Top Stories
Daily Telegraph: "Iran is operating a worldwide recruitment network for nuclear scientists to lure them to the country to work on its nuclear weapons programme, officials have told the Daily Telegraph. They claim that the country is particularly reliant on North Korean scientists but also recruits people with expertise from African countries to work on developing missiles and nuclear production activities. North Korea relies on an lucrative financing agreement with Iran to fund its expanding nuclear activities. In return for Iranian money and testing facilities, North Korea sends technology and scientists. Mohamed Reza Heydari, a former Iranian consul in Oslo, told The Daily Telegraph, that he had personally helped scores of North Koreans enter the country while working for the foreign ministry's office in Tehran's Imam Khomenei airport. 'Our mission was to coordinate with a team from the Ministry of Intelligence in checking the visas of the foreign diplomatic and trade delegates who visited Iran, with special attention to VIPs,' he said. 'We had the instructions to forego any visa and passport inspections for Palestinians belonging to Hamas and North Korean military and engineering staff who visit Iran on regular basis. The North Koreans were all technicians and military experts involved in two aspects of Iran's nuclear programme. One to enable Iran to achieve nuclear bomb capability, and the other to help increase the range of Iran's ballistic missiles.'" http://bit.ly/fWELNw
AFP: "Iran's opposition leaders have slammed the cut in government subsidies on energy and food products, warning that a 'dark future' awaits the nation's economy, an opposition website reported Wednesday. Opposition leaders Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi acknowledged the necessity of cutting subsidies, but criticised its timing and the ability of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's government to implement the sensitive plan. 'The country is faced with severe international sanctions, the economy is stagnating, unemployment of higher than 30 percent has spread across the country, and inflation is running wild,' the website Sahamnews quoted the two leaders as saying during their meeting on Tuesday. 'Implementing the plan at this time is a burden whose pressure will be felt by the middle and lower classes' of society, it reported the pair as adding. On Sunday, Ahmadinejad's government levied up to a five-fold hike in fuel prices as it started implementing its long-awaited economic overhaul." http://bit.ly/hAUQ8m
CNN: "A Taliban member suspected of helping to move weapons between Iran and Afghanistan has been seized, NATO's International Security Assistance Force said on Wednesday. The man, captured in Afghanistan's Kandahar province on Saturday, is thought to have facilitated weapons trafficking between Iran and Kandahar through Nimroz province, the southwestern region that borders Iran. The Shiite-led Iranian regime and the Sunni Taliban would not seem to have a lot in common, but there have been reports this year that Iran has been planning to ship weapons to the Taliban. 'Iran continues to provide lethal assistance -- including weapons and training -- to elements of the Taliban,' according to a Defense Department report on Afghanistan." http://bit.ly/f9Ih9c
Nuclear Program & Sanctions
AFP: "Hong Kong has detained a cargo ship linked to an Iranian shipping firm at the centre of new US sanctions aimed at curbing Tehran's nuclear and weapons activities, a report said Thursday. The South China Morning Post said authorities in the southern Chinese city detained the Decretive, a Maltese-flagged container vessel, on November 14 over a debt dispute with several European banks. The city's marine department could not be immediately reached to confirm the report. Hong Kong officials acted after moves by four banks, led by the German-based HSH Nordbank, over accusations of loan defaults totalling 268 million US dollars, the report said. A lawsuit filed in Hong Kong's High Court confirmed the German bank is suing the unnamed owners of the vessel, but it did not give details on the amount being sought. The bank's lawyers could not immediately be reached. The Post, citing unnamed sources, reported that the target of the dispute is the Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines (IRISL), the guarantor of bank loans which funded the Decretive's construction in 2008." http://bit.ly/elqNDb
NYT: "Government officials expressed alarm on Wednesday about what they described as Iran's unexplained ban on fuel exports to Afghanistan, asserting that at least 1,400 loaded tankers were parked on Iran's side of three border crossings. Abdul Karim Barahwe, the governor of Nimroz Province in western Afghanistan, said the Iranian authorities had started halting tankers bound for Afghanistan about 10 days ago. The effect is driving up fuel prices just as winter is setting in... There has been no word in Iran about a ban on Afghanistan-bound fuel. The restriction may reflect Iran's own energy problems, caused in part by Western sanctions on the country over its nuclear program, as well as a sharp increase in Iranian fuel prices caused by a government phase-out of subsidies that began this month. Or it could represent an effort to retaliate against the United States for the sanctions, even though the fuel is not supposed to be supporting the American war effort." http://nyti.ms/i2mtS0
Bloomberg: "Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said Iran's policy on its nuclear program is 'unreasonably tough' and urged inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency. 'Iran must allow IAEA officials on its territory and make it possible to bring the situation under control,' Medvedev said at a meeting with students in Mumbai today. 'This is why there are issues with Iran and sanctions against it.' The Persian Gulf state in mid-2010 came under a fourth set of United Nations sanctions, which were supported by Russia, as well as tougher U.S. and European Union measures. IAEA inspectors have been stymied by Iranian officials, who have refused to discuss documents that show Iran may have researched the construction of nuclear weapons. The IAEA, the UN's nuclear watchdog, has been investigating Iran's nuclear work since 2003, when it was revealed that the government had hidden atomic research for two decades. Medvedev said in July that Iran was getting closer to achieving the capability to make nuclear weapons." http://bit.ly/fnLtcI
Human Rights
Reuters: "An Iranian man was given 80 lashes in public for drinking alcohol, ISNA news agency reported on Wednesday, a punishment aimed at discouraging others from such behaviour outlawed in the Islamic Republic. Under Iran's Islamic law, alcohol is banned and its consumption can be punishable by lashes, but beatings in public are relatively unusual." http://reut.rs/gYYnx1
AFP: "Germany Wednesday condemned the jailing of Iranian filmmaker and vocal opposition backer Jafar Panahi as 'scandalous' and 'unacceptable' and called on Tehran to lift the sentence. 'Sentencing Jafar Panahi to six years in jail is scandalous,' said Markus Loening, in charge of Germany's human rights policy, in a statement issued by the foreign ministry. 'It is simply unacceptable and all the more disconcerting given that Jafar Panahi's films have offered many people in recent years an insight into Iranian society and therefore contributed considerably to intercultural dialogue.' Loening called on authorities in Iran to recognise basic human rights and lift the sentence." http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?llr=hfdiftcab&et=1104126125776&s=30860&e=001NnGqN6wzDhfLy95bLd5KaJSSmcAeqCxErZW-96TmpZEkqTSONjN-Uz-9W9v3-4oJ7EQVPfW-xKP_CoCOIV_ZRReX2mLIzKTR9ok14y9ein38y1UfCatQDQ==
Foreign Affairs
AFP: "Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad joined regional leaders Thursday for a summit on economic cooperation in Istanbul, just a month ahead of nuclear talks with world powers in the Turkish city. As Turkish President Abdullah Gul welcomed his guests at a seafront Ottoman palace, Ahmadinejad arrived sporting a broad smile, gave Gul a warm hug and waved to the cameras. He was accompanied by his new foreign minister Ali Akbar Salehi, also Iran's nuclear chief, who made his first international appearance here Wednesday at a pre-summit gathering of the 10-member Economic Cooperation Organisation (ECO). Salehi was appointed interim foreign minister last week after Ahmadinejad sacked Manouchehr Mottaki in a surprise move signalling an apparent falling out over nuclear policy. The pair met with Turkish leaders to discuss a second round of talks that Iran would hold with the 5+1 group of world powers over its disputed nuclear programme, expected in late January in Istanbul." http://bit.ly/hFtgdd
Opinion & Analysis
Meir Javedanfar in The Diplomat: "First it was Ali Larijani, who resigned as Iran's top nuclear negotiator in October 2007. Now it's Manouchehr Mottaki, who was dismissed from his post as foreign minister this month in humiliating fashion, fired while out of the country on a diplomatic mission. Both had something in common: they were Ahmadinejad antagonists. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad never wanted either of them in their positions in the first place, but had to put up with it because they were Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's picks. So he worked to undermine them using a two-pronged strategy. First, there appears to have been some straightforward lobbying over their appointments with the Supreme Leader. But Ahmadinejad also looks to have gone further-creating as many obstacles and problems for the two as possible in the hope that they'd either tire of working with him or else be made to look so incompetent that Khamenei himself would seek their removal... These two are only the most high profile victims of Ahmadinejad, whose appetite for firing subordinates is reminiscent of US businessman Donald Trump in his reality TV show The Apprentice-he has previously fired numerous officials, ministers and the head of the country's central bank. So who's next in Ahmadinejad's crosshairs? There's one politician who must be starting to worry... The target of these attacks? Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the mayor of Tehran. If it were up to Ahmadinejad, there's little doubt Ghalibaf would have been removed long ago." http://bit.ly/eYe5O4
Peter Kenyon in NPR: "The United States this week expanded its sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program, but Tehran says the sanctions are having no effect. Analysts say a new focus on enforcement has Iran seeking different trade arteries. In the Persian Gulf emirate of Dubai, workers continue to load traditional wooden dhows with goods bound for Iran. The scene at the dhow port along Dubai Creek is much the same as it has been for decades. The wooden boats are tied three or four abreast, many laden with all kinds of cargo. Tires, TVs and computer monitors, cases of Bloody Mary mix, and even automobiles are waiting to make the short journey across the Persian Gulf to Iran, a country that U.S. officials say is effectively shunned and isolated by the international community. Dubai has long been an economic lifeline for Iran. Locals like to say that conservative Muslim Iranian families came to Dubai in the 1930s, when the Shah of Iran banned the chador, the full-length Islamic covering for women. Then more secular Iranians followed after the 1979 Islamic revolution, when women were forced back into the chador. The U.S. bans American companies from selling most products to Iran. But the United Arab Emirates, which includes Dubai, is a huge importer of American goods, and much gets redirected to Iran. But analysts are seeing signs that tougher sanctions and better enforcement are making inroads, even in this notoriously hard-to-police port." http://n.pr/gBWA5C
Mohsen Asgari in BBC: "While President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was outlining his targeted subsidies plan to the people on television on Saturday, riot police were deploying in Tehran's streets to deal with any protests the lifting of subsidies might trigger. The impact of the cuts on people's lives is still unclear, but anxiety is widespread. According to official statements the price of flour could be 40 times higher, petrol would cost between four and seven times more, gas five times more, and electricity and water about three times more. This could make life very expensive in big cities like the capital, where many residents already work two jobs to cover their living costs. The government has transferred 810,000 rials ($80) to the bank accounts of Iranians who have registered for compensation for the sudden price increases. They are due to receive the stipend every two months. And in his two-hour announcement of the subsidy plan on state television, Mr Ahmadinejad promised to double this compensation next year. But many people doubt this will be adequate cushioning from the increase in prices for the poor." http://bbc.in/dPvQm0
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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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