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Top Stories
Reuters:
"Officials from six world powers meet in Brussels on Wednesday to
plan for a possible new round of talks with Iran, the latest effort to
resolve a decade-long stand-off over its nuclear program and avert the
threat of a military conflict... 'There certainly is a window to do a
deal, but that window is closing, and closing fast. Ultimately it depends
on the Iranians meeting their international obligations,' said Ariel
Ratner, former Obama administration political appointee on Middle East
issues at the State Department. In hopes of a breakthrough, and despite
deep skepticism a deal with Tehran can be reached, the powers - Britain,
China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States - are revising their
strategy after three inconclusive rounds of negotiations this year. Their
plan could be presented to Iran in talks, convened by EU foreign policy
chief Catherine Ashton, which diplomats say may take place in the coming
months in Istanbul. 'The idea of the (Wednesday) meeting is to coordinate
on what kind of offer we are going to go forward with to Iran,' said one
senior Western official, familiar with the planning." http://t.uani.com/TPGlff
WSJ:
"China's imports of Iranian crude oil are down by about one-fifth so
far this year, a drop that puts the country in good position to avoid
U.S. sanctions and head off a diplomatic row with Washington. China has
repeatedly defended its crude purchases from Iran, telling the U.S. it
complies with existing U.N. resolutions. But October data released
Wednesday showed Iran crude-oil imports off 23% from a year earlier, to
458,000 barrels a day, continuing a year-long trend. China's
third-largest supplier of crude as recently as last year, after Saudi
Arabia and Angola, Iran this year has slipped to No. 4-surpassed by
Russia-shipping about 426,000 barrels a day in the first 10 months of the
year. October's import numbers will be the last used by the U.S. State
Department in deciding whether Beijing qualifies for a renewal of its
waiver from sanctions, which expires Dec. 25. China won the exemption in
late June, after the State Department determined that it had
'significantly reduced' crude imports from Iran in the first half of the
year. Renewal requires continued significant reductions. The State
Department says no decision has yet been made." http://t.uani.com/UISfbz
AFP:
"Iran has supplied military aid to the Islamist group Hamas in Gaza
locked in a conflict with Israel during which it has fired missiles at
Tel Aviv for the first time, the parliament speaker said Wednesday. 'We
are proud to defend the people of Palestine and Hamas ... and that our
assistance to them has been both financial and military,' Ali Larijani
said without elaborating, in remarks reported by parliament's website,
ICANA.ir. Iran has never made a secret of its support for Israel's foes
Hamas and the Islamic Jihad in the Gaza Strip but generally eschews
mention of sending military aid. The Jewish state has accused Iran of
supplying Hamas with its Fajr 5 missile, used to target Tel Aviv since an
Israeli offensive on Gaza was launched on November 14. Iran's
Revolutionary Guards chief General Mohammad Ali Jafari said on Wednesday
that Tehran was only responsible for having shared the missile's 'technology.'"
http://t.uani.com/WjVXdl
Nuclear
Program
Reuters: "Western officials
voiced concern on Tuesday about what they described as an unexpected
unloading of fuel at Iran's first nuclear energy plant and said Tehran,
which has dismissed it as a normal step, must clarify the issue. The U.N.
nuclear agency said in a confidential report on Friday that fuel
assemblies were transferred last month from the reactor core of the
Russian-built Bushehr plant to a spent fuel pond, but it gave no reason
for the move... 'This is not a routine matter or something that's quite ordinary,'
a senior Western official who declined to be identified said. 'So this is
of great concern. We need answers.' Another Western diplomat in Vienna,
where the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is based, said
he did not know what had happened at Bushehr but that the fuel
development raised possible safety-related questions. 'It sounds a safety
bell and then it potentially sounds a safeguards bell if it is used in a
weird way,' the diplomat said, referring to the fact that plutonium usable
for nuclear bombs could in theory be extracted from spent fuel." http://t.uani.com/QamoUt
Sanctions
AP: "An Iranian citizen has been charged with a plot to
export military antennas from the United States in violation of the Arms
Export Control Act. An indictment unsealed in U.S. District Court in
Washington on Tuesday charges Amin Ravan and his Iran-based company of
conspiracy to defraud the United States, smuggling, and violating the
export act. The Justice Department says that Ravan was arrested by authorities
in Malaysia last month, and the U.S. is seeking to extradite him to face
trial in Washington. The department says that 55 military antennas were
exported to Ravan's co-conspirators in Singapore and Hong Kong." http://t.uani.com/TXYkCA
Terrorism
AP:
"An Iranian news agency says the head of Iran's powerful
Revolutionary Guard has disclosed his country has given fighters in Gaza
the ability to produce longer-range missiles on their own, without direct
shipments. The comments by Gen. Mohammad Ali Jafari, quoted by the
semiofficial ISNA news agency, offer some of the clearest insights on
Iran's weapons support for Hamas, whose Iranian-engineered Fajr-5
missiles have struck near Tel Aviv and Jerusalem during weeklong battles
with Israel. The report Wednesday quotes Jafari as saying Iran has
supplied technology to Gaza for the missiles to be produced 'quickly.' Up
to now, Iran denied it directly supplied Hamas with the Fajr-5." http://t.uani.com/10tkSyV
Reuters:
"Iran's Speaker of Parliament Ali Larijani urged Arab states on
Wednesday to follow Iran's example of providing military assistance to
the Palestinians... 'We are honored that our help has material and
military aspects and these Arab countries that sit and hold meetings
should know that the nation of Palestine does not need words or
meetings,' Fars news agency reported Larijani as saying. 'Our message is
that if Arab countries want to help the nation of Palestine they should
give military assistance.'" http://t.uani.com/SeaAis
NYT:
"Anonymous, the loose coalition of hackers waging war on Israeli Web
sites, is the least of Israel's cyber problems. Its campaign against
Israel is a minor annoyance compared with a wave of cyber attacks that
have hit the country over the last year from Iran and Gaza... In July,
security researchers at Kaspersky Lab and Seculert, two computer security
firms, discovered that a strain of malware had infected Israeli
companies. Many of those companies handle critical infrastructure, like
the country's energy and water supplies, computer and telecom networks.
The malware, which the researchers named 'Mahdi' after a command in its
code, appears to have originated in Iran. Elements of the code were
written in Farsi, dates in the malware's code were formatted according to
the Persian calendar, and the domains used in the attacks were registered
to Islamic Azad University in Tehran. The term 'Mahdi' may have also been
a clue; for Shiites, Mahdi is a messianic figure." http://t.uani.com/10cGy39
Human Rights
Reporters Without
Borders: "Reporters Without Borders has learned that
Alireza Roshan, a journalist who wrote book reviews for the newspaper
Shargh, was arrested on 17 November after being summoned to the
prosecutor's office that is attached to Tehran's Evin prison. He is to
serve the one-year sentence he received from a Tehran revolutionary court
following his arrest with other members of the Majzooban Nor website
during a police raid on 8 September 2011. After being convicted on a
charge of activities against state security, he was released
provisionally on 3 October 2011 pending the outcome of an appeal. His
sentence was eventually confirmed by a Tehran appeal court." http://t.uani.com/10cCvE5
Domestic
Politics
Reuters:
"Iran's parliament called off plans to grill President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad on Wednesday after Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said
they must not act in the interests of Iran's enemies. Ahmadinejad's
opponents in the 290-seat assembly dominated by conservatives wanted to
question him about an economic crisis that they blame as much on his
mismanagement as on Western sanctions over Iran's nuclear program.
Economic woes have forced up prices of goods, diminished the value of the
Iranian currency and exacerbated divisions within Iran's factionalized
political system. 'Up to this point, the plan to question the president
has been positive because of the sense of responsibility of parliament
and the readiness of government officials,' said Khamenei, the
73-year-old cleric who holds ultimate power. 'But if this issue goes any
further, it will be what the enemies want and so I ask the honorable
representatives not to continue with it,' the Mehr news agency reported
him saying." http://t.uani.com/UIT5Fl
The Atlantic:
"Concern is growing over the health of Iranian opposition leaders
Mir Hossein Musavi and Mehdi Karrubi after opposition sources reported
that both men were hospitalized for several hours and underwent medical
tests on November 19. Musavi; his wife, university professor and women's
rights activist Rahra Rahnavard; and Karrubi were put under house arrest
in February 2010 after their call for a demonstration in support of the
Arab Spring uprisings brought a significant number of opposition members
into the streets. Musavi has reportedly been suffering in recent weeks
from chest pains and extreme fluctuation of his blood pressure. In
August, he underwent an angiography for a heart condition that he
is said to have developed in detention. Sahamnews, the website of fellow
opposition cleric Mehdi Karrubi, reports that Karrubi has recently lost a
substantial amount of weight and suffers from loss of appetite, nausea,
and dizziness. Last year, he allegedly suffered from respiratory
complications. Family members and aides believe that the health of the
men has deteriorated as the result of their detention." http://t.uani.com/10tmLeU
Opinion &
Analysis
Chicago Tribune
Editorial Board: "For about a week, the Israeli
military and the militant leaders of Hamas have been in a simmering war,
Israeli warplanes pounding targets in the Gaza Strip and Hamas launching
longer-range Fajr 5 rockets, courtesy of its patron Iran, toward
Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. On Tuesday, the two sides appeared close to a
truce, though no one knows if it would hold. So far, this conflict has played
out along familiar lines. But imagine that the puppeteer controlling
Hamas was not a nuclear wannabe Iran but a nuclear-armed Tehran. Imagine
if the threat of an Israeli ground invasion into Gaza carried the huge
and added risk of an Iranian nuclear retaliation on Tel Aviv. Imagine how
different the ongoing cease-fire negotiations would be and how much more
emboldened Hamas - and its Hezbollah allies in Lebanon - would be against
Israel. Think the Middle East is a complicated and dangerous neighborhood
now? On the day that Iran declares to the world that it has bulled
through Western red lines and is capable of building its first nuclear
bomb, the Middle East will become immensely more dangerous and unstable.
That day might be months - not years - off. In the past few days, we've
learned that Iran has completed the installation of centrifuges at its
underground nuclear fortress. That means Tehran now has the capability to
double its production of medium-enriched uranium in the next months,
according to the International Atomic Energy Agency. Tehran could
accumulate a bomb's worth of uranium by mid-2013. A nuclear Iran would
cement the fanatical mullahs in power and threaten U.S. allies such as
Saudi Arabia. It could set off a regional nuclear arms race. Iran, with
nuclear weapons to back its bluster, would be more than a dire threat to
Israel. It would embolden militants and terrorists sponsored by Iran...
American and EU officials are reported to be considering the imposition
of 'a de facto trade embargo' on Iran by early 2013, according to The
Wall Street Journal. Such a move would block all export and import
transactions through Iran's banking system. Current sanctions cover only
oil-related transactions through Iran's central bank. Result: Iran wouldn't
be able to pay its bills or collect its debts through the global banking
system. That would be devastating. It can't be launched too soon. Such an
embargo is likely the last chance to stop Iran's nuclear ambitions short
of a military showdown. The stakes have been made clearer in the past
week. The next Iranian missiles that fall on Tel Aviv may not be Fajr
5s." http://t.uani.com/SSewnp
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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
Internal Revenue Code. Eye on Iran is not intended as a comprehensive
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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
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