Top Stories
AFP: "Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Wednesday that any
talks with arch-foe the United States would take place only if Washington drops
'sanctions and threats' against Tehran. In a speech on state television, the
all-powerful Khamenei also blamed Washington for Iran's defiant move to enrich
uranium to 20 percent, the most controversial aspect of its nuclear programme. 'The
respected president (Mahmoud Ahmadinejad) and others have said that we are
ready for negotiation. It is right. But not with America,' Khamenei told an
audience of senior Iranian officials, including Ahmadinejad, in the speech." http://bit.ly/c8PReI
AP: "Iran took its case against the
United States to the United Nations on Wednesday and strongly condemned the top
U.S. military chief for saying military action remains a possibility if the
country develops nuclear weapons. Iran's acting U.N. ambassador Eshagh Alehabib
claimed in letters circulated to the secretary-general and presidents of the
Security Council and General Assembly that Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the
U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, and other U.S. officials and lawmakers 'threatened'
to use military action under the 'totally false' pretense that Iran is
developing nuclear weapons." http://bit.ly/bIXZRf
AP: "The CIA is opening a
counterproliferation center to combat the spread of dangerous weapons and
technology, a move that comes as Iran is on the verge of fueling up a new
nuclear power plant. CIA Director Leon Panetta said Wednesday that the new unit
would place CIA operators side by side with the agency's analysts to brainstorm
plans to 'confront the threat of weapons of mass destruction - nuclear,
chemical and biological.'" http://bit.ly/d8grcH
Nuclear Program
AFP: "A senior US Treasury official on Wednesday concluded two days of talks
in Lebanon with financial leaders and bankers on US and UN sanctions slapped on
Iran, the US embassy said. Stuart Levey, the undersecretary of Treasury for
terrorism and financial intelligence, met officials including Finance Minister
Raya al-Hassan, central bank governor Riad Salame as well as several bankers." http://bit.ly/dAqmQR
Reuters: "Iran
is unlikely to become a big exporter of natural gas unless China -- a crucial
partner as international sanctions scare others off -- can develop tricky
technology to liquefy the country's massive gas reserves... New European
Union bans on supplying energy equipment make it almost impossible for Tehran
to get full-scale liquefaction (LNG) technology from Germany's Siemens (SIEGn.DE), with the only other process patented by U.S.
industrial giant and military supplier GE (GE.N)
already off limits under U.S. laws." http://bit.ly/dCsZGl
AP: "German federal prosecutors say
they have charged two men with violating an arms embargo by working to export
equipment that Iran wanted for its missile program. The federal prosecutor's
office said Thursday that 65-year-old German Heinz Ulrich K. was charged with
breaking export laws and 52-year-old Iranian Mohsen A., 52, with incitement to
break them." http://bit.ly/98L9fw
Commerce
Reuters: "Venezuela will continue to supply Iran with gasoline despite sanctions
imposed on the Islamic Republic by the United States, European Union and
others, Caracas's ambassador to Tehran said on Wednesday... 'We are at the
service of Iran and whenever Iran needs we will supply it with gasoline,'
Venezuela's ambassador, David Velasquez, told Iran's semi-official Fars news
agency, Venezuela's state news agency AVN said in a statement." http://bit.ly/94Z6j8
Reuters: "MTN Group (MTNJ.J) has no immediate
plans to list its Iranian unit or lower its stake in the unit, the head of
Africa's largest mobile operator said on Thursday. MTN chief executive Phuthuma
Nhleko made the comment at an investor presentation following the company's
first-half earnings results." http://bit.ly/cp1PFq
Human Rights
AP: "The international outcry over the death sentence against an Iranian
woman convicted of adultery might be enough to save her from execution, the
lawyer who defended her told The Associated Press on Wednesday." http://yhoo.it/aSnwBN
AFP: "London said Iran had showed an 'unwillingness' to follow even its own
standards in recent judicial cases, after a junior foreign minister met Iran's
ambassador on Wednesday. The Foreign Office said Alistair Burt and ambassador
Rasoul Movahedian discussed the case of Sakineh Mohammadi-Ashtiani, a
43-year-old mother of two sentenced to death by stoning by an Iranian court." http://bit.ly/a7i6LZ
Radio Farda: "The Iranian state
committee that monitors the press has banned the well-known economic newspaper 'Asia,'
RFE/RL's Radio Farda reports. The Deputy Head of Iran's Ministry of Culture and
Islamic Guidance, Mohammad Ali Ramin, said the reasons for closing down 'Asia'
include 'publishing pictures against public chastity,' 'promoting wastefulness
and extravagance,' and 'persistence in carrying out the aforementioned
violations.'" http://bit.ly/9cP6Jo
Domestic Politics
NPR: "Reporter Jon Lee Anderson visited Iran, and spoke with members of the
reform movement as well as President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. His conclusion: Under
intense pressure from government supporters, 'the Green Movement has
effectively ceased to exist as a visible political force.'" http://n.pr/cKclaI
Foreign Affairs
Radio Farda: "Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is an active twitterer
(you can follow him at @khamenei_ir).
Mostly the tweets, in Persian and English, concern the main points of
Khamenei's speeches, pictures of his official meetings, and his views on a
variety of things, for instance women's rights.Yesterday
he was tweeting about ties with the United States and threats against Iran.
Here are some of his tweets in case you're not following him: ..." http://bit.ly/b1lZ7G
Opinion
Jonathan Schanzer in the
Houston Chronicle: "In the coming weeks, the State Department will provide
President Obama with recommendations on how to implement Washington's tough new
sanctions on Iran. The law imposes severe financial penalties on Tehran in
hopes of preventing it from acquiring a nuclear weapon, but it could also have
an outsized impact on Houston. As it turns out, many multinational companies
that do business in Iran also have offices and employees right here in Space
City. If Washington chooses to enforce the sanctions it has on the books, it
could mean lost business for Texas. But officials in Houston and Austin have a
unique opportunity to confront these companies behind closed doors and persuade
them to abandon their business in Iran rather than risk running afoul of
Washington." http://bit.ly/9pvFV7
Christian Caryl in FP: "So one
can't help but ask: Is the reactor in Bushehr likely to become the target of an
Israeli airstrike? The answer is almost certainly no -- and not just because
attacking the reactor after this weekend would release radioactivity into the
atmosphere. The reactor has been under construction for almost 30 years. In
several of his media appearances Bolton asserted that starting the reactor at
Bushehr means that Iran is now embarking on the path to enriching plutonium --
enough, he said in one interview, to produce 40 to 60 plutonium weapons. If
that really is the scale of threat, one wonders why the Israelis haven't
attacked it already. The reason is that, frankly, they have better things to
worry about." http://bit.ly/dgIuB7
Robert Tait in Radio Farda: "He
has built his political career and populist appeal on twin pillars of pious
religious faith and messianic fervor. But now Iran's president, Mahmud
Ahmadinejad, is risking a breach with his fundamentalist allies by toning down
his Islamist tub-thumping rhetoric in favor of a new oratorical weapon:
nationalism. Amid a deepening split within the Islamic system's 'principlist'
conservative faction, the combative president has begun stressing nationalistic
Iranian themes in what some observers characterize as an attempt to carve out a
new political constituency amongst nonpolitical types who neither identify with
religion nor the pro-reform Green Movement." http://bit.ly/9ztLcc
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