Top Stories
FT: "A new Californian law that prohibits companies with Iran investments from bidding for state contracts has prompted scores of international companies to clarify their status regarding the Middle East country, according to a pressure group. California is grappling with a $9.6bn budget deficit but the state's size and spending power means it has clout on the global stage - particularly when it comes to persuading companies to divest from Iran. By insisting companies sever ties with Iran before they bid for lucrative state and city contracts, California has 'changed the game' on Iran divestment, according to Mark Wallace, president of United Against Nuclear Iran. 'Its law says: if you do business in Iran we want to know about it and you will be subject to potential disbarment.' ... California's department of general services, which awards its public contracts, has contacted more than 150 companies seeking clarification regarding Iran. The companies include Layher, a German construction group that recently told UANI it had not done business in Iran for six years, and ABB, the Swiss electrical engineering group... 'The purchasing power of the big US states is so important,' said Mr Wallace, a former US ambassador to the UN. 'They procure goods and services worth billions of dollars.' California's Iran Contracting Act goes further than previous divestment campaigns because it applies to each contract awarded by every public body, city and municipality in the state." http://t.uani.com/mg9jHR
WSJ: "Iran is moving to cement ties with the leaders of three key American allies-Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq-highlighting Tehran's efforts to take a greater role in the region as the U.S. military pulls out troops. The Afghan and Pakistani presidents, visiting Tehran, discussed with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad 'many issues...that might come up after the NATO military force goes out of Afghanistan,' Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said in an interview here Sunday. 'The three presidents were very forthcoming in carrying out the cooperation and contacts so as to make sure things will go as smoothly as it could,' he said. That was a jab at Washington, which is increasingly in competition with Tehran for influence in the region, particularly as popular rebellions have surged across the Middle East and North Africa since January. The overtures by U.S. nemesis Iran come amid tensions between Washington and three governments that have each received billions of dollars in U.S. aid." http://t.uani.com/kGRfhU
Reuters: "Iran's Revolutionary Guards began a 10-day missile training exercise on Monday 'to preserve its readiness against enemy strikes,' a veiled reference to attacks the United States and Israel have refused to ruled out to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons. 'The war games, dubbed 'Great Prophet 6', include the testing of short-, medium- and long-range missiles,' Commander Amir Ali Hajizadeh, head of the elite forces' aerospace unit, was quoted as saying by the Sharq daily. The Islamic Republic, which is locked in a dispute with the West over its nuclear activities, regularly announces advances in its military capabilities in a bid to show its readiness for any attack by Israel or the United States. Iran, which denies it is developing nuclear weapons, says it has a wide range of missiles, some capable of striking Israel and U.S. Middle East bases." http://t.uani.com/iEPQ0m
Nuclear Program & Sanctions
AFP: "The United States said Friday it was monitoring Venezuela's ties to Iran and 'no option' is off the table for potential sanctions against President Hugo Chavez's government in Caracas. Kevin Whitaker, the acting deputy assistant secretary for Western Hemisphere affairs, said Washington was monitoring Venezuela for 'patterns of support for acts of international terrorism.' 'No option is ever off the table, and the department will continue to assess what additional actions might be warranted in the future,' he told a congressional hearing. 'The department strongly urged Venezuela to pursue a path of cooperation and responsibility rather than further isolation and we will continue to do so.' Venezuela's Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro shot back, saying the US threats only stoke Venezuelan patriotism." http://t.uani.com/jF2M8X
CNN: "The Israeli Cabinet on Sunday decided to expand economic sanctions against Iran, aligning its policies with the United States and Europe on trade with the Islamic republic. Among the sanctions is an amendment to Israel's money laundering law that allows for more oversight and control over those trading with Iran. 'It was also determined that state contact with companies that trade with Iran will be restricted,' a government statement said. The sanctions cover any type of trade with Iran, including private companies, a spokesman for Prime Minister Netanyahu said. As part of the sanctions, Israel will declare Iran and 'bodies linked to it' to be enemy elements. 'The committee's recommendations are an important step in the struggle against Iran's nuclear program,' Netanyahu said. 'These recommendations ensure that Israel will stand alongside other countries at the forefront of sanctions against Iran, in order to cause the Iranian regime to abandon its plans to develop nuclear weapons.'" http://t.uani.com/ilUR4A
AP: "Growing up in a provincial town in Iran, Nader Modanlo was fascinated by the flickering TV images of astronauts walking on the moon. As a teenager, he came to the United States, where he earned degrees in aerospace engineering, became a U.S. citizen and co-founded a pioneering satellite telecommunications company that at one point was worth up to $500 million. He seemed on the verge of the kind of success that immigrants dream of achieving. Today, those dreams are burning up like a spacecraft in steep re-entry. Modanlo's company is bankrupt, his U.S. and Iranian passports have been confiscated and a federal judge has ordered him to wear an electronic monitoring bracelet while he sleeps. A federal grand jury indicted the Potomac, Md., resident last year on charges he secretly brokered the launch from Russia of the first Iranian-owned satellite in 2005, in violation of the U.S. sanctions against Iran. If convicted on all counts, he could be sentenced to 65 years in prison and ordered to pay $10 million. Five Iranian nationals were also indicted, but none are in custody." http://t.uani.com/k5U9a7
Reuters: "The nuclear power plant Russia has built in Iran is likely to become fully operational in early August, Russian news agencies cited a senior diplomat as saying on Monday. 'If this happens in early August it will fully correspond with the prognoses and expectations of the Russian and Iranian sides,' state-run RIA quoted Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov as saying." http://t.uani.com/iBYX2W
Commerce
Reuters: "Iran will reject increase of OPEC production ceiling in the cartel's next meeting, the country's Oil Ministry caretaker Mohammad Aliabadi told the semi-official Mehr news agency on Sunday. 'Considering the demand and supply situation in the oil market, Iran will reject any increase in the OPEC output ceiling in the next meeting ... OPEC has no intention to increase prices of crude,' Aliabadi said. The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) meets on Sept. 9 to review its oil supply policy. Iran heads the rotating OPEC presidency. The group has already pledged to curb output by 4.2 million barrels per day (bpd), around 5 percent of global supply, since September last year to match the sharpest fall in demand since 1981." http://t.uani.com/lHxKL3
Human Rights
Scotsman: "Keeping pet dogs is the latest fashion to raise the hackles of Iranian hardliners as they combat a 'western cultural invasion'. Young men have been warned that jeans could make them infertile because they overheat the testicles. Police chief of the capital Tehran Hossein Sajedinia declared last week that cars will be seized if there are dogs in them, along with the pets. Canines are considered 'unclean' in Islamic tradition, but it has become fashionable in up-market north Tehran to keep them, especially expensive pedigree dogs." http://t.uani.com/iMoybP
Foreign Affairs
AFP: "Iran accused the United States and its European allies on Saturday of seeking to manipulate the oil market by forcing an 'artificial' reduction in prices, the oil ministry's website SHANA reported. 'America and Europe ... have done everything they could to reduce global oil prices,' Iran's OPEC representative Mohammad Ali Khatibi, whose country holds the rotating presidency of the oil cartel, told SHANA. 'The developments of the past few days are not at all based on supply and demand or the needs of the market, but are rather a side effect of political pressure exerted particularly from the American side,' he added. On Thursday, the International Energy Agency sparked a massive sell-off following an announcement that it planned to release 60 million barrels of crude from strategic oil stocks over the next month. The United States, the world's largest oil-consuming nation, took the lead in moving to draw down reserves, saying it would release 30 million barrels from its Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Immediately after the IEA announcement, oil prices fell sharply, dropping more than $8 in London and nearly $6 in New York. However, the price of Brent crude did not venture far from $110." http://t.uani.com/itAA8R
LAT: "The Peugeot was the symbolic scene-setter for a two-day conference in the Iranian capital on fighting terrorism. According to the Iranian media, officials from more than 60 countries and several heads of state flew in for the talks - among them Sudanese President Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court on war crimes charges. The event was heavy on U.S.-bashing, generally reflecting Tehran's views about Washington's policy in the region. In a message to the conference, Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei lashed out at the U.S. for drone strikes in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The attacks, he said, have 'repeatedly' turned 'wedding parties into mourning ceremonies.' He echoed the official Iranian line that the U.S. and its allies are hypocrites, employing terrorist tactics that kill civilians while condemning others as terrorists. 'The United States, Britain and some Western governments, with a black record in terrorist behavior, have now added to their rhetoric the claim of fighting terrorism,' Khamenei was quoted as saying by the semiofficial Fars News Agency." http://t.uani.com/j02zAF
Opinion & Analysis
David Albright, Paul Brannan & Andrea Stricker in ISIS: "Who is Fereydoun Abbasi-Davani, the new head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization (AEOI) and Vice President of Iran? Abbasi-Davani has assumed a prominent role this week in Vienna discussing Iran's nuclear program and safety issues at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) conference on nuclear safety. During the nuclear safety conference on Tuesday, Abbasi-Davani announced at a press conference that Iran would be open to building uranium enrichment plants and selling low enriched uranium (LEU) to other countries under IAEA safeguard, and would advise countries about nuclear power plant building contracts. He said he had no particular country in mind for this cooperation. But given the United Nations sanctions calling on Iran to suspend enrichment, his remarks were seen more for their defiance than Iran's ability to export LEU or a gas centrifuge plant for civilian purposes. Just what is Abbasi-Davani's background and what are his plans for Iran's nuclear program? The fact that he was wounded in a November 2010 assassination attempt in Tehran has increased interest in his role in steering Iran's nuclear program. Does he favor Iran acquiring nuclear weapons? Abbasi-Davani has not shown any sign that he will be more compromising with the IAEA than his predecessors as new head of the AEOI. He has already sparked a defiant note with the IAEA by instituting an important technical step that will significantly shorten the time Iran needs to make enough weapon-grade uranium for a nuclear weapon. In response to a letter from Yukiya Amano, Director General of the IAEA, in which Amano repeated the IAEA's 'concerns about the possible military dimensions' of Iran's program, Abbasi-Davani announced to the media, 'We will respond to the agency by stepping up our efforts in the area of nuclear expertise and technology...we will transfer the 20 percent enrichment to the Fordo nuclear site under the supervision of the agency and will triple our production [of 19.75 percent LEU] during the current year.' Within a year after starting this production at the fortified Fordow facility (which is situated under 90 meters of mountain), Iran would have enough 19.75 percent LEU to further enrich quickly to make enough weapon-grade uranium for a nuclear explosive device. Using 1,200 advanced centrifuges, Iran could transform the 19.75 percent LEU into sufficient weapon-grade uranium in three months. Abbasi-Davani has regularly been linked to Iran's efforts to make the nuclear weapon itself, a process called weaponization. According to an expert close to the IAEA, Abbasi-Davani was a key scientist in the Iranian covert nuclear weapons program headed by Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, a strong supporter of Iran's nuclear weapons program. Abbasi-Davani personally directed work to calculate the yield of a nuclear weapon as well as work on high energy neutron sources, this expert added... Abbasi-Davani is not a traditional pick to head the AEOI. He has an extensive scientific background more suited to researching nuclear weapons than building nuclear power reactors and uranium enrichment plants purportedly for civil uses. What he will contribute to Iran's nuclear effort remains uncertain." http://t.uani.com/m5ry9T
Dieter Bednarz & Erich Follath in Der Spiegel: "Amir Reza Jalilian, 39, is the kind of person anyone would want as a neighbor, work colleague or tour guide. He is a jovial man with a velvety voice who jokes a lot and frequently twirls his manicured beard. He has a family, loves good food and has trouble resisting sweets, a problem that is beginning to make itself felt on his hips. Everyone who works with him says that Jalilian is always helpful and wouldn't hurt a fly. It certainly seems that he is no Dr. Strangelove, a man who would take pleasure in seeing the world destroyed by nuclear weapons, or could even bomb it into oblivion himself. There is, however, something disconcerting that the real Iranian scientist has in common with the fictitious monster Peter Sellers portrayed in the 1964 film 'Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb,' a stock character that has since come to embody the notion of a lunatic bent on destroying mankind. Jalilian is one of the leading experts on the medical use of isotopes. He works with the chemical elements that are enriched to make fuel for nuclear power plants, but can also be used as the building blocks of nuclear weapons. Jalilian is indeed the kind of person one would want as a neighbor, work colleague or tour guide, provided he isn't leading a double life, and that his amiable nature isn't a façade, and that there is nothing phony or affected about him. Jalilian has offered to give SPIEGEL staff a tour of the innermost sanctum of the Iranian nuclear program, through what is probably one of the most well-protected workplaces in Tehran, one that is carefully shielded from prying eyes. Jalilian works in the northern part of the city, between two expressways, where the mountains are visible and the air is cleaner than in the smog-filled basin where much of the city lies. In the densely populated neighborhoods of the Iranian capital, a city of 13 million, apartment buildings alternate with supermarkets, restaurants and daycare centers. The hilly nuclear complex, which is the size of four football stadiums, is probably almost as large as Lale Park, which, like the government district, is only a few minutes away by car. There are no signs to reveal that this is the home of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, which, at least officially, is the heart of all nuclear activities in this country. The complex is sealed off with high walls and barbed wire, with electronic surveillance cameras scanning every hidden corner. Members of the Revolutionary Guard who are particularly loyal to the regime protect the site. All visitors must pass through several security checkpoints, including some with Geiger counters. It is a small, self-contained world, with its own mosque, cafeterias and administrative buildings. And if opposition sources are to be believed, it also contains highly dangerous laboratories. One of the world's most controversial nuclear research facilities, the Tehran research reactor, Jalilian's realm, is housed in an inconspicuous domed structure made of gray concrete. United Nations experts and foreign intelligence agencies suspect that Iranian scientists like Jalilian could be working on the ultimate weapon for the theocracy's political leadership. Several of his colleagues have already been assassinated . In January 2010, a remotely detonated bomb killed nuclear physicist Massoud Ali Mohammadi. A few months later, the nuclear scientists Majid Shahriari and Fereidoun Abbasi Davani were targeted in a double attack carried out almost simultaneously. In all likelihood, Israeli hit squads carried out the attacks." http://t.uani.com/ihsfVu
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