Top Stories
LAT: "Reporting from the United
Nations - Six world powers may resume talks with Iran over its disputed nuclear
program as early as this fall, officials said Wednesday. Diplomats from the six
nations said after a morning meeting in New York that they had seen several
recent signals that Tehran is willing to resume the conversations it broke off
almost a year ago. The diplomats expressed some wariness, however, saying that
Iranian officials have ignored previous approaches from the West and noting
that there is deep mistrust between the two sides after years of failed
attempts at negotiation. 'The real proof will be in renewed engagement,' said a
senior Obama administration official who asked not to be named because of the
sensitivity of the matter." http://lat.ms/97aKHz
CNN: "Iranian President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad lashed out at Benjamin Netanyahu in an interview with CNN's Larry
King Wednesday, calling the Israeli prime minister a 'skilled killer' who 'should
be put on trial for killing women and children.' The Iranian president denied
that international sanctions were hurting his country, and refused to commit to
meeting President Obama if the opportunity arose. Ahmadinejad also deflected
questions about Iran's nuclear program, saying Iran has 'no interest' in a nuclear
bomb and that no one is concerned about Iran's intentions other than 'the
Zionist regime and some American authorities.' 'We are not seeking the bomb,' Ahmadinejad
said." http://bit.ly/arZJng
Reuters: "ThyssenKrupp
said it would freeze all new business with Iran with immediate effect and
terminate existing contracts there as soon as possible in response to
ever-harsher sanctions against the Islamic Republic. 'By halting business with
Iran we are supporting the sanctions policies of the Federal Republic of Germany,
the European Union and the United States,' Ekkehard Schulz, chief executive of
Germany's biggest steelmaker, said on Thursday. ThyssenKrupp is the latest in a
series of German companies reducing business ties with Iran." http://bit.ly/9AUtaM
UNGA
Ambassador Mark Wallace in the Chicago Tribune: "Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is in
Manhattan this week to attend the United Nations General Assembly.
Unfortunately, the Hilton Manhattan East hotel has agreed to host the Holocaust-denying
president and his henchmen. He may want to bring some board games, because it's
unlikely he will be welcome anywhere else in the city. In fact, the vast
majority of New York venues have made it clear that he is not welcome... Companies
that have rebuffed this brutal regime go far beyond the hospitality industry
and far away from New York City. Caterpillar, General Electric, Ingersoll Rand,
KPMG and Toyota are just a few of the major corporations that have stopped
doing business in Iran. Because the regime's cronies pervade Iran's society and
economy, these businesses realize that their presence in Iran lends legitimacy
to the regime." http://bit.ly/bDxoPe
NY Post: "Iranian
President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad doesn't need nuclear weapons -- his food stinks so
bad, he's practically cleared out the Hilton Manhattan East. The finicky
fascist brought his own personal chef to prepare his meals while he's in town
for the UN General Assembly, a source told The Post's Helen Freund.
Unfortunately, his meals 'make the whole hotel stink like hell,' said the
source. The Hilton did not return a call for comment." http://bit.ly/aJlHWs
Nuclear
Program
NYT: "The White House praised Russia's president, Dmitri A.
Medvedev, on Wednesday for publicly barring the shipment of an advanced
antimissile system to Iran, even as American diplomats here discussed a plan to
reopen negotiations with Tehran over its nuclear program... Mr. Medvedev's decree
ended an internal debate in Russia, pitting supporters of sanctions against
those trying to bolster economic relations with Iran, and about whether the
Security Council sanctions included the air defense missiles. Russian news
media had reported that the contract was worth $800 million." http://nyti.ms/dlMPms
AP: "Iran is seeking a seat on
the decision-making board of the same U.N. nuclear agency probing its
activities for evidence that Tehran may be interested in making atomic weapons,
officials said Thursday. While Iran has sought such a position previously, it
had always withdrawn its candidates well before the 151 members of the
International Atomic Energy Agency approve members for the agency's 35-nation
board. Diplomats and other government officials, however, told The Associated
Press just hours before the issue was to be taken up Thursday that Iran's hat
remained in the ring." http://bit.ly/cAPCbU
ABC: "A top Israeli warned today
that Iran's vast nuclear program could be crippled for years with airstrikes on
just a 'few bottlenecks, important ones.' Israel's public calculation came a
day after Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad vowed that he would unleash a 'war
without boundaries' on the U.S. if it allowed Israel to attack its nuclear
complex. 'War is not just bombs,' the Iranian president threatened. Deputy
Israeli Foreign Minister Dan Ayalon was asked today in an exclusive interview
with ABC News Radio whether Iran's nuclear facilities face potential air strikes,
nuclear or otherwise, by Israel or the United States." http://bit.ly/aUIgVu
Reuters: "Iran is ready to enter 'fair'
negotiations with major powers over its nuclear activities, state radio quoted
Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki as saying. Major powers said on Wednesday
they hoped for an early negotiated solution to the stand-off over Iran's nuclear
program, which the United States and its allies suspect is aimed at developing
bombs, as well as fresh talks on a potential atomic fuel swap plan. State radio
quoted Mottaki as saying Iran, which insists it only wants nuclear power to
generate electricity, had always favoured resolving the dispute through talks."
http://nyti.ms/awck3S
Human
Rights
NYT: "A day after Iran's
president defended his country's record in permitting criticism, opposition Web
sites reported on Wednesday that the second dissident Iranian journalist in
less than a week had been incarcerated on charges including 'propaganda against
the state' ... The Web sites said the journalist, Emadeddin Baghi, had been
ordered jailed for six years for offenses that also included collusion to
commit acts 'against national security.' The sentencing offered further
evidence of Tehran's determination to suppress dissent after widespread
protests following disputed elections in June 2009." http://nyti.ms/9Yrbvb
Daily Telegraph: "Iranian
prosecutors have demanded the death penalty for a writer known as the 'blogfather'
who was put on secret trial earlier this year, according to his family. Hossein
Derakhshan, 35, who has both Iranian and Canadian nationality, won his nickname
after developing a blog platform for Persian characters that was widely copied
by online activists and commentators." http://bit.ly/9bxd0I
Domestic Politics
AP: "Iran's intelligence minister says the group behind the bombing
that killed 12 people in the country's remote west has been identified. The
minister, Haidar Moslehi, provided no details but warned the 'terrorists will
be punished soon.' His remarks were carried Thursday on state TV and the
semi-official Mehr news agency. Iran has already blamed Wednesday's attack on
Kurdish separatists who have fought Iranian forces in the area for years. But
most Kurdish groups condemned the attack and no one has so far claimed
responsibility for it." http://bit.ly/a3W5wa
Foreign Affairs
AP: "The Iranian defense minister
has criticized Russia for banning all sales of S-300 anti-aircraft missile
systems to Iran. Thursday's comments by Gen. Ahmad Vahidi come a day after
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev issued a decree on the ban... Vahidi told
Iranian state TV that the Russians are obliged to implement the 2007 contract."
http://bit.ly/9C73zK
Opinion
Bret
Stephens in WSJ: "It's a few
minutes before eight in the morning on Tuesday, and the 30 or so journalists
who have assembled to meet Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the conference room of a
midtown Manhattan hotel are gorging themselves on lox and bagels and wondering
whether the buffet is some kind of sly catering joke. A prominent TV
personality seated next to me is approached by an Iranian film crew wanting to
know her thoughts about their president. She says something cringingly
obsequious about how gracious he is for making himself available to the media. I
suppose she's simply trying to be polite, and perhaps taking care not to say
anything that could cause trouble for her or her colleagues down the road. But
it dawns on me that the exchange also captures the central dynamic of the
meeting. We get access to Ahmadinejad-and the feeling of self-importance that
goes with that. In exchange, we pay him court." http://bit.ly/aQaCR4
Mohamad Bazzi in NY Daily News: "Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (above) has once
again stolen the spotlight at the United Nations. On Tuesday, he declared that
capitalism would soon be dead, and demanded an overhaul of the 'undemocratic
and unjust' global political system. That was just a warmup for his speech
today at the opening of the UN General Assembly. It's easy to dismiss
Ahmadinejad's rhetoric as the rants of an unstable despot. But that misses the
point: His message is intended to improve his standing in the Muslim world and
bolster his reputation as a Third World hero." http://bit.ly/aYoig6
Borzou Daragahi
and Ramin Mostaghim in LAT: "In New York, Iranian President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad can boast that he's the talk of the town, appearing on television
shows with the likes of Christiane Amanpour and Larry King, hobnobbing with
fellow heads of state and addressing the United Nations General Assembly on
Thursday. In Tehran these days, the outspoken hard-line politician is under
withering attack from all political directions. His detractors in recent weeks
have included assorted fundamentalist clergymen who have accused him of
interfering in religious affairs, a judiciary that humiliated him by delaying
the release of American hiker Sarah Shourd, the editor of a right-wing
newspaper handpicked by supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the moderate
head of the powerful Assembly of Experts, and a member of parliament who
condemned him for praising the pre-Islamic Persian king Cyrus, who is an icon
of secular nationalists." http://lat.ms/9uSIXX
Reuel Marc Gerecht in TNR: "Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's
speech at the United Nations and his utterances elsewhere in New York are,
again, proof that the Marxist-Islamist Molotov cocktail that produced the
Islamic revolution is rebelliously alive among Iran's ruling elite. The
country's ruler-Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader-unquestionably cleared that
speech, and Ahmadinejad is to Khamenei what the Marseilles soccer baron Bernard
Tapie was to the effete François Mitterrand: a man of action and violence who expresses
mundanely what the more ethereal and physically timid alter ego could not. It
was said of Tapie (born in 1943) that President Mitterrand could easily imagine
him machine-gunning Nazis in a French café-something not at all possible of the
Vichy-comfortable, money-eschewing, bookshop-loving leader of the Socialist
Party." http://bit.ly/bjfaHR
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