Top Stories
FT: "Iran claimed to have increased the production of a
more highly enriched form of uranium on Wednesday, making what appeared to be a
new gesture of retaliation against the United Nations' decision to impose more
sanctions. Ali-Akbar Salehi, the head of
Iran's Atomic Energy Organisation, announced that some 17kg of uranium had been
enriched to 20 per cent purity." http://bit.ly/d3MUHt
WP: "As Congress prepares to target Iran's vital fuel
imports as part of its most far-reaching sanctions package yet, observers say
the Tehran government has already done much to deflect the impact of the new
U.S. measures. Under the pressure of
earlier Western sanctions, Iran has over the past four years reduced its
dependence on foreign imports of refined oil products from about 40 percent of
its domestic needs to just under 30 percent, according to analysts." http://bit.ly/bAhJMH
Bloomberg News: "President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Iran
next week will announce conditions for its participation in proposed talks on
the dispute over its nuclear program, which this month prompted a fourth round
of United Nations sanctions." http://bit.ly/c2SUlV
Nuclear Program
Foreign Policy: "Congress is moving fast to complete its
work on the Iran sanctions bill it unveiled this week, and is on track to meet
the goal of getting it to President Obama's desk by July 4. A Senate leadership aide told The Cable that
the sanctions legislation, which contains new and wide-ranging penalties aimed
at Iran's banking and energy sectors, could come up to the Senate floor
Thursday. The House could bring it to the floor as early as Friday, although
that could slip to early next week, a House leadership aide said." http://bit.ly/c4MhP4
AFP: "Sanctions may not have closed the door for talks
over Iran's nuclear program, but the ball is now in Tehran's court to allay
international fears, Brazil's foreign minister said here Wednesday." http://bit.ly/9g4dV5
Human Rights
AP: "The mothers of three American hikers held in Iran on
suspicion of espionage said Thursday they hope a report that their children
were arrested on the Iraqi side of the border will help lead to their release. Shane Bauer, Sarah Shourd and Josh Fattal
were arrested July 31 during what their families have said was a simple hiking
trip along the Iraq-Iran border. They have said if the hikers crossed into Iran
it was an accident." http://bit.ly/czqggc
Radio Farda: "An Iranian doctoral student at Oxford who
campaigned in Iran last year for opposition leader Mir Hussein Musavi is being
held in solitary confinement by Iranian authorities, his wife told RFE/RL's
Radio Farda." http://bit.ly/ah956a
Radio Farda: "Iran's hard-line Fars news agency reports
that the trial of controversial blogger Hossein Derakhshan, known as Iran's 'Blogfather'
for helping to popularize blogging in the Islamic republic, began in Tehran on
June 23. Derakhshan has been in jail
since November 2008." http://bit.ly/d4FRsy
Domestic Politics
LAT: "A dispute over control of a vast network of
semi-private universities is starting to resemble a bitter custody battle,
pitting President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad against one of his political rivals, Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, for
control of the schools and the 1.5 million faculty members and students." http://bit.ly/dAPp2m
Foreign Affairs
Radio Farda: "An Iranian diplomat says Tehran is strongly
opposed to U.S. involvement in a multinational peacekeeping force that would be
deployed around the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh in the event of an
Armenian-Azerbaijani peace accord, RFE/RL's Armenian Service reports." http://bit.ly/cfiDX0
Opinion
William Hague in the Sydney Morning Herald: "The isolation is entirely of the Iranian government's making. Over the past year, it has continued to enrich uranium far above the level needed for a civil nuclear power program, defied UN resolutions and accumulated a stockpile of uranium sufficient to build a nuclear weapon. Nothing Iran's government has done in recent months alters these facts." http://bit.ly/c97M4Q
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