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AFP: "Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned that a nuclear-armed Iran or a conflict over its program would both destabilize the region as she pressed Tehran for clear commitments in upcoming talks. As Israel voiced growing impatience over Iran, Clinton credited US sanctions with inflicting pressure on the Islamic republic but she warned of a tough road ahead as Tehran prepares to meet with six major powers. 'There is no clear path. We know that a nuclear-armed Iran would be incredibly destabilizing to the region and beyond. A conflict arising out of their program would also be very destabilizing,' Clinton said. 'There is no way to balance this. You have two very difficult paths here,' Clinton told a dinner in Norfolk, Virginia, where she was on a day trip to visit the only NATO command in the United States." http://t.uani.com/HPihVT
NYT: "The Iran sanctions effort led by the United States appeared to be causing new fractures in the Iranian economy on Tuesday, with leading oil companies in South Africa and Greece suspending imports of Iran's crude oil, further signs of emergency self-reliance emerging in Iran, and an influential former Iranian president publicly challenging his country's anti-American stoicism... The maneuvers in advance of the proposed talks have been accompanied by a tightening array of sanctions aimed at stopping Tehran's uranium enrichment. But Iran had called the measures a bullying tactic by the West that is doomed to fail. At the same time, Iranian leaders have acknowledged that the sanctions are causing deprivations in the country by severely restricting international financial transactions and sales of crude oil, Iran's main export." http://t.uani.com/HPeBDx
Politicker: "Now that the city has given Nissan a $1 billion contract to manufacture New York's 'Taxi of Tomorrow,' public advocate and likely 2013 mayoral candidate Bill de Blasio has launched an offensive against the automaker for doing business with Iran. Mr. de Blasio sent out a statement and a string of Tweets today demanding the car company stop selling its wares to the Iranian regime. 'You cannot do business with the people of New York City with one hand, and prop up the dangerous regime in Tehran with the other,' Mr. de Blasio said in his statement. 'For our billion dollars, taxpayers and taxi riders deserve a guarantee that Nissan will stop selling its vehicles to Iran.' Nissan is one of the companies on Mr. de Blasio's 'Iran Watch List,' which highlights 12 automakers that do business with the Iranian regime. According to the watch list, which was launched in partnership with the advocacy groups Iran180 and United Against Nuclear Iran, Nissan has produced more than 7,500 cars in Iran through a partnership with local manufacturer Pars Khodro." http://t.uani.com/HWgtZG
Nuclear Program Reuters: "Iran has proposed holding the next round of talks with six world powers over its disputed nuclear program next week in Iraq instead of Turkey, Iraq's foreign minister said on Wednesday. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Saturday the April 13-14 negotiations with Iran would be held in Istanbul, the first such meeting since January 2011 when the two sides failed even to agree on an agenda. Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari told Reuters the proposal for talks in Baghdad came from an Iranian delegation visiting on Tuesday and he would meet with ambassadors from the five Western powers plus Germany on Tehran's plan." http://t.uani.com/Hlw08I
CSM: "Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as is his habit, sought to pour cold water over the notion that US-led international sanctions on Iran are having an effect on its controversial nuclear program. Sure, the sanctions have undermined the Iranian currency, resulted in the expulsion of Iran's central bank from the international system that facilitates interbank transfers, and squeezed Iran's oil exports, the government's major revenue source. The rial has lost about 40 percent of its value against the dollar since December, and is now trading on the informal market at about 20,000 rials to the dollar. In the latest sign of the pain being inflicted on Iran's economy, a newspaper there today reports that the government has banned the import of 600 products. But Mr. Netanyahu told reporters yesterday that he sees no evidence of any impact on Iran's calculations about its controversial nuclear program." http://t.uani.com/I0d8JK
Sanctions
FP: "Several top members of the House of Representatives are fighting for expanded sanctions on Iran, but Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) opposes any changes to the bill currently before the Senate. House Foreign Affairs Chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), has joined with Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA) to introduce a bill of Iran sanctions measures they want to see added to the Johnson-Shelby Iran Sanctions, Accountability and Human Rights Act of 2012, which is currently pending before the Senate. Reid has said there is no time to debate or consider amendments to the bill and wants to pass it as is. But Ros-Lehtinen, Sherman, and a slew of senators including Joe Lieberman (I-CT) are urging Reid to allow lawmakers to offer amendments that would strengthen the bill. Ros-Lehtinen and Sherman's bill, the Iran Financial Sanctions Improvement Act, contains many of the sanctions measures that Sen. Mark Kirk (R-IL), who is recovering from a stroke, included in his proposed amendment to the Johnson-Shelby bill. The Ros-Lehtinen Sherman bill would expand financial sanctions to all Iranian banks, authorize the president to sanction any entity that works with any Iranian bank, expand sanctions against the Central Bank of Iran beyond oil, and expand sanctions on the Iranian insurance sector." http://t.uani.com/HfJYvL
Reuters: "Petronas' South African unit Engen said on Wednesday it had halted all imports of crude from Iran after deciding the sanctions placed on the Middle Eastern country were a risk to its security of supply. 'We have been working on diverting our supply since identifying Iran as a risk,' said Engen spokeswoman Tania Landsberg. Engen, the biggest South African buyer of Iranian crude, is majority-owned by Malaysian national oil company Petronas. While Landsberg would not comment on when Engen stopped imports, a Petronas source told Reuters last month Engen had stopped buying Iranian oil from March." http://t.uani.com/HfGqJH
Reuters: "Japanese refiners will cut Iranian crude imports yet again in April as they shy away from renewing annual contracts, showing continued commitment to U.S.-led sanctions over Tehran's nuclear programme. Japan, the world's third largest oil consumer, has strongly backed calls to cut Iranian oil imports and earlier reductions were hailed by its top business and military ally, the United States, as an example to other countries... JX Nippon Oil & Energy Corp, Japan's biggest oil refiner, has not renewed a contract to buy 10,000 barrels per day (bpd) of Iranian crude, which expired in March, the sources said, declining to be identified as they are not authorised to talk to the media. Apart from JX, at least three other Japanese firms, including Idemitsu Kosan Co and Cosmo Oil Co, which together buy around 40,000 barrels per day, will not lift any Iranian crude in April, industry sources said. These three do not lift Iranian oil every month." http://t.uani.com/HWl8dU
Terrorism
WSJ: "In the smoldering geopolitical feud between the U.S. and Iran, spymaster Major-General Qasem Soleimani is emerging as director of the Islamic Republic's effort to spread its influence abroad and bedevil the West. In January, Gen. Soleimani-commander of Iran's elite overseas forces-traveled in secret to Damascus to meet with Syria's president and architect of that nation's bloody and continuing Arab Spring crackdown. At the meeting, Gen. Soleimani agreed to send more military aid and reaffirmed Iran's close friendship, according to U.S. and Arab officials... Senior U.S. and Arab officials say it was Gen. Soleimani's idea to harass and bleed American forces for years in Iraq by arming Shiite militias there. The general's elite Qods Force of soldiers and spies oversees Iran's support for groups fighting Israel, including Hezbollah and Hamas... 'I see [Gen. Soleimani] as sort of the evil genius behind all of the activities that Qods Force has done, all the expansion of Iranian influence,' said Richard Clarke, counterterrorism czar for Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush." http://t.uani.com/HfTNdq
Human Rights
AP: "Iranian lawmakers have approved a petition to impeach the country's labor minister over his controversial appointment of an official implicated in the deaths of prisoners in custody. The development is part of a complicated power struggle between President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his conservative rivals in parliament. The parliament on Wednesday acted on a petition signed by 20 lawmakers. The confidence vote for labor minister, Abdolreza Sheikholeslami, could take place within 10 days. The lawmakers are angry over the minister's recent appointment of Saeed Mortazavi as head of Iran's social security organization. A parliamentary probe in 2010 found Mortazavi, then chief Tehran prosecutor, responsible for the deaths by torture of at least three anti-government protesters." http://t.uani.com/Hcz60C
Opinion & Analysis
Bernard Aronson in NYT: "Brazil, the saying used to go, is the land of the future - and always will be. But when Brazil's president, Dilma Rousseff, visits the White House next week, she will come as the leader of a country whose future has arrived... But there is one area where it has an opportunity to lead and has failed to: preventing the spread of nuclear weapons. Brazil should take the bold step of voluntarily ending its uranium enrichment program and calling on other nations, including Iran, to follow its example. Brazil started off as a force for nonproliferation. It voluntarily placed its nuclear facilities under International Atomic Energy Agency supervision in 1991 and later joined the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. But in 2004, Brazil, home to the world's fifth largest uranium reserves, also proclaimed that all states had an 'inalienable right' to enrich uranium for 'peaceful purposes.' It then constructed an enrichment facility and fought with the I.A.E.A. for more than a year before giving inspectors access. Brazil says its enrichment program is for peaceful purposes, and there is no reason to doubt it. The treaty permits signers to produce enriched uranium to fuel commercial and research reactors, store the radioactive fuel and reprocess spent fuel as long as all nuclear facilities are subject to I.A.E.A. oversight. But its greatest flaw is that the same facilities that enrich uranium for peaceful purposes can also be used to enrich it further for nuclear weapons. And reprocessed fuel from peaceful reactors yields plutonium that can be used in nuclear bombs. By exploiting this 'enrichment loophole,' North Korea developed a covert program to reprocess spent fuel, withdrew from the treaty and, soon after, developed nuclear weapons. Iran is trying to do the same. Of the countries now operating or constructing nuclear energy or research reactors under the treaty, more than 40 also have the capabilities to build nuclear weapons by exploiting this loophole. If Iran develops this capability, it could, as President Obama has warned, exert inexorable pressure on Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Turkey to quickly pursue nuclear weapons themselves. Brazil has unique standing among developing nations to address this proliferation danger because of its historic, nationalist defense of enrichment. If it were to renounce its right to enrich uranium in the name of international peace, close its enrichment facility, embrace a longstanding United Nations proposal to accept enriched uranium from the I.A.E.A., let the agency reprocess its spent fuel - essentially the deal offered to Iran - and call on other states that have signed the treaty to do the same, it would transform the nuclear debate. A new Brazilian stance would take away Iran's principal argument that the advanced nuclear weapons states are pursuing a form of 'nuclear apartheid' by pulling up the enrichment 'drawbridge' before developing nations have a chance to cross. It would also give Iran a face-saving way to join other developing nations in a new multilateral effort to suspend enrichment rather than appearing to yield to Western sanctions and threats. Finally, if Brazil and other developing nations were to give up enrichment, it would make possible a new concerted international effort to close the enrichment loophole permanently by amending the nonproliferation treaty." http://t.uani.com/HUkfoa
Tony Karon in TIME: "The clock is ticking and the window is closing for a diplomatic solution to the Iran nuclear standoff, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned Saturday, ahead of talks scheduled for April 13 in Istanbul. 'We are determined to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon,' Clinton declared. Speaking of the planned meeting between Iran and the P5+1 group comprising the major Western powers, Russia and China, she added: 'We enter into these talks with a sober perspective about Iran's intentions. It is incumbent upon Iran to demonstrate by its actions that it is a willing partner and to participate in these negotiations with an effort to obtain concrete results.' And, as if to underscore the sense of mounting drama, President Obama last Friday authorized a tightening of sanctions against countries buying oil from Iran. But just what is closing the Obama Administration's metaphorical window is not exactly clear: The President made clear earlier this month that he would be willing to take military action if that became necessary to stop Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon, but in the same breath he noted that Iran is not currently building such a weapon, and has taken no decision to do so. As such, Iran remains on the right side of the 'red line' drawn by President Obama for a military strike, even if its steady expansion of its nuclear infrastructure puts put the capacity to make a weapon closer to hand. And Iran is effectively declaring its intent to stay on the right side of Obama's red line: Both the President and the Secretary of State noted the recent public reiteration by Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatullah Ali Khamenei of a fatwa that declares nuclear weapons a sin against Islam, and called on Iran to come to the table to negotiate the creation of mechanisms through which Tehran can verify to the world that its nuclear program conforms to Khamenei's stated edict. If the window slams shut at the point that the U.S. decides to take military action, then it would occur only when U.S. intelligence assessed that Iran has made a qualitative shift towards weaponization in its current nuclear work. Meanwhile, Obama would, through a series of coercive disincentives and diplomatic incentives, seek to create conditions that prompt Iran to forgo the option of building nuclear weapons by tightening international scrutiny over its program. But there are other factors 'closing the window.'" http://t.uani.com/HfKNEO |
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