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NYT:
"Relatives of a Marine veteran incarcerated in Iran for more than
three and a half years sent a letter to congressional leaders on Tuesday,
dictated by him over the phone from prison, denouncing what he called
Iran's 'serial hostage-taking and mistreatment' and demanding tougher
pressure on the Iranian authorities to release him and two other American
prisoners as part of the nuclear negotiations. The letter from the veteran,
Amir Hekmati, of Flint, Mich., was one of the boldest steps he has risked
from Evin Prison in Tehran to help call attention to his own plight and
that of other American prisoners in Iran, who like Mr. Hekmati are of
Iranian descent and are considered Iranian citizens by the Tehran
authorities... 'While I am thankful that the State Department and the
Obama administration has called for my release and that of my fellow
Americans, there has been no serious response to this blatant and ongoing
mistreatment of Americans by Iran's Ministry of Intelligence and they
continue on with impunity,' Mr. Hekmati said." http://t.uani.com/1Jbs6R1
Reuters:
"The timing of sanctions relief is the sticking point in nuclear
talks between Iran and the six major world powers this week in Vienna,
where negotiations kicked off on Wednesday with a meeting between
delegates from Tehran and the European Union... After a tentative deal
between Iran and the P5+1 - China, France, Russia, Britain and the United
States, plus Germany - was reached in Switzerland on April 2, differences
have emerged over what was agreed. Arriving in Vienna, deputy foreign
minister, Abbas Araqchi, reiterated Iran's position: 'All the economic
sanctions should be lifted on the day that the deal is implemented,'
according to a report from Iranian news agency Tasnim. But the United
States has made it clear that sanctions on Iran would have to be phased
out gradually under the final pact." http://t.uani.com/1DNhpiR
NYT:
"When diplomats at the Iran talks in Switzerland pummeled Department
of Energy scientists with difficult technical questions - like how to
keep Iran's nuclear plants open but ensure that the country was still a
year away from building a bomb - the scientists at times turned to a
secret replica of Iran's nuclear facilities built deep in the forests of
Tennessee. There inside a gleaming plant at the Oak Ridge nuclear
reservation were giant centrifuges - some surrendered more than a decade
ago by Libya, others built since - that helped the scientists come up
with what they told President Obama were the 'best reasonable' estimates
of Iran's real-life ability to race for a weapon under different
scenarios. 'We know a lot more about Iranian centrifuges than we would
otherwise,' said a senior nuclear specialist familiar with the forested
site and its covert operations. The classified replica is but one part of
an extensive crash program within the nation's nine atomic laboratories -
Oak Ridge, Los Alamos and Livermore among them - to block Iran's nuclear
progress." http://t.uani.com/1DAsTDo
Nuclear Program & Negotiations
AP:
"Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, says all sanctions
must be 'lifted completely, on the very first day of the deal' and has
declared that military sites are off limits 'to foreigners ... under the
pretext of inspections.' Brig. Gen. Hossein Salami of the Revolutionary
Guards warns that anyone setting foot into an Iranian military facility
will be met with 'hot lead' - a hail of bullets. In fact, Iran must know
that both positions are untenable, suggesting it is again pushing the
envelope as a negotiating tactic... All of which leaves Tehran with two
options - tone down expectations or walk away from the table." http://t.uani.com/1DNgH5i
AP:
"North Korea should learn from the emerging nuclear deal with Iran
that Washington is willing to engage its adversaries if it has a
'credible' partner to negotiate with, a senior U.S. official said
Tuesday. Sydney Seiler, U.S. envoy to long-stalled six-nation talks on
North Korea's nuclear weapons program, also cited Cuba and Myanmar as
having 'responded to our offer to reach out a hand to those who would
unclench their fist.'" http://t.uani.com/1K4PkG4
Congressional
Action
Reuters:
"The U.S. Senate could plunge into a heated debate on legislation
giving Congress the power to review a nuclear deal with Iran as soon as
Wednesday, as some Republicans sought to change the bill to take a harder
line on any agreement. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted 19-0
last week for a compromise version of the bill, in a rare display of
bipartisan unity in the deeply divided Congress. Lawmakers said on
Tuesday the full Senate could begin debate on Wednesday or Thursday,
after Senate leaders reached an agreement ending an impasse over a human
trafficking bill and President Barack Obama's nominee to be attorney general."
http://t.uani.com/1bursjO
Yemen Crisis
Reuters:
"President Barack Obama said on Tuesday the U.S. government had sent
'very direct messages' to Iran warning it not to send weapons to Yemen
that could be used to threaten shipping traffic in the region. The
Pentagon said on Tuesday the presence of a large convoy of Iranian cargo
ships in the Arabian Sea was one factor in the U.S. decision to deploy
additional warships in the waters off war-torn Yemen. But Army Colonel
Steve Warren, a Pentagon spokesman, dismissed reports the carrier USS
Theodore Roosevelt and cruiser USS Normandy had been sent to the region
to intercept Iranian ships carrying arms to Iranian-backed Houthi rebels
fighting forces loyal to the U.S.-backed Yemeni president. In a televised
interview on Tuesday on MSNBC's 'Hardball,' Obama said Washington had
been 'very straightforward' with Tehran about the issue." http://t.uani.com/1Fe5sVW
Reuters:
"Saudi Arabia's military intervention in neighboring Yemen shows
that the Sunni monarchy will stand up to Iran and that Arab states can
protect their interests without U.S. leadership, the kingdom's ambassador
to Britain said... The traditionally cautious kingdom says it launched
the air strikes because its regional rival Iran had been training, arming
and financing the Houthis, extending Tehran's influence in the Arab world
to Saudi Arabia's southern border... 'Iran should not have any say in
Yemeni affairs. They are not part of the Arab world,' Prince Mohammed
told Reuters in an interview in the Saudi embassy in London. 'Their
interference has ignited instability, they have created havoc in our part
of the world and we've seen the events that took place because of their
malignant policies.'" http://t.uani.com/1QiXK0W
Dawn:
"Earlier today, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani had said a
Saudi-led offensive in Yemen was prompted by the kingdom's failures
elsewhere, causing what he called a 'mental imbalance'. Speaking to
reporters Tuesday before heading to Indonesia, Rouhani mocked Saudi
Arabia by calling it a country with dashed dreams in Iraq, Syria and
Lebanon. 'All the failures have accumulated and caused mental and
emotional imbalance for that country,' Rouhani said." http://t.uani.com/1ySnhZv
Human Rights
RFE/RL:
"The secretary-general of Iran's Teachers' Organization was arrested
on April 20 and transferred to Tehran's Evin prison to serve a five-year
sentence, Iran's semi-official ILNA news agency reported. Alireza Hashemi
was sentenced to prison in 2010 for 'pursuing union demands' and 'meeting
with relatives of jailed teachers,' his deputy, Tahereh Naghiyi, told
ILNA. Naghiyi said Hashemi had been convicted of charges that included
'acting against national security.' The organization said the move was an
attempt to radicalize the teachers' movement, which it said has been
following a rational path. The organization also called on the government
of Iranian President Hassan Rohani to listen to the voices of the
teachers calling for greater rights and to prevent the creation of a
'security [state] atmosphere' in the country." http://t.uani.com/1DhLBQP
AP:
"Tajigul Haidary had overstayed her residents' visa in Iran and was
expecting just a hefty fine when she went to renew it, she said. Instead,
she was arrested as an illegal immigrant, imprisoned, held in a transit
center with hundreds of other Afghans and, early this week, deported at a
dusty border point back to Afghanistan. It's a homeland that she hardly
knows. Her family took her to Iran when she was nine years old. Now 26
years old, she is married to another Afghan in Iran, has a 4-year-old son
and an 8-year-old daughter and is five months pregnant. When she was
deported, she was wrested away from them. 'My husband tried his best to
get me out but they wouldn't listen to him. My children cried, but it
made no difference. I don't know what to do. I have to get back,' she
said, tugging at the voluminous black chador warn by many Iranian women,
as she sat on a plastic chair in a shed at the Islam Qala border
crossing." http://t.uani.com/1DNeG96
Opinion &
Analysis
Michael Doran in
Mosaic: "If past behavior is anything to go by,
Obama will give Khamenei what he wants. Indeed, American concessions have
propelled the negotiations forward at every stage. A good example of the
established pattern is the fate of Fordow, the bunker under the mountain
near Qom. At the beginning of the negotiations, Obama publicly stated
that the existence of the facility was inconsistent with a peaceful
nuclear program. But after Khamenei announced his refusal to dismantle
Iran's nuclear infrastructure, Obama agreed that Fordow would not close.
In the latest round of negotiations, his position softened further. The
bunker would not only remain open; it would also contain operational
centrifuges. Thanks to retreats like this one, it is Khamenei's red
lines, not Obama's, that have determined the shape of the emerging deal-a
fact that prompts the president's critics to accuse him of fecklessness
and/or naïveté. But these descriptions miss the mark. The president is
not wedded to any set of specific demands. For him, the specific terms of
the nuclear agreement are far less important than its mere existence. One
of Obama's greatest diplomatic successes is to have persuaded much of the
world, including many of his critics, that the primary goal of his Iran
diplomacy is to negotiate a nuclear arms-control agreement. In fact, the
primary goal is détente with Iran. In the president's thinking, détente
will restrain Iranian behavior more effectively than any formal
agreement. In addition, it will also open the way to greater cooperation
with Iran on regional security. Détente will permit the United States to
pull back from the Middle East and focus more on its domestic priorities.
Finally, it will vindicate Obama's ethos of 'engagement,' which he sees
as a superior alternative to the military-driven concepts of American
leadership championed by his Republican opponents. In short, détente will
secure Obama's legacy. By contrast, Khamenei is pursuing highly specific
goals. Three stand out above all others. He is seeking, first, to
preserve Iran's entire nuclear infrastructure; second, to repeal the
sanctions on the Iranian economy; and third, to abolish the international
legal regime that brands Iran a rogue state. In all three areas, Obama
has already satisfied his core demands... Détente may sound like a minor
shift in American policy, but in truth it is nothing less than tectonic.
Obama has put an end to containment of Iran as a guiding principle of
American Middle East policy. To be sure, he continues to pay lip service
to the idea of countering Iran's influence, but his actions do not match
his rhetoric. In Syria and Iraq, especially, Obama has long been
respectful of Iranian interests while treating Tehran as a silent partner
against Islamic State (IS). Détente requires Obama to demote all of those
allies who perceive a rising Iran as their primary security threat."
http://t.uani.com/1FefbeG
Matthew Kroenig in
The Weekly Standard: "If there is one thing on which
Democrats and Republicans can agree, it is that it is undesirable for
countries other than the United States to possess nuclear weapons. For
this reason, America's nonproliferation policy has traditionally been
characterized by strong bipartisanship. It is notable, therefore, that
support for the recently negotiated Iran deal splits along party lines.
But on closer inspection, what is truly puzzling is that anyone supports
the agreement at all. In striking this deal, the Obama administration
abandoned a decades-old mainstay of U.S. nonproliferation policy, and
opponents are right to reject it. The United States has always opposed
the spread of sensitive nuclear technologies-uranium enrichment and
plutonium reprocessing-to all states, including its own allies, and it is
a mistake to make an exception for Iran... In an agreement with Libya in
2003, a textbook example of successful nuclear diplomacy, U.S. military
aircraft transferred over 55,000 pounds of nuclear equipment out of the
country, including its stockpile of centrifuges and centrifuge parts,
within weeks of concluding the deal. Washington's unbending position on
sensitive technologies always sat in uneasy tension with the 'inalienable
right' to peaceful nuclear technology granted in Article IV of the
Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, but when a superpower is willing to
enforce its interpretation of international law, it can, and in this
instance did, have a profound effect. This history helps explain why,
when the existence of Iran's covert nuclear program came to light in
2003, the United States immediately and reflexively declared that Iran
would not be permitted to enrich uranium. It was not an unreasonable or
unexpected demand; it was simply a restatement of U.S. nonproliferation
policy over the past half-century. The international community
understood America's position and slowly climbed on board, demanding that
Iran suspend enrichment in six separate U.N. Security Council
resolutions. The P5+1 resolutely held this line for nearly a decade as
the pressure began to mount on Iran, but then, suddenly, the Obama
administration abandoned this cornerstone of American foreign policy. In
the interim agreement struck in November 2013, Washington granted Iran
the right to enrich, and over the past 18 months it has engaged in the
unprecedented act of bargaining over the scale-not the existence-of an
aspiring proliferator's enrichment program. This decision will prove
disastrous. A deal that allows enrichment in Iran will not solve the
problem it is intended to solve. It was with good reason that Washington
prohibited sensitive nuclear technologies in the past; permitting the
possession of a large nuclear program, complete with sensitive
fuel-making capabilities, will make it much harder to prevent Iran from
building nuclear weapons if and when it decides to do so. Moreover,
verifying compliance with such a deal will be challenging. When
enrichment or reprocessing is prohibited altogether, detecting a
violation is relatively easy. Enforcing an agreement that permits 6,104
centrifuges but not 6,105 (as this deal does) is a fool's errand. Perhaps
more important, the Iran deal sets a dangerous precedent. The United
States is making this exception to its nonproliferation policy not for
just any country, but for Iran, a longstanding U.S. enemy, a leading
state-sponsor of terrorism, a country that has violated its
nonproliferation commitments in the past, and a country that at present
stonewalls the International Atomic Energy Agency's questions about the
military dimensions of its nuclear program. In the wake of the Iran deal,
it will be difficult for Washington to explain that it trusts Tehran with
sensitive nuclear technologies, but not other countries, including its
allies and partners. Other countries will inevitably demand a similar right
to enrich, further weakening the global nonproliferation standard and
inviting a possible cascade of nuclear weapons proliferation. This is not
a theoretical concern. Officials in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab
Emirates have already demanded the exact same nuclear rights and
capabilities granted to Iran in a final deal, and South Korea is
expressing an interest in reprocessing for peaceful purposes. This is
only the beginning. Expect additional bids for enrichment and
reprocessing programs as countries follow Iran's example and assemble the
components of a nuclear weapons capability under the guise of 'peaceful'
nuclear power." http://t.uani.com/1cZPXWG
Con Coughlin in
WSJ: "Iran is the leading Shiite protagonist in the
increasingly bitter conflict against rival Sunni Muslims in the Arab
world, but lately that hasn't prevented Tehran from rekindling one Sunni
alliance. The ayatollahs are rebuilding relations with the military wing
of Hamas, the Sunni Islamist group that controls Gaza. According to a senior
Western intelligence official, Iran's Revolutionary Guards during the
past few months have transferred tens of millions of dollars to Hamas's
Izz al-Din al-Qassam brigades. Intelligence reports show that the funds
have been transferred on the direct orders of Qasem Soleimani, the
commander of the Revolutionary Guards' elite Quds Force, who also
dedicated an annual budget to finance Hamas's military operations. The
funds, according to the intelligence reports, are being used primarily to
help Hamas rebuild the network of tunnels that were destroyed during the
Israeli Defense Force's response to rocket attacks launched by Hamas
militants from Gaza last summer. Apart from using Iranian aid to rebuild
the tunnel network in anticipation of future confrontations with the
Israeli military, the Palestinian brigades are also replenishing their
depleted stocks of medium-range missiles, according to the official
familiar with the intelligence reports. The restoration of relations
between the Revolutionary Guards and the al-Qassam brigades in Gaza is
the latest example of Iran's deepening military involvement in the Middle
East, which so far this year has seen Quds Force officers supporting
military operations in Iraq, Syria and, most recently, Yemen. In each
instance, the Iranians are basically supporting their Shiite allies, such
as the Badr brigades in Iraq and Houthi militiamen in Yemen, against
Tehran's Sunni enemies. But when it comes to dealing with Hamas, the
Iranians are clearly prepared to set aside their antipathy for militant
Sunni groups." http://t.uani.com/1IHNwC0
Shahrzad
Elghanayan in WashPost: "Until Iran's leaders decide
to get their facts straight about Jews, they should stay quiet on the
subject. No, I'm not talking about former Iranian president Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad's Holocaust-denying antics. These days, as Iran's leaders try
to soften their image to seal a deal to limit the country's nuclear
program in exchange for lifting sanctions, they're peddling a revised and
rosy version of Iran's own 2,600-year Jewish history. Asked by NBC's Ann
Curry during recent talks in Switzerland whether Iranian leaders
understand why Jews have been wary of their rhetoric, Foreign Minister
Mohammad Javad Zarif said, 'We have a history of tolerance and
cooperation and living together in coexistence with our own Jewish
people, and with - Jews everywhere in the world.' That's not quite right.
Iran's Jews did have something of a golden age relatively recently, but
Zarif, in his role as representative of a regime that eschews
pre-revolutionary Iran, can't take credit for it. That era was a brief
period when the conservative Shiite clergy were stripped of their power -
after the Constitutional Revolution of 1906 gave Iranians of all
religions and ethnicity equal rights, and before Ayatollah Ruhollah
Khomeini came to power in 1979... It was during that window of relative
Jewish affluence that my grandfather Habib Elghanian, born in 1912,
became one of Iran's most famous industrialists, after he and his
brothers introduced the plastics industry to the country in the late
1940s. In 1959, he was elected the chairman of the country's Jewish
association... When Khomeini returned from exile in February 1979 as the
head of the Islamic revolution, my grandfather was among the first civilians
he went after. On May 9, 1979, my grandfather was executed after a
20-minute trial on trumped-up charges that included being a 'Zionist
spy.' The Revolutionary Court did not allow my grandfather to have a
lawyer. After a firing squad killed him, the new regime stole what he had
spent his lifetime building... In his rosy tableau, Zarif points to what
he says are Iran's 20,000 Jews, which he says constitutes the largest
population of Jews in the Middle East outside Israel. (Iran's latest
census counted only 8,756 of them, and Turkey claims to have 20,000, as
well.) What he omits is that while Iran's population rose from over 37
million in 1979 to over 77 million today, the Jewish population has
plummeted from an estimated 80,000 to 100,000 in 1979. As Khomeini's
popularity was growing before his return to Iran from exile, some Jews
left Iran with their assets; many fled after my grandfather was executed,
and others followed in the early '80s... The relatively few Jews who
remain in Iran tell foreign journalists they have no complaints about
daily life. As Zarif points out, they are free to attend synagogues. They
also conduct their businesses and continue to have a representative in
parliament, as they did before the revolution. But like all Iranians who are
not government cronies, they know the rules and boundaries of
coexistence. For the past three decades, they have uttered monolithically
anti-Israel opinions. They can't hold high office or teach in
universities. Listening to the foreign minister's version of
Iranian-Jewish history makes me wonder what the nation's youth is
learning about its past. Maybe now that Iran is working to earn the
international community's trust, it's finally time for its leaders to
acknowledge past injustices." http://t.uani.com/1FedFJw
Aaron David Miller
in CNN: "If I had to describe the U.S.-Iranian
relationship in one word it would be 'overmatched.' We're playing
checkers on the Middle East game board and Tehran's playing
three-dimensional chess. Iran has no problem reconciling its bad and
contradictory behavior while we twist ourselves into knots over our tough
choices, all the while convincing ourselves that America's policy on the
nuclear issue is on the right track. Iran isn't 10 feet tall in this
region, but by making the nuclear issue the be-all and end-all that is
supposed to reduce Iran's power, the United States is only making Tehran
taller. Consider the following." http://t.uani.com/1zLZvcp
Aaron David Miller
in WSJ: "The last thing the United States needs is
535 legislators micromanaging its Iran policy. But having worked at the
State Department for more than two decades, I know I don't want Foggy
Bottom controlling a 10- to 15-year deal with Iran. Here are four ways
Congress could play a credible role on the Iran deal." http://t.uani.com/1aS5Uwg
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