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Bloomberg: "Iran missed an opportunity last week to begin clearing up what can 'only plausibly' be called a nuclear-bomb program, said Laura Kennedy, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Conference on Disarmament. International Atomic Energy Agency information 'can only plausibly be described as building blocks for a nuclear-weapons program,' Kennedy said today in remarks directed toward Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi. 'Just last week, Iran missed an opportunity to cooperate with the IAEA during the visit to Iran of the IAEA deputy director general for safeguards.' Both she and Salehi attended a meeting at the Conference on Disarmament today in Geneva. Countries are trying to negotiate a new accord to restrict production of atomic-weapon material." http://t.uani.com/wHE30k
NYT: "American officials who have assessed the likely Iranian responses to any attack by Israel on its nuclear program believe that Iran would retaliate by launching missiles on Israel and terrorist-style attacks on United States civilian and military personnel overseas. While a missile retaliation against Israel would be virtually certain, according to these assessments, Iran would also be likely to try to calibrate its response against American targets so as not to give the United States a rationale for taking military action that could permanently cripple Tehran's nuclear program. 'The Iranians have been pretty good masters of escalation control,' said Gen. James E. Cartwright, now retired, who as the top officer at Strategic Command and as vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff participated in war games involving both deterrence and retaliation on potential adversaries like Iran. The Iranian targets, General Cartwright and other American analysts believe, would include petroleum infrastructure in the Persian Gulf, and American troops in Afghanistan, where Iran has been accused of shipping explosives to local insurgent forces." http://t.uani.com/w2NFd3
FT: "The Obama administration will face its first test of resolve over new sanctions on Iran from Wednesday when it has to decide whether to place penalties on banks involved in Iranian imports that do not include oil. Lawmakers involved in drawing up the new sanctions law, which passed the Senate by a highly unusual 100-0 vote, say that the administration's response will demonstrate how serious it is about stepping up the pressure on Iran and could play a role in whether Israel decides to launch a military strike against Iran's nuclear facilities. Under the sanctions bill that was passed at the end of last year, the administration must decide by the end of June whether to impose sanctions on banks that do business with the Iranian central bank to process oil imports. However the law also calls on the administration to impose sanctions on those private banks conducting 'significant' non-oil business with the Iranian central bank by the end of February." http://t.uani.com/yevUXW
Nuclear Program
AP: "The U.S. and its European allies share fears that Iran might be seeking the capacity to make atomic arms as it forges ahead with its nuclear program. But they differ on whether it is actively working on such weapons, reflecting the difficulties of penetrating Tehran's wall of secrecy. Comments by U.S. intelligence officials indicate that Washington still thinks the Islamic Republic stopped such secret work nine years ago. But Britain, France and Germany disagree, even though their officials are keen to show that they and the United States speak with one voice on the concerns that Iran may want to produce nuclear arms. Such divergence could mean trouble for the West's strategy to keep Iran nuclear weapons-free." http://t.uani.com/xbu8jg
Reuters: "Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said on Tuesday that talks between Iran and the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany over Tehran's disputed nuclear programme may resume in April. 'Latest in April, I guess there will be a meeting in about a month's time. If they prefer to hold it in Turkey we will always host it,' Davutoglu said in an interview with the state-run TRT Haber television, adding he would speak to his Iranian counterpart next week." http://t.uani.com/wL9LCC
AP: "Iran opened a key space facility to visiting journalists for the first time Wednesday in an apparent effort to show its willingness to allow glimpses at sensitive technology even as Tehran and U.N. inspectors trade accusations about access to nuclear sites and experts. The press tour of the Alborz Space Center, about 40 miles (70 kilometers) west of Tehran, also sought to showcase Iran's advances in aerospace sciences less than a month after it announced another satellite was launched into orbit. Iran's ambitious space program has raised concerns in the West because of possible military applications. The same rocket technology used to send satellites into orbit - including the Feb. 3 launch of the domestically made Navid, or Gospel - can also be retooled to create intercontinental warheads." http://t.uani.com/xjdl3U
AP: "For one 55-year-old professor, what started out as an overseas trip to the doctor has become part of the shadowy U.S. struggle with Iran. The arrest in Los Angeles in December of Seyed Mojtaba Atarodi, a U.S.-educated electrical engineer who teaches at a leading Iranian university, comes as the U.S. uses export controls to try to restrict Iran's acquisition of U.S. technology, including for its military and nuclear programs. But the Atarodi case bears another hallmark of the long-running U.S.-Iran conflict: It's cloaked in secrecy. U.S. officials won't discuss the case or confirm that Atarodi has been charged. He has appeared in federal district court in San Francisco at least twice, but both proceedings were closed." http://t.uani.com/wzezWE
Sanctions
WSJ: "European Union sanctions are impeding the shipment of oil to Asia from Iran, in a threat to Tehran's hopes to find new buyers for its top export. Some Asian shippers say they have stopped sailing to Iran, and Japan's largest tanker-fleet owner said it is assessing whether it will do the same, because of difficulty maintaining insurance coverage by associations that are subject to EU laws. Bengt Hermelin, chief executive of Singapore-based tanker company Samco Shipholding Pte., said Tuesday that the impact of sanctions on insuring ships 'will prevent owners, including Samco, from calling Iran.' ... The International Group of P&I Clubs, which pools resources for tanker insurance clubs for 90% of global oil tonnage and is dominant in Asia, is based in London and subject to EU laws. Tighter U.S. banking sanctions also have the potential to affect insurance programs, because they are carried out in U.S. dollars." http://t.uani.com/zwMqw2
Reuters: "Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Tuesday pledged to aggressively implement new U.S. sanctions on Iran but noted that some allies such as Japan face 'unique situations' as they seek to reduce Iranian oil imports. President Barack Obama on December 31 signed into law the harshest in a series of U.S. sanctions on Tehran over its nuclear program, targeting foreign financial institutions that do business with Iran's central bank or other blacklisted Iranian financial entities. The new U.S. sanctions have set off a scramble among countries with significant Iranian oil imports to voluntarily reduce such purchases so they would be exempted from the penalties." http://t.uani.com/wZgKA3
Bloomberg: "Iran will accept payments from trading partners in gold in addition to dollars and other currencies, central bank Governor Mahmoud Bahmani said, according to the official Islamic Republic News Agency. Any nation can pay in its own currency, and Iran has already accepted goods as payment from China and India, the central bank said, according to IRNA. Iran will accept gold from any country, Bahmani said, according to the news agency. The European Union and U.S. have imposed sanctions to protest Iran's nuclear program, restricting trade and financial transactions." http://t.uani.com/zjEpsu
WSJ: "The U.S. Treasury Department disrupted a Dubai-based banking operation that Washington believes had become Tehran's primary conduit for evading international sanctions and processing its oil sales, according to people briefed on the operation. The effort was particularly sensitive because the targeted institution in the United Arab Emirates is partly owned by the local government of Dubai, a close U.S. ally. The chairman of the bank, called the Noor Islamic Bank, is the son of Dubai's ruler. In mid-December, Noor agreed to close off what the people briefed on the operation characterized as Iran's single-largest channel for repatriating foreign-currency oil receipts-facilitating as much as 60% of Iran's foreign oil sales by late last year, they estimated." http://t.uani.com/wfjgXq
AFP: "Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said Tuesday he was optimistic that talks with the international community over its controversial atomic activities would go ahead. 'We expect the dialogue that has started will continue,' Salehi told reporters after giving a speech to the UN Conference on Disarmament in which he repeated Iran's stance that it considers nuclear weapons a 'great sin'. His comments came after the International Atomic Energy Agency said last week it had 'major differences' with Iran after two fruitless visits probing suspected nuclear weapons work. The IAEA trip had been seen as having an impact on the possible resumption of talks between Iran and the so-called P5+1 powers -- Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States, plus Germany -- which broke down 13 months ago." http://t.uani.com/yByi20
Domestic Politics
WSJ: "Iran's government is goading citizens to vote and warning them not to protest the results of parliamentary elections on Friday, as the turnout emerges as a test of the regime's legitimacy. Many ordinary Iranians and now-outlawed reformist political parties say they will boycott the vote to protest the status quo. Risking reprisals, student activists from eight major universities issued a statement on Tuesday saying the election is a 'staged circus' by the regime. The opposition Green Movement said that it, too, would avoid the polls because it says the process isn't democratic." http://t.uani.com/vZLgBv
Opinion & Analysis
Martin Indyk in IHT: "As the Obama administration ramps up the sanctions pressure on Iran to accept meaningful curbs on its nuclear program, it is following a strategy of coercive diplomacy that has a fundamental design flaw. Consequently, President Obama is in danger of achieving the opposite of his intention: Iran may well decide that rather than negotiate a compromise, its best choice is actually to cross the nuclear weapons threshold, with fateful consequences for all. Obama's premise is that only by bringing the Iranian regime to its knees, through sanctions on its central bank and concerted efforts to reduce its oil exports, will it give up on its nuclear-weapons aspirations. The fact that Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has now himself labeled the sanctions 'crippling,' and that Iran's nuclear negotiators announced last week that they were ready to come back to the table, have been taken as evidence that the president's strategy is working. That judgment is at best premature, at worst wishful thinking. Iran has not slowed its production of enriched uranium. On the contrary, the regime announced earlier this month it was building an additional enrichment plant with more efficient centrifuges. Nor has it cooperated with International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors, who wrongly assumed that the announcement of a decision to come back to the table would result in a greater Iranian willingness to address their concerns. Defenders of the current strategy will explain Iran's continued defiance as a necessary prelude to concessions. More likely, what we are seeing are the reflexive reactions of a regime that believes its back is to the wall. The worst thing the Iranian supreme leader could do in such circumstances is show weakness, especially if he fears that his internal opposition could exploit it to challenge his regime from within. And if he looks around his neighborhood he can see evidence that submitting his nuclear program to international controls could invite military intervention to topple him. That's what happened to both Saddam Hussein and Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi. On the other hand, the North Korean leadership's defiant determination to develop nuclear weapons seems to have protected it from intervention. If the supreme leader has indeed reached the conclusion that defiance is the best way to ensure the survival of his regime, then we have entered a vicious circle... The only way out of the vicious circle is for Khamenei to understand that Obama is not seeking his overthrow - that behind the negotiating door lies a path to Iran's peaceful use of nuclear power and not a corridor to the gallows. But how, while pursuing sanctions designed to cut Iran's economic jugular, can Obama credibly signal this to Khamenei without opening himself up to the charge of weakness?" http://t.uani.com/ye3my0
Victor Davis Hanson in NRO: "In the past 40 years, the United States has intervened to go after autocrats in Afghanistan, Grenada, Haiti, Iraq, Libya, Panama, Somalia, and Serbia. We have attacked by air, by land, and by a combination of both. In the post-Vietnam, post-Cold War era, are there any rules to guide us about any action envisioned against Syria or Iran - patterns known equally to our enemies? 1. The target cannot have nuclear weapons. Strongmen in Pakistan and North Korea by virtue of their nukes are exempt from American reaction (unlike Syria or, at present, Iran) - unless they directly threaten our existence or that of our allies. With the end of the Cold War, many rogue states lost the Soviet nuclear umbrella and are still scrambling to acquire their own nuclear weapons to ensure them deterrence, especially against the United States, which has not yet invaded a nuclear nation. 2. We do not attack large countries. About 30 million or so - roughly the population of Iraq or Afghanistan - is the upper limit. That criterion suggests that we will not ourselves seek regime change in Iran (population: 65 million) through force - a different case from punitive bombing or preemptive air attacks on its nuclear facilities... Based on these rules, we can make two general observations about Syria and Iran. In Syria, the U.S., on proper humanitarian grounds, could easily intervene through air power alone - without either congressional or U.N. sanction - to so weaken the non-nuclear Assad regime that, as happened in Serbia and Libya, it would surely and quickly implode. That said, we probably will not, given that such action would offend China and Russia, would not ensure quiet or stability in the aftermath, be soon criticized by those pundits who originally urged us to go in, and in six months be either unappreciated or overtly criticized by nations that had initially demanded that we do something to stop the slaughter. As far as Iran goes, based on past precedents, there is zero chance that the United States would ever intervene to change the government, either on the ground or by an extended bombing campaign - and only a slight chance we will preempt by bombing suspected Iranian nuclear facilities." http://t.uani.com/xQlUCK
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