Eye on Iran: Gulf Countries Meet Over Iran Nuclear Radiation Fears

For continuing coverage follow us on Twitter and join our Facebook group.    Top Stories Reuters: "National emergency officials in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries met on Sunday in Saudi Arabia to discuss the risk of radiation spreading over the Gulf if Iran's Bushehr nuclear power plant is damaged by another earthquake. A 6.3-magnitude earthquake struck close to Iran's only nuclear power station last week, killing dozens of people but leaving the nearby plant undamaged, according to Iranian officials and the Russian company that built it... But the plant on earthquake-prone Iran's southern coast is a growing worry for its neighbors, because the prevailing winds of the Gulf mean that if radiation ever does escape it would probably be blown over the Qatari capital Doha and the main oil exporting ports of the United Arab Emirates. GCC Secretary-General, Abdulatif al-Zayani, said that Gulf Arab states must have a joint plan to collectively deal with any possible leak from the Iranian facility." http://t.uani.com/XM1HDa FT: "The ayatollah is hoping the upcoming poll will erase the memory of flawed elections in 2009, when he supported Mr Ahmadi-Nejad against accusations of rigging that sparked the worst street unrest since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Analysts in Tehran say he has three overriding concerns for the poll: a peaceful vote, a high turnout and a loyal winner. For this to succeed, he needs a credible contest, particularly at a time when Iran is under intense international pressure over its nuclear programme. Mr Ahmadi-Nejad has been capitalising on sensitivities surrounding the poll, making it clear he will not go quietly and raising fears that the election could once again be marred by unrest. He has vowed to stand against any 'violation' in the electoral process, which analysts see as a clear warning to his opponents - who include members of the Guardian Council (a constitutional watchdog), the parliament, the judiciary and the elite Revolutionary Guards - that if they try to block his political ambitions, through Mr Mashaei, he could make public dossiers of their alleged corruption." http://t.uani.com/ZV7oJc Xinhua: "A senior Iranian military official warned Sunday against any attempts to create unrest during the country's upcoming presidential election, Press TV reported. 'We warn domestic and foreign enemies and counterrevolutionary groups that any attempts to incite unrest or create sedition before or after the election will receive a vigilant and decisive response from the Iranian nation,' Major General Yahya Rahim- Safavi was quoted as saying. 'Relevant organizations and bodies must predict and (adopt) preventative (measures) against any domestic or foreign (sponsored) unrest,' said the Iranian commander. Rahim-Safavi, who is also a senior military adviser to Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, added that the upcoming presidential election will be another victory for Iranian nation." http://t.uani.com/YWVZgk   Nuclear Program WSJ: "U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, in his campaign to stabilize North Asia and the Middle East, is wrestling to understand the strategic calculations of two distinctly different-yet obscure and ruthless-men. The American diplomat's ability to effectively game the intentions of North Korean dictator Kim Jong Eun and Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, U.S. and allied officials said, could determine whether the Obama administration is capable of warding off military conflict in its second term. It also could dictate whether President Barack Obama will make good on his pledge to staunch the spread of nuclear weapons globally. 'What happens with respect to North Korea can affect Iran, and what happens with Iran can affect North Korea,' Mr. Kerry said Saturday in Beijing after meeting China's senior leadership. The Obama administration and United Nations are closely scrutinizing whether Pyongyang and Tehran may be cooperating in developing nuclear weapons, a charge the countries deny." http://t.uani.com/137s8BJ AFP: "Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Monday defended his country's controversial nuclear programme while on a tour of west Africa, calling it peaceful and arguing that Tehran has no use for an atomic bomb. Speaking during a visit to Benin, the first stop on a three-nation tour, Ahmadinejad called nuclear energy a 'divine gift' providing affordable electricity. 'They accuse Iran, like all nations that seek to rapidly find their way out of the current domination,' the Iranian leader said through an interpreter in a speech at a Benin university. 'We don't need an atomic bomb. ... And besides, it is not atomic bombs that threaten the world, but Western morals and culture declining in values.'" http://t.uani.com/15a6WyN AFP: "Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will leave on Sunday for a visit to Benin, Ghana and Niger, the world's fourth-largest uranium producer, the Fars news agency reported. He will meet the presidents of the three countries and sign agreements to develop economic and political relations, Fars said without providing details. Ahmadinejad is to arrive in Benin on Sunday afternoon on an official visit in his capacity as chairman of the Non-Aligned Movement of countries, the country's foreign minister, Nassirou Arifari Bako, told AFP." http://t.uani.com/17Alh76 AFP: "Russia condemned Iran's unveiling of a new uranium production facility, warning the move could hurt progress in negotiations with world powers over Tehran's contested nuclear programme, a report said Friday. An unnamed source in the Russian foreign ministry told Interfax that Iran's announcement does not actually breach its obligations under various international nuclear agreements. 'At the same time, in our opinion, the expansion of Iran's nuclear programme activities does not promote the achievement of an atmosphere of mutual understanding between the (P5+1) international negotiating nations and Iran, which is so necessary for the successful continuation of the negotiating process,' the foreign ministry source said." http://t.uani.com/12axKvT Sanctions AP: "The Obama administration is lifting sanctions it imposed on three companies two years ago for helping Iran to ship oil in violation of U.S. law. The State Department said Friday that the sanctions were being dropped because the firms had given assurances that they will not again engage in such activity. The companies - Singapore's Tanker Pacific Management, Monaco's Société Anonyme Monégasque D'Administration Maritime Et Aérienne and Liberia's Allvale Maritime Inc. - had been involved in a 2010 transaction that provided a tanker worth $8.65 million to Iran's state shipping line, a deal that violated the Iran Sanctions Act." http://t.uani.com/ZvdEaO Bloomberg: "South Korea, the world's fifth- largest oil importer, reduced crude shipments from Iran by about 17 percent in March from a year earlier, customs data show. Purchases last month were 556,658 metric tons, compared with 668,706 tons a year earlier, according to data on the Korea Customs Service's website today. The volume was 550,827 tons in February, the figures showed. The March deliveries were equivalent to about 132,000 barrels a day." http://t.uani.com/12doebz BBC: "Increasing numbers of Iranians are settling in the former Soviet state of Georgia. Some say they are being forced to move because of Iran's poor economy, hit hard by Western sanctions. Others blame persecution by the authorities in Tehran. The weekly magazine Aryana may be printed in Georgia but it is written in Farsi. That is because it is catering to the growing number of Iranians moving here - since its launch seven months ago, its circulation has quadrupled. The magazine helps Iranians settle in Georgia by explaining the local culture and traditions. Its editor and owner, Sara Ghazi, says that people in Iran are struggling to cope with rampant inflation. Georgia is an attractive option as it is close to Iran. And Iranians do not need a visa. 'There are Iranians with money who like to invest in Georgia, because they find Georgia as a business hub at the moment. The economy in Georgia is growing.'" http://t.uani.com/101QNdQ Terrorism National Post: "The government of Canada is arguing against victims of terrorism and in support of the Islamic Republic of Iran in precedent-setting court cases seeking to strip ownership of Tehran's assets in Canada and hand them to victims of Iranian-backed terror. Ottawa's request to intervene in the two court cases, so it can protect Iran's diplomatic assets, was approved Friday by an Ontario judge. 'Iran's state immunity has been lifted but its diplomatic immunity remains intact,' lawyers for Canada's Department of Justice argued in documents filed with the Ontario Superior Court of Justice. Allowing victims of Iranian backed terrorism to seize Iran's diplomatic property in Ottawa, including its embassy and ambassador's residence, would breach international law and make Canada's missions around the world vulnerable to similar action, the government claims." http://t.uani.com/132UYXo Syrian Uprising AP: "Masked men in camouflage toting Kalashnikov rifles fan out through a dusty olive grove, part of a group of Hezbollah-backed fighters from Lebanon who are patrolling both sides of a porous border stretch with Syria. The gunmen on the edge of the border village of al-Qasr say their mission is to protect Shiites on the Syrian side who claim their homes, villages and families have come under attack from Sunni rebels. Hezbollah chief Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, leader of many of Lebanon's Shiites and a staunch ally of Syrian President Bashar Assad, has said his group is supporting the cadres of fighters who call themselves Popular Committees. It is confirmation that the powerful Lebanese militant group is playing a growing role in the civil war just across the border." http://t.uani.com/135kBHd Domestic Politics AP: "Iran's state radio says candidates can begin to register for municipal council elections scheduled for June. The councils have little power. But unlike in parliamentary and presidential contests, the candidates are not vetted by a clerically dominated constitutional watchdog group and are considered an indicator of political trends. Iranian elections pit the dominant conservatives against reformers and the populist following of outgoing President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who broke with the conservatives after he was perceived to challenge clerical authority last year." http://t.uani.com/137iOOd Foreign Affairs FT: "Conflict-racked Yemen is emerging as the site of a murky and evolving power struggle between Iran, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf and western nations, in a powerplay with echoes of the proxy regional war raging in Syria... Now diplomats and analysts say Riyadh's old enemy, Shia-led Tehran, is trying to exploit the chaos in what one envoy calls "the soft underbelly of the Arabian peninsula" by backing rebels in both north and south. UN investigators are examining a boat that was seized by Yemeni security forces in January, which US officials claim was loaded with weapons from Iran. US officials say Iran is supporting militant elements of the southern secessionist Hirak movement, notably Ali Salim al-Beidh, a former Yemeni vice-president now based in Beirut." http://t.uani.com/10WfMKS Opinion & Analysis Steven David in The American Interest: "One of the most important foreign policy debates in the United States today is whether it is acceptable to allow Iran to develop nuclear weapons. On one side of this debate stand realists of different types, including former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski and political scientist Kenneth Waltz. This side argues that Iranian nuclear weapons can be deterred because Iranian rulers, while hardly appealing or praiseworthy, are nonetheless rational, cost-calculating actors who know suicidal behavior when they see or contemplate it. In their view, efforts to halt Iranian nuclear development should be modest and should certainly abjure the use of military force, because it would pose a relatively modest threat that can be managed through the time-tested posture of deterrence. Others disagree. They assert that Iranian leaders could well be religious fanatics who embrace death in the service of their faith and thus cannot be deterred as were the leaders of the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Many skeptics of Iran's deterrability also cite the fact that several Cold War conditions that conduced to superpower deterrence are not present in the contemporary Middle East. There are potentially many actors rather than just two; there are small numbers of vulnerable nuclear forces likely to be on hair-trigger alert rather than plentiful and secure second-strike forces; communication between leaderships is spotty, with 'red phones' few and far between; and a good deal more besides. Nuclear weapons in the hands of irrational Iranian leaders, operating in circumstances far more complex than those prevailing during the Cold War, would thus pose a major threat to Israel, the United States and world stability-the latter not least because of the likely impact on global energy markets. Thus, they say, Iran must be stopped from developing nuclear weapons-even if it takes military force to do so. Exactly where President Obama stands in this debate is something of a mystery. The President's words have strongly mirrored the logic of the second approach, but his and his Administration's body language better resemble that of the first. Choosing Chuck Hagel as Secretary of Defense, who is on record as being squarely in the former camp, has done nothing to bring this blurry image into sharper focus. For the most part, these arguments, especially when reduced to their simplest forms, are mutually exclusive. Either Iranian leaders are crazy, in which case they cannot be allowed to have nuclear weapons, or they are not, making a nuclear-armed Iran tolerable. But what if Iranian leaders are rational yet would contemplate a nuclear strike against Israel or the United States anyway? This is precisely the situation we might expect if the Iranian leadership finds itself on the brink of being toppled from within. Facing the end of their rule, and possibly their lives, Iranian leaders quite possibly could choose to lash out against the United States or Israel in a parting shot for posterity... Should the Iranian regime teeter on the brink of oblivion, all that would stop it from carrying out its murderous threats against Israel and perhaps the United States is a lack of capability. With thousands of centrifuges spinning each day, however, Iran is well on its way to developing nuclear weapons, giving it the ability to do precisely what it has threatened. Assurances that we have little to worry about because Iran's rational, cost-calculating mullahs will not commit suicide are not persuasive. If the prospect of horrendous retaliation was not enough to deter Fidel Castro or Saddam Hussein, and would likely not work against Bashar al-Assad, why would we expect the hate-filled mullahs of Iran to be any different? As Iran's leaders pursue their nuclear quest, therefore, we should indeed be very afraid. We have to hope that the President's words, not his body language, prevail if peaceful diplomatic means to prevent an Iranian nuclear breakout do not succeed. Even with all its horrendous implications, a military solution is preferable to a nuclear-armed Iran whose leaders are likely one day to find themselves with nothing to lose, and everything to destroy." http://t.uani.com/17zzTUm 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.