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WashPost:
"As Syrians went to the polls on Tuesday, President Bashar
al-Assad's chief ally Iran is trumpeting his anticipated victory as a
defeat for the United States. Recent days have seen a flurry of
declarations by top Iranian officials celebrating not only the affirmation
of Assad's continued hold on power that the election represents but also
Iran's role in sustaining him. The United States has repeatedly dismissed
the election taking place Tuesday as a 'parody' because the outcome is
guaranteed by rules written by the Assad regime... Iran, however,
dispatched a team of monitors Monday to observe the voting, part of an
extensive effort to mirror failed U.S. policies in Syria with initiatives
asserting ownership of the crisis. 'Foreign powers should give up their
illusions about fulfilling their personal desires and strategies through
military methods in Syria,' Iran's foreign minister, Mohammad Javad
Zarif, told a Friends of Syria conference in Tehran over the weekend...
'They should admit that there is no way to solve the crisis of Syria
other than the willpower of the Syrian people, which will be shown at the
ballot box,' Zarif told the gathering, reportedly attended by
representatives of 30 countries friendly to Iran." http://t.uani.com/T9UZpF
RFE/RL:
"Top Obama administration officials used the 10th anniversary of the
Treasury Department's Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence to
tout sanctions as a tool of foreign policy amid the president's stated
shift away from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Sanctions are becoming
'increasingly important tools' for the Obama administration's foreign
policy, said Under Secretary For Terrorism and Financial Intelligence
David Cohen. 'It is sometimes said that financial sanctions are a new
form of warfare,' he said. 'While that overstates the case -- real war is
decidedly different, and we should never forget that -- there is no
mistaking that the tools we have developed and deployed deliver real and
meaningful impact.' Sanctions fit with the administration's preferred
maxim on foreign policy, 'Don't do stupid stuff,' by providing an
alternative to war or military assistance... Lew said sanctions brought
Iran into negotiations with Western countries over its nuclear program,
and he added that Russia's sluggish economic growth was proof that
sanctions have imposed a 'cost' over the invasion of Crimea." http://t.uani.com/1x0v574
IHR:
"One prisoner was hanged in the prison of Semnan (Northern Iran) on
June 1, reported the official website of the Iranian Judiciary in Semnan.
The prisoner who was identified as 'J. L.' (39 year old from Zabol), was
charged with possession and trafficking of 1750 grams of the narcotic
substance crack, said the report. According to the reports collected by
Iran Human Rights (IHR), at least 320 prisoners have been executed in
2014 in Iran... Based on these numbers, the Iranian authorities have
executed in average, more than 2 people every day in the first five
months of 2014. This is despite the fact that there has been a 3 week's
halt in the executions around the Iranian new year in March." http://t.uani.com/1hvmHZ5
Nuclear Program & Negotiations
Reuters: "The head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog said on Monday that
Iran had begun to engage substantively with a long-thwarted probe into
suspected atom bomb research, but that more was needed to clear up his
concerns. Describing the investigation as a 'jigsaw puzzle', Yukiya Amano
made clear that it would not be finished before the July 20 deadline that
Iran and six world powers have set for the conclusion of broader talks to
settle a long-term dispute over Iran's nuclear programme. But Amano said
he did not believe the major powers expected the International Atomic
Energy Agency (IAEA) to finish its investigation by then. 'That is not
our timeline. It is their timeline. We will take the necessary time to
resolve all the outstanding issues,' he said. The IAEA's inquiry focuses specifically
on what it calls the possible military dimensions of Iran's atomic
activities, notably whether it has worked on designing a nuclear warhead,
a charge it denies." http://t.uani.com/1tBicvR
AP: "The head of the U.N. nuclear agency suggested Monday that a
probe of suspected atomic arms work by Iran may stretch into next year -
which would push Tehran's overall nuclear agreement with world powers
long past the July 20 target date. The International Atomic Energy Agency
investigation is formally separate from six-power talks with Iran that
are meant to build on a first step-accord struck late last year and focus
on substantially trimming Tehran's nuclear program in exchange for full
sanctions relief. The U.S. and its western allies at the negotiating
table insist that Iran and the IAEA must wrap up the investigation as
part of the overall nuclear agreement that Iran and the powers want to
finalize by July 20. On Monday, IAEA chief Yukiya Amano told reporters he
doesn't believe either side expects his agency to conclude its probe by
then - raising new doubts about the deadline. He could not say if the
investigation would finish by year's end. Speaking to the 35-nation IAEA
board, Amano said Iran is cooperating 'substantively' with the probe, but
it is too early to make an overall judgment." http://t.uani.com/1n8xLKJ
Human Rights
AFP: "The United States on Monday voiced renewed concerns about the
'large' number of executions in Iran, the day after a political prisoner
was hanged despite international concern. Gholamreza Khosravi Savadjani
was executed after being convicted of 'waging war against God' by helping
the People's Mujahedeen Organisation of Iran (PMOI), Iranian state media
reported... 'We continue to be concerned about the large number of Iranians
executed following trials involving serious violations of due process,'
State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said. 'Even as we test the
potential for a diplomatic resolution to the nuclear issue, our support
for the fundamental freedoms and rights of all Iranians will continue,'
she insisted. Progress in Iran's respect for human rights would be 'a key
test in Iran's reintegration with the international community,' Psaki
added." http://t.uani.com/1osa1kd
Guardian: "Iran's supreme leader has called for a population
increase in an edict likely to restrict access to contraception that
critics fear could damage women's rights and public health. In his
14-point decree, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said increasing Iran's 76
million-strong population would strengthen national identity and counter
undesirable aspects of western lifestyles. 'Given the importance of
population size in sovereign might and economic progress ... firm, quick
and efficient steps must be taken to offset the steep fall in birth rate
of recent years,' he wrote on his website. Khamenei's order, which must
be applied by all three branches of government, replaces the 'fewer kids,
better life' motto adopted in the late 1980s when contraception was made
widely available... But many Iranians are concerned about policy shifts
to boost the population, something proposed for years by conservatives,
including the former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who favoured nearly
doubling the population to 120 million, encouraging women to stay home
and devote their time to child-rearing. Reformist Iranians fear the
fertility campaign could undermine the position of women in a country
where 60% of university students are female but only 12.4% of the
workforce is, according to the Statistical Centre of Iran." http://t.uani.com/1nKJ1jY
RFE/RL: "The world took notice when Iranian women used a Facebook
page to openly defy the clerical establishment by posting pictures of
themselves in public without a hijab. Now the country's hard-liners
appear to be using more traditional media to hit back at the woman who
set up the page through a smear campaign that accuses her of espionage,
drug use, and immorality that led to her rape. 'Iranian Women's Stealthy
Freedom,' the brainchild of exiled journalist Masih Alinejad, has
garnered more than 400,000 'likes' and received extensive media coverage
since the exiled journalist started the page on May 3. It also got the
attention of hard-line blogs and news sites, including the semi-official
Fars news agency close to the powerful Revolutionary Guards Force (IRGC),
who have accused Alinejad of working with foreign intelligence services
and promoting immorality and promiscuity in Iran. The latest attack came
over the weekend by Iran's state controlled television, which accused Alinejad
of moral corruption and said that she was trying to deceive Iranian girls
and women. The state television claimed Alinejad had been raped in London
after using drugs and undressing in public. The report said the alleged
rape, by three men, took place in front of Alinejad's son in the London
Underground." http://t.uani.com/1h3QWpq
Domestic
Politics
Al-Monitor: "A video leaked online of the commander of Iran's
Revolutionary Guard saying that the Reformists' return to power in the
2009 elections was a 'red line' for them is proof of election fraud, some
are saying. Mohammad Nourizad, one of Iran's most outspoken politician
dissidents, uploaded to his Facebook page an edited video of the
commander of the Revolutionary Guard, Mohammad Ali Jafari, discussing the
2009 elections and the subsequent crackdown on protests... 'The
sensitivity of the [2009] presidential elections is clear for all of
you,' Jafari says at the beginning of the approximately five-minute
Facebook video. 'The concern and worry that existed, and the red line
that existed for the forces of the revolution, is again the return of
those opposed to the revolution and the values of the revolution, that
during the 2nd of Khordad found an opportunity and penetrated the
government, for them to return to power once again.' By '2nd of Khordad,'
Jafari was referring to the 1997 election won by Reformist President
Mohammad Khatami in a landslide victory." http://t.uani.com/1ktqzcb
Opinion &
Analysis
UANI President Gary Samore in Politico: "The most recent round of
nuclear talks in Vienna between Iran and six major world powers was a
sticker-shock moment. For the first time, negotiators presented Iran with
the specific bill of nuclear concessions it would have to make in
exchange for comprehensive sanctions relief. Despite all the happy talk
about a nuclear deal being imminent-much of it encouraged by Iran to lure
Western companies to sign contracts ahead of the scramble to resume
business if sanctions are lifted-the U.S. team was well aware of the tough
bargaining ahead and cautioned against excessive optimism. However, from
my discussions with officials involved in the negotiations, they entered
this critical phase of the talks confident of their strong bargaining
position... In exchange for Iran's nuclear constraints, the United States
and the European Union have eased some trade sanctions and released some
frozen funds from Iran's oil exports. But the overall sanctions regime
has remained intact, mainly because U.S. and European officials have
actively warned companies and other governments not to take actions that
would erode sanctions. To reinforce the message, Washington has continued
to impose sanctions against companies that have violated the existing
sanctions even while the interim agreement is in effect. Private
organizations like United Against Nuclear Iran (of which I am president)
have also helped by calling on specific Western companies not to engage
in business with Iran that violates existing sanctions... So, on balance,
the decision by the P5+1 (as the five permanent members of the Security
Council plus Germany are known) to pursue an interim agreement as a first
step toward a comprehensive agreement has been successful. In fact, the
status quo is probably more acceptable to the P5+1 than it is to Iran
because they are essentially freezing Iran's nuclear program without
giving up very much in sanctions leverage. The question now is whether
conditions are ripe to complete a comprehensive agreement by July 20,
2014, the near-term deadline set by the Joint Plan of Action. Since
leaving the White House, I've had the chance to discuss this question
with Iranians who claim to represent the views of Iranian President
Hassan Rouhani and his chief negotiator, Foreign Minister Javad Zarif. No
doubt, Tehran is highly motivated to complete an agreement. My Iranian
friends tell me that President Rouhani is under tremendous pressure to
produce economic results or face a counterattack by hardliners, charging
that he has shackled Iran's nuclear program without getting much economic
relief in return. In fact, some Iranians warn that Iran will walk away
from the talks if an acceptable deal is not achieved by the end of July,
but I suspect this threat is mainly a bargaining tactic. With soft
international oil markets, if Tehran abandons the negotiations,
Washington can retaliate by pressuring and persuading Iran's remaining
major oil customers (China, India, Japan and Korea) to reduce their
purchases of Iranian oil even further. President Obama is also eager for
a diplomatic victory, keen to silence critics of his foreign policy. To
paraphrase Obama's recent statements in Manila about foreign policy, a
good nuclear deal with Iran would be more than a single or a double. It
would be a home run-removing (or at least postponing) one of the most
significant security threats facing the United States and its allies in
the Middle East. And as a practical matter, a nuclear deal in July would
be easier to defend in Congress before the midterm elections, in which
the Republicans may take the Senate and be in a better position to block
any agreement. Prospects for a deal by July, however, are dim. On one
hand, the P5+1 and Iran seem to have agreed-at least in principle-to
modify the 40-megawatt Arak heavy water research reactor (which is still
under construction) to reduce the power level and alter the reactor core
and fuel type so that it cannot produce a significant amount of
plutonium. The details of these modifications still need to be
determined-in particular how extensive and how reversible the changes
will be-but this seems to be a bridgeable set of issues. In fact, Iran is
more willing to trade away Arak because its pathway to produce plutonium
for nuclear weapons is much more challenging and distant than its uranium
enrichment program. As one of my Iranian contacts said-half joking-'We'll
give you plutonium if you give us uranium.' On the other hand, the
negotiators seem far apart on at least two crucial issues. The first is
physical constraints on Iran's enrichment program. Currently, Iran has
installed about 20,000 IR-1 (first generation) centrifuge machines, of
which about 9,000 are actually enriching. In addition, Iran has installed
about 1,000 more powerful IR-2 (second generation) centrifuges that are
not yet operational. The P5+1 are demanding that Iran significantly scale
back the numbers and types of centrifuges, reduce its stockpile of low
enriched uranium, limit research and development of more advanced
centrifuges and close or convert the Fordow enrichment facility.
Presumably, the P5+1 want surplus centrifuges to be removed, disassembled
and stored under IAEA supervision. Excess low-enriched uranium could be
converted to oxide and exported for fabrication into fuel elements for
the Bushehr nuclear power plant. The Fordow enrichment facility could be
converted to store surplus centrifuges or to conduct limited research and
development. Finally, the P5+1 are demanding that these restrictions on
Iran's enrichment program remain in place for more than a decade... Given
all of these complex and contentious issues, I think it will be very
difficult to reach a comprehensive deal by July. Nonetheless, both sides
have a strong interest to keep the diplomatic process alive because
neither wants to return to previous cycle of escalation of increased
sanctions and increased nuclear activities with an increased risk of war.
And both sides will be able to make a good case that sufficient progress
is being made in the negotiations even if a final agreement has not been
reached. Therefore, I expect that the two sides will agree to extend the
interim agreement for an additional six months, until January 2015...
Whether Iran will agree to substantial long-term constraints on its
nuclear program in exchange for more comprehensive sanctions relief is
less certain, but I could imagine a series of interim or partial
agreements that continues to slow down Iran's nuclear activities, without
sacrificing our main sanctions leverage. In other words, we can still buy
time-and that may be the best that diplomacy can achieve while the
current Iranian leadership remains in power." http://t.uani.com/1hvtKko
UANI President Gary Samore Interviewed by Adam Garfinkle in The American
Interest:
AG: Tell us a bit about the organization you preside over, United Against
a Nuclear Iran, or UANI.
GS: It existed before
I became its president. The reason I was attracted to it is that they do
an excellent job of supplementing government efforts to impose sanctions.
And I think that without sanctions we're never going to get a nuclear
deal.
AG: Who set the organization up, and about when?
GS: It started during
the first Obama Administration, and was set up for the purpose of trying
to enforce sanctions through new means. Mark Wallace is the chief
operating officer, and he was one of Bush's Ambassadors to the United
Nations. This is one of the ways President Obama managed to overcome our
differences with the allies to build a better sanctions regime, and do
it, of course, without ever taking the military option off the table.
AG: Before we get to the negotiations going on right now in
Vienna, let's talk about the interim accord. What has gone well with it,
and from both a U.S. national security point of view and a broader
counter-proliferation point of view, what hasn't gone so well?
GS: I would say that
on balance, it has been successful in achieving its intended purpose,
which was to freeze, cap, or slow down Iran's nuclear program in critical
areas in exchange for limited sanctions relief. The big concern I had at
the time, along with many sanctions experts, was that once we started to
ease sanctions, the entire edifice might collapse. In fact, that hasn't
happen. The U.S and European governments have been very proactive in
warning their companies, saying they could go to Iran and discuss
possibilities for when sanctions are lifted, but if they signed any new
deals that contravened sanctions they would suffer themselves.
In many ways, the
status quo we've come to now serves us better than it serves the Iranians.
We've essentially gotten a freeze on their program in exchange for very
limited sanctions relief. It's easier for us to extend that status quo
than it is for the Iranians, which puts us in a very strong bargaining
position. And if we ever do have to go back to the sanctions track, I
think we're in a strong position to impose even greater sanctions on
Iran, especially on their oil exports, given the international oil market
and the political influence we have with Iran's biggest remaining
customers-Japan, Korea, and India. They're exporting about 1.2 million
barrels per day of crude now, and I think we can reduce that by half if
we decide we need to. http://t.uani.com/1jOubAH
Jeffrey Herf in The American Interest: "Radical,
theologically based hatred of Judaism, Zionism, and the state of Israel
is part of the core ideological beliefs of the leaders of the Islamic
Republic of Iran. Yet U.S. policymakers all too rarely consider Iran's
endemic anti-Semitism. In fact, it's hardly ever discussed outside of
Israel and a few Western intellectual circles. To be sure, the Iranian
regime's radical anti-Semitism is of deepest concern to Israel, but a
regime driven by such violent hatred also endangers the world, especially
modern, Western, democratic nations. While the U.S. Congress has held
hearings about the technical details of Iran's nuclear programs and the
impact of economic sanctions, as far as I know it has never publicly
discussed the core ideology of the Iranian regime and how it affects
Iran's quest for nuclear weapons. Such hearings are long overdue. The
radical anti-Semitism voiced by Iranian leaders is a worldview so
delusional, so removed from actual realities, that those who advocate it
will almost certainly not operate according to the customary norms of
what constitutes reasonable behavior in international affairs. Indeed,
U.S. policymakers cannot assume that Iran will value its own survival
more than it does the goal of eliminating the hated Jewish enemy. The
scholarship on the history of anti-Semitism hasn't yet had a significant
impact on the policy discussions in Washington about Iran. Perhaps too
many of our policymakers, politicians, and analysts still labor under the
mistaken idea that radical anti-Semitism is merely another form of prejudice
or, worse, an understandable (and hence excusable?) response to the
conflict between Israel, the Arab states, and the Palestinians. In fact
it is something far more dangerous, and far less compatible with a system
of nuclear deterrence, which assumes that all parties place a premium on
their own survival. Iran's radical anti-Semitism is not in the slightest
bit rational; it is a paranoid conspiracy theory that proposes to make
sense (or rather nonsense) of the world by claiming that the powerful and
evil 'Jew' is the driving force in global politics. Leaders who attribute
enormous evil and power to the 13 million Jews in the world and to a tiny
Middle Eastern state with about eight million citizens have demonstrated
that they don't have a suitable disposition for playing nuclear chess.
Iranian anti-Semitism has been well documented, in particular by Meir
Litvak of the Dayan Center for Middle East Studies at the University of
Tel Aviv and the Middle East Research and Media Institute (MEMRI). They
have offered abundant evidence that hatred of the Jews and a
determination to destroy the state of Israel are paramount goals for the
Islamic Republic and have been ever since its founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah
Khomeini, gave such views theological sanction. Like his fellow
Islamists, Haj Amin el-Husseini and Sayyid Qutb, Khomeini asserted that
Jews were bent on destroying Islam, a mission he claimed found modern
expression in the establishment of Israel. Indeed, he saw no difference
between his hatred of Jews and Judaism and his hatred of Israel.1 His
successor shares Khomeini's views: as reported by the Islamic Republic
News Agency (IRNA), Ayatollah Ali Khamenei stated in 2001 that 'the
occupation of Palestine [by the Jews] is part of a satanic design by the
world domineering powers, perpetrated by the British in the past and
carried out today by the United States, to weaken the solidarity of the
Islamic world and to sow the seeds of disunity among nations.'2 As Meir
Litvak writes, both Khomenei to Khamenei see Jews and Judaism as a threat
to Islam and the Muslims. Khomenei made uncompromising,
theologically-based assertions that Israel and Zionism were enemies not
only of Islam but of humanity in its entirety, and Khamenei has said the
same. Such evil enemies, they believe, must be wiped out for the good of
all. As a historian of modern German history, specializing in the Nazi
era and the Holocaust, I know the pitfalls of misplaced historical
analogies. Israel's enemies commonly make such analogies; the Soviet
Union, the Arab states, Palestinian organizations, Islamist terror groups
and the government of Iran have all compared Israel to Nazi Germany. Yet
our current policy debates suffer from the opposite problem. Policymakers
are unwilling to openly and frankly discuss radical anti-Semitism when it
comes from Islamist sources. Despite their differences, we must remember
that the Islamic Republic of Iran is the first government since Hitler's
in which anti-Semitism constitutes a central element of its identity. An
Iran with nuclear weapons would thus be the first government since
Hitler's to be both willing and able to threaten a second
Holocaust." http://t.uani.com/1udx1a5
Glenn Kessler in WashPost:
"Despite frequent warnings from the United States and Israel and
others, the Iranian nuclear program steadily advanced for years. At the
beginning of my presidency, we built a coalition that imposed sanctions
on the Iranian economy, while extending the hand of diplomacy to the
Iranian government."
- President Obama, commencement address at the U.S. Military Academy at
West Point, May 28, 2014
"Every White House has a tendency to believe - or at least assert -
that time started when the president entered office. But in reality,
problems are inherited and also passed on to the next administration. In
many cases, a presidential administration will build on work that was
done before, even if the new president disagrees rhetorically with a
predecessor's policies. The Iranian nuclear file is an interesting
example. Look at the way President Obama first frames the issue, 'Iran's
nuclear program steadily advanced for years.' That's the bad stuff that
happened before he became president. Then, he says: 'At the beginning of
my presidency, we built a coalition that imposed sanctions on the Iranian
economy, while extending the hand of diplomacy to the Iranian
government.' That's the good stuff that happened after he took office.
But is that an accurate depiction of what happened? ... Former Bush
administration officials involved in the sanctions effort against Iran
believe the administration's success cannot be separated from what
happened before - and that what happened under Obama is indeed what was
contemplated before he took office. 'This is a misleading and unfair
articulation of the history of the financial campaign and sanctions put
on Iran starting in 2006 - which had deep and broad international
support,' said Juan Zarate, who was deputy national security adviser for
counterterrorism. 'This was crafted as a constriction campaign starting
with the targeting of the Iranian banking sector, access to the insurance
and transport sectors, and then the constriction of the oil sector. Some
of the most critical and impactful steps happened in 2007, led by the
U.S. Treasury and the State Department.' Zarate noted that Obama
specifically retained a key architect of the Iranian effort, Treasury
Undersecretary Stuart Levey, to maintain continuity and to build on
Bush's efforts. Levey crisscrossed the globe, persuading financial
institutions and companies to curtail or end business in Iran. That, in
turn, made it easily for countries to later impose sanctions on Iran
because increasingly fewer companies were doing business there. 'There's
no question that the Obama administration and Congress added to the
measures - ultimately with the oil sanctions,' said Zarate, who wrote a
book about the effort titled 'Treasury's War: The Unleashing of a New Era
of Financial Warfare.' 'To suggest however that there were no
sanctions or financial pressure - and no coalition - before 2009 is
wholly inaccurate. It's a political distortion of history.' ... 'The Bush
administration led in convincing the Security Council to impose the first
three U.N.S.C. Chapter VII sanctions resolutions against Iran between
2006 and 2008. Bush also began the financial sanctions effort that Obama
later took even further,' said R. Nicholas Burns, a career Foreign
Service officer who was undersecretary of state under Bush. 'So,
the basic strategy of penalizing and pressuring Iran was begun by Bush
and was continued by Obama. Condi Rice, Stu Levy and I all spent an
enormous amount of time convincing the Europeans, Russians and Chinese to
join us.' 'I think President Obama has been skillful and effective in
pressuring Iran and getting us to negotiations,' said Burns, who praised
Obama's West Point speech as 'sincere and well said' in an interview in
The New York Times. 'But, he didn't start the economic and financial
sanctions process. I actually see a remarkable symmetry between Obama and
Bush on Iran. It is a good [and rare] example of bipartisan
continuity.' We realize that these are just a few lines out of a major
speech. But the framing of the Iranian issue leaves a misleading
impression. After all, the Iranian program continued to grow at a rapid
pace through much of the Obama administration, at least until the recent
negotiations. And the groundwork and the strategy for the coalition that
imposed sanctions on Iran was laid in the Bush administration. So the
'bad stuff' continued under Obama and the 'good stuff' started before
him. We wavered on whether this statement merits Two or Three Pinocchios.
On the one hand, one could argue that this is one of those 'half-true'
statements worthy of Two Pinocchios. But the more we looked into it, this
was a remarkably uncharitable and partisan description of an effort that
really is a model of bipartisan cooperation. It certainly took some
wordsmithing to narrow the reference to sanctions on the 'Iranian
economy.' It would have taken only a little humility - substituting 'at
the beginning of my presidency' with 'building on the efforts of my
predecessor' - to have made this statement significantly more
accurate." http://t.uani.com/1udC3n2
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