Bharat Rakshak

Last week, a Committee of Secretaries headed by the National Security Advisor decided to first approach Washington to keep Indian entities out of the sanctions using the exemption clause wherein the US President certifies that the waiver is vital to US national security interests.

Pending that, Indian enterprises would be advised to consider venturing into Iran in consortium with Russian, Chinese or Kuwaiti companies to make it harder for the US or the European Union to single out a country or company.

Another option from the Ministry of External Affairs is to create new corporate entities that will not have any financial exposure in the US or EU so that they are insulated from any retaliation.

- Investment by Indian firms through joint ventures in mining, fertilizer, food processing, pharmaceuticals and automobile projects that are not currently sanctioned.
- Opening of warehouses for fast-moving Indian products in Iranian Free Trade Zone with a mechanism to provide insurance cover for political and economic risks.
- Possible involvement of state-run companies to develop the Chabahar port and rail project for access to Afghanistan and Central Asia.

"If my friendship and affection for the president of Iran matters, and if this woman is causing problems there, we will welcome her here in Brazil," Lula proclaimed.

On Tuesday the Brazilian leader got his answer: a direct rebuff from Ahmadinejad's government, which, with exquisite condescension, described Lula as soft in the head. "As far as we know, he is a very humane and emotional person who probably has not received enough information about the case," said Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast. "What can be done is to let him know about the details of the case of this person who has committed a crime and has been convicted accordingly."The details are these: Ashtiani, a 43-year-old mother of two, was found guilty in 2006 of having "an illicit relationship" with two men. She was punished with 99 lashes. Then a court changed the charge to adultery and sentenced her to death by stoning. She has been the subject of an international campaign -- including in Brazil, where a petition questioning Lula's failure to speak up about human rights in Iran has received more than 100,000 signatures.This is not the first time Lula has been embarrassed by his Iranian "friend." In May, Ahmadinejad lured him into playing the role of useful idiot on the eve of a U.N. Security Council vote on sanctions. In Tehran, the Brazilian president signed a memorandum outlining a supposed compromise on Iran's nuclear program -- one that was instantly revealed to be a steal for Tehran and a non-starter for the Security Council's permanent members. The sanctions vote went ahead.

A conservative website said a handmade grenade exploded Wednesday near President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's convoy in an apparent assassination attempt, but Tehran state TV denied the report.

Iran has obtained four S-300 surface-to-air missile systems despite Russia's refusal to deliver them to Tehran under a valid contract, a semiofficial Iranian news agency claimed Wednesday.

Russia signed a 2007 contract to sell the S-300s, but so far has not delivered. The powerful, long-range missiles would significantly boost Iran's defense capability, and Israel and the United States have strongly objected to the deal.

Moscow said in June that the latest round of U.N. sanctions would prevent it from delivering the S-300s to Iran. The U.S. State Department said that Washington appreciates Russia's restraint.

But last month, Sergei Chemezov, the head of the state-owned industrial giant Russian Technologies, said the contract for the delivery of S-300s to Iran had not been annulled yet pending a decision by President Dmitry Medvedev.

Asked to comment on the Iranian report, Vyacheslav Davidenko, a spokesman for the Russian state arms trader Rosoboronexport, said that his company hadn't delivered any S-300s to Iran. "We are abiding by the U.N. sanctions," he said.

Kailash wrote:Another option from the Ministry of External Affairs is to create new corporate entities that will not have any financial exposure in the US or EU so that they are insulated from any retaliation.

- Investment by Indian firms through joint ventures in mining, fertilizer, food processing, pharmaceuticals and automobile projects that are not currently sanctioned.
- Opening of warehouses for fast-moving Indian products in Iranian Free Trade Zone with a mechanism to provide insurance cover for political and economic risks.
- Possible involvement of state-run companies to develop the Chabahar port and rail project for access to Afghanistan and Central Asia.

abhishek_sharma wrote:Govt in a fix over Iran’s demand

http://www.hindustantimes.com/Govt-in-a ... 83279.aspx

Vivek Raghuvanshi wrote:IS THIS PROPAGANDA OR TRUTH?
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Planet Iran Exclusive: Iranian regime’s sanctioned brothels at Imam Reza’s shrine in Mash’had

RajeshA wrote:

abhishek_sharma wrote:Govt in a fix over Iran’s demand

http://www.hindustantimes.com/Govt-in-a ... 83279.aspx

India should go on and invest in Iran. We can say the investment and project predate the sanctions, and as such cannot come under their purview.

ALTHOUGH the Iranian government insists that countries like China and Russia can make up lost Western investment in the petroleum sector, rising gas prices and stalled energy projects are signs that the regime is beginning to buckle under international sanctions.

In recent weeks, Tehran has begun to feel “a lot of pressure” on the gasoline front, said Houchang Hassan-Yari, a professor of international relations at the Royal Military College of Canada in Kingston, Ontario. The government is now curbing from 100 liters to 60 liters the amount of subsidized gas consumers can buy each month, Hassan-Yari told OilPrice.com.

As US sanctions against Iran’s oil and gas industry took hold, firms like Lukoil, Royal Dutch Shell, Total and Reliance stopped selling gas supplies to Iran. The government of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, which needs Western technology to help modernize the energy sector, last March announced plans to seek a $200-billion investment in oil, gas and refinery industries over the next five years.

As US sanctions against Iran’s oil and gas industry took hold, firms like Lukoil, Royal Dutch Shell, Total and Reliance stopped selling gas supplies to Iran.

Washington may be committing a similar error with respect to Iran's nuclear motives. Iranian security concerns are focused as much to the east on Pakistan as to the west on Israel. Iran's quest for nuclear weapons may be aimed at meeting the Sunni threat — not just the Israeli threat.

Given the long and lamentable history of Western interference and intervention in Iranian affairs, coupled with the continuing bellicose rhetoric directed at the Iranian regime, Tehran cannot discount an armed attack. Moreover, with so many of its neighbors nuclear armed — Israel to the west, Russia to the north, and Pakistan, China and India to the east — any prudent Iranian national security planner will most likely recommend an acceleration of the country's nuclear program

Pakistan's nuclearization in turn set the stage for Iran's program to acquire urgency. Pakistan has the world's fastest growing nuclear arsenal today. In ignoring and dismissing India's warnings of a China-assisted weaponization program by Pakistan, Washington set the stage for India's — and Pakistan's — overt nuclear breakout in 1998.

Iran is the Shiite island surrounded by Sunni countries, both Arab and non-Arab. Iraq is a Shiite-majority country, but the years of Sunni rule under Saddam Hussein and the ambiguity of Americans in finalizing the government in Iraq around its Shiite majority is looked at with great suspicion by Iran.

Tehran is opposed to Taliban domination of Afghanistan, at the expense of the sizable population of Hazaras, who are Shiite.

The growing nuclear arsenal of Pakistan, with Chinese help, poses two kinds of danger to Iran: The first is the possibility of Pakistani nuclear weapons falling into the hands of Taliban or al-Qaida, both of whom are anathema to the Iranians, as much as they are to India and the West. Iran harbors suspicions that Pakistan could be the provider of last resort of nuclear material and weapons to Sunni countries hostile to Shiite Iran. After all, Libya tried to buy nuclear weapons from the infamous Abdul Qadeer Khan syndicate, backstopped by Pakistan's armed forces, and the same group was accused of helping the Iraqi search for WMD.

If Iran is to be dissuaded from the nuclear weapons path, a realistic assessment of its threat perception is essential. It needs reassurance against Sunni hostility as much as against Israeli and Western threats of invasion and regime change.

1) Can sunnis and shias ever reconcile not in my lifetime.
2) Can Israel be friends with the muslim world not in my lifetime.
3) can western world give assurance of reduced threat-- easiest of all but still difficult.

krisna wrote:In ignoring and dismissing India's warnings of a China-assisted weaponization program by Pakistan, Washington set the stage for India's — and Pakistan's — overt nuclear breakout in 1998.

Neshant wrote:India's interest are not effected and may even be enhanced if Iran becomes a nuclear power.

Carl_T wrote:If it were that easy! Anyways they should have followed suit when Pakistan and Israel did it.

The hardline leader told the annual Palestinian solidarity day rally in Tehran that a popular revolt by the people of the Middle East would extinguish the Jewish homeland even if the governments reach a peace agreement.

"If the leaders of the region do not have the guts, then the people of the region are capable of removing the Zionist regime from the world scene," he said.

response the pro-government crowd chanted "Death to America. Death to Israel."

President Ahmadinejad said that direct peace talks which Western-backed Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas relaunched with Israel in Washington on Thursday after a 20-month hiatus were "doomed" to fail.

"What do they want to negotiate about? Who are they representing? What are they going to talk about?" the Iranian president said of the Palestinian leadership.

"Who gave them the right to sell piece of Palestinian land? The people of Palestine and the people of the region will not allow them to sell even an inch of Palestinian soil to the enemy.

"The negotiations are stillborn and doomed."

Iran is implacably opposed to the new peace talks and has given strong support to the Islamist Hamas movement which controls Gaza and which carried out two shooting attacks against Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank in the run-up to their relaunch that killed four and wounded two

A report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said Iranian nuclear scientists had made at least 22 kilograms of enriched uranium at least 20 per cent purity, a technical hurdle that is the hardest to overcome on the way to weapons-grade uranium.

Experts estimate that 20 kgs of uranium is the minimum required to arm a warhead. The uranium would still need to have its purity raised to 90 per cent, but that is a relatively easy process.

By HARSH V. PANT
In the wake of the International Atomic Energy Agency's recent report raising fresh concerns about Iran's nuclear capabilities, American allies from France to Japan have added their voices to the chorus asking Tehran to come clean. Not India, which not only supported a strongly worded statement from the 118-member Nonaligned Movement criticizing the report but also moved to exempt one of its joint shipping ventures in Iran from the latest round of United Nations sanctions.

Iran has long been a litmus test that India has had to pass to satisfy American policy makers. New Delhi's bond with Tehran has been termed variously by analysts as an "axis," a "strategic partnership" and even an "alliance." This level of scrutiny has always been disproportionate to the reality of the relationship. When in the past India had to choose between Iran and the United States, it always sided with the latter. But the shifting strategic landscape may be forcing New Delhi to rethink its approach.

The latest exemption is not India's first move to secure its Iranian interests against the broader international clampdown. New Delhi recently signed an air-services agreement with Iran enhancing the number of flights between the two nations and allowing each other's airlines to operate to additional destinations. The two sides also inked a memorandum of understanding that is aimed at increasing bilateral trade to $30 billion from $15 billion. Plans are afoot for greater maritime cooperation, and Iran has already joined the Indian navy's annual initiative, the Indian Ocean Naval Symposium, which provides a forum for the navies of the Indian Ocean littoral states to engage each other.

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Associated Press

Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, right, poses with Indian Foreign Minister S.M. Krishna.
More significantly, the two nations have decided to hold "structured and regular consultations" on Afghanistan. In the second trip to India by an Iranian minister in less than a month, Iran's deputy foreign minister visited India last month to coordinate the two countries' strategies. By deciding to provide a withdrawal timetable from Afghanistan, the Obama administration has unwittingly signaled to the Pakistani military that, as the U.S. reduces its presence in the war-scarred country, Islamabad is in a position to shape Afghanistan toward its own ends. Both India and Iran are, however, unlikely to accept an Afghanistan that serves as a springboard for the Pakistan military's interests. Their closer collaboration on Afghanistan would take that nation back to the early 1990s, when different regional powers pursued their own narrow agendas, taking Afghanistan to the brink of ruin.

On Iran's nuclear aspirations too, India has made subtle changes in its approach. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has voted repeatedly in favor of IAEA resolutions condemning the Iranian program. Yet his government has been keen in recent months to emphasize that dialogue and diplomacy are its preferred means of defusing nuclear tension. India has expressed particular disapproval of sanctions by individual countries that restrict other countries' investments in Iran's energy sector. Despite existing sanctions, New Delhi is encouraging Indian companies to invest in Iranian energy so that economic connections can underpin a political realignment, not foreclose it.

The most significant disruption to this harmonious relationship has come in the form of China, which is now Iran's largest trading partner. China has invested massively in Iran, with more than 100 Chinese companies on the ground and seeking to occupy the space vacated by Western firms that have grown skittish about mounting international pressure on the country. The partnership with China benefits both sides: Iran evades global isolation by courting China, which in turn gains access without any real competition to Iran's energy resources.

India has always enforced dutifully any U.N. measures against Iran, often to the detriment of its energy investments in the country. Yet China, which as a member the Security Council helps shape U.N. policy toward Iran, has been able to sustain its own energy business in the country without much trouble; Iran was the third-largest exporter of crude oil to China last year, accounting for about 11% of China's total crude imports. So India is right to feel restless about its marginalization within Iran, which has occurred despite strong cultural bonds connecting the two nations. Mr. Singh has now indicated that he will resume negotiations for India to import natural gas from Iran independently, via a seaboard pipeline.

India is trying to strike a balance between preserving its strategic interests and adhering to its global obligations. Its ability to maneuver in Tehran will remain limited so long as Iran does not find a workable solution with the West on its atomic ambitions. Faced with the region's changing strategic milieu, though, New Delhi has found it necessary to keep all its options open.

Mr. Pant is a professor of defense studies at King's College London.

The trilateral initiative will be an important breakthrough for India because it has been left out of every other regional effort at the behest of Pakistan. Islamabad’s discomfiture is what led to Turkey not inviting India to a regional meet last year. Then, of course, India was quite taken aback with Russia not including India at the quartet — Russia, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Tajikistan — meet in Sochi last month.

Both countries worked closely when the Taliban was in power in Kabul and are now cooperating on key infrastructure projects. Given that Pakistan does not allow transit rights to India, most Indian equipment and goods are transported via Iranian ports.

Two actions on the part of India in the past month, sources said, have sent out the signal to Iran that New Delhi does not always toe the US line on the Iranian nuclear programme.
First, India decided to approach the UN on removing Iran-o-Hind, an Indo-Iranian shipping joint venture, from the list of entities that UN recently sanctioned in Iran. Second, India supported a strongly worded NAM resolution against the IAEA on the DG’s recent report on the Iran programme.

In September 2008 the Iranian government approved exploitation of the Farsi block, with recoverable gas reserves over 12.8 trillion cubic feet, about a quarter more than India's largest gas producing field, operated by Reliance Industries Ltd. India's state-owned firms – the largest explorer Oil & Natural Gas Corp (ONGC) and the biggest oil marketing firm Indian Oil Corp (IOC) – are equal partners with 40 percent interest each to jointly develop the Farzad-B area of the Farsi block. Oil India (OIL) is the third partner with 20 percent.

The consortium won the right to explore the Farzad-B block under the umbrella of ONGC's foreign arm ONGC Videsh, initially investing US$90 million. In the second phase the three must to invest about US$5.5 billion in producing natural gas from the area for which they expect to earn a 15 percent annual rate of return. Another US$2.5 billion is needed to set up a liquefaction plant to transfer LNG to India.

India remains a major importer of Iranian crude, importing more than 435,000 barrels per day in the fiscal year of 2008-2009. In return, India supplies Iran's imported oil, gasoline and diesel fuels. The US has vainly sought to stop Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, among others, from doing business in Iran as well. Legislation enacted July expands the scope of violations under the Iran Sanctions Act (ISA) linked to any hydrocarbon related activity. The proposed sanctions provide for action against persons, including foreign firms that invest in excess of US$20 million in Iran's energy sector in any 12-month period. These include selling refined gasoline, shipping insurance or similar services and supplying equipment/constructing oil refineries in Iran, one of the richest in natural oil and gas resources.

Obama has the authority to grant reprieves to entities that make them eligible for international finance and technology that would be difficult to come by otherwise. Official sources say that India will seek to secure new business possibilities in defense and nuclear energy to American firms in exchange for the Iran exemption. Delhi will also argue that it has heeded Washington's discomfort with Tehran in the case of the pipeline, dropping its investment unlike Pakistan. Tehran and Islamabad have formally signed a gas pipeline deal under which Iran will supply India's energy-deficient eastern neighbor with natural gas from 2014. It will be a truncated 1,100 km version of the larger 2,600 km IPI project.

There is every indication that New Delhi is keen to take play a role in obtaining Iran's oil and gas resources, given India's rising domestic requirements in the household, power and auto sectors. India imports nearly 25 percent of its gas needs, which could rise to 50 percent by 2020 unless new domestic sources of energy are developed. Media reports over the last year have spoken about India negotiating prospects of importing natural gas from Iran via a sea pipeline. Indian state owned gas utility GAIL and a private entity are studying prospects.

Stuxnet's complexity suggests it could only have been written by a "nation state", some researchers have claimed.

It is believed to be the first-known worm designed to target real-world infrastructure such as power stations, water plants and industrial units.

* ThyssenKrupp, Germany's biggest steelmaker, said on Thursday it would not enter into new contracts with Iran and would terminate existing contracts in support of sanctions policies of Germany, the European Union and the United States.

* BP confirmed in July it had stopped supplying jet fuel to Iran Air at Germany's Hamburg airport.

-- BP declined to give a reason for ending the contract, but the halt in supply followed reports Iranian aircraft had been denied fuel because of the latest set of U.S. sanctions.

* Royal Dutch Shell would not renew its contracts to supply Iran Air with jet fuel in response to U.S. pressure to cease business with the Islamic Republic, an industry source said in July.

* Key shipping associations have created clauses in contracts enabling ship owners to refuse to deliver refined petroleum cargoes to Iran.

* Lloyd's of London said on July 9 it would not insure or reinsure petroleum shipments into Iran.

* South Korea's GS Engineering & Construction canceled a $1.2 billion gas project in Iran on July 1 following the imposition of U.S. sanctions.

* Spain's Repsol said on June 28 it had pulled out of a contract it won with Royal Dutch Shell to develop part of the South Pars gas field in Iran.

* French oil group Total on June 28 stopped supplying gasoline to Iran because of U.S. sanctions.

* Italy's Eni told U.S. authorities on April 29 it was handing the operation of Darkhovin oilfield in Iran to local partners to avoid U.S. sanctions.

* Malaysia's Petronas stopped supplying gasoline to Iran, a company spokesman said on April 15.

* Luxury carmaker Daimler announced plans on April 14 to sell its 30 percent stake in an Iranian engine maker and freeze the planned export to Iran of cars and trucks. The announcement followed similar action by German insurers Munich Re and Allianz

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran has accused the US government of orchestrating the 9/11 attacks to prop up Israel.

Speaking at the UN general assembly, just a few miles away from the still open wound of Ground Zero, he prompted a walkout of the US and UK delegations from the chamber. US diplomats dismissed his comments as "abhorrent and delusional".

At a time when Iran is being squeezed by sanctions imposed through the UN, Ahmadinejad showed no desire to extend a placatory hand and instead opted to repeat several old conspiracy theories relating to the terrorist attacks on September 11 2001. One theory of what happened on that day, he said, was "the US government orchestrated the attack in order to save the Zionist regime in the Middle East".

Addressing representatives of the UN's 192 member countries, the president said there was evidence that the US government had at least supported the attacks, including passports in the rubble of the Twin Towers of men who had been involved with US officials, while no trace of the alleged suicide attackers was retrieved.