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Top Stories
AP:
"Congress is considering a new series of hard-hitting Iran sanctions
on everything from mining and construction to the Islamic republic's
already besieged oil industry, despite concern from the Obama
administration that the measures could interfere with nuclear
negotiations. House and Senate bills are both advancing at a time
President Barack Obama's national security team is gauging whether
Iranian President-elect Hasan Rouhani is serious about halting some
elements of Tehran's uranium enrichment activity. Those involved in the
process said the administration wants to temper Congressional plans until
Rouhani takes office in August and has an opportunity to demonstrate
whether his government will offer concessions. The legislation would
blacklist Iran's mining and construction sectors, effective next year,
because they are seen as heavily linked to Iran's hard-line Revolutionary
Guard corps. It also would commit the U.S. to the goal of ending all
Iranian oil sales worldwide by 2015, targeting the regime's biggest
revenue generator and prime source of money for its weapons and nuclear
programs... The House's bill may pass before Congress' August recess. The
Senate version won't get a vote until at least September, said Sen. Bob
Menendez, D-N.J., chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and
a leading advocate of tougher Iran sanctions." http://t.uani.com/15EXYqj
WSJ:
"Iran has agreed to supply Iraq with natural gas in a four-year,
$14.8 billion deal that offers Tehran a respite from sanctions and Iraq a
needed energy source, and has already prompted concerns in Washington.
The deal would double Iran's natural-gas exports and require expanded
production from a gas field whose development has been hindered by
international sanctions, according to a senior Iranian oil and gas
official. The U.S. has asked the Iraqi government about the deal, a U.S.
State Department spokeswoman said Monday. Baghdad 'has been receptive to
these discussions in the past and has expressed its desire to remain
compliant with U.S. sanctions,' she said. 'We would, of course, make
clear the implications were any activity to be deemed as at variance with
U.S. sanctions.' For Iraq, the natural-gas supplies from Iran would offer
a needed fuel source, helping ease electricity shortages by feeding two
power plants in a suburb of Baghdad, said Mussab al-Mudaris, a spokesman
for the Iraqi ministry of electricity." http://t.uani.com/13XKWRP
Marine Log:
"Greek shipowner Victor Restis now has more immediate problems than
the suggestions by United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) that he has been
involved in Iran sanctions busting. Mr. Restis has loudly denied the UANI
charges and on July 19 filed a defamation suit against UANI and its CEO,
Mark D. Wallace, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of
New York. Today, though, Mr. Restis's main concern will be with what
happens in an Athens court. Greek media say that this morning he was
arrested outside his office in a northern suburb of Athens on suspicion
of money laundering and embezzlement and was expected to appear before a
prosecutor later in the day... According to reports, the allegations
against Mr. Restis involve €500 million in bad loans given by FBBank to
companies he controlled." http://t.uani.com/18xl30y
Nuclear Program
NYT:
"Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, threw some cold
water on recent efforts to reinvigorate diplomatic contacts between Iran
and the United States, saying he was not optimistic that any agreement
would be reached, though he does not oppose talks 'on certain issues.' At
a meeting on Sunday with the departing president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and
his cabinet, Mr. Khamenei said that he did not believe that direct talks
with the United States would have a positive result for Iran. 'The
Americans are unreliable and illogical, and are not honest in their
approach,' Mr. Khamenei warned, adding that his view was based on
previous talks with the United States, often conducted secretly, on
issues like Iraq... Hamid-Reza Taraghi, a political activist close to Mr.
Khamenei, also mentioned the embargoes. 'It is not enough for some U.S.
congressmen to write a letter,' Mr. Taraghi said. 'They should start
lifting sanctions. That would be a real green light for
negotiations.'" http://t.uani.com/19fzXeH
Sanctions
Reuters:
"India's imports of crude oil from Iran more than halved in June
from a year ago, as refiner Essar Oil became the only remaining Indian
client of the sanctions-hit country, tanker data obtained by Reuters
showed. India's imports for June fell about 60 percent on an annual
basis, pointing to imports from Iran's top four customers - China, Japan,
India and South Korea - of around 860,000 barrels per day (bpd) for the
month, down more than a third on the year. That would be the lowest for
Iran's top four buyers since April, when big drop-offs in barrels shipped
into India and Japan cut the total to 635,750 bpd, the smallest in
decades... Indian imports from Iran dropped to 140,800 bpd in June, down
45 percent from May, data from trade sources on tanker arrivals shows.
India's imports from Iran dropped in the first half of the year to
211,400 bpd, down more than 42 percent from the same period in 2012,
according to the data." http://t.uani.com/164lNrx
Reuters:
"China's daily crude oil imports from Iran fell 1.9 percent in the
first half of the year from the same period in 2012, making it easier for
it to stake a claim later to a waiver extension on U.S. sanctions against
the Middle Eastern nation... China won a six-month waiver in June, along
with other Asian importers of Iranian crude, and officials have said
Chinese refiners would likely cut Iran shipments 5-10 percent this year
from last. China's next waiver review is due November-December. The drop
in the first-half volumes came on top of a 21 percent cut in China's
purchases from Tehran in the first half of last year. A contract dispute
had slashed Iranian oil shipments in the first quarter of 2012. June volumes
imported from Iran were also sharply down compared with the same month
last year and from May imports. 'It looks like China was getting a bit
more aggressive with its cut in June in order to meet its overall target
for the year,' said Victor Shum, managing director of downstream energy
consulting at IHS. China, Iran's largest oil client, brought in 424,183
barrels per day (bpd) of Iranian crude in the first six months of the
year, data from the General Administration of Customs showed on
Monday." http://t.uani.com/14137x4
Terrorism
Reuters:
"Iran condemned on Tuesday the European Union's decision to put the
armed wing of Lebanese militant group Hezbollah on its terrorism
blacklist and said the move was 'contrary to all political and legal
norms, surprising and unacceptable'. Hezbollah was set up with the help
of Iranian funds and military advisers some three decades ago and, along
with Syria, is still Tehran's most important ally in the region,
positioned as it is on the 'frontline' with Iran's sworn enemy Israel.
Pressed by Britain and the Netherlands, the European Union blacklisted
Hezbollah's military wing on Monday over accusations it was involved in a
bus bombing in Bulgaria that killed five Israelis and their driver a year
ago, and its deployment of thousands of fighters to help Syrian President
Bashar al-Assad turn the tide of Syria's civil war." http://t.uani.com/13AlK7S
Cyber Warfare
Free Beacon:
"Iran has also stepped up its anti-U.S. cyber campaign in response
to tightening economic sanctions. 'We have seen some very, very
devastating efforts on behalf of Iran,' Rogers said. Iranian
government-backed hackers, for instance, have 'aggressively pursued
probing actions on our U.S, financial institutions,' he said. This action
is 'unabated' and ongoing. One recent attack on an unnamed U.S. financial
institution cost about '$100 million to deal with,' Rogers revealed.
'That's one institution. One attack. And it's not their best work. That
should make everybody sit up straighter.' There is evidence that some of
these Iranian hack attacks may have been influenced or sponsored by the
Russians, Rogers said. 'Some of the [Internet] signatures certainly have
a hint of Muscovite in them,' he said, adding that the Iranians have made
'the calculation that this is a justified response to sanctions.'" http://t.uani.com/131Hl9V
Domestic
Politics
Bloomberg:
"Iran's Revolutionary Guards, the elite military corps feared for
its crackdowns on internal dissent and pervasive presence in Iranian
society, says it hasn't been a good communicator. Its spokesman, in rare
comments about the Guards' work published today in the Shargh newspaper,
wants it to do a better job trumpeting its achievements. 'I see the most
important weakness of the Guards as being in the information arena,'
Ramezan Sharif told the Tehran-based newspaper. 'Despite much effort, we
haven't been able to present correctly the work and actions of this
popular and revolutionary entity.'" http://t.uani.com/16WWua6
Opinion &
Analysis
Bret Stephens in
WSJ: "The history comes to mind following a speech
last week by Hassan Rouhani, Iran's president-elect and reputed moderate.
Addressing a group called the 'Assembly of the Pioneers for Jihad and
Martyrdom,' Mr. Rouhani made an overture to Iranians living abroad who
wanted to make their peace with the regime. 'Those [Iranians] who are
ready to return should have the way paved for them, since repentance is
for everyone,' he said, according to a report by Radio Farda. This isn't
the first time a supposedly reformist president of the Islamic Republic
urged the estimated three million exiled Iranians to come home. Beginning
in the early 1990s, and especially after Mohammad Khatami's election as
president in 1997, the regime made the same pitch. 'Today, Islamic Iran
opens its arms to you,' Mr. Khatami said in a message to exiles, adding
that they were needed to help rebuild the country. Promises were made
that no returnee would face prison time. It's impossible to say how many
exiles returned to Iran for good. But many did begin traveling back and
forth from the country, often for long stints, to work or study or visit
relatives. Mr. Khatami's outreach also had the effect of dividing the
exile community politically between those who thought the regime could
never be trusted and needed to be toppled, and those who believed in
engaging it for the sake of reform. It was the latter camp that wound up
having the greatest influence in the West, not least by providing
intellectual cover and moral standing to U.S. and European policy makers
eager to reach out to Iran and make concessions. But it was also this
camp that often paid the greatest personal price for trusting the regime.
Consider Ramin Jahanbegloo, a well-known Iranian philosopher and advocate
of cultural dialogue. He was teaching at the University of Toronto when
he decided to return to Iran in 2001 to take up an academic post. In 2006
he was imprisoned for four months on suspicion of being 'one of the key
elements in the American plan for the smooth toppling of the Islamic
regime,' according to the Iranian Jomhuri Eslami newspaper. Similar
prison ordeals awaited Iranian expatriates such as Woodrow Wilson Center
scholar Haleh Esfandiari, journalist Maziar Bahari, businessmanAli
Shakeri, urban planner Kian Tajbakhsh. Far worse was the fate of
Iranian-Canadian photojournalist Zahra Kazemi, who was arrested,
tortured, raped and beaten to death in July 2003. Then there is Hossein
Derakhshan, a left-wing blogger who in 2006 made a case in the Washington
Post for Iran's acquisition of nuclear weapons. But he also visited
Israel that year, writing that while it might be illegal for him to do so
as an Iranian, as 'a citizen of Canada I have the right to visit any
country I want.' He was arrested in Iran in 2008, held in solitary confinement
and tortured. In 2010 he was sentenced by an Iranian court to 19.5 years
in Tehran's infamous Evin prison. Which brings us back to Mr. Rouhani's
invitation to Iranian exiles to return and repent. Last week, I asked
dissident Saeed Ghasseminejad, a leader of the Iranian Liberal Students
and Graduates who was jailed in Evin before coming to the U.S., how he
would respond to the president-elect's offer. 'The one who should repent
his sins is Mr. Rouhani himself,' Mr. Ghassaminejad wrote me in an email.
'He is part of a regime which has killed, raped and tortured thousands
and expelled and displaced millions of Iranians.' It would be nice if the
West could treat the arrival of yet another alleged regime reformer with
the same hard-earned skepticism." http://t.uani.com/1aGpvL6
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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
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commitment to prevent Iran from fulfilling its ambition to become a
regional super-power possessing nuclear weapons. UANI is an
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interests as well as the collective goal of advancing an Iran free of
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