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AP: "Iran's navy has begun a 10-day drill in international waters beyond the strategic Strait of Hormuz at the mouth of the Persian Gulf, the passageway for about a third of the world's oil tanker traffic. The exercise could bring Iranian ships into proximity with U.S. Navy vessels in the area. Navy chief Adm. Habibollah Sayyari says Iran is holding the war games to show off its prowess and defense capabilities. State TV broadcast his comments on Saturday." http://t.uani.com/s84GvG
Reuters: "An Iranian woman sentenced to be stoned to death for adultery could be hanged instead, the students news agency ISNA reported. A court sentenced Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani to be stoned in 2006 but the sentence was suspended last year after an international outcry. However, under a judicial review being carried out she still could be hanged. 'There is no rush ... our Islamic experts are reviewing Ashtiani's sentence to see whether we can carry out the execution of a person sentenced to stoning by hanging,' said Malek Ajdar Sharifi, head of judiciary in the East Azerbaijan province." http://t.uani.com/vkmUWp
Reuters: "An Iranian opposition leader who has been under house arrest since February has accused the Islamic establishment of intending to hold a 'rubber-stamp' parliamentary election in March, his website Sahamnews reported on Monday. Candidates began registering on Saturday for the March 2 vote, which will be the first litmus test of the clerical leadership's public standing since a disputed 2009 presidential vote that precipitated months of unrest. Mehdi Karoubi was detained along with his wife, Fatemeh, when he urged supporters to gather for a Tehran rally in support of uprisings in the Arab world. His wife was later allowed out for medical treatment but he remains under house arrest." http://t.uani.com/tX2c6v
Nuclear Program & Sanctions Reuters: "Iran said on Saturday it has extended its crude export contract with Turkey for 2012, state-run English Language Press TV reported, suggesting it aims to trade via Turkey to circumvent tight sanctions imposed over its disputed nuclear programme. Turkey has said it is complying with the sanctions, after trying unsuccessfully to mediate between Iran and the international community. 'The National Iranian Oil Co. has renewed its crude export contracts with a number of Turkish oil companies ... by the end of 2012,' Press TV said in the report." http://t.uani.com/uW4aN0
Human Rights
AFP: "Iran hanged five convicted drug traffickers in a prison in the northern city of Shahrud on Monday, the official IRNA news agency reported. The report did not give the identities or ages of the people sent to gallows but mentioned that they were from different Iranian cities. The hangings bring to 277 the number of people put to death in Iran this year, according to an AFP tally based on media and official reports." http://t.uani.com/rFHRan
Domestic Politics
AP: "Iran on Saturday began registering potential candidates for March parliamentary elections, a vote that will be especially hard fought between supporters and opponents of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad within the conservative camp. The country's major reformist groups are staying out of the race, claiming that basic requirements for free and fair elections have not been met. In their absence, the poll for the 290-seat assembly is likely to pit hard-line candidates who remain staunchly loyal to the country's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei against conservatives who support Ahmadinejad. Whatever the outcome, the vote is unlikely to change Iran's course. The country is a theocracy and Khamenei has final say on all state matters." http://t.uani.com/vs5roc
AFP: "The daughter of Iranian former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani is standing trial on charges of making anti-regime propaganda, her lawyer was quoted as saying on Sunday after a closed hearing. 'After the court told her about her accusation of propaganda against the regime, she and I gave our defence,' Gholam Ali Riahi, who represented Faezeh Hashemi at the hearing Saturday, said according to the newspaper Arman. 'In three days' time, we will present the court with a supplementary defence text and then the court will decide,' the lawyer said." http://t.uani.com/rXi8hp
Foreign Affairs
AFP: "Iran stands ready to expand its military and security ties with Iraq, its armed forces chief of staff said Sunday, a week after the exit of US forces from the neighbouring Arab country. General Hassan Firouzabadi hailed the 'forced departure' of the US and allied forces that he said 'was due to the resistance and determination of the Iraqi people and government,' the state Islamic Republic News Agency reported. The statements were made in messages Firouzabadi sent to his Iraqi counterpart, Lieutenant General Babaker Zebari, and to Iraq's acting defence minister, Saadun al-Dulaimi, IRNA said." http://t.uani.com/uSA6Ap
Reuters: "Iran rejected as 'completely baseless' U.S. allegations that it was harbouring an al Qaeda member who is accused of operating as a facilitator and financier for the group from the Islamic Republic, the semi-official Fars news agency reported Sunday. The United States announced Thursday that it was establishing a reward of up to $10 million (6.3 million pounds) for information leading to Syrian-born Yasin al-Suri, who is also known as Ezedin Abdel Aziz Khalil." http://t.uani.com/vsF8Yf
Opinion & Analysis
Golnaz Esfandiari in Radio Farda: "The Arab Spring; nuclear activity; mysterious killings at home and alleged assassination attempts abroad; house arrests; fears of impending air strikes; the storming of an embassy -- these are events that made 2011 the year of the threat in Iran. And as made clear by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in November, Iran doesn't take such threats lying down. 'We reply to threats with threat', he said. 'Anyone who thinks of carrying out any act of aggression against the Islamic Republic of Iran should prepare themselves for strong slaps and steel fists from the powerful nation of Iran.' Some observers, such as Patrick Clawson, director of research at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, would go so far as to say there is already a covert war under way between Iran and the West. 'There are already attacks, assassinations [of Iranian nuclear scientists], cyberwar, and I think the strong interest on the part of the West and Israel is to delay Iran's nuclear program as much as they can through sanctions, through sabotage, through encouraging defection of Iranian scientists and, when necessary through low-scale war like assassinations and cyberattacks,' Clawson says. 'No one's interested in a large-scale military confrontation. But let's be honest, there is a military confrontation going on.'" http://t.uani.com/rqKYBL
Robin Mills in FP: "As the country that gave the world chess, it is only appropriate that Iran's current sanctions standoff with the United States resembles a game between two inept players. Tehran repeatedly makes bad moves; Washington plays better but has no path to checkmate. Events this week gave encouragement that steadily tightening Western oil sanctions on Iran, imposed over its alleged nuclear weapons program, were having an effect. Britain and France are working on a European Union-wide ban on importing oil from Iran, while an amendment to the 2012 U.S. defense authorization bill would try to close down transactions with Iran's Central Bank. China's leading refiner, Sinopec, halved its January purchases of Iranian crude on a dispute over credit terms, while Saudi supplies surged by a third. This is exactly the intention of the amendment: to narrow the circle of Iran's customers to China and a few others, giving them the ability to extract discounts and thus starving the Islamic Republic of revenue. This follows the stunning effectiveness of sanctions on Syria, where oil exports have fallen almost to nothing, and Shell, Total and other Western operators have withdrawn. (Of course, this has not stopped the killing, and Syria is but a bit player in global oil markets.) Iran's response was surprisingly panic-stricken. It's hardly as if the tightening of sanctions has come as a surprise -- they have been in the works for months, and the Islamic Republic has lived under some kind of oil sanctions ever since its birth 30 years ago... On Dec. 20, semi-official news agency Mehr News announced that Iran had blocked imports from the UAE, with which it did $15 billion in trade in 2011, to punish it for supporting U.S. sanctions. The Iranian foreign minister quickly backed away from this suggestion, but the damage was done: The Iranian riyal plunged by 10 percent against the dollar as traders hurried to offload the currency, and has now lost half its value in the past few months. The declining riyal is also part of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's policy to help fill the government's budget deficit ahead of parliamentary elections in 2012. This comes at the cost of worsening inflation, already boosted by the removal of fuel and electricity subsidies in late 2010 (officially 19 percent, but unofficial estimates put it as high as 28 percent). Iran's own mismanagement of its economy and oil sector does it more damage than sanctions." http://t.uani.com/tyjXt3
Bennett Ramberg in IHT: "'Anyone who is thinking of attacking Iran should be prepared for powerful blows and iron fists.' So declared Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, on Nov. 10, speaking in response to reports that Israel may strike Iran's nuclear plants. But the risk of tit-for-tat attacks raises a specter few seem to recognize: the first radiological war in history. General Masoud Jazayeri, deputy commander of Iran's armed forces, indicated what 'blows' and 'fists' could mean when he warned last month that Dimona - the center of Israel's never-acknowledged nuclear arms program - was 'the most accessible target.' The significance of the threat goes beyond the risk to Israel's nuclear weapons program. An attack on the Dimona complex could release the facility's radioactive contents, posing major long-term contamination risks to the reactor site and beyond. But in a region where the principle of 'an eye for an eye' has long held sway Tehran's advantage stops there. As the country now housing the Middle East's largest nuclear power plant at Bushehr, Iran has become the holder of the region's largest radiological hostage. Does this present an Israeli checkmate? In this volatile part of the world, maybe, but don't count on it. Potential and active combatants have historically been reluctant to target operating nuclear reactors. The United States, for example, refrained from attacking North Korea's Yongbyon plant to halt Pyongyang's nuclear weapons program, in part over radiological concerns. Israel took off the gloves and bombed Iraq's Osirak reactor in 1981 and Syria's Al Kibar plant in 2007 before they went into operation, betting that neither country would strike Dimona in retaliation. The bet paid off. Iraq did not have the capacity to strike back and Syria feared the consequences of doing so. Only in 1991, during the first Gulf war, did we see the first attack on an operational plant, when the United States bombed a small research reactor outside Baghdad. But Iraq had removed nuclear material from the plant before the war started, then tried its own hand at targeting reactors when it launched Scuds at Dimona. The missiles missed their targets." http://t.uani.com/w2LpSe |
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