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Bloomberg: "Chinese and Japanese groups that insure ships against risks such as oil spills said European Union sanctions limit their ability to cover tankers hauling Iran's crude, raising speculation governments may intervene. The Japan Ship Owners' Mutual Protection & Indemnity Association and the China Shipowners Mutual Assurance Association are reinsured through the London-based International Group of P&I Clubs, meaning they are indirectly affected by EU sanctions approved Jan. 23, the organizations said. Both groups say they are the largest insurers for ships in their respective countries, the two biggest importers of Iranian oil... The EU ban on the purchase, transportation, financing and insurance of Iranian oil affects Asian importers because 95 percent of the world's tankers are insured by the 13 members of the International Group, according to Andrew Bardot, the organization's executive officer. While China said it won't reduce imports, the EU sanctions make fewer ships available to load the cargoes from the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries' second-largest producer." http://t.uani.com/xR51hU
AP: "A little-known company based in Belgium that facilitates many of the world's financial transactions has become central to the West's plan to prevent Iran from selling oil and other goods to raise money to fund its nuclear ambitions. The company is called SWIFT, which stands for the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication. It is a secure private network used by nearly every bank around the world to send payment messages to each other that then lead to the transfer of money across international borders. The Obama administration wants Iran evicted from SWIFT, which said last week it would comply with European Union rules to cut off Iranian banks once it is clear on what is required... 'This could be a potential silver bullet,' said Mark Wallace, a former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations who is now president of a group called United Against Nuclear Iran." http://t.uani.com/w6WNFS
WashPost: "The reason for the unusual purchase - 220 pounds of highly caustic fluorine gas - was never explained, but someone at Iran's Sharif University was clearly anxious to collect. For months, the mysterious buyer bombarded a British supply company with telexes, demanding to know when his 45 canisters would arrive. 'We have not received your reply,' complained one telex, sent from the Tehran school's purchasing department and written partly in broken English. 'We are awaiting for hearing from you as soon as possible.' But the telex, sent in 1992 and made public here for the first time, was not what it seemed. The real purchaser was not a university but a secretive research institute working for Iran's military." http://t.uani.com/AxPLCB
Nuclear Program & Sanctions
LAT: "As U.S. and Israeli officials talk publicly about the prospect of a military strike against Iran's nuclear program, one fact is often overlooked: U.S. intelligence agencies don't believe Iran is actively trying to build an atomic bomb. A highly classified U.S. intelligence assessment circulated to policymakers early last year largely affirms that view, originally made in 2007. Both reports, known as national intelligence estimates, conclude that Tehran halted efforts to develop and build a nuclear warhead in 2003. The most recent report, which represents the consensus of 16 U.S. intelligence agencies, indicates that Iran is pursuing research that could put it in a position to build a weapon, but that it has not sought to do so." http://t.uani.com/waDCpl
Reuters: "Japan's main shipping insurer will only be able to provide a fraction of the coverage to tankers transporting Iranian oil under new European Union sanctions, officials said on Friday. Starting in July, European insurers and reinsurers will be prohibited from indemnifying ships carrying Iranian crude and oil products anywhere in the world as per sanctions on Tehran. Although Japan's P&I Club, which provides insurance for shipping companies, does not directly fall under the sanctions regime, it is largely dependent on the European reinsurance market to hedge its risk... Japan P&I Club is the only Asian-based member of the Group of International P&I Clubs, an association of customer-owned ship insurers which covers 95 percent of the world's tankers against pollution and personal injury claims." http://t.uani.com/zA8gNs
Bloomberg: "The U.S. government has offered to help India get alternative supplies for Iranian crude as it looks to squeeze the Persian Gulf producer's oil revenue, according to three people with knowledge of the matter. The U.S. may help broker deals with suppliers such as Iraq and Saudi Arabia, the people said, declining to be identified because the information is confidential. Saudi Arabia has already offered to replace Iranian oil supplies if needed, two of the people said. The U.S. is in talks with countries around the world on reducing their dependence on Iranian oil, Victoria Nuland, a spokeswoman at the State Department in Washington, said in an e-mail yesterday." http://t.uani.com/w6VVGM
Bloomberg: "Turkiye Halk Bankasi AS, the Turkish bank that handles payments for Iranian oil, will stop processing transactions for supplies into Turkish refineries from July amid tightening Western sanctions against the Persian Gulf state. Tupras Turkiye Petrol Rafinerileri AS, which operates four refineries, won't be able to use the bank from the end of June unless it gets a U.S. waiver, a Tupras official said today, declining to be identified citing company policy. State-run Halk complies with all international regulations and standard practices on Iran, an official at the Ankara-based lender said by phone today, declining to be named for the same reason." http://t.uani.com/zbxlni
Reuters: "Greek refiner Hellenic Petroleum, which heavily relies on Iranian oil supplies, said on Thursday replacing those deliveries would be 'easy' and alternative grades from Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Russia were being considered. Hellenic needs to find an alternative for Iranian oil before European sanctions kick in on July 1. The Greek refiner said that imports from Iran made up around 30 percent of its oil supply over the year. Data from Eurostat suggests the proportion may have increased in the latter half, rising to 58 percent in the third quarter." http://t.uani.com/xP6WOC
Reuters: "Taiwan state-owned oil refiner CPC Corp on Thursday bought 6 million barrels of Angolan crude in what traders said was one of its biggest tender purchases for years and could be partly to replace Iranian oil. Taiwan imported slightly more than 30,000 barrels per day (bpd) of Iranian crude oil last year, the equivalent of about one cargo or almost 1 million bpd per month." http://t.uani.com/yExoSo
Human Rights
AP: "The Obama administration says it is deeply worried that Iran may execute a Christian pastor. State Department spokesman Mark Toner says the pastor, Youcef Nadarkhani, faces a death sentence for charges of apostasy and refusing to recant his Christian faith. He cited reports that a provincial court is renewing the execution order for Nadarkhani. Toner said Thursday the U.S. was standing with religious and political leaders from around the world in condemning Nadarkhani's conviction. Washington is demanding his immediate release." http://t.uani.com/xo2483
Domestic Politics
Reuters: "Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has often surprised his foes, but next week's parliamentary poll may make him a lame duck for the rest of his presidency, a penalty for defying the Islamic Republic's Supreme Leader. Vilified in the West for his barbs against America and Israel, his defiance on Iran's nuclear work, and questioning of the Holocaust, the blacksmith's son has long relied on his charismatic appeal to the poor and devout, as well as his links to the elite Revolutionary Guard and Basij religious militia. Many Iranians underestimated the little-known Ahmadinejad before he defeated political heavyweight Hashemi Rafsanjani for the presidency in 2005 and even later as he accumulated power." http://t.uani.com/zThSr9
Opinion & Analysis
Michael Gerson in WashPost: "Anyone who has worked at the White House is keenly aware of two gaps. The first is the gap between the obsessions of the media and the challenges of the country. So Rick Santorum explains his views on the pill and Satan, while nuclear inspectors leave Iran in failure and the president again enters the Situation Room to clarify his flawed options. The second gap is between the classified knowledge possessed by the White House and the confident cluelessness of commentators. The people making difficult choices on Iran know things we don't. But some things can be asserted with confidence. By building a broad international coalition against Iran and applying effective sanctions, the Obama administration has raised the stakes of the confrontation. More accurately, it has built a broad coalition by raising those stakes. After an initial period of naivete, the administration concluded that inducements would not be enough to hold back Iran's nuclear ambitions. The only hope is the application of costs that Iran cannot bear. The resulting sanctions are biting. But having made the case for urgency and concerted action, it would be difficult for President Obama to tell the world 'never mind' and shift to a strategy that accepts Iranian membership in the nuclear club. Sanctions have not caused Iran to back down, but the approach is not yet exhausted. It is worth another twist of the tourniquet to reduce significant exceptions and exemptions. The Iranians have traditionally used diplomatic meetings as a method to weaken sanctions in exchange for the promise of more meetings. A negotiation conducted by America and Europe that eases pressure only as a reward for compliance would send a final signal of seriousness. The history of negotiations with Iran justifies a cautious pessimism. In the event of failure, one man's reaction will matter most. And Obama needs to know his mind before indecision begins to limit his options." http://t.uani.com/wCSZ4r
Michael Singh in FP: "In a recent remark that has stoked considerable controversy, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey said that it is. Dempsey underscored the importance of this assertion when he said that it was based on this conclusion -- that the regime is a 'rational actor' -- that he felt the current U.S. approach to Iran 'is the most prudent path.' To determine whether Gen. Dempsey is right or wrong, it is important to understand what it means for a government to act rationally. It does not necessarily imply that the government sees the world the way we do, or makes the decisions we would make. Simply put, there are two essential criteria for rationality -- first, that decisions are arrived at through a process of logical reasoning; second, that the decisions made are the best ones given the choices available. Most discussions of whether the Iranian regime is rational focus on the first criterion. Does the regime make its choices by weighing costs and benefits, or through a capricious process guided by whim and claims of divine revelation? The U.S. intelligence community believes that it is the former: for all of the regime's unhinged rhetoric, the regime is calculating in its decisionmaking. The 2007 National Intelligence Estimate on Iran's nuclear program puts it this way: 'Tehran's decisions are guided by a cost-benefit approach rather than a rush to a weapon irrespective of the political, economic, and military costs.' However, this conclusion raises a critical question -- what does the Iranian regime see as costly, and what does it see as beneficial? This leads to the second criterion for rationality: a rational actor makes the best decision given the choices available. But 'best' according to whose interests, and whose values? Whether an action is costly or beneficial, and thus whether a decision is best, depends vitally on the answers to these questions. Our own domestic political experience -- witness the Democrat-Republican divide over the national debt -- demonstrates that two rational actors, faced with the same sets of facts and circumstances but holding different interests, philosophies, or values, can reach very different conclusions about what to do. So for a conclusion that the Iranian regime is rational to be useful in predicting its behavior -- not to mention making and judging our own policy -- we must assess how the regime perceives its interests. Otherwise the 'costs' we impose may not be viewed as costly by the regime, and the 'benefits' we offer may not be seen as beneficial." http://t.uani.com/AzaaAE
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