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Reuters: "China will participate in developing Iran's giant north and south Azadegan oil fields, work that is too expensive for an Iran firm to carry out, an Iranian official was quoted as saying on Saturday by the semi-official Mehr news agency. 'Separate contracts for developing the north and south Azadegan oil fields have been inked with the Chinese,' said deputy Oil Minister Ahmad Qalebani. He also said the contractor for the two oil fields is the same company, which he declined to name, adding that the amount of investment for the development of the two fields would exceed $6 billion, which is too much for Iranian contractors. 'Thorough development of these two giant oil fields requires more than $6 billion and the possibility of procuring such an amount by a domestic contractor does not exist.'" http://t.uani.com/i6MCr6
Guardian: "Iran's Islamic regime is using 'child soldiers' to suppress anti-government demonstrations, a tactic that could breach international law forbidding the use of underage combatants, human rights activists have told the Observer. The International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran says troops aged between 14 and 16 have been armed with batons, clubs and air guns and ordered to attack demonstrators who have tried to gather in Tehran. The youths - apparently recruited from rural areas - are being deployed in regular riot police roles and comprise up to one-third of the total force, according to witnesses. One middle-aged woman, who said she was attacked by the youths, reported that some were as young as 12 and were possibly prepubescent. They had rural accents, which indicated they had been brought in from villages far from Tehran, she said. Some told her they had been attracted by the promise of chelo kebab dinners, one of Iran's national dishes." http://t.uani.com/ieiyjX
American Shipper: "The group United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) is asking French shipping company CMA CGM to 'cease all business activities in Iran' as part of its campaign to prevent the Iran from possessing nuclear weapons. It is the second shipping company the group has targeted. Last fall it also asked Maersk Line to stop doing business with Iran. In a letter to CMA CGM Chairman Jacques R. Saadé and Frank Baragona, president of U.S. subsidiary CMA CGM (America) and copied to U.S. government officials, UANI claims CMA CGM has 'extensive business ties' with the U.S. government, receiving $18 million in federal contracts in the past decade. UANI calls on the federal government to debar the French carrier from eligibility for an award of federal contracts until such time that CMA CGM ends its business in Iran, and for the U.S. Attorney to investigate its business dealings in Iran... American Shipper affiliate ComPair Data lists 21 direct liner services calling Bandar Abbas that include 21 of the 25 largest container shipping companies in the world." http://t.uani.com/h0XQwj
Nuclear Program & Sanctions
Bloomberg: "Iranian and Chinese officials will sign a $2 billion agreement for the construction of a dam and a power plant in Iran's western province of Lorestan, Press TV reported. The agreement will be signed between Sinohydro Corp., China's largest water projects developer, and Iran's Farab, the state-run news channel said, citing Mohammad Reza Rezazadeh, the managing director of Iran's Water and Power Resources Development Co. The contract will be completed this week and operations are to start in the next Iranian calendar year, which starts on March 21, according to the report, published on Press TV's website today." http://t.uani.com/i4fQCA
Bloomberg: "Iran plans export as much as 5 million cubic meters of natural gas daily to Syria by the end of this year after construction of a pipeline via south Turkey is completed, the Iranian Oil Ministry's news website said. The route will be used to meet Syria's 'urgent needs' for gas until the start of a pipeline through Iraq that will supply 40 million cubic meters of gas a day, Shana reported, citing Iran's Oil Minister Masoud Mir-Kazemi. Iranian officials will meet with their Iraqi and Syrian counterparts this month or the next to finalize a contract on the export and transit of gas, according to the report. Iran and Syria signed a preliminary agreement on Jan. 19 for the construction of a 2,000-kilometer (1,250-mile) network to carry Iranian gas via a 56-inch (142-centimeter) pipeline with a daily capacity of as much as 110 cubic meters." http://t.uani.com/elyyce
Human Rights
AFP: "Iran said Sunday the trial of three US hikers arrested and accused of espionage in 2009 will resume on May 11, three months after the first hearing when their families expressed hopes of 'truth and justice.' 'The next hearing session of the three Americans who are accused of espionage will be held on (May 11)... in a Tehran revolutionary court,' Alireza Avaie, chief of Tehran's justice department, was quoted as telling the agency. Avaie hinted the hearing would be a closed session, like the first, IRNA reported. The prosecution of Sarah Shourd, Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal began on February 6, a year and a half after they were arrested at a remote section of the Islamic republic's border with Iraq." http://t.uani.com/hxkCCN
AFP: "A number of Bahais who were 'promoting their faith in kindergartens' have been arrested, a prosecutor in the southern city of Bam was quoted by the official IRNA news agency as saying on Saturday. 'A number of Bahais who were promoting their programmes under the guise of kindergartens in Bam, Kerman and Tehran were arrested by intelligence agents after nine months of intelligence work,' prosecutor Mohammad Reza Sanjari said. 'This group had also infiltrated a local newspaper in Kerman province and were weaving Bahai views into children's stories,' Sanjari added without naming the publication. He did not say how many people had been arrested or when. The Bahais, who are barred from higher education and government posts in staunchly Shiite Muslim Iran, are regarded as infidels and have been persecuted both before and after the country's 1979 Islamic revolution." http://t.uani.com/iff0Ss
Domestic Politics
Daily Telegraph: Police in Iran have imposed restrictions on an ancient festival which celebrates the triumph of good over evil, fearing that it could catalyse growing public anger against the country's theocratic leadership. Iranians traditionally leap over bonfires and set off fireworks to mark the pagan festival of Chahar Shanbeh Soori, which is celebrated on the last Tuesday before March 21, the Persian new year. This year, faced with an increasingly repressive crackdown on dissent, opposition leaders been calling on supporters to use the festival to express their resentment against the regime." http://t.uani.com/evkGcv
AP: "Iranian hackers working for the powerful Revolutionary Guard's paramilitary Basij group have launched attacks on websites of the 'enemies,' a state-owned newspaper reported Monday in a rare acknowledgment from Iran that it's involved in cyber warfare. The report followed an announcement in January that Iran had formed its first cyber police unit in an attempt by authorities to gain an edge in the digital world... Gen. Ali Fazli, acting commander of the Basij, was quoted by state-owned IRAN paper as saying Iran's cyber army is made up of university teachers, students and clerics. He said its attacks were a retaliation for similar attacks on Iran, according to the semi-official Mehr news agency. There were no further details about the possible targets or the time of the attacks." http://t.uani.com/idFpz7
Foreign Affairs
AFP: "US Defense Secretary Robert Gates said on Saturday that Bahrain's leaders needed to move quickly to adopt major reforms or else risk interference from Iran. After talks with Bahrain's king and crown prince, Gates said he was hopeful the government would take 'far-reaching steps' but warned that countries across the region could no longer ignore popular demands for democracy. Although there were no signs Shiite-led Iran was behind unrest in the Gulf kingdom or elsewhere in the region, Tehran would likely work to meddle in Bahrain's politics amid sectarian tensions, Gates told reporters on his plane after a visit to Manama." http://t.uani.com/hSIic4
BBC: "Iran has indicated it will attend the 2012 Olympics in London, despite complaining that the Games logo resembles the word 'Zion'. Last month the Iranians complained to the International Olympic Committee and called for the graphic to be replaced. They objected on the grounds that its resemblance to the word Zion - a Biblical term for Israel - was racist. But now the Iranian-backed Press TV has quoted an official as saying Iranians will 'participate gloriously.'" http://t.uani.com/g9IQEo
Opinion & Analysis
John Vinocur in IHT: "Through three months of Arab revolt against autocratic leaders, it's become commonplace to say that the only clear strategic winner from the changes so far is Iran, supposedly picking up windfall political fruit as if sitting in an armchair. Condensed, the argument goes like this: There has been only profit for Iran from the ouster of Hosni Mubarak, who represented an Arab bulwark against Tehran's nuclear weapons ambitions and the mullahs' allies, Hezbollah and Hamas. Conversely, and beyond its hopes for democracy in the Middle East, the United States and some of its Western friends have reaped potential grief in the destabilization their old regional power relationships. On the ides of March 2011, that assessment appears incomplete and almost mild. Rather, there's a developing sense of foreboding. Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi has increasingly real chances of putting down the rebellion against him in Libya. Before his boss could try to paper over what he said last week, James R. Clapper Jr., President Barack Obama's director of national intelligence, testified before Congress that the dictator's forces 'will prevail' in the long term. Apart from twisting the neck of the theories of inexorable popular rage certain to engulf all the region's tyrants (Just you wait, Tehran!), this shard of very possible truth places the West's hesitant, stuttering position on Libya parallel to its halting response to the threat of Iranian nukes - and reassures Iran's leaders of their wisdom in moving to crush their own protesters. A second naïve premise is also collapsing. It was the Pollyanna-ish (and calming) assumption of some analysts that while pocketing the disarray from the Arab upheaval, Iran was too clever to meddle in creating more of it. Now, for the first time, we're told this isn't so... So what to do? No decisive response on Iran, the ultimate Middle Eastern issue, is coming from Western capitals." http://t.uani.com/hSGOZF
Jonathan Paris in Standpoint: "Much has been said about Iran taking advantage of the instability in the Arab world to increase tensions. Sending two ships through the Suez Canal to a Syrian port, at this time, signalled Iran's desire to project Iranian power far beyond its neighbourhood. But such stunts miss the point. The more important consequences of the Arab people's rebellion are its impact on the Iranian people. There are at least four connections between Iran and the Arab sandstorm currently sweeping through the region. First, Arab republics have proven far more vulnerable than Arab monarchies. Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen, and Libya, all experiencing intense change, are post-monarchies. By contrast, Morocco, Jordan, the six-member Gulf Cooperation Council, comprising Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, UAE, Kuwait and Oman, are ruled by royal families/monarchs. Their kings and emirs can fire the government, move gingerly toward a constitutional monarchy like the United Kingdom and, perhaps, survive this Arab sandstorm. Is the Islamic Republic of Iran more like a vulnerable republic or a durable monarchy? Until the summer of 2009, the supreme leader under the velayat faqih that Ayatollah Khomeini introduced in 1979, reigned like a monarch above the fray. That fiction of being removed from government disappeared when Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei supported the incumbent President Ahmadinejad in a blatantly partial manner following the disputed election of June 2009. Khamenei became the target of the demonstrators of Tehran chanting 'down with the dictator'. Iran appeared more and more like an Egypt or Libya than an Arab monarchy, making its leaders vulnerable to an uprising from the people... Finally, Libya offers a fourth lesson on the wisdom of shooting unarmed demonstrators. The regime in Tehran should be very worried if Gaddafi falls because the lesson of Tripoli will be that the egregious human rights violations of Gaddafi against his own people have failed to intimidate or stop the protest movement. On the contrary, the killing of hundreds of Libyans in funeral marches and elsewhere in the streets of Libyan cities have spurred on the protestors and repulsed the entire world. Even Venezuela's Hugo Chavez says he does not agree with all of Gaddafi's actions. It is ironic that the Iranian government condemns Gaddafi. His downfall may remove the efficacy of the one card that the Iranian regime still holds, and that is a monopoly on force, and the willingness to use it against any popular insurgency." http://t.uani.com/f6rBDX
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