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Reuters: "Top exporter Saudi Arabia has struck deals to sell 3 million barrels more oil to India in August, stepping into the vacuum created by regional rival Iran after it cut supply to New Delhi. The sale could stoke simmering tension between Riyadh and Tehran over oil policy. Saudi sources say the kingdom is not actively seeking to wrest market share from the Islamic Republic, but with Brent at over $100 a barrel Riyadh has taken a $300 million slice of Iran's oil sales to India. 'If Iran can't get the [payment] issues resolved with India we will send them supplies and we have already alerted them to that,' said a Saudi government advisor. Iran has already criticised Saudi Arabia for boosting oil supply unilaterally after Tehran-led opposition defeated a Saudi proposal for a coordinated supply increase at an OPEC meeting in June. Iran told Indian refiners last week it would cut oil shipments amounting to about 400,000 barrels per day (bpd) in August. Tehran aims to pressure the refiners into settling $5 billion in debts for crude already supplied and to find a way around U.S. and UN sanctions that make trade with Iran difficult. Iranian oil normally meets about 12 percent of India's total demand of 3.46 million bpd." http://t.uani.com/pGZwBZ
AFP: "The United States on Monday denied Iranian accusations it assassinated a scientist and urged the Islamic regime not to use the incident to 'distract attention' from its contested nuclear program. Assailants shot dead Dariush Rezaei-Nejad, who was reportedly associated with the defense ministry, and wounded his wife as they waited for their child outside a Tehran kindergarten on Saturday. Iran's parliament speaker, Ali Larijani, accused the United States and Israel of a 'terrorist act.' 'We were not involved,' State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told reporters in Washington. 'Our sympathies are obviously with the family of the victim. We condemn any assassination or attack on... an innocent person,' she said. 'It's frequent practice for Tehran to accuse the West for these kinds of incidents and we hope that Tehran is not planning to use this incident to distract attention from what it needs to do, which is to come back into compliance with international obligations,' she said." http://t.uani.com/q5Zr8y
WSJ: "The oil ministers of Iraq, Iran and Syria Monday signed a preliminary agreement for a $10 billion natural-gas-pipeline deal, the official Iranian News Agency IRNA and other Iranian media reported. The document was inked in the Assalouyeh industrial region located in the southern province of Bushehr by Iranian oil minister Mohammad Aliabadi, Iraq's oil minister Abdul Kareem Luaiby, and Syrian counterpart Sufian Alow, the agency said. Iraqi oil officials confirmed that Mr. Luaiby was in Iran to sign the agreement. They gave no further details. Iranian oil officials said Syria would purchase between 20 million to 25 million cubic meters a day of Iranian gas. Iraq has already signed a deal with Tehran to purchase up to 25 million cubic meters a day to feed its power stations. The project requires some $10 billion investment and will be constructed within three years, the semi-official Iranian news agency Mehr reported. The pipeline length is more than 1,500 kilometers and will run from Assalouyeh to Damascus while passing through Iraq, with a transfer capacity of 110 million cubic meters of natural gas a day, it said. The gas will be produced from the Iranian South Pars gas field in the Gulf, which Iran shares with Qatar, and holds estimated reserves of 16 trillion cubic meters of recoverable gas." http://t.uani.com/p2Q8Ax
Nuclear Program & Sanctions
Reuters: "Iran's oil trade with China, its biggest crude buyer, has not suffered the problems hampering its exports to India, Beijing-based oil industry officials said on Monday. Chinese companies first started paying in euros for their Iranian crude in 2006 and have also considered payment in yuan, the sources said. There have been no problems with payments, they said. Iran is China's third-largest crude supplier, shipping around 540,000 barrels per day (bpd) in the first six months of the year, or more than 10 percent of Beijing's 5.1 million bpd of imports. The flow grew 50 percent from the first half of 2010. Tehran has cut supply to India for August as sanctions have made it difficult for New Delhi to find a way for its refiners to pay for Iranian oil. Chinese refiners have suffered no such problems in dealing with Iran, the sources said. 'We've been paying in euros all these years,' said a Chinese buyer of Iranian oil. The two industry officials said there were no pending debts between China and India." http://t.uani.com/qiuXJU
AFP: "Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi will visit Moscow at the invitation of his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov to discuss Tehran's controversial nuclear drive, an official said on Tuesday. 'Regarding Mr Lavrov's invitation to Mr Salehi... the topics of discussion will be elevating bilateral relations, studying regional and international developments,' Foreign ministry spokesperson Ramin Mehmanparast told a media conference. 'We welcome Russia's positive efforts to try to find a diplomatic solution and replace [existing] wrong solutions of threat and pressure,' Mehmanparast added without detailing when such visit will take place. He was alluding to an idea raised in mid-July in Washington by Lavrov aimed at restarting talks between Iran and major world powers on 'step-by-step' approach." http://t.uani.com/n3vGEI
Bloomberg: "Hindustan Petroleum Corp., India's third-largest state oil refiner, will buy an additional 1 million barrels of crude from Saudi Arabia next month to make up for missing supply from Iran, a company official said. 'We will get additional cargoes from Saudi Arabia in August,' K. Murali, Hindustan Petroleum's director of refineries, said by telephone today. 'In the future we can also take from other countries that we have contracts with, for example Kuwait.' The Mumbai-based company has term contracts with Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, Murali said. Hindustan Petroleum buys about 2.5 million metric tons a year of Saudi crude, or 50,000 barrels a day, he said." http://t.uani.com/pIuMmL
Reuters: "State-run Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals Ltd said on Tuesday it was confident about resolving oil payment issue with Iran soon. 'The effort in resolving payment issue with Iran is under progress. We are confident that an all-acceptable solution will be found shortly,' MRPL, which is Iran's top Indian client, said in a statement. Since December, India and Iran have struggled to find ways for New Delhi to pay for imports of 400,000 barrels per day, 12 percent of its oil demand, after the Reserve Bank of India halted a clearing mechanism under U.S. pressure. Top exporter Saudi Arabia has struck deals to sell 3 million barrels more oil to India in August, stepping into the vacuum created by regional rival Iran after it cut supply to New Delhi. MRPL, which runs a 236,400 barrels per day (bpd) coastal refinery in southern India, buys about 150,000 bpd crude oil from Iran." http://t.uani.com/peCeGv
Reuters: "Western security agencies were most likely behind the killing of an Iranian scientist in an operation that underlines the myriad complications in the conflict over Iran's nuclear programme, analysts say. Darioush Rezaie, 35, a university lecturer, was shot dead by gunmen in eastern Tehran on Saturday, the third murder of a scientist since 2009. One was killed in a car bomb, the second by a device detonated remotely. The Iranian government's responses to past such incidents have appeared confused but the Rezaie case has surpassed previous levels, with the authorities speaking in strikingly different voices from the outset. 'Assassinations will continue to be a tool used in this covert war. While it's impossible to tell with certainty whether Rezaie was an active nuclear scientist, his death appears to be another episode in that war,' said London-based analyst Ghanem Nuseibeh, founder of Cornerstone Global Associates." http://t.uani.com/qTZ9ma
Human Rights
LAT: "When Iranian activist-lawyer Shirin Ebadi was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003, human rights activists cheered. Here was a chance for Iranians to rally around a figure for political change and reform much as Poles rallied around Lech Walesa and Burmese around Aung San Suu Kyi, both fellow laureates. Eight years later, the small cadre of attorneys close to Ebadi and the organization she started with her prize money, the Center for the Defense of Human Rights, are either in jail or threatened with legal action. The center has been outlawed. Activists decry the detentions as a vengeful crackdown by government hard-liners who were incensed by Ebadi's Nobel prize. But some human rights lawyers criticize their peers, saying the attorneys sometimes overlook clients' best interests in their determination to take a stand." http://t.uani.com/prAJ3Y
AFP: "Iran's judiciary spokesman Gholam Hossein Mohseni Ejeie announced on Monday the release on bail of Iranian actress and filmmaker Pegah Ahangarani and actress Marzieh Vafamehr, IRNA news agency said. The two women were arrested separately earlier this month. 'These two people have been prosecuted following reports by security officials. The preliminary investigations on them have been completed and they should be released on bail today or tomorrow,' Ejeie was quoted as saying. Last week, Tehran's prosecution service confirmed the arrest of Ahangarani, who was due to travel to Germany to write her impressions of the Women's World Cup in an Internet blog created especially for her by German broadcaster Deutsche Welle. Before the arrest, the authorities had prevented her from leaving the country. She supported former prime minister turned opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi's candidacy in Iran's June 2009 presidential election which resulted in the disputed re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for a second term." http://t.uani.com/qylF2L
Domestic Politics
AP: "Iran's top leader on Monday appointed a mediator to resolve an ongoing dispute between the country's president and parliament that has also challenged his own authority. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei named his ally and former judiciary chief Ayatollah Mahmoud Shahroudi to head an arbitration body that will tackle controversies within the ruling system, the official IRNA news agency reported. The dispute with the parliament and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's differences with Khamenei are part of an ongoing power struggle over shaping Iran's politics ahead of next year's parliamentary elections and the 2013 presidential balloting. Khamenei's appointment could also be an attempt to weaken former President Hashemi Rafsanjani who now heads the Expediency Council, another arbitrating body in Iran. Rafsanjani has increasingly been alienated in the establishment because of his tacit support for the opposition in the wake of the disputed June 2009 presidential elections that brought Ahmadinejad another term in office." http://t.uani.com/q7PXzz Foreign Affairs
AFP: "Iran's Revolutionary Guards continued their offensive against rebels from the Party of Free Life of Kurdistan (PJAK), killing an unknown number of fighters, the Guards ground forces said Tuesday. 'Last night, several PJAK teams ... were ensnared and eliminated' near the towns of Piranshahr and Sardasht in Iran's West Azerbaijan province, the elite force said in a statement carried by the official IRNA news agency. 'PJAK terrorists fled the scene after suffering heavy losses, and the corpses of the slain mercenaries were left in the area,' it added. It did not specify the number of casualties. On July 16, Iranian troops launched a major offensive against PJAK bases, losing at least eight Guards members, including a senior officer, in clashes with the Kurdish rebels on the border with neighboring Iraq." http://t.uani.com/phuo1m
Opinion & Analysis
Amb. Mark Wallace in the NYPost: "It may not be politically expedient to admit, but Iran is engaged in a live, 'hot' war with the United States and its NATO allies -- even as we continue to do business with it. US officials have recently detailed Iran's latest hostile military actions in Iraq and Afghanistan, including the training and arming of insurgent groups directly responsible for the death of many Americans on the battlefield. As Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said while visiting Iraq, 'We are very concerned about Iran and the weapons they are providing to extremists here in Iraq... In June, we lost a hell of a lot of Americans as a result of those attacks. And we cannot just simply stand back and allow this to continue to happen.' Iran is deliberately killing US troops and has been for years. Last month was the deadliest for Americans in Iraq since 2009; the US military attributed most of the casualties to Shia extremists who'd received training and weaponry from Iran. Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mike Mullen said, 'Iran is very directly supporting extremist Shia groups which are killing our troops.' Iran's war against America extends to Afghanistan, where both US and NATO troops each day face Iranian-armed foes. In March, British special forces intercepted a Taliban convoy carrying 48 Iranian-made 122mm rockets. Gen. David Petraeus notes that al Qaeda operatives use Iran as a transit point to travel to Afghanistan and Pakistan, with the full knowledge of the Iranian government. Plus, Iran has trained an estimated 3,000 Taliban fighters within its borders. One Taliban commander frankly said, 'Our religions and our histories are different, but our target is the same -- we both want to kill Americans.' It's past time for US policymakers to at least acknowledge Iran's war with our nation and adopt appropriate policies and laws -- especially when it comes to the international business community and its all-too-convenient blinders. By continuing to do business in Iran, major corporations are lining the pockets of a regime that is killing US and NATO troops. While some companies, such as Caterpillar and Terex, have voluntarily and commendably pulled out of Iran, such multinationals as Nokia, Nissan and Honeywell continue their business there. And even as they enrich a regime engaged in killing Americans, these corporations benefit from US federal and state contracts worth billions. In the past, Western firms were stigmatized for doing business with America's enemies, yet today large companies do business in Iran with impunity and even receive billion-dollar contracts from our Defense Department. This is obscene. What should American policymakers do? As a first crucial step, our federal and state governments should pass tough laws to bar companies that do business in Iran from getting government contracts... So United Against Nuclear Iran has been working with state legislatures to pass 'contract debarment' laws. Such statutes prohibit firms that do business in Iran from maintaining their state contracts, forcing them to choose between Iran and America for business -- with an obvious outcome." http://t.uani.com/nphaJ8
Tim Arango in NYT: "Arrayed on a table in an air-conditioned room are the killing tools from attacks on American soldiers over the last several months - the detritus of munitions smuggled in from Iran, according to the soldiers here whose job it is to conduct the forensic analysis of evidence collected from the battlefield. One item, a firing system for a 240-millimeter rocket used in a recent attack that killed American soldiers, sits next to photographs of the dump truck from which it was seized. Forensic analysis of this evidence led to a member of Kata'ib Hizballah, which is one of three Shiite militant groups that frequently attack Americans and is linked to the Iranian government. The suspect is now in American custody. (The other two groups are the Promised Day Brigade, which answers to the anti-American cleric Moktada al-Sadr, and Asa'ib Ahl al-Haq, a splinter group formed by onetime allies of Mr. Sadr.) It is the work here conducted by a group of Army, Air Force and Navy personnel - called Combined Joint Task Force Troy - that provides the evidence to buttress the recent claims of top Americans officials, from Leon E. Panetta, the secretary of defense, to James F. Jeffery, the American ambassador in Iraq, that Iran is behind the recent deadly attacks on American troops. In June, 14 American soldiers were killed by enemy attacks, the most in three years. The three Iranian-backed Shiite groups are responsible for 12 of these deaths, say American officials. (The other two deaths came in northern Iraq at the hands of a group called the Men of the Army of Al Naqshbandia Order, commonly referred to as J.R.T.N., a Sunni group of insurgents once loyal to Saddam Hussein.) After the 2003 invasion and the failure of the Bush administration to find the unconventional weapons it said was a reason for the war, the subsequent claims by the American military that Iran was supplying weapons and training to Shiite militias to attack American forces were met with abundant skepticism by the American public and other countries. Partly to blunt that skepticism, which persists today, and the continued denials emanating from Tehran, the military has invited reporters to view the evidence and discuss - both on background and on an off-the-record basis - the forensic indicators that the group of military and civilian officials who work here have lifted from the battlefield, evidence that they say proves that the weapons originated from factories in Iran." http://t.uani.com/qEZPXq
Reza Kahlili in Fox News: "Despite the brutal crackdown by the Assad government, the ongoing protests in Syria have the Iranian leadership worried. The survival of the Syrian dictator, Bashar al-Assad, is essential to the dictatorial Islamic regime in Tehran because Syria provides the very gateway to Iran's expansion of power in the Middle East and its extremist policies against Israel and the United States. For the past four months, Syrian authorities have killed more than 1,500 people during widespread protests demanding the overthrow of the Assad regime. Neighboring Turkey has denounced the Syrian slaughter. Thousands of fearful residents from the northern regions of Syria have taken refuge in Turkey. A recent article published in the weekly magazine Sobh'eh Sadegh, one of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards' media outlets, sternly warned Turkey against its stance on Syria, emphasizing that Iran stands squarely with the Assad regime. The article, entitled 'Iran's Serious Stance in the Face of Syrian Events,' warned that 'Should Turkish officials insist on their contradictory behavior and if they continue on their present path, serious issues are sure to follow. We will be put in the position of having to choose between Turkey and Syria. Syria's justification in defending herself along with mirroring ideological perceptions would sway Iran toward choosing Syria' ... As reported earlier, Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei sent a letter to President Obama warning against any meddling in Syria. The Iranian officials also warned Turkey in recent weeks that should Turkey provide assistance to the U.S. in helping the protesters in Syria, then all U.S. and NATO bases in Turkey will become targets for the Iranian missiles. The Iranian leaders' top priority is to prevent the fall of the Assad government. Such a fall would trigger several crises for the Iranian leadership: It would impact their influence in the Middle East, threaten the survival of Hezbollah in dominating events in Lebanon, and could reignite unrest in Iran where its citizens would hope to remove their own dictator. As the Iranian regime watches events unfold in Syria, it has indeed much to worry about, including its very existence." http://t.uani.com/n2a7Fg
Jaime Daremblum in The Weekly Standard: "As Lewis Carroll's Alice might have said, the relationship between Argentina and Iran just keeps getting 'curiouser and curiouser.' To review the history: In 1992 and 1994, respectively, Iranian-backed terrorists blew up the Israeli embassy and the AMIA Jewish community center in Buenos Aires. These attacks killed a combined total of 114 people and wounded hundreds more. The proof of Tehran's complicity is overwhelming: Interpol has outstanding arrest warrants for several high-profile Iranians, and Argentina has spent years demanding that the perpetrators be brought to justice. (Writing in the Jerusalem Post last week, Matthew Levitt provided a good summary of the evidence linking Iranian regime officials to the 1994 AMIA bombing.) A few months ago, however, the Buenos Aires newspaper Perfil obtained an Iranian document indicating that Argentine foreign minister Héctor Timerman had secretly traveled to Syria and offered to suspend the two bombing investigations in return for Iranian economic concessions. To date, neither Timerman nor Argentine president Cristina Kirchner has denied the substance of the Perfil article; both have merely said that they will not 'dignify' its allegations with a response. Meanwhile, in late May, Iranian defense chief Ahmad Vahidi made an official visit to Bolivia, prompting the Argentine foreign ministry to file a formal complaint with the Bolivian government. Vahidi, you see, is one of the Iranians wanted by Interpol for planning the 1994 AMIA bombing. The 17th anniversary of that bombing fell on July 18, and President Kirchner shed tears at a ceremony marking the somber occasion. In short, Argentina's approach to Tehran seems utterly schizophrenic: Kirchner cries over Iranian terrorism, but Timerman proposes to whitewash it in exchange for closer trade ties. The latest wrinkle came earlier this month, when the Iranian foreign ministry told Buenos Aires that it was 'ready for a constructive dialogue' about the AMIA attack. Of course, Tehran still denies that Iranian agents played any role in the attack, and it still refuses to hand over the Interpol suspects. Nevertheless, Timerman praised the Iranians for their offer of cooperation, calling it 'an unprecedented and very positive advance.'" http://t.uani.com/o8RmW4
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