Iran News Round Up

Politics

• Mir-Hossein Mousavi attacks Ahmadinejad's statements that "there is only one country in this country which is the party of the guardianship" as return to the Shah's single party regime.

Military and Security

• Ahmadinejad sends congratulates on the Revolutionary Guards' Day: "Today, the Guards are alive to the degree that this force is the shining peak of the Iranian nation. One must struggle to preserve this peak since a bright tomorrow belongs to you."
• Hojjat al-Eslam Ali Saidi, the Supreme Leader's representative to the Revolutionary Guards, says the IRGC is developing into a "classical army."
• Mohammad Kowsari, parliamentary National Security Committee member:
  • "The attacks [against the Guards] are because of calculated and precise presence of the Guards and the Basij in order to contain the discord of 2009. The enemies did not at all expect that the Revolutionary Guards would neutralize this discord with such might..."
• Yadollah Javani, Revolutionary Guards Political Bureau chief:
  • "They [the United States] has discovered that during the past 31 years it was the Revolutionary Guards which neutralized and defeated great and small conspiracies against the Islamic revolutoin and the Islamic Republic. The Guards' role in neutralize the conspiracy of dismemberment of Iran during the first years of the revolution, the role of the Guards during the sacred defense, the Guards' role in providing flight security, the Guards role in progress and development in the country and tens of other obligations have tired American planners and policy makers. The Guards' success in neutralizing soft threats, especially the deep discord of last year - upon which results the enemies of the Islamic revolution and the Islamic Republic had hoped - has made the Americans more angry than ever. Therefore, they believe that in order to defeat the Islamic Republic there is no other way than to weaken the Guards..."
• Javan Online editorializes:
  • "Friends and foes of the Islamic revolution know well that the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps is [composed of] and has always been composed of a group of revolutionary, pure and brave young people... What has happened since the attacks and sensitivities towards the Guards has increased...?"
  • "Convening of the sixth parliament [under Khatami] and its schemes to change the regime within legislation made the Guards aware of its natural mission. In those years the Guards warned the counter revolution only through statements, and it was the only institution which commemorated the anniversary of the decree of His Holiness the Imam for execution of Salman Rushdie..."
  • "The revisionists understood that the Guards' statements were directed against them..."
  • "The Guards have broken the key of those engaged in toppling the regime..."

Trade

• Mohammad-Hossein Adib, economist, says sanctions against the Iranian banking system will only result in decreasing Iranian debt to foreign banks and will benefit Iran's economy.
• [E] Iran and Russia are drafting a road map for future energy cooperation likely to be signed during the Iranian oil minister's upcoming visit to Moscow.
• [E] Iran is likely to reduce its gasoline imports by 75 percent by 2015 as it expands refining capacity and halts fuel subsidies, the International Energy Agency (IEA) says.
• [E] Islamabad says that sanctions will have no bearing on the multi-billion-dollar Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline project.

Diplomacy

·         [E] Iran announced that Shahram Amiri, the scholar allegedly kidnapped in Saudi Arabia last year and appearing at the Iranian mission in Washington Monday night, will return to Tehran through a third country.

·         [E] Venezuela's envoy to Tehran stressed that members of the ALBA (the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas) are determined to continue their economic interactions with Iran irrespective of western sanctions.

o   [E] "We, Ambassadors and Heads of Missions of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA) in the Islamic Republic of Iran, condemn the destabilizing and militaristic aspirations of the United States' government and its allies.”

·         [E] Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki and his Portuguese counterpart Luis Filipe Marques Amado in a meeting in Lisbon conferred on ways to develop political and economic relations between the two countries.

·         [E] Afghanistan's Foreign Minister Zalmay Rassoul is scheduled to pay an official visit to Tehran on Thursday to meet with senior Iranian officials just a few days before a Kabul conference on Afghan problems.

Nuclear Issue

·         [E] "From now on we set conditions, meaning that if the questions asked by Secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council are not answered, we will not enter talks and interaction so easily,” said the Deputy Head of the parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Commission.

Photo of the Day

• Old photo of then Tehran Times editor and later nuclear negotiator Hossein Mousavian.