Top Stories
NYT: "Antigovernment protesters gathered throughout parts of Iran on Sunday, most concentrated in the capital Tehran, to mark the deaths of two men killed during demonstrations last Monday. The government mounted a stultifying security presence in the capital, with the police making arrests and using tear gas to try to prevent the unrest from escalating. Despite a steady rain, large crowds gathered intermittently throughout Tehran, from the main thoroughfare to city squares, according to opposition Web sites and witnesses. The security forces seemed prepared for them, and in some locations, witnesses reported that police officers and baton-holding mercenaries outnumbered the protesters. There were reports of police officers firing on the crowds, although those could not be confirmed, because most foreign journalists were not allowed to report in Iran." http://t.uani.com/hiNZYj
WSJ: "Iran is redoubling its efforts to enrich uranium by upgrading the equipment at its nuclear facilities, after its enrichment program was severely disrupted by a computer virus, according to diplomats familiar with a new assessment by the International Atomic Energy Agency. The IAEA, the United Nations' nuclear watchdog, believes Iran is seeking to replace thousands of centrifuges it has been using to enrich uranium with more modern, carbon-fiber centrifuges that can enrich nuclear fuel at about five times the speed of Iran's previous equipment, these diplomats say. The diplomats say Iran is also replacing computers and other electronic equipment at its nuclear facilities, including its Natanz enrichment plant, after apparently failing to trace the source of a damaging computer virus known as Stuxnet. Replacing all of the electronics could take Iran up to two years, these people say." http://t.uani.com/gTm9jd
WashPost: "A comprehensive new U.S. intelligence report concludes that Iran has resumed research on key components for a nuclear weapon, but that the slow and scattered nature of the effort reflects renewed debate within the government over whether to build a bomb, U.S. officials said. The finding represents a significant, if subtle, shift from the main conclusion of a controversial 2007 estimate that Iran had halted its weaponization work. In finding that Iran has again begun taking steps toward designing a nuclear warhead, the new estimate is likely to be seen as erasing doubt that the earlier document created about Iran's intent. But the new report reaches no firm conclusions about when Iran might acquire the bomb. The classified estimate has already triggered debate among American officials over whether Iran's apparent hesitation is the result of U.S.-backed sanctions meant to derail any weapons program." http://t.uani.com/ee5I8k
Nuclear Program & Sanctions
Bloomberg: "Iran's biggest crude oil tanker operator NITC said on Friday its ship insurers had declined to renew policy cover for the coming year due to the impact of tightening sanctions in the European Union. Western nations suspect Iran is seeking to develop a nuclear bomb although Tehran says its atomic programme is peaceful. NITC gets its third party liability insurance and pollution cover from the P&I Club market, marine insurers owned by shipping clients. 'NITC has found itself caught up in a situation of tightening sanctions as a totally innocent party, along with some 100 other Iranian shipping companies,' NITC chairman and managing director Mohammad Souri said in a statement." http://t.uani.com/f9WHhd
AP: "Suez Canal officials say two Iranian naval vessels are expected to start their passage through the strategic waterway early Tuesday. Canal officials say the ships are expected to pay a fee of $290,000 for the crossing. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they aren't authorized to speak publicly about the matter. If the ships make the passage, it would mark the first time in three decades that Iranian military ships have traveled the canal that links the Red Sea to the Mediterranean. Israel has made clear it views the passage as a provocation." http://t.uani.com/gZAFfR
AFP: "A Nigerian court on Friday adjourned the trial of an alleged Iranian Revolutionary Guard member charged over a weapons shipment sent from Iran and seized in Lagos in October. The trial, which began on Wednesday, was suspended to March 7 to enable the court to hear a bail application filed by Azim Aghajani and Nigerian suspect Ali Abbas Jega. The accused have pleaded not guilty to three charges of importing 13 containers of weapons and falsely declaring them as building materials. The arms shipment has drawn international attention because it could constitute a violation of UN sanctions against Iran over its nuclear programme. It has also sparked diplomatic tensions between West African nations and Iran." http://t.uani.com/ew1918
Human Rights
AP: "Iran on Saturday freed two German journalists who were arrested four months ago after they interviewed the son of an Iranian woman condemned to death by stoning for adultery. Earlier, an Iranian court threw out the 20-month prison sentences handed down against the journalists, Marcus Hellwig and Jens Koch. The court commuted the sentences to $50,000 fines, state television reported. The Germans - a reporter and a photographer for the Bild am Sonntag newspaper - got caught up in a confrontation between Iran and the West involving the case of the condemned woman, Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, a mother of two. She has been convicted of adultery and sentenced to death. The Germans were detained in October after interviewing Ms. Ashtiani's son, who had also been arrested, in Tabriz." http://t.uani.com/f5ZUhv
Domestic Politics
Radio Farda: "Ahmad Maleki, the head of Iran's consular office in Milan, has resigned his post to protest the Iranian government's 'barbaric actions against the Iranian nation,' RFE/RL's Radio Farda reports. Maleki told RFE/RL in an exclusive interview on February 20 that he had joined the opposition Green Movement. He became the fourth Iranian diplomat in the past year to resign over disagreements with how Tehran has handled the Green Movement and its supporters." http://t.uani.com/ibQNaF
AFP: "Faezeh Hashemi, daughter of Iran's ex-president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, was freed on Sunday after being arrested briefly in Tehran as police deployed to prevent protests, Fars news agency reported. 'Faezeh Hashemi, who was arrested as she led a number of anti-revolutionaries and rioters while claiming to purchase clothes in Vali Asr Street, has been released,' the report said. Earlier, Fars and state news agency IRNA reported Hashemi's arrest for 'provocative behaviour.' IRNA said that Faezeh was involved 'numerous times in illegal gatherings' in the unrest after the disputed re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2009." http://t.uani.com/hJWOsm
AFP: "Iran finally withdrew its entire fleet of Soviet era Tupolev aircraft on Sunday after a series of fatal accidents involving the planes, a top aviation official said. The ban affects 17 Tupolev TU 154 planes which were in service with four Iranian airlines, the head of Iran's Civil Aviation Organisation, Reza Nakhjavani, was quoted as saying on the state television website. The decision to ban Iranian airlines from using the aircraft was taken in 2010 after a series of crashes involving leased aircraft flown by pilots from former Soviet countries. In January, Nakhjavani announced that Iranian airlines had six months to employ local crews on their flights. On Sunday, he said Iranian airlines had purchased 35 aircraft to replace the Tupolevs and modernise their fleet. He did not go into details." http://t.uani.com/gIBpOq
Reuters: "Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad presented a delayed budget bill to parliament on Sunday, urging lawmakers to swiftly approve a package he said would continue his drive to reduce social inequality. The draft budget for the next Iranian year, which begins on March 21, was around $177 billion, he said. In addition to that, the budget for state-affiliated companies was $362 billion. Last year the total budget amounted to $368 billion. In an address which was bigger on political rhetoric than financial detail, Ahmadinejad told parliament his government aimed to reduce Iran's reliance on oil income and push ahead with a major subsidy phase-out which has already begun." http://t.uani.com/dRioFo
Foreign Affairs
AFP: "Iran`s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Sunday called on Muslims to "remove" the United States from the Islamic world. 'The main problem in the Muslim world is the presence of the United States. It is the biggest problem. We need to address that,' he told a gathering of scholars in Tehran for an international conference on Islam. 'It is necessary to remove the United States from the Islamic world,' the all-powerful cleric and Islamic republic`s commander-in-chief said, adding that the country`s arch-foe was currently weak." http://t.uani.com/g6ISCT
AP: " Israel's prime minister on Sunday accused Iran of trying to exploit the recent instability in Egypt by sending two warships through the Suez Canal into the Mediterranean, saying he views the move 'with gravity.' The Iranian ships were expected to make a rare crossing through the canal on Sunday or Monday en route to Syria - an Iranian ally and Israel's enemy to the north. Egypt confirmed the ships would be allowed through the strategic passage. 'Israel views this Iranian step with gravity,' Benjamin Netanyahu told the weekly meeting of his Cabinet. He did not suggest there would be an Israeli response. The ships would not enter Israeli territorial waters." http://t.uani.com/dWn7wo
AP: "Germany's foreign minister held a rare meeting with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Tehran in what appeared to have been a complicated deal to obtain the release of two journalists detained for four months, officials said Sunday. Leading Iranian exile opposition representatives called Guido Westerwelle's visit a 'disgrace,' saying Germany was bowing to the regime and it could deal a blow to popular protests gathering new steam amid the turmoil in the Middle East." http://t.uani.com/fxerMK
AP: "Former top-ranking U.S. officials on Saturday urged the Obama administration to take an Iranian dissident group off its list of terrorist organizations, saying the move would raise pressure on Tehran at a time when authoritarian regimes are tottering across the Middle East. Several ex-officials called on Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to rescind the 14-year-old designation of the Mujahedeen-e Khalq Organization, or MEK, as a terrorist group." http://t.uani.com/fZnUYk
Opinion & Analysis
Alan Cowell in IHT: "For 18 days, the world watched Egypt's revolution live on television, following every surge of protest, every incremental escalation of people power. And for one day this week, when the fervor inspired by Egypt's example seized Tehran, the world did just the opposite. No satellite images like those of Tahrir Square showed Enghelab Square. No foreign reporters poured through Tehran's airport. No networks vied for the most exhaustive coverage. Instead, outsiders foraged through YouTube fragments and Facebook snippets to divine what was happening. The narrative was disjointed, as those who disrupted it intended it to be. A reader wrote to ask me why there no moving pictures to confirm a revival, however fleeting, of the protest that flowed from Iran's disputed 2009 election and was then brutally crushed. The answer was simple: news cameras were barred; news gatherers were barred from the protests and punished by the removal of news media credentials as the Iranian authorities deployed their armory of controls: the Internet slowed; plainclothes security officials on motorcycles beat and intimidated protesters; the Parliament bayed for opposition leaders to be executed." http://t.uani.com/dQjWU4
Amir Taheri in WSJ: "'Hang them! Hang them!' the mob shouted while goose-stepping towards the podium. Some beat their chests and others raised clenched fists. 'Allah is the greatest!' chanted the turbaned clerics. This was the scene Tuesday in the Islamic Majlis, Iran's ersatz parliament. Members raged against the 'heads of sedition,' calling for their execution. By this they meant three of the most prominent leaders of Iran's reformist Green Movement-former President Mohammad Khatami, former Prime Minister Mir Hossein Mousavi, and Mehdi Karroubi, a cleric and 2009 presidential candidate who chaired the Majilis just six years ago. Sedition, or fitnah in Persian, is a Shariah term that describes action against the ruling Islamic authority. The regime uses it to justify its brutal crackdown on the pro-democracy movement triggered by the disputed re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in June 2009. The 'sedition' trio had called for a march in Tehran on Monday, ostensibly to mark 'the end of despotism in Egypt.' To do things legally, they applied for a permit, which the authorities refused. Meanwhile, the police blocked access to their homes and cut their telephone and Internet links. Not to leave things to chance, the authorities deployed more than 30,000 Basij (non-uniformed thugs) to help riot police contain any demonstrations. Crowds formed in various parts of the capital with the aim of converging on Azadi (freedom) Square to turn it into an Iranian version of Cairo's Tahrir (liberty) Square. The Basij blocked access, provoking intermittent battles with crowds of demonstrators throughout the day. Two students, Sanah Jaleh, 26, and Mohamad Mokhtari, 22, were killed. And at least 400 people, including nine Basij, were injured. Regime propaganda has blamed 'the CIA and Mossad' for the uprising and claims that 'Zionist snipers' shot the two students. The exercise was a partial success for the opposition. The crowds in Tehran did not exceed a few thousand before they were dispersed, but the protesters appeared as determined as ever despite 18 months of ferocious repression." http://t.uani.com/hBiIvd
WT Editorial Board: "The people flooding into the streets of Iran to seek regime change find no support from the U.S. government. President Obama, who hectored Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak to transfer power 'right now,
suddenly doesn't want to get involved when it comes to the dictators running the Islamic republic. The administration argues that taking a firm stand on regime change would hand Tehran a pretext for cracking down on pro-democracy protesters. It took the same approach during the 2009 protests, and the result was that Tehran's thugs ruthlessly suppressed demonstrators and blamed the United States for instigating them. Iran's leaders will do the same again no matter what Mr. Obama says. The president has nothing to lose by standing up for freedom, especially because the Iranian regime really needs changing.Taking the easy route projects weakness to the world, and it hardly takes courage for the United States to caution all sides against resorting to violence. The current situation cries out for a show of strength. As we learned in 2009, failure to stand up to the Islamic regime only emboldens the despots to respond with force. Mr. Obama apparently thinks his supine approach produced the right outcome in Egypt. On Tuesday the president claimed, with his usual humility, that 'history will end up recording that at every juncture in the situation in Egypt, that we were on the right side of history. ... I think we calibrated just about right.' For that to be the case, historians would have to overlook the administration's surprise and befuddlement as the events on the Nile began to unfold. It may be a bit premature for the president to clear space on his shelf for another prize certifying his role in history." http://t.uani.com/f3KQM0
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