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Guardian: "Western capitals have reacted angrily to an announcement by Iran that it is installing more advanced centrifuges in a uranium enrichment plant with the aim of accelerating its nuclear programme. 'The installation of new centrifuges with better quality and speed is ongoing,' Ramin Mehmanparast, the Iranian foreign ministry spokesman, told reporters at his weekly press briefing. 'We have announced it and the agency [the International Atomic Energy Agency] has full supervision of them. They are fully aware that Iran's peaceful nuclear activity continues to progress. This is another confirmation of the Islamic republic's successful strides in its nuclear activities.' However, France said Iran's move - which Tehran claims could triple the rate at which it enriches uranium - confirmed suspicions that the Iranian nuclear programme had 'no credible civilian application'. The French foreign ministry said: "Iran has just given in to another provocation by announcing the imminent installation of next generation centrifuges. This is a new violation of six security council resolutions and 10 resolutions by the council of governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency [IAEA].' The British Foreign Office said the announcement 'further undermines Iran's claim that its nuclear programme is designed for purely peaceful purposes, and demonstrates the urgency of increasing pressure on Iran ... Iran must understand that we will not be distracted by events in the region and it should not doubt our resolve.'" http://t.uani.com/oaBwfm
AFP: "The Iranian navy plans on deploying warships to the Atlantic Ocean as part of a programme to ply international waters, Rear Admiral Habibollah Sayari said in statements published Tuesday. But the commander of the navy, quoted by Kayhan newspaper, said he was waiting for 'final approval' before launching the operation. 'In case of final approval (of the project) a fleet of the navy will be sent to the Atlantic (Ocean),' Sayari was quoted as saying without giving details about the fleet or where in the Atlantic Ocean it would be deployed. 'The presence (of ships and submarines) in the Mediterranean Sea, the Suez Canal and the Indian Ocean and international waters is still on the agenda of the navy,' Sayari said. According to Sayari navy ships assigned to long-distance missions will be equipped with Noor cruise missiles... In February Iran moved two warships into the Mediterranean Sea, crossing the Red Sea and the Suez Canal, triggering anger in Israel which branded the move 'political provocation' and put its navy on alert. The two ships docked in Syria on February 24, marking Iran's first such mission since the 1979 Islamic revolution." http://t.uani.com/oW13Aj
UPI: "Italian company Eni has been called on to verify it is ending its business in the Iranian energy sector, an advocacy group said. United Against Nuclear Iran said in a letter to Eni that it wanted proof the company was working to cut its ties with Iran. UANI was part of a group protesting in New York against companies that do business with Iran. Eni officials in a statement to UANI said they were working to wind down their activity in the Iranian energy sector. 'To my knowledge, Eni has assured the U.S. administration that it has taken significant verifiable steps toward stopping its energy-related activities in Iran and will not engage in any such activities in the future,' said Enzo Viscusi, a senior adviser from Eni, said in a statement to protesters. 'We note that Italy is cooperating fully with multilateral sanctions efforts with respect to Iran.' Eni in 2010 purchased around $2 billion of Iranian crude oil. The U.S. State Department said in late 2010 that BP and Shell were no longer selling jet fuel to Iran Air, while Shell, Total, Spanish energy company Repsol and Italy's Eni all abandoned work in the upstream sector. UANI said it wants written proof by Monday that Eni is ending its business and investment activities in Iran." http://t.uani.com/pxN4BS
Nuclear Program & Sanctions
AP: "Iran's Revolutionary Guard shot down an unmanned U.S. spy plane that was trying to gather information on an underground uranium enrichment site, a state-owned news site said Wednesday. Lawmaker Ali Aghazadeh Dafsari said the drone was flying over the Fordo uranium enrichment site near the holy city of Qom in central Iran, the state TV-run Youth Journalists Club said. The report did not say when the plane was shot down... Iran has claimed to shoot down U.S. spy planes in the past. Earlier this month, Iranian military officials showed Russian experts several U.S. drones they said were shot down in recent years." http://t.uani.com/nwZpwF
WSJ: "Iran's crude oil supplies to India rose by 14% in June despite a dispute over $5 billion of unpaid bills, a person familiar with the matter said Wednesday. Iran and India have been at loggerheads since December after a clearing system for the Islamic Republic's oil sales to the Asian nation was discontinued due to international banking sanctions. Yet India's crude purchases from Iran--its second-largest oil supplier--have remained broadly unchanged compared with the past two years and even rose in the past month compared with May. Iran's oil deliveries to the Asian nation rose to 400,000 barrels a day in June from 350,000 barrels a day in May, said the person familiar with the trades, who isn't an Iranian official. Iran typically supplied about 400,000 barrels a day in 2009-2010, prior to the dispute. India has since paid into a joint account which Iran cannot draw from." http://t.uani.com/pOtDKf
Reuters: "Iran will sign a $4 billion contract with China for development of an underground transport system in Iran, state television quoted an official as saying on Tuesday. 'The $4 billion financing contract will be signed with China tonight,' said Mohammad Royanian, head of Iran's Transport and Fuel Management Office. He gave no other details. China, the second biggest importer of Iranian oil after Japan, has long been involved in infrastructure projects in Iran where economic sanctions have hampered investment by Western companies. Iran said in February that China had signed a $13 billion contract to build a railway network in the Islamic state. Trade between the two countries is worth around $30 billion per year. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said he hopes to increase the volume of trade to $100 billion." http://t.uani.com/n7hmWy
FT: "International sanctions imposed because of Iran's nuclear programme are causing fluctuations in the local currency market as a shortage of foreign exchange bites, economists say. One US dollar bought IR11,640 on Wednesday on the open market, down from IR12,000 a month ago, although this was higher than the IR10,700 at the beginning of the year. 'The central bank is short of hard currency because of sanctions which have disrupted withdrawal of money from overseas banks,' says a reform-minded economist connected to Iran's financial organisations. Over the past decade, Iran's central bank, which channels more than 90 per cent of hard currency into the local market, has employed a managed float system to support a single rate against hard currencies, notably the US dollar." http://t.uani.com/poEL6u
Human Rights
Reuters: "U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon called in a report made public on Tuesday for stepped-up efforts to resolve the problem of Iranian exiles living at a camp in Iraq that was the scene of a bloody clash in April. Camp Ashraf, some 65 km (40 miles) from Baghdad, houses the People's Mujahideen Organization of Iran (PMOI), which mounted attacks on Iran before the U.S.-led overthrow of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein in 2003. The future of the camp has been uncertain since the United States turned it over to Iraqi control in 2009. Unlike Saddam, who fought an eight-year war with Iran in the 1980s, Iraq's current government is sympathetic towards Tehran and has vowed to close the camp by the end of this year. In April, the camp -- which houses 3,400 people -- was the scene of clashes between Iraqi security forces and residents, 34 of whom were killed according to a U.N. investigation." http://t.uani.com/ndtpJW
Domestic Politics
WashPost: "Every summer, Iranian police get tough on women who violate the country's strict Islamic dress code by adjusting their veils and long coats to try to cope with the rising temperatures. But this year, amid the annual crackdown, the issue of how women wear the veil - and what the government does about it - has become part of an intensifying rift between President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and powerful Shiite clerics. The conservative clerics, and like-minded military commanders, complain that Ahmadinejad must do more to ensure that the dress code is strictly enforced, even, as some have said, 'if blood needs to be shed.' Some of them have also blamed recent violence against women on the victims themselves, arguing that they are at fault because of their failure to wear the veil properly. The public rift over the veil marks the latest in a series of clashes between the country's secular leaders, who run day-to-day politics, and its religious officials." http://t.uani.com/r2H7kH
Foreign Affairs
The Hindu: "Iran, which had been spectacularly successful in netting almost the entire leadership of the anti-Iran group Jandollah, has offered to cooperate with India in combating terrorism, a press release issued by the Iranian Embassy has said. The press release also denied reports alleging that two mysterious calls from Iran had asked a meat trader in Meerut and a farmer in Baghpat (both in Uttar Pradesh) to plant bombs in India. The Embassy said it had taken seriously the news reports and had informed Tehran to investigate the allegations. The news reports, sourcing unnamed Indian officials, added that calls were made from the U.S. against SIM cards issued in Iran and the preliminary investigations suggest that both were the prank calls. The Embassy press section said it is possible that this could be the work of those who wish to strain the ties between Iran and India." http://t.uani.com/qfg64K
The National: "An Iraqi politician yesterday called on the prime minister Nouri Al Maliki's government to condemn a raid and occupation by Iran in Kurdish rebel bases in northern Iraq, saying that a failure to do so is a 'sign of weakness'. Iranian Revolutionary Guard commanders announced on Monday that they had seized control of three militant camps, a claim that was immediately disputed as 'incorrect' by Iraqi security officials. However, local residents and security officers say the Iranian reports are true. 'There was an attack by Iranian Revolutionary Guard units against Pjak bases inside Iraq, and there was fighting between the two sides,' an Iraqi security official stationed in the area said. Iraqi forces had not intervened, he said." http://t.uani.com/qCN2ba
Opinion & Analysis
Fred Fleitz in WSJ: "Mounting evidence over the last few years has convinced most experts that Iran has an active program to develop and construct nuclear weapons. Amazingly, however, these experts do not include the leaders of the U.S. intelligence community. They are unwilling to conduct a proper assessment of the Iranian nuclear issue-and so they remain at variance with the Obama White House, U.S. allies, and even the United Nations. The last month alone has brought several alarming developments concerning Tehran's nuclear program. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Yukiya Amano said last month that his agency has new information pointing to the military ambitions of Iran's nuclear program. As of today, Iran has over 4,000 kilograms of low-enriched uranium-enough, according to the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, for four nuclear weapons if enriched to weapons grade. Iran has accelerated its production of low-enriched uranium in defiance of U.N. and IAEA resolutions. It has also announced plans to install advanced centrifuge machines in a facility built deep inside a mountain near the city of Qom. According to several U.S. diplomats and experts, the facility is too small to be part of a peaceful nuclear program and appears specially constructed to enrich uranium to weapons grade. To top this off, an item recently posted to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps website mused about the day after an Iranian nuclear test (saying, in a kind of taunt, that it would be a 'normal day'). That message marked the first time any official Iranian comment suggested the country's nuclear program is not entirely peaceful. Despite all this, U.S. intelligence officials are standing by their assessment, first made in 2007, that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003 and has not restarted it since. In February, the 17 agencies of the U.S. intelligence community issued a highly classified National Intelligence Estimate updating their 2007 assessment. That estimate had been politicized by several officials who feared how President George W. Bush might respond to a true account of the Iranian threat. It also was affected by the wave of risk aversion that has afflicted U.S. intelligence analysis since the 2003 Iraq War. Intelligence managers since then have discouraged provocative analytic conclusions, and any analysis that could be used to justify military action against rogue states like Iran. I read the February 2011 Iran NIE while on the staff of the House Intelligence Committee. I believe it was poorly written and little improvement over the 2007 version. However, during a pre-publication classification review of this op-ed, the CIA and the Office of the Director of Intelligence censored my criticisms of this analysis, including my serious concern that it manipulated intelligence evidence. The House Intelligence Committee is aware of my concerns and I hope it will pursue them. Censors also tried to prevent me from discussing my most serious objection to the 2011 Iran NIE: its skewed set of outside reviewers. The U.S. intelligence community regularly employs reviewers who tend to endorse anything they review: former senior intelligence officers, liberal professors and scholars from liberal think tanks. These reviewers tend to share the views of senior intelligence analysts, and they also want to maintain their intelligence contacts and high-level security clearances... It is unacceptable that Iran is on the brink of testing a nuclear weapon while our intelligence analysts continue to deny that an Iranian nuclear weapons program exists. One can't underestimate the dangers posed to our country by a U.S. intelligence community that is unable to provide timely and objective analysis of such major threats to U.S. national security-or to make appropriate adjustments when it is proven wrong. If U.S. intelligence agencies cannot or will not get this one right, what else are they missing?" http://t.uani.com/oue1pF
Ilan Berman in WSJ: "Two years after Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's fraudulent re-election to the Iranian presidency, it would be fair to say that Iran's pro-democracy reform movement is on the ropes. Key leaders of the Green Movement have vanished from public view, confined to house arrest or simply 'disappeared' by the regime. Protesters, having been systematically bloodied at the hands of Iran's basij militia, have retreated to the Internet for virtual dissent. The authorities have followed them there, erecting an increasingly draconian web-filtering system aimed at isolating dissidents from each other and from the outside world. But Iran's beleaguered democrats are starting to show heartening new signs of life. A number of Green Movement intellectuals in Tehran recently published a manifesto on the Century Foundation's InsideIRAN.org website. In it, they lay out the most detailed agenda to date for the country's reformists to retake the offensive in the ongoing struggle for Iran's soul. 'Greens inside and outside the country alike need to develop new tactics and strategies in order to utilize and channel effectively the ever-rising economic, political, and social discontent within our country and to ensure that the movement does not split or falter,' the document declares. To do so, its authors contend, Iran's anti-regime activists need to concentrate their energies on three things. First, they must emphasize their common core value: democracy. 'The principles that unite all Greens are the goals of rule of law, respect for human rights, and the supremacy of popular sovereignty over all state and government institutions, including the post of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of the Revolution,' the document proclaims. That call constitutes a direct repudiation of the doctrine of velayat-e faqih (rule of the jurisprudent), which makes Iran's clerical elite the ultimate arbiters of politics and justice. The manifesto makes the Iranian Greens' message clear: They believe the nature of Iranian governance needs to be fundamentally altered, and power restored to the people. Second, the manifesto calls on Iran's disparate opposition elements to demonstrate something that so far has been sorely lacking in their struggle: a real sense of cohesion. To that end, the document proposes the creation of a central 'Green Council' of leading political leaders and intellectuals, and the formation of individual Green 'cells' throughout the country. The goal would be to establish a national network through which the movement can propagate its ideas-and more effectively mobilizes masses when circumstances require. Finally, the manifesto maps out what amounts to an ambitious agenda for anti-regime activism. 'Strikes, boycotts, silent demonstrations' and other forms of civil disobedience are now back on the table. So is bolstering 'propaganda' actions aimed at exposing regime corruption and human-rights violations, to include 'naming and shaming' the officials responsible for such abuses. These plans bear more than a passing resemblance to the tactics that Cold War-era dissidents used in their efforts to discredit the Soviet leadership a generation ago." http://t.uani.com/oeFinb
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