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NYT: "Two defectors from Iran's intelligence service have testified that Iranian officials had 'foreknowledge of the 9/11 attacks,' according to a court filing Thursday in a federal lawsuit in Manhattan that seeks damages for Iran's 'direct support for, and sponsorship of, the most deadly act of terrorism in American history.' One of the defectors also claimed that Iran was involved in planning the attacks, the filing said. The defectors' identities and testimony were not revealed in the filing but were being submitted to a judge under seal, said lawyers who brought the original suit against Iran on behalf of families of dozens of 9/11 victims. The suit's allegation that Iran had foreknowledge of the attacks is hard to assess fully, given that the defectors' testimony is being filed under seal. The suit contends that Iran and Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant organization with close ties to Tehran, helped Al Qaeda in planning the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, and in facilitating the hijackers' training and travel. After the attacks, the suit contends, Iran and Hezbollah helped Qaeda operatives escape, providing some with a safe haven in Iran. The question of an Iranian connection to 9/11 was raised by the national 9/11 commission and has long been debated." http://t.uani.com/iZNtSf
AP: "President Barack Obama skipped the chance to offer a strong new condemnation of Iran in his speech on Middle East policy. The president accused Iran Thursday of hypocrisy and reiterated U.S. opposition to the country's intolerance, illicit nuclear program and sponsorship of terror. But the president also said those views were well-known and he didn't dwell on them. Nor did he cast Iran as the bogeyman of the Middle East, as U.S. officials have in the past. Instead, Obama's speech had strong challenges to Syria and Bahrain to stop violent crackdowns. Iran merited little more than a paragraph in the 45-minute speech. The Obama administration's outreach to Tehran has gone nowhere, although U.S. officials still hope they can lure Iran into negotiations over its nuclear program and other issues." http://t.uani.com/jIdbTU
NYT: "The Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is expected to lead next month's OPEC conference in Vienna as he presses for higher oil prices to aid Iran's struggling economy, while also seeking to protect and consolidate his power at home as he confronts a growing split with the nation's supreme leader. As chairman of the meeting on June 8, Mr. Ahmadinejad is likely to inject a bit of drama into the usually predictable proceedings, in which members of the 12-nation bloc generally follow Saudi Arabia's lead in promoting moderate oil prices. His position may complicate Saudi Arabia's ability to direct policy at a time when industrialized nations are pressing for more production to restrain oil price increases. But the issue for the Iranian president appears to be at least as much about his political fight with Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, as about his desire to seek increased prices, analysts said. Mr. Ahmadinejad has been engaged in a power struggle with Ayatollah Khamenei that has already diminished the president's standing and undermined his authority, analysts said. 'Ahmadinejad is looking for a public stage to both proclaim his own importance in the Iranian leadership and assert his views in a very public way for the first time since the Arab awakening,' said Suzanne Maloney, an Iran expert at the Brookings Institution." http://t.uani.com/jOATcX
Nuclear Program & Sanctions
AP: "A federal judge has awarded $300 million in punitive damages in each of two suicide bombings blamed on Iran and Iranian-backed Islamic groups. One of Thursday's rulings came on behalf of the family of Alan Beer, a U.S. citizen who was killed in Jerusalem in 2003 in the bombing of a bus by the Iran-backed organization Hamas... In both cases, survivors sued Iran and so to collect Lamberth's award, their lawyers must find Iranian assets in a country with judges willing to order those assets seized on their behalf based on Lamberth's rulings." http://t.uani.com/jNlP7I
Human Rights
AP: "The families of two American hikers held in Iran have made countless TV appearances, enlisted celebrities for help and even traveled to Tehran to keep the spotlight on the men. Their latest tactic: a hunger strike that even they acknowledge is a desperate measure. Nothing they've done yet has swayed the Iranian government, not after nearly two painful years of separation. 'As family members, we're taking a big hit and we're getting to the bottom, financially, emotionally, physically,' said Cindy Hickey of Pine City, Minn., the mother of Shane Bauer, who has been held along with Josh Fattal for 21 months. 'We're all suffering from this. It's very desperate.' ... Hickey and Fattal's mother, Laura Fattal of suburban Philadelphia, began their hunger strike Thursday. They said it was done in solidarity with their sons, who they believe are also on a hunger strike in Iran because they have done it before. However, the mothers said they don't know for sure because independent observers have been denied access to the men. Suzanne Maloney, an Iranian affairs expert at the Brookings Institution in Washington, said she doubted the hunger strike would have any effect, 'if only because Tehran has had many opportunities to make dramatic humanitarian gestures and yet have continued to hold these young men on really unjustified charges.'" http://t.uani.com/iMGNXV
Domestic Politics
AP: "In a fresh blow to the embattled Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran's constitutional watchdog body has ruled that the president cannot serve as the country's caretaker oil minister, a news agency reported Friday. The decision by the Guardian Council comes as the country's hardline religious rulers seek to weaken Ahmadinejad after he publicly challenged Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei last month. Ahmadinejad made clear this week that he was taking on the job of caretaker oil minister after firing the previous minister last week. In that role, Ahmadinejad planned to personally chair an OPEC meeting in Vienna in June since Iran holds the rotating presidency of the oil bloc. The semiofficial Fars news agency said in a report Friday that the Guardian Council - which oversees government adherence to the constitution - ruled that Ahmadinejad's move was a 'constitutional violation.' It didn't provide details." http://t.uani.com/jO062w
Bloomberg: "President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's closest political aide was accused by a group that backs Iran's supreme leader of trying to establish contacts with the U.S. and its intelligence services, the Shargh newspaper reported. The latest accusations against Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, a relative of Ahmadinejad, were made by Hossein Fadaei, head of the Society of Islamic Revolution Devotees, according to the Tehran-based newspaper. A 'current of deviation' now exists in Iran that is aimed at controlling key posts in the economy and changing anyone who refuses to submit to it, the privately owned Shargh cited Fadaei as saying. 'Current of deviation' is the term coined in recent days by Mashaei's opponents to define an ideological movement that they say he initiated and that is detrimental to the Islamic establishment under Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the top religious figure in Iran and the final arbiter on the affairs of state." http://t.uani.com/lS9Vse
WSJ: "Despite impending jail-time, two convicted Iranian filmmakers, Mohammad Rasoulof and Jafar Panahi, are screening new films at the Cannes Film Festival this week that could put their legal situations in jeopardy. But both filmmakers were willing to take the political risk. 'The worse case scenario is that I'll have to go back to jail if the Iranian authorities don't approve,' Rasoulof said on the phone Wednesday from Tehran, speaking through a translator. 'Hopefully, I'll be able to bring some books.' Convicted in December by the Iranian Judiciary for conducting anti-government activities, the filmmakers have received considerable support around the world. The Cannes Film Festival sponsored its own petition, which they released prior to this year's event, decrying the filmmakers' 6-year prison sentences as 'shameful, intolerable and unfitting for two film makers whose only crime is to want to make films freely in their country.'" http://t.uani.com/iNzasb
Foreign Affairs
AFP: "Iran on Friday slammed US President Barack Obama's speech on the Middle East as a sign of 'despair' and 'contradictions' in Washington's policies in the region. 'The despair, contradictions and lies are visible in the speech by Mr Obama and his support for the Jewish state clearly shows the racist nature of US policy,' said Saeed Jalili from the Supreme National Security Council, the body which sets Iran's national security policy. Obama in his speech on Thursday mapped out a Palestinian, non-militarised state within the borders of before the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. He said that 'a lasting peace will involve two states for two peoples: Israel as a Jewish state and the homeland for the Jewish people, and the state of Palestine as the homeland for the Palestinian people, each state enjoying self-determination, mutual recognition, and peace.' But Jalili, who is also Iran's top nuclear negotiator, said that 'the United States must know that all the land belongs to the Palestinians... this is what the region demands and we will accept nothing less.'" http://t.uani.com/mhbbhL
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