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Reuters: "Russia will look to revive nuclear talks between Iran and the world's biggest economic and military powers this week, hoping its special relationship with Tehran can help jolt back to life negotiations that some analysts consider 'dead in the water.' Presidential Security Council secretary Nikolai Patrushev is due to meet his Iranian counterpart and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Tehran on Monday and is expected to raise a Russian plan to restart the talks that collapsed in January." http://t.uani.com/pWt9Xh
Bloomberg: "Iran's Bushehr nuclear power plant will start on time and is not being delayed because of disagreements with Russia, RT television reported, citing an interview with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. 'I have already talked to President Dmitry Medvedev, who told me there is no obstacle to the plant launching its operations at the scheduled time,' Ahmadinejad was cited as saying by the state-run, English-language station. Rosatom, Russia's state nuclear holding company, has been finishing work on the 1,000-megawatt Bushehr station and has agreed to supply uranium to power the reactor and remove spent fuel. The project, which has faced numerous delays, was halted earlier this year after the reactor was switched on in August 2010." http://t.uani.com/nXSf2k
Reuters: "Iran has received two thirds of the oil debts from Indian buyers that had accumulated this year due to a sanctions-related payments problem, Central Bank Governor Mahmoud Bahmani told the students' news agency ISNA on Monday.'Two thirds of India's debt to Iran has been paid and the balance is being taken care of and there are no problems in this regard,' he said. Bahmani confirmed that Iran and India have discussed India paying for some of its oil in gold. 'Such talks have taken place and if necessary we will do that,' he said." http://t.uani.com/pOvx6Q 
Domestic Politics
Reuters: "The deputy to jailed PKK leader Adullah Ocalan made a rare appearance on television on Sunday to deny an Iranian report that its forces had arrested the second in command of the Turkish Kurd rebel group. A senior Iranian member of parliament said on Sunday that Iranian forces had captured the No. 2 commander of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), without giving a name. Murat Karayilan, the PKK's field commander, told a Kurdish TV channel from his hideout in the Kandil mountains between Turkey and Iraq that he was fine and free. 'These stories are just made-up games by Turkey and Iran to demoralize the organization,' Karayilan told Roj TV. Earlier, Alaeddin Boroujerdi, head of Iran's parliament's foreign affairs committee, had told the semi-official Mehr news agency: 'Our country's intelligence forces have carried out an important task and have arrested the second (highest) person in the PKK.' While Turkish media spread the news of the supposed arrest, which would have been a huge blow to the revel group, officials in both country were unable to confirm it." http://t.uani.com/nNZFOD
Foreign Affairs
NYT: "Mr. Maliki's support for Mr. Assad has illustrated how much Iraq's position in the Middle East has shifted toward an axis led by Iran. And it has also aggravated the fault line between Iraq's Shiite majority, whose leaders have accepted Mr. Assad's account that Al Qaeda is behind the uprising, and the Sunni minority, whose leaders have condemned the Syrian crackdown. 'The unrest in Syria has exacerbated the old sectarian divides in Iraq because the Shiite leaders have grown close to Assad and the Sunnis identify with the people,' said Joost Hiltermann, the International Crisis Group's deputy program director for the Middle East. He added: 'Maliki is very reliant on Iran for his power and Iran is backing Syria all the way. The Iranians and the Syrians were all critical to bringing him to power a year ago and keeping him in power so he finds himself in a difficult position.'" http://t.uani.com/pDKW9r
DPA: "Iran plans a state-organized protest targeting Britain over what Tehran calls 'savage aggression' used by police on demonstrators in the recent street riots across England, state media reported Saturday. The protest gathering is to be held by students in front of the British embassy in Tehran on Sunday afternoon 'in solidarity with the oppressed Britons and against British police terror,' the reports said." http://t.uani.com/pzOAW1
Opinion & Analysis
Reuters: "Beset by civil unrest at home and lambasted by the West and his Arab neighbors for his violent crackdown on dissent, Syria's President Bashar al-Assad can count on one firm ally: Iran. In a country that knows a thing or two about diplomatic isolation, Iran's politicians and media describe the Damascus government as an outpost of resistance to Israel that has been set upon by Washington and its lackeys in the region. While several Gulf Arab countries have withdrawn their ambassadors in protest at the violence, and countries once close to Damascus, Russia and Turkey, have turned harshly critical, Iran is the only big country still backing Syria, arguing anything else would spell disaster. 'In regard to Syria we are confronted with two choices. The first is for us to place Syria in the mouth of a wolf named America and change conditions in a way that NATO would attack Syria,' said Alaeddin Boroujerdi, head of the Iranian parliament's foreign affairs committee. 'That would mean we would have a tragedy added to our other tragedies in the world of Islam. The second choice would be for us to contribute to the termination of the clashes in Syria,' Boroujerdi said. 'The interests of the Muslim people command that we mobilize ourselves to support Syria as a center of Palestinian resistance.' A senior cleric pressed the message home. 'It is the duty of all Muslims to help stabilize Syria against the destructive plots of America and Israel,' said Grand Ayatollah Naser Makarem Shirazi." http://t.uani.com/oaSPsR
Raghida Dergham in Huffington Post: "Iran is confused and it doesn't have many options. Tehran might decide that saving the Syrian regime is an absolute priority and approve playing the Lebanese card through Hezbollah. It may also see in the GCC-Turkish alliance a Sunni axis opposed to it, being the country that has led a Shiite axis in Iraq and in Lebanon and made clear its ambitions to export its revolution and dominate the region. Its decision might then be to confront with a strategy of preemption instead of submitting to a new regional order that would not be in its favor. Yet such escalation by a decision from Tehran will not pass without a tremendous price being paid at the international level. There is a kind of a fragile international silence towards Iran, just as there is a kind of silent mobilization among the Iranian people against their regime. This is why the leadership of the Islamic Republic of Iran might consider that it would be better off to manage its own silence and not escalate. Escalation would surely clear the way locally and internationally for both an influx of international pressure and an 'Iranian Spring' simultaneously. The tug-of-war phase has entered the danger zone then, not only as a result of the military approach which Damascus has so far clung to bleeding the Syrian people, but also in light of the broader choices the regime might resort to in both Damascus and Tehran." http://t.uani.com/nyRx5L
John Bolton and Paula DeSutter in WSJ: "The more persuasive argument against globalizing the INF Treaty is precisely that China, Iran and North Korea are least likely to join. While ponderous negotiations proceeded at a glacial pace, Moscow and Washington would remain bound by the treaty's prohibitions while missile development elsewhere would continue full speed ahead. If the INF Treaty isn't expanded, we can expect Moscow to suspend its compliance with it, as it did with the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty originally signed in 1990. In that case, the U.S. shouldn't ignore Russia's violations but should suspend its own compliance with INF or, better still, withdraw entirely. President Obama's goal of a nuclear-free world is doomed for many reasons, but its inherent dangers are only made more manifest by the continuing spread of INF-range missiles. The U.S. motto on the INF should be: Expand it or expunge it. Given the odds against expansion, we should start thinking now about how to ramp up our INF-range missile capabilities. Assuming, of course, we still have a defense budget." http://t.uani.com/qKeNOX |
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