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Stories
Al-Monitor:
"President Obama is dispatching his top Iran negotiator and
sanctions expert to Congress next week to try to sell a four-month
extension of nuclear talks. Undersecretary of State Wendy Sherman and
David Cohen, Treasury's undersecretary for Terrorism and Financial
Intelligence, are slated to testify in open hearings before the Senate
and House foreign affairs panels on Tuesday. They can expect a harsh
reception. 'I don't see an extension of funding to Iran as progress,'
House Foreign Affairs Chairman Ed Royce, R-Calif., said in a statement
announcing the hearing. 'Everything about Iran's nuclear program
signals nuclear bomb, yesterday, today and, I worry, tomorrow.'
Already, Senate Republicans have reacted to the extension by
introducing a flurry of bills. Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., ranking member
on the Senate Foreign Relations panel, this week introduced legislation
with several other members of the committee that would require Congress
to formally approve any final deal with Iran. Sen. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., followed
suit on Thursday with legislation that would prohibit the
administration from further relaxing sanctions unless Secretary of
State John Kerry certified that none of the $2.8 billion to be
incrementally released under the deal would fund terrorism, nuclear
weapons development or human rights violations. Six Republicans have
already signed on to the bill. Finally, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, dropped
legislation on Friday that requires the 'immediate re-implementation of
sanctions, additional enforcement mechanisms, and an end to the failed
negotiations.' The Sanction Iran, Safeguard America Act would notably
expand sanctions related to the petrochemical and automotive sector and
prohibit funding for negotiations with Iran without congressional
approval." http://t.uani.com/1qH3JCT
Al-Monitor:
"The current war in Gaza has witnessed renewed contact between
Hamas on the one hand, and Iran and Hezbollah on the other, following
two years of a chill in relations. A political official in Hamas
confirmed to Al-Monitor that Khaled Meshaal, head of Hamas' politburo,
has recently received phone calls from Tehran initiated by Ali
Larijani, chairman of the Shura Council, Foreign Minister Mohammad
Javad Zarif and a senior Revolutionary Guard officer whose name he did
not mention. Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah called
Meshaal on July 20. This was the first official contact between
Hezbollah and Hamas since April, a Hamas official informed Al-Monitor.
Hezbollah's official website reported that, during his phone call with
Meshaal, 'Nasrallah praised the steadfastness of the resistance
fighters in Gaza,' stressing that he 'stands next to the Palestinian
resistance and supports its conditions to end the battle.'" http://t.uani.com/1rRhBZd
AFP:
"Five people were publicly flogged in Iran as punishment for
eating in public in violation of the rules of the Muslim fasting month
of Ramadan, state media reported. The offenders ignored warnings from
police and 'ate intentionally' in the western city of Kermanshah, the
province's chief justice Ali Mozafari said, quoted by the official IRNA
news agency." http://t.uani.com/1l6T4ta
Sanctions Relief
Reuters:
"The United States faces an awkward rival in its first attempts in
40 years to export crude oil - Iran. Iran, whose economy has been
throttled by Western sanctions that have halved its crude shipments, is
now selling higher quality and cheaper oil to China that leaves little
room for the U.S. crude to enter the world's top energy consumer...
'China gets condensate from Iran, which is much cheaper than that from
the U.S.,' said a Singapore-based trader with a European trading
company... Showing the competition U.S. exports face, Iran exports
about 55 percent of its roughly 250,000 bpd of South Pars condensate
output to two Chinese buyers at deep discounts under annual
contracts." http://t.uani.com/1oApcdH
Fars (Iran):
"Senior Iranian and Italian trade officials explored new avenues
for paving the way for the promotion of cooperation in various fields,
specially in agricultural and railway sectors. In a meeting which was
attended by Head of Iran Chamber of Commerce Gholam Hossein Shafeyee,
the Chamber's Deputy Head for International Affairs Ali Akbar Farazi,
Italy's Ambassador to Tehran Luca Giansanti, Director General for
Italian Promotion (economy, culture and science) Andrea Meloni, and
President of Italian Foreign Trade Agency Ricardo Monti, the two sides stressed
the need for both Tehran and Rome to utilize each and every capacity
and potential to broaden and widen economic relations, specially in the
fields railway transportation and agriculture." http://t.uani.com/WJJ9V2
Tasnim (Iran):
An Iranian trade official expressed the country's enthusiasm for
attracting Italian carmakers. 'In the field of automobile industry, the
ground is prepared for cooperation between Iran and Italy,' Head of
Trade Promotion Organization of Iran Valiollah Afkhami said in a meeting
with a visiting Italian trade delegation in Tehran." http://t.uani.com/1tSDGGd
Human Rights
Amnesty:
"Iranian prisoner of conscience Arzhang Davoodi, already in prison
for nearly 11 years, has now been sentenced to death on a new charge of
'enmity against God', in relation to his peaceful political activism
and writings. Iranian writer and poet Arzhang Davoodi learned from his
lawyer on 20 July 2014 that he had been sentenced to death for his
alleged membership and support of banned group People's Mojahedin
Organization of Iran (PMOI). The sentence was imposed despite an
apparent lack of evidence and after grossly unfair proceedings. He had
been given less than an hour on 3 June to present his defence before a
Revolutionary Court in the southern city of Bandar Abbas, which relayed
it to a Revolutionary Court in Karaj, responsible for issuing the death
sentence. Neither Arzhang Davoodi nor his lawyer were allowed to appear
before the court which issued the verdict." http://t.uani.com/1rXzW66
Opinion &
Analysis
Simon Henderson
in WINEP: "On July 22, the State Department
released a description of what Iran has done with its nuclear program
since the interim Joint Plan of Action (JPOA) took force on January 20.
Although the text leavens optimism with caution, its clear intention is
to spin the case for the four-month extension of talks agreed to
earlier this week. Some of its more categorical statements are
therefore open to question.
'Iran has halted
production of near-20 percent enriched uranium and disabled the
configuration of the centrifuge cascades [used] to produce it.'
True, but this only applies to declared centrifuge facilities. There
are fears that Iran may have other, secret centrifuge sites.
'Iran has completed
the dilution of half of its near-20 percent enriched uranium stockpile
that was in hexafluoride form, and the conversion of the rest to an
oxide form not suitable for further enrichment.'
True, but the oxides can be reconverted back to hexafluoride through a
straightforward process.
'Iran has capped its
stockpile of 5 percent enriched uranium.'
True, but it has not yet completed the conversion of excess
hexafluoride to oxide form.
'Iran has limited
its centrifuge production to those needed to replace damaged machines,
so [it] was not able to use the six-month JPOA period to stockpile
centrifuges.'
This is what Iran claims, but it has not been verified. In addition,
the JPOA includes no limitations on the manufacture of components for
centrifuges.
'Iran did not
construct additional enrichment facilities.'
This is not verified.
'Iran did not go
beyond its enrichment R&D practices that were in place at the start
of the JPOA.'
This is not verified. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has
not had access to Iranian centrifuge R&D that does not use or
require nuclear material.
'Iran did not
transfer fuel or heavy water to the Arak reactor site.'
True, but heavy water production likely continues at a plant close to
the reactor site.
'Iran did not build
a reconversion line, which is necessary to turn its stockpile of 20
percent uranium oxide back into a form suitable for further
enrichment.'
True, but only verified at locations to which the IAEA has access.
'Under the Joint
Plan of Action, Iran's enrichment facilities at Natanz and Fordow are
now subject to daily IAEA inspector access.'
True, but the daily access is just to each facility's cameras, not to
the whole facility.
'Iran also provided
managed access at centrifuge assembly workshops, centrifuge rotor
production workshops and facilities, and uranium mines and mills.'
True, but 'managed access' is not to the entire facilities. In
addition, the IAEA has not said what information it received, nor how
satisfied it was with this information." http://t.uani.com/1q9CTOP
Lee Smith in The
Weekly Standard: "Until Operation Protective Edge,
it was generally assumed that Gaza's tunnel system was simply a feeding
tube for a community of 1.8 million people. With both the Egyptian and
Israeli borders closed, as well as Israel's naval blockade, goods
entered Gaza mainly through the tunnels from Egypt. So did weapons,
including missiles made or designed by Iran, which, as the last two
weeks have shown, are capable of reaching any site in Israel. The
tunnel economy flourished under former Egyptian president and Hamas
sponsor Mohamed Morsi but has suffered under his successor, Abdel
Fattah al-Sisi, who has won praise from Jerusalem for shutting down as
many tunnels as he can find. However, there is another system in Gaza
as well, a network of attack tunnels that end not in Egypt but in
Israel, where over the last two weeks Hamas commandos have attempted
several terrorist operations... 'Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh said that
we are not under siege, we are imposing a siege,' says retired IDF
officer Jonathan Halevi, now a senior researcher at the Jerusalem
Center for Public Affairs. 'What he meant was that [Hamas] can use
tunnels as a strategic weapon. If you multiply tunnels, you can use
them to send hundreds of fighters into Israel and create havoc, totally
under cover. According to Hamas, the tunnels have changed the balance
of power.' Israeli officials have expressed amazement at the extent of
the tunnel network. 'Food, accommodations, storage, resupply,' one
astonished official told reporters last week. 'Beneath Gaza,' he
explained, there's 'another terror city.' That is, Hamas's tunnel
network is evidence of a military doctrine, both a countermeasure to
Israel's clear air superiority and an offensive capability that
threatens to take ground combat inside Israel itself, targeting
villages, cities, and civilians as well as soldiers. Israel perhaps
should not have been surprised to discover the size and seriousness of
Hamas's tunnel network because they've seen something similar before, in
the aftermath of the 2006 war with Hezbollah. And indeed it was Iran's
long arm in Lebanon that helped build Hamas's tunnels. 'The spiritual
father of Hamas's tunnel system is Imad Mughniyeh,' says Shimon
Shapira, a Hezbollah expert and senior research associate at the
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. Mughniyeh, assassinated in 2008 in
an operation believed to have been conducted by the Israelis, is
credited with directing Hezbollah's 2006 war. He was the head of the
organization's external operations unit and responsible for countless
terrorist attacks. He also served as liaison to the top Iranian
leadership as well as other Iranian allies and assets, including Hamas.
'Mughniyeh sent instructors to Gaza and took Hamas members to Iran,'
Shapira explains. While Hamas and Hezbollah's tunnel technology,
equipment, and funding are mostly Iranian, the knowledge and the
doctrine date back to the earliest days of the Cold War. 'The North
Koreans are the leading tunnel experts in the world,' says North Korea
expert Bruce Bechtol. They learned as a matter of necessity. 'The U.S.
Air Force basically exhausted its target list after the first eight
months of the Korean War,' Bechtol explains. 'All the North Korean
cities were turned to rubble, so they got good at building large
tunnels and bunkers, some of them 10 or 11 square miles. In effect, the
North Koreans moved their cities underground for three years, with
hundreds of thousands of people living down there.' ... Their top
customer is the Islamic Republic of Iran. The North Koreans, Bechtol
says, have helped build some of the Iranians' underground nuclear
weapons facilities, as well as Hezbollah's underground network. 'They
built it in 2003-04, coming into Lebanon disguised as houseboys serving
the Iranians. Maybe nobody asked, hey, how come these houseboys are
speaking Korean?' The significance of the tunnels became clear in the
2006 war, as Bechtol explains. 'It lowered Hezbollah's casualty rate.
The Israelis wondered why the air force was not inflicting more damage
and it was because of those tunnels. It was the first time Hezbollah
was ever truly protected.' Last week a U.S. federal judge ruled that
North Korea and Iran were liable for providing support to Hezbollah
during the 2006 war. According to U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth,
North Korea and Iran assisted 'in building a massive network of
underground military installations, tunnels, bunkers, depots and
storage facilities in southern Lebanon.'" http://t.uani.com/1rKF1Ro
Maziar Bahari in
WashPost: "Last week, Washington Post
correspondent Jason Rezaian, his wife Yeganeh Salehi and two
photojournalists were arrested in Iran. Officials haven't explained why
a dozen armed men raided Rezaian's home; they haven't offered up very
much information at all. But I have a good sense of what Rezaian and
his colleagues may be going through. The same thing happened to me. I
was Newsweek's Iran correspondent from 1998 until 2009. During that
time, I was also making documentary films and television reports. As a
journalist working for a foreign news agency, I was always under
government supervision. I would get invited to "drink tea" in
one of Tehran's posh hotels (the ones that used to be an
Intercontinental or Hilton before the 1979 revolution, and are now called
Tulip and Independence). After a short mandatory chitchat about the
health of my family and the weather, I'd be subjected to hours of
interrogations by members of the Ministry of Intelligence. They'd offer
me tea (Iranian spooks love to keep a healthy bladder), then go through
everything I'd written or filmed in the prior months. They wanted me to
know whatever I was doing, I was being watched. If I did something
wrong, bad things could happen to me. They revoked my press card a few
times and asked me to continue reporting in neighboring Iraq, where I
worked with more freedom than Iran. I wrote about this for the British
magazine New Statesman in 2007. I was interrogated for that piece a few
days later. The Ministry of Intelligence agents were paranoid and
distrustful, but they had specific complaints about my work and some
knowledge of the international media. Unfortunately, they aren't the
only intelligence arm in Iran. Each agency has its own agents and
agenda, and in many cases conflicting agendas. Most are comprised of
the Intelligence Ministry's rejects, people who love to interrogate and
torture but don't know much about espionage." http://t.uani.com/1kiOpJX
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Eye on Iran is a periodic news summary from United Against
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email Press@UnitedAgainstNuclearIran.com
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