NY Times: Iran Reacts to Pressure From America

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, promised on Sunday that Iran would deliver “an unforgettable response” to any “improper actions” from the United States over an alleged Iranian plot to kill the Saudi ambassador to the United States.

The ayatollah appeared to be responding to an American campaign to further isolate and pressure Iran, an effort that received a push on Sunday with reports that President Obama is pressing United Nations nuclear inspectors to release classified data showing that Iran is working on nuclear weapons.

The United States accused Iranian officials last week of plotting to murder the ambassador in a bizarre scheme involving an Iranian-American used car salesman who believed he was hiring assassins from a Mexican drug cartel for $1.5 million. Two men — the Iranian-American,Mansour J. Arbabsiar, and an officer in the Quds Force, part of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps — have been charged in the plot.

Iran’s leaders have called the case a fabrication meant to distract Americans from their own problems, and The Associated Press reported Sunday that Iranian state TV had said that Iran’s Foreign Ministry requested consular access to Mr. Arbabsiar.

Norbert Bärlocher, a spokesman for the Swiss Embassy in Washington, said the embassy had no knowledge of whether the Iranians had passed such a request to the Swiss government. He said, “We represent the U.S. in Iran, but we do not represent Iran in the U.S.”

Asked if she knew of any request to see Mr. Arbabsiar, his lawyer, Sabrina Shroff, said, “I have no such knowledge.”

The supreme leader’s comments on Sunday were his strongest yet about the case.

“If any American officials entertain delusions, they should know that any improper action, whether political or security related, will meet a decisive response from the Iranian nation,” Ayatollah Khamenei said, while speaking to university professors and students in Kermanshah Province in western Iran.

The ayatollah said that the United States was using the accusations to divert attention from its financial problems, suggesting that the protests over economic injustice sweeping the globe were an embarrassment to Washington. He said that “the people of at least 80 nations have expressed support for the Occupy Wall Street movement, and this is very bitter and difficult for American officials to accept.”

Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, also weighed in on Sunday, saying the alleged plot is just another of Washington’s “scenarios.” The semiofficial Press TV reported Mr. Ahmadinejad as saying that the United States makes “daily efforts to conceive scenarios against Iran. And, in this instance, it accused Iran of terrorism, but it should be clarified for the Americans that terror is the work of those that have no culture.”

Ayatollah Khamenei, according to Mehr News and IRNA, semiofficial news agencies, also issued a veiled threat to Mr. Ahmadinejad not to overstep his boundaries, addressing a power struggle between the two that has been going on most of this year. The ayatollah said, “Changing Iran into a parliamentary system from a presidential system” someday would not be a problem.

The news agencies focused on this comment. The implication, analysts said, was that Ayatollah Khamenei, the nation’s ultimate authority, was warning Mr. Ahmadinejad that he could abolish the presidency in the future.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/17/world/middleeast/iran-warns-america-against-trying-to-pressure-it.html?_r=1&src=tp

This Middle East power struggle could kill off the Arab spring by David Hearst: Guardian UK

The Iran 'terror plot' drama involves four players who have much to lose from Arab self-determination. Let's hope they fail

The drama of the Iranian plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in Washington features four players who, whatever the substance of the allegations, are engaged in a series of proxy battles for control of their interests in the Middle East, a great game if you will. Three of the four – Saudi Arabia, the US and Israel – are struggling to contain and deflect the tidal wave of democratic protest known as the Arab spring. While mouthing support for it, each have genuine reason to fear Arab self-determination. The fourth, Iran, sees in the same events a challenge to its stewardship of the Shias and the loss of the regional influence it was unexpectedly handed when the US invaded Iraq.

Between them, they could kill off the Arab spring, just as its first fragile shoots are beginning to poke through. In Egypt, registration opened this week for candidates for the first election since the fall of Hosni Mubarak. Tunisia will hold its first election in 10 days. Its current foreign minister, Mouldi Kefi, said Tunisia's election would be a bellwether for the region. But it must be sounding more like the bell for the final round of Arab absolute monarchies.

Let's start with the House of Saud. That the horror film of street protest is soon to play in cinemas near them, the ageing and feuding princes can now have little doubt. The Sunni regime tried to stop the rot of revolt by the Shia majority in neighbouring Bahrain by sending in troops, but the revolt has migrated over the bridge that separates the two kingdoms to the eastern, predominantly Shia, city of al-Qatif, where there were armed clashes on Sunday between police and protesters after two elderly men were arrested to pressure their sons to surrender to police.

Just as important is the evidence of Sunni dissatisfaction with one of the most repressive regimes in the Arab world. The government denies holding political prisoners, but admits to arresting around 5,700 "military extremists". Human rights organisations put the real figure of political detainees much higher. These include peaceful opponents of the regime such as Dr Saud Al Hashimi, or Mohammed Saleh Albejadi, the co-founder of the Saudi Civil and Political Rights Association.

Dissatisfaction is being voiced more openly in Riyadh and Jeddah. The independent religious leader Sheikh Salman Aloda, who expressed support for the revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia on his popular weekly programme on a Saudi-owned TV channel, has been taken off the air and banned from leaving the country. The Saudi kingdom needs a script to quell unrest. The interior ministry blamed an unnamed foreign country for the unrest in al-Qatif – which in the Gulf is a coded reference to Iran.

The kingdom's closest ally, the US, also needs a new way of re-establishing itself in a region so central to its interests. Once the power behind many thrones, it finds itself in the unusual position of bystander to events rather than their shaper. Its stated support for Arab democracy is riven with inconsistencies. It has gone seamlessly from supporting Mubarak and Tunisia's former president, Ben Ali, to supporting their ousters, without even trying to explain its relationship to these dictators or account for the services they provided.

Barack Obama has instead tried to wrap the Arab spring into a narrative of his own aspirations. This is not destined to have a long shelf life. US allies who are expendable in Tunisia and Egypt are not in Bahrain. Still less would they be in Jordan, Saudi Arabia, or Palestine if that rose up against occupation. Let the Arab spring continue, and core US oil and military interests would be affected. The gap between stated policy and national interest will go from being latent to something that has to be bridged. What better way to do that than a conflict with Iran?

It is evident that Israel thinks its date with destiny is not with the Palestinians but with Iran's as yet untamed nuclear programme.Apologising to Egypt for deaths of Egyptian soldiers in hot pursuit of attackers in Eilat, and reaching a deal with Hamas over Gilad Shalit, can be interpreted in many ways. But one of them is clearing the tables in preparation for an attack on Iran.

The street battles in Syria between government forces and opposition forces are a major threat to Iran. If it lost Syria, it would lose not just its closest ally, but the conduit of arms, missiles and money to Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas, whose external leadership is in Damascus. Hamas avoided the strategic error that Hezbollah's Hasan Nasrallah made when he urged Arabs to end the unrest in Syria. But Hamas's external leadership may well have to find a new home as a result of staying on the fence. The biggest deterrent card that Iran has left to play is Iraq, a country that US troops are intent on leaving, and whose rulers have announced their support for Syria's Bashar Assad.

The final part of a bleak jigsaw is time. There is only a limited window of opportunity for readjusting the furniture in the region before Egypt forms a government and begins to play once again a seminal role. The options being mulled now may not be available in a year's time. Let us hope they never are.

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/oct/13/middle-east-arab-spring-saudi-ambassador

Alleged plot to assassinate Saudi ambassador: Biden warns Iran of ‘serious consequences’

WASHINGTON, Oct 12: US Vice President Joe Biden warned Iran on Wednesday that it would have to face ‘serious consequences’ for allegedly plotting to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States. US President Barack Obama called the plot a “flagrant violation” of US and international law but allowed his deputies to do most of the talking.

Also on Wednesday, the US imposed sanctions on an Iranian commercial airline – Mahan Air – for allegedly “ferrying operatives, weapons and funds” on behalf of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which is also known as the Quds force.

“The consequences for Iran, I think, will be serious. I think what we have to do is unite the entire world against the Iranian behaviour,” Mr Biden told CBS News.

At the White House, spokesman Jay Carney told reporters that senior members of Iran’s Quds force had participated in the alleged plot to assassinate the Saudi envoy, Adel al-Jubeir.

“It’s clear that senior levels of Quds force were engaged in the plotting,” he said, adding that Washington would respond by intensifying efforts to isolate Iran.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the alleged plot was a “dangerous escalation” in Iran’s support of terrorism.

The plot is “a flagrant violation of international and US law and a dangerous escalation of the Iranian government’s long-standing use of political violence and sponsorship of terrorism”, she said.

On Tuesday afternoon, the US Justice Department announced that it had charged Manssor Arbabsiar, a naturalised US citizen, and Gholam Shakuri, a member of the Quds force with conspiring to carry out a bomb attack on the Saudi envoy.

In Tehran, Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi called the plot “an amateurish scenario” and told the news agency ISNA there have been similar allegations over the past few decades.

“The Islamic Republic never seeks to get involved in this kind of behaviour and, despite 32 years of pressure brought to bear on Iran, the country has always acted and reacted ethically,” he said. But the Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia in Washington endorsed the US claim saying that the plot was “a despicable violation of international norms, standards and conventions” and said it was “not in accord with the principles of humanity”.

In London, Saudi Prince Turki al-Faisal told a conference that “someone in Iran is going to have to pay the price” for the plot.

Vice President Biden said the US was laying out its case to world leaders and demanded “accountability for Iran and further isolation of Iran in terms of their ability to operate around the world”.

Iran was already subject to numerous American sanctions but on Wednesday, the US Treasury Department expanded the sanctions to include Mahan Air, claiming that it was “yet another facet of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ extensive infiltration of Iran’s commercial sector to facilitate its support for terrorism”.

On Capitol Hill, Republican lawmakers joined Democrats in condemning Iran.

“This would constitute an act of war not only against the Saudis and Israelis but against the United States,” said Congressman Michael McCaul.

“Iran’s assassination of a foreign diplomat in our country would have violated both US and international law, and represented an act of war,” said Congressman Peter King.

Congressman Ted Poe called the plot an “act of war” against the United States and said: “We have to do something.”

But a senior US Defence Department official told Fox News the announcement was “not a trip wire for military action” in Iran.

“No one should read into this as preteens for any type of military response,” the official said.

Source: http://www.dawn.com/2011/10/13/alleged-plot-to-assassinate-saudi-ambassador-biden-warns-iran-of-serious-consequences.html

Lal Masjid deputy cleric likely to face the chop

LAHORE: Maulana Aamer Siddique, the second-in-command (Naib Khateeb) at the Red Mosque (Lal Masjid) in Islamabad, is believed to be in the process of being expelled from his post in the coming days as a penalty for visiting Iran, sources familiar with the matter told The Express Tribune.

Siddique has now been receiving death threats while being labeled a “Shia-sympathiser”, The Express Tribune learnt. Maulana Abdul Aziz (chief cleric of the Red Mosque), whose brother Maulana Abdul Rasheed Ghazi, was killed in the operation against Red Mosque militants named “Operation Silence” in July, 2007 is believed to be behind the decision for his removal.

Siddique’s visit to Iran was brought to the forefront by Aziz during his Friday sermon, saying that the visit had hurt the sentiments of the community. In a fiery speech, Aziz allegedly invoked JUI (F) activists, students of the madrassas and activists of the Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP), all groups belonging to the Deobandi School of Islamic theology.

Consequently, Siddique is now all set to be expelled from his existing responsibilities and a formal announcement is likely to be made by Aziz shortly, sources further revealed. Aziz and his wife Umme Hassan, the woman said to be the brains behind the Red Mosque burqa brigade, expressed serious reservations about Aamer’s visit and have asked him to join an Imambargah instead, sources added. The couple refused to meet Siddique and snubbed him when he finally had an opportunity to clarify his position, labeling him an outsider.

Siddique assumed the responsibility of Naib Khateeb on May 17, 2009, replacing Ghazi Abdul Rashid after his death and was also one of the main activists who played a pivotal role in Aziz’s release.

The cleric was part of a ten-member delegation who visited Iran on the invitation of the Iranian Shia council where he is said to have visited the grave (mausoleum) of Ayatollah Khomeini, an act that has deeply enraged his elders. Talking to The Express Tribune, Siddique said he visited Iran on the invitation of the Iranian Shia council along with nine other members, adding that he had been receiving death threats and believed his life to be in danger.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 11^th, 2011.

 Source: http://tribune.com.pk/story/271382/lal-masjid-deputy-cleric-likely-to-face-the-chop/

Is circular debt the real issue?

By Salman Khalid and Kamal Munir 

PAKISTAN has been facing a series of power crises over roughly the last two decades. However, since 2007, the situation has deteriorated rapidly.

As a result of severe electricity shortage, industry, commerce and agriculture have all taken serious hits with the country’s growth prospects dimming significantly. At the same time, residential consumers have had to endure over eight-to-12-hour blackouts in major cities. The situation is even worse in rural Pakistan.

Surprisingly, the total energy produced in the country has actually decreased nearly 10 per cent between 2007 and 2010.
This is primarily due to lower-capacity utilisation, which in turn has been the result of ‘circular debt’, a concept that has been bandied around freely over the past few years as the primary problem that besets energy production in Pakistan.

However, despite its dominance of policy discourse, circular debt is not the fundamental issue here. The two most glaring reasons behind the present mess Pakistan finds itself in are the 1994 energy policy and the resultant extreme over-reliance on expensive imported fuel mix.

It is easy to forget that the roots of the present power crisis can be traced to almost two decades back with the advent of the highly generous 1994 power policy for independent power producers (IPP). At that time the country’s electricity generation relied on a fuel mix of approximately 70:30 in favour of hydro versus thermal. This changed dramatically over the next decade with the fuel mix going to 30 per cent hydro and almost 70 per cent thermal by the end of 2010.

This dramatic shift in generation source occurred because the 1994 power policy (and later the 2002 power policy) did not discriminate on fuel source being employed and made the country hostage to fluctuations in international oil and gas prices (the country does not possess either commodity in sufficient quantity).

The cost of this strategic policy-level folly can be understood with the following comparison. As per the National Power System Expansion Plan 2010-2030, as of 2010, Wapda (employing hydro production) generated electricity at Rs1.03/kWh ((1.2 cents/kWh) while public-sector thermal power plants provided the same at Rs8.5/kWh (10 cents/kwh).

However, the IPPs (primarily thermal) provided the same at Rs9.58/kWh (11.2 cents/kWh). As a result, the average blended cost of generation was Rs6.6/kWh (7.7 cents/kWh) in 2010 which further increased to Rs9.81/kWh (11.5 cents/kWh) for the end consumer due to line losses and theft in the transmission and distribution systems.

It should be noted that the above numbers underestimate the true cost because the cost of energy from old power plants is substantially lower due to repayment of debt. Most new thermal IPPs are charging in the range of 15-18 cents/kWh at current oil prices. As a result, tariffs will substantially increase further as the world economy comes out of recession over the next few years and oil/gas prices jump (with the US trying to print its way out of recession).

Even after adjusting for debt repayment, power production through indigenous hydro resources comes out much better than what we are given to believe.

The estimated cost of energy stands at 1.6 cents/kWh for Kalabagh dam with a vast majority of new hydros expected to come under 4.5 cents/kWh as per a recent NTDC (National Transmission and Despatch Company) report. Furthermore, the country has so far completely failed to develop its coal reserves (only 30MW coming from coal) which are estimated at 175 billion tonnes (the second largest in the world). Engro estimates a tariff of 10-12 cents/kWh for Thar coal-based power production based on the current policy. Incredibly, the world average for coal-based power production in the energy mix is 40 per cent while it is only 0.1 per cent in Pakistan.

To make matters worse, many of the thermal IPPs set-ups under both the 1994 and 2002 power policy are of inefficient design (single cycle rather than more efficient combined cycle) since these policies provided cost plus equity return of 15 per cent irrespective of the efficiency of the technology/fuel source being used in the power plant.

Many of these IPPs would normally be used for load-balancing (matching sudden jumps in demand etc) in other countries and would fall low in the merit order for power plants used but are instead employed for satisfying standard base demand in Pakistan. One begs to question the wisdom and/or sincerity of the policymakers of the country who completely ignored two of the biggest energy resources available locally which cost substantially less than the options they opted for.

Some people provide the excuse regarding the political deadlock over the Kalabagh dam and hence the need for Pakistan to go to the oil/gas-based IPP route. But what stopped the policymakers from going down the coal route, let alone hydro projects apart from the Kalabagh dam? Why couldn’t the Diamer-Bhasha dam or the Bunji or Doyian dam be commenced in the early 1990s instead of a Hubco?

Circular debt is a red herring. The core problem lies in wrong policy choices made in the early 1990s that have continued since then. These choices, made for whatever reasons (pressure from the World Bank, corruption, incompetence) have shifted Pakistan away from self-reliance in energy generation and landed us at the mercy of daily fluctuations of the international oil/gas markets and choked industrial progress in the country.

Taking subsidies away is not the solution. Electricity should not only be available to the wealthy! The provision of affordable electricity is the basic right of every citizen.

In a country that has unparalleled resources to generate electricity the present situation is unacceptable. Printing money to clear circular debt will hardly deliver us from this problem. For Pakistanis to be able to get an affordable, sufficient, long-term energy supply, the sustainable solution lies in revisiting the ridiculous power policies of 1994 and 2002 and exploiting other, more sensible sources of generation.

Salman Khalid has managed investments in power generation in Pakistan, Turkey, Bangladesh and Saudi Arabia. Kamal Munir teaches Strategy and Policy at the University of Cambridge.

Source: http://www.dawn.com/2011/10/10/is-circular-debt-the-real-issue.html

Mourners shot at Tamo funeral, Syria dissidents meet

Syrian security forces killed at least two mourners and wounded several others when they fired on the funeral of murdered Kurdish opposition figure Meshaal Tamo on Saturday, activists said.

Dissidents, meanwhile, lobbied in Cairo for recognition of their newly formed opposition front, the Syrian National Council (SNC), of which Tamo was a member, and on a day which saw 10 deaths reported across Syria.

Two people were killed in the shooting on the funeral procession for the slain Kurdish leader in the city of Qamishli, the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights told AFP, adding that several others were wounded.

The funeral for Tamo, who was gunned down on Friday in Qamishli in the north, became a mass rally with more than 50,000 demonstrators calling for the fall of President Bashar al-Assad's regime, activists said.

Tamo founded the liberal Kurdish Future Party, which considers Kurds an integral part of Syria, and had been recently released after three and a half years in prison.

His killing also sparked indignation abroad.

European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton firmly condemned the murder "in the strongest terms," a statement issued on her behalf said.

It added that Tamo's death "follows other targeted assassinations in the past days, which are totally unacceptable.

"These appalling crimes further add to the EU's grave concern over the situation in Syria. All those responsible for and complicit in these crimes must be held accountable."

In Beirut, 50 activists gathered outside the Syrian embassy to demand Assad's departure, and in Vienna 11 people were arrested overnight for invading Damascus's embassy and demonstrating on a balcony.

Police in London arrested seven protesters outside the Syrian embassy, including three men who climbed onto the roof and waved the Kurdish flag.

The United States on Friday charged that Assad's regime was escalating its tactics against the opposition with bold attacks on its leaders, and France said it was "shocked" by the news of Tamo's murder.

Syria closed one of its border gates with Turkey and barred Turks from entering Syria following the Qamishli clashes, Anatolia news agency reported.

Turks were not allowed to enter Syria from the border gate in Nusaybin city in southeast Turkey, just a few kilometres (miles) from Qamishli, local governor Murat Girgin told Anatolia.

The Local Coordination Committees inside Syria, meanwhile, accused Assad's regime of trying to "physically eliminate" opposition figures and "taking advantage of the laxity of the international community."

The official SANA news agency reported "the assassination" of Tamo and said he was killed "by gunmen in a black car who fired at his car."

Elsewhere Saturday, cell phone and landline communications were cut in Qusayr near the central city of Homs, raising fears of a military operation after checkpoints were set up and tanks deployed, the Observatory said.

It reported one killed by security forces in Homs and another three in Hama, and said that the bodies of two people who had been arrested were returned to their families.

In addition to the two killed at the Tamo funeral, two people were killed and 10 others wounded when security forces opened fire at a funeral for three people shot dead in Douma near Damascus on Friday, the rights group added.

The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child has reported that at least 187 children have died in Syria among the estimated total of more than 2,900 people killed since Syria launched its brutal crackdown on dissent in mid-March.

In a rare show of diplomatic support, the foreign ministers of Venezuela and Cuba are to lead a delegation of leftist Latin American states to meet Assad on Sunday, Venezuelan Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro said.

Syrian dissidents, meanwhile, were in Cairo where the Arab League has its headquarters to lobby for recognition of the SNC.

Yasser Najjar, a member of the delegation, told official Egyptian news agency MENA the delegation sought support for the recognition of the SNC, after which it would meet to elect a leadership.

Another 90 members of Syria's opposition gathered in Stockholm for a strategy meeting.

Russia has said it will host opposition figures next Tuesday after President Dmitry Medvedev unexpectedly piled pressure on Damascus to implement reforms announced by Assad.

"If the Syrian leadership is unable to undertake these reforms, it will have to go. But this is something that has to be decided not by NATO or individual European countries but by the people and leadership of Syria," he said.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/50-000-syrians-rally-kurdish-leader-slain-094936203.html