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NYT: "As arguments flare in Israel and the United States about a possible military strike to set back Iran's nuclear program, an accelerating covert campaign of assassinations, bombings, cyberattacks and defections appears intended to make that debate irrelevant, according to current and former American officials and specialists on The campaign, which experts believe is being carried out mainly by Israel, apparently claimed its latest victim on Wednesday when a bomb killed a 32-year-old nuclear scientist in Tehran's morning rush hour. The scientist, Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, was a department supervisor at the Natanz uranium enrichment plant, a participant in what Western leaders believe is Iran's halting but determined progress toward a nuclear weapon. He was at least the fifth scientist with nuclear connections to be killed since 2007; a sixth scientist, Fereydoon Abbasi, survived a 2010 attack and was put in charge of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization." http://t.uani.com/Aka0IA
AP: "The United States denied any role in Wednesday's killing of an Iranian nuclear scientist, the latest in a series of events that have exacerbated tensions with Iran... 'I want to categorically deny any United States involvement in any kind of act of violence inside Iran,' Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told reporters. 'We believe there has to be an understanding between Iran, its neighbors and the international community that finds a way forward for it to end its provocative behavior, end its search for nuclear weapons and rejoin the international community and be a productive member of it.'" http://t.uani.com/xEv5zu
AP: "A hard-line Iranian newspaper called Thursday for retaliation against Israel, a day after the mysterious killing of a nuclear scientist in Tehran with a magnetic bomb attached to his car... A column in the Kayhan newspaper by chief editor Hossein Shariatmadari asked why Iran did not avenge Roshan, a chemistry expert and a director of the Natanz uranium enrichment facility, by striking Israel. 'Israeli military chief Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz in his recent remarks spoke about damaging Iran's nuclear program,' he wrote. 'Assassinations of Israeli military and officials are easily possible.' The day before the attack, Gantz was quoted as telling a parliamentary panel that 2012 would be a 'critical year' for Iran - in part because of 'things that happen to it unnaturally.'" http://t.uani.com/w8HTNl
Nuclear Program & Sanctions WSJ: "Japan's finance minister told visiting U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner that his country will take steps to reduce its dependency on oil imports from Iran, taking a much more conciliatory approach to the matter than China did a few days ago. 'We want to take actions to further reduce our 10% dependency as soon as possible in a planned manner,' Japan Finance Minister Jun Azumi said. Japanese crude imports from Iran came to about 10% of its total crude imports in 2010, but Mr. Azumi said that Japan has reduced its oil imports from there by 40% over the past five years." http://t.uani.com/yQYqF1
NYT: "Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner pressed Chinese senior leaders on Wednesday to join an American-led campaign to reduce sharply Iran's lucrative oil exports because of its nuclear program. And as they had before Mr. Geithner's arrival here on Tuesday, Chinese officials said publicly that they wanted no part of the effort. ut President Obama's administration, armed with a new law that would punish foreign financial institutions that deal with Iran, appeared undeterred. 'We are in the early stages of a broad global diplomatic effort to take advantage of this new legislation to significantly intensify the pressure on Iran,' a senior administration official said on Wednesday. 'We are telling them what's important to us, and they are listening.' The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the diplomatic importance of the issues." http://t.uani.com/zf5832
Bloomberg: "Iran, the second-largest producer in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, cut the price of crude supplies loading in February to Asia relative to benchmark levels, said an official at National Iranian Oil Co. NIOC lowered Iranian Light (AOSPLTAS) exports to a premium of $2.26 a barrel above the average of Dubai and Oman oil, said the official, who asked not to be named, citing company policy. That compares with $4.36 for January. Iran Heavy, Forozan, Norooz and Soroosh were also lowered." http://t.uani.com/whr6KQ
Domestic Politics
Bloomberg: "In Tehran's shopping district, a crowd gathers round a man standing on a raised platform with arms aloft to display his merchandise: a stack of 500-euro bills. The Bazaar Arz, the narrow 19th-century arcade that's the center of Iran's foreign exchange market, is crammed with people trying to sell their currency as sanctions tighten and tensions with the U.S. escalate. In nearby shops, imported laptops and smart-phones change price hourly. The rial weakened 20 percent in the past month at the official rate offered to Iranians traveling abroad, and by even more in the bazaar, where demand for dollars and euros is surging. It's increasingly tough for Iranians to satisfy that demand." http://t.uani.com/wARiLP
Reuters: "Tehran factory worker Mohammad Varamini lost his job of 14 years when rising energy costs and shrinking sales drove the tile maker that employed him out of business. His tale is a familiar one, repeated across Iran where hundreds of firms have been shuttered over the past year, a consequence of international sanctions and economic mismanagement. 'The owner closed the factory because he could not afford the electricity, gas and water bills,' says Mohammad's wife Sedigeh, a mother of four. 'For a month we managed to pay the rent and other expenses by selling my gold jewelry and using our small savings. But then we had no money and my husband could not find another job. I had to start working as a cleaner.'" http://t.uani.com/z4DfVb
Opinion & Analysis
Andrew Cummings in The Guardian: "As yet another Iranian scientist becomes the victim of increasingly bold and creative attempts to disrupt and delay the Iranian nuclear programme, commentators around the world have lined up to point out the risks to this audacious approach. It is true, as both Julian Borger and Saeed Kamali Dehghan pointed out, that whoever is doing this risks profound consequences for the region. What many people fail to recognise, though, is that a covert campaign, while rife with physical, diplomatic and legal risks, is the lesser of many evils. No one should doubt that the west (and Israel) desire a negotiated settlement to Iran's nuclear programme. The Stuxnet virus, mysterious explosions at military bases and the James Bond-esque antics of motorcycle assassins have taken up many column inches, while less has been written about the efforts of the E3+3 (China, France, Germany, Russia, the UK and US) to reach a diplomatic solution. Since 2003, western powers, working closely with their often-resistant Russian and Chinese counterparts, have kept the door open to Iran to negotiate. This has been despite continual provocation, whether in the form of secret enrichment facilities such as the one outside Qom or in Iran's bellicose pronouncements regarding enrichment. The E3+3 continues to hold out a generous offer to Iran: give up your military programme that even the International Atomic Energy Agency has expressed concern about and receive economic investment and a properly safeguarded modern civil nuclear programme. That would be a good deal in most people's eyes... Many commentators argue that supporters of a covert campaign see it as an alternative to war. They warn that covert action will ruin chances of dialogue with Tehran while encouraging Iran to use its own covert operations. What this fails to recognise is that Iran has long been the master of covert operations. Through the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC), Iran has been responsible for increasing the efficacy of insurgent improvised bombs in both Iraq and Afghanistan. It has helped to prop up Bashar al-Assad's murderous regime in Syria and has a track record of attempting to assassinate or imprison its enemies - both at home and abroad. Instead of damaging the chances of dialogue, covert action might actually do the opposite." http://t.uani.com/wUnFHA
Victor Davis Hanson in Defining Ideas: "For much of last December, Iran seemed schizophrenic. As the European Union and the United States finally seemed to agree on implementing tough new sanctions against the theocracy, Tehran threatened to shut down the Strait of Hormuz and thereby choke off 40 percent of the world's petroleum leaving the Persian Gulf. At times, the mullahs bragged of new centrifuges coming on line; at other moments, they issued warnings to the American navy to pull one of its huge aircraft carriers out of the region-or face the consequences. Just when some sort of international crisis seemed inevitable, once again Iran issued a clarification, denying any desire for war-only to issue more threats against the U.S. navy the next day, along with boasts of pressing ahead with its nuclear program. What are we to make of these serial, but seemingly empty threats of war, so reminiscent of North Korean bluster? Of course, there are plenty of examples in history to remind us that the constant saber rattling of failed states leads nowhere except to temporary tension and convenient rises in commodity and oil prices. But there also are enough other instances of unexpected attacks to suggest that the lunacy of lunatic regimes sometimes should be taken seriously For much of October 1950, Chinese communists let it be known that they would invade the Korean peninsula should the Americans keep up their victorious march northward to the Yalu River. Gen. MacArthur, the American theater commander, in response assured his superiors that these near constant threats were absurd. As he pointed out to a worried President Truman in a meeting on Wake Island on October 15, 1950, the Americans had clear conventional and nuclear air superiority, which, along with far more armor and artillery, would lead to a vast slaughter of the vulnerable Chinese Army. Few political observers took seriously the serial threats of Mao Zedong, who was facing massive rebuilding in war-torn China and still worried about the permanence of his recently victorious communist government. And yet by mid-November the first brigades of some 500,000 'volunteers' poured into North Korea and sent American forces reeling in what would prove to be the longest retreat in U.S. military history-an attack completely unanticipated by all American and European intelligence agencies." http://t.uani.com/zmFLPR
Lee Smith in Tablet: "Is Iran rational? That's the key question policy-makers and experts have been asking for at least the last decade as Iran has gotten closer to bringing its nuclear-weapons program on line. Rational, of course, is not the same thing as reasonable. A regime that shoots its own people in the streets, as the Iranian government did in June 2009, is not reasonable. In the policy debate, rationality refers to a regime's interest in preserving itself. A regime is rational, therefore, if it understands that using a nuclear weapon would elicit a response that might spell its doom. An irrational regime is one that can't be deterred because it may use a nuclear weapon regardless of the consequences. Thus, the Islamic Republic's threat last week to close the Strait of Hormuz-a move that would send oil prices skyrocketing-struck many as strong evidence of the regime's irrationality. Interrupting the world's oil supply would compel the United States, the guarantor of Persian Gulf security, to take military actions that might mean toppling Iran's ruling establishment. On Sunday, U.S. Joint Chief of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey said in no uncertain terms that if Iran tries to close the Strait of Hormuz, the United States 'can defeat that.' Others look at Iran's threat to close the Strait of Hormuz as having little bearing on the country's rationality. Since the Iranians know the Americans would have no trouble breaking through a blockade, their argument goes, Iran doesn't actually have any intention of trying to close down one of the world's most strategically vital waterways. This regime understands, as Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Sunday, that closing down the Strait of Hormuz is an American red line. If Iran crosses it, it jeopardizes its own existence-and so it won't. Those that argue the regime is irrational point to the fact that the Iranian regime regularly threatens to destroy Israel, which would retaliate by obliterating Iran. Those that claim Iran is rational write off such threats as mere rhetoric. A nuclear Iran, they say, poses little threat to a much more powerful Israel, never mind the United States. Membership in the club of countries with nuclear weapons might even make Tehran more responsible. The reality is that it doesn't matter whether the regime is rational or not. The issue is not whether the Iranians would use the bomb, but how Tehran's acquisition of a nuclear weapon would enhance the regime's already reckless behavior. Moreover, it would severely limit the ability of the United States to respond to the provocations of this dangerous regime. For instance, if a nuclear-armed Iran actually closed the Strait of Hormuz, U.S. officials would be much less confident in their ability to re-open shipping lanes. American policy-makers already worried about high oil prices are not likely to risk the chances of a nuclear incident and even higher oil prices." http://t.uani.com/yxHE2F |
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