Wednesday, August 28, 2013

Eye on Iran: Strike on Syria Would Lead to Retaliation on Israel, Iran Warns






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Top Stories

NY Times:
"Iranian lawmakers and commanders issued stark warnings to the United States and its allies on Tuesday, saying any military strike on Syria would lead to a retaliatory attack on Israel fanned by 'the flames of outrage.' The warnings came against a backdrop of rising momentum among Western governments for a military intervention in the Syrian conflict over what the United States, Britain, France and others have called undeniable evidence that President Bashar al-Assad's forces used banned chemical weapons on civilians last week, killing hundreds. ... 'In case of a U.S. military strike against Syria, the flames of outrage of the region's revolutionaries will point toward the Zionist regime,' the semiofficial Fars news agency quoted Mansur Haqiqatpur, an influential member of Parliament, as saying on Tuesday." http://t.uani.com/1cgrvdO

Bloomberg:
"Iran lifted its output of uranium, the heavy metal at the center of the Islamic Republic's clash with the United Nations, according to monitors, who also reported negotiations with the country will continue. Iran's production of uranium enriched to 20 percent rose to 372.5 kilograms (821 pounds) from 324 kilograms in May, the International Atomic Energy Agency said today in a 14-page restricted report. The stockpile of material on hand to enrich at short notice grew 2 percent in the last 3 months to 185.8 kilograms. It has converted or is in the process of converting 186.7 kilograms, or 50 percent of the stockpile, into reactor fuel. 'The agency will not be in a position to provide credible assurance about the absence of undeclared material and activities in Iran unless and until Iran provides the necessary cooperation,' the Vienna-based IAEA said, adding that it 'continues to verify the non-diversion of declared nuclear material.'" http://t.uani.com/184ae4B

WSJ:
"A U.S. attack on Syria would likely dash expectations of progress in nuclear negotiations with Iran and undermine new Iranian President Hasan Rouhani's call for improving relations with the West, diplomats said. An attack on Damascus would likely give Iranian hard-liners, who oppose a nuclear compromise, the upper hand over moderate President Hasan Rouhani, who has made foreign policy and nuclear talks a priority. The deputy commander-in-chief of Iran's armed forces, Gen. Masoud Jazayeri, said on Monday that the U.S. would be 'crossing a red line' if it violated Syria's borders and warned of dire consequences for Washington, according to Iranian media." http://t.uani.com/15jghzm
Election Repression ToolkitNuclear Program & Sanctions

AP: "Iran and the U.N. nuclear agency have agreed to restart talks focused on the agency's attempts to probe suspicions that Tehran worked on atomic weapons, diplomats said Wednesday, in the first such meeting since Iran's hard-line president was replaced by a more moderate successor. The diplomats told The Associated Press that the negotiations will resume Sept. 27, with the main focus on gaining access to a section of a military site that the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency has long tried to access." http://t.uani.com/16QuJTd

Reuters: "Iran has installed about 1,000 advanced uranium enrichment centrifuges and is set to test them, a U.N. nuclear report showed, a development likely to worry Western powers hoping for a change of course under the country's new president. The International Atomic Energy Agency's quarterly report - the first since relative moderate Hassan Rouhani won Iran's June presidential election - also said the Islamic state had started making fuel assemblies for a reactor which the West fears could yield nuclear bomb material. Iran denies any such aim. On the other hand, Iran's most sensitive nuclear stockpile has grown little - remaining below its arch-enemy Israel's stated 'red line' that could provoke military action - since the previous IAEA report in May. This could buy time for more negotiations with six world powers. The IAEA report showed Iran continuing to press ahead with its disputed nuclear program at a time when the outside world is waiting to see if Rouhani will act to ease tension with the Islamic Republic's Western critics." http://t.uani.com/1fiPM2B

Syria Conflict

Reuters: "Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Wednesday U.S. intervention in Syria would be 'a disaster for the region,' the ISNA state news agency reported, as Western powers made plans to hit Damascus over a chemical weapons attack. After supporting Arab uprisings across the Middle East and north Africa in 2011 as examples of what Khamenei called an Islamic awakening, Tehran has steadfastly supported the secular President Bashar al-Assad, its main strategic ally in the Middle East, against a two-and-a-half-year-long rebellion. 'The intervention of America will be a disaster for the region. The region is like a gunpowder store and the future cannot be predicted,' the agency quoted Khamenei as saying." http://t.uani.com/16QgQB7

Reuters: "Iran denied reports on Wednesday that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad had flown to Iran, according to Iran's English-language state broadcaster Press TV. Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Araqchi said the reports were 'ridiculous,' Press TV said. Some financial market participants on Wednesday were citing reports in Middle East outlets that Assad had left Syria for Iran." http://t.uani.com/15wDJ02

Reuters: "A top U.N. official visiting Iran has urged it to use its influence to persuade the Syrian government to attend planned peace talks with opposition groups in Geneva, the United Nations said on Tuesday. Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs Jeffrey Feltman has spent the past two days in Tehran meeting officials, including Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, to discuss trying to reach a political solution in Syria. 'Mr Feltman shared the U.N. position that Iran, given its influence and leadership in the region, has an important role to play and a responsibility in helping to bring the Syrian parties to the negotiating table,' U.N. spokesman Farhan Haq said." http://t.uani.com/1fiQ21m

Foreign Affairs

AP: "Iran's parliament gave preliminary approval Wednesday to a bill requiring the government to sue the U.S. for its involvement in the 1953 coup that overthrew the country's democratically elected prime minister. The bill follows the release of newly declassified documents offering more details of how the CIA orchestrated the overthrow of Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh 60 years ago. It calls for setting up a committee to study the issue and provide a report within six months before legal action is launched against the U.S. government in an international court." http://t.uani.com/14D9VPF

Opinion & Analysis

Brian Fung in the Washington Post: "On Monday, Google became one of the first American companies to take advantage of newly loosened U.S. sanctions against Iran. With  a Google Plus post, the search giant announced that it was offering its Play store to Iranian citizens, allowing them to download free apps from its app marketplace. The Treasury Department, which sets the export restrictions, issued the new rules back in May. But the recent easing is actually part of a longer process that doesn't just change U.S. policy toward Iran; it also potentially touches the sanctions regime affecting other targeted states, including Syria. The directive that Google took advantage of this week is known as General License D. It replaces a narrower export regulation that made it possible for U.S. companies to sell social networking technology, blogging software, instant messaging tools and several other select types of technologies to Iran. The new rule established this spring widens the acceptable range of salable products to include 'services, software, and hardware incident to personal communications.' What's key about this is that the U.S. government no longer cherry-picks technologies, said Tim Maurer, a fellow at the New America Foundation in Washington. 'This new license provides blanket authorization for products and services, whereas before, you had regulation that required businesses to apply for specific licenses - which meant additional costs to apply and to wait,' said Maurer. Google isn't the first major tech company to respond to General License D. In June, Apple updated its export compliance page to say that some of its products fell into the whitelist. Iran is currently the only U.S.-sanctioned country to benefit from such a broad license. It's not clear why Treasury officials decided to open up to Iran this way first rather than picking a less controversial country, but the point is rather moot. Iran has already blocked access to Google Play from inside its borders, according to Internet researcher Collin Anderson. Still, the Obama administration has followed a pattern of gradually relaxing export restrictions worldwide. In 2010, the Treasury Department allowed American companies to export a limited set of named, specific technologies to countries including Iran, Sudan and Cuba. Then, in 2011, the agency issued a similar rule on Syria. In recent months, Treasury officials have adopted a broader rule for Syria, saying they would 'look favorably' on license applications involving technologies that aren't already covered by the 2011 round of loosening. The new rule isn't quite as relaxed as the policy toward Iran, but the easing of Syria sanctions does appear to reflect the department's previous progression, said New America's Danielle Kehl. With Washington abuzz in speculation over a potential military intervention in Syria, granting a blanket authorization might help the rebels coordinate their activity in the long run. It's not likely to happen in time for U.S. jets to arrive, though. Even if it did happen, it'd likely be months before any U.S. companies felt confident enough in the rules to do anything about it - just like it took months for Google to open up the Play store to Iran. http://t.uani.com/1dmAgWG

Hanin Ghaddar in NOW Lebanon: "As more indications show that the international community is heading to some sort of strike on Syria, the main concern is now Iran. While the Islamic Republic might not react directly by bombing Israel or Jordan,  it will try its best to secure its interests in Syria. Therefore, the U.S. needs to make sure there is a plan in place to check any growing Iranian influence in Syria after the possible military strike. This requires a long-term strategy for Syria, one that should also take into consideration the heightened Sunni-Shiite tension in Syria and Lebanon.  Iran's objective in Syria is not to protect the Assad regime. Iran wants to make sure it does not lose the territorial advantage in Syria, mainly linking Lebanon to Damascus and the coast through Qusayr and Homs. With or without Assad and his regime, they will do anything to maintain it even if they have to fight until the last Sunni in Syria and the last Shiite in Lebanon, and this needs to be addressed during and after a military strike. More Sunni-Shiite clashes could be a consequence. ... [For Iran,] There are only two options:  1) Use Hezbollah and its counterpart in Iraq to further destabilize the region. This will work to a certain extent but will not change much on the ground in Syria if the West is heavily invested. On the contrary, it will increase sectarian tensions - which have reached a dangerous level already - and even Hezbollah is not happy with the repercussions. 2) Give more attention to diplomatic efforts in order to reach a settlement over the nuclear program. The more bargaining chips Iran loses in the region, the more compromising it will be. The nuclear program is what really matter for Iran, after all. In any case, Hezbollah will have lost it all. Its involvement in Syria has killed it as a resistance force, regionally and locally. The fear here is for Lebanon's Shiites, who will have to pay the price of all the above." http://t.uani.com/1537xOz

Stephen Schwartz in the Weekly Standard: "The title of Ferghe News, an Iran-based website, means "Cult News." It is dedicated mainly to defaming Sufi Muslims. But Ferghe News, following the ideological posture of the Iranian clerical dictatorship, also condemns the Saudi-based Wahhabi sect (historically the most violent enemies of the Sufis), the Baha'is, never favored by Khomeinist Tehran, and "New Age" movements. Ferghe News and its scandalmongering are anything but frivolous or trivial. They represent a malign use of the Internet to support the suppression of dissident Iranian Sufis and to gin up criminal charges against them. In a recent post, the site described indoctrination against Sufis as an element of the activities in 'jihad training camps' at Azad University, in Khorramabad, capital of Lorestan province in western Iran. Typical headlines in Ferghe News accuse Sufis of rape, murder, opium-smoking, corruption, serving as U.S. agents, affiliation with Freemasonry, and influence over the Green movement that emerged all too briefly to challenge the questionable results of the second election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as Iranian president in 2009. (Masons are a conspiratorial hobgoblin for many Muslims. Sunnis blame them for undermining the Ottoman caliphate, and Shias accuse them of serving Britain against Persian interests more than a century ago.) The online persecutor of the spiritual Sufis has assailed the two largest Sunni Sufi movements (known as tariqat or "pathways"), the Qadiris and Naqshbandis, and other such bodies. But Ferghe News reserves its worst denunciations for the Shia Gonabadi-Nimatullahi Sufis, the leading Sufi trend in Shia Iran and in the Iranian diaspora. The Gonabadi-Nimatullahi group is named for the 15th-century poet Noorud'din Nimatullah Veli, whose verse is widely read and loved by Iranians. But the Gonabadi Sufis do not accept the theocratic doctrine of "governance by the jurisconsult," invented by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to justify the monopoly on power by his disciples after the Islamic Revolution of 1979. Western observers pick through the Iranian media looking for indications, however small, that Ahmadinejad's successor as president, Hassan Rohani, will ameliorate Tehran's confrontational posture toward the world. Meanwhile they ignore mountains of evidence of continued internal repression in the clerical state." http://t.uani.com/17gxLCX

Economist: "Oman's Sultan Qaboos bin Said al-Said (pictured on the left) has passed many messages between America and the Islamic Republic of Iran during their 34-year long antipathy. He lobbied the Iranians on behalf of the United States to release detained American journalist Roxana Saberi, and eventually pardon three young hikers who were accused of spying in 2009. He also negotiated the release of both Shahrazad Mir Gholikhan and Mojtaba Atarodi, Iranians whom America had imprisoned for allegedly trying to export to Iran night-vision goggles and high-tech lab equipment, respectively. It is hardly surprising then that the arrival on August 25th of the 72-year-old sultan for a three-day state visit in the same month as the inauguration of President Hassan Rohani (pictured on the right), a more moderate man than his predecessor, has sparked regional media speculation that he brings with him another message from the Americans. Al-Hayat, a pan-Arab newspaper, quoted sources in Iran as saying that the trip was 'not normal and does not fall under normal protocol'. Bahar, a publication linked to Iran's newly-empowered reformist bloc, reported that the sultan was visiting as a precursor to future talks between America and Iran to negotiate a deal on greater nuclear transparency in exchange for sanctions relief. Fararu, a reformist-leaning website, has suggested that a new back channel might be established between the two countries, to pave the way for discussions over Iran's disputed nuclear programme as well as the crisis in Syria. Iran's foreign-ministry spokesperson at first denied that the sultan would bring word from the US, but the foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, subsequently backtracked, saying that he would wait to see what the sultan might convey. Both America and Iran have softened their rhetoric since the election in June of a presidential candidate who campaigned on improving relations with the West. Iranians are demonstrating a rare cautious optimism that a deal, which would bring much-needed sanctions relief, might be at hand this time.  The sultan's trip coincided, meanwhile, with that of Jeffrey Feltman, a former US ambassador to the UN, who was visiting as an official of the UN to discuss Syria, and whom the Iranian press described as "the most senior American official to visit Iran since the revolution". Mr Feltman reportedly trod the line between feeling out for Iranian help over Syria and encouraging calm in the event of an increasingly likely Western intervention against Bashar Assad. Whatever the speculation over Sultan Qaboos's trip, he will have had plenty to discuss with his Iranian hosts." http://t.uani.com/19N1S3e   

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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