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WSJ: "The Obama administration, its European allies and key Arab states are intensifying discussions on how to maintain stability in the global energy markets in a possible precursor to a formal embargo on Iran's oil exports and its central bank. Such an embargo would constitute the most direct economic confrontation yet between Iran and the West and would amplify tensions as Iran repeatedly threatens to close the Strait of Hormuz, through which passes about one-fifth of the world's oil supply. U.S. and European officials indicated in interviews they are taking steps that could lay the groundwork for such financial penalties as part of the effort to counter Iran's nuclear program. In particular, the officials said they are seeking assurances from major oil producers, such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, to increase exports to the European Union and Asian nations if tighter sanctions on Tehran's energy exports and central bank are enforced in the coming months." http://t.uani.com/vpX6WD
NYT: "Iranian state television broadcast video images on Sunday of a man who it said was a captured American spy sent to infiltrate Iran's intelligence services. The video report, also posted online, identifies the man as Amir Mirzaei Hekmati, an Iranian-American from Arizona, apparently in his late 20s. In the video, the man says he joined the United States Army after graduating from high school in 2001, served in Iraq and received training in languages and espionage. He said he was sent to Iran by the Central Intelligence Agency to try to gain the trust of the Iranian authorities by handing over information, some misleading and some accurate. If his first mission was successful, he said he was told, there would be more missions. The claims in the video could not immediately be verified. The C.I.A. declined to comment on the matter on Sunday." http://t.uani.com/uU7wDY
AP: "Iran has prepared for 'the worst case scenario' to circumvent toughened new Western sanctions targeting its central bank and oil exports, Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said in an interview published on Saturday. 'We are not really worried,' Salehi told the official IRNA news agency. 'Appropriate responses have been prepared for the worst case scenario, and we have devised a road map' to circumvent new sanctions. The remarks came after the US Congress approved a tough new proposal to impose an embargo against Iran's oil exports and to cut off its central bank from the world financial system, effectively seeking its collapse. The European Union is considering similar measures. Salehi did not elaborate how the 'road map' would deal with the fresh Western economic sanctions, which are in response to Tehran's refusal to curb its controversial nuclear programme." http://t.uani.com/tRVqa5
Nuclear Program & Sanctions Reuters: "Iran signed a deal reportedly worth up to $1 billion with Russia's Tatneft on Sunday to develop an oil field, a rare example of new foreign investment into the oil and gas sector of a country under ever tighter economic sanctions. Oil Ministry website SHANA said the development at the Zagheh oil field, on the Gulf coast of Bushehr province, would produce 7,000 barrels per day (bpd) in its first phase, growing to 55,000 barrels in a second phase of the contract... 'This private company is one of the world's reputable companies working in extraction of heavy oil which is why we wanted to use its experiences,' Oil Minister Rostam Qasemi was quoted as saying by the semi-official Mehr news agency." http://t.uani.com/smxehq
WSJ: "When the United Nations Security Council blacklisted Iran's Sepanir Oil & Gas Engineering Co. last year, the company's main German intermediary terminated their trading relationship, the German firm says-an apparent victory for international sanctions. But within months, another intermediary had seized on the business opportunity. Hansa Group AG of Duisburg, Germany, ramped up its trade with Iran's oil and gas sector, the company said, delivering industrial equipment from German manufacturers to a new Iranian company that didn't appear on the U.N. blacklist. This week, 18 months after the U.N. sanctions were imposed, Hansa Group said Germany's export-oversight agency had asked it to halt deliveries to the Iranian firm, as the European Union discusses updates to its Iranian blacklist. A spokesman from the German agency, known as BaFa, declined to comment... After the sanctions were published in June 2010, Hansa began to move into the business abandoned by Sepanir's former German intermediary, Salzgitter Mannesmann International GmbH, which 'ended cooperation as soon as we learned the Iranian Revolutionary Guards were involved,' a Salzgitter spokesman said." http://t.uani.com/rSKEct
Reuters: "Indian companies have begun talks with alternative suppliers to slowly replace Iranian oil, fearing their current mechanism for payments to Tehran for some 350,000 barrels a day (bpd) via Turkey could soon succumb to sanctions, industry sources said. Plans for fresh U.S. financial sanctions on Tehran have worried its Asian customers who fear they will have no way to pay for crude imports from Iran. India, which a year ago lost one conduit for payments, is already looking for alternatives as Halkbank, the Turkish bank handling some transfers, refused to open an account for Indian refinery Bharat Petroleum. Indian refiners are also upset that Iran has asked them to pay about $15 million as interest on delayed payments in the first seven months of 2011 when they could not transfer funds. India's biggest refiner, Indian Oil Corp., has sought an additional two million barrels of crude from Saudi Arabia for January, a source privy to the development said. IOC buys about 30,000 bpd oil from Iran." http://t.uani.com/vN5hf1
Bloomberg: "Iran will end almost four years of talks with Poland's biggest natural-gas company over development of the Lavan field and hand the project instead to an Iranian group, state-run Mehr news agency reported. Iran had been negotiating with Polskie Gornictwo Naftowe i Gazownictwo SA about the Persian Gulf field and will now sign an agreement valued at $1.9 billion with Iranian companies, the state-run news agency reported today, without saying where it got the information." http://t.uani.com/uESn3c
Foreign Affairs
Reuters: "The United States is investigating a combination of pilot error and mechanical failure as possible causes for the crash of a classified U.S. drone in Iran and does not believe Iran brought down the plane, according to two U.S. government officials. The unmanned RQ-170 Sentinel drone, which had been on a sensitive CIA surveillance mission over Iran, crashed and was apparently reassembled by Iran before being put on display in Tehran, said one of the officials, who was speaking on condition of anonymity given the sensitive nature of the investigation. While exactly what went wrong with the aircraft is not publicly known, it is now becoming clear that its operators could have crashed the plane and destroyed it if they had taken action while it was still at a higher altitude, according to a source familiar with the aircraft and its operation." http://t.uani.com/s1u9bk
AP: "A U.S. official says Iran will find it hard to exploit any data and technology aboard the captured CIA stealth drone because of measures taken to limit the intelligence value of drones operating over hostile territory. The official also said Saturday that despite Iran's latest claims to have hijacked the RQ-170 Sentinel and brought it down near the eastern Iranian city of Kashmar, the U.S. is convinced that the drone malfunctioned. 'The Iranians had nothing to do with it,' the official said." http://t.uani.com/siBAX4
Reuters: "Iran deliberately delayed its announcement that it had captured an American surveillance drone to test U.S. reaction, the country's foreign minister said Saturday. Ali Akbar Salehi said Tehran finally went public with its possession of the RQ-170 Sentinel stealth drone to disprove contradictory statements from U.S. officials. Iran, which put the aircraft on display last week, has tried to trumpet the downing of the drone as a feat of Iran's military in a complicated technological and intelligence battle with the U.S. Tehran also has rejected a formal U.S. request to return the plane, calling it's incursion an 'invasion' and a 'hostile act.' 'When our armed forces nicely brought down the stealth American surveillance drone, we didn't announce it for several days to see what the other party (U.S.) says and to test their reaction,' Salehi told the official IRNA news agency. 'Days after Americans made contradictory statements, our friends at the armed forces put this drone on display.'" http://t.uani.com/sohGil
Opinion & Analysis
Joel Brinkley in SF Chronicle: "The world is closing in on Iran, but not aggressively enough. It's time for Europe to deal the final blow. The Iranian attack on the British Embassy in Tehran was close to an act of war - as was the plan to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to Washington. Given the collection of recent provocations from this rogue state, the West's extremely slow-motion campaign to end Iran's nuclear-weapons program needs to be pushed to its denouement. In recent days, the United States and Europe have been imposing ever more penalties and sanctions - closing embassies, isolating Iranian officials. But to all of it, Iran's leaders simply shrug. 'We will not budge an iota from the path we are committed to,' President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad vowed. Now the most important discussion is under way in Europe. Over the past week, European leaders have been debating whether to impose an oil embargo on Iran. The EU imports 450,000 barrels of Iranian oil each day, about 20 percent of Iran's output. At a meeting of EU foreign ministers this month, several states, including Britain, France and Germany, advocated an oil embargo, but others balked. Greece, for example, complained that while the state's economy is in crisis, it can't go prospecting to replace Iran's oil. The EU said it would make a decision next month, and statements from Tehran last weekend show the regime is terrified of an embargo. But now Saudi Arabia - Iran's hated enemy - is ramping up production, specifically to replace Europe's Iranian oil. Sen. Mark Kirk, an Illinois Republican, said he won a commitment from the Saudi ambassador in Washington to increase production, his spokesman told me. And in fact, every day now, Saudi Arabia is pumping 600,000 barrels above normal production - the highest output in decades - causing some refineries to throw up their hands and say they can't take any more. 'Asian refiners are not taking extra Saudi barrels,' energy analyst Alex Yap told Reuters. A South Korea refinery said it was actually cutting its output because of poor economic conditions in the region. What's more, Libya is increasing output now that the fighting there is over, and the International Energy Agency reported that during the third quarter of this year, Iraq produced 540,000 more barrels per day than it had a year earlier. In other words, the world is awash in oil - even as weak economies are reducing demand worldwide. Europe can impose a total oil embargo on Iran and easily replace that oil from other producers." http://t.uani.com/tqo5Z1
Harold Rhode in Hudson New York: "As the Ayatollah Khomeini, founder of the Islamic revolution in Iran, said: The Muslim world is engaged in a war with the non-Muslim world, a war which will end only when the non-Muslim world converts to Islam. What, then, is Islam, and what is the form of this religion that Khomeini wished should rule the world? Although Khomeini, a staunch Shiite, wrote before he returned to Iran that Islam was 'one,' and that the differences between the Sunnis and Shiites were secondary, he also constantly argued that the problems facing the Islamic world were the result of three sources: the hated Rashidun Caliphs, who were the first four leaders of the Sunni world after the Muslim prophet, Muhammad, died; the Umayyads, who ruled the Muslim world from Damascus from ca. 660- to 750 AD/CE, and the Abbasids (750-1258) from Baghdad. The Sunnis, however, who make up about 85% of the approximately 1.4 billion Muslims throughout the world, see these Sunni rulers as the very embodiment of the Golden Age of Islam. This is the context in which we should understand why obtaining nuclear weapons in so essential for the Iranian regime. Possessing nuclear weapons addresses both of the problems mentioned above: At one end, it addresses Islam's eternal battle with the non-Muslim world. Nothing of this is lost on the overwhelming majority of the Muslim world, whether Sunni or Shiite, who, from their point of view, see that the non-Muslim domination and control of most of the world goes against the basic precept of Islam: that Islam is Allah's [God's] most recent and final revelation to man, and therefore is a supremacist religion that must rule the entire world. To think anything less would be heresy. Hence the massive admiration by all Muslims - even the Sunnis -- of Iran's dogged pursuit of nuclear weapons. At the other end, a nuclear-armed, defiant Iran would seriously threaten most of the Sunni dictators and tyrants who rule the Arab world whom the West (usually inaccurately) labels as 'moderates.' Over the years, these dictators and tyrants have whipped up anti-West and anti-Israel hatred as an a way to focus the anger and frustrations of their own people towards the outer world, so their people would not blame them, their leaders, for the massive poverty, corruption and lack of accomplishment everywhere, despite the staggering oil-wealth of many of these nations. Along comes Iran and demonstrates that these Sunni Arab leaders have failed to push back the West, while Iran has stood up to the West, threatened it, and successfully caused it to retreat. A nuclear, anti-Western Iran would enable the Muslims to hold their heads high and force the West into retreat. Of all the Muslim countries, only Iran will have proven that it is willing and able to stand up to the non-Muslims and to the Sunni rulers of the Muslim world. This is what the acquisition of nuclear weapons means to the present Iranian regime, and why nothing the West does short of changing the current regime will stop the Iranians from acquiring these weapons. From the regime's point of view, nuclear weapons free them to make the political calculations they would like, both in the international arena and within the Muslim world. They do not even have to be used: the mere threat of their use would be sufficient to cause most countries to capitulate to whatever they were asked, especially if there were nuclear-tipped weapons pointed at every capital of Europe." http://t.uani.com/szGrZN |
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