Top Stories
AFP: "Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki has
said the United States, England and France deserved to be eliminated in the
World Cup for imposing nuclear sanctions on Tehran, newspapers reported on
Wednesday. 'In this World Cup you see a meaningful correlation between politics
and diplomacy and football,' Mottaki was quoted as saying by Tehran Emrouz
newspaper." http://bit.ly/b2O8qy
AFP: "Russia, France and the United States have proposed
a UN-brokered meeting with experts from all three countries and Iran to discuss
a nuclear fuel swap deal, Russia's top diplomat said on Tuesday. The talks brokered by the International
Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) would be held on condition that Iran stop enriching
uranium to 20 percent levels, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said during a
visit to Israel." http://bit.ly/9vfVPI
Bloomberg: "Iran lifted a cap on the percentage of shares
in Iranian banks that can be owned by a foreign individual or company, the
government said. President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad signed an order on June 27 for government departments, including
the Ministry of Economy and Finance, to implement the banking-law amendment
approved by the parliament in May, the government said today on its website." http://bit.ly/a60lqW
Nuclear Program
LAT: "But Iran's nuclear program remains his agency's No.
1 priority and his biggest challenge. The collapse of two versions of a
proposal first floated last year to swap Iran's enriched uranium stockpile for
fuel to power a Tehran medical reactor has left the international community
with little space for a deal." http://bit.ly/bPbTdd
WSJ: "Turkey on Tuesday called for Iran to negotiate with
world powers as soon as possible over a nuclear-fuel swap deal, a show of
frustration from one of Tehran's few allies during recent international
sparring over how to address Iran's nuclear ambitions." http://bit.ly/ajRhp1
AFP: "The United Arab Emirates is 'taking action' to
maintain nuclear security, its envoy to the atomic watchdog said on Tuesday
after a reported UAE crackdown on Iranian firms dealing in dangerous materials."
http://bit.ly/amwEFr
Reuters: "Iran said on Tuesday it would soon resume
nuclear talks with Turkey and Brazil - a tentative first step back to
international negotiations after Tehran was hit with a new wave of sanctions
over its disputed nuclear work. Iran has
belittled the UN, US and European sanctions and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
said on Monday he would return to long-frozen talks with world powers but on
certain conditions only, and not before the end of August." http://bit.ly/aZzGiV
Radio Farda: "U.S. President Barack Obama and Saudi Arabia's
King Abdullah have voiced 'strong support' for international efforts to curb
Iran's nuclear program, which the West says masks a secret drive to develop an
atomic bomb-making capability." http://bit.ly/boquP3
AFP: "A man claiming
to be an Iranian nuclear scientist whom Tehran alleges the United States
kidnapped said he has escaped from US agents, in a video screened on Tuesday on
Iranian television. 'I am Shahram Amiri,
a citizen of the Islamic republic. A few minutes ago I managed to escape from
the hands of US intelligence agents in Virginia,' said the man in the footage
shown on state television." http://bit.ly/bZupoy
Commerce
Radio Farda: "An Armenian government minister says
Yerevan is seeking as much as $1 billion in loans from China to finance a
railway link to neighboring Iran, RFE/RL's Armenian Service reports. Armenian Transport and Communications
Minister Manuk Vartanian said on June 28 that the government has spoken with
officials and financial institutions in Iran, China, and Russia about funding
the project. He added that he hopes an agreement with China will provide more than
$1 billion of the required funding." http://bit.ly/biJzry
Human Rights
Radio Farda: "Iranian opposition leader and reformist
cleric Mehdi Karrubi has again been harassed by a group of apparent hard-liners
who verbally assailed him at the Sharif University mosque on June 29. Karrubi
was reportedly shouted down upon entering the mosque to attend a mourning
ceremony for the father of former reformist official Mohammad Reza Aref." http://bit.ly/c1A3mQ
LAT: "In its latest attempt to explain the death of the
Green Movement's inadvertent icon Neda Agha Soltan, the Iranian regime released
a documentary last week to counter the widely accepted narrative of the
incident. It concludes that an unknown
woman approached Agha-Soltan and, grabbing a gun in her purse, shot her." http://bit.ly/d2lmmU
NYT: "As reports circulated Tuesday that Iran was
preparing to execute a 27-year-old Kurdish activist, the campaign to save her
life intensified, with a prominent opposition figure publicly urging the
authorities to show compassion." http://nyti.ms/dpgNrw
Opinion
Mark Dubowitz in Forbes: "What should be particularly
troubling for Tehran are two changes that occurred during the conference
committee: the first, Congress eliminated one sentence in the Iran Sanctions
Act which for fourteen years permitted companies providing technology, goods
and services to the Iranian oil and natural gas sectors to escape U.S.
sanctions; and the second, Congress added additional language to the
legislation which could bar foreign companies that do business with the U.S.
from entering into joint ventures, partnerships and investments with the
Iranian regime for foreign energy projects outside Iran." http://bit.ly/9kqgcO
|
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment