Top Stories
AFP: "The United States announced Thursday that top officials
will fan out starting next week to China, the United Arab Emirates, and other
key countries in support of tighter sanctions against Iran. 'China is of concern to us in this regard,' Robert Einhorn,
the US State Department's special adviser for nonproliferation and arms
control, told the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee." http://bit.ly/aL2wdL
AFP: "A Canadian court on
Thursday sentenced a Toronto man to four years and three months prison for
attempting to export dual-use nuclear-related items to Iran, in violation of UN
resolutions. Mahmoud Yadegari was sentenced in the Ontario Court of Justice to
20 months in jail, as well as the 15.5 months of pre-sentence custody, Canada's
public prosecution service said in a statement." http://bit.ly/bpBOmM
WT: "The
top U.S. general in Latin America and the Caribbean said Thursday that he is
closely monitoring the activities of Iran, Hezbollah, and Hamas in the region... Gen.
Fraser also spoke to the increased presence of Iran in the region. In recent
years, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has cemented alliances with
anti-American states in the region -- most notably Venezuela -- as well as, of
late, Brazil." http://bit.ly/dhBOmE
Nuclear Program
BBC: "But despite the cost to business, the United Arab Emirates says it
will strictly enforce the sanctions. In practice it may not be that simple. On
the quayside where most of the boats load up, there is no security and just two
small customs offices. It means there is no way of knowing what is in the
boxes. That makes it much easier for firms to evade the rules and cash in on
the black market." http://bit.ly/c5srz2
Bloomberg: "Iran Air, the
state-owned flag carrier, plans to sell its first shares to the public and buy
as many as 100 new aircraft to expand in the face of tighter international
sanctions, the company's chairman said. Iran Air is seeking to modernize its
aging fleet of foreign-built jetliners, which it operates amid political
obstacles to the purchase of new planes and spare parts from European suppliers
including Boeing Co. and Airbus SAS, Chairman Farhad Parvaresh said." http://bit.ly/ayzGHE
Commerce
Bloomberg: "Three
Russian state-controlled oil companies, including OAO Rosneft and OAO Gazprom
Neft, may begin delivering gasoline to Iran in a month, said the head of the
Iran Commission of the Moscow Chamber of Commerce & Industry." http://bit.ly/aQpIXz
Human
Rights
Radio Farda: "A number of political prisoners incarcerated at Tehran's Evin prison
have reportedly gone on hunger strike to protest their treatment, including
their transfer to solitary confinement and cancellation of family visits." http://bit.ly/d5Iq9t
Radio Farda: "On July 31, 2009, three Americans were arrested by
Iranian forces after they purportedly strayed across the Iranian border while
hiking in Iraqi Kurdistan. Shane Bauer, 27; Sarah Shourd, 31; and Josh Fattal,
27, have been held in Iran ever since, without charges, and are currently in
Tehran's notorious Evin prison. RFE/RL correspondent Nikola Krastev, who last
spoke to the hikers' mothers in May after they traveled to Iran to try to
secure their children's release, catches up with them again ahead of their
address on July 30 before Iran's Permanent Mission to the United Nations." http://bit.ly/9wsXru
Domestic Politics
Economist: "Strikes in the bazaar have been rare. This is only the second since the
revolution. The first was in 2008 when President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's
government first proposed VAT. The bazaaris may not be allied to Mr
Ahmadinejad's political opponents, but their disgruntlement means that the
president is obliged to fight on yet another front. The merchants have chafed
at the growing political and economic influence of the Revolutionary Guard
under Mr Ahmadinejad, sensing a threat to their own interests." http://bit.ly/9HWN95
AP: "An Iranian official says
cigarettes smuggled into Iran have been tainted with pig blood and nuclear
material as part of a Western conspiracy... Madani claims Philip Morris
International, which sells Marlboro outside the U.S., is 'led by Zionists' and
deliberately exports tainted cigarettes." http://bit.ly/9RPrb8
Foreign Affairs
Christian Science Monitor: "A sea mine may have been responsible for
denting a 160,000-ton Japanese oil tanker in the Strait of Hormuz this week,
investigators in the United Arab Emirates said Thursday, although the boat's
owner maintains it was likely attacked... Some are pointing fingers at Iran, as
it carefully guards its territorial waters and laid thousands of floating mines
for that purpose during the Iran-Iraq war - some of which remain today." http://bit.ly/cWKuIN
NYT: "The Educational Testing
Service, the company that offers the Test of English as a Foreign
Language,
announced Thursday that it would resume registering students for its
tests
inside Iran after striking a deal with a bank willing to process
payments." http://nyti.ms/au7ucC
Culture
Independent: "Instead it is the opening scene of a new cover
of Pink Floyd's seminal protest song 'Another Brick in the Wall' which is
becoming an underground anthem of resistance for those opposed to the Tehran
regime. Blurred Vision, a rock band fronted by two brothers whose family fled
Iran in the late 1980s and settled in Toronto, have reworked the 1979 classic."
http://bit.ly/bCLCsc
Opinion
Charles Krauthammer in WashPost: "President
Ahmadinejad has a penchant for the somewhat loony, as when last weekend he
denounced Paul the Octopus, omniscient predictor of eight consecutive World
Cup matches, as a symbol of decadence and purveyor of 'Western propaganda and
superstition.' But for all his clownishness, Ahmadinejad is nonetheless
calculating and dangerous. What 'two countries' was he talking about?
They seem logically to be Lebanon and Syria. Hezbollah in Lebanon has armed
itself with 50,000 rockets and made clear that it is in a position to start a
war at any time." http://bit.ly/bPZPdw
Edward J. Epstein in WSJ: "In a stunning departure from a decade of assessments, the 2007 National
Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran declared: 'We judge with high confidence
that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program,' including 'nuclear weapon design and weaponization work' and covert uranium
enrichment. Even more astonishingly, it attributed this change to 'increasing
international scrutiny and pressure resulting from exposure of Iran's
previously undeclared nuclear work.' In other words, the threat of sanctions
had ended that country's surreptitious effort to obtain nuclear weapons. This
assessment suggested that further action against Iran was unnecessary.
Unfortunately, as the Obama administration has now acknowledged, the NIE's
conclusion was dead wrong, costing us precious time in dealing with a serious
threat." http://bit.ly/98t40V
Tony Karon in TIME: "But in
Washington, the gloomy outlook on sanctions has been accompanied by a growing
rumble of war talk. My TIME colleague Joe Klein recently reported that the
military option was 'back on the table' because Washington was not
prepared to settle for 'containing' a nuclear-armed Iran if sanctions
failed and because U.S. officials believe that America's Arab allies support a
military strike." http://bit.ly/c4SVOX
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