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WSJ: "An organization that is central to the international banking system said it is working with U.S. and European governments to address their concerns that its financial services are being used by Iran to avoid sanctions and conduct illicit business. Current and former U.S. officials said that if the Belgium-based organization, the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, or Swift, bans sanctioned Iranian entities from using its network, Tehran could find itself virtually incapable of conducting electronic financial transactions. 'This would be the knockout blow,' said Avi Jorisch, a former U.S. Treasury Department official who has worked on Swift... Swift's board of directors is comprised of executives from some of the world's most important banks. This week, activist group United Against Nuclear Iran wrote to board members arguing that they are acting outside U.S. law by allowing designated Iranian banks to use Swift's services. They argued that Swift's guidelines mandate that its cut ties to Iran." http://t.uani.com/vZJvjX
WSJ: "President Barack Obama on Sunday wouldn't rule out U.S. support for an Israeli military strike against Iran, but said his administration still prefers a diplomatic solution to ease tensions over Tehran's nuclear ambitions. Mr. Obama, in an interview with NBC that aired Sunday evening, said his administration will 'do everything we can' to keep Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon, while warning that military action would have an adverse impact on U.S. economic and security interests. 'I don't think that Israel has made a decision on what they need to do. I think they, like us, believe that Iran has to stand down on its nuclear weapons program,' Mr. Obama said. 'Our goal is to resolve this issue diplomatically, that would be preferable,' Mr. Obama said. 'We're not going to take any options off the table though. Obviously any kind of additional military activity inside the Gulf is disruptive and has a big effect on us. It could have a big effect on oil prices.'" http://t.uani.com/wZsykq
Bloomberg: "A U.S. proposal to sanction Iran's state-owned oil company and its main tanker fleet may ensnare any person or business in the world involved in purchasing or shipping Iranian oil. Tensions over Iran's nuclear program have risen sharply in the last week, with U.S. officials such as Defense Secretary Leon Panetta expressing concern about a potential Israeli military attack by mid-year. As a result, pressure is mounting for additional steps against Iran's economy to force Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei to halt his country's suspected pursuit of nuclear-weapons capability. The Senate Banking Committee unanimously adopted a measure Feb. 2 to compel the administration to investigate links between Iran's crude-oil supply chain and its powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, an elite military unit that the U.S. has sanctioned for weapons proliferation, terrorism support and human-rights abuses... The Senate measure would give the U.S. Treasury Department 60 days to investigate whether the Revolutionary Guard owns or controls the National Iranian Oil Co., or NIOC, and the National Iranian Tanker Co., or NITC." http://t.uani.com/wyvd6K
Nuclear Program & Sanctions NYT: "American and European officials said Friday that a mission by international nuclear inspectors to Tehran this week had failed to address their key concerns, indicating that Iran's leaders believe they can resist pressure to open up the nation's nuclear program. The assessment came as Iran's supreme leader lashed out at the United States, vowing to retaliate against oil sanctions and threats of military action and warning that any attack 'would be 10 times worse for the interests of the United States' than it would be for Iran. While the inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency, who returned to Vienna after a three-day mission in Tehran, said nothing substantive about their trip and were planning to return to Iran later this month, diplomats briefed on the trip said that Iranian officials had not answered the questions raised in an incriminating report issued by the agency in November." http://t.uani.com/xCe6Zd
Reuters: "European Union governments could ban the sales of some telecommunications equipment to Iran in the coming months under plans for new sanctions discussed by EU experts in Brussels. EU diplomats said on Friday the bloc's 27 governments have reached an agreement in principle to target equipment that could be used by the Iranian authorities for monitoring of anti-government dissent. The new round of sanctions could also raise the number of officials affected by asset freezes and visa bans under the EU's program to target human rights abuses in the country." http://t.uani.com/y1LBcV
Platts: "Regular European buyers of Iranian crude said Thursday it was becoming more difficult to lift cargoes from Iran because ship owners have become increasingly reluctant to call at Iranian ports over fears about being properly insured and because of the likelihood of additional US sanctions targeting shippers. European Union sanctions, approved January 23 and due to come into effect fully on July 1, ban the import and transport of Iranian oil. Companies have been given several months to phase out existing crude supply contracts with Iran, but the EU bans the signing of new contracts with immediate effect." http://t.uani.com/ArAZO7
Reuters: "Iran will attack any country whose territory is used by 'enemies' to launch a military strike against its soil, the deputy head of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards told the semi-official Fars news agency on Sunday. 'Any spot used by the enemy for hostile operations against Iran will be subjected to retaliatory aggression by our armed forces,' Hossein Salami said during military manoeuvres. The Revolutionary Guards began the two-day ground exercises on Saturday as a show of military might as tension rises between Tehran and the West over Iran's disputed nuclear programme. Iranian media called it a small-scale exercise in southern Iran." http://t.uani.com/AxAlOp
Reuters: "With just a month to go before a parliamentary election, Iran has been hit hard in recent months by new U.S. and European economic sanctions over its nuclear programme, which Tehran says is peaceful but the West says is aimed at making a bomb. In conversations in towns and cities across Iran, people complained of rapidly deteriorating economic conditions, likely to be the main issue in an election that exposes divisions between President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and hardline opponents. The last time Iranians voted, in a 2009 presidential election, Ahmadinejad's disputed victory triggered eight months of violent street demonstrations. The authorities successfully put down that uprising by force, but since then the Arab Spring has demonstrated the vulnerability of governments in the region to uprisings fuelled by anger over economic difficulty." http://t.uani.com/zR80l7
Human Rights
AP: "A German reporter says he was beaten by guards during his nearly five months of imprisonment in Iran and that he heard constant, 'horrible cries' of other inmates being tortured. In the first public comment since being freed a year ago, Marcus Hellwig told the Sunday mass-circulation tabloid Bild am Sonntag he was regularly beaten and constantly interrogated during the first 10 'brutal' days in captivity until a German diplomat intervened. 'Sometimes they claimed that I was a spy, then allegedly a terrorist,' he was quoted as saying. 'They wanted to unsettle me with their never-ending questioning, wanted to put me under psychological pressure and create an ambiance of fear,' he said. Hellwig and German photographer Jens Koch - both working for Bild am Sonntag - had entered Iran on tourist visas and were detained in October 2010 after interviewing the son of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, an Iranian woman sentenced to death by stoning for adultery." http://t.uani.com/zofTdB
Domestic Politics
Daily Mail: "Bart Simpson and his family have joined Barbie on a list of dolls to be banned by the Iranian government. The move against Springfield's favourite cartoon characters is part of a decades-long crackdown on signs of Western culture in the country. But bizarrely the fictional U.S. superheroes Superman and Spiderman are being allowed on sale because they help 'the oppressed.'" http://t.uani.com/ApstkF
Foreign Affairs
AFP: "The Iraqi central bank has enacted measures to identify those who buy dollars, as some are believed to be front men at a time when Iran and Syria are facing foreign currency shortages due to sanctions. Both Iran and Syria have been hit by sanctions from the United States and Europe, the former over its controversial nuclear programme and the latter due to its bloody attempts to suppress a revolt that began last March. 'We have put in place new procedures since February 1,' Mudher Mohammed Saleh, the deputy governor of the Iraqi central bank, told AFP on Saturday." http://t.uani.com/wy83I0
Opinion & Analysis
Andres Oppenheimer in The Miami Herald: "Latin America rarely comes up as a major issue in U.S. presidential races, but this time it will: There are growing signs that Iran's rising presence in the region will become a contentious election topic. Republican hopeful Mitt Romney and leading Republicans in Congress are stepping up their attacks on President Barack Obama for allegedly not doing enough to stop what they see as Iran's intention to use Latin America as a launching pad for terrorist attacks against the United States. The issue is drawing growing attention in Washington. On Thursday , as Iran launched its own region-wide Spanish-language TV network in Latin America - a follow-up to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's fifth visit to the region in as many years - the Republican-controlled House Foreign Affairs Committee held hearings about 'Iran's agenda in the Western Hemisphere.' The hearings came hours after U.S. National Intelligence chief James Clapper stated that Iranian officials 'are now willing to conduct an attack in the United States.' Clapper did not explicitly suggest that such attacks would come from Latin America, but Republican congressional leaders did. House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ileana Ros Lehtinen, R-Miami, said in her opening statement that Iran's alliance with Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba and Ecuador 'can pose an immediate threat by giving Iran a platform in the region to carry out attacks against the United States, our interests and allies.' Recalling last year's U.S. government disclosure of a plot by Iran's Quds Force to kill the Saudi ambassador on U.S. soil, and a reported 2007 scheme by an Iranian diplomat in Mexico to launch a cyber-attack against the United States, Ros Lehtinen added that 'the fact that the military arm of a state-sponsor of terrorism has its operatives in multiple countries in our hemisphere is certainly cause for alarm.' In his testimony to the committee, University of Miami researcher Jose Azel warned of a nightmare scenario in which Iran could place nuclear weapons aimed toward U.S. territory in Venezuela - much like the Soviet Union began to build nuclear bases in Cuba during the 1962 missile crisis. Norman A. Bailey, a Reagan administration official, said Venezuela is helping Iran circumvent international financial sanctions through the use of the Venezuelan financial system. In addition, hard-liners stress that Iran-backed terrorist groups such as Hezbollah are likely to use friendly countries in Latin America as bases from which to prepare terrorist attacks elsewhere in the region. Argentina has charged that Hezbollah, with Iran's assistance, carried out the deadly bombings against the Israeli Embassy and a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires in 1992 and 1994." http://t.uani.com/Ajub2J
Natalie Nougayrède in Le Monde: "He is the mysterious man behind Iran's nuclear program, the invisible 'boss' of the military program at the heart of current Middle East tensions. His name is Mohsen Fakrizadeh, and he's 50 years old. For the past 10 years, this specialist in nuclear physics, who is also a general of a brigade of Pasdarans, the elite branch of the regime's Revolutionary Guard, has overseen all of the different organizations charged with developing a nuclear warhead for Iran. It is enough to say that his whole existence is clouded in extreme secrecy, since the Iranian government ferociously denies that the program he runs even exists. As the lynchpin in the most sensitive part of the nuclear program, Mohsen Fakrizadeh is also high on the list of 'targets' for the Mossad, Israel's spy agency, which has been trying for several years to sabotage Iran's nuclear program, and is suspected of assassinating several its top scientists. In 1981, Israel led a similar campaign against Saddam Hussein's nuclear program in Iraq. What might Fakrizadeh think about the current crisis, and the speculations about a possible military intervention against Iran's nuclear program? One Western expert describes Fakrizadeh as 'cut off from the outside world, holed up in his base and fed on the pride of standing up to the Great Satan (the United States).' Other insiders stress that, though he is under constant surveillance, he is both the discrete scientific hero and prisoner of the increasingly militarized Iranian system. Fakrizadeh has been the uncatchable spider at the center of the web of the Iranian nuclear program. And nobody has tried harder to meet him than Olli Heinonen, the man who headed the international nuclear inspections in Iran between 2003 and 2010. From Harvard, where he now works, the Finnish expert explained by telephone that 'having access to the head of the program is a must,' if you really want to shed light on Iran's work. For years, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has been asking, in vain, to speak with Fakrizadeh. Heinonen says he would be very surprised if the current IAEA delegation, which was in Iran from Jan. 29 to Feb. 1, managed to make any progress on this front. 'Especially since the regime has started to accuse the IAEA of exposing scientists to possible assassination attempts by mentioning them in their reports.'" http://t.uani.com/yxBoph
Amitai Etzioni in CNN: "There is a growing interest among U.S. foreign policy officials and scholars in deterring Iran; that is, in tolerating a nuclear armed Iran but keeping it at bay by threatening it in kind should it use its nuclear weapons. Although the Obama administration has not embraced this position, some observers believe this is the direction it is headed. One indication comes from Thomas Donilon, the national security adviser. In a speech late last year, he remarked, 'We will continue to build a regional defense architecture that prevents Iran from threatening its neighbors. We will continue to deepen Iran's isolation, regionally and globally.' And a recent report sponsored by the U.S. Air Force outlines a strategy for deterrence that includes expanding the United States' regional nuclear presence and improving American missile defense capabilities. As one expert puts it, 'Deterrence against a nuclear Iran should not be terribly difficult.' For deterrence to work, the leaders of the nations that command nuclear arms must be rational. The champions of deterrence claim to demonstrate that Iran's leaders are not insane by showing that they react in sensible ways to changes in the world around them. For instance, after the U.S. military easily wiped out Saddam Hussein's army in Iraq and President George W. Bush told Iran it was on the very short list of members in the 'Axis of Evil,' Iran made a very conciliatory offer regarding its nuclear program. In short, proponents of deterrence argue that leaders and governments in fact do respond to changes with reason and logic. However, there's another type of decision-making process that sociologists have known about. It's nonrational behavior, such as when people act in response to deeply held beliefs that cannot be proven or disproven. People have long shown they are willing to kill or be killed for their beliefs, and that God commanded them to act in a particular manner. They may respond to facts and pressures, but only as long as those factors affect the ways they implement their beliefs -- but not the beliefs themselves. Thus, a religiously fanatical Iranian leader who believes that God commanded him to wipe out Tel Aviv may calculate whether to use missiles or bombers and in what season to attack, but not whether to heed God's command to destroy the infidels. An example of nonrational thinking is summed up best in these words: '[Iran's] religious zealotry causes it to exaggerate the significance of issues that are, objectively speaking, only tangentially related to its interests. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict, for instance, has no direct bearing on Iran's security, but much of the regime sees it as fundamental to Iranian interests and even to Iran's identity as a Muslim nation.'" http://t.uani.com/xkHNSo |
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