Join UANI
Top Stories
Bloomberg:
"U.S. weapons intended for Iraq's beleaguered military are winding
up in the possession of the country's Shiite militias, according to U.S.
lawmakers and senior officials in the Barack Obama administration. These
sources say that the Baghdad government, which was granted $1.2 billion
in training and equipment aid in the omnibus spending bill passed last
month, is turning hardware over to Shiite militias that are heavily
influenced by Iran and have been guilty of gross human-rights violations.
One senior administration official told us that the U.S. government is
aware of this, but is caught in a dilemma. The flawed Iraqi security
forces are unable to fight Islamic State without the aid of the militias,
who are often trained and sometimes commanded by officers from Iran's
Revolutionary Guard Corps... On Facebook, members of Iraqi Shiite
militias proudly display American arms, such as this photo from October
of an M1A1 Abrams tank draped in a Hezbollah flag." http://t.uani.com/1BLl4Lv
AP:
"Iran's official IRNA news agency says the judiciary has ordered
three personal communication apps blocked, a decision President Hassan
Rouhani's administration has long opposed. The Wednesday report says the
judiciary has ordered that LINE, WhatsApp and Tango, three popular apps
providing free phone and messaging services, be shut down... IRNA said
the order will be implemented within the next few hours. Users in Tehran
could still access the services Wednesday afternoon." http://t.uani.com/1Iv33n8
Press TV (Iran):
"Iranian President Hassan Rouhani says imperial powers are trying to
cause division among Muslims in order to rule over strategic Islamic
lands. Addressing the opening of the 28th International Islamic Unity
Conference in the Iranian capital Tehran, Rouhani said a group of
mercenaries is sullying the image of Islam and condemned the Takfiri ISIL
militants for committing atrocities in Iraq and Syria in the name of
Islam." http://t.uani.com/1Bzr3VX
Sanctions
Relief
IRNA (Iran):
"China is ready for cooperation, partnership, and making investments
in all countries, including Iran, and China's NSRD state firm accepts
full responsibility of all projects implemented by Chinese firms,
company's representative said on Wednesday. 'The state-owned company, NSRD
was established in 1995 and is now one of China's largest companies
active in various fields, including environment protection,' said Lee in
a meeting with the company's 5,200 employees in Sistan-Baluchestan
economic working group." http://t.uani.com/1Fnuxig
Human Rights
ICHRI:
"Iranian security agents arrested an Assyrian pastor and two
Christian converts who were his guests at his Tehran residence on
December 26, 2014, according to Mansour Borji, Spokesperson for the
Alliance of Iranian Churches. Borji told the International Campaign for
Human Rights in Iran that the full reasons for the arrest of Pastor
Victor Beth Tarmez, a former leader of the Tehran Pentecostal Assyrian
Church, and his guests remain unknown, but that at the time of the raid
on his home, agents stated that they were arresting the individuals
because they 'participated in an illegal gathering.' The 'illegal
gathering' was a Christmas party Tarmez was holding at his home and his
guests were Zoroastrian, Muslim, and Christian citizens." http://t.uani.com/1s8Mawg
Foreign Affairs
AFP:
"Iran condemned the killing of 12 people at a French satirical
magazine on Wednesday but reiterated its criticism of the weekly's 2006
publication of cartoons of the Muslim prophet Mohammed. 'All acts of terrorism
against innocent people are alien to the doctrine and teachings of
Islam,' foreign ministry spokeswoman Marzieh Afkham told the official
IRNA news agency... But she renewed Iranian criticism of the magazine's
decision to reprint 12 cartoons of Mohammed published by the Danish
newspaper Jyllands-Posten in a statement for freedom of expression. The
cartoons, including one which showed a turban as a bomb, prompted angry
protests in Iran as well as other Muslim countries. 'Making use of
freedom of expression... to humiliate the monotheistic religions and
their values and symbols is unacceptable,' Afkham said." http://t.uani.com/1w33ZIw
Opinion &
Analysis
Ray Takeyh in LAT:
"This winter, Tehran has been a place of conferences and complaints.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on Sunday addressed a conference on the
economy and bemoaned that 'the economy cannot develop in isolation from
the rest of the world.' Rouhani is not the first president of the Islamic
Republic to grumble about the obstructionism of the parliament and the
unelected branches of the government such as the judiciary and the
security services. Rouhani senses that economic growth is contingent on
an arms control agreement with the great powers, but he still remains
very much a man of the system. 'In our general policies, all of us must
follow the guidelines of the supreme leader,' Rouhani emphasized. While
he was timidly challenging the theocracy's stakeholders, an even bigger
rebellion was brewing on the left. A conference in December at the
University of Tehran saw purged reformers harshly criticizing the
destructive costs of the regime's nuclear ambitions. It has long been the
presumption of the Western commentariat that the Islamic Republic's
nuclear path enjoys the steady support of the Iranian public. And yet the
denunciations of that program by the representatives of the most
progressive and popular faction of Iranian politics should testify to the
shaky domestic foundation of the supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's
defiant nuclear stance. Ahmad Shirzad, a former lawmaker, took the lead,
claiming that the nuclear program has not offered Iran any benefits, 'not
even a glass of water.' He added, 'If you ask me why the country went in
a nuclear direction, I have to answer I don't know.' Sadegh Zibakalam, an
outspoken and courageous academic associated with the reform faction,
followed this indictment with his own critique: 'The imposed war [with
Iraq] did not damage us as much as the nuclear program has.' The
conference also featured arguments about the economic impracticality of
nuclear energy in light of alternatives such as developing Iran's
petrochemical industries and more effective exploitation of its
considerable natural gas reserves. This should come as no surprise, as
the reform movement that controlled the institutions of the state from
1997 to 2005 always saw the nuclear program in the larger context of
Iran's foreign relations. In contrast to the hard-liners, the reformers
insisted that Iran's integration into the international order and the
global economy mandates accepting restrictions on the nuclear program. To
avoid the opprobrium of United Nations censure and the pressure of
economic sanctions, the reformers suspended the entire program from 2003
to 2005, when they lost power. Nor have influential reformers ceased
their criticism since their expulsion from the corridors of power. In
2006, Mohammad Reza Khatami, a former deputy speaker of the parliament,
insisted, 'We have written numerous letters to Leader Khamenei to explain
that insisting on uranium enrichment is not in the country's interest.'
In 2009, the so-called green movement, which was denied the presidency
through massive fraud, called for a pragmatic approach to nuclear
diplomacy and highlighted the costs of Iran's confrontational path. And
in 2012, Abdullah Nouri, a former interior minister and one of the most
popular politicians of the Islamic Republic, emphasized that 'we must not
underestimate the [resulting] difficulties in people's lives and allow
one issue, although very important, to threaten all of our national
interests.' The question then becomes, why are the musings of such purged
politicians important? One of the conceits of the Western media is that
the nuclear issue has merged with Iranians' sense of nationalism and that
the public stands behind the government and its nuclear imperatives. The
fact that Iran's most popular politicians take a dim view of the nuclear
program and point instead to its staggering costs stands as a rebuttal to
such simplistic notions. Given that the reformers could win if elections
were open and free, the positions they take and the proposals they
endorse have a larger popular resonance." http://t.uani.com/1KoUkGT
Adam Heffez in The
Hill: "Iran is cementing its control over the Middle
East and broader continent. Literally. A production capacity of 70
million tons of cement per year makes Iran the fourth largest
manufacturer in the world and the largest in the Middle East. With the
fastest cement industry growth rate on the planet, Iran will soon surpass
the United States, currently the third largest producer. The economic
forces of supply and demand cannot fully explain Iran's dominant position
in the cement industry. It just so happens that the country is funding an
insurgency in the world's top cement importer, Iraq. For over a decade,
the Quds Force, a special unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, has
trained and equipped Iraqi-Shia militias... Iran is simultaneously
contributing to Iraq's destruction and its (re)construction. According to
an official at the Iran-Iraq Joint Chamber, Iran currently supplies about
half of Iraq's total cement consumption. The underlying message that Iran
is sending through its cement industry is 'what war destroys, we
rebuild.' ... Cement is both a lucrative economic and political
opportunity for Iran. Parts of its cement industry are possibly
government fronts masquerading as private companies. The Social Security
Fund, an Iranian government institution, happens to be the main
shareholder in Fars & Khuzestan Cement Company (FKCC), the country's
largest cement producer. In 2008, the British government listed a
subsidiary of FKCC as an entity of potential concern for WMD-related
procurement... The cement industry is one example of how Iran's dealings
in global markets are not only economically, but also politically,
motivated. The country's cement industry thrives in Iraq, a country with
a destabilizing Shia insurgency and the world's number one cement
importer. Cement also provides Iran a foothold for military support to
Assad in Syria and Hamas in Gaza. Iran is cementing its position in its
neighborhood's political and economic landscape, and Western sanctions
have not been able to stop it." http://t.uani.com/1DBKmgL
|
|
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.
|
|
|
No comments:
Post a Comment