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Reuters: "The U.N. Human Rights Council agreed on Thursday to a U.S.-backed proposal to establish a U.N. human rights investigator for Iran, the first in a decade. The 47-member Geneva forum approved the resolution by 22 votes in favor, 7 against and 14 abstentions, its president, Thai Ambassador Sihasak Phuangketkeow, announced. The council voiced concern at Iran's crackdown on opposition figures and increased use of the death penalty, and called on the Islamic Republic to cooperate with the U.N. envoy to be named to the independent post. 'The United States and other partners are gravely concerned at the situation in Iran where respect for human rights has deteriorated dramatically in recent years,' U.S. human rights ambassador Eileen Donahoe said in a speech before the vote. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon said earlier this month that Iran had intensified its crackdown on opponents and executions of drug traffickers, political prisoners and juvenile criminals." http://t.uani.com/goVmuQ
Bloomberg: "U.S., British, French and German diplomats today cited evidence of a growing number of illegal arms exports by Iran, including the seizure earlier this month of rockets intended for the Taliban militia in Afghanistan. 'Germany is concerned about the high number of violation cases that were recently uncovered,' Ambassador Peter Wittig said in remarks to the United Nations Security Council. 'Many involve the extensive delivery of weapons from Iran to unstable regions in West Africa and the Middle East.' Britain's ambassador, Mark Lyall Grant, reported on the seizure in February of weapons by Afghan and allied troops in Afghanistan of 48 Iranian-made rockets that were being smuggled to the Taliban. The 122-millimeter rockets have a range of 13 miles, the Associated Press reported." http://t.uani.com/hPObcu
BBC: "Hackers in Iran have been accused of trying to subvert one of the net's key security systems. Analysis in the wake of the thwarted attack suggests it originated and was co-ordinated via servers in Iran. If it had succeeded, the attackers would been able to pass themselves off as web giants Google, Yahoo, Skype, Mozilla and Microsoft. The impersonation would have let attackers trick web users into thinking they were accessing the real service. The attack was mounted on the widely used online security system known as the Secure Sockets Layer or SSL. This acts as a guarantee of identity so users can be confident that the site they are visiting is who it claims to be. The guarantee of identity is in the form of a digital passport known as a certificate." http://t.uani.com/dL6Jbj
Nuclear Program & Sanctions
AFP: "Four Colombians face charges linked to an attempt to illegally export 22 F-5 fighter jet engines to Iran, the US Justice Department said Wednesday. Three of the four -- Amparo Echeverry Valdes, 53; Carlos Alfredo Pantoja, 57; and Diego Echeverry, 42 -- were arrested and are being held at a Florida detention center, prosecutors in Miami said. The fourth suspect, Felipe Echeverry, age unknown, is believed to be hiding in Colombia, the Justice Department said. The four suspects belong to the same family. A federal grand jury in Miami indicted the four 'on various counts of illegally attempting to export 22 F-5 jet fighter engines to Iran,' in violation of a US embargo exports to Iran." http://t.uani.com/e9Pp16
Foreign Affairs
Guardian: "Ofcom has ruled that Iran's state-run Press TV station, which has offices in London, did not breach the UK's broadcasting rules in transmitting a programme that showed an Iranian woman participating in the reconstruction of her alleged part in the murder of her husband. Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, 43, whose sentence of death by stoning for adultery triggered an international outcry, was taken from prison to her home in Osku, in Iran's East Azarbaijan province, last December. She appeared in front of a camera for Press TV recounting how she rendered her husband unconscious before the killer electrocuted him. Ashtiani's 22-year-old son, Sajad Ghaderzadeh, played the part of her husband in the broadcast. Human rights campaigners described it as a forced confession aimed at collecting new evidence against her and distracting world attention from Iran's embarrassment over the case." http://t.uani.com/hcFCvS
AFP: "Arab states in the Gulf plan to deport thousands of Lebanese Shiites over their alleged links to Hezbollah and Iran's elite Revolutionary Guard force, a Kuwaiti newspaper reported on Thursday. Al-Seyassah, quoting London-based Arab diplomatic sources, said the measure was being considered because of intelligence reports that Lebanese Shiites activists had been involved in protests in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. Based on the assessments by the United States, France and Bahrain, alleged Hezbollah and Revolutionary Guard agents were leading the protests along with local Shiite clerics in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia's Eastern Province, it said." http://t.uani.com/gAky7Y
Opinion & Analysis
WSJ Editorial Board: "Monday was Nowruz, the Persian New Year, and hundreds of Iranian political prisoners again spent the holiday behind bars. The difference this year is that President Obama mentioned some of those prisoners by name. That's a welcome first. For three years, Mr. Obama has recorded an annual Nowruz message to the Iranian people. In his 2009 greeting, he became the first U.S. President to refer to the 'Islamic Republic of Iran,' the name preferred by the country's ruling clerics. The U.S. seeks 'engagement that is honest and grounded in mutual respect,' the President said to an Iranian leadership that for 30 years has denounced, threatened and killed Americans. Nowruz 2010 (or 1389, on the Persian calendar) brought more conciliation. 'The United States acknowledges your right to peaceful nuclear energy,' Mr. Obama told the mullahs in Tehran. 'We are familiar with your grievances from the past-we have our own grievances as well, but we are prepared to move forward.' The theme was mutuality, as if the U.S. and Iran are merely two quarreling siblings in the family of nations. This week's message had no deferential talk of engagement. Instead, Mr. Obama focused on Tehran's brutality toward human rights and democracy activists, and he named names. 'We have seen Nasrin Sotoudeh jailed for defending human rights; Jafar Panahi imprisoned and unable to make films; Abdolreza Tajik thrown in jail for being a journalist; the Bahai community and Sufi Muslims punished for their faith; Mohammad Valian, a young student, sentenced to death for throwing three stones.' Never before has Mr. Obama spoken this directly. Even his references to Neda Agha-Soltan-the 26-year-old protester whose shooting death, captured on camera, came to symbolize the democracy movement-have not included her name. We're not sure who's writing the President's speeches these days, but we welcome the overdue shift. So, surely, do Iran's imprisoned democrats." http://t.uani.com/hhN6gt
Meir Javedanfar in The Guardian: "Democracy is arriving in the Middle East, albeit slowly. But what is making progress at a much faster pace is the cold war between Iran and Saudi Arabia. Some described the fall of the Mubarak government, preceded by the fall of the Ben Ali regime in Tunisia, as the Middle East's Berlin Wall moment. The parallels with the cold war in Europe do not end there. There are also similarities between the entry of Soviet forces into Budapest in November 1956 to put down a popular uprising and the Saudi decision to send forces into Bahrain on 14 March this year. The Soviets were worried that communist Hungary might fall into the hands of their western cold war adversaries, and thus felt it necessary to send their forces to put down any such initiative. The new Saudi strategy is based on similar calculations. They sent their forces into Bahrain because they felt that if the Shia uprising succeeded, it could turn the country from a Saudi friend into an ally of Iran. The Saudi decision to risk the lives of its own soldiers in Bahrain is a sign of how seriously they view the situation. It is a departure from the old strategy, where the Saudis paid others to do their fighting for them - as with the Saudi financing of Saddam Hussein's war against Iran between 1980 and 1988. As far as the Saudis are concerned, the gloves are off and this means that the Middle East's version of the cold war is intensifying. The Iranian government is furious as well. Publications such as the pro-Ahmadinejad Raja News have accused the Saudis of creating a "bloodbath" in Bahrain. Others, such as the Tehran-based Asr Iran, have called for the creation of a Hezbollah movement in Bahrain. Meanwhile, the Association of Independent Student Unions in Iran has declared its readiness to go to Bahrain in order to confront government and Saudi forces there." http://t.uani.com/hfbuda
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