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AFP:
"French President Francois Hollande said on Monday his country would
stand firm on its demand that Tehran vow not to pursue nuclear weapons
ahead of fresh international negotiations. 'If there is no clear
statement from Iran on giving up nuclear weapons, there will be no
agreement,' Hollande said on France Inter radio. 'France will not yield
on that point. It will remain absolutely firm,' he added." http://t.uani.com/1s1gUzs
AFP:
"An Iraqi Shiite militia leader and lawmaker has credited Tehran and
a powerful Iranian general with saving the Baghdad government during last
summer's offensive by Islamic State group militants. Hadi al-Ameri, a
former minister who commands the Badr militia, said support from Iran and
General Qassem Suleimani had been crucial after Iraqi government forces
collapsed in the face of the IS assault. 'If it were not for the
cooperation of the Islamic republic of Iran and General Suleimani, we
would not today have a government headed by Haider al-Abadi in Baghdad,'
Ameri told a memorial service south of Tehran Monday for an Iranian
officer killed in Iraq last month. 'It would not have existed,' he said
of the Iraqi government, according to the Isna and Fars news agencies.
The memorial was for Iranian Revolutionary Guards Major General Hamid
Taghavi, killed by IS fighters in the Iraqi city of Samarra last month.
Suleimani, the commander of Iran's Quds Force -- the foreign wing of the
Revolutionary Guards -- was also present at the memorial." http://t.uani.com/1DtCPk4
Telegraph:
"One of Iran's most senior military commanders denounced President
Hassan Rouhani as a 'fake revolutionary' on Monday as the beleaguered
leader faced public criticism for advocating sweeping reform. General
Mohammad Reza Naqdi, the commander of the Basij paramilitary force,
delivered a forceful response to a speech from Mr Rouhani on
Sunday. In this appearance, the president urged economic reform and
raised the possibility of appealing over the heads of his opponents to
Iran's people by holding referendums on vital questions of policy... But
this provoked a terse response from Gen Naqdi, who leads the paramilitary
wing of the Revolutionary Guard Corps. He described the regime's ideals
as the 'elimination of tyrants, of the American White House and the
wiping out of Zionism'. Gen Naqdi added: 'These days, fake
revolutionaries, who joined the ranks of revolutionaries to acquire
leadership and riches, speak about the necessity to make compromises and
are sure that our struggle must be halted - and they expect that we will
surrender our affairs to them.'" http://t.uani.com/1BFN0Rj
Nuclear Program & Negotiations
Fars (Iran):
"Iran's top negotiator in the nuclear talks with the six world
powers dismissed the possibility of Iran's uranium enrichment outside its
borders, adding that the entire world has accepted the country's
enrichment right. 'Today, no one speaks of enrichment outside Iran. Today
no one has a word about (Iran's right of) enrichment in principle since
today enrichment and moving towards industrialized enrichment has been
accepted as an inalienable reality and no one doubts about it anymore,'
Zarif said, addressing Iranian legislators at the parliament on Tuesday.
'Today, no one speaks of suspending enrichment. Today no one speaks of
closing Fordo (enrichment facilities) or Arak (heavy water reactor) (both
in Central Iran),' he added." http://t.uani.com/1KhXX1l
Sanctions
Relief
Reuters:
"Two of Japan's biggest buyers of Iranian crude, JX Nippon Oil &
Energy Corp and Showa Shell Sekiyu KK, are set to keep their purchases
from Tehran largely steady in 2015, their top officials said on Tuesday.
JX, which sources said imported 53,000 barrels per day (bpd) of Iranian
crude in 2014, will keep its volumes steady in the new term contract
starting this month, Chairman Yasushi Kimura said on the sidelines of an
industry gathering. 'Iranian sanctions have been unchanged, so we will
not increase or reduce volumes,' Kimura told Reuters. Showa Shell Sekiyu
also indicated its intention to keep its Iranian crude volumes steady at
about 70,000 bpd in the fiscal year starting on April 1... Cosmo in 2014
was lifting a little below 15,000 bpd, while Idemitsu has a contract for
2,000 to 3,000 bpd, sources said." http://t.uani.com/1AlCstm
Trend:
"Iran's Bank of Industry and Mine used $4 billion of Iran's assets,
which have been frozen due to the country's nuclear program in China, for
development projects. Gholamhossein Nematollahi, deputy governor of Bank
of Industry and Mine, said $4 billion has been allocated for rail and
steel projects, including the Isfahan-Tehran high speed train project,
Iran's IRNA news agency reported on Jan. 6. He added that $4 billion more
will be also allocated by the end of the current Iranian year (March 20,
2015) to eight steel and rail projects, including the Mashhad-Tehran
railway project... In November 2013, Iran announced that about $30
billion of its oil revenues have been blocked by Chinese banks due to the
sanctions imposed on Tehran's banking system. The two countries agreed
over Chinese companies' financing of Iranian projects as an approach to
return the blocked assets." http://t.uani.com/1xAJbNJ
Tehran Times:
"The First exclusive exhibition of Italian companies in Iran will
open today at the Tehran Permanent International Fairgrounds. The event,
which is the first exclusive exhibition of a European country in Iran,
will host over 50 Italian companies, the Mehr News Agency reported on
Sunday. Participants will showcase their latest products and achievements
in the fields of interior design and architecture as well as civil
engineering and architecture in the four-day exhibit." http://t.uani.com/1BDFiqs
Opinion &
Analysis
Matthew Kroening
in NRO: "As our lawmakers return from their winter
recess, the Iran nuclear negotiations will be high on the foreign-policy
agenda. The impetus in the new Republican-controlled Congress will be to
immediately pass tough new sanctions legislation, but there is a better
way to turn up the heat on Tehran while making it clear to everyone that
the obstacle to a successful negotiated settlement is Iran's Supreme
Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and not Republicans in Congress. To be
sure, getting an acceptable nuclear deal with Iran will require bringing
more pressure to bear. Iran makes concessions only when its back is
against the wall, and Congress has always understood this. It was
congressional sanctions (which the Obama administration resisted) that
brought Iran to the table in the first place and got us the interim
nuclear deal in November 2013. In the aftermath of that interim deal,
Congress wanted to continue its successful strategy by passing tough
sanctions-in-waiting legislation. The Kirk-Menendez bill would have put
in place conditional penalties that would have gone into effect only if
Iran walked away from the negotiations or if it was caught cheating on
the interim deal's terms. This was the perfect opening for the White
House to play good cop/bad cop. Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam
has shown through his concept of 'two-level games' how an implacable
opposition back home can actually strengthen one's hand in international
negotiations. The Iranians are shrewd enough to play this game against
us, as President Hassan Rouhani insists that he is eager to strike a
deal, and that the only problem is getting the more recalcitrant Supreme
Leader to come around. Instead, however, the Obama administration
undercut its own leverage. It lobbied against the proposed sanctions
legislation, claiming that bill would demonstrate bad faith and spoil the
atmosphere for negotiations. Although the bill had strong support from
lawmakers, Majority Leader Harry Reid, under pressure from the White
House, refused to bring it to the floor of the Senate. The
administration's peculiar theory of diplomacy, which holds that the best
way to get concessions from Iran is to play nice, has been repeatedly
proven incorrect over the past year. The best solution, therefore, would
be for the administration itself to return to the pressure track. In
fact, in last year's State of the Union address, President Obama
declared, 'If Iran's leaders don't seize this opportunity [and agree to a
final nuclear deal], then I will be the first to call for sanctions.'
But, like the Syria red-line debacle, this appears to be another of President
Obama's empty threats. Once again, therefore, it will fall on Congress to
do the right thing. With the sweeping Republican victories in the midterm
elections, there has been talk of Congress's passing new
sanctions-in-waiting legislation based on Kirk-Menendez as soon as it
reconvenes. However, if Congress attempts to pass such a bill in January,
the administration will again falsely accuse it of sabotaging
negotiations just as we were making 'progress' toward the March 1
deadline, the media will draw an erroneous equivalence between
'hardliners' in Iran and 'hardliners' in the U.S. Congress, and many will
wrongly blame the Republicans, not the Iranians, for the likely eventual
failure of diplomacy. Not only would this outcome be unfair, it would be
damaging both to Republicans and to U.S. interests, because America's
Iran strategy, including sanctions and possibly tougher actions down the
road, requires international support. If there were a widespread
perception that the U.S. Congress, not Iran, is responsible for the
impasse, then the international consensus against Iran could be broken.
Rather than go down this road, Republicans in Congress should announce
that they will give the diplomats the space they need to reach an
agreement by March 1. But they should also make clear that March 1 is a
hard deadline. If the diplomats cannot strike an accord by this, their
own deadline, then the hammer will come down. Congress will pass the
toughest remaining sanctions on Iran's banking, mining, and energy sectors.
Rather than conditional sanctions-in-waiting, this bill should stipulate
that sanctions will go into effect immediately on March 2 if a deal has
not been reached... In sum, the best approach for Republicans in Congress
- and the one that would be best for the nation - is simply to hold the
Iranians and the P5+1 to their own deadline. March 1 is not that far
away." http://t.uani.com/14hFgda
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