| For continuing coverage follow us on Twitter and join our Facebook group.
Top Stories
Reuters: "Leaders of a U.S. House and Senate negotiating panel on Monday said they had agreed to compromise legislation imposing new sanctions that target Iran's central bank, despite Obama administration misgivings over the measure. They said they hoped to pass it this week. The lawmakers, the leaders of armed services committees from both political parties, said they had made some changes sought by the administration. These added some flexibility in the treatment of foreign institutions that trade with Iran's central bank, Democratic Senator Carl Levin said. Levin told reporters the bill was probably '96 percent' the same as legislation that passed the Senate last week. It would penalize foreign financial institutions that do business with Iran's central bank, the main conduit for its oil revenues. But changes were made that would allow the option of imposing restrictions on such foreign financial institutions, rather than cutting them off entirely from the U.S. financial system, Levin said. A waiver provision was changed as well to make it easier for the administration to allow exceptions for countries that have sought to cooperate with the United States in pressuring Iran, lawmakers said." http://t.uani.com/uXPRMt
AP: "The Obama administration has delivered a formal request to Iran for the return of a U.S. surveillance drone captured by Iranian armed forces, but said it is not hopeful that Iran will comply. President Barack Obama said Monday that the U.S. wants the top-secret aircraft back. 'We have asked for it back. We'll see how the Iranians respond,' Obama said during a White House news conference with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki on Monday. In an interview broadcast live Monday night on Venezuelan state television, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said nothing to suggest his country would grant the U.S. request. 'The Americans have perhaps decided to give us this spy plane,' Ahmadinejad said. 'We now have control of this plane.' Speaking through an interpreter, Ahmadinejad said: 'There are people here who have been able to control this spy plane, who can surely analyze this plane's system also. ... In any case, now we have this spy plane.' He added, 'Very soon, they're going to learn more about the abilities and possibilities of our country.' On Tuesday, a semi-official Iranian news agency said authorities have shrugged off the U.S. request. Defense Minister Gen. Ahmad Vahidi said the United States should apologize for invading Iranian air space instead of asking for the return of the unmanned aircraft." http://t.uani.com/uPTAoC
AFP: "US financial watchdogs have demanded dozens of big-name Western firms open the lid on their business with Iran, Sudan and Syria -- countries deemed by Washington to be 'state sponsors of terrorism.' Documents recently released show the Securities and Exchange Commission in a tug-of-war with household names like Sony, Caterpillar, Xerox, AIG and Siemens to provide a comprehensive account of their trade with the three nations, as well as Cuba... But the documents also point to the repeated use of a loophole that allows Western -- and in particular US firms -- to do business in Iran, Syria and Sudan via non-US subsidiaries... And despite a broad three-decade-old US embargo on Iran, Caterpillar reported sales to the Islamic Republic worth $23.7 million in 2010. Caterpillar later ordered non-US subsidiaries to sever ties with the country and that figure is down to zero this year... Government-rescued insurance giant AIG reported that since 2008 it had identified five investments totaling $233.0 million which related to Iran, Sudan or Syria... Sony reported revenues of $325.6 million in its trade with Iran in the fiscal year ending in March 2011, mostly through 'Iran-based distributors and in part through traders based in Dubai.'" http://t.uani.com/scvZpV
Nuclear Program & Sanctions Reuters: "A member of the Iranian parliament's National Security Committee said on Monday that the military was set to practise its ability to close the Gulf to shipping at the narrow Strait of Hormuz, the most important oil transit channel in the world, but there was no official confirmation. The legislator, Parviz Sarvari, told the student news agency ISNA: 'Soon we will hold a military manoeuvre on how to close the Strait of Hormuz. If the world wants to make the region insecure, we will make the world insecure.' Contacted by Reuters, a spokesman for the Iranian military declined to comment." http://t.uani.com/vTT44m
Bloomberg: "Iran needs to come up with solutions to face western countries' punitive measures that target its central bank, Mehr reported, citing Mahmoud Bahmani, the bank's governor. The country needs to be managed as if it was under siege for two years and needed to survive, Bahmani said yesterday, according to a report published by the state-run news agency. He didn't elaborate on what the counter measures may be. Bahmani said the central bank had worked toward decreasing foreign currency prices. It was challenged after the Nov. 29 mob attack on the U.K embassy in Tehran, which affected foreign currency prices, he said." http://t.uani.com/uEgW1y
Domestic Politics
AP: "Iran's official news agency says the country's judiciary has issued indictments against 15 'American and Zionist' spies. IRNA on Tuesday quoted Tehran's chief prosecutor Abbas Jafari Dowlatabadi as saying the suspects carried out espionage activities against Iran. He did not elaborate on the nationality of the suspects, nor say when they were detained. The report does not say whether the suspects include any of the 12 alleged agents that Tehran said in November had been arrested for ties to the American CIA, Israel's Mossad and regional intelligence agencies. Iran periodically announces the capture or execution of alleged U.S. or Israeli spies, and often no further information is released." http://t.uani.com/v0jRkb
Foreign Affairs
AFP: "A website the United States touts as a 'virtual embassy' for Iran is really an 'espionage trap,' the Islamic republic's spy chief said in media reports Monday. Heydar Moslehi warned Iranians that the website was 'a bait to lure them into an espionage trap,' the Shargh daily reported. 'Our people, in particular the young people, must be vigilant,' the paper quoted him as telling reporters after a cabinet meeting late Sunday. He said that the US 'virtual embassy' followed the same approach and objective as of the 'den of spies' -- the term coined by Iranian officials for the former US embassy in Tehran, which was closed after militant students stormed it in 1979 and took 52 Americans inside hostage." http://t.uani.com/u7M6sA
WSJ: "Iran's intelligence chief traveled to Riyadh for talks with Saudi Arabia's top intelligence officials, maintaining security contacts between the two neighbors even as Saudi leaders publicly accuse Iran of instigating political unrest and a nuclear arms race in the region. Iranian Intelligence Minister Heidar Moslehi talked Monday with Saudi Crown Prince Nayef, who is also the Saudi interior minister; Saudi intelligence director Prince Muqrin; and other top Saudi royals, the Saudi Press Agency reported Tuesday. Iranian and Saudi officials 'reviewed a number of issues of common concern,' the Saudi news agency said. Saudi accusations have mounted against Iran in recent months, with Saudi officials publicly accusing Shia-dominated Iran of inciting trouble among the Shia Muslim populations of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Yemen, and other Arab nations. Saudi Arabia and the U.S. also charge Iran with plotting to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in Washington, D.C." http://t.uani.com/v63FEC
Reuters: "The storming of the British embassy in Tehran last month was not a planned attack but the result of an explosion of anger at London's meddling in Iranian affairs, a group that claimed responsibility for the incident said on Monday. Three men who looked in their 20s said they were among the attackers of the British embassy compounds in Tehran on November 29 but expressed no remorse over their acts, which further increased Iran's international isolation. Mostafa Mostajeran, one of the representatives of the so-called 'British spy nest pickets' council,' said the intention had been to protest in front of the British mission and stage a 'mock arrest' of the ambassador. 'There had been no prior planning made to enter the embassy. But the rage people felt towards Britain led to the loss of control and resulted in the entry into the embassy,' he said." http://t.uani.com/s5vZ14
Opinion & Analysis
Thomas Donnelly in The Weekly Standard: "In his history of the long-running conflict between Iran and America, Kenneth Pollack writes of the 'two clocks' that measure time as it relates to what he calls (in the title of his book) the Persian Puzzle. One, of course, is the countdown to a nuclear Iran. No one knows for certain how much time is on this clock-it's difficult to get good intelligence about a program the Iranians are doing all they can to protect-but if the November report by the International Atomic Energy Agency is to be believed, there isn't that much. Iran has sufficient material to build a handful of weapons, has plenty of delivery systems, and may not tip its hand by testing a device. Pollack also speaks of a 'regime change' clock, arguing that 'a different government in Tehran-one more reflective of the will of the Iranian people-would be willing to discontinue or reorient the [nuclear] program to make it much less threatening.' But he also acknowledged 'there is little likelihood that such a new government will take power soon.' Pollack wrote this in 2004, and the regime's behavior since, particularly its thuggish suppression of opposition in the wake of the 2009 election, seems to have borne out his prophecy. The rapid ticking of the Iran nuclear clock also marks an increasingly dark hour for the United States and its closest allies and partners, because it coincides with a third clock that Pollack did not imagine in 2004: the timetable of retreat set in motion by Barack Obama. The combination of the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq, the accelerating withdrawal from Afghanistan, serial reductions of U.S. military power, and the administration's 'pivot' away from the greater Middle East to the 'Indo-Pacific' portends a new era defined by a rising nuclear Iran and declining American influence in the region. This also marks a fundamental shift in U.S. grand strategy, one that has taken a favorable balance of power in the greater Middle East as key to a favorable international order. Thus, since 1979-the year of the Iranian revolution, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Saddam Hussein's rise to power in Baghdad, and the seizure of the Grand Mosque in Mecca by Sunni extremists-the United States has become ever more engaged in the struggle to prevent any sort of 'hostile hegemon' from dominating the region. That strategy has achieved successes. Defeat in Afghanistan brought on the collapse of the Soviet empire and ended any outside threat to the region. One counterinsurgency and two conventional campaigns later, Saddam is dead and so is his Baathist tyranny. Al Qaeda and its associates are being suppressed, and they control no state (unless the Arab Spring becomes the Salafi Spring). By contrast, the Iranian problem remains unresolved. Tehran has continued an on-again, off-again, low-level war with 'The Great Satan' from the original hostage-taking to the latest attempt to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in Washington. Our response has been a very mild form of containment, one that imposes few costs on the Islamic Republic. This means that the third clock, the one timing our regional retreat, is the one that measures the geopolitical competition with Iran. And because the United States has for so long focused on tactics rather than strategy-and for Iran, even nuclear weapons are a means rather than the end in itself-we've lost track of the time." http://t.uani.com/sw79bI |
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment