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AFP: "Iran said Tuesday it has begun installing new centrifuges with 'better quality and speed' to enrich uranium in its nuclear facilities, defying international demands it halt its atomic activities. 'The installation of new centrifuges with better quality and speed is ongoing. We have announced it and the agency (UN atomic watchdog) has full supervision of them,' Iranian foreign minister spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast told reporters at his weekly press briefing. 'They are fully aware that Iran's peaceful nuclear activity continues to progress. This is another confirmation of the Islamic republic's successful stride in its nuclear activities,' he added. He was responding to questions about progress in the installation of new-generation centrifuges, as per a June 8 announcement by Iran's nuclear chief Fereydoun Abbasi Davani. Abbasi Davani had at the time said 'the first cascade of 164 new-generation centrifuges' would soon be installed, without elaborating on the details of the new machines. He had at the same time announced that the Islamic republic would expand its production of 20 percent enriched uranium and move the work from its main enrichment plant in Natanz in central Iran, to a smaller site at Fordo, some 150 kilometres (90 miles) south of Tehran." http://t.uani.com/q7vXXO
AP: "Iran threatened Monday to cut oil supplies to India by the beginning of August if billions of dollars in what it said are overdue payments for crude oil are not made. The semi-official Fars news agency quoted an unidentified senior Oil Ministry official as saying it will not authorize shipments of crude oil to India as of Aug. 1 if overdue payments are not made. The semi-official Mehr news agency quoted Central Bank of Iran Governor Mohammad Bahmani as saying that India owes Iran about $5 billion. A plan for India to funnel oil payments to Iran through Germany's central bank in April was scrapped at a time when Tehran faces international sanctions over its controversial nuclear program... India reportedly imports 12 million barrels of crude oil, or more than 12 percent of the nation's total, every month from Iran. This makes Iran its the second-largest supplier after Saudi Arabia." http://t.uani.com/qzCLbm
AFP: "Argentina is studying an offer from Iran to cooperate with the investigation into a 1994 bombing that leveled a Jewish charity building, Foreign Minister Hector Timerman said Monday on the 17th anniversary of the attack. Eighty-five people were killed and 300 wounded in the bombing that destroyed the seven-story AMIA building. Argentine officials allege the attack, the worst terror strike ever on Argentine soil, was carried out by members of the Lebanese Shiite militant group Hezbollah on Tehran's orders. For years Iran, which denies the charges, has refused to collaborate with Argentina -- but on Saturday, Iran's foreign ministry said in a statement that it was 'ready for a constructive dialogue' with Buenos Aires on the case. Timerman said Monday that Argentina had officially received details of Iran's proposal. 'I am going to study it closely, I believe it is a step forward,' he told reporters. Argentina has issued warrants for the arrest of five Iranians, including Ahmed Vahidi, Iran's current minister of defense; former president Ali Rafsanjani; and ex-foreign minister Ali Akbar Velayati, as well as a Lebanese man for their alleged role in the bombing." http://t.uani.com/oqfR5g
Nuclear Program & Sanctions
WSJ: "Mangalore Refinery & Petrochemicals, a state-run Indian refinery, said it is in talks with crude oil suppliers in Abu Dhabi and Saudi Arabia to arrange backup supplies in case of potential disruptions from Iran, as the two countries' dispute over outstanding crude bills appears to enter a new deadlock. MRPL said it is in touch with oil suppliers including Abu Dhabi National Oil Co., or Adnoc, and Saudi Arabian Oil Co., or Saudi Aramco. MRPL and other Indian refiners face crude supply disruptions from Iran as they aren't able to clear dues after the Reserve Bank of India in December stopped trade-related payments through the Asian Clearing Union, a regional clearinghouse which the U.S. says is opaque and could be used by Tehran to finance its alleged nuclear weapons program. Iran has continued to deliver oil to India pending the resolution of the problem. But Iran has sent a fresh warning that it may stop oil exports to India from August 1 if $5 billion arrears aren't paid." http://t.uani.com/oInwWB
Reuters: "France condemned on Tuesday Iran's announcement that it was installing new uranium enrichment machines to speed progress in its nuclear programme, calling it a 'clear provocation'. The comments came after an Iranian official appeared to confirm a Reuters story last week that Iran was installing two newer and more advanced models of the centrifuges used to refine uranium for large-scale testing. 'Iran has just given into another provocation by announcing the imminent installation of next generation centrifuges,' the French Foreign Ministry said in a statement. 'This is a new violation of six Security Council resolutions and 10 resolutions by the council of governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency.'" http://t.uani.com/nn7RoH
AP: "A prominent Iranian hardliner has called for attacks against U.S. and European airline offices over their refusal to supply fuel to Iranian aircraft. Hossein Shariatmadari, a representative of Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, says in an editorial in his Kayhan daily Tuesday that American and European airlines should be 'taught an unforgettable lesson.' Iran already has banned the supply of jet fuel to European airlines in a tit-for-tat move. Iran is at odds with the West over its nuclear program. Tehran's refusal to halt uranium enrichment has brought four sets of U.N. sanctions against Iran. The U.S. and its allies accuse Iran of seeking to build nuclear weapons, a charge Tehran denies." http://t.uani.com/pPLPc9
Human Rights
Guardian: "Iran has announced that it will not permit the UN special rapporteur assigned with investigating its record of human rights to enter the country. Ahmad Shaheed, the former Maldivian foreign affairs minister, was appointed by the UN in June to look into human rights violations in Iran, leading to much criticism from the regime in Tehran. According to the Tehran Times, the state English-language newspaper, Mohammad Javad Larijani, Iran's secretary general of the high council for human rights, said: 'The western-engineered appointment of a special rapporteur for Iran is an illegal measure.' Larijani - whose brothers Ali and Sadegh Larijani are Iran's speaker of the parliament and head of the judiciary - added: 'This unilateral action makes no sense and if they want to send a special rapporteur to Iran, they should take the same measure in the case of other countries.' Shaheed's appointment was the result of concerted warnings by various human rights organisations against Iran's current record of human rights." http://t.uani.com/nCHLaB
Domestic Politics
Daily Telegraph: "Ruhollah Dadashi was stabbed to death by three assailants after a head-on collision in Tehran last week. He had been a prominent supporter of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. His skills were heavily promoted in the state media, especially in publications close to the controversial president. Iran organised an all-comers strongest man world championship on the Gulf island of Kish last year. When Dadashi won he was lauded in the media as the prime exponent of a discipline that Iran has excelled at in recent years. But his apparent willingness to take sides in power struggle between Mr Ahmadinejad and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei appears to have been his undoing. He was recently said to have 'insulted' the Supreme Leader by publicly observing that the Ayatollah Khamenei was 'behind' all the pressures on Mr Ahmadinejad. He had offered his gold medal to the president, praising Mr Ahmadinejad as 'the real champion of the nation.'" http://t.uani.com/p1IxD3
Foreign Affairs
AFP: "The Secretary General of the Gulf Cooperation Council on Monday delivered a protest note to Iran's ambassador to Saudi Arabia over an Iranian cleric's remarks on Bahrain, a GCC statement said. Abdullatif Zayani gave Ambassador Mohammed Rasuli a note of 'official protest from the Gulf Cooperation Council, totally rejecting the provocative and false claims in the Friday sermon of... Ayatollah Ahmed Janati against the kingdom of Bahrain,' the statement said. The note also termed Janati's remarks 'blatant and unacceptable interference' in Bahrain's internal affairs, and called on Iranian officials and the government to 'stop issuing false and inflammatory statements' about Bahrain, saying this could harm 'good, neighborly relations.' Ayatollah Ahmad Janati said during a Friday sermon on July 8 in Tehran that 'the number of the prisoners is increasing day by day. The academics and physicians are fired... what does Bahrain want?'" http://t.uani.com/pURoZA
LAT: "A top Bahraini official accused Iran of scuttling a potential deal between the government and the opposition during a weekend dialogue that nowhere. Fahad Ebrahim Shehabi, a spokesman for the Bahraini parliament, said the talks were going well until the main Shiite Muslim opposition, Wefaq, pulled out because of Iran, which opposes Bahrain's Sunni monarchy. 'The withdrawal of Wefaq came early in the negotiation process, whereas other opposition figures who have been supporters of Wefaq stayed in the negotiation process,' he told Babylon & Beyond in an interview. 'This is because the decision is not in their hands; it is in the hands of the Wilayet Faqih,' a reference to Iran's concept of theocratic rule by its supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. 'Wefaq has a different agenda,' he said. 'They want an Islamic state under Wilayet Faqih and they received a green light from Tehran to withdraw from the negotiations.' Shehabi did not cite proof. And opposition activists said the talks were disastrous because the entrenched Sunni monarchy of King Hamad Khalifa did not participate in the so-called dialogue, instead dispatching a bunch of toothless intermediaries." http://t.uani.com/pX2s4g
Opinion & Analysis
Hamid Dabashi in Al Jazeera: "The world might be distracted by the dramatic events in Syria, Libya, or even Yemen, but the pushing and pulling, jostling and shoving, kicking and elbowing for the post-Ahmadinejad Islamic Republic is well underway. Ahmadinejad has done his services to the ruling Ayatollah, and will be disposed of momentarily. His grand illusion that he can actually have a face off with the Supreme Leader and determine who - his choice is a close aide named Rahim Mashaei - is to succeed him is being dashed off rudely with the combined security, intelligence, military, and clerical forces that staged him against the Green Movement and will now escort him to the exit door. This exit - now well underway - is happening in a larger context. More than two years into the rise of the Green Movement in Iran and half a year of astounding developments in the Arab world, the Islamic Republic of Iran is juggling its domestic affairs to be able to cope with the tremor of regional earthquakes - and suddenly, at the centre of it all, one finds, yet again, Mohammad Khatami, the two-time Reformist president (1997-2001 and 2001-2005) who was once thought to be the Iranian Mikhail Gorbachev. It was not meant to be. As Ahmadinejad is being made redundant, Khatami may prove, yet again, to be useful - at least to the ruling regime... Ultimately the problem is not why Khatami is so weak, spineless, and accommodating to power - projecting his moral and intellectual limitations as 'wisdom' or 'pragmatism'. The problem is that he is all of these things from a position of weakness, facing a tyrannous monstrosity, and in the absence of any more radical positions within the general contour of the current political atmosphere. In these circumstances, Mousavi's forced silence is in fact infinitely nobler and more eloquent than Khatami's weakling pleadings for forgiveness from a tyrant. Under other circumstances, at the very least, when Mousavi, Karroubi, Zahra Rahnavard and other exiled voices can freely say and articulate their positions, Khatami's conciliatory voice is not only perfectly legitimate but in fact even necessary, as important and crucial as anyone else's. But when the ruling tyranny has silenced everyone - by assassination, imprisonment, torture, house arrest, exile, fear and intimidation, impoverishment, et cetera - Khatami's wobbly pleading is so pathetic because it is not stated from a position of free, fair, and democratic encounter with other, more or even less radical, voices. This regime has mutilated the Iranian political culture, does not even have the decency of allowing for a dignified funeral of an aging dissident, and its official thugs attack mourners and cause the death of his daughter - and to this regime and under these circumstances, Khatami says 'if' people have done you wrong and been tyrannous towards you, you should forgive them. Never in the entire history of Shiaism have tyrannised people been so robbed of their moral authority and the sacrosanct term of zolm been so brutally stolen from them, abused and applied to a tyrant. No amount of contextualisation, gloss, or appeals to pragmatism can whitewash that astoundingly immoral utterance." http://t.uani.com/roFB88
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