Iran Newsclips, January 12, 2015
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Samantha Power urges GOP Congress not to pursue Iran sanctions, Politico
New Republican Majority Wants A Say On Obama's Iran Talks, RFE/RL
Charges against Washington Post journalist imprisoned in Iran remain a mystery, Washington Post
U.S., Iran eye progress in next round of nuclear talks: Kerry, Reuters
Kerry: Framework of Iran Nuclear Agreement Could Come by March, Wall Street Journal
Iran presents enrichment needs ahead of talks, Al-Monitor
Iran says to explore with U.S. ways to speed up nuclear talks, Reuters
Singh: Cuba, Iran–and Where Engagement Falls Short, Wall Street Journal
Experts cast doubt on Spiegel claim of Syrian nuclear facility, Christian Science Monitor
Iran eclipses US as Iraq's ally in fight against militants, AP
ran vows to help Venezuela to stem oil price fall, Reuters
Sanctions Cost $100 Billion in Oil Revenues, Uskowi on Iran via IRNA
Iran’s economy needs a speedy nuclear deal, Al Arabiya
Parliament Session Descends Into Chaos Over Criticism Of House Arrests, RFE/RL
Rouhani invokes people power to end sniping by Iranian rivals, Bloomberg
Samantha Power urges GOP Congress not to pursue Iran sanctions, Politico, January 12, 2015
“Some members of Congress believe that the time has come to ratchet up sanctions on Iran. They argue that this is the most effective way to achieve the goal of getting Iran to give up its nuclear program. We in the administration believe that, at this time, increasing sanctions would dramatically undermine our efforts to reach this shared goal,” said Power on Monday morning, the first senior Obama administration official to appear with McConnell since he became majority leader last week.
New Republican Majority Wants A Say On Obama's Iran Talks, RFE/RL, January 11, 2015
"We have long believed that Congress should not consider any new sanctions while negotiations are under way, in order to give our negotiators the time and space they need to fully test the current diplomatic opportunity," a senior administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told RFE/RL. "New sanctions threaten the diplomatic process currently under way." Senator Tim Kaine, a Democrat from Virginia said European diplomats involved in the negotiations have also expressed concern about potential new sanctions in a recent meeting.
Charges against Washington Post journalist imprisoned in Iran remain a mystery, Washington Post, January 10, 2015
Five weeks after being charged in a Tehran court, Jason Rezaian, the Washington Post journalist imprisoned in Iran, still does not know the exact nature of the allegations against him and remains unable to speak to a lawyer, the reporter’s family said after visiting him twice last month. In what appears to be the longest imprisonment for a Western journalist in Iran, Rezaian, who has been the newspaper’s Iran bureau chief since 2012, has been held at Tehran’s Evin prison for more than 170 days. Weeks after an initial court date, he is aware only that the five separate charges against him relate to alleged “activities outside the bounds of journalism,” said his mother, Mary Breme Rezaian, and his brother, Ali Rezaian.
U.S., Iran eye progress in next round of nuclear talks: Kerry, Reuters, January 12, 2015
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said on Monday that he and his Iranian counterpart would seek at their meeting on Wednesday to lay the ground for negotiations on Tehran's nuclear program to make greater progress. … "The meeting is calculated to take stock, number one, and to provide direction to our teams, number two, and to hopefully be able to accelerate the process to make greater progress," Kerry told reporters on a visit to India.
Kerry: Framework of Iran Nuclear Agreement Could Come by March, Wall Street Journal, January 12, 2015
American and Iranian diplomats, following the holiday break, are re-engaging in direct negotiations this week over Tehran’s nuclear program with the aim of forging a framework agreement by March. The wildcard in the ongoing talks, said U.S. and European diplomats, is the impact of plunging oil prices on Iran’s diplomatic position. Tehran’s budget is dependent on oil sales for around 60% of its financing. Iranian officials have acknowledged that the fall of crude oil prices to below $50 per barrel from over $100 last summer is further eroding the country’s economic position.
Iran presents enrichment needs ahead of talks, Al-Monitor, January 12, 2015
During the Jan. 11 interview, Salehi said, “They had almost reached a complete deal. … Something happened [and] the opposing side suddenly pulled back.” Salehi viewed the P5+1's sudden retreat as connected to comments by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a few days later about the lack of a comprehensive deal and US Secretary of State John Kerry’s comments that Israel was informed of the talks. Salehi added, “They see their interests in the continuation of the crisis.” … Salehi said, “We voluntarily agreed to enrich up to 5%. We are discussing the volume of enrichment and production for one year. Right now we have 9,000 working centrifuges that produce 2.5 tons of uranium, while our needs are 30 tons per year, but they will not approve of this rate and say this is too much and that we should lower the number of centrifuges and convert the enriched uranium to 5%.”
Iran says to explore with U.S. ways to speed up nuclear talks, Reuters, January 11, 2015
Speaking at a Tehran news conference, Zarif said the purpose of the talks with Kerry "is to see if we can speed up and push the negotiations forward". "We will see how useful it will turn out. We are constantly gauging the benefits," he told reporters, referring to recent dialogue with the United States after decades of hostility dating back to Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution. Zarif said Iran-U.S. talks "will remain confined to the margins of the nuclear negotiations". "Talks with the U.S. take on a peculiar hue because we don't have diplomatic relations. With the others in P5+1, things follow their routine course."
Singh: Cuba, Iran–and Where Engagement Falls Short, Wall Street Journal, January 12, 2015
Iran does, however, offer a cautionary example of mistaking a tactic for a policy. The singular focus on engagement crowded out other tools that might otherwise have played a role in U.S. strategy. For example, the U.S. refrained from supporting mass protests in Iran in 2009 (an omission that Hillary Clinton, who was secretary of state at the time, recently said that she regretted), and discontinued efforts to bolster the credibility of U.S. military threats. Seeing engagement as an end rather than a means may also have driven the U.S. to accept negotiating outcomes previously considered unacceptable.
Experts cast doubt on Spiegel claim of Syrian nuclear facility, Christian Science Monitor, January 11, 2015
German news magazine Der Spiegel alleges that the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is operating a secret nuclear facility close to the Lebanese border. … Nuclear weapons experts have voiced doubts about the claim. Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Zarif dismissed the report as "ridiculous." … “The story is perplexing… so far we do not see anything that is distinctively nuclear,” says David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security which has conducted detailed satellite imagery analyses of suspected nuclear sites in the Middle East.
Iran eclipses US as Iraq's ally in fight against militants, AP, January 12, 2015
In the eyes of most Iraqis, their country's best ally in the war against the Islamic State group is not the United States and the coalition air campaign against the militants. It's Iran, which is credited with stopping the extremists' march on Baghdad. Shiite, non-Arab Iran has effectively taken charge of Iraq's defense against the Sunni radical group, meeting the Iraqi government's need for immediate help on the ground. Two to three Iranian military aircraft a day land at Baghdad airport, bringing in weapons and ammunition. Iran's most potent military force and best known general — the Revolutionary Guard's elite Quds Force and its commander Gen. Ghasem Soleimani — are organizing Iraqi forces and have become the de facto leaders of Iraqi Shiite militias that are the backbone of the fight. Iran carried out airstrikes to help push militants from an Iraqi province on its border.
Iran vows to help Venezuela to stem oil price fall, Reuters, January 10, 2015
Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei told Venezuela's president on Saturday he backed coordinated action between Tehran and Caracas to reverse a rapid fall in global oil prices which he described as a "political ploy hatched by common enemies". President Nicholas Maduro is on a tour of fellow OPEC countries to lobby for higher oil prices, which hit new lows last week below $50 per barrel, nearly half of what they were back in June 2014. The plunge in crude prices has pummeled the public finances of Iran and Venezuela, whose economies rely heavily on oil exports. "The strange drop in oil prices in such a short time is a political ploy and unrelated to the market. Our common enemies are using oil as a political ploy and they definitely have a role in this severe fall in prices," Khamenei said in talks with Maduro.
Sanctions Cost $100 Billion in Oil Revenues, Uskowi on Iran via IRNA, January 11, 2015
Secretary of Expediency Council Mohsen Rezaie said today that sanctions over the past three years caused $100 billion damage to Iranian oil revenues. He added that oil prices at $50 per barrel would cause another $100 billion loss in revenues over the next three years.
Iran’s economy needs a speedy nuclear deal, Al Arabiya, January 12, 2015
We have seen many hardliners move towards being in favor of finalizing a deal, which shows a level of pragmatism. But keeping up with the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s body language is another challenge for the negotiating teams. Recently, Ayatollah Khamenei showed some disappointment and mocked the negotiators saying: “I am not against the negotiations. Let them negotiate as long as they want!” Is there a contradiction in this statement? Or is he simply leaving little room to confront the government in case they don’t succeed in striking a good deal.
Parliament Session Descends Into Chaos Over Criticism Of House Arrests, RFE/RL, January 12, 2015
The parliament was...fully against sedition," lawmaker Seyed Mahmud Nabavian said of a January 11 session. Speaking to the hard-line Fars news agency the following day, Nabavian, a cleric, added that those who were calling for ending the house arrest of Iranian opposition figures seek another "sedition" -- borrowing the term that hard-liners in Iran use to refer to the antigovernment protests of 2009 and the opposition movement that was brutally suppressed. He was reacting to a Sunday speech by his conservative colleague, Ali Motahari, who in an open session of the parliament blasted the house arrest of Mir Hossein Musavi; Musavi's wife, Zahra Rahnavard; and reformist cleric Mehdi Karrubi.
Rouhani invokes people power to end sniping by Iranian rivals, Bloomberg, January 12, 2015
"This is a shot across the bows, to show that he has other resources to push his agenda," said Suzanne Maloney, senior analyst at Brookings Institute in Washington. With hardliners blocking his moves and plunging oil prices threatening his ability to deliver an economic revival, "the referendum talk reflects a degree of frustration on Rouhani's part," she said. The Paaydari is central among his targets. The grouping of conservative lawmakers, many close to former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has emerged as the major obstacle to much of Rouhani's agenda.