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NYT:
"President Obama's decision to engage in a lengthy battle to defeat
the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria reorders the global priorities of his
final years in office. The mystery is whether it will deprive him of the
legacy he had once hoped would define his second term, or enhance it
instead. Until now, Mr. Obama's No. 1 priority in the Middle East has
been clear: preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. Israeli officials,
who by happenstance arrived in Washington this week for their regular
'strategic dialogue,' immediately argued that ISIS was a distraction from
that priority. Their fear is that the Iranians, finding themselves on the
same side of the fight against ISIS as the United States, would use it as
leverage to extract concessions from the president. 'ISIL is a five-year
problem,' Yuval Steinitz, Israel's strategic affairs minister, said a few
hours before Mr. Obama addressed the nation on Wednesday night, using the
acronym the Obama administration employs to describe the Sunni extremist
group. 'A nuclear Iran is a 50-year problem,' he said, 'with far greater
impact.' Other Israeli officials warned the Obama administration that the
new American operation would bolster Iran's ambitions for regional
dominance." http://t.uani.com/1CZQccG
ICHRI:
"The Iranian youths who produced the dance video 'Happy in Tehran'
set to the Pharrell Williams hit song 'Happy' were put on trial in Tehran
on September 9, 2014, where they were charged with 'participation in
producing a vulgar video clip' and conducting 'illicit relations' with
one another, an informed source told the International Campaign for Human
Rights in Iran. Lawyers for the defendants objected to the brutal police
treatment of the suspects and raids on their homes during the arrests, as
well as the new charges of illicit relations leveled against the youths,
and demanded that the court address their objections. According to the
source, all principals involved in the making of the video, Sassan
Soleimani, Reyhaneh Taravati, Neda Motameni, Afshin Sohrabi, Bardia
Moradi, Roham Shamekhi, and a suspect known by the first name of Sepideh
were present at the trial session. The court, presided over by Judge
Heydari, will announce its ruling over the coming days. In addition to
the charges leveled against the group, one of the suspects, Reyhaneh
Taravati, is also accused of 'possession of alcohol' in her home and of
'uploading and distribution of the clip on YouTube.'" http://t.uani.com/1pcS47L
Al-Monitor:
"Remember Iran? The dominant foreign policy issue of the past year
has fallen by the wayside as Congress focuses on the rise of the Islamic
State (IS). Republicans who just months ago vowed to use every tool at
their disposal to force a vote on new sanctions in the Senate have
shelved those plans, and even the GOP-controlled House isn't scheduled to
hold a single hearing before the midterm elections. The shift in focus
has given President Barack Obama's negotiating team welcome breathing
room as it pursues a nuclear deal in Vienna, even as congressional
skeptics fret that Iran will take advantage of the lull in attention...
'I am worried that if we all focus on Iraq and miss nuclear weapons in
Iran, we have the danger of missing the biggest threat to international
cohesion and the security of the US,' said Sen. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., the
co-author of sanctions legislation that Senate Majority Leader Harry
Reid, D-Nev., has blocked from getting to the floor." http://t.uani.com/1qrsUZa
Nuclear Program & Negotiations
Reuters:
"Iran and world powers remain far apart over Tehran's nuclear
programme, and they face a 'difficult road' to reach a deal by a late
November deadline, a senior Iranian negotiator said on Thursday. Deputy
Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi spoke after a day of talks in Vienna with
the three European members of the group of six major powers that is
seeking to negotiate an end to a decade-old nuclear dispute with Iran...
Asked how big the differences were, Araqchi told reporters: 'Still big.'
He added: 'We are always optimistic ... but we have a difficult road to
go.'" http://t.uani.com/1uxt4xz
Human Rights
RWB:
"Reporters Without Borders is very worried about the many
journalists and netizens who continue to be detained despite suffering
serious ailments, and condemns the lack of adequate medical treatment in
the prisons where they are held. There is currently a great deal of
concern about the physical condition of a group of detained contributors
to the Sufi news website Majzooban Noor who began a hunger strike on 31
August in protest against their prison conditions... 'Their lives are in
danger amid complete silence and indifference. The regime has a duty to
respect its detainees' right to health. Any violation of this fundamental
principle will be regarded as a criminal failure to assist persons in
danger.' The Majzooban Noor contributors who began a hunger strike on 31
August are Reza Entesari, Hamidreza Moradi, Mostafa Abdi, Kasra Nouri and
Afshin Karampour. Their jailed lawyers, Amir Islami, Farshid Yadollahi,
Mostafa Daneshjo and Omid Behrouzi, have joined the hunger strike.
Majzooban Noor is a news website that supports the Nematollahi Gonabadi
order of Sufism." http://t.uani.com/WSKjNp
IHR:
"A 60 year old woman and a 31 year old man were hanged in the prison
of Rasht (Northern Iran) early Thursday morning (September 11), reported
the Iranian state media. According to the Iranian State Broadcasting IRIB
the 31 year old man was charged with possession and trafficking of 4100
grams of the narcotic drug crystal , and the woman was charged with
participation in buying, possession, trafficking and distribution of 3198
grams of heroin." http://t.uani.com/1sAg0Yg
Domestic
Politics
Asharq Al-Awsat:
"Heavy fighting between Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and
a Baluch Sunni rebel group called Jaish Al-Adl broke out on Tuesday
morning in Iran's southeastern province of Sistan and Baluchistan...
Iran's Edalat News, a media outlet that caters to Iran's Sunni community,
published a statement from Jaish Al-Adl, who portrayed the operation as a
success. 'Rebel forces managed to kill 10 regime soldiers and completely
destroy the Askan border post by sending a 600-kilogram [1,323-pound]
explosive device fitted on a car into the compound and triggering it
remotely,' the statement said. The province of Sistan and Baluchistan has
experienced a number of armed attacks from anti-regime Baluch groups over
the last few years. Earlier this year, 13 Iranian border guards were
killed and another five abducted in an ambush in the southeastern
province. The surge in rebel attacks on the eastern border led to Iran's
border forces handing over security for the border to the Revolutionary
Guard, resulting in additional military personnel and weaponry being
deployed to the region. The majority of Iran's Baluch population are
Sunnis, many of whom feel disenfranchised by the Shi'ite central
government." http://t.uani.com/1m03ErZ
Opinion &
Analysis
Dennis Ross in
NYT: "A new fault line has emerged in Middle Eastern
politics, one that will have profound implications for America's foreign
policy in the region. This rift is not defined by those who support or
oppose the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), or by conflict between
Sunnis and Shiites and the proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran. It is
characterized by a fundamental division between Islamists and
non-Islamists. On one side are the Islamists - both Sunni and Shiite.
ISIS and the Muslim Brotherhood represent the Sunni end of the spectrum,
while the Islamic Republic of Iran and its militias, including Hezbollah
(in Lebanon and Syria) and Asaib Ahl al-Haq (in Iraq), constitute the
other. Many of these Islamists are at war with one another, but they are
also engaged in a bitter struggle with non-Islamists to define the fundamental
identity of the region and its states. What the Islamists all have in
common is that they subordinate national identities to an Islamic
identity. To be sure, not all are as extreme as ISIS, which seeks to
obliterate sovereign nations under the aegis of a caliphate. But the
Muslim Brotherhood is committed to the Umma, the larger Muslim community.
One reason behind the popular revolt against its rule in Egypt was that
the Brotherhood violated a basic principle of national identity: It was
Islamist before it was Egyptian... The non-Islamists include the
traditional monarchies, authoritarian governments in Egypt and Algeria,
and secular reformers who may be small in number but have not
disappeared. They do not include Bashar al-Assad's regime in Syria; he is
completely dependent on Iran and Hezbollah and cannot make decisions
without them. Today, the non-Islamists want to know that the United
States supports them. For America, that means not partnering with Iran
against ISIS, though both countries may avoid interfering with each
other's operations against the insurgents in Iraq. It means actively
competing with Iran in the rest of the region, independently of whether
an acceptable nuclear deal can be reached with Tehran. It means
recognizing that Egypt is an essential part of the anti-Islamist
coalition, and that American military aid should not be withheld because
of differences over Egypt's domestic behavior." http://t.uani.com/1qPrh5b
David Albright,
Daniel Schnur, & Andrea Stricker in the Institute for Science and
International Security (ISIS): "As negotiations are
resuming on a comprehensive nuclear agreement under the Joint Plan of
Action, Iran's on-going illicit nuclear and missile procurements
complicate the achievement of that agreement. Moreover, Iranian officials
recently trumpeted the nuclear programs' illicit procurements while
inaccurately trying to present Iran as a victim of sabotage. Given
that the Iranian government openly supports violating other governments'
trade control laws and United Nations Security Council sanctions, its
complaints that some governments modify illegally acquired goods so they
do not work is at best hypocritical. Iranian official statements are akin
to a bank robber complaining about having stolen money destroyed by dye
cartridges emplaced by a bank. Any long term agreement will need to
create an architecture that prevents Iran from importing goods for banned
or covert nuclear programs." http://t.uani.com/1tPmNPG
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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
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email Press@UnitedAgainstNuclearIran.com
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