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NYT: "At the talks between Iran and six major powers in Istanbul over the weekend, Iran said it was 'no longer interested' in a fuel-swap deal proposed by Washington and the others, a senior Western diplomat said Monday. In Istanbul, the lead Western negotiator, Catherine Ashton, said only that her Iranian counterpart, Saeed Jalili, had refused to engage on the details of a revised offer to swap most of Iran's low-enriched uranium for fuel rods, to power a declining Tehran reactor that produces medical isotopes... But the senior Western diplomat, who would speak only anonymously, in keeping with diplomatic protocol, was more explicit, saying that Mr. Jalili told Ms. Ashton and the other powers that 'Iran was no longer interested in the Tehran reactor' because it had found its own source of uranium and could produce the fuel itself." http://nyti.ms/gomlHG
AP: "The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency said Monday his organization cannot be sure that Iran is not secretly working on nuclear arms, in comments reflecting disappointment with the collapse of talks between Tehran and six world powers... 'Cooperation is not sufficient' by Iran, IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano told The Associated Press. 'We cannot provide ... assurance on the absence of (undeclared) nuclear activities or the exclusively peaceful nature of all the nuclear activities of Iran.'... 'We maintain knowledge on Iranian enrichment activities and other nuclear activities which are declared,' Amano said. But, he said, 'our knowledge is limited to which we have the access.' ... Such lack of transparency means that 'we cannot provide an assurance of the absence of undeclared activities and facilities,' said Amano." http://wapo.st/fU11bJ
Reuters: "President Obama's point person on cracking down on financial flows to Iran resigned Monday, marking the loss of a key player in the U.S. effort to pressure Tehran over its nuclear program. The departure of Stuart Levey from his role as the Treasury Department's undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence comes as the United States and its allies appear likely to make a push for stiffer sanctions on Iran. Obama nominated Levey's deputy, David Cohen, to replace him. Cohen will need to be confirmed by the Senate. 'It will have no effect on policy or on our ability to execute the president's policy,' Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner said of Levey's departure. 'David came to Treasury with well-established outside expertise and has worked at Stuart's side for the last two years.'" http://wapo.st/f3uU9r
Nuclear Program & Sanctions
Reuters: "German Chancellor Angela Merkel warned Iran on Monday that it faced further sanctions if it did not satisfy world powers' concerns about its nuclear programme. Merkel said she was disappointed that talks between Iran and the powers -- the United States, France, Germany, China, Russia and Britain -- ended on Saturday without progress. 'It is up to Iran to dispel doubts which remain over its atomic programme,' she told a meeting of German diplomats, adding that Tehran must see to it that the talks move along in a positive way. 'Otherwise, things will continue along the sanctions route,' she said." http://bit.ly/fKZ0cD
Bloomberg: "Venezuela will resume gasoline shipments to Iran after a pause of more than two years, Energy Intelligence Group reported. State-run Petroleos de Venezuela SA has agreed to supply two 30,000-ton cargoes gasoline cargoes per month to Iran, EIG said in its International Oil Daily newsletter, citing Middle East trading and shipping sources that it did not identify. The first cargo is due to arrive at the port of Bandar Abbas in early February, the report said. The shipments are a gesture of goodwill from Venezuela after U.S. and European sanctions restricted the supply of fuel imports into Iran, EIG said." http://bloom.bg/eaEUYZ
Commerce
Reuters: "Iran's national gas company and one of its state banks signed a contract worth $4 billion on Monday to provide the funding for construction of refineries, state television reported. The deal was signed by Iran's Saderat Bank and the National Iranian Gas Company (NIGC) for the construction of Bidboland gas refinery and a unit at the Parsian refinery to produce ethanol, according to the report. State television said Saderat, one of Iran's five major state-owned banks, will have an 80 percent share in the two projects and that NIGC will hold the rest. 'A new relation has been established between domestic banks as investors and energy projects, which will lead to the increase of efficiency in the economy,' television quoted Oil Minister Massoud Mirkazemi as saying." http://bit.ly/gCxVXZ
AFP: "Iran has offered Turkey several small oil and gas fields to develop, Turkish Energy Minister Taner Yildiz said on Monday. Ankara plans to pass the proposal on to private companies, Yildiz told reporters, adding the offer would require an investment of $100-200 million. He did not give other details. An earlier project for Turkey to develop three large gas fields in Iran had been dropped as the two neighbours failed to agree on the terms, Yildiz said. He explained Turkey wanted to both use and sell on to third parties part of the gas to be produced but Iranian law made that impossible. 'The decision was made purely on technical grounds,' he said, rejecting suggestions that international pressure on Iran over its nuclear activities had had any influence." http://bit.ly/dRd8hu
Bloomberg: "NITC of Iran expects to become the third-largest oil-tanker company by 2013, and possibly the second-biggest, when it takes delivery of 22 very large crude carriers and expands its fleet by 72 percent, an executive said. NITC, formerly known as National Iranian Tanker Co., is not hindered by economic sanctions on Iran, Area Manager Capt. R. Ghareh told reporters today in Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates. The company continues to carry crude produced by Royal Dutch Shell Plc and Total SA, in addition to oil from Saudi Aramco and state-run producers in Kuwait and Abu Dhabi, the U.A.E. capital. 'We have not faced any problem,' Ghareh said. The Iranian operator expects by 2013 to have 74 ships of all sizes, including very large crude carriers, or VLCCs, and also smaller vessels, he said. NITC will operate 50 VLCCs at that time, up from 28 today. It now ranks as the fifth-biggest tanker operator worldwide, with a total of 43 ships, he said." http://bloom.bg/f0PZoe
Human Rights
AFP: "A top Iranian reformist from a banned political party who had been jailed for anti-regime propaganda was released on Monday, an opposition website said. 'Ali Shakouri-rad, one of the prisoners of the post-election events, was released from jail,' Kaleme.com, the website of opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi, reported. Shakouri-rad, a leader of the banned Islamic Iran Participation Front and former lawmaker, was jailed on December 9 for 'propagating against the regime and spreading lies,' according to the Tehran prosecutor's office. His arrest came after publication of comments in which he attributed 'lies to the esteemed head of the judiciary, Ayatollah Sadeq Larijani,' the office said at the time." http://yhoo.it/dTsna9
Domestic Politics
AP: "Iran's hardline president sharply criticized his rivals in parliament Monday for seeking to curb his powers to appoint the central bank governor. The attack by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was the latest sign of strains over the country's faltering economy, which rivals have accused the president of mismanaging. Iran recently lifted subsidies on food and fuel that sent prices soaring, perhaps a sign that multiple rounds of international sanctions over the country's disputed nuclear program are taking a toll on the economy. New legislation approved in November by the conservative-dominated parliament requires approval of the legislature for appointing the central bank governor. The legislation has been blocked by a powerful constitutional watchdog called the Guardian Council, which needed to approve it to become law. The council deemed it violated the constitution." http://yhoo.it/hbD4Lr
Opinion & Analysis
WashPost Editorial Board: "The Obama administration recently has been boasting of the success of its campaign to impose sanctions on Iran, which is said to have had a significant impact on the country's economy. But inflicting distress was not the end goal of the policy; the administration's theory has been that Iran would respond to sanctions by agreeing to serious negotiations about its nuclear program. Consequently, last weekend's meetings in Istanbul between Iranian representatives and a six-nation coalition can only be seen as a serious setback. Far from softening its long-standing refusal to suspend its enrichment of uranium, Iran refused to bargain with the United States and its allies, and Tehran's representative declined even to meet with the U.S. member of the delegation. There was no discussion of further talks... The failed meeting might make it easier for the Obama administration to win support for still more sanctions, though it would probably face an uphill battle in obtaining another Security Council resolution. The bigger question is whether the strategy of seeking to bargain with the regime of Ali Khamenei and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad should be reconsidered. Because it has banked on this approach, the administration has consistently played down U.S. support for the opposition Green movement, which has been dormant in recent months. Yet Mr. Jalili's behavior in Istanbul suggests that the regime remains more concerned about appearing weak to its domestic opposition than about the consequences of defying the Security Council. By doing more to support the Iranian opposition, the United States could press the regime where it actually feels threatened. It could also send an important message to Iranians: that the international coalition seeks not to punish them but to weaken the government they despise." http://wapo.st/fol9b7
WSJ Editorial Board: "This weekend's nuclear talks between Iran and the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany were noteworthy not for their predictable collapse but for Tehran's demands to lift sanctions as a precondition for restarting negotiations. It was the clearest admission yet that the economic pressure on Iran is beginning to bite. Some advocates of a 'critical dialogue' with the Islamic Republic like to argue that sanctions would be counterproductive, giving Tehran another excuse for belligerence while doing nothing to stop its quest for nuclear weapons. They're right, at least to the extent that economic sanctions alone are unlikely to force Iran's leaders to change course. But strong sanctions, properly enforced, can also impose steep marginal costs on Tehran. As Iranian journalist Amir Taheri described on these pages yesterday, an October report by Iran's own central bank shows oil revenues, imports and infrastructure projects all down. The regime has been forced to curtail 30-year-old energy and food subsidies. Public protests that forced the regime to shelve previous attempts to cut these handouts could flare again and perhaps revive a weakened, if not yet beaten, opposition Green Movement. None of this means the threat posed by Iran has declined, and desperate regimes are prone to take desperate gambles. But they're more likely to take those gambles if they sense weakness on the part of their adversaries, as Argentina's generals did in 1982 on the eve of the Falklands invasion." http://on.wsj.com/hWJlXY
Abbas Milani in The National Interest: "The Cold War began in 1945 when Russian leader Josef Stalin refused to take his troops out of Iran; the fall of the shah in 1979 marked the beginning of the war's end. Yet even today real and imagined ghosts of that war, in the shape of an eclectic history of U.S.-Iran relations, and of the role the United States played in the fall of Mossadegh, continue to haunt some of the diplomatic discourse on Iran. It is even reported that President Barack Obama's hesitancy in offering stronger support for the Iranian democratic opposition has been at least partially rooted in his desire to avoid the mistakes of the past. Clearly, only after a reckoning with the past and exorcising its haunting ghosts can prudent policy be formed. The Soviet-British occupation of Iran in 1941 brought with it the creation of the Tudeh Communist party and the rapid rise of a Stalin-era Manichean view that divided the world into two camps: the gulag-laced Soviet Union was the land of light and America was the embodiment of evil. In one of its biggest demonstrations, with more than a hundred thousand fellow travelers in attendance, Tudeh leaders demanded 'the liquidation of America spy nests.' Almost three decades later, in offering his blessing to the students who had brazenly taken over the American embassy, Khomeini called it a 'den of spies.' There was more than lexical coincidence at work here. Khomeini and his allies took up the Cold War narrative and simply changed 'proletariat' to 'the disposed (mostazaf),' 'imperialism' to 'arrogance (estekbar)' and 'America' to 'the Great Satan.' If Satan fell from grace because he defied God, America's 'original sin' in this new political theology was its alleged role in the overthrow of Mossadegh in 1953. It mattered little in this transubstantiation of Communist theology to clerical dogma that the Communists were in 1951 Mossadegh's biggest foes, and that the decision of the clergy to go against Mossadegh in 1953 was far more crucial to his fall than any CIA plan. So what role did, in fact, the United States play in that fall and in the events preceding it? Any serious investigation of documents and facts will dispel most of the Cold War shibboleths." http://bit.ly/h4pzSk
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