Top Stories
AFP: "Iran said Tuesday its nuclear and foreign policies will not change after President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad abruptly fired Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki and replaced him with the atomic chief. 'Iran's major international policies are defined in higher levels and the foreign ministry executes these policies. We will not see any changes in our basic policies,' foreign ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said at his weekly briefing. 'I don't think there will be any changes in the nuclear policy and the talks' with world powers over Iran's nuclear programme, he said. Ahmadinejad on Monday named Ali Akbar Salehi, a vice-president and head of Iran's atomic energy organisation, as interim foreign minister after sacking Mottaki. No reasons were given for the surprise move, but several Iranian newspapers on Tuesday linked it to disagreements between Ahmadinejad and Mottaki over foreign policy." http://bit.ly/gJs7a9
AP: "President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's brusk firing of his foreign minister drew sharp criticism at home Tuesday, re-igniting divisions between him and fellow conservatives who have long resented what they see as the Iranian president's power grabs. What remains unclear is the more crucial question of whether the move will cause tensions between Ahmadinejad and Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who holds ultimate power in the country and has clashed with the president over political appointments in the past. Khamenei has not spoken publicly about the firing, announced Monday. But Hossein Shariatmadari, the editor of a top conservative newspaper who is considered close to the supreme leader, blasted the way the dismissal was carried out as an 'open insult.'" http://wapo.st/gTY2oZ
AFP: "The foreign ministry summoned British envoy Simon Gass on Monday for criticising Iran's human rights record and calling for the release of a prominent lawyer, and also to protest against what it called violence against students by British police. The official IRNA news agency quoted the head of the ministry's human rights department, Ali Bahraini, as saying he 'strongly protested at the publishing of a article on the website of the British embassy in Tehran which is contrary to diplomatic principles, and considers it an unconventional act by an ambassador.' Bahraini was quoted as 'reminding' Gass of 'the necessity of refraining from acts which are not within the correct diplomatic framework.' In remarks posted on the embassy website to mark Thursday's International Human Rights Day, Gass said that lawyers, journalists and NGO workers were 'nowhere under greater threat than in Iran.'" http://bit.ly/elv7pE
Nuclear Program & Sanctions
Bloomberg: "Three Iranian ships seized in Singapore waters over Iran's alleged failure to pay back a French bank loan will be auctioned today, the state-run Mehr news agency reported, citing the Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines Managing Director. Mohammad-Hossein Dajmar, the company's head, rejected reports that the seizure is due to Iran's failure to pay back its debt, saying the move is linked to financial sanctions against Iran over the country's disputed nuclear program. The report did not name the bank. The three ships, named Sabalan, Sahand and Tochal do not have any cargo, Dajmar has said." http://bit.ly/dLdqBT
Der Spiegel: "In 2006 and 2007 Swiss diplomats tried to usher the Americans and Iranians to the negotiating table. Recently published US diplomatic cables show how deeply the Swiss initiative irked Washington -- and how Bern refused to give up despite repeated requests from the US. That US diplomats posted in Bern were upset by the efforts of Swiss Foreign Minister Micheline Calmy-Rey to intervene in the conflict surrounding Iran's nuclear program in 2006 and 2007 and force themselves on the United States as an intermediary is well known. But just how upset has now become clear from the confidential diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks. In February and March 2007, Calmy-Rey dispatched Michael Ambühl, a high-ranking Swiss diplomat, on several visits to Tehran in an attempt to persuade the Iranians and the US to engage in bilateral talks. As part of the same effort, she hosted Iran's then chief nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani, for talks in Bern. Washington had vehemently tried to dissuade Calmy-Rey from assuming such an active role; but that didn't stop her." http://bit.ly/hK9zzj
Human Rights
FOX: "An Iranian man who blinded his lover's husband will reportedly suffer a similar sentence -- having acid poured into his eye. The man, identified only as Mojtaba, threw acid in the face of his rival, a taxi driver named Alireza, after an illicit affair with the victim's wife, Mojdeh, the Daily Mail reports. All three people in the lover's triangle are 25 years old and live in Qom, Iran's clerical nerve 60 miles south of Tehran. The penalty was passed by a lower court and upheld by Iran's supreme court, a government daily in Iran reported over the weekend, according to the Daily Mail. In cases of violent crime, Iran's Islamic code allows for 'an eye-for-an-eye, a tooth-for-a-tooth' retribution known as 'qisas,' the newspaper reports." http://fxn.ws/grFNSW
Opinion & Analysis
Julian Borger in The Guardian: "Manouchehr Mottaki was dismissed as foreign minister in the most humiliating way. His departure was announced while Mottaki was performing his duties abroad. He found out about it while in Senegal, like a classic coup. It may have been Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's revenge for Mottaki's tenacity. He hung on in the foreign ministry a good two years after rumours began circulating that he was finished, with the protection of the Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei. It is not clear whether Mottaki's departure means he lost that patronage, or whether this represents a challenge to Khamenei. Ali Akba Salehi, the head of the Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran, and one of the country's several vice presidents, has been named caretaker minister in his place. It says something about Iran and its priorities for a nuclear physicist to get the top foreign policy job, even if it is temporary for now. The preservation of the nuclear programme has become the central organising principle of Iran's foreign policy." http://bit.ly/gbo2ns
Michael Petrou in Maclean's: "In September, U.S. President Barack Obama signed an executive order imposing sanctions on Iranian officials determined to be responsible for serious human rights violations. The idea that individual Iranians must be targeted for such violations, rather than exclusively because of involvement in Iran's nuclear program, has long been advocated by McGill University international law professor, and co-founder of the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center, Payam Akhavan. Maclean's understand the State Department consulted IHRDC while compiling its list of blacklisted individuals. Obama's order is significant because until recently most sanctions imposed on Iran have focused on the nuclear file. That this might be misguided is something I explored in an article last year. Challenging Iran over its nuclear program allows the regime to play to nationalist sentiments. Challenging Iran over human rights does not. Moreover, focusing on nuclear and other weapons suggests that should the Iranians involved cooperate, sanctions will be lifted and they will not suffer long-term consequences. But targeted sanctions based on human rights violations, says Akhavan, are an intermediate step before prosecution. They send a message that, one day, you will be held to account." http://bit.ly/fKe4IF
Ottawa Citizen Editorial Board: "Iran's attempt to exploit the tragic death of an Ottawa teenager demonstrates a strange truth: dangerous authoritarian regimes are often petty and ridiculous. After years of being condemned by Canada, Iran must have been looking for an excuse to call us onto the carpet. The shooting of 16-year-old Yazdan Ghiasvand Ghiasi in an Ottawa car gave them such an excuse. Ghiasi happens to have been born in Iran. An Iranian official summoned Canada's charge d'affaires to voice concern, and Iran has reportedly warned its citizens to take precautions when travelling in Canada. Iran's foreign ministry has also sent a note to ours urging that the perpetrators be punished. (Three men are already in custody in connection with the shooting, and while they are presumed innocent, there's no reason to believe the Canadian justice system is lagging in this case.) This is a naked attempt to create a perception of equivalence between Canada -- a safe, free country where homicides sometimes do happen -- and Iran, where the state regularly tortures and murders its own citizens." http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?llr=hfdiftcab&et=1104076841274&s=30860&e=001_KxqoQL-E7guo2FHBJ5E31QXL3_CbvcSwyPZJbJdc_He78T3ZBkch36FDc9WVquEmtEXjmYKUZEjljg4QDG3y-p7aIy8oZzaqmRBwF9HkJs=
Christopher Dickey, R. M. Schneiderman and Babak Dehghanpisheh in Newsweek: "Rarely has a covert war been so obvious, and rarely have the underlying facts been so murky. Conspiracy theory hangs as heavy in Tehran these days as the smog: a number of Iranian reformists opposed to Ahmadinejad have suggested the two scientists targeted in November, as well as another one, Masoud Ali Mohammadi, killed by an exploding motorcycle in January, were attacked by the regime itself because their loyalties were suspect. All reportedly sympathized to some extent with the opposition Green Movement. Both Mohammadi and Shahriari had attended at least one meeting of SESAME, a U.N.-linked research organization based in Jordan, where Israelis as well as Arabs and Iranians were present. 'In the eyes of the Revolutionary Guards, everybody's a potential spy,' says a former Iranian intelligence officer, who asked not to be named because of likely retributions inside Iran. 'You are either 100 percent dedicated to the system or you are an enemy.' So, who done it? The speculation itself is part of the psychological game played by various governments against Iran and to some extent against each other. In what Cold War spies would have called 'a wilderness of mirrors,' different intelligence services may take credit, with a wink and a nod, for things they did not do, while denying they did what they actually did do. Enemies of Iran can take pleasure, for now at least, in the fear stirred up by uncertainty. What we can deduce from the limited evidence that has emerged so far, according to former White House counterterrorism and cyberwarfare adviser Richard Clarke, is that at least two countries conducted operations against Iran simultaneously and not necessarily in close coordination." http://bit.ly/i0C0Mf
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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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