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Amanda Roraback's World in a Nutshell |
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Articles Can the West destroy Iran's nuclear capabilities?
Sanctions Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) (new 03/27/07)
Notes from Iran Is the US planning to go to war with Iran? ISOG (Iran Syria Operations Group) Iran's Military Op-Ed Iran better served by peace in Iraq Documents Letter from Ahmadinejad to George Bush
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IRAN |
Iran in a Nutshell |
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2007 June Afghanistan's president Hamid Karzai said Iran and Afghanistan and Iran are "very good friends" despite accusations that the Iranian government was arming Taliban fighters. May Iran has detained 4 Iranian-Americans on charges of spying for the United States. Among them are Haleh Esfandiari, director of the Middle East Program at the Washington-based Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars; Kian Tajbakhsh with George Soros' Open Society Institute; journalist Parnaz Azima from the U.S.-funded Radio Farda; and Ali Shakeri, a peace activist and founding board member at the University of California, Irvine, Center for Citizen Peace building. Iran has significantly stepped up its nuclear program. It's reported that Iran's nuclear facility near Natanz has more than three times as many centrifuges than it had three months ago. (Centrifuges are used to separate U-235 from U-238). April Iran plans to attend the conference in Sharm el-Sheikh to discuss the stabilization of Iraq. Iranian police arrested nearly 300 women accused of not covering up properly. All women in Iran are required to cover their hair and wear loose-fitting manteaus (coats) in compliance with Islamic codes of decency. Women who were showing too much hair or donning coats deemed too tight were taken to police headquarters. March A new 50,000 rial banknote (worth about $5.40) carrying an atomic symbol of electrons in orbit on one side and a picture of late Ayatollah Khomeini on the other, was released this month. Fifteen British sailors and marines were detained after the Iranians claimed they had sailed into Iranian waters in the Persian Gulf. February US and other countries consider imposing new sanctions against Iran after Tehran refused to halt its uranium enrichment efforts. Iran failed to comply with a Security Council resolution that had ordered Iran to suspend its uranium enrichment program by February 21st. Iran wanted to win European support for an offer to cap enrichment at 4% -- a level sufficient to manufacture nuclear fuel for power plants. The US feared that the technology was enough to allow Iran to allow Iran to expand its enrichment to weapons-grade levels (which requires enrichment to reach 85%). Iranian President Ahmadinejad is expected to announce progress on setting up the first of 3,000 enrichment centrifuges Iran has said it is building at a major new underground facility in Natanz. Once that milestone has been reached, there are signs some in Iran might advocate putting the centrifuge program on hold for a time. (Put on stand-by by injecting war air rather than uranium gas. This would pose a problem for the US which has designed strategies for a defiant Iran, not one that is cooperating with the UN. In a step towards implementing sanctions aimed at halting Iran's nuclear enrichment program, the U.N. nuclear agency said it plans to cancel nuclear aid to Iran. The move will not affect the agency's assistance on a civilian nuclear power reactor in Bushehr which is exempted from the UN resolution. Iran is one of the largest recipients of UN nuclear technical cooperation. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said that markings on bombs suggest that Iranians are linked to explosives used by Iraqi militants. Iran blames the U.S. for the abduction of the second secretary at the Iranian Embassy in Baghdad, Iraq. Iran claims that the kidnappers, 30 Iraqi men wearing Iraqi army uniforms, were acting on the orders of the American government. January Five Iranians diplomat officials are detained by American troops in the northern Iraqi city of Irbil. U.S. forces plan to step up their offensive against Iranians in Iraq as part of President Bush's new Iraq plan. U.S. officials accuse Iran of allowing militants to enter Iraq from their territory and providing arms, money and training to Shiite Muslim militias. 1/8/07 The Bush administration moved to freeze the assets of Iran's 5th largest state-owned bank (Bank Sepah) on suspicion that the bank aided industries associated with the country's WMD program. Among the allegations is that the Bank facilitated business between the Aerospace Industries Organization and North Korea's chief ballistic missile-related exporter, KOMID. 2006
December An analysis in the journal of the National Academy of sciences reports that Iran's oil exports could disappear by 2015 due to poor management and failure to invest. US troops in Baghdad arrested Iranians they believed were running guns and planning sectarian attacks. 12/15 Elections are held for seats in the the Assembly of Experts. Rafsanjani beats the candidate endorsed by Ahmadinejad. A student demonstration outside Amir Kabir University in Tehran revealed local disenchantment with Iran's president, Ahmadinejad. More significantly, the demonstration of "death to the dictator" was broadcast on state-run television indicating a rift between Iran's Supreme Leader (who controls Iran's media) and the firebrand president. Iran hosts the "International Conference on 'Review of the Holocaust: Global Vision" attended by "holocaust scholars" from 30 countries. Among the attendees was David Duke, former head of the racist, anti-Semitic Ku Klux Klan and anti-Zionist rabbis. The authors of the Iraq Study Group recommend establishing contact with Tehran and Damascus to explore common interests in Iraq and elsewhere.
November Iraq's president, Jalal Talabani,
is scheduled to meet Iran's president, Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad to discuss relations between the two
countries.
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