Top Stories
AP: "President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad of Iran taunted archenemy Israel yesterday from just across the tense
border in southern Lebanon where he rallied tens of thousands of supporters of
ally Hezbollah as Israeli attack helicopters buzzed in the skies nearby. Ahmadinejad,
who has repeatedly said Israel should be wiped off the map and has denied the
Holocaust occurred, vowed that 'resistance' forces will liberate Palestinians
from Israeli control. The United States and Israel called his visit to the
border region of southern Lebanon a provocation. 'The world should know that
Zionists will perish,' he said at a rally in the border village of Bint Jbeil,
which was one of the hardest-hit areas in the 2006 Israeli-Hezbollah war. It
has since been rebuilt with the help of heavy investments from Iran. 'Occupied
Palestine will be liberated from the filth of occupation by the strength of
resistance and through the faith of the resistance,' Ahmadinejad said to the
crowd waving a sea of Lebanese, Iranian, and Hezbollah flags." http://bit.ly/acJtjj
AFP: "A resumption of
long-stalled talks between world powers and Iran over its controversial nuclear
programme was back on the horizon Friday after Iran welcomed an offer to break
the stalemate. Iran's Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki flew into Brussels
for a Pakistan aid meeting saying an offer of dialogue delivered the previous
day was 'good news.' The European Union's foreign affairs chief Catherine
Ashton, who represents world powers in the nuclear dialogue with Iran, on
Thursday proposed a new round of meetings in Vienna next month. 'From our point
of view, October or November is a good time to re-establish negotiations
between Iran and the 5+1,' said Mottaki, referring to Britain, China, France,
Russia, the United States and Germany... Ashton, the EU's high representative for
foreign policy, suggested the talks take place over three days in the middle of
November." http://bit.ly/9zTMFl
AFP: "Japanese oil developer
Inpex Corp. said Friday it would withdraw from Iran's Azadegan oil field
project, a move believed to be aimed at keeping it off a list of firms subject
to US sanctions. 'Inpex Corp. has reached an agreement with Iran's state oil
company that its subsidiary will withdraw from the Azadegan oilfield
development project,' the Japanese government-backed company said in a
statement. Iran's Azadegan oilfield, which has about 42 billion barrels of oil,
was initially to have been developed with Inpex." http://bit.ly/aNdS5m
Nuclear
Program
AP: "The leader of Hezbollah gave
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a unique gift to cap off his two-day trip
to Lebanon - an Israeli assault rifle capture during the militant group's 2006
war with the Jewish state. Sheik Hassan Nasrallah presented the weapon - in a
felt-lined box with a row of bullets - during a meeting at the Iranian embassy
in Beirut late Thursday, Hezbollah said in a statement." http://bit.ly/dfcn1N
The Australian: "British banks and financiers, including Lloyds and
Barclays, helped Iran evade sanctions set up to prevent terrorism, the US said.
The
sanctions were also put up to promote Middle East peace and stop the ayatollahs
gaining nuclear weapons.Investigations
by prosecutors from the US Department of Justice found that Lloyds and Barclays
helped the Iranians to access up to $US600 million ($604m) in the US financial
system by hiding customers' identities.Lord
Lamont of Lerwick, the former Chancellor, is on the board of a British trading
house that was subjected to a civil penalty for breaching US sanctions by
helping Iran to get banned American aircraft." http://bit.ly/b1bdFJ
Commerce
Bloomberg: "American
International Group is likely to gain 'tens of millions of dollars' from the
initial public offering of a Chinese automaker that does business with Iran,
the South China Morning Post reported. AIG, through a unit, owns 13.5 percent
in Chongqing-based Lifan Industry Group Co., which exports motorcycles to Iran
and where a local factory has a licensing agreement to assemble Lifan's cars
from imported kits, the Hong Kong-based English- language newspaper reported
today, citing Mark Herr, AIG's New York-based vice-president of media
relations." http://bit.ly/9VcxtF
BBC: "Iran
will assume the presidency of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries
(Opec) for the first time in 36 years. The country's oil minister was elected
as Opec president at a one-day meeting of the group, which is made up of 12 oil
producing states. Masoud Mir-Kazemi will hold the presidency from 1 January
2011. Iran, which takes over from Ecuador, is Opec's second-largest oil
producer and holds about 10% of world oil reserves." http://bbc.in/aJQvZ8
Human
Rights
AFP: "Iranian women have been
forced into slavery, the former lawyer for Sakineh Mohammadi-Ashtiani, the
Iranian woman facing death by stoning, said Thursday. 'In Iran unfortunately
one could say women are in a real situation of slavery,' Mohammad Mostafaie,
who fled Iran for Norway last July, told the European Parliament's human rights
committee. Iran 'is one of the world's worst violators of human rights, with
deaths by stoning, executions of minors aged under 18 and amputations,' he
said. Mostafaie fled Iran when Tehran issued an arrest warrant against him at
the end of July. 'Women and children are tortured,' he told the committee. 'When
a country fails to respect the rights of its own citizens, it won't respect the
right of any other country.'" http://bit.ly/ag4o07
Reuters: "The European Union and
United Nations should tighten curbs on Iranian leaders' foreign travel over
alleged human rights violations, the lawyer who defended an Iranian women
sentenced to death by stoning said Thursday. Mohammad Mostafaei, who has sought
asylum abroad after fleeing Iran in July, made his comments to the European
Parliament's human rights sub-committee in Brussels. 'The European Union and
the U.N. Security Council should try, instead of economic sanctions on the
Iranian people, to implement political sanctions against Iran,' he said. 'Why
should Iranian rulers who are violating human rights be able to go abroad to
give speeches?'" http://reut.rs/9H66Ob
AFP: "Iran has arrested Mehdi
Khazali, the son of a prominent conservative cleric who has been fiercely
critical of hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, an opposition website said.
Khazali is being held on charges of 'acting against national security and
disturbing public opinion' after being interrogated at the capital's notorious
Evin prison, the opposition website Rahesabz reported late on Wednesday. A
medical doctor and veteran of the 1980-88 war with Iraq, Khazali is the son of
Ayatollah Abolqasem Khazali, a long-serving member of the Assembly of Experts,
the clerical body which oversees the work of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali
Khamenei." http://bit.ly/bduDSE
Reuters: "Iran's
prosecutor-general has said that two Germans who were arrested in Iran when
they tried to interview the son of a woman sentenced to be stoned to death had
admitted breaking the law, state media reported on Friday. Germany has said it
is seeking the release of two reporters seized on Monday after meeting the son
of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, whose death sentence for adultery was shelved
last month following a global outcry." http://reut.rs/acbH2w
Opinion
Con Coughlin in The Daily Telegraph: "But
it is Hizbollah's continued - though constantly denied - involvement in
terrorism, rather than its confrontational posture with its southern neighbour,
that is the real motivation behind Mr Ahmadinejad's decision to become the
first Iranian president to visit the region... In a few weeks' time, the United
Nations special tribunal that has spent the past five years investigating the
assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri is due to publish
its findings. Mr Hariri, a self-made Sunni Muslim billionaire who was financing
Lebanon's post-civil war reconstruction, was killed by a car bomb as he drove
through Beirut in 2005... Details of the UN tribunal's findings leaked to the
Beirut press suggest that, apart from Mugniyeh, the investigators have
uncovered evidence that links as many as 50 senior Hizbollah officials to the
assassination... By parading through Shia-dominated southern Lebanon yesterday,
Mr Ahmadinejad was not only demonstrating his loyalty to Tehran's favourite
Islamic militia. He was also sending an uncompromising message to Mr Hariri's
government to drop the charges against Hizbollah, or face the consequences." http://bit.ly/9D7JfZ
Frida Ghitis in World Politics
Review: "While Western diplomats and sanctions-enforcers ply their trade to
pressure Iran into stopping its uranium enrichment, much of the Middle East is
already preparing for war. Headlines might focus on United Nations resolutions
initiated by Western powers, or on fiery speeches delivered by Iranian
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. But just a few hundred miles from Tehran, the
Arab countries of the Persian Gulf have launched a race to arm themselves with
an urgency and intensity reminiscent of America's defense build-up prior to its
entry into World War II. The magnitude of the weapons purchases is nothing
short of astounding and the speed at which they are accelerating is
breathtaking. Consider how fast the orders are growing: Gulf nations, including
Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman and Kuwait, bought
$37 billion worth of U.S. weapons in the last four years, with the majority of
the purchases coming in just the last two years. And the deals already under
negotiation for the next four years are expected to total $123 billion. Those
numbers don't include arms purchases from countries other than the U.S." http://bit.ly/937q7Z
Tony
Karon in TIME: "Ahmadinejad is certainly in deep trouble at home, and
grandstanding in the international limelight of controversy, whether at the
United Nations last month or on south Lebanon's border with Israel on Thursday,
certainly offers temporary respite from domestic challenges. Even while his
thugs have managed to quiet the streets from protests by the Green Movement,
his mismanagement of Iran's economy, amplified by the bite of sanctions, and
his alienation of rival conservatives and of the clerics, has prompted vicious
political infighting inside the corridors of power. But while Iran's president
may be enjoying an opportunity to change the subject, his Lebanon visit
nonetheless underscores three harsh truths for the U.S. and its allies. First,
Iran is not nearly as isolated as Washington would like; secondly, the Bush
Administration efforts to vanquish Tehran and its allies have failed; and,
finally, the balance of forces in the region today prompts even U.S.-allied
Arab regimes to engage pragmatically with a greatly expanded Iranian regional
role." http://bit.ly/d62t8h
|
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment