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Top Stories
Reuters: "New
sanctions aimed at reducing global trade with Iran in the energy,
shipping and metals sectors may soon be considered by the U.S. Senate as
part of an annual defense policy bill, senators and aides said on
Tuesday. The sanctions legislation, which has not yet been unveiled,
comes during a crowded calendar as the Senate races to deal with deficit
reduction, the defense bill and other pressing issues by the end of the
year. The package would build on current U.S. sanctions, passed almost a
year ago, that have slashed Iran's oil revenues. The goal is to pressure
Tehran to stop efforts to enrich uranium to levels that could be used in
weapons... Democratic Senator Robert Menendez and Republican Mark Kirk
have crafted new sanctions that would punish foreign banks that handle
transactions for a broad sector of industries, including shipping, ports,
ship building and more types of energy. 'Our significant effort right now
is in pursuing areas of the economy that can lead to proliferation -
energy, shipping, to mention a few,' Menendez said in a brief hallway
interview. U.S. persons and companies have long been barred from doing
business with Iranian entities. These new sanctions apply to foreign
banks, threatening to ban them from the U.S. financial system unless they
cut their dealings with Iran. Senator Carl Levin, the Democratic chairman
of the Armed Services Committee, said he was reviewing a draft version of
the sanctions and was amenable to the measures being added to the defense
bill... The sanctions would end 'Turkey's game of gold for natural gas,'
a senior Senate aide said, referring to reports that Turkey has been
paying for natural gas with gold due to sanctions rules. The legislation
'would bring economic sanctions on Iran near de facto trade embargo levels
with the hope of speeding up the date by which Iran's economy will
collapse,' the aide said. The legislation will also impose new bans on
insurance and re-insurance for shipments of a broader range of goods,
aides said." http://t.uani.com/Y2EPz3
AP:
"Iranian scientists have run computer simulations for a nuclear
weapon that would produce more than triple the explosive force of the
World War II bomb that destroyed Hiroshima, according to a diagram
obtained by The Associated Press. The diagram was leaked by officials
from a country critical of Iran's atomic program to bolster their
arguments that Iran's nuclear program must be halted before it produces a
weapon. The officials provided the diagram only on condition that they
and their country not be named. The International Atomic Energy Agency -
the Vienna-based U.N. nuclear watchdog - reported last year that it had
obtained diagrams indicating that Iran was calculating the 'nuclear
explosive yield' of potential weapons. A senior diplomat who is considered
neutral on the issue confirmed that the graph obtained by the AP was
indeed one of those cited by the IAEA in that report. He spoke only on
condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the
issue." http://t.uani.com/Sp3skO
Reuters:
"Gazans offered very public thanks to Iran on Tuesday for helping
them in this month's fight against Israel, when Iranian-made missiles
were fired out of the Palestinian enclave towards Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.
'Thank you Iran', said large billboards on three major road junctions in
the Gaza Strip - the first time there has been such public
acknowledgement of Iran's role in the arming of Islamic militants in the
tiny territory. The message was written in Arabic, English, Hebrew and
Farsi. The posters also depicted the Iranian Fajr 5 rockets that were
used for the first time to target Israel's two largest population
centers. No one was injured in the attacks. The billboards were not
signed, but a senior official with the militant group Islamic Jihad,
Khader Habib, said it was only natural to show gratitude for Iran's role
in the conflict. 'Iranian rockets struck at Tel Aviv. They reached out to
Jerusalem. Therefore it was our duty to thank those who helped our
people,' he told Reuters." http://t.uani.com/10SRVO9
Nuclear
Program
Reuters: "An increase in
Iran's higher-grade uranium stockpile is worrying but may arise from a
bottleneck in making reactor fuel rather than a bid to quickly accumulate
material that could be used for nuclear weapons, diplomats and experts
say... Tehran's move this year to use a big part of its most sensitive
material - which could otherwise be turned into bomb-grade uranium - for
civilian fuel purposes helped ease intense speculation of an imminent
attack by the Jewish state. But tension may soon flare again if Iran's
holding were to rapidly approach an amount that would be enough for a
weapon, either by stepping up output of higher-enriched uranium or by no
longer using the material to produce reactor fuel, or both. 'The question
is, at what point do they cross the critical point ... when we enter the
danger zone?' one senior diplomatic source said. 'Will they decide to
voluntarily decide to stay clear of that point?' A U.N. nuclear watchdog
report issued this month showed that Iran in late September suddenly stopped
converting uranium gas enriched to a fissile concentration of 20 percent
into oxide powder to make fuel for a medical research reactor in Tehran.
Because Iran's enrichment work at the same time continued unabated, the
halt meant that its stockpile of the higher-grade uranium rose by nearly
50 percent to 135 kg in November compared with the level in the previous
quarterly report in August." http://t.uani.com/TluarN
Reuters:
"Iran will go on enriching uranium 'with intensity' and the number
of enrichment centrifuges it has operating will rise substantially in the
current year, the country's nuclear energy chief was quoted as saying on
Wednesday. The comments by Fereydoun Abbasi-Davani, head of Iran's Atomic
Energy Organisation, signaled continued defiance in the face of
international demands that Tehran halt enrichment to the higher 20
percent fissile purity level, close down its Fordow enrichment plant, and
ship out its stockpile of the material. But Abbasi-Davani also said Iran
would continue and possibly raise its output of reactor fuel using 20
percent enriched uranium, which could allay concerns that a growing
stockpile of the higher-grade material could be put to making atom
bombs." http://t.uani.com/Wv8UAR
RFE/RL:
"A rare expression of concern about Iran's nuclear sites and their
impact on human health has been expressed by the head of the country's
accident and medical emergency center. 'We believe all of our emergency
services should be trained and ready to face nuclear accidents,'
Gholamreza Massoumi was quoted as saying by Mehr, the country's
semiofficial news agency. Massoumi referred to 'accidents' at the Isfahan
Uranium Conversion Facility (UCF), where yellowcake is converted into
highly toxic uranium hexafluoride, saying: 'People who have been in the
region, for example -- Isfahan's UCF -- have had some accidents for which
they have been treated.' Massoumi said that some employees at the Isfahan
site had suffered from health issues and warned of 'problems [that]
civilians living close to nuclear sites could face.'" http://t.uani.com/Tsi03T
AP:
"The International Atomic Energy Agency acknowledged Tuesday that
one of its servers had been hacked after a previously unknown group
critical of Israel's undeclared nuclear weapons program posted contact
details for more than 100 experts working for the U.N. nuclear watchdog.
A group called 'Parastoo' - Farsi for the swallow bird and a common
Iranian girl's name - claimed responsibility for posting the names on its
website two days ago." http://t.uani.com/UXeGMu
Sanctions
Bloomberg:
"Sekavin SA, a Greek fuel supplier, said it's investigating the
origin of a cargo aboard an Iranian tanker off the Mediterranean island
of Syros amid a European Union ban on purchases from the Middle East
nation. The Baikal arrived at the Greek island yesterday and has the
capacity to carry about 1 million barrels of oil or refined products,
ship-tracking data compiled by Bloomberg show. The cargo of ship fuel
hasn't been unloaded, Sekavin Operation Manager Yannis Spyridakis said by
phone today. The vessel is flying the Tanzanian flag, he said. NITC, a
Tehran-based tanker operator, controls the ship and says the company is
owned by Iranian pension funds, data compiled by Bloomberg show... Tanzania-Zanzibar
said last month 14 Iranian tankers that were previously registered in
Tuvalu were mistakenly signaling the east African territory as their flag
state." http://t.uani.com/Sp1G3e
Reuters:
"Iran's food distribution system is in crisis even though Western
sanctions do not directly target the market, badly hurting the poor and
turning some staples into luxuries. Private importers are shrinking away
from deals made risky by turmoil in the rial currency, and many foreign
banks are reluctant to finance even trade exempt from the sanctions for
fear of drawing fire simply for doing business with Iran. The result is
that the Iranian state is under growing pressure to import and allocate
more goods as it tries to avoid any social unrest due to shortages and
soaring prices. An increasingly shaky state apparatus will struggle to
fill the gap often left by private companies, analysts say. 'If you are
talking about the number of deals needed for a country of 75 million ...
you do not have an organized overall strategy for finance, purchase and
distribution. I do not think they can cope with the challenge,' said
Scott Lucas, a specialist in Iranian affairs at Birmingham University.
'Even if the sanctions were lifted, which is a huge if, the problems in
the system are now so endemic I think they face real serious structural
problems.'" http://t.uani.com/Y58tnu
AFP:
"A former Iranian ambassador on Tuesday won his court battle against
extradition from Britain to the United States for allegedly conspiring to
smuggle arms to Iran. Nosratollah Tajik, Iran's former ambassador to
Jordan, is wanted by Washington over claims that he conspired to export
US night-vision equipment to Iran without a licence. The 59-year-old was
arrested in 2006 after agents from the US Department of Homeland Security
pretended to be co-conspirators in a sting operation. The extradition
process has been held up over fears that sending Tajik to the US could
exacerbate diplomatic British-Iranian relations and create a 'real
threat' to staff at the British embassy in Tehran." http://t.uani.com/Sp1mS9
Human Rights
Reuters:
"A U.N. General Assembly committee on Tuesday condemned Syria and
Iran for widespread human rights abuses, but both Damascus and Tehran
dismissed the separate votes as politically motivated. The draft
resolution on Syria, which was co-sponsored by Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the
United States, Britain, France and other Arab and Western states,
received 132 votes in favor - 10 more than a similar resolution last year
received - along with 12 against and 35 abstentions. The resolution on
Iran, which was drafted by Canada and co-sponsored by other Western
countries, received 83 votes in favor, 31 against and 68 abstentions...
The resolution on Iran voiced 'deep concern at serious ongoing and
recurring human rights violations in the Islamic Republic of Iran
relating to, inter alia, torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading
treatment or punishment, including flogging and amputations.' It also
criticized the 'continuing alarming high frequency of the carrying-out of
the death penalty (in Iran) in the absence of internationally recognized
safeguards, including an increase in the number of public
executions.'" http://t.uani.com/U1IGUs
The National:
"Now entering her seventh week on hunger strike in Tehran's infamous
Evin prison, Nasrin Sotoudeh is alarmingly weak in body but steely as
ever in spirit. When her distraught husband, Reza Khandan, was allowed a
rare visit recently, he asked how long she would continue to refuse food.
She replied: 'My hunger strike is unlimited.' Slight and dark-haired,
soft-spoken and modest, the 49-year-old mother-of-two from a religious
middle-class family is one of Iran's most prominent human-rights lawyers,
garlanded abroad for her courageous defence of dissidents. The European
Parliament last month awarded her its Sakharov Prize for Freedom of
Thought, previously won by former South African president Nelson Mandela
and Aung San Suu Kyi, the Burmese pro-democracy figure. Tehran is under
increasing international pressure over her plight and that of many like
Ms Sotoudeh who have received draconian sentences for championing
democratic reform in Iran." http://t.uani.com/TpDqeW
Foreign Affairs
NYT:
"For years, the United States and its Middle East allies were challenged
by the rising might of the so-called Shiite crescent, a political and
ideological alliance backed by Iran that linked regional actors deeply
hostile to Israel and the West. But uprising, wars and economics have
altered the landscape of the region, paving the way for a new axis to
emerge, one led by a Sunni Muslim alliance of Egypt, Qatar and Turkey.
That triumvirate played a leading role in helping end the eight-day
conflict between Israel and Gaza, in large part by embracing Hamas and
luring it further away from the Iran-Syria-Hezbollah fold, offering
diplomatic clout and promises of hefty aid. For the United States and
Israel, the shifting dynamics offer a chance to isolate a resurgent Iran,
limit its access to the Arab world and make it harder for Tehran to arm
its agents on Israel's border." http://t.uani.com/V67Nqx
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Eye on Iran is a periodic news summary from United Against
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