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Top Stories
Reuters:
"Iran has taken delivery of several new tankers from Chinese
shipyards, giving it greater flexibility in maintaining oil exports in
the face of Western sanctions. The sanctions, imposed by the United
States and European Union to halt a nuclear programme they believe is a
cover to develop atomic weapons, have hurt Iran's oil exports, leading to
a plunge in its currency. But Iranian crude oil imports rose in December
to their highest since European Union sanctions took effect last July,
helped in part by more tankers deployed. Since the start of 2013, two
supertankers have joined Iran's trading fleet, with another three new
vessels having arrived in recent months, according to industry sources
and shipping data. Each vessel has a maximum capacity of 2 million
barrels of oil. 'Right now Iran needs every tanker, and it will certainly
make life easier for them,' said Sam Ciszuk with KBC Energy Economics
consultancy. 'With a few more tankers, they could build floating storage
to make sure they can provide a buffer for these big fluctuations in oil
demand,' he said, referring to holding oil on board ships at sea until
buyers can be found... With the latest acquisitions, NITC's supertanker
fleet has been boosted to 30 vessels with a maximum carrying capacity of
60 million barrels. It has an additional 14 small crude oil tankers...
The Atlantis and Infinity, the two vessels that joined NITC's fleet in
recent weeks, are part of a $1.2 billion contract with two Chinese
shipyards that was ordered in 2009 for 12 new supertankers. The
Carnation, Rainbow and Skyline reached NITC last year." http://t.uani.com/XU8GDp
FT:
"Will he eventually drink from the poisoned chalice? The question is
on the lips of many Iranians, who are debating whether Iran's supreme
leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, will bow to pressure from world powers
and strike a deal over its nuclear programme. Iranian usage of the
expression dates back to 1988 when the founder of the Islamic Republic,
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, finally accepted the UN-brokered ceasefire
to end an eight-year war with Iraq - a setback that was, he said, 'more
deadly than drinking from a poisoned chalice'. In Tehran, speculation is
rife over whether history will repeat itself: will the supreme leader bow
to international calls to curb Iran's nuclear ambitions for the sake of
alleviating the growing economic strain of international sanctions? Iran
is set to resume nuclear talks with the six major powers - the US, UK,
France, Russia, China and Germany - in Kazakhstan on February 26 after an
eight-month hiatus." http://t.uani.com/WvsM9a
Bloomberg:
"Iran faces a fresh obstacle to turning its most lucrative export
into cash as the U.S. tightens sanctions this week to keep importers from
paying for the oil with dollars and euros. Under penalty of expulsion
from the U.S. banking system, Iranian crude customers such as China,
Japan and India will be restricted to using their own currencies for the
purchases, starting today. Importers will be compelled to keep the
payments in escrow accounts that Iran can use only for locally sourced
goods and services, in what will amount to barter arrangements. 'They'll
have to accept that a lot of cash is piling up in banks in importing
countries, and they'll now have to look for ways to get it out,' said
Robin Mills, the head of consulting at Dubai-based Manaar Energy
Consulting & Project Management, in a Jan. 31 phone interview. 'It's
making the trade much more difficult.' ... Today's sanctions, part of
U.S. legislation passed last year, may exacerbate the decline because it
forces bartering with countries whose exports to Iran are in almost every
case less than the amount of oil they buy from it... Even so, the revenue
Iran can generate from its current level of exports is probably enough to
sustain its economy, said Olivier Jakob, managing director of consultants
Petromatrix GmbH in Zug, Switzerland. With Brent crude, a benchmark for
more than half of the world's oil, selling at more than $110 a barrel,
and Iranian prices at similar levels, the country doesn't face immediate
financial distress, he said Jan. 31 by phone. 'The amount of crude Iran
exports at current prices is equivalent to exporting at full capacity
with the price of $81 a barrel,' Jakob said. 'As long as the oil flow
isn't stopped, Iran has time to work out the financial way around the new
sanctions.'" http://t.uani.com/VHOVVd
Nuclear Program
AP:
"In years past, keeping track of Iran's claims of military and
technological advances was relatively easy: Wait until early February and
watch the parades and announcements in the buildup to celebrations
marking the Islamic Revolution. Now, with the strategic stakes ever
higher, Iranian officials are boasting louder, pressing harder and
leaving questions about how much is real. The reasons for the flood of
self-described achievements touch on the various pressures bearing down
on Iran, including Western sanctions and the threats of possible military
action if diplomacy cannot solve the standoff over Tehran's nuclear
program. It also highlights the learning curve of Internet-age
showmanship from a country that acknowledges the economic pain inflicted
by sanctions - which could tighten further on Wednesday - but claims it
has the tools to bounce back stronger. Since January alone, Iran has
showcased a steady stream of purported advances that have been met with
varying degrees of skepticism. They include another domestically made
surveillance drone, claims of a monkey sent into space on a successful
roundtrip mission, a supersonic air tunnel and a compact, single-seat
warplane described as a radar-evading jet fighter." http://t.uani.com/TGjWqH
AFP:
"Russia put pressure on Iran Wednesday by noting that it expected to
see 'serious progress' made at this month's talks in Kazakhstan over
Tehran's disputed nuclear programme. Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei
Ryabkov said world powers and the Islamic republic had made no progress
since the last round of top-level negotiations were held in Moscow at the
end of June 2012. But he stressed that pressure will be high on sides to
climb down from their respective positions and seek middle ground at the
February 26 meeting in Almaty. 'Despite everything, I would very much
hope to see the upcoming round result in -- if not an outright
breakthrough -- then serious progress,' Ryabkov said in a wide-ranging
interview with the state-run RIA Novosti news agency." http://t.uani.com/WOvHLN
Sanctions
NYT:
"When German customs agents at the Düsseldorf airport found a check
for the equivalent of nearly $70 million in Venezuelan currency in the
carry-on bag of a former Iranian economy minister last month, it seemed
like the elements of an international thriller. But an Iranian
construction company contended on Tuesday that the reality was much more
mundane: the money, it said, was meant to pay wages and buy concrete and
other materials as part of a project to build 10,000 apartments in Venezuela.
'They're buildings, not bombs, not missiles,' said a lawyer for the
company, Kayson Venezuela, mocking speculation here that the company's
construction projects were a front for more sinister activities... The
unusual courier was Tahmaseb Mazaheri, a former Iranian economy minister
and Central Bank governor, according to the lawyer and a second employee,
Khosro Mobasser, the company's director of Latin American business
development. They said Mr. Mazaheri was bringing the check to Venezuela
as a favor to the company, which is owned by Kayson, a large Iranian
construction company." http://t.uani.com/X1LGpv
Human Rights
Fox News:
"The American pastor sentenced to eight years in Iran's Evin prison
is unaware of the groundswell of international support for him, and
instead fears he's been abandoned, according to relatives who met with
him this week. Saeed Abedini mentioned his doubt during a visit with
relatives on Monday. It was a second time he was allowed to see members
of his extended family since he was convicted. Abedini expressed
apprehension and concern to his relatives about his fate and openly asked
if there were international efforts to secure his freedom, according to
advocacy group American Center for Law and Justice. It is believed that
Abedini's downtrodden spirit is due to abuse and brain-washing techniques
used by prison officials." http://t.uani.com/XnR0Qo
Domestic
Politics
NYT:
"As President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad escalated a bitter political fight
this week with Iran's most influential political family by disclosing
secret film recordings of what he purported were fraudulent business
deals, Iran's political maneuvering took a new turn Wednesday when an
imprisoned associate of the president was reported to have been freed.
The release of Saeed Mortazavi, reported by two Iranian news agencies,
came as the latest chapter in several days of political drama playing out
with unusual prominence in the public eye." http://t.uani.com/VDF0dV
Foreign Affairs
Reuters:
"President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, on the first visit to Cairo by an
Iranian leader in more than three decades, called for a strategic
alliance with Egypt and said he had offered the cash-strapped Arab state
a loan, but drew a cool response. Ahmadinejad said outside forces were
trying to prevent a rapprochement between the Middle East's two most
populous nations, at odds since Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution and
Egypt's signing of a peace treaty with Israel in the same year. 'We must
all understand that the only option is to set up this alliance because it
is in the interests of the Egyptian and Iranian peoples and other nations
of the region,' the official MENA news agency quoted him in remarks to
Egyptian journalists published on Wednesday... Video footage shot by a
Turkish cameraman appeared to show a bearded man trying twice to throw a
shoe at Ahmadinejad as he was mobbed by well-wishers on leaving the
Hussein mosque." http://t.uani.com/Wx7Lex
Opinion &
Analysis
WashPost Editorial
Board: "On Tuesday the Bulgarian government
confirmed what most of the world has known for months: The bombing of a
bus carrying Israeli tourists in the Black Sea resort of Burgas last July
18 was carried out by members of Lebanon's Hezbollah organization. The
results of an official investigation present leaders of the European
Union with a reality that will be difficult to ignore. They must decide
whether to allow a terrorist attack on E.U. territory to go unpunished or
to sanction a movement that is both an Iranian proxy and the dominant
party in the Lebanese government. The case for sanctions is a strong one.
The Burgas attack, which killed five Israelis and wounded more than 100,
was not an isolated incident but part of a campaign of terrorism against
Israeli, U.S. and gulf state targets by Hezbollah and the Quds Force of
Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps. According to a new report by Matthew
Levitt of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, the two groups
decided in January 2010 to launch a campaign of violence aimed at
punishing Israel for the assassination of Iranian scientists and
deterring an attack on Iran's nuclear program. Since then the Quds Force
has, among other things, plotted to kill the Saudi ambassador to the
United States in Washington and the U.S. ambassador to Azerbaijan, and it
has attacked an Israeli diplomat's wife in India. Hezbollah has attempted
attacks on Israeli tourists in Cyprus, Greece and Thailand as well as in
Bulgaria. Mr. Levitt says that more than 20 terror attacks by Hezbollah
or the Iranian force were detected between May 2011 and July 2012;
fortunately, almost all failed or were disrupted. Israel participates in
this shadow war, too: Five Iranian nuclear scientists have been
assassinated in recent years. The United States has sponsored
cyberattacks on Iranian nuclear facilities. But nothing justifies
Hezbollah's attempts to murder tourists; one of those killed in Bulgaria
was a pregnant woman. Nor should a democratic community such as the
European Union tolerate terrorist attacks on its territory by an
established organization such as Hezbollah, which seeks recognition as a
legitimate political movement worthy of governing Lebanon. The United
States, which long ago designated Hezbollah as a terrorist organization,
has been pressing European leaders to do the same so that the group's
funds in European banks and other financial assets can be targeted.
Several governments, led by France, have resisted; they worry that
sanctions could further destabilize Lebanon or subject European
peacekeepers in the south of that country to reprisals. Bulgaria's
findings should end the debate. Inaction would mean accepting that Europe
can be a free-fire zone for Iran and its proxies." http://t.uani.com/VDGHbj
Michael Singh in
NYT: "Few of President Obama's original foreign
policy goals have eluded him so much as engagement with Iran. Over the
weekend, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. announced during a speech in
Munich that the United States was ready for direct talks with Iran. With
the risk of war over Iran's nuclear program looming, the offer is
prudent, but it is also beside the point. As Iran continues to evade
negotiations - literally in this case, since the Iranian foreign minister
was in the same building as Mr. Biden - the real question is not whether
America should talk to Iran, but how to get the Iranians to talk to us in
earnest. Diplomatic engagement with Iran isn't a new idea. Every American
president from Jimmy Carter on has reached out to Iran. But such
approaches have never led to improved relations. That was true of the
secret visit by President Ronald Reagan's national security adviser,
Robert C. McFarlane, to Tehran in 1986 in what became the Iran-contra
affair; it was also true of quiet talks over Afghanistan and Iraq in the
2000s, when the former achieved only fleeting tactical progress and the
latter none at all. The reasons for failure in all the approaches share a
common thread: Iran shrank from any broad bilateral thaw because it
feared engagement with the United States more than it feared
confrontation. 'Resistance' to the West - and especially to the United
States - was a founding principle of Iran's Islamic regime. And while
Iran has gradually normalized relations with many European and Asian
allies of Washington, it has not done so with the United States itself,
just as it has not with America's ally Israel. To lose those two nations
as enemies would be to undermine one of the regime's ideological raisons
d'être. As a result, serious engagement with the United States is likely
to be only a consequence of a strategic shift by the regime, rather than
a cause of it. And so far, no such shift has taken place. While there are
signs of increasing dissent within the Iranian government as
sanctions begin to bite more deeply, there are also indications that
existing sanctions have done all they can in this regard: Iran's oil
exports are ticking upward after a long decline, and high inflation and
unemployment have not produced mass unrest. This provides a good reason
for America to offer direct talks - to counter Iran's narrative of
'resistance.' But there is little hope that Iran will accept this offer,
or that talks right now would be productive. In fact, the regime may feel
that time is on its side. American and Israeli red lines for military
action depend on the pace of Iran's nuclear activities, meaning that Iran
can delay conflict simply by slowing those activities, as it recently has
done. Meanwhile, Iran's leaders may be hoping that black-market
workarounds and a pickup in global oil demand will allow their country to
expand its exports. So the United States must be more creative in the
ways it uses engagement and pressure to hasten a change in Iran's
strategic outlook." http://t.uani.com/Xm8MDP
Karim Sadjadpour
& Firas Maksad in Bloomberg: "As Syria's
President Bashar Al-Assad clings mercilessly to power, hopes that his
regime will be replaced by a stable, tolerant democracy are being dwarfed
by fears of prolonged sectarian strife and Islamist radicalism. The
outcome will hinge in part on a simple question: Whom do Syria's diverse
rebels hate more, the U.S. or Iran? The anomaly of power in modern Syria
-- where an Alawite minority rules over a Sunni Arab majority -- was
never sustainable, and few countries stand to lose more from the regime's
collapse than the Islamic Republic of Iran. Syria has been Iran's only
consistent ally since the 1979 revolution, providing the leadership in
Tehran with a crucial thoroughfare to Iran's most important regional
asset, the Lebanese Shiite militant group Hezbollah. As a result, Iran
has done its utmost to keep Assad afloat, providing billions of dollars
of support as well as strategic aid to crush dissent. To relieve pressure
on the Syrian military, Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps is
reportedly training two paramilitary organizations, Jaysh al Sha'abi and
the Shabiha, which boast 50,000 fighters and are modeled on the Bassij
militia that violently quashed Iran's 2009 popular uprisings. As Syria's
President Bashar Al-Assad clings mercilessly to power, hopes that his
regime will be replaced by a stable, tolerant democracy are being dwarfed
by fears of prolonged sectarian strife and Islamist radicalism. The
outcome will hinge in part on a simple question: Whom do Syria's diverse
rebels hate more, the U.S. or Iran? The anomaly of power in modern Syria
-- where an Alawite minority rules over a Sunni Arab majority -- was
never sustainable, and few countries stand to lose more from the regime's
collapse than the Islamic Republic of Iran. Syria has been Iran's only
consistent ally since the 1979 revolution, providing the leadership in
Tehran with a crucial thoroughfare to Iran's most important regional
asset, the Lebanese Shiite militant group Hezbollah. As a result, Iran
has done its utmost to keep Assad afloat, providing billions of dollars
of support as well as strategic aid to crush dissent. To relieve pressure
on the Syrian military, Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps is
reportedly training two paramilitary organizations, Jaysh al Sha'abi and
the Shabiha, which boast 50,000 fighters and are modeled on the Bassij
militia that violently quashed Iran's 2009 popular uprisings. This
support can only delay, not prevent, Assad's demise. Thereafter Iran will
face a strategic decision: whether to continue supporting a predominantly
Alawite militia that represents only a small fraction of Syrian society,
or to engage the Sunni Islamists who are poised to wield power in
Damascus once Assad falls. Iran's leaders will try to embrace the Sunni
radicals, and if that fails they will work with the Shabiha to prevent
the formation of a stable, anti-Iranian order in Syria. What's most
important for Iran is not the sectarian makeup of Syria's future rulers,
but a like-minded ideological worldview premised on resistance to the
U.S. and Israel. As Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei once said, 'We
will support and help any nations, any groups fighting against the
Zionist regime across the world.' Iran's Sunni allies Hamas and
Palestinian Islamic Jihad are cases in point. Despite sharing common
enemies with some Syrian rebels, there is no guarantee that Iran will be
able to befriend the same forces it has helped to massacre over the past
two years. Anti-Shiite, anti-Persian sentiment is rife among Syria's
rebels, and the attraction of Iranian petrolargesse is eclipsed by the
deeper pockets of Saudi Arabia and Qatar. The question for the U.S. and
allies such as Turkey is what can they do to ensure that moderate
factions in the Syrian opposition come to dominate in a post-Assad Syria,
and that they will prefer to work with the U.S. and its friends in the
region, rather than with Iran. That outcome isn't guaranteed, either.
Iranian influence tends to thrive in countries suffering power vacuums
and tumult, which they can attribute to U.S. or Israeli policies." http://t.uani.com/WOthwB
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Eye on Iran is a periodic news summary from United Against
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