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Top Stories
RFE/RL:
"An Iranian official accused of playing a key role in the summary
executions of thousands of political prisoners in the summer of 1988 is
poised to become Iran's justice minister. The prospect of Mostafa
Purmohammadi in the cabinet of newly elected President Hassan Rohani --
who campaigned on a pledge to seek the release of political prisoners --
has led rights groups and others to say he should be brought to justice,
not dole it out. Purmohammadi, who heads Iran's General Inspectorate
Organization, a body linked to Iran's judiciary, attracted attention in
2005 when he joined former President Mahmud Ahmadinejad's cabinet as
interior minister. Human Rights Watch (HRW) criticized that appointment
at the time in a report titled 'Ministers Of Murder,' which highlighted
Purmohammadi's alleged role in the 1988 executions, the assassination of
political figures abroad, and the 1998 killings of intellectuals inside
the country while he was a director in the Intelligence Ministry." http://t.uani.com/17C5pOj
NYT:
"Iran has built a previously undisclosed launching site and space
center near the northeastern city of Shahrud that could theoretically be
used for testing ballistic missiles, according to satellite imagery
reported on Thursday by IHS Jane's, an authoritative weapons research
publication based in London. In a report posted on its Web site, Jane's
said its analysis of the satellite imagery showed that the new site,
about 220 miles east of Tehran near the Caspian Sea, had been developed
over the past three years and would be one of three launching sites in
Iran's space program. Iranian officials have said they are intent on
developing rockets capable of sending astronauts into space, and have
alluded to the construction of a new site as part of that goal, but had never
specified its location. The Jane's report was likely to be viewed with
concern by Western officials and Israel. They have expressed suspicions
that Iran's ballistic missile development is part of what they view as
the country's ambition to build nuclear weapons that can be mounted on
missile warheads." http://t.uani.com/1cjndpp
RFE/RL:
"The head of Russian nuclear regulator Rosatom has said that state
company will soon sign documents transferring operational control of the
Bushehr nuclear power plant to Iran. 'Bushehr is currently operating at
100-percent capacity and the process of preparing it for transfer to the
project originator is concluding,' Rosatom's Sergei Kiriyenko said. The
'project originator' is Iran. Rosatom's construction wing, Atomstroyeksport,
finished construction at Bushehr, after a German company started in the
mid-1970s but pulled out of after the 1979 Iranian revolution. The
government in Tehran signed the Bushehr contract with Russia in 1995.
Bushehr reached full capacity at the end of August 2012." http://t.uani.com/19RYo2e
Sanctions
Reuters: "India is thinking of
providing a 20 billion rupee ($327 million) state guarantee to back local
insurance for refineries that use Iranian oil and therefore cannot get
foreign cover due to Western sanctions, an industry source said. The
government has previously ruled out such a guarantee but a drop in
India's currency to record lows means it is keen to boost oil imports
from Iran, which has agreed to be paid in rupees, as dollar-priced oil
imports have grown more expensive. The finance ministry is now willing to
consider covering half of a planned total 40 billion rupee fund for
underwriting such insurance, to which the oil ministry and local insurers
would contribute 10 billion rupees each... Two state-run refiners have
had to halt imports from Iran since April because of problems in securing
insurance for their refineries. That helped cut India's imports from Iran
by more than half in June." http://t.uani.com/1czy0uY
Terrorism
Daily Beast:
"Following a report by a leading Argentinian prosecutor, the State
Department has decided to reexamine its own assessment of Iran's growing
infrastructure to support terrorist activities in Latin America. 'For the
first time in the Argentine and world judicial history, it has been
gathered and substantiated in a judicial file, evidence that proved the
steps taken by a terrorist regime, the Islamic Republic of Iran, to
infiltrate, for decades, large regions of Latin America, through the
establishment of clandestine intelligence stations and operative agents
which are used to execute terrorist attacks when the Iranian regime
decides so, both directly or through its proxy, the terrorist
organization Hezbollah,' wrote Alberto Nisman in his 500-page May report on
Iran's Latin America strategy. Nisman was the original prosecutor
assigned to the 1994 bombing of the Argentine Israelite Mutual
Association (AMIA), which he contends was carried out by Hezbollah with
Iranian government support. Iranian involvement in Latin America extended
to several other plots as well, including a 2010 attempt to attack JFK
airport in New York, a plot that was thwarted by U.S. law enforcement,
according to his report." http://t.uani.com/19S1wuY
Foreign Affairs
AP:
"Iran's top leader lashed out at the United States on Friday, saying
that America is not a good mediator in Mideast peace talks because it
allegedly always sides with Israel. The comments by Ayatollah Ali
Khamenei came ahead of the second round of U.S.-brokered Israeli-Palestinian
peace talks next week. The talks resumed after a five-year freeze.
Khamenei argued that the results of any U.S.-hosted talks will eventually
damage the Palestinian side and force the Palestinians to 'abandon their
rights and encourage the occupier.' 'The U.S. is not a real mediator, it
stands by the Zionists,' said Khamenei. 'Definitely .... it is against
the interests of the Palestinians.'" http://t.uani.com/14C5oiA
Opinion &
Analysis
Amos Yadlin &
Avner Golov in NYT: "Is Iran finally ready to talk?
Iran's new president, Hassan Rouhani, has said he's ready for nuclear
negotiations. And in recent weeks, the Iranian government has repeatedly
expressed its desire to reach a deal on its uranium enrichment program...
But it would be dangerous to think that Iran's proposal for negotiations
alone would pave the way for a deal. What matters is not the talks but
the outcome. Whoever negotiates with Iran must acknowledge that the
enrichment of uranium from a low level (3.5 percent to 19.75 percent) to
weapons-grade level (90 percent) is only one of three dimensions of
Iran's nuclear strategy. A second dimension is Iran's progress toward a
quick 'breakout capability' through the stockpiling of large quantities
of low-enriched uranium that could be further enriched rapidly to provide
weapons-grade fuel. Third, Iran also appears to be pursuing a parallel
track to a nuclear capability through the production of plutonium. If
there is going to be a nuclear deal with Iran, all three parts of its
strategy must be addressed. In the past year, Iran has installed
thousands of centrifuges, including more than 1,000 advanced ones. A
report by the International Atomic Energy Agency states that Iran already
has enough low-enriched uranium to produce several nuclear bombs if it chooses
to further enrich the fuel. Iran has deliberately refrained from crossing
what is perceived as Israel's red line: 240 kilograms (about 530 pounds)
of uranium enriched to a level of 19.75 percent. Nonetheless, Western
experts like Graham T. Allison Jr. and Olli Heinonen estimate that if
Iran decided to develop a bomb today, it could do so within three to five
months. That is assumed to be sufficient lead time for the West to detect
and respond to an Iranian decision. But a recent report from the Institute
for Science and International Security estimates that at the current pace
of installation, Iran could reduce its breakout time to just one month by
the end of this year. The report also estimates that at that pace, by
mid-2014 Iran could reduce the breakout time to less than two weeks. Any
agreement must ensure that an Iranian breakout is detected quickly enough
to allow for a Western response - meaning that the international
community must be able to uncover any concealed facilities and activities
for the production of fissile material. A solution will also have to
address the potential for a plutonium bomb. In May, Iran announced that
the heavy-water reactor in Arak would become operational early next year.
Some American and European officials claim that Iran could produce
weapons-grade plutonium next summer. These two announcements indicate
that Iran is making progress on this alternative track. So far, the West
has not paid much attention to the potential for a plutonium-fueled
weapon. Now it must do so. A functioning nuclear reactor in Arak could
eventually allow Iran to produce sufficient quantities of plutonium for
nuclear bombs. Although Iran would need to build a reprocessing facility
to separate the plutonium from the uranium in order to produce a bomb,
that should not be the West's primary concern. Western negotiators should
instead demand that Iran shut down the Arak reactor. This is crucial
because the West would likely seek to avoid an attack on a 'hot' reactor,
lest it cause widespread environmental damage. Once Arak is operational,
it would effectively be immune from attack and the West would be deprived
of its primary 'stick' in its efforts to persuade Iran to forgo a
military nuclear capability. Of the three countries that have publicly crossed
the nuclear threshold since the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty entered
into force in 1970, two - India and North Korea - did so via the
plutonium track. In order to deny Iran this route, any agreement between
the West and Iran must guarantee that Iran will not retain a breakout or
'sneak out' plutonium-production capacity." http://t.uani.com/11Rf8S2
John Reed in FP:
"You're looking at what may be the launch site that Iran is secretly
building for its first intercontinental ballistic missiles. And that
means Tehran could be inching dangerously close to striking foes from
thousands of miles away. This complex, revealed by Jane's
Intelligence Review last night, appears to be Iran's latest space launch
facility. However, this site, located about 35-40 kilometers southeast of
the town of Shahrud, may be geared toward testing ICBMs instead of
rockets meant to loft satellites into orbit. 'Imagery analysis of the
Shahrud site suggests it will be a strategic facility used to test
ballistic missiles, leaving the other two sites free to handle Iran's
ambitious program of satellite launches,' Matthew Clements, Editor at IHS
Jane's Military and Security Assessments Centre, said in a statement. How
can you tell? Jane's says that July 2013 satellite imagery of the site
shows rocket assembly buildings and a launch tower that are significantly
smaller than those found at Iran's other space launch facility, near the
town of Semnan. This may reflect the fact that the Shahrud facility is
built to accommodate smaller, truck-mounted ballistic missiles compared
instead of much larger satellite-lifting rockets. (Remember, ICBMs aren't
always launched from silos the way America's Minuteman III missiles are.
Iran may well be trying to develop truck-launched ICBMs resembling those
found in Russia and China.) The new site also lacks a liquid-fuel storage
facility needed to support the rockets that hoist Iranian satellites into
space. Furthermore, the launch pad at Shahrud looks to Jane's like it's
been built to support the weight of the larger missile carrying trucks
that will lob ballistic missiles skyward. 'One explanation for the
different pad sizes is that the one at Shahrud is designed to handle test
launches of ballistic missiles fired from transporter-erector launcher
(TEL) vehicles rather than [space launch vehicles],' reads the private
intelligence firm's report on the site. All of these signs point to Iran
possibly getting ready to start testing a no-kidding intercontinental
ballistic missile. 'Iran's claim that its 2,000 km-range, solid-fuel
Sejjil missile is already in service after two tests suggests the next
stage in the program will be the development of an intercontinental
ballistic missile,' claims Jane's. Adding some credence to the theory is
the Pentagon's 2012 estimate that Iran will be able to test an ICBM by
2015." http://t.uani.com/14cw2rh
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Eye on Iran is a periodic news summary from United Against
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