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ABC: "As thousands of Americans gather across the country for tearful ceremonies to remember the nearly 3,000 killed in the Sept. 11 terror attacks ten years ago today, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad marked the anniversary by repeating the conspiracy theory that the attacks were orchestrated by the U.S. as a pretext for war. 'The September 11 [attacks] were actually a planned game to provoke the human community's sentiments and find an excuse for launching attack on Muslim regions and occupying Iraq and Afghanistan, which led to the massacre of one million innocent people,' Ahmadinejad said today according to Iranian press reports. Ahmadinejad also said the U.S. and its allies attempt to wage war in different parts of the world in an attempt to increase the sale of small arms. Ahmadinejad -- and several others -- have made the conspiracy theory claim previously. Last year, the Iranian president asked the U.N. General Assembly to form an independent fact-finding group to investigate the 9/11 attacks." http://t.uani.com/oadBs3
Reuters: "Google Inc is advising its Gmail email service customers in Iran to change their passwords in the wake of a cyberattack that has affected a major swath of the country. Google itself was not compromised, but the attackers may have been able to break into the link between Gmail and a person's computer, essentially. As such the attack was the latest illustration of the difficulty and complexity of securing the Web. 'We learned last week that the compromise of a Dutch company involved with verifying the authenticity of websites could have put the Internet communications of many Iranians at risk, including their Gmail,' Google said in a post on its official blog on Thursday." http://t.uani.com/qAboyt
AP: "The head of the U.N. nuclear agency on Monday announced plans to publish new information backing up his belief that Iran may be working on a nuclear warhead - developments that leave his organization 'increasingly concerned.' The comments by International Atomic Energy Agency chief Yukiya Amano were significant because it was the first time he revealed plans to release some of the most recent knowledge available to the IAEA leading to such worries. Such new intelligence would likely be detailed in the next report on Iran's nuclear activities in November... He also had some positive words for Iran, saying it had demonstrated 'greater transparency' than usual, in allowing a senior IAEA official to tour previously restricted nuclear sites last month. At the same time, Amano urged the Islamic Republic to show more openness on other nuclear issues of concern. The agency, he said, 'continues to receive new information' about Iranian attempts to develop a nuclear warhead, adding that he hoped 'to set out in greater details the basis for the agency's concerns' in the near future." http://t.uani.com/nHYQzy
Nuclear Program & Sanctions
NYT: "He claims to be 21 years old, a student of software engineering in Tehran who reveres Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and despises dissidents in his country. He sneaked into the computer systems of a security firm on the outskirts of Amsterdam. He created fake credentials that could allow someone to snoop on Internet connections that appeared to be secure. He then shared that bounty with people he declines to name. The fruits of his labor are believed to have been used to tap into the online communications of as many as 300,000 unsuspecting Iranians this summer. What's more, he punched a hole in an online security mechanism that is trusted by millions of Internet users all over the world. Comodohacker, as he calls himself, insists he acted on his own and is unperturbed by the notion that his work may have been used to spy on antigovernment compatriots. 'I'm totally independent,' he said in an e-mail exchange with The New York Times. 'I just share my findings with some people in Iran. They are free to do anything they want with my findings and things I share with them, but I'm not responsible.'" http://t.uani.com/nEd0t3
AFP: "Russian energy minister Sergei Shmatko on Sunday promised further nuclear cooperation with Iran, after building the Islamic republic's first atomic power plant despite US objections. 'I say with certainty that in the future, we will have more cooperation in the Bushehr power plant, and also in the development of other projects in the field of nuclear energy,' Shmatko said at a press conference with Iranian foreign minister Ali Akbar Salehi. 'I think this (cooperation) is in the interest of the Iranian people,' Shmatko added, without giving a timetable for future projects or saying whether they would include new power plants. The Bushehr plant was linked to the national grid early this month, and on Monday Tehran has organised a ceremony to mark the plant reaching 40 percent of its 1,000 megawatts capacity." http://t.uani.com/rspoc5
AP: "Israel's prime minister says a decade after the Sept. 11 attacks, Iran's nuclear program must be stopped and that the possibility of extremists getting atomic weapons is a real threat. Benjamin Netanyahu spoke at a memorial Sunday marking the anniversary of the attacks in the U.S. In the speech, he repeated a long-standing plea to the world to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons. Israel considers Iran a serious threat because of its nuclear program, support for anti-Israel militants and frequent references to Israel's destruction. Netanyahu said the 'the possibility that the world's most dangerous weapons will fall into the hands of the world's most dangerous regimes is too real.'" http://t.uani.com/n8ljFF
Reuters: "Sean Stone, son of Oliver, seems like a chip off the old block. Fresh off the plane from Tehran, the famous filmmaker's son defended Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in an interview this weekend and supported Iran's right to a nuclear program as a defense against threats from Israel. The 26-year-old is a documentary filmmaker met exclusively with TheWrap at the Toronto Film Festival, offering some unconventional views. Criticizing the Iranian government is 'like someone coming to your house and saying the father shouldn't hit the kids,' he said. 'Who are we to tell them how to rule their country?' 'Iran is ruled by law,' he said. 'People don't like Ahmadinejad, but that doesn't warrant a war or an uprising.' ... Stone, who studied history at Princeton, said that Iran should certainly have the right to a nuclear program. 'Israel has nuclear weapons, Iran has the right to them,' he said. 'Every nation has the right to self determination for defense.'" http://t.uani.com/n0lugN
Human Rights
AFP: "Iran on Monday hanged five convicted drug traffickers jailed in the central city of Shahroud, the Fars news agency reported. The report did not identify those executed. The latest hanging brings to 192 the number of executions reported in Iran so far this year, according to an AFP tally based on media and official reports. Iranian media reported 179 hangings last year but international human rights groups say the actual number was much higher, ranking the Islamic republic second only to China in the number of people it executed in 2010." http://t.uani.com/q3GFgU
Guardian: "Iran's gay and lesbian community is struggling to win some recognition by coming out in defiance of a regime that criminalises homosexuality. A group of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Iranians have posted videos of themselves on Facebook in a campaign to highlight the discrimination against sexual minorities in Iran where homosexuals are put to death. Hundreds of Iranians in and outside the country have joined a Facebook page, called 'we are everywhere', which encourages members to share their personal stories online. Members of the campaign in Iran have posted audio messages or videos which do not reveal their identity while some outside talked about their sexual orientation freely." http://t.uani.com/niuSDf
Domestic Politics
Bloomberg: "Boosting Iran's crude production is one of the Oil Ministry's top priorities, the ministry's Shana news website reported, citing Oil Minister Rostam Qasemi. Crude output must increase by 1 million barrels a day by 2013, Qasemi said at a meeting with officials in the southern city of Ahwaz, according to Shana. Iran, the second-biggest producer in OPEC, pumped 3.6 million barrels of oil a day in August, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Steps planned for boosting production include developing new oil fields and deposits that Iran shares with its neighbors, using secondary methods of recovery such as gas injection and installing desalination units and other processing facilities, Qasemi said. He reiterated his ministry's plans to sell bonds worth 1 trillion Iranian rials ($94 million) in the current Iranian calendar year, which started on March 21, to pay for oil projects, according to the report published yesterday." http://t.uani.com/nV1EQJ
Bloomberg: "Iran plans to next week install a crude platform in the Persian Gulf that will allow the country to increase its oil production by 75,000 barrels per day, Press TV reported, citing Amir Panahi, managing director of Tasdid, an Iranian company involved in the project. The platform, referred to as P4, will be the largest in the Persian Gulf, Panahi said without giving details about the costs. It will be installed in the Reshadat oilfield located 110 kilometers (68 miles) southwest of Lavan Island, according to the state-run report published yesterday." http://t.uani.com/oPOzqB
AFP: "Several Iranian banks have been targeted in one of the biggest frauds in the Islamic republic's history, losing nearly $2.6 billion in more than two years, media reports said Sunday. The fraud was reportedly orchestrated by a single man, referred to as 'Mr X' in Iranian media, who developed a network and used forged letters of credit to purchase assets, including one of Iran's largest steel production companies, Khuzestan Steel Company. 'Mr X ran his master plan from June 2009 to last August, pocketing around 28 trillion rials (nearly $2.6 bn) and also unsuccessfully attempting to form a new bank,' said central bank chief Mahmoud Bahmani in remarks published Sunday." http://t.uani.com/qotp6K
Foreign Affairs
Reuters: "U.N. security handed over a U.N.-accredited journalist working for an Iranian broadcaster to New York City police after a stage-prop gun was found in his baggage, U.N. officials said on Friday... Several U.N. officials, however, told Reuters on condition of anonymity that the gun was not a toy but a real weapon that had been rendered incapable of firing so that it could be used as a stage prop. The officials also said that the journalist was working for Iranian state-funded broadcaster Press TV." http://t.uani.com/qMgDap
FT: "The Islamic regime in Tehran has welcomed the ransacking of the Israeli embassy in Cairo, comparing it to Iran's takeover of the US embassy more than 30 years ago. Ali Akbar Velayati, a senior adviser to Iran's supreme leader on international affairs, called the Israeli embassy in Cairo 'the den of espionage'. Iran had used similar words to describe the US embassy in Tehran after its seizure in 1979, a move that led Washington to sever bilateral ties that have never been restored." http://t.uani.com/pS3Gq8
Opinion & Analysis
Claudia Rosett in Pajamas Media: "On this tenth anniversary of Islamist terrorists striking America, there will be many tributes to the victims and heroes of Sept. 11, including Sunday's ceremonies in lower Manhattan. But the best way to honor America's dead is not solely to remember them. It is to win the war against the enemies who killed them. In that spirit, one of the best commemorations - perhaps the most appropriate of all - can be found in Times Square, where a patriotic nonprofit called United Against Nuclear Iran, or UANI, has put up a billboard about Sept. 11. It reads: 'AS WE REMEMBER 9/11 TEN YEARS LATER, AL QAEDA'S SILENT PARTNER IS COMING TO NEW YORK.' Under that caption is today's most prominent face of the Tehran regime, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad - who will be arriving in New York later this month to deliver his seventh speech since 2005 at the annual opening of the United Nations General Assembly. What does Iran have to do with Al Qaeda? Plenty, as the U.S. Treasury detailed in July. UANI, a bipartisan outfit headed by a former U.S. envoy to the UN, Ambassador Mark Wallace, provides a much fuller account, in a report on its web site, 'Alliance Against America: Al Qaeda and Iran.' Most immediately, UANI is calling on New York hotels to refuse lodging to Ahmadinejad and his entourage. The broader message here is that Iran, the world's leading sponsor of terrorism, now pursuing nuclear weapons, has been acting in cahoots with Al Qaeda since the early 1990s. This alliance poses a 'formidable and menacing threat' to America. This is part of the same war that brought - to borrow an Iranian slogan - 'death to America,' out of blue skies, on Sept. 11." http://t.uani.com/qjIaM2
Ronen Bergman in YnetNews: "In July of 2004, members of the National Commission established to look into the September 11 attacks were facing immense pressure. The target date for submitting the report the whole of America was waiting for had passed, and commission members were given a 60-day extension that was also about to expire. However, eight days before the final submission date, some commission members received word of new information; a real intelligence time bomb. Commission members didn't know what to do. On one hand, a whole new lead emerged; yet on the other hand, nobody could process this huge amount of information within days. At the end of the day, the commission chose a solution that turned out to be the worst of all: It crammed some of the information into three pages (pp. 240-242 in the report) written hectically, ignored most of the information, and in fact left the big question open. As it turned out, the prominent building housing the National Security Agency's headquarters in Fort Meade includes a particularly interesting room. In this room, the NSA accumulated tens of thousands of conversation records pertaining to one subject: The ties between Iran's intelligence service and al-Qaeda from the 1990s to the eve of the 9/11 attacks. The piles of information included 75 intelligence documents characterized as critical to understanding the relationship between Tehran and al-Qaeda. At the end of the day, the commission noted in its report that the issue deserves further scrutiny by the US Administration. However, such examination was not undertaken and may have never materialized. Indeed, this entire affair may have remained buried in the three abovementioned pages, had it not been for one brave woman: Ellen Saracini. Saracini is not an intelligence analyst or counter-terrorism expert. She is the widow of pilot victor Saracini, the captain of the Boeing jet that took off from Boston aboard United flight 175, which was crashed into the southern tower. However, Ellen was unwilling to see the death of her husband and father of her two daughters end with yet another line in the commission's report; she decided to seek justice on her own. Saracini approached attorney Thomas Mellon, who specializes in lawsuits against large corporations. Mellon's team members launched an investigation. They met potential witnesses, interviewed intelligence officials, CIA agents, Iranian defectors, a French judge and others. They even reached Israel in their search (in the interest of full disclosure, the writer of this article was also summoned to testify in the trial, as one of nine expert witnesses.) The investigation kept progressing, diving deep into the dark corners of the global world of intelligence and terrorism. Ten years later, Mellon and his team are convinced that they possess the 'smoking gun' that will tie Iran to the September 11 attacks. The legal team drafted a huge lawsuit, recently submitted to the Manhattan District Court. What hides inside it is far from being routine. The lawsuit is premised on a dramatic charge: The responsibility for the 9/11 attacks lies not only with al-Qaeda, but also with Iran and Hezbollah, based on what attorneys say is clear, unequivocal evidence. The case has far-reaching implications, which explain why the US government is not eager to look into the conversation records in the abovementioned NSA room. A ruling that Iran is linked to the attacks would pose a tough test to Administration officials: On the one hand, they would not be able to ignore such verdict. Yet on the other hand, what exactly will they do with it? Will they attack Iran, just as they invaded Afghanistan and Iraq?" http://t.uani.com/oAsvWI
Ali Vez in FP: "The Bushehr reactor's troubled past could be a prologue to its future. Although the reactor itself does not help Iran obtain nuclear weapons -- the Russians, according to a 2005 agreement, supply its fuel and remove its waste in order to minimize the weapons proliferation risk -- it is plagued with many of the elements that have contributed to the world's major nuclear mishaps, from technical problems to political miscalculations to natural disasters. Despite having no experience in operating nuclear reactors, Iran is insisting on taking over management of the reactor from Russia only one year after it goes online. The lack of independent nuclear regulators, the absence of highly experienced operators, and Iran's refusal to ratify international conventions on nuclear safety renders Bushehr highly vulnerable to a nuclear catastrophe. And at Bushehr, despite Iranian claims to the contrary, politics is the priority. Will those politics, as in the Soviet Union's colossal missteps in Chernobyl, take precedence over safety? In August 2010, yearning to prove that delay is not defeat, the Iranian government orchestrated a premature launch of the nuclear plant. This proved to be a major failure: Operators were forced to shut down and remove fuel from the reactor after an antiquated emergency-cooling pump broke down. More worrisome, perhaps, is that like Japan's doomed Fukushima nuclear power plant -- crippled by this March's earthquake and tsunami -- Bushehr is located in an earthquake-prone area, at the juncture of three tectonic plates. Lusting for the long overdue inauguration, decision makers in Tehran dismissed warnings from Iranian scientists in a May 2011 report about seismic threats. Iran's dim record in emergency preparedness is an ominous sign for the people of Bushehr and their neighbors in other Persian Gulf countries. Yet last year, Ali Akbar Salehi, the current Iranian foreign minister who was then the country's nuclear chief, said, 'Despite all pressure, sanctions, and hardships imposed by Western nations, we are now witnessing the start-up of the largest symbol of Iran's peaceful nuclear activities.' What Salehi failed to mention was the tiny share of power this large symbol will provide Iran: Once up and running, the Bushehr reactor will generate 2 percent of Iran's electricity output, which pales in comparison with the 18 percent waste in the country's transmission lines. After nearly 37 long years, with the inauguration on Sept. 12 and an official launch set for the end of this year, Iran's wait for its nuclear Godot is finally coming to an end. But given Bushehr's ill-fated history, it might be better off waiting indefinitely." http://t.uani.com/qzEa4V
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