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NewsCore: "The U.S. State Department offered a $10 million reward Thursday for information that helps authorities find Ezedin Abdel Aziz Khalil, better known as Yasin al Suri, an Iran-based senior financier of Al Qaeda. Suri, operating under an agreement between Al Qaeda and the Iranian government since 2005, allegedly moves money and recruits through Iran and on to Pakistan and Afghanistan, the department said in its announcement. He is an important fundraiser for the terrorist network and has collected money from donors throughout the Persian Gulf region, the department said." http://t.uani.com/sudOFb
AP: "A federal judge has signed a default judgment finding Iran, the Taliban and al-Qaida liable in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Judge George Daniels in Manhattan signed the judgment Thursday, a week after hearing testimony in the 10-year-old case. The signed ruling, which he promised last week, came in a $100 billion lawsuit brought by family members of victims of the attacks. He directed a magistrate judge to preside over remaining issues, including fixing compensatory and punitive damages. Daniels signed findings of fact saying the plaintiffs had established that the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks were caused by the support the defendants provided to al-Qaida. The findings also said Iran continues to provide material support and resources to al-Qaida by providing a safe haven for al-Qaida leadership and rank-and-file al-Qaida members." http://t.uani.com/ujBnz3
NYT: "Iran put neighbors on notice Thursday that it was about to conduct vast naval exercises in the Arabian Sea, including war games near the Strait of Hormuz, a vital shipping lane for international oil traffic. The exercises, to start Saturday and last 10 days, are Iran's first since May 2010 and were described by the official news media as the largest the country ever planned. The scale of the maneuvers appeared intended to demonstrate Iran's military capabilities as it faces increased isolation over its suspect nuclear energy program. The exercises are bound to put Iranian warships close to vessels of the United States Fifth Fleet, based in Bahrain, which patrols some of the same waters, including the Strait of Hormuz." http://t.uani.com/u1Lbtu
Nuclear Program & Sanctions Bloomberg: "The clandestine arrangement worked smoothly for years. The Israeli company shipped its Internet- monitoring equipment to a distributor in Denmark. Once there, workers stripped away the packaging and removed the labels. Then they sent it to a man named 'Hossein' in Iran, an amiable technology distributor known to them only by his first name and impeccable English, say his partners in Israel and Denmark. Israeli trade, customs and defense officials say their departments didn't know that the systems for peering into Internet traffic, sold under the brand name NetEnforcer, had gone to a country whose leaders have called for the destruction of the Jewish state. Israel's ban on trade with its enemy failed, even though a paper trail on the deals was available in Denmark. The transactions illustrate how ineffective governments have been in blocking a global trade in new, intrusive surveillance technologies that authoritarian regimes can use as weapons for repression." http://t.uani.com/ukXDTY
WSJ: "Alibaba.com Ltd.'s trade website was inaccessible Thursday to people in Iran, according to a person familiar with the matter, just one day after the Chinese government publicly complained that Chinese buyers of Iran's iron ore had problems doing business there. It is unclear what caused the site outage or even whether the incidents are related, but it marks the latest business hiccup between two countries that have long shared a close diplomatic relationship, as the Iranian government comes under mounting international pressure over its alleged nuclear efforts. On Wednesday, China's Ministry of Commerce published a report saying that Chinese companies have had difficulty conducting business in Iran, and that iron-ore importers have been victims of fraud and 'shoddy business practices.' A ministry spokesman referred questions to China's Foreign Ministry, which didn't respond for comment." http://t.uani.com/sy90bh
Reuters: "China has bought enough spot crude from the Middle East, Africa and Russia in January to replace lost Iranian oil supply, trade sources said on Friday, putting it in a strong position as it tussles with the Islamic Republic over payment terms for 2012 contracts. China will load an additional 12.43 million barrels of crude from Iraq, Russia and West Africa in January, more than covering 285,000 barrels per day (bpd) supply cut from Iran, according to trade sources and shipping data. Sinopec Corp, the country's top refiner, cut its crude shipments from Iran for January as the two haggle over terms for next year's supplies. A long-term decline in exports to the world's second-largest oil consumer would be a major blow for Iran, as China is the largest customer for its crude sales, which are under increasing threat from growing U.S. and EU sanctions." http://t.uani.com/vZ8sJ3
Bloomberg: "Europe's threat to ban cargoes from Iran over the nation's nuclear ambitions is helping push Middle East oil-tanker hiring to a record on concern shipments from the region will be disrupted, consultant FACTS Global Energy said. The CHART OF THE DAY shows how oil tankers booked to load 2 million-barrel cargoes of Gulf crude climbed to 140 in December, the most since at least January 2005, according to data from London-based shipbroker Galbraith's Ltd. European Union foreign ministers will meet Jan. 30 to discuss possible sanctions to pressure Iran to abandon a suspected nuclear weapons program." http://t.uani.com/txYTgR
Foreign Affairs
WT: "Iraq's vice president says that Iran is 'definitely' behind Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's move to jail him on terror charges, saying it is 'not a coincidence' that his arrest warrant was announced the day after the last U.S. troops left Iraq. 'Definitely Iran was involved,' Tariq al-Hashemi told The Washington Times in an exclusive interview, speaking by phone late Wednesday from a Kurdish town in northern Iraq. 'My dear friend, they have ... staff now in the government and in the parliament. They are representing Iran.' Mr. al-Hashemi said he has been a consistent critic of the 'intervention of Iran in every respect of my country.'" http://t.uani.com/vyaknU
Opinion & Analysis
Dennis Ross in WSJ: "President Barack Obama, like President George W. Bush before him, has stated that it would be unacceptable for Iran to have nuclear weapons. Recently, Mr. Obama has taken this a step further by declaring that he is determined to prevent the Iranians from acquiring the bomb. Does that mean that the use of force against the Iranian nuclear program is inevitable? No, nor should it be. I don't say this because I believe we can live with a nuclear-armed Iran; I do not. An Iran with nuclear weapons would confront the world with many dangers, including the very real danger that it will trigger a nuclear war in the Middle East. Consider that once Iran has nuclear weapons, nearly all of its neighbors will seek them as well to counter Iranian power and coercion. Israel, given Iranian declarations that it should be wiped off the map, will feel it has no margin for error and cannot afford to strike second in the event of a war. But Israel won't be the only country operating on a hair trigger. Each country, lacking the ability to absorb a nuclear strike, will adopt a launch-on-warning posture in a region that has many local triggers for conflict and enormous potential for miscalculation. Containment does not address that risk. Even the offer of a nuclear umbrella, with its implicit promise to obliterate the Iranians after a strike, can provide small comfort for any country in the Middle East, particularly Israel. I do not doubt that the Iranians are making progress on their nuclear program. According to the most recent International Atomic Energy Agency report, released last month, the Iranians have accumulated roughly 4,900 kilograms of low enriched uranium (LEU), enough for three to four bombs if enriched further. They have 6,200 centrifuges operating at Natanz, with a production rate of about 125 kilograms a month, and have now installed 174 centrifuges in two tandem cascades and 64 in a third in their facility near Qom. And, while the bulk of their LEU is enriched to 3.5%, the Iranians are now enriching some of their material to nearly 20%-a move that would shorten the time they would need to create weapons-grade highly enriched uranium (HEU)." http://t.uani.com/vDEOe7 |
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