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NYT: "As tension grew in its nuclear dispute with the West, Iran was reported on Tuesday to have struck an increasingly bellicose tone, warning that it would take pre-emptive action against perceived foes if it felt its national interests were threatened... Without mentioning Israel directly, Mohammed Hejazi, the deputy armed forces head, said on Tuesday: 'Our strategy now is that if we feel our enemies want to endanger Iran's national interests, and want to decide to do that, we will act without waiting for their actions,' Reuters reported. Divisions in Iran's leadership make it difficult to interpret the government's intentions, but the statement showed a new level of aggressiveness in Iran's rhetoric." http://t.uani.com/z1rzQt
AP: "A U.N. team visiting Iran has no plans to inspect the country's nuclear facilities and will only hold talks with officials in Tehran, Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman said Tuesday. The remarks by Ramin Mehmanparast cast doubt on how much the U.N. inspectors would be able to gauge whether Iran is moving ahead with its suspected pursuit of nuclear weapons. The two-day visit by the International Atomic Energy Agency team, which started Monday, is the second in less than a month amid growing concerns over alleged Iranian weapons experiments... Mehmanparast said the visiting IAEA team was made up of experts, not inspectors. He told reporters that the IAEA team was holding discussions Tuesday in Tehran to prepare the ground for future cooperation between Iran and the U.N. watchdog. He said this cooperation is at its 'best level.'" http://t.uani.com/wW9k8c
NYT: "Two Iranian warships docked in a Syrian port on Monday as a senior Iranian lawmaker denounced American calls for arming the Syrian opposition, adding to the international tensions over the nearly yearlong crackdown by the government of President Bashar al-Assad... The Iranian ships arrived in the Syrian port, Tartus, days after the sharpest international rebuke to Mr. Assad so far: the passage of a resolution in the United Nations General Assembly condemning the crackdown and calling for him to step aside. The current escalation of attacks on Homs and other areas began early this month, after the same resolution was vetoed in the Security Council by Russia and China. Russia recently sent ships to the same Syrian port, activists said. Iran's semiofficial Fars News Agency called the ships 'a serious warning' to the United States, and quoted a senior Iranian lawmaker's denunciations of comments by Senator John McCain a day earlier in support of arming the Syrian opposition." http://t.uani.com/AbdVXH
Nuclear Program & Sanctions
Reuters: "China, India and Japan are planning cuts of at least 10 percent in Iranian crude imports as tightening U.S. sanctions make it difficult for the top Asian buyers to keep doing business with the OPEC producer. The countries together buy about 45 percent of Iran's crude exports. The reductions are the first significant evidence of how much crude business Iran could lose in Asia this year as Washington tries to tighten a financial noose around Tehran. The cuts would add to a European Union ban on Iran oil imports, which comes into effect on July 1, to restrict the flow of vital foreign exchange to Tehran under pressure over its nuclear program. Japan is close to an agreement with Washington on the size of cuts needed to win waivers from the U.S. sanctions, two ministers said. The Yomiuri newspaper, citing unidentified sources, said the two sides would settle on an 11 percent cut." http://t.uani.com/yCLDHy
Reuters: "Indian shipping firms will find it difficult to obtain replacement insurance coverage to continue importing Iranian crude oil after new European Union sanctions come into effect, industry sources said. State-run Shipping Corp. of India, the largest tanker owner in India, will lose its EU insurance coverage for its oil tankers operating in Iran from July 1, when European insurers will be prohibited from indemnifying ships carrying Iranian oil. Indian maritime firms are likely to be the most affected in Asia by the sanctions as the other two biggest buyers China and Japan do not rely on European insurers but are covered by domestic providers. India, China and Japan are Iran's three biggest crude oil buyers." http://t.uani.com/y0BPi2
AFP: "Iran, which on Monday said it planned to halt oil sales to several more European Union states in addition to Britain and France, sends only around a fifth of its exports to the EU, with Asian countries taking the lion's share, according to US and international oil agencies. The Energy Information Administration (EIA) in Washington says that in 2010 four Asian states took around two-thirds of all the crude oil exported by the Islamic Republic, with China buying 20 percent, Japan 17 percent, India 16 percent and South Korea 9 percent. A separate body, the International Energy Agency (IEA), reports that Iran supplies between 6 and 10 percent oil consumption in the four Asian nations." http://t.uani.com/wrzMlE
WashPost: "Iran has laid out conditions for future oil exports to other European countries after halting sales to Britain and France earlier this week, the Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman said Tuesday... Mehmanparast told reporters Tuesday that Tehran seeks guarantees of payments, long term contracts and a ban on unilateral cancellation of contracts by buyers. He said all these should be considered if Europe wants continued trade and oil relations. The terms were conveyed in a meeting with ambassadors of six European countries in Tehran, Mehmanparast said. He did not say when the meting took place." http://t.uani.com/zTBxaa
Human Rights
CPJ: "The number of journalists imprisoned worldwide shot up more than 20 percent to its highest level since the mid-1990s, an increase driven largely by widespread jailings across the Middle East and North Africa. In its annual census of imprisoned journalists, CPJ identified 179 writers, editors, and photojournalists behind bars on December 1, an increase of 34 over its 2010 tally. Iran was the world's worst jailer, with 42 journalists behind bars, as authorities kept up a campaign of anti-press intimidation that began after the country's disputed presidential election more than two years ago." http://t.uani.com/zcK6bv
AP: "When Haleh Esfandiari was arrested by Iranian officials in 2007, she and her family had a plan: Go public with her plight. As the Iranian-American citizen sat in prison, her supporters appeared frequently in the media and appealed to U.S. and Iranian representatives. Four months later, Esfandiari was released. The decision to publicly pressure the Tehran government stands in stark contrast to the case of another Iranian-American currently held in an Iranian prison. Amir Mirzaei Hekmati, a former U.S. Marine, was sentenced to death earlier this year by an Iranian court after being convicted of working for the CIA. Relatives deny the allegations and hired an attorney and a crisis public relations firm, but unlike Esfandiari, they are keeping quiet about the case." http://t.uani.com/A4O2Ez
LAT: "Internet access was disrupted in Iran on Monday, raising fears that the state might be stepping up censorship ahead of national elections next week. Foreign websites beginning with 'https' were not available, an Iranian technology expert said. The disruptions followed a week of spotty email and interrupted access to social networking sites. This time, special software that many Iranians use to dodge government filters was not working. Iran has long censored the Internet, blocking some URLs and filtering the Web with keywords, according to the media freedom group Reporters Without Borders. YouTube and websites where people share photos are off limits. Police have arrested Web developers." http://t.uani.com/wuYAqZ
Foreign Affairs
Gallup: "Americans most frequently mention Iran when asked to name the country they consider to be the United States' greatest enemy, and the 32% who do so is up from 25% in 2011." http://t.uani.com/y1arOp
Opinion & Analysis
Victor Davis Hanson in NRO: "Given the worrying over nuclear Iran, it is timely to review the rules of nuclear proliferation. NUCLEAR CRED: Otherwise insignificant nations and failed states gain credibility by shorting their own people to divert billions of dollars to acquiring a bomb. Take away that fact from Pakistan, and the United States would probably have reduced aid to such a de facto belligerent long ago. Without the ongoing appearance of possessing nukes, North Korea would probably earn about as much foreign aid as Chad or Niger. What makes France a world player, in a way that the much larger and richer Germany is not, is not just the burdens of German guilt, but also the fact of a nuclear France. The bomb sometimes achieves what even GDP, population, strategic location, or natural resources cannot. MADNESS AS FORCE MULTIPLIER: Presumed madness is a force multiplier of nuclear capability, especially in an Islamic apocalyptic context. Under conventional nuclear deterrence, rough nuclear parity, and the assurance that neither side has a first-strike capability sufficient to render its opponent nuclearly impotent, prevent both wars and nuclear blackmail. But if a head of state can feign insanity, or, better yet, convincingly announce a wish for the apocalypse, then he can, in theory, circumvent some traditional rules of deterrence. An Iranian theocrat's supposed willingness to use his sole nuclear weapon to wipe out tiny Israel - at the cost of losing 30 million Iranians from retaliation - yields a cheap way to obtain not just parity with Israel, but potentially a nuclear advantage. In any given Middle Eastern crisis, a soon-to-be-nuclear Iran will always talk of the return of the hidden imam while threatening to repeat the Holocaust. By these means, it hopes to reap political concessions that its paltry array of nukes would not otherwise warrant. Acting as if one had nothing to lose is an advantage in nuclear poker - analogous to the supposedly prison-bound high-school dropout picking a fight with his graduating, Harvard-bound counterpart." http://t.uani.com/ysLsXa
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