Eye on Iran: Iran Rejects 'Excessive Demands' in Nuclear Talks with Six Powers

Join UANI           Top Stories Reuters: "Iran told six big powers on Friday it would not accept their 'excessive demands' after the latest talks on lifting sanctions against Tehran in exchange for curbs on its nuclear work yielded no breakthrough, with a deadline for a deal just a month away. U.S. Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Wendy Sherman said it was Iran that would need to shift its position: 'What is still unclear is if Iran is really ready and willing to take all the necessary steps to assure the world that its nuclear programme is and will remain exclusively peaceful.' The stakes are high in the Vienna talks, which will resume on July 2, as the powers seek a negotiated solution to a more-than-decade-long standoff with Iran that has raised fears of a new Middle East war and a regional nuclear arms race... Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif highlighted the wide gulf between the sides, urging the six nations to 'abandon excessive demands which will not be accepted by Iran'. 'Still we have not overcome disputes about major issues,' he told reporters as five days of negotiations in Vienna wound up. 'There has been progress, but major disputes remain.' He made clear there was no agreement yet between Iran and the six on a draft text of an agreement. A senior Chinese official said the two sides had put together a 'textual framework', though gave no details." http://t.uani.com/T35j1Q NYT: "But even negotiating an extension could be problematic: The Iranians have already indicated that they would want additional sanctions to be lifted, and that would almost certainly meet major objections in Congress. Already some in Congress are pressing for new sanctions, an effort the White House says would subvert any chance to reach an accord. Over the past few weeks the two sides have reached tentative understandings on reducing the amount of plutonium - a second route to fuel for a bomb - that will be produced by a heavy-water reactor under construction near the town of Arak. There are reports of a possible compromise that would turn a deep underground facility called Fordow, where 3,000 centrifuges are in place, into a 'research facility,' a face-saving way for Iran to keep the once-secret facility open, though not producing significant amounts of fuel. Both of those facilities have been visited by international inspectors, who say Iran has honored terms of the temporary accord. But Iran still insists it must become self-sufficient in fueling its power-reactor at Bushehr, currently running on Russian-provided fuel. Iran also wants to greatly expand its capability to provide fuel for reactors it has not even begun to build, a capacity that could give it the ability to race for a bomb." http://t.uani.com/1nwBssj AP: "Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said Sunday that he was against any intervention by the United States in neighboring Iraq, where Islamic extremists and Sunni militants opposed to Iran have seized a number of towns and cities, the official news agency IRNA reported. 'We strongly oppose the intervention of the U.S. and others in the domestic affairs of Iraq,' Ayatollah Khamenei was quoted as saying, in his first reaction to the crisis. 'The main dispute in Iraq is between those who want Iraq to join the U.S. camp and those who seek an independent Iraq,' said the ayatollah, who has the final say over government policies. 'The U.S. aims to bring its own blind followers to power since the U.S. is not happy about the current government in Iraq.'" http://t.uani.com/1lKMLi7     Nuclear Program & Negotiations AFP: "Iran is moving to finalise plans with Russia to build at least two more nuclear power plants on the Islamic republic's southern Gulf shores, media reports said on Monday. The announcement came as Russia's Rosatom deputy chief Nikolai Spassky arrived in Tehran for a two-day visit during which he will meet senior nuclear officials. Spassky will also meet Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi, a senior negotiator in talks with world powers on Iran's nuclear ambitions, the official IRNA news agency reported. Iran's Atomic Energy Organisation spokesman Behrouz Kamalvandi said that after months of negotiations, the deal with Moscow would be signed this week, the ISNA news agency reported. Under a provisional agreement, Russia will build two more 1,000-megawatt plants next to Iran's sole existing plant in the southern Gulf port city of Bushehr... Oil-rich Iran says it wants to operate at least 20 nuclear power plants capable of producing 20,000 megawatts of electricity, as a way of decreasing dependency on its vast oil and gas resources. 'It is possible that in addition to the two nuclear power plants, we will also discuss further power plants,' Kamalvandi said." http://t.uani.com/1j6eTYM Reuters: "Iran has acted to eliminate virtually all of its most sensitive stockpile of enriched uranium gas under a landmark nuclear deal with six world powers last year, an IAEA report assessing compliance with the interim accord showed on Friday. The monthly update by the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which has a key role in ensuring that Iran lives up to its part of the Nov. 24 agreement, showed that Iran was meeting its commitments to curb its disputed atomic activities. However, a new nuclear-related facility that Iran needs in order to fulfil all the requirements of the six-month deal by the time it expires on July 20 did not yet appear to be fully operating. The IAEA only said Iran had 'begun the commissioning' of the plant, without elaborating... Iran also agreed under the November deal to convert some of its low-enriched uranium gas (LEU) of up to 5 percent fissile concentration into an oxide powder that is not suitable for further processing into highly enriched, bomb-grade uranium. But the required uranium conversion plant that has been repeatedly delayed. Friday's report suggested that this work had yet to start, but did not give details. The delay means that Iran's LEU stockpile - which it agreed to limit under last year's pact - is almost certainly continuing to increase for the time being, simply because its production of the material has not stopped, unlike that of the 20 percent uranium gas." http://t.uani.com/1wmTOkL Sanctions Relief Reuters: "China's Iranian crude oil imports expanded 36 percent in May from a year ago to the second highest on record, customs data showed on Monday, and imports in the first five months of 2014 gained nearly 50 percent over the same year-ago period. China, Tehran's largest oil client, has since late 2013 been stepping up purchases from the OPEC country after a landmark November nuclear deal eased some sanctions on Iran, making up the main portion of Asia's higher imports since then. Asian buyers are expected to import about 1.25 million-1.3 million barrels per day (bpd) of Iranian oil in the six months through June, mostly owing to China's increases, industry and government sources have said... China's May imports at 3.22 million tonnes, or 757,900 bpd, eased from a record high of nearly 800,000 bpd in the previous month. Top refiner Sinopec Corp has since last November been lifting full contract volumes or more of Iranian oil deemed cheaper versus similar grades from Saudi Arabia, industry officials have told Reuters. The increases were both a result of the state refiner's new push to cut crude procurement costs and the easing sanctions environment, they said." http://t.uani.com/1ljub0U Sanctions Enforcement & Impact WSJ: "BNP Paribas SA and U.S. prosecutors have agreed to broad terms of a deal in which the bank would pay $8 billion to $9 billion and accept other punishment based on what investigators say is evidence the bank intentionally hid $30 billion of financial transactions that violated U.S. sanctions, according to people close to the probe... A majority of those transactions involved Sudan, though BNP also facilitated such transfers for Iran and other sanctioned countries... About a decade ago, BNP became the preferred bank for Sudanese companies and government officials seeking to do business in dollars without running afoul of U.S. sanctions, according to investigators. In 2007, the bank announced it would no longer do business in Sudan. In the case of Iranian transactions, the bank had to admit as recently as last year that it had found additional transactions for sanctioned entities." http://t.uani.com/V5meTz Iraq Crisis AFP: "Iran has sent 'small numbers' of operatives into Iraq to bolster the Shiite-led government in Baghdad, but there is no sign of a large deployment of army units, the Pentagon said Friday. The comments by spokesman Admiral John Kirby marked the US government's first public confirmation that Iranian operatives had crossed into Iraq, where the Baghdad government is struggling to counter the swift advance of Sunni extremists. 'There are some Iranian revolutionary operatives in Iraq but I've seen no indication of ground forces or major units,' Kirby told a news conference, apparently referring to Tehran's Quds force, the covert arm of the Revolutionary Guard Corps. When US troops occupied Iraq between 2003 and 2011, Washington accused Tehran of using the Quds force to support Shiite militias attacking American soldiers. 'Their interference in Iraq is nothing new,' Kirby said." http://t.uani.com/1qsGAAn Trend: "Iran can compensate for Iraq's loss of oil supply to the international market. Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh said Iran enjoys the capacity to compensate for Iraq's loss of oil supply, but U.S. sanctions have prevented the country from using its maximum capacity to produce and supply crude oil, Iran's IRNA news agency reported on June 21." http://t.uani.com/1nxC3ZA Human Rights AFP: "When Iran qualified for the World Cup last year it prompted dancing on the streets of Tehran, with millions of men and women gathering to celebrate a rare sporting achievement. It was an even rarer sight in the Islamic republic to see both sexes mix together so freely. Put bluntly, the police had a dilemma: act and spoil the party, or let the fun flow wildly for a few hours. They did nothing. Now that the Iranian team is competing in Brazil, the authorities in Tehran don't want the same thing to happen again. The message is simple: stay at home. Cafes and restaurants in the capital have been told to not show the games, which start in the evening because of the time difference and can end in the small hours." http://t.uani.com/1pa68VR Al Jazeera: "Iran has banned female fans and even women journalists from attending World League volleyball matches in Tehran, the official IRNA news agency reported. Women were reportedly turned away from the Azadi Stadium when Iran played Italy in the first leg on Friday, while female reporters inside the complex were ordered to leave. 'Female journalists are banned from entering the stadium for the next three matches in Tehran,' IRNA reported, without giving details. National police chief General Esmail Ahmadi Moghaddam said it was 'not yet in the public interest' for men and women to attend such events together. 'We cannot allow the presence of women in stadia. The police are applying the law,' he said in comments carried by Fars news agency... A small group of female fans protested outside, and journalist Fatemeh Jamalpour of the reformist Shargh daily said they were detained by the authorities. Jamalpour was also taken into custody and held for six hours, she said on her Facebook page." http://t.uani.com/V5j6qI Foreign Affairs Trend: "A delegation of France's National Assembly is set to pay an official visit to Tehran, Iran on June 24. The four-member delegation will be headed by the deputy head of French National Assembly's Foreign Affairs Commission, Iran's Asriran news website reported on June 22. The French delegation is scheduled to meet with the chairman of the National Security and Foreign Policy Committee of Iran's Majlis, Alaeddin Boroujerdi. They will also hold a number of meetings with other Iranian MPs. A delegation of French parliament, headed by Chairman of the Finance Committee of the French Senate, Philippe Marini visited Tehran in April." http://t.uani.com/V5i9OZ Opinion & Analysis Claudia Rosett in WSJ: "As the Iran nuclear talks grind toward a soft July 20 deadline in Vienna, U.S. negotiators and their partners seem oblivious to a loophole that could render any agreement meaningless. Tehran could outsource the completion of a bomb to its longtime ally, North Korea. As a venue for secretly completing and testing a nuclear bomb, North Korea would be ideal. North Korea is the only country known to have tested any nuclear bombs since India and Pakistan both performed underground tests in 1998. Despite wide condemnation, it has gotten away with three nuclear tests, in 2006, 2009 and 2013. Pyongyang threatened to carry out a fourth test in March, which it said would take an unspecified 'new form.' North Korea's first test was plutonium-based. The composition of the next two remains unconfirmed, but in 2010 North Korea unveiled a uranium-enrichment plant at its Yongbyon nuclear complex. If North Korea's next test is uranium-based, that could be neatly compatible with Iran's refusal at the bargaining table to give up its thousands of centrifuges, which could be used to produce weapons-grade uranium. Citing Pyongyang's proliferation in years past of nuclear materials to Libya and nuclear reactor technology to Syria, the Defense Department noted in a report this March to Congress that 'One of our gravest concerns about North Korea's activities in the international arena is its demonstrated willingness to proliferate nuclear technology.' The report did not say to whom North Korea might next proliferate. After North Korea's Feb. 12, 2013, nuclear test, there were a number of media reports that Iranian officials had flown in for the detonation. At a State Department background press briefing following a round of the Iran nuclear talks in Vienna this February, I asked a senior U.S. administration official what is being done to address such issues. That official ducked the question, saying only that the U.S. 'is always concerned about reports of shared technology and proliferation of technology and of nuclear weapons technology.' Declining to talk about specifics, the official described North Korea as 'an ongoing concern all on its own.' But the pieces have long been in place for nuclear collaboration between the two countries. North Korea and Iran are close allies, drawn together by decades of weapons deals and mutual hatred of America and its freedoms. Weapons-hungry Iran has oil; oil-hungry North Korea makes weapons. North Korea has been supplying increasingly sophisticated missiles and missile technology to Iran since the 1980s, when North Korea hosted visits by Hasan Rouhani (now Iran's president) and Ali Khamenei (Iran's supreme leader since the death of Ayatollah Khomeini in 1989)." http://t.uani.com/1mehODu Michael Young in NOW Lebanon: "What does one make of the apparent rapprochement between the United States and Iran over Iraq? It's difficult to say, principally because both countries have very different agendas in the country, even if their shared aim is to contain the offensive of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS). For Iran, fragmentation in Iraq is not only acceptable, but also - if controlled - desirable in helping the Islamic Republic impose its hegemony over the country. Tehran has backed Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki through thick and thin, doing nothing to restrain his divisive Shiite-centric policies that have so alienated the Sunni community. It has also persuaded other Shiite leaders, most prominently Muqtada al-Sadr, to go along with Maliki, even when they had no desire to do so. In parallel, the Iranians have retained influence over Iraq's Kurds. That's understandable, given the border shared by Kurdistan and Iran, and the fact that the Kurds are sandwiched between Turkey and Iran while being caught up in a tense relationship with the rest of Iraq. In this context the Kurds simply cannot afford to alienate their powerful neighbors. Illustrating the ties, even when he was president, Jalal Talabani was said to meet regularly with General Qassem Soleimani, the head of the Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. For Iran, enhancing fragmentation is a necessary strategy to assert its power. The Islamic Republic, which is in the midst of expanding its regional influence, would find it much more difficult to control unified Arab countries. With chaos, on the other hand, Iran can make gains amidst division and exploit the political openings provided by perpetual conflict. That is precisely the plan Iran has followed in Syria. Tehran has bolstered the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, but only in a strategically important area that includes Damascus, the border with Lebanon, the Syrian coast, and communications lines in between. Outside those areas Iran, both for reasons of necessity and choice, has not helped Assad's army re-conquer territory, effectively helping to harden de facto partition lines in Syria. What disturbs the Iranians today in Iraq is not that the state appears to be falling apart. It is that the Sunni uprising risks undermining vital Iranian interests, while simultaneously obstructing the geographic continuity between Iran and Syria and Lebanon. This is particularly important in the event Iran must rearm or supply Hezbollah or the Assad regime.  Unlike Iran, the United States is not after fragmentation in Iraq: it is after integration. Its message to Maliki has been that he better integrate Sunnis into the Iraqi state if he seeks American assistance. Washington has reportedly also asked the Kurds to help the Maliki government regain territory from ISIS, a request the Kurds have reportedly resisted. Iran has asked the same. But where the Americans did so in order to rally Iraq's different communities, seeing the ISIS threat as a potential national unifying factor, Iran seems far more concerned with reversing the broader Sunni challenge, even if that means mobilizing Shiites in a campaign bound to heighten sectarian animosities." http://t.uani.com/1nwBPDl 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. For more information please email Press@UnitedAgainstNuclearIran.com United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) is a non-partisan, broad-based coalition that is united in a commitment to prevent Iran from fulfilling its ambition to become a regional super-power possessing nuclear weapons.  UANI is an issue-based coalition in which each coalition member will have its own interests as well as the collective goal of advancing an Iran free of nuclear weapons.