Monday, July 28, 2014

Eye on Iran: A Skeptical Congress to Weigh Iran Nuclear Talks' Extension








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Al-Monitor: "President Obama is dispatching his top Iran negotiator and sanctions expert to Congress next week to try to sell a four-month extension of nuclear talks. Undersecretary of State Wendy Sherman and David Cohen, Treasury's undersecretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, are slated to testify in open hearings before the Senate and House foreign affairs panels on Tuesday. They can expect a harsh reception. 'I don't see an extension of funding to Iran as progress,' House Foreign Affairs Chairman Ed Royce, R-Calif., said in a statement announcing the hearing. 'Everything about Iran's nuclear program signals nuclear bomb, yesterday, today and, I worry, tomorrow.' Already, Senate Republicans have reacted to the extension by introducing a flurry of bills. Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., ranking member on the Senate Foreign Relations panel, this week introduced legislation with several other members of the committee that would require Congress to formally approve any final deal with Iran. Sen. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., followed suit on Thursday with legislation that would prohibit the administration from further relaxing sanctions unless Secretary of State John Kerry certified that none of the $2.8 billion to be incrementally released under the deal would fund terrorism, nuclear weapons development or human rights violations. Six Republicans have already signed on to the bill. Finally, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, dropped legislation on Friday that requires the 'immediate re-implementation of sanctions, additional enforcement mechanisms, and an end to the failed negotiations.' The Sanction Iran, Safeguard America Act would notably expand sanctions related to the petrochemical and automotive sector and prohibit funding for negotiations with Iran without congressional approval." http://t.uani.com/1qH3JCT

Al-Monitor: "The current war in Gaza has witnessed renewed contact between Hamas on the one hand, and Iran and Hezbollah on the other, following two years of a chill in relations. A political official in Hamas confirmed to Al-Monitor that Khaled Meshaal, head of Hamas' politburo, has recently received phone calls from Tehran initiated by Ali Larijani, chairman of the Shura Council, Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and a senior Revolutionary Guard officer whose name he did not mention. Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah called Meshaal on July 20. This was the first official contact between Hezbollah and Hamas since April, a Hamas official informed Al-Monitor. Hezbollah's official website reported that, during his phone call with Meshaal, 'Nasrallah praised the steadfastness of the resistance fighters in Gaza,' stressing that he 'stands next to the Palestinian resistance and supports its conditions to end the battle.'" http://t.uani.com/1rRhBZd

AFP: "Five people were publicly flogged in Iran as punishment for eating in public in violation of the rules of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, state media reported. The offenders ignored warnings from police and 'ate intentionally' in the western city of Kermanshah, the province's chief justice Ali Mozafari said, quoted by the official IRNA news agency." http://t.uani.com/1l6T4ta
   

Sanctions Relief

Reuters: "The United States faces an awkward rival in its first attempts in 40 years to export crude oil - Iran. Iran, whose economy has been throttled by Western sanctions that have halved its crude shipments, is now selling higher quality and cheaper oil to China that leaves little room for the U.S. crude to enter the world's top energy consumer... 'China gets condensate from Iran, which is much cheaper than that from the U.S.,' said a Singapore-based trader with a European trading company... Showing the competition U.S. exports face, Iran exports about 55 percent of its roughly 250,000 bpd of South Pars condensate output to two Chinese buyers at deep discounts under annual contracts." http://t.uani.com/1oApcdH

Fars (Iran): "Senior Iranian and Italian trade officials explored new avenues for paving the way for the promotion of cooperation in various fields, specially in agricultural and railway sectors. In a meeting which was attended by Head of Iran Chamber of Commerce Gholam Hossein Shafeyee, the Chamber's Deputy Head for International Affairs Ali Akbar Farazi, Italy's Ambassador to Tehran Luca Giansanti, Director General for Italian Promotion (economy, culture and science) Andrea Meloni, and President of Italian Foreign Trade Agency Ricardo Monti, the two sides stressed the need for both Tehran and Rome to utilize each and every capacity and potential to broaden and widen economic relations, specially in the fields railway transportation and agriculture." http://t.uani.com/WJJ9V2

Tasnim (Iran): An Iranian trade official expressed the country's enthusiasm for attracting Italian carmakers. 'In the field of automobile industry, the ground is prepared for cooperation between Iran and Italy,' Head of Trade Promotion Organization of Iran Valiollah Afkhami said in a meeting with a visiting Italian trade delegation in Tehran." http://t.uani.com/1tSDGGd

Human Rights

Amnesty: "Iranian prisoner of conscience Arzhang Davoodi, already in prison for nearly 11 years, has now been sentenced to death on a new charge of 'enmity against God', in relation to his peaceful political activism and writings. Iranian writer and poet Arzhang Davoodi learned from his lawyer on 20 July 2014 that he had been sentenced to death for his alleged membership and support of banned group People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI). The sentence was imposed despite an apparent lack of evidence and after grossly unfair proceedings. He had been given less than an hour on 3 June to present his defence before a Revolutionary Court in the southern city of Bandar Abbas, which relayed it to a Revolutionary Court in Karaj, responsible for issuing the death sentence. Neither Arzhang Davoodi nor his lawyer were allowed to appear before the court which issued the verdict." http://t.uani.com/1rXzW66

Opinion & Analysis

Simon Henderson in WINEP: "On July 22, the State Department released a description of what Iran has done with its nuclear program since the interim Joint Plan of Action (JPOA) took force on January 20. Although the text leavens optimism with caution, its clear intention is to spin the case for the four-month extension of talks agreed to earlier this week. Some of its more categorical statements are therefore open to question.

'Iran has halted production of near-20 percent enriched uranium and disabled the configuration of the centrifuge cascades [used] to produce it.'

True, but this only applies to declared centrifuge facilities. There are fears that Iran may have other, secret centrifuge sites.

'Iran has completed the dilution of half of its near-20 percent enriched uranium stockpile that was in hexafluoride form, and the conversion of the rest to an oxide form not suitable for further enrichment.'

True, but the oxides can be reconverted back to hexafluoride through a straightforward process.

'Iran has capped its stockpile of 5 percent enriched uranium.'

True, but it has not yet completed the conversion of excess hexafluoride to oxide form.

'Iran has limited its centrifuge production to those needed to replace damaged machines, so [it] was not able to use the six-month JPOA period to stockpile centrifuges.'

This is what Iran claims, but it has not been verified. In addition, the JPOA includes no limitations on the manufacture of components for centrifuges.

'Iran did not construct additional enrichment facilities.'

This is not verified.

'Iran did not go beyond its enrichment R&D practices that were in place at the start of the JPOA.'

This is not verified. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has not had access to Iranian centrifuge R&D that does not use or require nuclear material.

'Iran did not transfer fuel or heavy water to the Arak reactor site.'

True, but heavy water production likely continues at a plant close to the reactor site.

'Iran did not build a reconversion line, which is necessary to turn its stockpile of 20 percent uranium oxide back into a form suitable for further enrichment.'

True, but only verified at locations to which the IAEA has access.

'Under the Joint Plan of Action, Iran's enrichment facilities at Natanz and Fordow are now subject to daily IAEA inspector access.'

True, but the daily access is just to each facility's cameras, not to the whole facility.

'Iran also provided managed access at centrifuge assembly workshops, centrifuge rotor production workshops and facilities, and uranium mines and mills.'

True, but 'managed access' is not to the entire facilities. In addition, the IAEA has not said what information it received, nor how satisfied it was with this information." http://t.uani.com/1q9CTOP

Lee Smith in The Weekly Standard: "Until Operation Protective Edge, it was generally assumed that Gaza's tunnel system was simply a feeding tube for a community of 1.8 million people. With both the Egyptian and Israeli borders closed, as well as Israel's naval blockade, goods entered Gaza mainly through the tunnels from Egypt. So did weapons, including missiles made or designed by Iran, which, as the last two weeks have shown, are capable of reaching any site in Israel. The tunnel economy flourished under former Egyptian president and Hamas sponsor Mohamed Morsi but has suffered under his successor, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who has won praise from Jerusalem for shutting down as many tunnels as he can find. However, there is another system in Gaza as well, a network of attack tunnels that end not in Egypt but in Israel, where over the last two weeks Hamas commandos have attempted several terrorist operations... 'Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh said that we are not under siege, we are imposing a siege,' says retired IDF officer Jonathan Halevi, now a senior researcher at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. 'What he meant was that [Hamas] can use tunnels as a strategic weapon. If you multiply tunnels, you can use them to send hundreds of fighters into Israel and create havoc, totally under cover. According to Hamas, the tunnels have changed the balance of power.' Israeli officials have expressed amazement at the extent of the tunnel network. 'Food, accommodations, storage, resupply,' one astonished official told reporters last week. 'Beneath Gaza,' he explained, there's 'another terror city.' That is, Hamas's tunnel network is evidence of a military doctrine, both a countermeasure to Israel's clear air superiority and an offensive capability that threatens to take ground combat inside Israel itself, targeting villages, cities, and civilians as well as soldiers. Israel perhaps should not have been surprised to discover the size and seriousness of Hamas's tunnel network because they've seen something similar before, in the aftermath of the 2006 war with Hezbollah. And indeed it was Iran's long arm in Lebanon that helped build Hamas's tunnels. 'The spiritual father of Hamas's tunnel system is Imad Mughniyeh,' says Shimon Shapira, a Hezbollah expert and senior research associate at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. Mughniyeh, assassinated in 2008 in an operation believed to have been conducted by the Israelis, is credited with directing Hezbollah's 2006 war. He was the head of the organization's external operations unit and responsible for countless terrorist attacks. He also served as liaison to the top Iranian leadership as well as other Iranian allies and assets, including Hamas. 'Mughniyeh sent instructors to Gaza and took Hamas members to Iran,' Shapira explains. While Hamas and Hezbollah's tunnel technology, equipment, and funding are mostly Iranian, the knowledge and the doctrine date back to the earliest days of the Cold War. 'The North Koreans are the leading tunnel experts in the world,' says North Korea expert Bruce Bechtol. They learned as a matter of necessity. 'The U.S. Air Force basically exhausted its target list after the first eight months of the Korean War,' Bechtol explains. 'All the North Korean cities were turned to rubble, so they got good at building large tunnels and bunkers, some of them 10 or 11 square miles. In effect, the North Koreans moved their cities underground for three years, with hundreds of thousands of people living down there.' ... Their top customer is the Islamic Republic of Iran. The North Koreans, Bechtol says, have helped build some of the Iranians' underground nuclear weapons facilities, as well as Hezbollah's underground network. 'They built it in 2003-04, coming into Lebanon disguised as houseboys serving the Iranians. Maybe nobody asked, hey, how come these houseboys are speaking Korean?' The significance of the tunnels became clear in the 2006 war, as Bechtol explains. 'It lowered Hezbollah's casualty rate. The Israelis wondered why the air force was not inflicting more damage and it was because of those tunnels. It was the first time Hezbollah was ever truly protected.' Last week a U.S. federal judge ruled that North Korea and Iran were liable for providing support to Hezbollah during the 2006 war. According to U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth, North Korea and Iran assisted 'in building a massive network of underground military installations, tunnels, bunkers, depots and storage facilities in southern Lebanon.'" http://t.uani.com/1rKF1Ro

Maziar Bahari in WashPost: "Last week, Washington Post correspondent Jason Rezaian, his wife Yeganeh Salehi and two photojournalists were arrested in Iran. Officials haven't explained why a dozen armed men raided Rezaian's home; they haven't offered up very much information at all. But I have a good sense of what Rezaian and his colleagues may be going through. The same thing happened to me. I was Newsweek's Iran correspondent from 1998 until 2009. During that time, I was also making documentary films and television reports. As a journalist working for a foreign news agency, I was always under government supervision. I would get invited to "drink tea" in one of Tehran's posh hotels (the ones that used to be an Intercontinental or Hilton before the 1979 revolution, and are now called Tulip and Independence). After a short mandatory chitchat about the health of my family and the weather, I'd be subjected to hours of interrogations by members of the Ministry of Intelligence. They'd offer me tea (Iranian spooks love to keep a healthy bladder), then go through everything I'd written or filmed in the prior months. They wanted me to know whatever I was doing, I was being watched. If I did something wrong, bad things could happen to me. They revoked my press card a few times and asked me to continue reporting in neighboring Iraq, where I worked with more freedom than Iran. I wrote about this for the British magazine New Statesman in 2007. I was interrogated for that piece a few days later. The Ministry of Intelligence agents were paranoid and distrustful, but they had specific complaints about my work and some knowledge of the international media. Unfortunately, they aren't the only intelligence arm in Iran. Each agency has its own agents and agenda, and in many cases conflicting agendas. Most are comprised of the Intelligence Ministry's rejects, people who love to interrogate and torture but don't know much about espionage." http://t.uani.com/1kiOpJX

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.







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