Eye on Iran: Iranian Oil Exports Spiked in December

For continuing coverage follow us on Twitter and join our Facebook group.    Top Stories Free Beacon: "Iranian oil exports hit a high in December, just one month after Western nations inked a nuclear pact with Iran that guaranteed up to $7 billion in economic sanctions relief. Exports of Iranian crude oil rose from 789,292 barrels per day in November to 1,059,605 per day in December, according to new shipping data provided to the Washington Free Beacon by the advocacy group United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI). This is among the highest number of oil exports Iran reached in all of 2013. Iran hit its peak oil sales in April of that year, when it was exporting some 1.39 million barrels per day... China, India, South Korea, Turkey, and Syria are currently the top five importers of Iranian oil, according to UANI's shipping data. Taiwan also resumed its oil purchases from Iran in December after halting them completely during the previous months. 'More than anything, [the uptick in exports] is an indication of increased imports by China and Taiwan,' according to Martin House, UANI's lead shipping analyst." http://t.uani.com/1eGYusv Bloomberg: "North Dakota and Texas have more than doubled crude output since Obama's 2011 speech, with Texas pumping more than Iran, according to the EIA, the statistical arm of the U.S. Energy Department, and a Bloomberg survey of producers, oil companies and analysts... Gasoline users and diplomats benefit from the surge in U.S. production. While the 2011 Libyan uprising had U.S. consumers paying almost $4 a gallon for gasoline, pump prices declined 1.3 percent last year and averaged $3.314 a gallon on Jan. 6, according to AAA, the largest U.S. motoring organization. That was even after sanctions cut off more than 1 million barrels a day of Iranian oil exports. Starved of their primary source of cash, the Islamic republic's leaders in November reached an agreement to curb its nuclear program. 'It took time to realize how significant this transformation was going to be,' said Jason Bordoff, who was an energy adviser to the National Security Council and helped draft Obama's 2011 speech. 'We were able to impose pain on Iran without imposing pain on ourselves.'" http://t.uani.com/1dfL0qB AFP: "The United States on Tuesday accused Iran of helping 'brutalize' Syria as Secretary of State John Kerry prepared to talk to Russia about Tehran's potential role at a peace conference... 'At this point, Iran has done nothing but helped the regime, help bring foreign fighters in, help the regime's efforts to brutalize the Syrian people,' State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki told reporters. 'If they wanted to send a message to the world about their seriousness of having a positive outcome, there are steps they could take. There's no indication that they have any desire or interest in taking any of these steps,' she said." http://t.uani.com/1cOXpvt   Nuclear Negotiations RFE/RL: "Is Iran's conservative camp muscling in on Tehran's nuclear negotiations with six world powers?  Yes, if you listen to some hard-line lawmakers and media who are reporting that two conservatives have been added to a mysterious panel said to monitor the work of Tehran's negotiating team. Not really, if you go by the word of those participating in the negotiations and media close to the government. In fact, they question the existence of any such panel at all. One thing appears clear amid the murk: there are stark internal differences in Iran when it comes to the country's approach in talks with the P5+1 (the United States, Britain, France, China, Russia, plus Germany)." http://t.uani.com/1bRd1OT Sanctions Trend: "The latest report from Iran indicates doubling the petrochemical products export over the past month. A report from the Iran Custom Administration shows a growth of about 214 percent, surpassing pre-sanctions levels. There is not any concrete evidence to show the reason, but the Custom Administration's report last month indicates a twofold increase of condensate export in last two months of Iranian calendar year, compared to average of monthly condensate export during the year, surpassing pre-sanctions level as well. The condensate and petrochemical products exports are vital for Iran because they share about a half of the country's total non-oil exports. The rapid rising of condensate and petrochemical products exports after the Iranian newly elected moderate President Hassan Rouhani took power in August seems to be resulted by the easing of some restrictive measures imposed by the West on Iran during Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's presidency." http://t.uani.com/KxOE2u Reuters: "Turkey's state-owned Halkbank, whose general manager has been detained as part of a corruption inquiry, will keep processing payments for Turkey's oil and gas imports from Iran, Turkey's Deputy Prime Minister Ali Babacan said on Wednesday. 'The state of Iran has accounts with Halkbank and we deposit the payments for the oil and gas purchased to these accounts ... Halkbank will continue to carry out this function,' Babacan told Bloomberg HT Television. Halkbank general manager Suleyman Aslan was among dozens of prominent business people, the sons of three cabinet ministers, and state officials questioned as part of a corruption inquiry swirling around Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan's government. Most have been released but 24, including Aslan and two of the ministers' sons, are still in custody, local media says." http://t.uani.com/1bRe15v Free Beacon: "Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D., Fla.) has become a major obstacle to a new bipartisan Iran sanctions measure, according to multiple sources on Capitol Hill and in Florida. Wasserman Schultz has broken with leading pro-Israel Democrats like New York Senator Chuck Schumer and New Jersey Senators Robert Menendez and Cory Booker, privately urging her fellow Democrats to follow the White House's lead by opposing a bipartisan House resolution backing new sanctions on Iran, according to multiple congressional sources close to the debate. The Iran resolution fell apart in the final days of 2013 after House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer (Md.) withdrew his support for it following a last minute lobbying campaign helmed by Wasserman Schultz, who sources identified as the 'key Democrat' leading the anti-sanctions charge. Wasserman Schultz's backroom bid to kill the sanctions measure has angered some Democrats on Capitol Hill and in her hometown of South Florida." http://t.uani.com/1dUWnTe Syria Conflict AFP: "Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif will visit Beirut on Monday amid an inquiry into November's deadly blast at his country's embassy, the Lebanese foreign ministry said. 'Mr Zarif will arrive on a one-day visit, to meet Lebanese officials and discuss the inquiry into the attack on Iran's embassy and the Majid al-Majid issue,' a ministry source said Tuesday. The November 19 double suicide bombing killed 25 people, including Tehran's cultural attache. Majid, a Saudi suspected of heading the Abdullah Azzam Brigades, which claimed responsibility for the attack, died in custody on January 4 from kidney failure." http://t.uani.com/1a8ltK0 Domestic Politics RFE/RL: "Culture Minister Ali Jannati has been questioned in the Iranian parliament by a hard-line lawmaker over some of his comments regarding the closure of newspapers and the solo singing of women.  Hamid Rasayi accused Jannati of showing tolerance toward the insulting of religious sanctities and promoting laxness over religious principles. Rasayi said Jannati had defended the solo singing of women and expressed regret over the closure of the daily 'Bahar.' Jannati said he believed some cases of solo singing by women, including lullabies, are permissible." http://t.uani.com/1ggJT8b Fox News: "The latest religious edict from Iran's supreme leader takes aim at the Islamic Republic's lonely hearts. Online chatting between men and women on social networks is forbidden under Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's latest fatwa, delivered ironically enough on his website in answer to a question sent by email. The top mullah's reasoning is that such contact could eventually lead to activities prohibited by Islam. 'Given the immorality that often applies to this, it is not permitted,' Khamenei wrote." http://t.uani.com/1cAUNVt Foreign Affairs FT: "Former foreign secretary Jack Straw has met a group of Iranian MPs in Tehran as he leads a delegation of British politicians seeking to mend relations between Iran and the UK. Mr Straw landed in Iran on Monday at the start of a five-day tour, during which he will be accompanied by a small team of politicians from both the Conservative and Labour parties, including Lord Lamont, the former chancellor. High quality global journalism requires investment. The group met their counterparts in the Iran-Britain Parliamentary Friendship Group on Tuesday, as Britain continues to take tentative steps towards fuller diplomatic relations, which were cut off two years ago. Speaking before that meeting, Mr Straw said: 'This is true that the two countries' relations have had ups and downs in the past, but our efforts are now surely aimed at improving the relations within the framework of mutual interests.'" http://t.uani.com/KxNFiK Opinion & Analysis Colum Lynch & Jamila Trindle in FP: "The White House and Congress have credited international sanctions with forcing Iran to negotiate a nuclear deal. But the American and European coalition that imposed those measures is now in danger of coming apart, because of widely different notions about what makes sanctions fair. Some of America's closest allies now want to give blacklisted individuals the right to challenge their designation as international malefactors. It's a step the United States is fighting at every turn. During the past 15 years, the United States has successfully mustered international support for targeted sanctions against hundreds of alleged terrorists, nuclear arms proliferators, and other international miscreants. The measures -- including travel bans, asset freezes, and trade and financial restrictions -- have exacted a high price for terrorists and their financial backers as well as for countries, including Iran and North Korea, that routinely flouted U.N. demands to curtail their nuclear activities. But a series of European court rulings have denounced those very sanctions as fundamentally unfair and undemocratic. The measures violate basic norms of due process, the courts say, placing sanctioned individuals in a kind of Orwellian legal black hole with no right to challenge the evidence -- much of it secret -- used against them. European judges have overturned asset freezes on alleged Iranian nuclear proliferators. And European governments are pushing the United Nations to reform its sanctions system to grant individuals the right to some form of recourse... But the American notion of due process in these cases is different than the European conception. Individuals and companies designated by the United States can petition to be taken off the list, but petitioners and their lawyers are often not privy to the evidence against them because it is classified. Because most of the listed people aren't U.S. citizens, they aren't entitled to the due process rights of the American justice system. U.S. authorities have to prove only that they acted reasonably, not that the underlying evidence against a person or company proves them guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Not only are the targets of American-led sanctions routinely denied access to the evidence that put them on the blacklist, but they have to appeal for removal to the same government office that put them on the rolls. A series of high profile lawsuits have placed the U.N. Security Council, which serves as its own judge and jury, on a collision course with European courts, which are increasingly questioning U.N. actions that run afoul of human rights protections on their own soil. More worrying for American and European policymakers was a September ruling by Europe's second most powerful court, the European Union's General Court, which quashed decisions by the European Union to freeze some of the funds of an Iranian banker and seven Iranian banks, insurers, and companies linked to Iran's nuclear program. The court decided that the European Union failed to provide sufficient evidence to support its claims of wrongdoing. The European Union is appealing the case. The row over the sanctions enforcement comes at a delicate moment. The sanctions against Iran and the people who support the regime are widely credited with leading to the current negotiations over Tehran's nuclear program. U.S. legislators are threatening to impose additional sanctions if such a deal doesn't pan out to their liking. (While the United States maintains its own blacklist, which is much longer than the U.N.'s list, the American efforts have been bolstered, both in effectiveness and perceived legitimacy, by the support of the United Nations and member countries.) Some legal experts sharply criticized European judicial activism on behalf of sanctioned individuals. The European courts' rulings in favor of the rights of sanctioned individuals ignore European governments legal obligations under the U.N. Charter to enforce sanctions, these experts say, and could ultimately weaken the authority of the U.N. Security Council." http://t.uani.com/1ep0gOd 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.