| For continuing coverage follow us on Twitter and join our Facebook group.
Top Stories
AP: "Iran put to death more than twice as many people in 2011 as it did the year before, Amnesty International said Monday in a new report. The rights group said that the rate of executions in public increased even more dramatically, in an apparent bid to suppress political dissent and promote a climate of fear among those who might defy harsh Iranian law. 'Casting a shadow over all those who fall foul of Iran's unjust justice system is the mounting toll of people sentenced to death and executed,' said the 70-page report, released in the run-up to Iran's parliamentary elections on March 2. 'There were around four times as many public executions in 2011 than in 2010, and hundreds of people are believed to have been sentenced to death in the past year,' it said. In Iran, prisoners are usually executed by hanging. The report said the heightened pace of executions 'may be a strategy to spread fear among the population and to deter protests. As the repression of dissenters widens, the risk of further death sentences and executions cannot be excluded.'" http://t.uani.com/xeLAzT
WSJ: "Complaints from Israel about the U.S.'s public engagement with Iran have pushed the White House to consider more forcefully outlining potential military actions, and the 'red lines' Iran must not cross, as soon as this weekend, according to people familiar with the discussions. President Barack Obama could use a speech on Sunday before a powerful pro-Israel lobby to more clearly define U.S. policy on military action against Iran in advance of his meeting on Monday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, these people said. Israeli officials have been fuming over what they perceive as deliberate attempts by the Obama administration to undermine the deterrent effect of the Jewish state's threat to use force against Tehran by publicly questioning the utility and timing of such strikes." http://t.uani.com/y1tkN5
AP: "Israeli officials say they won't warn the U.S. if they decide to launch a pre-emptive strike against Iranian nuclear facilities, setting a tense tone ahead of high-level meetings in the coming days in Washington. A U.S. intelligence official says Israel warned that it will keep the Americans in the dark, to decrease the likelihood that Americans would be held responsible for failing to stop Israel's potential attack. Israel's prime minister and defense minister delivered the message to top-level U.S. visitors to Israel in recent weeks, including the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the White House national security adviser and the director of national intelligence." http://t.uani.com/yqhW7N
Nuclear Program & Sanctions
Reuters: "Iran said on Tuesday that it expected talks with the watchdog International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to continue and it was optimistic that they would proceed in the right direction. In the latest high-level talks between the IAEA and Iran, conducted in Tehran in January and February, Iranian officials stuck to a refusal to address intelligence reports about covert research relevant to developing nuclear weapons. Iran says its nuclear program is for peaceful energy purposes only." http://t.uani.com/wKtE3Z
Reuters: "HSBC Holdings Plc said on Monday it will likely face criminal or civil charges from an expanding investigation into its ties to allegedly illegal money transactions, including some tied to Iran. The disclosure in a regulatory filing shows the increasingly serious nature of inquiries into the London-based bank's business. HSBC already is the subject of multiple U.S. law-enforcement probes for ties to illegal money transactions. Monday's filing was the first time the bank disclosed that Iranian transactions are under scrutiny and that it could face a criminal charge." http://t.uani.com/A39d7W
WSJ: "India will consider steps including providing sovereign guarantees to local shipping companies so that they continue to get insurance cover for transporting crude oil from Iran, the top bureaucrat in the shipping ministry said Tuesday. 'A decision on it will be taken in two to three months,' Shipping Secretary K. Mohandas told reporters. Indian shippers usually take covers from European firms, which are now reluctant to provide indemnity for transporting crude from Iran due to the U.S. and the European Union tightening sanctions against the Middle East nation for its alleged program to develop nuclear weapons. A full oil embargo by the EU will likely come into effect July 1." http://t.uani.com/zCIAOx
FT: "As Iran's youth unemployment soars, factories close and inflation surges, struggling local businesses are looking to an unlikely source for help: tightening international sanctions. While the mainly western architects of the new punitive measures aim to put pressure on Tehran and sow unrest among Iranians by stifling imports, local manufacturers hope to benefit from the reduced competition from foreign products. Embattled Iranian industrialists - already boosted by a collapse in the value of the rial that has made overseas goods more expensive - see a fresh, if perhaps shortlived, upside in the potential for a still-harder international financial squeeze to cut outside supplies of some goods altogether." http://t.uani.com/wtrJx5
WSJ: "The U.S. Treasury Department said Monday it published regulations implementing part of the Iran central bank sanctions provision signed into law Dec. 31. The measures, which penalize foreign financial institutions for doing business with Iran's central bank or a U.S.-blacklisted Iranian entity, contain time-based triggers for imposing the sanctions. Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control on Monday revised the Iranian Financial Sanctions Regulations and reissued them in their entirety to implement the law... After Wednesday, privately-owned foreign financial institutions doing significant business with Bank Markazi for things other than oil can face sanctions - except if it's for the sale of food, medicine or medical devices to Iran. The sanctions go into effect as of June 28, 2012, if those institutions are found doing oil-related transactions." http://t.uani.com/zFCMV8
Human Rights
Fox News: "The Christian pastor sentenced to death in Iran last week for leaving Islam and converting to Christianity was confirmed alive as of early Sunday, sources close to his attorneys told Fox News. Iran's government backtracked over the weekend, stating that no execution order had been announced for Youcef Nadarkhani, and that he was being held not for apostasy, but for rape and 'other crimes,' according to the Islamic Republic's state-controlled Press TV. Nadarkhani's attorneys believe the government toned down its rhetoric in response to an international outcry. The execution order, however, remained in effect, they said." http://t.uani.com/yKymfg
Foreign Affairs
AP: "A Shiite extremist group handed over a simple wooden casket containing the remains of the last U.S. soldier missing in Iraq, a prominent Iraqi lawmaker said Monday, drawing a close to a case that has anguished the American's family since his 2006 disappearance. Shiite lawmaker Sami al-Askari, a close ally of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, said the remains of Staff Sgt. Ahmed al-Taie were turned over last week as part of a prisoner exchange agreement between the Iraqi government and the militant group Asaib Ahl al-Haq... Asaib Ahl al-Haq, or Band of the People of Righteousness, is a Shiite militant group in Iraq. It generally relies on Iran, the regional Shiite power, for support, including around $5 million in cash and weapons each month, according to Iraqi and U.S. intelligence officials. Officials believe there are fewer than 1,000 Asaib Ahl al-Haq militiamen, and their leaders live in Iran." http://t.uani.com/xIxcvH
AFP: "Thai police said on Monday they were holding a third Iranian for questioning in connection with an alleged plot to kill Israeli diplomats in Bangkok. The man, who has denied any links to a string of botched blasts in the Thai capital on February 14, was charged with overstaying his visa, said Police Lieutenant General Wiboon Bangthamai. According to Thai media, mobile telephone call logs showed he had been in regular contact with two Iranians now in custody, one of whom was badly hurt as he hurled a bomb at police while fleeing." http://t.uani.com/yQneLg
Opinion & Analysis
Elise Labott in CNN: "In 2005 the world powers and North Korea reached an agreement in which Pyongyang would abandon its nuclear program, resume compliance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and allow international inspectors to return. In exchange, North Korea would receive food and energy assistance and a chance to normalize relations with the United States. Since then, North Korea conducted a nuclear weapons test in 2006, demolished its cooling tower at its main nuclear power plant and handed over thousands of documents on its program to the United States. In recent years as tensions with the United States and South Korea have increased, North Korea has undertaken efforts to restart its program. The administration refuses to acknowledge North Korea as a nuclear power although it's a distinction without a difference. North Korea has nuclear weapons and the test to prove it. The United States is now trying to walk back a North Korean nuclear program that has matured while the international community allowed the regime to play for time to build a nuke under the guise of talking. Is the U.S. now repeating these mistakes with Iran? Last week Iran sent a letter that it was ready for talks on its nuclear program 'as soon as possible.' It was a delayed response to an October letter from European Union Foreign Policy Chief Catherine Ashton, who is leading contacts between Iran and the so-called 'P5 plus one' group of nations, inviting Iran to a new round of talks aimed at forging an agreement to address international concerns over Iran's nuclear program. The P5 plus one group is made up of the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council - the United States, the United Kingdom, China, Russia and France - plus Germany. Tough sanctions on the regime have begun to trickle down to the Iranian people, and the suffering is sure to intensify once curbs against Iranian oil exports take effect in June. The United States and its allies believe those biting sanctions are what is bringing Iran back to the table. We've been here before. The world's six major powers - Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States - first started negotiating with Iran over it's nuclear program in 2008. The following year, Iran reneged on an agreement to ship most of the enriched uranium it had made out of the country in exchange for fuel for the Tehran Research Reactor, which is used to make isotopes for medical diagnosis... But is this North Korea all over again with Iran simply playing for time, agreeing to an endless series of meetings over a course of years which ends with Tehran testing a nuclear weapon?" http://t.uani.com/z9twpV
|
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment