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Iran Primer: "In its latest action against Iran, the Treasury Department has sanctioned six new front companies connected to Iran's official shipping line. The six companies, based in Panama, are part of an Iranian game of cat-and-mouse designed to hide Tehran's ownership and mask its ongoing activities related to both proliferation and terrorism. The companies took ownership of the Iranian vessels after Treasury sanctioned their previous owners, working out of the Isle of Man, last November. Over the past three years, the United States has now designated over 150 vessels, companies, entities and individuals related to the Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines ( IRISL). 'IRISL has not changed its conduct; instead it has tried to change its identity,' said Adam Szubin, director of Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control. 'IRISL's ships have been renamed, reflagged, repainted, and renamed again. It has repeatedly shifted the nominal owners of ships and modified shipping documents to conceal its activities.' The action is part of a widening campaign by Washington to take tougher action against Iran, particularly after revelations about a plot to kill the Saudi ambassador in the United States... Treasury's latest sanction on Oct. 27-which chronicles Iran's effort to transfer ownership of IRISL entities from the Isle of Man to Panama-underscores how significantly Iran's presence in Latin America has grown since the 1994 bombing, despite efforts to contain it." http://t.uani.com/tE81iZ
BBC: "An Iranian actress who was sentenced to a year in prison and 90 lashes has been released after three months in custody, according to Amnesty International. Marzieh Vafamehr was detained for appearing in 2009 Australian film My Tehran For Sale, about an actress whose stage work is banned. Amnesty said the flogging had been overturned and her sentence commuted. The charity said it was 'deeply worrying' that other Iranian film-makers were still in prison. According to Amsterdam-based Persian language station Radio Zamaneh, Vafamehr was released without bail. In My Tehran For Sale, which is banned in Iran, she appeared in scenes without a hijab headscarf." http://t.uani.com/vyX4V5
Bloomberg: "U.S. sanctions don't clearly prohibit China from selling to Iran short-range cruise missiles that might threaten Persian Gulf oil supplies, a congressionally created commission concludes in a draft report. China, Iran's largest arms supplier, has sold $312 million in weapons to Iran since 2006, mostly short-range anti-ship cruise missiles, according to the document. 'China's provision of anti-ship cruise missiles to Iran could allow Iran to target, among other things, oil tankers transiting the Strait of Hormuz' on Iran's south shore, according to the draft annual report by the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission." http://t.uani.com/ufMRwp
Nuclear Program & Sanctions
JTA: "House Democrats failed in their attempt to block a bill that they say allows a stake in the largest U.S. copper mine to an Iranian-affiliated mining company. The bill, backed by Arizona's Republican delegation, would swap public lands in Arizona with lands owned by Resolution Copper, allowing for the establishment of the largest copper mine in the United States. Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday mounted a vigorous offense against the bill, saying that Resolution Copper was owned by London-based Rio Tinto, and that that company is partnered with the Iran Foreign Investment Company in mining uranium in Namibia." http://t.uani.com/vqgGY7
Domestic Politics
Reuters: "Iranian media reported last week that monetary authorities had reversed a 6-month-old decision to cut interest on bank deposits, aiming to mop up excess cash in the economy and halt a dangerous rise of inflation. The news made sense to economists, who said April's interest rate cut had prompted Iranians to withdraw their savings and rush to buy dollars and gold as a safeguard against inflation - creating heavy pressure for the rial currency to depreciate. It may have made sense, but it never happened. The media reports were premature, as the Money and Credit Council continued to sit in the Central Bank of Iran well into the night of Oct. 18 and eventually decided to leave deposit rates untouched, rejecting the proposal of CBI Governor Mahmoud Bahmani. Two Tehran-based economists, who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity because of concern about being seen as criticizing the government, said the confusion underlined an economic policy split at the highest levels in Iran." http://t.uani.com/vGaUuf
Reuters: "An explosion and fire at an Iranian oil refinery on Friday was brought under control and caused no casualties, while a separate oil field blast killed one person, the semi-official Mehr news agency reported. 'At the moment, the (refinery) incident has been completely brought under control,' Majid Rajabi, managing director of the Shazand oil refinery, told Mehr. 'The incident caused neither casualties nor financial damage and everything is normal now,' he said." http://t.uani.com/uuWcpV
Foreign Affairs
Reuters: "The United States on Thursday accused Iran's leaders of hypocrisy and said it has taken actions that suggest it might not meet its international obligations. White House spokesman Jay Carney made the comment in response to a question at a news briefing about Iran's internal politics. 'The leadership in Iran is hypocritical with regards to the Arab Spring and has consistently taken actions that do not suggest that they will fulfill their international obligations and we are very mindful of that,' Carney said." http://t.uani.com/sG8w2r
JPost: "A slated European Union lawmakers' five-day trip to Iran in late October and early November was canceled on Wednesday. The controversial trip - which was organized by five lawmakers, including two German European members of parliament (EMP), Barbara Lochbieler and Kurt Lechner - faced intense criticism from fellow EMPs and Iranian dissidents. Saba Farzan, a prominent German-Iranian expert on the Islamic Republic and EU-Iranian relations, told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday, 'The planned Iran trip by a European delegation and an Iran event hosted by a think tank in Berlin reveals a major dilemma. Germany refuses to realize that isolation is important, that isolation works and that we need more isolation, including cutting diplomatic ties with one of the most brutal regimes of this world.'" http://t.uani.com/rpCNnq
Opinion & Analysis
Firuz Kazemzadeh in WSJ: "In some 40 years as a university professor, I have been privileged to teach students who went on to serve their people as senators, ambassadors, prominent scholars and even U.S. president. None of this would have been possible had I lived in my family's homeland of Iran. As a member of the Bahai faith, I would have been barred from teaching freely-and I might even have been imprisoned, as seven Bahai educators now are. While many Iranian citizens are targets of repression by the current regime, the treatment of Bahais, the country's largest non-Muslim religious community, is a special case. Unlike Jews, Christians and Zoroastrians, who have certain limited rights under the Islamic Constitution, Bahais were declared unprotected infidels immediately following the Islamic Revolution of 1979. Bahais have faced persecution in Iran since their religion was founded more than a century and a half ago, but it was never as systematic as in the last 30 years. Since the Islamic Revolution, more than 200 Bahai leaders have been put to death. The regime has outlawed Bahai institutions, confiscated their properties, desecrated their cemeteries, demolished their holy places. Bahais are subject to constant state-sanctioned pressure to recant their faith. To stamp out that faith, Iranian Supreme leader Ali Khamenei approved the so-called Golpaygani memorandum in 1991. Photo copies describing plans to slowly strangle Iran's Bahai community were made public by the United Nations in 1992. One measure was to deny Bahais entry to universities, thereby impoverishing them intellectually and economically... The rights of Iran's Bahais cannot be separated from the human rights of the general population. That journalists, artists and activists languish in jails; that students are excluded from universities based on their religion; that seven Bahai leaders have been condemned to prison for 20 years and seven Bahai educators now face a similar fate; that all Bahais are virtual outlaws in their native land-it's all part of a single assault on human dignity. One hopes the rest of the world won't close its eyes." http://t.uani.com/ufWXW7
Reza Kahlili in WT: "The pressure the United States and the West is bringing to bear on Iran to keep it from acquiring nuclear weapons is all for naught. Not only does the Islamic Republic already have nuclear weapons from the old Soviet Union, but it has enough enriched uranium for more. What's worse, it has a delivery system. The West for nearly a decade has worried about Iran's uranium enhancement, believing Iran is working on a nuclear bomb, though the government maintains its uranium is only for peaceful purposes. When Iran began its nuclear program in the mid-1980s, I was working as a spy for the CIA within the Revolutionary Guards. The Guards' intelligence at that time had learned of Saddam Hussein's attempt to buy a nuclear bomb for Iraq. Guard commanders concluded that they needed a nuclear bomb because if Saddam were to get his own, he would use it against Iran. At that time, the two countries were at war. Mohsen Rezaei, then-chief commander of the Guards, received permission from the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to start a covert program to obtain nuclear weapons, so the Guards contacted Pakistani generals and Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pakistani nuclear scientist. Commander Ali Shamkhani traveled to Pakistan, offering billions of dollars for a bomb, but ended up with a blueprint and centrifuges instead. The first centrifuge was transferred to Iran on Khomeini's personal plane. In a second but parallel attempt to amass nuclear weapons, Iran turned to the former Soviet republics. When the Soviet Union dissolved in 1990, Iran coveted thousands of tactical nuclear warheads that had been dispersed in the former republics. In the early 1990s, the CIA asked me to find an Iranian scientist who would testify that Iran had the bomb. The CIA had learned that Iranian intelligence agents were visiting nuclear installations throughout the former Soviet Union, with particular interest in Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan, which had a significant portion of the Soviet arsenal and is predominately Muslim, was courted by Muslim Iran with offers of hundreds of millions of dollars for the bomb. Reports soon surfaced that three nuclear warheads were missing. This was corroborated by Russian Gen. Victor Samoilov, who handled the disarmament issues for the general staff. He admitted that the three were missing from Kazakhstan. Meanwhile, Paul Muenstermann, then vice president of the German Federal Intelligence Service, said Iran had received two of the three nuclear warheads and medium-range nuclear delivery systems from Kazakhstan. It also was reported that Iran had purchased four 152 mm nuclear shells from the former Soviet Union, which were reportedly stolen and sold by former Red Army officers." http://t.uani.com/vVILgs |
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