Iraqi ambassador to Iran calls for closer economic ties
Press TV – August 12, 2012
Iraqi Ambassador to Iran Mohammad Majid al-Sheikh says there is a huge capacity for development of financial transactions between the two countries.
“Given the friendly and brotherly relations between the two neighboring countries and hundreds of kilometers of shared borders, there are many potentials for boosting bilateral trade ties,” he told IRNA on Sunday.
He noted that Iran-Iraq trade transactions amounted to $7 billion in 2011, and hoped that the number would rise to $10 billion in the near future.
He said that a high-ranking Iraqi delegation is to visit Tehran this Tuesday in order to further commercial relations.
Headed by Deputy Prime Minister Rozhi Nouri Shawis, the delegation will include Finance Minister Rafe al-Essawi, Trade Minister Khairullah Hassan Babakr, Industries and Mines Minister Ahmad Nasser Deli, and Governor of the Central Bank Sinan Al-Shabibi, the ambassador stated.
Al-Sheikh added that setting up an Iraqi bank in Iran will be on the delegation’s agenda.
“Establishing an Iraqi bank [in Iran] can greatly help enhance bilateral economic and commercial relations,” he underlined.
US public “brainwashed” to hate Iran says president of Veterans for Peace
By Sherwood Ross | Aletho News | August 10, 2012
MIAMI, FL — The president of a veterans’ anti-war organization said the American public has been “brainwashed” to hate Iran and pressure to prevent the U.S. from attacking it will have to come from outside the US.
“I don’t think we can get mass protests going against [war on] Iran here,” said Leah Bolger, president of Veterans For Peace (VFP) in a speech Thursday to its 27th annual national convention here. “The American public is brainwashed. The American public is saying ‘We hate Iran,'” Bolger said.
“We have to reach out to the global community and get them to put pressure on the US to prevent war against Iran,” she told an audience of cheering veterans at the Marriott Biscayne Bay hotel. “We see how the U.S. sanctions are an act of war against Iran, a country which has done no harm to anyone.”
American are brainwashed, Bolger said, because the mass media has framed Syria and Iran “as terrorist nations out to get us” and making wars against them as “necessary.”
Bolger went on to say, “The Iranian people have done nothing illegal. They have every right to develop nuclear power. Iran is a signatory to the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty (NPT).”
By contrast, she continued, “Israel has never let the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspect their facilities. The best way to discourage nuclear weapons is for the US and Israel to dismantle their own. We are bellicose and activist nations.”
The veterans cheered when Bolger said VFP is the only veterans organization that has called for the abolition of war. The group has also called for dismantling the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
Veterans For Peace was founded in 1985 and has approximately 5,000 members in 150 chapters located in every US state and several countries. It is a 501(c)3 non-profit educational organization recognized as a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) by the United Nations, and is the only national veterans’ organization calling for the abolition of war.
Sherwood Ross may be reached at sherwoodross10@gmail.com.
Iran Conference: Setting the Stage for Dialogue in Syria
By Elie Chalhoub | Al Akhbar | August 9, 2012
A “Consultative Meeting on Syria” in Tehran aims to promote a Syrian political solution and establish a counterweight to the self-styled “Friends of Syria.”
Iran’s position on Syria is unchanged: the crisis can only have a Syrian solution, based on dialogue between the warring parties. It aims to persuade as many countries as possible to support that option, and establish an alternative to the coalition of states complicit in the bloodletting in Syria.
Iran is looking ahead to the aftermath of what it expects to be the Syrian regime’s “victory” in Aleppo. Once that is achieved, Tehran believes, the powers backing the rival sides in Syria will have no alternative but to negotiate.
Turkey’s position is crucial in this regard, as it would clearly have a major impact if it opted to intervene directly in the battle for Aleppo. This in turn explains the sudden and sharp deterioration in relations between Ankara and Tehran, with the latter threatening to freeze trade with the former.
The Iranians have been preparing for today’s “Consultative Meeting on Syria,” hosted by the Foreign Ministry, for around two weeks, according to Iranian sources. Their contacts focused on states that are “not directly complicit” in the Syrian crisis, in addition to Turkey, which was also invited.
The sources said outgoing UN/Arab League envoy Kofi Annan was invited too, in the hope that he could be persuaded not to abandon his mission, but decided, apparently under pressure from various parties, not to attend.
On the eve of the conference, 20 countries were due to send delegates to the gathering, including Russia, China, Turkey, Pakistan and India, and seven Arab states (Iraq, Algeria, Tunisia, Mauritania, Kuwait, the UAE, and Oman). Eight countries were to be represented by their foreign ministers, the others at a less senior level.
Lebanon decided not to take part in line with its policy of non-involvement in Syrian affairs. Iraq was to send high-level delegates other than Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, who “represents the American face of the Iraqi regime,” according to the sources. But Iraqi diplomatic efforts led to an agreement that would have Zebari attend along with the minister of national security. The sources added that many of the countries invited had – like Annan, who initially agreed to attend – come under heavy pressure to stay away, or at least to lower the level of their representation.
The Iranian sources said the principal objective of the conference is to “bring the Syrian opposition and regime together around the negotiating table, with the aim of arriving at a Syrian solution to the crisis in Syria.”
They said Iran had obtained undertakings from “a fair number” of Syrian opposition groups to support such talks, as well as the endorsement of President Bashar al-Assad, who conferred in Damascus earlier this week with the secretary of Iran’s National Security Council, Saeed Jalili.
“We want this conference to be a counter to the Enemies of Syria (Friends of Syria) group, which has been promoting militarization, violence and sectarianism,” they said. “The hope is to persuade the maximum number of states to encourage and take part in an intra-Syrian solution.”
The thinking in Tehran is that the Syrian regime is bound to prevail in the battle of Aleppo, and that “after that, the time will come for negotiations between the forces that wanted to destroy the Syrian state and bring down the regime, and the states that want to make a political solution succeed and find a Syrian way out of the crisis.” Thursday’s conference is part of a process of “preparing the ground for such negotiations.” […]
It is significant that close US allies and supporters of the Syrian rebels – Turkey, Kuwait, Oman, the UAE and Tunisia – were to attend the Tehran conference. “That is the strongest evidence of the opposition front cracking, and of its willingness to enter into a dialogue once the dust has settled on the Battle of Aleppo,” they said. However, it seems that diplomatic pressure succeeded in the end in keeping Kuwait and UAE from participating. … Full article
South Korea resumes Iranian oil supplies
RT | August 8, 2012
South Korea, the fourth largest importer of Iranian crude, plans to resume purchases after a two-month pause due to a European Union embargo.
South Korean refiners and the National Iranian Tanker Company (NITC) are negotiating the details of a deal, which would allow supplies to restart from September, Reuters reported citing government sources. Tehran offered to deliver crude in its own tankers and provide up to $1 billion shipment insurance cover.
SK Energy and Hyundai Oilbank – the only two South Korean refiners that import Iranian crude, have confirmed that they are involved in negotiations with NITC. Though it’s unclear whether Iran had offered South Korea a discount for crude.
South Korea, India, Japan and China are the biggest importers of Iranian crude, accounting for more than half of its oil exports. In May, Seoul announced it would halt crude import from the Islamic Republic, becoming the first major importer of Iranian oil to give up supplies due to the EU sanctions.
EU sanctions banning Iranian oil as well as insurance affect Asian customers as they rely on EU companies to insure their shipments. Nearly 90% of the world’s tanker fleets are covered by 13 international P&I clubs from the EU.
Meanwhile Japan approved providing $7.6 billion insurance coverage for Iranian tankers, while China offered to use its own vessels for delivery. India has given permission to its state-run refiners to import Iranian oil on condition Tehran arranges insurance.
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Three Iranians abducted by armed gangs in Syria killed
Press TV – August 6, 2012
Three of the Iranian pilgrims, who were kidnapped by armed insurgents near the Syrian capital of Damascus, have been killed, Reuters reports.
The so-called Free Syrian army has threatened to kill the rest of the pilgrims if the Syrian military does not stop attacking them.
Forty-eight Iranian pilgrims, who were traveling on a bus from Damascus International Airport to the shrine of Hazrat Zainab (AS) on the outskirts of the Syrian capital, Damascus, were abducted by insurgents on August 4.
The insurgents who have abducted the Iranian pilgrims had claimed that the hostages are members of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) by simply referring to their military discharge cards.
An informed official at Iran’s Foreign Ministry on Sunday vehemently dismissed the reports by certain Arabic-language news networks that the Iranian pilgrims were military members.
On Saturday, Iran’s Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi called his Turkish and Qatari counterparts Ahmet Davutoglu and Hamad bin Jasim bin Jabir Al Thani and asked for their assistance in securing the release of the hostages.
The Qatari and Turkish foreign ministers promised to do their best to bring about the liberation of the Iranian pilgrims.
According to a Qatari source, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar are sending weapons and communications equipment to the insurgents in Syria via a base that is located in the southern Turkish city of Adana, about one hundred kilometers from Syria’s border, to fight against the government of President Bashar al-Assad.
The Iranians were kidnapped in Syria days after seven Iranian Red Crescent Society (IRCS) members were abducted in Libya.
On July 31, The Libyan Red Crescent (LRC) said in a statement that unidentified gunmen kidnapped a seven-member IRCS delegation after they left the headquarters of the LRC in Benghazi.
The Iranian delegation went to Libya at the invitation of the Libyan Red Crescent to discuss various prospects for cooperation in the field of humanitarian assistance.
Is Iran “The Most Destabilizing Nation in the World”?
By Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett | The Race for Iran | August 1st, 2012
Standing reality on its head—at least in the eyes of most Middle Easterners—presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney declared during his recent visit to Israel that the Islamic Republic is “the most destabilizing nation in the world.” In fact, reputable surveys conducted by international and regional polling groups—see here and here—show that, by orders of magnitude, largely Sunni Arab populations see Israel and the United States as much bigger threats to their security and interests than Iran. Al Jazeera asked our colleague, Seyed Mohammad Marandi of the University of Tehran, to comment on Governor Romney’s remark; to see the segment, click here or on the embedded video above.
Mohammad’s observations that, given the record of American policy in the Middle East (and all the death and destruction it has caused), the United States is hardly in a position to “complain very much about Iran” and that, from an Iranian perspective, there is not a lot of difference between Romney and President Obama are well presented. His explanation why the “soft war” that the Obama Administration is currently conducting against the Islamic Republic is not that different from a “hot war” is especially eloquent. We, though, want to pick up on Mohammad’s response to the interviewer’s suggestion that it is Iranian intransigence which is blocking progress in the nuclear talks and prompting tougher sanctions:
“The Iranians have been talking. The Iranians are basically saying that ‘we are willing to negotiate.’ But the Western position is ‘you give up everything and then we’ll start talking.’ The Iranian right to enriching uranium is a right that all sovereign countries have. And the Iranian Revolution itself was partially about dignity and independence. The Iranians are not going to accept being a second-rate country. This is not the Saudi regime or the Jordanian regime. This is a country that is fiercely independent. So the Iranians will continue to enrich uranium within the framework of the NPT and international law. The United States cannot stop Iran from doing so. If the United States was reasonable and rational, if the Europeans were rational, then the Iranians would be willing to give further assurances to ease tensions. But the United States isn’t really after that, in the eyes of Iranians.”
We think that is an important statement, both of the Iranian position and of reality. We have long argued that, if Washington accepted the principle and reality of internationally safeguarded enrichment in Iran, it would become eminently possible—not to say relatively easy—to negotiate a satisfactory resolution to the Iranian nuclear issue. But the United States—even under the Obama Administration—does not want to do that, for recognizing Iran’s right to enrich implies recognizing the Islamic Republic as a legitimate political entity representing legitimate national interests. We think that is unlikely to change after the U.S. presidential election in November, regardless of whether Romney or Obama wins. … Full article
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China Hits back at New US Sanctions over Iran
Al-Manar | August 1, 2012
Beijing reacted furiously Wednesday to new US sanctions imposed on a Chinese bank over transactions with Iran, urging Washington to revoke them and saying it would lodge an official protest.China, US flags
China’s Foreign Ministry urged the United States to lift the sanctions on the Bank of Kunlun and stop “damaging China’s interests and Sino-US relations.”
US President Barack Obama on Tuesday imposed new economic sanctions on Iran’s oil export sector and on a pair of Chinese and Iraqi banks accused of doing business with Tehran.
Obama said the new measures underlined the United States’ determination to force Tehran “to meet its international obligations” in nuclear negotiations, according to a statement released by the White House.
The US president accused the Bank of Kunlun and the Elaf Islamic Bank in Iraq of arranging transactions worth millions of dollars with Iranian banks already under sanctions because of alleged links to Tehran’s weapons program.
In a brief statement, China’s foreign ministry expressed “strong dissatisfaction and firm opposition” to the US move and said it would officially protest the decision.
“China has regular relations with Iran in the energy and trade fields, which have no connection with Iran’s nuclear plans,” the statement said.
Source: AFP
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Iran plans to establish international NAM news agency
Press TV – July 31, 2012
Iran plans to accomplish one of the main objectives of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) since its inception by launching the movement’s international news agency.
Mohammad Sheikhan, deputy head of the 16th NAM summit for public relations and communications, said in a Tuesday briefing in the Iranian capital city, Tehran, that the establishment of the news agency has long been an unfulfilled objective of the NAM.
“Since Iran assumes the presidency of the NAM for the next three years, we plan to establish the news agency and the decision will soon be put into action,” he said.
The 16th summit of the NAM member states will be held on August 26-31 in the Iranian capital, Tehran, during which the Islamic Republic will assume the rotating presidency of the movement for three years.
Sheikhan expressed Iran’s readiness to provide media coverage for the summit and noted that Tehran will prepare all the equipment required by the press.
NAM, an international organization with 120 member states and 17 observer countries, is considered as not formally aligned with or against any major power bloc.
The organization was founded in the former Yugoslavia in 1961. NAM’s purpose, as stated in the Havana Declaration of 1979, is to ensure “the national independence, sovereignty, territorial integrity and security of non-aligned countries.”
Israel, US Bent on Brewing Iran Crisis
By Ismail Salami | Palestine Chronicle | July 29, 2012
Tehran – A report published on Sunday in Ha’aretz reveals that US National Security Adviser Tom Donilon has presented Washington’s contingency plans for a possible attack on Iran to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu once the nuclear negotiations reach an impasse.
However, the report was immediately denied by a top Israeli official who spoke on condition of anonymity. He said, “Nothing in the article is correct. Donilon did not meet the prime minister for dinner, he did not meet him one-on-one, nor did he present operational plans to attack Iran.”
A quick justification for this denial could be that such a contingency plan was not supposed to be publicized and should have remained confidential for as long as necessary.
Still, there is no denial that Washington and Israel are the two sides of a coin and it is manifest that they have in their political wheeling and dealing formed a united front against Iran.
US GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney has recently paid a visit to Israel to marshal up support of the Israelis on the one hand and express his unswervingly servile commitment to Israel (including his anti-Iran stance) on the other. Dan Senor, a top foreign policy adviser for the GOP presidential candidate, says that Romney would support “Israel’s decision to launch a military strike against Iran to keep that country from achieving nuclear capabilities, but hopes diplomatic and military measures will dissuade Tehran from pursuing its path toward nuclear acquisition.”
Furthermore, he told reporters ahead of the speech, planned for late Sunday near Jerusalem’s Old City, “If Israel has to take action on its own, in order to stop Iran from developing the capability, the governor would respect that decision.”
With a more somber tone, however, Romney himself has repeatedly said that he has a “zero tolerance” policy toward Iran obtaining the capability to build a nuclear weapon.
In the recent past, Washington has frequently threatened Iran with a military strike. The threats, which evidently run counter to all international laws, are generally uttered by a massive number of officials influenced by the powerful Zionist lobby in Washington. A brazen instance of these threats is that Washington may use the 14-ton bunker buster (20ft long, 1ft wide weapon) known as Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP), the world’s largest conventional bomb against Iran nuclear sites. Michael Donley, the US Air Force Secretary, said the bomb would be available if necessary.
“We continue to do testing on the bomb to refine its capabilities, and that is ongoing,” he said “We also have the capability to go with existing configuration today.”
In order to justify their illegal threats and sanctions, the US has apparently embarked on a systematic program of fomenting Iranophobia in the US and the rest of the world. In this pernicious Iranophobic campaign, a number of groups and parties including the Tea Party, neocons and AIPAC are actively involved.
By this program, the US is hell bent on distorting the realities of the Islamic Republic as well as brainwashing public opinion in the world into believing that Iran is seeking to build nuclear weapons, and that Iran poses a grave danger to the security of the world. In this smear campaign, Washington also makes use of its allies including Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Israel in the region.
A politically bankrupt politician who does have but little respect in his own country, Romney follows the selfsame Iranophobic campaign, takes an aggressive stand on Iran in Israel where he is falsely emboldened and says Tehran’s leaders are giving the world “no reason to trust them with nuclear material.” He even voiced support for an Israeli decision for military action “to prevent Iran from gaining nuclear capability”.
“Make no mistake: The ayatollahs in Tehran are testing our moral defenses. They want to know who will object, and who will look the other way. My message to the people of Israel and the leaders of Iran is one and the same: I will not look away; and neither will my country.”
These facts aside, the duo have recently started a string of false flag terrorist attacks taking place in different parts of the world. With Washington pointing the finger of blame at Iran, Israel feels more fallaciously entitled to tone up its war rhetoric against the Islamic Republic and make the best of the fabricated ops. In the same line, former UN Ambassador John Bolton has called on the Zionist entity to attack Iran in retaliation for the alleged killing of Israeli tourists in Bulgaria, saying “the time has come for the Jewish state to quit threatening and take action”.
“This is obviously a very dangerous period for Israel with the civil war in Syria, refugees reported going across the border into Lebanon, and Hezbollah well armed with rockets on Israel’s northern border,” Bolton told Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren Thursday night. “So I think if there were ever a time to retaliate, and directly against Iran this time, this is it.”
In the final analysis, one can see that the real threat in the world is being posed and imposed by those warmongers in Washington who will turn the situation to the best of their own interests in the region as well as by Israel who will in the wake of a war against Iran reap the benefits of such aggression if of course they ever outlive such an act of belligerence.
– Dr. Ismail Salami is an Iranian writer, Middle East expert, Iranologist and lexicographer. He writes extensively on the US and Middle East issues.
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The Crusades – colliding narratives
Ashes of Pompeii | June 13, 2026
They say history is written by the victors, but the Crusades offer an interesting historical contrast: a two-century collision that produced not one history, but two parallel, irreconcilable realities. The dates and the battles are identical in both accounts, but the moral axis is entirely flipped.
In the traditional Western narrative, the Crusades are framed as a heroic, if tragic, epic. The First Crusade is a pious pilgrimage; the knights are romanticized figures of chivalry in shining armor, bravely holding the line in a hostile, exotic land. The eventual loss of the Holy Land is mourned as the “fall of Outremer,” a tragic retreat of European civilization. In this telling, the East is often reduced to a passive backdrop, its inhabitants viewed through a lens of mystique or backwardness, mere obstacles to a divine mandate.
But cross the Mediterranean, and the exact same timeline reads like a chronicle of foreign invasion and eventual, hard-won restoration against the barbarous northerners. The dates do not change, but the adjectives do. Here is the history as it is remembered in the Levant… continue
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