Eye on Iran: Iran: Rogue Trader

Join UANI           Top Stories FT: "The secret oil deals were only one example of the widespread corruption that reformists say characterised the regime of Mr Ahmadi-Nejad, whose second term came to an end last year. High quality global journalism requires investment. The corruption, along with western sanctions, brought the Iranian economy to its knees. Deep concern over the weak economy was a main driver behind Iran's attempt to reach an agreement over its nuclear programme and end international sanctions. In the trading scheme, the government granted oil allocations to its accomplices at big discounts. They earned high commissions as long as they could bring cash or basic commodities back into the country. Thanks to their anonymity - the recruits were not known businessmen or politicians - they could use information from back channels to sell crude to new customers, or even previous importers of Iran's oil, by changing transport routes. The crude could first be shipped to Asian countries such as Malaysia, where it would either be reloaded on to other tankers or put in storage before being sold labelled as another country's oil. Iran's oil could also be taken directly to Iraq or Oman to be sold as those countries' crude... Although the policy was disguised as an economic necessity to preserve national security, not all revenues from the oil sales made it back into the state coffers. While the exact total is unknown, the amount of lost revenue could be staggering: some knowledgeable Iranian economists say it could be as high as $20bn. Much of this money is thought to have ended up in foreign accounts held by participants in the scheme." http://t.uani.com/1i8B40f NYT: "An unusual survey of Iranian public opinion indicates that 40 percent of Iranians would be willing to give up any ability to produce nuclear weapons in the future in return for the full removal of sanctions. Nearly 40 percent of those asked agreed that Iran should recognize Israel if Israel reached a peace accord with the Palestinians and withdrew from the contested territories. Such delicate issues are not ordinarily broached by pollsters in Iran, according to experts. Yet perhaps the most surprising detail about the poll was that it was conducted by Israelis. A strong majority of those questioned - more than 74 percent - agreed that Iran should establish full trade and diplomatic relations with the United States, even though many perceived the United States as Iran's biggest enemy - with Israel in second place." http://t.uani.com/1kG3rr4 AP: "The U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia announced Thursday that a subsidiary of the Dutch aerospace company Fokker Technologies Holding BV will forfeit $21 million for selling U.S.-made goods to Iran, Sudan and Burma in violation of trade sanctions. As part of a five-year scheme, Fokker Services provided aircraft parts, technology and services to the countries, which have been sanctioned by the United States. The company admitted to more than 1,110 shipments of banned parts to the three countries. The $21 million represents the value of the transactions that officials at the company detailed in a voluntary, self-disclosure statement made to U.S. prosecutors in 2010. 'For years, Fokker Services treated U.S. export laws as inconveniences to be worked around through deceit and trickery,' U.S. Attorney Ronald C. Machen Jr. said in a statement. 'Today's prosecution sends a clear message that there will be consequences for those who seek to profit from violating and circumventing U.S. trade laws.'" http://t.uani.com/1kCPYkL     Syria Conflict Fars News (Iran): "Chairman of the Iranian Parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Commission Alaeddin Boroujerdi in a meeting with Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Al-Moallem congratulated the massive participation of the Syrian nation in the country's presidential election and reelection of President Bashar Al-Assad. 'I congratulate the successful holding of the voting and reelection of President Bashar al-Assad to the post,' Boroujerdi said. On Wednesday, the Syrian People's Assembly speaker Mohammad Jihad al-Laham announced that the president Assad won 88.7 percent of the vote. The country's Supreme Constitutional Court also announced that 73.42% of the 15.8 million eligible voters had taken part in the election... 'This victory will certainly disappoint the Zionists and will also result in restoration of tranquility and security in Syria,' Larijani said during the phone conversation." http://t.uani.com/1kCQKym Opinion & Analysis Ali Alfoneh in TNI: "'The lesson of history is that there is no lesson,' Jacob Heilbrunn writes in The National Interest, quoting the British scholar Alan John Percivale Taylor's warning against erroneous historical analogies. A case in point is 'Congress and Attempts to Kill the Iran Deal,' by Paul Pillar, also in TNI. Pillar likens President Barack Obama's overtures to Tehran with President Richard Nixon's opening to Red China, and AIPAC with what was then known as the China lobby supporting the Nationalist regime in Taiwan. The 'saboteurs' in Congress are presented as culprits, then and now. There may be similarities between the wishes of the United States to disentangle from Vietnam in the 1970's and the Middle East of today. However, the fundamental problem, both with Dr. Pillar's analysis, and more seriously the Obama administration's overture, is that Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's Iran does not resemble Chairman Mao Zedong's China. While Chairman Mao considered the Soviet Union, rather than the U.S., as the greatest threat to the survival of his regime, Khamenei constantly and consistently depicts the United States as the main enemy of the Islamic Republic, and the puppeteer of domestic opposition to his rule. Moreover, when Chairman Mao accepted President Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's overtures, it marked a strategic shift. Khamenei openly admits that his shift is tactical. Addressing commanders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) in September of last year, he explained his concept of 'heroic flexibility' which authorized President Hassan Rouhani to engage in nuclear negotiations with the U.S.: 'A wrestler who sometimes shows flexibility because of technical reasons, should not forget his opponent.' In other words, under the weight of the sanctions regime, Khamenei made a tactical shift but did not change strategy. It's also worth noting that the U.S.-China rapprochement came at a time when the Communist regime already possessed the nuclear bomb, and its military ambitions would not clash with American policies for nonproliferation. In the case of Iran, the Islamic Republic's nuclear ambitions are likely to remain a constant source of tension between the two states." http://t.uani.com/1ojZYj5 Gregory Jones in NPEC: "Negotiations on Iran's nuclear program are continuing in an effort to produce a follow-on agreement, termed the 'Comprehensive Solution,' to the November 2013 'Joint Plan of Action' (JPA). Much of the discussion of the Comprehensive Solution has focused on the terms such an agreement should include to prevent Iran from being able to produce nuclear weapons. However, this objective will not be attainable unless the agreement addresses key aspects of Iran's nuclear program, fixes the flaws in the JPA which seriously constrain any agreement and recognizes fundamental problems with International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards as currently implemented. First, Iran's ability to quickly produce Highly Enriched Uranium (HEU) means that Iran is already a de facto nuclear weapon state. The Obama Administration, unwilling to face this U.S. policy failure, continues to try to say otherwise. The Administration has turned conventional nuclear nonproliferation wisdom on its head and implausibly claims that it is the nonnuclear weapon components, not the HEU, that are the great barrier to a country producing nuclear weapons. Any successful nuclear agreement with Iran would need to deny it easy access to HEU, not only in the short-term but in the long-term as well. Similarly, any fix for Iran's Arak plutonium production reactor would need to address the possibility that the reactor could be reconverted to produce significant amounts of plutonium. Second, several key elements of the Comprehensive Solution have already been determined by the JPA. These are that the Comprehensive Solution will 'have a specified long-term duration to be agreed upon,' that Iran will be allowed to retain some amount of centrifuge enrichment capability and, once the Comprehensive Solution has lapsed, Iran's nuclear program will be under no special restrictions but rather 'will be treated in the same manner as that of any non-nuclear weapon state.' Many analysts have mistakenly referred to the Comprehensive Solution as a 'final' nuclear agreement but clearly it will only be a long-term interim agreement. The terms of the final agreement have already been enunciated in the JPA, namely that Iran will have an unrestricted centrifuge enrichment program. A 'Comprehensive Solution' based solely on the terms of the JPA will not only enhance Iran's nuclear weapon capability in the long-term but also lay the groundwork for the further spread of nuclear weapons by legitimizing any country's desire for a centrifuge enrichment program. Third, it is necessary to delegitimize the possession of centrifuge enrichment by any non-nuclear weapon state. To do this the U.S. must insist that IAEA safeguards do what they say they do, not only provide the detection of the diversion of nuclear material but also provide the timely detection of that diversion. Commercial-scale centrifuge enrichment facilities can produce HEU so quickly that these facilities are unsafeguardable as timely detection of diversion is impossible. (Appendix 2) Nor is the problem restricted to just centrifuge enrichment. Recently, China has expressed concern about Japan's large and soon to be rapidly expanding plutonium stockpile. The U.S., instead of taking this opportunity to try to strengthen IAEA safeguards, supported the IAEA's position that because this plutonium had not been diverted in the past, there is no danger that it will be diverted in the future. If this were really true, there would be no need for IAEA safeguards at all. Only by facing the inherent dual peaceful/military nature of nuclear technology is it evident what the terms of any agreement with Iran should be, namely that Iran should have no centrifuge enrichment capability and that it should not be possible to reconvert the Arak reactor to natural uranium fuel for large-scale plutonium production. This latter requirement means that at a minimum, Iran would need to export all of its current heavy water stocks and shut down and dismantle its heavy water production facility. Better still, the reactor should never be finished and its components should be destroyed. A Comprehensive Solution based solely on the terms of the JPA would do more harm than good. It would legitimize Iranian possession of centrifuge enrichment, allowing Iran in the long-term to have a larger, more robust centrifuge enrichment program than it would otherwise possess. At the same time it would allow any country to claim the 'right' to centrifuge enrichment, enabling it to get very close to possessing nuclear weapons." http://t.uani.com/1uryB8h 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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