Eye on Iran: White House Looks to Convince Senators to Hold Off on Sanctions

For continuing coverage follow us on Twitter and join our Facebook group.    Top Stories WSJ: "Under pressure over nuclear talks with Iran, top Obama administration officials planned to try Wednesday to quell any move by lawmakers to tighten sanctions while diplomacy is under way. The absence of a quick agreement in Geneva last weekend has rekindled interest among some lawmakers for a new round of sanctions against Iran. The White House has counseled against that because of the delicate nature of the talks, which are set to resume next week. Secretary of State John Kerry has scheduled a closed-door meeting with members of the Senate Banking Committee, who likely would be the first to vote on sanctions, to brief them on the talks. Although Iran and the six world powers failed to reach an accord, enough progress was made to schedule another round. Mr. Kerry's challenge will be twofold: explaining why the Geneva talks faltered and convincing lawmakers to allow negotiators more time. The White House is employing the same argument it used against critics of talks on Syria's chemical weapons-that to shun diplomacy is to favor military force, which many Americans oppose. 'If pursuing a diplomatic opening is something that some say we should not do, they ought to be explicit about the fact that they are suggesting the only alternative is use of force,' White House spokesman Jay Carney said Tuesday... 'Sanctions remain the best way to avoid war and prevent a future of Iranian nuclear weapons. The American people should not be forced to choose between military action and a bad deal that accepts a nuclear Iran,' said Sen. Mark Kirk (R., Ill.)." http://t.uani.com/171Gnfl AFP: "Secretary of State John Kerry faces a potentially hostile reception Wednesday when he urges skeptical US lawmakers not to proceed with proposed new sanctions aimed at halting Iran's nuclear drive. Senate Republicans and Democrats who are convinced that tighter sanctions against Tehran could bring about a long-sought resolution to its disputed atomic program bristled when the White House warned Tuesday that such action could trigger a "march to war." ... Fresh from the Geneva talks, Kerry will take the administration's position directly to the Senate Banking Committee, which is mulling a new sanctions package. 'The secretary will be clear that putting new sanctions in place would be a mistake,' State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said. 'What we are asking for right now is a pause, a temporary pause in sanctions,' she told reporters. 'We are not rolling them back.' ... But Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman Robert Menendez sounded taken aback by the White House warning that stiffer sanctions could lead to military confrontation. 'That's pretty alarmist. Over the top,' he told AFP." http://t.uani.com/1a4qcz7 Bloomberg: "Iran, which plans to have enough nuclear reactors to generate 20,000 megawatts of electricity, hopes the construction of another Russian-built power plant can start after March, said the head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization. 'We hope to witness the construction of our country's second nuclear power plant in the beginning of the new Iranian year,' Ali Akbar Salehi was quoted as saying by the state-run Iranian Students News Agency. The new year starts on March 21. Salehi said the plant would have the capacity to generate as much as 4,000 megawatts and cited Russia's 'readiness to be involved. The Russian-built 1,000-megawatt reactor located in Bushehr province is Iran's first and only functioning nuclear power plant. Iranian officials say they plan to generate 20 times as much nuclear power to accommodate their growing population of 77 million." http://t.uani.com/HXLfbF Nuclear Negotiations AFP: "Iran's nuclear reactor being built at Arak figured highly in recent failed talks between Tehran and six world powers in Geneva, with France in particular wanting work there stopped. The so-called 'heavy water' reactor is of concern because, in theory, it could provide the Islamic republic with plutonium -- an alternative to highly enriched uranium used for a nuclear bomb. Once completed, Iran could extract from Arak's spent fuel between five and 10 kilogrammes (10-20 pounds) of weapons-grade plutonium a year, enough for one nuclear weapon, experts estimate. Iran denies wanting to do any such thing, saying the reactor in western Iran, known as the IR-40, will be used to produce medical isotopes and for research." http://t.uani.com/1gJwOr1 Reuters: "Under Monday's Iran-IAEA agreement, Tehran will provide inspectors access to the Gchine uranium mine and the Arak heavy water production plant within three months. The IAEA had previously asked for this but Iran had ignored it until now... But the initial steps do not appear to include requested design information about the Arak research reactor, a plant of deep concern for the West as it can yield plutonium for bombs once it starts up. Iran says it is for peaceful purposes only. The agreement also makes no direct mention of the IAEA's stalled investigation into what it calls the possible military dimensions to Iran's nuclear program. Tehran says it is an entirely peaceful energy project. As part of that inquiry, the U.N. agency has long wanted to visit Iran's Parchin military base, where it believes tests relevant to nuclear detonations took place a decade ago." http://t.uani.com/1hFuHWu Sanctions Bloomberg: "Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Iran stands to gain back billions of dollars under a deal to ease economic sanctions, which negotiators almost reached at nuclear talks in Geneva last week. 'It gives Iran a tremendous break, a hole, not a tiny hole, but a big hole, in sanctions,' Netanyahu said today in a speech to the Bloomberg Fuel Choices Summit in Tel Aviv. It would gain 'several billion dollars worth that is augmented to much more.'" http://t.uani.com/HXLp2L Reuters: "Indian refiners have asked the government to clarify if they can pay Iran for crude in euros after the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) requested settlement of some debts through a Turkish bank, Indian officials said on Wednesday... The United States in February tightened sanctions further by forcing Iran's remaining oil buyers to stop transferring cash payments to Tehran, and instead keep the money in bank accounts in the currency of the importing countries. Those sanctions cut the payment route Indian buyers had used to pay for over half their imports, which was to transfer euros to Iran via Turkey's state-owned Halkbank. India is Iran's second-largest buyer, and with no payment route, the cash has quickly piled up. India now owes Iran about $5.3 billion for oil imports, government and refining sources said last week. In mid-October, NIOC informed Indian refiners that Halkbank was ready to restart channelling the payments to Iran, the sources told Reuters, declining to be named due to the sensitivity of the matter. NIOC said it had been informed that Halkbank could be used again by Iran's central bank. It was unclear from the communication from NIOC what had changed that would allow the payments to restart without contravening U.S. sanctions, the sources said." http://t.uani.com/171DsU6 Human Rights HRW: "Three major opposition figures in Iran have been under house arrest or detention for 1,000 days with no charges against them, notwithstanding President Hassan Rouhani's promise to release political prisoners, Human Rights Watch and the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran said today. The Iranian government should immediately and unconditionally release the opposition figures and 2009 presidential candidates Mehdi Karroubi and Mir Hossein Mousavi, and Mousavi's wife, Zahra Rahnavard, an author and political activist. On November 12, 2013, the three will have spent 1,000 days under house arrest or detention without charge or trial. No governmental agency or body has expressly accepted responsibility for the opposition figures' detention or brought any charges against them. 'The continuing house arrest and detention of these opposition figures is indicative of the continued repression and intolerance of government authorities toward dissent in Iran,' said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. 'Officials' claims that there are no political prisoners in Iran flies in the face of the brutal reality of Iran's still-jailed political leaders and activists.'" http://t.uani.com/1fBiAVY Bahai World News Service: "Despite recent signals by Iran that it intends to improve on its human rights record, there has been little evidence of change, according to a report issued yesterday by the UN's expert on human rights in that country. 'The human rights situation in the Islamic Republic of Iran continues to warrant serious concern, with no sign of improvement,' said Ahmed Shaheed, the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in Iran. Among other things, Dr. Shaheed expressed concern over Iran's high level of executions, continuing discrimination against women and ethnic minorities, poor prison conditions, and limits on freedom of expression and association. He also said that religious minorities in Iran, including Baha'is, Christians, Sunni Muslims, and others, 'are increasingly subjected to various forms of legal discrimination, including in employment and education, and often face arbitrary detention, torture and ill-treatment.'" http://t.uani.com/184SCIO Opinion & Analysis Yeganeh Torbati, Steve Stecklow & Babak Dehghanpisheh in Reuters Investigates: "n the supreme leader's watch, Iran conducted a systematic campaign to legalize and safeguard the seizure of assets on which Setad's wealth was built. Two months before his death in 1989, Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini tried to solve a problem unleashed by the revolution he led a decade earlier. Land and other assets were being seized en masse from purported enemies of the young theocratic state. Khomeini issued a two-paragraph order asking two trusted aides to ensure that much of the proceeds from the sale of the properties would go to charity.  The result was a new organization - known as Setad, or 'The Headquarters' - that reported to Iran's supreme leader. As one of the aides later recounted, Setad was intended to oversee the confiscations and then wind down after two years. Twenty-four years later, Setad is an economic giant. Khomeini's successor as supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has used it to amass assets worth tens of billions of dollars, rivaling the holdings of the late shah. Setad's portfolio includes banks, farms, cement companies, a licensed contraceptives maker, apartments seized from Iranians living abroad and much more. Reuters found no evidence that Khamenei puts these assets to personal use. Instead, Setad's holdings underpin his power over Iran. To make Setad's asset acquisitions possible, governments under Khamenei's watch systematically legitimized the practice of confiscation and gave the organization control over much of the seized wealth, a Reuters investigation has found. The supreme leader, judges and parliament over the years have issued a series of bureaucratic edicts, constitutional interpretations and judicial decisions bolstering Setad. The most recent of these declarations came in June, just after the election of Iran's new president, Hassan Rouhani." http://t.uani.com/1dpB9uQ Con Coughlin in The Daily Telegraph: "For all the optimism expressed by John Kerry, the US Secretary of State, that the recent talks in Geneva aimed at ending Washington's 30-year-plus standoff with Terhan are moving in the right direction, Western policymakers would do well to remember who ultimately calls the shots on Iran's nuclear programme. During previous negotiating sessions in Geneva - for example in 2009 - the Iranian delegation has agreed a deal to resolve the crisis over Iran's uranium enrichment activities, only for Khamenei, who personally controls the nuclear programme, to veto it. The big difference this time round, though, and the real reason the Iranians are so keen to do a deal, is that the Iranian economy has been badly hit by the UN sanctions imposed in retaliation for Iran's long-standing failure to comply with the requirements of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, which has concluded that there is enough evidence to suggest that Iran is working on a clandestine nuclear programme. Hassan Rouhani's recent election as Iranian president owed much to his campaign promise to get the sanctions lifted, and the break-neck speed with which the Iranian delegation has approached the negotiations owes more to their desperation to ease the sanctions regime than any serious intention to stop enriching uranium, which is the issue that lies at the heart of the current crisis. As even the Panglossian Mr Kerry has now had to concede, the main stumbling block to a deal in Geneva last weekend was Iran's insistence on reserving the right to enrich uranium. In previous negotiations the Iranians have frequently indulged in delaying tactics, stringing out the talks so that Western negotiators are led to believe they are about to get a deal, when in fact they were just buying themselves more time. As every nuclear expert knows, there will come a point when Iran has enough enriched uranium that it can press ahead with building a nuclear weapon, and there will be nothing the West can do to stop them. It is debatable whether Iran has yet reached that point, but it is certainly getting close, and the one crucial factor John Kerry seems to be conveniently overlooking is that, for all the encouraging noises being made by the Iranian delegation, there has been no let-up in Iran's uranium enrichment activities. Indeed, if Mr Kerry is allowed to have his way, there is every possibility that Iran will be allowed to continue to enrich uranium, such is the Obama administration's desperation to appease the ayatollahs." http://t.uani.com/171FjYO Patrick Clawson in WashPost: "There is a broad consensus among Iran's elite that a nuclear deal with Washington would serve Iran's hegemonic objectives. In this view, the real barrier to such a nuclear accord is not the United States but Europe and Israel, supported by the Saudis... In high-profile speeches, Khamenei has been laying the groundwork to walk away from any deal by warning that the West is untrustworthy and will not deliver on its promises - the same reasons he gave for walking away from the earlier nuclear deals. Israel has good reason to worry that the economic sanctions will be eased, reducing the pressure on Iran such that whatever the West presents as the first temporary step is never followed by another step, meaning that Tehran never accepts more limits on its nuclear program. Saudi Arabia has equally solid grounds to worry that, in return for a nuclear deal, Iran would get a free hand to pursue its hegemonic agenda in the region and consolidate its influence in Syria and Iraq. And Iranian democrats are right to fear that any accord with the West would herald renewed vigor for the Islamic Republic. After all, Rouhani has done little to improve human rights, as evidenced by the increased pace of executions since he took office. Israel, the Gulf states and Iranian democrats will be reassured only by vigorous U.S. actions to address their concerns: efforts to persuade allies to threaten more sanctions to show Iran how bad things would get in the absence of a more far-reaching permanent accord; efforts to shore up those resisting or opposing Iranian proxies such as Syrian President Bashar al-Assad; and efforts to put renewed muscle behind outreach in support of Iranian democracy. The challenge for the Obama administration is to take steps that would make a nuclear accord a success for U.S. interests rather than facilitate the Islamic Republic's hegemony at home and in the region." http://t.uani.com/17pagmM Elliot Abrams in WashPost: "Public rites will be visible across Iran on Wednesday in honor of Ashura, a major Shiite festival commemorating the death of Hussein, Muhammad's grandson. But for Iranians who are not Shiite Muslims, public practice of their religion remains severely limited or flatly banned - and the Islamic Republic's war on religious freedom has hurt no community more than Iran's Bahais. There are only 300,000 Bahais in Iran, or less than one-half of 1 percent of the country's population. But since its founding in 1979, the Islamic Republic has singled this group out for systematic repression. In the early years, hundreds of Bahais were executed and thousands more were imprisoned. Bahai properties have been confiscated without compensation. Bahai Iranians are barred from holding government jobs, their children are excluded from the nation's university system, their marriages are not recognized and their cemeteries and holy places have been desecrated. It is government policy to incite hatred of Bahais in the official media. And more than 100 Bahai leaders remain in prison - for the crimes of being Bahai and teaching their children their religion. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has sought to cast himself as a moderate. His 'rise to power and the strengthening of his position will come at a cost to Iran's hard-liners,' the Iranian-born analyst Meir Javedanfar predicted last month. Here is a good test: Will the harsh conditions for Iran's Bahais improve? After decades of oppression by the Islamic Republic, will the bitter official pressure be reduced? Alas, the evidence suggests the answer is no. To smooth Rouhani's path at the U.N. General Assembly in September, Iran released 11 prisoners of conscience - but not one was a Bahai. In August a well-known Bahai in Bandar Abbas, Ataollah Rezvani, was murdered. Before his death, human rights groups report, Rezvani had received threats and been pressured by agents of the Ministry of Intelligence. He also received threatening phone calls. The government opened an investigation, but no progress has been reported. Amnesty International reported last year that: 'Non-Muslims, especially the Baha'i community, have been increasingly demonized by Iranian officials and in the Iranian state-controlled media. In 2011, repeated calls by the Supreme Leader and other authorities to combat 'false beliefs' - apparently an allusion to evangelical Christianity, Baha'ism and Sufism - appear to have led to an increase in religious persecution. The Baha'i minority... suffers particularly harshly at the hands of the state, which regards it as a 'heretical' sect.' ... In his Sept. 19 op-ed in The Post, Rouhani wrote that 'we must join hands to constructively work toward national dialogue, whether in Syria or Bahrain. We must create an atmosphere where peoples of the region can decide their own fates.' How about in Iran? The persecution of Bahais gives the lie to his pose as a moderate." http://t.uani.com/184R29V Jonathan Spyer in Tablet: "As the Syrian civil war grinds on toward its fourth year, no end appears in sight. It is the greatest disaster in the Levant in a generation: More than 115,000 people have died. Around 2 million refugees have departed the country-for Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, and beyond-while untold more who have left their homes remain in Syria, seeking with increasing desperation to put themselves and their families out of reach of the guns. But while the war appears far from ending, its direction and likely outcome have shifted significantly in the past year. At the beginning of this year, the Assad regime looked beleaguered, with an end-game fast approaching. Rebel groups had entered the main cities, and Aleppo, the "capital of the north," was largely in rebel hands. The battle for Damascus seemed about to begin as Assad's foes pushed into the city's eastern suburbs. Today, as 2013 draws to a close, the situation looks very different. Bashar al-Assad is still in power and has succeeded in ending any immediate threat to his regime. He is no longer in control of the entirety of Syria-his overstretched forces have ceded around half the country's territory, concentrating their strength in this region around the capital, the Alawite heartland of the western coast, and the area linking the two-but that was never the issue at stake this year. The question was whether the rebels would succeed in pushing into areas of regime control. They have not and are unlikely to in the immediate future. Indeed, rebel advances have ceased, and in some areas, the insurgents have been turned back. The lines between the two sides are largely static, although the daily death toll continues to mount. The factors driving this new war of attrition derive from both the weakness and disorganization of the rebels, and the relative cohesion of the regime, in particular from the staunch assistance of its regional and global allies and backers, who have come together in unprecedented ways in the course of the last 18 months in order to prevent his downfall. Russia has continued to supply arms to the regime, and its veto power on the U.N. Security Council has prevented any coherent international response to the crisis. But it is Iran that has played the really crucial role in propping up the government. The Syrian central bank has announced that Iran has facilitated a credit line worth at least $4 billion to Assad. One Arab official estimated that Iran was providing around $700 million per month to Syria... So, Assad has been lucky in his choice of enemies. He has, of course, also been lucky in his choice of friends. For the Iranians, saving Assad is not a matter of charity and altruism. Syria forms an essential link in Iran's goal of consolidating a contiguous line of pro-Iranian Shia states stretching from the country's own western border across Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon to the Mediterranean coast. If Assad were to fall, that dream is over, and Hezbollah, Iran's main Arab proxy, would be left isolated. The Iranians are determined to prevent that, and in the course of this year they have succeeded dramatically. It is in the prosecution of the war itself that Iran's assistance has been most intriguing and most telling. The Iranians understood early on that Assad's Achilles heel was his lack of trustworthy men willing to engage on his behalf.  While on paper the Syrian dictator possesses an enormous conventional army, large parts of this force are Sunni conscripts who cannot be relied upon to support Assad's continued rule. In the course of the latter part of 2012, the Iranians, together with their Hezbollah proxies, set about creating an alternative army for their Syrian friend. Today, the National Defense Forces are 50,000 strong and play an important role on the battlefield. In addition, Hezbollah fighters are in Syria, around 10,000 of them earlier in 2013, according to Israeli estimates, though the number has now been somewhat reduced. They have played a vital role in keeping the links between Damascus and the regime's heartland on the western coastal area open. The Iranians have mobilized additional regional proxies on Assad's behalf. The Iraqi Abu Fadl al-Abbas Brigade has sent Shia volunteers into Syria. And of course, Iranian Revolutionary Guards personnel are themselves present in Syria and have taken part in the fighting. The efficient division of labor between Russian arms provision and diplomatic support and Iranian financial assistance, strategic advice, and training and provision of fighters enabled Assad to halt and turn back the rebel advances of late 2012. But Assad may well have paid a price for this assistance: Arguably, he is no longer the undisputed master even of the 40 percent or so of the country that remains under government control. Some reports have suggested that Qassem Suleimani of the Iranian Quds Force is the real 'director' of the regime's war in Syria today, not Bashar Assad." http://t.uani.com/19k1GWn Eye on Iran is a periodic news summary from United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) a program of the American Coalition Against Nuclear Iran, Inc., a tax-exempt organization under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. Eye on Iran is not intended as a comprehensive media clips summary but rather a selection of media elements with discreet analysis in a PDA friendly format. 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