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WashPost:
"The United Nations must be decisive and swift in judging whether
diplomacy can resolve world concerns about Iran's nuclear program, U.N.
Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said Thursday, or invite the risk that
Iran, like North Korea, will use talks as a cover to build a bomb. In an
interview with The Washington Post, Ban said he wants to accelerate
diplomatic talks with Iran and give them new urgency. World powers will
hold another meeting with Iran later this month, the latest in a series
of thus-far ineffective efforts to resolve questions about the scope and
intent of Iran's nuclear development. 'We should not give much more time
to the Iranians, and we should not waste time,' Ban said. 'We have seen
what happened with the DPRK.' The Democratic People's Republic of Korea,
the formal name for North Korea, exploded a third nuclear test device
this week. The North exploited a decade of fitful diplomatic efforts to
make progress toward a weapon... The U.N. Security Council must 'show a
firm, decisive and effective, quick response,' Ban said, that makes plain
to Iran that the rest of the world is not convinced that it is not
seeking nuclear weapons. Ban said he told Iran's supreme leader and
president last year that he is not satisfied with their assurances that
the program is peaceful. He traveled to Tehran over objections from the
United States and other nations that his presence could reward the
clerical regime." http://t.uani.com/12oOEZz
Reuters:
"Tighter U.S. sanctions are killing off Turkey's gold-for-gas trade
with Iran and have stopped state-owned lender Halkbank from processing
other nations' energy payments to the OPEC oil producer, bankers said on
Friday. U.S. officials have sought to prevent Turkish gold exports, which
indirectly pay Iran for its natural gas, from providing a financial
lifeline to Tehran, largely frozen out of the global banking system by
Western sanctions over its nuclear program. Turkey, Iran's biggest
natural gas customer, has been paying Iran for its imports with Turkish
lira, because sanctions prevent it from paying in dollars or euros.
Iranians then use those lira, held in Halkbank accounts, to buy gold in
Turkey, and couriers carry bullion worth millions of dollars in hand luggage
to Dubai, where it can be sold for foreign currency or shipped to Iran.
Halkbank had also been processing a portion of India's payments for
Iranian oil. A provision of U.S. sanctions, made law last summer and
implemented from February 6, effectively tightens control on sales of
precious metals to Iran and prevents Halkbank from processing oil
payments by other countries back to Tehran, bankers said. 'Halkbank can
only accept payments for Turkish oil and gas purchases and Iran is only
allowed to buy food, medicine and industrial products with that money,'
one senior Turkish banker told Reuters. 'The gas for gold trade is very
difficult after the second round of sanctions. Iranians cannot just
withdraw the cash and buy whatever they want. They have to prove what
they are buying ... so gold exports will definitely fall,' he said."
http://t.uani.com/Z2lJpn
Mail &
Guardian: "A United States computer salesperson who
supplied sensitive and potentially 'dangerous' equipment to MTN's mobile
network in Iran has been jailed for violating United States economic
sanctions. The conviction is damning for the South African mobile giant,
as it provides judicial corroboration that the company used
sanctions-busting networks to beef up its technical infrastructure in Iran.
The salesperson's alleged co-conspirator is also on trial in the US on
charges that he serviced embargoed US technology for a 'front company' of
MTN Irancell. MTN has denied complicity in sanctions busting after
detailed allegations last year that it dodged embargoes by routing
high-end computer equipment through a network of Middle Eastern
companies... Jailed for four years, the salesperson, Mohammad Hajian, an
Iranian-born US citizen, tried to have his sentenced reduced by telling a
US court in October last year that he sold super-computers worth about
$14-million to 'a South African cellphone company in Iran [a reference to
MTN]', rather than to the regime itself. Prosecutors told the district
court in Tampa, Florida, that the equipment sold to MTN Irancell in 2009
could have military applications and be used to spy on citizens." http://t.uani.com/YcPz7x
Nuclear Program
AP:
"North Korea is upgrading one of its two major missile launch sites,
apparently to handle much bigger rockets, and some design features
suggest it is getting help from Iran, a U.S. research institute said
Thursday. A successful satellite launch in December, and a nuclear test
on Tuesday, both in defiance of U.N. Security Council resolutions, have
intensified concern that North Korea is moving toward its goal of
building a bomb small enough to be fitted on an intercontinental missile.
An analysis written for 38 North, the website of the U.S.-Korea Institute
at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, indicates that
North Korea has made significant progress since October in constructing a
new launchpad and other facilities at Tonghae, on the country's northeast
coast. The assessment is based on commercial satellite photos, the latest
taken in January. It says design features, including a flame trench
covering that protects large rockets from the hot exhaust gases they emit
on takeoff, is similar to one at a launch complex in Semnan, Iran, and
hasn't been used by the North before." http://t.uani.com/YjGnjQ
AFP:
"Iran tried to smuggle thousands of specialized magnets through
China for its centrifuges, in an effort to speed its path to reaching nuclear
weapons capability, according to a new US report. The report, by a
renowned American nuclear scientist, said the operation highlighted the
importance of China as a transit point for Iran's nuclear program, and
called for sanctions against any Chinese firms involved. The Institute
for Science and International Security (ISIS) report said an Iranian
front company used a Chinese commercial website to try to acquire 100,000
ring-shaped magnets, which it is banned from importing under United
Nations sanctions, in late 2011. Two magnets were needed for each of
50,000 first-generation centrifuges used to enrich uranium at Iran's
nuclear plants, in a process that Western powers say is designed to build
nuclear weapons, a charge Tehran denies. The ISIS report by US scientist
David Albright suggested that the operation meant that Iran was trying to
'greatly expand' its number of first-generation centrifuges even as it
builds more advanced machines." http://t.uani.com/11Kwylf
Bloomberg:
"International sanctions designed to punish Iran for its nuclear
program may be counter-productive, said scientists and security analysts
tracking the decade-long dispute over the Persian Gulf nation's atomic
work. While trade and financial sanctions have choked off Iran's access to
materials such as aluminum and maraging steel used to make its first
generation of nuclear equipment, they have spurred the Islamic Republic
to find its own solutions for subsequent technological innovations. Now,
Iran is positioned to both build better nuclear devices and export them.
'The serious consequence of all of these sanctions are that you drive the
indigenous production of these parts,' Ferenc Dalnoki-Veress, a physicist
at the Monterrey, California- based James Martin Center for Nonproliferation
Studies, wrote in response to questions. 'This means the proliferator
learns more about the technology and so now they don't only know how to
produce the parts, but they could also sell them to other states.'" http://t.uani.com/Z2mKh8
Sanctions
VOA:
"The U.S. government has repeatedly stated that sanctions are
'targeted' at Iran's nuclear program and not the Iran's people.
Washington points to humanitarian exceptions from the sanctions for
agricultural commodities, food, medicine or medical devices. As with any
sanctions regime, there is an ongoing debate about how effective
sanctions are and who they really hurt. 'We have no quarrel with the
people of Iran,' David S. Cohen, the Undersecretary for Terrorism and
Financial Intelligence at the U.S. Treasury Department, said in an
interview with VOA. 'The ultimate objective here is to try and slow down
the development of Iran's nuclear program and to put pressure on those
senior officials in Iran who are responsible for making policy judgments
with respect to the nuclear program, not to make food and medicine
scarce.' But there have been numerous reports of shortages, particularly
of medicine, and the reports have turned into a propaganda war between
the two sides. Iranian government officials blame Western sanctions for
the shortages. Western officials blame the Iranian government for
mismanaging the situation and causing scarcity. Iran's health minister,
Marzieh Vahid Dastjerdi, was fired last December after she criticized the
government for not providing enough foreign currency to import vital
medicines, causing a shortage. 'The hard currency that they needed wasn't
allocated to the health ministry,' said Cohen. 'Instead, the hard
currency is being allocated by the government to other purposes, whether
it is supporting the Assad regime [in Syria], supporting terrorism or
supporting the nuclear program.'" http://t.uani.com/WqyfhY
Zawya:
"Iran's crude export earnings were down USD33 billion last year
compared to 2011, according to estimates by The Rhodium Group. The
Washington-based think tank closely tracks Iran's economic and political
developments and believes that Western sanctions against the country have
significantly reduced the country's ability to export crude and generate
market prices for its commodity. 'Assuming Iran was able to sell every
barrel at the Official Selling Price (OSP) posted by the state oil
company National Iranian Oil Company, export earnings were down USD33
billion last year,' wrote Rhodium analyst Trevor Houser in a new report.
'While a 35% decline from 2011 levels, historically high oil prices meant
2012 was still Tehran's third best year in recent history, despite a
nearly 1 million barrels per day decline in export quantity.' However,
payment delays and discounts, in addition to rising production costs and
government revenue needs, means that as much as USD65 billion worth of
invoices were not fully paid and kept balance of payments
depressed." http://t.uani.com/Zd41mS
AP:
"Iran has ordered a six-month ban on pistachio exports to try to
control the price of the nut, which doubled in the past month. Pistachios
are among Iran's top non-oil exports and widely consumed at home,
bringing in an average of $1.5 billion a year and providing work for
hundreds of thousands of people. Iran was long the world's largest
pistachio exporter, with over 200,000 tons a year, but was surpassed last
year by the United States. First Vice President Mohammad Reza Rahimi told
Iranian state TV on Friday that the ban is temporary and meant to help
bring down the price of pistachios that doubled from about 250,000
Iranian rials ($7) per kilogram." http://t.uani.com/WuwEaX
Terrorism
Reuters:
"A U.S. appeals court refused Thursday to revive a lawsuit against
UBS AG by U.S. victims of Hamas and Hezbollah attacks in Israel who
claimed the bank aided international terrorism... The plaintiffs had
contended that the two organizations, which the U.S. government has
labeled terrorist groups, received billions of dollars in funding from
Iran, which had received billions in cash from UBS from 1996 to 2004. UBS
was fined $100 million by the Federal Reserve in 2004 for violating
sanctions by sending money to countries including Iran, which the U.S.
government deems a state sponsor of terrorism. Karina Byrne, a UBS spokeswoman,
said that while the bank 'expresses sympathy for the plaintiffs, as
victims of terrorism, today's decision further vindicates the firm's
strong repudiation of the plaintiffs' claims.'" http://t.uani.com/Un48td
Syrian Uprising
Reuters:
"An Iranian Revolutionary Guard commander has been killed inside
Syria by rebels battling Iran's close ally President Bashar al-Assad,
Iranian officials and a rebel leader said on Thursday. Syrian rebels have
repeatedly accused Tehran of sending fighters to help Assad crush the
22-month-old uprising, a charge Iran has denied. The Iranian embassy in
Lebanon said the dead man, Hessam Khoshnevis, was in charge of Tehran's
reconstruction assistance in Lebanon. It said he was killed by 'armed
terrorist groups', a label used by the Syrian government to describe
Assad's foes, on the road to Lebanon as he returned from Damascus." http://t.uani.com/14Wx914
Human Rights
WSJ:
"The U.S. formally called for the release from house arrest of
Iran's two top opposition leaders in a blunt statement that indicated a
policy shift regarding Tehran as it approaches national elections. The
politicians, Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, have been detained
by Iranian security services for two years after charging the government
of rigging 2009 presidential elections, in which both men were candidates
and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was declared the winner. The White House at the
time offered only muted condemnation of Tehran's handling of the
presidential vote. Iranian political and human-rights activists charged
the U.S. with playing down the Iranian government's abuses." http://t.uani.com/XJzUAk
Guardian:
"Six leading human rights organisations have called on Iran to the
end the 'arbitrary' house arrest of opposition leaders Mir Hossein Mousavi
and Mehdi Karroubi, who have been cut off from the outside world for
nearly two years without being put on trial. 'For two years now Iranian
officials have stripped these opposition figures of their most basic
rights without any legal justification or any effective means of remedy,'
the Iranian Nobel peace prize laureate, Shirin Ebadi, said in a joint
appeal signed by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, International
Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, International Federation for Human
Rights, League for the Defence of Human Rights in Iran, and Reporters
Without Borders. 'They and their families should not have to endure even
one more day under these wholly unjustifiable and abusive conditions,'
she said." http://t.uani.com/VYX4iM
RFE/RL:
"Iran appears to be taking measures to tighten online censorship
ahead of its presidential vote. In recent days, a long list of online
activities has been designated as criminal, including calling for an
election boycott, organizing sit-ins or protests, and insulting
presidential candidates. Simultaneously, reports by Iran's Fars and ISNA
news agencies say that linking to Facebook, Twitter, and other websites
that are blocked in Iran, or even promoting blocked websites, has also
become a crime. Iran is already one of the world's harshest online
censors. The regime bans tens of thousands of websites it considers
immoral or a threat to national security, including news websites and
social-media sites. The new measures, if enforced, would put increased
pressure on people who use the web or social media as platforms for
online activism." http://t.uani.com/YjMp3K
AFP:
"US lawmakers on Thursday pressed for the release of an
Iranian-American pastor imprisoned in Tehran over his work with
underground churches, urging the use of all diplomatic efforts. In a
letter to Secretary of State John Kerry, 84 senators and House members
across the political spectrum urged him 'to exhaust every possible
option' to secure the release of naturalized US citizen Saeed Abedini.
Representative Trent Franks, a conservative Republican from Arizona who
helped lead the effort, said in a statement that Abedini's case needed
Kerry's 'immediate and personal attention.' Representative Henry Waxman,
a left-leaning Democrat from California, said that Abedini's detention
'exemplifies Iran's flagrant violation of human rights and religious
freedom.' 'We hope that this letter, with its deep support from all
across America, will show Saeed Abedini that he is not alone and that we
have not forgotten him,' Waxman said." http://t.uani.com/11KwOAK
Opinion &
Analysis
UANI Advisory
Board Member Walter Russell Mead in The American Interest:
"Iran can sometimes be very hard to read, but the announcement that
even as talks approach it is installing advanced and more capable
centrifuges at its nuclear facility in Natanz doesn't need much
interpreting: Iran isn't afraid of Barack Obama. The Ayatollahs have
looked at the clues, added up the numbers, and come to the conclusion
that the President will not use military force as Iran presses forward
with its nuclear plans. One of the clues that lead them to this
conclusion is the U.S. decision to cut back the number of aircraft
carriers in the Persian Gulf region. If Washington were serious, the
Iranians believe, we would be building up our naval presence, not drawing
it back. President Obama's choice of one of the most prominent 'Iran
doves' in American public life as his new Defense Secretary is also being
read in Tehran as a sign of the President's thinking. Surely, the mullahs
appear to believe, if the President were really serious about using force
to stop Iran's nuclear program, he would be appointing someone who isn't
deeply opposed to it. In any case, this kind of appointment is what
people overseas often see as a signal. The President may not have meant
to send it, but he did. The announcement of more troop withdrawals from
Afghanistan in last night's SOTU will confirm the already widespread view
in Tehran that the U.S. is in retreat and that if Iran hangs tough it can
get what it wants. If the U.S. really were gearing up for war, the
mullahs would expect to see signs that American forces in the region were
strengthening positions rather than standing down by land and by sea.
From Iran's point of view the Administration also seems to be standing
down in Syria. A year ago Washington was full of tough talk: demands that
Assad relinquish power, unambiguous statements that he 'must go.' America
was huffing and puffing-but folded like a cheap suit when it came time to
back words with deeds. From an Iranian point of view this sends two very
clear signals. First, don't worry about threats and rhetoric from this
White House. When they utter threats, they are just making noise. Assad
'must go,' Iran 'must stop' its nuclear program. This is just chit-chat;
it won't be followed up by anything other than diplomatic notes. Another
signal our Syria policy inadvertently sends is that Iran still has power
in the Middle East. The alliance with Assad and Hezbollah puts Iran at
the center of the politics of the eastern Mediterranean. American
passivity in Syria tells Iran that its 'resistance' axis of anti-Israel,
anti-U.S. forces isn't on the verge of collapse; the Americans aren't
going to push Assad off the cliff and break Iran's regional alliance
system. Russia has also signaled that it won't abandon Assad, adding to
Iran's determination to hang tough. It can deepen its alliance with an
Iraq where American power is a fading memory, salvage something out of
the Syria mess, and enhance its regional power in the face of ineffective
and mostly verbal U.S. opposition. On Syria, the Obama administration has
done exactly the opposite of what Teddy Roosevelt proposed: we've been a
loudmouthed blowhard with a handful of wet noodles instead of a big
stick. Some of the Iranian tea leaves are hard to read, and it's clear
that Iran isn't ready to go for broke and rush to build a bomb. For one
thing, the mullahs are worried about an Israeli attack, and they may well
fear that too rapid and open a push toward nuclear capacity will awaken
political forces in the United States that will stiffen the
administration's spine. Thus Iran continues to send mixed signals,
balancing the news of new centrifuges with soothing talk of concessions.
But over time the conviction seems to be growing in Tehran that President
Obama is unwilling to take Iran on, and the fact that the President
didn't make the confrontation with Iran a centerpiece of his State of the
Union message will be read in Iran as yet another signal. Their nuclear
program isn't a high enough priority for this President to lead to war.
We aren't saying the Iranians are right about President Obama. Kaiser
Wilhelm once thought that Woodrow Wilson was so determined to stay out of
war that he didn't have to worry about U.S. intervention in Europe. After
Wilson ran for re-election on the slogan 'He kept us out of war,' Germany
tended to discount Wilson's threats. But while Germany misread Wilson,
that misreading made war more likely." http://t.uani.com/X7qAGu
Lee Smith in
Tablet: "The White House and President Obama's
supporters insist that he's making his first trip to Israel next month to
assure the Jewish state that if push comes to shove with Iran, he'll have
Israel's back. But North Korea's nuclear test Tuesday morning could
indicate that it's already too late for that. If North Korea has the
bomb, then for all practical purposes Iran does, too. If that's so, then
Obama's policy of prevention has failed, and containment-a policy that
the president has repeatedly said is not an option-is in fact all
Washington has. If this sounds hyperbolic, consider the history of
extensive North Korean-Iranian cooperation on a host of military and
defense issues, including ballistic missiles and nuclear development, that
dates back to the 1980s. This cooperation includes North Korean sales of
technology and arms, like the BM-25, a missile capable of carrying a
nuclear warhead and reaching Western Europe; Iran's Shahab 3 missile is
based on North Korea's Nodong-1 and is able to reach Israel. Iran has a
contigent of Iranian weapons engineers and defense officials stationed in
North Korea. Meantime, North Korean scientists visit Iran. And last fall,
both countries signed a memorandum of understanding regarding scientific,
academic, and technological issues. Given all this, there's a great deal
of concern that, as one senior U.S. official told the New York Times,
'the North Koreans are testing for two countries.' The classic case of
testing for another country is when the United States tested for the U.K.
under the 1958 U.S.-U.K. Mutual Defense Agreement. The situation with the
Hermit Kingdom and the Islamic Republic is different: The North Koreans
certainly aren't going to make the cooperation quite so explicit, but
they're also not hiding it. In January, Kim Jong-un boasted that the
United States was the prime target for Pyongyang's nuclear and missile
tests. Earlier this month, Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei rejected
the idea of nuclear negotiations with the United States. So, neither
North Korea nor Iran believe the White House can do much to stop their
march-one that they seem to be conducting in lockstep.
Nuclear-proliferation experts I spoke with are reluctant to push the
conclusion quite that far. 'There's no evidence of direct cooperation on
nuclear tests,' Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation
Program at Monterey Institute, told me. 'And it would be hard to know,'
he added, given the paranoid, secretive nature of both regimes. Unless or
until the North Koreans or Iranians volunteer that information, it is
going to be hard to prove definitively that the North Koreans would give
the bomb-or blueprints for one-to Iran... Pyongyang's nuclear program is
the crown jewel of the North Korean state enterprise, a carefully guarded
secret to which they have given only Iran access. Given how extensively
the Iranian nuclear program has been penetrated by foreign intelligence
services-which foreign minister Ali Akbar Salehi openly admitted in
2010-the North Koreans surely understood they were taking an enormous
risk by letting Iranians in the door. Whatever they're getting from Iran
in exchange-oil, money, or scientific cooperation on complicated
issues-must be crucial. If Tehran has paid for access to Pyongyang's program,
it will also pay for a bomb. At this point, it could be only a matter of
haggling over the price. 'Some of us have been saying this is something
to worry about for five or six years,' said Henry Sokolski, executive
director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center in Washington,
D.C. 'The North Koreans have been cooperating with Iran for about a
decade on nuclear and missile issues, and the Iranians have several
full-time weapons engineers on site in North Korea. Neither the North
Koreans or the Iranians have made a secret of this. The Iranians were
reported at North Korea's last nuclear test as well. It's hard to believe
they had no access to the most recent test.'" http://t.uani.com/XBzxEb
Amir Taheri in the
NYPost: "'A strategic partnership': So Iran and
Russia describe the series of security, economic and cultural agreements
they've signed together in the past few weeks. Iran's Foreign Minister
Ai-Akbar Salehi arrived in Moscow this week to co-chair the first annual
session of the 'partnership' with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov.
Days earlier, a group of officers from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard
arrived in the Russian capital for a crash course in crowd control and
civil unrest. They're expected to return to Iran by May and be
'operational' in time for the June presidential election. Iranian
authorities are nervous about expected unrest during the elections, and
so have called on Russia to help prevent an Iranian version of the 'Arab
Spring.' But Russia made its support conditional on signing a security
treaty with Iran; Tehran complied last month. The agreement represents a
break with an old principle in Iran's defense and security doctrines.
Russia has been a source of fear and fascination for its Iranian
neighbors since the 18th century. Several wars of varying magnitude
proved Russia to be a threat, as successive czars dreamed of winning
control of a port on the Indian Ocean - which meant annexing or
dominating Iran. In Iranian political folklore, Russia has long been
depicted as a bear whose embrace, even if friendly, could smother you.
The dynamic persisted despite multiple changes of regime in both nations.
Even after the fall of the shah and of the USSR, the Iranian tradition of
keeping the Russian bear at arm's length continued under the Khomeinist
regime. It's clear that a different fear has moved Tehran to abandon that
tradition. The new security pact provides for cooperation in intelligence
gathering and the fight 'against terrorism, people-trafficking, and
drug-smuggling.' But it more significant is that it commits Russia to
training and equipping Iranian security forces to deal with civil unrest.
Tehran and Moscow are nervous about being hit by Arab Spring-style
uprisings. Under the agreement, Moscow will help Tehran create special
police units patterned on the 500,000-strong 'internal army' controlled
by the Russian Interior Ministry. There are other signs of change in
Moscow-Tehran relations. Last week, Iran played host to Russian warships
visiting Bandar Abbas on the Strait of Hormuz in what looks like the
opening gambit for a Russian naval presence in the strategic
waterway." http://t.uani.com/12OrSdg
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Eye on Iran is a periodic news summary from United Against
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