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Top Stories
CNN:
"Two Iranian Su-25 fighter jets fired on an unarmed U.S. Air Force
Predator drone in the Persian Gulf on November 1, the Pentagon disclosed
on Thursday. The incident, reported first by CNN, raised fresh concerns
within the Obama administration about Iranian military aggression in
crucial Gulf oil shipping lanes. The drone was on routine maritime
surveillance in international airspace east of Kuwait, 16 miles off the
coast of Iran, U.S. officials said. The Predator was not hit. 'Our
aircraft was never in Iranian airspace. It was always flying in
international air space. The recognized limit is 12 nautical miles off
the coast and we never entered the 12 nautical mile limit,' Pentagon
Press Secretary George Little said in responding to questions from
reporters after CNN reported the incident. Little said the United States
believed this was the first time an unmanned aircraft was shot at by the
Iranians in international waters over the Gulf. In December of
2011, a U.S. surveillance drone crashed in eastern Iran." http://t.uani.com/Tz0LLK
AFP:
"Washington unveiled sanctions Thursday against top Iranians and
national bodies, including the communications minister and the culture
ministry, hitting back for media and Internet censorship. The move
against Communications Minister Reza Taghipour came after he was blamed
for ordering the jamming of international satellite TV broadcasts and
restricting Internet access, a State Department official said. The United
States was determined to stop the 'Iranian government from creating an
electronic curtain to cut Iranian citizens off from the rest of the
world,' said State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland. Four
individuals and five bodies were placed under sanctions by both the State
Department and the US Treasury for 'censorship or other activities that prohibit,
limit or penalize freedom of expression or assembly by citizens of Iran.'
They were also accused of limiting 'access to print or broadcast media,
including by jamming international satellite broadcasts into Iran,'
Nuland said in a statement, denouncing the 'regime's insidious actions.'
... Other newly rolled out sanctions focused on individuals designated
for sponsoring terrorism, in particular the Kata'ib Hezbollah group
responsible for violent attacks in Iraq. A third tranche of the
designations targeted the support network of the Iranian Revolutionary
Guards Corps -- including the National Iranian Oil Company, which is
already under sanctions, and two Tehran universities." http://t.uani.com/SR39ir
Reuters:
"The U.N. nuclear agency said it would hold a new round of talks
with Iran on its atomic program next month, in the latest push to resolve
a dispute that has raised fears of war in the Middle East... The United
Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said it hoped the
talks in Tehran would produce an agreement that would allow it to resume
a stalled investigation into possible military aspects of Iran's nuclear
program... 'The IAEA and Iran have agreed to hold further talks on 13
December in Tehran,' agency spokeswoman Gill Tudor said. 'The aim is to
conclude the structured approach to resolving outstanding issues related
to Iran's nuclear program,' she said in response to a question." http://t.uani.com/Tx1o6g
Nuclear
Program
CNN: "Iran
defended its right to 'confront' incursions into its territory after the
Pentagon said two Iranian jets fired on an unmanned U.S. Air Force drone
last week. 'The armed forces will respond decisively to any act of
transgression,' Maj. Gen. Seyed Masoud Jazaeri said Friday, according to
the semi-official Fars News Agency. 'If any foreign planes try to enter
our country's space, our armed forces will confront it,' he was quoted as
saying. 'The defenders of the Islamic republic will give a decisive response
to navy air, land or naval attacks.' Jazaeri neither confirmed nor denied
the reports of the November 1 incident. The United States said the firing
happened over international waters. It triggered a formal warning by the
United States to Iran through diplomatic channels." http://t.uani.com/Q1KBxB
Reuters:
"Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Thursday the age of
nuclear deterrence was long gone and any country still stockpiling
nuclear weapons was 'mentally retarded'. He again denied Iran was trying
to develop nuclear weapons, a day after the re-election victory of U.S.
President Barack Obama, for whom Tehran's disputed nuclear programme will
be one of the thornier foreign policy issues of his second term. 'The
period and era of using nuclear weapons is over ... Nuclear bombs are not
anymore helpful and those who are stockpiling nuclear weapons,
politically they are backward, and they are mentally retarded,'
Ahmadinejad told reporters at a forum to promote democracy on the
Indonesian island of Bali. 'The Iranian nation is not seeking an atomic
bomb, nor do they need to build an atomic bomb ... For defending
ourselves we do not need a nuclear weapon,' said Ahmadinejad. He added
that representatives of any government or agency could visit the Islamic
Republic to verify that it was not developing nuclear weapons." http://t.uani.com/TyYTCC
WSJ:
"Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said the threat of attack by
the U.S. over its nuclear program was unfounded and unfair, and said his
country could withstand international sanctions. The Iranian leader said
during an annual gathering of heads of state on the island of Bali that
other nations in the region around Iran had developed nuclear arsenals
and weren't threatened with attack. 'The United States unconditionally
supports some of them in the region, so clearly it isn't about nuclear
bombs while they know for themselves that the Iranian people and nation
hasn't begun an atomic bomb nor do they need to build one,' Mr.
Ahmadinejad told a news conference on Thursday. 'Why does the Iranian
nation need an atomic bomb?'" http://t.uani.com/Tx1bjl
AP:
"Israel's defense minister has said that Iran has slowed the
timetable for enriching enough uranium to build nuclear weapons, implying
that Israel would have more time to decide whether to strike Iran's
enrichment facilities. 'They essentially delayed their arrival at the red
line by eight months,' said Ehud Barak, adding it was not clear why Iran
stepped back. Barak's time frame is in line with one Israeli Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made in September when he spoke at the U.N.
General Assembly. There, Netanyahu said the world has until next summer
at the latest to stop Iran before it can build a nuclear bomb." http://t.uani.com/Xpxd8i
Sanctions
AP:
"Lawmakers are working on a set of new and unprecedented Iran
sanctions that could prevent the Islamic republic from doing business
with most of the world until it agrees to international constraints on
its nuclear program, officials say. The bipartisan financial and trade
restrictions amount to a 'complete sanctions regime' against Tehran,
according to one congressional aide involved in the process. But it could
put the Obama administration in a difficult position with allies who are
still trading with Iran, but whom the U.S. needs if it is to secure a
peaceful solution to the Iranian nuclear standoff. On Thursday, in its
first foreign policy announcement since the president's re-election, the
administration targeted four Iranian officials and five organizations
with sanctions for jamming satellite broadcasts and blocking Internet
access for Iranian citizens. But the measures that Sen. Mark Kirk,
R-Ill., and Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., want to attach to a defense
bill would be far more sweeping. They would target everything from
Iranian assets overseas to all foreign goods that the country imports,
building on the tough sanctions package against Tehran's oil industry
that the two lawmakers pushed through earlier this year, congressional
aides and people involved in the process said. Those earlier measures
already have cut Iran's petroleum exports in half and hobbled its
economy." http://t.uani.com/UdvrRd
Human Rights
Iran Human Rights:
"Seven prisoners were hanged in Shiraz (southern Iran) today,
reported Iranian state media. According to official reports, one prisoner
was also hanged in Mashhad Prison (northwestern Iran) yesterday. 15 other
prisoners were hanged in three Iranian cities yesterday. In total, 23
prisoners have been executed since yesterday, according to official
Iranian sources. Nine of the executions were carried out in public. Seven
prisoners were hanged in Shiraz today- Five of them hanged in public:
Fars, the state-run Iranian news agency reported that five prisoners were
hanged publicly in the city of Shiraz today. Two other prisoners were
reportedly hanged in Adelabad prison in Shiraz early this morning. All
seven prisoners were convicted of drug-related charges." http://t.uani.com/TPDuY0
Reuters:
"An Iranian man who received death threats due to his
anti-government blog died in custody, possibly as a result of torture,
Amnesty International said on Thursday. The human rights group and
European governments urged Tehran to investigate the death of Sattar
Beheshti, 35, who was arrested in his home southwest of the capital on
October 28 and whose body was handed back to his family on Wednesday.
'Fears that Sattar Beheshti died as a result of torture in an Iranian
detention facility, after apparently lodging a complaint about torture
are very plausible, given Iran's track record when it comes to deaths in
custody,' Amnesty said." http://t.uani.com/Tx2lLS
Domestic
Politics
AFP:
"The jailed son of Iran's former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani
has been accused of spying, the Fars news agency reported on Thursday.
Quoting an unnamed informed source, the agency said that Mehdi Hashemi
has been accused 'of spying and of having provided sensitive information
to foreigners.' Rafsanjani, who was arrested in late September, was also
accused of seeking to disrupt the economy and corruption linked to oil
contracts signed during his father's presidency between 1989 and 1997. He
is also accused of having undermined national security during protests
that broke out after the disputed 2008 re-election of current President
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Mehdi Hashemi was arrested in late September upon
his return to the Islamic republic from Britain, where he had lived for
the past three years. Tehran had issued an arrest warrant for him in
2010. Just days prior to his arrest his sister, Faezeh Hashemi, was also
detained and jailed for 'propaganda against the regime' in line with a
court decision earlier this year sentencing her to six months in
jail." http://t.uani.com/XpsmUt
Opinion &
Analysis
David Makovsky in
FP: "In the wake of U.S. President Barack Obama's
reelection victory, some have suggested that he will pursue a feud
against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, given the two leaders'
disagreements over how to pursue peace with the Palestinians and deal with
the Iranian nuclear threat. There is no denying that the relationship
between the two leaders has been rocky. Yes, Obama believed Netanyahu had
wrongly lectured him about borders in front of the media in the Oval
Office in May 2011. Netanyahu has his own grievances: He was upset that
he could not get a September meeting with the president to discuss Iran,
for instance. As Israeli Interior Minister Eli Yishai put it the day
after the U.S. election, 'It seems like it is not such a good morning for
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.' While it is safe to assume Netanyahu
personally preferred Mitt Romney, he in fact did not endorse Obama's
Republican challenger -- despite every Israeli reporter's efforts to
entice him into doing so. As one Netanyahu aide put it privately, when it
comes to the U.S. election, 'our room to maneuver on this issue has the
width of dental floss.' But at the end of the day, a settling of scores
between Obama and Netanyahu is unlikely. It is counterproductive for the
two leaders to focus their energies on the past when they are confronted
by an array of challenges that will require them to work together.
Obama's cerebral style toward foreign leaders made Israelis skeptical of
him, in part because it was a departure from the bear-hug style of
President Bill Clinton. But it is also one reason the United States and
Israel will now avoid a public feud. As Dan Shapiro, Obama's former top
White House aide and current U.S. ambassador to Israel, told a panel in
Tel Aviv on Nov. 7, 'The president is a strategic thinker; his policies
are not governed by emotion.' He termed talks of Obama taking revenge
against Netanyahu 'ridiculous.' Too much is at stake for both countries
to let old grudges dictate policy. It is no secret that the Obama
administration views a new diplomatic initiative toward Tehran as
integral to its sanctions policy. The potent international sanctions
currently in place, combined with diplomacy, are the world's one hope of
solving the Iran nuclear crisis peacefully. Nobody can guarantee that
Iran will back off from its program, but a U.S.-led offer is still
inevitable to test that proposition. And Israel knows this. Contrary to
perception, Netanyahu would also like to see a peaceful end to the crisis
-- there is no Gen. Curtis LeMay figure in the Israeli government out to
firebomb Iran. Whether it is in the format of bilateral U.S.-Iran talks
or the P5+1 (the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council plus
Germany), the United States will want Israel on board with U.S. diplomatic
efforts to avoid the prospect of an Israeli strike. This does not give
Netanyahu any kind of veto over the U.S. offer to Iran, but it is hard to
imagine that the United States would not welcome Israel's thoughts to
ensure that the two countries do not act at cross-purposes." http://t.uani.com/SV8dDh
Access:
"Access has repeatedly seen governments crack down on dissent by
using telecoms to surveil users and filter content. Iran epitomizes this
trend, as its connected, tech-savvy population runs up against a
government that relies on advanced surveillance and censorship methods to
stifle free expression. One foreign telecom operating there, MTN, has
faced international criticism and investigations over reports of its role
in the harassment of government critics and participation in corrupt
business practices. As this brief details, MTN has unsettled obligations
to the Iranian public. To date, MTN has operated there without regard to
international norms on accountability and transparency and respect for
human rights, exposing the company to the imminent threat of
international sanctions that would likely limit their operations. The
company must urgently respond to this crisis through presenting a
principled and comprehensive set of commitments to rule of law,
accountability and transparency, which protect both the rights of users,
as well as the critically important progress of providing
widely-available access to modern communications services to the Iranian
public. Against the threat of further damage to the company's reputation,
and the substantial risk of legal repercussions, MTN must sincerely
commit to a human rights and rule of law framework, predicated on a set
of basic principles set out in this brief." http://t.uani.com/Zdafja
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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
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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
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interests as well as the collective goal of advancing an Iran free of
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