Top Stories AFP: "A group close to the Iranian opposition in exile said Thursday it has located an industrial site near Tehran that produces components for centrifuges used to enrich uranium. The Taba site has been in operation for four and a half years, Alireza Jafarzadeh said at a news conference in Washington, citing information gathered by the People's Mujahedeen of Iran (PMOI) opposition group. Taba, which in Persian stands for Iranian Cutting Tools Factory, produces 'aluminium casing, magnets, molecular pumps, composite tubes, centrifuge bases,' he said. Several aerial photographs of industrial installations were presented at the news conference. The site was said to be located in Karaj in Tehran's western suburbs. 'This is another indication that Tehran, unlike what it says, is not transparent, (does not intend) to be cooperative with the international community, is not pursuing a peaceful nuclear energy program, because otherwise there's no need for any of these things, no need to hide the program since 2002,' Jafarzadeh said." http://t.uani.com/hTSiQ1 UPI: "Russian natural gas company Gazprom announced Thursday that it was exploring ways to cooperate more closely with Iran in the energy sector. Gazprom chief Alexei Miller welcomed Iranian Deputy Vice President for Economic Affairs Ali Agha Mohammadi to Moscow to discuss bilateral energy issues. 'The parties discussed the opportunities for Russia and Iran to develop cooperation in the oil and gas industry,' the Russian company said in a statement. 'Special attention was paid to the global energy market trends and the issues of strategic partnership within the Gas Exporting Countries Forum activities.' ... State-run Gazprom has played a role in the giant South Pars gas field off the coast of Iran since 1997." http://t.uani.com/i98uDO Reuters: "Nuclear fuel is once again being loaded into the reactor of Iran's Bushehr power plant, Russian state nuclear company Atomstroyexport said on Friday, after the latest in a series of delays to its launch. Iran had removed the fuel after small pieces of metal entered the cooling system. Atomstroyexport said in a statement it has now completed the study and cleansing of the pipes at the Russian-built reactor. 'On April 8, 2011, loading of fuel rod arrays began at Bushehr,' Atomstroyexport said, calling the fuel removal earlier 'a necessary measure' to ensure safety. Bushehr, first in a planned network of nuclear power plants in Iran, was due to start producing electricity early this year." http://t.uani.com/emL8YI
Nuclear Program & Sanctions AP: "Iran's semiofficial Mehr News Agency says three explosions have hit gas pipelines near the country's holy city of Qom, in the same area where simultaneous blasts took place two months ago. The lines carry gas from Iran's gas refineries in the south to the country's northwest. The report says Friday's explosions cut the gas flow through those lines but power plants switched to oil for electricity production. Mehr says an investigation is under way as to what caused the blasts. In February, officials said the blasts were not caused by technical failures but did not say if they were acts of sabotage." http://t.uani.com/hsaGNu Reuters: "Israel believes Turkey is actively helping Iran to sidestep economic sanctions and has also turned a blind eye to Iranian weapons smuggling into Syria, according to leaked U.S. diplomatic cables published on Friday. Citing documents obtained by WikiLeaks, Haaretz newspaper said senior Israeli officials had told the United States that Turkey was moving ever-closer to Iran because it needed Iranian energy supplies and because it was revising its global strategy. Israel used to enjoy excellent relations with Turkey, NATO's only Muslim member, but these have grown fraught in recent years, with the Jewish state deeply concerned by Ankara's warm ties with its arch-foe Iran. '(Israeli secret services) said (the) Turkish government is now assisting Iran in by-passing international financial sanctions and is ignoring Iranian weapons smuggling to Syria ... through Turkey,' a U.S. cable dated November 2009 said." http://t.uani.com/fOfo3I Independent Online: "The Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines (IRISL) said the last of five ships seized following sanctions against Iran has been released, Iran Daily reported with reference to Fars News Agency. IRISL vessels were impounded at ports around the world late last year, after European banks called in loans to the major shipper. 'The last of the five IRISL container ships which were seized several months ago was released last Thursday,' the company's chairman, Mohammad Hossein Dajmar, said. Three ships held in Singapore were released in January and the fourth, seized in Hong Kong, was allowed to sail in February. The last vessel was held in Malta. Mr Dajmar said all the ships would resume normal commercial activities." http://t.uani.com/ePpF1A AP: "A former CIA officer charged with leaking classified documents about agency programs in Iran to a reporter is asking a judge to toss out the bulk of the charges. A hearing is scheduled Friday in federal court in Alexandria, Va., in the case against Jeffrey Sterling of O'Fallon, Mo. Sterling was an officer from 1993 to 2002 and spent part of that time on the CIA's Iran Task Force. The government alleges that Sterling leaked information between 2001 and 2006 to a journalist, who is not identified in court papers. But it is clear from details in the indictment that the journalist is New York Times reporter James Risen. Risen wrote a book in 2006 about the CIA's covert spy war with Iran." http://t.uani.com/hWraU2 AP: "A lawmaker says Iran's parliament has launched an investigation into repeated delays in the startup of the Bushehr nuclear power plant. Gholam Ali Meigolinejad says the plant was expected to produce electricity in February but the Russian engineers building the plant ordered the removal of fuel from the reactor because of concerns that metal particles might be contaminating fuel assemblies. Foreign intelligence reports have said the control systems at Bushehr were penetrated by the mysterious computer worm known as Stuxnet. Iranian lawmakers say the unloading has delayed the startup of the plant by a year. Bushehr was scheduled to start working in July 1999 but there have been repeated delays blamed on technical problems." http://t.uani.com/fbnk2R Human Rights AP: "UNESCO has awarded its World Press Freedom Prize to jailed Iranian journalist Ahmad Zeidabadi, who has been convicted of spreading propaganda against the ruling Islamic establishment and is serving a six-year sentence. UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova says Zeidabadi 'has courageously and unceasingly spoken out for press freedom and freedom of expression.' The journalist was among more than 100 political figures and activists tried together in the aftermath of Iran's disputed 2010 elections. He is the former editor-in-cheif of Azad newspaper and a contributor to the BBC's Persian service." http://t.uani.com/gapTE7 Foreign Affairs NYT: "In what appeared to be an attempt to assert Iran's credentials as a supporter of protesters in Bahrain, non-Iranian religious students from the city of Qom demonstrated outside the United Nations headquarters in Tehran and the Saudi Embassy on Friday morning. The gathering of around 1,000 people, many of them Shiite clerics, came from countries as diverse as Nigeria, Madagascar, India and Bangladesh as well as representatives from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Lebanon and Bahrain itself. A small number of women protesters wearing customary black chadors stood separately from the main crowd." http://t.uani.com/fT3S4e AFP: "US Defence Secretary Robert Gates said in Iraq Thursday that Iran and extremist groups such as Al-Qaeda would try to exploit the unrest sweeping the Arab world... 'We have to keep our eye on it very closely because... this is a period where extremists will probably try to take advantage -- including Iran,' Gates said. Gates arrived in Baghdad late Wednesday after a short stop in Saudi Arabia, where he sharply criticised Iran after talks with King Abdullah. 'We already have evidence that the Iranians are trying to exploit the situation in Bahrain and we also have evidence that they're talking about what they can do to create problems elsewhere,' Gates said, referring to Shiite-led protests which were crushed by the Sunni monarchy." http://t.uani.com/e9wqs1 AFP: "Malaysian police said Thursday they had dealt a major blow to a drugs syndicate operating across Asia after arresting nine Iranians and seizing more than 70 kilogrammes of methamphetamine. Anti-narcotics chief Noor Rashid Ibrahim told AFP the haul, which included seven million ringgit ($2.3 million) in foreign currency, was uncovered in Kuala Lumpur but refused to name the exact location or say when it was seized. 'Initial investigations show that these Iranians are part of a major syndicate and they smuggled in the drugs and have been selling them in Malaysia and shipping them overseas as well,' he said." http://t.uani.com/i6rJ4l AP: "Iraqi forces early Friday stormed an Iranian exile camp that Iraq's Shiite-dominated government has tried to close for years, and both sides reported casualties in the raid. The exiles said as many as 31 residents at Camp Ashraf in Iraq's northeastern Diyala province were killed, while the Iraqi general who ordered the offensive vehemently denied any fatalities. U.S. and U.N. officials in Baghdad were unable to immediately verify how many people were killed or injured. A hospital official in Baqouba, Diyala's capital, said 10 people were killed and 16 wounded in the clashes. Five Iraqi soldiers and one policeman also were injured, said the official. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information." http://t.uani.com/fNtvIa Opinion & Analysis Gregory Jones in NPEC: "Since Iran began using centrifuges to produce enriched uranium in 2007, there have been concerns that Iran could modify its enrichment operation to produce the Highly Enriched Uranium (HEU, typically at least 80% U-235) needed to manufacture nuclear weapons. Recently the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) has produced estimates of the time required for Iran to use its existing enrichment facilities at Natanz in order to produce the HEU for a nuclear weapon. The IISS estimates that it would take Iran one to two years to carry out this process and prefer their estimate of two years. This estimate includes not only the time needed to produce the HEU but also the time required to fashion the HEU into a metal sphere required for a nuclear weapon. An estimate of two years is far higher than my most recent estimate of the approximately two and one half months. Naturally I was interested in what caused the difference in our estimates. Initially I thought the difference might lie in the arcane calculations related to uranium enrichment but in fact the differences relate to four factors. One, the IISS assumes that Iran would prefer to repipe its cascades at Natanz to produce HEU rather than use the significantly faster batch recycling method. Two, the IISS vastly overestimates the time required to convert uranium hexafluoride (UF6-the chemical form of uranium required for the enrichment process) to a uranium metal sphere required for a nuclear weapon. Three, the IISS assumes that due to processing losses, Iran will have to produce a total of 37.5 kilograms of HEU when only 20 kilograms are necessary. Four, the IISS assumes that Iran uses only 24 cascades (3,936 centrifuges) when Iran has the equivalent of 31 cascades (5,144 centrifuges) in operation. We will discuss each of these factors in turn, after some background on centrifuge enrichment of uranium and Iran's centrifuge enrichment operations." http://t.uani.com/hP4Ma8 Tariq Alhomayed in Asharq Al-Awsat: "The Iranian Ambassador in Damascus, Ahmed al Moussawi, has announced his country's support for the Syrian regime, which is normal. However, what was not normal was his attack on the Syrian people, who came out to demonstrate in several Syrian cities, demanding reform and the ending of the longest-standing emergency law in the region. The Iranian Ambassador, speaking at a conference entitled 'The Islamic Awakening and Confronting Strife in Syria', which was being held in Damascus, said that 'the events taking place in Syria have been prepared and planned by enemies to replicate the civil strife experienced by Iran, especially the slogans echoed by protestors in Daraa, such as No Hezbollah and No Iran. This means that the source stems from the enemy, where external agents are receiving orders from enemies and Zionists!' Here we must stop to examine several points. Firstly, the title of the conference itself is contradictory, for what is this 'Islamic awakening' in a secular state, ruled by the Baath party? Secondly, the Syrian authorities came out in the media to do the impossible, and deny that the people in Daraa shouted 'No Hezbollah and No Iran'. Yet here is the Iranian Ambassador himself confirming the opposite! This slogan is highly significant, especially in the game of majority and minority, and the sectarian dimension in Syria. The other matter of course is the Iranian Ambassador attacking the demonstrators and branding them as agents of enemies and Zionists, whilst we find that the Syrian President himself has begun to receive delegations from the troubled areas, including social activists from Hasaka province. The Syrian regime has also began talking about reforms, and a Syrian official told AFP yesterday that 'There will be an extraordinary (parliament) session from May 2 to 6 in which social and political laws will be adopted in line with the reforms desired by the head of state' ... It is a sad state of affairs for Iranian diplomacy to descend to this level, but the magnitude of Iranian hypocrisy with regards to our region is astonishing. How can it explain its attacks on the Syrian people, compared to what it says and does in Bahrain for example? When the all sects of the Syrian community come out to demonstrate, they become traitors and foreign agents, yet when Bahrain's Shia population comes out in protest, they are freedom fighters? It's clear that sedation follows Iran where ever it goes, and this is evident in Tehran's dealings with Syria under the principle: support the regime and attack the people." http://t.uani.com/hj13JO |
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment