Eye on Iran: France 'Will Not Yield' on Iran Nuclear Demand: Hollande

Join UANI           Top Stories AFP: "French President Francois Hollande said on Monday his country would stand firm on its demand that Tehran vow not to pursue nuclear weapons ahead of fresh international negotiations. 'If there is no clear statement from Iran on giving up nuclear weapons, there will be no agreement,' Hollande said on France Inter radio. 'France will not yield on that point. It will remain absolutely firm,' he added." http://t.uani.com/1s1gUzs AFP: "An Iraqi Shiite militia leader and lawmaker has credited Tehran and a powerful Iranian general with saving the Baghdad government during last summer's offensive by Islamic State group militants. Hadi al-Ameri, a former minister who commands the Badr militia, said support from Iran and General Qassem Suleimani had been crucial after Iraqi government forces collapsed in the face of the IS assault. 'If it were not for the cooperation of the Islamic republic of Iran and General Suleimani, we would not today have a government headed by Haider al-Abadi in Baghdad,' Ameri told a memorial service south of Tehran Monday for an Iranian officer killed in Iraq last month. 'It would not have existed,' he said of the Iraqi government, according to the Isna and Fars news agencies. The memorial was for Iranian Revolutionary Guards Major General Hamid Taghavi, killed by IS fighters in the Iraqi city of Samarra last month. Suleimani, the commander of Iran's Quds Force -- the foreign wing of the Revolutionary Guards -- was also present at the memorial." http://t.uani.com/1DtCPk4 Telegraph: "One of Iran's most senior military commanders denounced President Hassan Rouhani as a 'fake revolutionary' on Monday as the beleaguered leader faced public criticism for advocating sweeping reform. General Mohammad Reza Naqdi, the commander of the Basij paramilitary force, delivered a forceful response to a speech from Mr Rouhani on Sunday.  In this appearance, the president urged economic reform and raised the possibility of appealing over the heads of his opponents to Iran's people by holding referendums on vital questions of policy... But this provoked a terse response from Gen Naqdi, who leads the paramilitary wing of the Revolutionary Guard Corps. He described the regime's ideals as the 'elimination of tyrants, of the American White House and the wiping out of Zionism'. Gen Naqdi added: 'These days, fake revolutionaries, who joined the ranks of revolutionaries to acquire leadership and riches, speak about the necessity to make compromises and are sure that our struggle must be halted - and they expect that we will surrender our affairs to them.'" http://t.uani.com/1BFN0Rj     Nuclear Program & Negotiations Fars (Iran): "Iran's top negotiator in the nuclear talks with the six world powers dismissed the possibility of Iran's uranium enrichment outside its borders, adding that the entire world has accepted the country's enrichment right. 'Today, no one speaks of enrichment outside Iran. Today no one has a word about (Iran's right of) enrichment in principle since today enrichment and moving towards industrialized enrichment has been accepted as an inalienable reality and no one doubts about it anymore,' Zarif said, addressing Iranian legislators at the parliament on Tuesday. 'Today, no one speaks of suspending enrichment. Today no one speaks of closing Fordo (enrichment facilities) or Arak (heavy water reactor) (both in Central Iran),' he added." http://t.uani.com/1KhXX1l Sanctions Relief Reuters: "Two of Japan's biggest buyers of Iranian crude, JX Nippon Oil & Energy Corp and Showa Shell Sekiyu KK, are set to keep their purchases from Tehran largely steady in 2015, their top officials said on Tuesday. JX, which sources said imported 53,000 barrels per day (bpd) of Iranian crude in 2014, will keep its volumes steady in the new term contract starting this month, Chairman Yasushi Kimura said on the sidelines of an industry gathering. 'Iranian sanctions have been unchanged, so we will not increase or reduce volumes,' Kimura told Reuters. Showa Shell Sekiyu also indicated its intention to keep its Iranian crude volumes steady at about 70,000 bpd in the fiscal year starting on April 1... Cosmo in 2014 was lifting a little below 15,000 bpd, while Idemitsu has a contract for 2,000 to 3,000 bpd, sources said." http://t.uani.com/1AlCstm Trend: "Iran's Bank of Industry and Mine used $4 billion of Iran's assets, which have been frozen due to the country's nuclear program in China, for development projects. Gholamhossein Nematollahi, deputy governor of Bank of Industry and Mine, said $4 billion has been allocated for rail and steel projects, including the Isfahan-Tehran high speed train project, Iran's IRNA news agency reported on Jan. 6. He added that $4 billion more will be also allocated by the end of the current Iranian year (March 20, 2015) to eight steel and rail projects, including the Mashhad-Tehran railway project... In November 2013, Iran announced that about $30 billion of its oil revenues have been blocked by Chinese banks due to the sanctions imposed on Tehran's banking system. The two countries agreed over Chinese companies' financing of Iranian projects as an approach to return the blocked assets." http://t.uani.com/1xAJbNJ Tehran Times: "The First exclusive exhibition of Italian companies in Iran will open today at the Tehran Permanent International Fairgrounds. The event, which is the first exclusive exhibition of a European country in Iran, will host over 50 Italian companies, the Mehr News Agency reported on Sunday. Participants will showcase their latest products and achievements in the fields of interior design and architecture as well as civil engineering and architecture in the four-day exhibit." http://t.uani.com/1BDFiqs Opinion & Analysis Matthew Kroening in NRO: "As our lawmakers return from their winter recess, the Iran nuclear negotiations will be high on the foreign-policy agenda. The impetus in the new Republican-controlled Congress will be to immediately pass tough new sanctions legislation, but there is a better way to turn up the heat on Tehran while making it clear to everyone that the obstacle to a successful negotiated settlement is Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and not Republicans in Congress. To be sure, getting an acceptable nuclear deal with Iran will require bringing more pressure to bear. Iran makes concessions only when its back is against the wall, and Congress has always understood this. It was congressional sanctions (which the Obama administration resisted) that brought Iran to the table in the first place and got us the interim nuclear deal in November 2013. In the aftermath of that interim deal, Congress wanted to continue its successful strategy by passing tough sanctions-in-waiting legislation. The Kirk-Menendez bill would have put in place conditional penalties that would have gone into effect only if Iran walked away from the negotiations or if it was caught cheating on the interim deal's terms. This was the perfect opening for the White House to play good cop/bad cop. Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam has shown through his concept of 'two-level games' how an implacable opposition back home can actually strengthen one's hand in international negotiations. The Iranians are shrewd enough to play this game against us, as President Hassan Rouhani insists that he is eager to strike a deal, and that the only problem is getting the more recalcitrant Supreme Leader to come around. Instead, however, the Obama administration undercut its own leverage. It lobbied against the proposed sanctions legislation, claiming that bill would demonstrate bad faith and spoil the atmosphere for negotiations. Although the bill had strong support from lawmakers, Majority Leader Harry Reid, under pressure from the White House, refused to bring it to the floor of the Senate. The administration's peculiar theory of diplomacy, which holds that the best way to get concessions from Iran is to play nice, has been repeatedly proven incorrect over the past year. The best solution, therefore, would be for the administration itself to return to the pressure track. In fact, in last year's State of the Union address, President Obama declared, 'If Iran's leaders don't seize this opportunity [and agree to a final nuclear deal], then I will be the first to call for sanctions.' But, like the Syria red-line debacle, this appears to be another of President Obama's empty threats. Once again, therefore, it will fall on Congress to do the right thing. With the sweeping Republican victories in the midterm elections, there has been talk of Congress's passing new sanctions-in-waiting legislation based on Kirk-Menendez as soon as it reconvenes. However, if Congress attempts to pass such a bill in January, the administration will again falsely accuse it of sabotaging negotiations just as we were making 'progress' toward the March 1 deadline, the media will draw an erroneous equivalence between 'hardliners' in Iran and 'hardliners' in the U.S. Congress, and many will wrongly blame the Republicans, not the Iranians, for the likely eventual failure of diplomacy. Not only would this outcome be unfair, it would be damaging both to Republicans and to U.S. interests, because America's Iran strategy, including sanctions and possibly tougher actions down the road, requires international support. If there were a widespread perception that the U.S. Congress, not Iran, is responsible for the impasse, then the international consensus against Iran could be broken. Rather than go down this road, Republicans in Congress should announce that they will give the diplomats the space they need to reach an agreement by March 1. But they should also make clear that March 1 is a hard deadline. If the diplomats cannot strike an accord by this, their own deadline, then the hammer will come down. Congress will pass the toughest remaining sanctions on Iran's banking, mining, and energy sectors. Rather than conditional sanctions-in-waiting, this bill should stipulate that sanctions will go into effect immediately on March 2 if a deal has not been reached... In sum, the best approach for Republicans in Congress - and the one that would be best for the nation - is simply to hold the Iranians and the P5+1 to their own deadline. March 1 is not that far away." http://t.uani.com/14hFgda      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.