Eye on Iran: Iran's Current Uranium Enrichment Not Acceptable Says US

Join UANI           Top Stories AFP: "Iran cannot convince the world that its current ability to enrich uranium is acceptable, the top US negotiator said ahead of new nuclear talks with global powers. After months of intense negotiations the two sides have 'identified potential answers to some key questions,' Under Secretary of State Wendy Sherman said in a speech at an award-giving ceremony at Georgetown University. But she warned 'we remain far apart on other core issues, including the size and scope of Iran's uranium enrichment capacity.' As Iran and world powers prepare for new talks starting on Thursday in New York, Sherman said she expected the Islamic Republic 'will try to convince the world that on this pivotal matter, the status quo ... should be acceptable.' 'It is not,' Sherman stressed, as she was given a top award for distinction in the conduct of diplomacy." http://t.uani.com/1DjlYBM AFP: "Iranian President Hassan Rouhani will address the UN General Assembly in New York next week but is not scheduled to meet Barack Obama, a government spokesman said on Wednesday... Iranian media say Rouhani is to leave Tehran on September 22, and the UN said he will give a speech at the Assembly on September 25 and a press conference the next day. The White House said on Monday that no meeting between Obama and Rouhani was planned." http://t.uani.com/1s6vvsX Fars (Iran): "President Hassan Rouhani said Iran's economy has got out of stagnation based on economic indicators in the current calendar year which started in March. 'The calculations for the first quarter of the year confirm that Iran has left behind the stagnation period,' Rouhani said in the holy city of Mashhad. 'Today, we have to join our hands for the growth and prosperity of the country,' he said. He said his administration will continue to take greater strides under the aegis of national unity. 'We are moving forward for the development of powerful Iran and we will overcome problems one after another,' said Rouhani. The president said Iran's inflation is to fall below 20 percent by next March, adding: 'We will see significant developments in terms of energy, oil and gas, and in the oil sector, we will probably experience a near 8-percent growth.'" http://t.uani.com/1qLeZ08   Nuclear Program & Negotiations AFP: "EU foreign affairs head Catherine Ashton will meet Iranian Foreign Minister Mohamad Javad Zarif on Wednesday in New York for further talks on Tehran's contested nuclear programme, her spokeswoman said. There will be additional 'negotiating sessions' ahead of formal discussions between Iran and the P5+1 powers -- the UN Security Council permanent members, Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States, plus Germany -- Ashton's spokeswoman said. These P5+1 talks will take place on Friday on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly meetings in New York, the spokeswoman added. Zarif and Ashton will hold a working lunch, his deputy Abbas Araqchi told Iranian state news agency IRNA on Tuesday." http://t.uani.com/1wDcLCB Sanctions Relief Trend: "Russian oil and gas company, RAO Rosneftegazstroy, has agreed to establish a petrochemical complex in Iran. The agreement was signed by Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh and Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak at the end of the 11th meeting of Iran-Russia Joint Economic Cooperation Commission, which was held in Tehran on September 9, Iran's Mehr news agency reported on September 17. According to the agreement, the Russian company will build a fertilizer plant, named Hormoz, in the southern region of Assalouyeh, which is the gas hub of Iran." http://t.uani.com/1uH12iZ Iraq Crisis NYT: "Once a leading killer of American troops, the militia is spearheading the fight against the Sunni extremists of the Islamic State, also known by the acronyms ISIS and ISIL. That means Asaib Ahl al-Haq and the United States military are now fighting on the same side, though each insists they will not work together... Even while many Iraqi Shiites view the militias as their protectors, many in the Sunni minority say they fear the groups as agents of Iran, empowered by the Baghdad government to kill with impunity. After a decade of support from Iran and a new flood of recruits amid the Islamic State crisis, the Shiite militias are also now arguably more powerful than the Iraqi security forces, many here say, limiting the ability of any new government to rein them in... Asaib Ahl al-Haq, usually translated as League of the Righteous, is considered the most formidable of Iraq's three large Iranian-backed militias. The second is Kata'ib Hezbollah, which shares the Iranian patronage and ideology of the Lebanese group of the same name, but has no other known links to it. The third is the Badr Corps, led by Hadi al-Ameri, a lawmaker in the governing coalition who served as minister of transportation in Mr. Maliki's government." http://t.uani.com/XCdOUa Syria Conflict Bloomberg: "The head of Iran's Revolutionary Guards reaffirmed support for Syria's government, as the U.S. steps up aid for moderate rebel groups while preparing airstrikes against Islamic State militants. Iran's 'support of the Syrian regime will continue' and 'we strongly condemn this move by the U.S. which we see as an aggressive and bullying posture,' Major General Mohammad Ali Jafari said at a news conference in Tehran today... Iran-backed Hezbollah, a Lebanese militant group that has been fighting in Syria in support of Assad's forces, also reiterated its commitment to stay in the country. 'Hezbollah has to remain in Syria now more than any time before' to fend off the threat of Islamic State, Nabil Qawooq, a senior official in the Lebanon-based movement, said yesterday, according to the Annahar newspaper." http://t.uani.com/1wpG88i Human Rights ICHRI: "A blogger found guilty of insulting the Prophet Mohammad in his postings on Facebook has been sentenced to death. An informed source told the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran that the blogger, Soheil Arabi, will be able to appeal the decision until September 20, 2014. Agents from the Revolutionary Guards Corps' (IRGC) Sarallah Base arrested Soheil Arabi, 30, and his wife in November 2013. Arabi's wife was released a few hours later, but he was kept in solitary confinement for two months inside IRGC's Ward 2-A at Evin Prison, before he was transferred to Evin's General Ward 350. Branch 76 of the Tehran Criminal Court, under Judge Khorasani, found Arabi guilty of 'sabb al-nabi' (insulting the Prophet), on August 30, 2014." http://t.uani.com/1uH0slz Guardian: "Earlier this summer, Ghoncheh Ghavami stood outside Tehran's majestic Azadi (freedom) stadium, wearing a white scarf and holding up a placard. With Hassan Rouhani promising a more moderate stance in Iran, she wanted to enter the stadium alongside male fans, hoping that the Islamic republic's ban on women attending big sporting events would finally be over. As Iran's volleyball team hosted Italy later that Friday, Ghavami, 25 - who holds dual British and Iranian citizenship - was arrested with a number of other female fans who were peacefully demanding to be allowed into the match. She was released after several hours in detention but re-arrested in late June when she went back to collect her mobile phone, which had been confiscated after the protest. Nearly three months on, she remains in jail. Amnesty International says she is being held in Tehran's notorious Evin prison, where she was kept in solitary confinement for more than 40 days before being moved to a shared cell. 'She is a prisoner of conscience, arrested solely for taking part in a peaceful protest against the ban on women attending volleyball world league matches in Tehran's Azadi stadium,' said Amnesty." http://t.uani.com/1wDbCLh Opinion & Analysis Suzanne Maloney in Brookings: "Even as diplomats from around the world were meeting to launch a new campaign against violent extremists in Iraq and Syria, Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei denounced the American-instigated effort yesterday and insisted that Tehran will not cooperate with Washington against the group calling itself the Islamic State (IS, or ISIS.) His statements conformed to his unswerving hostility toward the United States and every aspect of its security policies in the Middle East, and further underscored the improbability of even tacit cooperation between Washington and Tehran on the regional crisis. Khamenei sought to rebut recent U.S. statements that suggested Tehran was deliberately excluded from the early efforts to build an anti-ISIS coalition. He called the reports 'amusing' and insisted in some detail that several American officials - including the U.S. ambassador in Iraq, Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Wendy Sherman, and Secretary of State John Kerry - have repeatedly pursued Iran's participation in the campaign against ISIS. 'They are all lying,' he reproached in the somewhat unusual interview, which took place as Khamenei left a Tehran hospital after a week-long stay for prostate surgery... Here's my take: anyone who was surprised by the Supreme Leader's statements hasn't been paying very close attention to his politics over the course of the past 35 years. Khamenei's hospital declaration on the anti-ISIS coalition was entirely consistent with his every prior utterance on America's regional role. Even before he assumed the office of the supreme leader, Khamenei was repeatedly on record as opposing any type of dialogue with Washington, and he routinely fulminates against any security cooperation in the region, from the 1991 U.S.-led (and United Nations authorized) coalition to evict Saddam Hussein from Kuwait to the past decade's wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Why would anyone have expected his views to have modulated this time around? As Iran's ultimate decision-maker, Khamenei holds veto power over Iran's foreign policy, but on the issue of ISIS he is likely reflecting broad consensus among the security establishment as well as many others within the political elite. Tehran appreciates better than any other actor the overlap between the threat of violence and state disintegration in Iraq and the Syrian civil war. But the rise of ISIS only feeds into the official Iranian narrative on culpability for the Syrian tragedy, and there is little fresh evidence of any internal debate on this approach. Despite his apparent interest in and mandate for securing a nuclear deal, Rouhani is neither empowered nor inclined to alter Iran's longstanding commitment to preserving the Syrian regime. The barrage of official Iranian repudiations should dash expectations of U.S.-Iranian cooperation against ISIS. As I've written before, such a partnership was never in the cards - whether it was to be some serendipitous 'team of rivals' assembled to take on a common threat as posited by advocates of engagement or a furtive 'alignment' that sacrifices Syria to Iran in exchange for Tehran's assistance in stabilizing Iraq. The simple reality is that the confluence of a common enemy cannot overcome the array of logistical, institutional and ideological obstacles to teamwork among the two old adversaries. So long as our objectives in the region diverge, there will be no convergence between U.S. and Iranian policies in the Levant." http://t.uani.com/1maGf7m    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.