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WashPost:
"The Obama administration on Wednesday acknowledged a widening gulf
with key Middle Eastern allies over nuclear talks with Iran, as Israeli
and Persian Gulf Arab leaders pressed for drastic cuts to Iran's atomic
infrastructure that Tehran has insisted it will never accept. The
differences came into stark relief as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu appeared to lecture Secretary of State John F. Kerry at a joint
news conference, warning against a 'bad deal' that would allow Iran to
retain any capability to make enriched uranium... 'Iran must not have a
nuclear weapons capability, which means that they shouldn't have
centrifuges for enrichment,' Netanyahu told reporters after a private
meeting with Kerry in Rome. '...I think a partial deal that leaves Iran
with these capabilities is a bad deal.' Administration officials say any
agreement with Iran must include a combination of strict curbs on its
nuclear activities and aggressive monitoring to ensure that Iran cannot
use its nuclear facilities to make weapons. A report released Wednesday
by independent nuclear experts said Iran's ability to achieve a nuclear
weapons 'breakout' could be significantly impeded by imposing
restrictions limiting the size of its uranium stockpile and the number
and type of centrifuges it operates. Still, Saudi Arabia and other
Persian Gulf monarchies have joined Israelis in expressing growing dismay
over U.S. suggestions that Iran could be allowed to retain a limited
capability to enrich uranium as part of a comprehensive agreement ending
the decade-old nuclear dispute... To Israelis officials and many
foreign-policy conservatives in Congress, the only fail-safe solution
would be to require complete dismantlement of Iran's uranium-enrichment
program, which has grown since 2003 to include two enrichment plants
containing tens of thousands of fast-spinning centrifuges to make nuclear
fuel. Iran's current, 11-ton stockpile - the result of decades of
investment amounting to much as $200 billion, according to some estimates
- consists of low-enriched uranium of the type used in nuclear power
plants and medical research reactors." http://t.uani.com/18OX3r8
NYT:
"An influential Iranian lawmaker says his country has halted the
production of enriched uranium up to 20 percent, a level that experts say
is only a few technical steps from what is needed to produce a nuclear
weapon. The remarks by the lawmaker, Hossein Naqavi Hosseini, who is the
deputy head of the national security and foreign policy committee in
Parliament, were published on the Parliament's official Web site, Icana,
on Tuesday. No other officials confirmed the news, but Mr. Naqavi
Hosseini and his committee have recently visited nuclear sites and on
Saturday were briefed by one of Iran's main nuclear negotiators, Deputy Foreign
Minister Abbas Araghchi. Mr. Naqavi Hosseini is the first lawmaker of
such stature to make such a statement. If his report is true, then Iran
may be edging closer to accepting one of the main demands of world
powers, that it suspend the enrichment of uranium, especially up to 20
percent... Mr. Naqavi Hosseini said on Tuesday that Iran now had enough
enriched uranium to meet the reactor's needs. 'This site has the required
fuel at the moment and there is no need for more production,' he said,
adding, 'The issue of suspending or halting enrichment is meaningless
because no production is taking place at the moment.' He also said Iran
was not interested in shipping its stockpile of uranium enriched up to 20
percent abroad as part of a nuclear deal, as has been proposed in the
past." http://t.uani.com/1bij6Ft
Reuters:
"Iran's apparent new readiness to address international concerns
about its atomic ambitions will be tested in talks with U.N. inspectors
on Monday, with diplomats hoping for progress such as on access to a
sensitive military site. However, the diplomats say Iran will probably
agree to cooperate fully with an investigation by the U.N. International
Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) only if a broader deal is reached in separate
negotiations with six world powers... The Vienna-based IAEA has been
investigating accusations for several years that Iran may have
coordinated efforts to process uranium, test explosives and revamp a
missile cone in a way suitable for a nuclear warhead... Expectations for
Monday's round are higher and the diplomats believe Iran may soon offer
some concessions, perhaps by allowing the inspectors to visit its Parchin
military base southeast of Tehran - long a priority for the IAEA. The
IAEA believes nuclear-related explosives tests took place at Parchin,
possibly a decade ago, and wants the inspectors to interview officials
and study documents to shed light on what happened there. It has
acknowledged, however, that it may no longer unearth anything at Parchin
due to suspected Iranian efforts to remove any incriminating
nuclear-linked traces there... Eleven meetings between senior IAEA and
Iranian officials since January last year have so far failed to produce a
framework accord outlining the terms for the investigation." http://t.uani.com/1ado6L7
 Nuclear
Program
LAT: "U.S.
Secretary of State John F. Kerry and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu met in Rome for seven hours Wednesday evening, double-billed as
discussions on Iran and Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. Headed into the
meeting, both leaders appeared to agree in their concern that Iran must
not be able to develop a nuclear weapon and that diplomatic means were
the best way toward achieving this goal. Welcoming the change of tone and
diplomatic opening offered by Iran's new leadership, Kerry stressed that the
U.S. will need to know that actions are being taken to make it 'crystal
clear, undeniably clear, fail-safe to the world' that whatever nuclear
program Iran pursues is a peaceful one. These actions, according to
Netanyahu, must involve complete dismantling of Iran's uranium-enrichment
capabilities and removal of amassed fissile material from the country, as
well as halting the country's plutonium track. 'A partial deal that
leaves Iran with these capabilities is a bad deal,' Netanyahu said."
http://t.uani.com/1hcqGpM
AFP:
"Israel's international affairs minister on Thursday said there were
'small differences' with the United States over the Iranian nuclear
issue, a week after direct talks between Tehran and world powers. 'We
generally see eye to eye with the Americans on the final objective, which
is to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, but there are sometimes
small differences over the way to do that,' Yuval Steinitz, who is also
intelligence minister, told Israeli public radio. Steinitz, who is on a
visit to the US for discussions on Iran, did not elaborate, but added
that sanctions against Tehran must not be relaxed until there is 'an
agreement guaranteeing 100 percent that Iran will never be able to have a
nuclear weapon.'" http://t.uani.com/17LPuhe
Guardian:
"Tehran's streets are dotted with billboards questioning the United
States's honesty in its direct talks with the Iranian government. Tehrani
citizens have in recent days noticed billboards showing an Iranian
negotiator talking face to face to his American counterpart behind a
table. The US negotiator is half-civilian, half-military with a
pump-action shotgun on his lap. 'The US government styles honesty,' reads
the billboard... Billboards destined for public places in Iran must be
vetted by the authorities, meaning that their distribution around Tehran
has had some sort of official backing. It is not clear which political
groups are behind the billboards but they have been designed by the
Islamic Republic Designing House, which has pictures posted on its
website showing the billboards across the city. Teribon, the conservative
Iranian news website conducted an interview with designers. Teribon said
the billboards were "a spontaneous reaction" to the nature of
holding talks with the United States. 'We believe that art has more
influence in introducing and showing the essence of our enemies, more
than political statement,' one of the organisers behind the 'US honesty'
project told Teribon. 'Some experts believe that Obama has no authority in
regards to Iran and it's the Israeli lobby in America which has the first
and final word,' Teribon said." http://t.uani.com/1eN1TGT
Bloomberg:
"Iranian conservatives are calling for a boycott of the country's
nuclear talks with world powers unless Under Secretary of State Wendy
Sherman, the top U.S. negotiator, is removed for making what they say was
an insulting comment about Iran. In a front-page editorial, the Kayhan
newspaper, which is close to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei,
called for Iran to boycott the negotiations if Sherman, the State
Department's third-ranking official, is present. On Oct.3, during a
briefing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Sherman, said while
discussing the history of nuclear talks with Iran: 'We know that deception
is part of the DNA.' Sherman later told senators: 'I don't trust the
people who sit across the table from me in these negotiations.' 'Such
comments by U.S. officials vindicate the sense of mistrust of the Iranian
nation toward the West, especially the U.S.,' said Esmail Kowsari, an
Iranian member of parliament on the National Security and Foreign Policy
Commission, Tasnim news agency reported yesterday." http://t.uani.com/HjdSzK
CSM:
"For nearly three weeks, Iranian media virtually ignored Sherman's comments.
Fars has chosen to highlight them as Iran's US-educated Foreign Minister
Mohammad Javad Zarif and his negotiating team come under fire from
hard-line factions that fear that the secrecy surrounding the nuclear
talks indicates that the outcome will be bad for Iran." http://t.uani.com/1a2GSTl
Sanctions
Bloomberg:
"MTN Group Ltd. (MTN), Africa's largest wireless operator, cut its
full-year target for new subscribers as regulations limited growth and
customer numbers fell in Iran. The company reduced its goal for net
additional subscribers in 2013 by 9 percent to 19.1 million, Nik Kershaw,
head of investor relations, said by phone today. MTN Irancell's customer
base contracted 1.7 percent to 41.3 million because of a weakening
economy in the Middle East country and the withdrawal of a sim card
promotion, he said... MTN has made progress on repatriating about $450
million from its Iranian unit that's been subject to U.S. sanctions,
Kershaw said in the phone interview." http://t.uani.com/1akuEcI
WSJ:
"Two U.S. senators have requested that the Pentagon's inspector
general broadly investigate a contract awarded to a Dubai company that
the lawmakers believe may have violated U.S. sanctions by using Iran as a
route to ship goods to Afghanistan. Republican Sens. Mark Kirk of
Illinois and Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire said in a letter to the
inspector general that Anham FZCO also may have conducted business with a
port operator owned by Iran's elite military unit, the Islamic
Revolutionary Guard Corps. The lawmakers asked whether the Pentagon
should revoke Anham's contract to supply all food and water to American
forces in Afghanistan-estimated to be worth at least $8 billion to the
company-or levy a fine. 'We request that you urgently look into this
matter, verify the recent public reports surrounding Anham, make
recommendations on what to do with Anham's existing U.S. government
contracts and propose steps the department should take to ensure this
does not happen again,' Mr. Kirk and Ms. Ayotte wrote in a letter dated
Tuesday to Inspector General Jon Rymer, according to a copy viewed by The
Wall Street Journal." http://t.uani.com/H4fPjT
AP:
"Pakistan's plan to import natural gas by pipeline from neighboring
Iran would be an economic 'death sentence' for the country because the
gas price is too high, a Pakistani advocacy group said in a report
released Wednesday. Despite U.S. pressure, the Pakistani government
struck a deal with Iran to import gas in the hope of relieving the
country's energy crisis, especially the shortage of electricity. Gas is
used to fire many of Pakistan's power plants, but insufficient quantities
mean rolling blackouts are common. The Islamabad-based Sustainable
Development Policy Institute said in its report that the contract with
Iran means the gas sold to Pakistan likely will be several times more
expensive than the domestic gas currently used. 'This is a death sentence
for Pakistan's economy,' the report said. It criticized Pakistani
officials who 'blatantly ignored the energy dynamics and its pricing
while going for this deal.'" http://t.uani.com/1fXqZWo
Syria Conflict
Bloomberg:
"Saudi Arabia's support for rebels in Syria won't be constrained by
U.S. efforts to keep the money from Islamist groups, as the kingdom steps
up efforts to battle Iranian influence in the region, a Saudi official
said... Saudi King Abdullah has urged the U.S. to attack Iran, 'cut off
the head of the snake' and halt its nuclear program, U.S. diplomats
reported in cables released by WikiLeaks in 2010. After last month's
accord on chemical weapons, Prince Saud said Assad's government would
probably use the deal as an opportunity 'to impose more killing and to
torture its people.' 'We don't know what the Americans are trying to do
with Syria,' said Khalid al-Dakhil, a political science professor at King
Saud University in Riyadh. 'They seem to be using Syria as a bargaining
chip with Iran. They handed Iraq to the Iranians, and the Saudis won't
let them do the same thing to Syria.'" http://t.uani.com/1aHHbnv
Terrorism
AFP:
"President Barack Obama marked 30 years since the killing of 241
Marines, troops and sailors in a Beirut suicide bombing Wednesday and
vowed to support Lebanon's unfinished quest for stability. 'This
despicable act of terrorism was the deadliest single-day death toll for
the US Marine Corps since the World War II Battle of Iwo Jima,' Obama
said, adding that the Marines had gone to Lebanon 'in peace.' ... Obama
noted that the bombing was followed moments later by a second attack on a
French barracks in Lebanon which killed 58 paratroopers also blamed on
Hezbollah, the Iran-backed Lebanese militia." http://t.uani.com/1ady7rI
Fox News:
"Thirty years after the Marine Corps barracks bombing in Beirut, one
of the most horrific and formative terror attacks in American history,
the new Iranian government appears to be thumbing its nose at the United
States by appointing one of the alleged masterminds of that attack as its
new defense minister... While new Iranian President Hassan Rouhani lately
has sought to ease U.S. concerns about its alleged pursuit of a nuclear
weapon, survivors of the barracks bombing today say anyone aligned with
that attack cannot be trusted. That includes current leadership in
Tehran. Retired Col. Tim Geraghty, who commanded the international
peacekeeping mission and the 24th Marine Amphibious Unit that lost 220
Marines that day, said Brig. Gen. Hossein Dehghan, the new Iranian
defense minister, is the former Iranian Revolutionary Guard commander who
helped oversee the attack. Geraghty spoke at a remembrance ceremony at
Camp Lejeune in Jacksonville, N.C., on Wednesday. 'The past three Iranian
ministers of defense, including the current one selected a few months
ago, all have peacekeepers' blood on their hands and are leading the
Iranian lockstep march for the acquisition of nuclear weapons,' Geraghty
said." http://t.uani.com/16xGFaq
Reuters:
"Deutsche Boerse on Thursday said it would ask a U.S. court to
dismiss claims against its Clearstream unit from relatives of a 1983
bombing of the U.S. Marine Corps barracks in Beirut. For a settlement to
go through, Deutsche Boerse needed the approval of a certain amount of
plaintiffs. 'The requisite number of signatures has been obtained,'
Boerse said in a regulatory statement. Through its Clearstream unit,
Deutsche Boerse has been embroiled in a legal dispute with U.S.
plaintiffs seeking damages from Iran for Clearstream's alleged role in
helping Hezbollah carry out the barracks attack during the civil war in
Lebanon. As part of this action, U.S. plaintiffs sought in 2008 to freeze
Iranian funds held in Luxembourg-based Clearstream's securities account.
The U.S. amended a sanctions bill against Iran in August 2012 which
opened the door to further damages claims against foreign lenders
including Clearstream." http://t.uani.com/Hjd1iF
Human Rights
Reuters:
"Iran's human rights record should not be overlooked amid overtures
to the West by new President Hassan Rouhani, a U.N. envoy said on
Wednesday as he criticized Tehran for executing 724 people in 18 months,
including dozens just after Rouhani was elected in June. Ahmed Shaheed,
U.N. special rapporteur on human rights in Iran, said at least 44 people
were executed shortly after the Iranian polls and that the majority of
all executions were related to drug-trafficking cases... 'Any renewed or
revitalized dialogue between Iran and the international community must
include and not seek to sideline the issue of human rights,' Shaheed told
the U.N. General Assembly's Third Committee, which focuses on human rights.
'Human rights considerations must be central to the new government's
legislative and policy agenda, and to international dialogue and
cooperation,' said Shaheed, who was not allowed to visit Iran to
investigate the rights situation... He said shortages of drugs and
materials to repair and maintain medical equipment 'are having a
profoundly worrisome impact on access to life-saving medical measures,'
but that some reports indicate that the Iranian government could have
done more to protect medical supplies in the face of sanctions. 'A former
Iranian health minister is reported to have maintained that of the $2.5
billion earmarked for foreign exchange necessary to meet the import needs
of the medical sector in 2012, only $650 million was provided, intimating
that the funds were misallocated,' Shaheed said." http://t.uani.com/1adlBbS
Bloomberg:
"Iran's government executed at least 82 people in the weeks after
Hassan Rouhani was elected as president in June, according to a United
Nations investigator. Ahmed Shaheed, the UN special rapporteur on human
rights in Iran, said in a report presented to the General Assembly today
that he's 'alarmed by the spate of executions,' 38 of which were
officially announced during the same period that 'at least 44 others reportedly
took place.'" http://t.uani.com/1dmM2AF
AFP:
"Iran's foreign ministry warned Malaysia Wednesday against executing
two Iranian women convicted of trafficking methamphetamine into the
Southeast Asian country. 'The execution of two Iranian women in Malaysia
will have negative effect on our bilateral ties,' Hassan Ghashghavi,
deputy foreign minister in charge of consular affairs, was quoted as
saying by official news agency IRNA. Ghashghavi said Malaysia should
spare the women 'so that the friendship and brotherhood between Iran and
Malaysia can continue'. His remarks came amid reports of two Iranian
women, identified as Shahrzad Mansour, 31, and Neda Mostafaei, 26, being
sentenced to death for trafficking methamphetamine into Malaysia in
December 2010... Iran has one of the world's highest execution rates,
with more than 500 cases last year and almost the same number so far this
year, according to human rights watchdogs." http://t.uani.com/1akkWHm
AFP:
"A Christian US pastor arrived home Wednesday after being deported
from Iran for staging a protest outside a Tehran prison, denouncing what
he called the 'belligerent' Islamic regime. Pastor Eddie Romero, from
southern California, was arrested Monday and held for over 24 hours in
the Iranian capital before being put on a plane out of the country...
Romero protested outside Tehran's Evin prison, calling for the release of
five inmates who he said were prisoners of faith and conscience,
including an Iranian Christian pastor and a prominent human rights lawyer.
'We have to do things outside the box,' he told supporters and
journalists gathered at Los Angeles airport. 'Because conventional ways
are way too slow, way too slow for people who are languishing in prison,
way too slow for families who are hurting to have their loved ones
back.'" http://t.uani.com/1a9D9Jr
Domestic
Politics
NYT:
"Born during the hostage crisis days after the 1979 Islamic
Revolution, the chant "Death to America" has enjoyed a long run
on the Iranian stage. But it has been getting a little threadbare in
recent times, and has even come under threat, with no less a person than
the newly elected president, Hassan Rouhani, suggesting that the country
no longer needed slogans. While for some this may be a refreshing sign of
political maturity, others are determined to inject new life into the old
chant. Toward this end, several hard-line groups have announced plans for
a 'Down With U.S.A.' conference next month, highlighted by 'The First
Major International Award of Down With America' for the best photograph,
poster, video, song or caricature. The contest winners will be announced
in December, and will receive cash awards of as much as $4,000. While the
slogan in Persian, 'Marg bar Amrika,' means 'Death to America' and has
always been translated that way in the West, the official translation
from the 1979 Islamic Revolution is 'Down With America.'" http://t.uani.com/1dmMOOg
The National:
"Iran's hardliners, left fuming and frustrated by President Hassan
Rouhani's outreach to the West, plan to hit back on November 4 with their
biggest rally against the United States in years. It was on that date in
1979 that militant Iranian students stormed the US Embassy in Tehran
after the Islamic revolution and held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days.
The event led to a rupture in diplomatic relations that continues until
today and is seared into the American psyche. It also gave birth to
Iran's most enduring revolutionary slogan: 'Death to America' - or 'Marg
bar Amrika' in Farsi. For more than three decades, clenched-fist chants
of the slogan have been shouted in well-drilled unison at Friday prayers
and other public events, where the Stars and Stripes are often also set
ablaze." http://t.uani.com/1eN3V9I
Foreign Affairs
NYT:
"As the United States grapples with some of the most intractable
problems in the Middle East, it has run into a buzz saw of criticism, not
from traditional enemies but from two of its strongest allies. During
stops in Paris and London this week, Secretary of State John Kerry found
himself insisting that the United States was not facing a growing rift
with oil-rich Saudi Arabia, whose emissaries have described strains over
American policy on Egypt, Iran and Syria. And during a stop in Rome, Mr.
Kerry sought to reassure Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel that
the Obama administration would not drop its guard in the newly
invigorated nuclear talks with Iran. Mr. Kerry's comments appeared to do
little to persuade Mr. Netanyahu, whose demands that Iran dismantle its
nuclear program are tougher than any compromise that the United States
and other world powers seem prepared to explore as they seek a deal with
Iran's new president. But the criticism by Saudi officials has been the
most vehement, as they have waged a campaign against the United States'
policy in the Middle East in private comments to diplomats and reporters,
as well as in public remarks by a former intelligence official... 'There
is a lot of confusion and lack of clarity amongst U.S. allies in the
Middle East regarding Washington's true intentions and ultimate
objectives,' said Robert M. Danin, a senior fellow at the Council on
Foreign Relations who was a State Department official on Middle East
issues during both Democratic and Republican administrations. 'There is
also widespread unease throughout the Middle East, shared by many U.S.
allies, that the United States' primary objectives when it comes to Iran,
Egypt or Syria are to avoid serious confrontation.'" http://t.uani.com/1d1Vw1A
Opinion
& Analysis
UANI Advisory Board Member Fouad Ajami in WSJ:
"Lamentations about what has become of U.S. foreign policy in the
Middle East miss the point. The remarkable thing about President Obama's
diplomacy in the region is that it has come full circle-to the very beginning
of his presidency. The promised 'opening' to Iran, the pass given to
Bashar Assad's tyranny in Syria, the abdication of the American gains in
Iraq and a reflexive unease with Israel-these were hallmarks of the new
president's approach to foreign policy. Now we are simply witnessing the
alarming consequences of such a misguided, naïve outlook. Consider this
bit of euphoria from a senior Obama administration official after the
Oct. 16-17 negotiations in Geneva with the Iranians over their nuclear program:
'I've been doing this now for about two years, and I have never had such
intense, detailed, straightforward, candid conversations with the Iranian
delegation before.' In Iran, especially, Mr. Obama believed that he would
work his unique diplomatic magic. If Tehran was hostile to U.S.
interests, if Iran had done its best to frustrate the war in Iraq, to
proclaim a fierce ideological war against Israel's place in the region
and its very legitimacy as a state, the fault lay, Mr. Obama seemed to
believe, with the policies of his predecessors. When antiregime protests
roiled Iran in Mr. Obama's first summer as president, he stood locked in
the vacuum of his own ideas. He remained aloof as the Green Movement
defied prohibitive odds to challenge the theocracy. The protesters had no
friend in Mr. Obama. He was dismissive, vainly hoping that the cruel
rulers would accept the olive branch he had extended to them. No one
asked the fledgling American president to dispatch U.S. forces into the
streets of Tehran, but the indifference he displayed to the cause of
Iranian freedom was a strategic and moral failure. Iran's theocrats gave
nothing in return for that favor. They pushed on with their nuclear
program, they kept up the proxy war against U.S. forces in Iraq, they
pushed deeper into Arab affairs, positioning themselves, through their
proxies, as a power of the Mediterranean. This should have been Mr.
Obama's Persian tutorial. Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei had no
interest in a thaw with the Great Satan. Yet last month at the United
Nations Mr. Obama hailed Khamenei for issuing a 'fatwa' against his
country's development of nuclear weapons. Even though there is no
evidence that any such fatwa exists, the notion that the Iranian regime
is governed by religious edict is naïve in the extreme. Muslims
know-unlike the president, apparently-that fatwas can be issued and
abandoned at the whim of those who pronounce them. In any event, Khamenei
is not a religious scholar sitting atop Iran's theocracy. He is an
apparatchik. As the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini himself put it in 1988,
when his regime was reeling from a drawn-out war with Iraq: 'Our
government has priority over all other Islamic tenets, even over prayer,
fasting and the pilgrimage to Mecca.' We must not underestimate the
tenacity of this regime and its will to rule. We should see through the
rosy Twitter messages of President Hasan Rouhani, and the PowerPoint
presentations of his foreign minister, Mohammed Jawad Zarif. These men
carry out the writ of the supreme leader and can only go as far as the
limit drawn by the Revolutionary Guard. In a lawyerly way, the Obama
administration has isolated the nuclear issue from the broader context of
Iran's behavior in the region. A new dawn in the history of the theocracy
has been proclaimed, but we will ultimately discover that Iran's rulers
are hellbent on pursuing a nuclear-weapons program while trying to rid
themselves of economic sanctions... Those who run the Islamic Republic of
Iran and its nuclear program, like most others in the region, have taken
the full measure of this American president. They sense his desperate
need for a victory-or anything that can be passed off as one." http://t.uani.com/17LReqH
Barak Ravid in
Haaretz: "Over the past weeks, I have written several
times about Iranian Foreign Minster Muhammad Javad Zarif's social media
forays, which often contain policy insights. A few days ago, an exchange
with a young Iranian woman on his Facebook page offered a poignant
glimpse into the attitudes of the Islamic Republic's youth today. The
anonymous 26-year-old woman issued an emotional plea addressed to Zarif
on Friday in response to one the posts he had published upon returning
from the Geneva talks. She has been engaged for three years, she
explained, but has been unable to marry, due to her financial
difficulties. Her fiancée, she said, is a doctoral student unable to find
employment, and her parents are pensioners, unable to offer assistance.
'For most girls, the meaning of engagement is a party, joy, travelling.
I, too, am engaged, but I've gotten only one thing from life:
frustration. I don't want you to say you're sorry. I am not writing to
you to win anyone's pity. I just want my rights.' The woman said she was
a graduate student at one of Tehran's universities who resides outside
the city and relies on public transportation to make her three weekly
trips to school - but often cannot afford the fare. Dr. Raz Tzimet, a
research fellow at the 'Alliance' Institute for Iranian Studies at Tel
Aviv University, published his translation of the woman's letter, which
garnered hundreds of Facebook likes in his blog, 'A spotlight on Iran.'
Here are a few excerpts: 'I am an Iranian. Why is it that in my own
country, to which my family gave many martyrs and veterans, I lack basic
welfare? Why am I unemployed? Why am I undernourished? Why am I
destitute? Why am I treated like scum, despite my GPA and my resume? This
nuclear energy - Where is it? What portion of it trickles down to me?
Will I or my talented husband ever be hired in the nuclear program? Our
bills are constantly increasing, life is becoming more expensive. ...What
words shall I use to tell you, sir, that I do not wish to pay the price
of nuclear energy with my youth and my life. I have only one life to live
and I wish to be happy. I've had my share of sadness." http://t.uani.com/1cfIFMs
Ben Birnbaum TNR
Interview of Amos Yadlin: "'I supported [Netanyahu
and Barak] on the notion that if we come to the fork in the road [on
Iran], where we have to choose between very tough alternatives-the bomb
or the bombing-I'm with the prime minister, for the bombing,' former
Israeli defense-intelligence chief Amos Yadlin told me on a recent
evening on the porch of his home in the small town of Carmay Yosef. It
was a bold statement coming from a man who in 2010 reportedly helped
persuade Netanyahu and then-Defense Minister Ehud Barak not to strike
Iran. It was not the first time I had spoken with Yadlin about Iran-we
had discussed it at various intervals over two years-but it was the first
time he'd agreed to let me publish an interview with him on the subject.
And that was because Yadlin believes that from an operational
perspective, Israel is finally approaching that fork in the road-perhaps
within a year, if the newest round of diplomacy doesn't yield an
acceptable deal (last week, Yadlin co-published a Wall Street Journal
op-ed on 'Four Possible Deals with Iran'). The 62-year-old Yadlin is no
stranger to the idea of bombing a neighboring country's nuclear program.
In 1981, he was one of the eight Israeli F-16 pilots that destroyed
Iraq's nuclear reactor; according to accounts from senior Bush
administration officials, he was also a key player in Israel's discovery
and destruction of the Syrian nuclear reactor in 2007. Now president of
Israel's Institute of National Security Studies (INSS), he is widely
considered one of the nation's leading security authorities (according to
informed sources, leaders of three major parties sought unsuccessfully to
convince Yadlin to run as their candidate for defense minister in the
January election)... On Iran, Yadlin was always similarly measured. He
consistently disassociated himself from the 'time is just about up'
chorus led by Netanyahu. As head of INSS, he has become a sort of arbiter
in the Israeli public between the conflicting schools of thoughts
presented by Barak (who strongly backed an Israeli strike) and former
Mossad chief Meir Dagan (who called it 'the stupidest thing I have ever
heard'), presenting a conceptual framework and various algorithms with
which to objectively measure the urgency of the Iranian threat and
Israel's best options for dealing with it. Until recently, Yadlin
believed that Israel had more time-more time to wait for sanctions to
bite, more time for alternative measures to take their toll, and more
time to hope that the Iranian regime might fall or that the U.S. might
take action itself. In September 2012, as speculation about an imminent
Israeli strike reached fever pitch, Yadlin told Ha'aretz's Ari Shavit of Netanyahu
and Barak: 'They say that time has almost run out, but I say there is
still time. The decisive year is not 2012 but 2013. Maybe even early
2014.' Yadlin's assessment of the timeline for Israel's military option
has changed very little since then, and therein lies his-and
Israel's-dilemma. Like most top members of the security establishment,
Yadlin believes that Israel cannot live with a nuclear Iran. But he also
knows that so long as there appears to be a chance for a diplomatic
solution, Israel does not have the international legitimacy to act. 'We
should let [Rouhani] enjoy the benefit of the doubt, that maybe something
is different,' he told me. 'Maybe he is taking with him the big majority
that elected him, that really wants to lift the sanctions and end the
nuclear crisis. But we should not let him drag it out two years and then
realize that he deceived us, and that we don't have the military option
on the table anymore.' What follows is a composite of two recent
conversations with Yadlin about the Iranian nuclear program, the new
diplomacy with Hassan Rouhani, and Israel's complicated military
option." http://t.uani.com/HgZ1XF
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Eye on Iran is a periodic news summary from United Against
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