Eye on Iran: Houla Massacre: US Accuses Iran of 'Bragging' About Its Military Aid to Syria

For continuing coverage follow us on Twitter and join our Facebook group.    Top Stories Guardian: "The US has accused Iran of 'aiding and abetting' the massacre of women and children in Houla by providing support for the Syrian militia accused of carrying out the slaughter. The state department said that Tehran was 'bragging' about its role at the weekend after the deputy commander of Iran's elite Quds force said the force has units inside Syria in support of President Bashar al-Assad. Victoria Nuland, the state department spokeswoman, said that Iran's hand is clearly visible in the killing of more than 100 people, including scores of young children, by a Syrian militia group, the Shabiha, which closely resembles an Iranian militia, the Basij. 'The Iranians have clearly supplied support and training and advice to the Syrian army, but this Shabiha thug force mirrors the same force that the Iranians use. The Basij and the Shabiha are the same type of thing and clearly reflects the tactics and the techniques that the Iranians use for their own suppression of civil rights,' she said." http://t.uani.com/LeAv4L AP: "A senior Iranian military official says Iran's oil industry was briefly affected by a powerful computer virus that has unprecedented data-snatching capabilities and can eavesdrop on computer users. Gholam Reza Jalali, who heads an Iranian military unit in charge of fighting sabotage, said Wednesday that Iranian experts had found and defeated the Flame virus. Jalali told state radio Wednesday that the oil industry was the only governmental body affected and all problems had been resolved." http://t.uani.com/LFye1R AP: "Tehran says the West should withdraw its 'illogical' demand that Iran halt production of uranium enriched to 20 percent. Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast told reporters on Tuesday as saying that Iran has a right to produce nuclear fuel for peaceful purposes. The West is concerned that uranium enriched to 20 percent, used for fuel in Iran's medical reactor, could quickly be turned into more highly enriched weapons-grade material." http://t.uani.com/KSOiQy       Nuclear Program     NYT: "The computers of high-ranking Iranian officials appear to have been penetrated by a data-mining virus called Flame, in what may be the most destructive cyberattack on Iran since the notorious Stuxnet virus, an Iranian cyberdefense organization confirmed on Tuesday. In a message posted on its Web site, Iran's Computer Emergency Response Team Coordination Center warned that the virus was dangerous. An expert at the organization said in a telephone interview that it was potentially more harmful than the 2010 Stuxnet virus, which destroyed several centrifuges used for Iran's nuclear enrichment program. In contrast to Stuxnet, the newly identified virus is designed not to do damage but to collect information secretly from a wide variety of sources." http://t.uani.com/Ndx28p AP: "A senior Iranian official claims Tehran has defeated a powerful computer virus that has unprecedented data-snatching capabilities and can eavesdrop on computer users. Ali Hakim Javadi, who is Iran's deputy Minister of Communications and Information Technology, is quoted by the official IRNA news agency as saying Wednesday that Iranian experts have already produced an anti-virus capable of identifying and removing 'Flame' from computers." http://t.uani.com/JUQCSY AFP: "Germany is 'very concerned' about Iran's nuclear programme which not only threatens the Middle East but could also pose a threat to Europe, German President Joachim Gauck said in Jerusalem on Tuesday. 'I'm very concerned about Iran's nuclear programme. It represents not only a concrete danger for Israel but for the whole region and potentially even for us in Europe,' he said upon meeting his Israeli counterpart Shimon Peres. But he stressed that Berlin was committed to finding a diplomatic solution to the impasse over Iran's nuclear programme which Israel and much of the West believes is a bid to develop an atomic bomb." http://t.uani.com/KcstgD Sanctions Guardian: "A US company and an Iranian university have agreed to collaborate on nuclear fusion, the elusive technology that promises a limitless supply of clean energy. New Jersey-based Lawrenceville Plasma Physics Inc and Tehran's Islamic Azad University will jointly design a fusion machine that 'would be affordable to construct in industrializing nations', according to a contract signed last weekend and seen by The Guardian... Sceptics doubt whether US trade sanctions will permit the collaboration." http://t.uani.com/L5bnO9 Reuters: "Japan's crude imports from Iran fell 65.5 percent in April from a year earlier, ahead of deeper declines that may come from July due to the difficulty in doing business with the Islamic Republic as Western sanctions bite. The double-digit decline was partly because of the timing of shipments clearing customs. Last month, Ministry of Finance trade data showed customs-cleared crude imports from Iran fell only 6.3 percent in March from a year earlier... Japan will load about 123,000 barrels per day (bpd) in May from Iran, about the same as in April, traders said earlier this month, about 60 percent less than the 305,114 bpd average imports from Iran in the first three months of the year. April custom-cleared imports were about 119,000 bpd." http://t.uani.com/KZfMRY Globe & Mail: "Sanctions aimed at crippling Iran have been 'very good for business,' at least on the shady side of informal banking, says a grey-market currency trader in Tehran... A wide range of sanctions, imposed by an array of countries, range from blackballing individuals so they can't travel to blocking big Iranian banks linked to the government from international transfers. But, at least when it comes to shifting money, sanctions-busting or finding a workaround isn't too hard." http://t.uani.com/NdsFdr  Foreign Affairs NYT: "The Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected the last legal appeal for former American hostages seeking compensation for their captivity in Iran three decades ago, leaving legislation newly introduced in Congress as the last chance to resolve their longstanding grievance... 'I would never have thought when I was getting kicked around in Iran that my own government would ever go to court to stop me,' said David M. Roeder, a retired Air Force colonel who was the named plaintiff in the case. But after 12 years of legal wrangling, he said he was not surprised by the outcome. 'It's not just this administration or Clinton or even the Bush administration; there seems to be some sort of a weird hands-off-Iran policy,' he said." http://t.uani.com/KHTN3M AFP: "Iranian Vice President Ali Saeedlu began an official visit to Cuba, following up on a trip to the communist-ruled island earlier this year by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Saeedlu, Ahmadinejad's deputy for international affairs, on Monday met with Cuban Vice President Jose Ramon Machado, after which they stressed the 'excellent state of bilateral ties,' an official statement said." http://t.uani.com/MXJHyC Opinion & Analysis Michael Singh in NYDN: "Last week's talks in Baghdad between Iran and the P5-plus-1 - the United States, Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia - yielded no agreement. Paradoxically, however, both Washington and Tehran are likely to view the negotiations as successful, but for vastly different reasons. There is an interest that both Iran and the United States hold in common: staving off military action, whether by the U.S. or Israel. From there, however, U.S. and Iranian motivations diverge; understanding this divergence is key to understanding why the talks thus far have failed. Iranian officials publicly dismiss but likely privately worry about the consequences of war, while U.S. officials often seem more worried about the consequences of military action than about the Iranian nuclear program a strike would be designed to destroy. Indeed, for many within the United States and other P5-plus-1 countries, the mere fact of 'intensive' talks about Iran's nuclear program is itself a success. There is a narrative, espoused by then-candidate Barack Obama during the 2008 presidential campaign, that at the root of the Iran nuclear crisis is U.S.-Iran conflict, and that the root cause of that conflict is mistrust. As a candidate, Obama pledged to meet personally with Iranian leaders and predicted that the Iranians 'would start changing their behavior if they started seeing that they had some incentives to do so.' And as President, in his famous June 4, 2009, speech in Cairo, Obama spoke of the need to 'overcome decades of mistrust.' In this narrative, talks are successful insofar as they end not in collapse but in a sustained negotiating process - that is, more talks. For Iran, meanwhile, there is little indication that the talks are aimed at building confidence or opening up the broader possibility of U.S.-Iran rapprochement. Indeed, there is ample evidence that the Iranian regime views normal relations with the United States as undesirable, even threatening, while it views a nuclear weapons capability as strategically vital. Giving up the latter for the former would make little sense to Tehran. Prolonging the talks serves a threefold purpose for Iran beyond merely buying time or delaying an attack: first, to enhance Iranian prestige by sitting as co-equal with the world's great powers and discussing the great regional and global issues of the day; second, to secure tacit acceptance of nuclear advances once deemed unacceptable and third, to gain relief from sanctions without making major concessions. In this round, Iran appears to have made progress toward the first and second goals, but not the third. Regarding the first, Iran reportedly included in its proposals items relating to Syria and other regional issues - clearly legitimizing its role as a regional power player." http://t.uani.com/KcfADU Eye on Iran is a periodic news summary from United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) a program of the American Coalition Against Nuclear Iran, Inc., a tax-exempt organization under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. Eye on Iran is not intended as a comprehensive media clips summary but rather a selection of media elements with discreet analysis in a PDA friendly format. For more information please email Press@UnitedAgainstNuclearIran.com United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) is a non-partisan, broad-based coalition that is united in a commitment to prevent Iran from fulfilling its ambition to become a regional super-power possessing nuclear weapons.  UANI is an issue-based coalition in which each coalition member will have its own interests as well as the collective goal of advancing an Iran free of nuclear weapons.