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AP: "Iran is poised to greatly expand uranium enrichment at a fortified underground bunker to a point that would boost how quickly it could make nuclear warheads, diplomats tell The Associated Press. They said Tehran has put finishing touches for the installation of thousands of new-generation centrifuges at the cavernous facility, machines that can produce enriched uranium much more quickly and efficiently than its present machines. While saying that the electrical circuitry, piping and supporting equipment for the new centrifuges was now in place, the diplomats emphasized that Tehran had not started installing the new machines at its Fordo facility and could not say whether it was planning to. Still, the senior diplomats, who asked for anonymity because their information was privileged, suggested that Tehran would have little reason to prepare the ground for the better centrifuges unless it planned to operate them. They spoke in recent interviews, the last one Saturday." http://t.uani.com/Ahg6iF
NYT: "The United States and the European Union signaled on Friday that negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program could soon resume for the first time in more than a year, even as a telecommunications network vital to the global banking industry prepared to expel Iranian banks. While senior American and European officials stopped short of declaring a diplomatic breakthrough, Iran dropped previously unacceptable preconditions for talks in a letter this week from its senior nuclear negotiator, Saeed Jalili, who declared his country's 'readiness for dialogue' at 'the earliest possibility.' ... Yet another potentially crippling sanction against Iran moved a step closer on Friday when the Belgium-based Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, known as Swift, said in a statement on its Web site that it was 'ready to implement sanctions against Iranian financial institutions.' ... 'Swift appears to have made the right decision to end its relationships with sanctioned Iranian institutions,' United Against Nuclear Iran, a New York-based group that has been pushing for stricter sanctions, said in a statement. It said Swift's action 'has the potential to significantly isolate the Iranian regime from the world's markets, and lessen the capital it has to pursue nuclear weapons and fund terrorism.' 'Now is the time,' it continued, 'for the most robust sanctions in history, and more pressure on the regime than ever before.'" http://t.uani.com/wIJsBq
WSJ: "The Belgium-based organization central to the international banking system said it was preparing to ban blacklisted Iranian banks from using its financial communications and clearing systems, a move that will sharply intensify the West's financial campaign against Tehran. The announcement Friday by the Society for Worldwide International Financial Telecommunication, or Swift, is expected to drastically scale back Tehran's ability to conduct global trade, said U.S. and European officials... When barred from using Swift, Iran is expected to seek out other payment systems to continue conducting trade, such as IBAN, or International Bank Account Number. But financial experts said such systems aren't used nearly as widely as Swift and, therefore, the cost of conducting transactions will increase significantly for Tehran... 'This action has the potential to significantly isolate the Iranian regime from the world's markets, and lessen the capital it has to pursue nuclear weapons and fund terrorism,' said Mark Wallace, president of United Against Nuclear Iran, an advocacy group that lobbied Swift to cut its Iran ties." http://t.uani.com/weVefv
Nuclear Program NYT: "Should Israel decide to launch a strike on Iran, its pilots would have to fly more than 1,000 miles across unfriendly airspace, refuel in the air en route, fight off Iran's air defenses, attack multiple underground sites simultaneously - and use at least 100 planes. That is the assessment of American defense officials and military analysts close to the Pentagon, who say that an Israeli attack meant to set back Iran's nuclear program would be a huge and highly complex operation. They describe it as far different from Israel's 'surgical' strikes on a nuclear reactor in Syria in 2007 and Iraq's Osirak reactor in 1981. 'All the pundits who talk about Oh, yeah, bomb Iran, it ain't going to be that easy,' said Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, who retired last year as the Air Force's top intelligence official and who planned the American air campaigns in 2001 in Afghanistan and in the 1991 Gulf War... Should the United States get involved - or decide to strike on its own - military analysts said that the Pentagon had the ability to launch big strikes with bombers, stealth aircraft and cruise missiles, followed up by drones that could carry out damage assessments to help direct further strikes. Unlike Israel, the United States has plenty of refueling capability. Bombers could fly from Al Udeid air base in Qatar, Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean or bases in Britain and the United States." http://t.uani.com/ykyYxV
Guardian: "Officials in key parts of the Obama administration are increasingly convinced that sanctions will not deter Tehran from pursuing its nuclear programme, and believe that the US will be left with no option but to launch an attack on Iran or watch Israel do so. The president has made clear in public, and in private to Israel, that he is determined to give sufficient time for recent measures, such as the financial blockade and the looming European oil embargo, to bite deeper into Iran's already battered economy before retreating from its principal strategy to pressure Tehran. But there is a strong current of opinion within the administration - including in the Pentagon and the state department - that believes sanctions are doomed to fail, and that their principal use now is in delaying Israeli military action, as well as reassuring Europe that an attack will only come after other means have been tested. 'The White House wants to see sanctions work. This is not the Bush White House. It does not need another conflict,' said an official knowledgeable on Middle East policy. 'Its problem is that the guys in Tehran are behaving like sanctions don't matter, like their economy isn't collapsing, like Israel isn't going to do anything.'" http://t.uani.com/yR32BS
CNN: "The United States believes talk of military strikes against Iran's nuclear program is 'premature' and has advised Israel that an attack would be counterproductive, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff says. In an interview aired Sunday on CNN's 'Fareed Zakaria GPS,' Gen. Martin Dempsey said U.S. officials aren't convinced Iran has decided to pursue nuclear weapons. Meanwhile, economic and diplomatic sanctions are taking a toll on the Islamic republic, he said. 'On that basis, I think it would be premature to exclusively decide that the time for a military option was upon us,' Dempsey said. The comments from Dempsey, a former Army chief of staff who served two tours of duty in Iraq, comes amid a period of saber-rattling in the Persian Gulf region." http://t.uani.com/AsW9FH
AFP: "UN nuclear watchdog officials arrived in Tehran on Monday for discreet talks on Iran's suspect atomic activities, amid a worsening international showdown that has sent tensions and oil prices soaring. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is hoping for 'concrete results' from the two days of talks focused on 'the possible military dimensions of Iran's nuclear programme,' the delegation's leader, chief UN nuclear inspector Herman Nackaerts, said on departing from Vienna late Sunday. But he cautioned progress 'may take a while.' The last such visit, three weeks ago, yielded no breakthrough." http://t.uani.com/ApIt1W
Sanctions
LAT: "Despite the Obama administration's vows to cripple Iran with economic sanctions, it is leaders in Congress and Europe who have seized the lead in the West's long-running campaign to punish Tehran for its suspected nuclear weapons program. In recent months, the toughest moves to deter Iran from pursuing its presumed nuclear ambitions have come from a bipartisan group in Congress and European allies, especially Britain and France. The White House at first resisted these steps before embracing them as inevitable. The administration has imposed dozens of sanctions on Iran since 2009, but it has carefully calibrated their effect. Officials fear that too powerful a blow to the world's third-largest oil exporter could cause an oil price increase, damaging the global economic recovery, undermining international support for the sanctions campaign and creating political trouble in an election year... This month, Congress began crafting legislation that would essentially cut Iran out of the global clearinghouse for international financial transactions known as SWIFT, or the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication. The far-reaching step could inflict severe damage to Iran's economy by restricting the ability of banks and other institutions to move funds in or out of the country." http://t.uani.com/AoSrDB
NYT: "Iran's government on Sunday ordered a halt to oil exports to Britain and France, in what may be only an initial response to the European Union's decision to cut off Iranian oil imports and freeze central bank assets beginning in July. Britain and France depend little on Iranian oil, however, so their targeting may be a mostly symbolic act, a function of the strong positions the two nations have taken in trying to halt Iranian nuclear enrichment and to bring pressure to bear on Syria, one of Iran's closest allies. Iran may also be reluctant, when its economy has been damaged by existing sanctions, to deprive itself of revenues from its larger European customers. At the same time, it may be seeking to divide the 27-nation European Union between those who depend on Iranian oil and those who do not." http://t.uani.com/yWyOpy
WSJ: "Amid tightening U.S. and European Union sanctions against Iran, almost all of Turkey's banks have stopped handling trade deals with the Islamic Republic, leaving one Turkish lender to rake in all that business: state-owned Halkbank. Washington passed sanctions in January threatening to penalize financial institutions dealing with Iran's central bank, forcing Turkey's private lenders to halt transactions with Tehran for fear of being frozen out of international markets. U.S. Treasury officials visited Turkey several times last year to advise financial institutions that doing business with proscribed Iranian entities runs the risk of being frozen out of the U.S. financial system. That put the spotlight on Halkbank, or People's Bank, little known outside Turkey, which has continued to process payments from third parties for Iranian goods... Halkbank couldn't be reached for comment on whether the move by Belgium's Society for Worldwide International Financial Telecommunication, or Swift, on Friday to cancel payments to Iran would affect its ability to process payments for Iranian clients. One Turkish source who uses Halkbank to process Swift payments from Iranian customers for medical goods said they could use IBAN or another more costly alternative payment for their products." http://t.uani.com/yGCyZn
City Press: "Corporate heavyweights MTN and Sasol this week faced immense global pressure to quit troubled Iran as war talk and brinkmanship reached fever pitch. Former US ambassador to the United Nations Mark Wallace and former CIA chief James Woolsey have joined forces to mount a campaign against MTN to force disinvestment from Iran. Wallace and Woolsey marshal a powerful New York-based lobby group, known as United Against Nuclear Iran (Uani), which is packed with heavy hitters in the US foreign policy establishment. Four South African companies - MTN, petrochemicals group Sasol, little-known Icarus Marine and Scavenger Manufacturing - are listed on Uani's list of more than 500 companies earmarked by the lobby group to withdraw from the Islamic republic." http://t.uani.com/A4D1L2
Reuters: "Tightening international sanctions against Iran over its disputed nuclear programme, combined with rampant inflation, have drastically restricted the ability of working-class Iranians to feed themselves and their families. Uncertainty and financial hardship form the backdrop to a parliamentary election on March 2. The official inflation rate stands at 21 percent but critics of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his handling of the economy say such figures are falsified and real inflation is around 50 percent. 'My purchasing power declines almost every day and the prices of basic foods are soaring overnight,' said the 52-year-old mother in the vibrant, bustling covered market. 'My bank savings are shrinking. I can't afford the unbearable cost of living by only relying on my husband's pension,' Hamidi said, as she pointed out the price of meat." http://t.uani.com/zevIFR
Daily Telegraph: "In an attempt to escape the effects of the wide-ranging sanctions imposed over Iran's illegal nuclear programme, Iran's central bank is using a number of financial institutions in China and Turkey to fund the purchase of vital goods to keep the Iranian economy afloat. According to Western security officials China, which is Iran's largest oil trading partner, is playing a major role in helping Iran to avoid the sanctions. Instead of transferring payments to Iran owed from oil purchases, Chinese banks are using the money to buy goods on behalf of the Iranians and then shipping them to Iran. 'It is like an old-fashioned barter mechanism,' explained a senior security official. 'The money Iran earns from oil sales goes into banks in China and is then used for Iranian purchases of other goods and materials. It is a very good way of getting round the sanctions.' Security officials have also identified a number of financial institutions in Turkey that are helping Iran to evade sanctions." http://t.uani.com/ymILCD
Human Rights
CNN: "A computer programmer from Canada faces imminent execution in Iran for the actions of another person, which he had no control over, a human rights group says. Saeed Malekpour wrote a program to upload photos to the Internet, an accomplishment that could cost him his life, Amnesty International reported Friday. Authorities in the Islamic Republic claimed his program was used by someone else to upload pornography and charged him with 'insulting and desecrating Islam.' ... Iran's Supreme Court confirmed the sentence on January 17. Malekpour's lawyers have been unable to ascertain the whereabouts of his court files since Tuesday and fear this could be an indicator that an executioner could carry out the sentence soon, Amnesty said." http://t.uani.com/xdWRha
Toronto Star: "How did it come to this? In the 1,232 days and nights since his arrest, Saeed Malekpour has asked himself that question. Each day takes him no closer to the answer, but closer to the enigma of his death. For most of his 36 years Malekpour was a problem-solver, a man with a workaround mind. His family's troubleshooter. The cleverest in his class. The Canadian resident, top-ranked engineering graduate, software designer is now awaiting execution in Iran's Evin Prison. Arrested in 2008 while visiting his dying father, accused of managing a network of websites used to upload pornographic images, tortured and condemned to death after a trial without defence, Malekpour is living in an Iranian Kafka novel from which there is no exit." http://t.uani.com/wesebe
Domestic Politics
AP: "A Tehran court began hearing the trial of 32 defendants Saturday in a $2.6 billion bank fraud described as the biggest financial scam in the country's history, state TV reported. The city's chief prosecutor Abbas Jafari Dowlatabadi read the text of the indictment against the 32 accused, who wore prison uniform as they attended the Saturday session of the Revolutionary Court charged with hearing cases involving security and organized crimes. The charges involve the use of forged documents to get credit at one of Iran's top financial institutions to purchase assets including major state-owned companies." http://t.uani.com/wftAcm
Foreign Affairs
WSJ: "Thai police said one of several missing suspects in a botched bomb plot that rattled Bangkok earlier this week is a 52-year-old man who might have served as an explosives training expert to help aid the strike aimed at Israeli diplomats in the city. Police said they are now hunting for the sixth suspect, 52-year-old Javad Nikkhahfard, a suspected explosives expert who like the other alleged plotters is believed to have come from the Middle East to Thailand. Bangkok police Commissioner Lt. Gen. Winai Thongsong said Mr. Nikkhahfard was seen leaving the suspects' rented home shortly before their explosives appeared to have been prematurely detonated. It is unclear whether the man, whose nationality hasn't been released, is still in Thailand or whether he has already left the country. Thai authorities have said the suspects, including several Iranian nationals, planned to assassinate Israeli officials here amid worsening tension between Iran and Israel over Tehran's nuclear program." http://t.uani.com/wQdRzj
Reuters: "Iran is becoming more active in Yemen and could pose a deeper threat to its stability and security, the U.S. envoy to Yemen said on Monday, highlighting what would be yet another layer of uncertainty in a near-failed state. U.S. Ambassador Gerald Feierstein's warning is likely to reinforce long-held fears among Sunni Gulf monarchies that Shi'ite Muslim power Iran is trying exploit regional unrest. 'We do see Iran trying to increase its presence here, in ways that we believe are unhelpful to Yemen's stability and security,' Feierstein said in an interview one day before Yemenis head to the polls to elect a new president to replace Ali Abdullah Saleh, ending his three decades in power." http://t.uani.com/xQXZgo
NewsCore: "Two Iranian warships docked at the Syrian port of Tartus in what was described as a training mission, following a provocative journey through the Suez Canal at a time of global tension over the Islamic Republic's nuclear ambitions. The vessels, a destroyer and a supply ship, docked in the Syrian port after passing through the canal Saturday. Tartus is home to Damascus-ally Russia's only Mediterranean naval base. The mission was 'to provide maritime training to naval forces of Syria under an agreement signed between Tehran and Damascus a year ago,' Iranian English-language broadcaster Press TV reported Monday." http://t.uani.com/xa4lhI
Opinion & Analysis
Ray Takeyh in WashPost: "Bombastic claims of nuclear achievement, threats to close critical international waterways, alleged terrorist plots and hints of diplomatic outreach - all are emanating from Tehran right now. This past week, confrontation between Iran and the West reached new heights as Israel accused Iran of a bombing attempt in Bangkok and others targeting Israeli diplomats in India and Georgia. And yet, on Wednesday, an Iranian nuclear negotiator signaled that Tehran wants to get back to the table. What does Iran really want? What, as strategists might ask, are the sources of Iranian conduct? The key to unraveling the Islamic republic lies in understanding Iran's perception of itself. More than any other Middle Eastern nation, Iran has always imagined itself as the natural hegemon of its neighborhood. As the Persian empire shrank over the centuries and Persian culture faded with the arrival of more alluring Western mores, Iran's exaggerated view of itself remained largely intact. By dint of history, Iranians believe that their nation deserves regional preeminence. However, Iran's foreign policy is also built on the foundations of the theocratic regime and the 1979 revolution. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini bequeathed to his successors an ideology that divided the world between oppressors and the oppressed. The Islamic revolution was a battle for emancipation from the cultural and political tentacles of the iniquitous West. However, Iran was not merely seeking independence and autonomy, but wanted to project its Islamist message beyond its borders. Khomeini's ideology and Iran's nationalist aspirations created a revolutionary, populist approach to the region's status quo... The nation has long invested in its atomic infrastructure. However, more so than any of their predecessors, Iran's current rulers see nuclear arms as central to their national ambitions. While the Rafsanjani and Khatami administrations looked at nuclear weapons as tools of deterrence, for the conservatives they are a critical means of solidifying Iran's preeminence in the region. A hegemonic Iran requires a robust and extensive nuclear apparatus." http://t.uani.com/z53lqs
Niall Ferguson in Newsweek: "The signs of economic recovery in the United States grow more numerous-and with them rises the probability of President Obama's reelection. But two crises abroad threaten to rain on the American parade: the European sovereign-debt debacle and the phony war over Iran's nuclear program. Most commentators treat these two crises as unrelated. But they are in reality two sides of the same crisis. Call it the Euranian crisis. The connection surfaced on Feb. 15 when Iran's Oil Ministry threatened to cut off exports to six European countries in a bid to preempt the EU embargo on oil imports from Iran, which goes into effect on July 1. At first sight, this was just a new version of an old ruse: if someone threatens you with sanctions, try to get your retaliation in first. In typical fashion, it coincided with television coverage of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad personally inserting the first Iranian-made nuclear fuel rods into a reactor in Tehran (while chanting verses from the Quran)-as well as the arrest of three Iranians suspected of plotting attacks on Israeli diplomats in Bangkok. It's all rather reminiscent of that gangster character Jimmy Cagney used to play: the little guy who tries to intimidate bigger opponents by acting like a psychopath. But there's even more method to Iran's seeming madness. First, note which European countries Tehran threatened with its oil-export ban: France, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, and Spain. Four out of the six belong, with Ireland, to the 'PIIGS' club of euro-zone countries with chronic deficits. These are not exclusively fiscal deficits (gaps between government spending and tax revenue). Experts have long given more weight to the PIIGS' trade deficits, which have been larger for longer than their fiscal deficits. According to Martin Wolf of the Financial Times, the key imbalance at the heart of the euro crisis is the trade and services deficit between the PIIGS and the so-called core: Germany... Europe's problems therefore extend far beyond the danse macabre of spiraling deficits, which German-dictated austerity budgets only make worse. On top of the notorious demographic problem, which is bankrupting the continent's superannuated welfare states, there is chronic energy dependency. Thanks to new sources of fossil fuel like shale oil, the U.S. has a way out of that dependency. Europe doesn't. 'Eurabia' was a term coined some years ago by the Egyptian-born author Bat Ye'or to describe the cultural consequences of decades of Muslim immigration to Europe. But there's also Eurania: the nexus between Europe and Middle Eastern oil. (It's scant consolation that the continent's reliance on Russia and other former Soviet republics is even greater.)" http://t.uani.com/wqwHLe
Edward Luttwak in WSJ: "As the pros and cons of attacking Iran's nuclear installations are debated, Americans are confronted by equally confident but contradictory assertions about the possible scope of Iran's retaliation or the impact on the stability of the regime. Some hope the possession of nuclear weapons will moderate Tehran's fanatics. They argue that's what happened with China under Mao Zedong. Others note that extremism has never been reduced by empowerment. And so the debate continues inconclusively while Iran's nuclear efforts persist-along with daily threats of death to America, Israel, Britain, Saudi Arabia's rulers, and more. Yet everyone seems to assume the scope of the attack itself is a fixed parameter-a take-it-or-leave-it proposition that some fear to take and others dread to leave undone. That, by all accounts, is exactly how the issue was framed when the debate started in the last years of the second George W. Bush administration. This is misleading. The magnitude and intensity of an attack is a matter of choice, and it needs to be on the table. The Joint Chiefs of Staff and their planners offered President Bush only one plan, a full-scale air offensive with all the trimmings-an air war rather than an air strike. While the plan was never publicly disclosed, its magnitude was widely known, and I have learned some of the details. Instead of identifying the few critical nodes of a nuclear-weapon program, the target list included every nuclear-related installation in Iran. And to ensure thorough destruction, each target was accorded multiple aiming points, each one then requiring a weapon of commensurate power, with one or more to follow until bomb-damage assessment photos would show the target obliterated... But this war planning denied to the president and American strategy the option of interrupting Iran's nuclear efforts by a stealthy overnight attack against the handful of buildings that contain the least replaceable components of Iran's uranium hexafluoride and centrifuge enrichment cycle-and which would rely on electronic countermeasures to protect aircraft instead of the massive bombardment of Iran's air defenses. That option was flatly ruled out as science fiction, while the claim that Iran's rulers might be too embarrassed to react at all-they keep telling their people that Iran's enemies are terrified by its immense might-was dismissed as political fiction. Yet this kind of attack was carried out in September 2007, when the Israeli air force invisibly and inaudibly attacked the nuclear reactor that Syria's Assad regime had imported from North Korea, wholly destroying it with no known casualties. To be sure, an equivalent attack on Iran's critical nuclear nodes would have to be several times larger. But it could still be inaudible and invisible, start and end in one night, and kill very few on the ground. The resulting humiliation of the regime might be worthwhile in itself-the real fantasy is a blindly nationalist reaction from a thoroughly disenchanted population. In fact, given the probability that an attack could only delay Iran's nuclear efforts by several years, the only one worth considering at all is the small, overnight strike." http://t.uani.com/xTFllv
Nicholas Burns in The Diplomat: "The Indian government's ill-advised statement last week that it will continue to purchase oil from Iran is a major setback for the U.S. attempt to isolate the Iranian government over the nuclear issue. The New York Times reported recently that Indian authorities are actively aiding Indian firms to avoid current sanctions by advising them to pay for Iranian oil in Indian rupees. It may go even further by agreeing to barter deals with Iran - all to circumvent the sanctions regime carefully constructed by the U.S. and its friends and allies. According to the Times, India now has the dubious distinction of being the leading importer of Iranian oil. This is bitterly disappointing news for those of us who have championed a close relationship with India. And, it represents a real setback in the attempt by the last three American Presidents to establish a close and strategic partnership with successive Indian governments. The Indian government's defense is that it relies on Iran for 12 percent of its oil imports and can't afford to break those trade ties. But India has had years to adjust and make alternative arrangements. Ironically, the United States has had considerable success on the sanctions front in recent months. The EU has decided to implement an oil embargo on Iran, the U.S. is introducing Central Bank sanctions and even the East Asian countries, such as China, have imported less Iranian oil in recent months. That makes India's recent pronouncements seem extremely out of step and out of touch with the new global determination to isolate and pressure Iran to negotiate in order to avoid a catastrophic war. There's a larger point here about India's role in the world. For all the talk about India rising to become a global power, its government doesn't always act like one. It is all too often focused on its own region but not much beyond it. And, it very seldom provides the kind of concrete leadership on tough issues that is necessary for the smooth functioning of the international system." http://t.uani.com/ykbqTp |
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