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Top Stories
Fox News:
"The winner in Iran's presidential election has been labeled a
'moderate,' but his record of working closely with the nation's religious
leaders - particularly on thwarting international weapons inspections -
leaves scant hope for a thaw in the Islamic Republic's relations with the
West, according to experts... But a closer look at Rowhani's resume
reveals a history of advancing the agenda of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali
Khamenei. As secretary to the National Security Council for 16 years and
top nuclear negotiator from 2003 to 2005, Rowhani was the face of Iran's
diplomatic duplicity, often publicly pledging cooperation with nuclear
inspectors even as the nation continued its intransigence. 'What we will
see from Rowhani, I think, are conciliatory statements in public, while
in secret, going forward with the nuclear program,' said Mark Wallace,
chief executive officer of United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI). 'And in
many cases it's worse than what we've had. It's dishonest.'" http://t.uani.com/16zxF6j
NYT:
"President-elect Hassan Rowhani of Iran, speaking Monday for the
first time since his election victory, said he wanted to reduce tensions
with the United States but ruled out direct talks between the two
estranged nations. In his first news conference after winning Friday's
presidential election promising more freedoms and better relations with
the outside world, Mr. Rowhani called the issue of nonexistent relations
between Iran and the United States 'an old wound, which must be healed.'
Iran, he said, wants to reduce tensions between the two countries, which
have no diplomatic relations and are at odds over the nature of Iran's
nuclear enrichment program. Echoing similar statements from the departing
administration of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Mr. Rowhani said there
would be no direct talks until the United States stopped 'interfering in
Iran's domestic politics,' respected what he called Iran's nuclear rights
and lifted economic sanctions. 'All should know that the next government
will not budge from defending our inalienable rights,' Mr. Rowhani told
reporters. He emphasized that, like those of his predecessors, his
government would not be prepared to suspend uranium enrichment, something
he had done as a nuclear negotiator in 2004 as a trust-building measure
in discussions with European countries. 'We have passed that period,' he
said of that time. 'We are now in a different situation.'" http://t.uani.com/1bRwGik
Reuters:
"Iran is making 'steady progress' in expanding its nuclear program
and international sanctions do not seem to be slowing it down, the U.N.
nuclear agency chief told Reuters on Monday. Yukiya Amano's comments
underlined the difficult challenges facing world powers in seeking to
persuade the Islamic state to scale back nuclear activities they suspect
could be used to make atomic bombs, a charge Tehran denies... 'There is a
steady increase of capacity and production (in Iran's nuclear program),'
Amano said in an interview. Asked if international punitive steps aimed
at making Iran curb its atomic activity were slowing it down, he said: 'I
don't think so ... I don't see any impact.'" http://t.uani.com/11IOMxp
Nuclear Program
FP: "Iran continues to evade U.N.
sanctions on its nuclear program by changing its supply routes, erecting
new front companies, and shopping the world for lower grade parts not
explicitly prohibited by the U.N. Security Council, but still capable of
contributing to the assembly of a nuclear power reactor. That's according
to a 'confidential' unpublished report by a U.N. Security Council panel
monitoring sanctions on Iran, exclusively published by Turtle Bay. The
45-page report - which summarizes the U.N. panel's work over the past
year - documents several cases in Europe and the Middle East where
Iranian agents have sought to procure a host of industrial products --
including valves, carbon fiber, and bellows -- that can be used in a
nuclear facility. The equipment, however, is not explicitly prohibited
from being sold to Tehran, making it easier to get similar items through
customs. 'The panel continues to be told by many states that Iran is
seeking items that fall below established control thresholds but could be
used for prohibited activities,' the report states. 'All of the nuclear
related cases investigated by the panel during its current mandate
involve items that are not to be found among the [control] lists' that
states are banned from supplying Tehran." http://t.uani.com/128U59f
Reuters:
"Iran's election has exposed popular discontent with the Tehran
government but is unlikely to bring about any change in Iranian nuclear
policy, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Reuters on Monday.
Acknowledging that economic sanctions were clearly taking their toll on
Iran, Netanyahu said the pressure needed to be maintained and urged
Western allies not to pin their hopes on the newly elected Iranian
president, Hassan Rohani. 'He doesn't count. He doesn't call the shots,'
Netanyahu said, adding that Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali
Khamenei, made all the decisions regarding nuclear policy, which the West
fears is geared towards developing an atomic bomb. 'The Iranian election
clearly reflects deep disaffection of the Iranian people with its regime,
but unfortunately it doesn't have the power to change Iran's nuclear
ambitions,' said the Israeli leader, who heads a centre-right coalition
government." http://t.uani.com/14gls4u
AP:
"Russia's foreign minister says Iran is willing to halt its
20-percent enrichment of uranium, which has been a key concession sought
in international negotiations over Iran's nuclear program. That is the
highest level of enrichment acknowledged by Iran and one that experts say
could be turned into warhead grade in a matter of months. In an interview
with the Kuwaiti news agency KUNA that was released by the Foreign
Ministry on Tuesday, Sergey Lavrov said that 'for the first time in many
years' there are encouraging signs in international efforts to resolve
the Iranian nuclear dispute. He said Iran has confirmed that it is ready
to halt production of uranium enriched to 20 percent. He did not give
details, but said the sextet of international negotiators should make
'substantial reciprocal steps.'" http://t.uani.com/19fI887
June 14 Elections
AP:
"President Barack Obama said Monday that Iran's election of a
relative moderate shows that the country's people want to change course.
But he stressed that Tehran still needs to show the international
community that it's not pursuing a nuclear weapon. Obama said in an
interview with PBS' Charlie Rose airing Monday night that the Iranian
election of cleric Hasan Rowhani showed that 'the Iranian people want to
move in a different direction.' 'The Iranian people rebuffed the
hardliners and the clerics in the election who were counseling no
compromise on anything anytime anywhere. Clearly you have a hunger within
Iran to engage with the international community in a more positive way,'
Obama said." http://t.uani.com/11vyEAi
Reuters:
"The victory of a moderate in Iran's presidential election has
kindled the hopes of liberals for a return to the 'golden years' of
reformist president Mohammad Khatami, when Iranians enjoyed more freedoms
and Tehran had better relations with the West. But like Khatami, former
nuclear negotiator Hassan Rohani will face obstacles from the
conservative establishement. He will be unable to move fast and may not
want to move far since, unlike Khatami, he has close ties with the religious
leadership. 'Dr. Rohani and the Supreme Leader have been friends for more
than four decades,' said Hossein Mousavian, who worked directly under
Rohani when he was chief nuclear negotiator. 'It is a relationship of
trust.' That trust is a clue to the puzzle of an overwhelming victory for
reformist-backed Rohani after a pre-election clampdown on reformists left
many expecting a hardline victory. 'This outcome more likely came about
because, not in spite of, the Supreme Leader who allowed Rohani to enter
the race, gain momentum, and win,' said Ali Vaez, Iran analyst at
International Crisis Group." http://t.uani.com/17VvcX9
TIME:
"When Iranians elected moderate cleric Hassan Rowhani their new
president by a landslide on Friday, they surprised Washington and the
world. The process of figuring out what his election means has only just
begun. Moderate as applied to Iranian mullah politicians is a relative
term - even the reformists tip the far conservative end of the political
spectrum - but Rowhani's win represents an opportunity for easing
relations between Iran and the West. The country is still led by
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, but the Supreme Leader indicated that he would
allow Rowhani to engage in direct talks with the U.S., should he so
wish... Rowhani is no American patsy. He was one of the original
revolutionaries, living in exile in Paris with Iran's first Ayatollah
Ruhollah Khomeini. His loyalty to the Supreme Leader is absolute, or he
wouldn't have been allowed to run. He's an insider who's spent decades
atop some of Iran's most important committees. In recent weeks he's
voiced support for Syrian strongman Bashar Assad and in his first press
conference as president-elect, he insisted the time has long past for
Iran to negotiate on its enrichment of low-grade uranium - that is Iran's
unassailable right. In 2004, as lead negotiator on Iran's nuclear
program, he bragged that he kept the West talking while Iran was
importing advanced materials to further the program. 'We will go ahead
with confidence-building and will endeavor to build up our [nuclear]
technical capability,' Rowhani reportedly said at a news conference at
the time. 'This is our diplomacy: to proceed [in] both directions
simultaneously.'" http://t.uani.com/11vBxB7
YnetNews:
"Behind the smiles and the mirth brought about by Hassan Rohani's
triumph in the first round of the Iranian presidential election, there
lurks a personal tragedy: his elder son took his own life in 1992 in
protest of his father's close connection with Iran's Supreme Leader
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. 'I hate your government, your lies, your
corruption, your religion, your double acts and your hypocrisy,' wrote
the future president's son in his suicide note, published in London by
exiled Iranian political commentator Ali Reza Nouri. 'I am ashamed to
live in such environment where I'm forced to lie to my friends each day,
telling them that my father isn't part of all of this. Telling them my
father loves this nation, whereas I believe this to be not true. It makes
me sick seeing you, my father, kiss the hand of Khamenei,' read the
letter published in the London-based al-Sharq al-Awsat." http://t.uani.com/15g5ZAd
NYT:
"At the end of his first news conference since winning Iran's
presidential election, the moderate cleric Hassan Rowhani was confronted,
live on state television, with the raised expectations his election has
stirred. Video of the incident, which was quickly copied to YouTube and
shared on social networks by Iranian expatriates, showed Mr. Rowhani
speaking at the end of the event when a voice from the back of the
crowded hall shouted a plea for him to remember the detained opposition
leader Mir Hussein Moussavi who has been under house arrest for two
years." http://t.uani.com/12SQBPJ
Sanctions
Bloomberg:
"The Iranian rial, whose plunge triggered an inflation crisis, is
gaining in the unregulated market after President-elect Hassan Rohani
said he would seek to ease international sanctions crippling the economy.
The currency strengthened to 34,650 rial a dollar today in unregulated
trading, marking a 4.6 percent appreciation from June 13, the day before
Rohani's surprise first-round victory, according to Daily Rates For Gold
Coins and Foreign Currencies, a Facebook page used by businessmen based
in Iran and abroad." http://t.uani.com/12GV6LR
Syrian Civil
War
Bloomberg:
"Syria's central bank said a $1 billion credit line from Iran will
help support the pound as the currency extended its record slump after
the U.S. decided last week to arm rebels fighting President Bashar
al-Assad. The central bank has set up a mechanism to use the credit to
'finance a big part of the local market's need, which will contribute to
reducing the pressure' on the pound's exchange rate, the state-run Sana
news agency quoted Central Bank Governor Adib Mayaleh as saying. The
report did not say when the credit line was given." http://t.uani.com/1009s7m
Opinion &
Analysis
WashPost Editorial
Board: "Hassan Rouhani will be Iran's next president
not only because he was picked by a majority of Iranian voters but also
because the country's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, chose to
accept his victory. That decision surprised us and some Western experts
on Iran, but in retrospect there was good reason for it. Had the Islamic
regime falsified the results and blocked Mr. Rouhani, it would have
risked a repeat of the popular uprising that followed the 2009 election,
when followers of reformist candidates concluded - probably rightly -
that the reelection of hard-liner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had been rigged. At
the same time, Mr. Rouhani was in the presidential race because he had
been judged to be a reliable follower of the supreme leader, unlike other
moderate and reformist candidates who were banned from the ballot. Though
he criticized the government's recent handling of negotiations on Iran's
nuclear program, he made clear that he supports the program and that
decisions about it would lie with Mr. Khamenei. At a press conference
Monday, Mr. Rouhani rejected the suspension of uranium enrichment, mandated
by multiple U.N. Security Council resolutions, and repeated Tehran's past
rhetoric that an improvement in relations with the United States would
require that 'they have to recognize our nuclear rights [and] put away
bullying policies against Iran.' As president, Mr. Rouhani could well
make it easier for Tehran to resist sanctions and other international
pressure without slowing its progress toward a nuclear bomb, its
intervention in Syria's civil war or its sponsorship of terrorism. With
his crude denials of the Holocaust and promises to wipe Israel off the
map, Mr. Ahmadinejad helped the United States and its allies rally
support for measures that have reduced Iran's oil earnings by half and
isolated it from the world. Mr. Rouhani, in contrast, has boasted of his
record, as nuclear negotiator from 2003 to 2005, of heading off sanctions
through skillful diplomacy even as more centrifuges were installed.
Hismore moderate face has already prompted calls for the Obama
administration to sweeten its proposals for compromise with the regime...
The election demonstrated that a majority of Iranians continues to yearn
for a freer society and reject the reactionary policies of Mr. Khamenei
and his clique of hard-line clerics. If Mr. Rouhani is not allowed to
take steps to answer those aspirations, both he and the regime could face
another popular challenge." http://t.uani.com/12SMkf4
Bret Stephens in
WSJ: "'There's a sucker born every minute' is one of
those great American phrases, fondly and frequently repeated by Americans,
who tend to forget that it was said mainly about Americans. In the
election of Hassan Rohani as Iran's president, we are watching the point
being demonstrated again by someone who has demonstrated it before. Who
is Mr. Rohani? If all you did over the weekend was read headlines, you
would have gleaned that he is a 'moderate' (Financial Times), a
'pragmatic victor' (New York Times) and a 'reformist' (Bloomberg).
Reading a little further, you would also learn that his election is being
welcomed by the White House as a 'potentially hopeful sign' that Iran is
ready to strike a nuclear bargain. All this for a man who, as my
colleague Sohrab Ahmari noted in these pages Monday, called on the
regime's basij militia to suppress the student protests of July 1999
'mercilessly and monumentally.' More than a dozen students were killed in
those protests, more than 1,000 were arrested, hundreds were tortured,
and 70 simply 'disappeared.' In 2004 Mr. Rohani defended Iran's
human-rights record, insisting there was 'not one person in prison in
Iran except when there is a judgment by a judge following a trial.' Mr.
Rohani is also the man who chaired Iran's National Security Council
between 1989 and 2005, meaning he was at the top table when Iran
masterminded the 1994 bombing of the Jewish cultural center in Buenos
Aires, killing 85 people, and of the Khobar Towers in 1996, killing 19
U.S. airmen. He would also have been intimately familiar with the secret
construction of Iran's illicit nuclear facilities in Arak, Natanz and
Isfahan, which weren't publicly exposed until 2002. In 2003 Mr. Rohani
took charge as Iran's lead nuclear negotiator, a period now warmly
remembered in the West for Tehran's short-lived agreement with Britain,
France and Germany to suspend its nuclear-enrichment work. That was also
the year in which Iran supposedly halted its illicit nuclear-weapons'
work, although the suspension proved fleeting, according to subsequent
U.N. reports. Then again, what looked to the credulous as evidence of
Iranian moderation was, to Iranian insiders, an exercise in diplomatic
cunning. 'Negotiations provided time for Isfahan's uranium conversion
project to be finished and commissioned, the number of centrifuges at
Natanz increased from 150 to 1,000 and software and hardware for Iran's
nuclear infrastructure to be further developed,' Seyed Hossein Mousavian,
Mr. Rohani's spokesman at the time, argues in a recent memoir. 'The heavy
water reactor project in Arak came into operation and was not suspended
at all.' Nor was that the only advantage of Mr. Rohani's strategy of
making nice and playing for time, according to Mr. Mousavian. 'Tehran
showed that it was possible to exploit the gap between Europe and the
United States to achieve Iranian objectives.' 'The world's understanding
of suspension' was changed from a legally binding obligation . . . to a
voluntary and short-term undertaking aimed at confidence building.' 'The
world gradually came close to believing that Iran's nuclear activities
posed no security or military threat. . . . Public opinion in the West,
which was totally against Tehran's nuclear program in September 2003,
softened a good deal.' 'Efforts were made to attract global attention to
the need for WMD disarmament by Israel.' ... Now the West is supposed to
be grateful that Mr. Ahmadinejad's scowling face will be replaced by Mr.
Rohani's smiling one-a bad-cop, good-cop routine that Iran has played
before. Western concessions will no doubt follow if Mr. Rohani can
convince his boss, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, to play along. It
shouldn't be a hard sell: Iran is now just a head-fake away from becoming
a nuclear state and Mr. Khamenei has shown he's not averse to pragmatism
when it suits him. The capacity for self-deception is a coping mechanism
in both life and diplomacy, but it comes at a price. As the West cheers
the moderate and pragmatic and centrist Mr. Rohani, it will come to
discover just how high a price it will pay." http://t.uani.com/1004PKA
Suzanne Maloney in
Foreign Affairs: "Of course, Rouhani's most powerful
advantage was the bitter unhappiness of the Iranian people, who have
witnessed the implosion of their currency, the return of austerity
measures not seen since the Iran-Iraq War, and the erosion of their basic
rights and freedoms over the past eight years. The fact that they were
willing to hope again, even after the crushing disappointment of 2009
election, underscores a remarkable commitment to peaceful change and to
democratic institutions. All this might explain the massive turnout
on election day and Rouhani's overwhelming popular victory. It does not
explain, though, why Khamenei avoided the chicanery that plagued the 2009
vote and why he let the result stand. One explanation is that the
Ayatollah simply miscalculated and found himself, once again, overtaken
by events when Rouhani's candidacy surged with little forewarning.
Indeed, it is likely that Khamenei really did expect Iranians to vote for
the conservatives. After all, the conservatives have held all the cards
in Iran since 2005; they dominate its institutions and dictate the terms
of the debate. With the leading reformists imprisoned or in exile, no one
expected that the forces of change could be revived so powerfully. When
his expectations proved off base last Friday, Khamenei could have simply
opted not to risk a repeat of 2009. There is another possibility,
however, and one that better explains Khamenei's strangely permissive
attitude toward Rouhani's edgy campaign and toward the extraordinary
debate that took place between the eight remaining presidential
candidates on state television only a week before the election. In that
discussion, an exchange about general foreign policy issues morphed
unexpectedly into a mutiny on the nuclear issue. One candidate, Ali Akbar
Velayati, a scion of the regime's conservative base, attacked Jalili for
failing to strike a nuclear deal and for permitting U.S.-backed sanctions
on Iran to increase. The amazingly candid discussion that followed
Velayati's charge betrayed the Iranian establishment's awareness of the
regime's increasing vulnerability. It could only be understood as an
intervention -- one initiated by the regime's most stalwart supporters
and intended to rescue the system by acknowledging its precarious straits
and appealing for pragmatism (rather than Jalili's dogmatism). The
discussion was also an acknowledgement that the sanctions-induced
miseries of the Iranian public can no longer be soothed with nuclear
pageantry or even appeals to religious nationalism. It is therefore
possible to imagine that Khamenei's unexpected munificence, including his
last-minute appeal for every Iranian -- even those who don't support the
Islamic Republic -- to vote, was planned. In this case, those who see
Rouhani's election as a replay of the shocking political upset that
Khatami pulled off in 1997 are off base. Instead, Rouhani's election is
an echo of Khamenei's sudden shift in 1988 and 1989, when he charged
Rafsanjani, a pragmatist, with ending the war with Iraq, and then helped
Rafsanjani win the presidency so that he could spearhead the post-war
reconstruction program. Now, as then, Khamenei is not bent on infinite
sacrifice. Perhaps allowing Rouhani's victory is his way of empowering a
conciliator to repair Iran's frayed relations with the world and find some
resolution to the nuclear dispute that enables the country to revive oil
exports and resume normal trade." http://t.uani.com/1bRlrGy
Mehdi Khalaji in
WashPost: "The main theme of Rouhani's campaign was
his critique of the Islamic Republic's nuclear policy during the last
eight years, which led to a series of U.N, E.U. and U.S. sanctions
against Iran. Not only were the business community and private sector
deeply damaged by sanctions, but the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps's
companies and government businesses also came under unprecedented
pressure. The current policy left little hope for peaceful resolution of
the nuclear crisis and, because of sanctions, made the impasse the first
concern of many Iranian citizens, both urban and rural. In the televised
debates and his campaign, Rouhani has defended the pre-Ahmadinejad
nuclear policy, which he ran from 2003 to 2005. He argued that he
succeeded in keeping the nuclear program off the U.N. Security Council's
agenda while also preventing a significant interruption to the program.
He said that Iran should change its negotiation pattern, assure the West
that it is not after a nuclear bomb and save the economy from sanctions,
while letting Iran's peaceful nuclear program proceed. He described the
2003-04 decision to suspend uranium enrichment for a few months as a way
for Iran to prove that the nuclear program is for peaceful purposes while
at the same time make progress on the enrichment program during the
suspension. Rouhani's victory can be interpreted as the success of the
West's policy toward Iran's nuclear program. Since the start of
sanctions, many have doubted whether sanctions are useful, and whether
they would change Iran's nuclear policy, but the 2013 election proved
that sanctions deeply affected people's opinions of the government's
policy of resistance rather than compromise. During the campaign, many of
the candidates criticized the resistance approach, which was defended
only by current nuclear negotiator Jalili. Even Velayati - who has been
regarded as an influential advisor to the supreme leader- criticized
Jalili in the televised debate, saying Jalili's policy harmed Iran and
produced zero benefit... To be sure, sanctions weren't the only reason
Rouhani won. Unlike many classic dictatorships such as Iraq under Saddam
Hussein, the political power in Iran is not monopolized by one group and
person. Tiny holes that open in the election season sometimes provide a
chance for new dynamism... Nevertheless, the West now should have more
confidence in the negotiations because the Iranian people showed that
they are not indifferent to the leverages used against nuclear policy -
and indeed the hard-line elite showed it is deeply split over how to
proceed on the nuclear front. But one should not forget that Rouhani's
justification for negotiations during the campaign was to relieve the
pressure without giving up the program. This means that while the West
should approach negotiations with cautious optimism, the West has to
remain insistent on Iran having only a peaceful nuclear program that is
verifiably far from a nuclear weapons capability. And of course, Iran's
president does not dominate Iran's foreign and security policy, which is
overwhelmingly set by Khamenei, though the fact that Khamenei allowed
Rouhani to win suggests that Khamenei himself may be open to a shift in
approach." http://t.uani.com/16E7H1D
Martin Indyk in
FT: "The surprise election of Hassan Rohani to the
Iranian presidency shines a hopeful ray of sunlight through the darkening
storm clouds of western relations with Iran. But rushing to embrace Mr
Rohani could end up being exactly the wrong strategy for the US and its
European partners to adopt in an environment so permeated by mistrust...
We should be careful, however, not to let our hopes get ahead of
realities. The sanctions are indeed hurting; the Iranian people want an
end to their isolation; and by winning a majority in the first round Mr
Rohani has received a resounding mandate for change. But Ayatollah Ali
Khamenei remains very much in command. Indeed, this election may have
solidified his reign: rather than protesting against him as they did in
such massive numbers four years ago, the people were celebrating in the
streets after this election. And his radical regime now has a moderate,
democratically elected president to cloak his own extremism and
paranoia... But there is another reason for a deliberate approach. A too
warm embrace of the new president could heighten the paranoia of the
supreme leader and make it impossible for Mr Rohani to push for
concessions in the nuclear negotiations - if that is his intention - that
would brand him as suspect in Mr Khamenei's eyes. We have a precedent for
that in the way the supreme leader emasculated Ayatollah Mohammad Khatami
- the last reformist president with a popular mandate - when President
Bill Clinton tried to engage him and reciprocate his interest in a
constructive dialogue. Giving the new Iranian president time to establish
himself, listening carefully to how he proposes to proceed with the
nuclear file, and never giving the supreme leader the impression that we
are trying to go around him, is therefore a wiser approach. But time is
not on the side of a negotiated resolution of the Iranian nuclear file.
Iran's nuclear programme is fast approaching a breakout capability in
which, perhaps by the end of 2013, it will have the ability to achieve
bomb-grade enrichment of its stockpile within two to three months of a
decision to go for it. That would constitute a crossing of Israeli prime
minister Benjamin Netanyahu's red line and would come close to
challenging Mr Obama's own commitment to prevent Iran from acquiring a
nuclear weapon. The west, therefore, needs to proceed with all deliberate
speed, recognising in Mr Rohani's victory an opportunity that we cannot
afford to squander by a hasty embrace based on wishful thinking but also
with an ear attuned to the ever-louder ticking of the nuclear
clock." http://t.uani.com/18VYw0E
Ray Takeyh in The
Weekly Standard: "This year marks the sixtieth anniversary
of Operation Ajax-the notorious CIA plot that is supposed to have ousted
Iranian prime minister Muhammad Mossadeq. In the intervening decades, the
events of 1953 have been routinely depicted as a nefarious U.S.
conspiracy that overthrew a nationalist politician who enjoyed enormous
popular support. This narrative, assiduously cultivated by the Islamic
Republic, was so readily endorsed by the American intellectual class that
presidents and secretaries of state are now expected to commence any discussion
of Iran by apologizing for the behavior of their malevolent predecessors.
At this stage, the account has even seeped into American popular culture,
featuring most recently in Ben Affleck's Oscar-winning blockbuster Argo.
The only problem with this mythologized history is that the CIA's role in
Mossadeq's demise was largely inconsequential. In the end, the 1953 coup
was very much an Iranian affair." http://t.uani.com/11McfhS
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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
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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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