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Top Stories
Reuters:
"A senior western diplomat cautioned on Thursday that any
breakthrough in diplomacy over Iran's nuclear program was not 'close',
seeking to dampen expectations the next round of talks on November 7-8
could lead to a deal. Western negotiators have described two days of
nuclear talks with Iran in Geneva on Tuesday and Wednesday as the most
detailed and serious to date after Tehran hinted it was ready to scale
back sensitive atomic work to secure sanctions relief. Despite the
improved atmosphere, diplomats said major differences remained between
western governments, which suspect Iran's nuclear work has covert
military goals, and Tehran, which denies that and demands the lifting of
crippling economic sanctions. In Brussels, a senior diplomat said the talks
in Geneva - the first such meeting since relative moderate President
Hassan Rouhani took office in Iran in August - had left negotiators 'more
reassured than we were before.' 'We learned more about their program and
their concerns,' the diplomat said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
'However, it doesn't mean we are close to a solution and that we will
have an agreement next month.'" http://t.uani.com/1fI47Ky
Al-Monitor:
"Iran has put forward a new proposal to resolve the nuclear crisis
that includes a freeze on production of 20% enriched uranium, a pledge to
convert its stockpile to fuel rods and an agreement to relinquish spent
fuel for a still-to-be completed heavy water reactor, according to an
Iranian source who has proven reliable in the past The offers, combined
with increased scrutiny by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA),
are meant to provide confidence that Iran could not quickly break out of
its nuclear obligations and make nuclear weapons... While the plan
contains interesting new ideas, it does not meet previous demands by the
United States and its negotiating partners for removing Iran's stockpile
of 20% uranium from Iran, suspending operations at Fordow and halting
work on Arak. It also does not address Iran's growing stock of low-enriched
uranium - some 10,000 kilograms [22,046 pounds]." http://t.uani.com/1bF6vwS
NYT:
"The Obama administration, in the wake of a promising first round of
nuclear diplomacy with Iran, is weighing a proposal to ease the pain of
sanctions on Tehran by offering it access to billions of dollars in
frozen funds if the Iranian government takes specific steps to curb its
nuclear program, a senior administration official said Thursday. Such a
plan, under which the United States could free up Iran's frozen overseas
assets in installments, would avoid the political and diplomatic risks of
repealing the sanctions, which had been agreed to by a diverse coalition
of countries, the official said. It would also give President Obama the
flexibility to respond to Iranian offers that emerge from the
negotiations without unraveling the global sanctions regime the
administration has spent years cobbling together. The official likened
the plan, which is still being debated inside the White House and the
State Department, to opening and closing a financial spigot... 'The
Iranians are looking for fundamental sanctions relief,' said Ray Takeyh,
an expert on Iran at the Council on Foreign Relations. 'I'm not sure
whether they'd accept phased access to their own money.'" http://t.uani.com/19dTtWE
Nuclear
Program
Reuters: "France is treating
Iranian overtures to the international community over its nuclear program
with caution and is waiting to see concrete proposals, French Foreign
Minister Laurent Fabius said on Thursday... 'We are waiting for
substantive change,' Fabius told parliament. 'Given what he know on Iran,
the Guide (Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei) being the same, we are
compelled to be cautiously open.' ... 'It is too early to draw
conclusions," Fabius said. 'France will not mix up appearances with
reality.'" http://t.uani.com/17R059R
Algemeiner:
"Iran continues to woo the West in talks over concessions vis-a-vis
the country's nuclear program. But Gary Samore, President of United
Against a Nuclear Iran-which describes itself as a non-partisan,
broad-based coalition committed to preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear
weapons- and formerly one of U.S. President Barack Obama's point men at
the National Security Council on these issues, believes Iran is all style
and no substance. 'What they're offering is really no different than what
we've heard from the previous government, from Ahmadinejad's government
for the last couple of years,' Samore told journalists on Wednesday.
'They continue to reject any physical limits on their enrichment capacity
- meaning the number and type of centrifuge machines, the stockpile of
enriched material that they have in country.' ... 'I fear that one of the
reasons why these negotiations will not proceed to a comprehensive
agreement is because the supreme leader [Ayatollah Khamanei] may very
well miscalculate and believe that Iran is in a stronger position than it
really is. And it may be necessary for the U.S. and its allies to proceed
with additional sanctions before he recognizes the need to make any
really significant concessions,' Samore said." http://t.uani.com/17R2Ac0
Human Rights
NYT:
"Death penalty opponents pleaded with Iran on Thursday to spare a
convicted drug felon who survived a hanging and was sent from the morgue
to a hospital to recuperate so he could be rehanged. It appeared to be
the first time that the judicial authorities in Iran, one of the world's
top users of the death penalty, twice ordered a hanging carried
out...Hadi Ghaemi, the executive director of the International Campaign
for Human Rights in Iran, a New York-based advocacy group, said the order
'does appear to be setting a precedent to the best of our knowledge in
cases of hanging.' Mr. Ghaemi said in a report posted on his group's Web
site last week that the rate of hanging executions in Iran has
accelerated in recent weeks, even as Hassan Rouhani, Iran's president,
has sought to convey a softer and gentler image of Iran abroad. At least
125 people have been hanged since Mr. Rouhani took office in August, Mr.
Ghaemi asserted, many of them for drug-related offenses." http://t.uani.com/19WeiJ2
BuzzFeed:
"Iran will set a date this week for hearings into the cases of 17 to
20 people detained during a raid on a party in the Iranian city of
Kermanshah described as a 'network of homosexuals and satanists,' the
Iranian Queer Organization (IRQO) told BuzzFeed. A total of 75
people were arrested in the raid, IRQO's Farrokh Nikmaram said. Contrary
to earlier reports, none was a foreigner, he said. Further details remain
murky. Nikmaram said his group did not know exactly how many people would
be charged following the Oct. 9 raid by forces associated with the
Revolutionary Guard, nor what they would be charged with. Charges of
homosexual relations could carry the death penalty." http://t.uani.com/19aOLZX
Domestic
Politics
Reuters:
"Four months after President Hassan Rouhani's election, Iran is
reviewing the house arrest of two opposition leaders, but conservatives
may fear the consequences of freeing men who remain heroes to many
Iranians. Mirhossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karoubi, candidates who led the
'Green Movement' that disputed the 2009 re-election of Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad, have never been charged with any crime. Yet both men, former
top officials now in their 70s and in ill health, have been held under
tight surveillance since early 2011. But now, as Iran seems keen to heal
old conflicts both at home and with the West, their living conditions
have been eased and their case referred to a powerful state security
council... Earlier this month, Minister of Justice Mostafa Pour Mohammadi
announced their cases were being re-examined by the Supreme National Security
Council (SNSC)." http://t.uani.com/1bF1qEJ
NYT:
"During his presidential election campaign, Hassan Rouhani excited
Iranians' expectations by promising to get suffocating Western sanctions
lifted and revive the economy while increasing personal freedoms: opening
up access to the Internet and taking the much-hated morality police off
the streets, among other things... Four months after Mr. Rouhani's
election and two months after his installation as president, people here
in the capital are still waiting for the great changes that most of them
are longing for. But even if their immediate hopes have been dampened,
most here say they are relieved to see the last of the previous
president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and his confrontational policies, and are
savoring an emotion that had been absent for years: hope." http://t.uani.com/176ormm
Opinion
& Analysis
WashPost Editorial: "Though few
details of Iran's new offer on its nuclear program have been released,
two broad points were clear following this week's negotiations in Geneva.
One is encouraging: The Iranian government is more serious than it has
been in years about negotiating a deal with the United States and its
five partners. The other is ominous: Tehran is still insisting that it
will never give up its capability to enrich uranium, which is the key to
nuclear weapons production. The detailed proposal set out by Foreign
Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif was a stark change from previous rounds of
negotiations, which featured filibustering by Iranian negotiators who
offered only vague ideas. Mr. Zarif made clear that Iran is eager to come
to an agreement that would lift the sanctions crippling its economy. He
reportedly talked about finalizing an accord within three to six months.
Several reports, including one by Iran's state news agency, suggested
that the plan includes limits on the degree to which uranium would be
enriched and on the number of centrifuges, as well as acceptance of a
more aggressive U.N. inspection regime... Mr. Zarif is saying that Iran's
'right' to enrich uranium must be recognized, and it appears Tehran may
be unwilling to take even the interim, confidence-building steps proposed
by the United States unless this principle is conceded. This position is
troubling. No 'right' to enrich uranium exists in the Non-Proliferation
Treaty. Nor is enrichment needed for a nuclear power program: Many
countries using nuclear power do not enrich their own uranium. On the
other hand, as Mr. Rouhani himself said in a 2005 speech, a 'country that
possesses this capability is able to produce nuclear weapons.' Iran's
insistence on enrichment appears meant to preserve a capability for
nuclear breakout after sanctions are lifted. The Obama administration has
been hinting that it could accept some Iranian enrichment, provided it
was under strict controls. But any such deal would pose political
challenges. Israel and France remain opposed to any Iranian enrichment,
as do many members of Congress... We believe it is worth exploring a
settlement that permits a token amount of enrichment while locking down
the program to minimize the chance of an undetected breakout. Certainly
this would be preferable to military action. But such a deal would
require far greater concessions than the regime appears to be contemplating.
As Russia's deputy foreign minister put it in Geneva, the sides remain
'kilometers apart.' And since Iran has yet to slow its enrichment, time
is running out." http://t.uani.com/16U7WYb
Ilan Berman in
Forbes: "Ever since the modern Iran sanctions era started
in 1996, U.S. economic pressure wasn't specifically tailored to Tehran's
pursuit of WMD. Instead, for more than a decade-and-a-half, U.S.
sanctions have focused on the totality of Iran's rogue behavior, from
nuclear development to human rights abuses to support for international
terrorism. And even though Tehran might be beginning to play ball on the
nuclear front, it certainly isn't on the others. Rather, as the State
Department's most recent Country Reports on Terrorism makes clear, Iran
not only remains a major state sponsor of terrorism but has actually
stepped up its "terror-related activity" in Asia, the Middle
East and elsewhere in recent months. On human rights, too, Iran's
policies remain deeply troubling; the February 2013 report of the UN Special
Rapporteur for human rights in Iran, for example, found continued
systemic violations of freedom of expression and the widespread official
use of torture as a political instrument. And little on this front
appears to have changed since Rouhani's inauguration back in August.
These issues, however, have taken a back-burner to Iran's nuclear file of
late, as the Obama administration has scrambled for some sort of
compromise with Tehran-one that now seems within reach. As a result, the
White House is in danger of effectively becoming a lobbyist for the
Islamic Republic, one that will need to coax and cajole a reluctant
Legislative Branch into turning a blind eye to Iran's other deformities
because of tactical successes on the nuclear front. That's not just bad
policy; it's also a ruinous legacy for an Administration that has become
obsessed with leaving a lasting one on foreign affairs. President Obama
has pinned a great deal of hope on avoiding a confrontation with Iran's
ayatollahs over their nuclear ambitions. And because he has, his
Administration now runs the risk of going down in the history books as
the moment that America stopped caring about Iran's human rights
atrocities and fomentation of radicalism abroad. All of which can hardly
be considered a victory-either for us or for the Iranian people." http://t.uani.com/19Xq7Nn
Patrick Clawson in
WINEP: "Among the participants in the October 15-16
Iran nuclear talks in Geneva was the U.S. official who administers most
of Washington's sanctions against the regime -- Adam Szubin, director of
the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). His
presence, and the agreement that sanctions experts would have a follow-up
meeting before the next round of negotiations on November 7, was a sign that
the United States is willing to discuss easing sanctions if Tehran takes
steps to scale back the troubling parts of its nuclear program. The U.S.
government has imposed many different sanctions on Iran under many
different legal authorities -- some by executive order, some by
legislation -- raising questions about what relief the president could
provide without congressional approval. In addition to obvious measures
such as lifting executive orders and using his waiver authority to bypass
restrictions imposed by law, the president has other options should he
find it necessary to offer timely sanctions relief in exchange for
substantive Iranian compromises... The extent to which President Obama
can provide sanctions relief to Iran is largely a political question. He
may find it advantageous -- either for domestic political reasons or as a
bargaining technique with Tehran -- to complain that his hands are tied
by Congress. Although that argument would be true in terms of the law, it
is definitely not true with regard to de facto sanctions relief. If the
administration deems it necessary to erode sanctions in order to reach a
nuclear deal, reducing enforcement and eschewing action against the many
new front companies Iran is constantly creating would do the trick."
http://t.uani.com/1d2sO3h
Andrew Apostolou
in The Daily Beast: "Following the first round of
nuclear talks with Iran in Geneva, a proposal is circulating to allow
Iran conditional access to some of its sanctioned cash. The proposal,
reported by Jeffrey Goldberg and apparently originating with Mark
Dubowitz at Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), would provide
sanctions relief without formally lifting the sanctions. The basic idea
is to pay Iran for concessions on its nuclear program to prevent it from
advancing toward a nuclear weapons capability. There is impetus for this
approach from the U.S. and Iran. The Obama Administration wants to give
Iran an incentive to reduce its nuclear activities, and 'put some time on
the clock' according to one anonymous official, while maintaining
sanctions in case Iran backslides. The Iranian regime may also welcome
this suggestion. The Iranian economy is suffering, which has forced the
regime to negotiate. Iran has more than $50 billion in oil revenues in overseas
banks that it cannot get its hands on. Dubowitz therefore suggests
putting a price on Iranian nuclear concessions, letting Iran earn some of
the money currently out of reach because of sanctions. This sounds like a
deal, except that the proposal could turn the nuclear talks into a ransom
negotiation. By pricing apparent nuclear concessions, the proposal would
encourage Iran to dress up minor alterations as significant moves and
financially exploit its flouting of international non-proliferation norms.
Such an approach has been tried before. During the Cold War, the West
Germans used to pay the East Germans to release political prisoners and
allow them to emigrate. The East Germans may have been communists, but
they understood a business opportunity. The West Germans ended up
ransoming East Germans whose dissident activity was minor to
non-existent. The other problem with Dubowitz's idea is that it obviates
a core principle of sanctions: denying Iran access to liquidity. The U.S.
and its allies have imposed the most stringent set of international
financial measures ever because the Iranian regime cannot be trusted with
cash. Instead, the Dubowitz proposal allows access to cash, which is
easily abused, in return for cheating less, which Iran should not be doing
in the first place. This creates potential for a rift in the P5+1, (the
five permanent members of the UN Security Council and Germany), which
Iran is encouraging. What will the reaction be if cash released for
'improved' nuclear behavior is misused? Iran will argue, and some in the
P5+1 will agree, that the diversion of a few million dollars should not
derail the process of negotiation. Yet the whole strength of sanctions
has been that they have been relentless and uncompromising. The Iranian
regime's constant maneuvering has had little effect on slowing the
sanctions juggernaut. Except now Iran is being offered sanctions relief
in return for sending the same old diplomats to Geneva, but this time
smiling, and offering the same old proposals, but this time in a
PowerPoint presentation. This is a bad deal that the U.S. should not
accept." http://t.uani.com/1fIcJAF
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Eye on Iran is a periodic news summary from United Against
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