Top Stories
AFP: "US President Barack Obama condemned Syria's 'outrageous' use of violence, accusing the regime of seeking Iran's aid in a brutal month-long crackdown that left over 70 people dead Friday. Obama also dismissed Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's move to scrap the emergency rule imposed by the ruling Baath Party when it seized power in 1963 and allow for peaceful demonstrations as 'not serious' in light of the violence against protesters... 'Instead of listening to their own people, President Assad is blaming outsiders while seeking Iranian assistance in repressing Syria's citizens through the same brutal tactics that have been used by his Iranian allies,' Obama added." http://t.uani.com/fiMZ8I
Reuters: "Iran has been targeted by a second computer virus in a 'cyber war' waged by its enemies, its commander of civil defense said on Monday. Gholamreza Jalali told the semi-official Mehr news agency that the new virus, called 'Stars,' was being investigated by experts. 'Fortunately, our young experts have been able to discover this virus and the Stars virus is now in the laboratory for more investigations,' Jalali was quoted as saying. He did not specify the target of Stars or its intended impact. 'The particular characteristics of the Stars virus have been discovered,' Jalali said. 'The virus is congruous and harmonious with the (computer) system and in the initial phase it does minor damage and might be mistaken for some executive files of government organisations.'" http://t.uani.com/fEDpVe
Reuters: "Food prices in Iran have risen almost 25 percent in one year, official figures released on Sunday showed, twice the overall official rate of inflation. Figures from the Central Bank of Iran, carried in Iranian newspapers, showed the bank's food basket cost 24.46 percent more in the first month of the Iranian year, starting March 21, than in the same month a year ago. Iranians are feeling the pinch not only from global food prices rises but also from the government's decision to slash subsidies on essentials like food and fuel -- a move which increased the price of gasoline by between 400 and 700 percent overnight in December and caused utility bills to soar." http://t.uani.com/iix30X
Nuclear Program & Sanctions
AP: "The commander of Iran's powerful Revolutionary Guard warned Friday that his forces are expanding capabilities to retaliate against possible enemy attacks from outside the Gulf, further suggesting that Tehran seeks to widen its military reach. The comments by Gen. Mohammad Ali Jafari appear part of a broader strategy by Iran to project its power beyond the Gulf and its neighbours. The range of Iranian missiles has been steadily enlarged in recent years to encompass Israel and parts of Europe, and two Iranian warships entered the Mediterranean in February for the first time since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. 'Given that the responsibility of countering enemy threats in faraway regions has been delegated to the Guard, we are increasing ... capabilities to reach and hit the enemy in the same way the enemy stands in remote regions outside the Persian Gulf,' Jafari told the semi-official Fars news agency." http://t.uani.com/dMhORB
Commerce
AP: "Senior officials from Iran, Oman, Qatar, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan have signed an agreement to create an international transportation corridor that will serve a revamped link between energy-rich Central Asia and Persian Gulf ports. Uzbek Foreign Minister Elyor Ganiyev said the route will be created from existing railroads running from Uzbekistan through Turkmenistan and further south to seaports in Iran. Foreign ministers from the five nations met Monday in the Turkmen capital, Ashgabat. The planned route would substantially ease trade exchanges between Persian Gulf nations and Central Asia, as well as China and Russia further north. Iran, in particular, hopes to export its oil to Central Asia." http://t.uani.com/guhpf2
Human Rights
CNN: "The trial for three American hikers charged with spying in Iran should proceed even if freed hiker Sarah Shourd fails to return for the next hearing, their attorney told CNN on Sunday. Masoud Shafii said the court told him the next hearing for Shourd, Josh Fattal and Shane Bauer would be held May 11 at Branch 15 of the Revolution Court. The three were arrested in 2009 for allegedly entering Iran illegally while hiking in Iraq's Kurdistan region. They have been charged with spying. Shourd was released on $500,000 bail last year because of a medical condition and immediately left the country. She failed to return for a previous court hearing in February. According to Shafii, Iran's foreign ministry has sent a summons to Shourd to appear in court on May 11, adding that it was 'up to Sarah' on whether to return to Iran." http://t.uani.com/i7cjle
Daily Mail: "In a desperate attempt to have their asylum claims accepted by the UK government, four Iranians have sewn their mouths shut with fishing wire and gone on hunger strike with two others. The men have not eaten for 20 days and have set up a makeshift camp outside the Lunar House immigration centre in Croydon, south London. The British government is planning on sending them back to Tehran, but the men claim that their lives would be in danger if that happened, as they all took part in protests against the Iranian regime in 2009 and were beaten, tortured and even raped as a result. Mahyar Meyari, who is 17, explained how he was arrested and given brutal treatment after taking part in a demonstration." http://t.uani.com/gKrzlL
Reuters: "The wife of an Iranian opposition leader who has been under unofficial house arrest since February has been allowed out for medical treatment, a reformist website said on Saturday. Fatemeh Karoubi had been held incommunicado with her husband Mehdi since he called supporters on to the streets for a February14 Tehran rally in support of uprisings in the Arab world. Two people were shot dead at the demonstration, deaths protesters blamed on security forces but which the government said was the work of 'terrorist' elements among demonstrators." http://t.uani.com/epsF3C
Domestic Politics
NYT: "Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said Saturday that he remained ready to intervene in the country's political affairs if the nation's interests were being 'neglected,' continuing a rare public flexing of his power days after a disagreement with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad flared into the open. In a speech to supporters in Fars Province that was broadcast live on state television, he praised Mr. Ahmadinejad's administration. But he said that the country's religious leadership would remain the ultimate authority. 'While the leadership is alive, it will never allow deviation in the movement of the Iranian nation toward its goals,' he said. The statement came after a week of public tension between the president and Mr. Khamenei over what was seen as an effort by Mr. Ahmadinejad to extend control over the politically sensitive Intelligence Ministry." http://t.uani.com/i4jkTd
WSJ: "In 1978, the future Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi helped storm the justice ministry in Tehran in protest against the shah. 'The future appeared full of promise.' 'At the time I really believed that an Islamic Republic would bring us independence and liberty.' The time was 1978 and the belief belonged to Shirin Ebadi, then a 31-year-old judge on the Tehran city court. So strong was her revolutionary fervor that she helped storm the justice ministry, one of many acts of revolt that eventually toppled the shah and installed Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini as Iran's supreme leader. 'What would happen to our beloved Iran? No one knew,' Ms. Ebadi writes in 'The Golden Cage,' her new book out next week, 'but the future appeared full of promise.' The future, it turned out, was full of 7th-century religious fanaticism and brutal political repression." http://t.uani.com/fgg0Pc
AFP: "Iran is bracing for a fresh showdown between supporters of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and some conservatives as simmering tensions build in the run-up to the March 2012 parliamentary election. The aborted resignation of Intelligence Minister Heydar Moslehi set off a conservative storm against the president's entourage, with the focus on his chief of staff and key adviser Esfandiar Rahim Mashaie. On April 17, Iranian media announced Moslehi, close to all-powerful supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, had been dismissed after he tried to sack one of his deputies, who reportedly has close ties to Mashaie. But minutes later, Ayatollah Khamenei, who holds the ultimate authority in the country, personally intervened to overturn the dismissal. Under the constitution, the president is in charge of appointing ministers -- who then need to be approved by the parliament -- as well as dismissing them. But an unwritten law requires top ministers, including the intelligence, defence, interior and foreign affairs, to have the tacit approval of the supreme leader." http://t.uani.com/i4e9f1
AFP: "Four rebels belonging to a 'Wahabi terrorist' group have been killed near Sanandaj, capital of the Iranian province bordering Iraq, a top official was quoted by the Fars news agency as saying on Friday. 'The four remaining members of a terrorist group... were killed in armed clashes with security agents in Hasan Abad village near Sanandaj,' Iraj Hasanzadeh, a deputy governor general of Kurdistan province, was quoted as saying. He did not elaborate on the group that he named as Tohid and Jihad." http://t.uani.com/h2KGdN
Foreign Affairs
AP: "When Syria's president visited Iran late last year, he received a heroes' medal and spoke about unbreakable bonds in a ceremony broadcast on national television. Now, a nervous leadership in Iran has imposed a media blackout on Bashar Assad's struggle against a swelling Syrian uprising and Tehran faces the unsettling prospect of losing its most stalwart ally in the region. The Islamic Republic managed to choke off its homegrown 'Green Revolution' after the disputed June 2009 presidential election. But now it is being dragged into the uprisings sweeping across the Middle East and stirring unrest in Syria, and unfriendly neighbor Bahrain... For Iran, its ties with Syria represent far more than just a rare friend in a region dominated by Arab suspicions of Tehran's aims. Syria is Iran's great enabler: a conduit for aid to powerful anti-Israel proxies Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Should Assad's regime fall, it could rob Iran of a loyal Arab partner in a region profoundly realigned by uprisings demanding more freedom and democracy." http://t.uani.com/h2UGJV
AP: "Iran and Iraq have signed an accord to extradite 'convicts and criminals' wanted by the two neighbours, state television's website and newspapers reported on Monday. Justice Minister Morteza Bakhtiari and his visiting Iraqi counterpart Hassan al-Shammari signed the agreement late on Sunday, Aftab-e Yazd newspaper said. According to state television's website, the agreement will allow the 'repatriation of convicts and criminals, including those who have fled their country, to stand trial and await implementation of their sentence.' The accord follows a deadly raid on April 8 by Iraqi security forces on Camp Ashraf, set up in the 1980s and which houses about 3,500 members of Iran's main armed opposition group, the People's Mujahedeen of Iran, and their families. The raid inside Iraq near the border with Iran killed 34 members of the group, which fought alongside Iraqi forces against the Islamic republic in the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war and figures on the US government's terrorist list." http://t.uani.com/fvuydz
AFP: "Iranian Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi voiced hope Saturday over mass protests in Syria, saying that the fall of Tehran's main Arab ally would send a powerful signal to the Islamic regime. 'Democracy in Islamic and Arab countries, specifically Syria, will certainly affect democracy in Iran,' Ebadi told AFP on a visit to Washington. 'If Syria becomes democratic, Iran will lose its puppet.' Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's forces were said to have killed more than 80 people Friday and to have shot dead mourners on Saturday in a bid to crush the latest uprising against authoritarian leaders in the Middle East." http://t.uani.com/ha2ZAO
AFP: "Iran said on Friday it gives 'moral support' to the demands of Bahrain's people but without any involvement in the Shiite-led protests in the Gulf kingdom ruled by a Sunni dynasty. 'Other than offering moral support to the legitimate and peaceful demands of the people,' Tehran has 'no role in the events,' foreign ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said in a statement emailed to AFP. His remarks came after a joint GCC-European Union statement issued on Wednesday in Abu Dhabi backed the March 14 deployment of a Saudi-led Gulf force including UAE police in Bahrain. The move freed up Bahraini security forces to crush the protest movement in the only Shiite-majority Arab state of the Gulf, in a move repeatedly condemned by Shiite-dominant Iran." http://t.uani.com/dJlPqw
Opinion & Analysis
Ali Alfoneh in AEI: "On April 17, 2011, the Iranian media reported on a presidential decree enacted by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in which he accepted the 'resignation' of Intelligence Minister Hojjat al-Eslam Heydar Moslehi, who, according to Ahmadinejad, would 'serve the regime and the Islamic revolution in other capacities.' In a separate decree, Ahmadinejad appointed Moslehi 'presidential adviser in intelligence affairs,' a move clearly aimed to emasculate the influential minister. Less than an hour after Ahmadinejad's decree appeared in the media, however, Fars News Agency reported that Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei had 'opposed' the 'resignation.' While Ahmadinejad has yet to comment on Khamenei's veto, his media director Ali-Akbar Javanfekr initially claimed that the Supreme Leader's decree was fabricated. Although Khamenei remained publicly silent on the matter, Hojjat al-Eslam Morteza Aqa-Tehrani, Ahmadinejad's clerical affairs spokesman, conceded that 'the Leader of the Revolution is Fasl al-Khetab [has the final say].' The failed attempt to dismiss Moslehi is part of Ahmadinejad's wider campaign to cleanse his government of senior officials imposed on him by other power circles within the Islamic Republic. Moslehi's resignation would also make Ahmadinejad's cabinet - along with Prime Minister Mehdi Bazargan's short-lived transitional government in 1979 - the only cabinet in the history of the Islamic Republic devoid of representatives from the clergy. Ahmadinejad has previously attempted to restrain the Supreme Leader's control over the intelligence ministry. On July 26, 2009, Ahmadinejad dismissed then Intelligence Minister Mohseni Ezhehi, accusing him of 'incompetence' in dealing with the popular unrest that engulfed Iran after the June 12, 2009, presidential election. Some reports suggested that Ahmadinejad dismissed Ezhehi because his ministry had prepared a report to the Supreme Leader arguing that the protest movement was not a foreign plot or a velvet revolution. Ahmadinejad, with a team of intelligence analysts from the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), reportedly went to the Intelligence Ministry and declared that the political activists arrested by the IRGC had already confessed their activities as foreign agents. In addition to the minister, Ahmadinejad also replaced a number of senior intelligence ministry officials with IRGC officers. There is no love lost between the IRGC and the Intelligence Ministry, and IRGC officials publicly express contempt for the ministry which they perceive as a rival in the fight against the 'counter-revolutionaries.' ... Resigned or fired, Moslehi seems to be the latest victim in the struggle for power between Ahmadinejad and Khamenei. Moslehi will find it difficult to work in Ahmadinejad's cabinet and his authority within the intelligence ministry will be contested by Ahmadinejad's political appointees. This will further weaken Moslehi and the intelligence ministry. The conflict between Ahmadinejad and Khamenei, coupled with the weakening of the intelligence ministry, is not without beneficiaries: the IRGC is likely to exploit any ambiguity and to fill the vacuum. Moslehi may end up wishing he had indeed been fired." http://t.uani.com/fDZdcZ
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