Top Stories
NYT: "Mehdi Karroubi, an Iranian opposition leader, said Tuesday that a demonstration planned in Tehran next week, nominally in solidarity with the protest movements in Egypt and Tunisia, was a test both for the Iranian government and its opponents. Since Tehran is painting events in Cairo and elsewhere as the long-awaited regional blossoming of its own Islamic Revolution, to deny a permit for such a march would show that its position in support of the Arab movements is fake, Mr. Karroubi said in a rare interview from Tehran, conducted via an Internet video link. For the Iranian opposition, events in Cairo mirror the post-election protest movement in Iran in 2009, not the 1979 Islamic Revolution, and could give new life to the Green movement for political reform, which Mr. Karroubi said had largely been battered into submission by government oppression." http://t.uani.com/gaUN0h
Reuters: "Crates of weapons seized in Nigeria last year had been sent from Iran and were destined for Gambia as part of a three-year-old agreement between the two countries, the Iranian ambassador to Nigeria said. Nigeria reported Iran to the U.N. Security Council in November for an apparent breach of U.N. sanctions. Tehran's ambassador said he had told Nigerian authorities the shipment was part of legitimate trade with Gambia. The weapons included assorted calibres of mortars and 107mm rockets -- designed to attack static targets and used by armies to support infantry units -- and shells for a 23mm anti-aircraft gun, hidden in containers marked building materials." http://t.uani.com/ieGvSI
AFP: "A rally sought by opposition leaders in support of Arab revolts is a political move aimed at dividing Iranians, prosecutor general Gholam Hossein Mohseni Ejeie said in comments reported Wednesday. 'This is a political act. These people have separated their path from that of the people and they want to divide the people of Iran,' Mohseni Ejeie was quoted as saying by ILNA news agency. He was referring to Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, Iran's two main opposition leaders, who have asked the authorities for permission to hold a rally on February 14 to show solidarity with Egyptian and Tunisian protesters. Mohseni Ejeie said if the two leaders want to support the Arab uprisings they should join the government endorsed annual rally on February 11, which marks the anniversary of Iran's Islamic revolution of 1979." http://t.uani.com/fWZRqv
Nuclear Program & Sanctions
AFP: "The European Union is considering lifting a travel ban on Iran's new foreign minister to boost hopes for a nuclear accord, officials said Tuesday. Ali Akbar Salehi, a former head of Iran's atomic program who became foreign minister last month, is one of a group of Iranian officials banned from entering the 27-nation EU under sanctions imposed against Iran's nuclear drive. 'Dr Salehi is foreign minister and the discussion going on is that normally foreign ministers are taken off the banned lists because generally you want to have an interlocuter, foreign minister, who is able to travel and visit,' EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton told reporters." http://t.uani.com/eouLG0
Reuters: "Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals Ltd, India's biggest importer of Iranian oil, said on Tuesday there was no word yet from the government on an alternative payment mechanism for oil imports from Iran. 'We understand that a payment mechanism is being finalised but there is no official communication to us,' MRPL Managing Director U.K. Basu said." http://t.uani.com/ighwpP
Human Rights
Reuters: "Iran's science minister has called for universities to enforce strict sex segregation, saying allowing men and women to mingle on campus is a sign of the influence of alien western values, media reported Wednesday. Strict laws adopted after the 1979 revolution which founded the Islamic Republic bar any contact between men and women, but implementation of those rules varies widely. Conservative politicians have often called for stricter observance. 'The problem is our universities were built based on western values ... that are not compatible with our Iranian-Islamic values,' Science Minister Kamran Daneshjou was quoted as saying by Javan daily." http://t.uani.com/gL46YF
Radio Farda: "Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad has extended for another year enforcement of the Islamic Penal Code that mandates punishments that include stoning, RFE/RL's Radio Farda reports. Ahmadinejad on February 6 issued a notification to extend enforcement of the code until March 2012, the beginning of the Iranian new year, following ratification by the Iranian parliament in December 2010. Lashing, amputation of hands, and stoning to death are among the punishments permitted under the code." http://t.uani.com/fVsroW
Domestic Politics
Daily Telegraph: "Iran's opposition is targeting the powerful Revolutionary Guard to recruit a cadre of disgruntled officials to carry out a newly launched plan to cripple President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's regime from within its own ranks. A billionaire opposition leader who has pledged his fortune to the cause of removing the Iranian government and a former senior Guard commander told The Daily Telegraph that dissatisfaction with hardline tactics was rife in throughout the Guards. Amir Jahanchahi, the leader of the exiled opposition group, Green Wave, has teamed up with Gen Reza Madhi to target insiders to undermine the government and its grip on the powerful oil industry." http://t.uani.com/hyTw9p
Foreign Affairs
WSJ: "Iran and its ally Hezbollah have been quick to claim kinship with the mass demonstrations in Egypt, describing them as part of a 'regional Islamic awakening,' but the reaction from Egypt's own Islamic movement has been lukewarm... During Friday's prayer sermon, Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said the oppressed people of Egypt and Tunisia were aspiring for an Islamic state modeled after Iran and that the street demonstrations were 'liberating Islamic movements.' Meanwhile, the Muslim Brotherhood acted quickly to distance itself from Iran and Hezbollah, saying it 'regards the revolution as the Egyptian people's revolution, not an Islamic revolution.'" http://t.uani.com/fBqlUc
AFP: "Iran's elite military force, the Revolutionary Guards, denied on Monday that it is holding former FBI agent Robert Levinson as reported on some websites. 'We deny the arrest of the FBI agent and if the Guards had arrested an enemy, it would announce itself,' the head of the Guards, commander Mohammad Ali Jafari, told reporters, according to ILNA news agency. Jaafari said news reports of Iran holding Levinson were nothing more than attempts by the Islamic republic's 'enemies to find excuses and weaknesses' about Iran. Mystery shrouds the fate of Levinson, who disappeared on Iran's Gulf island of Kish in March 2007." http://t.uani.com/i5b6m8
AFP: "Afghanistan on Monday dismissed a claim by Tehran that the two countries had reached an agreement for Iran to supply all of its private sector fuel, drawing out a long-running dispute between the neighbours. Ghulam Mohammad Aylaqi, deputy commerce minister, denied comments made Sunday by Iranian Oil Minister Masoud Mirkazemi that an agreement was made under which the private sector would buy 'all its needed products' from Iran. Aylaqi said Kabul could not afford such a deal with Iran." http://t.uani.com/h7gPvO
Opinion & Analysis
Anthony Vance in HuffPo: "Imagine a country where it is not only illegal for some human beings to be friends with each other because of their religions, but where even their cows were once banned from grazing together in the same field. In recent months, in Rafsanjan, Iran, a wave of arson attacks was unleashed against Iranian Baha'is for making 'friends' with Muslims. After more than a dozen Baha'i-owned shops were burned, a warning letter arrived at Baha'i homes and businesses demanding that the Baha'is 'refrain from forming contacts or friendships with Muslims.' This follows arson attacks last year against Baha'i homes in Ivel, Iran -- the same village where a decree was once passed forbidding Baha'i- and Muslim-owned cows from grazing together. This week, four U.S.-based Iranian Baha'is will come to Washington, D.C. to advocate for the release of their innocent relatives, who have been jailed solely due to their religious beliefs. Three of the prisoners they represent are serving 10-year sentences for being part of a national administrative group known as 'The Friends,' or Yaran in Farsi, while another prisoner is a young woman serving a four-year sentence for engaging in a project to teach underprivileged youth how to read and write... For a climate of oppression to thrive -- Nazi Germany comes immediately to mind -- public scrutiny must be diverted from the central authority and projected onto an 'other,' usually a minority population that serves as a scapegoat." http://t.uani.com/heEn62
Reza Aslan in The Atlantic: "A wide range of observers, from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Fox News' Glenn Beck, are warning that the downfall of the U.S.-backed dictator in Egypt could lead to another Iranian style theocracy in the Middle East. Others, such as New York Times columnist Roger Cohen, are drawing parallels between the Egyptian protests and Iran's Green Movement uprising of 2009. This debate is raging no more fiercely than in Iran itself, where many Iranians - on both the right and the left - are clamoring to claim the Egyptian revolution for themselves. On one side of the political spectrum are a group of conservative parliamentary members, Revolutionary Guard leaders, and even the Supreme Leader himself, who are trying to cast the Egyptian revolution as a part of a greater Islamic uprising across the region... On the other side are Iran's youth and the leaders of the Green Movement, some of whom are even taking credit for the popular revolution that is now taking place in Egypt. Mir Hussein Mousavi, the man whose loss to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the 2009 presidential elections launched the largest and most sustained demonstrations in Iran since the 1979 revolution, voiced his confidence that 'the starting point of what we are witnessing in the streets of Tunis, San'a, Cairo, Alexandria, and Suez stems from the demonstrations in the streets of Tehran, where millions of Iranians marched in June of 2009.' A statement in the university journal Daneshjoo News made the point in starker terms: 'The democracy movement we started is spreading in the region and today we are witnessing the awakening of the Arabs. It's time for us to once again join hands and prove to the world that dictatorship must end.' It is this latter notion - that the events in Egypt could push Iranians to align in popular demonstrations against their government - that has raised the ire of the country's regime." http://t.uani.com/e84RQB |
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