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NYT: "The Senate Banking Committee unanimously approved a new regimen of anti-Iran sanctions on Thursday that would for the first time threaten to punish the global financial telecommunications network that nearly all banks rely on to conduct their daily business. The legislation's banking provision, aimed at forcing the telecommunications network to expel Iranian banks that have already been blacklisted, would be financially catastrophic for Iran if carried out fully, according to proponents and sanctions experts. Expulsion from the network - the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, known as Swift - would deny to Iran many billions of dollars in revenue from abroad that is routinely routed into its domestic banking system. 'The Senate Banking Committee has sent a strong message,' said Mark D. Wallace, the president of United Against Nuclear Iran, an advocacy group based in New York that has been pushing for such a provision. He has argued that Swift, which based in Belgium, is already in violation of other sanctions against Iran as well as its own rules. "Swift must end its business in Iran," he said. The legislation does not specify what action would be taken against Swift if it did not comply. There was no immediate comment by Swift on the legislation. But officials of the network, mindful of pressure from Mr. Wallace's group and others that have increasingly advocated stricter sanctions against Iran, denied it was acting illegally, in a statement posted earlier Thursday on the network's Web site." http://t.uani.com/z0nwrW
WSJ: "Iran denied United Nations inspectors access to a suspected nuclear site, scientists and documents during a visit to Tehran this week, dimming already scant hopes for a breakthrough to end a standoff over Iran's nuclear work, said diplomats briefed on the International Atomic Energy Agency's mission... The IAEA said it will return a senior-level team to Iran later this month to try to build on three days of discussions that were held with senior Iranian officials, which ended Tuesday. The two sides largely discussed the mechanisms through which they could address the IAEA's concerns, and a possible future work plan, according to the officials briefed on the trip. But U.S. and European officials are already voicing concerns that Tehran is seeking to use the dialogue to divide the international community and stave off additional financial penalties that are being crafted in Washington and the EU." http://t.uani.com/ykO2fY
AP: "During his presidential campaign in 2007, Republican candidate Mitt Romney promised that a trust overseeing his financial portfolio would shed any investments that conflicted with GOP positions toward Iran, China, stem cell research and other issues. But Romney's family trusts kept some of those stocks and repeatedly bought new investments in similar holdings as recently as 2010, when they were sold in advance of his latest White House campaign, a detailed review of Romney's financial records by The Associated Press shows... Many of those companies are included among an extensive list compiled by United Against Nuclear Iran, a bipartisan group urging pressure on firms with business in Iran. A spokesman for the group, Nathan Carleton, declined to comment on Romney's holdings. But Carleton noted that the group's list-it named several of the firms the Romney trusts bought stock in-'is available for anyone to investigate.'" http://t.uani.com/zRcjHL
Nuclear Program & Sanctions WSJ: "U.S. officials say they believe Iran recently gave new freedoms to as many as five top al Qaeda operatives who have been under house arrest, including the option to leave the country, and may have provided some material aid to the terrorist group. The men, who were detained in Iran in 2003, make up al Qaeda's so-called management council, a group that includes members of the inner circle that advised Osama bin Laden and an explosives expert widely considered a candidate for a top post in the organization... U.S. officials believe there have been recent indications officials in the Iranian government have provided al Qaeda operatives in Iran limited assistance, including logistical help, money and cars, according to a person briefed on the developments... The management council, a group of advisers to al Qaeda leaders in Pakistan, includes planner and explosives expert Saif al Adel, who is from Egypt; spokesman Sulayman Abu Ghayth, of Kuwait; Abu al-Khayr al-Masri, of Egypt, who was a member of bin Laden's inner shura council; planner Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah, of Egypt; and spiritual leader Abu Hafs al-Mauritani, a Mauritanian." http://t.uani.com/zkRa1D
WashPost: "A fiery anti-Israel speech by Iranian leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Friday, and a successful satellite launch by his country, added to growing global tensions, as Israel warned it might make a preemptive strive against Iran's nuclear facilities despite U.S. objections. 'From now onwards, we will support and help any nations, any groups fighting against the Zionist regime across the world, and we are not afraid of declaring this,' Khamenei said during a rare Friday prayer lecture at Tehran University. 'The Zionist regime is a true cancer tumor on this region that should be cut off,' Khamenei said. 'And it definitely will be cut off.'" http://t.uani.com/AgKAvg
Reuters: "The central banks of UAE and Qatar have told lenders to stop financing trade with Iran, bankers said on Thursday, cutting another source of credit for a country struggling under Western economic sanctions imposed over its nuclear programme. The Gulf has a long history of trade with Iran, especially in Dubai where there is a large Iranian trading community, and Gulf banks had been expected to fill a funding gap for the import of grains left by European lenders banned from financing trade by EU sanctions... About 8,000 Iranian traders are registered in Dubai, and re-export trade between Iran and the UAE totalled 19.5 billion dirhams ($5.32 billion) in the first half of 2011, according to the latest figures from United Arab Emirates' customs authority." http://t.uani.com/yOaUHz
NewsCore: "The global institution charged with facilitating international financial transactions was embroiled in controversy Thursday over its relationship with Iranian banks. The US Senate Banking Committee passed a bill Thursday that, if passed into law, would authorize the Treasury Department to sanction Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) if it does not sever its ties with Iran. SWIFT, based in Belgium, provides the global network through which financial institutions transfer money to each other... The move by the committee comes after a week of calls by United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI), a nonpartisan foreign policy advocacy group, for SWIFT to terminate its work with Iran. UANI contends that SWIFT violates EU and US sanctions by granting Iran access to its financial-messaging network. On Monday, UANI President Mark Wallace, a former US ambassador to the United Nations, sent SWIFT's leadership, international banking and regulatory officials, and US lawmakers a letter detailing SWIFT's violations of US and EU sanctions against Iran." http://t.uani.com/xIjlKk
WSJ: "Shares of South Africa's MTN Group Ltd. fell Friday after the company said it is investigating claims by Turkey's largest mobile-phone operator that it engaged in corruption to secure a deal in Iran. According to MTN, Turkcell Iletisim Hizmetlera AS alleges the South African company encouraged Pretoria to support Iran's nuclear power development program in 2005, and also claims MTN made improper payments to an Iranian and a South African government official between 2004 and 2005 to enable the company to secure a license to operate in Iran... The allegations come as MTN's Iranian operation is the target of a U.S. lobby group, which is seeking to get foreign businesses to leave Iran. United Against Nuclear Iran last week sent a letter to MTN Chief Executive Sifiso Dabengwa calling for the company to pull out of the country, alleging MTN's technology is being used by Iran's government to locate and track mobile-phone users. MTN declined to comment on the letter at the time, but said it had no intention of leaving the country." http://t.uani.com/w8ftj6
Haaretz: "Iran is mulling a partial ban of products manufactured by South Korean electronics giant Samsung over an Israeli commercial promoting one of the firm's products which depicts the imagined destruction of Iran's nuclear facility in Isfahan by Mossad operatives. In the commercial for the cable TV company HOT, three characters from the popular show Asfur arrive disguised as women near the nuclear facility, where they meet a bored Mossad agent passing the time by watching the show on his Samsung tablet." http://t.uani.com/w9atee
Human Rights
HRW: "The Iranian government has been intimidating and detaining relatives and friends of foreign-based Persian-language journalists to obtain information or silence them, Human Rights Watch said today. A family member of a BBC reporter whom Iranian authorities arbitrarily detained and held as a hostage for close to two weeks is one of the latest victims in a new wave of arrests against journalists and bloggers prior to parliamentary elections due on March 2, 2012." http://t.uani.com/zQdPxQ
Foreign Affairs
NYT: "It was meant to be a crowning moment in which Iran put its own Islamic stamp on the Arab Spring. More than a thousand young activists were flown here earlier this week (at government expense) for a conference on 'the Islamic Awakening,' Tehran's effort to rebrand the popular Arab uprisings of the past year. As delegates flooded into a vast auditorium next to a space needle in western Tehran, a screen showed images of the Iranian revolution in 1979, morphing seamlessly into footage of young Arab protesters in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Libya and Yemen. But there was a catch. No one was invited from Syria, whose autocratic president, Bashar al-Assad, is a crucial Iranian ally. The Syrian protesters are routinely dismissed by Tehran's government as foreign agents - despite the fact that they are Muslims fighting a secular (and brutal) dictatorship." http://t.uani.com/z1Waxx
Opinion & Analysis
David Ignatius in WashPost: "Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has a lot on his mind these days, from cutting the defense budget to managing the drawdown of U.S. forces in Afghanistan. But his biggest worry is the growing possibility that Israel will attack Iran over the next few months. Panetta believes there is a strong likelihood that Israel will strike Iran in April, May or June - before Iran enters what Israelis described as a 'zone of immunity' to commence building a nuclear bomb. Very soon, the Israelis fear, the Iranians will have stored enough enriched uranium in deep underground facilities to make a weapon - and only the United States could then stop them militarily. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu doesn't want to leave the fate of Israel dependent on American action, which would be triggered by intelligence that Iran is building a bomb, which it hasn't done yet. Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak may have signaled the prospect of an Israeli attack soon when he asked last month to postpone a planned U.S.-Israel military exercise that would culminate in a live-fire phase in May. Barak apologized that Israel couldn't devote the resources to the annual exercise this spring. President Obama and Panetta are said to have cautioned the Israelis that the United States opposes an attack, believing that it would derail an increasingly successful international economic sanctions program and other non-military efforts to stop Iran from crossing the threshold. But the White House hasn't yet decided precisely how the United States would respond if the Israelis do attack. The Obama administration is conducting intense discussions about what an Israeli attack would mean for the United States: whether Iran would target U.S. ships in the region or try to close the Strait of Hormuz; and what effect the conflict and a likely spike in oil prices would have on the fragile global economy. The administration appears to favor staying out of the conflict unless Iran hits U.S. assets, which would trigger a strong U.S. response." http://t.uani.com/zGQFaI
Charles Krauthammer in WashPost: "Imperial regimes can crack when they are driven out of their major foreign outposts. The fall of the Berlin Wall did not only signal the liberation of Eastern Europe from Moscow. It prefigured the collapse of the Soviet Union itself just two years later. The fall of Bashar al-Assad's Syria could be similarly ominous for Iran. The alliance with Syria is the centerpiece of Iran's expanding sphere of influence, a mini-Comintern that includes such clients as Iranian-armed and -directed Hezbollah, now the dominant power in Lebanon; and Hamas, which controls Gaza and threatens to take the rest of Palestine (the West Bank) from a feeble Fatah. Additionally, Iran exerts growing pressure on Afghanistan to the east and growing influence in Iraq to the west. Tehran has even extended its horizon to Latin America, as symbolized by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's solidarity tour through Venezuela, Ecuador, Nicaragua and Cuba. Of all these clients, Syria is the most important. It's the only Arab state openly allied with non-Arab Iran. This is significant because the Arabs see the Persians as having had centuries-old designs to dominate the Middle East. Indeed, Iranian arms and trainers, transshipped to Hezbollah through Syria, have given the Persians their first outpost on the Mediterranean in 2,300 years. But the Arab-Iranian divide is not just national/ethnic. It is sectarian. The Arabs are overwhelmingly Sunni. Iran is Shiite. The Arab states fear Shiite Iran infiltrating the Sunni homeland through (apart from Iraq) Hezbollah in Lebanon, and through Syria, run by Assad's Alawites, a heterodox offshoot of Shiite Islam... Force the issue. Draw bright lines. Make clear American solidarity with the Arab League against a hegemonic Iran and its tottering Syrian client. In diplomacy, one often has to choose between human rights and strategic advantage. This is a rare case where we can advance both - so long as we do not compromise with Russia or relent until Assad falls." http://t.uani.com/yUPWMj |
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