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WSJ: "India's largest buyer of Iranian crude is scouting for alternative supplies from the spot market to pre-empt a possible disruption in shipments from Iran after India's central bank closed a longstanding payment route for such transactions. Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals Ltd., which buys more than half of its crude oil from Iran, has issued three spot tenders in as many days, the latest for loading as early as next month. The flurry of tenders will likely boost sentiment for the heavier, high-sulfur grades from the Middle East, whose premiums are declining in the spot market due to weak fuel oil margins. While both New Delhi and Tehran could be hard pressed to find an early resolution, there's greater pressure on Iran, which has been increasingly isolated from its customers due to trade restrictions and sanctions aimed at slowing down its nuclear program." http://on.wsj.com/efIoVs
WSJ: "Days after India's government clamped down on the main conduit Indian companies use to pay for Iranian oil, New Delhi and Tehran have opened a temporary channel for transactions, a senior Indian official said Tuesday-one that involves routing payments through an Iranian bank that is already under U.S. sanctions. The move essentially moves India from one uncomfortable spot into another, and could place Indian firms at loggerheads with the U.S. legal system. Under U.S. legislation enacted in July, any foreign firm dealing with Iranian entities sanctioned by Washington could also find itself banned from conducting business inside the U.S. The U.S. Treasury blacklisted Hamburg-based European-Iranian Trade Bank AG Bank in September, saying it provided a financial lifeline to Iranian companies that it alleges support weapons proliferation. 'India is finding how difficult it's becoming to do business with Iran globally,' said Avi Jorisch, a former Treasury official who has tracked the Iranian bank. 'The number of legitimate channels is constricting.'" http://on.wsj.com/fCHvFQ
Reuters: "The European Union's executive said on Wednesday it was up to the U.N. nuclear watchdog to inspect Iranian atomic facilities, after Tehran invited EU envoys to tour the sites this month. The European Commission said it had yet to reply to the invitation, sent to some ambassadors, including the EU's, accredited to the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna just weeks before a second round of talks between Iran and six world powers on its disputed nuclear ambitions. Iran invited the EU as well as China, Russia and others to visit in a move that raise questions in the West as to whether it constituted a genuine step towards more nuclear transparency or was a public relations stunt meant to divide major powers and buy time for further nuclear advances." http://bit.ly/gIx7Tz
Nuclear Program & Sanctions
WSJ: "State Bank of India will take suitable precautions to avoid possible U.S. sanctions due to any dealing with the blacklisted Hamburg-based European-Iranian Trade Bank AG, a senior finance ministry official said Wednesday. New Delhi and Tehran have opened a temporary channel for oil-related transactions for January crude. As per the arrangement, Indian oil companies will open accounts with state-run SBI, which will in turn deposit the payments for Iranian crude with EIH Bank. The temporary channel was created after the Reserve Bank of India said late last month that all trade-related payments with Iran had to be cleared outside the Asian Clearing Union, a clearinghouse through which most India-Iran trade was being conducted. But the new mechanism may also ruffle U.S. feathers as the Treasury Department blacklisted EIH Bank in September, saying it provided a financial lifeline to Iranian companies that it alleges support weapons proliferation. EIH isn't subject to sanctions by the United Nations or the European Union." http://on.wsj.com/fLC4vx
JPost: "The Islamic regime in Iran will likely not be around in another decade, but Israel cannot rely on a regime change when confronting the Iranian nuclear threat, Defense Minister Ehud Barak said on Tuesday. 'I am not sure that this regime will be in power 10 years from now,' Barak said at a conference on Iranian Jewry held at the Diaspora Museum in Tel Aviv. 'I can also not rule out the possibility that in a year from now, an opposition group like the Green Movement will not lead a new revolution. But we cannot count on this.' Barak added that the current round of sanctions imposed on Iran will not succeed in stopping the Islamic regime's race to obtain nuclear power. 'Sanctions are having an effect, but there is no chance that on their own they will stop the Iranians' efforts,' Barak said. 'There's still time for diplomacy but the sanctions need to be much tougher and include Russia, China and India. Only this way will the Iranians be really tested.'" http://bit.ly/eDwkD6
Reuters: "Iraq has been unable, due to U.S. sanctions, to pay Iran millions of dollars owed for electricity, an Iraqi official said, potentially damaging its efforts to supply enough power to a population suffering chronic shortages. Iraq imports 650 megawatts of electricity from Iran and plans to boost imports to around 1,000 MW this year, Adel Mahdi, an adviser in the electricity ministry, said on Wednesday. But due to U.S. sanctions against Tehran over its nuclear programme, foreign banks have refused to transfer at least $200 million of overdue payments to Iran, raising fears among Iraqi officials that a cheap and vital power supply could be cut ahead of the sizzling Iraqi summer." http://bit.ly/g1leIv
Human Rights
AFP: "Iran has arrested a number of Christian missionaries in Tehran province and vowed to detain more of them, the provincial governor was quoted as saying by state news agency IRNA on Tuesday. Morteza Tamaddon said 'the leaders of this movement have been arrested in Tehran province and more will be arrested in the near future.' He did not give their identities, so it was unclear whether they are foreigners, Iranians or a combination of both. Nor did he explain what he meant by their belonging to a movement, which he called 'deviated' and 'corrupt.' He referred to them as 'tabshiri,' or missionaries, and likened them to the Taliban. 'Just like the Taliban... who have inserted themselves into Islam like a parasite, they have crafted a movement with Britain's backing in the name of Christianity,' Tamaddon said." http://bit.ly/fj1A5Q
CNN: "Iran executed a man in a rare public hanging in Tehran on Wednesday morning, local media reported. The man, identified only as 'Yaqub,' was convicted of stabbing a man to death in broad daylight in October, said the official Islamic Republic News Agency. The public hanging, which was attended by the victims' family and large crowds of onlookers, took place in the main square of the affluent northern Tehran neighborhood of Sa'adat Abad. The October murder sparked outrage amongst Tehran residents after videos of the stabbing surfaced on the Internet and were replayed on Iranian state television. The killing took place in front of two police officers, the news agency said. Although executions are common in Iran, public ones are not." http://bit.ly/gh11ft
Domestic Politics
AP: "Iran's hard-liners are seeking to bar pro-reform politicians from running in next year's legislative elections, calling them traitors who tried to topple the ruling system over the disputed 2009 presidential elections. One of those taking that view, Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, said pro-reform opposition groups should not stand in the elections because the Iranian people have no need for them. Jannati heads a powerful constitutional watchdog called the Guardian Council that screens electoral candidates." http://lat.ms/9PBXCo
Foreign Affairs
AP: "The apparent suicide of the former shah of Iran's youngest son has shocked and saddened Iranian emigres, many of whom were forced into exile by the Islamic Revolution and hoped their country's monarchy could one day be restored. The death of 44-year-old Alireza Pahlavi of a gunshot wound at his home in Boston brought home the personal tragedies of many who fled Iran more than three decades ago, and symbolized another lost link to the era of the Western-backed dynasty's Peacock Throne. In Iran, the official Islamic Republic News Agency carried a brief story that was the most-viewed early Wednesday." http://wapo.st/f4wEh0
AP: "Iran's new foreign minister is pushing to cement ties with neighboring Iraq Wednesday at a time when American troops are preparing to go home and Tehran's influence is on the rise. Officials from around the Middle East have been streaming into Iraq since the new Shiite-led government was sworn in last month, nine months after an inconclusive election that led to prolonged political wrangling. Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi's visit came a few days after Jordan and Egypt sent senior delegations. Iraq's mainly Sunni neighbors are racing to try to regain their influence in Iraq, partly to counter Iran's rising power." http://wapo.st/fxSf4d
Opinion & Analysis
Max Boot in WSJ: "Now another covert-action program appears to have scored a big success. Israeli cabinet minister Moshe Yaalon, a former Israeli military chief of staff, said last week that, as a result of recent setbacks, Iran will not go nuclear until 2014 at the earliest. That's quite a change from earlier Israeli forecasts that Iran could get the bomb in 2011. Why the extra three years? Mr. Yaalon didn't elaborate beyond the bland statement that 'the Iranian nuclear program has a number of technological challenges and difficulties.' But it has been widely reported that Siemens computers used to control Iranian nuclear facilities in Natanz and Bushehr were infected by a fiendishly clever virus, called Stuxnet, that is hard to detect and even harder to eradicate... Whoever is responsible may have scored the most notable victory yet recorded in the brief annals of cyberwarfare. It appears that Stuxnet has managed to delay the Iranian nuclear program as long as Israeli air strikes might have, while avoiding any of the obvious blowback... In the case of Iran, the question is whether we'll make good use of the time apparently bought by successful covert action. If the Obama administration spends the next three years trying to push sanctions resolutions out of the United Nations or trying to open negotiations with Tehran, it will accomplish little. Better to ramp up another covert action program - this one designed to help the Iranian people overthrow their dictators." http://bit.ly/fS4g1f
Abbas Milani in The National Interest: "The failure of American and British governments to predict the fall of the shah in 1979 was one of the biggest intelligence failures of the twentieth century. In the aftermath of that monumental mess, the British government ordered a policy review to learn what went wrong. They identified three main errors: inattention to the brutality of the regime's secret police (SAVAK), insufficient knowledge of the corruption of the ruling elite and a lack of focus on the intellectual life of Iran. Today, thirty years later, the dominant discourse on American policy toward Tehran often suffers from exactly the same three maladies. As the nuclear impasse with Iran continues, the new Republican majority in the House of Representatives is likely to pressure the Obama administration for harsher measures against the clerical regime, so the debate about the stability of the Iranian elite and the power of the opposition, and about what would be the right U.S. policy, is only likely to increase. In the weeks before the policy of ending subsidies on food and petroleum was implemented, several leading security officials of the regime threatened the people with harsh punishment should they react to the new economic landscape. Lest anyone missed the message, and lest anyone did not hear about the prison sentences against leaders of the opposition, the regime also organized a major show of force in Terhan-a 'security exercise,' they said-intended to remind the people of what might happen if they dared demonstrate against the new harsh reality. In the days after the implementation of the policy, every night President Ahmadinejad is reported to have convened special sessions with his cabinet to address or contain any problem. The regime was clearly worried that any small incident might act as a trigger that would once again lead to mass demonstrations." http://bit.ly/g8bSn8 |
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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