Thursday, January 8, 2015

Eye on Iran: Iran-Backed Militias Are Getting U.S. Weapons








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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

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