Top Stories
WSJ: "Iran's economy is under
increasing strain four months after the latest international sanctions against
Tehran, say Iranian businessmen, traders and consumers, who describe spreading
pain from inflation, joblessness and mounting shortages. In interviews from
within Iran, these people paint a picture of unsteady supply chains and
disrupted exports. Ordinary Iranians say they worry they will be caught paying
more for goods and services even as the government trims subsidies... 'The
economic crisis we are witnessing today is a direct result of the sanctions-and
Iranian officials who say otherwise are fooling themselves,' said Mojtaba
Vahidi, who served as a top-level manager for nearly two decades in Iran's ministries
of finance and industry." http://bit.ly/dpNqHj
NYT: "Iran's chief prosecutor
said Monday that the police had arrested two foreigners masquerading as
journalists who were caught in midinterview with the son of a woman convicted
of adultery and murder and sentenced to death by stoning. The chief prosecutor,
Gholamhossein Mohseni-Ejei, announced that two 'foreign nationals' were
arrested Sunday while conducting an interview with Sajad Ghaderzadeh, the son
of Sakineh Mohammadi-Ashtiani, whose conviction and stoning sentence aroused an
international uproar. Mr. Mohseni-Ejei did not identify the nationalities of
the two detained foreigners or specify the news organization they claimed to
represent, but there were indications that they were from Germany." http://nyti.ms/abG3x4
FT: "Iran's oil minister has said
petrol imports have fallen to their lowest level in more than a decade owing to
international sanctions over the country's nuclear programme but insists
domestic production remains sufficient to meet demand. Although Iran sits on
the world's third-largest oil reserves, it lacks sufficient refining capacity
and until recently imported about a third of its 66.5m litres of petrol needs. Masoud
Mir-Kazemi told reporters on Monday that imports of petrol during the last
Iranian month, ending September 22, had shrunk to 0.8m litres, down from 23m litres
a few months ago." http://bit.ly/bz4kYa
Nuclear
Program
AFP: "Iran on Tuesday blamed
European Union Foreign Affairs chief Catherine Ashton for the deadlock over
nuclear talks with world powers, urging her to be 'more active' in pursuing the
dialogue. 'Basically, it seems that the volume of Ms. Ashton's activity is
lower,' foreign ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast told reporters, targeting
Ashton for the stalemate in talks over Tehran's controversial nuclear
programme. Ashton represents the six world powers -- the United States,
Britain, China, France, Russia and Germany -- in negotiations with Iran." http://bit.ly/dzTxFf
WT: "Bahrain on Sunday sought to
'clarify' comments made last week by its U.S. ambassador about the threat a
nuclear-armed Iran would pose to the tiny island kingdom... The Foreign Ministry
statement, which was reported by Press TV and Fars News Agency, two Iranian
state-controlled media outlets, expanded on her remarks without explicitly
denying them. 'Bahrain has consistently made clear its support for the right of
all states to the peaceful civilian use of nuclear energy, transparently and in
accordance with the relevant international framework and safeguards,' the
statement said. 'Bahrain has made clear on a number of occasions that the Islamic
Republic of Iran is no exception to this right.'" http://bit.ly/cR7CYS
Bloomberg: "European Union
sanctions against Iran threaten the planned Nabucco pipeline to ship natural
gas from the Caspian region to Europe, Sueddeutsche Zeitung said, citing an
internal EU paper. Iran holds a 10 percent stake in Azerbaijan's Shah Deniz gas
field, which may help supply Nabucco, through state-owned Naftiran Intertrade
Co., the newspaper reported. The current draft of the sanctions forbids
investments and the supply of equipment for exploration should they be destined
for ventures in which Iran holds a stake, Sueddeutsche said." http://bit.ly/aM4nlk
CNN: "An Iranian legislator has
called on the government to sue Russia after Moscow reneged on the delivery of
an antiaircraft missile system to Iran, the semi-official FARS News Agency
reported Monday. 'The government of the Islamic Republic of Iran should pursue
the case with Russia's lack of commitment to the delivery of the system,'
Kazzem Jalali of the parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy
Commission told reporters Sunday in Tehran, FARS said. He was referring to the
sophisticated S-300 missile system." http://bit.ly/9MmNaC
AP: "Former Alaska Gov. Sarah
Palin says a nuclear weapon in the hands of Iran could 'lead to an Armageddon'
and a world war that could 'decimate so much of this planet.' Palin made her
comments to the conservative website Newsmax.com, which posted excerpts of its
interview online Monday. Palin said the U.S. should keep the military option on
the table, along with sanctions and negotiations, in support of its allies,
including Israel." http://bit.ly/cul2pY
Commerce
Bloomberg: "Iran
Khodro, the country's largest automaker, plans to open a second assembly
facility in Senegal in November, part of a broader push into other emerging
markets including Venezuela and Turkey. Iran Khodro wants to use the West
African nation as a base from which to export vehicles for sale elsewhere in
the continent. The company's Africa strategy fits with its ambitions in South
America, where it is in talks to quadruple the number of cars it assembles each
year at a plant in Venezuela. Iran Khodro also wants to form a joint venture in
Turkey to build a car to be marketed in Islamic countries." http://bit.ly/aUNDEr
Human
Rights
Bloomberg: "Chancellor Angela
Merkel said that the German Foreign Ministry is working to free two German
citizens arrested in Iran. 'We have a huge interest in trying to free them,'
Merkel told reporters in Bucharest today. 'We are doing what we can but we
don't have any new information' on the circumstances of the the pair's arrest.
Iran said yesterday that it arrested two foreign nationals who entered the
Persian Gulf country as tourists and interviewed the son of Sakineh
Mohammadi-Ashtiani, an Iranian woman sentenced to death by stoning." http://bit.ly/b45BkK
Reuters: "Iran has cancelled the
accreditation of the correspondent of the Spanish daily El Pais and ordered her
to leave the country within two weeks, her newspaper said on Monday. Angeles
Espinosa is one of a dwindling group of resident foreign correspondents in
Tehran who have faced growing restrictions on their activities and freedom of
movement since a disputed presidential election sparked protests last year. El
Pais said Espinosa had been given no official explanation but the decision
appeared to be linked to an interview she had conducted with the son of the
late dissident Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri in July." http://bit.ly/bGqogG
Domestic Politics
AP: "Iran's leader issued a
decree Monday paving the way for a state takeover of the country's largest
private university, in a crushing blow to the nation's moderates. The Islamic
Azad University is the center of power for former President Akbar Hashemi
Rafsanjani, a pragmatist and key supporter of Iran's moderates. The
institution, which was founded in 1982, was a major site for opposition
protests against the 2009 disputed re-election of President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad, which opponents say was fraudulent. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali
Khamenei's decree declared the university's endowment, which keeps it
financially independent, to be religiously illegitimate and therefore null and
void." http://bit.ly/9l2cHB
Foreign Affairs
LAT: "On Wednesday, the Iranian
leader makes his first state visit to Lebanon - a visit that includes
strongholds of the Shiite militia Hezbollah in the southern suburbs of Beirut
and the mountainous south... Some observers see Ahmadinejad's visit as a victory
lap and a slap to Israel, the United States and its Arab allies in the region,
as well as Lebanon. Hariri's supporters privately complain that Iran is trying
to turn their country into an Iranian base on the eastern edge of the
Mediterranean Sea." http://lat.ms/aV2TJ8
Opinion
John Vinocur in NYT: "But in
describing how the administration's goals became fixated on finding a date when
U.S. forces would begin to leave the country, and how the original objective of
'defeating' the Taliban became 'disrupting' them, and then 'degrading' the
insurgents, the book's essential meaning for allied governments is likely to be
in the indications it provides of a United States for which 'winning' has
become a soft notion, open to interpretation. Today, this concern - notably in
France - often relates to Iran because the allies, as the book asserts, play a
minor fighting role in the war in Afghanistan that is without constant impact
on their domestic politics. Because the French, and many Americans in an
election year, are emphasizing that a nuclear-armed Iran is an ultimately
greater concern, the book tends to reinforce the questions of some of the
allies about the Obama administration's resolve to stop the mullahs' drive." http://nyti.ms/cDTWeq
Jahangir Arasli in INEGMA: "The following considerations should be kept in mind in relation to the
IRI BM program. This program is inherently linked to the nuclear program and
should be treated indivisibly from it. The program in question has relatively
low conventional application utility and extremely high unconventional one. The
ultimate goal of Iran is to get an operational nuclear weapon. At the same
time, the missile program per se has already taken shape as the IRI's strategic
asset and a political warfare force multiplier. By conducting repetitive
missiles tests, supported by extensive media and propaganda coverage, Iran
simultaneously tests the will and cohesion of the Western alliance, signaling
its intentions to the world." http://bit.ly/dhMblQ
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