Eye on Iran: Iran Says Tested New Nuclear Enrichment Machine, May Irk West

Join UANI           Top Stories Reuters: "Iran has conducted 'mechanical' tests on a new, advanced machine to refine uranium, a senior official was quoted as saying on Wednesday, a disclosure that may annoy Western states pushing Tehran to scale back its nuclear programme. Iran's development of new centrifuges to replace its current breakdown-prone model is watched closely by Western officials. It could allow the Islamic Republic to amass potential atomic bomb material much faster... 'Manufacturing and production of new centrifuges is our right,' Iranian atomic energy chief Ali Akbar Salehi said. Iran's Fars news agency also quoted him as saying that Iran had tested its latest generation of centrifuge, the IR-8, but had not yet fed it with uranium gas. U.N. nuclear agency reports this year showed Iran testing four other models under development at an above-ground Natanz nuclear site - IR-2m, IR-4, IR-6 and IR-6s - with such gas. Iran had informed the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency in December that it planned to install a single IR-8. The IAEA said in May that it had observed a new 'casing' at the site, but that it was not yet connected... In a comment that Western officials may dispute, Salehi said that 'based on the Geneva agreement, research and development have no limit', Fars reported." http://t.uani.com/1lhDhgH WSJ: "The U.S. gave European satellite companies Intelsat SA and Eutelsat Communications SA another six months to win back Iran's business lost after lawmakers barred them from transmitting Iranian programming. Russian and Middle East rivals quickly picked up the transmission business, and while the revenue lost doesn't amount to a lot of money, the firms are eager to reclaim it. The Luxembourg and French satellite companies were forced to abandon their Iran businesses when authorities in the U.S. and Europe imposed bans in 2012 on working with state-run Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting. Earlier this month, Secretary of State John Kerry decided to extend by six months a waiver that allows satellite companies to go back to beaming Iranian state-run television to Iranians and Farsi language audiences abroad, according to a senior State Department official. The companies say they have had to push hard, and have regained some of the business they lost. Both companies said the amount of revenue lost was immaterial... After discussions between U.S. and Iranian diplomats last year produced a commitment from Iran to stop satellite jamming, Secretary Kerry waived the ban in February for a six-month trial period that ended this month." http://t.uani.com/1lhEiFm Reuters: "Russia said on Thursday the possibility of lifting sanctions on Iran had emerged thanks to international talks on Tehran's nuclear program and urged all countries involved to show political will to reach a deal. Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif will meet his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov in Moscow on Friday to discuss the negotiations with six world powers on a decade-old stand-off over the Islamic Republic's nuclear ambitions... Russia's Foreign Ministry said it still hoped a deal was possible no later than November. 'Despite the difficult course of the negotiating process, a possibility is emerging to satisfy in full all integral rights of Iran as a member state of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, including the right to enrich uranium and lifting the sanctions regime,' it said... A senior Western diplomat said there had been no narrowing of opinions on the issue of Iran's capacity to enrich uranium, an activity that can have both civilian and military uses. 'The core of the problem remains the number of centrifuges,' the diplomat said this week, referring to the machines uses to refine uranium. The six powers were ready to accept Iran having about 3,000-5,000 centrifuges but Tehran wants 'a figure that allows them to have an industrial capacity', the diplomat said." http://t.uani.com/1tZFvRi   Sanctions Relief Reuters: "India's Essar Oil imported 89 percent more Iranian oil in July compared with the previous month and shipments from Tehran jumped about 55.3 percent in the first seven months of this year, tanker arrival data made available to Reuters showed. The private refiner imported 98,700 barrels per day (bpd) of oil from Iran in July, about 182 percent higher than a year ago month when imports were cut sharply as insurance cover was not available for refiners processing Iranian oil. Essar shipped in 122,400 bpd of oil from Iran in January-July as it boosted purchase in the first quarter to help New Delhi achieve the targeted 220,000 bpd from the Gulf nation in the fiscal year ended March 31, 2014. India took about 46 percent more oil from Iran in January-July compared with a year earlier as its refiners continued to lift higher volumes while world powers and Tehran work to resolve a decade-old dispute over the OPEC nation's nuclear programme." http://t.uani.com/1vpUF6o Bloomberg: "Iran's petrochemical exports are still hampered by western sanctions even as an embargo on sales of the products are suspended during negotiations with global powers to limit the country's nuclear program, an official said. Transferring payments for sales and securing insurance for exports remain the biggest hindrances for petrochemical producers, Mohammad-Hasan Peyvandi, Vice President of Iran's National Petrochemical Company, said in an interview at his Tehran office yesterday. 'There are problems with exporting petrochemicals, but they relate to issues surrounding insurance,' Peyvandi said. 'It has gotten better. In the past three to four months, we've had between 4 to 6 percent' increases in production and exports." http://t.uani.com/1plrMpD Domestic Politics Al-Monitor: "An Iranian official tasked with fighting corruption has said that in the final three years of the administration of former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, $22 billion in exchange-rate abuses took place, with companies using access to government-subsidized exchange rates to to buy luxury items or resell goods at a free market rate and pocket the difference. 'Huge amounts of currency at a prime exchange rate was given to importers who, after investigation, it became clear that some of them are not real, meaning they had no foreign existence,' Kazem Palizdar, head of the office for coordinating the fight against economic corruption, told Industry and Development Monthly. Palizdar continued, 'They would get a large amount of currency at a prime rate to acquire essential goods. Not only did they not do this, but we realized that these import companies did not even exist. It's not clear where this currency went.' He continued, 'Other companies would get currency at a prime rate, meaning 1,226 toman per dollar, in order to import essential goods, but when the goods were imported they were sold at free market prices. These companies had 100% profits and sometimes more.' Palizdar went on to describe a third type of violation, in which companies would acquire dollars through the prime exchange rate and instead of buying essential goods, the purpose for which the prime rate is offered by the government, they would buy luxury items, such as high end cars." http://t.uani.com/1tNYaAC RFE/RL: "A senior Iranian hard-line cleric says high-speed mobile Internet and third generation mobile services are 'un-Islamic' and violate 'human and moral norms'. Grand Ayatollah Naser Makarem Shirazi said Iranian authorities should introduce measures that would prevent access to the 'negative features' of high-speed mobile Internet and 3G services before making them widely available. Makarem Shirazi, a Shi'ite source of emulation, said expanding Internet services hastily can result in the spread of corruption including the access of young people to anti-Islamic movies and other content." http://t.uani.com/1nIhJp2 Opinion & Analysis Emily Landau in INSS: "Indeed, the true problem with this latest round of negotiations is the loosening not only of the economic leverage that the US and EU built up in recent years, but the relaxed determination of the P5+1 to uphold its original goal of having Iran back away from its military nuclear ambitions. Even though throughout the past seven months of negotiations the US team has emphasized that nothing will be resolved until everything is resolved, reality on the ground challenges that principle. What we see happening is that any indication of progress is played up and hailed, while the overwhelming lack of Iranian cooperation is relatively muted. Clearly, the negotiators want to focus on the progress, and would rather not see the problems - a well-known dynamic that has characterized and challenged the effectiveness of negotiations with Iran ever since the EU-3 took the lead in 2003. The Interim Deal of November 2013, although only meant to stop the clock and provide time for the real negotiation on a comprehensive deal, is now hailed as a 'landmark deal.' The P5+1 are no longer demanding that Iran back away from its military ambitions; they are not even pressing for the weaponization aspects to be confronted head-on and quickly. Rather, they are demonstrating a relatively lax attitude on that front, while quietly shifting the goal of the negotiation from an Iranian strategic U-turn in the nuclear realm to an attempt to ensure that enough time - 6 months, a year, or maybe 18 months - remains between the current situation and the possibility for Iran to break out to a bomb. This assumes amazing verification capabilities that are far from given. Indeed, the problematic (albeit implicit) message accompanying the current focus on breakout time is that Iran is quite likely to cheat on the deal. Ironically, a decade of negotiations with Iran has apparently come to this. When in characterizing the talks P5+1 negotiators choose to focus on (minor) 'progress' over (major) 'problems,' they display ongoing justification for a continuation of negotiations, although they are clearly not moving toward a good deal. The minimal (insignificant) progress makes them resist declaring negotiations a failure, even as they prove unable to achieve the deal they have been striving for since 2003. A likely outcome at this point is a bad nuclear deal with Iran, which will not only keep Iran's quick breakout capability intact, but will legitimize it by virtue of a concluded deal." http://t.uani.com/1vpX0OI 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.