UANI

According to Iranian press, the Iranian representative to the IAEA said, "U.S. and Western countries have to cope with new realities: that Iran is the master of nuclear enrichment technology and at the same time Iran is cooperating with the agency". Read More

The Associated Press reported that Iranian President Ahmadinejad made comments to the press "saying that the Jewish state won't survive in any form. Speaking to reporters on Thursday, the hard-line leader smirked at a former mantra of the Israeli right of a 'Greater' Israel that would include occupied Palestinian territories. The idea has since been abandoned, with Israeli consensus now that there will be a Palestinian state alongside Israel." Read More

The Christian Science Monitor wrote about the upcoming UN General Assembly saying, "There is growing resignation among some Western diplomats, for example, that the next wave of action against Iran is likely to come from like-minded Western countries - not anytime soon from additional council sanctions.... US officials and many diplomatic experts say they realize a new Russia has arrived on the international stage, one set on ushering in a multipolar world. At the same time, they recognize that China also favors a less Westcentric and US-dominated international system." Read More

Reuters reported that the US is filing charges against a group of foreign individuals and companies for "illegally obtaining U.S. dual-use and military goods for Iran". "The 16 foreign-based defendants are charged with conspiracy and violations involving the Iran Trade Embargo, the Iranian Transactions Regulations, the Export Administration Regulations and the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. U.S.-origin goods diverted to Iran through the network included some subject to U.S. controls for missile technology, national security and anti-terrorism reasons, the Commerce Department said." Read More

According to Reuters, an Iranian official warned the West that Iranian missiles can reach any ship in the Gulf. "'At a time of war no ship can pass through the region of the Persian Gulf without being in the reach of the Revolutionary Guards' coast-to-sea missiles,' Yahya Rahim-Safavi, a senior military adviser of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was quoted by the Iran daily as saying. Rahim-Safavi said earlier this week that Khamenei had put the elite Guards in charge of defending the Gulf against any attacks and that they would not hesitate to 'confront foreign forces.'" Read More

According to Iranian press, Italy and Iran discussed increasing cooperation of their capital markets. "Talking to IRNA, Ali Rahmani stated that the sides reviewed the ways of expanding relations between the stock markets and transferring the Italian’s experience in privatization. A seminar is to be held on promoting the two countries’ cooperation in the capital market sector, he added." Read More

Voice of America wrote about repression of access to the internet in Iran. "The promise of the internet is the free flow of information and ideas – at the touch of one’s fingertips. The appeal of that promise is obvious among Farsi speakers. In 2004, a survey found that Farsi was the fourth most popular language of bloggers on the internet. And internet usage in Iran has been steadily increasing. The press freedom organization Reporters Without Borders calculates that in 2004 there were just over one million internet users inside Iran; today it says, that number has climbed to eighteen million. But the government of Iran views access to the free flow of information and ideas by the Iranian people as a challenge to its legitimacy and power." Read More

Current professor and former Reagan State Department official John Hughes wrote in the Christian Science Monitor about the People's Mujahideen of Iran in Iraq. "The Iranians, members of the People's Mujahideen of Iran (PMOI), who once mounted military operations against the Tehran regime from sanctuary in Saddam Hussein's Iraq, have been disarmed and placed under the protection of American forces since the US invasion of Iraq. To add to the confusion, some Iraqi sources say Iraqi troops have deployed to 'protect the camp, not to seize it.' But the withdrawal of American forces from Iraq is now under discussion. With that withdrawal in prospect, Iran is pressing for the fighters, the military arm of the Paris-based National Council of Resistance of Iran, to be returned to Iran, or at least turned over to the Iraqi government, which it believes would do Tehran's bidding." Read More