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Top Stories
Reuters:
"The House of Representatives easily passed a bill on Wednesday to
tighten sanctions on Iran, showing a strong message to Tehran over its
disputed nuclear program days before President-elect Hassan Rouhani is
sworn in. The vote also highlighted a growing divide between Congress and
the Obama administration on Iran policy ahead of international talks on the
nuclear program in coming months. Iran insists the nuclear program is
purely for civilian purposes. The bill, which passed 400 to 20, would cut
Iran's oil exports by another 1 million barrels per day over a year to near
zero, in an attempt to reduce the flow of funds to the nuclear program. It
is the first sanctions bill to put a number on exactly how much Iran's oil
exports would be cut. The legislation provides for heavy penalties for
buyers who do not find alternative supplies, limits Iran's access to funds
in overseas accounts and penalizes countries trading with Iran in other
industrial sectors... Rep. Ed Royce, a California Republican and Chairman of
the House Foreign Affairs Committee who introduced the bill with Rep. Eliot
Engel, a New York Democrat, said the United States has no higher national
security priority than preventing a nuclear-armed Iran. Royce said the
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's drive to develop a nuclear arsenal
was evident. 'New president or not, I am convinced that Iran's Supreme
Leader intends to continue on this path,' he said." http://t.uani.com/1cgY9yy
Al-Monitor:
"The head of Iran's Commission Export Chamber of Commerce has warned
that Iran can expect food shortages in the coming months. Meanwhile, a
deputy in Iranian customs has said that 330 tons of medicine is currently
stuck in Tehran's Imam Khomeini International airport due to issues
stemming from Iran's multiple exchange rates. Assadollah Asgarolladi, the
head of the Export Chamber of Commerce and one of the wealthiest and most
influential businessmen in Iran, said, 'Unfortunately, with the events that
have taken place recently, and the differences between the Central Bank,
Ministry of Industry and Trade and Customs, during the next two months the
country will encounter a deficit and shortage of goods.' 'A set of goods
have been deposited in customs,' Asgarolladi said. 'Most of the goods are
perishable, and a heavy cost is paid to keep them refrigerated.' He
continued, 'There are 10,000 containers of food and medicine in the ports
in the south of Iran and 5,000 containers in Port of Jebel Ali in Dubai
that are waiting for this problem to be solved and to receive the sum they
desire.'" http://t.uani.com/1cetge0
RFE/RL:
"Iranian officials are pulling out all the stops for Hassan Rohani's
presidential inauguration. Invitations were reportedly sent to leaders
across the globe to travel to Tehran for the August 4 swearing-in ceremony.
Officials have highlighted the expected presence of 200 journalists,
including 50 representing media outlets from 16 foreign countries. But with
just days to go, the VIP guest list is noticeably thin, with even some of
Iran's closest allies opting not to send their heads of state. Iranian
officials say that at least 40 countries responded positively to the
invitation, with 10 presidents and three prime ministers among those making
the trip." http://t.uani.com/1chd1wP
Nuclear Program
Global Security
Newswire: "Iran is poised to activate 5,000 more
uranium enrichment centrifuges, increasing its count of the operating
machines by more than 40 percent, the country's departing president said
earlier this week. 'Twelve thousand centrifuge machines are now running in
our nuclear sites and 5,000 new centrifuges are ready to start operation,'
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Sunday in televised remarks quoted by
the Tehran Times." http://t.uani.com/15xSoax
Bloomberg:
"Iranian President-elect Hassan Rohani once complained that the
Islamic Republic's leaders tend to take extreme positions in negotiations
with the West and find it hard to compromise. Rohani is about to get a
chance to prove he can do better. The former negotiator, who wrote a book
about his experience as a nuclear diplomat, will be inaugurated as
president on Sunday. He won the June 14 election promising to ease a
standoff with the U.S. and revive an economy crippled by sanctions that
reflect Iran's growing isolation under outgoing President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Failure risks exposing Iran to a military attack by Israel, which says it
considers a nuclear-armed Iran as an existential threat, or the U.S.
Success may depend on Rohani's ability to leverage connections with Iran's
powerful non-elected bodies and most of all with Ayatollah Ali Khamenei,
the top decision-maker, whom he first met four decades ago during the early
days of Islamist opposition to the Shah. 'Rohani can do a deal because the
Supreme Leader trusts him,' said Peter Jenkins, the U.K. Ambassador to the
International Atomic Energy Agency in the period when Rohani was Iran's
negotiator. 'He is a defender of Iranian interests and will drive a hard
but honest bargain.'" http://t.uani.com/142eMsz
Sanctions
Daily News (Tanzania): "In response to
recent fresh allegations that some Iranian tankers have been detected using
Tanzanian identification codes, Zanzibar has asked all port authorities
around the world to take stern measures against them. The Zanzibar Maritime
Authority (ZMA) Director, Mr Abdi Maalim, said that what the Iranian
tankers are doing is unacceptable. 'We (Zanzibar) nullified our contract
with the 36 Iranian tankers to avoid falling victim with the international
community. We do not want any conflict,' he said. It has been reported that
despite Zanzibar deregistering the tankers, at least three ships owned by
the NITC have started emitting a wireless number starting with '677?' the
country code signalling a Tanzanian flag, according to shipping databases
Marine Traffic and Fleetmon. The code can be used, for example, to give a
distress signal. The vessels are also using a call sign - a unique
identifier given by flag registration authorities -with a prefix that
corresponds to the African country. 'I have written to our main urgent in
Dubai Philtex asking to be watchful.'" http://t.uani.com/1354gxn
Reuters:
"India's Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals Ltd plans to resume
Iranian oil imports from August, after stopping for four months, because it
has found no suitable alternatives, an industry source with knowledge of
the matter said. Resumption of shipments by MRPL, Iran's top Indian client
until it stopped purchases in April, will help to revive the country's
Iranian oil imports. India's intake of Iranian crude fell by 40 percent in
the April-June quarter, as refiner Essar Oil became Iran's lone Indian
client. Hindustan Petroleum Corp and MRPL both halted their Iranian oil
buys amid difficulties securing insurance for refineries processing oil
from the sanctions-hit country. 'Other crudes are not giving the right
price margin. They are not of right type of quality and are not available
at the right time,' said the source. 'All these problems are there.'" http://t.uani.com/11wQ2HY
Reuters:
"Russia said on Thursday a vote by the U.S. House of Representatives
to tighten sanctions against Iran would not help resolve the dispute over
Tehran's nuclear program... Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov
said that United Nations Security Council sanctions already in place
against Tehran were sufficient. He suggested the U.S. bill, which still has
more steps to clear before becoming law, was counterproductive. 'Any
additional sanctions are actually aimed at the economic strangulation of
Iran, but not at solving the problem of non-proliferation,' Gatilov told
Interfax news agency. 'What has been done through the Security Council is
quite adequate and sufficient.'" http://t.uani.com/14HbZ40
Syrian Civil War
AFP:
"Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri said that Lebanese Shiite militant
group Hezbollah had been exposed as a tool of Iranian expansionism, in an
audio message posted online on Wednesday. Zawahiri said that Hezbollah
leader Hassan Nasrallah's public acknowledgement in late April that its
fighters had intervened in neighbouring Syria in support of President
Bashar al-Assad, a key Tehran ally, 'tore off the mask he always hid
behind.' 'The jihadist uprising in Muslim Syria has exposed the ugly face
of Hasan Nasrallah, the head of the rejectionist (Shiite) Safavid (Iranian)
plan for Syria,' the Al-Qaeda leader said. Sunni extremists describe
Shiites as rejectionists. The Safavids were an Iranian imperial dynasty of
the 16th and 17th centuries. 'It has been revealed to the Islamic Umma
(faithful) that he is just an instrument in the rejectionist Safavid plan
that aims to spread the hegemony of the vali-e faqih,' he said, referring
to Iranian supreme leader Ayatollahi Ali Khamenei." http://t.uani.com/1crYQ6L
Terrorism
NYT:
"The food boxes bore the logo of Islamic Jihad and the Iranian flag
alongside the Palestinian one. Islamic Jihad, an Iranian-backed extremist
militant group, often challenges the larger Hamas. Organizers at the
packaging center said that the Imam Khomeini Relief Foundation, a
Beirut-based Iranian charity, was financing the $2 million food aid
project. Islamic Jihad has been granted the honors of distributing the
40,000 parcels, giving it a boost at a delicate time when Hamas is
struggling to cope with a shifting regional landscape. In recent months,
Iran has suspended millions of dollars in monthly aid to Hamas because the
group did not stand by President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, its former
patron, in his struggle against rebel forces. Unlike Hamas, Islamic Jihad
did not leave its base in Damascus and has kept up relations with the
government of Mr. Assad, a longtime Iranian ally. Mkhaimar Abusada, a
political science professor at Al Azhar University in Gaza, said that the
food relief served as an Iranian reminder to Hamas that Iran was its only
reliable backer." http://t.uani.com/1crZKjo
Human Rights
AP:
"Iran's supreme leader is urging Iranians to avoid all dealings with
members of the banned Baha'i sect in a possible prelude to further crackdowns
on the minority. Iran already bans the Baha'i, which considers a 19th
century Persian nobleman as the final prophet. The fatwa, or religious
edict, by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is his latest against the
group. It supports similar fatwas in the past by other clerics. An Iranian
news website, Tasnim, reported Wednesday that Khamenei called the Baha'i
'deviant and misleading.'" http://t.uani.com/142f2b5
VOA:
"Iran, with a little help from China, is putting together its own
closed version of the Internet to keep its citizens from viewing material
it considers unsuitable. Experts say the project is struggling and unlikely
to work. The project, begun a few years ago, is driven by concerns over
national security as well as censorship, according to Mahmoud Enayat,
director of Small Media, a London-based organization that works to increase
the flow of information in closed societies... Some equipment is still
being acquired clandestinely, said Enayat. But more often, he said the
hardware comes from Chinese companies or proxy companies in Malaysia or
Thailand. 'No Western companies sell this equipment to Iran because ...
there's been enough pressure by the Western governments on Western
companies that sell these things,' Enayat said. 'The Chinese is where the
problem is still there. And actually the Chinese government doesn't care.
The companies themselves, because of fear of losing business in the U.S.,
have slowed it down, but they haven't shut it down completely.'" http://t.uani.com/1edyW4s
Domestic Politics
Bloomberg:
"Four million tons of food and medicines are stranded in Iranian
customs because of disagreements between the central bank and the Commerce
Ministry over access to a preferential currency exchange rate for importers
of essential goods, local media reported... 'We all admit that Iran's
foreign currency revenues have dropped,' said Majid-Reza Ansari, who heads
the imports committee at Iran's Chamber of Commerce. 'Still, we need to
properly manage the existing revenues rather than avoid allocating
currencies and disrupting the market.' Asadollah Asgaroladi, head of the
Chamber of Commerce's export committee, said it was likely there would be
shortages of some essential goods in the absence of a quick solution, the
Iranian Labor News Agency said yesterday. Masoud Daneshmand, a member of
the Tehran chamber of commerce's board of representatives, expressed
similar concerns in the Shagh report today. 'If the dispute is not resolved
and relegated to the next administration it may not be possible for the
goods to be cleared before October,' Daneshmand said, 'which means much of
the foodstuff will perish.'" http://t.uani.com/13pz9QL
Reuters:
"A wave of optimism has swept Iran since Hassan Rouhani was elected
president last month, but as he takes office on Sunday the moderate cleric
has a monumental task to resolve the nuclear dispute, ease stringent
sanctions and revive a failing economy. If that were not enough, he has to
do this while trying to satisfy the demands of his reformist allies while outflanking
the conservatives he defeated, but who still dominate parliament and are
deeply embedded within the state. But no matter what progress, if any,
Rouhani makes towards resolving Iran's myriad problems, President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad's eight years in office are at an end, to the relief of his
critics at home and abroad." http://t.uani.com/1edyoLX
Foreign Affairs
Reuters:
"Britain's Foreign Secretary William Hague said on Wednesday he was
willing to meet his Iranian counterpart to discuss the two countries'
frosty relationship, following the election of a new president in Iran.
Britain, at odds with Iran over its nuclear program and other issues, shut
its embassy in Tehran after what it called "an attack by
government-sponsored militias" on the mission in November 2011. Iran's
embassy in London was also closed. The Foreign Office said in a statement
that Hague was ready to meet Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi to
discuss relations on a 'step-by-step' and a 'reciprocal' basis. He also
stressed the need for urgent progress to resolve international concerns
about Iran's nuclear program." http://t.uani.com/16aqBMd
Reuters:
"Russian leader Vladimir Putin will meet Iran's newly elected
president for the first time in Kyrgyzstan in September, the Islamic
Republic's ambassador to Moscow said on Wednesday. Russian and Iranian
media reported last week that the Russian president would go to Iran in
August for talks with Hassan Rouhani on Tehran's nuclear program. But
Ambassador Seyed Mahmoud-Reza Sajjadi told a news conference that these
reports were false, and that Putin's first talks with Rouhani would be on
the sidelines of a summit of the six-nation Shanghai Cooperation
Organization in the Kyrgyz capital, Bishkek, on September 13." http://t.uani.com/1aYJYuK
Opinion &
Analysis
Gary Samore in CFR:
"With the inauguration of President Hassan Rowhani, nuclear expert
Gary Samore says he is optimistic that a direct dialogue between the United
States and Iran may develop, but he does not foresee an early breakthrough
on the nuclear issue. He says bilateral talks would allow both sides to
discuss a more comprehensive agreement and 'what kind of nuclear
constraints we would expect in exchange for relieving sanctions that are
really doing the most damage--the oil and banking sanctions.' Rowhani has a
good reputation as a nuclear negotiator, Samore says, but for nearly a
decade, Iran has failed to assuage concerns about its intent to produce
weapons-grade material... What
are the United States and its allies seeking as a minimum from the Iranians
to get things moving? The approach that the P5+1 have taken
over the last five years of negotiations has been to propose very modest
confidence-building measures as a first step toward an effort to negotiate
a more comprehensive agreement. The most recent proposal the P5+1 made in
Almaty, Kazakhstan, earlier this year was that Iran would shut down the
Fordow enrichment facility; it would remove a large portion of its 20
percent enriched uranium; and it would cease or suspend further production
of 20 percent enriched uranium. In exchange, the P5 + 1 offered modest
sanctions relief, in particular sanctions on petro chemicals and precious
metals. The idea is that getting some progress on a modest step would
create conditions for trying to negotiate a more comprehensive agreement.
But the truth is that the P5+1 are very far apart themselves on what a
comprehensive agreement would look like, but they could all agree on what
an initial step could look like. What's
Iran's response? Iran's position is that they would temporarily
suspend production of 20 percent enriched uranium, but they want all
sanctions relieved, including the ones that really matter the most, which
are the oil and the financial sanctions. So the P5+1 talks have really
gotten stuck over huge differences in substance in terms of what the P5+1
were demanding and what they were prepared to give in exchange. These very
large differences in substance are likely to continue because I don't see
any indication that either Iran or the P5+1 are going to dramatically
change their positions in terms of what kind of sanction relief would be
provided in exchange for what kind of nuclear constraints." http://t.uani.com/11wRMRH
John Hudson in FP:
"To the dismay of liberal Democrats, the House of Representatives
overwhelmingly passed a new round of sanctions against Iran on Wednesday
just as newly-elected President Hassan Rouhani prepares to take office. In
a 400-20 landslide vote, lawmakers passed the Nuclear Iran Prevention Act,
which would compel countries currently purchasing crude oil from Iran to
reduce their combined purchases by a total of 1 million barrels per day
within a year. It also further penalizes individuals who engage in
significant commercial trade with Iran. Given Rouhani's reputation as a
relative moderate who campaigned on engagement with the West, a cohort of
liberal Democrats sought to delay the vote as not to get off on the wrong
foot with Rouhani. But Omid Memarian, an Iranian analyst who has
interviewed a number of officials in Rouhani's inner-circle, tells The
Cable that the sanctions could have a counterintuitive effect. 'It might
seem ironic, but the new sanctions could play into Rouhani's hand,' he
said. 'The sanctions are hurting the Iranian people and they are the ones
who suffer the most, but if Rouhani wants to make a step and stand up
against hardliners who are delusional about the country's dire condition,
both economically and politically, this public pressure helps him to do
something meaningful and sell it to the Iranian leadership.' ... Expert
views are somewhat muddled on the potential damage the House vote could
have on the Obama administration's September talks with Iran. Former U.S.
ambassadors Thomas Pickering and William Luers have advised against a rush
to add more sanctions. Former U.S. Central Command chief Gen. Joseph Hoar
also said the vote 'would send all the wrong signals.' But Memarian isn't
alone in believing that increased U.S. sanctions, or at least the threat of
increased sanctions, could benefit Rouhani. 'Rouhani's main theme in his
campaign was that I am a better diplomat so I can negotiate better and lift
the sanctions,' Mehdi Khalaji, a senior research fellow at the Washington
Institute for Near East Policy, told The Cable. 'I think continuation of
pressure on Iran will help Rouhani to remain relevant.'" http://t.uani.com/1bNMw2H
William C. Witt,
Patrick Migliorini, David Albright & Houston Wood in ISIS:
"ISIS would like to share a paper that may be of interest to technical
audiences. It outlines a method for analyzing one centrifuge cascade
structure recently developed and implemented by Iran. The novel
configuration consists of two conventional cascades interconnected in a
tandem fashion. It presents an extension of the conventional analysis
procedure that is appropriate for tandem cascades. The new method is used
to assess Iran's tandem cascades, including their utility for producing
highly-enriched uranium for nuclear weapons." http://t.uani.com/16axP2V
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