Eye on Iran: US Lawmakers Worry Iran is Stonewalling Nuclear Watchdog

Join UANI           Top Stories AFP: "A large majority of US House of Representatives members wrote Secretary of State John Kerry expressing their concern Thursday over Iran's 'refusal' to work with the United Nations nuclear watchdog. With a November deadline fast approaching for Tehran and world powers to reach a deal on the Islamic republic's nuclear program, 354 of the House's 435 members warned that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has been frustrated in its efforts to glean more information about the 'potential military dimensions' of Iran's atomic efforts. 'We believe that Iran's willingness to fully reveal all aspects of its nuclear program is a fundamental test of Iran's intention to uphold a comprehensive agreement,' wrote the lawmakers including House Speaker John Boehner and several Democrats. 'We remain deeply concerned with Iran's refusal to fully cooperate with the (IAEA),' they added. 'The only reasonable conclusion for its stonewalling of international investigators is that Tehran does indeed have much to hide.'" http://t.uani.com/1yC6xog ADL: "Iran kicked off its anti-America and anti-Israel New Hori­zon Con­fer­ence as the final part of the 13th Inter­na­tional Resis­tance Film Fes­ti­val in Tehran. The three-day con­fer­ence opened on Sep­tem­ber 29 and marks the sec­ond time Tehran has hosted the event. Accord­ing to orga­niz­ers, the event will include 'tens of elite thinkers, philoso­phers, activists and politi­cians world­wide' who will dis­cuss and 'expose' Zion­ist con­trol of the film indus­try and the influ­ence of the 'Zion­ist lobby in America.' As in the pre­vi­ous con­fer­ence, this year's New Hori­zon Con­fer­ence has drawn the par­tic­i­pa­tion of sev­eral anti-Israel activists, anti-Semitic con­spir­acy the­o­rists and Holo­caust deniers. A new pres­ence at the con­fer­ence is the par­tic­i­pa­tion of a so called Amer­i­can anti-war activist, Medea Ben­jamin, a co-founder of CODEPINK. In addi­tion to Ben­jamin, the conference's offi­cial web­site pub­lished the names of sev­eral Amer­i­can and inter­na­tional anti-Semites, anti-Israel activists and Holo­caust deniers that are expected to be in atten­dance, includ­ing Maria Poumier, a French con­spir­acy the­o­rist and Holo­caust denier; Clau­dio Moffa, an Ital­ian Holo­caust denier; Kevin Bar­rett, an anti-Semitic con­spir­acy the­o­rist and fre­quent con­trib­u­tor to Iran's Eng­lish lan­guage pro­pa­ganda news net­work, Press TV; Garth Porter, an anti-Israel jour­nal­ist; Pepe Esco­bar, a Brazil­ian anti-Israel jour­nal­ist; and Art Olivier, a for­mer elected offi­cial from Cal­i­for­nia and 9/11 con­spir­acy theorist." http://t.uani.com/YZMr7c RFE/RL: "A group of Iranian journalists has openly criticized President Hassan Rohani for claiming that reporters are not being jailed in the Islamic republic. Rohani made the remark in an interview with CNN in New York on September 26. He told the U.S. cable television network: 'I do not believe that an individual would be detained or put in prison for being a journalist.' But an open letter on October 2, signed by 135 journalists and activists, says the Iranian president is 'distorting and denying reality.' The letter accuses Rohani of not living up to his election promise to ease government controls on the media." http://t.uani.com/1oGQxro     Nuclear Program & Negotiations Reuters: "A high-level U.N. nuclear watchdog team will visit Tehran for talks in coming days, Iran said on Friday, more than a month after it missed a deadline for addressing questions about its suspected atomic bomb research. Diplomats told Reuters on Thursday that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was expected to make a new attempt soon to advance its long-running investigation into Iran's nuclear program and that a meeting might be held in the Iranian capital early next week. Reza Najafi, Iran's ambassador to the Vienna-based U.N. agency, said the IAEA delegation would be led by the head of its division dealing with nuclear safeguards issues, Deputy Director General Tero Varjoranta." http://t.uani.com/1nTjAgG Islamic State Fars (Iran): "Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei slammed the West, specially the US, for creating the Takfiri terrorists, and said that the main objective of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) is to create differences among Muslim sects. 'The Takfiri groups are spreading atrocities in the West Asian region in a bid to sow discord among Muslims,' the Supreme Leader said in a message to the Hajj pilgrims on Friday. He noted that the enemy is pursuing to provide the Zionist regime with safety through igniting war among Muslims." http://t.uani.com/1vEedBQ Domestic Politics Al-Monitor: "An official with Iran's Department of Environment has said that jamming satellites can cause cancer and that the agency recommends eliminating jamming efforts by the Iranian government. Saeed Motassadi, an official with the Department of Environment, said, 'A committee was formed in cooperation between the Department of Environment and the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology to address the situation of jamming.' Motassadi told Islamic Republic News Agency, which is managed by the administration of President Hassan Rouhani, that the meetings reached the minister level and that resolutions have been approved. 'The topic of jamming causing cancer was studied many times, and the possibility exists of this illness coming about in individuals as a result from the effects of jamming,' Motassadi said. Iran has longed jammed foreign satellite channels coming into Iran, particularly Persian-language news channels or ones that conservative authorities believe may influence the culture of younger Iranians in an un-Islamic direction." http://t.uani.com/ZAtCIR Opinion & Analysis WashPost Editorial: "The deadline for completing a nuclear agreement with Iran is now less than eight weeks away, and the omens are not good. U.S. officials had hoped that an intensive week of negotiations at the United Nations last month would open the way to a deal but, by the account of both sides, little headway was made. 'The gaps are still serious,' said a U.S. official briefing reporters at the end of the talks. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani was even blunter: 'The progress realized thus far has not been significant.' The impasse certainly does not reflect a lack of initiative by the Obama administration. On the contrary, U.S. negotiators have responded to Iranian intransigence on key issues with creative but sometimes disturbing counterproposals. Most notably, Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has declared that the regime will not dismantle any of the 19,000 centrifuges it has constructed to enrich uranium. So the United States and its allies, which once insisted that most of the machines be eliminated, reportedly have floated a proposal to leave the centrifuges in place but take away the plumbing that connects them. If Iran has made similar efforts to bridge the gaps between the two sides, there is no report of them. Instead, Tehran appears to be sticking to its insistence on maintaining and eventually vastly expanding its nuclear infrastructure while offering only a temporary slowdown in uranium enrichment and 'increased transparency.' It is refusing to discuss its ballistic missile program and still isn't cooperating with international inspectors' probe into its past nuclear weapons design work. The Obama administration has a history of responding to Iran's stonewalling by peeling away its own demands. It gave up an attempt to impose a permanent ban on Iranian enrichment and seems to have dropped a requirement that an underground uranium enrichment plant be closed. Now it seems to be contemplating scenarios under which Iran would not have to dismantle centrifuges that would be the center of any bomb-making effort. In theory, a nuclear deal including this concession could still achieve the goal publicly set by Secretary of State John F. Kerry, which is to increase the time Iran would need to produce a bomb to six months to one year. However, by leaving the nuclear infrastructure intact, it would cede Iran the option of racing to build a nuclear arsenal at a time of its choosing, while removing the sanctions that are pressing the regime. Meanwhile, a concession already made by the United States and its allies - setting a date after which all restrictions on Iran's nuclear work would lapse - would create a time bomb for the Middle East. Neighbors such as Saudi Arabia would likely take such a date, whether it is five or 15 years away, as a deadline for creating their own capacity for building nuclear weapons. We have supported negotiations with Iran, and the interim deal struck last year, as preferable to what had previously looked like a slide toward war. But President Obama should resist the temptation to make further concessions in order to complete a long-term deal by November. In the absence of a dramatic change in its positions, Iran should be offered, at best, an extension of the existing arrangement, with the current sanctions left in place - and threatened with tougher measures if it does not accept." http://t.uani.com/1ujfkYf    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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