Eye on Iran: Iran's Rouhani Says Israel Threats 'Laughable'

For continuing coverage follow us on Twitter and join our Facebook group.    Top Stories Reuters: "Iranian President-elect Hassan Rouhani said on Wednesday it was laughable for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to say that Tehran was getting close to Israel's 'red line' over its nuclear program and derided the Jewish state's ability to strike Iran... 'There has been a lot of talk that this option is on the table,' said Rouhani, referring to Israel's veiled threats. 'You laugh when you hear them,' Rouhani told veterans of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war. 'Who are the Zionists to threaten us?' Rouhani, who takes office next month, has indicated he would like a less confrontational approach to nuclear talks with six world powers than current President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who also offended the West by calling for Israel to be wiped off the map. But Rouhani is still very much an Islamic Republic insider who may offer more of a change of style rather than substance, especially as Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has the last word on the nuclear dispute and strategic policy issues." http://t.uani.com/1as80xZ AP: "Iran's president-elect has sent messages to Syria's Bashar Assad and Lebanon's militant Hezbollah group, reaffirming support for the two allies. The official IRNA news agency on Tuesday cited Hasan Rouhani as saying close Iranian-Syrian ties will be able to confront 'enemies in the region, especially the Zionist regime,' or Israel. Rouhani says Syria will 'overcome its current crisis.' The note was in response to Assad's congratulatory message on Rouhani's June election. Tehran has sided with Assad's regime in Syria's civil war. Rouhani also wrote to Hezbollah's leader, Hassan Nasrallah, saying Iran backs the 'steadfast nation' of Lebanon and the Palestinians, a reference to the militant Hamas group." http://t.uani.com/18nu2op LAT: "More than 200 steelworkers staged a demonstration Tuesday in front of the Iranian parliament, protesting layoffs and unpaid salaries in an illustration of the daunting economic challenges facing President-elect Hassan Rouhani. One of the laid-off workers told the semiofficial Iranian Labor News Agency that most were from the Zagros Steel Factory and had spent the night in a yard near the Tehran cemetery and on the grounds of the mausoleum of the late Ayatollah Ruholla Khomeini because they didn't have the money to pay for hotel rooms... For the incoming president, the steelworker dispute illustrates a looming challenge: how to satisfy frustrated citizens who are growing increasingly impatient about rising prices and high unemployment... The ailing economy was a key point on Rouhani's agenda when he addressed lawmakers in an open session of parliament Sunday. In his speech, Rouhani provided a grim overview. 'For the first time since the imposed war [Iran's 1980s war with Iraq], our economic growth has been negative for two years in a row, and this is the first time that the negative growth is accompanied with high inflation -- the highest inflation in the region or perhaps in the world,' Rouhani said." http://t.uani.com/17kWlzh     Nuclear Program  Reuters: "World powers expressed hope on Tuesday of resuming negotiations with Iran over its disputed nuclear program 'as soon as possible' but gave no indication of a possible date for any new talks. Senior diplomats from the six countries negotiating with Tehran - the United States, Russia, China, France, Britain and Germany - met in Brussels to map out plans for diplomacy following the June 14 presidential election in Iran. Negotiations have been on hold since a failed round in April and the six nations are keen to get back to the table amid concerns a breakdown in diplomacy could prompt Israel to attack Iran and spark a new war in the Middle East. The European Union's foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, who oversees talks with Iran on behalf of the six powers, said they were waiting for Tehran to nominate a team of negotiators after the presidential vote, before making concrete plans." http://t.uani.com/192OD0B AP: "Iran's foreign minister says Tehran will be ready to resume nuclear talks with world powers as soon as the country's president-elect puts together his negotiating team. Wednesday's comments by Ali Akbar Salehi follow a meeting in Brussels with members of the six-member group that reopened talks with Iran last year." http://t.uani.com/13OxWVw Sanctions AFP: "Britain has issued export licences worth £12 billion ($18 billion, 14 billion euros) for the sale of military equipment to states deemed possible rights violators including Syria, Iran and China, lawmakers said Wednesday. A report by a group of parliamentary committees said that 3,000 licences for arms and other equipment had been issued to countries on the Foreign Office's list of 27 countries of human rights concerns... Iran, at the centre of international concerns about its nuclear programme, had 62 licences worth £803 million and Syria, where a civil war has left up to 100,000 people dead according to the United Nations, had three licences worth £143,000." http://t.uani.com/12V9sna Domestic Politics Bloomberg: "Iran's outgoing President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad ordered the creation of an agency in the presidential office in an effort to retain a presence even after his successor, Hassan Rohani, takes over. The new 'Former President's Office' was outlined in a June 22 directive from Gholam-Hossein Elham, Ahmadinejad's deputy for human resources in the presidency, Tehran-based newspapers Shargh and Donya-e-Eqtesad said today. The office will be staffed with 25 people, consisting of a director, experts and others in charge of coordination and communication , Donya-e-Eqtesad said." http://t.uani.com/1bIx2dR AFP: "Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Tuesday appointed four clerics to Iran's powerful Guardians Council, a body dominated by ultra-conservatives that interprets the constitution and supervises elections, media reported. The council is an unelected body of 12 members headed by hardliner Ayatollah Ahmad Janati, and is also tasked with ensuring laws approved by parliament are in line with the constitution and Iran's strict sharia, or Islamic law. It is made up of six clerics appointed by Khamenei and six jurists who are proposed by the supreme leader's judicial chief and voted in by parliament, which itself is vetted by the council. Among the clerics appointed to a six-year term by Khamenei are ex-judiciary chiefs Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi and Ayatollah Mohammad Yazdi, who were already council members... The council is notorious for a number of issues, including its electoral supervision and barring reformist candidates." http://t.uani.com/17kWPp3 Foreign Affairs Guardian: "One of Iran's most famous film-makers, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, a former revolutionary who spent four years in jail under the late shah's rule, has made headlines again after breaking a taboo by visiting Israel. Makhmalbaf, who was invited by the Jerusalem film festival, said he went as 'an ambassador for peace' to promote Iranian art in a country that has previously threatened to launch a pre-emptive strike against his homeland. His visit last week has stirred a heated debate among Iranians. 'I went there to take a message of peace,' he told the Guardian. 'I try to unite people through arts, I am citizen of cinema, and cinema has no border, and in fact before my journey to Israel my film travelled to that country many years before.' Makhmalbaf, a leading figure in Iranian cinema's new wave movement, is the most prominent Iranian figure to visit Israel since the 1979 Islamic revolution. Iranian passports are not valid for travel to Israel and those visiting the country risk a jail sentence of at least five years under Iranian law." http://t.uani.com/1bIxLM2 Opinion & Analysis Stuart Appelbaum & Benjamin Weinthal in NYDN: "On June 20, less than a week after the election of Iran's new president Hassan Rowhani, the 42-year-old Iranian trade unionist Afshin Osanloo died under mysterious circumstances in prison. Times are extremely tough for struggling independent labor activists in Iran. Iran's notorious hanging judge, Abolqasem Salavati, sentenced Osanloo in 2010 to five years in prison for his effort to exercise employee rights in a country where independent unions and meaningful worker rights are non-existent. His tragic fate mirrors the death of the 35-year-old blogger Sattar Beheshti, who died while in police custody last November. The court accused Osanloo of 'collusion and assembly with the intent to act against national security.' In other words, Iran's rulers raised bogus charges to criminalize democratic union activity. Sohrab Soleimani, the head of Tehran Province Prisons, claimed Osanloo 'died after a heart attack.' But his sister, Fereshteh Osanloo, told the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran that 'my brother did not have any heart conditions. He was well. He exercised in prison every day. He had an in-person visit with my mother two weeks ago. My mother said that Afshin was healthy and doing well.' In an ominously written letter to international labor federations last August from prison, Osanloo captured the desperation and dogged optimism among working class Iranians. His appeal aimed to spark action from human rights groups and international organizations to stop Iran's violent crackdown on independent union organizing efforts. 'We want you [The International Transport Workers' Federation and International Labor Organization] to tell them how in our country we have no labor or human rights, and how unjust and illegal it all is and how the smallest complaint about our working conditions causes us to be severely tortured and imprisoned,' wrote Osanloo. The deceased truck driver Osanloo knew his subject matter from personal experience. Iran's security agents incarcerated him in the notorious Evin prison. 'For five months I was kept in solitary confinement and was interrogated and tortured,' wrote Osanloo in his prison letter. The plight of Iranian political prisoners like Osanloo has not spurred major human rights action from the U.S. Instead, intense Western attention has been devoted to Rowhani, who hails from the inner circle of Iran's anti-Western supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, as a new president who can help the Iran engage the West. The Islamic Republic's repression forced Mansour Osanloo, the brother of Afshin and viewed as 'Iran's Lech Walesa,' to flee Iran in May because of his independent union organizing activity. He sharply rejects the West's one-dimensional focus on Iran's nuclear weapons program at the expense of union and civil democracy promotion. After all, Rowhani played a critical role in the violent suppression of Iranian student protests in 1999. Iranian students, like their counterparts in the pro-democracy union movement, sought to obtain democratic rights. Rowhani took pleasure in carrying out the regime order to 'crush mercilessly and monumentally' the student demonstrations. In short, Rowhani (former secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council for 16 years) has long been part of a brutal security apparatus that vehemently rejects the kind of economic and political democracy that Iranian trade unionists desire... American labor unions are in a unique position to replicate the cold war Polish model of international solidarity. There is no shortage of pressure points to influence a change in Iran's behavior. Western trade unions can symbolically adopt imprisoned Iranian labor activists as a way to spotlight the need for their release. International trade union federations can issue resolutions condemning Iran. Human rights groups can ratchet up the pressure to show that Iran's violations of labor rights mean repression of human rights. That would be a start to fill the words of Afshin Osanloo's letter with meaning, content and action." http://t.uani.com/14dAMlT 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 Internal Revenue Code. Eye on Iran is not intended as a comprehensive media clips summary but rather a selection of media elements with discreet analysis in a PDA friendly format. For more information please 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 nuclear weapons.