Friday, July 12, 2013

Eye on Iran: Pentagon Report Says Iran May Develop Nukes That Could Reach the US by 2015











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JPost: "US intelligence agencies have assessed that as early as 2015, Iran will be set to test an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), that has the capability to strike the United States, a released Pentagon report states. 'Iran has ambitious ballistic missile and space launch development programs and continues to attempt to increase the range, lethality, and accuracy of its ballistic missile force,' the report says. 'Iran could develop and test an ICBM capable of reaching the United States by 2015.' The US Department of Defense assessment was compiled by The National Air and Space Intelligence Center (NASIC) at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, together with the Defense Intelligence Agency's Missile and Space Intelligence Center and the Office of Naval Intelligence." http://t.uani.com/13FkVNY

Reuters: "European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton will host a meeting of senior officials from six major powers in Brussels on Tuesday to discuss how to move forward nuclear talks with Iran after the election of a new president, the EU said on Thursday. Senior officials from the six powers - the United States, China, Russia, Britain, France and Germany - will discuss 'how to move forward in the Iran nuclear file. We are keen to make concrete progress in the talks following the election of the new president,' Ashton's spokesman, Michael Mann, said. The election last month of a relative moderate, Hassan Rouhani, as Iran's new president has raised hopes for a resolution of a long-running dispute with the West over Iran's nuclear programme." http://t.uani.com/12rST5Y

Reuters: "Iran has asked India to settle all oil trade including $1.53 billion owed to Tehran in the partly convertible rupee as the sanctions-hit nation cannot find an alternative payment channel, industry and government sources in Delhi said. India has been paying for 45 percent of its Iranian oil imports in rupees, which has limited international acceptability, and was settling the remainder in euros through Turkey's Halkbank, but this was halted in February under pressure from tighter western sanctions... Since April 1, Indian refiners have held on to 55 percent of payments as Iran has been exploring avenues, including settling in roubles through Russia, the sources said. The non-payment was seen as a hidden incentive or a temporary relief on top of attractive credit terms offered by Iran to Indian clients. 'The Russian route didn't work out so they have asked us to make the entire payment, including dues, in rupees and we have no problems in that. Soon we will start clearing the dues in rupees,' said an official at an Indian refiner." http://t.uani.com/1b6qMxS
Election Repression Toolkit   
Sanctions

WSJ: "When CCA Civil Inc. won a bid this spring to rebuild a section of the Pulaski Skyway in New Jersey, the runner-up in the contest saw a chance to snatch away the huge road-building job. CCA Civil is a division of China Construction America Inc., the U.S. arm of China State Construction Engineering Corp., one of the largest Chinese building companies. Because the government of China has an ownership interest in the parent company, and in companies that have done energy-sector work in Iran, the rival contractor charges, CCA Civil should be barred from receiving government contracts in New Jersey under a new divestment law aimed at isolating the Middle Eastern nation... A rise in legal challenges is a 'definite possibility' as more states begin to pass laws codifying lists of companies that are barred from receiving government contracts because of economic ties to Iran, said Lori Damrosch, a professor of international law at Columbia University... Under New Jersey's law, the state Department of the Treasury has published a list of 41 entities that are barred from public contracts because of work in Iran." http://t.uani.com/13FjTBK

Human Rights


Reuters: "Syrian plans to run for a spot on the U.N. Human Rights Council met with sharp criticism from the United States and Israel on Thursday, while Tehran announced it had withdrawn its candidacy for the world body's rights watchdog. The General Assembly's annual elections for the United Nations' 47-nation, Geneva-based human rights body will be held in November in New York... A spokesman for Iran's U.N. mission, however, said on Thursday that Iran had withdrawn its candidacy and did not provide an explanation. 'It (withdrawing) is a normal practice within all the U.N. regional groups,' the spokesman said. U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Rosemary DiCarlo said neither Syria nor Iran belonged on the U.N. rights council. 'Attempts by either country to join the Human Rights Council are highly inappropriate given existing Human Rights Council mandates to investigate human rights violations in these countries, their egregious records on human rights, and their on-going collaboration to suppress the democratic aspirations of the Syrian people,' DiCarlo said." http://t.uani.com/178Ez2a

Domestic Politics

AP: "Some arrived in Porsches or BMWs, which were whisked away by valet parking attendants. The hotel lobby was awash with the celebrated and powerful including A-list actors, well-known artists and captains of commerce. For one glimmering moment late last month, the Iranian capital was the talk of the world's art market after 80 works sold for $2 million, astonishing a country whose economy is battered by Western sanctions but still has pockets of wealth looking for investment havens for their money. This is the other side to Tehran - hidden by walls surrounding elite enclaves or in high-rise towers with doormen - that has more in common with well-heeled spots in Manhattan or London... Car dealers get orders - even at inflated price tags because of import complications - for a $300,000 Mercedes Benz or BMWs at $200,000 each. Ice cream flaked with edible gold dust was a signature dish at the rotating restaurant atop Tehran's 435-meter (1,427-foot) Milad Tower." http://t.uani.com/1agG6VK

Foreign Affairs

Reuters: "Egypt accused Iran on Thursday of 'unacceptable interference' in its domestic affairs for having criticized the Egyptian army's removal of elected president Mohamed Mursi last week. The incident signaled a return to cooler relations between the two Middle Eastern powers after an attempt at rapprochement under Mursi, who hails from the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood. Iran on Monday called the ousting of Mursi after mass protests against him a 'cause for concern' and suggested that 'foreign hands' were at work in the Arab state. Egypt shot back on Thursday, expressing 'extreme discontent' with the Islamic Republic's comments and saying they reflected a 'lack of precise knowledge of the nature of the democratic developments Egypt is witnessing.'" http://t.uani.com/178E6wI

Opinion & Analysis

Claudia Rosett in Forbes: "When President Obama visited Tanzania last week, he praised the East African country as a place with which he feels a 'special connection.' A glitch he did not mention is that Tanzania has developed a special connection of its own - to Iran's main oil tanker fleet. Since turning up last year as a leading flag of convenience for sanctioned Iranian ships, Tanzania just can't seem to cut itself loose. That's not for lack of Tanzanian promises. Last summer, a number of U.S. lawmakers voiced bipartisan protest over Tanzania's flagging of at least 36 sanctioned Iranian vessels, urging that the Obama administration penalize Tanzania itself unless it kicked this habit. Tanzanian authorities first denied there were any Iranian ships registered under their flag. Then they conceded there were, but said that all such ships would be deregistered. By last December, they were saying the deregistration was complete. That's not what ship-tracking data suggests. Analysis of information on Lloyd's List Intelligence shipping database shows that dozens of tankers blacklisted by the U.S. as owned by the government of Iran are still signaling as flagged to Tanzania. Tougher U.S. sanctions that took effect July 1 under the Iran Freedom and Counter-proliferation Act of 2012 (IFCA) are meant. among other things, to help shut down Iran's  foreign-flagging operations, potentially targeting the provision of registry, flagging and classification services to Iran's shipping sector. But over the past month, at least 39 Iranian oil tankers have signaled as registered to Tanzania, 34 of them since the beginning of July. That number accounts for well over half the crude carriers of Iran's main tanker fleet, owned by NITC, formerly known as the National Iranian Tanker Company. The most curious aspect of this continuing Tanzania connection is that according to Lloyd's, only 12 of the 39 tankers signaling within the past month as flagged to Tanzania are actually registered there. The rest were previously listed as flagged to Tanzania. They now appear as flag 'unknown.' But they have continued to identify themselves in shipping traffic as flagged to Tanzania. The tell-tale sign is a nine-digit number known as a Maritime Mobile Service Identity number, or MMSI, part of the onboard signaling system that transmits the registered identity of a ship as well as its location. The MMSI number is unique for each vessel, but the initial three digits identify the ship's flag state (677 for Tanzania)... Part of the problem may be that Tanzania's balkanized ship-flagging arrangements do not lend themselves to transparency or straightforward supervision. Tanzania's flag also represents the semi-autonomous archipelago of Zanzibar, run by the Revolutionary Government of Zanzibar, which has its own maritime registry. Some time ago, Zanzibar contracted out its ship registration services to a private company called Philtex Corporation, with offices spread around the globe, in places such as Dubai, the U.S. and the Philippines. Philtex is run by an American named Chris Warren, who described himself in an email to me last summer as 'a US citizen and small business owner in Austin, Texas' ... In February, a New York-based watchdog organization called United Against Nuclear Iran, or UANI, released the results of an inquiry it had made into the persistent links between Tanzania's flag and Iran's tankers. UANI is run by a former U.S. envoy to the U.N., Mark Wallace. In a letter addressed to the president of Tanzania, the ruler of Dubai, and Obama, among others, Wallace alleged that Philtex was an 'illegitimate front company,' issuing 'key shipping documentation' to Iran's 'illicit oil-carrying ships.' Wallace wrote that this was part of 'an Iranian-sponsored fraud, which is designed to avoid the full impact of sanctions against Iran.' He included a description of oil-smuggling methods employed by Tanzanian-flagged Iranian ships, and appended a sheaf of exhibits, including copies of some of the Iranian ship documents issued via Philtex and the TZIRS." http://t.uani.com/1aymXSL

Tehran Bureau: "The evening the results of the presidential election were announced, I locked myself in - a voluntary house arrest. Moments after Hassan Rouhani's victory was officially endorsed, Tehran had burst into celebration. Hearing the happy clamor of crowds cheering the victory of their presidential candidate placed me, unexpectedly, within a minority. This was the minority who had not voted because they do not believe in gradual reform within a militaristic theocracy, and because they are unwilling to trade the long-term interests of the Iranian people for skin-deep change. It was a drunken sort of celebration (sans alcohol, of course). Those who voted must have needed to get drunk. With a deft sleight of hand, the regime had not only led the populace to vote, with no little hope and hoopla, for a conservative cleric from the military/security apparatus, but it also had them feeling that this time around their vote was not stolen, even that they had made history. What the celebrations clarified was that we had, indeed, been played. The middle class, scared out of its wits by the prospect of another Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, had demonstrated that it would accept whatever alternative the regime would allow. The burgeoning radicalism that, had there been a refusal to participate in the masquerade, could have dug in its roots and grown into a formidable challenge to the regime was forsworn. Ideals of freedom and civic participation gave way to a naïvely optimistic reliance on the right to vote. Even a large number of experienced political activists, brandishing sentimental slogans about democracy, put their weight behind the election. The list of demands the crowd turned into impromptu slogans was so long and thorough that you would think Rouhani held the 'key' (the symbol of his campaign) to a storehouse of panacea. One can only pray that it will not turn out to be hemlock instead. The reality is that Rouhani is an excellent choice - for the ruling elite. The current condition of out-and-out economic and political bankruptcy demands a figure like him: someone with no real clout (has anyone paid him a thought in the past 30 years?) but clean enough hands to try and wipe away the memory of Ahmadinejad's corrupt, destructive presidency. Someone to blow hot air into the deflated balloon that carries the regime's banner of 'democracy.' In the aftermath of Rouhani's election, the people's list of demands only grows: he is to release political prisoners, rein in the brutal Revolutionary Guards, end the atomic danse macabre with the west, convince the US to find another bad guy for its foreign policy, and so on. What is interesting is that the Iranian public could not possibly have forgotten the failure of reformist president Mohammad Khatami - with his much stronger mandate - to achieve very similar goals. The Khatami experiment now seems not so much like a bright spot in the past, but rather a short-lived flare in the dark. Four years ago, the street clashes that followed the presidential election began with a stately gesture: a silent protest, composed of millions, who posed a simple, rhetorical question, 'Where is my vote?' As the silence broke and the protests faced mounting violence, the question was turned into a promise to the lost: 'Neda [Agha Soltan], Sohrab [Arabi], we will take back your vote!' Now, in the jubilation that followed the announcement of Rouhani's victory, crowds declared the fulfillment of that promise: 'Neda, Sohrab, we took back your vote!' Did no one stop to consider the absurdity of mirroring these two events: one in which Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei brazenly disregarded democratic procedure, and another in which he played the magnanimous father, generously allowing the vote to be counted? Does not this second election, with its halo of legitimacy, make a mockery of the green movement?" http://t.uani.com/1agFGOY

Sebastian Rotella in ProPublica: "Last year, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad visited his ally President Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, where the firebrand leaders unleashed defiant rhetoric at the United States. There was a quieter aspect to Ahmadinejad's visit in January 2012, according to Western intelligence officials. A senior officer in the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) traveled secretly with the presidential delegation and met with Venezuelan military and security chiefs. His mission: to set up a joint intelligence program between Iranian and Venezuelan spy agencies, according to the Western officials. At the secret meeting, Venezuelan spymasters agreed to provide systematic help to Iran with intelligence infrastructure such as arms, identification documents, bank accounts and pipelines for moving operatives and equipment between Iran and Latin America, according to Western intelligence officials. Although suffering from cancer, Chavez took interest in the secret talks as part of his energetic embrace of Iran, an intelligence official told ProPublica. The senior IRGC officer's meeting in Caracas has not been previously reported. 'The aim is to enable the IRGC to be able to distance itself from the criminal activities it is conducting in the region, removing the Iranian fingerprint,' said the intelligence official, who requested anonymity because he is not authorized to speak publicly. 'Since Chavez's early days in power, Iran and Venezuela have grown consistently closer, with Venezuela serving as a gateway to South America for the Iranians.' A year and a half later, Chavez has died and Ahmadinejad is no longer president. But the alliance they built is part of an Iranian expansion in the Americas that worries U.S., Latin American, Israeli and European security officials. Experts cite public evidence: intensified Iranian diplomatic, military and commercial activity in the region; the sentencing this year of an Iranian-American terrorist in a plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in Washington; U.S. investigations alleging that Hezbollah, Iran's staunch ally, finances itself through cocaine trafficking; and a recent Argentine prosecutor's report describing Iran's South American spy web and its links to a 2007 plot to bomb New York's JFK airport." http://t.uani.com/1ayoica

Eye on Iran is a periodic news summary from United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) a program of the American Coalition Against Nuclear Iran, Inc., a tax-exempt organization under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. Eye on Iran is not intended as a comprehensive media clips summary but rather a selection of media elements with discreet analysis in a PDA friendly format. For more information please email Press@UnitedAgainstNuclearIran.com

United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) is a non-partisan, broad-based coalition that is united in a commitment to prevent Iran from fulfilling its ambition to become a regional super-power possessing nuclear weapons.  UANI is an issue-based coalition in which each coalition member will have its own interests as well as the collective goal of advancing an Iran free of nuclear weapons.




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