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AP: "Iran's president wants to shed the nation's secrecy and forge ahead openly with developing nuclear weapons but is opposed by the clerical leadership, which is worried about international reaction to such a move, says an intelligence assessment shared with The Associated Press. That view, from a nation with traditionally reliable intelligence from the region, cannot be confirmed and contrasts with assessments by other countries that view Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as relatively moderate on the nuclear issue compared to the country's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Attempts to interpret Iran's goals are important because as it expands uranium enrichment, it is moving closer to being able to make a nuclear weapon by the day, even as it asserts that it is not interested in such arms and its programs are geared only to making reactor fuel. A U.S. official cited one assessment he has seen suggesting Ahmadinejad may be more 'moderate' - more open to talks with the international community on resolving nuclear concerns than Khamenei. He asked for anonymity because his information was privileged. But a blunt comment by Ahmadinejad last month raises questions. While repeating that Iran does not want nuclear arms, he openly reinforced its ability to make them, telling Iranian state TV that 'if we want to make a bomb, we are not afraid of anybody.' That defiant statement fits the scenario laid down by the intelligence assessment shared with the AP, depicting Ahmadinejad as wanting to move publicly to develop a nuclear program." http://t.uani.com/rmGlWy
Daily Telegraph: "According to a study by the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), North Korea's weapons programmes are now benefiting from technology from Iran. Pyongyang also possesses technology that would enable Iran's uranium enrichment programme to increase its output. However concrete evidence that North Korea has supplied the Iranians with its superior equipment has not been uncovered by IISS. The disclosure marks a disturbing escalation in the race for nuclear weapons technology by the two states which are seen to present the biggest threat to global security. Mark Fitzpatrick, the IISS expert on weapons proliferation, said North Korea possessed a technological edge over Iran in making nuclear equipment. t was capable of manufacturing high strength steel that Iran has been unable to manufacture. Iran has instead relied on carbon fibre materials that are less reliable. 'What previously had been a one way flow of North Korean missile technology to Iran is now going two ways,' he said. 'North Korea may be self-sufficient in its uranium programme and there are some areas where Iran can't produce equipment that North Korea has the capacity to produce.'" http://t.uani.com/nCKAXi
AFP: "A graphic video of a public hanging in Iran of three men convicted for rape shows the 'brutalisation' of the condemned and those who watch executions, Amnesty International said Thursday. In the video, which the London-based human rights watchdog said it received from a blogger, the men are seen standing atop three buses as guards hook ropes around their necks from a bridge overhead. Dozens of people can be seen watching from below in what was said to be Azadi Square in the western Iranian city of Kermanshah on Tuesday. After the crimes for which the three men were convicted and their executions are announced, the buses back up one by one and leave the trio suspended by their rope as numerous onlookers photograph or film the hangings, Amnesty said. 'These latest public executions underline the continuing horror of the death penalty in Iran,' said Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui, Amnesty's deputy director for the Middle East and North Africa. 'Not only those executed, but all those who watch public executions, including, children, are brutalised and degraded by the experience. These public displays of killing perpetuate a culture of acceptance of violence and blood lust, rather than a belief in justice,' she said. 'We have also been informed that the arrest, trial and execution of these men took barely two months, which raises serious questions about the fairness of the trial'... So far this year, 171 people have been executed in the Islamic republic, according to an AFP tally based on media and official reports." http://t.uani.com/pGgxKR
Nuclear Program & Sanctions
WSJ: "India is yet to receive any official communication from Iran about stopping crude oil supplies to the South Asian country, a senior finance ministry official said Friday. 'Officially, there is nothing from Iran that they are stopping oil supplies,' said the official, who declined to named. Iran has been supplying crude to Indian refiners without being able to access payments after India's central bank in December closed a trade mechanism between the two nations, apparently under U.S. pressure. Iran had earlier cautioned Indian refiners that supplies of crude could stop from August if the two countries fail to find a way to transfer the estimated $5 billion in pending oil payments due to Tehran. The Fars news agency Monday reported, citing an Iranian oil ministry official, that oil exports to India may be stopped from Aug. 1 if the issue isn't resolved." http://t.uani.com/obHjeo
Domestic Politics
Daily Telegraph: "Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has warned of the danger of 'harmful books' likening them to 'poisonous drugs'. In a meeting with librarians and publishing industry leaders this week, Khamenei said the activity of reading should be encouraged but warned against books carrying 'a public appearance but with specific political hidden motives.' 'Not all books are necessarily good and not all of them are unharmful, some books are harmful,' he said, according to his official website, Khamenei.ir. His comments have brought criticism from Iran's former culture minister Ataollah Moherajerani who said access to literature should not be limited." http://t.uani.com/q24Iqi
Reuters: "A commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guards was killed in an explosion during clashes with Kurdish rebels in northwestern Iran, the Guards said in a statement on Friday. It named the commander only as Qasemi and did not say when he died. Some opposition websites have said the overall commander of the Guards in the important city of Qom was killed. 'In recent clashes with PJAK in northwestern Iran, a car belonging to the Revolutionary Guards blew up and some members of the Guards, including Commander Qasemi, were killed,' the statement said. PJAK is the Free Life Party of Kurdistan." http://t.uani.com/qt5TDr
Foreign Affairs
Daily Star: "The Cabinet approved Wednesday a key Memorandum of Understanding between Lebanon's Energy and Water Resources Ministry and Iran's Petroleum Ministry in the field of energy, as President Michel Sleiman called on the government to address socio-economic needs. A source from the Energy and Water Resources Ministry told The Daily Star that the MOU allows Iran to assist Lebanon in the fields of gas and oil exploration but refused to elaborate. The Hezbollah-affiliated Al-Manar television station said the cooperation agreement in the field of energy was worth $50 million. During the Cabinet session, Sleiman and Prime Minister Najib Mikati urged ministers to address the socio-economic needs of the Lebanese and combat growing inflation." http://t.uani.com/nNw4c7
AFP: "Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said on Friday that he hoped 'misunderstandings' with Saudi Arabia could be resolved after a war of words erupted over its military intervention in Bahrain. Salehi said that Iran respected the sovereignty of Sunni-ruled Shiite-majority Bahrain and hoped that a national dialogue launched by King Hamad after the March crackdown on Shiite-led protests would bear fruit. 'We have no particular problem with Saudi Arabia and we regard it as an important country in the region that has influence in international affairs,' Salehi said in an interview with the official IRNA news agency. 'We have had friendly relations with Saudi Arabia for a long time. After recent events in the region there were differences of analysis and interpretation,' he said without elaborating. 'I believe these misunderstandings can be resolved. I hope that we will find an acceptable way to continue consultations between our two countries.' Salehi's overture to Saudi Arabia came after a sharp downturn in relations in the months since Saudi-led troops intervened to help Bahrain's Sunni rulers put down the Shiite-led protests." http://t.uani.com/qZ97Np
Opinion & Analysis
WashPost Editorial Board: "According to a recent story in The Post, the Obama administration is 'quietly toasting' the success of international sanctions against Iran. The Islamic republic is having increasing difficulty arranging imports, including food, and the central bank is reportedly short of hard currency. Billions of dollars in foreign investment projects have been canceled, and few banks, insurance companies or shipping firms are willing to do business with Tehran. There are also signs of political stress. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is bitterly at odds with conservative clergy and a majority of parliament and appears to have lost the support of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Iran's closest ally, the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad, is slowly but steadily losing ground to a popular uprising, raising the prospect that Iran's once-firm foothold in the Arab Middle East will be reduced to an isolated Hezbollah militia in Lebanon. We don't begrudge the White House a toast or two over these developments; the administration has worked hard and relatively effectively to make the sanctions work. But it's important to note a stubborn reality: There has been no change in Iran's drive for nuclear weapons or in its aggressive efforts to drive the United States out of the Middle East. If anything, Tehran has recently grown bolder. Last month it announced plans to triple its capacity to produce uranium enriched to the level of 20 percent - a far higher degree of processing than is needed to produce nuclear energy... he bottom line is that the threat from Iran is not diminishing but growing. Where is the policy to reverse that alarming trend?" http://t.uani.com/rhUDh7
Clyde Russell in Reuters: "The market appears quite relaxed about the escalating dispute between India and Iran over payment for oil supplies, but it has wider implications and may yet disrupt Asian crude markets. For now there seems to be little concern that Iran will stop shipping 400,000 barrels a day of oil to India next month, the view being that Saudi Arabia and other Gulf suppliers can take up the slack. That may well be the case in the short term, especially since some Indian refiners are undergoing maintenance in August anyway, but the longer-term picture of how India will replace 12 percent of its crude supplies isn't so clear. India hasn't paid Iran for oil since December after the Reserve Bank of India halted a clearing mechanism under U.S. pressure to crack down on doing business with Iran. Already the Iranians are owed $5 billion, which must be hurting their struggling fiscal situation, and they finally put their foot down and said no more. This raises some issues for both the crude oil market and the wider geopolitical situation in the Middle East and Asia. First, the market issues. While the focus has been on how India will replace its Iranian supplies, the question should also be asked, what are the Iranians going to do with their extra oil?... On the other hand, the Iranians now have to try and sell the oil to other buyers, and that will present a few problems. Not all Asian refiners can process their heavier grades, and some that can, such as Japan, won't buy because of the U.S. pressure. That leaves China as the default buyer, with perhaps some of the slack being sent to Singapore, whose refiners can process around 1.5 million barrels a day. But the Chinese have shown they are price-sensitive, and if they know there is a certain level of distress in Iran, they are likely to push for big discounts when buying crude. Of course, the Iranians could put some of their output into floating storage in the hope a tighter market drives prices higher, but given their budget is weighed down by subsidy payments and the economy is still dealing with inflation above 10 percent, they are likely to be seeking immediate cash. This may result in a tug-of-war in crude markets as the Saudis supply more oil at current high prices and the Iranians discount to find a new home for 11 percent of their output. On the political front, the India payment issue may well raise the temperature between Saudi Arabia and Iran. The surest way for the Saudis to show their displeasure at the Iranian-led move at the June OPEC meeting to keep output quotas unchanged is to take some of the Iran's market share. The Saudis, no doubt with U.S. encouragement, may well make it harder for the Iranians to shift cargoes. In fact, the United States may well be pleased with what's happening, the Indians seems to be OK with their oil supplies, the Saudis are pumping more and the Iranians are under pressure, although it's hard to see them buckling and ending their nuclear programme any time soon... And the Chinese may well be happy too, buying Iranian crude at discounts. Already they have been taking more from Iran, with June imports around 650,000 barrels a day, a jump of 53 percent from May, while year-to-date imports are up 49 percent." http://t.uani.com/ncLoNE
Karim Sadjadpour in FP: "Nobody has ever confused Niccolo Machiavelli with an Islamic revolutionary -- but he certainly knew a thing or two about revolutions. The Florentine political philosopher watched his native city overthrow, restore, and then overthrow again the powerful Medici family. And it was in this hotbed of backstabbing clans, religious favoritism, and political power plays that Machiavelli sharpened his teeth. Ah, how he would have enjoyed the Tehran of today. Half a millennia later, the author of The Prince and intellectual father of realpolitik has found one of his most impressive students in Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei -- another leader well-acquainted with the exercise of acquiring, and keeping, political power. Indeed, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose rise (and now his seeming fall from grace) was orchestrated by Khamenei, is the third Iranian head of state (preceded by Hashemi Rafsanjani and Mohammed Khatami) whom Khamenei has outmaneuvered. This is only the latest struggle from which Khamenei appears to have come out on top. For the last 22 years, he's woken up every morning and gone to bed every night believing not only that many of his own subjects want to unseat him, but also that the greatest superpower in the world is plotting his demise. In summer 2009, his worst fears became reality when millions of Iranians took to the streets to protest Ahmadinejad's tainted reelection. Some of them chanted slogans of 'Death to Khamenei' and 'Khamenei is an assassin, his rulership is annulled.' Yet after Oman's Sultan Qaboos and Libyan leader Muammar al-Qaddafi -- who continues to hang by a thread -- Khamenei is now the longest serving autocrat in the Middle East. It is no accident that Khamenei has succeeded thus far in beating back the challenge posed by the Green Movement. Despite his Shiite pretentions, his ruling ideology is more Machiavelli than martyrdom. It's a fact that Machiavelli himself -- who trudged around Italy with papal armies, marveling at the combination of military might and religious authority -- would have observed with a knowing smile. Throughout Khamenei's rule, he has held to five basic tenets that reflect the philosophy of statecraft -- and stagecraft -- embodied in Machiavelli's famous treatise." http://t.uani.com/qVWkm2
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