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Top Stories
Reuters: "Many
thousands of Iranians shouted "Death to America, death to
Israel" during state-organized protests on Friday and President
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told them there was no place for the Jewish state in
a future Middle East. Iran, penalized by tough Western sanctions, faces
the threat of an Israeli or U.S. military strike on its disputed nuclear
facilities. With popular uprisings reshaping the region, the Islamic
Republic is also trying to prevent the overthrow of its closest Arab
ally, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. 'You want a new Middle East? We
do too, but in the new Middle East ... there will be no trace of the
American presence and the Zionists,' Ahmadinejad told worshippers at
Tehran University in an event broadcast live on state television." http://t.uani.com/S3u23k
Reuters: "Tanzania
intends to cancel its contract with a Dubai-based shipping agent, saying
the company reflagged Iranian ships with the Tanzanian flag without its
knowledge, a minister for the semi-autonomous Zanzibar government said on
Friday. The east African country said it was in the process of
de-registering 36 Iranian vessels after an investigation into the origin
of the ships concluded they were from Iran." http://t.uani.com/S0R1dO
AFP: "The
United States said Thursday that it told Secretary General Ban Ki-moon
that an upcoming summit in Iran sent a 'strange signal' after Tehran
reported that the UN chief would attend. Iranian state media has said
that the UN chief will visit Tehran for an August 30-31 summit of the
Non-Aligned Movement, a group of 120 countries set up during the Cold War
to reject alliances with both Washington and Moscow. US State Department
spokeswoman Victoria Nuland stopped short of urging Ban not to attend but
said the United States considers Iran 'an inappropriate place for this
meeting.' 'The fact that the meeting is happening in a country that's in
violation of so many of its international obligations and posing a threat
to neighbors... sends a very strange signal with regard to support for
the international order,' Nuland told reporters." http://t.uani.com/S0ShxB
 Sanctions
Reuters:
"Turkey's importance as a trade conduit to Iran has widened to
include supplying most of its steel as Turkish banks are among the very
few still willing to arrange financing for the sanctions-hit country.
Despite sometimes strained political ties, trade between the two
neighbours has risen sharply over the past decade, with Turkey regarded
by some as a possible weak link in international sanctions imposed on
Iran over Tehran's suspected development of nuclear weapons. Iran is
Turkey's biggest export market for gold while Turkey is Europe's only
remaining importer of Iranian oil." http://t.uani.com/S0XAwW
Reuters:
"The White House is 'dusting off old plans' for a potential release
of oil reserves to dampen prices and prevent high energy costs from
undermining sanctions against Iran, a source with knowledge of the
situation said on Thursday. U.S. officials will monitor market conditions
over the next few weeks, watching whether gasoline prices fall after the
September 3 Labor Day holiday, as they historically do, the source
said." http://t.uani.com/QIHxji
Ottawa Citizen:
"Thirty days after TD Bank Group said it would "reach out"
to some Iranian-Canadian clients whose accounts were closed in compliance
with Canadian sanctions against Iran, affected clients say they have not
heard from the bank. On July 6, The Citizen reported that TD had begun
sending letters to Iranian-Canadian clients whose accounts it had closed.
The letters told clients that under recent changes to the Special
Economic Measures (Iran) Regulation, Canadian financial institutions are
forbidden from providing financial services to anyone in Iran or for the
benefit of Iran, or any client with an active residential or employment
address in Iran. The bank said it tried to contact customers who were
affected by the regulations, and in cases where they did not hear back,
it was forced to close their accounts." http://t.uani.com/S0WZeQ
Syrian Civil
War
Wired.com:
"Chalk up another victory for the social-media prowess of the Syrian
rebels. The opposition to Bashar Assad says it's captured spy drones made
by Assad's patron, Iran. And it's put the evidence on YouTube. In the
video above, Syrian rebels show off three smallish, unarmed surveillance
drones they say they downed. Walking a viewer through what looks like a
machinist shop displaying their banner, the Syrians display two robotic
planes built around a missile-shaped fuselage, appearing to be around six
feet in length, painted red and yellow; and a far smaller red plane. All
three show signs of damage, with the tiny drone's nose cone looking to
have taken the worst, and alongside the drones are pamphlets displaying
the face of the dead Iranian ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. It's yet more
evidence that Iran considers Syria's civil war to be a proxy contest with
much at stake for their influence in the region." http://t.uani.com/R6voZG
Human Rights
AP:
"Iran's top leader has granted amnesty to 130 prisoners related to
the 2009 post-election turmoil, a state-run newspaper reported Thursday.
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei ordered immediate releases for some
of the 130 and reduced prison terms for the rest on the occasion of the
upcoming holiday ending the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, the IRAN daily
quoted Tehran's chief prosecutor as saying Abbas Jafari Dowlatabadi, the
prosecutor, called the prisoners 'security convicts', a term used for
those detained in the wave of unrest that followed the controversial
re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Iran arrested hundreds of
political figures and activists in the turmoil and many were sentenced to
prison." http://t.uani.com/NICGAa
Opinion &
Analysis
Benoit Faucon in
the WSJ: "Oral-B mouth wash, made by Procter &
Gamble Co. of Cincinnati, Ohio, is still on display at local corner shops
in Iran-the company confirms it still sells to Iran legally. Coca-Cola
Co.'s Coke soft drink is sold in cafes and supermarkets. The
Atlanta-based multinational says its syrup is still being legally
exported to Iran and bottled by Khoshgovar Co., whose commercial manager
Valid Nejati confirmed the information. ... By contrast, the growth of
U.S. sales to Iran largely stems from a decision in October to replace
the previous cumbersome approval process with a blanket license for
non-sanctioned food items, says Michael Burton, a Washington-based
sanctions lawyer at Arent Fox. While some European cereal traders say
they can't find banks to issue letters of credit for Iran, the U.S. this
year restarted wheat exports to the Islamic Republic after a two-year
gap. As of last year, the vast majority of U.S. goods were medical
preparations or equipment-31%- , pulpwood and woodpulp-25% and
agricultural goods and food-17% But U.S. permits even extend to goods
such as cigarettes, though they are not covered by the blanket license
and are subject to more stringent control than foodstuffs. In April,
Philip Morris International Inc. obtained a specific licence from the
U.S. Treasury, 'to sell cigarettes to customers for import into Iran,' a
spokesman for the company said, although it has yet to make use of the
authorization. But expect no miracle to explain why Iranians may be
allowed to buy Marlboros but not drive the new Peugeot in the future. To
put it simply: when it comes to pleading its case with decision-makers,
Corporate America does it better. ... Both commodities trader Cargill
Inc., of Minneapolis, Minn., which confirmed it was still trading with
Iran, and Procter & Gamble have approached members of the U.S. Senate
and the House of Representatives over Iran sanctions, according to
disclosures made as recently as July 19, and the companies
themselves...." http://t.uani.com/NIAYif
Ilan Berman in the
WSJ: "Yet so far, U.S. policy has not responded to
Iran's shift toward Asia. On the contrary, in many ways, it has encouraged
it. The Obama administration's decision earlier this summer to exempt all
20 of Iran's major oil customers from biting new sanctions has sent the
unmistakable message to Asian nations that-despite the official bluster
emanating out of the White House-it is still possible to do business with
both Washington and Tehran simultaneously. True, the U.S. Congress just
agreed to new sanctions that will take additional aim at Iran's energy
industry. And once enacted, they will significantly expand penalties on individuals
or companies who invest in Iran's oil and natural gas sectors, insure
Iranian energy trade, or buy crude from the Islamic Republic. But Iran's
Asian consumers aren't likely to be significantly deterred by these new
provisions. If history is any judge, the Obama administration, wary of
upsetting economic ties with Beijing and other regional capitals, won't
implement them with anything resembling the diligence needed to make a
real dent in Iran's Asian market share. That would be a grave error. To the
extent they're implemented, sanctions are already having a pronounced
effect on Iran's energy trade. Its oil exports are now estimated at one
million barrels per day-the lowest figure in years, and just a fraction
of the 2.5 million barrels the Islamic Republic was exporting daily just
a few years ago. But if Asia continues to throw the mullahs a lifeline,
the regime won't learn. It follows, then, that for Western sanctions to
truly stand a chance of altering Iran's behavior, Asia's economies must
be forced to back away from their business with the Islamic
Republic." http://t.uani.com/Q6Rre7
David Feith in the
WSJ: "The unfortunate reality is that sanctions are
generally a limited tool-and the Obama administration has made these
sanctions even more limited. When Congress wanted to sanction Iran's
central bank last year, the administration initially opposed the effort.
The Senate endorsed it anyway, on a 100-0 vote, so the administration
focused on getting last-minute loopholes written into the law. One of
them gave the State Department the authority to exempt from sanctions any
country that it determined had 'significantly reduced' its imports of
Iranian oil. No one paid much attention at the time, but eight months
later we know the loophole's effect: All of Iran's major oil-trading
partners-20 of them-received exemptions from U.S. sanctions. The Obama
administration says all countries with exemptions earned them. But here
again the rhetoric is slippery. India was exempted for pledging to cut
its Iran imports by only 11%. Japan cut by 22%. Then there's China, which
cut 25% overall from January to May but increased its take of Iran oil by
35% in the final two months, just before earning its exemption. President
Obama said in March that 'the world is as united as we've ever seen it
around the need for Iran to take a different path on its nuclear
program.' Yet China, India, Japan and others that continue to do big
business with Tehran aren't focused on squeezing Iran's economy. They're
focused on such things as getting around banking restrictions by
bartering rice and steel for oil. Whether they're motivated by trade
imperatives, nonaligned politics or something else, these countries show
that Iran is by no means as 'isolated' as Mr. Obama asserts." http://t.uani.com/Nsmqm1
Kevan Harris in
the Iran Primer: "What are the primary reasons that
the Iranian rial has lost half of its value against the U.S. dollar in
just one year? Iran's currency was valued at about 10,000 rials to the
dollar in the summer of 2011. It plummeted to more than 20,000 to the
dollar in the summer of 2012. Inflation in Iran's economy has not been
this bad since the end of the Iran-Iraq War or the economic crisis of the
early 1990s, which also caused high inflation. The rial's value began to slide
rapidly at the beginning of 2012 after the United States announced new
sanctions above and beyond the latest U.N. sanctions. The slide was due
partly to the psychology of sanctions. In that sense, a certain
percentage of the public-and their expectations--helped cause the more
rapid slide. They don't think the Central Bank can stabilize the rial in
the medium term. People who have money are buying gold, dollars, and real
estate to protect their wealth. Everybody is making individual decisions
that are pushing the rial down because everyone is holding onto foreign
currencies. What is the impact on the Iranian public? With increased
sanctions, the demand went up for gold, foreign currency and anything
independent of the rial. In fact, the real estate market in Tehran has
been growing over the last six months. It had slowed in previous years
due to a housing crash just like everywhere else. People are even putting
money into real estate in poorer neighborhoods, which means people are
continuing to take money out of the banks and invest it in housing. What
has happened in the last six months is very similar to what happened to
the Russian middle class in 1999 and Argentine middle class in 2001. The
Iranian middle class is going through the same process. They are seeing
the value of their money in the bank erode. It is a shock." http://t.uani.com/Pgd0gC
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Eye on Iran is a periodic news summary from United Against
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