Eye on Iran: Iran Talks End With Little Sign of Progress

For continuing coverage follow us on Twitter and join our Facebook group. Top Stories WashPost: "Talks between Iran and major powers ended Tuesday with few signs of progress except an agreement to meet again in Istanbul next month. In a brief statement to reporters, European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton described the talks as 'detailed, substantive' and said the parties in January would 'discuss practical ideas and ways of cooperating towards a resolution of our core concerns about the nuclear issue.' But she refused to take any questions. The outcome of this round appeared to be significantly less than last year's meeting, which resulted in an announcement of a tentative deal and a pledge to meet again soon... After a day-long series of meetings in a drab Swiss building here, the two sides held a brief morning session lasting about two hours before announcing that their discussions were concluded. In a sign that Iran was taking a tough stance, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Tuesday in Iran talks on his country's nuclear program involving the five United Nations Security Council permanent members plus Germany would be 'fruitful' if sanctions against the country were canceled." http://wapo.st/eDAQCO AP: "Iran and six world powers concluded talks Tuesday with an agreement to reconvene early next year, suggesting Tehran may be willing to address concerns about its nuclear program. But Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad warned that unless they lift U.N. sanctions the six face failure in the next round. Diplomats from delegations at the table with Iran said Tehran made no commitments to talking about U.N. Security Council demands that Tehran freeze uranium enrichment - which has both civilian and military uses. 'We didn't get anywhere on substance,' said one of the officials. 'It was an exchange of views.' Iran's chief negotiator, Saed Jalili also sought to dampen expectations. 'I am telling you clearly and openly that halting uranium enrichment will not be discussed at the Istanbul meeting,' he told reporters." http://wapo.st/e5z4dF AP: "Leaders of six U.S.-allied Gulf Arab nations said Tuesday they were monitoring with 'utmost concern' developments in Iran's disputed nuclear program and issued a thinly veiled warning to their Persian neighbor not to meddle in their internal affairs. A communique issued by the six leaders at the end of a two-day summit in Abu Dhabi, capital of the United Arab Emirates, said they wanted the dispute to be resolved through 'peaceful means' and to make the Middle East free of weapons of mass destruction. The gathering of leaders from the Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain and Oman followed the publication of leaked U.S. diplomatic memos that revealed deeper concern among Gulf Arab leaders over Tehran's nuclear program than had previously been known - including a desire by several of them to see the United States destroy Iran's nuclear facilities." http://wapo.st/f2kZ46 Nuclear Program & Sanctions WashPost: "A bipartisan group of Senators today sent a tough-worded letter to President Obama about Iran. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) and Bob Casey (D-Pa.) praised the 'cascade' of recently enacted sanctions. The senators urged the president to emphasize that we intend to 'keep ratcheting' up the pressure and that there will be 'no possibility of any freeze or reductions' in sanctions until we get a 'full, verifiable and sustained suspension' of the Iranians enrichment activities. Saying they are concerned that Iran is simply playing for time, they warned Obama not to be distracted by "tactical maneuvering" by the Iranian regime. Finally, the senators said they oppose 'any diplomatic endgame' that would allow Iran to keep its nuclear program. There seems to be concern among these senators -- as well as others -- that Obama again will lapse into endless 'engagement,' allowing the Iranians still more time to move advance their nuclear capability." http://wapo.st/gWlPP3 Guardian: "The US has worked discreetly to block the supply of Iranian and Syrian weapons to the Palestinian movement Hamas and Lebanon's Hezbollah, pressuring Arab governments not to co-operate - in many cases where the requests were based on secret intelligence provided by Israel. State department cables released by WikiLeaks show that Sudan was warned by the US in January 2009 not to allow the delivery of unspecified Iranian arms that were expected to be passed to Hamas in the Gaza Strip around the time of Israel's Cast Lead offensive, in which 1,400 Palestinians were killed. US diplomats were instructed to express 'exceptional concern' to the Khartoum authorities. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Oman and Chad were informed of the alleged Iranian plans and warned that any weapons deliveries would be in breach of UN resolutions banning Iranian arms exports." http://bit.ly/fE5lnR AP: "A former Iranian diplomat who defected to the West this year says he saw North Korean technicians 'repeatedly' travel to Iran, which Western officials fear is trying to develop nuclear weapons. Mohammad Reza Heydari, who resigned in January from his post as Iranian consul in Norway, said he's 'certain' the cooperation is continuing between his home country and North Korea. The comments come amid international concerns that North Korea could be actively engaged with Iran in exporting weapons systems and possible nuclear expertise." http://usat.ly/eniCCS Commerce WSJ: "Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad once famously threatened to wipe Israel 'off the map.' But while the Islamic Republic may be bent on the Jewish state's destruction, it is also contributing to Israel's construction. Iranian marble, it turns out, is featuring prominently in some of this country's most prominent buildings, despite a near-total ban on trade with Iran. The high-ceilinged lobby and stately exterior of the new headquarters of Bank Leumi, a partially state-owned Israeli lender, are swathed in thousands of square feet of gray-beige Gohara stone, a coveted variety of marble found only in Iran's Lorestan province, southwest of Tehran... The stealth invasion has some Israelis fuming about the risks of trading with the enemy." http://on.wsj.com/dFxixa Human Rights BBC: "Canada is 'deeply concerned' over a reported death sentence given to an Iranian-born Canadian for allegedly designing an adult website, an official has said. Saeed Malekpour was convicted in Iran of designing and moderating adult sites, according to a campaign run by the 35-year-old's supporters. Canada's foreign ministry said the legal process was highly questionable. Mr Malekpour, 35, has reportedly been detained in Iran since 2008. 'Canada remains deeply concerned by the continued flagrant disregard of the Iranian authorities for the rights of Iranians,' said Alain Cacchione, a spokesman for Canadian Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon. He added: 'This appears to be another case in which someone in Iran is facing a death sentence after a highly questionable process.'" http://bbc.in/huYadV BBC: "Iran says it is considering a request to temporarily release two German journalists detained in connection with a controversial stoning case. A foreign ministry spokesman said there was a possibility the two might be allowed to reunite with their families for Christmas. The pair were arrested in Tabriz, north-west Iran, in October. They interviewed the son of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, a woman sentenced to death by stoning for adultery. 'There has been a request that these people meet their families, given that the Christian New Year is coming up. We are examining this request,' Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said." http://bbc.in/gfMiYN AP: "A senior Muslim cleric has denounced the participation of Iranian women in the Asian Games, calling it a humiliation and saying women's sports are a product of the West's 'dirty' culture that should be shunned. As he has done in the past, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad took the opposite view - one shared by most Iranians - and praised female athletes from Iran who won medals in the 16th Asian Games in Guangzhou, China, which took place in November. Iran's strict Islamic rules forbid physical contact between unrelated men and women, and Iranian women are even barred from attending soccer games in which men's teams are playing." http://wapo.st/gQPMo3 Domestic Politics WashPost: "The Iranian capital is experiencing what officials say is the worst pollution in its history, prompting the government to shutter offices and consider placing air purifiers across the city as it seeks to combat the brown blanket of smog. The weeks of heavy pollution are taking a serious toll on residents of Tehran. Hospitals are reporting a strong increase in patients with breathing problems. Government offices have been closed for three days in the past three weeks, and schools and universities have been shuttered for at least six days. Tightly embraced by one of the highest mountain ranges in the Middle East and filled with millions of cars, Tehran has grappled for decades with air pollution. But this year, as the capital and other Iranian cities struggle with extreme pollution, many here are blaming a new, locally produced form of gasoline." http://wapo.st/h3MGLj NYT: "The wedding nearly 1,400 years ago of Imam Ali, Shiite Islam's most revered figure, and Fatemeh al-Zahra, the daughter of the Prophet Muhammad, is commemorated in Iran's packed political calendar as a day to celebrate family values. But in a sign of the Iranian authorities' increasing concern about Iran's shifting social landscape, Marriage Day, as it is usually known in Iran, this year was renamed No Divorce Day. Iran's justice minister decreed that no divorce permits would be issued. Whether the switch was effective or not, the officials' concerns are understandable. Divorce is skyrocketing in Iran. Over a decade, the number each year has roughly tripled to a little more than 150,000 in 2010 from around 50,000 in 2000, according to official figures." http://nyti.ms/eWYBEo Asia Times: "The leaders of Shi'ite-majority Iran are growing increasingly impatient with the Sunni clergy in the southeastern province of Sistan-Balochistan. The shift in official mood appears to reflect falling confidence in once-favored Muslim leaders, in a region where the government worries about Sunni fundamentalism and separatism. In October, two son-in-laws of Maulana Abdulhamid Esmail-Zehi, the most prominent Sunni cleric in Iran, Abdulalim Shahbakhsh and Hafez Esmail Molla-Zehi, were arrested. Fars News Agency, which is affiliated to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, said Shahbakhsh was accused of being in contact with 'foreign elements.'" http://bit.ly/hU4kCl Foreign Affairs ABC: "A brief paragraph in the mountain of Wikileaks documents shed a sliver of light on what officials claim is a viscious and coldly efficient Iranian campaign of revenge on Iraqi air force pilots who bombed Iran during the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s. 'Many former Iraqi fighter pilots who flew sorties against Iran during the Iran-Iraq war were now on Iran's hit list (NOTE: According to [Name removed], Iran had already assassinated 180 Iraqi pilots. END NOTE),' the Dec. 14, 2009 confidential U.S. cable stated. The systematic elimination of Iraqi air force pilots by Iran was a little noticed vendetta amid the crossfire of ethnic fighting and urban combat that convulsed Iraq in the years after the U.S. invasion toppled Saddam Hussein's regime." http://abcn.ws/fkpYV0 Opinion & Analysis Ali Alfoneh in NRO: "As the '5 plus 1' Group - the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France, and Germany - resumes nuclear negotiations with Iran today in Geneva, expectations remain low. Reading the Iranian press, and looking at which political factions the Iranian negotiators represent, those expectations should be subzero. On Sunday, Kayhan, unofficial mouthpiece of Supreme Leader Khamenei, editorialized: 'Iran's real counterpart is not the 5+1 Group, but the United States.... If the United States stops its malice and fabrication of excuses, there will be no other contender in the field.' President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in an attempt to trump Kayhan, said: 'Today, Iran is nuclear and it is to their benefit to recognize this issue.' Not desiring to lag behind Ahmadinejad, Said Jalili, the Islamic Republic's chief nuclear negotiator, used his press conference prior to the negotiations to stress that 'the rights of the Iranian people' are 'not negotiable.' In the meantime, the state television showed trucks transporting yellowcake from Bandar Abbas to Isfahan to produce nuclear fuel. Such a setting is hardly promising for successful negotiations. But should the bravado and propaganda turn out to be mere theatrics meant to disguise the Iranian political leadership's readiness to accept the terms of the 5-plus-1 Group in Geneva, there is still little reason for enchantment. The Iranian negotiators in Geneva represent the Ahmadinejad government and possibly Khamenei, therefore they cannot deliver what they may promise." http://bit.ly/gSndAG Scott Peterson in CSM: "As top Western diplomats sit down at the negotiating table with their Iranian counterparts in Geneva, they will have no shortage of advice, some of it freshly culled from the trove of secret US State Department cables released by WikiLeaks. Pointed, sometimes insightful, though also sweeping at times in condescending assumptions or schoolteacher-ish advice, the releases show a narrow snapshot of US diplomacy and America's perceptions of one of its most enigmatic foes. Coping with the Islamic Republic since it came into being with the 1979 Islamic revolution has been a top priority of Washington - but also one of its most challenging battles. Less than three months before the US Embassy in Tehran was overrun by militant students, taking 52 Americans hostage for 444 days, diplomats posted there crafted a 'how-to' guide to negotiating. Some elements of the Iran analysis have in the past three decades been revised or changed in practice - if not in text, as so far, few other similar documents have been leaked. Yet the confidential cable notes the 'special features' of negotiating with Iranians, and reads, 'We believe the underlying cultural and psychological qualities that account for the nature of these difficulties are and will remain relatively constant.' The cable posits that, 'Perhaps the single dominant aspect of the Persian psyche is an overriding egoism' stemming from the 'long Iranian history of instability and insecurity which put a premium on self-preservation.' The result, the cable says, is 'an almost total Persian preoccupation with self and leaves little room for understanding points of view other than one's own.'" http://bit.ly/h4psyI Barbara Slavin in FP: "Searching for up-to-the-date country-specific information among the WikiLeaks cables is for the most part a pretty easy task. Interested in eavesdropping on contemporary France? Click on the collected messages from the U.S. Embassy in Paris. Want to browse the latest political proceedings in Russia? Go to the Moscow embassy link. But there's one exception to that impressive efficiency. The dispatches from Tehran all date from 1979 or earlier, before the United States severed its diplomatic ties with the Islamic Republic (in 1980) while 52 Americans were being held against their will in their country's embassy on a main boulevard downtown. That's not to say U.S. diplomats have stopped following their main Middle East adversary. To the contrary, Iran is famously at the center of much of the diplomatic business recorded in the WikiLeaks cables -- that business, though, is forced to take place in other countries. Indeed, WikiLeaks has shed light not only on the content of America's Iran strategy, but on the unorthodox ways in which Washington finds itself gathering information about a state with which it has had limited direct contact. At the center of those efforts are the so-called Iran Watch stations, a set of monitoring posts the United States has been operating in more than a dozen cities on Iran's periphery and in Western Europe." http://bit.ly/gU8COn 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.

Email Marketing by United Against Nuclear Iran PO Box 1028 New York NY 10185