Top Stories AFP: "Iran is not making fast progress towards acquiring a nuclear weapon, a US expert said Friday, adding he believed Tehran would still need another two years to achieve that goal. 'Iran is not moving as fast as it could. They've been at it since 25 years since they started the Iranian enrichment program in about 1985,' said Mark Fitzpatrick, from the International Institute for Strategic Studies. He said Iran would still need 'a little over two years to have a bomb.' Fitzpatrick also compared Tehran's slow progress to the 11 years it took Pakistan to acquire a nuclear capacity, as he presented an IISS report entitled 'Iran's nuclear, chemical and biological capabilities: a net assessment.' But Fitzpatrick, a former State Department employee, added Iran had still not yet completely decided whether to press ahead with making a nuclear bomb. 'As long they haven't made that decision I think there is still a time for diplomacy,' he said." http://t.uani.com/gLwsqM AFP: "Qatar on Sunday denied press reports that it had seized two Iranian boats carrying weapons in the Gulf amid mounting tensions in the strategic region. 'The reports about the seizure in territorial waters of two Iranian boats loaded with weapons are inaccurate,' the official QNA news agency quoted an interior ministry spokesman as saying. The Kuwaiti electronic newspaper Al-Aan had reported that the two Iranian boats were intercepted off the Al-Zubara coast, in the northeast of Qatar, and close to the country's territorial waters with Bahrain. The newspaper's sources provided no details on the crew, the date of the operation or the destination of the boats. Sunni-ruled Bahrain, where Shiite-led protests broke out on February 14, accuses Shiite-led Iran of meddling in its affairs and elements of the Bahraini opposition of links with foreign powers." http://t.uani.com/f4P3lw AFP: "The US and its Western allies are repeating 'mistakes' by intervening in Libya, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Sunday as he hosted regional leaders to celebrate the Persian new year. 'Wherever it is appropriate, they (the US and its allies) stand with despotic rulers ... and when necessary, they sacrifice them to ensure their own interests,' Ahmadinejad said in an allusion to the military campaign against Libyan strongman Moamer Kadhafi. 'Despite the clear lessons that the peoples of Iraq and Afghanistan have taught them and despite the public opinion's hatred, the oppressive governments are repeating their mistakes,' he said." http://t.uani.com/ifPHXx
Nuclear Program & Sanctions Reuters: "Oil and gas group OMV has not renewed a fuel supply contract with Iran's state airline because of international sanctions against the Islamic Republic, an Austrian newspaper reported. The move means Iran Air planes can no longer fill up at Vienna airport, the Wiener Zeitung reported in its weekend edition. The contract expired on March 23, it said. 'As an international company, OMV always operates within the agreed regulations,' OMV spokesman Sven Pusswald was quoted by the paper as saying. 'Following the EU, U.N. and U.S. sanctions against Tehran we decided not to extend the contract because it would not be in accord with U.S. sanctions.' He gave no further details about the contract. OMV was not immediately available for further comment. According to Wiener Zeitung, OMV was one of the last major oil companies that had been supplying Iran Air with fuel." http://t.uani.com/h6n1Y6 Dow Jones: "Germany's Bundesbank is set to help India process payments for Iranian oil, despite international sanctions against the regime in Tehran, German newspaper Handelsblatt reports, citing government and financial sources. Germany's foreign and economic ministries have already ratified the arrangement, under which India would transfer an estimated EUR9 billion to the Bundesbank to fund Iranian oil imports, rather than directly to Iran, Handelsblatt reports. The Bundesbank would then transfer the money to an account at Hamburg-based lender Europäisch-Iranische Handelsbank, which would send it on to Tehran, Handelsblatt reports. India's central bank said in February it wanted to process Iranian oil imports through the Bundesbank, following massive pressure from the U.S. to give up direct business relationships with the regime in Iran, Handelsblatt reports. 'We are in discussions', a spokesman for the Indian finance ministry confirmed, Handelsblatt reports. The EIHB is on a list of institutions against which the U.S. finance ministry and the European Union want to see sanctions upheld, but the list isn't binding for the German government, Handelsblatt reports." http://t.uani.com/fpaDBy AP: "Israel wants clarifications from Argentina over a report it offered Iran a deal: It would stop investigating bombings on Jewish centers there in the 1990s in exchange for better trade ties, an Israeli foreign ministry official said Sunday. The Argentine paper Perfil quoted a leaked Iranian cable on Saturday detailing the offer. Eighty-five people were killed and 200 were injured when a bomb exploded in a van outside the Argentine Israeli Mutual Association on July 18, 1994 - that country's bloodiest terrorist attack... Argentine officials claim that Iran orchestrated the attacks and that the Iranian-backed Hezbollah group carried it out. The United States and Israel also say Iran was behind the bombings, but Iran has denied it. Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said Sunday he is waiting for official Argentine comment. 'If this is true, then it would be a display of infinite cynicism and a dishonor to the dead,' he said." http://t.uani.com/eGXMxQ Human Rights Radio Farda: "The UN Human Rights Council voted on March 24 to appoint a special investigator on human rights in Iran -- a position that last existed a decade ago. A day later, Tehran objected. The UN move is aimed at increasing international scrutiny of the Islamic republic, which has been accused by watchdog groups and Western officials of increased human rights violations. The United States, which had been pressing for the appointment, welcomed the vote, calling it a 'seminal moment.' Iran branded the vote 'unfair and unjustified.' RFE/RL correspondent Golnaz Esfandiari spoke with Maurice Copithorne, the last person to hold the title of UN rapporteur on human rights in Iran (1995-2002), on the challenging task the new appointee will face." http://t.uani.com/dYH6Mo Domestic Politics Reuters: "Iran will host an international celebration of its new year next week despite critics who say it glorifies a pre-Islamic festival and will invoke memories of the last shah. Opposition to the gathering for Nowruz, an ancient festival marking the start of the Iranian solar year and the coming of spring, shows the difficulties facing President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as he tries to boost Iran's standing in the region. Heads of states from Iraq, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Armenia will attend the festivities next Sunday and Monday, the official news agency IRNA said. Qatar, Oman and Kyrgyzstan will also send high-level representatives. Ahmadinejad's international affairs director said 'Nowruz diplomacy' -- spreading the goodwill message of what is Iran's biggest holiday -- would become a new 'diplomatic doctrine' aimed at improving ties with Iran's neighbors. But conservatives have criticized the ceremony on religious grounds, saying the Islamic Republic should not glorify a holiday which has pagan origins -- a sensitive theme in Iran where Muslim festivals share the calendar with older, pre-Islamic feast days." http://t.uani.com/gDfSQC Guardian: "The son of the former Iranian president Akbar Rafsanjani is being investigated by Oxford University after claims that his successful doctoral thesis proposal was written with the help of others. Mehdi Hashemi Rafsanjani, a former head of Iran's state-owned gas company, began a five-year DPhil course in the Iranian constitution at the faculty of oriental studies in October. An Oxford academic has complained that the university's usual high standards have been 'subverted' with the help of university insiders to allow Hashemi to study. If proven, he could be asked to leave. Hashemi, who helped co-ordinate the 2009 election opposition campaign against Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, denies the Oxford claims and has defended his application. Friends say he is the victim of a witch-hunt." http://t.uani.com/esxaw5 Opinion & Analysis WashPost Editorial Board: "Ms. Clinton issued two press statements hailing actions by the U.N. council. One praised the body for a resolution on religious tolerance that was notable mainly for avoiding illiberal language in previous resolutions that condemned critical speech against religion. The second celebrated the council's decision to create a 'special rapporteur' on the human rights situation in Iran, with a mandate to report on abuses in that country. The U.S. ambassador to the council, Eileen Donahoe, told reporters it was near a turning point. 'While the council remains an imperfect body, we have seen distinct progress in terms of its ability to respond to happenings in the world in real time,' she said, according to a Reuters dispatch. 'There is more shared common ground here than people realize.' That could be. But before the celebrations go any further, some context is worth adding. The new special rapporteur on Iran, for example, will be the council's 25th; there are also nine 'independent experts.' When was the last time the U.N. reps on human rights in Cambodia, North Korea, Haiti, Burundi, Somalia or Sudan got the world's attention? We can't recall an instance. The Iran and religious tolerance resolutions, meanwhile, were not the only ones approved by the council. There were, in all, 14 resolutions on individual countries - and six of those were attacks on Israel. In all, 41 of the 65 resolutions dealing with individual countries since the council's founding have singled out the Jewish state... The Bush administration concluded that any human rights body to which such governments could gain membership was not worthy of U.S. participation. The Obama administration has spent the past two years trying mightily to prove otherwise. Thanks to its efforts, the council has gotten a little better. But is it really the best vehicle for advancing the cause of human rights? Our guess is that a few more speeches on Iran by the president and secretary of state, not to mention stronger backing for the Green Movement there, would do a lot more good than a U.N. special rapporteur." http://t.uani.com/hkyjDi Robert Kaplan in WSJ: "Whatever happens in Libya, it is not necessarily a bellwether for the Middle East. The Iranian green movement knows that Western air forces and navies are not about to bomb Iran in the event of a popular uprising, so it is unclear what lesson we are providing to the region. Because outside of Iran, and with the arguable exceptions of Syria and Libya itself, there is no short-term benefit for the U.S. in democratic revolts in the region. In fact, they could be quite destructive to our interests, even as they prove to be unstoppable... Bahrain, meanwhile, may descend into a low-level civil war. The country's Shia have legitimate complaints against the ruling Sunni royal family, but their goals will play into Iranian hands. Yemen, Jordan, Iraq, Bahrain and the other Gulf states are all individually more important than Libya because they constitute Saudi Arabia's critical near-abroad. In this era of weakening central authority throughout the Middle East, the core question for the U.S. will be which regime lasts longer: Saudi Arabia's or Iran's. If the Saudi monarchy turns out to have more staying power, we will wrest a great strategic victory from this process of unrest; if Iran's theocracy prevails, it will signal a fundamental eclipse of American influence in the Middle East... Yes, Iran experienced massive antiregime demonstrations in 2009 and smaller ones more recently. But the opposition there is divided, and the regime encompasses various well-institutionalized power centers, thus making a decapitation strategy particularly hard to achieve. The al Sauds may yet fall before the mullahs do, and our simplistic calls for Arab democracy only increase that possibility... Like former President George H.W. Bush during the collapse of the Soviet Union, he intuits that when history is set in motion by forces greater than our own, we should interfere as little as possible so as not to provoke unintended consequences. The dog that didn't bark when the Berlin Wall fell was the intervention of Soviet troops to restore parts of the empire. The dog that won't bark now, we should hope, is the weakening of the Saudi monarchy, to which America's vital interests are tied. So long as the current regime in Iran remains in place, the U.S. should not do anything to encourage protests in Riyadh." http://t.uani.com/hbX9Aa Kara Rowland in WT: "During his five-day tour of Latin America, President Obama covered just about every hot-button topic - Libya, drug violence, immigration, trade - but not once did he publicly mention Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. The omission stands in stark contrast to the danger that analysts say Mr. Chavez poses to U.S. foreign policy with his ever-deepening ties to Iran and continued support for guerrilla groups across Latin America. Allies are worried about him, as is the American foreign policy establishment, which in confidential diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks expressed their concern about his ties to Cuban intelligence services and his growing 'Bolivarian' alliance of anti-U.S. states. But even amid reports that Iran could be mining for uranium in Venezuela under the guise of a tractor factory, Mr. Obama remained silent on the case of Mr. Chavez and even went out of his way not to mention his name or country when asked about the issue by a Miami Herald columnist last week. 'They're consistently cavalier about our Hugo Chavez problem,' said Joel D. Hirst, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who closely tracks U.S. foreign policy in the region. 'I think it's a mixture of a little bit naivete on the part of the administration not understanding what he's up to, and maybe the belief that if they don't rock the boat, maybe he'll go away.' ... Central to the Chavez threat are Venezuela's ties to Cuba and Iran, which the U.S. and other international allies have accused of trying to develop nuclear weapons. Mr. Chavez and Mr. Ahmadinejad have exchanged several visits - Mr. Chavez made his ninth visit to Tehran in October - and Mr. Chavez is pursuing a nuclear program that, like the Iranian leader, he claims is only for peaceful purposes. Venezuela is known to have considerable amounts of untapped uranium reserves, and the two countries reportedly signed a secret nuclear cooperation agreement in 2008. That has some analysts questioning whether Iranian factories that have been set up in Venezuela, supposedly to produce bicycles and tractors, could be front operations for uranium mining. Mr. Obama, asked last week by journalist Andres Oppenheimer about the reports that Venezuela is helping Iran obtain uranium, said he wouldn't make 'categorical statements about these issues' but focused his answer on Iran, never once mentioning Venezuela or Mr. Chavez." http://t.uani.com/f6McpF Luke Hunt in The Diplomat: "Undermining Iran's nuclear programme remains near the top of the US foreign policy agenda, and a change in strategy by the United Nations Security Council - at Washington's behest - is being felt far and wide, particularly in East Asia. And while the new approach may not grab many headlines, it's already showing some useful results. In an effort to halt Iran's controversial efforts by choking off the supply of materials, international focus has shifted to financial services and the world's shipping lanes, which deliver goods Tehran needs to continue developing its nuclear programme. Heading the list of targets is the Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines (IRISL). The carrier boasts the biggest fleet in the Middle East, with about 170 vessels, but is struggling as banks foreclose on mortgaged vessels, and as insurers refuse to underwrite the company's operations. IRISL ships were once a common sight in Asian ports, Hong Kong, Singapore, Thailand and in the Malaccan Straits dividing Malaysia and Indonesia. Its ships were among the biggest and newest to ply the waterways, and mostly transported goods supplied by Chinese companies. David Albright, a US nuclear physicist who inspected Iran's nuclear facilities for the UN's atomic energy agency, says China is key to Tehran's nuclear designs as a supplier of high strength maraging steel, specialty vacuum pumps, Kevlar and carbon fibre. 'Over and over, Iran goes there to buy things,' Albright said after the United Nations imposed the latest round of sanctions against Iran in June last year... Regardless of Iranian intentions, sanctions recently came to a head in Singapore, where a sheriff's sale of three IRISL ships was organized after the vessels were seized. The courts later released the ships, after IRISL found the cash to meet calls on loan repayments, and Chairman Mohammad Hossein Dajmar went on the offensive, rebuking Singapore and the banks for impounding his ships. 'We had a loan and (the banks) changed it from a loan to a due payment because of sanctions...they committed a violation because the loan contract was signed before the sanctions,' he said. He also told the Financial Times that sanctions hadn't hurt the company, insisting revenue for the eight months from March 2010 was up 40 percent, while shipping transactions were up 25 percent. But despite his protestations, it's clear that international sanctions are hampering the firm's ability to operate. Dajmar failed to mention, for example, that another four European financial institutions are seeking the detention of five new IRISL ships amid alleged defaults worth $268 million. Already, two of the vessels have been detained - the Decretive was seized in Hong Kong and the Dandle in Malta last November - following requests from banks. Hong Kong companies have apparently organized mortgages on seven Maltese registered ships." http://t.uani.com/eJOV0z |
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