Eye On Iran: Amid Iran Sanctions Drive, U.S. Lobbies Foreign Firms

For continuing coverage follow us on Twitter and join our Facebook group. Top Stories Reuters: "New York advocacy group United Against Nuclear Iran, which keeps a database of companies doing businesses with Iran, has waged a letter-writing campaign urging them to cut their ties. 'If we have 10, 15, 20 of these multinational companies pull out of Iran it will force that economy into the red zone,' said the group's president Mark Wallace, a former ambassador under President George W. Bush." http://bit.ly/9yoghI Reuters: "The U.S. government, while urging the world to cut business ties with Iran, has given government contracts worth nearly $880 million to seven foreign companies involved in Iran's energy sector in recent years, a report said on Wednesday." http://bit.ly/daXpzI AP: "Al-Qaida operatives who have been detained for years in Iran have been making their way quietly in and out of the country, raising the prospect that Iran is loosening its grip on the terror group so it can replenish its ranks, former and current U.S. intelligence officials say." http://bit.ly/9w52WI Nuclear Program AFP: "US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and a Chinese official acknowledged 'good progress' had been made when they talked about efforts to impose new sanctions on Iran, a US official said Wednesday. State Department spokesman Philip Crowley said Clinton and China's state councilor Dai Bingguo spoke for more than an hour by telephone late Tuesday, discussing both Iran and North Korea, whose nuclear programs worry Washington." http://bit.ly/9snb9I Bloomberg: "Boeing Co. and Exxon Mobil Corp. are lobbying to fend off tightened sanctions against Iran that business groups say may cost $25 billion in U.S. exports. Legislation before Congress would expand a 1996 law penalizing foreign companies that invest in that country's oil industry. U.S. firms, already barred from investing there, say their sales worldwide could be hurt by provisions that ban doing business with companies in Europe, Russia or China that trade with Iran." http://bit.ly/d7PGUg Reuters: "Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned the United States and other Western nations on Thursday against imposing unilateral sanctions on Iran over its nuclear program, Interfax news agency reported." http://bit.ly/akgUxL McClatchy: "As world powers wrangle this month at the United Nations about how to handle Iran's nuclear plans, China is attempting to balance its thirst for Iranian oil and natural gas with its ambition to be a diplomatic heavyweight. Tough sanctions against Iran could have serious economic consequences for China, one of the five veto-wielding permanent members of the U.N. Security Council." http://bit.ly/a28ksx Human Rights AFP: "European Union foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton on Wednesday pleaded with Iran to drop death sentences imposed on two people awaiting execution for being 'enemies of God'. The call came after five militants were hanged for similar offences on Sunday, a decision Ashton said the EU 'strongly condemns.'" http://bit.ly/cHERrX Foreign Affairs Reuters: "Around 1,000 Afghans demonstrated today against alleged ill-treatment and executions of some Afghan refugees by Iranian authorities on charges of drug-smuggling. The protesters threw eggs at the gate of Tehran's consulate in the eastern city of Jalalabad and burnt down an effigy of Iran's spiritual leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei." http://bit.ly/cDaCiM Opinion Mark Dubowitz in Forbes: "On Wednesday, the powerful Homeland Security & Governmental Accountability Committee of the U.S. Senate held a hearing on why the U.S. government continues to give contracts to companies doing business with Iran. Why indeed? The hearing yielded rare bipartisan agreement - disbelief that energy companies are getting U.S. taxpayer support to do business with a regime that is building a nuclear weapon, supporting terrorism, aiding and abetting militia groups in Afghanistan and Iraq that are killing U.S. soldiers, and committing egregious human rights abuses against its own people." http://bit.ly/bGvsA1 Roxana Saberi in WP: "Shortly after Iran announced that it had executed five Kurdish political activists on Sunday, I received an e-mail from a human rights campaigner in Tehran who knew one of them, asking me to spread the word about the hangings. 'We are truly helpless,' she wrote, 'and we feel lost.' Iran labeled the five 'terrorists,' but human rights advocates have said the prisoners denied the charges against them, were subjected to torture and convicted in unfair trials." http://bit.ly/bG39iS 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.

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