Eye on Iran: Iran, Russia Working to Seal $20 billion Oil-for-Goods Deal

Join UANI           Top Stories Reuters: "Iran and Russia have made progress towards an oil-for-goods deal sources said would be worth up to $20 billion, which would enable Tehran to boost vital energy exports in defiance of Western sanctions, people familiar with the negotiations told Reuters. In January Reuters reported Moscow and Tehran were discussing a barter deal that would see Moscow buy up to 500,000 barrels a day of Iranian oil in exchange for Russian equipment and goods. The White House has said such a deal would raise 'serious concerns' and would be inconsistent with the nuclear talks between world powers and Iran. A Russian source said Moscow had "prepared all documents from its side", adding that completion of a deal was awaiting agreement on what oil price to lock in. The source said the two sides were looking at a barter arrangement that would see Iranian oil being exchanged for industrial goods including metals and food, but said there was no military equipment involved. The source added that the deal was expected to reach $15 to $20 billion in total and would be done in stages with an initial $6 billion to $8 billion tranche." http://t.uani.com/QIeogo Reuters: "The top U.S. Treasury Department official responsible for sanctions said on Wednesday there is no evidence that any companies are taking advantage of a preliminary nuclear agreement with Iran by reaching new deals in Iran. 'We have not seen companies anywhere - Europe, the Gulf, Asia - trying to take advantage of this ... narrow opening, the quite limited suspensions of the sanctions to get into the Iranian market, enter into business deals that would otherwise be sanctionable,' Treasury Under Secretary David Cohen said at a U.S. Senate hearing. Cohen noted that authorities estimated when the preliminary agreement was reached that the sanctions relief would be worth a maximum of $6 billion to $7 billion for Iran. He said that estimate seems to be holding more than two months after the pact came into force in January. 'Nothing that we have seen leads us to question that estimate. If anything, that estimate is probably on the high side,' Cohen said." http://t.uani.com/1hEjy6m Reuters: "The United States has told Iran it has deep misgivings about the possibility that Hamid Abutalebi, a veteran Iranian diplomat, may be named to serve as Tehran's new ambassador at the United Nations, the State Department said on Wednesday. The fact that Abutalebi, who has held key European postings, has been selected by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani as Iran's new ambassador to the United Nations has been well known among U.N. delegations for months, but has not been formally announced or confirmed by Tehran. The possibility that he may have played a role in the 1979-1981 hostage crisis has outraged some of the U.S. embassy workers held by the Iranians for 444 days as well as some U.S. lawmakers. 'We think this nomination would be extremely troubling,' State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf told reporters at her daily briefing. 'We have raised our serious concerns about this possible nomination with the government of Iran.' The United States, which severed diplomatic ties with Iran in 1980 during the hostage crisis, is generally required to allow U.N. diplomats to come to New York under its host country agreement with the United Nations. However, it can under limited circumstances refuse to grant visas to such diplomats." http://t.uani.com/1jERosS        Nuclear Program & Negotiations Reuters: "Changes to the design of Iran's planned Arak research reactor could drastically reduce its output of potential nuclear weapon material, U.S. experts said in a proposal. How to deal with Arak is one of several issues that must be tackled in negotiations between Iran and six global powers that got under way in February with the aim of reaching a long-term deal on the decade-old nuclear dispute by late July. Princeton University academics said that annual production of plutonium could be cut to less than a kilogram - well below the roughly eight kg needed for an atomic bomb - if Iran altered the way the plant is fuelled and lowers its power capacity. 'These redesigns would not reduce the usefulness of the reactor for making radioisotopes and conducting research,' wrote Ali Ahmad, Frank von Hippel, Alexander Glaser and Zia Mian - members of Princeton's Program on Science and Global Security. 'This approach would meet Iran's needs and would address the concerns of the international community,' said their article, due to be published on Wednesday by the on-line journal of the Arms Control Association, a U.S. research and advocacy group." http://t.uani.com/1fzAHNY Sanctions Enforcement & Impact WSJ: "A rare scene in Capitol Hill these days: Lawmakers insisted an agency leader needed more money, but he continued to demur. Members of the Appropriations Committee expressed concerns that the U.S. Treasury office that pursues sanctions against Iran and North Korea might be stretched too thin, as the administration begins to punish Russia over Ukraine. Lawmakers questioned Undersecretary David Cohen, who leads Treasury's Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, on whether President Barack Obama's budget request for the agency was large enough. Mr. Obama has requested $105.9 million for the Office, an increase of about $4 million. But some lawmakers wondered aloud whether that would be enough to handle the Office's increasing responsibilities. 'Under the president's budget you will get $4 million more but you are getting a lot more work,' said Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D., Md.)." http://t.uani.com/PmQvKf Human Rights Trend: "Senior Iranian official says that the European Parliament's resolution on violation of human rights in Iran is baseless and counterproductive. Approval of the resolution is based on double-standards and politically motivated, Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman, Marzieh Afkham said, the country's IRNA news agency reported on April 2. Expressing regret over issuance of the resolution, the spokeswoman said, 'European parliament should do its best to understand Iranian culture and religious beliefs and not to use human rights as a political lever.' Afkham also underlined that the Islamic Republic would continue its way forward for promotion of human rights based on 'Islamic injunctions.'" http://t.uani.com/1dUSQqR Terrorism Daily Star: "Information made available to The Daily Star revealed that a high-ranking Iranian lieutenant colonel, identified as Mahmoud A., arrived recently in Lebanon to provide counsel as Hezbollah radically reforms its security apparatus. The changes are a response to violations committed within party ranks, documented by Israeli as well as Western intelligence, as well as the party's missteps in dealing with the sensitive security situation in Lebanon - not to mention the conflict in neighboring Syria, where the party has suffered from almost daily information leaks. The colonel is expected to be involved in a series of changes and new appointments in a number of leading security posts, as well as reorganizing groups and cells in line with amendments relating to the party's communication structure." http://t.uani.com/1k32ydA Syria Conflict Reuters: "Conflict in Syria kills hundreds of thousands of people and spreads unrest across the Middle East. Iranian forces battle anti-Shi'ite fighters in Damascus, and the region braces for an ultimate showdown... On the other side, many Shi'ites from Lebanon, Iraq and Iran are drawn to the war because they believe it paves the way for the return of Imam Mahdi - a descendent of the Prophet who vanished 1,000 years ago and who will re-emerge at a time of war to establish global Islamic rule before the end of the world. According to Shi'ite tradition, an early sign of his return came with the 1979 Iranian revolution, which set up an Islamic state to provide fighters for an army led by the Mahdi to wage war in Syria after sweeping through the Middle East. 'This Islamic Revolution, based on the narratives that we have received from the prophet and imams, is the prelude to the appearance of the Mahdi,' Iranian cleric and parliamentarian Ruhollah Hosseinian said last year." http://t.uani.com/Of4WPf Commerce Trend: "ECO Bank of Trade and Development has agreed to financially support Iranˈs plan to improve regional economic cooperation in the Middle East and North Africa, IRNA reported. Deputy Minister of Roads and Urban Development Mohsen Sadeghi told IRNA on Wednesday that the signed agreement is a follow-up of ECO Economic Cooperation meeting held in Istanbul last September. He added the ECO Bank had declared, in the meeting, its support for plans of ECO transportation, agriculture, and trade committees." http://t.uani.com/1scmPi8 Domestic Politics Trend: "Iranian senior official says that the inflation rate for the 12-month period reached 32.1 percent by the end of last Iranian calendar year (March 20). Vice-president for Strategic Planning and Control Mohammad Baqer Nobakht underlined that the 43-percent inflation rate of August-September 2013 has been reduced to 32.1 percent, the country's Young Journalists Club news agency reported on April 3. The point-to-point inflation stood at 19.6 percent for the last Iranian calendar month of Esfand (Feb.20-March 20), which indicates a fall by 0.4 percent compared to the previous month, according to the official website of the Statistics Center of Iran. The Statistical Center of Iran on March 1 put the 12-month and the point-to-point inflation rates for the eleventh Iranian calendar month of Bahman (Jan. 21 - Feb. 19) at 33.7 percent and 22 percent, respectively." http://t.uani.com/1gqz8xK Al-Monitor: "A senior commander in Iran's Revolutionary Guard has defended the body's entrance into the oil industry, saying that without it, the country would not have been able to manage under international sanctions. Col. Rasool Sanaeirad, head of the political office of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC or Sepah), told Basirat, 'We are in a situation of economic war and Sepah ... has additional capacity for the realization of a resistance economy and to help the executive [branch] and the system.' 'Just as before this,' he continued, 'Sepah had an added role in decreasing the effects of sanctions with a presence in the construction field. If Sepah had not entered fields such as the oil industry, foreign companies could have inflicted irrecoverable blows to our oil industry and our economic activities.'" http://t.uani.com/1ijFodd Foreign Affairs NYT: "Six months after President Obama made a groundbreaking telephone call to his Iranian counterpart, Hassan Rouhani, the administration has made clear that expectations of a complete thaw in relations between Iran and the United States are premature. The latest reminder is the appointment of Hamid Aboutalebi, a veteran Iranian diplomat who is Tehran's choice of envoy to the United Nations and who once played a still-mysterious role in the 1979 hostage crisis... In a measure of the wide gulf that remains between Iran and the United States, an Iranian lawmaker, Mehdi Bazrpash, said on Wednesday that the visa delay represented the latest American insult against Iran. 'It is not fitting for our country that our chosen envoy to the United Nations is not accepted by America,' he said, according to the Fars news agency... If Mr. Aboutalebi has sought to cast himself as a bit player in 1979, his prospective job here is among the most important for his government. Iran's permanent mission to the world body, on the 34th floor of a high-rise on the east side of Manhattan, is the country's only diplomatic outpost in the United States." http://t.uani.com/1kuXIl1 Free Beacon: "Former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad emerged from hiding on Wednesday to deliver a rare public speech in which he told Iranians, 'We can rest the day that we raise the flag of martyrs over the White House,' according to an independent translation of Persian language media reports... 'This was Ahmadinejad's first political comment after a long silence, more importantly it is reported by a news agency controlled by [Iran's] powerful Basij forces, the Iranian version of SS forces,' Saeed Ghasseminejad, cofounder of Iranian Liberal Students and Graduates, told the Washington Free Beacon. 'Ahmadinejad also got the chance to sit close to Khamenei, as Khamenei's website and IRGC-run Fars News reported,' Ghasseminejad said. This may be seen as 'a significant sign in Iran's politics showing that Ahmadinejad's relation with Khamenei is improving,' he said. 'It seems that Khamenei and powerful forces in his office have decided not to keep Ahmadinejad totally out of the loop.'" http://t.uani.com/1dQ6iwv 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. 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