Top Stories
AP: "The control systems of Iran's Bushehr nuclear plant have been penetrated by a computer worm unleashed last year, according to a foreign intelligence report that warns of a possible Chernobyl-like disaster once the site becomes fully operational. Russia's envoy to NATO, Dmitry Rogozin, also has raised the specter of the 1986 reactor explosion in Ukraine, but suggested last week that the danger had passed. The report, drawn up by a nation closely monitoring Iran's nuclear program and obtained by The Associated Press, said such conclusions were premature and based on the 'casual assessment' of Russian and Iranian scientists at Bushehr. With control systems disabled by the virus, the reactor would have the force of a 'small nuclear bomb,' it said. 'The minimum possible damage would be a meltdown of the reactor,' it says. 'However, external damage and massive environmental destruction could also occur ... similar to the Chernobyl disaster.'" http://uani.com/fYyJsR
Reuters: "Western powers should work on the assumption that Iran could have a nuclear weapon by next year and an Israeli intelligence assessment of 2015 could be over-optimistic, British Defence Secretary Liam Fox said on Monday. Meir Dagan, outgoing director of Israeli intelligence agency Mossad, said this month that Israel believed Iran would not be able to produce a nuclear bomb before 2015. But Fox, answering questions in parliament, said Dagan was 'wrong to insinuate that we should always look at the more optimistic end of the spectrum' of estimates of Iran's nuclear capability. 'We know from previous experience, not least what happened in North Korea, that the international community can be caught out assuming that things are more rosy than they actually are,' he said. 'We should therefore be very clear that it is entirely possible that Iran may be on the 2012 end of that spectrum and act in accordance with that warning,' he said." http://uani.com/eVqWUF
CNN: "The United States is urging the Iranian government to halt executions after Tehran hanged a Dutch-Iranian woman, saying she was a drug smuggler. The International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran has said the drug charges were only a pretext to execute Zahra Bahrami, and the Netherlands froze all ties with Iran on Sunday, a day after the hanging. On Monday, the U.S. State Department said it was 'deeply concerned that Iran continues to deny its citizens their human rights.' 'Judicial cases, trials, and sentences continue to proceed without transparency and the due process rights enshrined in Iran's own constitution,' it said." http://uani.com/eSA4Wi
Nuclear Program & Sanctions
Reuters: "The trial in Nigeria of an alleged member of Iran's Revolutionary Guards over an arms shipment seized last year in the West African country has been postponed until later this week, lawyers said on Monday. Azim Adhajani was charged last November with importing prohibited firearms after a shipment of mortars and rockets from Iran was seized in the main port of Lagos, apparently putting Tehran in breach of U.N. sanctions. Adhajani, who Nigeria's secret service says is a member of the Revolutionary Guards, appeared in court on Monday in the capital Abuja with three alleged Nigerian accomplices for what was meant to be the start of his trial. But Judge Hafusat Soso dismissed the case after the prosecution filed fresh charges at a federal high court in Lagos, saying it would be easier for them to use the seized weapons as evidence if the case was heard there." http://uani.com/hu8c5U
AP: "The appeals from cash-starved businesses in Iran come in nearly every day at the small shipping office in Dubai. Can they get goods on good-faith credit? Can the company help as economic sanctions on Iran cut off access to international banking and commercial markets? ... Just a few years ago, the family's Sky Star Co. could barely keep up with demand from Iranian businesses making orders via Dubai, one of the main transit points for consumer products and other goods heading for Iran... The lean times at Sky Star are echoed by Iranian-linked businesses across Dubai. Their troubles offer a clearer look at how stronger economic sanctions are squeezing average commerce and Iran's merchant middle class, who face a dwindling supply of business partners abroad and have been effectively blackballed from getting loans and credit on international markets." http://uani.com/gtoIEy
AFP: "Iran will soon find a successor to atomic chief Ali Akbar Salehi, who this week officially took over as foreign minister, a top aide of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Tuesday. 'God willing, his successor in this organisation will soon be known,' Esfandiar Rahim Mashaie, chief of staff of Ahmadinejad's office, told the ISNA news agency. Iran's parliament on Sunday endorsed Salehi as the Islamic republic's foreign minister. Salehi, 61, who is also a vice president of the Islamic republic, has led the Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran since July 2009. He has been a driving force behind Iran's nuclear programme. It has been during his tenure that Iran brought its first nuclear power plant on line and started higher-level uranium enrichment amid Western concerns. Iranian media have cited Ali Asghar Soltanieh, Iran's envoy to the International Atomic Energy Agency, as well as Salehi's deputy Mohammad Ahmadian and nuclear research chief Mohammad Ghanadi as possible successors." http://uani.com/gHWPls
Human Rights
Reuters: "Iran rejected on Tuesday Dutch outrage over the hanging of one of its citizens, saying the West should applaud its tough penalties for drug traffickers. Zahra Bahrami, 45, who had both Dutch and Iranian nationality, was hanged on Saturday for drug smuggling, a charge her family says was fabricated after she was arrested for taking part in anti-government protests in 2009. The Netherlands froze official contacts with Iran, saying it had informed The Hague just hours earlier that legal proceedings were still under way. A Dutch foreign affairs ministry spokesman called the execution 'an act committed by a barbaric regime'. 'Dutch officials made certain comments, it looks like they do not have enough information regarding the case of this lady,' Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast told a weekly news conference. 'They have made these hasty comments.'" http://uani.com/hitunt
Domestic Politics
AP: "President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad faced another sharp rebuke from opponents in parliament Tuesday as lawmakers dismissed his transportation minister in the wake of several deadly plane crashes in the country. The vote highlights the growing political fissures between Ahmadinejad and former conservative allies in parliament who accuse him of overstepping his powers, not being transparent and mismanaging the economy... The impeachment vote against Transport Minister Hamid Behbahani - which passed 147-78 with nine abstentions - was the most direct attack by the conservative-dominated parliament against Ahmadinejad's government. Behbahani was immediately dismissed." http://uani.com/i2XPEn
Foreign Affairs
AFP: "Tehran has warned it will cut cultural ties with France if renowned Paris museum The Louvre fails to set up an exhibition of Persian artefacts in Iran as agreed, an official was Monday cited as saying. 'If this museum (The Louvre) fails to fulfill its commitment with the (Iranian) Cultural Heritage Organisation in the next two months, then we will cut cultural ties with France,' head of the organisation Hamid Baghai was quoted as saying by Tehran Emrouz newspaper. Under an agreement between Iran and France, 'years ago we set up exhibits in The Louvre in exchange for them setting up their Persian artefacts here,' he said." http://uani.com/g6JD2H
Opinion & Analysis
Irwin Cotler in The National Post: "While the eyes of the world are understandably turned toward North Africa, Iranian executions have escalated dramatically. Human rights organizations report that in January 2011 alone, Iran has executed at least 65 people, while another 43 executions took place in the 10 days before the new year. This is a rate of about one person every eight hours, an unprecedented 'execution binge' even by wanton Iranian standards. It has gone largely unnoticed. This past weekend, The Netherlands froze its ties with Iran to protest the hanging of a Dutch-Iranian woman, Zahara Bahrami. She had been executed on trumped-up drug charges, but her real 'crime' had been to protest the fraudulent June 2009 election of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Her execution came just after the hanging of two other post-election demonstrators in Tehran's notorious Evin prison, and the sentencing of seven other protestors to death. Iran is engaged in a wholesale assault on the rights of its own people, including a state-orchestrated wave of arrests, detentions, beatings, torture, kidnappings, disappearances and executions. Initially, all of this was overlaid with Stalinist show trials and coerced confessions; but now, even that pretence has been discarded... The video of an innocent young woman named Neda - gunned down in 2009 while protesting the fraudulent election of President Ahmadinejad - went viral in the immediate aftermath of her murder. But there are many more Nedas out there. Their unconscionable murder goes unredressed. It is our responsibility to sound the alarm and stand in solidarity with the struggle for human rights in Iran." http://uani.com/dIBIH4
Barbara Slavin in FP: "While the world's attention has been riveted by Arab uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt this month, Iran's government has taken the opportunity to execute a record number of prisoners in an apparent bid to head off the return of the dramatic street protests that pushed President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's government to the brink in June 2009. Meanwhile, Iranian officials have been spinning the turmoil in the Arab world as a victory for Iran and a replay of Iran's 1979 revolution against the U.S.-backed shah. But the mass protests that are ricocheting around the region -- spread in part by Facebook, Twitter, text messaging, and satellite television -- cut more than one way for Tehran. They remind Iranians of their own recent failed attempt to dislodge an increasingly authoritarian government. 'This is a reaction to the developments in Egypt and Tunisia,' says Hadi Ghaemi, director of International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran. 'The Iranian intelligence forces want to show their power by executing so many people including even someone of European nationality.' The crackdown could be in part an effort to pre-empt more demonstrations as Iran on Jan. 31 begins the commemoration of the 32nd anniversary of the Islamic Revolution." http://uani.com/iirUF6
John Vinocur in IHT: "Excruciating new problems never nullify the old ones. In the case of Iran's potential nuclear threat, Egypt's gathering implosion - joined by some new elements of concern - is only more bad news for the West. For a month or so, a kind of notional pause on Iran had been in order, a seeming parenthesis of respite and reflection: a departing Israeli spy chief's estimate of a due-date for the mullahs' capacity to build nukes pushed it off three years into the future; a fruitless meeting with Iran in Istanbul was portrayed as going well in terms of Russia and China's cooperation with the United States and its allies; the effect of sanctions and other measures taken against the Iranian leadership was described by Washington as successful to the point of being 'underreported' by the news media. And now? A situation in Egypt where the West, including the Obama administration, looks both challenged in articulating its support for the protesters shaking an apparently futureless regime in Cairo and unwilling to openly assert that it wants a successor to Hosni Mubarak who would hold to his clear line against Iran becoming a nuclear power. In Tehran, the mullahs have been comparing the wobbling Mubarak regime to the fall of the shah in 1979. Indeed, a better comparison might be with the circumstances around the mullahs' stolen election in 2009. At the time - and since - President Barack Obama of the United States didn't (and hasn't) offered either verbal or practical backing to the Iranian opposition against a government whose history of oppression and contempt for the law is well documented, and well known." http://uani.com/fC2qiD
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