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Bloomberg: "New European Union sanctions on Iran's largest ports operator will curb billions of euros in otherwise legal trade, if EU authorities police those seeking ways around the rules, according to trade lawyers, shipping and insurance executives and EU officials. The EU's announcement of an Iranian oil embargo on Jan. 23 overshadowed an asset freeze approved the same day on Tidewater Middle East Co., Iran's dominant ports operator, a move with consequences for European companies all along the trade and supply chain. The EU was Iran's top trade partner in 2010, with about 13 billion euros ($17.3 billion) in non-petroleum trade that year, European Commission and International Monetary Fund figures show. The new measure forbids any EU person or entity from making direct or indirect payments for Tidewater's benefit. That means exporters, importers, shipowners and charterers can't pay loading fees at Tidewater's seven ports, including the Shaheed Rajaee complex at Bandar Abbas. Ninety percent of Iran's container traffic passes through that port at the mouth of the Strait of Hormuz." http://t.uani.com/x278mo
Reuters: "Sanctions on Iran are already hitting global oil flows even though a European ban on imports from the Islamic Republic does not come into effect until July, the International Energy Agency (IEA) says. The IEA said the sanctions, designed to curb Iran's nuclear program that Washington and its allies say aims to produce an atomic bomb, could affect far more Iranian oil than the 600,000 barrels per day (bpd) sold last year to the European Union. The agency, adviser to the world's most industrialized nations on energy policy, cited industry estimates that up to 1 million bpd of Iran's 2.6 million bpd of oil exports may be replaced by alternative supplies once sanctions go into effect. Iran could be forced to place unsold barrels into floating storage or even shut in production in the second half of this year, the IEA said on Friday in its monthly Oil Market Report." http://t.uani.com/xlsXpf
AP: "Hamas appears to be drifting away from its longtime patron Iran - part of a shift that began with last year's Arab Spring and accelerated over Tehran's backing of the pariah regime in Syria. The movement's top leader in exile, Khaled Mashaal, wants Hamas to be part of the broader Islamist political rise triggered by the popular uprisings sweeping across the Arab world. For this, Hamas needs new friends like the wealthy Gulf states that are at odds with Iran. For now, Hamas won't cut ties with Iran or close its headquarters-in-exile in the Syrian capital of Damascus, officials in the movement said. However, relations have become increasingly strained. Hamas has reduced its presence in Iran-allied Damascus in response to Syrian President Bashar Assad's brutal crackdown on a popular uprising against him." http://t.uani.com/A2VsFQ
Nuclear Program & Sanctions Reuters: "The organization that facilitates the bulk of the world's cross-border payments is facing growing U.S. pressure to do what it has never done before - cut a country off from its global messaging system. Belgium-based SWIFT - the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication - is vital to international money flows, exchanging an average 18 million payment messages per day between banks and other financial institutions in 210 countries... Faced with outside pressure, SWIFT's typical response has been: don't shoot the messenger. The Belgium-based body, involved in 80 to 90 percent of all global payments, is keen to point out that it does not carry out transactions and is only a messaging system, more akin to a telephone service, which U.S. lawmakers are not targeting. SWIFT does not hold accounts for members and does not perform clearing or settlement... 'SWIFT is clearly concerned about setting a precedent here, but we're looking at a Mideast war or worse. Hopefully they will find a solution, some way of ensuring this is just a one-off,' said Schrank. 'Otherwise, SWIFT could get endlessly caught up in financial disputes as well.'" http://t.uani.com/wK07x1
NYT: "India emerged as a major new irritant on Thursday in Western efforts to isolate Iran, announcing that it was sending a large trade delegation there within weeks to exploit opportunities created by the American and European antinuclear sanctions that are increasingly disrupting Iran's economy. The trade delegation announcement coincided with new reports that India, an important consumer of Iranian oil, had eclipsed China for the first time as Iran's No. 1 petroleum customer last month, subverting efforts by the United States to persuade other countries to find non-Iranian sources for their energy needs or risk onerous penalties under a new American sanctions law... Iranian news agencies prominently reported Thursday that Iran's crude exports to India had increased to 550,000 barrels a day in January, partly offsetting a reduction by China, which has long been Iran's top buyer, to 250,000 barrels a day." http://t.uani.com/A6NSRh
Reuters: "India and Iran share close historical links -- or so argued India's first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru. Now economic interests are pulling the two countries closer again. India has struck a clever deal to pay for Iranian oil in its own not freely convertible currency, the rupee. It could be a diplomatic hot potato. New Delhi buys $12 billion of oil a year from Iran. But the trade isn't balanced. Iran only spends $2.7 billion on Indian exports, according to Tehran. Under the mooted plan for 45 percent of Iranian oil to be settled for in rupees, Tehran would end up with a surplus of nearly $3 billion in rupees, assuming trade levels remain constant. If all of Iran's payment shifted to rupees the surplus would be $9 billion per year. That illiquid currency would be like a gift card that the holder can only spend in Indian shops. Iran needs a plan." http://t.uani.com/xKUxuA
Reuters: "Singaporean firms have stopped supplying Iran with Indonesian palm oil on concerns over the country's ability to make payments in the wake of Western sanctions, trading sources in Singapore said on Thursday... Indonesia supplies around 50,000 tonnes a month, or slightly more than half of Iran's needs, said the Singaporean traders, who declined to be named due to the sensitivity of the issue. Most of Indonesia's palm oil deals are done in Singapore, a trading hub for the region... Secretary general of Indonesia's Palm Oil Association, Joko Supriyanto, said two local companies, PT Musim Mas and PT Wilmar Nabati Indonesia, supply some of the cargoes heading to Iran... Senior officials from PT Musim Mas and PT Wilmar Nabati Indonesia, a unit of Singapore-listed Wilmar International, told Reuters their firms do not directly export palm oil to Iran." http://t.uani.com/wxo2pZ
Human Rights
WashPost: "Whenever Maysam, a prominent Iranian blogger, connects to the Internet from his office in the bazaar, he switches on a special connection that for years would bypass the Islamic republic's increasingly effective firewall. But recently the software, which allowed him and millions of other Iranians to go online through portals elsewhere in the world, stopped working. When it sporadically returns, speeds are so excruciatingly slow that sites such as Facebook and Balatarin.com - which evaluates unofficial news and rumors in Farsi - become unusable. 'There has been a change,' said Maysam, who spoke on the condition his last name not to be used out of fear of being summoned by Iran's cyber police. 'It seems that the authorities are increasingly getting the upper hand online.'" http://t.uani.com/Aj3xVV
WashPost: "An Iranian opposition website reported Thursday that authorities have banned one of the daughters of opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi from her teaching job. The report by Kaleme.com said Mousavi's daughter was omitted from the list of instructors of Al-Zahra University. She was teaching art at the all-women university. It said security agents also warned all three of Mousavi's daughters they might be detained. Kaleme said the ban and the warning came after the children of Mousavi and his fellow opposition leader Mahdi Karroubi urged people to oppose detention of political prisoners. Mousavi and Karroubi have been under a house arrest since last February. The call was made earlier this week in a letter." http://t.uani.com/w1vJoW
AFP: "Iranian dissident cartoonist Mana Neyestani says drawing has been his salvation and a weapon to combat his own personal demons as well as Tehran's hardline Islamist regime. Neyestani's autobiographical comic book 'An Iranian Metamorphosis,' a Kafkaesque story recounting his jailing in Iran over a cartoon depicting a cockroach that sparked riots in 2006, is due to hit stores on February 16. 'With this book, I wanted to share my experiences but also to forget my worst nightmares, when I was arrested in 2006,' said Neyestani, who has been in exile for the past five years and last month applied for political asylum in France." http://t.uani.com/A7qqEJ
Foreign Affairs
Daily Telegraph: "The head of Iran's elite Quds force is reportedly visiting Syria to advise the regime on repressing protests and the armed resistance, as consternation grew in Western capitals on Thursday about Iranian and Russian meddling in the crisis. Members of the opposition Syrian National Council said they had reliable intelligence that Qassem Suleimani was intimately involved with President Bashar al-Assad and his ruling coterie. 'It is his second visit at least,' said Radwan Ziahdeh, an executive member of the council. 'The Quds force is working mainly with training, helping militias and snipers.' ... Western and Arab experts and diplomats estimate that the number of troops and advisers from the Quds force in Syria to be in the high hundreds or low thousands. They have set up at least one base in Zabadani near the capital Damascus." http://t.uani.com/zVnEpE
Opinion & Analysis
Economist Editorial Board: "Is it all part of a carefully calibrated campaign of bluff and rumour intended to support tightening sanctions and bring Iran to the negotiating table, or is the ground really being prepared for an attack on Iranian nuclear facilities in the next few months? Perhaps it is neither and the people who count, yet to make up their minds, are frantically hedging and debating. In early February the annual Herzliya security conference in Israel provided a platform for the country's military and intelligence elite to air their concerns about Iran's progress toward a nuclear weapon. Israel's hawkish defence minister, Ehud Barak, said that the 'window' for an effective strike was rapidly closing because the continuing movement of essential uranium-enriching centrifuges to the Fordow underground facility, close to the holy city of Qom, would give Iran a 'zone of immunity' in which it could construct a bomb regardless of any intervention by the outside world. Attacking the case for waiting to assess the impact of the latest round of sanctions, due to come into effect by midyear, Mr Barak warned that 'whoever says later may find that later is too late.' He added that 'the assessment of many experts...is that the result of avoiding action will certainly be a nuclear Iran, and dealing with a nuclear Iran will be more complicated, more dangerous and more costly in lives and money than stopping it.' Mr Barak's American opposite number, Leon Panetta, who was travelling with journalists to a meeting with his NATO counterparts in Brussels, confided soon afterwards that there was a strong likelihood of Israel attacking Iran in April, May or June, when the skies are usually clear. Mr Panetta was not speaking on the record, but later turned down an opportunity to disown his remarks. Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, responded by using his nationally broadcast Friday sermon on February 3rd to commit the country to continuing its nuclear programme no matter what, and to threaten both Israel and America. He described Israel as a 'cancerous tumour' that 'will be removed' and declared that if war broke out 'it would be ten times deadlier for the Americans' than for Iran. Mr Khamenei also called on regional allies to attack Israel. 'Iran would assist any country or organisation that would fight the Zionist regime, which is now weaker than ever,' he said. It is a call that may, however, fall on deaf ears. Iran's main ally in the region, the Syrian government, has other things on its mind. If it falls, pro-Iranian groups in Lebanon and Gaza will find their supply-lines cut. Amid the escalating war of words, the military preparations for a conflict are indeed under way." http://t.uani.com/wuXvu8 |
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