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The Atlantic: "Read up on Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's visit to the U.N. General Assembly in New York this week, and you'll come across headlines like Activists to Protest Ahmadinejad in New York and Controversy Comes to NYC Ahead of UN General Assembly. But here's the caveat: While Ahmadinejad's General Assembly visits are always cloaked in controversy, this year, at least thus far, the protests are largely emanating from one source: the New York-based advocacy group United Against Nuclear Iran, which counts some foreign policy heavyweights among its members... This year, by contrast, early reports of protests generally revolve around UANI's actions, though a few outfits like the pro-Israel group StandWithUs have also announced demonstrations. When it emerged that Ahmadinejad and his delegation would be staying at the Warwick Hotel in Manhattan, for example, UANI demanded that the hotel deny Ahmadinejad accommodation and set up an email submission form so that others could express their outrage and threaten a boycott of the luxury hotel (the group protested his stay at the Hilton last year)... UANI has also mounted an inflammatory billboard in Times Square and, more recently, on the back of a truck that will drive around near the U.N. and Warwick Hotel. Like the letter to the Warwick, the billboard invokes al-Qaeda by calling Ahmadinejad the militant group's 'silent partner.' While the U.S. government did accuse Iran in July of secretly partnering with al-Qaeda, links between the two entities have not been conclusively proven (a page on UANI website probes the nexus between Iran and al-Qaeda)." http://t.uani.com/pdWxet
Columbia Spectator: "Members of Columbia's international relations group CIRCA will not be attending a dinner with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Wednesday after the invitation was rescinded by the Iranian mission to the UN... CIRCA members said that they were informed by the mission on Monday that its students were no longer invited to the dinner in the wake of the media firestorm. But other students will still be attending the dinner, which will take place as scheduled on Wednesday. Ahmadinejad has previously held private dinners with students, diplomats, professors and others, and representatives from Yale and New York University have attended in the past. CIRCA members said that even though their invitation had been revoked, students from Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs would still be attending. Over the summer, members of the group were told that they might be able to take 15 students to dinner with the head of state, whose views on Israel, human rights, and homosexuality have drawn sharp criticism. Ahmadinejad is in town to attend the annual United Nations General Assembly." http://t.uani.com/puMutq
NYT: "Iranian state-run media said Wednesday that two Americans arrested two years ago while hiking along the Iran-Iraq frontier and imprisoned on espionage charges had been released. There were strong indications that the men, Shane M. Bauer and Joshua F. Fattal, both 29, had left the prison where they were being held and were on their way out of the country, though it was not clear where they would be immediately taken. Last week, the Gulf nation of Oman sent a plane to Iran for the purpose of fetching the men, The Associated Press said. A Swiss diplomatic convoy that entered the prison shortly before the announcement was seen departing, according to news reports. Masoud Shafiei, the lawyer acting for the Americans, had said the two would be handed over to Swiss diplomats who represent American interests in Iran in the absence of diplomatic relations between Tehran and Washington, The A.P. reported." http://t.uani.com/ov7gFw
Nuclear Program & Sanctions
Reuters: "Iran will not retaliate against its enemies who killed Iranian nuclear scientists but wants international action to help prevent further attacks, its envoy to the U.N. atomic agency said on Tuesday. Ambassador Ali Asghar Soltanieh called the assassinations, which Tehran blames on Israel and other foes, a 'crime against humanity' at an Iranian-organized media event in Vienna where the wife of one of the killed experts also spoke. 'We want not only our scientists, we want all scientists of the whole world, to be protected,' he told reporters on the sidelines of an annual member state gathering of the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). But, Soltanieh said, 'the Islamic Republic of Iran is not going to retaliate.' In July, university lecturer Darioush Rezaie was shot dead by gunmen in eastern Tehran, the third murder of a scientist since 2009. One was killed in a car bomb, the second by a device detonated remotely." http://t.uani.com/oZPD5p
Human Rights
AFP: "Iran on Wednesday publicly hanged a teenage boy convicted of killing an athlete billed as 'Iran's strongest man,' local media reported. Despite calls by human rights group Amnesty International for an 11th-hour stay of the 17-year-old's execution, Alireza Molla-Soltani was sent to the gallows at the scene of the crime in the city of Karaj, west of the capital. A large crowd of people had gathered to witness the hanging and security forces were present 'to ensure the sentence was carried out without any glitches,' the official IRNA news agency reported. Molla-Soltani was sentenced to death last month for stabbing the popular athlete, Ruhollah Dadashi, to death in mid-July. The teenager said at his trial he had killed only in self-defence after a driving dispute led him and two other youths into a confrontation with Dadashi, according to Amnesty. A spokesman for the prosecution, Ali Ramezanmanesh said the boy had reached 'religious maturity; and was over 18 years of age." http://t.uani.com/nkRtMi
Guardian: "The Nobel-prize winning author Gabriel García Márquez is revered for his evocation of a surreal and sometimes dangerous world where nothing is quite what it seems. In this case, however, the country in question is not his native Colombia but Iran under President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Copies of Márquez's 1996 work News of a Kidnapping have sold out from bookshops in Tehran this week after detained opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi said the book's description of Colombian kidnappings offers an accurate reflection of his life under house arrest. Mousavi and fellow opposition leader Mehdi Karroubi have been under house arrest since mid-February when thousands of Iranians poured onto the streets in response to their calls for fresh protests in solidarity with pro-democracy movements in the Arab world." http://t.uani.com/qye07Y
Opinion & Analysis
Anne Bayefsky in The Weekly Standard: "The Iranian minister of foreign affairs, Ali Akbar Salehi, is now scheduled to take part in the conference known as Durban III, according to a well-placed source close to the United Nations. On September 22, the U.N. will 'commemorate' the 10th anniversary of Durban I that ended just three days before 9/11. Given that Iranian leaders hope for the genocidal destruction of the U.N. member state of Israel and deny the Holocaust, their enthusiasm for the Durban phenomena blows the lid of the event's 'anti-racism' cover. The 2001 Durban Declaration claimed Palestinians were 'victims' of Israeli racism. Israel was the only one of 192 U.N. member states standing accused. Quite deliberately, therefore, Salehi will address one of the 'roundtable' gatherings organized by the U.N., titled, 'Victims of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance: recognition, justice and development.' Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was the lead speaker, and the only head of state in attendance, at Durban II in Geneva in 2009. At the time, his lengthy anti-Semitic diatribe resulted in a walkout by European states that hadn't boycotted the event already. The United States, Israel, Canada, and others had pulled out in advance. This time, the United Kingdom and France have decided not to wait for the inevitable Iranian slur and have joined 12 other states now boycotting Durban III. The boycott by all three Western democratic members of the U.N. Security Council veto-holding powers, along with another eleven states, is a unique rebuff of the United Nations. The representatives of governments that remain, however, will end Durban III at 6:00 p.m. in the U.N. General Assembly Hall by signing on to a new declaration that 'reaffirms' the Durban Declaration and its anti-Israel accusation. Backing Iran's idea of combating xenophobia and intolerance ought to send shivers up the spines of even the U.N.'s most ardent democratic supporters." http://t.uani.com/o0nmkh
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