Solsticewitch13's BOS: Eye on Iran: Iran Won't Talk About Limiting Nuclear Program

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AP: "Iran's president said Wednesday that his country wants to discuss cooperation to resolve global issues and to promote peace and security at nuclear talks with world powers, but won't talk about what it insists is its right to continue nuclear activities. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad spoke a day after Iran offered to resume nuclear talks this month with six nations - the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany. The talks collapsed last year and Ahmadinejad's comments raise further questions about whether Iran is willing to reopen the dialogue on its nuclear program... Addressing a group of people in Qazvin, in northern Iran, Ahmadinejad said Tehran is ready to discuss 'global challenges' and help global peace based on mutual respect but won't discuss its right to continue nuclear activities. 'We've said repeatedly that the Iranian nation will never discuss its basic rights with anybody,' Ahmadinejad said." http://wapo.st/axqp1k

AP: "Iran offered Tuesday to resume nuclear talks with United States and other world powers, though it set a possible deal-breaking ground rule by insisting that a key international demand be left off the table. The shifting signals from Tehran - which also included separate announcements with different timetables for talks - raised questions about whether Iran was seriously interested in reopening international dialogue over its nuclear program or trying to emphasize the point that it would never accept a package requiring it halt uranium enrichment. Iran ruled out any discussion of a nuclear fuel exchange deal like the one it balked at last year and which was meant to ensure it could not divert material to nuclear weapons production... Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman, Ramin Mehmanparast, said the proposed talks would 'not include the issue of the fuel swap under any circumstance,' according to a report by the semi-official Mehr news agency." http://wapo.st/bwKYTU

WSJ: "Iran has proposed two dates for fresh nuclear talks with the major powers, Nov. 23 and Dec. 5, Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Wednesday. Mr. Erdogan said in televised remarks that the talks, between Iran and the group known as P5+1-the U.S., China, Russia, France, the U.K. and Germany-wouldn't happen on Nov. 15, as earlier proposed by Iranian officials. He said no date has yet been agreed to by the parties. The Turkish prime minister was speaking to reporters at Ankara airport on his way to Seoul for a meeting of the leaders of the Group of 20 industrial and developing nations. Turkey has said it would agree to host the talks if it is asked, but the location remains uncertain." http://on.wsj.com/cQqHSC

Nuclear Program & Sanctions

Reuters: "Britain's North Sea Rhum gas field is shutting down due to European Union sanctions on Iran, operator BP said on Wednesday. 'BP continues to seek appropriate clarification from the UK Government on certain aspects of the regulations and how they apply to the BP-operated Rhum field in the North Sea (in which the Iranian Oil Company Limited has a 50 percent interest),' the energy producer said. 'Pending clarification from the Government, and to ensure we comply with the required notification period in the Regulations, preparations to suspend production are underway.' The shutdown process is expected to take several days." http://bit.ly/d6193I

Reuters: "Iran has developed a version of the Russian S-300 missile and will test-fire it soon, the official news agency IRNA said, two months after Moscow decided not to deliver it to Tehran to comply with U.N. sanctions. 'The Iranian (version) of the S-300 system is undergoing field modification and will be test-fired soon as other long range systems are being designed and produced,' IRNA quoted Brigadier General Mohammad Hassan Mansourian, a commander in Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards, as saying." http://reut.rs/9k50ad

WashPost: "The U.N. Security Council was preparing Tuesday to release a long-delayed report alleging that North Korea may have transferred ballistic-missile and nuclear technology to Syria, Iran and Burma, according to diplomats... Those accounts, according to the U.N. report, indicate North Korean 'involvement in nuclear ballistic missile related activities in certain other countries, including Iran, Syria and Myanmar,' Burma's official name." http://wapo.st/dfwZea

Bloomberg: "The United Arab Emirates government is taking steps to prevent Iran from exploiting bilateral economic ties to evade international sanctions aimed at preventing nuclear proliferation, U.S. officials said. UAE is sustaining some economic damage from its efforts to comply with international obligations under United Nations sanctions against Iran, two officials told reporters, speaking at the end of Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner's visit to Abu Dhabi. One official said the economic impact is causing pain for certain enterprises, if not heavy damage to the country's overall economy." http://bit.ly/dlJEcG

Human Rights

AOL: "Nobel Peace laureate Shirin Ebadi today urged the international community to impose 'political sanctions' on Iran, where she said human rights for women and political prisoners are rapidly deteriorating. Ebadi, who is Iranian herself, called for steps such as travel bans and freezing assets of those leaders and officials who were involved in human rights abuses. She noted that eight Iranian officials had recently been barred from entering the United States. 'We ask other countries to adopt the same kind of political sanctions against Iran. ... Let's make the world smaller for violators of human rights,' she told reporters at U.N. headquarters in New York." http://aol.it/aSREvQ

AFP: "Iranian Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi said Tuesday it was 'a joke' that her country and Saudi Arabia are in line to get places on the board running the new UN Women agency. Saudi Arabia is assured of a place on the board of the women's super agency, which UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has made a priority of his administration. Iran, frequently condemned over human rights, is one of 11 nations contending for 10 Asian places on the 41-nation board. Ebadi told a press conference at the UN headquarters it was likely that Iran would win a place when the UN General Assembly decides on Wednesday." http://bit.ly/ajQ82a

Daily Mail: "Iran has launched a second scathing barrage of insults at French First Lady Carla Bruni - branding her an adulteress with a 'vastly immoral lifestyle.' The hardline newspaper Kayhan - the mouthpiece of the extremist Islamic regime - also claimed President Nicolas Sarkozy had said he would be 'happy if his wife died.' The verbal onslaught comes after both Sarkozy and Bruni had pleaded with Iran not to stone to death 43-year-old mother-of-two Sakineh Mohammadi-Ashtiani, accused of cheating on her husband and then helping to kill him." http://bit.ly/baTCT6

Guardian: "Iranian exiles opposed to the Islamic regime claimed a victory today with the defection of a former air force officer said to have significant links with senior members of the country's military. Behzad Masoumi Legwan, a lieutenant who was purged from the armed forces in 2001 but remained politically active until fleeing Iran last year, arrived in France today to seek political asylum, the Green Wave movement announced. Masoumi, who fled Iran to Iraq, served as an interlocutor between disgruntled fellow air force officers and senior officers in other branches of the Iranian armed forces, it said. The Green Wave, led by businessman Amir Jahanchahi, has announced the defection of three diplomats from Iranian embassies in Europe in recent months. Several more are apparently waiting to join the group in protest over human rights and electoral abuses in Iran." http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?llr=hfdiftcab&et=1103899436047&s=30860&e=0015x-Wjyqk-rUvbNIRvT-6LlcWEBLTt4Tj2fWzRIoyCElIZSjJlGJ4QByi6kLwDfViw9WBmOBW8mFeL3-Xq_OZ0ruv5KkWJOVoJpjl1FDkwq8=

Foreign Affairs

Guardian: "The BBC is to resume broadcasts from Iran nearly 18 months after its correspondent was thrown out during the mass unrest that followed the country's disputed presidential election in 2009. The move is being interpreted as a slight thaw in Iran's tense relations with Britain and the west, especially because the BBC is often attacked by Iranian hardliners as a propaganda arm of the UK government. The first public sign of the relaxation came with a report by an Iranian employee of the BBC's Tehran bureau, published today. The bureau remained open even when its last correspondent, Jon Leyne, was expelled in June 2009." http://bit.ly/9wcnCi

Bloomberg: "An envoy of Pope Benedict XVI met with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Tehran and delivered a message from the Roman Catholic leader, Italian news agency Ansa said today, citing Iranian media reports. Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, who heads the Vatican's office on inter-religious dialogue, met with Ahmadinejad yesterday, Ansa said. The Vatican said this week that Tauran was traveling to Iran to take part in inter-religious talks that would include a visit to the city of Qom, a Shiite spiritual center where the Iranian government has said it is building a uranian-enrichment facility." http://bit.ly/9SCG6B

Opinion & Analysis

Zalmay Khalizad in WSJ: "Iran is playing a dangerous game right now in Iraq. Seven months after Iraq's inconclusive election, Tehran has emerged as the key power broker in the country, expanding its regional influence by fostering sectarianism and a government dominated by it. If we hope to prevent a serious strategic setback, American leadership is required immediately. The election initially looked like a setback for the Iranian regime. Former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi's anti- Iranian, secular and mostly Sunni Arab-backed party, called Iraqiya, won the most seats. Current Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's State of Law Coalition came in a close second. Mr. Maliki's party has a Shiite orientation, but Iran perceived it to be moving Iraq in a more independent direction-away from pro-Iranian sectarian politics. Instead of helping the Iraqis unify their fragile government, Washington adopted a hands-off policy for several months. There were likely two reasons for this approach: internal disagreements within the White House about the proper strategy, and the Obama administration's almost exclusive focus on carrying out its timetable for withdrawal." http://on.wsj.com/bUQ6nJ

Emma Belcher in HuffPo: "The Obama administration is preparing the ground for tougher sanctions on Iran by pushing to revive last year's ill-fated fuel swap deal. The renewed proposal to swap Iran's low enriched uranium for research reactor fuel is not a serious attempt at engagement, as the Unites States knows it will likely fail. Instead, it is intended to depict the United States as a reasonable negotiating partner, and Iran as a duplicitous state bent on obtaining the bomb at all costs. This could increase support for harsher international sanctions that are more strictly implemented... If the new fuel swap deal is a serious attempt at engaging Iran, it is doomed to fail. It will fall prey to the same dynamics that precluded a deal the first time around. Iran has flatly rejected shipping significantly more than 1,200kg of 3.5 percent fuel abroad to account for its enrichment since the original proposal -- a key element of the Administration's new terms... The timing is not ripe for such a deal, and the Obama administration cannot be blind to this reality. It is reviving the deal as part of a broader strategy to strengthen support for sanctions implementation, and to further isolate Iran. For an administration that believes in the power of sanctions, they are not as harsh as they could be." http://huff.to/d7J7JU

Zvi Bar'el in Haaretz: "Are relations between Syria and Iran cooling off? Has Tehran overdone things in Damascus? Huda al-Husseini, a veteran Lebanese correspondent, has information that seems to point in this direction. In a long and detailed article published last week in the Saudi-owned and London-based newspaper Asharq Al Awsat, she explains that not only were senior Syrian officials far from enthusiastic about Hezbollah's grandiose performance for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad when the Iranian president visited Lebanon last month, but Syria also appears to have been responsible for confiscating a large shipment of explosives that Iran was planning to send to Hezbollah via Italy. According to the article, a container holding seven tons of RDX explosives was confiscated from the deck of the cargo ship Finland in an Italian port on September 22. The ship belongs to MSC Mediterranean Shipping Company, a Swiss shipping line, and was on its way from Iran to Syria. The explosives, which had been sent by Iran's Revolutionary Guards, can be used as ammunition for M-302 missiles, which have a 150-kilometer range, and M-600 missiles, which have a range of 250 kilometers and carry 500-kilogram warheads. The discovery of the explosives was published at the time in the Italian press. What is unusual about this revelation, according to Iranian opposition sources who intercepted the Revolutionary Guards' report about the confiscation, is that it was a Syrian citizen who told the Italian authorities about the illegal cargo." http://bit.ly/awTPcF

Eye on Iran is a periodic news summary from United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) a program of the American Coalition Against Nuclear Iran, Inc., a tax-exempt organization under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. Eye on Iran is not intended as a comprehensive media clips summary but rather a selection of media elements with discreet analysis in a PDA friendly format. For more information please email Press@UnitedAgainstNuclearIran.com

United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) is a non-partisan, broad-based coalition that is united in a commitment to prevent Iran from fulfilling its ambition to become a regional super-power possessing nuclear weapons. UANI is an issue-based coalition in which each coalition member will have its own interests as well as the collective goal of advancing an Iran free of nuclear weapons.