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AP: "Tehran lashed out on Friday at the decision by U.N.'s top human rights body to appoint a special investigator to look into allegations of human rights abuses in Iran, saying the newly created post is 'politically motivated' and meant to divert attention from abuses in the United States. Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast claimed the vote at the Geneva-based U.N. Human Rights Council on Thursday came 'under U.S. pressure.' The council narrowly approved a U.S. and Swedish-backed proposal for a special rapporteur for the Islamic Republic. The decision marks the first time since the Geneva-based council's creation in 2006 that a new position for a country-specific investigator was created for a U.N. member, rather than merely extending the mandate of a previously existing one. The proposal was narrowly approved with a 22-7 vote, with 14 nations abstaining. Four of the council's 47 nations did not participate. An outside expert is to be appointed to the new position when the council next meets in June. Iran, which is not a council member, considers the vote meddling with the country's internal affairs." http://t.uani.com/ifsj90
WSJ: "A lobbying group that had targeted construction crane-maker Terex Corp. (TEX) over Iran's use of the company's cranes for public hangings said Thursday it is satisfied that Terex no longer does business in Iran. United Against Nuclear Iran said Terex demonstrated that it has received no revenue or profit from Iran since the third quarter of 2010, in keeping with the company's April 2010 policy prohibiting all new business transactions in Iran. 'We applaud Terex for ending its business in Iran,' said Mark Wallace, president of the group, in a written statement Thursday. 'Any socially responsible company should be appalled at the possibility of having its products used for gruesome public executions.' The New York-based group made Terex the first target of its 'Cranes Campaign' against companies whose machinery in Iran is used in executions where the condemned are hung from cranes and their bodies left to dangle for public display. Terex had insisted that it ceased its business dealings in Iran. But the group remained skeptical, noting that the company's policy allowed its foreign-based subsidies and joint ventures to complete the supply and service contracts for Iran that were already in place when the policy was adopted last year. Wallace maintained that this provision could be used to extend Terex's connections to Iranian customers for years. But information received from the Connecticut-based company in the past week convinced United Against Nuclear Iran that Terex had indeed severed its business dealings in Iran and 'will have no future revenues from sales or business in Iran with the current Iranian regime in place.'" http://t.uani.com/fof1X6
WSJ: "Bahrain gave its sternest warning yet to Iran to keep out of its affairs, saying an escalation in the two countries' dispute over Bahrain's recent crackdown on political unrest could even lead to 'conflict.' The threat from Iran could increase 'to any level' at a time of deep divisions between Iran and its Arab neighbors in the Persian Gulf region, Bahrain's foreign minister Sheik Khalid bin Ahmed Al Khalifa said in an interview. 'They could make mistakes in causing a conflict,' Sheik Khalid said. 'The campaign against us from Iran at this stage is political, but it could have a different posture at any time,' he added. Iran has denounced Bahrain's decision to allow Saudi troops into the country as it moved last week to suppress a mainly Shiite protest movement calling for the downfall of the monarchy." http://t.uani.com/hcSalM
Nuclear Program & Sanctions
AFP: "Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday played up the global danger of Iran as he sought to persuade Russia to scale down its cooperation with Israel's foes in the increasingly volatile region. The Israeli leader held separate talks with President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin a day after a bus bombing killed a British woman and injured 39 people in Jerusalem. Netanyahu went into the meetings vowing to show Israel's 'iron will' to those who attack his country and he underscored the risk of Islamic regimes rising to power amid the turbulence now wracking North Africa and the Middle East. 'There is a danger to Israel, Russia and the modern world that radical regimes, possibly radical Islamic regimes, will emerge that threaten us,' Netanyahu told Medvedev at his suburban Moscow residence. 'One regime is already doing so. That is Iran, which threatens to torpedo all attempts at peace and to return us all to the ninth century,' he said." http://t.uani.com/gtfMxk
Human Rights
Vancouver Sun: "Canada pledged on Thursday to maintain its annual 'diplomatic' assault on Iran at the United Nations - even though the world body's Human Rights Council earlier Thursday resumed direct scrutiny of the Islamic republic after a nine-year hiatus. Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon told Postmedia News there would be no let-up in Canada's successful multi-year bid to push through resolutions in the UN General Assembly deploring abuses in Iran that include public executions and arbitrary arrests. 'Canada will continue to take Iran to task for their egregious human rights abuses,' Cannon said from Ottawa. 'We will do this at every opportunity, and in every appropriate forum, including in the General Assembly, until the situation improves dramatically.'" http://t.uani.com/fESSdb
Opinion & Analysis
Fredrik Dahl in Reuters: "Western air strikes against Muammar Gaddafi's forces could stiffen Iran's resolve to resist U.S.-led demands over its nuclear programme, though Tehran's final analysis may depend on when and how the Libyan war ends. Seeking to mend ties with the West, Gaddafi agreed in 2003 to abandon efforts to acquire nuclear, chemical and biological weapons -- a move that brought him in from the cold and helped end decades as an international pariah. In contrast, Iran has repeatedly ruled out halting sensitive nuclear activities it says are aimed at generating electricity but which the United States and its allies suspect are geared towards developing a nuclear weapons capability. Analysts say events in Libya, where Western warplanes hit Libyan tanks on a fifth night of air strikes on Thursday, are likely to provide new arguments for those in Iran who believe it would be a mistake to back down over its nuclear programme. Iran's arch foes -- Israel and the United States -- have refused to exclude possible military action against the Islamic Republic if diplomatic efforts to resolve the dispute fail. Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman told Reuters on Thursday that Iran and Syria posed a greater security threat than Libya, urging the West to treat those countries in the same way as it has Gaddafi's government. 'I suspect that this is playing into the hands of those who say that Iran has to have a nuclear deterrent because look at what happened to Gaddafi,' Shannon Kile, at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, said. Iran is pushing ahead with its uranium enrichment work despite toughening sanctions by the United Nations, United States and Europe on the major oil producer and technical and others woes slowing its nuclear progress. Iran says it is refining uranium only to provide fuel for a planned network of nuclear power stations so that it can export more of its oil and gas. But the same material can be used to make bombs if refined much more. 'Even without the operations in Libya the attitude in Iran has hardened over the last 2-3 years,' said David Hartwell, IHS Jane's North Africa and Middle East analyst. He said hardliners were likely to use the air campaign in Libya as a further justification for their position that 'we simply can't trust the West.' Iran's highest authority, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, this week said Gaddafi's concessions over its nuclear programme showed Tehran was right to continue to reject any curb to its atomic energy development." http://t.uani.com/dPbyjC
John Hannah in NRO: "One hopes that the Obama administration is connecting the dots in response to the sudden escalation of violence against Israel. Big Iranian weapons shipments seized off the coast of Gaza; an Israeli family of five slaughtered in their beds; a barrage of more than 90 rockets fired at Israeli population centers over the past few days. And yesterday's horrific terrorist attack at a bus station in Jerusalem. These are not isolated events. Nor are they outbursts of random violence by otherwise peace-loving Palestinians driven to despair by a stalemated peace process. On the contrary, these outrages are better understood as part of a strategic campaign by hardened terrorist groups, closely tied to Iran, Syria, and Hezbollah, to divert attention from the popular uprisings that have targeted tyrannical governments across the Middle East. While feigning confidence in the face of Jasmine revolutions that have toppled pro-American autocrats, Iran's mullahs know full well that the bell tolls for them, as the contagion of popular uprising now at work across Muslim lands threatens to reignite the Green Movement that in 2009 shook the Islamic Republic to its core... Add to all this a U.S.-led military intervention on behalf of a Libyan revolt that threatens to topple Moammar Qaddafi, one of the charter members of the Middle East's league of terrorist-sponsoring totalitarians, and you've got an awfully compelling reason for Iran, Syria, and their allies to want to change the subject as fast as possible. The easiest way to do that, of course, has always been to trigger a major dustup with Israel, preferably one that leaves in its wake as many innocent Palestinian or Lebanese corpses as possible. It's the oldest ruse in the playbook, a murderous attempt to draw the moths of the international media back to the light of Palestinian suffering, and redirect the anger of mobilized Muslim masses away from their current laser-like focus on the brutal and ruinous regimes that rule over them." http://t.uani.com/gRqULI
Gabriel Elizondo in Al Jazeera: "Iran and Brazil. My, oh, my. How times can change in the realpolitik world of international diplomacy. It just seemed like yesterday that Turkey, Brazil and Iran announced with great fanfare the nuclear fuel swap deal meant to stave off new UN sanctions. Going into the negotiatoins, Brazil had a clear mission at the time. Once the deal was done, in May last year, it was triumphed by the principals involved as a sign that international diplomacy can be accomplished - thank you very much - amongst developing powers without the influence of Europe or the US. But the deal was quickly brushed off, as a Reuters headline said at the time, by 'an unconvinced West'. Regardless of the blocking of the well-intentioned accord, the signing of it culminated what many believed at the time would be a longstanding Turkey-Brazil-Iran diplomatic power triangle - with Turkey famously bridging the Europe-Arab World divide and the brash new kid on the block, Brazil, bridging the North America-South divide. In the middle, Iran. There was certainly debate within Brazil at the time on what, if any, self interest Brazil had in the deal. But, maybe in the end, it was a courtship of convenience. At the time, the Iranian regime was in need of a fresh-faced, up-and-coming global powerhouse as an ally and Brazil fit the bill perfectly. Brazil, at the time, had a wildly popular president in Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva who was looking to greatly expand his country's foreign policy in major international issues. The Iran nuclear issue fit the bill. And for the Brazilians, adding the weight and regional credibility of Turkey into the mix made it all the better. Likewise, the friendship produced economic benefits, as Lula da Silva himself said in a speech in Tehran last year. In the last eight years, the commercial trade between Iran and Brazil doubled from $500m to $1.2bn. Iran is now one of the top three trading partners in the Middle East for Brazil. Back in 2009, more than 450 Brazilian companies exported to Iran. And in the first semester of 2010, when Brazil-Iran relations were their closest, Brazilian exports to Iran increased 77 per cent, while Iran imports to Brazil increased 125 per cent. But things have changed. Lula da Silva is out of office. Influential former foreign minister, Celso Amorim (who was named by Foreign Policy magazine as one of the world's top Global Thinkers last year) is semi-retired in Rio de Janeiro.And so too, perhaps, is Brazil's friendship with Iran. The dynamic between Brazil and Iran has taken a sudden and abrupt turn in the form of Dilma Rousseff. Brazil's new president is barely three months into her presidency, and she has mostly veered far away from jumping into the sometimes murky pool of international politics, letting her smooth and highly experienced foreign minister, Antonio Patriota, be the main voice on all things outside Brazil's borders. However, even during the campaign whenever she was pestered by reporters about 'the Iran question,' usually two words that ended up coming out of her mouth in her answer were 'human' and 'rights.' No doubt this made the Iranians uncomfortable." http://t.uani.com/eEdeHm
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