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AP: "Iran's president says his country isn't afraid of making a nuclear weapon but doesn't intend to do so. Iranian state television on Thursday quoted President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as saying: 'If we do want to make a bomb, we are not afraid of anybody.' Iran has long insisted that its nuclear programs are peaceful and meant only to generate power for a future nuclear reactor network. But the U.N. Security Council has passed four sets of sanctions against Iran for refusing to freeze activities that could be used in a weapons program. The U.N. says Iran also blocked an IAEA probe into allegations of secret experiments that could reflect attempts to develop an arms program." http://t.uani.com/kUhybu
Reuters: "EU states reached a political agreement on Wednesday to extend sanctions against Syria to four military-linked entities and seven individuals, including three Iranians, linked to suppression of dissent, EU diplomats said. In May, the European Union added Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and other senior officials to a list of Syrians banned from traveling to the EU and subject to asset freezes. 'There is a political agreement on extending the list,' an EU diplomat said, adding that the new sanctions would take effect on Friday, once all 27 EU states have written on Thursday to give their formal approval. The new sanctions list was drawn up by Britain and France and would bring the total number of individuals and entities targeted by EU sanctions on Syria to 34. The diplomat said the Iranians were involved in providing equipment and support to help suppression of dissent in Syria, in which rights groups say 1,300 civilians have been killed. 'We welcome the inclusion of three Iranian names in the extended round of sanctions on the Syrian regime,' a British government spokesman said. 'This sends a clear message to the government of Iran that its provision of equipment and technical advice to help the Syrian regime quash protests is unacceptable.'" http://t.uani.com/mqfcz6
Al Jazeera: "Iran's ex-deputy foreign minister - an ally of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad - has been arrested on unspecified charges, an unnamed official has told the semi-official Fars news agency. Malekzadeh had resigned from his position as deputy foreign minister on Tuesday. 'Mohammad Sharif Malekzadeh was arrested a few hours ago,' Reuters news agency reported citing Fars on Thursday. His resignation came in the wake of pressure by hardline politicians, who accused him of being part of a 'deviant current' trying to undermine the role of Iran's influential religious leaders. Some members of parliament also accused him of financial corruption. Malekzadeh was considered close to Esfandiar Rahim Mashaie, the president's controversial chief of staff, whom the conservatives accuse of being the head of the 'deviant current.'" http://t.uani.com/kRnKgw
Nuclear Program & Sanctions
YnetNews: "Five Russian scientists who assisted in the design of Iran's Bushehr nuclear power plant were among the 44 fatalities of Monday's Russian plain crash, Moscow's International News Agency RIA Novosti reported Thursday. The Tupolev-134 plane broke up and caught fire upon making an emergency landing outside the northern city of Petrozavodsk. A preliminary investigation ruled out the possibility of a technical failure... The five worked at Bushehr and were to ensure the facility would withstand natural disasters." http://t.uani.com/mwzLmA
Domestic Politics
NYT: "President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, seeking to repair a politically reckless rift with the country's supreme leader that is leaving him isolated and embattled, recently portrayed their relationship as one of 'father and son.' Conservative clerics, convinced that the ambitious, messianic president remains determined to supplant them, rebuked Mr. Ahmadinejad for elevating his own station. 'The relationship with the leader of revolution should be the relation between the guide and the guided,' growled Mojtaba Zolnour, the supreme leader's representative to the Revolutionary Guards, in a speech in Qum, Iran's religious center. 'What does it mean to say that my relation with the leader is like the relation of a son to his father. This is nonsense. This is deviant discourse!' Since April, an unusually public battle has escalated between two men long seen as ideological soul mates - Mr. Ahmadinejad and the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei... Fundamentally, the fight conforms to a pattern of presidential politics that has troubled the Islamic Republic since the 1979 revolution. The system allows for two presidents, one divine, the other democratic. The divine leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, holds most of the power levers, controlling the military, the judiciary and the state broadcasting services. The divine leader is also permanent, while elected presidents serve a maximum of eight years. Mr. Ahmadinejad's predecessors - Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and Mohammad Khatami, who also clashed with the supreme leader over prerogatives - have gradually faded from view. Mr. Ahmadinejad is determined to avoid their fate, and that, say Iran experts, set off the current showdown." http://t.uani.com/ivj7Y0
Foreign Affairs
NYT: "Iran's state-run Press TV announced on Wednesday that the government of the Islamic Republic had arrested 30 people in May on suspicion of spying for the United States. The report quoted Haida Moslehi, the director of Iranian intelligence, as saying that that an additional 42 people had been identified as C.I.A. operatives in various countries. Operatives working in the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, and Malaysia, among others, were used to make contact with Iranians who could provide important information on everything from key infrastructure elements to the oil and gas industry to the nuclear program, it said." http://t.uani.com/k5DZIK
UPI: "Iraq will respond if Iranians conduct military activity in the country even [if] Tehran targets U.S. forces, Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr said. Hassan Danaifar, the Iranian envoy to Baghdad, suggested Tehran would respond against Iraq if U.S. forces used the country as a springboard to launch attacks on Iran. There is no indication the United States is planning such an action. 'We will not allow this, even if it is the (American) occupiers who are being targeted,' a statement attributed to Sadr was published by London's pan-Arab daily Asharq al-Awsat... Sadr is seen as leaning toward Iranian interests and was once carrying out his clerical studies alongside key ayatollahs in Iran." http://t.uani.com/kCvWW3
Bloomberg: "Iran agreed to supply 1.5 million liters, or 9,400 barrels, of gasoil a day to Iraq over 12 months for power generation, said Masaab Serri, a spokesman for the Iraqi Electricity Ministry. The fuel will enable power plants to generate 250 megawatts, according to the agreement signed by officials from the neighboring countries in Baghdad today, Serri said in a telephone interview. The gasoil will be transported by trucks and sold at international prices, he said." http://t.uani.com/jLXTYG
Opinion & Analysis
Don Argue & Ted Van Der Meid in The Hill: "The week of June 20 marks the second anniversary of the murder of Neda Agha-Soltan, a 26-year-old Iranian who was slain during demonstrations in Tehran against her country's fraudulent June 12, 2009 presidential election. Captured on video, Neda's death sparked global revulsion against one of the world's worst human rights abusers - the government of Iran. It also symbolized a democratic movement's brave resistance to tyranny. Across the region, this resistance stirred hearts and minds, helping sow the seeds for the Arab Spring. The aftermath of the election and Neda's murder also spurred the United States and the world community to take action against the abusers -- action that must continue if freedom is to prevail in Iran and the Middle East.Since seizing power in 1979, Iran's radical Islamist theocracy has been a particularly egregious abuser of the fundamental freedom of religion or belief, detaining, torturing, and executing people based on religious identity. Religious minorities are systematically targeted. The Baha'is have been labeled as 'heretics' and have suffered severe repression. Since 1979, Iranian authorities have killed more than 200 Baha'i leaders, while dismissing more than 10,000 from government and university jobs. Officially recognized minorities, including Christians, Zoroastrians, and Jews, face repression. Religious services are subject to arbitrary raids, with members threatened, and leaders and worshippers imprisoned. State-run television broadcasts anti-Semitic messages, while the government has hosted conferences and cartoon contests denying the Holocaust. Iran's government also oppresses minority Sunni and Sufi Muslims, sometimes harassing and imprisoning their leaders. The regime has imposed harsh prison sentences as well on reformers from the Shi'a majority... Abusers must be sanctioned, and those they've abused must be set free. To that end, U.S. Senator Mark Kirk (R-IL) recently launched the Iranian Dissident Awareness Program, a bipartisan, bicameral effort to spotlight and support imprisoned dissidents, including religious minorities, student activists, women's rights advocates, and human rights defenders. Likewise, USCIRF has highlighted prisoners including seven Baha'i leaders, two of them women - Fariba Kamalabadi and Mahvash Sabet; Christian pastor Yousef Nadarkhani; Shi'a Muslim cleric Ayatollah Mohammad Kazemeni Boroujerdi; and Sufi Muslim leader Morteza Mahjoubi; as well as women's rights activists like Nasrin Sotoudeh and renowned blogger Hossein Derakhshan. The United States and the international community should intensify their demand that Iran's government release all victims of its human rights abuses immediately. The name, 'Neda' means 'voice' in Persian. As we mark the second anniversary of Neda Agha-Soltan's death, we must not only be a voice for the voiceless but a harbinger of freedom - including freedom of religion -- for her country and its people." http://t.uani.com/kQ2idx
Yossi Melman in Haaretz: "The procession of cars carrying Fereidoun Abbasi Davani sped down Vienna's Wagramer Strasse this Monday and into the underground car park of the International Atomic Energy Agency. Outside the building, on the bank of the Danube River, some 30 protesters from the Stop the Bomb movement demonstrated, waving signs denouncing the Iranian nuclear scientist. But Iranian security officers seemed more concerned about the prospect of someone trying to exploit Abbasi Davani's controversial visit to finish the job. On November 29, 2010, anonymous assailants tried to assassinate Abbasi Davani as he emerged from his home in Tehran. He and his wife, seated next to him in the car, were hit by gunfire, but survived the assassination attempt. Iran blamed the Mossad for the failed operation. The assassins were more successful in a different attack launched that same day, which killed another nuclear scientist - Majid Shahriari.The Iranians claimed that Abbasi Davani was nothing but an innocent physics professor. Intelligence sources countered that his university position was just a cover for his secret activity as one of the leading experts in Iran's weaponization, which is working on the final and decisive stage of developing a nuclear weapon under the auspices of the Revolutionary Guards. His name appears on the UN Security Council's blacklist, compiled after the council voted in March 2007 to impose sanctions on companies, organizations and individuals involved in Iran's nuclear and ballistic missile programs. It also appears on similar lists compiled by the United States and the European Union, which ordered that his assets be frozen. About two months after Abbasi Davani was shot, in January 2011, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad appointed him as his vice president and as head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization, a defiant move that seemed to say Iran would continue its nuclear program and no one could stop it." http://t.uani.com/ltPPUT
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