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NYT: "The Hyundai Motor Company, the automaking subsidiary of Hyundai, the South Korean conglomerate, has quietly ended its business dealings with Iran, where it had extensive operations, including a joint venture to make cars. United Against Nuclear Iran, an American group that has advocated economic sanctions to pressure Iran over its disputed nuclear program, has reclassified Hyundai Motor, putting it in the 'withdrawn' category on a list the group has compiled of foreign businesses that deal with Iran... Hyundai is the second big foreign automaker in a week to pull back from Iran. Last week, General Motors said its French partner, PSA Peugeot Citroën, had suspended shipments of components to the Iran Khodro Industrial Group, an Iranian vehicle maker, to comply with American restraints on Iran trade." http://t.uani.com/HJcE9W
Reuters: "Greece's top refiner Hellenic Petroleum has suspended purchases of Iranian crude in April as approaching sanctions on Tehran have made banking payments virtually impossible, a senior source at the firm said. Greece's financial difficulties have made Athens reluctant to reduce its purchases of Iranian crude, which is cheap, ahead of a EU-wide embargo that is due to come into force on July 1. But the source at the refiner, who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the issue, said no European Union banks were willing to handle the business any more, forcing it to suspend buying this month. 'We were using a Turkish bank all the time but we have to use an EU corresponding bank to make the payment from our Greek bank to the Turkish one and the EU banks are refusing that,' the source told Reuters." http://t.uani.com/HkwgS5
AFP: "Russia said Monday that the date and place for talks with Iran on its controversial nuclear programme have not been set, despite a US announcement over the first such meeting in more than a year. 'The date and the place of the meeting have not been definitively set,' Sergei Ryabkov, deputy foreign minister, told the Interfax news agency. 'The meeting could take place on April 13 or 14 or in the following days,' he said, adding that the talks should take place as soon as possible. 'The situation is very complicated and could get worse. We can't wait any more. These negotiations are extremely important,' he was quoted as saying." http://t.uani.com/H9QBhY
Nuclear Program & Sanctions Reuters: "Iran has banned the importation of about 600 goods and only importers of essential items will henceforth benefit from preferential exchange rates, daily newspaper Sharq reported. Iran's energy-reliant economy is reeling from international sanctions aimed at stifling its lucrative oil exports. As a result, hard currency inflows have shrunk and the rial's value against the dollar plunged, forcing Tehran to take steps to preserve its foreign currency reserves. Sharq quoted Hamid Safdel, director of Iran's Trade Promotion Organization, as saying that the 600 items temporarily banned have domestic equivalents. It did not specify the goods in question. Importers of 180 luxury products will now have to buy foreign currency at the market rate instead of getting it at the official rate from state banks. The rial moves around 20,000 to the dollar on the market, well above the official rate of 12,260." http://t.uani.com/HbVSkR
Reuters: "Japanese refiners have secured a clause in annual contracts with Iran that exempts them from incurring a penalty if international sanctions prevent crude buyers from taking delivery of Iranian oil, industry sources said on Tuesday. International sanctions are making it tough for refiners to find shippers for the oil, insurers to underwrite the trade, and banks to clear payments for Tehran's principal export. Japan is Iran's third-largest buyer. The country's refiners have negotiated the inclusion of sanctions in a clause usually limited to exempting buyers from liability due to fires, accidents and natural calamities. The force majeure clause exempts counterparties from the penalties included in a contract for failing to honor terms due to circumstances beyond their control." http://t.uani.com/HR3iuL
The Hindu: "A senior U.S. official on Monday said Washington did not want to jeopardise India's energy security by asking it to reduce its dependence on Iranian oil, but made it clear that New Delhi was expected to join the West's attempts to pressure Tehran into accepting conditions on the nuclear issue. Maintaining that up to a point the U.S. also wanted a diplomatic solution, U.S. Under Secretary for Political Affairs Wendy Sherman said it was up to India to fulfil its international obligation with respect to Iran." http://t.uani.com/HkBkFl
Human Rights
Bloomberg: "A group of 19 Iranian parliamentarians are seeking to impeach Labor, Cooperatives and Social Welfare Minister Abdolreza Sheikholeslami after he appointed an official accused of links to the deaths of prisoners in custody, the state-run Fars news agency reported. An impeachment motion has been signed and will be submitted to parliament's presiding board shortly, lawmaker Ahmad Tavakoli, who heads the body's research center, told state-run Press TV today. Fars, which also published a copy of the motion, said the document was lodged earlier today. The move comes after Sheikholeslami appointed former prosecutor-general Saeed Mortazavi as the head of the country's Social Security Organization, Press TV said. Mortazavi was suspended in 2010 after three men died in the Kahrizak detention center following their arrest during protests after the 2009 presidential elections, Shargh newspaper reported at the time." http://t.uani.com/Hd2VLr
Foreign Affairs
Reuters: "A senior Iranian political figure has spoken out against Turkey hosting Iran's next talks with world powers on its disputed nuclear program, in the latest anti-Turkish broadside from politicians in Tehran, Fars news agency reported late on Monday. Last month Turkey offered Istanbul as the venue for talks expected to take place on April 13, a proposal which appeared to gather momentum last week when Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said Istanbul would be 'the best option'. Turkey has repeatedly backed Iran's right to develop peaceful nuclear technology. The United States and its allies suspect Tehran of covertly working on nuclear weapons and have imposed tough new sanctions on its financial and energy sectors." http://t.uani.com/HbqVC3
AFP: "The Tehran bureau of international news agency Reuters has been 'suspended indefinitely' because of a report it issued mischaracterising Iranian female ninjas as 'terrorists,' authorities said on Monday. The head of the department in the culture and Islamic guidance ministry that monitors foreign media in Iran, Mohammad Javad Aghajari, announced the decision in a statement published by the official Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA). 'The decision was taken following the production of a video clip by this news agency's video department branding some Iranian female athletes who practice ninjutsu as terrorists,' he was quoted as saying." http://t.uani.com/HdclXW
Opinion & Analysis
Alan Kuperman in LAT: "As calls mount, especially in Israel, for military action against Iran's nuclear program, the main counterargument has been seductively simple: Iran is rational. Indeed, our country's top military official, Army Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, recently rejected the need for airstrikes because, as he put it, 'We are of the opinion that the Iranian regime is a rational actor.' By this logic, we should not risk war to prevent Iran from going nuclear because even if Iran acquired nukes, it would never use them offensively, never share them with terrorists and never utilize them as a shield for regional adventurism. To do so would risk nuclear retaliation, which would be irrational. Although I disagree with the general's conclusion that we shouldn't take action, I do believe his underlying assumptions are mainly right. The Iranian regime is mostly rational most of the time. Its rhetoric is blustery, but its actions typically are moderated to avoid provoking retaliation. For example, Iran has so far avoided kicking out international inspectors and launching a crash program to build nuclear weapons, the steps most likely to provoke airstrikes. Instead, Iran permits inspectors to verify that it is enriching uranium to a significant degree, in direct contravention of U.N. Security Council resolutions, in amounts for which it has no civilian need but that would facilitate a bomb program. Although this strategy has provoked economic sanctions, it has also permitted Iran to both proceed steadily toward a nuclear weapons capability and avoid military retaliation. According to the latest inspection, Iran is producing enough 20%-enriched uranium each year to fuel its one nuclear research reactor for 15 years, which would make no sense. But that production rate is also sufficient for one bomb per year, if further enriched for just a few weeks, which suggests a perfectly rational strategy. The problem is that Iran does not always act quite so rationally. Rarely, but repeatedly over the years, it has launched attacks that seemed to invite massive retaliation, for apparently little gain. Iran's targets have included the U.S. Embassyand Marine barracks in Lebanon in 1983, the Israeli Embassy and a Jewish community center in Argentina in the early 1990s, and the U.S. military's Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia in 1996. Just last year, the Iranians were behind a botched scheme to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in the United States. Some might argue that even these attacks were rational because Iran avoided massive military retaliation. But that was partially luck, and in any case Iran did suffer significant economic and diplomatic punishment. By any objective measure, the Iranian regime ran risks that greatly exceeded expected material benefits, the very definition of irrationality. We don't know exactly why Iran acts so irrationally from time to time. One possibility is that the regime itself is rational but lacks full control, so that extremist factions act autonomously on occasion. Another is that domestic politics drive the regime to appease extremist factions from time to time. Or it's possible that the regime's own radical Islamist ideology sometimes overwhelms its rationality. Whatever the reason, the reality is that Iran seems to act rationally most - but not all - of the time. This has two major strategic implications." http://t.uani.com/Hdat52
Victor Davis Hanson in NRO: "Iran, if not stopped, will join the nuclear club, probably within two or three years. It may be stupid to try to preempt Iran; it may be even stupider not to try. But the stupidest assumption of all is that either Iran is not enriching uranium in order to obtain a weapon, or it might through negotiations or sanctions be persuaded to give up trying. Why? In Iran's way of thinking, nuclear-weapons capability has no downside. Diplomatic grandees who assure us that nukes are prohibitively expensive, counterproductive, a guarantee of pariah status, always disruptive to regional peace and prosperity, and never popular with the public are lying, even if they wish they were not. There is no Iranian worry over the cost. Tehran currently exports almost half a billion dollars' worth of natural gas and oil every day. Porous sanctions and embargoes won't stop much of that income stream in an oil-hungry world. Unlike dirt-poor nuclear Pakistan and North Korea, Iran has the potential not just to join the nuclear club, but to do so in a big way, with hundreds of expensive bombs and delivery systems. When we speak of a nuclear Iran, we mean not something like North Korea's five or six nukes of dubious reliability, but an entire petrodollar-fed strategic arsenal. A nuclear Iran will some day be analogous to China or India, not North Korea. Who would be able to deter a bellicose nuclear Iran? Pakistan is deterred by its archenemy, the far larger India. Tiny North Korea is corralled by China, which enjoys the mischief Pyongyang's few nukes cause the West - but only up to the point of not causing too much trouble in its own neighborhood. But when it comes to deterring Iran, nuclear Israel is tiny - and is ostracized by most of the world. America is growing tired of its role as Middle East watchdog, and until recently President Obama was begging the Iranians for a new 'reset' relationship. The rival Sunni Gulf sheikdoms are not known for their martial prowess. Would France step up to warn nuclear Iran not to point its missiles at Berlin? Would the EU band together to fund missile defense? Once a rogue regime has the bomb, it seems immune from foreign decapitation. We snubbed Pakistan for its bomb and then relented and turned the dollar spigot back on. We fought two wars against Iraq only because Saddam Hussein's nuclear-enrichment plant had been blown up earlier by the Israelis. Poor Bashar Assad should have dug his cave first, and built his nuclear plant second. Libyan dictator Moammar Qaddafi's chief mistake was not seeking to enrich uranium, but surrendering his facilities before he got a bomb and, with it, immunity from the sort of NATO bombing campaign that removed him from power - and from this world. Had he got his centrifuges up and running safely underground, Qaddafi could have playacted his way to all sorts of concessions from Europe, as he ranted one day about taking out Rome, the next day about supplying freedom fighters with the wherewithal to neutralize Israel." http://t.uani.com/HGLYMe
Majid Rafizadeh in JPost: "In an attempt to depict the Arab uprising as revolts inspired by the Iranian Islamic Revolution, Tehran recently hosted a conference called the 'Islamic Awakening' and invited a number of young Arab activists. Unsurprisingly, no Syrian activists were invited. The conference began with eclectic images of the 1979 Iranian revolution alongside with pictures of the Tunisian, Egyptian and Libyan revolutions. The absence of Syrian activists provoked the participants to the extent that a group of attendance started chanting 'Freedom, God and Syria.' In a post-conference interview a Libyan activist asserted that Libyan people are looking for democracy and the rule of law, and thanked the United States for helping the people in overthrowing Gaddafi. He further added that Iran is backing Assad's regime because it is a Shi'ite government and insisted that 'Bashar is a tyrant and must be overthrown.' For most of the world, the Arab Spring has meant the Arab people's struggle for democracy, rule of law and freedom of expression as well as government transparency and accountability. For the Iranian regime, the upheavals rocking the Middle East take on a completely different meaning. Iranian leaders have explained the Arab uprisings with their own unique narrative. As far as the Islamic Republic of Iran is concerned, the goal of those participating in the Arab revolts is neither democracy nor human rights. Rather, the aim is to create Islamic states like Iran; it is an 'Islamic awakening.' For Iran, the Arab uprisings are merely evidence that the world is moving towards one world system made up of Islamic states (i.e. The Islamic Republic of Egypt, Islamic Republic of Tunisia, Islamic Republic of Lebanon, etc.) Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, employs the term 'Islamic awakening' to describe what many call the Arab Spring. As far as Iranian leaders are concerned, the struggles of the Arab world are inspired by the Islamic revolution and struggle against the 'powers.' In their opinion, the uprisings in Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen, Algeria, Bahrain and other Arab nations have been, and continue to be, led by Islamic groups. In their perspective, the Arab social movements are motivated by religion (Islam). The Iranian leadership claims that the people of the Arab world seek to install regimes which follow an Islamic legal system. For them, the Islamic Republic of Iran has pioneered this struggle. The Iranian government has spread its narrative through state-controlled media, frequently broadcasting pictures of mass street prayers and women covered with scarves. As the Arab Spring blossoms, the Islamic Republic of Iran seems to have successfully repressed the democratic aspirations of its own people. The Iranian leadership has gone as far as to tout the recent developments in the Arab world as a victory for the Islamic Revolution of 1979, with Egypt and Tunisia walking in Iran's proverbial footsteps. Ironically and hypocritically, however, when it comes to Syria, it has taken a different narrative. The uprisings in Syria are not toward an Islamic state but rather part of a plot devised by Western nations, particularly Israel and the United States. For Iran, the over 8,000 men, women and children who have been killed by the Syrian regime were deployed by Westerners. The burned and mutilated 13-year-old child whose image shocked the world, was not an innocent child who had been murdered by the Syrian regime but a tool of the Western powers seeking to threaten Islam." http://t.uani.com/HdaWEn |
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