Top Stories
AFP: "'This year, 166 Chinese companies are present at the fair compared to 100 companies last year,' a senior oil ministry official said. 'The number of foreign companies are up 35 percent,' to 496 out of the total 1,550, he said. He said that despite UN sanctions and bilateral punitive measures by the United States and the European Union against Iran, 'Germany is present with 64 companies, Italy with 36, Britain with 37, Spain with 14, France with 15 and South Korea with 33 companies.' Major Western energy groups such as Total of France, Norwegian Statoil and OMV of Austria, who have withdrawn from Iran, made a 'symbolic' appearance at the fair. In recent years, Chinese companies have claimed many contracts since Western firms exited Iran before the sanctions were imposed on Tehran over its nuclear programme." http://t.uani.com/ghOyeo
AP: "U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Friday accused Iran of trying to derail democratic revolutions around the Mideast and warned Arab nations not to permit intolerance against women and religious minorities. Clinton said Iran was clearly trying to use uprisings around the region to further its own goals and foment broader unrest while at the same time cracking down on its own reform movement. 'I think that that everyone is aware if its efforts to exploit and even hijack what are legitimate protests. But certainly in an era of instant communication we hope that people will not be fooled by their tactics.' Clinton said the U.S. sees 'no evidence yet that Iran instigated such protests but we do see activities by Iran to try to take advantage of these uprisings.'" http://t.uani.com/fR0ZdD
AFP: "President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Monday accused the United States of wanting to create tension between Iran and Arabs, after Gulf Arab states urged the Iranian regime to stop interfering in their affairs. 'America and its allies are trying to create an Iranian-Arab tension, they seek to sow discord among Shiites and Sunnis... but their plan will fail,' the hardliner said at Iran's annual Army Day parade, where the military displayed a range of home-built drones and missiles. 'America is not an honest friend and the record shows it has drawn swords against its own friends and those who have sacrificed themselves for America,' Ahmadinejad said in a speech broadcast live on state television. 'America has done it in order to save its interests. But they should know that they have no place among nations,' Ahmadinejad said." http://t.uani.com/gzzu8n
Nuclear Program & Sanctions
Reuters: "India continues to receive normal shipments of oil from Iran and discussions between the two countries are ongoing over how India will pay for its crude imports, the country's oil minister said on Sunday. India has been searching for a permanent method to make payments to Iran for crude oil imports since its central bank scrapped a clearinghouse system in December. 'Iran has kindly continued shipments of oil and we're looking at ways for the payments... we are looking at options now,' said Petroleum and Natural Gas Minister S. Jaipal Reddy. India stopped making the payments earlier this month via a Hamburg-based bank handling international trade for Iranian companies. The use of the German bank had drawn strong disapproval from the United States, which suspects Iran is using its oil money to fund a nuclear weapons program." http://t.uani.com/dToGXI
AP: "A senior Iranian military official involved in investigating a mysterious computer worm targeting Iranian nuclear facilities and other industrial sites said Saturday the malware could have caused large-scale accidents and loss of life... On Saturday, Gholam Reza Jalali, head of a military unit in charge of combatting sabotage, said Iranian experts have determined that the United States and Israel were behind Stuxnet, which can take over the control systems of industrial sites like power plants. Jalali said disastrous accidents and loss of life were averted by Iranian experts fighting the computer code. He gave no specific examples." http://t.uani.com/g5g40H
Reuters: "An Iranian military commander has accused German engineering company Siemens of helping the United States and Israel launch a cyber attack on its nuclear facilities, Kayhan daily reported on Sunday. Gholamreza Jalali, head of Iran's civilian defense, said the Stuxnet virus aimed at Iran's atomic program was the work of its two biggest foes and that the German company must take some of the blame. Siemens declined to comment. 'The investigations show the source of the Stuxnet virus originated in America and the Zionist regime,' Jalali was quoted as saying." http://t.uani.com/eVkBLq
Reuters: "Iran's oil minister voiced concerns on Monday about investment in the energy sector, saying the country's ability to export crude would be put at risk without it, the semi-official Mehr news agency reported. 'If no investment is made in Iran's oil and gas industry, considering that our reservoirs are in the second half of their lives, then there would definitely be concerns for the continuing production and export of Iran's crude,' Massoud Mirkazemi said during a meeting at an oil and gas fair in Tehran, Mehr reported." http://t.uani.com/guCXZO
Commerce
Reuters: "Iran's OPEC governor said on Friday he saw demand for oil rising as Japan recovers from its March 11 earthquake and tsunami. 'There is a balance in the market,' Mohammad Ali Khatibi told Reuters on the sidelines of an oil and gas trade fair in Tehran. 'Demand is likely to increase after events in Japan.' He also said the oil price would increase if tensions in the Arab world worsened." http://t.uani.com/ely3bC
Bloomberg: "Iran expects by next March to finish drilling its first exploration well for oil in the Caspian Sea, where it hopes to catch up with neighboring countries that are already developing major crude deposits. Iran spent more than $500 million to build and install a semi-floating drilling platform and put supply boats into place, Mahmoud Mohaddes, National Iranian Oil Co.'s director for exploration, said in an interview in Tehran. The well is partially drilled, and the company aims to complete it by the end of the first quarter of 2012, he said." http://t.uani.com/ffpEhI
Bloomberg: "Iran's foreign exchange reserves stand at $100 billion, Press TV reported, citing Shamseddin Hosseini, the economy and finance minister. The country's foreign debt is about $20 billion, he said, without giving details, according to the state-run news channel." http://t.uani.com/dVgCI2
Human Rights
Radio Farda: "Iran has condemned the European Union for its fresh sanctions against 32 Iranian officials over alleged human rights abuses, accusing the bloc of hypocrisy and servitude to the United States. 'This action is a political one which employs double standards, and it is unacceptable,' Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast was quoted as saying on state broadcasting. He said the actions were aimed at diverting attention from Western rights violations, adding that 'this [EU] act, which follows American policies, is condemned... [and] it shows that the European Union is distancing itself from making policy independently.'" http://t.uani.com/gVWZHQ
AP: "Iran hanged three inmates all convicted of killing two policemen, armed robbery and kidnapping and a fourth person convicted of serial killings, a news agency reported. The semi-official Mehr news agency quoted Jaber Banshi, the head prosecutor of the southern city of Shiraz, as saying the three were hanged Saturday after all were convicted on the same charges. They were hanged from cranes in public on a street, their eyes covered with black masks and their hands bound behind their backs. They were led to their deaths by troops armed with machine guns clad all in black with their faces hidden by black balaclavas." http://t.uani.com/fi3YX3
Domestic Politics
AFP: "Iranians will go to the polls in March 2012 to elect deputies to a four-year tenure in the parliament, the interior minister told the state broadcaster on Sunday. 'The election for the majlis (parliament) will be held on Friday the 12th of Esfand (March 2)," said Mostafa Mohammad Najjar. Speaker Ali Larijani currently presides over the conservative-dominated, 290-seat legislative body. He has repeatedly criticised President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's policies, especially on the economy. There are around 60 reformist deputies in the house. Iran's electoral watchdog, the Guardians Council, will vet registered candidates and must also endorse the final results." http://t.uani.com/eBd1k3
AFP: "Intelligence Minister Heydar Moslehi, who resigned from his post, was reinstated by supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei despite the resignation being accepted by the president, reports said Sunday. 'Heydar Moslehi will continue his work in the ministry as minister after his resignation was rejected by the supreme leader,' news agencies ISNA, Fars and Mehr reported. Earlier on Sunday, state news agency IRNA reported that Moslehi had quit and that his resignation had been accepted by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. IRNA also reported that Ahmadinejad immediately appointed Moslehi as his 'adviser' on intelligence affairs." http://t.uani.com/gJd8kt
AFP: "One person was wounded as the result of two bomb blasts in the western city of Sanandaj in the Iranian Kurdistan province, the official IRNA news agency reported Saturday, quoting a provincial official. 'Fortunately as the result of two blast no one was seriously wounded or fatalities ... but due to shattering of the some window panes ... only a passer-by was sent to hospital suffering from injury in his arm,' the police commander of the Iranian Kurdistan police, Ebrahim Qaed, was quoted by IRNA." http://t.uani.com/ib9heV
Bloomberg: "Iran's Persian Gulf Star refinery, under construction in the southern city of Bandar Abbas, is 40 percent complete, Deputy Oil Minister Alireza Zeighami said. Iran expects the first phase of the refinery which has a production capacity of 120,000 barrels a day to come on stream 'in the next two years,' Zeighami, who also heads the National Iranian Oil Refining and Distribution Co., told reporters in Tehran today. The Persian Gulf Star will be the first of Iran's planned new refinery to start and its total output capacity will be 360,000 barrels a day, Zeighami said. Iran seeks to build seven new refineries at a total cost of $25.8 billion, he said. Other planned facilities are Pars, Anahita, Hormoz, Khuzestan, Caspian and Shahriyar." http://t.uani.com/g5Rv8i
Foreign Affairs
AP: "Bahrain's foreign minister says Gulf troops will stay in his island nation until its rulers believe that threats from Iran have eased. Bahrain's Sunni monarchy is backed by a Saudi-led force of about 1,500 troops, invited to help battle a Shiite uprising that Gulf Arab leaders believe could clear the way for greater influence by Shiite powerhouse Iran. Bahrain's foreign minister, Khalid bin Ahmed Al Khalifa, told reporters on Monday that the Gulf force is needed to counter a 'sustained campaign' by Iran in his country. The strategic kingdom hosts the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet." http://t.uani.com/geyvsh
Reuters: "Saudi Arabia's top cleric accused Iran of interfering in the internal affairs of the six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries and attacked its 'hypocrisy and deception', a Saudi newspaper said on Friday. Gulf Arab countries are concerned over what they see as the ambition of non-Arab Shi'ite power Iran to extend its influence in Arab countries mostly under Sunni rule. Saudi Arabia follows a brand of Sunni Islam that views Shi'ites as heretics. 'We must guard against their (Iranian) intrigues and we have to be wary of them and be careful of their deceits and not fall for their claims about Islam, which are all hypocrisy and deception,' Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdulaziz Al al-Sheikh was quoted as saying in the daily Okaz." http://t.uani.com/e845Lr
Reuters: "A Saudi minister urged Iran on Monday to protect its diplomats in the Islamic republic and threatened unspecified measures if it failed to do so. Iranian students demonstrated outside the Saudi embassy in Tehran last Monday, protesting against the Gulf Arab state's role in Bahrain, media reports said. Last month, Iranian protesters broke windows at a Saudi consulate in Mashhad. 'We hope that these continuous violations will not lead us to take other positions,' Saudi Deputy Foreign Minister Prince Turki bin Saud al-Kabeer was quoted as saying by the newspaper al-Watan. 'We hope not to resort to other measures, However if matters reached an unacceptable level then it is our right to protect our citizens,' he added." http://t.uani.com/dQRlYP
AFP: "Iran and Turkey opened a third border crossing Saturday, with Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu proclaiming the two neighbours 'friends for eternity,' Anatolia news agency reported. Davutoglu inaugurated the new crossing at Kapikoy in eastern Turkey's Van province with his Iranian counterpart Ali Akbar Salehi, and said a fourth would open in June at Esendere in the southeast. A fifth would follow at Dilucu in northeast Turkey, Davutoglu said, without giving a date. 'Our prime minister has set a target of 30 billion dollars' in annual trade with Iran, Anatolia quoted him as saying. 'That is why we are opening this border crossing.' Davutoglu added: 'We are announcing to the world that Turkey and Iran will be friends for eternity.' ... 'Currently Iran-Turkey trade stands at 11 billion dollars annually and we are trying to hike it to 30 billion dollars,' Salehi said." http://t.uani.com/hrf842
AFP: "Iraq-based Iranian rebels who lost 34 members in a clash with the Iraqi army this month were barred from burying the dead at a cemetery inside their base, spokesmen for both sides said on Sunday. The People's Mujahedeen of Iran (PMOI) wanted to bury the bodies at a graveyard within Camp Ashraf, which houses around 3,500 opponents of the clerical regime in Tehran, but were prevented from doing so by Iraqi soldiers responsible for securing the camp. 'The cemetery is under the control of the Iraqi army, so if the mujahedeen come to bury their dead, there will be disputes,' said an official at Baquba Operations Command in Diyala province north of Baghdad, where Camp Ashraf is located." http://t.uani.com/el1Sht
Opinion & Analysis
Boston Globe Editorial Board: "As the United States prepares to withdraw most, if not all, of its troops from Iraq by year's end, Iran's pervasive influence in that country becomes an ever more worrisome concern. And now a deadly assault by Iraqi security forces on an Iranian opposition group living inside Iraq - an attack that Senator John Kerry rightly termed a massacre - ought to set off alarms in Washington about the subservience of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to the regime in Tehran. The Iranian dissident group known as the PMOI has a checkered history. It played a prominent role in the uprising against the shah, then came into conflict with the theocratic regime of Ayatollah Khomeini. Thousands of its adherents were imprisoned, tortured, and executed. In the early 1980s, during the Iran-Iraq war, a few thousand PMOI members were installed by Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein at a site called Camp Ashraf near the Iranian border. From there, they carried out bombings and assassinations against Khomeini's henchmen in Iran. In addition, they provided US intelligence with important information about Iran's nuclear program. However, they were also accused by some Iraqi dissidents of assisting in Hussein's murderous attacks on Iraqi Kurds. None of their past actions, however, can justify what Iraqi troops under Maliki's authority did to them in the early morning of April 8. A video shot and edited by the PMOI shows unhurried Iraqi sharpshooters firing at unarmed civilians and heavy military vehicles running them over. Confirming PMOI claims that 34 people were killed, including 7 women, and more than 200 wounded, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, said Friday, 'There is no possible excuse for this number of casualties.' The Obama administration will look feckless if it does not back her call for 'a full, independent and transparent inquiry' and for the prosecution of those found responsible... The United States and its allies must act quickly to relocate abroad some 3,000 PMOI members still in Camp Ashraf. Toward this end, the State Department needs to remove the group from its terrorist list; it was placed there in 1997 as a goodwill gesture to facilitate dialogue with Iran. That didn't work, and it has been many years since the PMOI did anything that could be construed as terrorist. The regime in Tehran, however, is more terrorist than ever. And more influential in Iraq." http://t.uani.com/fxEn2Z
Bill Spindle and Margaret Coker in WSJ: "For three months, the Arab world has been awash in protests and demonstrations. It's being called an Arab Spring, harking back to the Prague Spring of 1968. But comparison to the short-lived flowering of protests 40 years ago in Czechoslovakia is turning out to be apt in another way. For all the attention the Mideast protests have received, their most notable impact on the region thus far hasn't been an upswell of democracy. It has been a dramatic spike in tensions between two geopolitical titans, Iran and Saudi Arabia. This new Middle East cold war comes complete with its own spy-versus-spy intrigues, disinformation campaigns, shadowy proxy forces, supercharged state rhetoric-and very high stakes. 'The cold war is a reality,' says one senior Saudi official. 'Iran is looking to expand its influence. This instability over the last few months means that we don't have the luxury of sitting back and watching events unfold.' ... But many worry that the toll could wind up much worse if tensions continue to ratchet upward. They see a heightened possibility of actual military conflict in the Gulf, where one-fifth of the world's oil supplies traverse the shipping lanes between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Growing hostility between the two countries could make it more difficult for the U.S. to exit smoothly from Iraq this year, as planned. And, perhaps most dire, it could exacerbate what many fear is a looming nuclear arms race in the region." http://t.uani.com/g2H8l5
Ken Timmerman in Newsmax: "Hundreds of foreign oil companies are taking part in a major industry exhibition that opened in Tehran on Saturday, making a mockery of U.S. and European Union efforts to impose sanctions on Iran's oil and gas industry. Organizers of the 16th annual oil and gas industry exhibition in Tehran expect to welcome more than 1 million visitors from Iran and around the region, and boast that they have attracted 460 foreign companies to attend. 'In this exhibition, [the number of] participating countries and foreign companies has increased by 20 and 22 percent respectively as compared to the previous year,' exhibition manager Hossein Porsan told the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency. Companies showing their wares - either directly or through their Iranian agents - came from Austria, Spain, Australia, England, Italy, Germany, Turkey, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Russia, France, the Netherlands, Norway, India, Singapore, Japan, China, Taiwan, Thailand, Saudi Arabia, Canada, and Brazil, Porsan said. A coalition of European human rights organizations seeking a total trade embargo on Iran said the participation of European companies undermined European Union sanctions against Iran's energy sector and blasted governments in Germany, Austria, and the UK for failing to stop them from showcasing their technology in Tehran. The 'Stop the Bomb' campaign condemned the participation of European companies, and called on the governments of Britain, Germany, Switzerland and Austria to investigate them for possible sanctions violations. 'Any deals with the Iranian energy sector directly support the regime itself, and the guilty Western companies are perpetuating the regime's violations of human rights, its nuclear program and the export of terror against the will of the Iranian people and in spite of powerful popular protests against the Ahmadinejad's government,' said Dan Coen, the director of Stop the Bomb-UK... The German government of Chancellor Angela Merkel has been a vocal critic of Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons and its human rights violations. And yet, Germany continues to do a booming business with Iran. Forty-two German governments were identified as participants in the Tehran oil and gas exhibition, according to the organizers, and Germany continues to be the most important business partner of the Iranian regime, exporting to Iran products worth 3.8 billion Euros ($5.5 billion) last year." http://t.uani.com/gA65zu |
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