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Top Stories
WashPost:
"After failing to halt Iran's nuclear advances with harsh economic
sanctions, a group of U.S. lawmakers and analysts is proposing a more
drastic remedy: cutting off Iran entirely from world oil markets.
Advocates of the measure say increases in oil and gas production in the
Middle East and North America have made it economically feasible to
organize the first truly global boycott of Iranian crude. Such an effort,
if successful, would sideline the world's fourth-biggest oil producer and
could force Iran to change its nuclear policies... 'If we're talking
about things that could really hurt the Iranian economy, at the top of
the list is taking their oil off the market,' said a senior Senate aide
involved in discussions of a proposal to require all countries to stop
buying oil from Iran or risk losing access to the U.S. banking system.
The aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal
Senate deliberations, described 'strong interest, on a bipartisan level,'
in the plan." http://t.uani.com/10F4mu7
Reuters:
"The United States on Monday said it was 'highly inappropriate' for
Iran to take over the rotating chair of the U.N. Conference on
Disarmament this month and vowed that its ambassador would boycott any
meeting led by the Tehran. The world's sole multilateral disarmament
negotiating forum has been deadlocked for about 15 years. While the
chairmanship of the Geneva-based body is largely ceremonial, it is a
high-profile U.N. position. 'Iran's upcoming rotation as President of the
Conference on Disarmament (CD) is unfortunate and highly inappropriate,'
Erin Pelton, spokeswoman for the U.S. mission to the United Nations, said
in a statement. 'The United States continues to believe that countries
that are under Chapter VII (U.N.) sanctions for weapons proliferation or
massive human-rights abuses should be barred from any formal or
ceremonial positions in U.N. bodies,' she said." http://t.uani.com/11Bdw1j
Roll Call:
"After a temporary lull, Congress is gearing up to try to pass new
Iran sanctions legislation in the coming months that could severely
restrict whole segments of Iranian commerce, including oil. The aim is to
have votes in both chambers as early as June, with a consensus bill
moving to the president's desk before the August recess. By then, Iran
will have completed its presidential election and transfer of power,
although most observers expect little change in Tehran's stance on its
nuclear program, given that Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali
Khamenei, is the ultimate arbiter of those decisions. Capitol Hill gave
the Obama administration a bit of leeway during the last round of
multilateral negotiations with Iran, which took place in April. Little
progress was made. Now the House Foreign Affairs Committee is poised to
mark up a bipartisan sanctions bill on May 22, and the Senate is likely
not to be far behind, with lawmakers working to draft a companion measure
that is expected to be released in the coming weeks. Both the House
Foreign Affairs and Senate Foreign Relations panels have hearings on Iran
scheduled this week with senior Obama administration officials -
Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Wendy Sherman and
Undersecretary of Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence David
S. Cohen." http://t.uani.com/13Ypgb7
Nuclear Program
Reuters:
"Iran expects progress will be made in talks this week with the
United Nations' atomic agency, Tehran's nuclear envoy said on Monday, but
Western diplomats held out little hope of an end to the deadlock. The
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has been trying for more than a
year to coax Iran into letting it resume a stalled investigation into
suspected atomic bomb research by Tehran, which denies any aims to make
nuclear weapons. Wednesday's talks in Vienna will be the 10th round of
negotiations between the two sides since early 2012, so far without an
agreement that would give the IAEA the access to sites, officials and
documents it says it needs for its inquiry. 'We have the meeting with the
expectation of progress of course,' Ali Asghar Soltanieh, Iran's
ambassador to the IAEA, told Reuters. 'We are serious in these
talks.'" http://t.uani.com/13YjEhc
Bloomberg:
"Iran's nuclear policy is based on the nation's rights and will not
be modified no matter who succeeds President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Foreign
Ministry spokesman Abbas Araghchi said. 'The Islamic Republic's policies,
including on its nuclear program, are based on people's rights and can't
be compromised under any government,' Araghchi told reporters in Tehran
today. The 'next government will pursue the same process and defend
Iran's rights.'" http://t.uani.com/14jRBZ5
Domestic
Politics
AP:
"A report says more than half the members of Iran's parliament have
joined a complaint against the president for accompanying his chief
adviser when he registered for June's election. The semiofficial Mehr
news agency reported Monday that more than 150 of the 290 members added
their names to the inquiry by Iran's constitutional watchdog. It's
looking into whether President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad violated the law by
accompanying his chief adviser, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, to register for
the presidential election. Responding to the allegations, Ahmadinejad's
website said he did not break the law because he was on leave Saturday,
when Mashaei registered. The statement said Ahmadinejad is not involved
in the election. Ahmadinejad cannot serve another term." http://t.uani.com/11BdHcN
Foreign Affairs
AFP:
"An Iranian and his Nigerian accomplice were sentenced to five years
in prison Monday over a plot they orchestrated to smuggle a shipment of
military-grade weapons including mortar rounds into West Africa. Both
Azim Aghajani and his accomplice, Usman Abbas Jega, pleaded for leniency
in the hearing, in which Justice Okechukwu J. Okeke avoided giving the
men a maximum sentence of life in prison. The two men already have served
more than two years in prison waiting for trial, time which will count
toward their release. The case began when security forces broke open 13
containers at Lagos' busy Apapa Port in October 2010 and found the
weapons, sparking an international outcry as Iran is barred by the United
Nations from shipping arms abroad. The cache, hidden under tiles in a
shipment labeled as containing construction equipment, included 107 mm
artillery rockets, rifle rounds and other weapons. The shipment was bound
for Gambia in West Africa, said authorities. Nigerian officials initially
claimed the weapons were intended to be used by politicians in the
country's 2011 elections, though Israeli officials also at one point
suggested they could be bound for the Gaza Strip." http://t.uani.com/YT3U02
AP:
"Iran has expressed regret for the shooting deaths of Afghan
migrants entering the country illegally over the weekend. On Saturday,
Afghan Foreign Minister Zalmai Rasoul issued a complaint after 10
migrants were shot and killed by Iranian border guards. Iran initially
denied that anyone was shot. Poor Afghans often try to sneak into Iran in
search of work as day laborers. Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Aragchi
said Tuesday, 'We express regret while offering sympathy to relatives of
victims if innocent people were harmed when passing through Iran
illegally.'" http://t.uani.com/10vW9aQ
Opinion &
Analysis
UANI Advisory
Board Member Gary Milhollin in Bloomberg: "There has
been a lot of talk about Iran making a sudden dash for the bomb. The fear
is that, with its thousands of gas centrifuges and its tons of enriched
uranium, Iran might be able to make a bomb's worth of nuclear fuel before
the U.S. or any other country could intervene to stop it. In a speech in
September at the United Nations, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu went so far as to display a bomb diagram, on which he drew a
red line showing when the dash might occur. He said it could be as early
as this spring. It is surprising that this version of events has gained
such currency, because it isn't likely to happen. Iran, in fact, doesn't
seem to be in a hurry. It is playing a longer game, all the more menacing
because it is more likely to succeed. Iran's goal is to build a nuclear
arsenal at an acceptable cost. To achieve that, Iran must avoid any
drastic step that would trigger a war. In a shootout with the U.S., the
ayatollahs would risk their survival -- a large cost indeed. Iranian
leaders have stayed just beneath the line of intolerable provocation. Of
course, they must also keep the pain from sanctions low enough to avoid
revolt. They are succeeding there as well. So their strategy is working.
Its success is only one reason that Iran probably won't race for a bomb
anytime soon. A second reason should be fairly obvious: No country wants
only one bomb. That is especially true of the type of bomb Iran has been
trying to develop. It employs the principle of implosion, and would have
to be tested. The U.S. was obliged to test its implosion bomb in 1945
before dropping 'Fat Man' on Nagasaki, Japan. Iran, too, would be obliged
to test, to find out whether its design worked, and to let the rest of
the world know it worked. Otherwise, there would be no effect of nuclear
deterrence, which is the reason for getting the bomb in the first place.
Thus, a sprint to produce one bomb's worth of fuel -- a possibility that
has spilled a small torrent of ink estimating how long it would take --
would cross the finish line with mainly test data. And the activity would
probably be detected. The director of U.S. intelligence, James Clapper,
assured a congressional committee in March that Iran couldn't divert
material and make a weapon-worth of uranium 'before this activity is
discovered.' By 'material,' Clapper meant the uranium Iran has already
enriched. Most of it is 'low-enriched,' meaning two-thirds of the way to
weapon-grade. A small amount is 'medium-enriched,' meaning 90 percent of
the way. To make a dash now, Iran would have to start with enriched
material; to start with natural, unenriched uranium would take so long as
to be impractical. But there is a catch: All the enriched uranium is
regularly checked by UN inspectors. Within a few weeks at most, they
would probably detect its diversion. The result would be a perfect storm,
politically. Governments would be under tremendous pressure to act.
Israel, the U.S. and Europe couldn't afford not to. Iran would be in
flagrant breach of its Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty obligations, which
require continuous inspection of enriched uranium and forbid its use for
any but peaceful ends. Iran could face the very war it had been trying to
avoid. This war could start before the dash succeeded. To produce
bomb-grade uranium, Iran would have to enrich its stockpile further. That
means passing it again through its centrifuges. Unluckily for Iran, yet
luckily for just about everybody else, its present generation of
centrifuges is grossly inefficient. Iran's largest known enrichment site
is near Natanz, about 160 miles south of Tehran. It is home to some 9,000
rapidly spinning centrifuge machines. How long would it take these
machines to raise Iran's uranium stockpile to weapon-grade?" http://t.uani.com/16wZyyh
Anne Bayefsky in
Fox News: "In case you didn't think the UN could get
even more bizarre (and dangerous), try this one. Iran will soon become
the President of the Conference on Disarmament. The Iranians rotate into
the job for four weeks near the end of May. Their qualification for
the position? Iran is the member state that comes next in the English
alphabet after Indonesia. Iran will have the task of managing the 2013
Conference agenda, which includes 'the cessation of the nuclear arms race
and nuclear disarmament.' On the one hand, since the mullahs running the
country are engaged in a mad race to acquire nuclear arms, chairing a
meeting on disarmament may be a bit of a struggle. On the other hand, the
Conference just talks, and talking for its own sake is an Iranian art
form.The UN Charter says the organization is sworn to maintain
international peace and security. The Conference on Disarmament is
'the world's single multilateral forum for disarmament negotiations.'
According to the UN, 'the Conference is funded from the UN regular budget,
reports to the General Assembly and receives guidance from it.' That's
the theory.But somewhere along the line these institutions got very lost.
Now the proverbial foxes guard the chicken coop. It would be funny,
except that the Iranian fox really intends to devour the chickens. This
isn't the first time that the Conference on Disarmament has faced similar
controversy. In July 2011 it was North Korea's turn to take the helm. Not
surprisingly, North Korea took the appointment as a sign of
approval. Its representative announced that the country was 'very
much committed to the Conference' and that 'he would do everything in his
capacity to move the Conference on Disarmament forward.' So fast
forward. We find an ever more aggressive North Korea sharing nuclear
know-how with like-minded belligerents, such as Iran and Syria." http://t.uani.com/16aa0MJ
Gissou Nia in FP:
"When it comes to the death penalty, European governments are
ardently abolitionist. Yet the European taxpayer may in fact be
unwittingly fueling executions for drug-related offenses in the Islamic
Republic of Iran. In a recent post on Iran's war on drugs, Marya
Hannun mentions the 'steep price' of the country's drug war -- namely the
execution of hundreds of individuals annually for the possession, use,
and trafficking of narcotics. While Hannun referenced the praise that the
United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) has bestowed on Iran's
anti-narcotics program despite the high execution rate for drug-related
offenses, what is not discussed is the funding provided by European
nations for these efforts. Countries such as France and Germany provide
funds to the UNODC's integrated program of technical cooperation on drugs
and crime in Iran, which ultimately results in gross human rights violations
perpetrated by Iranian authorities. According to the UNODC website, the
integrated program was launched in March 2011 thanks to a 'generous
financial contribution' from the government of Norway. The program
'aims to support national efforts on drugs and crime' and consists of
three sub-programs: 1) illicit trafficking and border management; 2) drug
demand reduction and HIV control; and 3) crime, justice and corruption.
There are counter-narratives to UNODC's high regard for Iran's
anti-narcotics efforts, including allegations that law enforcement
personnel in Iran are in fact partaking in and facilitating the sale of
illicit drugs for profit on the black market. Regardless of government
complicity, the fact remains that thousands of individuals are arrested
each year with the technical and material support provided by sub-program
1, including body scanners, drug-detection kits, sniffer dogs, vehicles,
and night-vision devices. Of those arrested, hundreds will subsequently
be sentenced to death by Iran's judiciary on drug allegations. Iran is a
global leader in executions, with only China exceeding it in number of
people put to death annually. According to Iran Human Rights, a
Norway-based group that documents executions in Iran, at least 580 people
were executed in the country in 2012. In these documented cases, at least
76 percent of executions were due to drug-related charges. Since news of
the frequency with which Iran puts individuals to death for drug-related
offenses has come to light, UNODC and donor countries have come under
fire for their support of the program, and human rights groups have
encouraged donors to request greater transparency from the Iranian
government about how their money is spent in this joint initiative."
http://t.uani.com/16aa5jj
Thanassis Cambanis
in FP: "On the eve of the uprisings just three short
years ago, many Arab analysts observed half-jokingly that the most
influential state in the Arab world wasn't Arab at all -- it was Iran,
awash in oil revenues and ready to lavish cash on a region in the throes
of an increasingly hot Sunni-Shiite cold war. Sunni monarchs and
dictators fretted about a 'Shiite Crescent' linking Iran, Iraq, Syria,
and Hezbollah. Tehran, for its part, strutted triumphantly across the
Arab stage, bragging about an unstoppable 'Axis of Resistance' oiled with
ideological fervor and the supreme leader's bank account. What a
difference a few uprisings can make. Today, Iran's involvement in Syria
has all the makings of a quagmire, and certainly represents the Islamic
Republic's biggest strategic setback in the region since its war with
Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein ended in 1988. Syria's conflict has begun
to attract so much attention and resources that it threatens to end the
era when Iran could nimbly outmaneuver the slow-moving American behemoth
in the Middle East. Iran -- already reeling from sanctions -- is spending
hundreds of millions of dollars propping up Bashar al-Assad's regime. In
the murky arena of sub rosa foreign intervention, it's impossible to keep
a detailed count of the dollars, guns, and operatives the Islamic
Republic has dispatched to Syria. Westerners and Arab officials who have
met in recent months with Syrian government ministers say that Iranian
advisers are retooling key ministries to provide copious military
training, including to the newly established citizen militias in
regime-controlled areas of Syria. 'We back Syria,' Iranian General Ahmad
Reza Pourdastan reiterated on May 5. 'If there is need for training we
will provide them with the training.' In private meetings, Iranian
diplomats in the region project insouciance, suggesting that the Islamic
Republic can indefinitely sustain its military and financial aid to the
Assad regime. To be sure, its burden today is probably bearable. But as
sanctions squeeze Iran and it comes under increasing pressure over its
nuclear program, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) might find
the investment harder to sustain. The conflict shows no signs of ending,
and as foreign aid to the rebels escalates, Iran will have to pour in
more and more resources simply to maintain a stalemate. If this is Iran's
Vietnam, we're only beginning year three. The cost of Tehran's support of
Assad can't entirely be measured in dollars. Iran has had to sacrifice
most of its other Arab allies on the Syrian altar. As the violence
worsened, Hamas gave up its home in Damascus and its warm relationship
with Tehran. Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood-dominated government has also
adopted a scolding tone toward Iran on Syria. On Egyptian President
Mohamed Morsy's first visit to Tehran, he took the opportunity to blast
the 'oppressive regime' in Damascus, saying it was an 'ethical duty' to
support the opposition. Gone are the days when Iran held the mantle of
popular resistance. Popular Arab movements, including Syria's own rebels,
now have the momentum and air of authenticity. Iran's mullahs finally
look to the Arab near-abroad as they long have appeared at home --
repressive, authoritarian, and fierce defenders of the status quo.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, Iran's commitment to Assad has put
the crown jewel of its assets in the Arab world, Hezbollah, in danger.
Just a few years ago, a survey found that Nasrallah was the most popular
leader in the Arab world. Along with other members of the 'resistance
axis,' Hezbollah mocked the rest of the Arab world's political movements
as toadies and collaborators, happy to submit to American-Israeli
hegemony. Today, however, it has sacrificed this popular support and
enraged Sunnis across the Arab world by siding with a merciless
dictator." http://t.uani.com/12xeZRQ
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Eye on Iran is a periodic news summary from United Against
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