Top Stories
Reuters: "U.S. lawmakers said on Monday they were seeking to stiffen sanctions on Iran to pressure it to give up its nuclear program and stop alleged abuses of human rights. U.S. Representatives Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Howard Berman, the top Republican and Democratic members of the U.S. House of Representatives' foreign affairs committee, have introduced new sanctions legislation. The two lawmakers and others in Congress worry that Iran is circumventing sanctions approved by Congress last year as part of an international effort to press Iran into talks over its nuclear development... The U.S. sanctions approved last year targeted Iran's energy and banking sectors, threatening to penalize foreign companies that did business with Tehran. Only two companies have been sanctioned: Belarusneft, from Belarus, and Naftiran Intertrade Co, a Swiss-based subsidiary of the National Iranian Oil Company. The new legislation would seek to close loopholes in existing law by, among other things, making it harder for the U.S. president to waive sanctions, Ros-Lehtinen's office said. 'U.S. policy toward Iran has offered a lot of bark but not enough bite,' Ros-Lehtinen, a Republican, said in the statement. The bill would also impose additional sanctions on companies that did energy business with Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which is increasingly involved in all sectors of Iran's economy, Berman's office said." http://t.uani.com/jXOfgR
AP: "The leaders of earthquake-prone Iran have rejected concerns by the country's top scientists about a plan to build a national nuclear reactor network, according to intelligence shared with The Associated Press. An official from a member nation of the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency says the Iranian decision was reached shortly after Japan's March 11 earthquake and tsunami that crippled the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear complex, spewed radiation into the atmosphere and evolved into the worst nuclear disaster since the 1986 Chernobyl catastrophe. According to the official, key Iranian leaders reviewed a 2005 report on Iran's southwestern Khuzestan province - site of a planned nuclear plant near the town of Darkhovin on the northern tip of the Persian Gulf - that was updated in 2010 and early this year with a study of earthquakes that have hit other Iranian provinces in the last decade. The official said Tuesday the report by Iranian scientists warns that 'data collected since the year 2000 shows the incontrovertible risks of establishing nuclear sites in the proximity of fault lines' in Khuzestan and 19 other Iranian provinces." http://t.uani.com/jnXFJT
AP: "Iran on Tuesday denied a U.N. panel report saying that North Korea and Iran appear to have been regularly exchanging ballistic missiles, components and technology in violation of U.N. sanctions. Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast argued that Iran's own missile capabilities are so advanced that it doesn't need outside help, and he slammed the report's findings as 'fabrications.' He spoke in reaction to a U.N. panel report to the Security Council which said prohibited ballistic missile-related items are suspected to have been transferred between North Korea and Iran on regularly scheduled flights of Air Koryo and Iran Air, with trans-shipment through a third country that diplomats identified as China. The report, obtained by The Associated Press on Monday, was sent to the 15 Security Council members for their approval by Tuesday morning. If all countries agree, it will be released. The panel's first report, in May 2010, was held up by China and finally released in November after Beijing dropped its objections." http://t.uani.com/lotmUv
Nuclear Program & Sanctions
LAT: "The country's largest public pension fund is selling all its stock in companies that continue to operate in Iran and Sudan. The California Public Employees' Retirement System announced Monday that it is fully complying with state divestment laws passed in 2006 and 2007. Iran and Sudan are subject to U.S. economic sanctions. Iran has been identified as a state sponsor of terrorism, and Sudan has been cited for genocidal acts against the inhabitants of the Darfur region. CalPERS said it would sell approximately $160 million in stock in eight companies operating in the energy and other sensitive economic sectors of the two nations. At one point in the last decade, the retirement fund owned more than $2 billion worth of shares in 47 companies that did business in Iran and Sudan. Those shares have been gradually removed from the fund's portfolio. CalPERS declined to name the eight companies, saying it did not want to reduce the stocks' value before selling." http://t.uani.com/jAet95
JPost: "The Iranian government is moving forward with the construction of rocket launch bases in Venezuela, the German daily Die Welt wrote in its Thursday edition. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is Teheran's most important South American ally. Iran is building intermediate- range missile launch pads on the Paraguaná Peninsula, and engineers from a construction firm - Khatam al-Anbia - owned by the Revolutionary Guards visited Paraguaná in February. Amir al-Hadschisadeh, the head of the Guard's Air Force, participated in the visit, according to the report. Die Welt cited information from 'Western security insiders.' The rocket bases are to include measures to prevent air attacks on Venezuela as well as commando and control stations. The Iranian military involvement in the project extends to bunker, barracks and watch tower construction. Twenty-meter deep rocket silos are planned. The cost of the Venezuelan military project is being paid for with Iranian oil revenue. The Iranians paid in cash for the preliminary phase of the project and, the total cost is expected to amount to 'dozens of millions' of dollars, Die Welt wrote." http://t.uani.com/lLtClT
AFP: "Four US senators frequently critical of the White House on national security issues pressed the Pentagon to say whether Russian entities were helping Iran develop ballistic missiles. Republican Senators Jon Kyl, Mark Kirk, John Barrasso, and Jim DeMint also asked for access to draft documents in Russo-US talks on the deployment of a proposed US missile defense shield in Europe. 'We renew our request for any draft materials you are discussing with the Russians,' including a draft Missile Defense Cooperation Agreement (MDCA) and Defense Technology Cooperation Agreement (DTCA), they said. The message came in a letter to Principal Deputy US Undersecretary of Defense for Policy James Miller, who met with the lawmakers on May 12 to discuss their 'concerns' about the missile defense talks between Washington and Moscow." http://t.uani.com/lSJkDv
Human Rights
AP: "Iran said Tuesday that a missing Al-Jazeera reporter attempted to enter Syria last month with an expired Iranian passport and without proper press clearance, but offered no details on whether she is being held in Iran. The comments by Iran's foreign ministry spokesman, Ramin Mehmanparast, were the first public remarks by an Iranian official about Dorothy Parvaz, who was last seen leaving Qatar on April 29 for Damascus to cover the country's anti-governing uprising. Syrian authorities said Parvaz was sent to Iran shortly after her arrival, but her whereabouts remain unknown... Mehmanparast told reporters that Parvaz committed 'violations' by trying to enter Syria with an expired Iranian passport and 'planned to work without a press permit and had several passports on her.' It's unclear what rules could be broken by traveling with multiple valid passports, but Mehmanparast reiterated that Iran does not recognize multiple nationalities for Iranians. Iranians do not need advance visas to enter Syria." http://t.uani.com/kLyNtw
AFP: "It will cost an Iranian man convicted of throwing acid in the face of a fellow student two million euros to escape a court-ordered blinding, the Arman newspaper quoted his victim as saying on Tuesday. 'I announced that I want two million euros to guarantee my life and my future, and not for treatment,' Ameneh Bahrami told the paper. 'It is only then that I will give up qesas (retributive justice) against Majid, although they said -- and I hope it is true -- that the sentence will be carried out next week,' she added. Majid Movahedi was sentenced to be blinded in both eyes in February 2009 after being convicted of hurling acid in the face of university classmate Bahrami when she repeatedly spurned his offer of marriage. The court-ordered blinding of Movahedi was postponed at the 11th hour on Saturday. No official reason was given. Bahrami, the driving force behind the sentence, had travelled to the Iranian capital from Spain where she now lives in the expectation of it being carried out. She even said she was ready to do the blinding herself. Amnesty International had called on Friday for a stay of the sentence, which it described as 'a cruel and inhuman punishment amounting to torture.'" http://t.uani.com/m7EYwe
AFP: "Iran has hanged a convicted rapist in the southern port city of Bandar Abbas, the ISNA news agency reported on Monday. The man, identified by his initials of A.S., was sent to the gallows for raping the wife of an acquaintance after tricking her into letting him into her home. No additional information was given. The latest hanging brings to 125 the number of executions reported in Iran so far in 2011, according to an AFP count based on media and official reports. Iranian media reported 179 hangings last year. But international human rights groups say the actual number was much higher, making the Islamic republic second only to China in the number of people it put to death." http://t.uani.com/k24V2f
Domestic Politics
Bloomberg: "Unemployment statistics presented by Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are deceitful, according to Ahmad Tavakoli, an economist and head of the parliament's research center, Shargh reported. Ahmadinejad said in an interview with state television two days ago that his government had created 1.7 million jobs in the last Iranian calendar year ended March 20, that conflicts with reality, Tavakoli told the Tehran-based newspaper. Iran's central bank failed to report figures for the country's gross domestic product in the past three years, which appears to have been declining, the newspaper cited Tavakoli as saying. Iran has been in a recession over this period, Shargh reported him as saying. The failure to disclose information allows some officials to present false statistics and project a successful image, Tavakoli told the newspaper." http://t.uani.com/kmtJWW
Foreign Affairs
WashPost: "In an action that could increase tensions between Iran and Arab monarchies, two Iranian ships in the Persian Gulf carrying Shiite activists to Bahrain were turned back Monday by warships belonging to a coalition of gulf states that is aiding the island kingdom in its crackdown on anti-government demonstrators, according to the activists' Web site. The Shiite activists, members of the Islamic Revolution Supporters Association, said the Iranian government did not prevent them from sailing. But halfway to Bahrain, they decided to return to Iranian waters because of 'the emergence of threats from the ships of the Peninsula Shield Force and the possibility of attacks,' the Hameyema Web site stated Monday." http://t.uani.com/lDCguR
AFP: "Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi will travel to Kuwait on Wednesday to discuss bilateral and regional issues, ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast has said. The visit comes amid allegations of an Iranian spy ring operating in the Gulf state which soured relations between the two countries and saw them engage in tit-for-tat expulsions of diplomats in early April. 'Salehi's visit to Kuwait is in line with... efforts to discuss bilateral and regional issues with the countries in the region,' Mehmanparast said in remarks broadcast on state television Tuesday. 'The views of each side as well as solutions to regional issues will be discussed during the visit,' he said. The Kuwait stopover will mark Salehi's fifth regional trip in the past few weeks, following visits to Qatar, Oman, Iraq and the United Arab Emirates." http://t.uani.com/j73xcs
Opinion & Analysis
Ali Alfoneh in JPost: "It is still too early to tell whether the waves of change sweeping over the shores of North Africa and the Middle East will erode the foundations of autocracy or, conversely, whether they will merely substitute secular authoritarianism with Islamist totalitarianism. It is clear, however, that no regional regime is immune to their impact, not even the Islamic Republic of Iran, the self-proclaimed vanguard of the permanent world revolution. Iran's pro-democracy movement, the Green Movement, prides itself on having ignited the Arab upheavals by staging large-scale demonstrations in Iran in the wake of the fraudulent June 12, 2009 presidential election. The Arab upheavals, in turn and to some degree, revived the Iranian opposition at a time when the regime's suppression of the opposition seemed total. On February 6, Hojjat al-Eslam Mehdi Karrubi and Mir-Hossein Mousavi, the leaders of the Green Movement, in a joint letter asked the Interior Ministry for a permit to demonstrate 'in solidarity with popular movements of the region, especially the liberation-seeking revolts of the people of Tunisia and Egypt.' Not surprisingly, the permit was denied, and the two opposition leaders, together with former president Mohammed Khatami, were put under house arrest. Ignoring the demonstration ban, the opposition rallied on February 14 and March 1 with calls for Supreme Leader Ali Khamene'i to follow in the footsteps of the Tunisian and Egyptian dictators: 'Mubarak, Ben Ali, it is now the turn of Seyyed Ali [Khamene'i]', 'Khamene'i, Mubarak, congratulations with your marriage!' and 'Whether those in Iran with motorcycles, or those in Cairo with camels, death to the dictators!' However, the regime in Tehran had learned valuable lessons from the post-presidential election antiregime demonstrations. The Intelligence Ministry unleashed a new round of arrests of protest organizers who had not been detained during earlier demonstrations. In affected neighborhoods, the cell phone network was cut off and the speed of the Internet was reduced to a bare minimum, which further restricted communications with the outside world. Apart from this, coordination in containing the protests between law enforcement forces, the Basij Resistance Force, the Revolutionary Guards, and vigilante organizations was far more synchronized than during earlier demonstrations... The waves of change are indeed sweeping across the shores of the Middle East and North Africa. However, the Islamist regime in Iran is better geared to suppress internal dissent than other regional autocracies and, therefore, has better prospects of surviving the crisis - at least for now. But as long as the regime is unwilling or incapable of allowing Iranians to become masters of their own destinies by liberalizing the Iranian political system, the results may be increased repression and the surfacing of more radical opposition movements inside Iran." http://t.uani.com/jqWDo8
Karlos Zurutuza in The Diplomat: "'It's the closest thing to Mars on Earth,' concluded a group of US geologists visiting the region of Sistan and Balochistan in the early 1970s. And since Iran's revolution in 1979, the country's southeast feels as little explored as the Red Planet. Balochistan, as the Baloch refer to their homeland, is divided today between Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan. But the fact that the region is a virtual no-go area for the international media shouldn't disguise its potential strategic importance. After all, the area-roughly the size of France-holds significant reserves of gas, gold, copper, oil and uranium, and also has a 1,000-kilometre coastline at the gates of the Persian Gulf. '(But) unlike what happened in Pakistani-controlled Balochistan, Tehran hasn't exploited the energy and mineral reserves in the area,' says Prof. Taj Muhammad Breseeg. 'It prefers that the region's resources and population remain undeveloped.' Today, the region has the lowest per capita income in Iran, with almost 80 percent of the Baloch people living below the poverty line by some estimates. The average life expectancy, meanwhile, is at least eight years lower than the national average, while infant mortality rates are the highest in the country. It all results, suggests Breseeg, from Tehran's 'policy of assimilation.' 'Annexation of the region to Iran in 1928 brought terrible episodes of repression, caused a mass exodus of the local population and saw virtually every Baloch place name changed toa Persian one,' Breseeg says. The problem for Balochs is that they are Sunni Muslims in a Shiite-ruled nation. 'The Islamic Shiite missionaries sent by Tehran told us that we'd have no jobs, no schools and no opportunities unless we converted,' says Faiz Baloch, one of thousands of Baloch refugees who were forced to leave their homeland... 'Our problems aren't only due to the fact that we are neither Persian nor Shia,' says Abdul-Sattar, who like most people here, is Sunni. The 50 year-old says he survives on the goods (mainly Chinese and Indian) he transports with his truck up to the Afghan border, almost 1,000 kilometres away. 'Perhaps we were just born in the wrong place and the wrong time.'" http://t.uani.com/jRqpkb
Reza Kahlili in Fox News: "On May 17th, an Iranian economic and trade delegation will be traveling to the U.S. to participate in the Futurallia International Business Development Forum. Mohammad-Reza Sabzalipour, director of the Iranian World Trade Center, who announced this news to a group of reporters, said: 'A sixteen-person delegation comprised of private sector Iranians has been invited by the U.S. to attend this three-day conference in Kansas City. Eight hundred trade delegations from thirty countries are expected to participate. This Forum can set the stage and provide the necessary groundwork for the development of international trade and business relations for Iran's private sector.' Sabzalipour emphasized that sanctions have neither been very effective, nor a deterrent in Iran's private sector relations with the U.S. He added: 'Though Iran is facing sanctions and the U.S. is the host of this Forum, they could have omitted us from the list of participants but luckily, they did not. The members of our delegations have all also been given three-month visas.' Reportedly the Iranian companies participating in the forum will be from the industrial sector, which includes producers and manufacturers of chemical materials, household items, paint and coloring, food stuffs and chocolate. A financial analyst is also expected to be accompanying the delegation. The Futurallia Forum is an annual international conference created for business and trade networking, as well as accessing ways to connect small businesses with larger trade outlets, financial facilities, as well as technological promotion and agreements for greater international economic growth... Instead of allowing the Iranian delegation's travel to U.S., Mr. Obama should instead openly announce his disgust with the regime in Iran for their crimes against humanity, for torturing and murdering Iranian citizens, for genocide against religious minorities, for involvement in international terrorism, and for killing American soldiers serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. Let us refuse to allow these very people, who have the blood of our heroes on their hands, to enter the U.S. and to attend the Forum in Kansas City." http://t.uani.com/m0ufiW
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