Top Stories
NYT: "With a vote on new sanctions against Iran only days
away, the Obama administration is making the case to members of the United
Nations Security Council that Iran has revived elements of its program to
design nuclear weapons that American intelligence agencies previously concluded
had gone dormant." http://nyti.ms/dxlBgr
NYT: "On Jan. 24, 2009, a rusting freighter flying a Hong
Kong flag dropped anchor in the South African port of Durban. The stop was not
on the ship's customary route, and it stayed only an hour, just long enough to
pick up its clandestine cargo: a Bladerunner 51 speedboat that could be armed
with torpedoes and used as a fast-attack craft in the Persian Gulf." http://nyti.ms/9lR23h
AP: "Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Tuesday
that a nuclear swap deal brokered by Turkey and Brazil was a one-time
opportunity to resolve his nation's standoff with the West, days before the
U.N. Security Council is expected to vote on new sanctions." http://bit.ly/9Gik2K
Nuclear Program
NYT: "Leaders of Russia, Turkey and Iran convened at a
security summit meeting in Istanbul on Tuesday in a display of regional power
that appeared to be calculated to test the United States just days before a
scheduled American-backed debate in the United Nations Security Council on
imposing tighter sanctions over Iran's nuclear program." http://nyti.ms/dsyFv2
AFP: "Russia and Iran will establish a joint venture to
operate Tehran's first nuclear plant set to come online this summer, Sergei
Kiriyenko, chief of Russia's nuclear state corporation, said on Tuesday. Russia has been helping Iran build its first
nuclear plant in the southern city of Bushehr since the mid-90s but its launch
has been marred by a series of delays and the issue is hugely delicate amid a
standoff over Iran's nuclear program." http://bit.ly/ar1LkE
AP: "Iranian state television showed a video Monday of a
man it identified as a missing nuclear scientist, who said he had been abducted
and taken to the United States." http://bit.ly/cBL5Ao
Commerce
Bloomberg: "Iran started to build a long-planned pipeline
to export natural gas to Europe with an investment of at least 1.3 billion
euros ($1.55 billion), state television reported today. Iran plans to complete its section of the
pipeline by 2013, the TV network said, without citing a source. The system will
pass through Turkey and have a capacity of as much as 110 million cubic meters
of gas a day, it said. The route of the pipeline is unclear." http://bit.ly/9QAEHz
Human Rights
AP: "Iran has no plans to swap three Americans jailed in
Tehran for an Iranian nuclear scientist it says is being held in the Unites
States, an Iranian official said Tuesday." http://bit.ly/cXiJso
Domestic Politics
LAT: "What could have made Iran's supreme leader so
visibly angry? The extraordinary photo
above -- posted to the website of Iran's hard-line Fars news agency but then
quickly taken down -- shows supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, at center
with his hand raised, extremely angry after the conclusion of the June 4
ceremony commemorating the founder of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah
Khomeini." http://bit.ly/bdZiHN
Reuters: "Iran's first women-only bank branch opened
Monday, allowing women to manage their finances without dealing with unrelated
men -- something likely to appeal to religious families who oppose mingling
between the sexes. Under sharia, the
Islamic legal system imposed after Iran's 1979 revolution, unrelated men and
women are forbidden to have intimate contact." http://bit.ly/bYw4VL
Foreign Affairs
AP: "'Iranian President [Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad comes to
China on June 11 to attend national pavilion day activities at the Shanghai
Expo,' Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang told a news conference Tuesday. Mr. Qin said no talks have been scheduled
between Mr. Ahmadinejad and senior Chinese leaders, since the Iranian leader is
visiting at the invitation of Expo organizers." http://bit.ly/bDZXWu
Opinion
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace: "Two weeks
after parties to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) concluded their
five-year Review Conference in New York, the main decision-making body of the
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) meets in Vienna starting today. On
the agenda are ongoing IAEA investigations in Iran and Syria, Israel's nuclear
capability, and the IAEA budget. In a
Q&A, Mark Hibbs writes that it is unlikely that a dramatic showdown with
Iran or Syria will occur during the meeting." http://bit.ly/cBFytw
Golnaz Esfandiari in Foreign Policy: "Before one of the
major Iranian protests of the past year, a journalist in Germany showed me a
list of three prominent Twitter accounts that were commenting on the events in
Tehran and asked me if I know the identities of the contributors. I told her I
did, but she seemed disappointed when I told her that one of them was in the
United States, one was in Turkey, and the third -- who specialized in urging
people to 'take to the streets' -- was based in Switzerland." http://bit.ly/bLewmo
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