Monday, August 6, 2012

Eye on Iran: White House Advisor Got $100,000 Fee from Affiliate of Firm Doing Business with Iran






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WashPost: "David Plouffe, a senior White House adviser who was President Obama's 2008 campaign manager, accepted a $100,000 speaking fee in 2010 from an affiliate of a company doing business with Iran's government. A subsidiary of MTN Group, a South Africa-based telecommunications company, paid Plouffe for two speeches he made in Nigeria in December 2010, about a month before he joined the White House staff. Since Plouffe's speeches, MTN Group has come under intensified scrutiny from U.S. authorities because of its activities in Iran and Syria, which are under international sanctions intended to limit the countries' access to sensitive technology. At the time of Plouffe's speeches, MTN had been in a widely reported partnership for five years with a state-owned Iranian telecommunications firm... The White House on Sunday hinged its response in part on the activities of a prominent watchdog group, United Against Nuclear Iran. White House officials noted that the group did not start a public campaign against MTN Group until this year. 'Seems like if MTN was a notable public problem in 2010, they might have started their campaign then,' the White House said in an e-mail to The Post. Mark Wallace, the chief executive of United Against Nuclear Iran, said Sunday: 'MTN was a charter member of UANI's target list - the Iran Business Registry - launched in 2009. We hope Mr. Plouffe will use his considerable influence to urge President Obama to enact a full economic blockade of Iran so that companies like MTN will no longer be able to operate there.'" http://t.uani.com/Pzz2pQ

Reuters: "Iran's rial sank about 5 percent in trading against the U.S. dollar on Monday after the central bank said it would change the currency's official exchange rate, prompting fears of another devaluation as the economy suffers from international sanctions. The rial was trading in the free market at around 21,510 per dollar, according to Persian-language currency tracking website Mazanex, down from about 20,440 on Sunday. Most dealers in Tehran's major currency trading district stopped selling dollars on Monday and removed signs from windows advertising their rates, Mehr News Agency reported. It said the rial fell as low as 22,000 before partly recovering to 21,400. Central bank governor Mahmoud Bahmani said on Sunday he would announce a change to the government's 'reference rate' of 12,260 rials to the dollar 'within the next 10 days', Iranian media reported. He did not elaborate, but Iranian media speculated the new reference rate might be between 15,000 and 16,000 rials." http://t.uani.com/QETyfW

AFP: "Iran is being hit by a 'war' on its economy, according to officials facing tightened US sanctions and renewed Israeli threats of imminent military action over Tehran's nuclear activities. 'This is war,' Ayatollah Ahmad Janati, the hardline chief of Iran's influential Guardians Council, said as he led Friday prayers in Tehran. Iran needs to mobilise 'the nation, government, officials and armed forces' to tackle its 'special and serious economic problems' which went beyond the global economic malaise, he said. 'We should prepare and break this wave (of economic pressure). We should not surrender,' he said." http://t.uani.com/MIJ4WU
Lebanon Banking Campaign   
Nuclear Program 

Reuters: "Israel is upgrading its Arrow II ballistic missile shield in a U.S.-backed 'race' against Iran, Syria and other regional enemies, a senior Israeli defense official said on Sunday. The new 'Block 4' generation of guided interceptor rockets, radars and technologies for synchronizing Arrow with U.S. systems was being installed in deployed Israeli batteries, a process that would take several weeks, the official said. 'The accuracy and the reach will be greater,' the official said of Arrow, which has been operational since 2000 and is designed to blow up incoming missiles at altitudes high enough for non-conventional warheads to disintegrate safely." http://t.uani.com/MnQAVO

AP: "Iran claimed Saturday it has successfully test-fired an upgraded version of a short-range ballistic missile with improved accuracy, increasing the Islamic Republic's capability to strike both land and naval targets. Defense Minister Gen. Ahmad Vahidi said the solid-fueled Fateh-110 has a range of 185 miles. He claimed the weapon could strike with pin-point precision, making it the most accurate weapon of its kind in Iran's arsenal. 'By reaching this generation of the Fateh-110, a new capability has been added to our armed forces in striking sea and land targets,' state TV quoted Vahidi as saying. 'Few countries in the world possess the technology to build such missiles.'" http://t.uani.com/NX0qnm

Bloomberg: "Iran probably would attempt to block the Strait of Hormuz at the mouth of the Persian Gulf only as a 'last resort,' according to a Pentagon historian who's written a new history of America's 33-year shadow war with the Islamic Republic. Iran has greatly improved its ability to disrupt shipping through the strategic waterway, the route for a fifth of the world's traded oil, said historian David Crist. Still, the Islamic Republic's economy also relies on shipping through the Strait, he said. 'Their prime means of exporting oil is through the Strait,' said Crist, author of 'The Twilight War: The Secret History of America's Thirty-Year Conflict with Iran', in an interview. 'If they mine, it means their oil is not coming out, either.'" http://t.uani.com/RsAsZw

Reuters: "Iranian state television on Sunday broadcast purported confessions by more than a dozen suspects in connection with the killing of five nuclear scientists since 2010. The broadcast showed some of the suspects re-enacting the assassinations in different districts of the capital Tehran. The 14 suspects shown on TV included eight men and six women. The TV showed pictures from a military garrison it said was a training camp outside Tel Aviv in Israel. It said the suspects took courses there, including how to place magnetic bombs on cars -- the method used in the killing of the scientists." http://t.uani.com/MYEOH7 

Sanctions
  
JPost: "A Tel Aviv-based civil rights group accused UK satellite operator Inmarsat Plc over the weekend of admitting it provides its technology to Iranian oil tankers. Shurat HaDin (Israel Law Center) warned Inmarsat last month that the company could risk civil as well as criminal proceedings in US courts if it did not stop supplying its guidance services to Iranian military vessels and tankers. Rich Harris, Inmarsat's senior vice president told Shurat HaDin that the group's allegations had no basis, and that Inmarsat is not violating sanctions... The warning letter came in the wake of recent US Treasury Department sanctions against Iranian vessels, imposed last month." http://t.uani.com/MnQ7CO

Times LIVE: "Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe's romantic partner Gugu Mtshali and her close associates stand accused of peddling political support for the Iran deal - in return for a promised R104-million. The Grant Thornton report, commissioned by the Department of Trade and Industry, is the first independent proof that officials delivered on their side of a deal to solicit political support for the company, 360 Aviation. It found that officials of the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) were guilty of 'gross negligence' by providing a government support letter to 360 Aviation for a R2-billion helicopter deal with Iran." http://t.uani.com/OY5dot

Bloomberg: "The Islamic Development Bank approved a 170 million-euro ($210 million) loan for wastewater plant upgrades in Iran's capital, the Tehran Times reported, citing Tehran Water and Wastewater Co.'s managing director. The loan will be used to establish a sewage treatment plant in western Tehran, the executive, Mohammad Parvaresh, said without elaborating, according to today's report. The greater Tehran area has a population of about 12 million. Iran received a $50 million World Bank loan in October to help develop wastewater projects in northern Iranian cities, the paper cited Mehdi Samareh-Hashemi, managing director of the Iran Water and Wastewater Engineering Co., as saying." http://t.uani.com/OF26O7

Human Rights

MEMRI: "Iran has the second-highest annual rate of executions in the world, after China. According to the regime, those executed are criminals convicted of felonies such as murder, rape and drug trafficking; human rights activists say that some are regime opponents. Moderate conservative circles in Iran recently criticized the Iranian public's enthusiasm for attending public hangings, particularly the practice of bringing children to watch them. Jafar Mohammadi, editor of the moderate conservative website Asr-e Iran, wrote in an article that the public's appetite for this activity was a sign of social sickness." http://t.uani.com/R9ejOf

Syrian Civil War

NYT: "A group of Syrian rebels took responsibility on Sunday for the kidnapping of 48 Iranians in Damascus a day earlier, but the rebels insisted that their captives were members of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards, not religious pilgrims as Iran's official news agency had reported. 'They are Iranian thugs who were in Damascus for a field reconnaissance mission,' said a rebel leader, in a video that the rebels said showed the captives sitting calmly behind armed Syrian fighters. In the video, the rebels flipped through what they said were Iranian identification cards and certificates for carrying weapons, proving, the rebels said, that the hostages were not religious pilgrims." http://t.uani.com/OGlfCe

Reuters: "Iran warned against foreign intervention in Syria on Sunday and said the conflict there could engulf Israel, Iranian media said. Iran's Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani accused the United States and regional countries he did not name of providing military support to rebels fighting to topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, an ally of Iran. Syria has accused Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia of backing rebels in Syria and fuelling violence there. Iran has supported Assad's efforts to crush the 17-month revolt and has accused Western countries and Israel of interfering in the crisis." http://t.uani.com/OKM3ih

Reuters: "Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will attend a summit of Muslim leaders in Saudi Arabia expected to focus on Syria, Iranian media said on Monday, as tensions between Tehran and Riyadh run high over their opposing stances on regional uprisings. The extraordinary summit of the Organisation of Islamic Countries (OIC) is to be held in Mecca next week. 'Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will be present at this summit at the invitation of King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia,' Mohammad Reza Forghani, the director of international affairs in Ahmadinejad's office, was quoted as saying by state news agency IRNA." http://t.uani.com/MnSCFe

Opinion & Analysis

Jaime Suchliki in The Miami Herald: "The same week that President Obama downplayed the threat to U.S. security from Venezuela's Hugo Chávez, a high-level delegation from Hezbollah was visiting Caracas and Havana. Ammar Musawi, head of Hezbollah International Department, praised Cuba as a model on how to oppose 'imperialist hegemony, arrogance, and plunder.' In Venezuela, he met with the Vice-Foreign Minister and condemned the 'ferocious attack' against their Syrian ally. Venezuela's growing relations with Iran and Chávez' support for terrorist groups both in the Americas and the Middle East should worry the U.S. The most remarkable and dangerous foreign policy initiative of the Chávez regime has been allying Venezuela with Iran. Chávez has allowed the Iranians to use Venezuelan territory to penetrate the Western Hemisphere and to mine for uranium in Venezuela. Chávez policy is aiding Iran in developing nuclear technology and in evading U.N. sanctions and U.S. vigilance of the Iranian drug trade and other illicit activities. The Chávez regime is also providing Venezuelan passports to Iranian operatives. Venezuela's Mining and Basic Industries Minister Rodolfo Sanz, acknowledged that Iran is 'helping Venezuela to explore for uranium.' What would stop the Iranians, once they develop their own weapons, from providing some to their close ally in Caracas? Or worse, will the Iranians use Venezuela as a transshipment point to provide nuclear weapons to terrorist groups? Or with the help of Venezuelans, would the Iranians smuggle a nuclear weapon into the U.S.? Given Chávez's erratic and irresponsible behavior, these possibilities should not be dismissed lightly. Fidel Castro helped the Soviet Union surreptitiously introduce nuclear weapons into Cuba aimed at the United States. The October 1962 missile crisis is a grim reminder that poor U.S. vigilance, a daring leader in the Caribbean and a reckless dictator in Russia almost brought the world to a nuclear holocaust. Iran is also providing Venezuela with technical assistance in the areas of defense, intelligence, energy and security. Iranians, as well as Cuban personnel, are advising and protecting Chávez and training his security apparatus. This triple alliance represents a clear threat to the hemisphere." http://t.uani.com/MfamqY

Erin Burnett in Fortune: "The U.S. and Europe are implementing the toughest sanctions yet on Iran to stop its leaders from developing nuclear weapons. The measures have succeeded in making life harder for regular Iranians; according to Iranian news sources, milk prices are rising daily, and citizens boycotted bakeries and grocery stores in protest in June. As difficult as sanctions have made life for Iranians, they could be tougher and more effective. That's because the U.S. government, the leader of the international sanctions program, is applying its policies inconsistently. First are the exemptions that the State Department granted to the top three buyers of Iranian oil: China, Japan, and India. If the U.S. really wanted to apply pressure on President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's nuclear program, it could insist that China, Japan, and India cease all oil imports (oil is the lifeblood of Iran's economy, accounting for 80% of Iranian foreign-exchange earnings -- and China alone buys half of Iran's crude exports) and pledge to deny those countries access to U.S. banks if they don't comply. The U.S. already bars Cuba from tapping our financial system, for example, but Havana, unlike Beijing, doesn't own $1.17 trillion of U.S. debt. And so our diplomats praise China, Japan, and India for merely reducing their dependence on Iranian oil imports and look the other way. Then there's South Korea, historically the fourth-biggest buyer of Iranian crude. The Koreans have relied on Iran for about 10% of their oil needs. Recently government officials indicated they'd look elsewhere for oil. And Iran responded by threatening a trade embargo on Korean imports to Iran. As Fortune went to press, South Korea had halted Iranian oil imports because it could not get insurance for the shipments, but Seoul is looking for ways to resume its purchases, including using Iranian tankers. To understand why Korea is so keen to maintain good relations with Iran, just look at Samsung (No. 20 on the Fortune Global 500), Hyundai (No. 117), and Kia (No. 266), companies that would feel the pain if Korean goods were barred from Iran. Samsung tells me it sells the world's current must-have gadget, the Galaxy S III, in Iran, along with printers, cameras, and televisions. When I was in Iran about 18 months ago, Samsung had a retail store in a mall I visited. It was sleek and new, indistinguishable from Samsung stores in major U.S. cities. All the televisions I saw in Iranian hotel rooms and homes were made by Samsung. So it's no surprise that Iran's threat of a trade embargo on South Korea carries weight. So why is the U.S. government to blame for this situation? Because while the U.S. was putting the harshest sanctions in history on Iran and pushing its allies to join, it signed a free-trade deal with South Korea, the biggest single free-trade deal for America since NAFTA." http://t.uani.com/OF2I6m

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.

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