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Top Stories
Reuters:
"U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and fellow big power foreign
ministers headed to Geneva on Friday to help clinch an interim nuclear
deal with Iran and ease a decade-old standoff, with Israel warning they
were making an epic mistake. Diplomats said a breakthrough at this week's
negotiations remained uncertain and would in any case mark only the first
step in a long, complex process towards a permanent resolution of Iran's
dispute with the West over its nuclear ambitions. But they said the
imminent arrival of Kerry, British Foreign Secretary William Hague and
French and German foreign ministers Laurent Fabius and Guido Westerwelle
hinted that the five permanent U.N. Security Council members and Germany
may be closer to an agreement with Iran than ever before. A senior U.S.
State Department official said Kerry was committed to doing 'anything he
can' to narrow differences with the Islamic Republic. The powers aim to
cap Iran's nuclear work to prevent any advance towards a nuclear weapons
capability. 'This is a complex process,' the official said in Tel Aviv
where Kerry met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who sees
Iran's atomic aspirations as a menace to the Jewish state... Kerry said
that Tehran would need to prove its atomic activities were peaceful, and
that Washington would not make a 'bad deal, that leaves any of our
friends or ourselves exposed to a nuclear weapons programme'. 'We're
asking them to step up and provide a complete freeze over where they are
today,' he said on Thursday." http://t.uani.com/HF4qr7
Reuters:
"A threat by the U.S. Congress to slap tough new sanctions on Iran
hung over negotiations on Tehran's nuclear program on Thursday, even as
diplomats at talks in Geneva voiced optimism an agreement was close. A
package of tighter sanctions on Iran has been making its way through
Congress but was held up after President Barack Obama's administration
asked for a delay to let the delicate diplomatic talks over Tehran's
nuclear program unfold. But Congress tends to take a harder line on Iran
than the administration. Many lawmakers, including several of Obama's
fellow Democrats, believe that tough sanctions brought Tehran to the
negotiating table and insist that more are needed to discourage it from
developing a nuclear bomb... 'I think Iran has in its power to decide
whether or not it faces any more sanctions or whether or not it gets any
relief from existing sanctions,' Senate Foreign Relations Committee
Chairman Robert Menendez told Reuters. Menendez and several other
lawmakers said they were open to easing sanctions, but only if Tehran
made significant, verifiable concessions like suspending uranium
enrichment and allowing more invasive inspections. Otherwise, Menendez
said he felt the sanctions should go ahead. 'I just don't understand a
negotiating posture that suggests that we should stop pursuing a course
of action that at least brought Iran to the table while they continue to
enrich,' he said." http://t.uani.com/18cRoaK
Reuters:
"In a bitter outburst, Netanyahu denounced on Friday the contours of
an Iranian agreement leaked to the media, once again putting himself in
direct conflict with Washington. 'This is a very bad deal and Israel
utterly rejects it,' Netanyahu said as he headed into his third round of
talks in just 48 hours with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry. 'Israel
will do everything it needs to do to defend itself and to defend the
security of its people,' he told reporters... Israel has long feared that
world powers would not back its demand for a full dismantlement of Iran's
enrichment facilities before any rollback of sanctions. It has argued
that this approach is the only way to ensure Tehran never builds a bomb.
'Netanyahu's worst nightmare is about to come true,' said Ehud Yaari, an
Israel-based fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
'This is not just Netanyahu. This is the position of everyone in the
Israeli security establishment.'" http://t.uani.com/1cIpLxQ
 Nuclear
Program
AFP: "US
President Barack Obama said Thursday that an interim deal with Iran on
its nuclear program would provide only 'very modest relief' from the
sanctions that have crippled Tehran's economy. Obama said in an interview
with NBC News that an agreement being fleshed out in high stakes talks in
Geneva would keep the bulk of sanctions on the Islamic Republic in place.
'We don't have to trust them. What we have to do is to make sure that
there is a good deal in place from the perspective of us verifying what
they're doing,' Obama said. 'There is the possibility of a phased
agreement in which the first phase would be us, you know, halting any
advances on their nuclear program, rolling some potential back, and
putting in place ... some very modest relief, but keeping the sanctions
architecture in place.' The president said that if necessary such limited
relief from sanctions could be reversed if it was judged Iran was not
living up to its end of the bargain. 'If they're not willing to go
forward and finish the job of giving us assurances that they're not
developing a nuclear weapon, we can crank that dial back up,' Obama
said." http://t.uani.com/1iRF9W9
Sanctions
Reuters:
"The Senate Banking Committee will move ahead with a package of
tough new sanctions on Iran after the negotiating session over its
nuclear program ends in Geneva on Friday, the committee's chairman said
on Thursday. Senator Tim Johnson, a Democrat, said Senate Majority Leader
Harry Reid told him to go ahead with the mark-up - or consideration - of
the bill, a step toward bringing it to the full Senate for a vote. 'We'll
wait until the Geneva meeting is over with, but I talked to Harry Reid
about it yesterday and he wants to mark up,' Johnson told Reuters outside
the Senate chamber. He said the date of the mark-up, during which
senators present amendments to the legislation and vote whether to send
it to the full Senate, had not been determined as of Thursday." http://t.uani.com/17RL4sN
Live Mint:
"Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd. (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corp.
Ltd. (HPCL) will forego buying Iranian crude even as Mangalore Refinery
& Petrochemicals Ltd. (MRPL) accepts an offer from the Persian Gulf
nation to waive shipping charges. Refiners want to import crude in rupees
amid a 13% slump against the dollar this year while Iran doesn't want to
accept the Indian currency, according to the government in New Delhi.
While MRPL has accepted an offer for free shipping, BPCL and HPCL haven't
brought oil from the Islamic Republic since April. 'Unless and until the
payment issue is resolved, there's no point taking Iran crude,' said B.K.
Datta, the director of refineries at BPCL, the country's second-biggest
state refiner. 'We have plans to buy Iran crude this year, but can't
until there is clarity on the payment mechanism,' he said in a phone
interview from Mumbai." http://t.uani.com/1d3L35h
Reuters:
"Pakistan is committed to building a multi-billion-dollar gas
pipeline from neighbouring Iran but the threat of international sanctions
makes the task difficult, the South Asian nation's petroleum minister
said on Friday. The comments follow remarks last month by Iran's oil
minister that the country would probably abandon the contract, prompting
speculation that the two sides had decided to ditch the project altogether.
'There is no decision to shelve anything, there is no decision to delay
anything, but the constraints remain,' Petroleum Minister Shahid Khaqan
Abbasi told Reuters in an interview in Islamabad. The $7.5-billion
project has faced repeated delays since it was conceived in the 1990s to
connect Iran's giant South Pars gas field to consumers in energy-hungry
Pakistan and India." http://t.uani.com/1hSw6GS
Human Rights
AP:
"A decision by Iranian officials to transfer an American pastor from
a prison where he was held with other political detainees to a
notoriously violent lockup has heightened fears among his relatives and
supporters and energized lawmakers demanding his immediate release.
Christian pastor Saeed Abedini, 33, has been in Iranian custody since September
2012, and in January he began serving an eight-year sentence for
undermining state security when he tried creating a network of churches
in private homes in Iran. For most of his confinement, Abedini, who is of
Iranian origin but had been living in Boise, Idaho, was at Evin Prison in
Tehran. But family members and government officials say he was moved
Sunday to Rajai Shahr Prison, described by human rights groups as an
extremely brutal facility populated by Iran's most violent criminals with
excessive rates of inmate-on-inmate violence. 'Now I'm even more afraid
for his life,' said his wife, Naghmeh Abedini, who lives in Boise with
their two children. 'The blow that has come with this news has been even
harder than the blow that came with his initial arrest.'" http://t.uani.com/1hq7ffH
AFP:
"FIFA chief Sepp Blatter appealed to the Iranian authorities on
Thursday to end the ban on women attending men's football matches in
force since the 1979 Islamic revolution. Blatter, who was wrapping up a
two-day visit to Tehran, said that Iran's top female official, Vice
President, was among those he had raised the issue with but stressed he
was not seeking to interfere in Iranian politics. 'I had the opportunity
this morning to speak with the lady vice president to ask that in the
government they should try to change one of the cultural laws here that
woman cannot attend football matches,' Blatter said. 'I repeated this to
the (conservative) speaker of parliament (Ali Larijani) and he said he
will take it up,' he added." http://t.uani.com/1c5bEOc
Foreign Affairs
Times of Israel:
"Iranian state television aired a computer-animated video that
showed an imagined Iranian missile strike on Israeli cities including Tel
Aviv and Dimona, malls and IDF bases. The video was also posted online by
the pro-regime website Iran's View, which said Thursday the four-minute
clip was part of an 'hour long documentary [that] includes a video
simulation of Iranian respond [sic] to an airstrike by Israel against
Iran's nuclear facilities.' The video glamorizes such a strike, showing
computer-generated video of Iranian missiles being pointed upward against
a backdrop of scenic skies and swelling musical accompaniment." http://t.uani.com/1c5fB5C
AFP:
"Egyptian police on Thursday arrested the Cairo bureau chief of an
Iranian news station and a former Islamist lawmaker, security officials
said. Ahmed Fahim Abdel Azim al-Siufi, the Egyptian head of the Cairo
office of Iran's Arab-language station Al-Alam, was arrested in an
apartment with ex-senate member Essam Ismail Farrag, the officials said.
They were arrested at the orders of prosecutors, the officials said
without elaborating on the charges." http://t.uani.com/1esIf5u
Opinion
& Analysis
Eli Lake & Josh Rogin in The Daily Beast:
"The Obama administration began softening sanctions on Iran after
the election of Iran's new president in June, months before the current
round of nuclear talks in Geneva or the historic phone call between the
two leaders in September. While those negotiations now appear on the
verge of a breakthrough the key condition for Iran-relief from crippling
sanctions-began quietly and modestly five months ago. A review of
Treasury Department notices reveals that the U.S. government has all but
stopped the financial blacklisting of entities and people that help Iran
evade international sanctions since the election of its president, Hassan
Rouhani, in June. On Wednesday Obama said in an interview with NBC News
the negotiations in Geneva 'are not about easing sanctions.' 'The
negotiations taking place are about how Iran begins to meet its
international obligations and provide assurances not just to us but to
the entire world,' the president said. But it has also long been Obama's
strategy to squeeze Iran's economy until Iran would be willing to trade
relief from sanctions for abandoning key elements of its nuclear program.
One way Obama has pressured Iran is through isolating the country's banks
from the global financial sector, the networks that make modern
international commerce possible. This in turn has led Iran to seek out
front companies and cutouts to conduct routine international business,
such as selling its crude oil. In this cat and mouse game, the Treasury
Department in recent years has routinely designated new entities as
violators of sanctions, forcing Iran to adjust in turn. In the six weeks
prior to the Iranian elections in June, the Treasury Department issued
seven notices of designations of sanctions violators that included more
than 100 new people, companies, aircraft, and sea vessels. Since June 14,
however, when Rouhani was elected, the Treasury Department has only
issued two designation notices that have identified six people and four
companies as violating the Iran sanctions. When an entity is designated
as a sanctions violator it can be catastrophic. Banks and other investors
almost never take the risk of doing business with the people and
companies on a Treasury blacklist because of the potential reputational
harm and the prospect they could lose access to U.S. financial
markets." http://t.uani.com/17cGdyE
Bennett Ramberg in
The Japan Times: "As the United States and its
allies resumed talks over Iran's nuclear program this week, the vexing
task of crafting Iran's recent proposal into an enduring agreement began
in earnest. There are many obstacles to an agreement, but among the least
examined is the legacy of nuclear-disarmament efforts involving Libya and
North Korea. Both cases raise issues that neither Iran nor the U.S. wants
to see repeated - but that both will have difficulty avoiding. For the
U.S., North Korea illustrates how a poor but ambitious country developed
the bomb by gaming talks and gaining time. For Iran, Moammar Gadhafi's
2003 relinquishment of Libya's weapons of mass destruction demonstrates
how a regime, still considered a bête noire by the international
community even after normalization of diplomatic relations, arguably
forfeited its survival in 2011 by forgoing the chance to build a nuclear
deterrent. Digging further into each case illuminates the challenges
faced by Iran and its international interlocutors. What makes the North
Korea precedent particularly troubling is how much Iran has mimicked the
regime in Pyongyang. This naturally prompts questions about whether Iran
is using the current round of negotiations as a facade for an ongoing
effort to develop nuclear weapons. Consider parallels 10 years apart. In
June 1993, following talks with the U.S. and a threat to withdraw from
the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), North Korea allowed the
International Atomic Energy Agency to conduct limited 'safeguards
activities.' Then, in October 1994, the U.S. and North Korea entered into
the Agreed Framework to freeze North Korea's nuclear program. Similarly,
in December 2003, after hiding construction of the Natanz
uranium-enrichment facility and other plants from the IAEA, Iran agreed
to sign - but not ratify - the so-called Additional Protocol, allowing
broader application of IAEA safeguards. Then, in November 2004, in
negotiations with European representatives, Iran agreed to suspend
nuclear enrichment. Neither agreement lasted long. In March 1996, the
IAEA reported that North Korea was not complying with efforts to verify
plutonium held at the Yongbyon nuclear facility. On Oct. 9, 2006, North
Korea detonated its first nuclear weapon, and the United Nations Security
Council adopted Resolution 1718 calling on the country to abandon its
program and rejoin international denuclearization talks. Since then,
North Korea has responded to incremental tightening of international
sanctions with two more nuclear tests, the latest this year under the new
leadership of Kim Jong Un. Likewise, in January 2006, following the
collapse of negotiations with European emissaries, Iran broke the IAEA
seals on the Natanz facility's equipment and storage areas. The following
month, the IAEA reported the Islamic Republic to the Security Council for
its failure to be forthright about its nuclear program. Since then, Iran
has responded to incremental tightening of international sanctions by
building more centrifuges. The question now is whether the North
Korea-Iran parallel stops with Iran's new president, Hassan Rouhani. The
Libyan legacy confronts Iran with its own conundrum... Given this
history, Iran has a strong incentive to retain at least a
nuclear-breakout option (which would mean completing all but the final
steps to weaponization). Of course, Iran's leaders may believe that
economic isolation is the greatest danger to the regime. But what
happened in Libya has made them fear that Gadhafi's fate could be theirs,
too, without an adequate deterrent. Indeed, commenting on Gadhafi's
plight in 2011, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said, '[T]his
gentleman wrapped up all his nuclear facilities, packed them on a ship
and delivered them to the West and said, Take them! Look where we are,
and in what position they are now.' ... With little leverage, Iran's
leaders would then have two options. They could follow North Korea by
sacrificing economic prosperity for nuclear breakout, and hope that US
and Israeli talk of "all options" being on the table to stop
their efforts is a bluff; or they could pursue economic prosperity by
forgoing a nuclear-weapons capacity, and hope that a Libya-style revolt
does not envelope the country and doom the regime to a fate like that of
Gadhafi." http://t.uani.com/17j098x
John Bolton in
WSJ: "Are Iran and North Korea cooperating on their
nuclear-weapons programs? If so, their efforts undermine, and may
preclude, Barack Obama's diplomatic attempts to address these threats
separately. The issue is especially timely now as Mr. Obama's negotiators
rush to make a deal with Iran. Tehran-Pyongyang collaboration raises
questions of enormous strategic importance for global
counterproliferation efforts. Although publicly available information is
scarce, American policy makers should pay the closest attention to the
implications of such cooperation. The direct evidence, while limited, is
troubling. Not least because of the initial intermediation of Pakistani
scientist A.Q. Khan's proliferation network, the potential for
Iranian-North Korean cooperation has long been attractive. But within the
U.S. diplomatic, defense and intelligence communities, broad
understanding of such dynamics is often hampered by powerful bureaucratic
'stovepipes.' In the bureaucratic tribal mindset, Pyongyang is an Asia
problem and Tehran is a Middle East problem. Yet A.Q. Khan was an
equal-opportunity proliferator who by his own admission sold
uranium-enrichment technology and equipment to Iran, North Korea and
Libya. Subsequent exchanges among these customers, including of enriched
uranium, are well-documented. Although the U.S. shut down Khan's network
after seizing a shipment of centrifuge equipment bound for Libya in 2003,
U.S. intelligence agencies have never received an adequate opportunity to
question him about his operation's full scope. In pressing Pakistan for
better bilateral relations, one of Washington's highest priorities should
be getting more information out of Khan, particularly on possible
Iranian-North Korean connections... The U.S. and its allies clearly have
significant gaps in their knowledge about nuclear cooperation between
Iran and North Korea. But the implications of any such cooperation are
profound. Given the closed nature of both rogue states, Washington is
long overdue in increasing its relevant intelligence-collection efforts
and re-examining whether Russia or China are also involved." http://t.uani.com/16Mr5ej
Bloomberg
Editorial: "This weekend will mark the 1,000th day
since Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karrubi, the two reformist candidates
who fought former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's fraud-ridden
re-election in 2009, were placed under house arrest. Their detention
should end immediately... Releasing Mousavi and Karrubi would also signal
to countries involved in talks over Iran's alleged nuclear weapons
program, which restart in Geneva today, that the switch from Ahmadinejad
is about more than just style... The Iranian regime remains one of the
world's most brutal and repressive. According to a recent United Nations
report, Iran still has 500 human rights defenders in jail and executed
724 people in the 18 months from January 2012 to June 2013. Given that
record, releasing Mousavi and Karrubi would be no more than a symbol --
but an important one nonetheless." http://t.uani.com/HCOs0w
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Eye on Iran is a periodic news summary from United Against
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