Mehdi Karroubi in an interview with German weekly magazine “Spiegel”

Although he is placed under surveillance by Iran’s regime, reformist cleric Mehdi Karroubi is not to be intimidated. In an interview with SPIEGEL ONLINE, the prominent opposition leader talks about torture and rape in prisons, and also about renewed protests on the anniversary of the rigged election.

Mehdi Karrubi: The prominent reformist cleric is being consistently isolated from visitors

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Mr Karroubi, until just now, two guards were standing in front of your house. Has the regime placed you under house arrest?

Karroubi: I would not put it this way. I am still allowed to leave the house. But they have dissolved my political party “Etemad-e Melli” (“National Trust”) and my office, my newspaper of the same name was banned. And I am always surrounded by police. Whoever wants to visit me – be it members of parliament, intellectuals, friends – will be registered, questioned, and must expect to face consequences.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Are your activities being monitored by the intelligence service?

Karroubi: The Persian language has a nice metaphor: The walls have mice, and the mice have ears, therefore, the walls are able to listen. Apart from that, the regime has seconded 14 people to ensure my so-called safety. They are supposed to “defend me from terrorists”, as I was told. However, the real purpose is to gather information. In case I will be killed, I highly recommend to check whether the perpetrator belongs to the circle of my protectors.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Despite the repression of the past months you have not lost your sense of humour.

Karroubi: Should I allow my opponents to wear me down? No. I was imprisoned under the Shah, I fought for this revolution together with Imam Khomeini. This state is my child that I will not abandon as long as I live.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Many people are not able to stand as firm against the pressure of the regime as you do. They are very afraid.

Karroubi: Yes, our people bear a great burden, and there is great fear. The people know the massive presence of police and militias that is ready to confront them. They know what to expect when they dare to revolt: They lose their jobs, their posts, their future. They face beatings, arrests, interrogations, and even worse things. This is the reason for the calm.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Do you still stick to your claims that arrested opposition supporters were tortured to death?

Karroubi: Of course I did not personally witness these incidents, but I trust the sources who provided the information. I know of four deaths that were caused by torture.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: The regime, that is flying the flag of virtue, was especially annoyed by your claim that even rapes took place.

Karroubi: I know of five cases: Three women and two men who were raped. Whatever they threaten to do to me: I stick to what I said. I was physically assaulted for this during a Friday prayer. But should I renounce my conviction because of this?

SPIEGEL ONLINE: The situation in the prisons is dismayingly reminiscent of the terrible times under Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.

Karroubi: There are two differences: Under the Shah, torture was carried out systematically, by “experts”. Today it is different. The cases of torture are excesses, breaches of some individuals who did not act on behalf of the leadership. Unlike today, though, at that time people were at least allowed to publicly grieve for the victims. This was beneficial for their souls.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Do you fear to become a victim of those torturers yourself?

Karroubi: No. We don’t have a system of torturers. Apart from that, I am a disciple of Imam Khomeini who had only three guiding principles: Steadfastness, honesty, and readiness to fight.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Isn’t it merely a matter of time before they will arrest you as well? Most of your staff have already been arrested.

Karroubi: They have taken away so many that I am unable to give an exact number. I estimate that about 50 of my combatants were captured, among them many important helpers, like the manager of my weblog. My youngest son Ali, 37, was severely abused.

SPIEGEL’s editor Dieter Bednarz met with Karroubi in his house in Tehran.

Part 2: “Sanctions mean further hardships for the people”

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Does the former Prime Minister Hossein Moussavi, who like you ran against Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the presidential elections of June 12 and whom many regard as the true winner, continue to stand at your side?

Karroubi: We still are in close contact, exchange letters, talk on the phone. At least once a month we meet for private talks. Our aides meet much more often, though. Mr. Moussavi and I work for the same goals: We do not want to change the system. Our constitution does guarantee freedom of opinion and democracy. We want those rights to be implemented.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: But the reformist movement has quietened down.

Karroubi: The streets are quiet. But don’t let yourself be fooled. Every day the ideas of reform continue to spread. The people are just waiting for a spark.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: And you are going to light that spark?

Karroubi: We are calling for another peaceful gathering on the anniversary of our mass demonstration of 15. June, when about 3 million people protested against the manipulation of election results. We have already applied for authorisation.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: The regime has issued a ban on demonstrations because it fears a show of force of your movement. It is very unlikely that this ban will be lifted on occasion of this anniversary.

Karroubi: It is important that we encourage people to continue protesting. Without violence, but with full determination.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: This means that new bloodshed is preprogrammed.

Karroubi: This government is brilliant in increasing the people’s dissatisfaction. Therefore, the people despite all misgivings will sooner or later revolt against the aggressive foreign policy, the lousy economic policy. I feel sorry for every single further victim. You can not imagine how much this affects me. But what else can we do? Give up? No, the people would be very disappointed if we urged them to stay home. They want us to encourage them, to tell them: Take to the streets, be brave.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: How much influence do you and Mr. Moussavi have on the movement today?

Karroubi: What has happened was a result of accumulated anger. The protestors share our call for freedom, they merely demand what is rightfully theirs.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Other demands have been voiced that go beyond that, though: The system must be abolished, the revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei must resign.

Karroubi: Very few people go as far as that. The vast majority says: We had a revolution, that’s enough. We don’t want a radical change, we want our prior course to be corrected.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: The UN Security Council will most likely issue another resolution for stricter sanctions soon, because the regime does not cooperate on the nuclear issue. Do you welcome that?

Karroubi: Absolutely not. Sanctions mean nothing but more hardships for the people. If foreign countries wish to help us, they should demand that human rights be respected. However, we don’t actually need the foreign countries. We have learned to stand on our own feet.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Should the world actually talk to this president at all?

Karroubi: This man is a calamity for the people. However, since he is in office, you can’t ignore him.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Do you accept Ahmadinejad as the president?

Karroubi: No. The election was rigged. But he is holding this position, and thus he must be held accountable for what is happening.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: The revolutionary leader has declared that the election was legitimate. Thus, who questions Ahmadinejad’s presidency at the same time questions Khamenei’s authority.

Karroubi: You may interpret it whatever way you like. I am not commenting on the revolutionary leader.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Do you expect the leadership to give in?

Karroubi: I don’t see a chance for Ahmadinejad to complete his four year term. Every day he causes new unrest. Even this conservative parliament has conflicts with him. No, it can’t go on like this.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Do you still believe in the future of the theocratic state?

Karroubi: I do, but I don’t believe in the theocracy of Dr. Ahmadinejad. In my theocracy people are free, and the government is elected by the people.

Published on the website of German weekly magazine “Spiegel” on 28. April 2010
Source (German) http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/0,1518,691638,00.html
English translation provided by German to English
http://germantoenglish.wordpress.com/2010/04/28/irans-reformist-karroubi-take-to-the-streets-be-brave/

Apr 24 2010

Human Rights Community Prevails in Forcing Withdrawal of Iran’s Candidacy for the UN Human Rights Council

(24 April 2010) The withdrawal of Iran’s candidacy for a seat on the United Nations Human Rights Council, which was vociferously opposed by Iranian civil society leaders and human rights community, is a victory for Iranian citizens whose human rights would very likely have suffered had Iran’s repressive and brutal policies been legitimized, the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran said today.

The Iranian government’s decision to withdraw was announced to the Asian group of delegates in Geneva today. Iranian human rights defenders and activists had launched a major campaign opposing Iran’s candidacy.

“This is a very important achievement for Iranian human rights defenders who have suffered so much in the past year and who opposed Iran’s candidacy,” said Hadi Ghaemi, spokesperson for the Campaign.

“We believe that with Iran off the Council, the General Assembly Human Rights Council will be in a better position to assist Iran in meeting its obligations,” he added.

The Iranian government had filed its candidacy for membership in the Human Rights Council despite its record of well-documented, systematic and widespread human rights violations, particularly following the post-election crackdown during the past year.

The Campaign calls on the Human Rights Council to hold the Iranian government accountable for the serious human rights crisis underway inside the country and to initiate investigative mechanisms regarding the post-election events during its upcoming session in June 2010.

The Campaign believes that the Iranian government’s withdrawal reflects its realization that not only would it fail to garner enough votes in the General Assembly, but that the election would provide an opportunity for the international community to focus on the grave situation of human rights in the country.

“This withdrawal is a tacit admission of how bad the situation is. The Human Rights Council should not let Iran off the hook, but rather intensify its efforts to improve the situation there,” Ghaemi said.

Source: http://www.iranhumanrights.org/2010/04/iran-withdrawal-un/

Apr 24 2010

Companies feeling more pressure to cut ties with Iran

By PETER BAKER, New York Times in Washington — While President Obama struggles to negotiate United Nations sanctions with teeth against Iran, a parallel campaign to turn up the heat is gaining momentum by pressuring American and foreign corporations individually to cut their business ties there.

Two giant American accounting firms, PricewaterhouseCoopers and Ernst & Young, disclosed this week that they no longer had any affiliation with Iranian firms, becoming the latest in a string of companies to publicly shun the Islamic republic. After a similar decision by KPMG this month, that leaves none of the Big Four audit firms with any ties to Iran.

In recent months, other companies have announced that they would stop sales, cut back business or end affiliations with Iranian firms, including General Electric, Huntsman, Siemens, Caterpillar and Ingersoll Rand. Daimler said it would sell a minority share in an Iranian engine maker. An Italian firm said it would pull out after its current gas contracts ended. And the Malaysian state oil company cut off gasoline shipments to Iran, following similar moves by Royal Dutch Shell and trading giants like Vitol, Glencore and Trafigura.

The tangible impact of these moves varies depending on the firm. After three decades of sanctions, American companies have relatively little business in Iran at this point, while foreign and multinational companies often find ways to circumvent measures intended to sever ties with Iran. China has become an increasingly robust partner.

But current and former American officials said the recent announcements would further isolate Iran as it pursued its nuclear program in defiance of international pressure.

“No one of these actions is that significant,” said Stuart Levey, the Treasury under secretary who has led the American effort to persuade firms to abandon Iranian ties first under President George W. Bush and now under Mr. Obama. “But the overall trend, if you analyze it with the increasing political isolation of Iran, could be very significant.”

Mark D. Wallace, a former ambassador under Mr. Bush and now president of an advocacy group called United Against Nuclear Iran, said the growing trend could undercut the Tehran government. “This is a sort of tipping point,” he said. “You’re seeing the regime standing at the precipice and if a few more companies pull out and they don’t have the ability to access international services and goods and capital, they’re in real trouble.”

Foreign businesses have been an important source of support for Iran in recent years. In the last five years, 41 foreign companies have helped Iran develop its oil and gas sector, which accounts for more than half of the Tehran government’s income, the General Accountability Office reported this week.

None of those companies were American, but an analysis by The New York Times last month showed that the federal government had awarded more than $107 billion in contract payments, grants and other benefits over the past decade to foreign and multinational American companies doing business in Iran.

The campaign to pressure companies to give up Iranian business began a few years ago under Mr. Bush even as three successive rounds of United Nations sanctions failed to stop Iran from enriching uranium.

The American government initially focused pressure on international banks and financial institutions, but the recent announcements show that it is extending well beyond that sector to manufacturers, insurers and service providers.

The pressure comes not just from Mr. Levey and his team, who present firms with evidence showing how other companies have run afoul of sanctions rules because of Iranian subterfuge. It also comes from Congress, where both the Senate and the House have passed bills limiting the government’s ability to do business with companies that contribute to Iran’s development of petroleum resources. The two chambers must reconcile separate versions before sending a bill to Mr. Obama.

And then there is Mr. Wallace’s group, which was formed in 2008 by a group of prominent Republicans and Democrats, including some now in the Obama administration, to focus public attention on Iran’s nuclear program. The group has tried to shame companies with ties to Iran by posting a list on its Web site. Among those it has cited have been KPMG, Caterpillar and Ingersoll Rand. .

This week, Mr. Wallace’s group received letters from both PricewaterhouseCoopers and Ernst & Young assuring the group that they had cut ties with Iranian firms. PricewaterhouseCoopers wrote that the Middle East member of the company’s global network had had a “cooperating firm relationship” with Agahan & Company, an Iranian firm, but that it expired last year. Ernst & Young said it cut its ties in 2001 to the Tadvin Company, one of Iran’s largest accounting firms, even though Tadvin was still listed on its Web site this year.

Mr. Wallace called that a breakthrough because by publicly avoiding Iran, the American accounting firms that audit so many other companies send an important signal. “What it says is if it’s too risky for the Big Four accounting firms,” he said, “it should be too risky for other companies.”

Apr 22 2010

Renowned Henri Nannen Award goes to Iranian journalists for their courage

Maziar Bahari - Iranian Journalist

German daily Kieler Nachrichten reports that this year’s renowned Henri Nannen Award goes to the oppressed Iranian journalists for their stance to promote freedom of press in Iran.

According to a statement released by the awarding body, the Gruner & Jahr publishing house, journalist Maziar Bahari, will accept the award as representative of his Iranian colleagues on May 7th in Hamburg. “It is not an exaggeration to say that Iran is currently one of the biggest prisons for media professionals”, said Thomas Osterkorn, editor in chief of the weekly magazine “Stern”, one of Gruner & Jahr’s flagship publications.

“Our recognition and sympathy is owed to our colleagues who are suffering from this regime but do not waver their efforts and struggle for a free press.”

Source: German-to-English blog. http://germantoenglish.wordpress.com/2010/04/22/journalists-in-iran-receive-henri-nannen-award/

Apr 22 2010

Iran begins war games in Persian Gulf oil route

TEHRAN, Iran — Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guard held war
games today in the strategic Persian Gulf oil route, the Hormuz Strait, a show of its military strength at a time when the country’s leaders are depicting President Barack Obama’s new nuclear policy as a threat.

Ahead of the military maneuvers, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei accused Washington of trying to dominate the world through its nuclear arsenal and vowed that Iran would not bend before what he called “implicit atomic threats.”

Khamenei was referring to Obama’s announcement earlier this month of a new nuclear strategy that focuses less on Cold War threats and more on preventing the spread of weapons. As part of the new guidelines, Washington vowed not to use its arsenal against nations that don’t have their own nuclear weapons, with the exception of countries that are not abiding by international non-proliferation rules – a caveat the administration said meant Iran and North Korea.

Khamenei’s rhetoric, depicting Washington as seeking to dominate Iran, appeared aimed at keeping up support at home as Iran tried to fend off a new U.S. attempt to win a fourth round of United Nations sanctions over Iran’s nuclear program.

The Obama administration is lobbying hard at the U.N. Security Council for tougher punishment of Iran over its refusal to suspend uranium enrichment, a process that can produce either a warhead or fuel for a nuclear reactor. The U.S. and its allies accuse Iran of seeking to build a weapon, a claim Tehran denies.

Iran has been holding military maneuvers, dubbed as The Great Prophet, in the strategic waters of the Persian Gulf annually since 2006 to show off its military capabilities – and serve as an implicit warning of the consequences if the United States or Israel attack Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Iran’s leaders have said in the past that if attacked, the country would respond by shutting off the Strait of Hormuz, the mouth of the Gulf through which around 40 percent of the world’s oil and gas supplies pass, as well as by attacking American bases in the Persian Gulf.

The three-day war games brought in naval, air and ground units from the Revolutionary Guard, state television reported. In the past four years, the maneuvers were held in the summer, and there was no official explanation why they were brought forward this year. But it came after repeated denunciations by Iran’s top leaders over the past week of the new U.S. nuclear policy.

On Thursday, the military unveiled a new attack speedboat, describing it as an “ultra-speed and smart” vessel called “Ya Mahdi.” Iran also said 313 smaller speedboats with the capability of firing rockets and missiles would participate in the war games.

source: http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/04/22/1592205_p2/iran-begins-war-games-in-gulf.html

Apr 19 2010

The U.S. must work harder to foster an Arab middle class.

By Jay Hallen – In the long struggle against Islamic extremism, American political leaders have always known that success would come only through the application of many tools, including economic aid. But this aid comes in many shapes and forms, and billions in poorly targeted “development” assistance to the Middle East often don’t produce the expected benefits. Instead, we should use our money to promote middle-class growth—among the most effective ways to nudge reform throughout the developing world, because a growing middle class usually comes to demand such goods as transparency, accountability, smoother capital flows, and eventually political liberty and freedom of the press. If America truly wants to help the Arab world turn the corner, it should use its influence to foster entrepreneurship, the engine of urban middle-class growth.

A robust venture-capital industry is crucial to the growth of urban entrepreneurialism, but in the Arab world it’s sorely lacking. In July 2006, I met with the four Egyptian runners-up of the Arab Business Challenge—the first large-scale competition of young Arab entrepreneurs, in which each of 17 Arab countries administered its own contest and sent a finalist to a regional challenge in Dubai. The meeting was both inspiring and sad. The exhibits included a prototype Arabic search engine that seemingly produced more accurate results than Google in a live comparison; a medical-device company that monitored at-home patient care to reduce time and money spent in hospitals; a streamlined system to monitor media and advertising penetration rates; and a mock-up of the first-ever Arab-themed video game, with graphics every bit as realistic as those in Grand Theft Auto. The entrants had all the same wide-eyed enthusiasm and free-thinking initiative on which open and thriving societies depend. It was sad, then, to contemplate that the lack of early-stage venture capital meant that these business ideas—which called for $500,000 to $3 million apiece in start-up funding—would remain only on paper.

One of the obstacles to fostering venture capital and entrepreneurialism in the Arab world is a culture that favors large enterprises over small start-ups. Historically, in the resource-free desert, buying and transporting goods took precedence over creating them; the effects of this history can be seen today in the Arab private sector, which remains dominated by family-run conglomerates with long pedigrees in trade. Such an economic environment suppresses the creative individual, particularly when he doesn’t come from an established merchant family. More recently, the discoveries of oil and gas in the Middle East have further entrenched elites and non-democratic governments, who now have even less incentive to diversify their economies and empower their people.

More recently still, the spike in oil prices earlier this decade drove a robust Middle East private-equity industry—but its focus was almost entirely on buyouts of large family conglomerates and state-owned enterprises. In the wealthy and economically diverse United Arab Emirates, the nonprofit Global Entrepreneurship Monitor reports, “liquidity is being driven into equity and property markets. Public and/or private vehicles to channel these funds into supporting entrepreneurial ventures within the UAE are almost non-existent.” In other words, there’s plenty of cash for acquiring pharmaceutical companies with $50 million in sales, but barely a trickle for software developers who need far less to get their ventures off the ground.

The dampening effects of this non-entrepreneurial culture have been felt even in wealthy states like Kuwait. “With a record budgetary surplus of almost $35 billion,” writes Ed James in the Middle East Economic Digest, “Kuwait is one of the world’s richest countries. But its inflexible state-run economy risks undermining this success.” Oil wealth, born of a top-down concentration of capital and labor resources, has stunted entrepreneurship and the institutions that nurture it. It should come as no surprise, then, that while the Arab world’s 13 represented countries achieved an average ranking of 53 out of 133 in the World Economic Forum’s 2010 Global Competitiveness Report, they fell to 85th place for the subcategory of Capacity for Innovation. Oil-rich states Oman, Qatar, and Libya ranked 87th, 109th, and 133rd in this category, in part because resource extraction requires no innovation.

Changing a culture is unquestionably difficult, but for the billions of dollars that America spends on development aid to the Middle East, we can do much more to help the urban middle class. One of USAID’s largest missions is Egypt; the State Department agency proudly trumpets the $15 billion in economic assistance that it has sent to Cairo since 1975. However, of the $160 million in current active loans to the Egyptian small- and medium-sized enterprise (SME) sector, over 75 percent goes to women in economically disadvantaged areas. When USAID does lend to urban entrepreneurs, the maximum loans are only about $2,600—hardly enough financing for a serious startup.

A better goal of U.S. economic aid would be to lay the foundations of the next Silicon Valley or the next emerging arts scene on the banks of the Nile or the Jordan. New media technologies are not born of rural microloans. American policy should help emerging middle-class entrepreneurs ascend the ranks of their societies and create a culture of meritocracy for those who will follow. A U.S.-sponsored venture capital fund, geared toward this particular demographic, could fill an important need.

American policymakers can also address the absence in the Middle East of good investment exit strategies, such as selling a business to larger competitors or holding an initial public offering (IPO) in the local stock market. In Egypt, the situation improved in 2007 when the Cairo and Alexandria Stock Exchange rolled out NILEX, an exchange designed to attract small- and mid-cap companies and modeled on London’s AIM market. But the U.S. could help matters further by offering technical assistance to other regional stock exchanges, encouraging IPOs for emerging companies.

Another exit strategy in need of American assistance, ironic as it may sound, is bankruptcy. Bankruptcy is important to middle-class growth because it gives entrepreneurs the flexibility to experiment and a cushion against failure. Bankruptcy laws bring transparency to the separation of personal and company liability, and they clarify the rights of creditors and debtors. While the countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC)—Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates—have relatively advanced legal frameworks, they also maintain debtors’ prisons, which would dissuade the most adventurous businessperson. In Egypt, commercial law derives from a tangle of sharia, socialism, the Napoleonic Code, and British influence. The result is a system that, according to Andrew Bossone, provides “no functional equivalent of ‘bankruptcy protection’ . . . that would allow a company . . . to re-organize and beat insolvency.”

Helping Arab entrepreneurs could have the positive effect of encouraging broader reforms in the region. Middle-class fortunes rise or fall according to the quality of transparency, civil society, and domestic governance. When these institutions don’t work in its favor, the middle class is uniquely able to rouse leaders for political and regulatory reform from within. Even a corrupt and insulated leadership is tempted to respond to middle-class complaints, realizing that action could result in economic growth, higher tax receipts, and good publicity. Moreover, institutional reform brought about by an agitated middle class has far more legitimacy than anything an intervening foreign power would enforce.

Not even the harshest American critics could credibly object to our support of the Arab world’s enterprising young people. Aiding the middle class would build goodwill, foster economic growth, and quietly create an influential constituency for reform in the Middle East—and that would be good news for the Arab world and the United States.

Jay Hallen works at a trade finance firm in New York. He has previously consulted financial institutions in Iraq and Egypt on behalf of the U.S. government. Source: http://www.city-journal.org/2010/eon0416jh.html

Apr 19 2010

Netanyahu: Israel Can Only Rely On Itself

Benjamin Netanyahu

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday reminded his fellow cabinet members that in the midst of Israel’s most serious rift with the U.S. in decades, they must remember that Israel can only truly rely on itself.

Echoing the words of Zionist philosopher Theodor Herzl in 1901, Netanyahu said, “Don’t rely on help from strangers, don’t trust even the charitable and don’t wish for stones to grow soft, for the charitable give degrading charity at most, and stones do not soften. A nation that wishes to stand tall must place all its trust in itself only.”

Netanyahu was addressing the cabinet on the day before Israel’s Independence Day, which will begin at sunset on Monday, April 19.

http://www.israeltoday.co.il/default.aspx?tabid=178&nid=20941

Apr 18 2010

Ahmadinejad responds to Obama at the Tehran Disarmament & Non Proliferation Conference

Tehran Non Proliferation Conference

At the Tehran international conference on disarmament and non-proliferation today, president Ahmadinejad stated that “foreign forces must leave the Middle East region now in order to avoid conflict.” He was referring to the United States.

This statement comes as a direct response to President Obama’s announcement at a similar venue late last week in Washington, DC where he made the statement that Iran and North Korea are on a nuclear hit list in the event that war ever broke out between his country and its allies against Iran and or North Korea.

Tehran has reacted to this announcement with great indignation.

Foreign Minister Mottaki lashed out at the United States during last week’s Friday prayer at Tehran University calling this statement an insult and a double standard. “Why is it that those who shout the loudest about nuclear non proliferation are the same countries with thousands of nuclear war heads” he stated. “Why is it that when other countries want to develop the same knowhow independently, the so called developed countries try everything in their power to stop them”.

Many people of the Arab world admire Iran and Ahmadinejad for standing up to the West given their own leaders incapacitated role to stand their ground given the oil ties and cheer him on behind closed doors. This makes Ahmadinejad’s rhetoric’s even more potent across the region which is another reason why the Middle East can potentially become a volatile epicenter of instability and conflict, one that can spread around the world like a brushfire.

Recognizing that the US administration is facing a serious challenge in the region neither being able to pull its troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan nor having much success in establishing peace in the region, Ahmadinejad went on to add that “if the president of the United States wants to resolve the present Middle East crisis and if he wants to see a second term in office, his only hope is to start talking to Iran”.

Something tells me the Obama administration is clueless in how to deal with IRAN and my great concern is that this inaction on the part of the United States will in fact further embolden the radicals in Iran and subsequently the region.

Apr 15 2010

Petronas halts fuel sales to Iran as sanctions loom

(Reuters) – Malaysia’s Petronas PETR.UL has stopped supplying gasoline to Iran, a company spokesman said on Thursday, as the threat of U.S. sanctions on oil firms with supply ties to the Islamic Republic looms large.

Iran is the world’s fifth biggest crude oil exporter but U.S. sanctions mean it has suffered from lack of investment in refineries, forcing the OPEC member to import some 40 percent of its gasoline needs.

Malaysia’s state oil firm has stopped supplying gasoline to Iran since the middle of March, the Petronas spokesman told Reuters.

Petronas gave no reason for the pullout but an industry source in Dubai said the company wanted to safeguard its business exposure in the United States.

On Monday, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib and U.S. President Barack Obama agreed on the importance of Iran strictly abiding by its obligation under international nuclear non-proliferation pacts.

“The threat of sanctions has sent a clear message to the energy sector. The United States is serious about passing and enforcing comprehensive energy sanctions against the Iranian regime,” said Mark Dubowitz, executive director of a Washington-based think-tank.

“The focus of the sanctions debate soon will shift to sanctions enforcement and a game of “whack-a-mole” between US authorities and Iran’s energy partners.”

Several of the world’s top oil companies and trading houses have already curbed sales to preempt potential penalization of their U.S. operations.

LUKOIL, Russia’s No. 2 oil company, this month joined a growing list of international oil and trading firms that has stopped gasoline sales to Iran.

In March, Royal Dutch Shell (RDSa.L) announced that it had stopped gasoline supplies to the Islamic republic, joining two of the world’s largest independent trading companies, Glencore and Vitol, who had taken similar decisions.

Iran bought around 128,000 barrels per day (bpd) of gasoline in March, steady with imports the previous month, traders said.

Petronas last shipped a gasoline cargo into the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas between March 4 and 5, industry sources said.

The 255,000-barrel cargo was loaded from the United Arab Emirates port of Jebel Ali, a key transshipment and oil storage hub for fuel supply in the region.

Petronas has been shipping about 16,000 barrels per day (bpd) of the motor fuel to OPEC members since the fourth quarter of 2009, traders said.

It has been supporting sales to Iran via its fuel storage tanks at the port of Fujairah in the UAE.

CHINA TO BENEFIT?

“Someone has to fill the void. It’s a high possibility that Chinese companies will benefit from this, especially since China has a glut of gasoline supplies,” said Victor Shum, an analyst at energy consultancy Purvin & Gertz.

Another Chinese company, Sinopec, is also poised to sell gasoline to Iran for the first time in six years, trade sources said on Wednesday.

China’s imports of Iranian crude shrank by nearly 40 percent in the first two months of 2010 from a year ago, Chinese customs data showed, despite the Asian economy’s growing hunger for foreign oil.

(Editing by Clarence Fernandez)