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AFP: "Iran's authoritarian regime has secretly executed hundreds of prisoners, according to a new UN report detailing growing rights abuses in the Islamic republic. The mysterious executions at Vakilabad prison in Mashhad in eastern Iran were highlighted in a report compiled by Ahmed Shaheed, the new UN special rapporteur on the human rights situation in Iran. Shaheed, who assumed responsibility for the mandate on August 1, billed this as an interim report cataloging the most recent trends in the human rights situation in Iran. The report, which is to be presented to the UN General Assembly on Wednesday, details a raft of abuses from the denial of women's rights to torture, but the most shocking data was the skyrocketing rate of executions... 'Furthermore, authorities reportedly conducted more than 300 secret executions at Vakilabad prison in 2010,' the report said. 'Vakilabad officials, in violation of Iranian law, allegedly carried out the executions without the knowledge or presence of the inmates' lawyers or families and without prior notification to those executed,' it said. 'It has also been reported that at least 146 secret executions have taken place to date in 2011.'" http://t.uani.com/qIoIZP
WashPost: "Iran's nuclear program, which stumbled badly after a reported cyberattack last year, appears beset by poorly performing equipment, shortages of parts and other woes as global sanctions exert a mounting toll, Western diplomats and nuclear experts say. The new setbacks are surfacing at a time when Iran faces growing international pressure, including allegations that Iranian officials backed a clumsy attempt to kill a Saudi diplomat in Washington. Analysts say Iran has become increasingly frustrated and erratic as political change sweeps the region and its nuclear program struggles. Although Iran continues to stockpile enriched uranium in defiance of U.N. resolutions, two new reports portray the country's nuclear program as riddled with problems as scientists struggle to keep older equipment working. At Iran's largest nuclear complex, near the city of Natanz, fast-spinning machines called centrifuges churn out enriched uranium. But the average output is steadily declining as the equipment breaks down, according to an analysis of data collected by U.N. nuclear officials." http://t.uani.com/r6vTg8
Reuters: "Iran's nuclear program is struggling with low-performing enrichment machines but it would still be able to produce material that could be used for atomic bombs, according to a U.S. think tank. In a report coinciding with rising tension between Iran and the West, the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) also said tougher sanctions could make it more difficult for the Islamic state to obtain key parts for its uranium enrichment work... ISIS said Iran's main enrichment complex at Natanz 'is unlikely to ever produce enough LEU (low-enriched uranium) for a nuclear power reactor the size of' Bushehr. Western experts say tightening sanctions, technical hurdles and possible cyber sabotage have slowed Iran's atomic advances. But it is still amassing LEU and the experts say it now has enough to make at least two bombs if refined much more, should it decide to. Iran denies seeking to develop nuclear arms... 'Is the Iranian enrichment program on a trajectory toward being dedicated to producing weapon-grade uranium for nuclear weapons?' ISIS asked and replied: 'Unfortunately, despite its severe limitations, this program is able to do so.'" http://t.uani.com/nSdELb
Terror Plot
WashPost: "Iran is ready to 'investigate' U.S. charges that its elite Quds Force plotted to kill the Saudi ambassador to Washington, Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said Monday, while continuing to deny any Iranian involvement. 'We are ready to patiently investigate any issue, even if it is fabricated,' Salehi told the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency. 'We also asked America to give us the information related to this scenario.' Salehi and other Iranian officials nevertheless continued to maintain that Iran had nothing to do with the alleged plot, which has seriously increased tensions with the United States and its regional ally, Saudi Arabia. The request for documents seemed aimed at punching holes in the U.S. allegations, which Iranian officials have dismissed as a 'bad Hollywood script.'" http://t.uani.com/pfkQr3
AFP: "Iran should extradite or prosecute the high-ranking Revolutionary Guard official accused of plotting to assassinate Saudi Arabia's ambassador in Washington, the United States said Monday. The State Department also said it was supportive of Iranian consular visits to the other main suspect in the apparent plot, Iranian-American dual national Mansour Arbabsiar, who is currently being held in a US jail pending trial... The man US officials say was Arbabsiar's face-to-face contact in the Quds Force, Gholam Shakuri, alleged to be an aide to Arbabsiar's cousin, was also charged with trying to murder a foreign dignitary with a 'weapon of mass destruction.' It is Shakuri, who is still believed to be in Iran, who Washington says should now be extradited or face trial. 'According to the international convention on protected persons, Iran's government has a choice to either extradite this person or submit the case for prosecution on its own. We leave it to them to take action,' State Department spokesman Mark Toner told a press briefing." http://t.uani.com/qQ91mu Nuclear Program & Sanctions
AFP: "Iran plans to produce the first of its own enriched nuclear fuel within five months, Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said on Monday, the official IRNA news agency reported. 'We hope to produce the first domestic-made nuclear fuel plate within the next four to five months,' Salehi, former head of Iran's atomic energy organisation, was quoted as saying. He said the plate, made of uranium enriched to 20 percent, would be tested at Tehran's research reactor, which is currently running on low-enriched nuclear fuel imported from Argentina in 1993. Iranian officials have said the Argentine fuel reserves are nearly depleted and they need higher enriched uranium plates in the plant purely for research and medical purposes. But the United States and Western allies question whether Iran has the technology to make such plates... On Monday, Salehi said 'around 70 kilogrammes of (20 percent-enriched) uranium has been produced in Iran' so far, according to the latest inventory report he had seen, dating from September." http://t.uani.com/nJn4N0
Reuters: "Iranian gasoline imports have slumped by as much as 95 percent over the last four years, according to official government data, as rising refinery capacity and lower fuel subsidies help neutralize western sanctions aimed at starving Tehran of fuel. Iran's inadequate refinery infrastructure and rampant internal demand intensified Iran's gasoline import dependency until 2007 -- a vulnerability that western governments have targeted by blocking fuel supplies to pressure Tehran over its disputed nuclear programme. But gasoline imports have fallen from 204,000 barrels per day (bpd), or 32.47 million litres a day in June 2007 to at least a 10-year low of 10,000 bpd (1.59 million litres) in June 2011, according to Joint Data Initiative (Jodi) figures, while seasonal peak imports were down nearly 70 percent in January 2011 from highs of 244,000 bpd in January 2007." http://t.uani.com/pVYBo8
Human Rights
Reuters: "Human rights violations in Iran appear to be increasing, with political activists, journalists and others often facing persecution, a U.N. rights investigator said in a report released on Monday. The U.N. special rapporteur on human rights in Iran, Ahmed Shaheed of the Maldives, said in a report to the U.N. General Assembly that the Iranian government had not allowed him to visit Iran while making his assessment. Shaheed has 'catalogued an increasing trend of alleged violations of the fundamental rights of the people, guaranteed under international law, and stresses the need for greater transparency from the Iranian authorities,' he said in the report released by the United Nations. Among the abuses by the Iranian justice system that Shaheed has investigated are 'torture, cruel, or degrading treatment of detainees, the imposition of the death penalty in the absence of proper judicial safeguards, (and) the status of women,' according to the report." http://t.uani.com/nymOTQ
Domestic Politics
Radio Farda: "Iranian financiers suspected of growing rich through links to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) are flaunting their wealth through the import of exclusive fast cars, an investigation backed by the European Union has found. Models including Italian-made Bugattis and British-manufactured Rolls Royces are believed to have been purchased by senior shareholders of recently opened private banks. Investigations have revealed that import duties -- which should amount to millions of dollars -- have not been paid on many of the purchases, fueling suspicions of increasing corruption in Iran's economy. Some 48 exclusive top-of-the-range sports cars were reportedly imported between March and July 2011 by buyers in just three cities: Tehran, Isfahan, and Shiraz. The finding, by the British financial-analysis company Betamatrix, comes amid reports of rising numbers of fast cars being driven on the streets of Tehran and other major cities." http://t.uani.com/njiEbW
Foreign Affairs
Reuters: "A U.S. push to isolate Iran looks unlikely to make Tehran back down over its nuclear programme and other disputes, setting the scene for sharpening rhetoric and rising tension at a time when the two foes are preparing for elections. U.S. President Barack Obama, seeking a second term next year, says the Islamic republic will face the harshest possible sanctions for an alleged plot to assassinate a Saudi diplomat in Washington and has not ruled out military action. And the U.N. atomic agency is expected to publish intelligence data next month likely to strengthen suspicions that Iran may be working to develop nuclear bombs, providing the West with additional arguments to punish Tehran. Iran, which holds a parliamentary election in March followed by a presidential ballot in 2013, angrily rejects both the allegations - that it planned to kill Saudi Arabia's envoy to Washington and that its atomic activities have military aims. 'It is difficult to see any movement from either side to improve relations during the next year and a half,' said a senior Western diplomat in Tehran." http://t.uani.com/og26Dn
Reuters: "Washington has not given up on trying to secure a deal to keep U.S. military trainers in Iraq beyond the end of the year, as it frets about what it calls Iranian meddling in the region, U.S. officials said on Monday... Little said the U.S. desire to keep the trainers in Iraq was based in part on a threat seen emanating from neighboring Iran. 'Regardless of the question of troop presence, we are going to be working closely with the government of Iraq because we remain very concerned that Iran is meddling, not just in the affairs of Iraq but of other countries in the region. And that's unacceptable,' Little said." http://t.uani.com/oSZn8c
Opinion & Analysis
Richard Cohen in WashPost: "A mere moment or two after the Obama administration announced it had discovered and thwarted a plot by Iran to kill Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the United States by bombing a Washington restaurant, the doubters started to air their doubts. Columnists and experts, even some columnists who were not experts, said the Iranians would never be so sloppy as to commit a virtual act of war by setting off a bomb in the nation's capital. The alleged plot was crazy, they said. I agree. But so is Iran. It's not as if the Iranian intelligence services, particularly the Quds Force of the Revolutionary Guard Corps, usually operate deftly and leave no fingerprints. This is a regime that commenced what amounts to mass murder soon after it came to power. It executed not only its opponents but also its critics. It even went after exiled Iranians. In 1991, it murdered the former prime minister, Shapour Bakhtiar, in Paris. He was stabbed to death - how's that for sloppy? - and in 2010, when France freed one of Bakhtiar's killers, he was given a hero's welcome in Tehran. Iran was blamed by Argentine prosecutors for the 1994 bombing of the Buenos Aires Jewish center that killed 85 and wounded at least 300. It has been implicated in the 1996 bombing of a housing complex in Khobar, Saudi Arabia, which killed 19 U.S. airmen and wounded another 372 people. It is the chief sponsor of Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Both are terror organizations that Iran has used as proxies. More recently, Iran is suspected of playing a role in the 2005 assassination of Rafiq al-Hariri, five times prime minister of Lebanon and an immensely wealthy and effective businessman. He was killed when a bomb detonated as his car went by. This may well have been a group endeavor - Syria, Hezbollah and, in training and aid, Iran. Hariri was not only a force for stability but he was extremely close to the Saudi royal family and maintained a home in Riyadh. The Saudis took his death personally. The mistake with Iran is the tendency to think its leadership is rational. This may not be the case. The country's leaders are Islamic fundamentalists who would surely kill any member of the Saudi royal family, custodians of the holy city of Mecca and fervid Sunnis all. The Iranians are just as fervid Shiites. They have many enemies, including their own people, whom they oppress in the name of God and torture with abandon. In Iraq, the Iranians have gotten away with a proxy war against the United States. If they indeed undertook that Washington operation, it's because they have achieved so much and paid so little... The alleged Washington bomb plot does not tell you something that's limited to Iran's Quds Force; it offers an insight into the entire Iranian regime. It's too reckless to be allowed a nuclear arsenal." http://t.uani.com/npzJOu
Bret Stephens in WSJ: "Regarding the alleged attempt by Iranian agents to enlist a Mexican drug cartel to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States, there are two significant parts to the story. But only one of them is getting much attention. That's the part about how Iranian officials apparently felt little compunction ordering up a terrorist attack on American soil. Some commentators have noted that the plot does little credit to the supposedly expert tradecraft of Iran's terrorist Qods Force, suggesting that unspecified rogue agents may have played a role. Others have argued that Tehran's readiness to conduct the attack suggests how little they think they have to fear from the Obama administration. The real shocker, however, is how shocked the administration seems to be by the plot. 'The idea that they would attempt to go to a Mexican drug cartel to solicit murder-for-hire to kill the Saudi ambassador, nobody could make that up, right?' marvelled Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Information about the plot was initially met within the government with a level of incredulity more appropriate for an invasion by, say, alien midgets. Yet policy analysts, military officials and even a few columnists have been warning for years about Iran's infiltration of Latin America. The story begins with the 1992 bombing of the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires, an example of the way Tehran uses proxies such as Hezbollah to carry out its aims while giving it plausible deniability. Iran later got a boost when Hugo Chávez came to power in Venezuela and began seeding the top ranks of his government with Iranian sympathizers. In October 2006, a group called Hezbollah América Latina took responsibility for an attempted bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Caracas. Since Mahmoud Ahmadinejad came to power in 2005, Iran has increased the number of its embassies in Latin America to 11 from six. All this has served a variety of purposes. Powerful evidence suggests that Iran has used Venezuelan banks, airliners and port facilities to circumvent international sanctions. Good relations between Tehran and various Latin American capitals-not just Caracas but also Managua, Quito, La Paz and Brasilia-increase Tehran's diplomatic leverage. Hezbollah's ties to Latin American drug traffickers serve as a major source of funding for its operations world-wide. Hezbollah has sought and found recruits among Latin America's estimated population of five million Muslims, as well as Hispanic converts to Islam. And then there is the detail that Latin America is the soft underbelly of the United States... It's time to wise up. Until now, the idea of terrorist infiltration along our southern border has been the stuff of Tom Clancy novels. Not anymore. And unless Tehran is made to understand that the consequences for such infiltration will be harder than an Obama wrist slap, we can expect more, and worse, to come." http://t.uani.com/n1zee0
Jeffrey Goldberg in Bloomberg: "This February, a U.S. Navy P-3 Orion surveillance plane, on routine patrol over the Persian Gulf, drew some unwelcome attention. An Iranian aircraft made such a close pass that the American pilots reported that they could see the faces of their Iranian adversaries. The Pentagon was quickly notified of the near- collision. Two months later, the British warship HMS Iron Duke, patrolling the waters off Bahrain, was suddenly challenged by an approaching speedboat. Every sailor in every Western navy is acquainted with the al-Qaeda suicide-boat attack on the USS Cole in Yemen in 2000, in which 17 Americans were killed, so the Iron Duke's crew was quickly ordered to fire warning shots to the side of the speedboat. The two men in the approaching craft took the suggestion to heart, and sped away. The identities of the men are unknown, but some British and U.S. officials reached the highly plausible conclusion that they were part of the growing navy of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. Yes, the Revolutionary Guards have their own navy -- a bigger one, in fact, than Iran's traditional navy. (The traditional navy has 18,000 sailors; the IRGC's navy reportedly has 20,000 personnel, as well as a large fleet suitable for waging the sort of asymmetric warfare it favors.) And the guards -- protectors of Ayatollah Khomeini's dystopian vision for a radicalized Muslim world, enthusiastic exporters of terrorism, and rulers of a state within a state -- are becoming ever more aggressive in the Gulf. This year has seen a spike in such encounters. Western ships in the Gulf are now regularly shadowed by the smaller crafts of the Iranians. When U.S. strategists make lists of the many challenges posed by Iran, the capabilities of the IRGCN, as it is known, quickly rise to the top. The Gulf, of course, is indispensable to the smooth flow of energy resources (in 2009, more than 15 percent of oil traded worldwide moved through the Strait of Hormuz, the chokepoint between the Gulf and the Arabian Sea), and the Iranians are well aware of their ability to strangle the global economy. Only Iran's nuclear program -- the one its leaders claim is entirely peaceful in nature even as they develop the technology to make triggers for nuclear weapons -- is a greater preoccupation... Which brings us to the particular challenge posed by the navy of the Revolutionary Guard: It could very well spark a war with the West without an express order from Tehran. In a new report issued by the Institute for the Study of War, Navy Commander Joshua Himes, an expert on Iranian naval forces, suggests that this is a highly credible scenario: 'Though Iran could make a rational decision to initiate a limited kinetic strike to further its strategic aims, an alternative scenario exists,' he writes. 'An incident could arise from having the less professional (or more fervent) IRGCN sailors overstep their commanders' intent, miscalculate at a tactical level, and set off a chain of events that could spiral into conflict.' And if such an incident happens, there is no easy way for the U.S. to de-escalate it: Iran recently rejected an American offer to establish a hot line between the two countries' militaries." http://t.uani.com/riqXjy |
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