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Top Stories
Reuters: "Iranian
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Monday Israel has no roots in the
Middle East and would be 'eliminated,' ignoring a U.N. warning to avoid
incendiary rhetoric ahead of the annual General Assembly session.
Ahmadinejad also said he did not take seriously the threat that Israel
could launch a military strike on Iran's nuclear facilities, denied
sending arms to Syria, and alluded to Iran's threats to the life of
British author Salman Rushdie. The United States quickly dismissed the
Iranian president's comments as 'disgusting, offensive and outrageous.'
... Ahmadinejad's annual visits to New York, a city with a sizable Jewish
population, are routinely met with protests against his anti-Israel
rhetoric. United Against Nuclear Iran, a U.S. group that opposes Iran
acquiring an atomic bomb, protested at the Iranian official's hotel with
a banner reading 'Out of the Warwick, out of New York, out of the
U.N.!'" http://t.uani.com/ORQqN6
CNN
Video: UANI UN General Assembly Protests http://t.uani.com/UD8pIw
CSM:
"Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad takes his final bow at the
United Nations this week, and he's likely to go out more like a lion than
a lamb... As usual, Ahmadinejad's visit to the US is causing a stir. The
US group United Against Nuclear Iran every year tries to 'shame' New York
hotels into slamming their doors in the Iranian leader's face - and is as
busy as ever mounting anti-Ahmadinejad protests this year, too. In a bit
of a if-you-can't-beat-'em-join-'em move, UANI has set up its command
post in the Warwick Hotel - after failing to convince the West 54th
Street establishment to deny the Iranian a room. It planned to hold an
anti-Ahmadinejad rally outside the hotel Monday afternoon, joining a list
of organizations that plan to hold similar events - including outside the
UN on Wednesday, when Ahmadinejad speaks." http://t.uani.com/PDeErn
AFP:
"Protesters targeted the Manhattan hotel where Iranian President
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was staying on Monday while attending the UN General
Assembly. About 50 people yelled slogans and waved placards near the
upscale Warwick Hotel where the Iranian leader had booked in for the
second year running during the annual UN get-together. 'Warwick, Warwick,
shame on you,' they chanted. One person held a placard reading: 'Out of
the Warwick, out of New York, out of the UN.' ... David Ibsen, with
protest organizer United Against Nuclear Iran, called for a boycott of
the hotel. 'A lot of different venues have decided not to host him
because his regime is the world's biggest sponsor of terrorism,' he
said." http://t.uani.com/ReEwLz
RFE/RL:
"Demonstrators protested outside the hotel housing Iranian President
Mahmud Ahmadinejad who is in New York City for the UN General Assembly.
Protesters criticized the Warwick Hotel for agreeing to host the Iranian
leader. 'We're here to protest the presence of Ahmadinejad and the
Iranian delegation in New York,' David Ibsen, the executive director of
United Against Nuclear Iran, which organized the protest, said, 'and also
to protest the decision of the Warwick Hotel to host the
delegation.'" http://t.uani.com/P0xV3G
 UN
General Assembly
NYT:
"President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran stoked the anger of Israel,
the United States, Syrian insurgents and gay rights advocates on Monday,
using the first full day of his final visit to the United Nations as
Iran's leader to assert that he has no fear of an Israeli attack on his
country's nuclear facilities, regards the Israelis as fleeting
aberrations in Middle East history, is neutral in the Syria conflict and
considers homosexuality an ugly crime. In a series of public appearances
that included a breakfast meeting with selected members of the news
media, a speech on the rule of law at a United Nations conference and a
CNN interview broadcast on Monday evening, Mr. Ahmadinejad sought to
portray Iran as a principled and upstanding member of the global community.
But the Iranian leader, known for his denials of the Holocaust and other
inflammatory statements, ignored a warning by the secretary general of
the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon, against making provocative declarations.
Instead, he offended a wide range of parties and prompted the Israeli
delegation to walk out of the United Nations conference in protest."
http://t.uani.com/ORRtN7
AFP:
"Iran's president called Israel a nuclear-armed 'fake regime'
shielded by the United States, prompting Israel's U.N. ambassador to walk
out of a high-level U.N. meeting Monday promoting the rule of law.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad also accused the U.S. and others of
misusing freedom of speech and failing to speak out against the
defamation of people's beliefs and 'divine prophets,' an apparent
reference to the recently circulated amateur video made in the U.S. which
attacks Islam and denigrates the Prophet Muhammad." http://t.uani.com/RUk2ui
AFP:
"Supporting homosexuality is the stuff of hardline capitalists who
do not care about real human values, Iran's president said Monday.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said in an interview on CNN that
homosexuality is a 'very ugly behavior' that he said was banned by 'all
prophets and all religions and all faiths.' In New York to attend the UN
General Assembly, Ahmadinejad said that just because some countries
tolerate homosexuality, that does not mean his criticism of it amounts to
a denial of people's freedom. He ridiculed politicians and parties who,
he said, approve of gays and lesbians just to win 'four or five
additional votes.' More broadly, he said tolerating homosexuality had
nothing to do with supporting human development." http://t.uani.com/UPS5CK
CNN:
"Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made clear what he meant when
he said Israel should be 'wiped off' the map and touched on everything
from the Holocaust to homosexuality in a wide-ranging interview that
aired Monday on CNN's 'Piers Morgan Tonight.' The president, speaking
through a translator, also said what his country would do if attacked by
Israel, and he slammed an anti-Islam film that has triggered protests in
the Muslim world." http://t.uani.com/QRT02b
Nuclear
Program
Reuters: "President Barack
Obama will warn Iran on Tuesday that the United States will "do what
we must" to prevent it acquiring a nuclear weapon, and appeal to
world leaders for a united front against further attacks on U.S.
diplomatic missions in Muslim countries... Seeking to step up pressure on
Iran, Obama will tell the U.N. General Assembly that there is still time
for a diplomacy but that 'time is not unlimited,' according to advance
excerpts of his speech, due to begin sometime around 1315 GMT... 'A
nuclear-armed Iran is not a challenge that can be contained,' he will
say. 'It would threaten the elimination of Israel, the security of Gulf
nations and the stability of the global economy ... The United States
will do what we must to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear
weapon.'" http://t.uani.com/SPvSjI
WashPost:
"Ironically, as the Obama White House winds down its first term, it
finds itself in a similar place on Iran as the George W. Bush
administration did in its final months: grappling with a belligerent
regime locked on a course of nuclear expansion, impervious to U.S.
threats, coercion or diplomacy. It is hardly the outcome that Obama's
policy advisers envisioned when the Democrat took office promising to
overturn three decades of hostile relations with the Islamic republic. As
a presidential candidate, Obama determined early that Iran would be a top
priority, former and current administration officials say. Then a
senator, Obama had made nuclear nonproliferation one of his signature
issues, and he came to regard Iran's nuclear program as deeply
destabilizing, not only to Middle East security but also to the
international nonproliferation standards that had contained the spread of
nuclear weapons throughout the second half of the 20th century, according
to several of his top advisers." http://t.uani.com/QhDBuz
Reuters:
"Iran is prepared to defend itself in case of a 'cyber war' which
could cause more harm than a physical confrontation, a commander in the
country's Revolutionary Guards said on Tuesday. The Islamic Republic has
tightened cyber security since its uranium enrichment centrifuges were
hit in 2010 by the Stuxnet computer worm, which it believes came from
Israel or the United States. 'We have armed ourselves with new tools,
because a cyber war is more dangerous than a physical war,' said Abdollah
Araqi, deputy commander of ground forces in the Islamic Revolutionary
Guard Corps (IRGC), according to the Iranian Students' News Agency
(ISNA)." http://t.uani.com/PDh21o
AP:
"A senior Iranian commander says the country's newly-produced
missile-carrying drone has a range of 2,000 kilometers (1,250 miles),
which puts much of the Middle East within operating distance of Iranian
territory. The Monday report by the semiofficial Fars agency quoted Gen.
Amir Ali Hajizadeh, who is aerospace chief of the powerful Revolutionary
Guards. His description of the aircraft, which Iran first announced last
week, is like that of the American RQ-170 Sentinel, one of which went
down in Iranian territory last year. Iran said it was building a copy of
the RQ-170 in April." http://t.uani.com/UsVqoq
AP:
"Iran has test-fired four missiles designed to hit warships during a
drill near the strategic Strait of Hormuz, an Iranian military commander
said. The missiles were fired simultaneously and hit a 'big target' the
size of a warship, sinking it within 50 seconds, Gen. Ali Fadavi of the
powerful Revolutionary Guard was quoted as saying by the semi-official
Fars news agency. The Fars report late Monday was the first indication of
an Iranian military exercise taking place simultaneously and close to
U.S.-led joint naval maneuvers in the Persian Gulf, including
mine-sweeping drills, which got under way last week." http://t.uani.com/PDj9Ch
Sanctions
Reuters:
"The U.S. government officially linked Iran's state oil company to
the country's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps on Monday, a
determination that enables Washington to apply new sanctions on foreign
banks dealing with the company. The Treasury Department determined that
the National Iranian Oil Company, one of the world's largest oil
exporters, is 'an agent or affiliate' of the IRGC, which the United
States has long put under sanctions for terrorism and human rights
abuses... While U.S. companies already are prohibited from buying Iranian
oil, the new determination means the United States can impose further sanctions
on any foreign bank that facilitates transactions with NIOC, according to
the sanctions law. But the new penalties will not apply to countries that
have been granted 'exceptions,' or waivers, to the sanctions because they
have significantly cut their purchases of Iranian oil." http://t.uani.com/SPuDkM
Human
Rights
CNN:
"With Iran's president in New York for the UN General Assembly, an
Iranian-American family in Michigan is appealing to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
publicly to have their son - imprisoned in Iran on espionage charges -
released before his father dies of brain cancer. In a hospital interview
with CNN, the father of former US marine Amir Mirzaei Hekmati, says if
his son is not released soon, he will pass away without ever seeing him
again. 'Please, please, please release an innocent man,' pleaded the
father, Ali Hekmati, who had a cancerous tumor removed from his brain.
'Reunite him with his father, his mother.'" http://t.uani.com/QC2Zba
Foreign
Affairs
AP:
"After years of growing influence, a new sign of Iran's presence in
Iraq has hit the streets. Thousands of signs, that is, depicting Iran's
supreme leader gently smiling to a population once mobilized against the
Islamic Republic in eight years of war. The campaign underscores widespread
doubts over just how independent Iraq and its majority Shiite Muslim
population can remain from its eastern neighbor, the region's Shiite
heavyweight, now that U.S. troops have left the country. The posters of
Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei first appeared in at least six Shiite
neighborhoods in Baghdad and across Iraq's Shiite-dominated south in
August, as part of an annual pro-Palestinian observance started years ago
by Iran. They have conspicuously remained up since then. 'When I see
these pictures, I feel I am in Tehran, not Baghdad,' said Asim Salman,
44, a Shiite and owner of a Baghdad cafe. 'Authorities must remove these
posters, which make us angry.'" http://t.uani.com/SiTwEH
AFP:
"Iran announced it was yanking its entry in the Oscars race because
of the 'intolerable insult' of the US-made anti-Islam film that has
angered Muslims in several countries. Oscars organizers in Los Angeles
said they had not heard officially from Iranian authorities, after the
announcement in Tehran by Culture Minister Mohammad Hosseini. 'I am
officially announcing that in reaction to the intolerable insult to the
Great Prophet of Islam we will refrain from taking part in this year's
Oscars and we ask other Islamic nations to show their protest like this,'
the minister said, cited by the ISNA news agency. Iran was pulling its
sole movie entered in the Academy Awards, 'A Cube of Sugar,' after
discussions with its production company, he said." http://t.uani.com/S1EL9U
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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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