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Reuters: "Iran and six world powers are expected to resume in the next few weeks long-stalled talks about the Islamic state's disputed nuclear program, diplomatic sources said on Tuesday. One Western diplomat said he expected a meeting to be held on April 13-14, while another envoy said those dates had not been confirmed and a third suggested later in the month was possible. The venue was unclear, they said. A spokesman for European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, who handles dealings with Iran on behalf of the big powers, said 'nothing has been decided yet' regarding the time and place for a meeting. The last meeting over the nuclear work that Iran says is peaceful but the West suspects has military links took place in Istanbul in January 2011, when the two sides failed even to agree on an agenda." http://t.uani.com/GSVZ4O
MSNBC: "Iran carried out death sentences on at least 360 people in 2011, up by more than 40 percent on the year before, according to a report published Tuesday by Amnesty International... Iran's total, which was up from at least 252 people in 2010, included at least three juvenile offenders 'in violation of international law,' Amnesty said. There were another four unconfirmed executions of juveniles in Iran, it added. The group said it had received 'credible reports' that there were a large number of unacknowledged executions in Iran, which would 'almost double the number of official ones there.' Among those executed in Iran were people convicted of offenses such as adultery and sodomy." http://t.uani.com/GR5vX5
Reuters: "ZTE Corp, China's second largest telecommunications equipment maker, said on Tuesday it is no longer seeking to expand in Iran. 'ZTE has provided standard communications and network solutions to Iran on a small scale,' the Shenzhen-based company said in a statement. 'However, due to local issues in Iran and its complicated relationship with the international community, ZTE has restricted its business practices in the country since 2011. ZTE no longer seeks new customers in Iran and limits business activities with existing customers.' Last week, ZTE executives told Reuters they were curtailing their business in Iran, after Reuters reported that it entered a 98.6 million euro ($130.6 million) contract with the Telecommunication Co of Iran in December 2010. The contract had included a surveillance system capable of monitoring telephone and Internet communications, sources said." http://t.uani.com/GTFive
Nuclear Program & Sanctions WSJ: "Iran is ramping up imports of wheat, including rare purchases from the U.S., in a sign Tehran is building a strategic stockpile of grain in anticipation of harsher sanctions or even military conflict. The country has bought wheat from the U.S., Australia, Brazil, and Kazakhstan in the past few months, and is in talks on what could be a major wheat buy from India, according to market watchers and official data. Such a maneuver could bolster the Islamic regime at a time when the West is increasing pressure over Iran's disputed nuclear program, including curbing purchases of Iran's oil and freezing its government banks out of international networks. Current U.S. sanctions allow companies to sell food to Iran. Access to wheat is crucial for the country, enabling it to prevent spikes in the cost of bread, a key staple among its 78 million citizens. Such spikes have in the past led to social unrest in Iran and elsewhere in the Middle East... The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates Iran will import 2 million metric tons of wheat in the year through June. That is a tenfold rise from a February estimate, and enough to cover 13% of Iran's annual consumption, according to USDA data. Industry officials say Iran is also negotiating to buy up to 3 million tons of wheat from India, but it isn't clear if that deal will come to pass." http://t.uani.com/HdYi1M
Bloomberg: "Mostafa Farahmand, who oversees sales at a car dealer in Tehran, hasn't replenished his stock of Porsche, BMW and Mercedes-Benz models for months because neither he nor his customers can pay for them. Demand for European and Asian cars has plunged as sanctions imposed by the U.S. and the European Union on Iran restrict access to foreign currency, making the vehicles hard to come by and raising prices beyond the means of most Iranians... Sellers with larger operations in Iran buy cars from Gulf dealers and smaller businesses purchase them from individuals to import them. While there are ways around the sanctions, buying cars from the Gulf is becoming tougher, dealers said." http://t.uani.com/H6gIHn
Globe & Mail: "As nations around the world scramble to comply with U.S. sanctions on dealing with Iran, one of those in the toughest predicament is South Africa. South Africa relies on Iran for 27 per cent of its oil supply, and it hasn't yet figured out how to replace the Iranian oil. But that's only one part of the dilemma. South Africa also has a web of business and political connections with Iran, and those will be equally difficult to sever... One of South Africa's biggest telecommunications companies, MTN, is a major investor in Iran. It owns 49 per cent of Iran's second-biggest cellphone operator, MTN-Irancell, which controls almost half of Iran's mobile phone market. Critics say the South African company complied with Iranian orders to cut off Skype and text-messaging services to Iranian cellphones during the anti-government protests in 2009. They also allege that MTN-Irancell did a deal with a Chinese company to install tracking technology on Iranian cellphones, so that Iran can track dissidents." http://t.uani.com/GTYOpv
Dow Jones: "European trader Vitol and China's Tianbao have both chartered tankers to lift fuel oil from Iran, the first such fixtures seen in nearly a month, traders and shipbrokers said Tuesday. Vitol has chartered Olympic Spirit II to lift 80,000 metric tons of fuel oil from Bandar Mahshahr on March 27, while Tianbao has chartered Alberta to take 80,000 tons of fuel oil from Bandar Mahshahr April 10, in what is the first fixture for April loading reported by shipbrokers, they said. Tianbao is a unit of Chinese state-run trader Zhuhai Zhenrong, which was placed under sanctions by the U.S. in January for allegedly selling gasoline to Tehran." http://t.uani.com/GUcP4Z
Opinion & Analysis
Jeffrey Goldberg in Bloomberg: "Last week, I wrote about some of the assumptions Israel's leaders are making about the potential fallout from a strike on Iran's nuclear sites. I visited Tel Aviv and Jerusalem this month, and I was struck, in my conversations with Israeli officials and ex-officials, by the number of best-case scenarios they offered up. They seemed dangerously overconfident that they could manage the aftermath of a strike, and this has led them to contemplate what seems to me -- at this moment at least -- a precipitous and premature attack. I also went to Israel to test a notion I've often heard: that Netanyahu might be engaged in an enormous bluff. I doubted this theory (and certainly President Barack Obama and his secretary of defense, Leon Panetta, doubt it). But it seemed worth testing, in part because Netanyahu's campaign to focus the world's attention on Iran has worked so well without his having to resort to military force. I came away from this visit certain that Netanyahu isn't bluffing. I disagree with Panetta's view that an Israeli attack could come by June, but I do think that, if current conditions prevail, there is a very good chance Israel will strike by the end of the year. Which brings me to another belief of the Israeli leadership I heard during my visit. This one might surprise Obama's critics among right-wing Israel supporters (and among Republican presidential candidates): The Israelis don't see Obama as an adversary. Especially after the air-clearing meeting between Obama and Netanyahu this month at the White House, the Israeli leadership is fairly confident Obama will side with them if they launch an attack, and they are also fairly confident the president is serious when he suggests that the U.S. might one day use force to stop Iran. But that's almost beside the point. From the perspective of the two men who matter most in the Israeli decision-making process -- Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak -- American promises are somewhat immaterial. Because it is imprinted on the Israeli DNA that Jews, post-Holocaust, shouldn't rely on the kindness of non-Jews to bail them out of trouble. In other words, no matter how strong Obama's rhetoric, Israel's leaders will not subcontract out their defense to the U.S. or any other party. Senior officials I met with also told me that there are no gaps between the U.S. and Israel on intelligence issues, or in a basic understanding of the Iranian threat. The only gap is in timing: U.S. officials are confident they could destroy Iran's nuclear facilities in 2013 or 2014 if they needed to. The Israelis seem to believe that, because of their more modest offensive capabilities, they either strike in 2012 or don't strike at all." http://t.uani.com/GSVhEt
Dina Temple-Raston in NPR: "There has been a subtle shift taking place in the intelligence community in recent months. Intelligence and law enforcement officials say analysts and experts who have been tracking al-Qaida for more than a decade have been quietly reassigned. Some are being moved completely out of al-Qaida units. Others are being asked to spend less time watching al-Qaida and more time tracking more traditional foes - like state-sponsored terrorists. U.S. officials declined to provide specific numbers or detail which intelligence units have changed priorities, but they did say that a goodly portion of the analysts who have been reassigned from their al-Qaida duties are being asked to focus on one country: Iran. Officials said that with the relative threat from al-Qaida declining, it made sense to reallocate resources and with the increase in terrorism related activity linked to Iran, it also made sense to focus on it. The concern tore into public consciousness last fall, when FBI Director Robert Mueller, Attorney General Eric Holder and a roster of high-level Justice Department officials announced that the U.S. had uncovered a plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States. U.S. officials didn't mince words. They said that the scheme could be traced - through money transfers - to the top ranks of the Iranian government. 'As a career intelligence analyst I always look at problems from two perspectives, that is capability and intent,' said Philip Mudd, a former top counter terrorism official in both the CIA and the FBI. 'Clearly the Iranians have had the capability since the revolution in 1979, to assassinate members of the opposition in Europe, which they did in the 1980s. The question now is intent ... do they want to do this?' Iran denied that it had anything to do with the plot and demanded an apology. But just months later there were other suspicious episodes that suggested that the intelligence communities concern about Iran was well placed. In February, two bombs exploded in India and the country of Georgia, and they appeared to be targeting Israeli diplomats. It is unclear who was responsible, but India issued warrants for three Iranian citizens. They stood accused of helping several men attach a magnetic bomb to the back of an Israeli diplomatic vehicle in New Delhi. The same day, a similar attack was launched against an Israeli diplomat in Georgia. Again, the Iranians denied any involvement. Mudd says he's suspicious. 'When I saw those attacks, to me the light that went on in my head was the intent light. Iran's intent is back,' he says." http://t.uani.com/HbXUp8
Pam Benson in CNN: "American officials are adamant. The U.S. will respond - possibly with military force - if Iran crosses a red line and decides to actually make nuclear weapons. But will the U.S. know with an degree of certainty that a line has been crossed? The decision itself to push ahead really comes down to one person, according to Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. Clapper told a Senate hearing recently that any decision would be based on 'the supreme leader's world view and the extent to which he thinks that would benefit the state of Iran or, conversely, not benefit.' Clapper was referring to Ayatollah Ali Khameini, the supreme leader of Iran. 'It's Khameini, period, full stop, end of sentence,' agreed Kenneth Pollack, an Iran expert at the Brookings Institution. But trying to read one person's mind is no easy thing, observed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently, noting how Iraq's Saddam Hussein was misread by U.S. intelligence. 'People sometimes say and do things that are at variance with what one might expect,' the secretary of state said. 'It's still quite bewildering to me why Saddam Hussein wanted everyone to believe that he had chemical, biological and even nuclear weapons of mass destruction when apparently he did not.' Ephraim Asculai, a retired Israeli nuclear scientist, said there are three ways the world will know if Iran has decided to break out and make a dash to nuclear weapons: Iran tells everyone, the the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) discovers it, or the intelligence community figures it out. But he is not terribly confident any intelligence service - whether it's the United States' or Israel's or some other nation's- will discover it. 'Depending on the intelligence community - this is not very good,' Asculai said. Even though the weaponization program may be stopped, Iran continues to push ahead with the more difficult component of a potential nuclear weapons program, the manufacturing of fissile material. The IAEA is able to keep tabs on Iran's uranium enrichment efforts. Although Iran is not believed to be enriching to weapons-grade, it is churning out stockpiles of lower-enriched uranium that could be rather quickly - within two to three months - enriched to the 90% needed for a weapon. Current and former intelligence officials agree that IAEA inspectors play an instrumental role. CIA Director David Petraeus recently told a Senate hearing: 'I believe their past report was a very accurate reflection of reality, of the situation on the ground. I think that is the authoritative document when it comes to informing the public of all the countries in the world of the situation there.' By just about anyone's account, Iran is one of the toughest intelligence targets." http://t.uani.com/HgSOWP |
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