Top Stories
WSJ: "Iran is developing an
underground military installation in the mountains west of Tehran, according to
U.S. officials and Iranian dissidents, but the facility's exact purpose is in
dispute... The MEK said the facility is 85% complete and adjoined to a major
Iranian military garrison. The dissidents said they didn't believe that
cascades of centrifuges, which are used to produce nuclear fuel, have been
introduced to the mountainous site. But they said that three halls to house the
centrifuges have been built and that the Iranian government has spent roughly
$100 million developing the facility." http://bit.ly/aZ15ZK
NYT: "Iran plans to release Sarah
E. Shourd, one of the three American hikers detained last year and accused of
spying, Iranian officials said Thursday. The Ministry of Culture and Islamic
Guidance in Iran has invited reporters to witness the release on Saturday
morning at a Tehran hotel, the same hotel where the three Americans were allowed
to meet with their mothers in May - their only meeting with relatives or other
Westerners since they were detained after straying across the mountainous
border with northern Iraq in July 2009." http://nyti.ms/aQYNbr
FT: "Iran has activated an
emergency plan to increase petrol production in tacit confirmation that tighter
international sanctions over its nuclear programme have affected supplies. Although
Iran is a big oil producer, it lacks sufficient refining capacity and imports
about a third of its petrol needs... Masoud Mir-Kazemi, Iran's oil minister, said
this week that Iran had implemented the emergency plan and was now capable of
producing 66.5m litres of petrol, enough to cover domestic needs. He insisted
that the country was no longer dependent on imports." http://bit.ly/aG61vj
Nuclear Program
AFP: "Iran on Friday denied claims by opposition groups that it was secretly
building a new uranium enrichment site deep in the mountains northwest of the
capital. 'We have no such installation that enriches uranium and if they
(opposition groups) are aware of such a development, they should tell us. We
will thank them,' the country's atomic chief Ali Akbar Salehi told the Mehr
news agency." http://bit.ly/bVgodd
Commerce
Bloomberg: "Iran's Agriculture
Ministry banned the import of 49 agriculture products, Donya-e-Eqtesad reported.
Iranian Agriculture Minister Sadegh Khalilian wrote to the Commerce Ministry
demanding imports of certain fruit, fruit concentrates and dairy products to be
halted until further notice, the newspaper said, citing the document... The move
comes two weeks after the agriculture Ministry announced that non-'essential'
imports would be restricted." http://bit.ly/9xcs1z
Human Rights
AFP: "Iran's delaying the stoning
to death of a woman for adultery appears to underscore reticence by Muslim
governments to brook local and international opinion to carry out such
terrifying executions. Apart from Iran, none of a handful of countries where
Islamic sharia law is practised, including ultra-conservative Saudi Arabia, has
implemented the punishment in recent years. And even in Iran, where press
reports say six people may have been stoned to death over the past five years,
stoning for adultery and fornication is increasingly rare." http://bit.ly/cngo4w
AP: "An Iranian news agency says
Saturday's planned released of one of three Americans jailed for more than a
year is a result of intervention by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad... Iran's Mehr
news agency on Friday quoted the Foreign Ministry as saying the president intervened
in part because of the 'special viewpoint of the Islamic Republic of Iran on
the dignity of women.'" http://bit.ly/a8TVGY
ABC: "On the eve of the planned
release of Sarah Shourd, one of three American hikers detained in Iran, the
lawyer for the remaining two captives said the release raises doubt about
Iran's account of the hikers' original arrest more than a year ago. 'If Sarah
is released based on her sickness, then why were they detained in the first
place?' attorney Masoud Shafie said through a translator in an interview that
aired on 'Good Morning America' today. 'This raises big questions.'" http://bit.ly/apOHUZ
Domestic Politics
FP: "Faezeh
Hashemi Rafsanjani, 48, was one of Iran's leading members of parliament from
1992 to 1996 and the founder and editor of Zan, Iran's first-ever daily
women's newspaper. She is also the daughter of Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi
Rafsanjani, one of the country's most influential men and strongest opponents
of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. During the widespread protests that followed
Iran's contested presidential election last year, Hashemi was a vocal supporter
of the Green Movement and was briefly imprisoned by the Iranian government for
her activism. She spoke to Omid Memarian about how Iran has changed since that
election and the future of the Green Movement." http://bit.ly/9Jzx00
Foreign Affairs
AP: "A Babylonian artifact
sometimes described as the world's first human rights charter is to go on
display in Iran after the government threatened to cut ties with the British
Museum if it did not loan the object. The Cyrus Cylinder is a sixth century
B.C. clay object inscribed with an account in cuneiform of the conquest of
Babylon by the Persian King Cyrus the Great. It arrived in Iran on Friday and
will go on display in the coming days at Iran's National Museum for four
months, state TV reported." http://bit.ly/9wyU3e
JPost: "Israel is behind a US
Reverend's planned Koran burning, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki
said Thursday, according to the official Iranian news agency IRNA. 'The
software for this plan was made by the Zionists following their defeats against
Muslims and the Islamic world,' Manouchehr said in a meeting with foreign
diplomats in Iran." http://bit.ly/93f0RA
Opinion
NYT Editorial: "Tehran has a long
and cynical history of hiding nuclear facilities - including its main
enrichment site at Natanz and more recently discovered enrichment facility at
Qum. If that isn't enough, an Iranian dissident group on Thursday said it has
found evidence of yet another secret nuclear site. And Iran is still refusing
to fully cooperate with inspections by the atomic energy agency. For the past two
years, Iran has barred two of the agency's most experienced monitors. The
report also says Iran is continuing to refuse to answer questions about whether
it is hiding other facilities and whether its program has military uses,
including a suspected project to fit a nuclear warhead on a missile. American
officials say said the new sanctions are beginning to bite - choking Iran's
access to foreign capital, trade and investments. If there is any chance of
changing Tehran's behavior, it is clearly going to take more pressure and more
time." http://nyti.ms/cBiipq
WSJ Editorial: "When it comes to
doing business with Iran, the countries that usually come to mind are China,
Russia, Turkey and North Korea. Yet democracies like South Korea, Japan and
India also boast hefty trade flows with Tehran. That economic lifeline matters
as the clock ticks down to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's bomb. That's why South Korea
and Japan's recent announcements that they'll implement United Nations Security
Council Resolution 1929 is worth cheering. Both U.S. allies have billions of
dollars of energy investments and do a thriving goods trade with the Iranian
regime. They have tried to straddle both sides of the fence for decades." http://bit.ly/br2s5P
WashPost Editorial: "Administration
officials say that it would still take Iran a year to produce a weapon and that
such an attempt would likely be detected by U.N. inspectors. But the IAEA
report contained worrisome information on that score, too. Iran is refusing to
answer questions about its work on more advanced centrifuges or on plans to
construct more enrichment facilities. In June it barred two of the most
experienced inspectors, part of a systematic effort to blind the IAEA to its
activities. An analysis of the report by the Institute for Science and
International Security concluded that Iran may be seeking 'to increase its
capability to divert nuclear material in secret and produce weapon-grade
uranium in a plant unknown to the inspectors or Western intelligence agencies.'
If that is the case, economic sanctions are unlikely to prevent it." http://bit.ly/9lpptW
Ian Bremmer in FP: "There's an
interesting fight simmering inside Iran. Not over support for the nuclear
program, which remains just about the only thing Iranians of all ages and
ideological persuasions agree on. Nor is it another round in the conflict
between the regime and the reformers that kicked into high gear following last
year's disputed presidential election, though that one is far from over. This
fight is within the conservative elite -- with interesting implications for the
future of President Ahmadinejad, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and the
balance of power within the establishment. It's a battle for the future of the
regime." http://bit.ly/cZ0em8
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