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Top Stories
Reuters:
"Iran renewed threats on Sunday to close the Strait of Hormuz unless
sanctions against it were revoked, though it remains unclear how Tehran
could shut down the vital oil shipping channel given the significant
American military presence there. The Iranian parliament is considering a
bill calling for the strait to be closed. The assembly has little control
over national defense and foreign policy decisions and, while the bill
would be largely symbolic, it would indicate the legislature's support
behind any leadership decision to close the strait. '(Under the bill) the
closure of the Strait of Hormuz will continue until the annulment of all
the sanctions imposed against Iran,' lawmaker Javad Karimi Qoddousi was
quoted as saying by the Fars news agency." http://t.uani.com/MterJ8
AFP:
"The United Arab Emirates on Sunday inaugurated a pipeline to pump
oil from east coast terminals, bypassing the strategic Strait of Hormuz
which Iran has threatened to shut down, state-run WAM news agency
reported. The first shipment of 500,000 barrels of oil from the Habshan
fields in Abu Dhabi emirate were pumped through the pipeline to Fujairah
oil terminal on the Gulf of Oman, where it was loaded on a tanker headed
for Pakistan... Fears of a closure of the Strait of Hormuz have
intensified amid repeated threats by Tehran to close the strategic outlet
in retaliation for Western efforts to choke off its oil exports to rein
in Iran's nuclear programme." http://t.uani.com/MtfIQt
AFP:
"Iran's auto production fell by more than 36 percent over the past
three months, the industry ministry was quoted by ISNA news agency as
saying on Saturday, citing 'lack of money.' Production fell to about
241,500 vehicles in the first quarter of the Iranian year (March 21 to
June 20), according to the figures. Iran built more than 1.5 million
vehicles in 2011/2012. The decline coincides with the halt of parts
deliveries to Iran by French manufacturer Peugeot because of Western
sanctions. Peugeot is a partner of the main Iranian auto maker Iran
Khodro (IKCO), which manufactures the 405 and 206 models, whose output
represents approximately 40 percent of Iranian automobile production.
They incorporate 5-10 percent of components imported from France...
Citing industry executives, business daily Donaye Eghtesad said the
decline in production is 'unprecedented in the past 20 years' and could
create difficulties for the entire automotive industry, including
subcontractors, with plant closures and layoffs, if the government does
not come forward with $1 billion in aid." http://t.uani.com/MsAmAj
Nuclear
Program
Reuters: "Offering immunity or
an easing of the sanctions pressure may be the only way - if there is one
at all - to coax Iran to end years of stonewalling a U.N. watchdog
investigation into suspected nuclear weapons research in the Islamic
state. Any such initiative would likely need to come from world powers as
part of a broader diplomatic thrust to defuse the dispute over Iran's
nuclear program, leaving the investigation by the U.N. atomic agency
dependent on how those talks develop. The International Atomic Energy
Agency (IAEA) has failed in a series of high-profile rounds of
discussions in the last six months to persuade Tehran to give it access
to sites, officials and documents it says it needs for the long-stalled
inquiry." http://t.uani.com/NtDf38
AP:
"An Iranian parliamentary committee has approved a bill requiring
the government to design nuclear-powered merchant ships and provide them
with nuclear fuel, an Iranian news agency reported Sunday. The bill
appears to be a symbolic gesture to bolster Tehran's argument that it has
a right to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes. The West suspects Iran's
nuclear program is aimed at developing weapons technology, a charge
Tehran denies. Nuclear-powered vessels other than warships are rare, and
the International Atomic Energy Agency has said in the past that
nuclear-powered merchant ships would be uneconomical." http://t.uani.com/OJ6ivs
Sanctions
Daily Telegraph:
"Against a backdrop of lengthening food queues, Esmail Ahmadi-Moghaddam,
the head of Iran's law enforcement forces, has warned that films
depicting scenes of chicken dinners could provoke the underprivileged
classes to attack the rich. 'They show chicken being eaten in movies
while somebody might not be able to buy it,' Mr Ahmadi-Moghaddam,
brother-in-law of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, told a law
enforcement officers conference in Tehran. 'Films are now the windows of
society and some people observing this class gap might say that we will
take knives and take our rights from the rich. IRIB [Iran's state
broadcaster] should not be the shop window for showing all which is not
accessible.' The warning is the latest sign of official alarm over the
strains being caused by rampant inflation and international sanctions
aimed at curbing Iran's nuclear programme..." http://t.uani.com/O1P3WY
RIA Novosti:
"Egypt will not stop transporting Iranian oil through the Suez Canal
and internal pipelines despite the EU embargo on oil exports, Egypt's Al
Ahram newspaper reported on Sunday quoting a source... 'Iranian oil, like
any other oil, is transported in terms of contracts which are updated
every year. We have not received any notifications to ban oil shipments
from Iran,' the source in Egyptian energy sector told the paper. Iranian
oil is transported through pipelines owned by Egyptian SUMED firm, the
paper says." http://t.uani.com/M2R4l7
Reuters:
"India's biggest buyer of Iranian oil, MRPL, has bought Azeri, Saudi
and Emirati crude to replace imports from Iran in July and it may halt
purchases from Tehran altogether as sanctions make shipments more
difficult, industry sources said on Monday. Loss of exports to Mangalore
Refinery and Petrochemicals (MRPL) would be a blow to Iran, which has
seen overseas sales decline by more than half from a year ago due to U.S.
and European Union sanctions." http://t.uani.com/O3ih8a
Bloomberg:
"South Korea's crude imports from Iran fell 24 percent in June from
a year earlier amid Western pressure to cut shipments from the Persian
Gulf nation. The world's fifth-largest oil importer purchased 736,552
metric tons of oil, or about 24,551 tons a day, from Iran last month,
compared with 971,908 tons, or about 32,397 tons a day, a year earlier,
according to data on the website of South Korea's Customs Service. Iran
accounted for 6.9 percent of the total crude imports in June, the data
showed. Purchases slid 21 percent to 4.8 million tons in the first six
months of this year compared with the same period in 2011." http://t.uani.com/MtdJvy
FT:
"Simply put, if a major importer of Iranian crude abides by the
sanctions, it's a problem for Iran. But for any country that relies on
Iran for a significant proportion of their oil, sanctions even more of a
problem. The chart below shows countries plotted by the proportion of
Iranian oil that they import, and by how much Iranian oil makes up their
supply. It's clear that the biggest problems for Iran are China, Japan,
India and South Korea. But switching off Iran's oil is a big headache for
South Africa, Turkey and Sri Lanka, all of which rely on Iranian oil
heavily." http://t.uani.com/MtfxVj
CBC:
"Cripple the Iranian regime in any way possible, outside of military
intervention, human rights activist Nazanin Afshin-Jam said Friday. The
Iranian-born activist and wife of Defence Minister Peter MacKay said
she's against a military mission in the country, but that Canada should
shut down the embassy in Ottawa to send a message to Tehran, the
country's capital. 'I'm very much against the idea of military
intervention on Iran, so I'm always trying to find ways of crippling this
regime in other ways,' Afshin-Jam told Robyn Bresnahan, host of CBC
Radio's Ottawa Morning." http://t.uani.com/NrtGOe
Corporate
Malfeasance
Reuters:
"ZTE Corp, the world's fifth-biggest telecommunications equipment
maker, could face steep fines and restrictions on its U.S. operations if
it is found to have illegally sold U.S. computer products to Iran. The
FBI has opened a criminal investigation into the Chinese company's sale
of banned equipment, according to an FBI affidavit. Reuters reported in
March that ZTE had a $120 million contract in 2010 with Iran's largest
telecom firm, including supplying U.S. computer equipment. Reuters later
reported that ZTE had agreed last year to ship millions of dollars worth
of additional embargoed U.S. computer equipment to a unit of the
consortium that controls the Iranian telecom. The U.S. Commerce
Department is also investigating." http://t.uani.com/OvPebp
Bloomberg:
"HSBC Holdings Plc (HSBA)'s failure to implement adequate
money-laundering controls in Mexico is among lapses that U.S. Senate
investigators will criticize tomorrow, according to two people briefed on
the matter... The compliance failures in Mexico, a nation struggling to
rein in drug cartels, as well as unreported Iranian transactions and
insufficient attention to U.S. anti-money-laundering rules will be among
allegations leveled at HSBC at tomorrow's hearing, the people said.
London-based HSBC, Europe's largest bank, will be cited as an example of
the financial system's exposure to drug cartels and terrorists hiding
cash, according to a statement from the subcommittee. The hearing, titled
'U.S. Vulnerabilities to Money Laundering, Drugs, and Terrorist
Financing: HSBC Case History,' will accompany the release of a 400-page
committee report, one of the people said. Investigators were interested in
the bank's failure to disclose transactions with firms in Iran, the
people said, and the allegations will come a month after ING Groep NV
(ING) agreed to pay $619 million to settle U.S. charges it falsified
financial records and bypassed sanctions on Iran and Cuba." http://t.uani.com/SAaL7p
Terrorism
Reuters:
"Israel accused Lebanon's Hezbollah guerrillas and Iran on Sunday of
plotting to attack its citizens in Cyprus after police on the
Mediterranean island arrested a foreigner on suspicion of security offences.
The suspect, who was arrested in Limassol port on July 7, was described
by Cypriot media as a Swedish passport-holder of Lebanese descent. He was
detained after tracking the movement of Israeli tourists on the island,
according to some reports, but has not been charged with any crime. In a
statement, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the incident
'the attempted terrorist attack by Hezbollah against an Israeli target in
Cyprus'. He accused the Shi'ite guerrilla group's sponsor, Iran, of
overall responsibility." http://t.uani.com/NcukDK
Reuters:
"A Kenyan court on Monday set a trial date of July 23 for two
Iranians arrested after police seized chemicals they believed the pair
would use to make explosives in Mombasa, which has suffered a series of
attacks by suspected Islamist militants... Judge Paul Biwott freed the
Iranians, Ahmad Mohammed and Sayed Mousavi, on bail of 2 million
shillings ($23,800) each on Monday and ordered police to hand their
passports to the court." http://t.uani.com/LUxbS2
Human Rights
Reuters:
"Iranian police shut down dozens of restaurants and coffee shops
over the weekend, Iranian media reported, in a renewed crackdown on what
the state sees as immoral and un-Islamic behavior. Regular officers and
members of the 'morality police' raided 87 cafes and restaurants in a
single district of the capital Tehran on Saturday and arrested women for
flouting the Islamic dress code, according to the Iranian Students' News
Agency (ISNA)." http://t.uani.com/LqIIa5
Foreign Affairs
Reuters:
"Iran is ready to host talks between the Syrian government and
opposition groups, the Iranian foreign minister was quoted as saying on
Sunday, but members of the opposition quickly rejected the offer. The
statement by Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi appeared to suggest a
possible shift in the Iranian leadership's approach. Iran has
consistently supported Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's efforts to
suppress a 17-month-long uprising. Tehran has repeatedly accused Western
and regional powers of meddling in Syria's internal affairs through
backing extremist militant groups." http://t.uani.com/OJ6F9b
AFP:
"The drought in southern Iran is part of a 'soft war' launched
against the Islamic republic by the West, the Fars news agency quoted an
Iranian vice president as saying on Monday. 'I am suspicious about the
drought in the southern part of the country,' Hassan Mousavi, who also
heads Iran's cultural heritage and tourism organization, said at a
ceremony to introduce the nation's new chief of meteorological
department. 'The world arrogance and colonist [term used by Iranian
authorities to label the West] are influencing Iran's climate conditions
using technology... The drought is an acute issue and soft war is
completely evident... This level of drought is not normal.'" http://t.uani.com/LsjCHQ
Opinion &
Analysis
WSJ Editorial
Board: "Want some entertainment for these hot summer
days? Try the theater of the absurd at the United Nations, where the
Islamic Republic of Iran has earned a top arms-control post. Iran was
recently elected to the 15-member general committee of the U.N. Arms
Trade Treaty conference currently underway in New York. The conference is
supposed to develop a treaty regulating the international sale of
conventional arms. We'd be laughing if the mullahs weren't peddling
weapons to some of the world's most murderous operators. Tehran provides
Hezbollah and Palestinian terror groups with the missiles they send
willy-nilly into Israeli civilian neighborhoods. Iraqi insurgents have Iran's
Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to thank for access to improvised
explosive devices that have killed hundreds of U.S. troops and maimed
many more. Two Iranian agents were arrested in Kenya earlier this month
with 33 pounds of explosives they allegedly planned to use against
American and British targets. In their race to acquire the world's
deadliest weapons, Iran's rulers have also violated every
nonproliferation statute on the book. They have given the International
Atomic Energy Agency the runaround for over a decade, currently banning
their inspectors. The U.N. Security Council has passed six separate
resolutions condemning Iran's failure to comply with its obligations
under international law. Now Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will
get to set the global arms-control agenda. Perhaps behind the scenes the
world's responsible powers are cringing at this latest U.N. charade. But
then why do they keep paying the price of admission?" http://t.uani.com/LUve81
Ilan Berman in WT:
"When it comes to the financial markets, it is a rule of thumb that
past success is a poor indicator of future performance. Sadly, it turns
out, that's also the case with political science. Take the latest
offering from one of the field's best and brightest. Kenneth N. Waltz, a
decorated professor at Columbia University and the University of
California at Berkeley, is dean of the 'neorealism' school in
international relations theory - a deep thinker whose 1965 book 'Man, the
State, and War' revolutionized our understanding of how nation-states
behave. Of late, however, Mr. Waltz has turned his attention to a more
contemporary international security dilemma, with considerably less
satisfactory results. In an article in the latest issue of the journal
Foreign Affairs, Mr. Waltz makes the case that the current hubbub over
the Islamic Republic of Iran's nuclear program is overblown. In his view,
a nuclear-armed Iran would be a neutral - indeed, even a beneficial -
development for regional security, spurring 'balancing' by other nations
and generally leading to a more stable Middle East. I wish that were so,
but Mr. Waltz's argument falls flat on at least two fronts. The first has
to do with the Iranian regime's rationality. At the heart of Mr. Waltz's
contention that Iran should be allowed to get the bomb is the assumption
that, at the end of the day, its leaders are 'perfectly sane ayatollahs.'
That issue has been debated hotly for years. Skeptics allude to the fact
that parts of the Iranian government - most notably Iranian president
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his ideological fellow-travelers - espouse a
millenarian worldview to argue that the Iranian regime writ large is both
irrational and apocalyptic. Others, however, point to the conduct of
Iran's 'realist' camp, headed by former President Ali Akbar Hashemi
Rafsanjani, as proof that Iran's leaders are supremely pragmatic in
nature. To some extent, both are right. Iran is anything but a political
monolith, and its official ideological spectrum stretches from the
messianic conservatism of Mr. Ahmadinejad's spiritual mentor, the
Ayatollah Mohammad Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi, on the far right to the more
progressive 'reformist' ideas of former president Mohammad Khatami, now a
leader of the 'Green' movement. (Informally, Iran's political scene is
wider still and includes dissidents seeking the outright abandonment of
the Islamic republic in favor of a more representative, post-theocratic
polity.) The question, rather, is whether the political faction currently
in power in Tehran is capable of being deterred in the way Mr. Waltz
envisions. There still is considerable uncertainty on that score, and,
given the notorious opaqueness of Iran's internal power politics, world
leaders simply cannot afford to be sanguine about the how the Iranian
regime - which is still officially radical and revolutionary - might
behave once it possesses a nuclear weapon. Mr. Waltz's second spurious
contention is that Iran's nuclearization will have a beneficial and
stabilizing effect on the Middle East. He identifies Israel's
long-running 'regional nuclear monopoly' as the root of the current
crisis - and Iran's will to atomic power as the logical (if belated)
response to it. But Israel's 4-decade-old nuclear hegemony in the Middle
East has proved so remarkably durable precisely because other regional
states, whatever their public animus toward the Jewish state, have tended
to view it as a mature nuclear possessor. Israel's 'Samson option,' in
other words, is seen regionally as much more shield than sword." http://t.uani.com/MrWUBd
Sohrab Ahmari in
The American Interest: "The collapse of the latest
round of negotiations between the great powers and the Islamic Republic
of Iran in Moscow has prompted the usual soul-searching in Washington and
Brussels: Did we misread the mullahs' psychology yet again? Could a
sweeter Western proposal have overcome their natural mistrust? These are
worthwhile questions to ask. But the emotional rollercoaster accompanying
each cycle of failed talks-from fear and trembling to boisterous optimism,
then back to anxiety-suggests that the West lacks the proper conceptual
framework for answering them. Thirty-three years since Shi'a Islamists
seized power in Tehran, we are far from appreciating the sources of their
conduct. We therefore stand little chance of altering it. As George
Kennan understood when he wrote 'The Sources of Soviet Conduct' in 1946,
the behavior of every long-term adversary is rooted in a specific
combination of ideology and circumstance. The mullahs are no exception.
Unlocking the sources of their conduct can narrow the range of realistic
options, and disclose new ways for dealing with the Iranian threat.
First, the ideology. Whether they call themselves 'principlists' or
'reformists,' Iran's leaders are Khomeinists before anything else. They
are still burning the initial reserve of revolutionary fuel tapped by the
regime's founder, the Ayatollah Khomeini. Its religious trappings often
lend it an exotic air, yet Khomeinism is a modern concoction. For
starters, it breaks decisively with traditional Shi'a doctrine, which
held that the pious should defer to earthly rulers on matters of state.
Khomeinists show no such restraint. Indeed, they have sought to radically
reengineer the Persian soul-with its love of wine and erotic poetry-by regulating
every sphere of Iranian life. The mullahs thus closely resemble the
totalitarians of the Third Reich and the Soviet Union. This is no
accident. Consider Ali Shariati, the Sorbonne-educated sociologist widely
credited as the Islamic Republic's intellectual architect. Shariati's
philosophy blended Marxist doctrine, Frantz Fanon-style third worldism,
and Shi'a Islamism. In his writing, Shariati substituted the opposition
between the (more Islamic-sounding) 'arrogant' and 'dispossessed' for
Marx's class struggle. But his teaching was structurally similar to
Marxism, especially in its faith in Islamic history's inevitable march
toward the total state promised by the Prophet Muhammad and the Shi'a
saints. From Lenin, Shariati borrowed the notion of an Islamist
intellectual vanguard led by scholars like himself and called by history
to help hasten the arrival of that state." http://t.uani.com/LT9R7e
Ali Alfoneh in
AEI: "Every Friday, the elderly Ayatollah Isa Ahmad
Qassim al-Dirazi al-Bahrani, more commonly known as Sheikh Qassim, climbs
the stairs to the pulpit at the Imam al-Sadiq mosque in Diraz, Bahrain,
to deliver his sermon. Wearing a white turban and cloak matching his
white beard and reading his handwritten sermon on ethics aloud in a
monotonous voice, the spectacled sheikh resembles the scholarly imam
after whom the mosque is named rather than a revolutionary leader.
However, every week, hundreds of Bahraini Shi'a line up to pray behind
Sheikh Qassim in Diraz, and thousands find political inspiration in his
sermons, which they follow on the Internet or radio and television
broadcasts sponsored by the regime in Tehran and the Lebanese Hezbollah.
Sheikh Qassim's persistent demand for political reforms and his call for
active resistance to the Sunni ruling elites of Bahrain have made him the
preeminent Shi'a leader in Bahrain. The Sunni ruling elites of Bahrain,
however, see Sheikh Qassim not as a reformer but as a zealot
revolutionary serving the Islamic Republic of Iran. They accuse him of
trying to overthrow rather than reform the political order in Bahrain.
Instead of bridging the gap between the Shi'a and Sunni, they claim,
Sheikh Qassim widens the sectarian divide in society. There is some truth
to both perceptions of Sheikh Qassim. The history of the struggle of the
Bahraini Shi'a, with which Sheikh Qassim's political life is intertwined,
illustrates his dual role. Sheikh Qassim expresses the just grievances of
the Shi'a protest movement and demands civil rights for the Shi'a
majority but increasingly he-and the Shi'a protest movement- act like
revolutionaries rather than reformists. There is also unquestionably a
relationship between Sheikh Qassim and the regime in Tehran, which he
denies, but whose propaganda machinery he skillfully employs to spread
his message." http://t.uani.com/Nv6rEw
IISS in RCW:
"Financial sanctions and oil embargoes imposed since December 2011
by the United States and European Union respectively have tightened the
economic pressure on Iran and, along with United Nations Security Council
sanctions imposed in June 2010, could yet deal a knock-out blow to the
country's development of long-range ballistic missiles. There is mounting
evidence to suggest that, whereas the sanctions regime has not prevented
Tehran from operating an increased number of centrifuges for
uranium-enrichment activities or adding to its stockpile of fissile
material, it has stymied efforts to develop and produce the long-range
ballistic missiles capable of striking potential targets in western
Europe and beyond. If sanctions continue to disrupt Tehran's access to
the key propellant ingredients and components needed to produce large
solid-propellant rocket motors, Iranian attempts to develop and field
long-range ballistic missiles could be significantly impeded, if not
halted altogether. Soon after the start of the Iran-Iraq War in 1980,
Tehran initiated a two-track effort to acquire ballistic missiles and
related technologies to compensate for its barely operational air force.
The first track focused on the immediate acquisition of short-range,
liquid-propellant Scud-B missiles from Libya, Syria and North Korea for
use against Iraqi cities during the latter stages of the war. The
perceived success of the missile attacks led Iran to purchase additional
300km-range Scud-Bs from Pyongyang, along with 500km-range Scud-Cs, in
the 1990s, which it renamed Shahab-1 and -2. Wishing to threaten targets
as far afield as Israel, Iran began procuring medium-range No-dong
missiles,known locally as Shahab-3s, from North Korea in the mid- to
late-1990s. The imported No-dong/Shahab-3 missiles, as received and
initially tested by Iran in 1998, had a maximum range of only 900km,
meaning that they could only reach Israel if launched from sites near
Iran's border with Iraq. In a quest to enhance pre-launch survivability,
Iranian engineers spent almost a decade modifying the Shahab-3 to create
a longer-range version of the missile, dubbed Ghadr-1. The Ghadr-1 has a
maximum range of roughly 1,600km when carrying a relatively light payload
of 750kg and is believed to have entered military service some time after
2007. If fitted with a heavy payload, such as a notional first-generation
nuclear warhead weighing upwards of 1,300kg, the Ghadr-1's maximum range
would be reduced to roughly 1,100km. Iran does not have the capacity to
design, develop and produce new, more powerful liquid-fuelled engines,
and this is unlikely to change over the next decade. Available evidence
also indicates - but does not prove - that Iran cannot reliably build the
liquid-propellant engines that power its current inventory of Scud and
No-dong/Ghadr-1 missiles, a shortfall that likely leaves the Islamic
Republic susceptible to supplier controls and unable to add to its
stockpile of operational liquid-fuelled missiles. Iranian engineers may
one day establish a capacity to produce near-copies of the Scud and
No-dong engines, but such endeavours are rarely successful - replica
engines do not perform as well as the originals and often prove to be
unreliable." http://t.uani.com/Mwi1Mq
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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
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email Press@UnitedAgainstNuclearIran.com
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regional super-power possessing nuclear weapons. UANI is an
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