Top Stories
AP:
"Iran's supreme leader said a solution to the nuclear impasse with
the West would be 'easy' if the United States and its allies are serious
about seeking a deal, Iranian media reported Thursday. The remarks by
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei are his first on the nuclear issue since the
presidential election earlier this month of Hasan Rouhani, who supports
direct talks with Washington. It suggests Khamenei also could endorse
bolder diplomacy by Tehran if talks resume with world powers. Several
newspapers, including the hard-line Jomhouri Eslami, quoted Khamenei as
saying 'the solution to Iran's nuclear case is an easy and smooth job' if
Western powers want to strike a deal. 'The opposition front against Iran
does not want the nuclear issue to be solved,' Khamenei told a group of
judiciary officials Wednesday. Khamenei, who has final say on all state
matters, singled out the U.S. for what he called 'new excuses' to block
possible headway on negotiations over Tehran's nuclear program." http://t.uani.com/14c9qdx
Platts:
"Japan imported 221,523 b/d of crude from Iran in May, more than
double the 99,236 b/d imported the same month a year ago, according to
figures released Thursday by the Ministry of Finance. Platts converts
MOF's statistics based on kiloliters into barrels per day. The May level
was also up 99.2% from the 111,218 b/d imported from Iran in April,
according to MOF data. The May surge comes after Japan's crude imports
from Iran registered a sharp drop in April, when delays by refiners in
renewing term contracts with Iran coincided with the process of rolling
over shipping insurance provided by the Japanese government, according to
sources familiar with the matter. Two Japanese tankers carrying a total
of around 3 million barrels of Iranian crude reached Japanese ports at
the end of April, although most of this oil was not counted as imports
for that month." http://t.uani.com/15IQ11H
FT:
"Iran is suffering a new round of economic instability after the
unexpected victory of moderate president-elect Hassan Rohani earlier this
month. Although the national currency, the rial, has risen by 12 per cent
since Mr Rohani's win, prices have remained high as wholesalers insist
the strengthening of the rial is temporary because sanctions on the
country's nuclear programme remain in place... Markets for cars, home
appliances, electronic equipment and housing have stagnated since June 14
as Iranians wait for the fall in the value of hard currencies to be
translated into lower prices. 'People now suffer from a mirage of cheap
prices and refuse to buy goods,' said Morad, a merchant of home
appliances in Tehran's grand bazaar. 'But in fact nothing has changed and
sanctions are still there.' One US dollar bought 32,000 rials on
Wednesday, down from 36,200 rials before the election." http://t.uani.com/17k1UOR
Sanctions
WSJ:
"When a company discloses its business in Iran, as required by
federal law, that data can also be snatched up by states implementing
their own sanctions... Under federal sanctions law signed in 2010, U.S.
states can maintain their own sanctions laws on Iran. States are allowed
to require public divestment from businesses making investments of $20
million or more in Iran's energy sector, the federal law says, provided
the company gets a 90-day notice to cease activity in the Iranian market.
Though there's no evidence yet of states taking action on the new
disclosures, lawyers said, they anticipate it happening in the future.
'This gives us another vehicle to both identify and engage potential
scrutinized list companies,' said Judith Lee, a partner at Gibson Dunn
who leads the firm's international trade and regulation compliance
practice." http://t.uani.com/10n42DH
Radio Zamaneh:
"The Iranian auto industry warns that U.S. sanctions have left
carmakers on the verge of bankruptcy. The Mehr News Agency reports that
the industry has called on the government to assist companies with the
crisis in automotive parts and continually rising costs. The industry has
called on the government for bailout money to invest in the industry. The
latest round of U.S. sanctions, which go into force on July 1, target
automotive parts and all services linked to automobile manufacturing. Iranian
industry officials have predicted the price of auto parts will rise 15 to
40 percent. A report on Mehr indicates that South Korean companies, which
have continued dealing in automotive parts with Iran in recent years, now
indicate they will have to curtail that business under the new U.S.
sanctions." http://t.uani.com/10YAoqP
Syrian Civil
War
Bloomberg:
"Iran's President-elect Hassan Rohani will not change the country's
policy of supporting Bashar al-Assad in Syria's civil war, according to a
member of the Iranian parliament. 'The tactics may change but the
strategic aims will not change,' said Ahmad Bakhshayesh, a member of the
Majlis National Security and Foreign Policy Commission, in a telephone
interview from Tehran, describing Syria, Iran and Lebanon's Shiite
militia Hezbollah as part of a 'resistance front' opposing Israel. 'We
don't want Syria to leave the resistance front.'" http://t.uani.com/1aQ9qDJ
Domestic
Politics
Al-Monitor:
"Thirty dogs have died of starvation and thirst in a dog jail in
Kahrizak, a suburb south of Tehran. The shocking news broke just a couple
of weeks ago, and was somehow overlooked amid the heat of Iran's
presidential elections. All of these dogs had owners. Ahmad-Reza Radan,
commander of Tehran's Armed Forces Corps, warned dog owners to refrain
from walking them on the streets. He said, 'As summer approaches, we will
make an effort to stop people from bringing out their dogs in their cars
or parading them on the streets to show off. We won't have any of that.'
Radan stuck to his word." http://t.uani.com/13a7e9I
Daily Telegraph:
"A Scottish university has confirmed it received a complaint that
Iran's new president, Hassan Rouhani, plagiarised part of the thesis for
the doctorate he obtained in the 1990s. Iranian activists have analysed
passages of Mr Rouhani's Glasgow Caledonian University PhD thesis, titled
The Flexibility of Sharia (Islamic Law) with reference to the Iranian
experience, that closely match sentences written in a book by an Afghan
author. Behdad Morshedi, a London-based writer, said Mr Rouhani appeared
to have lifted segments from a book by Mohamad Hashem Kamali, the
chairman of the International Institute of Advanced Islamic Studies. 'Mr
Kamali is closely associated with the regime but his book was published
in his own name and the extracts are virtually identical,' said Mr
Morshedi (a pen name). 'We will be submitting a petition calling on the
university to cancel the PhD.' Charles McGhee, a spokesman for Glasgow
Caledonian University, said its staff had received the allegations from
another activist in the US and would be looking into the matter." http://t.uani.com/17kgjuw
Foreign Affairs
Bloomberg:
"Iran isn't actively supporting terrorist cells in Latin America and
its influence is waning in the region after almost a decade of promises
to increase investment, according to a State Department report. While
Iran's interest in Latin America is a 'concern,' sanctions have
undermined efforts by the Islamic republic to expand its economic and
political toehold in the region, according to the unclassified summary of
yesterday's report. 'As a result of diplomatic outreach, strengthening of
allies' capacity, international nonproliferation efforts, a strong
sanctions policy, and Iran's poor management of its foreign relations,
Iranian influence in Latin America and the Caribbean is waning,'
according to the report." http://t.uani.com/11KH6z6
Opinion &
Analysis
The Economist:
"Iran is putting up with sanctions that damage its economy rather
than accept a deal limiting its nuclear programme. It has developed the
capacity to enrich far more uranium than it needs for generating nuclear
power or for medical research. And its outgoing president has talked
about wanting to wipe Israel off the map. All of which suggests to
outsiders that the country intends, at a time of its choosing, to get its
hands on nuclear weapons. Iran, for its part, denies that it wants any
such thing and points to a fatwa against both the possession and use of
nuclear weapons. So how close is Iran to having a nuclear bomb? To become
a nuclear power, a country requires both the fissile material for a bomb
and the means of delivering it reliably to its target ('weaponisation' in
the jargon). Iran was thought to have suspended work on weaponisation in
2004, but now the International Atomic Energy Agency is not so sure. In
order to create a nuclear weapon, Iran would need to convert highly
enriched uranium into a metal sphere and make a detonator small enough to
fit in the warhead of a ballistic missile. That is not beyond its
technological capability. But does Iran have enough uranium for a bomb?
To make one it would need about 20 kilograms of highly enriched uranium.
To get there it would need to begin with a larger amount of
medium-enriched uranium-somewhere between 94 kilograms and 210
kilograms-and enrich it further. At present it is thought to have around
123 kilograms of medium-enriched uranium. And getting from 20%, the upper
limit for medium enrichment, to 80% or 90% is not as hard as getting from
2% to 20%, which Iran has already done. The upshot is that although Iran
may not have decided whether it wants a bomb, it already has most of what
it needs to build one. British and American intelligence sources think
Iran is about a year away from having enough highly enriched uranium to
make a bomb, and rather further from mastering the technologies to make a
nuclear warhead small enough to fit into a missile. But David Albright, a
former UN weapons inspector who is president of the Institute for Science
and International Security, thinks that by mid-2014 Iran will have the
capacity to produce enough fissile material for a single bomb in one or
two weeks, should it choose to do so. It seems unlikely that Iran could
be forced to change course on this matter by foreigners. The best that
can be hoped for is that it decides that it does not want or need a
nuclear weapon. The alternative is probably a nuclear-armed Middle East
in which Iran and Israel-and eventually Saudi Arabia, Turkey and
Egypt-all have missiles pointed at each other." http://t.uani.com/12stnIQ
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