Top Stories
AP: "Iranians convicted for same-sex activities are on death row and awaiting hanging, including several who were minors when arrested, Human Rights Watch said Wednesday. A report by the nonprofit organization documented cases of arbitrary arrests, invasions of homes, mistreatment of detainees and the denial of due legal process to people suspected of nonconformist sexual activity. Thousands of people are believed to have been condemned to death for homosexual activity since the 1979 Iranian revolution, and the public hanging of two men - one of them a minor - in 2005 for having consensual sex drew international attention... Human Rights Watch said the number of executions for same-sex intercourse was difficult to determine, since most cases are conducted in closed court and often the defendant is accused of other capital crimes as well as 'sodomy.' But several gays are among an estimated 130 people awaiting execution for offenses committed as juveniles, a violation of international law, it said." http://wapo.st/ecD38W
FOX: "A leader of Iran's powerful Revolutionary Guard is promising that American generals will be targeted and killed in revenge for last week's attacks on two of his country's leading nuclear scientists -- a threat Middle East experts say must be taken seriously. In a speech published in Farsi at an Iranian website linked to the Revolutionary Guard, Brig. Gen. Mohammad Reza Naghdi was quoted as saying that 'the filthy Americans and the Zionists should not think that with killing our scientists, they can divert our nation from its path of Jihad and scare us.' He continued with a specific threat: 'We will mark the hanging sites of the American and Zionist generals and we will identify which hanging was in retaliation for the blood of our great martyr Shahriari.' ... Jim Phillips, an expert on Middle East Policy for the Heritage Foundation, and Alireza Nader, an expert in Iran's leadership at the RAND Corporation, said Iran often makes outlandish threats, but they agreed that this one has to be taken as a serious and credible threat because it came directly from Naghdi." http://fxn.ws/f7wKQJ
WT: "Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak compared Iran's growing influence in the Middle East to a 'cancer,' according to a cable released by the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks. 'President Mubarak has made it clear that he sees Iran as Egypt's - and the region's - primary strategic threat,' says the secret cable, sent April 28, 2009, from the U.S. Embassy in Cairo. 'His already dangerous neighborhood, he has stressed, has only become more so since the fall of Saddam, who, as nasty as he was, nevertheless stood as a wall against Iran, according to Mubarak. He now sees Tehran's hand moving with ease throughout the region, from the Gulf to Morocco,' as he told a recent congressional delegation.' The cable notes, however, that 'Mubarak's focus on the Iranian threat differs somewhat from ours.' 'While he will readily admit that the Iranian nuclear program is a strategic and existential threat to Egypt and the region, he sees that threat as relatively long term. What has seized his immediate attention are Iran's non-nuclear destabilizing actions such as support for HAMAS, media attacks, weapons and illicit funds smuggling, all of which add up in his mind to Iranian influence spreading like a cancer from the GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council countries] to Morocco.'" http://bit.ly/dRNv4N
Nuclear Program & Sanctions
AFP: "US President Barack Obama on Wednesday strongly condemned an "outrageous terrorist attack" by a suicide bomber at a Shiite religious procession in Chabahar, Iran, which killed at least 39 people. 'I strongly condemn the outrageous terrorist attack on a mosque in Chabahar, Iran,' Obama said in a written statement. 'The murder of innocent civilians in their place of worship during Ashura is a despicable offense, and those who carried it out must be held accountable. This is a disgraceful and cowardly act.' Obama said such acts recognized no religious, political, or national boundaries, adding that the United States condemned terrorism wherever it occurs." http://bit.ly/gIrVUA
Reuters: "The quality of gasoline produced in Iran in an attempt to achieve self-sufficiency is well below global standards, a website quoted an official as saying, but his comments were rejected by the Islamic state's oil ministry. The poor quality of Iranian gasoline was the main cause of pollution in the capital Tehran in recent weeks that forced the government to shut down offices, schools, and other organisations for days, say experts and some lawmakers. 'Our refineries have been designed to produce petrochemical products not gasoline,' Aftab daily quoted lawmaker Qolamali Meygolinejad. 'A major part of Tehran's air pollution is due to the lack of standard in production of fuel in the country,' said another lawmaker Mohammad Reza Rezaee, according to the daily. Iran announced in September it had raised its gasoline output to attain self-sufficiency and foil sanctions imposed by the European Union and the United States targeting its energy needs. Tehran used to import up to 40 percent of its gasoline before it began producing it domestically." http://bit.ly/hH3uoD
JPost: "Iran has cut the annual budget it provides Hizbullah by over 40 percent, stirring an unprecedented crisis within the Lebanese Shi'ite guerrilla organization.This comes, according to recent Israeli intelligence assessments, just weeks before a United Nations tribunal is expected to accuse Hizbullah of assassinating former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri in 2005. Iran has in recent years provided Hizbullah with close to $1 billion in direct military aid, but due to the impact of the recent round of international sanctions, the Islamic Republic has been forced to cut back on the funding. The money is used by Hizbullah to buy advanced weaponry, train and pay its operatives and establish military positions and sustain them throughout Lebanon." http://bit.ly/hJNGE0
Philadelphia Inquirer: "When a certain F-5 Tiger fighter jet outlived its military use years ago, it was sold for surplus, and the plane became the toy of a rich Californian. He leased it as a big prop for Hollywood movies. This year, the fighter jet became the star of a real-life sting - against an American accused of trying to sell it to Iran. The F-5 is the centerpiece of an undercover Homeland Security investigation that stretched from Philadelphia to Los Angeles to Budapest, Hungary. An arms broker from California has been charged with trying to sell the jet for $3.6 million to Philadelphia-based agents who were pretending to work on behalf of the Iranian military." http://bit.ly/e1Mfgl
AP: "Chevron Corp. expressed interest in developing oil reserves straddling the Iran-Iraq border, potentially putting the American energy giant at risk of violating U.S. sanctions against Tehran, according to comments made public in a leaked diplomatic cable. In the March 2009 cable, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki told a senior U.S. embassy official he was in talks with Chevron about the cross-border oil field. He added that Chevron, America's second-largest oil company, had also approached Iran about the project - a claim the memo makes clear the embassy was unable to confirm. Al-Maliki said Iraq was interested in awarding Chevron rights to develop the unnamed field but wanted the embassy's guidance about the 'political feasibility of such a deal' in light of U.S. sanctions against Iran." http://lat.ms/fHljyb
Human Rights
AP: "An Iranian opposition website says authorities have detained the family of an imprisoned documentary filmmaker. The kaleme.com website says authorities detained members of Mohammad Nourizad's family Thursday after they gathered outside of Tehran's Evin prison to inquire about his health. The report says Nourizad's wife, son, two daughters, parents and brothers were all in custody. Nourizad is serving a three and a half year prison sentence for spreading propaganda against the government and insulting the country's leaders." http://wapo.st/hStg4p
AP: "An Iranian court convicted an opposition activist of working against the ruling system and insulting the country's supreme leader, sentencing him to 20 months in jail, an opposition website reported Wednesday. Ahmad Ghabel was also given additional sentences of three years' exile, a ban on interviews and lectures during that time, and a fine for possessing a satellite receiver. His laptop was also confiscated. Two other liberal-minded activists were arrested Wednesday, another opposition website reported." http://wapo.st/dFBzas
Foreign Affairs
Bloomberg: "Iran's Interior Minister Mostafa Mohammad-Najjar said the 'terrorists' who carried out the bomb attacks yesterday received training in Pakistan. 'A group of terrorists who are unfortunately being trained on the other side of our eastern borders, in Pakistan, committed this terrorist act,' he said, cited by the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency. At least 38 people were killed in two bombings outside a mosque in Iran's southeastern city of Chabahar during the annual Shiite Muslim ceremonies of Ashura, the agency said yesterday." http://bit.ly/fXuqR0
Opinion & Analysis
Jonathan Kay in The National Post: "In the final minutes of his presentation, Rubin concluded by ticking off the elements of Iran's advanced tech research: (1) nuclear enrichment, (2) solid-propellant ballistic missiles, (3) space-launch technology. Then he asked: 'If a scientist from Mars would come down and say Hey, there's a country on earth that has these three programs - what does it want?, the answer is obvious: A nuclear ICBM.' No one is arguing that Iran will rain death on the world as soon as it gets a fleet of intercontinental ballistic missiles (assuming it builds them at all). What is more likely is that Iran aspires to join the superpower club, and ownership of an ICBM is the official condition of entry. If Rubin is right, his argument fundamentally changes the way we need to look at Iran. Many of us assumed that the main goal of Ahmadinejad and his boss, Supreme Leader Ali Khamanei, was to build a quickie nuclear bomb and use it either to destroy Israel, or (as seems more likely) create a nuclear umbrella for the benefit of Hamas and Hezbollah. But if that were the objective, then building missile systems with ranges of 2,500 or 3,500 km - several times the distance between Iran and Israel - seems beside the point. An ICBM program would be more consistent with a long-term strategy that imagines Iran being in conflict with the West for decades, or perhaps generations." http://bit.ly/idHWHF
David Pollock in WINEP: "Recent WikiLeaks revelations about the discrepancy between the public and private views on Iran voiced by Gulf Arab leaders have been widely covered by the pan-Arab media without provoking policy shifts or internal tensions in Gulf Arab states. U.S. officials should therefore be encouraged in their policy of pressing for a robust regional coalition to curb Iran's ambitions. Since the WikiLeaks story broke in late November, various Gulf Arab official spokesmen have generally refused to confirm their privately hostile comments about Iran -- but have not disavowed them, either. The story has not been censored by the Arab media, as some Western analysts have alleged, although it is correct to say that the semiofficial press in most countries has covered it sparsely. But there is widespread access to the internet, pan-Arab newspapers, and satellite television channels, which have provided ample coverage and commentary. Most Arab media outlets (except the semiofficial Syrian papers and the pro-Hizballah elements in the Lebanese press) also accept the veracity of WikiLeaks -- unlike the Iranian media, which seems to be on the defensive, claiming to view the leaked cables as part of some nefarious plot." http://bit.ly/f5RF4X
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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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