We have moved!

DoctorZin:

We have moved to a new website: http://regimechangeiran.com.

Our new RSS Feed is located at: http://regimechangeiniran.com/index.xml

DoctorZin

Iran, Russia Sign Deal to Open Nuclear Plant

Ladane Nasseri, Bloomberg:

Iran's first nuclear power plant, a Russian-built project, will begin operating by September 2007, according to an agreement between the two countries.

The accord involving the facility near the southern city of Bushehr was announced today on Iranian state-run television after talks in Moscow between the head of the Iranian Atomic Energy Organization, Qolam-Reza Aqazadeh, his Russian counterpart, Sergei Kiriyenko, and Russian Security Council chief Igor Ivanov. Russia also will provide enriched uranium to fuel the plant before its completion.

``Russia guaranteed that it will complete the plant by September and deliver the nuclear fuel to Iran in March,'' Mohammad Saeedi, deputy head of the Iranian agency, said in a television interview. READ MORE

The power station is part of Iran's nuclear program, which the U.S. and its allies accuse of being a cover for the development of weapons. Iran failed to meet the United Nations Security Council's Aug. 31 deadline to suspend uranium enrichment. Russia is among the council's five permanent members. A push for UN sanctions against Iran will begin early next month if the Islamic Republic maintains its stance.

Diplomatic efforts aimed at getting Iran to end production of the nuclear fuel have included a proposal for Iran's uranium to be enriched on Russian soil and then shipped to Iran. Enriched uranium can also be used in a nuclear weapon.

Iranian officials who are involved in talks with European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana won't discuss the possibility of freezing uranium enrichment, an unidentified official from Iran's nuclear agency was cited as saying today by Agence France-Presse after the announcement of the Bushehr deal. The proposal was for a three-month freeze, AFP said.

Iran has so far paid Russia $1 billion to build the plant, capable of generating about 1,000 megawatts of electricity. Iran had urged Russia to complete construction of the nuclear plant following numerous delays. Iran plans to build 20 nuclear power plants with a combined capacity of 20,000 megawatts.

To contact the reporter on this story: Ladane Nasseri in Tehran at lnasseri@bloomberg.net.

Iran Close to Nuclear Suspension

Bill Gertz, The Washington Times:

Iran is close to an agreement that would include a suspension of uranium enrichment but wants the deal to include a provision that the temporary halt be kept secret, according to Bush administration officials. Javier Solana, the European Union's foreign policy chief, has been working with Iranian nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani on the enrichment-suspension deal that could be completed this week.

Disclosure of talks on the secret element of the arrangement comes as Mr. Solana and Mr. Larijani are set to meet today or tomorrow in Europe when the deal could be completed, said officials opposed to the deal, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

According to the officials, the suspension of uranium enrichment by Iran would be for 90 days, so additional talks could be held with several European nations. READ MORE

Many U.S. officials are opposing the agreement as a further concession to Iran, which continues to defy a United Nations' call for a complete halt to uranium enrichment. A Security Council resolution had given Iran until Aug. 31 to stop its enrichment program or face the imposition of international sanctions. Tehran ignored the deadline, but diplomacy has continued.

Some in the State Department are supporting the deal, which they view as a step toward achieving a complete halt to uranium enrichment.

However, other officials said that keeping any suspension secret would be difficult and that it would drag the United States into further negotiations with Iran.

Iran is seeking to continue talks on its nuclear program while attempting to avoid the imposition of sanctions, something the Bush administration favors but that several other key states, including Russia, oppose.

The United States would then be faced with the difficult position of negotiating against the 90-day deadline, a position that favors Iran.

"The Iranians are very good negotiators," said one official close to the issue.

The officials opposed to the deal want any agreement on uranium suspension to be announced publicly.

Also, any suspension of enrichment would require International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspections to verify that work has stopped at Iranian facilities. The inspections would likely be disclosed, exposing any secret arrangement with Iran on suspension.

Failing to publicly announce the suspension also would be a face-saving measure for the Iranian government.

Officials said President Bush is not happy with the secrecy demand, although he continues to support the use of diplomacy to solve the problem.

Asked about the pending deal, State Department spokesman Tom Casey said in an e-mail, "The terms laid out by the Security Council are clear: Iran needs to suspend its uranium enrichment activities, and it needs to do so in a verifiable way. If it does, we can start negotiations. If it doesn't, we move to sanctions. It is a clear and unambiguous standard."

In New York yesterday, Iran's Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said that talks between European and Iranian officials were on track and that a negotiated settlement is possible.

"I think very soon they will have the next round of discussions," Mr. Mottaki told the Associated Press, noting that "there was good connection between the two sides" after Iran's Aug. 22 response to a package of incentives offered by six nations -- the United States, Britain, France, Germany, China and Russia -- for a halt in enrichment efforts.

A recent report by the IAEA said that as late as Aug. 24, Iran had continued to feed uranium hexafluoride into its 164-centrifuge cascade, which is used to enrich uranium. The report also said that Iran is building additional facilities, including a second 164-centrifuge cascade and that work on a plutonium-based heavy-water reactor is continuing.

The Bush administration is convinced that Iran's nuclear program is intended to develop weapons, contrary to repeated statements from Iranian leaders that the program is aimed at producing electrical power for civilian use.

The Bush administration wants to impose internationally approved economic sanctions on Iran in the next several weeks, based on the IAEA report and Iran's missing the deadline to halt enrichment.

'An Economic Coalition of the Willing'

Ilan Berman, The Wall Street Journal:

By now, it has become all too clear that when it comes to the Iranian nuclear crisis, the ball is squarely in Washington's court.

Aug. 31 has come and gone, and with it the international deadline for Tehran to halt its uranium enrichment. Iran's ayatollahs, however, have shown no signs of curbing their atomic ambitions. "The Iranian nation will not accept for one moment any bullying, invasion and violation of its rights," Iran's radical president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has defiantly told his supporters. In response, the Bush administration has signaled its commitment to seeking punitive measures against the Islamic Republic, sanctions chief among them. In practice, however, Washington has not yet seriously tackled the economic dimension of the current crisis -- or explored the financial levers by which Iran can be confronted.

This amounts to a critical oversight, because Iran's economy is deeply susceptible to foreign pressure on at least three fronts. All that is necessary is the proper political will to exploit these weaknesses. READ MORE

Iran's first vulnerability is its dependence on foreign investment.

Today, though a bona fide energy superpower that produces some 3.9 million barrels of oil daily, the Islamic Republic still requires sustained international engagement. Studies say that the regime in Tehran currently needs $1 billion a year to maintain current oil output levels, and $1.5 billion to increase them -- and that without it, Iran could quickly become a net energy importer. To be sure, this sum is just a pittance compared to the dozens of billions of dollars that Iran has reaped over the past several years, thanks to the high price of world oil (as much as $50 billion as of March 2006). But, by complicating the flow of foreign investment into Iran, the U.S. and its allies can force the regime to draw down its hard-currency reserves, reducing the resources that it has available to forge ahead with its nuclear program -- or to fund radicalism in the region.

Iran's second weakness stems from its centralized economic hierarchy.

For all of its lip service to fiscal reforms and grass-roots prosperity, the vast majority of the regime's wealth remains concentrated in the hands of a very small number of people. The extended family of former Iranian president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, which practically controls copper mining in Iran, the regime's lucrative pistachio trade, and a number of profitable industrial and export-import businesses, is just one example. Another group of key economic players is the Islamic Republic's sprawling charitable foundations, known as bonyads, which control over 30% of Iran's national GDP (and as much as two-thirds of the country's non-oil GDP). By impeding their access to global markets and curtailing their capacity to engage in commerce, the international community can immediately capture the attention of these key decision-makers.

Far and away the biggest chink in Iran's economic armor, however, is its reliance on foreign gasoline. Today, Iran's antiquated, socialist economy -- where a gallon of gas still sells for roughly 40 cents -- has become a major Achilles' heel. Iran now consumes over 64.5 million liters of gasoline a day, with close to 40% coming from foreign sources (among them India, France, Turkey and the Gulf states). This energy habit is expensive; Iran will spend over $3 billion -- and perhaps as much as $8 billion -- on gasoline imports this year alone. And, with just a 45-day domestic supply available, steady supplies from abroad are vital to the continued functioning of the regime. All of which suggests that a comprehensive gas embargo on the Islamic Republic could quickly wreak havoc on Iran's industrial sectors -- and, potentially, galvanize serious social unrest on the Iranian street as well.

But the West's window of opportunity to implement such measures is rapidly closing. Already, Iran has begun to make serious economic countermoves, transferring financial assets from Europe to China and Southeast Asia and initiating a large-scale privatization of governmental funds. Most significant of all, the Iranian regime recently approved a new fiscal budget that calls for a halt to gasoline imports and the institution of gasoline rationing beginning this fall. The aim of these efforts is crystal clear: to proactively limit potential economic leverage over its behavior.

Sadly, international diplomacy so far has played directly into Iran's hands. In the best case, serious U.N. Security Council action will still take weeks or months to materialize, buying Iran's ayatollahs valuable time to forge ahead with their nuclear program. What's more, if and when they do eventually emerge, U.N. sanctions are guaranteed to be limited in scope, so as not to offend two of Iran's chief strategic partners, Russia and China. As such, they are not likely to offend Iran's ayatollahs much either.

By hitching itself to this flawed policy, the Bush administration is courting disaster. Instead of relying on the United Nations, the White House should be thinking creatively about another sort of grouping -- an economic "coalition of the willing" capable of implementing the specific financial levers that are most likely to alter Iranian behavior, and of doing so without further delay.

The stakes could not be any higher. If the U.S. and its international allies fail to promptly use their existing economic leverage to curb Iran's nuclear ambitions, they will soon have just two choices: to acquiesce to the emergence of an atomic Iran, or to use military force to prevent it from happening.

Mr. Berman is vice president for policy at the American Foreign Policy Council, and the author of "Tehran Rising: Iran's Challenge to the United States" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2005).

Tuesday's Daily Briefing on Iran

DoctorZin reports, 9.26.2oo6

"Islam is not compatible with democracy.” - The next Supreme Leader?

• The New York Times reported concern that Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi, is trying to expand his already growing power by packing the "assembly of experts" (which has the power to elect the Supreme Leader) with his loyalists. He said: “Democracy means if the people want something that is against God’s will, then they should forget about God and religion.”
  

BBC radio's pro-Islamic Republic campaign of misinformation.

• Ardeshir Dolat reported that the BBC radio 4 in Britain has started a campaign of misinformation on Iran. Its report ‘Uncovering Iran’ appears designed to convince the British public that Iran respects human rights, democratic principles and values. Listen to the report.

But BBC radio fails to "uncover" reports like these, today:

• Amnesty International published an Urgent Action report on the imminent execution in Iran of Kobra Rahmanpour.
• Amnesty International also published an Urgent Action report on their fear for the safety, medical concern and torture of student activist Ahmad Batebi.
• Amnesty International said it is greatly concerned by new arrests and detentions in Iran targeting human rights activists, minority community activists and others peacefully exercising their rights to freedom of expression and association.
• International Federation of Journalists reported that it is concerned by news that the Islamic Republic is intimidating journalists in Iran who travel overseas by alleging they are engaged in spying.
• Iran Press News reported that Iranians gathered at the Tehran U.N. offices to protest imminent execution of 3 women by the regime where the guards attacked protestors and brutally battered them.
• Iran Press News reported that the human-rights-violating Islamic regime has once again issued the death sentences of seven residents of the province of Sistan-Baluchestan.
  Iran Press News reported that Keyvan Ansari, former secretary of the Amir Kabir University student association was arrested.
• Iran Press News reported that Pourya Nejad-Veysi, a corruption busting journalist and segment producer the Islamic Republic’s own television news reports has been arrested. A revolutionary court sentenced him with the high crime of “taking action against the security of the regime.”
• Iran Press News reported that the organization for the defense of human rights in the province of Kurdistan confirmed the prison sentence and flogging for their organization’s member and political activist, Loghmon Mehri.
• Iran Focus reported that State Security Forces (SSF) in the western city of Hamedan announced that they would crack down on people eating in public during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, forcing offenders to dig graves.
• Iran Press News reported that the Islamic Republic’s general attorney, described the murders of the two young activists and political prisoners Akbar Mohammadi and Valiollah Fayz-Mehdavi, as appropriate, goes on to specify: “Not only is this a warning, it should be absolutely construed as a threat [to all Iranians opposing the Islamic regime]."

Russian increasing its ties with Iran.

• The Jerusalem Post reported that the chief of Iran's Atomic Organization said: "Iran will complete the establishment of its nuclear power station at Bushehr in half a year."
• Iran Press News reported that Russian media announced that the Islamic Republic intends to purchase yet another five passenger planes from Russia.
• MosNews reported that Russia has offered to sell a range of surface-to-air missile systems to protect Iran’s nuclear facilities.
  

Now Eqypt and Turkey want nuclear programs.

• The Times Online reported that Egypt and Turkey are pressing ahead with plans to join the nuclear club, amid fears that Iran’s atomic program could trigger a nuclear race across the Middle East.

Condi: No gas embargo on Iran.

• The Washington Post reported that U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said she did not support a gasoline embargo on Iran as a way of punishing Tehran.

Ledeen: Religion now dominates the world debate and the west doesn't get it.

• Michael Ledeen, The National Review Online noted that that religion — not so long ago pronounced irrelevant by most everyone in proper society — now dominates the global debate. Even a Communist like Hugo Chavez used religious terms to denounce W., perhaps because he is now in a tag team with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who speaks for a theocracy. And now the Pope...
  

Here are a few other news items you may have missed.

• Paul Gigot, The Wall Street Journal interviewed Reza Pahlavi on the growing showdown with Iran. He said: "The minute [the Islamic Republic] stand back from their aggressive position on the nuclear issue and what have you, they will instantly lose credibility and support within their own militia, which is really the basic foundation and power base of this regime."
• Reuters reported that Israel is debating taking the veil off of its nuclear weapons program in order to deter Iran from the use of nuclear weapons against it.
• Iran Focus reported that Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad sacked his Minister of Welfare and Social Security, marking the first time the radical president has ousted a cabinet member.
• IranMania reported that some 800,000 foreigners are working in Iran illegally.
• Iran Press News reported that Islamic Republic organizations actively financed the Lebanese Hezbollah.
• You Tube featured a video of a demonstration at Fox New LA to save Nazanin & Kobra from execution.

Tags: iran, news, iraq, nuclear, military, UN, Ahmadinejad,