Eye on Iran: Gulf Arabs States Reject Iran "Interference"

For continuing coverage follow us on Twitter and join our Facebook group. Top Stories Reuters: "Gulf Arab states voiced deep concern on Sunday over what they called Iranian interference in their affairs after Iran objected to the dispatch of Saudi troops to Bahrain and a spying row raised tensions. A statement issued after a meeting of foreign ministers rejected Iran's 'continuing interference' in the internal affairs of the six members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). 'The (foreign affairs ministers meeting) severely condemned Iranian interference in the internal affairs of Bahrain which is in violation of international pacts,' the statement said. Shi'ite Iran has criticised Saudi Arabia for sending troops to Bahrain which faces protests by majority Shi'ites against the island state's Sunni ruling family." http://t.uani.com/gEqcTg JPost: "Former national security adviser to US President Barack Obama, James Jones, warned of Tehran's role in uprisings in the Middle East, saying 'you can bet that Iran is affecting virtually everything and trying to play in every one of these countries where we're having some difficulties ... Iran is out there agitating things.' Jones made the comments in an interview with CNN aired on Sunday. '(Iran) is flying under the radar right now because, you know, you don't hear too much about their nuclear program because everyone else is focused elsewhere,' Jones stated. He added that chaos reigning in the region is something the Iranian government is 'reasonably happy with.'" http://t.uani.com/iidtQj AFP: "Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in a telephone conversation has asked the UN chief to stop US and Europe 'intervention' in the region, the website of his office reported on Monday. 'The intervention of some European countries and America in the regional nations increases concern and makes circumstances more complicated,' Ahmadinejad was quoted as telling UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. The website said the Iranian president told the UN secretary general to prevent 'catastrophes' as occurred in Afghanistan and Iraq happening in the region... 'The double standard action of the Western countries in Bahrain and Libya and their silence towards the atrocities of the Zionist regime against the innocent Palestinians shows their contradictory performance in the world.'" http://t.uani.com/emAIqe Nuclear Program & Sanctions Der Spiegel: "The controversial involvement of the Bundesbank in an oil deal between India and Iran is possibly more politically sensitive than previously thought. According to government sources in Berlin, the deal was made in connection to the release of two reporters from the weekly paper Bild am Sonntag from Iranian detention last February. The sources say the German government approved the Bundesbank's help in the Iranian-Indian transaction in exchange for the release of the two prisoners. The government's official response to questions from SPIEGEL ONLINE has been reserved. A connection was neither confirmed nor denied. When asked what role the Indian-Iranian deal played in the release of the two prisoners, a spokesperson for the Foreign Ministry said: 'The federal government became active at the very beginning of the detention of the two German journalists in October 2010, so that they could be brought back to Germany as soon as possible.' The spokesperson referred to the statements made by Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle, of the business-friendly Free Democrats (FDP), after the return of the journalists. At that time, Westerwelle thanked 'all those who worked together to find a solution for this very complicated case.'" http://t.uani.com/gjdq5C Reuters: "Iran aims to slice three zeros off the end of its currency which has weakened steadily over many years despite a policy to keep it loosely pegged to the dollar, the official news agency IRNA reported on Saturday. IRNA quoted the economy minister as saying the government hoped to make the redenomination of the rial, which stands at more than 10,000 to the U.S. dollar, over the next year. Iran 'will remove three zeros from the national currency this year on the condition that the prerequisites are achieved,' Shamseddin Hosseini told IRNA. The announcement comes as Iran faces two major economic challenges: the continued tightening of international sanctions and a policy to slash subsidies which for years has artificially held down the price of essentials like food and energy." http://t.uani.com/fic3Gy Domestic Politics Reuters: "Four Iranian border guards were killed and five wounded by a grenade attack on their post at a city in the Kurdistan region that borders Iraq, state television reported late on Saturday. The report said the attack happened on Friday night in the city of Marivan. 'Unidentified armed people threw a grenade into the police office,' it said. On March 25, news agencies reported two policemen were shot dead and three other people wounded in two 'terrorist' shootings in the nearby city of Sanandaj. Security forces in the west of Iran often clash with guerrillas from PJAK, an offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which took up arms in 1984 for an autonomous homeland in southeast Turkey and shelters in Iraq's northeastern border provinces." http://t.uani.com/gOuKag Foreign Affairs AFP: "Saudi Arabia has urged Iran to mind its own business after a parliamentary panel in Tehran warned that Riyadh was 'playing with fire' by deploying troops in Bahrain. 'Iran's statement deliberately ignores Iran's interference in the region's affairs and its violation of the independence and sovereignty of the region,' a government official said late on Friday, quoted by state news agency SPA. On Thursday, the Iranian parliament's foreign affairs and national security committee said: 'Saudi Arabia should know it's better not to play with fire in the sensitive region of the Persian Gulf.'" http://t.uani.com/fXsAMZ Opinion & Analysis WSJ Editorial Board: "The Obama Administration has advertised its sanctions regime against Iran as the toughest ever applied and a great diplomatic success. So what are we to make of its decision this week to punish only a single company doing business with Iran's oil and gas industry-and a small fry at that? The State Department announced that it is punishing Belarusneft, a firm owned by the government of Belarus, for signing a $500 million contract in 2007 to develop an oil field in southwestern Iran. The company is now barred from working with the U.S. Export-Import Bank, receiving large loans from U.S. banks, contracting with the U.S. government and obtaining U.S. export licenses. The effect of all this? Nil. The State Department admits that Belarusneft doesn't seek to do any of these things. The sanctions may also be redundant: Belarusneft's parent company, Belneftekhim, has been under U.S. sanctions since 2007 for its connections to Belarusian President and international pariah Alexander Lukashenko. The failure to sanction bigger offenders caught the attention of Congress. 'We do not believe this represents full compliance with the sanctions regime put in place by Congress,' wrote Senators Mark Kirk (R., Ill.), Jon Kyl (R., Ariz.) and Joe Lieberman (I., Conn.) to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner this week. They attached a classified 54-page annex detailing international firms that are or might be in violation of U.S. sanctions. We assume the list includes, among others, the China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC), the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), Sinopec, Zhuhai Zhen Rong, Lukoil and Turpas-all companies known to be investing in Iran. None of this is news to the Obama Administration, which would appear to lack the political will to act against firms with friends in Beijing, Moscow and Ankara." http://t.uani.com/eQr4aJ David Sanger in NYT: "On a Tuesday afternoon in mid-March in the White House Situation Room, as President Obama heard the arguments of his security advisers about the pros and cons of using military force in Libya, the conversation soon veered into the impact in a far more strategically vital place: Iran. The mullahs in Tehran, noted Thomas E. Donilon, the national security adviser, were watching Mr. Obama's every move in the Arab world. They would interpret a failure to back up his declaration that Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi had 'lost the legitimacy to lead' as a sign of weakness - and perhaps as a signal that Mr. Obama was equally unwilling to back up his vow never to allow Iran to gain the ability to build a nuclear weapon. 'It shouldn't be overstated that this was the deciding factor, or even a principal factor' in the decision to intervene in Libya, Benjamin J. Rhodes, a senior aide who joined in the meeting, said last week. But, he added, the effect on Iran was always included in the discussion. In this case, he said, 'the ability to apply this kind of force in the region this quickly - even as we deal with other military deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan - combined with the nature of this broad coalition sends a very strong message to Iran about our capabilities, militarily and diplomatically.' That afternoon in the Situation Room vividly demonstrates a rarely stated fact about the administration's responses to the uprisings sweeping the region: The Obama team holds no illusions about Colonel Qaddafi's long-term importance. Libya is a sideshow. Containing Iran's power remains their central goal in the Middle East. Every decision - from Libya to Yemen to Bahrain to Syria - is being examined under the prism of how it will affect what was, until mid-January, the dominating calculus in the Obama administration's regional strategy: how to slow Iran's nuclear progress, and speed the arrival of opportunities for a successful uprising there... Only two and a half months ago, things seemed very different. In January, American officials were fairly confident that they had cornered Iran: new sanctions were biting, the Russians were cutting off sophisticated weaponry that Iran wanted to ward off any Israeli or American attack, and a deviously complex computer worm, called Stuxnet, was wreaking havoc with the Iranian effort to enrich uranium. But that changed with the arrival of the Arab Spring. Suddenly the Arab authoritarians who had spent the last two years plotting with Washington to squeeze the Iranians - 'Cut off the head of the snake,' King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia was famously quoted as advising in the WikiLeaks cables - became more worried about their own streets than the Iranian centrifuges spinning out nuclear fuel at Natanz." http://t.uani.com/hYxPPY Robert Kaplan in The Atlantic: "'Iran,' Kissinger told me, 'merely by pursuing nuclear weapons, has given itself a role in the region out of proportion to its actual power, and it gains further by the psychological impact of its being able to successfully defy the United Nations Security Council.' Nevertheless, he went on, he does not consider Iran a threat of the 'same order of magnitude' as the 1950s' Soviet Union, even as it 'ideologically and militarily challenges the Middle East order.' When I asked Kissinger whether a nuclear Iran would be containable, he suggested that he would want to take tough measures to prevent a nuclear Iran in the first place. He did tell me that the United States had 'different deterrence equations' to consider: Iran versus Israel, Iran versus the Sunni Arabs, Iran versus its own dissidents, and Islam versus the West. All of these dynamics, he explained, would interact in the event of an Iran that goes nuclear, and lead to 'even more-frequent crises' than we currently have in the Middle East. But in spite of Iran's refusal thus far to avail itself of 'the genuine opportunity to transform itself from a cause to a nation,' Kissinger told me, the country's true strategic interests should 'run parallel with our own.' For example, Iran should want to limit Russia's influence in the Caucasus and Central Asia, it should want to limit the Taliban's influence in neighboring Afghanistan, it should accept stability in Iraq, and it should want to serve as a peaceful balancing power in the Sunni Arab world. Indeed, I would argue that because Sunni Arabs from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Lebanon, and Egypt perpetrated the attacks of September 11, 2001, and because Sunni hostility to American and Israeli interests remains a conspicuous problem, the United States should theoretically welcome a strengthened Shiite role in the Middle East, were Iran to go through an even partial political transformation. And demographic, cultural, and other indicators all point to a positive ideological and philosophical shift in Iran in the medium to long term. Given this prognosis, and the high cost and poor chances for success of any military effort to eliminate Iran's nuclear program, I believe that containment of a nuclear Iran is the most sensible policy for the United States." http://t.uani.com/i1g9Yd Eye on Iran is a periodic news summary from United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) a program of the American Coalition Against Nuclear Iran, Inc., a tax-exempt organization under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. Eye on Iran is not intended as a comprehensive media clips summary but rather a selection of media elements with discreet analysis in a PDA friendly format. For more information please email Press@UnitedAgainstNuclearIran.com United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) is a non-partisan, broad-based coalition that is united in a commitment to prevent Iran from fulfilling its ambition to become a regional super-power possessing nuclear weapons. 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