Eye on Iran: Kerry Says Iran, World Powers Closer Than Ever to Historic Nuclear Deal

Join UANI           Top Stories Reuters: "The United States and five other major powers are closer than ever to a deal with Iran that would end a 12-year-old standoff over Tehran's nuclear program, though more tough negotiations lie ahead, Secretary of State John Kerry said on Monday. Kerry spoke at the United Nations on the opening day of a month-long conference taking stock of the 1970 nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and ahead of a meeting in New York with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, their first face-to-face encounter since recent marathon talks in Lausanne, Switzerland. Zarif and Kerry met later on Monday at the Iranian U.N. ambassador's residence across from Central Park and discussed efforts to secure a final agreement between Iran and the six powers by a June 30 deadline. The meeting was 'productive,' a senior U.S. State Department official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. 'They discussed the work that political directors and experts did last week in Vienna and the path forward for the talks,' the official added. Kerry told the 191 NPT parties: 'We are, in fact, closer than ever to the good, comprehensive deal that we have been seeking, and if we can get there, the entire world will be safer.' He said bringing Iran back into compliance with the pact was always at the heart of negotiations with Tehran. 'If finalized and implemented, (an agreement) will close off all of Iran's possible pathways to the nuclear material required for a nuclear weapon and give the international community the confidence that it needs to know that Iran's nuclear program is indeed exclusively peaceful,' he said. Kerry added, however, that 'the hard work is far from over and some key issues remain unresolved.'" http://t.uani.com/1P2lUcH Politico: "The commander of Iran's ground forces said that American officials planned and executed the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, to justify military intervention in the region. 'These wars and these threats stem from a comprehensive American strategy. After the fall of the Soviet Union, the Americans felt that a new force was beginning to materialize, namely the union between Sunnis and Shiites,' said Ahmad Reza Pourdastan in an interview with Iran's Arabic-language Al-Alam state news network. 'The basis of this force was the blessed Islamic Revolution in Iran. This force is Islam, or the Islamic world. In order to prevent this force from materializing, the Americans did many things,' Pourdastan said, according to a translation of his remarks by the Middle East Media Research Institute. 'The first thing they did was to plan and carry out the events of 9/11, in order to justify their presence in Western Asia, with the goal of ruling it,' he said. He also brought up the possibility of terrorist attacks in Saudi Arabia, predicting that Houthi rebels equipped with Yemen's arsenal of weapons could deal 'lethal blows' to the kingdom. 'Personally, I feel that if Saudi cities were targeted by bombings and missiles, it would be difficult for the officials there to withstand this,' he said." http://t.uani.com/1J6nZTh ABC: "Just hours after President Obama used his appearance at the White House Correspondents' Dinner to call for the release of an American journalist held prisoner in Iran, another American held at the same prison was taunted by Iranian prison guards who told him the president did not mention his name, his family said. The prisoner, Marine Corps veteran Amir Hekmati, called his mother over the weekend from the notorious Evin prison in Tehran, terrified that gaining his release is not a priority for the U.S. government, his family said. Now, in an emotional letter to the White House, Amir's sister is demanding to know why the president has never said her brother's name in public. He has been imprisoned for nearly four years. 'He has already been mistreated, abused, and tortured,' writes Sarah Hekmati, Amir's sister, in a letter to White House counter-terrorism advisor Lisa Monaco. 'Now the mental torture continues as he is made to feel that the country he put his life on the line for, the one he defended, and the president he voted for has left him behind and are not actively trying to secure his freedom.' Of the three Americans known to be imprisoned in Iran, Hekmati has been held the longest... 'Why has President Obama yet to utter the name Amir Hekmati?' his sister wrote." http://t.uani.com/1EzMFDU     Nuclear Program & Negotiations Reuters: "Iran on Monday demanded that countries possessing nuclear weapons scrap any plans to modernize or extend the life of their atomic arsenals, while branding Israel a threat to the region due to its presumed nuclear stockpile. Speaking on behalf of the 120-nation Non-Aligned Movement, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif told signatories to the 1970 nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) that there should be no limits on the transfer of nuclear technology and know-how to NPT signatories. 'We call upon the nuclear-weapon states to immediately cease their plans to further invest in modernizing and extending the life span of their nuclear weapons and related facilities,' Zarif said at the start of a month-long review conference taking stock of the NPT, the world's benchmark disarmament treaty... He said non-aligned states viewed Israel's assumed nuclear weapons as 'a serious and continuing threat to the security of neighboring and other states, and condemned Israel for continuing to develop and stockpile nuclear arsenals.'" http://t.uani.com/1DwY1Do FP: "America's top negotiator in the Iran nuclear talks offered a surprisingly detailed assessment of Tehran's existing nuclear capabilities on Monday as she warned that failing to secure a final deal with the longtime adversary would seriously threaten American national security. The remarks by Wendy Sherman, the undersecretary for political affairs at the State Department, come at a pivotal juncture in U.S. politics as Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill wrangle over provisions in a new bill allowing Congress to review a final agreement. Sherman, speaking at the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism in Washington, said that failing to reach an agreement would leave Tehran closer than ever to acquiring a bomb. Without a deal, Sherman said, Iran would expand its nuclear enrichment program to 100,000 centrifuges in the next few years instead of shrinking that figure to 5,000 as agreed in the framework agreement brokered in Lausanne, Switzerland on April 2... 'So when you look at the comparison to the agreement we are negotiating and the chance that we wouldn't succeed - the better course of action is abundantly clear,' she said." http://t.uani.com/1GDXbfz Al-Monitor: "US Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, speaking to reporters in Washington on April 27, said that over the next two months, negotiators would work to finalize arrangements for how inspectors could access non-nuclear sites where there are concerns of past possible military nuclear work. 'There will be a process in place to establish reasons for needing access to particular places,' Moniz told reporters at a breakfast hosted by the Christian Science Monitor on April 27. 'That process will not be blockable by one country or two countries.' There will be a 'very detailed understanding of the process to resolve the IAEA's [International Atomic Energy Agency] Iran requirements for satisfying and clarifying the [past] possible military dimensions' of its program. Moniz also reiterated that under the framework deal reached earlier this month with Iran, the only enrichment site Iran will operate will be at Natanz, and that the underground Fordow facility will have no enrichment, no fissile material and also no advanced centrifuge research and development." http://t.uani.com/1DT0p82 AP: "At a breakfast meeting with journalists, Moniz, a former MIT physics department head, provided some new detail on the combination of technical limits that the U.S. says would keep Iran at least a year away from assembling enough fissile material for one nuclear weapon for at least a decade. Hours after the framework was announced, the U.S. said Iran would be permitted to keep 6,104 centrifuges installed. Of these, a little more than 1,000 could be kept at Iran's deeply buried facility at Fordo that may be impervious to U.S. or Israeli air attack. None of those would be permitted to enrich uranium, material that can be used in a nuclear warhead. Moniz said no advanced centrifuges can be installed or developed at that site for 15 years. And in a new twist, he said only one-third of the 1,000 centrifuges there can actually 'spin' over that period. The rest will be 'just sitting there,' he said." http://t.uani.com/1ba55iv Congressional Action AP: "The Senate begins debate Tuesday over legislation empowering Congress to review and possibly reject any nuclear pact the Obama administration develops with Iran. The bill approved by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee has gained the tacit approval of Obama, and proponents are trying to discourage any changes. They recognize that politically driven amendments could undermine Democratic support and sink the carefully crafted measure. The legislation would block Obama from waiving congressional sanctions for at least 30 days while lawmakers weigh in. And it would stipulate that if senators disapprove the deal, Obama would lose authority to waive certain economic penalties - an event that would certainly prompt a presidential veto. Among proposed additions to the bill are demands that Iran release any U.S. citizens it is holding and refrain from any cooperation with nuclear-armed North Korea. Another insists that any agreement be treated as an international treaty, requiring two-thirds ratification by the Senate. Another set of amendments would block any sanctions relief for Iran until it meets goals the U.S. set years ago as negotiating stances and has long since abandoned." http://t.uani.com/1EiS68E Sanctions Relief Newsweek: "In downtown Tehran, the German electronics powerhouse Siemens AG opens and closes for business each day. But since 2010, no new business has been done there. 'You walk in the door and the staff will tell you, 'We are keeping the office open until the Iranian sanctions are lifted,'' says Michael Tockuss, managing board member of the German-Iranian Chamber of Commerce Association, in Hamburg, Germany. 'People forget that many companies, like Siemens, have a history with Iran that goes back more than 100 years. They stick to the rules, but they keep up the relationship.' For Big Oil, the payoff for keeping up the relationship could be enormous, which is why oil multinationals are discreetly, but assiduously, courting Iran's oil ministry... In recent months, traffic to Iran from Europe and the United States has doubled, says Sina Makki, chief executive of the Tehran office for HRG Worldwide, a British global travel company catering to business executives. 'We have seen a lot of executive delegations from Europe-Germany, Italy, France and also England-particularly from Frankfurt, which has direct flights to Iran. I have also been surprised by the number of people coming from the U.S. over the past two months,' he says. The executive delegations include oil companies, Makki told Newsweek, though he declined to name specific firms." http://t.uani.com/1QETNny Press TV (Iran): "Iranian President Hassan Rouhani says the sanctions regime put in place against the Islamic Republic is collapsing. President Rouhani made the remark while addressing a ceremony in the capital, Tehran, to hail Iranian workers on Tuesday. The Iranian president said Iran's enemies have created two crises. 'First, they accused us and said we are after nuclear weapons; and second, they created a wrong mechanism to cripple our banking system, to prevent foreign investment in the country and to impede purchases, exports and sales,' he said." http://t.uani.com/1zjPngq AFP: "President Hassan Rouhani warned Tuesday that middlemen who have circumvented sanctions will need to 'think of another job' as a potential final nuclear deal brings changes to Iran's economy. The remarks, at a ceremony in Tehran ahead of Labor Day Friday, signaled Rouhani's intent to tackle a black market that has thrived in Iran after official trading routes were cut off. Although sanctions plunged the economy into recession and hurt most of the population, some Iranians have amassed fortunes from smuggling foreign goods from Turkey, Iraq and Gulf states. 'Sanctions busters should now think of another job,' Rouhani said. 'With the final agreement - which if the other side has serious determination will be possible in the coming months - production and the economic situation will be much better.'" http://t.uani.com/1FujNO1 WSJ: "A diplomatic thaw between Iran and the West is raising the prospects of an eventual flood of Iranian oil into already-sated global markets, weighing on prices in recent weeks. But Iran's prodigious natural-gas reserves may also, someday, start to reshape global energy markets, should Tehran reach a definitive deal with the U.S. and other Western powers which resulted in the easing of sanctions. Iran holds the world's second-largest gas reserves, behind only Russia. It is the world's third biggest gas producer, behind Russia and the U.S. But because the Islamic Republic has been slow to develop infrastructure and has been hobbled for years by international sanctions, exports are still tiny-just 9 billion cubic meters a year. That ranks Iran 23rd in the world, behind Brunei, according to 2013 data, the most recent available. Most of that goes to a single customer: Turkey. But Tehran is already pushing to expand those sales." http://t.uani.com/1EzAvLb Regional Destabilization Press TV (Iran): "A senior Iranian presidential adviser says the United States and the Israeli regime have waged a sectarian war in the Middle East region. 'Today, nothing is more dangerous than a sectarian war in the region and the US and Zionists have kindled this flame in the region,' Ali Younesi, President Hassan Rouhani's adviser on ethnic and religious minority affairs, said on Monday. 'Under the current circumstances, the Islamic Republic of Iran enjoys the highest degree of security but the enemies of Islam cannot tolerate this atmosphere and seek to create conflicts and divisions among various ethnic groups and denominations,' he added." http://t.uani.com/1ENcwdu Al Arabiya: "Albeit a power-sharing government, and a dialogue that is in play between his party and Hezbollah, but former Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri is leaving no room for doubt when it comes to the new 'united Arab front in countering the Iranian influence.' Coordinating some form of a safe zone in Syria and arm-twisting measures across the greater Middle East are in the works Hariri says, in what experts interpret as a direct reaction to 'U.S. abandonment' of the region. In a closed meeting with Arab journalists during his current visit to Washington, Hariri said 'Operation Decisive Storm,' which Saudi Arabia and a regional coalition launched in Yemen on March 25, is 'the beginning of a united Arab front against Iranian influence.' The Lebanese leader, who met U.S. Vice President Joe Biden on Friday and was received by Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz prior to arriving in DC, laments that 'the international community will stand with the strong, and this is a fact we have realized in Yemen and beyond,' adding: 'we have to be as aggressive to counter Iran.'" http://t.uani.com/1KpOUua Syrian Conflict CSM: "Iran has proven critical in helping keep President Bashar al-Assad in power after four years of bloody war, dispatching thousands of soldiers and paramilitary fighters to bolster Syria's flagging army and billions of dollars in loans to prop up its economy. Yet, despite this massive show of support, the Assad regime in the past month has lost ground against opposition forces in a series of battlefield reversals. And, crucially, it faces a serious shortage of fresh soldiers and militiamen willing to continue fighting, making it ever more reliant on Iran, its close ally of 35 years... Diplomatic sources in Beirut estimate that Iran spends between $1 billion and $2 billion a month in Syria in cash handouts and military support. Staffan de Mistura, the United Nations envoy to Syria, recently told a private gathering in Washington that Iran has been channeling as much as $35 billion a year into Syria, according to one of the participants at the meeting. 'Iran has always considered Syria its gateway to the Arab region. I don't think that assessment has changed,' says Randa Slim, a Hezbollah expert and a director at the Washington-based Middle East Institute." http://t.uani.com/1KpUv3w Reuters: "Syria's defense minister started an official visit to its major ally Iran on Tuesday at the head of a military delegation to discuss cooperation 'in the face of terrorism,' Syria's state news agency SANA said. Minister Fahad Jassim al-Freij, who is also deputy commander of the Syrian armed forces, met his Iranian counterpart Hossein Dehghan and other officials, SANA said, publishing a picture of the meeting... The visit was aimed at 'strengthening coordination and cooperation between the two armies ... especially in the face of terrorism and common challenges in the region,' SANA said." http://t.uani.com/1JNZA4R Yemen Crisis AFP: "A top Iranian security official on Tuesday accused Saudi Arabia of using 'cold war era' scare tactics in Yemen, after an air drop of leaflets that criticise 'Persian expansion'. The reference, to Iran's language and ancient name, was contained on white paper fliers released from Saudi aircraft in recent weeks... 'Dropping these leaflets, as untrue as they are, has the goal of frightening the Yemeni people,' Ali Shamkhani, secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, was quoted as saying. An AFP correspondent in Sanaa said the leaflets were dropped for two weeks during Operation Decisive Storm, the name given to the air campaign which officially ended last week. Air strikes, however, have continued. The leaflet, in Arabic, said: 'My brother of Yemen. The real goal of the coalition is to support the people of Yemen against the Persian expansion.'" http://t.uani.com/1bPaoVM Domestic Politics Rudaw: "Iran's President Hassan Rouhani has come under fire by three senior clerics for saying in a speech that police are not on the streets to enforce Islam, but to enforce the law. 'Our leaders should be more careful and not say things that would upset our faithful people,' Ayatollah Safi Golpayegani, a senior cleric, said Monday in response to Rouhani's comments. In a speech to police and security officials on Saturday the Iranian president said: 'The police are not tasked to enforce Islam but their duty is to enforce the law.' He said all police actions should be taken 'according to the law and the law must be clear and transparent.' Another one of Rouhani's critics, the powerful Ayatollah Makarim Shirazi, said that the president's speech contradicted Iran's Islamic laws." http://t.uani.com/1DHaXb5 Opinion & Analysis Marc Thiessen in WashPost: "The Iran deal is a disaster. No, I'm not talking about the nuclear agreement President Obama is negotiating with Tehran (though that is a disaster, too), but rather the Iran deal that Obama cut with Congress. The Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act that Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) negotiated with Obama comes up for a vote in the Senate this week. It is a terrible bill that virtually guarantees that Congress will give its de facto stamp of approval to any agreement Obama concludes with Iran. The reason is simple: Instead of requiring that Congress vote to affirmatively approve any Obama-Iran agreement before it can take effect, the Corker-Cardin bill allows the agreement to take effect unless it is disapproved by Congress. Big difference. An affirmative vote would have required Obama to persuade a simple majority in both houses of Congress to approve his agreement. If he failed, the agreement would be dead. Now, under a disapproval mechanism, the burden shifts to congressional opponents of the Iran deal, who need to convince not simple majorities, but super majorities, in both houses if they want to kill the deal. The bill allows opponents to pass a 'resolution of disapproval,' which requires only a simple majority. That allows congressional critics to claim that they voted against the agreement. But Obama can veto the resolution of disapproval and send it back to Congress. When that happens, opponents need two-thirds of the House and Senate to override his veto. There is no chance that will happen. In fact, this is precisely why the Corker bill is so appealing to some Democrats. They get the political cover of voting against Obama's Iran deal without being responsible for actually delivering an embarrassing defeat to Obama. That's a 'win-win' on Capitol Hill. Failure to override Obama's veto would mean that Congress will have effectively assented to the deal, giving the agreement a congressional imprimatur. Obama will be able to claim that Congress reviewed the agreement under a procedure of its own creation, and the result of the review was that the agreement was approved for implementation. That is worse than if Congress had never voted in the first place." http://t.uani.com/1P2zNrm Eli Lake in Bloomberg: "The top ranking Republican in Congress privately acknowledged this weekend that his party doesn't have enough votes to overcome a veto of any resolution disapproving the nuclear-weapons deal President Barack Obama hopes to reach with Iran. Speaking at an off-the-record event Saturday at the Republican Jewish Coalition's meeting in Las Vegas, House Speaker John Boehner told the audience that he didn't expect that more than two-thirds of Congress would vote to overturn a veto from Obama if Congress voted against a nuclear deal, according to four people who were inside the room for the private talk. The resolution of disapproval is provided for in legislation before the Senate this week, known as the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act. The deadline for reaching a final nuclear accord between Iran, the U.S. and five other world powers is June 30. Proponents of the legislation, such as Republican co-author Senator Bob Corker, say the bill gives Congress a chance to review an Iran agreement and could stop Obama from lifting sanctions during the review process. Critics, however, want to strengthen the bill's mechanisms and lower the threshold necessary for Congress to disapprove the deal. Their hope is to be able to ultimately stop Obama from at least lifting those sanctions created by Congress, as opposed to the ones created through executive order or the United Nations Security Council. Boehner's comments this weekend confirm their suspicions that Corker's bill is too weak to stop Obama from implementing a bad Iran deal. Michael Steel, a spokesman for Boehner, confirmed that the speaker said he did not expect Congress to have the votes to overturn a veto of a resolution to disapprove the Iran deal. 'Obviously, it takes only a fraction of the House and Senate Democrats to sustain a veto,' Steel told me. 'But it is impossible to say whether they will or not until we know what the final 'deal' looks like.' One Republican elected official who attended the Republican Jewish Coalition's weekend event told me many attendees were disappointed in Boehner's prediction. 'It seems like Congress can't do anything to stop Obama's Iran deal,' the official said. Others who went to the Boehner event expressed a similar concern to me as well." http://t.uani.com/1DT56yH John Kerry & Ernest Moniz in FP: "Amid the drama and promise of the negotiations, it is vital to remember that the basic goal was - and remains - preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon by bringing Iran back into compliance with its obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). The NPT is at the heart of the global effort to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons, and it has helped keep the world safe for 45 years. We welcome the international community to today's opening of the 2015 NPT Review Conference at the United Nations in New York and encourage them as they work toward recommendations on how to strengthen this landmark accord. The NPT is elegant in its simplicity: Under the treaty, parties that do not possess nuclear weapons agree to forego them, parties that possess nuclear weapons agree to work in good faith toward nuclear disarmament, and all parties are able to access peaceful nuclear benefits like nuclear medicine and energy... As the heads of two of the U.S. departments responsible for America's nuclear policies, we are proud that no other nation has devoted as much time and resources to preventing the spread of nuclear weapons. As President Obama said in Prague in 2009, we cannot do these things alone, but we can and must lead. As we work to fulfill our NPT commitments, the United States will do everything in its power to ensure that nuclear weapons are never used again. We have already taken the vital step to clarify that the fundamental role of nuclear weapons in our security strategy is to deter nuclear attack on the United States and its allies and partners. Our nuclear forces remain in a reduced alert status, and we continue to take every reasonable step to ensure the safety, security, and strict control of our arsenal. Through word and deed, the United States is fighting nuclear dangers across the board, but there is still much to do. Reducing and eventually eliminating the nuclear threat will never be easy, but the NPT is our best tool in this fight. The accord represents a heroic, if quiet, triumph of pragmatic cooperation to protect the world from nuclear dangers while promoting the safe, peaceful uses of the atom that can benefit mankind." http://t.uani.com/1ba8cXK          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.