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Reuters: "Russia pitched Wednesday a proposal to Iran's foreign minister which it hopes could bring a breakthrough in a confrontation over Tehran's nuclear program, despite doubts in the West that the plan can make much headway. Since talks between global powers and Iran foundered in January, Russia has advocated a phased plan in which Tehran would address concerns that it may be seeking nuclear weapons, and be rewarded with an easing of sanctions. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said after meeting his Iranian counterpart Ali Akbar Salehi that he hoped the plan would lead to new talks between Iran and the powers -- Russia, the United States, Britain, France, China and Germany. 'We hope this will help us move forward faster than has been the case until now and that we can resume negotiations soon,' Lavrov told a joint press conference with Salehi. Salehi said the proposal had good elements and that Tehran's reaction was 'positive,' but suggested that a final resolution to the long-running dispute could still be far off. "We agreed that we will study all the details of this project and will continue to perfect it through expert work," he said. 'A very long journey begins with a first step,' Salehi said, adding that Iran was ready for talks but would not be pressured." http://t.uani.com/q9KS7n
LA Times: "Iran's ultra-hardliners have gone after a newspaper that acts as a mouthpiece for Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad after it published a supplement on the Islamic dress code for women in what is perceived as a battle for the loyalty of the country's middle class. Police officers were reportedly assigned to protect the staff of the daily paper, Iran, on Sunday, a day after publication of the supplement titled Khatoun, Persian for lady. A Tehran prosecutor was said to be drawing up charges against the paper. The 259-page special section on the history of the dress code, or hijab, recalled practices in pre-Islamic times, cited anti-Islamic social theorists such as Bertrand Russell and Sigmund Freud and traced the headscarf's transformation throughout history. Conservatives condemned the supplement and accused the paper of 'promoting permissiveness and religious laxity' in an effort by Ahmadinejad's press advisor, Ali Akbar Javanfekr, to increase his boss' street cred among the middle classes who despise him." http://t.uani.com/nkpzAs
Bloomberg: "Iran's Air Force plans to hold a joint aerial military exercise with an unidentified country in the region next month, Press TV reported. The exercise is due to be held sometime after September 6, the state-run news channel said in a report yesterday on its website, citing Brigadier General Aziz Nasirzadeh, deputy commander of the Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force. The report didn't name the country that will join Iran in the drill." http://t.uani.com/oOOxaz 
Foreign Affairs
UPI: "A senior Iranian general has warned Azerbaijan about getting too close to Israel, underlining fears in Tehran that the Jewish state could use Iran's northern neighbor to launch pre-emptive strikes against Iran's nuclear program. Israel has been quietly building intelligence and military links with oil rich Azerbaijan, a largely secular Muslim state, since the collapse of the Soviet Union two decades ago. The Israelis sell significant amounts of weapons and unmanned aerial vehicles to the government in Baku, on the Caspian Sea, as its intelligence services dig in along the border with Iran. That gives Israel a forward operating base to monitor Iran, particularly its contentious nuclear program, which Jerusalem views as a major existential threat. Over the last two years, tensions have escalated as Azerbaijan has become part of the shadowy intelligence war between Iran and Israel. It has become even more important to Israel since its May 2010 rift with former ally Turkey, which also borders Iran." http://t.uani.com/qwLt1T
Culture
Examiner: "On or around August 26 the Iranians mark International Jerusalem Day. They began Jerusalem Day in 1979 following a decision by the Ayatollah Khomeini and the Iranian regime on the third Friday of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, according to intelligence and terrorism analysts at the Meir Amit Center in Israel. The objective of Jerusalem Day is to express the support of Iran and the Arab-Muslim world for the Palestinian cause and the 'liberation of Jerusalem,' to defame Israel and call for its destruction, and to defy the United States and the West in general ('the arrogant super powers')." http://t.uani.com/pGyGDK
Opinion & Analysis
Alison Frankel in Reuters: "And what's even more distressing than the difficulty of finding and attaching Iranian assets for terror victims is the stark reality of who victims have to fight to get those assets: other victims. Documents unsealed this week in an attachment proceeding in New York show how much competition there is for Iranian assets. Salon Marrow Dyckman Newman & Broudy obtained a $2.6 billion default judgment against Iran for families of U.S. Marines killed in the 1983 bombing of their barracks in Beirut. In June 2008, the firm served Citibank with a restraining notice attempting to attach Citi-held assets of Clearstream, a Luxembourg unit of Deutsche Borse that allegedly helped Iran funnel money out of the United States. (The Wall Street Journal has reported that Citi holds $250 million in frozen Clearstream assets.) Sealed litigation followed before Judge Barbara Jones in Manhattan federal court. The judge unsealed the case earlier this month, and this week, a redacted version of Citi's Aug. 11 third-party petition was released. In the 20-page filing, Citi's lawyers at Davis Wright Tremaine list all of the other terror victims -- all with multimillion-dollar judgments against Iran in hand -- who have filed claims on the Clearstream assets. It's a very long list. 'There are claimants who may be adverse to the claim of [the Marines barracks plaintiffs] to the assets at issue in the underlying turnover action,' Citi's lawyers wrote. Liviu Vogel of Salon Marrow, who's representing the Marines families in the Clearstream case, told me he believes his clients are first in line for the Citi-held Eurobonds. 'The New York procedure for enforcement of judgment is complicated,' Vogel said. 'It's designed to reward vigilance. You could describe it as a race.; And that race, he conceded, is against the other victims trying to attach the same assets as his clients. 'There is a game of cat and mouse between the creditors [of Iran],' Vogel said. 'We are adversaries against each other.' Vogel blames the U.S. government for the competition. 'It's unfortunate that there are so few assets here in the U.S. that belong to Iran, and because of the status of the law ... and the failure of our government to be more friendly to victims of terrorism, some of those assets are not attachable,' he said." http://t.uani.com/n31m32 |
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