Eye on Iran: Iran Commander Suleimani Says Tehran's Regional Influence Growing

Join UANI           Top Stories AFP: "An influential Iranian general who has reportedly been near the front line against the Islamic State group was quoted Thursday saying the jihadists are 'nearing the end of their lives'. General Qassem Suleimani, the once rarely seen commander of the powerful Quds Force, has become the public face of Iran's support for the Iraqi and Syrian governments against jihadists... 'Considering the heavy defeats suffered by Daesh and other terrorist groups in Iraq and Syria, we are certain these groups are nearing the end of their lives,' Suleimani was quoted as saying by the semi-official Fars news agency, using an Arabic acronym for IS. His extremely rare published remarks came in a speech made Wednesday in his home province Kerman to mark the 36th anniversary of Iran's Islamic revolution. Suleimani also said Tehran's regional influence was growing. 'Today we see signs of the Islamic revolution being exported throughout the region, from Bahrain to Iraq and from Syria to Yemen and North Africa,' he said. 'The arrogants and Zionists have admitted, more than before, to their own weakness and to the Islamic republic's power, following their successive defeats,' he said." http://t.uani.com/1AvLZxx Radio Zamaneh: "The Russian Ambassador to Iran says all preparations for the construction of a second nuclear power station in Bushehr are on track and the construction will commence in the fall of 2015. Levan Jagarian told Interfax: 'The construction project of the Bushehr 2 nuclear power plant will proceed according to schedule.' He added that there are no foreseeable delays at this time and the project is on track. Behrooz Kamalvandi, the spokesman for Iran's Atomic Agency, reported in July on agreements with Russia to build two power plants in Bushehr. The Russian company Rusatom and Iran's Atomic Agency signed a deal in November for the construction of two more power plants, with the possibility of increasing that to four power plants at other sites in the country. According to the agreement, fuel for the power generators is to be provided by Rusatom, which will also take care of reprocessing, storage and its return to Russia." http://t.uani.com/1ywDywl AFP: "Intelligence Affairs Minister Yuval Steinitz warned Thursday that Israel could act unilaterally against Iran over its nuclear drive, saying Tehran has failed to make concessions in talks with world powers. 'I won't be too specific but all options are still on the table,' Steinitz told reporters. 'We never limited Israel's right of self-defence because of some diplomatic constraints,' he said... Steinitz said Iran has so far shown little or no flexibility on key issues such as uranium enrichment, destruction of related infrastructure and the fate of its Arak nuclear reactor and Fordow secret underground enrichment facility. 'Its' a gloomy picture,' said Steinitz, adding that he discussed it at last week's security conference in Munich with International Atomic Energy Agency chief Yukiya Amano. 'The Iranians didn't move much... therefore we are so disturbed,' he said. Steinitz said the agreement being thrashed out was 'full of loopholes.'" http://t.uani.com/1D3E3Fu     Sanctions Relief Press TV (Iran): "Iran earned more than $2.3 billion from sales of oil products in the 10 months to January as the country is applying innovative methods to sidestep US-led sanctions. Sales of fuel oil rose 30% to $1.35 billion from the same period a year ago, head of the commercial department of National Iranian Oil Products Distribution Company (NIOPDC) Mohammad Reza Mazloumi said. Gas oil sales also generated Iran $963 million during the period, he said. NIOPDC projects its sales of fuel oil will hit 4 million tons by the end of the Iranian year in March 20, having sold more than 3 million tons in the first 10 months.  Sales of oil products offer a lifeline in the face of a double whammy of US-led sanctions and oil price swings." http://t.uani.com/1Coun3a Sanctions Enforcement & Impact Reuters: "European Union governments agreed on Thursday to put the National Iranian Tanker Company (NITC), Iran's biggest tanker firm, back on a list of sanctioned firms. The EU's second-highest court ruled last July there were no grounds to blacklist the NITC after it contested the designation, but the EU moved to re-impose sanctions on tighter legal grounds. The decision to put the tanker firm back on the sanctions list was taken by an EU working group on Thursday. The regulation will be published in the EU's Official Journal on Saturday. NITC - a major transporter of Iran's oil - contested the EU's original blacklisting last year, arguing that the firm is privately owned by Iranian pension funds. It has denied any links with the Iranian government or with the Revolutionary Guards... The EU has also decided to re-impose sanctions on Iranian businessman Gholam Golparvar, who, the EU says, has links to Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines, Iran's top cargo shipping group, EU documents showed." http://t.uani.com/1E7tazG Iraq Crisis WSJ: "Numbering some 100,000 fighters and officially known as Hashed al Shaabi, or 'popular mobilization,' the Shiite militias are viewed as an alien occupation army or worse by many Iraqi Sunnis. With their Iranian backing and sectarian agenda, they have committed plenty of atrocities of their own-and are a reason why many Sunnis embraced Islamic State's cause in the first place. 'They are criminals just like Islamic State,' said Faleh al Issawi, the deputy chairman of the Anbar provincial council. 'Both kill innocent Muslims.' ... Despite all the talk of protecting the Sunnis, at the Badr militia's company base nearby, there was no pretense about its sectarian nature. Portraits of revolutionary Iran's supreme leaders Ruhollah Khomeini and Ali Khamenei festooned the walls. One of the Badr fighters performed a song praising Iran's Revolutionary Guards and Lebanon's Hezbollah, and promising to 'break the nose' of Sunni Saudi Arabia, as others, ranging from pot-bellied grandfathers to skinny 15-year-olds, danced waving their guns." http://t.uani.com/1AiQn4y Human Rights WashPost: "Iranian prison authorities have allowed jailed Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian to get outside medical treatment and receive some care packages in recent weeks amid a groundswell of signatures on an online petition urging his release. Ali Rezaian, the imprisoned reporter's brother, said Thursday in an interview that his sibling briefly left prison twice recently to see specialists who prescribed antibiotics for infections in his eye and groin area. 'He's feeling better,' said Ali Rezaian, who noted that the infections went untreated for more than a month. 'But as a result of the delayed treatment, it's harder for him to recover.' ... Meanwhile, a burgeoning online petition drive has collected signatures from people in more than 70 countries asking Iran to immediately set Rezaian free. The petition on Change.org has collected more than 100,000 signatures, a dramatic rise from less than 10,000 just a few weeks ago." http://t.uani.com/1ywvhIC AP: "An Iranian Kurdish man who was arrested when he was 17 years old and alleges he was tortured into confessing has been informed he will be hanged next week, rights group Amnesty International said Friday. The London-based group is urging Iranian authorities to immediately halt the execution of the man, Saman Naseem, who is now 22, and thoroughly review his case. 'Imposing the death penalty on someone who was a child when the alleged crime took place goes against international human rights laws that Iran has committed to respect,' the group's deputy director for the Middle East, Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui, said in a statement... In a letter seen by the rights group, Naseem alleged that he was held in a cell measuring 2 meters (yards) by half a meter. He says he was repeatedly beaten and suspended by his hands and feet before being forced while blindfolded to put his fingerprints on documents to confirm his alleged confession. He then appeared in a televised confession and in January 2012 was sentenced to death following a conviction for 'enmity against God' and 'corruption on earth' over his supposed involvement with the Kurdish armed group. He later retracted his confession at trial, noting his torture claims, and his lawyers have not been allowed to pursue his defense, according to Amnesty." http://t.uani.com/1F5CPdF Guardian: "An Iranian poet who translated the prize-winning French graphic novel Blue Is the Warmest Colour into Persian has claimed she is the target of a smear campaign in Iran for supporting homosexuality, punishable in the country by 100 lashes or even death. A group of hardline Iranian news websites have attempted to discredit Sepideh Jodeyri for the Persian translation of Julie Maroh's 2010 graphic novel, about a lesbian romance between two young women in France. The film adaptation of Blue is the Warmest Colour won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes film festival in 2013. Aviny Film, a conservative website, said homosexuality was a 'new plague in the west'. It added: 'Jodeyri has spoken in support of homosexuality ... how can we let such a person publish other works for readers in Iran?' ... 'I've been declared persona non grata in my own country,' Jodeyri said. 'An event organised [in Tehran] for my recent poetry collection And Etc was cancelled, the organiser was sacked from his job, my publisher was threatened with having his licence suspended and interviews were withdrawn, all because of the negative publicity in the conservative media around my translation of Maroh's book.'" http://t.uani.com/1zAl2Dg Domestic Politics FT: "The fertile Hamoun wetlands on Iran's border with Afghanistan have a long history. They supported a sophisticated culture in ancient times where, according to legend, Zoroastrianism originated. The verdant landscape was the setting for the epic Persian poem, the Shahnameh. But it has taken just a few years to turn the 5,660 sq km area into an ecological disaster. Its once teeming waters are now reduced to a cracked, dust-covered expanse dotted with abandoned boats. State mismanagement, 15 years of drought and the building of dams in neighbouring Afghanistan are blamed for the disappearance of the waters, leaving the local population, who for generations lived on fishing, cattle breeding and hunting, with no source of income... The dried up wetlands are not only harming the local economy but are also creating dust storms and a choking haze in many parts of the country, contributing to respiratory disease, cancer and even depression." http://t.uani.com/1FGYhmX AP: "Iran is breaking bad. Officials say methamphetamine production and abuse of hard drugs are skyrocketing in the country despite potentially lethal criminal penalties for users if they are caught. The increase is partly because Iran is the main gateway for the region's top drug exporter, Afghanistan - and partly because Iranian dealers are profiting so handsomely... Anti-narcotics and medical officials say more than 2.2 million of Iran's 80 million citizens already are addicted to illegal drugs, including 1.3 million on registered treatment programs. They say the numbers keep rising annually, even though use of the death penalty against convicted smugglers has increased, too, and now accounts for more than nine of every 10 executions." http://t.uani.com/1E7rTbV Foreign Affairs Haaretz: "A joint offensive by the Assad regime, Hezbollah and advisers from Iranian Revolutionary Guards in southern Syria has registered some early successes, as regime forces were apparently able to retake several villages and towns from the rebel groups, which are led by the Al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front... Hezbollah and Iran, which had previously denied their presence on the Syrian side of the Golan Heights, admit it now, following the January 18 operation, attributed to Israel, that killed six Hezbollah operatives and a general of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. Now they say their activity in the Golan has a dual purpose - to help Assad remove the rebels from the border, and to challenge Israel by opening another front of 'resistance' along the Syrian border, in response to acts of aggression that they and Syria attribute to Israel in Syrian and Lebanese territory." http://t.uani.com/1vqwGA4 Opinion & Analysis Dennis Ross in Washington Jewish Week: "Israel views the Iranian nuclear issue in tandem with Tehran's activism in the region. It also believes that overlooking said activism could lead Tehran to miscalculate. Israel and many Arab countries have expressed great concern that the United States' current administration is giving Iran a pass and seems ready to treat the Islamic Republic as a future regional partner. In the meantime, Tehran is actively trying to change the regional balance of power while transferring increasingly accurate missiles to Hezbollah. The United States and Israel hold conceptually different perspectives on the nuclear issue. While Israel has officially said it will not accept any agreement that allows Iran to enrich uranium, this stance is more tactical than strategic - Israelis would likely tolerate a limited degree of enrichment if an agreement emerges that they deem acceptable. What they fear is not so much a small enrichment program, but rather an agreement that eventually permits Iran to have an industrial-size nuclear program. In such a circumstance, they believe Iran would be left as a threshold nuclear state at some point in the future - one capable of breaking out to a nuclear weapons capability at a time of its choosing. The U.S. position seems to hold that Iran would technically be permitted to have an industrial-size program down the road; in the meantime, the international community would be assured that Tehran will remain at least a year away from being able to break out. With appropriate transparency, Washington believes that such an arrangement would allow it to detect Iranian cheating and give it sufficient time to do something about it. The key difference, then, is not over what happens in the next year or two, but over what Iran would be permitted to do when the term of a potential agreement is up - say 10 to 15 years from now. The United States seems to believe it has no better alternative, and that deferring the Iranians for that long could produce favorable changes in the interim. Interestingly, this basic conceptual difference with Israel may be moot because Tehran is unwilling to concede much at the moment, greatly diluting the prospects of a comprehensive deal. On this, the two allies seem to agree - though Israel fears that Washington and its P5+1 partners might continue making concessions to Iran. Another difference could emerge if the United States does not achieve a comprehensive agreement, but instead settles for the Joint Plan of Action as the 'new normal.' Although this arrangement may be preferable in the near term, it could leave Iran three months away from achieving a nuclear weapons capability and putting Israel in an untenable situation." http://t.uani.com/171EK4l James Robbins in TNI: "Denying Iran nuclear-weapons capability is not only a means of limiting the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. It is also part of a broader ideological struggle that Tehran is taking much more seriously than is the United States. This month, Iran celebrates the 36th anniversary of the return of the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini from exile in 1979 and the advent of the Islamic Revolution. In speeches, rallies and state-sponsored television shows, Tehran is reaffirming the messages of the heady days of the downfall of the Shah, the supremacy of Shi'a Islam and the destruction of Iran's enemies, particularly Israel and the United States. The celebration reminds us that Iran is not just a Middle Eastern adversary state with dreams of regional hegemony. It is a revolutionary regime seeking to reshape the map of the region, and the belief system of the world. Tehran remains committed to its revolutionary agenda. Today, Iran is active in promoting its ideology in Iraq and Afghanistan. Iran supports the largest international terrorist network in the world, including backing Hezbollah and Hamas. Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen have captured vast swathes of territory and disrupted the established government. This is a revolution in action, and it illustrates that Tehran is not simply seeking to extend its influence in the region. Rather, it is working to impose Khomeini's Shi'ite Islamist agenda beyond its borders. Yet the White House is loathe to wage a war of ideas with Iran. Given President Obama's well-documented sensitivities regarding Islam, his administration prefers to focus on other aspects of the effort to achieve global stability... The Western rivalry with Iran is reduced to the language of power politics, ignoring the ideological dimension. But Iran is not seeking nuclear-weapons capability simply to preserve its regime; it is also doing so to extend its revolution. When Iran can deter the use of force, it can also increase the reach of its ideas. And if Washington refuses to promote a convincing counterargument for freedom, it is unilaterally disarming... Focusing only on the nuclear dimension of the Iranian threat is a mistake, because the ideological conflict is the root cause of the problem. Absent Tehran's revolutionary aspirations, there would be no drive to acquire weapons of mass destruction and no Iranian-backed global terrorist network. Arms-control agreements, verification regimes and contentious international inspections cannot guarantee that Iran is not still secretly developing nuclear weapons. When a regime leads its people in chants of 'death to America,' we should do them the courtesy of believing that they mean it." http://t.uani.com/1ElsZAD David Albright, Serena Kelleher-Vergantini & Christopher Coughlin in ISIS: "New Digital Globe imagery purchased and analyzed by ISIS shows continued signs of external activity at the Parchin military site where Iran is alleged to have conducted work related to nuclear weapons development. The signatures visible in the most recent imagery indicate that Iran may be engaging in new asphalting at the site, efforts likely aimed at concealing past banned activities. Parchin continues to be a key outstanding issue to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in resolving its concerns about Iran's past and possibly on-going nuclear weapons work and military fuel cycle activities. Iran has yet to grant the IAEA access to the site, provide information about alleged activities at this site, allow interviews of officials linked to activities at the site, or permit visits to other sites linked to the alleged military dimensions of Iran's nuclear programs. Prospects for a comprehensive agreement dim if Iran remains intransigent on Parchin. A deal that does not include Iran addressing the IAEA's concerns about the past and possibly on-going military dimensions of its nuclear program would undermine the verifiability of a long-term agreement, and thus the credibility of a comprehensive deal. Any deal will depend heavily on the adequacy of the verification arrangements. Unless reversed, Iran's consistent and unjustified refusal to address the IAEA's concerns, which require access to Parchin and other military sites, creates a dangerous precedent that makes adequate verification of a long-term agreement impossible, even if Iran ratifies the Additional Protocol. Prior to the finalization of a long-term deal, the IAEA must make significant progress on resolving its concerns about Parchin and other alleged nuclear weapons related activities. Certainly, without such progress, no key economic or financial sanction on Iran should be lifted." http://t.uani.com/1Cots2H Daniel Byman in Brookings: "Iran's leaders have used terrorism since they took power in 1979. Over 35 years later, Iran continues to use terrorism and to work with an array of violent substate groups that use terrorism among other tactics. Iran's strategic goals for supporting terrorists and other violent substate groups include: Undermining and bleeding rivals. Iran uses insurgent and terrorist groups to weaken governments it opposes. In the 1980s, this included bitter enemies like Saddam Hussein's Iraq and also lesser foes like the rulers of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Power projection. Tehran's military and economy are weak-and with oil prices plunging and sanctions in place, this weakness is becoming more pronounced. Nor is its ideological appeal strong. Nevertheless, Iran's regime sees itself as a regional and even a world power, and working with terrorists is a way for Iran to influence events far from its borders. Iran's support for the Lebanese Hizballah, Palestine Islamic Jihad, and Hamas make Iran a player in the Israeli-Palestinian and Israeli-Arab disputes, and Iran's backing of Houthis in Yemen give it influence on Saudi Arabia's southern border. Playing spoiler. Iran has supported groups whose attacks disrupted Israeli-Palestinian and Israeli-Syrian peace negotiations-a victory for Iran, which sees the negotiations as a betrayal of the Muslim cause and as a means of isolating the clerical regime in Iran. Intimidation. Working with violent substate groups gives Iran a subversive threat, enabling Iran to press its neighbors to distance themselves from the United States or to refrain from joining economic or military efforts to press Iran. Such efforts, however, often backfire: because these states see Iran as meddling in their domestic affairs and supporting violence there, they often become more, not less, willing to support economic or even military pressure directed at Tehran. Deterrence. Iran's ties to terrorist groups, particularly the Lebanese Hizballah with its global infrastructure, enable it to threaten its enemies with terrorist retaliation. This gives Iran a way to respond to military or other pressure should it choose to do so. Revenge. Iran also uses terrorism to take revenge. It has attacked dissidents, including representatives of non-violent as well as violent groups, even when they posed little threat to the regime. Iran attacked France during the 1980s because of its support for Iraq, and it has tried to target Israel because of its belief that Israel is behind the deaths of Iran's nuclear scientists and in retaliation for the 2008 killing of Hizballah's operational chief, Imad Mughniyah, which is widely attributed to Israel. Preserving options. As a weak state in a hostile region, Tehran seeks flexibility and prepares for contingencies. Iran's neighbors have often proved hostile, and rapprochements short-lived. Iran seeks ties to a range of violent groups that give it leverage that could be employed should suspicion turn to open hostility." http://t.uani.com/1DNaYNV          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.