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NYT: "In late May 2009, Israel's defense minister, Ehud Barak, used a visit from a Congressional delegation to send a pointed message to the new American president. In a secret cable sent back to Washington, the American ambassador to Israel, James B. Cunningham, reported that Mr. Barak had argued that the world had 6 to 18 months 'in which stopping Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons might still be viable.' After that, Mr. Barak said, 'any military solution would result in unacceptable collateral damage.' There was little surprising in Mr. Barak's implicit threat that Israel might attack Iran's nuclear facilities. As a pressure tactic, Israeli officials have been setting such deadlines, and extending them, for years. But six months later it was an Arab leader, the king of Bahrain, who provides the base for the American Fifth Fleet, telling the Americans that the Iranian nuclear program 'must be stopped,' according to another cable. 'The danger of letting it go on is greater than the danger of stopping it,' he said. His plea was shared by many of America's Arab allies, including the powerful King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, who according to another cable repeatedly implored Washington to 'cut off the head of the snake' while there was still time. These warnings are part of a trove of diplomatic cables reaching back to the genesis of the Iranian nuclear standoff in which leaders from around the world offer their unvarnished opinions about how to negotiate with, threaten and perhaps force Iran's leaders to renounce their atomic ambitions." http://nyti.ms/hEtLkO
NYT: "Secret American intelligence assessments have concluded that Iran has obtained a cache of advanced missiles, based on a Russian design, that are much more powerful than anything Washington has publicly conceded that Tehran has in its arsenal, diplomatic cables show. Iran obtained 19 of the missiles from North Korea, according to a cable dated Feb. 24 of this year. The cable is a detailed, highly classified account of a meeting between top Russian officials and an American delegation led by Vann H. Van Diepen, an official with the State Department's nonproliferation division who, as a national intelligence officer several years ago, played a crucial role in the 2007 assessment of Iran's nuclear capacity. The missiles could for the first time give Iran the capacity to strike at capitals in Western Europe or easily reach Moscow, and American officials warned that their advanced propulsion could speed Iran's development of intercontinental ballistic missiles." http://nyti.ms/gksKFW
AFP: "Iran used Red Crescent ambulances to smuggle weapons and agents into Lebanon during Hezbollah's 2006 war with Israel, a leaked US diplomatic cable showed on Monday. The 2008 classified cable which originated in Dubai quotes an Iranian source as saying the Iranian Red Crescent was used as a cover by members of the elite Revolutionary Guard to enter Lebanon during the conflict. 'IRC shipments of medical supplies served also to facilitate weapons shipments,' said the cable that appeared on the whistleblower website WikiLeaks. It added Red Crescent staff had seen 'missiles in the planes destined for Lebanon when delivering medical supplies to the plane. The plane was allegedly half full prior to the arrival of any medical supplies,' the cable said." http://bit.ly/gN1Ve5
Nuclear Program & Sanctions
AP: "Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has accused Israel and Western governments of being behind the killing of a prominent Iranian nuclear scientist in a bombing Monday. Assailants on motorcycles attached bombs to the cars of two nuclear scientists as they were driving to work in Tehran Monday, killing one and wounding the other, Iranian officials say. Ahmadinejad says that 'undoubtedly the hand of the Zionist regime and Western governments is involved' in the killing. But he says the assassination won't stop Iran from pursuing its nuclear programs. In his comments to a press conference, Ahmadinejad has not specified which Western government." http://wapo.st/hjpr2F
AP: "Technicians have finished loading fuel into Iran's first nuclear power reactor and aim to start up the facility by late January, the country's nuclear chief said Saturday. The startup of the Bushehr power plant, a project completed with Russian help but beset by years of delays, will deliver Iran the central stated goal of its atomic work - the generation of nuclear power. The United States and some of its allies, however, believe the Bushehr plant is part of a civil energy program that Iran is using as cover for a secret aim to develop a nuclear weapons capability. Iran denies the accusation. Nuclear chief Ali Akbar Salehi said it will take another month or two before the 1,000-megawatt light-water reactor at Bushehr begins pumping electricity to Iranian cities, and he again denied that a mysterious and destructive computer worm known as Stuxnet has set back Iran's nuclear work." http://bit.ly/gukxf0
WashPost: "The United States asked China in 2007 to stop a shipment of ballistic missile parts going from North Korea to Iran through Beijing and indicated that the U.S. government was fed up with China's unwillingness to crack down on such trade, according to reports Sunday based on U.S. diplomatic cables. Another cable highlighted U.S. concern this year that Chinese firms were supplying North Korea with precursors for chemical weapons - in what would be a violation of U.N. sanctions... U.S. officials have long accused China of failing to crack down on proliferation activities that occur on its territory." http://wapo.st/i6w502
NYT: "In Iran's first official reaction to leaked State Department cables quoting Arab leaders as urging the United States to bomb Tehran's nuclear facilities, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad dismissed the documents as American psychological warfare that would not affect his country's relations with other nations, news reports said. The documents seemed to show several Arab nations, notably Saudi Arabia, Iran's rival for influence in the Persian Gulf, displaying such hostility that King Abdullah repeatedly implored Washington to 'cut off the head of the snake' while there was still time. Nonetheless, Mr. Ahmadinejad said at a news conference on Monday that Iran's relations with its neighbors would not be damaged by the reports." http://nyti.ms/eYQdkw
Reuters: "Iran has produced more than a billion litres of gasoline since July, in an effort to make the country less vulnerable to sanctions over its disputed nuclear programme, the Oil Ministry's website Shana said on Saturday. Oil Minister Masoud Mirkazemi said Iran had been able to cut dependence on imported gasoline substantially since the implementation of an emergency gasoline production scheme at the country's petrochemical units which went into effect in July. 'So far more than a billion litres of premium gasoline have been produced at domestic petrochemical units and distributed,' Shana reported him as saying. 'The import of gasoline ... stood at 20-22 million litres a day before the implementation of the emergency plan.' He did not specify the level of current gasoline imports to Iran, the world's fifth-largest oil exporter. Iran's current gasoline production stands at around 45 million litres a day with daily national consumption of around 63 million litres, Iranian media reported last month." http://bit.ly/dQ6yA2
Reuters: "The United States needs to be realistic about its efforts to engage Iran, whose leaders are lying about Tehran's nuclear program and are on a path to building nuclear weapons, the top U.S. military officer said. Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in comments released on Friday that the U.S. military has been thinking about military options on Iran 'for a significant period of time' but added that diplomacy remained the focus of U.S. efforts. 'I still think it's important we focus on the dialogue, we focus on the engagement, but also do it in a realistic way that looks at whether Iran is actually going to tell the truth, actually engage and actually do anything,' Mullen said in an interview with CNN's Fareed Zakaria GPS due to air on Sunday." http://reut.rs/g8EaIu
Commerce
AFP: "Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his Turkmen counterpart Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov inaugurated on Sunday the last section of a pipeline to export Turkmen gas to northeast Iran, media reported. The leaders inaugurated the final half of the 1,000-kilometre (620 miles) pipeline which links Tehran to Khangiran refinery near the northeastern Iranian town of Sarakhs, said the official IRNA news agency and state television. The pipeline has a daily capacity of 58 million cubic metres or more than 20 billion cubic metres per year, Iran's deputy oil minister, Javad Owji, said ahead of the ceremony. Despite having the second largest gas reserves in the world, Iran's own production of 600 million cubic metres per day barely meets domestic consumption." http://bit.ly/e0xbv3
WSJ: "Iran has seen the fastest growth in natural-gas vehicles. They accounted for 1.7 million of the country's 11 million vehicles at the end of 2009, up from about 115,000 in 2006. That number is expected to hit 2.5 million vehicles by early 2012, according to a spokesman for an international conference on CNG [compressed natural gas] technologies that took place in Tehran this year... 'Developing CNG industries is one of the most important policies to make Iran invulnerable against the risk of more sanctions,' says Mahmoudreza Bagherbeik, who helps manage the government's CNG program. Because of a lack of refining capacity, Iran has long depended on imports for almost half of its gasoline consumption. Over the summer, when Iran's pursuit of nuclear technology prompted the U.S. to adopt sanctions targeting the supply of gasoline to Iran, Iran responded by temporarily converting petrochemical plants into refineries and turning more of its car-refueling infrastructure to CNG." http://on.wsj.com/ewZ9Ob
Human Rights
Guardian: "When Hossein Ghanbarzadeh Vahedi, a 75-year-old American of Iranian descent, decided to visit relatives in Tehran in May 2008, he took a flight from Los Angeles in the normal way. When he returned home, his means of transport was somewhat less orthodox. After seven months in which he was prevented from leaving Iran, had his passport confiscated and saw his appeals ignored by the revolutionary courts, Vahedi took matters into his own hands. In a daring escape, he mounted a horse, hired two guides, and began a perilous 14-hour overnight climb across the freezing mountains of north-western Iran into eastern Turkey. After that he took a bus. On 9 January 2009, Vahedi turned up at the consular section of the US embassy in Ankara and asked for assistance. To the evident astonishment of American diplomats, Vahedi appeared in good health, but for 'a few aches and pains' caused by a fall." http://bit.ly/gyEWc8
Domestic Politics
AP: "An Iranian opposition website is reporting that Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has pardoned 19 jailed opposition activists on a religious occasion. The low-level activists released Thursday were among hundreds detained during the unrest after President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's disputed re-election in June 2009. Claims of vote fraud set off months of protests that widened into a serious challenge to Iran's ruling system. Authorities responded with a massive crackdown and a mass trial of more than 100 opposition activists, leaders and officials from past pro-reform governments." http://fxn.ws/flJSDD
AP: "A man attempting to hijack a Syria-bound flight carrying a number of Iranian lawmakers was arrested on board, Iran's state radio reported Saturday. Security guards on the Tehran-Damascus flight thwarted the attempt and arrested the suspect, the report said. No one was hurt. The radio report said an unspecified number of Iranian lawmakers were on the plane en route to a parliamentary conference in Damascus. It did not provide further details. The semi-official Fars news agency said the incident happened minutes before the Iran Air flight landed in the Syrian capital." http://bit.ly/eFb1qk
Reuters: "U.S. diplomatic cables released by online whistle-blower WikiLeaks include remarks from an Iran source in 2009 saying Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has terminal cancer, French daily Le Monde reported. The source, a non-Iranian businessman based in Central Asia and traveling often to Tehran, 'has learned from one of his contacts that (former president Ali Akbar) Rafsanjani told him Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has terminal stage leukemia and could die in a few months,' according to an August 2009 cable. The document, written by a U.S. diplomat, says that Rafsanjani, a critic of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who has expressed sympathies with Iran's reformist movement, decided on learning of Khamenei's illness to start preparing himself to be a successor." http://reut.rs/hxNAmG
Foreign Affairs
AP: "Israel's prime minister said Monday that newly leaked U.S. diplomatic memos provide clear proof that the Arab world agrees with his country's assessment that Iran is the chief danger to the Middle East. According to the documents released Sunday by online whistle-blower Wikileaks, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia repeatedly urged the United States to attack Iran to destroy its nuclear program. The king is just one of many Arab voices in the documents calling for tough action against Iran - proof that Israel is not alone in its belief that Tehran is a growing menace to the region, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said. 'The greatest threat to world peace stems from the arming of the regime in Iran. More and more states, governments and leaders in the Middle East and in far reaches of the world understand this is a fundamental threat,' Netanyahu told a news conference." http://wapo.st/gz9hG6
AP: "Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri expressed concerns for stability in the Middle East as he began a visit to Tehran Saturday to rally Iran's support for his efforts to keep Lebanon stable amid tensions over a U.N. probe into the assassination of his father, Rafik Hariri. The visit follows President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's October tour of Lebanon, during which the Iranian leader reinforced Tehran's ties to the Lebanese militant Hezbollah group, a longtime protege of the Shiite powerhouse. The exuberant welcome the Shiite Hezbollah staged for Ahmadinejad in Lebanon threw Hariri's Western-backed factions in the government on the defensive. After touchdown in Tehran, Hariri was greeted by Iran's Vice President Mohammad Reza Rahimi and reviewed an honor guard before heading in to meetings. Lebanon's fragile unity government, which includes Hezbollah, has been struggling ahead of expected indictments by the U.N. tribunal investigating former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri's 2005 slaying." http://fxn.ws/hwwi1S
AFP: "Iran has criticised Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit for reportedly saying Tehran should keep out of the internal affairs of Arab countries and not meddle in Iraq and Lebanon. 'We recommend that Mr Ahmed Abul Gheit... pays more attention to the unity among the Islamic world instead of pursuing the interest of the region's ill-wishers who seek to divide Islamic nations,' the official IRNA news agency quoted a foreign ministry source as saying. The unnamed Iranian official added that Abul Gheit should 'think about guarding Egypts' rights and security which is often violated by the Zionist regime.'" http://bit.ly/igohiH
Opinion & Analysis
Abe Greenwald in Commentary: "Our paralysis on North Korea, therefore, makes one thing clear: we cannot, for any reason, allow Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon. The only good option today is to ensure that we do not end up with 'no good options' when faced with an aggressive and unpredictable nuclear Islamic Republic. If guessing at Kim Jong-il's motives makes fools of us all, just imagine trying to react to a nuclear theocratic thug-state perpetually sponsoring regional terror and frozen in a cold domestic revolution. Just as the U.S. is obligated to defend North Korea's neighbors, so too are we obligated to our allies in the Middle East, most critically Israel. If war on the Korean peninsula threatens to destabilize the region, imagine what happens when you throw oil into the mix. Worst of all, where the cult of Kim is unpredictable, the doctrine of Khomeinist Islamism is not. Pyongyang may ultimately only want goodies or talks or an unfettered palace ascendancy. For the leaders in Tehran, however, everything is a means to defeating America and her allies." http://bit.ly/eRAT6g
Dustin Dehez in JPost: "While sanctions have so far failed to end the Iranian nuclear program, there is again increasing debate on how to approach the conflict over Iran's nuclear ambitions. The debate gathered some momentum following Jeffrey Goldberg's recent article in The Atlantic, in which he discussed the prospect of a military campaign. At the same time, there is increasing support for a containment strategy as a fall-back option. This school of thought gained momentum with James Lindsay and Ray Takeyh recently arguing in Foreign Affairs that a nuclear Iran could be deterred, and more importantly contained, if only a couple of credible red lines would be drawn. In light of an inconclusive debate on the merits of a military campaign, a strategy of containment appears increasingly credible. Tempting as it is to resort to such a strategy, there are some serious problems. Containment requires a rational adversary. The Islamic Republic of Iran, however, is anything but a rational actor; nuclear capability in its hands will only foster its irrational course. But perhaps more importantly, the very design of containment makes it a far less attractive option than its proponents want us to believe. When arguing in favor of containment, one should note that the international community has been doing so ever since the Clinton administration decided to pursue what it called dual containment - a strategy announced in 1994 to contain both Iraq and Iran - with anything but reasonable success." http://bit.ly/gBK9zS
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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.
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