Monday, May 4, 2015

Eye on Iran: Gulf States Want U.S. Assurances and Weapons in Exchange for Supporting Iran Nuclear Deal






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WSJ: "Leading Persian Gulf states want major new weapons systems and security guarantees from the White House in exchange for backing a nuclear agreement with Iran, according to U.S. and Arab officials. The leaders of the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council, including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, plan to use a high-stakes meeting with President Barack Obama next week to request additional fighter jets, missile batteries and surveillance equipment. They also intend to pressure Mr. Obama for new defense agreements between the U.S. and the Gulf nations that would outline terms and scenarios under which Washington would intervene if they are threatened by Iran, according to these officials. The demands underscore the complicated diplomatic terrain Mr. Obama is navigating as he drives toward a nuclear deal with Iran, one of his top foreign-policy goals. They also demonstrate how a pact aimed at stabilizing the Middle East risks further militarizing an already volatile region... The challenge Mr. Obama faces at Camp David is to assuage growing fears among those Sunni countries that want military superiority over Shiite-dominated Iran, while not undermining longtime U.S. security guarantees to Israel. Current law mandates that the U.S. uphold Israel's qualitative military edge over its neighbors." http://t.uani.com/1EL6K96

AFP: "US Secretary of State John Kerry Saturday denounced what he called 'hysteria' over a final nuclear accord being discussed between world powers and Iran over its controversial nuclear programme. 'There's a lot of hysteria about this deal. People really need to look at the facts, and they need to look at the science behind those facts,' Kerry told Israel's privately run Channel 10 Television in an interview. Kerry said a final agreement due to be agreed by June 30 provides indefinite access to Iranian nuclear facilities. 'We will have inspectors in there every single day. That's not a 10-year deal. That's forever. There have to be inspections,' he said. 'I say it again. We will not sign a deal that does not close off Iran's pathways to a bomb and that doesn't give us the confidence to all of our experts and global experts, that we will be able to know what Iran is doing and prevent them from getting a nuclear weapon.'" http://t.uani.com/1AzLhff

Politico: "In January 2012, Barack Obama sent a private letter to Tehran with a stern warning: the Strait of Hormuz was a 'red line' for the United States, and any Iranian attempt to close the vital shipping channel would draw a swift military response. Obama administration officials say that in recent weeks Iran has edged closer to that line by harassing commercial shipping in the area, and the Pentagon is reacting to the threat. The flashpoint is the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow waterway along Iran's west coast that provides access to the Persian Gulf and major oil-exporting ports in Kuwait, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia that fuel the global economy." http://t.uani.com/1zsDFjk

   
Nuclear Program & Negotiations

The Hill: "The leaders of the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Friday released a letter to President Obama urging him to consider using sanctions to stop Russia from delivering missile systems to Iran. 'If completed, the transfer of this sophisticated weapons system would significantly bolster Iran's military capabilities and introduce new obstacles to our ability to eliminate the threat of an Iranian nuclear weapon,' wrote Committee Chairman Ed Royce (R-Calif.) and Ranking Member Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.). 'We believe existing U.S. sanctions should be used to deter Russia from transferring this or other dangerous weapons systems to Iran,' they said in the April 30 letter... President Obama said at an April 17 news conference that Russia is not prohibited by sanctions from selling the 'defensive weapons' to Iran. Royce and Engel argued in their letter that although Moscow may not be prohibited by existing sanctions, existing U.S. law does provide the him with the authority to apply sanctions in response a transfer of 'destabilizing' weapons systems." http://t.uani.com/1JLRZHs

AFP: "Iran is determined to end the 'manufactured crisis' over its nuclear programme and drafting of a final deal with world powers, though hard, is progressing, Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said Monday... 'Drafting #IranDeal is moving forward. Hard work, and many brackets, remain. Determined to end this manufactured crisis & open new horizons,' Zarif tweeted." http://t.uani.com/1GUwdNT

Military Matters

AP: "The U.S. Navy accompanied four American-flagged ships and a British vessel moving through the Strait of Hormuz at the mouth of the Persian Gulf on Thursday, and officials said the U.S. will offer that aid to any other nation concerned about interference from Iranian vessels. U.S. Army Col. Steve Warren, a Pentagon spokesman, said the four U.S. ships belonged to the Navy's Military Sealift Command or were contract vessels. Those ships have civilian crews and are used to carry cargo or re-supply U.S. Navy ships. Air Force Col. Pat Ryder, a spokesman for U.S. Central Command, said that any U.S.-flagged ship can ask to be accompanied by Navy warships through the narrow strait, which includes Iranian territorial waters." http://t.uani.com/1GVqtGy

AFP: "US warships protecting American-flagged ships in the Strait of Hormuz may extend assistance to other countries' vessels, officials said Friday, after reports of Iranian forces harassing shipping. The expanded US naval presence is intended to signal to Iran that Washington is ready to safeguard shipping along the vital corridor, even at a moment of delicate diplomacy with Tehran over its nuclear program, experts said. American warships started 'accompanying' US-flagged vessels in the Strait of Hormuz on Thursday in response to two incidents in less than a week in which commercial vessels were coerced or harassed by Iran's Revolutionary Guards. Defense Secretary Ash Carter approved the operation and 'this is going to continue for an indefinite period of time,' Pentagon spokesman Col. Steven Warren said... 'Our current plans are for accompanying US-flagged ships, although there are discussions with other nations to include their vessels as well,' Central Command spokesman Col. Patrick Ryder told reporters." http://t.uani.com/1GVqSZJ

AFP: "The case of the ship intercepted in the Gulf by Iran's navy on Tuesday is purely financial and with no political overtones, an Iranian oil company involved said on Saturday. 'Unfortunately, some are seeking to exploit the case politically, but the reality is limited only to damages that Maersk has made us suffer,' said Hamid Reza Jahanian, head of the Pars Oil Products Talayieh company, the Fars news agency reported... Jahanian confirmed that a longstanding lawsuit between his firm and Maersk related to 'containers sent to (the UAE port of) Djebel Ali and never delivered to the customer'... On Saturday, Jahanian asked that Maersk 'comply with the law and pay damages' to his firm, adding that the Iranian courts had jurisdiction in the matter. 'If Maersk pays what we want, the ship will be released. If not, the goods or the ship itself will be put up for auction.'" http://t.uani.com/1JkSoxc

Reuters: "Maersk Line said on Monday it had met again with the Ports & Maritime Organization (PMO) in Iran regarding the seizure of the vessel Maersk Tigris but has yet to receive any official documents from Iranian authorities... Maersk said its representative met Iranian PMO officials, while the Danish ambassador in Iran met with officials from the Iranian ministry of foreign affairs. However, little progress appeared to have been made. 'We have yet to receive any written notifications (court ruling, arrest order or similar) pertaining to the seizure of Maersk Tigris or the cargo case,' Maersk wrote in a statement... Maersk repeated that the crew and the vessel should be released immediately." http://t.uani.com/1zsx0Wn

Sanctions Relief

Reuters: "South Africa hopes to restore energy ties with Iran, its energy minister said on Sunday, according to Iran's Shana news agency, three years after international sanctions halted oil trade between the two countries. 'South Africa is aiming for a framework of cooperation with Iran regarding crude oil, LNG, LPG, gas and petrochemicals,' Tina Joemat-Pettersson was quoted as saying by Shana during a visit to Tehran. 'South Africa's private sector can invest in various parts of Iran's oil industry,' she added. Mohsen Ghamsari, director of international affairs at the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC), said on Saturday that South Africa was hoping to import crude oil and other energy products from Iran, state news agency IRNA reported." http://t.uani.com/1QeQeDo

Reuters: "A U.S. delegation will visit Iran to review energy investment opportunities while Tehran negotiates a final deal with world powers on its nuclear programme, a senior oil ministry official told Mehr news agency on Monday... 'It is forecast that by the visit of (the) American delegation this week and in the case of lifting sanctions on Iran's oil industry, we will witness involvement of major international American oil and gas companies in Iran in the future,' said deputy Oil Minister Abbas Sheri-Moghaddam." http://t.uani.com/1zHR4Va

Sanctions Enforcement

AFP: "A US judge Friday ordered BNP Paribas to pay a record $8.9 billion fine to settle violations of US sanctions linked to Iran and other countries. Judge Lorna Schofield finalized a sentence that also included a five-year probation and the imposition of a monitor at France's largest bank. In June 2014, BNP Paribas agreed to plead guilty to criminal charges that it had violated the sanctions, deliberately hiding thousands of transactions with Iran, Sudan and Cuba during 2004-2012 that senior bank officials knew broke US law. At the time, the bank also agreed to the record penalty. In July the court approved the plea agreement. Most of the penalty is based on the amount of the illegal transactions BNP handled: $6.4 billion in Sudan, $1.7 billion in Cuba and $650 million in Iran. In addition, BNP Paribas will pay $140 million in fines. BNP Paribas 'has taken many steps' to address the violations, the bank's chief counsel, Georges Dirani, told the court." http://t.uani.com/1KGU30V

Terrorism

AP: "The U.S. government announced a system Friday to compensate people harmed by Sudan, Iran and Cuba using some of the $8.9 billion forfeited by France's largest bank for violating U.S. economic sanctions by processing transactions for clients in blacklisted countries. Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew Goldstein revealed the plan after U.S. District Judge Lorna G. Schofield formally sentenced BNP Paribas consistent with the bank's guilty plea last year. She said the bank must turn over the forfeiture and pay a $140 million fine. It also pleaded guilty to state charges. Federal authorities say the forfeiture set a record for a sanctions case brought by the Justice Department and for a penalty imposed in a criminal case involving a bank." http://t.uani.com/1F1svVi

Anti-Americanism

Politico: "America planned September 11. John McCain supports the Islamic State. Jews are sorcerers. A top Iranian general's recent claim that the U.S. staged the 9/11 attacks as an excuse to invade the Muslim world may seem crazy. But it might not be the nuttiest-sounding thing a prominent Iranian has said in recent months... The creative thinking comes from Iran's highest levels. In a 2011 speech to the United Nations, for instance, Iran's previous president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, also implied that the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks may have been self-inflicted, calling them 'a mystery.' Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has repeatedly said that the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant was deliberately created by the west. The alleged goal: to divide Muslims and bomb their countries. In case the point wasn't clear enough, Iranian state television recently claimed that Sen. John McCain met personally with Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the Sunni militant group's self-declared caliph. The television network broadcast doctored images of the hawkish Republican last September, as an announcer declared: 'These say more than a thousand words regarding the links between the United States and this group.' In an address last September, Khamenei added that the West also created Al Qaeda and the Taliban, groups he called 'the handicraft of colonialists,' in order to counter Iran." http://t.uani.com/1ERyb2j

Yemen Crisis

AFP: "Iran considers the security of Yemen to be like its own, Deputy Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said Saturday, denouncing 'adventurist actions' by Saudi Arabia, the state television website reported. 'We consider the security of Yemen to be the security of the region and of Iran. Others will not be allowed to play around with our common security with their adventurist actions,' the site quoted him as saying. 'The fact that Saudi Arabia is focused on the war against Yemen only benefits the Zionist regime and terrorist groups,' said Amir-Abdollahian." http://t.uani.com/1zHS0Jc

Human Rights

AFP: "Hairstyles of a spiky and unorthodox nature have reportedly been banned in Iran because they imply devil-worship, while tattoos and other male bodily adornments are also being outlawed. Jagged haircuts have become fashionable among all strata of Iran's youthful population in recent years, but have divided opinion and been deemed by the authorities as western and un-Islamic. 'Devil worshipping hairstyles are now forbidden,' said Mostafa Govahi, the head of Iran's Barbers Union, cited by the ISNA news agency. 'Any shop that cuts hair in the devil worshipping style will be harshly dealt with and their license revoked,' he said, noting that if a business cut hair in such a style this will 'violate the Islamic system's regulations'. As well as tattoos being banned, solarium treatments and the plucking of eyebrows - another rising trend among young Iranian males - will not be tolerated, the report said." http://t.uani.com/1JLIfNs

IHR: "On April 16 Iran Human Rights (IHR) reported about execution of a minor offender in Iran. According to IHR's sources five prisoners were hanged in the Rajaishahr prison of Karaj (west of Tehran) early Wednesday morning April 15. All of the five prisoners were convicted of murder. One of the prisoners, identified as Javad Saberi, was reportedly sentenced to death for a murder he had committed when he was under 18 years of age. Javad Saberi had a serious mental illness and had stayed at 'Amin Abad' mental hospital, according to these sources... Iran is among the few countries in the world imposing death sentence for offences committed at under 18 years of age." http://t.uani.com/1I8syh1   

Opinion & Analysis

WSJ Editorial: "In the matter of the Corker-Cardin bill giving Congress a voice in the Iranian nuclear deal, allow us to adapt Churchill's dictum on democracy: It's the worst form of legislation, except for all the others that have been proposed. We write this as the bill-named for Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Bob Corker (R., Tenn.) and ranking Democrat Ben Cardin (Maryland)-is being assailed by some of our conservative friends as a damp squib that won't stop President Obama from striking a bad deal with Tehran while giving the agreement an implicit seal of Congressional approval. Senators Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz have proposed amendments that, while defensible on their merits, would give Democrats the political excuse many of them seek to vote against the bill. In a better world-one in which Mr. Obama were not President-we'd be inclined to agree with the critics. A nuclear deal with Tehran is the most significant international agreement of the past decade and should be handled as a treaty, requiring two-thirds support from the Senate. By contrast under Corker-Cardin Democrats need only 41 votes to filibuster a resolution of disapproval of a deal, and only 34 to sustain a near-certain presidential veto. In other words, the legislation effectively inverts the Founders' intentions by allowing the President to get his way with one-third of the Senate on his side. There is also no good reason why Mr. Cruz's amendment, which would require an Iran deal to get a simple majority from the Senate and House to go into effect, or Mr. Rubio's demanding that Iran accept Israel's right to exist, should be deal-breakers for Democrats. But then we step back to reality. Critics of Corker-Cardin insist the bill is a gift to the Administration, but you wouldn't know it given how hard the President and Secretary of State John Kerry lobbied against the bill before it was voted out of committee on a 19-0 bipartisan vote. What the Administration most fears is that the bill will require Mr. Obama to submit a nuclear deal, in all of its detail, to a public debate, in which supporters may have to explain its various giveaways. Why, for instance, should Iran get tens of billions of dollars in immediate sanctions relief, which (money being fungible) will immediately be put to use funding missiles for Hezbollah, rockets for Hamas, and barrel bombs for Bashar Assad? ... That debate will be an education that will inform voters going into the next election. It will also make a filibuster uncomfortable for Senate Democrats, most of whom have political careers to think about after Mr. Obama leaves office. This may not defeat an Iran deal, but that was always unlikely once Mr. Obama chose to submit it as an executive agreement and go to the United Nations first. The Corker bill nonetheless does offer the potential of putting a bipartisan majority's stamp of disapproval on Mr. Obama's dangerous diplomacy... We have long been skeptical of Mr. Obama's Iran project, and the deal so far looks like a strategic blunder that will unleash a new age of nuclear proliferation. Until the U.S. elects a President who is serious about stopping Iran's nuclear bid, Corker-Cardin is the best bet for censuring Mr. Obama's misbegotten diplomacy, and giving his successor a fighting chance to reverse it." http://t.uani.com/1zsIMQy

David Crist in Politico: "President Barack Obama must have spent last week wondering if he'd stumbled back into the 1980s as he responded to new Iranian aggressions in the Strait of Hormuz and ordered the Navy's 5th Fleet to escort ships transiting the Persian Gulf. The headlines could have been ripped right out of Ronald Reagan's presidency, when naval engagements with Iran became all-too commonplace. It's a chapter of history that most U.S. policymakers-and too many military officers-have long forgotten. But the Iranians certainly haven't. Ryan Crocker, one of America's old Middle East hands and whose first posting as a newly minted diplomat was to Khorramshahr during the days of the Shah, once explained, 'For Iran, history is not the past, but the present.' Just as Vietnam shaped a generation of American military officers, the Tanker War of the 1980s profoundly influenced the thinking of Iran's current military leaders; in fact, today Iran's Revolutionary Guard Navy is headed by a veteran of that war. The 1980s conflict also has influenced the Iranian military's view of any future war with the United States, and it's spent decades ensuring that it won't repeat the crippling mistakes made fighting a previous U.S. president. Unfortunately,  the Pentagon has begun listening to those lessons only recently... Even as nuclear negotiations continue, Iran is making provocative moves around the Middle East-providing an unprecedented flotilla of weapons to the Houthis in Yemen, boarding the Maersk Tigris, and apparently attempting to do the same to a U.S. flagged ship, Kensington. Those incidents resulted in the Navy's 5th Fleet announcement of a new naval escort regime, whereby U.S. warships would accompany American merchants as they transited the Strait to safeguard them from Iranian forces. It's eerily familiar. Some 28 years ago, a yearlong quasi-war between the two nations, pitted the high-tech U.S. Navy against an unorthodox force of Iranian small boats. Described as a guerilla war at sea, the struggle culminated in the U.S. Navy's largest surface battle since World War II. And it all began with incidents not unlike those of last week. War dominated the Middle East during the 1980s. The Iranian Revolution portended a Shia revival across the region, which many Sunni states found uncomfortable. With the encouragement of Saudi Arabia, on September 22, 1980, an opportunistic Saddam Hussein invaded Iran, hoping to take advantage of the revolutionary chaos and seize Iran's oil fields. The Iraqi army proved no more competent than its current version has been against the Islamic State. Iran rallied and the war quickly bogged down into brutal trench warfare. To try and break the stalemate, Iraq began attacking Iranian oil tankers. Tehran retaliated by striking the shipping of Baghdad's chief supporters, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, who allowed large quantities of military hardware for Iraq to transit their ports and provided Saddam Hussein with as much as $1 billion in assistance each month. By the end of so-called Tanker War, Iran had sunk or damaged 214 ships from more than 30 nations. In a move akin to last week's actions, Iran declared it had the right to board any ship entering the Gulf suspected of carrying Iraqi war material. Any vessel found with suspicious cargo would be diverted to Bandar Abbas. In the first eight months of 1985, Iranian Revolutionary Guard boats stopped and boarded 66 ships in the Strait of Hormuz. On January 12, 1986, an Iranian boat intercepted the American ship President Taylor off the coast of the United Arab Emirates. After the ship's captain refused to comply with a request to allow a search of his ship, the Iranians trained their weapons on the U.S. merchant ship to force the issue. Seven Iranian sailors boarded the ship, holding her crew under armed guard while conducting a perfunctory search. After an hour, they allowed the President Taylor to proceed." http://t.uani.com/1JLTgOH

Josh Rogin in Bloomberg: "Top Obama administration officials have released new details about how they would lift most sanctions against Iran. Those are unnerving some experts, who doubt the administration's claims about the sanctions will hold up. In speeches last week to a conference at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew and Vice President Joe Biden revealed new details about the end of most sanctions against Iran if a nuclear deal is reached. The officials also claimed that most of the sanctions, including multilateral sanctions, could be snapped back into place if Iran cheated, and they argued that giving Iran tens of billions of dollars in cash won't dramatically increase Iran's spending on terrorism and other nefarious activities. Lew spoke to a private meeting of Washington Institute members last Wednesday, after which Treasury posted his remarks. He said that President Obama planned to use his own authority to suspend sanctions against Iran's oil, banking and trade sectors after Iran complied with the initial parts of the deal and that Congress wouldn't actually be asked to lift sanctions during his presidency. 'Only after many years of compliance would we ask Congress to vote to terminate sanctions, and only Congress can terminate legislative sanctions,' he said. Lew said this suspension, rather than a legislative repeal of sanctions, would allow the administration to quickly reinstate U.S. sanctions if Iran is caught cheating. He also said that United Nations sanctions would be able to snap back easily and no single nation would be able to stop that. 'We have made it abundantly clear that if Iran breaks its commitment, it will face once again the full force of the multilateral sanctions regime,' he said. 'The snapback would not be vulnerable to a veto by an individual P5 member, including China and Russia.' That explanation directly conflicts with what Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif told an audience at New York University earlier that day. Zarif said that UN sanctions would be lifted within days of an agreement being signed and that all sanctions would be permanently lifted, including Congressional sanctions, once Iran met its initial obligations. Treasury officials told me that Lew's statements were in line with previous administration explanations about how sanctions would be suspended and potentially put back into place later. But the Washington Institute's Matt Levitt, a former Treasury official who moderated the April 29 event with Lew, said that once sanctions are suspended, especially the multilateral sanctions, there's no easy way to put them back into place. 'No one should be fooled into thinking there will be any automaticity here,' he said. 'If we thought Iran was cheating, the debate then moves to whether there was in fact a violation. You can see a situation where Russia and China will dispute whether there is in fact a violation.' Levitt and other experts also noted that Lew said the sanctions on one specific part of the Iranian regime, the Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, will stay in place. Treasury considers it linked to terrorism. Lew didn't say anything about the rest of the Revolutionary Guard, which is sanctioned for both proliferation and human rights violations and controls as much of a third of the Iranian economy through shell companies in mining, banking and oil. It stands accused of directing huge amounts of illicit activity around the region... Several experts said that in order for Iran to receive the sanctions relief it seeks as part of a deal, most if not all of the IRGC sanctions would have to go. That could allow for a huge expansion of the group's influence and activities... The exact amount of money Iran would receive after a deal is signed is also in dispute, but Lew said not to worry about that either: Iran has between $100 billion and $140 billion of oil revenue frozen in foreign banks. $30 billion to $50 billion could be released to Iran right after signing a deal. But Lew said Iran was likely to spend that cash on domestic needs and not on terrorism or support for violence. 'President Rouhani was elected on a platform of economic revitalization, and Iranians are demanding proof that engagement with the international community will produce tangible economic benefits,' Lew said. 'As a result, Iran is expected to use new revenues chiefly to address those needs, including by shoring up its budget, building infrastructure, maintaining the stability of the rial, and attracting imports.' Lew also said that Iran has lost so much money to the sanctions, it would take the Iranian government years to recoup those losses. Levitt disagreed and said that the Iranian economy doesn't have to recoup losses like a business would. 'It's a cute argument, but it misses the point,' said Levitt. 'I don't think the argument is going to sway people in the region, particularly the Gulf states, who are very worried about the near-term release of significant amounts of money that will empower Iran to do all sorts of things.'" http://t.uani.com/1F1B6ax

David Feith & Bari Weiss in WSJ: "Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif was in New York this week facing the harsh, skeptical reception appropriate for the high representative of a brutal theocratic terror state on the verge of going nuclear. Just kidding. Between visits to the United Nations and the 'Charlie Rose' television show, Mr. Zarif appeared Wednesday at New York University. The New America Foundation think tank hosted him there to talk statecraft with Washington Post columnist David Ignatius. American colleges these days are famously sensitive places, bristling with trigger warnings, protests and boycotts, but NYU and its environs received Mr. Zarif with eerie equanimity. There was one notable exception. Outside the Greenwich Village hall where Mr. Zarif spoke, a group of activists ridiculed his welcome by sardonically celebrating a recent Iranian-regime milestone: hanging 1,000 prisoners in a mere 18 months. With festive red, white and green balloons to match the Islamic Republic's flag and an ice-cream truck parked at the curb, the mock celebration's theme was, 'Free ice cream; free Iran's political prisoners.' Passersby lined up for artisanal ice cream from the truck, adorned with signs reading 'Over 1,000 hanged. Go Iran!' Speakers broadcast an English-language message from a gay Iranian who recently fled the Islamic Republic. 'A lot of my friends are being arrested. Tortured. Mocked. Terrorized,' he said. 'The government wants to imply that we do not exist. But we do.' Homosexuality is a hanging offense under the regime Mr. Zarif serves. Another sign on the truck identified the street corner as 'Majid Tavakoli Plaza,' in honor of the Iranian student leader imprisoned since 2009 for protesting Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's fraudulent re-election to Iran's presidency. On an earlier visit to New York, in 2013, Mr. Zarif denied knowing who Mr. Tavakoli was. That claim earned him widespread derision on Iranian social media. The person who challenged Mr. Zarif about the Tavakoli case two years ago was David Keyes, executive director of the group Advancing Human Rights-also the organizer of Wednesday's guerrilla block party." http://t.uani.com/1zI3RXN

Nick Gillard in Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: "For more than 30 years, Iran has purchased goods for its nuclear program largely from the shadows. Sanctions and an increasingly constrictive global nuclear supply regime have left it little other option. So Iran has built a clandestine global network of front companies and used it to obtain the key goods Tehran needs to keep its centrifuges running and reactor construction on track. With the framework agreement agreed in Lausanne recently, all this may change.  According to the US State Department, one of the agreement's provisions creates a dedicated procurement channel for Iran's nuclear program. This channel will 'monitor and approve, on a case-by-case basis, the supply, sale, or transfer to Iran of certain nuclear-related and dual-use materials and technology,' a US State Department press release on the agreement says. President Obama has described the channel as being run by a 'procurement committee.' That's more exciting than it sounds. This provision will open a legal trade line to most aspects of Iran's nuclear program for the first time in years. Like Michael Corleone in The Godfather, Part III, Iranian nuclear procurement is finally going legitimate. It's a sea change for the way Iran's nuclear supply chain works, and several questions have already been posed about how this channel will function and who will oversee it. The most interesting of these questions, perhaps, is just who will supply Iran the goods it needs to keep its nuclear program running... Big-ticket items like power reactors are one thing that Iran will probably seek via this new, legitimate trade channel. But the procurement committee envisaged by the framework agreement is likely to have to deal far more regularly with smaller, but equally important, items: dual-use, nuclear-related consumables. Take the various widgets that keep Iran's centrifuges spinning. Centrifuges operate only with the assistance of a network of dual-use infrastructure, some parts of which need regular replacement. Pressure transducers, for example, which monitor the flow of uranium hexafluoride gas in centrifuge cascades, need to be frequently swapped out due to the corrosive nature of their operating environment. These dual-use goods are made and sold by private companies, rather than by states. It is private companies that Iran will most likely want to buy them from. And surprisingly, it might be American companies that will fill the role of seller." http://t.uani.com/1JLSS2F
        

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.

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