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LAT: "Osama bin Laden was a Sunni Muslim extremist who considered Iran's Shiite majority faith a blasphemous deviation from the Koran. His ideological fellow travelers killed members of the Islamic Republic's Revolutionary Guard in eastern Iran and slaughtered Shiites in Iraq. But his death was a great victory for the United States and the Obama administration. And so, within the cold calculus of Middle East politics and diplomacy, it was a defeat for Tehran. 'Because the algebraic sum in the Middle East is zero, whatever is a victory for the U.S. should be assumed as a defeat for the Islamic Republic of Iran,' said Maziyar Aqazadeh, the head of the international desk at the daily newspaper Farhikhtegan. As word of Bin Laden's death spread Monday, Iranian officials and state media alternately disparaged the news as a fabrication, labeled it part of a cynical conspiracy and cited it as a reason why the U.S. should now pull its troops out of the region." http://t.uani.com/jZj4La
AP: "The United States has no excuse to keep troops in the Middle East after killing al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, a senior Iranian official said Monday. Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said the U.S. can no longer keep troops to the region under the pretext of fighting terrorism now that Osama bin Laden is dead. The al-Qaida leader was killed in a raid by elite U.S. forces in Pakistan. 'Excuse for alien countries to deploy troops in this region under the pretext of fighting terrorism has been eliminated,' he said, according to the state news agency. 'This development clearly shows that there is no need for a major military deployment to counter one individual,' he said. 'We hope this development will end war, conflict, unrest and the death of innocent people, and help to establish peace and tranquility in the region.'" http://t.uani.com/iS8sxN
Reuters: "Iranian state television ran a report Monday saying Israeli military aircraft were massing at a U.S. air base in Iraq for a strike on Iran. Israel said it had no knowledge of such a strike plan, as reported on the website of Iran's English-language Press TV, and Iraq's air force commander denied the report. The Pentagon dismissed it as 'ridiculous.' Press TV quoted what it said was a source close to the movement of Moqtada al-Sadr, an Iraqi Shi'ite cleric who opposes the U.S. presence in Iraq and has close ties to Iran's leaders...An Israeli army spokeswoman said she had no knowledge of any such report and said the military did not comment on operational matters. Iraqi air force commander Staff Lieutenant General Anwar Ahmed rejected the report as 'groundless.'" http://t.uani.com/j3kd3S
Nuclear Program & Sanctions
Bloomberg: "Iran's domestic wheat consumption is expected to drop to 6.4 million tons in the current Iranian year from 8.7 million the previous year, following a cut in subsidies in December, Donya-e-Eqtesad reported, citing Deputy Commerce Minister Hamid Alikhani. The government paid some 40 trillion rials ($3.8 billion) a year in bread subsidies, Alikhani said, according to the Tehran- based newspaper. The start of a five-year plan to phase subsidies including on wheat will increase competitiveness in flour and bread production and reduce bread waste, he said. Based on February 2010 figures, each Iranian consumes about 8.7 kilos of bread a month and some 104 kilos a year, he told the newspaper." http://t.uani.com/l7Frfq
Commerce
Reuters: "The agreed $513 million takeover of South Korea's Daewoo Electronics by Iran's Entekhab Industrial Group is at the risk of collapse as the buyer continues to fail to meet extended deadline to file acquisition funding plans, a leading shareholder said on Tuesday. An official at Woori Bank, which represents creditors-turned shareholders of the unlisted Korean firm, said they were now aiming to close the deal by the end of this month but declined to comment whether they'll start talks with reserved bidder, should the deal falter. The unlisted Iranian appliance maker was named preferred bidder for Daewoo last year, beating out rival bidder Swedish electronics firm Electrolux, but it has repeatedly failed to satisfy creditor demands for detailed funding plan, resulting in several months of delay in the final agreement than it had initially planned." http://t.uani.com/kYlutM
Domestic Politics
WT: "A leading Iranian dissident has killed himself in what appeared to be a final act of defiance against the Iranian regime that had nearly ruined him. Farsi-language websites reported over the weekend the death Friday of Siamak Pourzand, an 80-year-old journalist and essayist who was one of his country's leading political and cultural writers before the 1979 revolution that later brought a theocratic regime to power. After the revolution, Mr. Pourzand became one of the main writers affiliated with Iran's domestic secular opposition in the 1990s. According to his children, Mr. Pourzand jumped from the sixth-floor balcony of his apartment in Tehran, where he has been under house arrest for the last five years. 'My father was a secularist, and he believed the culture of Iran needed to be safeguarded from the religious revolutionaries in 1979,' said his daughter, Banafsheh Zand-Bonazzi in a phone interview Sunday." http://t.uani.com/k3QXQm
Foreign Affairs
Bloomberg: "Ten Iranian nationals are detained in the U.S., the state-run Press TV news channel said. The prisoners include businessman Mohsen Afrasiabi, electrical engineering student Majid Kakavand and Nasrollah Tajik, a former ambassador to Jordan, who were all abducted in Europe and sent to the U.S, Press TV said. Also on the list is Ali-Reza Asgari, a retired Revolutionary Guard Corps. general and former deputy defense minister, who disappeared in Turkey in December 2006, it said. Baktash Fattahi, a U.S. resident, was arrested in April 2009 in California and charged with attempting to export U.S.- made military aircraft parts to Iran. Amir Amirnazmi, a dual U.S.-Iranian citizen, was arrested in February 2009 on charges of conducting business with Iranian companies under U.S. sanctions, according to the report." http://t.uani.com/jElTcW
Opinion & Analysis
Gerald Seib in WSJ: "Important as the death of Osama bin Laden may be, disposing of al Qaeda's murderous leader wasn't the most important goal for U.S. foreign policy. Actually, it hasn't been for some time. Instead, the al Qaeda question that burned so deeply into America's soul a decade ago has been overtaken by three more pressing problems: getting Pakistan right, getting the Arab spring right and containing Iran... Finally, there is the need to contain Iran. The largely Sunni al Qaeda movement and the Shiite revolutionaries in Iran aren't natural allies, and it isn't likely that bin Laden will be greatly mourned in Tehran. In fact, Iran's mullahs are watching more closely what happens to the popular uprisings in Syria and Libya. And the danger is that Iran's leaders are concluding that the lesson to be learned from Syria and Libya is that the way to deal with dissidents is to crush them ruthlessly, and that the way to prevent the Western military intervention now plaguing Libya is to finish developing a nuclear weapon to deter it. The challenge for the U.S., in turn, is to use bin Laden's death to make the opposite point to the Iranian people-that time isn't on the side of extremism or extremists, and that America hasn't lost its ability to push events in the opposite direction." http://t.uani.com/j05tCs
Ali Alfoneh in AEI: "President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has for years propagated the conspiracy theory of 9/11 as an event orchestrated by 'some segments within the U.S. government' to 'reverse the declining American economy and to tighten its grips on the Middle East in order to save the Zionist regime.' Even today, official Islamic Republic news agencies reported on the death of Osama bin Laden in the context of the 'suspicious events of September 11.' The Iranian public, however, has never subscribed to the conspiracy theories of the regime and most Iranian Internet users expressed joy at the death of the notorious terrorist. The following examples are extracted from Tehran-based Asr-e Iran News: 'We too are happy. Those who shed the blood of innocent people will pay for it.' 'May God curse him!' 'I wish Bin-Laden had used his money and intelligence fighting against ignorance, illiteracy and health issues in Muslim countries.' 'This is the destiny awaiting all terrorists...' 'There is an end to crime, injustice and usurpation. But there is no end to the agony of conscience, curses of the people and God's punishment...' 'I pray for annihilation of all rootless terrorists who have made a bad name for the Muslims. Amen!' 'I am happy about the death of this murderer who has killed so many people. This is the first time that someone's death has made me happy. Forgive me God. I hope that one day all megalomaniac terrorists will pay for their crimes, regardless who they are.' 'May God curse this criminal who could have created factories and jobs for the people of Afghanistan but instead started killing innocent people. News of the death of this bloodthirsty [person] enchanted me. Inshallah [God willing] all criminals will suffer the destiny of this infidel.' Such comments are hardly surprising. Iranians, after all, have been victims of Islamist terror since 1979." http://t.uani.com/msXRVX
Steven Cook in CFR: "Everything that has been said about Osama bin Laden's demise has already been said and will likely be said again and again. It is an important symbolic moment and a tremendous relief to many people, but it is unfortunately not going to alter the threat of transnational terrorism and it will likely not have an impact on U.S. policy in the Middle East. Speaking of which, I do not understand U.S. policy on Syria. What exactly is the Obama administration's goal? Unless I am missing something, Washington has taken a relatively softer position on Bashar al Assad than certainly Muammar Qadhafi or even Hosni Mubarak. Why? It might have something to do with the peace process and the belief that Assad remains a critical link in the search for peace, or concern that instability in Syrian will have a negative effect on Lebanon and Iraq. Perhaps the administration's approach to Assad is the very definition of 'leading from behind,' hoping that Syrians dislodge the regime without much help from Washington and others. If these are, in fact, the reasons, Washington may be missing an important strategic opportunity. After all, with Bashar and the Alawi power structure gone, it is unlikely that the Damascus-Tehran axis would survive. This would be a major blow to Iranian ambitions. The end of the Assad regime would effectively shut down the channel through which Tehran plays in the broader arena of Middle Eastern politics, supporting Hizballah, Hamas, and placing traditional U.S. allies like Saudi Arabia and Jordan on the defensive. To be sure, Iran would still be able to influence events in the region, but losing Syria would make it a lot harder. The Syrian-Iranian relationship made sense three decades ago when Ayatollah Khomeini posed a challenge to Saddam Hussein-a sworn enemy of Hafiz al Assad. Under Bashar, the relationship continued to serve Damascus' interests even as Tehran has developed good ties with post-Saddam Baghdad. Yet under new Syrian leaders-likely from the Sunni majority-it would make no sense at all to line up with the Iranians. What possible interest could Tehran serve? Iran no longer acts as a balancer to rival Iraq, Damascus would be able to acquire oil and financial resources elsewhere, and the end of the Syrian-Iranian special relationship would make it more likely that the Israelis agree to withdraw from the Golan Heights... Some observers argue that Assad's fall would usher in a new, nastier dictatorship or generalized instability. Those are certainly risks, but it seems the potential for isolating Iran-a primary policy goal of the United States since the 1980s-is worth it." http://t.uani.com/mgcdcA
Ali Alfoneh in AEI: "President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad marked his return to office by presiding over the May 1 cabinet session after a two-week long absence from the limelight. Ahmadinejad called his absence 'distance working' from home because of 'reasons' he said he would rather keep to himself. However, Ahmadinejad also provided a coded explanation: 'I am convinced and believe that a strong and powerful president would lead to dignity of the Leadership and especially the nation. A strong president can stand firm as a defensive shield, advance affairs of the state and bring dignity upon it. All leaders and executives are in need of strong arms.' Ahmadinejad's call for greater presidential authority is a subtle reference to his aborted April 17 sacking of Intelligence Minister Hojjat al-Eslam Heydar Moslehi. Appointing and dismissing cabinet ministers is a constitutional presidential prerogative, but less than an hour after Ahmadinejad's decree appeared in the media, Fars News Agency reported that Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei had 'opposed' the 'resignation' of the intelligence minister and that Moslehi would, therefore, remain in the cabinet. Khamenei's unconstitutional overruling of Ahmadinejad has ignited the latest round in this struggle for power between the president and the Supreme Leader. Despite Ahmadinejad's return to politics, the conflict seems far from over: According to Fars News, Moslehi was absent from the cabinet meeting due to a visit to the holy city of Qom. The conflict will likely continue throughout the remainder of Ahmadinejad's presidency, and will doubtless escalate as Ahmadinejad's supporters begin to question the unrestricted powers of Khamenei as Guardian Jurist and head of state during parliamentary elections in 2011 and next year's presidential election." http://t.uani.com/jNYzWQ
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