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News | EU agrees on tougher sanctions on Iran.

Bushehr nuclear power plant in Iran (AFP)

BRUSSELS, TEHRAN (Agencies)

The European Union reached agreement Thursday on a package of sanctions against Iran which targets Tehran’s energy sector over its refusal to halt sensitive nuclear work, an EU diplomat said.

Meanwhile, in defiance to the U.N. , U.S. and now the EU sanctions, Iran planned on Friday to issue 11.5 billion euros ($14.8 billion) worth of bonds by March 2011 to help finance development of its energy sector, the semi-official Mehr news agency quoted a senior official as saying on Friday.

Analysts say Iran needs funds to help modernize and expand its oil and gas sector, but Western companies in particular are increasingly wary of investing in the major oil producer due to Iran’s nuclear dispute with the West.

” By end of this (Iranian) year (March 2011), we will issue bonds worth 11.5 billion euros to help finance oil and gas projects as well as building power plants “ Iran\’s first Vice-President, Mohammad Reza Rahimi “By end of this (Iranian) year (March 2011), we will issue bonds worth 11.5 billion euros to help finance oil and gas projects as well as building power plants,” said first Vice-President Mohammad Reza Rahimi. Oil Minister Massoud Mirkazemi said in May that Iran needs around $25 billion a year in oil and gas industry investment and could turn into an importer of oil because of the lack of such funds. One of the world’s biggest oil and gas producers, Iran has been hit by U.S. and U.N. sanctions that have frightened away international energy firms. The Islamic state has increasingly turned to Asian firms instead but they often lack the technology to implement oil and gas projects.

Tougher EU sanctions does not only target Iran’s energy sector ” (EU Sanctions)expected to have a material impact on the country’s energy industry “ International Energy Agency Ambassadors from the 27 E.U. member states met in Brussels to endorse the sanctions, which include measures against the oil and gas industry and must be approved at a meeting of foreign ministers on Monday to come into force. “The text on the restrictive measures against Iran have been adopted,” the diplomat said on condition of anonymity. The U.N. Security Council imposed a fourth set of sanctions on Tehran in early June, but E.U. leaders and the United States decided shortly after to impose their own penalties against the Iranian energy sector. The sanctions are part of a twin-track approach with E.U. foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton seeking to revive moribund talks between Iran and six world powers — the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China. Western powers have demanded that Iran suspend its uranium enrichment program, fearing that Tehran would use the material to build a nuclear bomb. Tehran says that its atomic program is a peaceful drive to produce energy. E.U. leaders agreed at a June 17 summit to impose a ban on new investment, technical assistance and technology transfers to Iran’s huge gas and oil industry, particularly for refining and liquefied natural gas. Iran is the world’s fourth largest producer of crude oil but it imports 40 percent of its fuel needs because it lacks enough refining capabilities to meet demand. The U.S. and E.U. sanctions, seen as much tougher than U.N. sanctions, were “expected to have a material impact on the country’s energy industry,” the International Energy Agency said.

” longer term, development of the country’s oil and gas industry will clearly be adversely impacted”, the IEA said. “Iran’s growing gas and natural gas liquids projects are expected to be hardest hit “ IEA The IEA noted that it was “significant” that China and Russia had agreed to back the UN sanctions but that those did not include specific measures aimed at Iran’s energy sector. The U.S. and E.U. sanctions were harder, and “longer term, development of the country’s oil and gas industry will clearly be adversely impacted”, the IEA said. “Iran’s growing gas and natural gas liquids projects are expected to be hardest hit.” The E.U. measures also target the Islamic republic’s transportation, banking and insurance sectors, and slap new visa bans and asset freezes on the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

EU sanctions to deter Iran and bring it to the negotiation table ” For the first time Iran will face biting sanctions that will significantly impact its economy “ Mark Fitzpatrick, director of the nonproliferation program at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London “These sanctions are surprisingly strong,” said Mark Fitzpatrick, director of the nonproliferation program at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. “They go much further than the UN sanctions.” Fitzpatrick added: “For the first time Iran will face biting sanctions that will significantly impact its economy.” The sanctions “could nevertheless give reasons to Iran to go back to the negotiating table,” he said. “In the past, Iran has always moved once it was under pressure of the international community.” Also, the EU foreign ministers, during their meeting on Monday, will urge Iran to set a date for new talks. The last high-level talks between Iran and the six world powers were held in Geneva in October 2009 when the two sides agreed a nuclear fuel swap that has since stalled. Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said last week that talks could begin in September after Ashton reached out to Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili in a letter in June. According to the draft conclusions, E.U. foreign ministers will call on “Iran to seize this opportunity to allay the concerns of the international community about its nuclear program and agree on a concrete date for talks with the E.U. High Representative, together with the six countries.”

UAE gives its back to Iran’s attempt to switch its crude-oil sales currency ” We are free to choose any currency for our oil sell and this issue depends on Iran’s interests…the important issue is to exclude euros and dollars “ Mohammad Reza Rahimi Iran will switch to currencies other than euros and dollars for payment of its oil exports, a senior Iranian official was quoted on Friday as saying by the semi-official Mehr news agency. “We are free to choose any currency for our oil sell and this issue depends on Iran’s interests…the important issue is to exclude euros and dollars,” said Mohammad Reza Rahimi. “We will shift from euros and dollars to any other currency.” To avoid this, Iran has been discussing shifting to other currencies, most notably to the dirham, however the United Arab Emirates central bank governor dismissed on Tuesday reports that Iran may seek payment in dirhams for its oil exports to Europe to get around sanctions. Rahimi said shifting to dirhams “depended on the country’s national interests”. The dollar is the standard currency for oil trade, but Iran had shifted to the euro for European deals in response to years of U.S. sanctions against the Islamic Republic. Oil transactions can in theory be carried out in whatever currency the parties involved decide. Iran still claims that its nuclear development program is only for peaceful purposes.

Change we must believe in.

Change has come to the Middle East. Over the past several weeks, multiple press reports indicate that Turkey is collaborating militarily with Syria in a campaign against the Kurds of Syria, Iraq and Turkey.

Turkey is a member of NATO. It fields the Western world’s top weapons systems.

Syria is Iran’s junior partner. It is a state sponsor of multiple terrorist organizations and a proliferator of weapons of mass destruction.

Last September, as Turkey’s Islamist government escalated its anti-Israel rhetoric, Ankara and Damascus signed a slew of economic and diplomatic agreements. As Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu made clear at the time, Turkey was using those agreements as a way to forge close alliances not only with Syria, but with Iran.

“We may establish similar mechanisms with Iran and other mechanisms. We want our relationship with our neighbors to turn into maximum cooperation via the principle of zero problems,” Davutoglu proclaimed.

And now those agreements have reportedly paved the way to military cooperation. Syrian President Bashar Assad has visited Istanbul twice in the past month and then two weeks ago, on the Kurdish New Year, Syrian forces launched an operation against Kurdish population centers throughout the country.

On Wednesday, Al-Arabiya reported that hundreds of Kurds have been killed in recent weeks.

The Syrian government media claim that 11 Kurds have been killed.

There are conflicting reports as well about the number of Kurds who have been arrested since the onslaught began. Kurdish sources say 630 have been arrested. The Turkish media claims 400 Kurds have been arrested by Syrian security forces.

Al-Arabiya also claimed that the Syrian campaign is being supported by the Turkish military.

Turkish military advisers are reportedly using the same intelligence tool for tracking Kurds in Syria as they have used against the Kurds in Turkey and Iraq: Israeli-made Heron unmanned aerial vehicles.

Even if the Al-Arabiya report is untrue, and Turkey is not currently using Israeli-manufactured weapons in the service of Syria, the very fact that Syria has military cooperation of any kind with Turkey is dangerous for Israel. Over the past 20 years, as its alliance with Turkey expanded, Israel sold Turkey some of the most sensitive intelligence- gathering systems and other weapons platforms it has developed. With Turkey’s rapid integration into the Iranian axis, Israel must now assume that if Turkey is not currently sharing those Israeli military and intelligence technologies and tools with its enemies, Ankara is likely to share them with Israel’s enemies in the future.

OBVIOUSLY, THE least Israel could be expected to do in this situation is to cut off all military ties to Turkey. But amazingly and distressingly, Israel’s leaders seem not to have recognized this. To the contrary, Israel is scheduled to deliver four additional Heron drones to Turkey next month.

Even more discouragingly, both the statements and actions of senior officials lead to the conclusion that our leaders still embrace the delusion that all is not lost with Turkey. Speaking to the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee earlier this month, IDF Chief of General Staff Lt.- Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi told lawmakers, “What happens in Turkey is not always done with the agreement of the Turkish military. Relations with the Turkish army are important and they need to be preserved. I am personally in touch with the Turkish chief of staff.”

As Turkish columnist Abdullah Bozkurt wrote last week in Today’s Zaman, Ashkenazi’s claim that there is a distinction between Turkish government policies and Turkish military policies is “simply wishful thinking and do[es] not correspond with the hard facts on the ground.”

Bozkurt explained, “Ashkenazi may be misreading the signals based on a personal relationship he has built with outgoing Turkish military Chief of General Staff Gen. Ilker Basbug. The force commanders are much more worried about the rise in terror in the southeastern part of the country, and pretty much occupied with the legal problems confronting them after some of their officers, including high-ranking ones, were accused of illegal activities. The last thing the top brass wants is to give an impression that they are cozying up with Israelis…”

As described by Michael Rubin in the current issue of Commentary, those “legal problems” Bozkurt referred to are part of a government campaign to crush Turkey’s secular establishment.

As the constitutionally appointed guarantors of Turkey’s secular republic, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Islamist government has targeted the military high command for destruction.

Two years ago, a state prosecutor indicted 86 senior Turkish figures including retired generals, prominent journalists, professors and other pillars of Turkey’s former secular leadership for supposedly plotting a coup against the Islamist regime.

By all accounts the 2,455-page indictment was frivolous. But its impact on Turkey’s once allpowerful military has been dramatic.

As Rubin writes, “Bashed from the religious Right and the progressive Left, the Turkish military is a shadow of its former self. The current generation of generals is out of touch with Turkish society and, perhaps, their own junior officers. Like frogs who fail to jump from a pot slowly brought to a boil, the Turkish General Staff lost its opportunity to exercise its constitutional duties.”

And yet, rather than come to terms with this situation, and work to minimize the dangers that an Iranian- and Syrian-allied Turkey poses, Israel’s government and our senior military leaders are still trying to bring the alliance with Turkey back from the dead. Last month’s disastrous “top secret” meeting between Industry, Trade and Labor Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer and Davutoglu is case in point.

Far from ameliorating the situation, these sorts of gambits only compound the damage. By denying the truth that Turkey has joined the enemy camp, Israel provides Turkey with credibility it patently does not deserve. Israel also fails to take diplomatic and other steps to minimize the threat posed by the NATO member in the Iranian axis.

OUR LEADERS’ apparent aversion to accepting that our alliance with Turkey has ended is troubling not only for what it tells us about the government’s ability to craft policies relevant to the challenges now facing us from Turkey. It bespeaks a general difficulty that plagues our top echelons in contending with harsh and unwanted change.

Take Egypt for example. Over the past week, a number of reports were published about the approaching end of the Mubarak era. The Washington Times reported that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak is terminally ill and likely will die within the year. The Economist featured a 15- page retrospective on the Mubarak era in advance of its expected conclusion.

There are many differences between the situation in Egypt today and the situation that existed in Turkey before the Islamists took over in 2002.

For instance, unlike Turkey, Egypt has never been Israel’s strategic ally. In recent years however, Egypt’s interests have converged with Israel’s regarding the threat posed by Iran and its terror proxies Hizbullah and Hamas – the Palestinian branch of the Mubarak regime’s nemesis, the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. These shared interests have paved the way for security cooperation between the two countries on several issues.

All of this is liable to change after Mubarak exits the stage. In all likelihood the Muslim Brotherhood will have greater influence and power than it enjoys today. And this means that a successor regime in Egypt will likely have closer ties to the Iranian axis. Despite the Sunni-Shi’ite split, joined by a common enmity toward the Mubarak regime, the Muslim Brotherhood has strengthened its ties to Iran and Hizbullah of late.

Recognizing the shifting winds, presidential hopefuls are cultivating ties with the Brotherhood.

For instance, former International Atomic Energy Agency chief and current Egyptian presidential hopeful Mohamed El-Baradei has been wooing the Brotherhood for months. And in recent weeks, they have been getting on his bandwagon. Apparently, El-Baradei’s support for Iran’s nuclear program won him credibility with the jihadist group even though he is not an Islamic fanatic.

If and when the Brotherhood gains power and influence in Egypt, it is likely that Egypt will begin sponsoring the likes of Hamas, al-Qaida and other terrorist organizations. And the more powerful the Brotherhood becomes in Egypt, the more likely it is that Egypt will abrogate its peace treaty with Israel.

It is due to that peace treaty that today Egypt fields a conventional military force armed with sophisticated US weaponry. The Egyptian military that Israel fought in four wars was armed with inferior Soviet weapons. Were Egypt to abrogate the treaty, a conventional war between Egypt and Israel would become a tangible prospect for the first time since 1973.

Despite the flood of stories indicating that the end of the Mubarak era is upon us, publicly Israel’s leaders behave as though nothing is the matter. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s routine fawning pilgrimage to Mubarak this week seemed to demonstrate that our leaders are not thinking about the storm that is brewing just over the horizon in Cairo.

TURKEY’S TRANSFORMATION from friend to foe and the looming change in Egypt demonstrate important lessons that Israel’s leaders must take to heart. First, Israel has only a very limited capacity to influence events in neighboring countries.

What happened in Turkey has nothing to do with Israel and everything to do with the fact that Erdogan and his government are Islamist revolutionaries. So, too, the changes that Egypt will undergo after Mubarak dies will have everything to do with the pathologies of Egyptian society and politics, and nothing to do with Israel. Our leaders must recognize this and exercise humility when they assess Israel’s options for contending with our neighbors.

Developments in both Turkey and Egypt are proof that in the Middle East there is no such thing as a permanent alliance. Everything is subject to change. Turkey once looked like a stable place. Its military was constitutionally empowered – and required – to safeguard the country as a secular democracy. But seven years into the AKP revolution the army cannot even defend itself.

So, too, for nearly 30 years Mubarak has ruled Egypt with an iron fist. But as Israel saw no distinction between Mubarak and Egypt, the hostile forces he repressed multiplied under his jackboot.

Once he is gone, they will rise to the surface once more.

Moving forward, Israel must learn to hedge its bets. Just because a government embraces Israel one day does not mean that its military should be given open access to Israeli military technology the next day. So, too, just because a regime is anti-Israel one day doesn’t mean that Israel cannot develop ties with it that are based on shared interests.

Whether it is pleasant or harsh, change is a fact of our lives. The side that copes best with change will be the side that prospers from it.

Our leaders must recognize this truth and shape their policies accordingly.

Iran announces plan to build world’s first nuclear fusion reactor – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.

Iran’s nuclear agency began studies on Saturday to build an experimental nuclear fusion reactor, something that has yet to be achieved by any nation.

Iran is not known to have carried out anything but basic fusion research, but it does have a nuclear fission program that the U.S. and its allies believe is a front to build weapons — a charge Tehran denies.

Nuclear fusion, the process powering the sun and stars, has so far only been mastered as a weapon, producing the thermonuclear explosions of hydrogen bombs. It has never been harnessed for power generation.

Vice President Ali Akbar Salehi, who also heads the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, told a conference on the new research program that his agency has set an initial budget of $8 million to conduct “serious” research in the area of nuclear fusion.

Asghar Sediqzadeh, the head of the new fusion research center said Iran will take two years to complete these studies and then another decade to design and build a reactor.

“The scientific phase of the project effectively began today. We have already hired 50 experts for this purpose,” he told state TV.

The United States, the European Union, China, India, Russia, Japan and South Korea signed an accord in 2006 to build a $12.8 billion experimental fusion reactor at Cadarache, southern France, aimed at revolutionizing global energy use for future generations.

The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, or ITER, members have said no single country can afford the immense investment needed to move the science forward.

Salehi, Iran’s nuclear chief, said Iran was willing to join any international grouping to offer its expertise to promote the project. However, he said Iran will go its own way should the world not welcome it.

“We are ready to enter into cooperation with any international group or country,” he told the semiofficial ISNA news agency.

Salehi said it would take 20 to 30 years before nuclear fusion energy can be commercialized but that Iran seeks to make use of all the capacity inside Iran to speed up its research.

The UN Security Council has already passed four sets of sanctions over Iran’s nuclear program on suspicions it is being used to produce weapons. Iran denies the accusations, saying its program is geared merely toward generating electricity.

	A nuclear reactor in Bushehr, Iran.
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May: Imagine if Iran becomes nuclear-armed » Ventura County Star.

It’s been said that a diplomat is a gentleman paid to go abroad and lie for his country. Sometimes, however, diplomats slip up and tell the truth.

In response to a question at the hopefully named Aspen Ideas Festival this month, Yousef al-Otaiba, ambassador from the United Arab Emirates, said bluntly: “We cannot live with a nuclear Iran.”

If sanctions fail to stop Iran’s drive for nuclear weapons, al-Otaiba added, military force will be the only option left and it should not be ruled out. “A military attack on Iran by whomever would be a disaster,” he said. “But Iran with a nuclear weapon would be a bigger disaster.”

Abd Al-Rahman Al-Rashed, the director-general of Al-Arabiya TV, followed with an article for the English language edition of Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, in which he not only agreed with the ambassador, he declared the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran “the most dangerous threat that is facing our region in a hundred years.” He called upon readers to “imagine what Tehran will do when it has nuclear capabilities!”

Al-Rashed then did a little imagining himself: A nuclear-armed Iran, he said, would soon “dominate … and perhaps take over” the Gulf states, the small, wealthy, Arab countries so tantalizingly close to its borders.

Such an anschluss would not require tanks or troop deployments. As Ambassador al-Otaiba predicted at Aspen, the region’s leaders will “start running for cover toward Iran” once it becomes clear that Washington, having said under both the Bush and Obama administrations that it would be “unacceptable” for Iran to acquire nuclear weapons, had accepted that after all.

One can only imagine that other nations will draw the conclusion that being America’s enemy is less risky than being America’s friend. The implications for Iraq — where the U.S. has invested so much blood and treasure — are obvious.

In Pakistan, Islamists will advance, while democrats retreat. That will further complicate matters in Afghanistan where Iranian interventions — e.g. the supplying of roadside bombs to insurgents — will escalate in an effort to frustrate an already challenging American mission.

Turkey’s Islamist government already has moved closer to Iran. Syria has long been an Iranian client. Hezbollah, Iran’s terrorist proxy, will be strengthened within Lebanon, within Latin America where it has been making substantial inroads in recent years and, of course, along the border with Israel.

Hamas’ leaders have never entertained the possibility of making peace with Israel. With a nuclear Iran supporting them, they will count themselves as wise for having taken that position. By contrast, the Palestinian Authority will become weaker than ever. A Hamas takeover of the West Bank is possible to envision.

Is there a chance that Iran will give nuclear weapons to anti-American terrorists — or attack the Great Satan directly? That is hard to imagine — almost as hard as it was a few years ago to imagine that a stateless terrorist group based in rural Afghanistan would organize the hijacking of passenger jets and use them as missiles to attack Washington and New York.

Jim Woolsey, who served as CIA director under President Bill Clinton, and Rebeccah Heinrichs, an adjunct fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, recently noted: “Iranian military writings show the mullahs recognize the potential” of launching a nuclear-armed missile from a ship near one of our coasts to create an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) that would destroy “the electric grid and electrical systems across a wide swath of U.S. territory.”

The result: “unimaginable economic devastation” and tens of thousands of deaths.

At present, we are not building a missile defense system that could prevent such an attack. Nor are we hardening the grid so that it could withstand such an attack.

The U.S. Congress has passed, and President Barack Obama has signed, legislation that would impose crippling sanctions on Iran. The questions now: Will Obama seriously implement them? And will the Europeans help or hinder?

If sanctions fail, there will be no good choices — only bad choices and worse choices. To figure out which is which will require imagination — more than most Western leaders have demonstrated in recent years.

— Clifford D. May is president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. E-mail him at cliff@defenddemocracy.org.