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Reuters: "Belgium-based SWIFT, which operates the bulk of global cross-border payments, said on Friday it was ready to implement sanctions against Iranian financial institutions as part of new U.S. and European restrictions against Tehran. The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication said it understood the European Union was drafting new international sanctions regulations directly affecting EU-based financial communication service providers. 'SWIFT stands ready to act and discontinue its services to sanctioned Iranian financial institutions as soon as it has clarity on EU legislation currently being drafted,' it said in an emailed statement. SWIFT said it was also closely following the progress of a bill passed by the U.S. Senate's Banking Committee seeking to cut off Iranian financial institutions." http://t.uani.com/y8h9NK
AFP: "The United States is urging the European Union to block Iranian banks' access to SWIFT, the global interbank transfer network, to step up pressure on Tehran, a US official said Thursday... Last week a US-based non-governmental organization urged SWIFT board directors for immediate compliance with US and EU Iran sanctions law. 'We have no doubt that you have not sought to oversee an institution that has been an enabling financial mechanism for the Iranian regime to pursue an illicit nuclear weapons program, support terrorist activities, and to engage in brutal human rights abuses,' said the NGO, United Against Nuclear Iran, said in letters to the directors. 'In recent months, however, the world has united in an effort to economically isolate the Iranian regime and to sanction its key industries. SWIFT must join that movement or risk continuing to run afoul of applicable sanctions law,' UANI said. 'Moreover, SWIFT jeopardizes its good reputation if it continues its work with Iran's financial institutions.'" http://t.uani.com/zflb7i
CNN: "Iran poses a laundry list of threats to U.S. national security, according to top officials in the intelligence community. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday that Iran poses a threat on a number of fronts, including its ability to develop a nuclear weapon, and the fact that any nuclear attack would likely be delivered by a ballistic missile. 'Iran already has the largest inventory of ballistic missiles in the Middle East, and it is expanding the scale, reach, and sophistication of its ballistic missile force, many of which are inherently capable of carrying a nuclear payload,' Clapper said during his opening remarks to the committee. The question for the intelligence community remains whether Iran, in particular Supreme Leader Sayyed Ali Khamenei, either already has decided or will decide to pull the trigger when it comes to taking the country's nuclear knowledge and applying it to the actual development of a nuclear weapon." http://t.uani.com/wO9Ow8
Nuclear Program & Sanctions AP: "The Obama administration is slapping sanctions on Iran's ministry of intelligence and security, asserting that it supports global terrorism, commits human rights abuses against Iranians and participates in ongoing repression in Syria. The Treasury Department announced Thursday that it added the ministry to its list of specially designated global terrorists. The step freezes any assets the group may have in U.S. jurisdictions, bars Americans from doing business with it and bans ministry employees from travel to the United States. The effect of the sanctions will be largely symbolic as it is not known to have holdings in the U.S. The announcement said the ministry had helped al Qaeda agents in Iran and provided them with identity cards and passports and had given money and weapons to al Qaeda in Iraq." http://t.uani.com/zIAKyq
WSJ: "A call by Iran for a quick resumption of nuclear negotiations with world powers drew a cautiously receptive response from U.S. and European officials on Thursday, opening a potential avenue for reducing the mounting tensions between Tehran and the West. Iran's chief nuclear negotiator, Saeed Jalili, sent a letter to the European Union's foreign-policy chief, Catherine Ashton, dated Feb. 14, which requested 'to resume our talks...for sustainable cooperation' at the 'earliest' possible time, according to a copy of the letter. U.S. and European officials who viewed the letter said it was vague and didn't allay serious concerns in Washington and Brussels that Tehran would seek to use any new talks to buy time to advance its nuclear work and stave off new sanctions. But these officials also said their governments were closely studying Mr. Jalili's position and that they believed they needed to further test Iran's willingness to re-engage in direct talks after a hiatus of more than a year." http://t.uani.com/yTPhEu
Reuters: "U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Friday that Iran must disprove allegations that it is secretly developing nuclear weapons, but that diplomacy is the only way to resolve international concern about its program. Ban appeared to reject U.S. and Israeli suggestions of possible military strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities as a last resort, if diplomatic efforts fail to persuade the Islamic Republic to stop work that could be used to make such weapons." http://t.uani.com/AnzIL4
WSJ: "China has, at least for now, dashed any hopes that it plans to obey tighter U.S. sanctions against Iran after hammering out an agreement to resume some imports of Iranian crude. State-owned Unipec, one of China's top importers, reached an agreement with National Iranian Oil Co. earlier this week to renew an annual supply contract that had lapsed at the end of the year. During the negotiations, which dragged into February and were only resolved after a visit to Beijing by Iran's deputy oil minister, imports fell by about 280,000 barrels a day and halved the amount of Iranian crude shipped to China in January and February. Although the timing of the cuts coincided with a renewed push by the international community to apply pressure to Iran over its nuclear activities, the agreement underscores that China's dispute with Iran was strictly commercial rather political." http://t.uani.com/xaNlIT
Reuters: "Essar Oil, the second biggest Indian client of Iranian oil, will continue to buy 100,000 barrels per day from the Islamic country in the next fiscal year starting April 1 for its Vadinar refinery in the western state of Gujarat, Chief Executive L.K. Gupta said. Iran accounts for about 11 percent, or 350,000-400,000 barrels per day (bpd), of India's oil imports and is the South Asian country's second-largest crude oil supplier." http://t.uani.com/wKLske
WSJ: "Western countries seeking to pressure Tehran are aiming new, stiff sanctions at Iran's top export-oil-but imports of food and other staples have borne the brunt of the measures so far, with an immediate financial impact on Iranian consumers. As a result, Iranians say they are stockpiling daily needs such as rice and cooking oil, while paying sharply higher prices. The regime's oil revenues are the main target of the new sanctions, including a European Union boycott of Iranian oil and U.S. restrictions on doing business with Iranian banks. The aim is to starve Iran of revenue so it will stop enriching uranium for its nuclear program and return to negotiations aimed at guaranteeing that the program is for peaceful purposes, as Iran says it is." http://t.uani.com/xgr0wb
Business Standard: "Piggybacking on the anti-Iranian sentiments, an anti-India campaign seems to be gaining ground in the United States. This comes amid escalation in tension between Iran and Israel and the United States slapping additional sanctions on the Iranian regime... 'We call on India to cancel its planned trade exploration trip to Iran, stop buying Iran's oil, and join the international effort to isolate the regime,' said United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) as it urged lawmakers to ask India to stop its oil trade with Iran and not to send its trade delegation to Tehran. India is sending a trade delegation to Iran to explore the possibilities of increasing bilateral trade so that it can make payments for the oil purchase." http://t.uani.com/zqlb73
Reuters: "Japanese refiners should consider having a force majeure clause in term crude contracts with Iran in case they have difficulties making payments in the face of pressure from U.S. sanctions, the industry's top official said on Friday. The United States, angry over Iran's nuclear programme, wants Japan's oil industry to cut back on Iranian imports but Japan must import swathes of oil in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear crisis and the country's refiners have yet to make significant cuts. Japan, Iran's No. 3 crude buyer, is seeking an exemption from U.S. sanctions, which, if enforced, would penalise some Japanese banks for doing transactions with Iran's central bank." http://t.uani.com/wsVrfZ
Human Rights
AP: "When German reporter Marcus Hellwig was thrown into an Iranian prison on spying allegations, it struck him as odd that the chair in the interrogation cell had no backrest. The reason soon became clear: 'There was no backrest so that they could conveniently hit and kick people's backs,' Hellwig told The Associated Press in his first interview with international media. The 46-year-old reporter for Germany's mass-circulation Bild am Sonntag was arrested with his photographer after entering Iran on a tourist visa in October 2010 and interviewing the son of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, an Iranian woman sentenced to death by stoning for adultery in a case that generated international outrage. Hellwig and photographer Jens Koch were split up and Hellwig said he was initially thrown into a plain 65 sq. foot (6 sq. meter) cell kept brightly lit 24 hours a day, but without a window or toilet. There was no furniture, only a carpet to lie on. Hellwig said he was held in a facility run by the Pasdaran, Iran's feared Revolutionary Guard elite forces, and heard 'terrifying cries' of inmates being abused every day." http://t.uani.com/yf960A
Opinion & Analysis
WSJ Editorial Board: "Sophisticated commentary about the Islamic Republic of Iran can be a thing to behold: Whenever the mullahs resort openly to terrorism, it's taken by some in the West as a good sign that they're finally serious about negotiations. So it has been this week, as Iranian agents sought to carry out terrorist attacks against Israeli diplomats in India, Georgia and Thailand. The attempt in Tbilisi was foiled without injury, but the bombing in New Delhi critically injured the wife of one Israeli official and hurt three others. In Bangkok, four Thais were injured when a cache of explosives detonated in an Iranian safe house. Tehran officially denies involvement. But three Iranian nationals are now under arrest in Thailand, another is on the lam, and a fourth is being extradited to Thailand from Malaysia. If these are the marks of a country that is 'ready to talk'-as former Obama Administration diplomat Dennis Ross argued in a New York Times op-ed this week-we'd be interested to know what Iranian actions would qualify as evidence of belligerence. An attempt to bomb Washington, D.C.? Oh, wait: They tried that, too. The larger story is that Iran is coming close to openly making war on the country it wants to wipe off the map. That's an escalation from the more veiled (and often more deadly) warfare the Islamic Republic has waged against Israeli and Jewish targets for decades. It's also an indication that the mullahs, far from seeking to de-escalate tensions with the West, are scrapping for a fight. They might get one." http://t.uani.com/x2dNSQ
Thomas Joscelyn in the Long War Journal: "The US Treasury Department today designated the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) 'for its support to terrorist groups as well as its central role in perpetrating human rights abuses against the citizens of Iran and its role in supporting the Syrian regime as it continues to commit human rights abuses against the people of Syria.' Al Qaeda and its affiliate, al Qaeda in Iraq, are among the terrorist groups supported by the MOIS, which is Iran's chief intelligence agency. 'Today we have designated the MOIS for abusing the basic human rights of Iranian citizens and exporting its vicious practices to support the Syrian regime's abhorrent crackdown on its own population,' Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence David S. Cohen explained in a press release. 'In addition, we are designating the MOIS for its support to terrorist groups, including al Qaeda, al Qaeda in Iraq, Hizballah and HAMAS, again exposing the extent of Iran's sponsorship of terrorism as a matter of Iranian state policy.' The MOIS is assisting al Qaeda in a variety of ways. According to Treasury, the 'MOIS has facilitated the movement of al Qaeda operatives in Iran and provided them with documents, identification cards, and passports.' In addition, the MOIS has 'provided money and weapons to al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI)...and negotiated prisoner releases of AQI operatives.' This is not the first time the Treasury Department has targeted the nexus between Iran and al Qaeda. In July 2011, Treasury designated an al Qaeda leader known as Yasin al Suri along with five other terrorist operatives who use Iranian soil to move funds and recruits from Iran's neighboring Gulf countries to South Asia and elsewhere. Al Suri's network assists not only senior al Qaeda operatives in Pakistan, but also al Qaeda in Iraq. The Treasury Department said that al Suri's network operates as part of a 'secret deal' between al Qaeda and the Iranian government. In December 2011, US authorities announced a $10 million reward for information leading to al Suri's capture. Recent press reports indicate that the scrutiny placed on al Suri has led to his replacement as the head of al Qaeda's Iran franchise. The terrorist who has reportedly replaced him is a notorious al Qaeda financier named Mohsen al Fadhli. In addition to working with al Qaeda in Iraq and its deceased leader, Abu Musab al Zarqawi, al Fadhli is wanted for his involvement in al Qaeda's international terrorist plotting. Namely, al Fadhli helped finance the Oct. 6, 2002 attack on the French ship MV Limburg and has been tied to the Oct. 8, 2002 attack against US Marines stationed on Kuwait's Faylaka Island. One Marine was killed during the Faylaka Island shootout." http://t.uani.com/yuerNQ
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