Top Stories
ABC: "Sarah Shourd, one of three
Americans who have been held in Iran for 14 months on accusations of espionage,
has been released on bail, ABC News has confirmed today. Masoud Shafie, an
attorney for the Americans, confirmed Shourd's release to ABC News. Shafie said
the Swiss ambassador will be taking Shourd from the Tehran prison to the
airport. Swiss officials have been representing U.S. interests in the case
since the U.S. government does not have diplomatic relations with Iran." http://bit.ly/bNp7cF
Reuters: "Veteran Iranian
politician Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani criticized President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on
Tuesday for failing to counter the impact of sanctions -- the latest sign of
division within Iran's ruling elite. Rafsanjani, head of a powerful clerical
body, said the Islamic Republic was under unprecedented global pressure and
said the government was wrong to dismiss the sanctions as no threat to the
economy." http://nyti.ms/9rrxxE
FT: "Kia
is a household name in the Islamic republic and its affordable, boxy Pride
represents between 30 and 40 per cent of vehicles on the road. The export
suspension comes at a time of heightened tension between Iran and South Korea,
a US ally that last week imposed unilateral sanctions on Tehran because of its
nuclear ambitions. Kia has substantial interests in the US, which it may be
trying to protect by cutting links with Iran." http://bit.ly/bz13MZ
Nuclear Program
Reuters: "The head of the U.N.
nuclear watchdog said on Monday his agency was assessing a report by a
dissident Iranian group that it had evidence of a new secret underground atomic
site in Iran. The dissident group last week said the information came from a
network of sources inside Iran affiliated with the exiled opposition National
Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) and the People's Mujahideen Organization
of Iran (PMOI), a guerrilla movement opposed to the Islamic Republic's
government." http://bit.ly/aIJGgB
Reuters: "Iranian President
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad plans to attend a high-level U.N. meeting next week aimed
at reviving stalled global disarmament talks, U.N. Secretary-General Ban
Ki-moon said on Monday. That meeting, scheduled for September 24 during the
annual General Assembly gathering of world leaders in New York, follows 12
years of inaction at the world's sole multilateral disarmament negotiating
forum in Geneva." http://bit.ly/bWg2Zc
FT: "Iran faces mounting
difficulties selling its crude oil with tighter sanctions depriving the country
of essential shipping and banking services... Traders and oil company officials
said European and Middle Eastern banks have all but stopped issuing letters of
credit - an instrument used in trade - with Iranian financial institutions.
This makes it very difficult to transact payments for oil sales. Shipping
companies are also refusing to send tankers to Iranian oil terminals, while
insurers are reluctant to cover cargoes, they said." http://bit.ly/9ChI4N
AP: "Iran's nuclear chief has
called remarks by the head of the U.N.'s atomic energy agency a dangerous
mistake. According to the state news agency Tuesday, Ali Akbar Salehi said 'if
Mr. Amano has expressed the remarks knowingly, he has committed a big mistake.'
Salehi said the situation was dangerous because it meant the International
Atomic Energy Agency was responding to external pressure." http://bit.ly/c1TiYr
Human Rights
WashPost: "Haystack, a company that has
created software designed to circumvent Iranian government censors, has stopped
testing its program amid criticism of faulty security. Haystack founder Austin
Heap said in an interview Monday that concerns about how his much-touted
software program works and whether it is secure are 'valid.' 'For the time
being, we are going to stop human testing and rely instead on machine testing,'
Heap said." http://bit.ly/drExYQ
AP: "A
third Iranian diplomat upset with Tehran's post-election crackdown on
dissidents has defected in Europe - this time in Belgium, an opposition group
said Monday. The announcement came just hours after the No. 2 man at Iran's
mission in Helsinki said he will seek asylum in Finland. The defections are an
embarrassment for Iran, which clamped down on citizens after last year's
presidential election was followed by large-scale protests and accusations that
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won by fraud." http://bit.ly/9GVCsD
AP: "Iran's
state TV says authorities have detained an Asian reporter for asking suspicious
questions about the country's disputed nuclear program. The report did not
identify the reporter by name or nationality. His two Iranian assistants were
also detained. The report says the journalist asked people in Tehran for their
views on whether Iran's nuclear program had a military dimension and on Iran's
relations with Russia." http://bit.ly/cS4ASQ
WashPost:
"Have U.S. authorities given up on the case of Robert Levinson, the retired
FBI agent who disappeared on Iran's Kish Island more than three years ago? All
eyes have been focused on the American hiker Sarah Shourd, whose scheduled
release from a Tehran prison over the weekend became entangled in Iranian
politics. Two of her hiking companions remain jailed on charges of being
American spies, which top U.S. officials vehemently deny." http://bit.ly/cOBrX4
Foreign Affairs
NYT: "Iran's supreme leader,
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, delivered a fiery address on Monday accusing the United
States government of orchestrating desecrations of the Koran by right-wing
American Christian groups last weekend, Iranian state news agencies reported. The
speech appeared to be part of an effort by Iran's hard-line leaders to amplify
Muslim outrage over scattered gestures to burn or tear pages of the Koran, in
the wake of the threat - later withdrawn - by Terry Jones, a Florida pastor, to
burn the Koran on the anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks." http://nyti.ms/b2CbNR
WSJ: "Iran won a federal court victory
against the family of an American killed by a terrorist attack allegedly
bankrolled by the extremist regime. And who represented the Islamic Republic,
which the U.S. State Department classifies as a state sponsor of terrorism? The
U.S. Justice Department. There's been no thaw between Washington and Tehran,
however. Instead, the Justice Department found itself obligated to step up
under the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, a 1961 treaty concerning
foreign government property. In 2002, Marla Bennett, a
24-year-old graduate student from San Diego, was one of six people killed by a
bomb blast at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. After Hamas claimed
responsibility, Bennett's parents sued Iran, one of the terrorist group's
financial backers." http://bit.ly/ajCd0Z
AFP: "Authorities in Indian Kashmir
said Monday they had banned Iran's state-run news channel Press TV after it
broadcast images of a small group of Christians ripping the Koran in
Washington. Video of the weekend stunt was blamed for stoking simmering anger
in Kashmir, where security forces shot dead 12 demonstrators on Monday and a
mob torched a church-run school. 'We have decided to impose a ban on the airing
of Press TV broadcasts by local cable operators,' the state chief secretary
S.S. Kapur told reporters in Srinagar, the summer capital of Indian Kashmir." http://bit.ly/9CDKB3
Bloomberg: "President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad said he sees 'no limits or restrictions' on Iran's cooperation with
countries in Africa. Iran and African
nations are 'culturally and historically friends and brothers who are fighting
in the same camp,' Ahmadinejad said today at the opening of a conference in
Tehran, according to the official Islamic Republic News Agency. Iran and Africa
have lands that are rich in natural resources and have had to counter the
presence of 'oppressors and foreign pillagers,' Ahmadinejad was cited by IRNA
as telling conference guests, including Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade and
his Malawian counterpart, Bingu wa Mutharika." http://bit.ly/bF6x9z
Opinion
Iason Athanasiadis in The National: "Iran will eventually release all three hostages, whom it has unconstitutionally
kept inside a high-security prison without charge since July 2009. But until
then, the twists and turns taking place in Tehran belie the Islamic Republic's
claim to be a law-abiding democracy that respects human rights. Just over a
year ago, I was the victim of similar games. Iran's intelligence ministry
detained me as I was leaving the country after I had spent a week reporting on
the tumultuous presidential elections as an accredited journalist for The
Washington Times. Two plainclothes goons beat me in full view of dozens of
people at Tehran's international airport before spiriting me off to Evin
Prison. Three surreal weeks followed." http://bit.ly/9PBNtl
Bernard-Henri Lévy in HuffPo: "Why
Sakineh, the disgruntled ask? Aren't there many other Sakinehs, in Iran and
elsewhere, facing the same fate? Because Sakineh is a symbol, we replied in
unison. She could well have done without being a symbol. She has become this
symbol, oh how unwillingly. But that's how it is, it happened as though
dictated by destiny. It is an insane story whose consequences rained down upon
the head of this simple, practically illiterate woman who is innocent in every
sense of the word. Clearly, today, by defending Sakineh, we in fact defend the
other Sakinehs waiting on Iran's death rows, and perhaps we take vengeance, as
well, for those who, alas, were granted no waiting time and who are dead. This
is the face of all the women who have been stoned to death, burned alive,
eviscerated--but those without faces and who disappeared, for that, in silence
and indifference, just an abstract number." http://huff.to/c6ymJt
Launch of Iran180: Sign the declaration of Iran180, a movement of people and
organizations who have to come together to demand a 180 by the Iranian
government in their pursuit of nuclear weapons and the treatment of their
citizens. http://bit.ly/cTXMWu
|
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment