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Bloomberg: "The Obama administration wants China, India and 10 other nations to present specific plans of how they will curtail Iranian oil imports, saying past cuts aren't enough to win them an exclusion from new U.S. sanctions. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton this week granted Japan and European Union countries six-month, renewable exemptions from the measures that take effect June 28, crediting them with 'significantly reducing' imports from the Persian Gulf nation. While China and India, the two biggest buyers of Iran's crude, have made cuts in recent months and years, they were not granted exemptions. The distinction is that the EU and Japan made assurances they will go beyond past reductions and continue to curb purchases from the world's fourth-biggest producer, U.S. officials say. 'What we are looking for is for countries to come to us and tell us if they believe that they should be in that category that deserves an exemption, what are the kinds of significant reductions that they are willing to pursue,' said Carlos Pascual, the State Department's special envoy and coordinator for international energy affairs." http://t.uani.com/GIwQLJ
WSJ: "European Union foreign ministers agreed Friday to add 17 Iranians to its sanctions list for human rights abuses, and also signed off on a legal text that details how they will implement an oil embargo on Iran. Those individuals targeted by sanctions related to human rights abuses will be subject to a travel ban and asset freeze. The 17 new people added Friday take to 78 the total number of Iranians targeted for abuses. Ministers also extended by a year the human rights sanctions, to April 13, 2013. At a meeting in Brussels, foreign ministers also agreed a ban on the export of equipment and software to Iran that can be used to monitor or intercept telecommunications. The list of people to be targeted will be published Saturday in the EU's official journal. The foreign ministers also signed off on the legal text that will enforce a major broadening of sanctions on Iran. The EU agreed those sanctions in January in reaction to Tehran's nuclear program, including a ban on Iranian exports of crude oil, sanctions on its central bank and a ban on trade in gold." http://t.uani.com/GKqgph
Reuters: "The European Union will allow some insurance on Iranian oil shipments before its full embargo starts on July 1, member states agreed on Thursday, responding to concerns from Asian importers heavily reliant on the EU for their cover. The decision, expected to be formally approved by EU foreign ministers on Friday, should make it easier for the likes of Japan and South Korea to import Iranian crude at least until the deadline, EU diplomats said. Those countries lobbied the EU for an exemption on insurance restrictions after the bloc agreed an oil embargo in January as part of efforts to pressure Iran to curb nuclear work many western countries fears is aimed at making atomic bombs." http://t.uani.com/GJqolM
Nuclear Program & Sanctions
AFP: "The threat of a military strike on Iran is preventing the Islamic republic from taking the final steps towards developing a nuclear bomb, Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak said on Thursday. 'We are seeing with our own eyes the reason why Iran, which really wants to achieve a military nuclear capability, is not taking some of the steps defined by the IAEA as breaking the rules, why it is not breaking out,' he told public radio, referring to the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency. 'One of the reasons is the fear of what will happen if, God forbid, the United States or maybe someone else acts against them,' Barak said, referring to the threat of an air strike against Iran's nuclear facilities." http://t.uani.com/GRcGAj
Reuters: "Saudi Arabia will be able to pump enough oil to compensate for any loss of Iranian output caused by Western sanctions, the head of the International Energy Agency (IEA) said on Friday. 'There is no fear of disruption of supplies and you know Saudi Arabia is going to bring more oil to the market,' Maria van der Hoeven, the executive director of the agency that advises developed nations, said while attending an Asia Gas Partnership conference in New Delhi. Brent crude prices have risen 15 percent since the beginning of the year to more than $123 a barrel amid concern that much of Iran's 2.5 million barrels a day of exports will be lost to the market because of European and U.S. sanctions, which are aimed at punishing Iran for its nuclear programme." http://t.uani.com/GRiY40
Reuters: "Sri Lanka has signed a deal to buy crude from Oman, as it looks to reduce its reliance on Iran for oil after pressure from the United States. Sri Lanka, despite being a small player in the world crude market, is one of the 12 countries listed that buy Iranian oil and could be subject to U.S. sanctions unless they significantly cut purchases, a U.S. State Department official said on Wednesday. State-run Ceylon Petroleum Corporation (CPC) said in a statement on Friday that it had inked the deal with Oman Oil Company to buy crude and other petroleum products, though it did not give amounts. The island nation imports 93 percent of its crude from Iran and the island's only refinery, the 50,000 barrels-a-day Sapugaskanda facility, is almost entirely reliant on Iranian crude." http://t.uani.com/GKF1uW
ZDNet Asia: "Chinese telecommunications equipment maker ZTE to back off from business development in Iran, amid reports that it reportedly sold the Telecommunication Company of Iran (TCI) a surveillance system to monitor landline, mobile and Internet communications. When contacted by ZDNet Asia, a China-based ZTE spokesperson said that her company only sold 'standard' equipment to Iran. 'Our main focus for business in Iran is to provide standard communications and network solutions for commercial use to help operators upgrade their network,' she told ZDNet Asia in an e-mail. 'We are a small scale telecommunication equipment supplier in the Iran market [and] sell standard equipment [to them] as we do globally. In the future, we will restrict our business development in Iran.' When queried further for clarification, the ZTE spokesperson responded: 'The specifics of this process are currently under review and the details are still being finalized.'" http://t.uani.com/GW2F4a
New Era: "The latest US and European sanctions against Iran have Rio Tinto's Rössing Uranium in Namibia 'concerned' over the impact they will have on its uranium mining business. So worried is Rössing Uranium that they are 'monitoring the situation and are in the process of assessing and managing any associated current and future risks,' a senior Rössing Uranium executive told New Era. The company does, however, emphasise that they have always, and would continue, to comply with all United Nations Security Council resolutions on Iran, particularly resolution 1929... Iran's state-owned enterprise, Iran Foreign Investment Company (IFIC), holds a 15 percent shareholding in Rio Tinto's open pit mine at Arandis since 1975, before the Islamic revolution in 1979." http://t.uani.com/GRiN7N
Daily Monitor: "MTN, Africa's largest mobile network operator, is now locked in around-the-clock talks with Iranian authorities about its 49 per cent telecoms stake in Irancell. The Middle East country has become the target of sanctions by the United States and the European Union for its nuclear ambitions... MTN paid €300-million for its 49 per cent stake in Irancell. It has admitted that it is already finding it a 'challenge' to get its money out of Iran because of tightening Western standards. It plans to spend R1.3-billion in capital expenditure there this year, up from R1.2-billion last year, and expects to sign four million new subscribers. Some argue that it would make sense for MTN to walk away and patch up some of its reputational damage, given the campaign by United Against Nuclear Iran that calls on investors and institutions not to do business with MTN unless it ends its partnership with the Iranian regime." http://t.uani.com/GKGVf0
Terrorism
AFP: "Interpol has issued 'red notices' for four Iranians suspected of involvement in a bomb attack near the Israeli embassy in New Delhi, the international police agency said Thursday. Indian authorities requested the notices, which instruct police across the globe to arrest the suspects, following the February 13 embassy attack that left an Israeli diplomat seriously injured. Those wanted are: Mohammadreza Abolghashemi, Houshang Afshar Irani, Seyed Ali Mahdiansadr and Masoud Sedaghatzadeh. They are all wanted for terrorism related offences, including criminal conspiracy and attempted murder." http://t.uani.com/GJ6pan
Human Rights
Reuters: "The United Nations renewed the mandate of its human rights investigator for Iran on Thursday, but Russia and China voted against the resolution that expressed 'serious concerns' about a country said to have the highest per capita execution rate in the world. As Western nations tighten sanctions on Iran over its nuclear programme, Thursday's vote at the U.N. Human Rights Council added to the pressure by extending the one-year term of the investigator who has been denied entry by Tehran. Just as they opposed the economically crushing U.S. and EU sanctions on Iran and twice vetoed Security Council resolutions against Syria, Russia and China were among the five countries that voted against the human rights resolution that was backed by 22 countries with 20 abstentions. The vote means that former Maldives Foreign Minister Ahmed Shaheed retains for another year the role of looking into human rights in the Islamic Republic. After his first year in the job he issued a report earlier this month showing a rapidly increasing rate of executions in Iran, with some 670 people put to death last year, most of them for drug crimes that do not merit punishment under international law and more than 20 for offences against Islam." http://t.uani.com/GIpESz
Foreign Affairs
Reuters: "Iraq's former prime minister says the United States is ignoring an 'emerging dictatorship' in his country, telling The Washington Times that Iran is 'swallowing' Iraq and dictating its strategic policies. Ayad Allawi, who served as prime minister from 2004 to 2005, accused Iran of meddling in Iraqi politics to the point that Tehran 'is becoming the dominant feature of Iraq,' and claimed that some U.S. officials 'concede secretly' that 'Iran won, got the best advantage of what happened in Iraq.'" http://t.uani.com/GK7dri
Opinion & Analysis
Herb Keinon in JPost: "Before you 'consider bombing the hell out of a country,' you should 'first at least be willing to enact and measure the impact of the most robust sanctions in history.' That, at least, is the view of Mark Wallace, the US representative for UN management and reform under the Bush administration and now the head of a New York-based organization called United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI), a non-partisan advocacy group lobbying hard for economic sanctions against Iran. The sanctions-first policy is both morally and tactically the right way to go, Wallace said in a telephone interview. 'On a moral basis, we should be prepared, if debating a military option, to first enact truly the most robust sanctions on Iran,' he said. And from a tactical perspective, such sanctions may convince the Iranians that all that talk about a military option being 'on the table' is real. Harsh economic sanctions will show the Iranians the West's 'seriousness of purpose,' he said. In other words, why should the Iranians ever believe the West would take military action if it is unable to even take robust economic action? But a willingness to impose crippling sanctions will send a message about a readiness, if necessary, to use military force. For that reason, Wallace - who formed his organization in 2008 with late US ambassador Richard Holbrooke, former CIA director Jim Woolsey and former White House Middle East expert Dennis Ross - said the move this week by the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) to cut off a number of Iranian banks out of its system was significant. Significant, but not enough because the move cut off some - but not all - Iranian banks out of the structure through which the financial world conducts its business. Anyone who has ever wired money anywhere has used the Brussels-based SWIFT system. At the end of January, Wallace wrote to Yawar Shah, the chairman of SWIFT's board of directors, and urged him to take action against Iran. 'No financial institution in Iran would be able to process funds transfers in any EU country without access to SWIFT. It is the means of communication on which the financial world wholly depends for certainty of transaction,' he wrote... One direction in which UANI is channeling its energies is to get multinational corporations to end their business dealings with Iran. For instance, last week UANI called on US Congress to ensure that the InterContinental Hotels Group end its business with the Iranian regime or lose its lucrative contacts with the US government, including the US Army. The InterContinental hosted Iran;s delegation at this week;s meeting of the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva and has hosted Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in New York during the UN General Assembly. According to Wallace, the Iranians should be forced to do what the delegations of poorer countries do when travelling abroad - stay at the home of the ambassador." http://t.uani.com/GVZ32e
Meir Javedanfar in The Diplomat: "The Iranian regime can live without its nuclear program. But it can't live without its economy, and the recently imposed sanctions, if continued, could turn into an existential danger for the Iranian regime by precipitating an economic collapse. The sanctions imposed against Iran's central bank in December 2011, which have started to dissuade an increasing number of countries from buying oil from Iran as they have to deal with the bank, are proving particularly damaging. These sanctions came in addition to a move by the EU that prompted the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) to discontinue offering service to Iranian banks. This means that from now on, Iranian banks won't be able to send and receive money to and from the vast majority of banks abroad. Ultimately, this could mean Iranian businesses having to send suitcases full of banknotes to suppliers or abroad - or even to stop trading altogether. A $900 billion economy simply can't be run like this. If there's one thing we know about Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei it's that nothing is more important to him than the stability of his regime. The West must therefore use the current economic weakness and diplomatic isolation of the regime as a tool with which to change Khamenei's current nuclear policies. First, though, it's worth looking at what's missing from the West's approach to Iran: a clear message to Iran's supreme leader that even if he does build a bomb, or just reaches a breakout capability, the sanctions and isolation won't end. In fact, the opposite should be true: they will continue or even get worst. Although Western intelligence agencies have suggested that Khamenei hasn't actually made the decision to make a bomb, the price that he's already paying for the nuclear program seems to suggest that he wants to reserve this option. Otherwise, why go through all this pain? His calculation appears to be that Iran can continue along its current path, paying a price for doing so, but that the costs of its continued defiance will end once he has made his decision and the country produces a bomb. After all, why would sanctions aimed at deterrence continue once Iran has secured a bomb? What would be the point? And with the end of the sanctions, Khamenei could recover by doing business with the rest of the world again. But by making clear that sanctions will be continued even if Iran manages to build a bomb, the West will be sending a message to Iran's leader that the sooner he reaches a deal with the West, the lower the economic cost will be. Similarly, if he decides to continue, the longer he waits, the more the country's economy will pay. The regime can't continue with the economic status quo indefinitely. If the economy collapses, nothing will be able to save it or stave off the regime-threatening instability that would come with it. Sending this clear message could also encourage other influential players in Iranian politics, notably the Islamic Revolutionary Guard (IRGC), to pressure Khamenei now, rather than later. More than ever, the IRGC is these days very much about its business interests. It runs a huge business empire, which includes the real estate and construction sector, manufacturing, and a massive import empire reportedly worth around $20 billion annually." http://t.uani.com/GInLFi
David Albright & Paul Brannan in ISIS: "ISIS has learned in researching and discussing the new National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran that important differences exist from the 2007 NIE on Iran's capability to make a nuclear weapon. The 2007 declassified NIE specifically noted that it did not take into account Iran's 'declared civil work related to uranium conversion and enrichment' when assessing the status of its nuclear weapons program. The new NIE does not distinguish between declared and undeclared enrichment activities when considering Iran's nuclear weapons capability. In doing so, the new NIE more accurately values the impact that Iran's advancements in its gas centrifuge uranium enrichment program, declared or otherwise, have on its capability to decide to make highly enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon. This acknowledges that Iran's capability to make highly enriched uranium, as represented by the declared elements of its uranium enrichment program, influences any political decision to make nuclear weapons. The new NIE includes that Iran could be furthering its development of components for nuclear weapons while reportedly assessing that not enough activity has occurred on weaponization to justify a determination that Iran has made a decision to restart its nuclear weaponization program or build a bomb. Both NIEs judge that Iran had a nuclear weaponization program prior to 2004. Missing in ISIS's information about the new NIE is the confidence level that the intelligence community has in its ability to detect a restart and the level of detected activity necessary to determine that a restart has occurred. The 2007 NIE judged with moderate confidence that restart had not happened as of mid-2007. It should be noted that this assessment about restart was rejected by key European allies and Israel, which all assessed that Iran was likely continuing to develop its nuclear weaponization capabilities and that its nuclear weapons program likely existed after 2003. A key weakness of the 2007 NIE was that it did not appropriately emphasize the significance of the status and growth of Iran's enrichment program in general as it related to Iran's ability to make a nuclear weapon. Rather, the 2007 NIE recognized that declared enrichment activities represented a technical capability that 'could be applied to producing nuclear weapons,' but instead highlighted the evidence of the cessation of specific weaponization work by Iran in 2003 and its judgment that a weaponization program had not restarted as of mid-2007. Another weakness of the 2007 NIE was that it cited the cessation of certain weaponization work in Iran as evidence of a halt to a nuclear weapons program. Recent events involving Iran's nuclear program raise questions about how to define a nuclear weapons program. Construction of the Fordow enrichment facility, for example, began as early as 2006 and continued through September 2009, when it was revealed in an announcement by Presidents Barack Obama, Nicolas Sarkozy and Prime Minister Gordon Brown. There is a strong possibility that the Fordow facility was originally designed to be an enrichment facility for the production of highly enriched uranium for nuclear weapons-separate from the Natanz enrichment facility. A facility with a military nuclear purpose under construction by at least 2006 could suggest that some elements of Iran's military nuclear effort that the 2007 NIE states were in existence in the 1990s may have continued beyond 2003 in a different capacity." http://t.uani.com/GM5Lbp
Tabassum Zakaria and Mark Hosenball in Reuters: "The United States, European allies and even Israel generally agree on three things about Iran's nuclear program: Tehran does not have a bomb, has not decided to build one, and is probably years away from having a deliverable nuclear warhead. Those conclusions, drawn from extensive interviews with current and former U.S. and European officials with access to intelligence on Iran, contrast starkly with the heated debate surrounding a possible Israeli strike on Tehran's nuclear facilities. 'They're keeping the soup warm but they are not cooking it,' a U.S. administration official said. Reuters has learned that in late 2006 or early 2007, U.S. intelligence intercepted telephone and email communications in which Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, a leading figure in Iran's nuclear program, and other scientists complained that the weaponization program had been stopped. That led to a bombshell conclusion in a controversial 2007 National Intelligence Estimate: American spy agencies had 'high confidence' that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in the fall of 2003. Current and former U.S. officials say they are confident that Iran has no secret uranium-enrichment site outside the purview of U.N. nuclear inspections. They also have confidence that any Iranian move toward building a functional nuclear weapon would be detected long before a bomb was made. These intelligence findings are what underpin President Barack Obama's argument that there is still time to see whether economic sanctions will compel Iran's leaders to halt any program. The Obama administration, relying on a top-priority intelligence collection program and after countless hours of debate, has concluded that Iranian leaders have not decided whether to actively construct a nuclear weapon, current and former officials said. There is little argument, however, that Iran's leaders have taken steps that would give them the option of becoming a nuclear-armed power. Iran has enriched uranium, although not yet of sufficient quantity or purity to fuel a bomb, and has built secret enrichment sites, which were acknowledged only when unmasked. Iran has, in years past, worked on designing a nuclear warhead, the complicated package of electronics and explosives that would transform highly enriched uranium into a fission bomb. And it is developing missiles that could in theory launch such a weapon at a target in enemy territory. There are also blind spots in U.S. and allied agencies' knowledge. A crucial unknown is the intentions of Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Another question is exactly how much progress Iran made in designing a warhead before mothballing its program. The allies disagree on how fast Iran is progressing toward bomb-building ability: the U.S. thinks progress is relatively slow; the Europeans and Israelis believe it's faster. U.S. officials assert that intelligence reporting on Iran's nuclear program is better than it was on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, which proved to be non-existent but which President George W. Bush and his aides used to make the case for the 2003 invasion. That case and others, such as the U.S. failure to predict India's 1998 underground nuclear test, illustrate the perils of divining secrets about others' weapons programs. 'The quality of intelligence varies from case to case,' a U.S. administration official said. Intelligence on North Korea and Iraq was more limited, but there was 'extraordinarily good intelligence' on Iran, the official said." http://t.uani.com/GQqUn3
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