. The committee said it was 'one of the two Iranian companies that
played key roles in Iran's illicit transfer of arms to West
Africa.'" http://t.uani.com/JiR15i
AFP:
"Wealthy Iranians are fueling an unprecedented luxury car boom
despite sanctions hurting their economy, paying up to $360,000 for
high-end autos, according to showroom employees and reports Sunday.
'Buyers are paying upfront for these cars, which generally cost two to
three times more than abroad,' one car salesman in Tehran told AFP on
condition of anonymity. A newspaper citing official customs data,
Hafte-Sobh, reported that 'some 563 different Porsche models were sold in
the last Iranian year (to March 2012),' worth a total $50 million before
a hefty 100-percent import tax... Maserati, the growling musclebrand
owned by Italy's Fiat, is also looking to get a slice of the action by
opening its own Tehran showroom within weeks, reports say. The
ostentatious splurge by Iran's elite starkly contrasts with the straits
experienced by ordinary Iranians." http://t.uani.com/JkdAEf
CBS:
"For years, the U.S. and Europe have been trying everything short of
going to war to get Iran to drop its nuclear program. That includes
unprecedented sanctions. CBS News correspondent Anthony Mason looks into
how those sanctions are working. The oil trade funds about half of the
Iranian government's budget. But under sanctions, Iran's oil business has
suddenly sprung a leak. The International Energy Agency predicts that by
this summer, Iran's exports could be down by as much as 30 percent."
http://t.uani.com/I7Odca
Human Rights
CNN:
"A prominent Iranian literary translator imprisoned since January on
unknown charges is now on a hunger strike, and relatives say he sounds
weak and fragile, a source close to his family said Sunday. Mohammad
Soleimani Nia is refusing solid food and is only drinking salted and
sugared water as a way to protest his imprisonment without charge, the
source said. Soleimani Nia was detained in early January for unknown
reasons and was being held in solitary confinement in Tehran's Evin
prison, notorious for its harsh conditions, the source said." http://t.uani.com/JHm73c
Foreign Affairs
AFP:
"Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki arrived in Tehran on Sunday for
two days of meetings with Iranian leaders and senior officials on various
bilateral issues, Iran's IRNA state news agency reported. The visit
notably comes ahead of an important May 23 meeting to be hosted in
Baghdad between Iran and the P5+1 group of world powers on Tehran's
disputed nuclear programme. Maliki's schedule of meetings including
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad underlined the current good relations
between their Shiite-dominated administrations -- a far cry from the
hostility and war that reigned between their countries in the 1980s when
Baghdad was run by Saddam Hussein and his Sunni-led government." http://t.uani.com/HZnn1e
Bloomberg:
"Iran plans to produce 850,000 barrels a day from fields it shares
with Iraq and Qatar by 2015, the director of combined planning at
National Iranian Oil Co. said, according to the Oil Ministry website
Shana. While Iran is producing about the same amount of oil as Iraq
from their shared onshore fields, it lags behind Qatar in producing from
the oil layer of the shared offshore South Pars natural-gas field,
Abdol-Majid Delparish was cited as saying by the website. Neither Iran
nor Iraq produces gas from their shared onshore fields, Delparish said.
Iran produces 230 million cubic meters of gas a day from South Pars,
while Qatar produces 430 million, he said." http://t.uani.com/I35BMK
Weekly Standard:
"An alarming news report from Iran's Press TV, a propoganda arm of
the Iranian government, showing American professors gathering in Tehran
to discuss the Occupy Wall Street Movement. The professors interviewed on
Press TV include Alex Vitale of Brooklyn College, Heather Gautney of
Fordham University, and John Hammond of City University of New
York." http://t.uani.com/IftPAC
Opinion &
Analysis
Economist:
"With the European Union set to halt all oil imports from Iran from
July 1st, and Iranian officials scrambling to find new buyers to make up
the shortfall in foreign-currency receipts, many believe that unless Iran
backs down on the nuclear issue, today's hardships may be only a
foretaste of worse to come. In Tabriz, a big city in the north-west of
the country dominated by the Turkish-speaking Azeri minority, residents
say sanctions already threaten the future of their two biggest
infrastructure projects. The first is a long-delayed metro network.
Already six years behind schedule, and with less than half of the planned
17km of track for Line 1 laid so far, government planners say it will be
at least two years before any trains start moving. Also under a cloud is
a twin-tower, 40-storey office and shopping complex which, if ever
finished, will be one of the Iran's largest commercial buildings. For the
time being it remains an impressively large hole in the ground. On the
outskirts of Tabriz, high above a valley thick with blooming walnut and
apricot trees, the road passes through a cluster of half-completed
apartment towers, part of an effort by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to
fulfil his campaign pledge to put Iran's oil money on the tables of the disadvantaged.
This project, too, is stalled, and without another injection of
government financing it could become one more casualty of the sanctions.
For the crowd of unemployed men in their 20s who spend their days making
conversation in Tabriz's Khaqani Garden, life is at least a little easier
than in the capital. One out-of-work civil-engineering graduate said he
had already made the move to Tehran and back, priced out by scarce job
opportunities and the rising cost of accommodation. 'I'm concentrating on
practising English to boost my chances of leaving the country,' he said.
Not everyone in Iran is pleading poverty. In the wealthy north of the
capital, Tehran, many flout the regime's favoured dreary, functional
look. Opening soon on swanky Mirdamad Boulevard, a new Maserati
dealership offers flashy motors for a mere $500,000 in cash, including
customs duties of 100% or more. Other luxury car dealerships say sales
have slowed in recent years, but should pick up if the currency
stabilises." http://t.uani.com/Jl9cos
Reuel Marc Gerecht
in The Weekly Standard: "Since we don't know what
Saeed Jalili, Iran's chief nuclear negotiator, said at the recent confab
in Istanbul, we can't be sure that Israeli prime minister Bibi Netanyahu
was right to dismiss the powwow as a 'freebie' for Tehran. Also, the
Islamic Republic is a theocracy: The most senior officials need to report
face-to-face to their master. Jalili, an ill-tempered, narrow-minded,
one-legged veteran of the Iran-Iraq war, lost face after a disastrous meeting
in Geneva in October 2009, when he tentatively agreed to a nuclear-fuel
swap, only to see the supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, bat the deal down
from Tehran. So no matter how well rehearsed, Jalili would need time for
his boss to digest what was demanded and offered. In any case, as long as
the Iranians were polite, we were going to have two meetings. And so
there is another get-together scheduled for May 23 in Baghdad. The odds
are high, however, that the next session will lead to no diplomatic
yellow-brick road. Round two could be a success, and lead to a round
three, if Khamenei agreed to do five things: (1) Stop all uranium
enrichment to 20 percent purity, which is near bomb-grade; (2) ship
abroad the entire stockpile of 20 percent enriched uranium; (3) close the
Fordow enrichment facility, which is buried under a mountain near the
clerical city of Qom; (4) allow inspectors from the International Atomic
Energy Agency immediate and unfettered access to any suspected nuclear
site; and (5) permit the IAEA to install devices on centrifuges for
monitoring uranium-enrichment levels. Khamenei is, to say the least,
unlikely to agree to this. It's worth stressing that it is a serious
mistake to allow Khamenei and his Revolutionary Guards, who oversee
terrorist operations and the nuclear program, any domestic enrichment
capacity. This was the position of the Obama administration and our
Western European allies. Now that consensus has apparently collapsed
because Iranian agreement seems impossible. Khamenei's determination to
keep advancing uranium enrichment despite increasingly severe sanctions
has paid off. Tehran has enough low-grade, 3.5 percent enriched uranium
stockpiled to produce at least one, soon two, nuclear weapons. It also
has a 163-pound stockpile of 20 percent enriched uranium. As Oli
Heinonen, the former deputy director general of the IAEA, has pointed
out, mastering 3.5 percent enrichment is 70 percent of the way to
mastering the fuel cycle for an atomic weapon. Twenty percent enrichment
is 90 percent of the process." http://t.uani.com/JnxX8f
Elliot Abrams in
The Weekly Standard: "As the United States and other
members of the P5+1 commence negotiations with Iran, it is worth
recalling the classic analysis of Iran's negotiating style sent in from
the U.S. embassy in Tehran on August 13, 1979. The author of the cable,
political counselor Victor Tomseth, and the man who authorized it, charge
d'affaires Bruce Laingen, became hostages when the embassy was seized on
November 4, 1979. The cable is an analysis of the 'underlying cultural
and psychological qualities' that explain the difficulties the embassy
had been having in negotiations with the new regime. In one famous line,
the cable claims that 'Perhaps the single dominant aspect of the Persian
psyche is an overriding egoism ... that leaves little room for
understanding points of view other than one's own.' There is also a
'pervasive unease about the nature of the world in which ... nothing is
permanent and ... hostile forces abound.' Persians therefore see
themselves as 'obviously justified in using almost any means available to
exploit such opportunities' to protect themselves. Tomseth then adds that
Persians have a poor understanding of causality, 'an aversion to
accepting responsibility for one's actions,' and resist 'the idea that
Iranian behavior has consequences' on American policy. From these
analyses, explained at greater length, the cable draws lessons. First,
'one should never assume that his side of the issue will be recognized,
let alone that it will be conceded to have merits. ... A negotiator must
force recognition of his position upon his Persian opposite
number.' Second, the Iranian negotiator will not seek cooperation
or a long-term relationship of trust; instead, he 'will assume that his
opposite number is his adversary' and will 'seek to maximize the benefits
to himself that are immediately available.' Third, 'linkages will be
neither readily comprehended nor accepted.' Fourth, and especially
relevant now, 'one should insist on performance as the sine qua non at
each stage of the negotiations. Statements of intention count for almost
nothing.' Fifth, 'cultivation of good will for good will's sake is a
waste of effort.' And finally, 'one should be prepared for the threat of
breakdown in negotiations at any given moment and not be cowed by this
possibility.' With these warnings in mind, reading accounts of the first
round of negotiations held in Istanbul on April 14 cannot be
reassuring." http://t.uani.com/JkbeVU
ISIS:
"Can we believe Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, when
he says he opposes the construction of nuclear weapons on religious
grounds? Information obtained by the International Atomic Energy Agency
(IAEA) suggests the need to approach the statement with skepticism.
IAEA verification can nonetheless overcome this skepticism if Iran
cooperates with the inspectors in answering concerns about past and
possibly on-going work on nuclear weapons and military nuclear fuel
cycle. In an internal 2009 IAEA document, most of which was published by
ISIS, is a section titled 'Statements made by Iranian officials.'
It states: 'The Agency [IAEA] was informed that in April 1984 the then
President of Iran, H.E. Ayatollah Khamenei declared, during a meeting of
top-echelon political and security officials at the Presidential Palace
in Tehran, that the spiritual leader Imam Khomeini had decided to
reactivate the nuclear programme. According to Ayatollah Khamenei this
was the only way to secure the very essence of the Islamic Revolution from
the schemes of its enemies, especially the United States and Israel, and
to prepare it for the emergence of Imam Mehdi. Ayatollah Khamenei further
declared during the meeting, that a nuclear arsenal would serve Iran as a
deterrent in the hands of God's soldiers.' The November 2011 IAEA
safeguards report describes the growth of an Iranian nuclear weapons
program that reached its peak in 2002 and 2003, at which point it was
abruptly halted. The IAEA also presented in this report information from
member states that some aspects of this program continued or restarted
after 2003 and may be on-going. The evidence would imply that Khamenei
supported that program since he controls national security decisions.
Khamenei's pledge against nuclear weapons is welcome. However, it is not
prudent to take his recent commitment at face value. He must prove
it." http://t.uani.com/IitjW0
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Eye on Iran is a periodic news summary from United Against
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