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AFP: "Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Tuesday reiterated Tehran's readiness to 'immediately' stop production of low enriched uranium of 20 percent, provided world powers give it the nuclear material. 'If they give us the 20 percent (enriched) fuel, we will immediately halt 20 percent (enrichment),' Ahamdinejad said in an interview aired live on Iranian state-run television repeating his comments to the New York Times when he was in New York to attend the UN General Assembly in late September... Iran started enriching uranium at 20 percent level in February 2010 after failed negotiation over a fuel swap which would have seen Iran shipping out its 3.5 percent enriched uranium in exchange for 20 percent fuel from Russia and France. According to figures given by the International Atomic Energy Agency published in September Iran has produced 70 kilos (155 pounds) of 20 percent enriched uranium... Ahmadinejad insisted that repeating Iran's readiness to give up 20 percent enrichment was 'a way to disarm (world powers) ... who say 20 percent means one step closer to the bomb.' He added, however, that 'we need fuel to 3.5 percent for our plants and research.'" http://t.uani.com/qjk1NK
AP: "Iran criticized Turkey on Tuesday for agreeing to allow NATO to station an early warning radar in the southeast of the country that will serve as part of the alliance's missile defense system. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad claimed the defense system was meant to protect Israel against Iranian missile attacks in the event a war breaks out with the Jewish state. 'The missile defense shield is aimed at defending the Zionist regime. They don't want to let our missiles land in the occupied territories (Israel) if one day they take action against us. That's why they put it there,' Ahmadinejad said in an address to the nation on state TV late Tuesday." http://t.uani.com/pXzcj7
Guardian: "Pressure is mounting on Iran to determine the fate of Kouhyar Goudarzi, an Iranian human rights activist who remains missing two months after being arrested. Officials are refusing to acknowledge the arrest of the 25-year-old member of the Committee for Human Rights Reporters (CHRR) in Iran, who is believed to have been picked up from a friend's house in Tehran on 31 July along with two of his friends. His lawyer and family, who contacted the officials, have so far not received any information that could shed light on where or under what circumstances he is currently being kept. But Behnam Ganji, a friend and flatmate who was detained with Goudarzi and later released, is reported to have met him in Tehran's Evin prison, where scores of political and human rights activists arrested in the aftermath of Iran's disputed presidential elections in 2009 are being held. Concerns over Goudarzi's situation have escalated in recent days after Ganji and another mutual friend, Nahal Sahabi, killed themselves under mysterious circumstances." http://t.uani.com/nWzoLH
Nuclear Program & Sanctions
WSJ: "U.K. Defense Minister Liam Fox said a nuclear-armed Iran would trigger an arms race in the Middle East, one of the world's most unstable regions. Speaking at the Conservative Party's annual conference, Mr. Fox said Iran was a huge danger to the U.K. and that the world shouldn't rule out any option, including military action, to stop its advance. If Iran developed nuclear weapons, 'I predict it would not be very long before Saudi Arabia, probably Egypt and probably Turkey would become nuclear powers,' he told a fringe meeting at the conference. 'A new arms race in one of the world's most dangerous regions' would put the world in a 'very dangerous situation,' he said." http://t.uani.com/ok1lFq
Human Rights
Guardian: "The BBC's head of global news has called on the UK government to rebuke Iran after relatives of 10 of the corporation's staff were arrested or intimidated following a documentary about the country's supreme leader. Peter Horrocks claimed on Wednesday that Iran was responsible for a 'dramatic increase in anti-BBC rhetoric' and that attempts to intimidate the corporation had reached new levels since mid-September, when the BBC aired a documentary on Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. In a post on the BBC's Editors blog, Horrocks said that Tehran had intensified its blocking of the corporation's Persian TV channel, and that relatives and friends of 10 members of staff had been arrested." http://t.uani.com/qePJcI
Domestic Politics
Reuters: "Iran's cinema owners have threatened to close their movie houses to protest against costs that have soared since energy subsidies were slashed last year, sending a highly visible message of opposition to the government's key economic policy. Despite restrictions on foreign films, often banned for reasons of morality, movie-going is hugely popular in Iran which has a lively domestic film industry, but the cinemas say rising costs are driving them out of business. 'After the implementation of the (subsidy) plan, the price of electricity, water and gas increased by 10 to 15 times, while the income of the cinemas did not increase,' Habib Kavoush, a spokesman for the Cinema Guild told Sharq, a reformist newspaper, on Tuesday." http://t.uani.com/qaGzd2
Foreign Affairs
FT: "The Saudi Arabian government blamed an unnamed foreign power - normally a code word for Iran - for trying to stoke trouble in the heavily Shia-populated area around the city of al-Qatif after 14 people were injured in clashes on Monday... Saudi Arabia has openly accused Iran several times this year of meddling in the affairs of Arab countries and fomenting instability. In April, Prince Khalid bin Sultan, assistant minister of defence and aviation, used a visit to the eastern province to criticise Iran's 'rhetoric' and urge his troops to be ready for all 'possibilities.'" http://t.uani.com/qMkvvX
Bloomberg: "Iran, the target of sanctions that frustrate the country's efforts to modernize its aging aircraft fleet, is trying to strike a deal with Ukraine for the joint production of regional passenger planes. Iran plans to build Antonov-158s because the twin-jet aircraft suits its needs, said Manouchehr Manteqi, managing director of the state-run Aviation Industries Organization, according to the official Islamic Republic News Agency. Ukraine's Antonov company has given technological assistance to Iran for the production of small aircraft and the two countries aim to build commercial planes together, Manteqi told Iranian journalists in Tehran yesterday after a meeting with Ukrainian officials. The Antonov-158, a bigger version of the Antonov-148, can carry as many as 99 passengers, he said." http://t.uani.com/rmxMmu
Opinion & Analysis
Bloomberg Editorial Board: "'U.S. and international officials appear to agree that the sanctions have not, to date, hurt Iran's economy to the point at which the core Western goals on Iran's nuclear program can be accomplished.' That was the conclusion of a report last month by Kenneth Katzman of the Congressional Research Service, a nonpartisan group that writes policy and legal analysis for lawmakers. A prime example of the porousness of the sanctions can be found in November's issue of Bloomberg Markets magazine, which focuses on the business ethics of the petrochemical conglomerate owned by Charles and David Koch, the billionaire brothers who are big donors to conservative political causes. Starting in the 1990s and until at least 2007, a Koch Industries Inc. subsidiary with offices in Italy and Germany circumvented the U.S. embargo by selling millions of dollars of equipment to Iran's oil industry. Did Koch break the law? It seems not. The company relied on a loophole in the 1996 Iran Sanctions Act and subsequent laws and executive orders that make it illegal for U.S. companies to do business in Iran's oil sector, the lifeblood of the rogue nation's economy. This weakness in the sanctions regime has allowed opportunistic foreign subsidiaries of American companies to conduct business in Iran as long as American or U.S.-based employees weren't involved in the transactions... Koch is hardly the only U.S. company to have benefited from this shortcoming in the law. According to the Congressional Research Service report, Honeywell International Inc., General Electric Co., Caterpillar Inc., Halliburton Co. and Huntsman Corp. -- the family business of Republican presidential hopeful Jon Huntsman -- have all conducted business in Iran through foreign subsidiaries. These companies began pulling back operations only after a 2005 scandal, when it came to light that Halliburton, where Vice President Dick Cheney had served as chief executive officer, used a subsidiary registered in the Cayman Islands to carry out contracts for work on oil fields in Iran. Nobody knows how much commerce is being done this way with Iran today -- because it is not illegal, it isn't being carefully tracked... This dangerous situation could be remedied with an unequivocal prohibition on commerce by U.S. companies and their subsidiaries with Iran. Language to that effect was included in the Senate version of last year's measure, but was stripped out of the law before it was sent to President Barack Obama -- another demonstration of effective resistance by some business trade groups and their allies in Congress. Iran gets closer each day to developing a nuclear weapon, further destabilizing an already shaky region. The U.S. faces an uphill battle in rallying international support for tougher sanctions, and the unseemly laxity toward American companies leaves the administration open to justified accusations of hypocrisy. Congress could ease this diplomatic challenge -- and make the world a somewhat safer place -- with a stricter law on sales to Iran." http://t.uani.com/pmFkMV
Michael Rubin in Commentary: "On Tuesday, the National Iranian American Council (NIAC) again held an event on Capitol Hill to advocate against sanctions on Iran; never mind Iran's nuclear developments, state sponsorship of terrorism, or incitement. Their panel included fierce partisans and even a member of a consulting firm close to the Rafsanjani camp, each talking about why sanctions are bad, and how the United States needs to try even harder to convince Iran to unclench its fist. While NIAC claims to be the largest Iranian American advocacy organization in the United States, its own internal audits suggest the organization recognizes this may not be untrue. And while NIAC says it advocates for Iranian American empowerment, most of its activities appear geared more toward breaking down any biting sanctions directed at the Islamic Republic. The question about what motivates NIAC is fair: There is a major discrepancy between the organization's public face and its private actions. The organization has not always been honest: While it promoted the fiction of a 2003 Grand Bargain offer by Iran, internal emails released in the course of the discovery phase of its lawsuit show the Iranian ambassador at the United Nations dismissing the Iranian provenance of the offer in the weeks and months before NIAC promoted the offer as genuine in order to play partisan games in Washington. Now, thanks to Google's ever-expanding crawling of the internet, there is a new resource that sheds new light into the motivation of Trita Parsi, the organization's leader: While studying in Sweden, Parsi sometimes spelled his first name Terita, and used to participate actively in chat groups. Parsi's contributions provide interesting insights into the future NIAC leader's views about Iran, its alleged enemies, and his antipathy toward any assimilation of the Iranian community in America. Here Trita is, for example, condemning the American melting pot and arguing instead that Iranians in America must resist assimilation. Why Parsi believes that celebration of cultural identity and the embrace of what America stands for are diametrically opposed is beyond me... It has been some time since Parsi was a student, and perhaps he wishes to dismiss his university-era rants as a mistake of youth. Nevertheless, he has never disassociated himself from such views. It may be time for the lawmakers Parsi seeks to influence to ask when or even if he changed his mind regarding the value of the United States, its melting pot, the danger of Iran's nuclear program, and whether or not he still embraces the same conspiracy theories he once promoted in his internet ramblings." http://t.uani.com/oQbbpx
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