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NYT: "The European Union announced on Wednesday that it was leveling sanctions against Iran's Al Quds military force, saying it had given technical and material support to President Bashar al-Assad of Syria in his efforts to crush the five-month-old uprising against his rule. The move adds the European Union's imprimatur to charges that Iran has aided Mr. Assad in carrying out a brutal crackdown of pro-democracy activists that the United Nations says has killed 2,200 people since March. There was no immediate reaction from the Syrian or the Iranian governments about the sanctions, which are the first to single out Iran in connection with the Syrian uprising. The decision was welcomed by activists in Damascus, Syria, who have refused to back down in the face of the crackdown. 'The sanctions are great and very needed,' said an opposition figure from Damascus who insisted on anonymity for fear of reprisal. 'But I don't know how much they will help us on the ground to get rid of this regime. It is going to be a long battle.' The European Union said in a statement published in its official journal that Al Quds, an elite unit of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, 'provided technical assistance, equipment and support to the Syrian security services to repress civilian protest movements.'" http://t.uani.com/qf6lke
AFP: "Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the main ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, called Wednesday for dialogue between Damascus and the opposition to end months of violence. 'The people and government of Syria must come together to reach an understanding,' he told Lebanese Al-Manar television, the station run by the Iranian- and Syrian-backed Hezbollah movement. 'When there is a problem between the people and their leaders they must sit down together to reach a solution, away from violence,' he said. 'One must not kill the other, because killing, whichever side is responsible, serves Zionist interests,' Israel's arch-foe added. Iranian officials have several times called on Assad to make reforms in order to avoid being swept away by rebellions such as those that have occurred in other Arab states. At the same time, Iran has accused Israel and the United States of trying to undermine Syria." http://t.uani.com/rge17i
Haaretz: "Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said that Iran was determined to eradicate Israel, ISNA news agency reported Thursday. 'Iran believes that whoever is for humanity should also be for eradicating the Zionist regime (Israel) as symbol of suppression and discrimination,' Ahmadinejad said in an interview with a Lebanese television network, carried by ISNA. 'Iran follows this issue (the eradication of Israel) with determination and decisiveness and will never ever withdraw from this standpoint and policy,' the Iranian president added in the interview with the Al-Manar network. The remarks by Ahmadinejad came one day before the annual anti-Israeli rallies named Qods (Jerusalem) Day, which are held nationwide in Iran on the last Friday of the fasting month of Ramadan." http://t.uani.com/qiGr4m
Nuclear Program & Sanctions
WT: "Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told U.S. lawmakers nearly two years ago that Iran already had the capability to make a nuclear weapon, according to a U.S. diplomatic cable recently released. The confidential Dec. 23, 2009, cable describes a meeting in Jerusalem between Mr. Netanyahu and a congressional delegation and notes his reply to a question on when Iran would acquire nuclear weapons. 'Netanyahu responded that Iran has the capability now to make one bomb or they could wait and make several bombs in a year or two,' says the cable, which was sent by the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv and released by the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks. Mr. Netanyahu went on to say that the revelation of a secret nuclear facility in Qom had 'helped convince doubters in the international community that Iran has a weapons program.'" http://t.uani.com/pnqeYw
Daily Star: "Russia said Thursday it was surprised by Iran's move to lodge a legal complaint against Moscow over the cancellation of an S-300 missile contract, insisting that sanctions had tied its hands. Iran's ambassador to Moscow, Mahmoud Reza Sajjadi, announced on Wednesday that Tehran had lodged a complaint against Russia with an international court of arbitration, Russian news agencies reported. He did not say which tribunal had been approached or if it involved the the International Court of Justice, which settles disputes between states. Russia's state news agency RIA Novosti, quoting Sajjadi, said Iran had filed the complaint nearly half a year ago. A Russian foreign ministry spokesman said Moscow took note of Iran's move but insisted it had had no choice but to cancel the long-agreed delivery of ground-to-air-missiles due to UN sanctions." http://t.uani.com/mRiJdU
WT: "A Slovakia-based computer-security firm could face a U.S. investigation for sanctions violations after its anti-virus products were downloaded in Iran in an apparent attempt to secure the country's networks against the cyberworm that attacked Tehran's nuclear program. A former employee said he showed executives at ESET's San Diego offices evidence in December that their software was being downloaded and installed on tens of thousands of computers in Iran. 'It was being downloaded at a tremendous rate,' Charles Jeter told The Washington Times. 'Traffic to ESET's website [from Iran] was five times the level it was to any of our competitors ... and we were getting more traffic from Tehran than from New York and Los Angeles combined,' Mr. Jeter said, citing an analysis of last year's Internet traffic he had conducted for ESET." http://t.uani.com/r2poWV
Opinion & Analysis
NYT Editorial Board: "The American hikers Shane Bauer and Joshua Fattal have spent 755 days in Iran's brutal Evin prison. They never should have been arrested, much less held for so long. With the Muslim world celebrating the holy month of Ramadan, Iranian officials should show compassion, and true respect for justice, and let them return home. Senior Iranian officials have repeatedly raised expectations that the two men would be released 'soon.' Two weeks ago, Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said he hoped their trial 'will proceed in a manner that will result in their freedom.' But, on Saturday, after a show trial, judicial authorities unjustly sentenced the two Americans to eight years in prison for illegal entry and espionage. Sarah Shourd, Mr. Bauer's fiancée, who was held for 14 months before being released, has said that the three accidentally crossed a poorly marked border from Iraq, and only because a border guard gestured for them to approach. As for the charge of espionage, Iran has never offered one iota of evidence to prove its claim. Last November, Mohammad Javad Larijani, the secretary general of Iran's government-controlled High Council for Human Rights, told NBC News that the hikers might not be spies... Iran's leaders claim that the case is in the hands of the judiciary and that the judiciary is independent, but there is no doubt that it is being manipulated for political ends... Mr. Bauer and Mr. Fattal should be freed immediately." http://t.uani.com/nAJ9so
Michael Rubin in NRO: "Moammar Qaddafi's rule might be crumbling, but the colonel refuses to quit. On the evening of August 23, Qaddafi loyalists launched Scuds at the rebel-run town of Misrata. The missile strikes will be a footnote to the last days of the Transitional National Council's struggle to unseat Qaddafi, but Western policymakers should not ignore them, for reasons that have less to do with Libya and far more with the Islamic Republic of Iran. Both Pres. George W. Bush and Pres. Barack Obama declared that they would not allow Iran to develop nuclear weapons. 'The free world cannot allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon,' Bush declared on CBS's Face the Nation in 2006. Obama, for his part, told the Associated Press in 2009 that he's 'not reconciled' with Iran's theoretical possession of nuclear weapons during his presidency. Bush left office with his policy in tatters. Obama sought renewed diplomacy, but this too has failed. Both inside and outside the State Department, Pentagon, and Old Executive Office Building, officials whisper privately what they will not state publicly: The United States is not prepared to use military force to deny Iran a nuclear weapon. Instead, the United States will rely on traditional deterrence. Those around the administration, as well as respected analysts, agree. 'I don't think this is a suicidal regime. I don't dismiss out of hand at all the idea that they could be deterred,' Thomas Fingar, one of the primary authors of the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate, told National Public Radio two years ago. Joshua Pollack, a columnist for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and government consultant, argued on the same program that deterrence is the least bad option. 'The alternatives to deterrence are what, after all?' he explained, pointing out that the costs associated with military action against Iran would be greater than those in Iraq... When considering Iran's nuclear weapons, however, the character of the regime is less important than the ideology of those who would have custody, command, and control of the nuclear arsenal. It is safe to assume that should the Iranian regime develop a nuclear weapon, the most elite and ideologically trusted unit of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps would retain custody. After all, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini founded the Revolutionary Guards to be the elite ideological guardians of his regime. The army's officers had for too long supported the shah, and while they might help defend Iran's borders, Khomeini had no confidence that when push came to shove, they would stand firm against the political winds. Unfortunately, the Revolutionary Guards remain effectively a big black box to the American analytical and academic communities." http://t.uani.com/r0oU38
Robin Pomeroy in Reuters: "Seen from Iran, Libya is either the latest dictatorship to fall to an 'Islamic awakening' that will unite the Muslim Middle East, or a new foothold for the treacherous West to assert its economic and political domination over the region. Muammar Gaddafi, who fled his Tripoli compound this week, was no friend to the Islamic Republic which considered him a flamboyant despot almost as bad as the despised former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. 'Like Saddam who killed his people, in a five-month civil war he killed thousands,' said the conservative Resalat daily which accused Gaddafi of being an ally of Israel, the worst possible insult in Tehran's view, citing the disappearance of the Iranian-born leader of Lebanese Shi'ites, Imam Musa Sadr, on a visit to Libya in 1978. That incident still resonates in Iran where Gaddafi is widely seen as a brutal maverick who played a double game with the West, in recent years dumping his nuclear programme to shake off sanctions, something Tehran has said it will never do. So it was no surprise that non-Arab Iran hailed his fall as a blessing -- the latest good news from the Arab Spring. 'The heroic Libyan nation rose up against the oppressor leaders of their own volition and proved that in the era of the awakening of nations, there is no room for tyranny and that the demands of the people must be respected,' said parliament speaker Ali Larijani. Kar va Kargar daily printed pictures of the fallen leaders of Tunisia, Egypt and Libya followed by those of Yemen, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, figures Iran hopes will be the next dominos to fall to popular unrest. But Gaddafi's fate brings potential dangers to Iran's interests in the region, not least because of the heavy involvement of the West in his downfall." http://t.uani.com/oyB9UB |
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