WarSclerotic

The United States has rejected Iranian calls for amendments and further talks on the deal and US President Barack Obama said time was running out for diplomacy to resolve a long standoff over Iran’s nuclear programme.
Mottaki criticised the United States for pressuring Iran to accept the deal. “Diplomacy is not black or white. Pressuring Iran to accept what they want is a non-diplomatic approach.”
Russia and France, both also involved in the fuel proposal, also pressed Iran to accept it as is. Tehran faces possible harsher international sanctions and risks even last-ditch Israeli military action to knock out its nuclear sites.
Iran says it needs nuclear technology to generate power but its history of nuclear secrecy and restricting UN inspections have raised Western suspicions of a covert quest for atom bombs.
Tehran has repeatedly said it preferred to buy reactor fuel from foreign suppliers rather than part with its low enriched uranium (LEU) — also bomb material if refined to high purity.
Sentenced
Iran has sentenced five defendants to death in a mass trial of opposition figures accused of fomenting the unrest that followed the disputed June presidential election, state television reported Tuesday.
The five apparently include three death sentences announced last month. None of the five have been identified by Iranian authorities.
Iran began the mass trial in August of more than 100 prominent opposition figures and activists, accusing them of a range of charges from rioting to spying and plotting what Iran’s clerical rulers have depicted as a foreign-backed plot to oust them from power.
In the weeks following the June 12 election, the opposition led massive street protests that drew hundreds of thousands and supporters clashed with security forces. They claimed fraud after election authorities declared President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad the winner of a second term and their anger unleashed the most serious internal unrest in Iran in the 30 years since the Islamic Revolution.
A harsh crackdown ended the demonstrations and a security sweep went far beyond rounding up just protesters on the streets, snatching up rights activists and journalists, as well as pro-reform politicians. Rights groups and opposition figures in Iran have criticized the court proceedings, calling them a “show trial” and saying confessions are coerced.
Deal
Iran faces a “very short” window to submit its formal response to a UN-brokered deal meant to allay suspicions that it seeks to develop nuclear weapons, the US State Department said on Tuesday.
“Frustration is mounting,” State Department spokesman Ian Kelly told a news briefing, noting that Tehran had still not made a formal reply to a proposal drafted by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) more than a month ago.
“We’re not prepared to actually pronounce that they have rejected the deal because they haven’t formally rejected the deal yet,” Kelly said.
“We always hesitate to give a formal deadline — but I would just say that time is very short.”
Kelly did not specify the time frame he meant by “short.”
Kelly added that an IAEA report this week that said Iran’s belated revelation of a new uranium enrichment site raised concern about possible further nuclear secrets underscored the need for full Iranian compliance with its international obligations.
The draft deal brokered by the IAEA, the UN nuclear watchdog, calls on Iran to send some 75 percent of its low-enriched uranium (LEU) to Russia and France to be turned into fuel for a Tehran medical research reactor.
Probe
Several Iranian MPs have called for a probe into the “suspicious” death of a doctor who examined protestors held at a controversial detention centre, local press reported on Wednesday.
“We have asked the coroner to carry out an autopsy to find the cause of Ramin Pourandarjani’s death,” Aftab Yazd newspaper quoted parliamentary health commission member Masoud Pezeshkian as saying.
The 26 year-old medic, who was found dead on Nov 10, was under investigation in relation to the Kahrizak detention centre south of Tehran, where he visited protestors arrested in protests after the disputed re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in June.
“Given his (young) age and the fact that he hasn’t had any record of disease it doesn’t make sense that he died of a heart attack,” Pezeshkian said of initial reports about the cause of death.
The MP said that relevant authorities are investigating Pourandarjani’s “suspicious death.”
Iran’s police chief, Esmail Ahmadi Moghaddam, said on Wednesday that the doctor “apparently committed suicide.”
The lawyer of a French academic who appeared before an Iranian court in connection with anti-regime protests hopes for an acquittal at its next hearing, Fars news agency reported on Wednesday.
Clotilde Reiss was in court on Tuesday and then allowed to return to her country’s embassy, where she has been holed up since her release on bail in August, French officials said.
She made a first trial appearance on charges of “collecting information and provoking rioters,” they said.
“The court held a closed session during which we presented our defence, and we will present the remaining defence at the next session which will be announced,” defence lawyer Mohammad Ali Mahdavi told Fars.
“Probably the next session will be the last court session, and taking into consideration our defence I hope that we will be able to get Clotilde’s acquittal from the court,” he added.
Riots
Iran’s Basij militia, who clashed with protesters after June’s presidential poll, will confront any further “street riots”, its commander said on Wednesday, ahead of a ceremony to mark the killing of a dissident couple.
The turmoil after the disputed June 12 election, in which President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won a second term, was the worst in Iran since its 1979 Islamic revolution. Authorities denied vote-rigging and portrayed the unrest as foreign backed.
Iran’s judiciary said on Tuesday that five people had been sentenced to death and 81 have received jail terms of up to 15 years in connection with protests and violence after the poll.
Some Iranians had heeded calls to stage “street riots” which were broadcast by US-based Iranian satellite television, the commander of the hardline Basij, Mohammadreza Naqdi, said.
“Those groups that chant slogans against the revolution’s values … should know that they will be confronted by Basij,” said Naqdi, the official IRNA news agency reported.
The daughter of a dissident nationalist couple, stabbed to death by “rogue” Iranian security agents in 1998, has urged people to attend a gathering on Sunday to commemorate their killing, a reformist website reported.
Syria
The United States on Tuesday said it hopes for a reasonable explanation from Syria on how traces of uranium were found at a nuclear research reactor in Damascus.
“That’s what we want: a credible explanation,” said State Department spokesman Ian Kelly.
“We want them to open up what the IAEA is asking them to open up in terms of access to sites and access to information,” Kelly said.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) confirmed to AFP earlier Tuesday its inspectors were in Damascus after a report from the agency said it doubted Syria’s initial explanation.
Asked about any possible consequences to situation, Kelly said it would “depend on the response” from Syria to the IAEA’s requests.
Samples taken at the so-called Miniature Neutron Source Reactor in August 2008 confirmed the presence of “particles of anthropogenic natural uranium of a type not in Syria’s declared inventory,” according to the international nuclear watchdog.
The discovery of the uranium traces at the reactor raised eyebrows because the IAEA is already investigating allegations that Syria had been building an undeclared nuclear reactor in a remote desert site called Dair Alzour until Israel bombed it in 2007.