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Reuters: "Iran has upped the ante in an oil payments row with India and halted crude supplies in August, company sources said on Thursday, forcing Indian refiners to seek shipments from alternative suppliers including top exporter Saudi Arabia. Since December, India and Iran have struggled to find ways for New Delhi to pay for 400,000 barrels per day or 12 percent of its oil demand after the Reserve Bank of India halted a clearing mechanism under U.S. pressure. That move won praise from Washington, which is using sanctions in a bid to get Tehran to halt its nuclear programme. Indian firms Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals Ltd, Iran's biggest Indian client, BPCL, IOC, HPCL and Essar buy crude from the Islamic Republic and their collective debt to Iran since the crisis broke out has risen to more than $5 billion. None of the five refiners have received a crude supply plan from Iran for August loading cargoes, officials and executives at the companies said on condition of anonymity. Iran has told BPCL, HPCL and Essar that they will receive no supply in August, said a source at Saudi Aramco, which has been approached by these companies for extra volumes. IOC and MRPL have so far not asked for additional Saudi oil. MRPL is still hopeful it will get a late allocation from Iran, a company source said." http://t.uani.com/nczT8P
AFP: "Iran on Tuesday declared that the 'innocence' would be proved of its nationals accused of the 1994 bombing that leveled a Jewish charity building in Argentina and killed 85 people. 'If in fair conditions and within legal procedures a serious effort is made to shed light on this action, the error in this case and the attempt by some to implicate some citizens of our country will become known and the innocence of our nationals will be proven,' Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Ramin Mehmanparast told reporters. Mehmanparast's comments come a day after Argentinian Foreign Minister Hector Timerman said that Buenos Aires is studying an offer from Iran to cooperate with the investigation into the bombing. Monday marked the 17th anniversary of the attack that destroyed the seven-story AMIA building in Buenos Aires. Aside from the 85 deaths, 300 people were injured in the blast. Argentine officials allege the attack, the worst terror strike ever on Argentine soil, was carried out by members of the Lebanese Shia group Hezbollah on Tehran's orders. But Mehmanparast denied Iran was involved." http://t.uani.com/q1yntw
AP: "Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has cautiously welcomed a Russian proposal for bringing Iran back to talks over its nuclear program, the official news agency reported Thursday. The proposal calls for the international community to make limited concessions to Iran for each step it takes in meeting demands to clarify the nature of its nuclear program... 'They have proposed step-by-step cooperation with Iran in the nuclear field,' the IRNA news agency quoted Ahmadinejad as saying. 'All right, we have taken our step and cooperated with the U.N. nuclear watchdog. Now, you take your step and come to prepare a plan together. And you take one step; we take a step, too.' Ahmadinejad repeated Iran's assertion that it is not after nuclear weapons, and that its missile program is not a threat to Europe." http://t.uani.com/pDPe8m
Nuclear Program & Sanctions
VOA: "The U.S. has denied an Iranian report that the country's Revolutionary Guard shot down a U.S. drone (unmanned spy plane). Intelligence and military officials told VOA on Wednesday that the U.S. rejects the claim and has not lost a drone. An Iranian lawmaker said the country's elite military group downed the U.S. spy plane as it was attempting to collect information about an underground uranium enrichment site. Iran's state TV-run Youth Journalists Club on Wednesday quoted MP Ali Aghazadeh Dafsari as saying the aircraft was flying near the Fordu site around the holy city of Qom. The report did not say when the Revolutionary Guards shot down the plane. The report comes a day after Iran said it was installing new centrifuges aimed at speeding up its enrichment of nuclear material." http://t.uani.com/qKmWuk
Houston Chronicle: "The natural gas boom in the U.S. has weakened Russia's influence on European energy supplies and could keep Iran's influence in check for years to come, according to a new study from the Baker Institute for Public Policy at Rice University... 'By increasing alternative supplies to Europe in the form of liquefied natural gas (LNG) displaced from the U.S. market, the petro-power of Russia, Venezuela and Iran is faltering on the back of plentiful American natural gas supply,' writes Amy Myers Jaffe, a fellow at the Baker Institute and one of the authors of the study... Cutting U.S. dependence on LNG imports would also delay for another 20 years the need for other countries to import LNG from Iran, the study says. That would diminish Iran's economic influence and increase make it easier for the other countries to support U.S.-led sanctions against Iran for its nuclear weapons development." http://t.uani.com/nA7jlg
Reuters: "India is ready with a back up plan to cope with a halt to supplies of crude from Iran, its oil minister S. Jaipal Reddy said on Thursday, adding there will not be any oil shortages due to Iran halting supplies in August. 'No. There will not be any shortage or problem. We have a back-up plan,' Reddy told Reuters when asked if Asia's third largest oil consumer would face problems as Tehran has decided against supplying oil in August. The minister declined to give details of the back-up plan or alternative sources to replace Iranian volumes, that account for about 12 percent of India's crude demand." http://t.uani.com/qaVhJC
JPost: "Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz will declare new sanctions against Iran in the coming days, which will define the Islamic Republic as an enemy nation and prohibit all economic contact with it or to its benefit. The ministry will also publish a list of bodies with connections to Iran, outlawing all trade with them. Steinitz sent a draft regulation prohibiting investment in corporations doing business with Iran to the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee on Thursday morning. The regulation constitutes one step in the measures approved by the Cabinet against Iran's nuclear enrichment program on April 17, the ministry said. The draft regulation sets the criteria for what defines a business relationship with Iran, and requires that any company found to have filled the criteria be placed on a blacklist of firms in which it is prohibited to invest." http://t.uani.com/o0L0Xg
Foreign Affairs
AFP: "Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards continued their offensives against rebels from the Party of Free Life of Kurdistan (PJAK) on Wednesday, killing and wounding a number of them, media reported. 'The Guards on Wednesday killed and wounded a number of the PJAK members in a new phase of operations,' Guards commander in northwestern Iran Brigadier General Mohammad Taqi Osanlou was quoted on the state television website as saying. He added that the operation against PJAK was carried out in Alvatan, Dasht-e Vazne, Jasusan and the Gavizeh Heights, all of which are inside Iran, and did not mention any cross-border operation. Osanlou's comments come a day after authorities in Iraqi Kurdistan told Iran that it must respect the border with Iraq." http://t.uani.com/q6O2k0
Opinion & Analysis
Matthew Levitt in JPost: "Seventeen years ago this week, Hezbollah operatives working closely with Iranian intelligence blew up the Israeli-Argentine Mutual Association (AMIA) building in Buenos Aires, killing 85 people and wounding 300 more. Now, after years of obstructing investigation into the attack, Iran claims it is ready to 'engage in constructive dialogue' with Argentina about the case, but insists that talk of an Iranian link is nothing more than 'plots and political games.' In fact, it is Iran that is playing games. Argentinean authorities conducted an extensive investigation into the AMIA attack, with significant international cooperation, and concluded that 'the decision to carry out the AMIA attack was made, and the attack was orchestrated, by the highest officials of the Islamic Republic of Iran at the time, and that these officials instructed Lebanese Hezbollah - a group that has historically been subordinated to the economic and political interests of the Tehran regime - to carry out the attack.' Iran and Hezbollah each had their own reasons for wanting to attack Israeli or Jewish targets in Argentina in 1994, as they had just two years earlier when they bombed the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires. At the time, Tehran was furious over Buenos Aires' decision to cease all nuclear cooperation with Iran in 1992 for fear that Iran's nuclear program was not limited to peaceful purposes. In 1994, Argentina terminated its nuclear cooperation. Hezbollah, meanwhile, sought to avenge the Israeli assassination of its leader, Abbas Moussawi, in 1992, and then Israel's capture of Hezbollah ally Mustapha Dirani in Southern Lebanon in May 1994. Such coincidence of interests, coupled with Hezbollah's prized status as Tehran's primary proxy, and operational considerations such as Argentina's porous borders, Iran's heavy diplomatic and intelligence presence there, and the existence of a strong Hezbollah financial/logistical support network in South America, all combined to make Argentina a particularly attractive target for Iranian intelligence and Hezbollah operatives... Iran's offer should be immediately tested with renewed requests for those indicted to be made available to stand trial. But the families of the victims should not hold their breath waiting for Iran's response. In light of the evidence linking Iran and Hezbollah to the AMIA bombing, the odds are overwhelming that Iran's offer to assist in the investigation is, to borrow Iran's phrase, nothing more than 'plots and political games.'" http://t.uani.com/oDxHHi
Robert Baer in TIME: "To paraphrase Ronald Reagan, I wonder what the Ten Commandments would have looked like if Moses had first discussed them on talk radio. Having found myself at the center of a bizarre series of stories claiming that Israel is planning to attack Iran in September as a result of some speculative answers to a talk-show host's questions, I think I now know. Last week, my friend Ian Masters, who hosts the Los Angeles talk-show 'Background Briefing', called me up to talk about the Arab spring, and especially what would happen if Israel were to attack Iran. He was struck by the comments of recently retired Mossad chief Meir Dagan, saying that an increasingly paranoid and isolated Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was considering launching a reckless attack on Iran's nuclear facilities, and doing that soon. Would an Israeli strike put a spike in the Arab spring? That was unknowable, I said, but the resulting crisis would certainly give repressive regimes the excuse to crack down a lot harder on the street... Warming to the subject, I chattered on about how I'd heard there was a 'warning order' at the Pentagon to prepare for a conflict with Iran. I was about to add that that this was not unusual; there are warning orders all the time, and it could have nothing to do with Israeli or anything it was or wasn't planning for Iran. (Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, after all, is accusing Iran of being behind the sharp uptick in deadly attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq.) But time was short, and the host needed to finish up for the next guest. This was a wide-ranging speculative conversation on a local radio station, two like minds kibitzing, as media pundits so often do, with no inside information to back our interpretations of the significance of the flood of former senior Israeli security officials warning that Netanyahu is crazy and likely to do something rash. 'If I was forced to bet,' I ventured, 'I'd say we're going to have some sort of conflict in the next couple of months, unless this is all just a masterful bluff - which I can't believe the Iranians would succumb to - I think the chances of it being a bluff are remote.' Not exactly claiming to know any more than any other tea-leaf reader... When I hung up the phone, I was sure Masters had lost more than a few listeners. After all, what I'd said was a tedious rehash of various media reports. I would have forgotten it altogether were it not for the blogosphere's version of a Pacific hurricane. I don't know where it started, but soon the choice bits of our conversation were being rebroadcast as a danger signal flashing bright red: 'Former CIA Official: Israel Will Bomb Iran in September,' read the headline in the Huffington Post... What I am now certain of, however, is that my speculative wandering accidentally kicked a hidden hornets' nest. For all I know, maybe there really is an attack planned for September. Or, more likely, the problem is that it's July, it's hot, and everyone's bored of the Murdoch stuff. And, here I leave pure speculation to return to fact: It's lucky tweets, talk radio and blogosphere hysteria don't drive the decision making in Jerusalem and Washington. But, then again, what do I know?" http://t.uani.com/oiW2VY
Roger Noriega in AEI: "Iran's offer to cooperate with Argentina in the investigation of the 1994 bombing of the Jewish Community Center (AMIA) in Buenos Aires is shocking, in light of Tehran's apparent complicity in that attack. Alberto Nisman, the independent prosecutor in the terrorism case, reacted to the offer by challenging Tehran to surrender the Iranian officials who organized the bombing. By contrast, the rather obsequious reaction of Argentina's foreign minister, Hector Timmerman, raises troubling questions about the true nature of the relationship between the Ahmadinejad and Kirchner governments. Monday marked the 17th anniversary of the car-bombing, which leveled the AMIA center in the heart of Argentina's capital, killing 85 people; two years earlier, a few blocks away, the Israeli embassy was destroyed in another attack, which claimed 29 lives. Argentine and U.S. authorities have concluded that both bombings were the work of a Hezbollah cell coordinated and supported by the Iranian embassy. Iranian officials posted in Buenos Aires at the time, including Mohsen Rabbani, and Tehran's current defense minister Ahmad Vahidi, have Interpol warrants pending against them for the crime. The prosecutor Nisman has theorized that the attacks were related to a decision by then President Carlos Saul Menem to terminate Argentina's cooperation with Iran's nuclear program around 1992. That troubling story will not go away. Just last week, U.S. congressional leaders asked the Department of State to investigate whether Iran and Argentina have renewed nuclear cooperation in a deal brokered and paid for by Venezuela. Their July 15 letter cited 'reports that in 2007 Mahmoud Ahmadinejad allegedly asked [Venezuelan leader] Hugo Chávez to intercede with President Nestor Kirchner to change Argentine policy to allow Iran access to Argentine technology' to aid Iran's 'nuclear program.' The letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, sent by the chairman of the U.S. House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen; chairman of the Subcommittee on Western Hemisphere Affairs, Rep. Connie Mack; and subcommittee member, Rep. David Rivera, referred to Venezuelan documents that are now in the hands of the State Department. One of these secret documents, which have been obtained from sources within the Venezuelan government and been published by an independent website in Venezuela, is an internal report of a conversation between planning minister Julio De Vido, who is a confidante of current Argentine President Christina Kirchner, and Venezuelan vice president Elias Jaua in which the subject of nuclear cooperation between their two countries was raised. Another document bears the signature of Hugo Chávez, authorizing the payment of roughly $240 million to 'Argentina' for a number of economic development projects carried out in collaboration with 'Iran.' According to that document from Chávez's office, that substantial sum was the first of two payments by Venezuela to Argentina in 2010-2011 for supposed cooperation on dozens of joint commercial ventures carried out by Argentina and Iran in Venezuela. A second document lists 10 Argentine companies-based in the rural Argentine province of Santa Fe that is the home of President Kirchner-that were supposed to perform the work using these funds. It is not known whether these Argentina-Iran projects are real or merely a façade to justify the transfer of funds. However, it is quite suspicious that these three governments are engaging in these significant transactions in absolute secrecy. In recent months, a national scandal was sparked in Argentina by reports of mere diplomatic contact between Argentina and Iran." http://t.uani.com/oaunIn
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