- BLOG
- The Strangest Man, Graham Farmelo
- EVENT
- Celtic dancing in Geneva
- EVENT
- Wine fair and sale
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Criticism rained down from Western governments on Iran during its periodic review by the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva Monday morning 15 February. The review session was opened by Mohamad Jabad Larijani, responsible for human rights in Iran, but his country’s human rights record was immediately attacked by the United States and other Western governments.
Michael Posner, US assistant secretary for state with responsibility for human rights told the meeting that “the United States strongly condemns the recent violent and unjust suppression of innocent Iranian citizens, which has resulted in detentions, injuries and deaths.
Two Belgian tourists, imprisoned and later released by Iran, say they are concerned about the state of three US tourists held there since July 2009. The two Belgians, Idesbald van den Bosch and Vincent Boon Falleur, issued a statement in French Tuesday 26 January saying they had some contact with the Americans, who had been in solitary confinement for several months, with no contact with their families or lawyer. The two were cycling across Iran when they were arrested in September 2009 as spies, but they were released 8 December, the last time they had contact with the Americans. They ask in their statement that Iran not politicize the case of the three others, who strayed into Iran when they were hiking in Iraqi Kurdistan. All five were held in Evin Prison.
An Iranian nuclear scientist, Masoud Ali Mohammadi, has been killed by a remote-controlled bomb planted on a motorcycle in front of his home in northern Tehran, official state media reported. The foreign ministry spokesman said Tuesday 12 January that initial investigations pointed to Israel, America and their agents in a “terrorist attack”, state media IRIB reported. No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack.
It is not known if Ali Mohammed was involved in the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, the country’s uranium enrichment programme. He has written and posted papers on quantum mechanics on the Internet, and he was a lecturer at Tehran University.
Tensions have mounted concerning Iran’s controversial nuclear programme, with Western powers accusing Iran of trying to secretly build nuclear weapons. Iran accused the US of kidnapping an Iranian nuclear scientist in Saudi Arabia in May 2009, while he was on pilgrimage to Mecca. In 2007, a former deputy defense minister disappeared while visiting Istanbul, Turkey. Iran has accused the US and Israel of complicity in his disappearance.
Links to other sites: BBC, CS Monitor, Washington Post
A group of 90 professors at Iran’s oldest university have written a letter of protest to the government over recent violence against students and professors. The letter to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei asks that Revolutionary Guards and others such as militiamen be removed from the campus of Teheran University. The letter “is a rare and significant showing of discontent among Teheran University’s academics,” reports CNN. It was posted on the “Green Path” reformist web site.
Links to other sites: CNN, Guardian, UK, protest photos, Dec 2009, and Guardian editorial 4 Jan on Internet, protest movements
Protest marches involving what several Western media are calling “thousands” of people turned ugly in Iran Sunday 27 December, as at least four people were killed when police opened fire. One of them was reportedly the nephew of opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi, but Al Jazeera notes that the report cannot be independently verified, as foreign media are banned from covering street protests. The government told media that police were not carrying weapons. The marches took place in Teheran, but there appear to also have been protests in Isfahan and Najafabad. Government supporters criticized the protesters for taking political action on Ashoura, a religious event marked by Shia Muslims that commemorates the 7th century death of Prophet Muhammad’s grandson.
Links to other sites: Al Jazeera, BBC, Jerusalem Post
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, president of Iran, told ABC television in the US that the American government forged and disseminated documents showing that Iran has planned to use uranium deuteride as a nuclear bomb trigger in a test. The report on the document, published 14 December by The Times, UK, is “fundamentally not true”, he told ABC interviewer Diane Sawyer.
Links to other sites: ABC interview with Ahmadinejad, US, BBC, Times, UK
Iran will build 10 new sites to enrich uranium, the government of Iran announced Sunday 29 November. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says the facilities will produce 250-300 tonnes of enriched uranium a year. Construction is to begin on five of the new plants within two months, and when all 10 are completed will house 500,000 centrifuges.
The decision by Iran was taken after the UN’s nuclear watchdog agency, IAEA, sharply rebuked Iran 27 November for not complying with five UN Security Council resolutions calling on Iran to cease its nuclear activities. The IAEA resolution had Russian and Chinese backing.
Brazilian President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva is calling on world leaders to develop new tactics with Iran, to engage the country rather than isolating it. Lula da Silva and Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad met in Brazil Monday 23 November and Lula, the rare leader to welcome Ahmadinejad, said in a joint press conference at the end that he supports Iran’s efforts to develop a peaceful nuclear energy programme. Lula’s background includes years as a union negotiator.
Iran’s Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said Tuesday 10 November that the three US hikers detained by Iran after they strayed across the border from Iraq last July face charges of illegally entering the country. Other charges may be filed. The US has called for the three to be released, and insists that they were wrongly detained. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in Germany Monday 9 November, “We believe strongly that there is no evidence to support any charge whatsoever.” AFP , AP (video)
State and local governments that want to divest themselves of investments in companies which do business in Iran will be allowed to do so with a proposed law that the US House of Representatives approved Wednesday 14 October. No new sanctions on Iran are envisaged, but companies that invest more than $20 million in Iran’s energy sector can be targeted and their shares sold by state and municipal investment agencies. The federal government has the exclusive right to conduct foreign policy, but would waive its right in this case, if the Senate passes the law as well.
The move comes as the US is trying to line up international support for a united response to Iran’s continuing nuclear program. The five permanent members of the UN Security Council cannot agree on sanctions on Iran to force it to comply with international rules concerning nuclear research programmes. AP, The Hill
Villa Saugy (photo: canton Geneva)
Update 3 18:58
Genthod, Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The lovely setting of the blue-shuttered Villa Saugy in Genthod, a tiny lakeside village just minutes from the centre of Geneva, with Lake Geneva shimmering and the Alps white against a deep blue sky, provided an auspicious start for the talks between Iran and the 5+1 group Thursday 1 October.
Hopes that Americans and Iranians would talk to each other, for virtually the first time in three decades, were realized. Saeed Jalili, Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator, held bilateral talks with William Burns, the senior US official leading Washington’s delegation.
Iran says yes to nuclear inspections and parties agree to another meeting in October
Javier Solana, Europen Union foreign policy chief, said after the talks that Iran has agreed to allow the UN’s nuclear watchdog agency to visit its uranium enrichment plant, a source of tension since Western nations discovered its existence recently.
US says bilateral talks covered nuclear issues, human rights
Robert Woods, deputy spokesperson for the US State Department, issued this statement on the meeting: “On the margins of today’s P5+1 meeting with Iran in Geneva’s Villa Le Saugy, Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Bill Burns met with Iranian Head of Delegation Said Jalili, Secretary of Iran’s Supreme Council on National Security.
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - The question marks hanging over Iran’s nuclear activities, peaceful or warlike or possibly both, are bringing together in Geneva today 1 October top officials from Iran and the group known as 5+1: Britain, China, France, Russia, the United States and Germany. It follows an earlier meeting of the group in July 2008, which ended on a sour note, and where the head of the US delegation, William Burns, reportedly left the room to avoid shaking hands with his Iranian counterpart, Saeed Jalili. Early in 2009 US President Barack Obama’s administration said it intended to take a fresh approach, and Obama has since said that he wants to allow time to reassess the US relationship with Iran.
This session is described by Iran as an opportunity to discuss security in the region, and by some of the others as a chance for Iran to clarify its nuclear activities. It is also being seen in the West as a chance for China and Russia, whose attitudes towards Iran may have shifted in the past year, to provide their reaction to the announcement that Iran has a uranium enrichment plant at Qom.
Update 3 / 30 September Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Swiss foreign ministry spokesman Lars Knuchel told GenevaLunch Wednesday morning 30 September that a Swiss delegation has indeed visited the three US hikers held by Iran since they strayed over the border in July. Reuters reported the news late Tuesday, which appeared to conflict with US Assistant Secretary of State Philip Crowley saying at a press conference in Washington that the Swiss would be granted consular access to the three, but the US had not been told this has actually taken place. Knuchel says the State Department was informed of the visits; in cases where Switzerland represents the interests of one country with another, the Swiss foreign ministry cannot provide any information or details until the other government, this case the US, has done so. The US has not yet made public any further details. so the Swiss will not release more information.
Switzerland represents the interests of the US in Iran. The two broke off diplomatic relations in 1980.
The families and the US government have had no contact with Joshua Fattal, Shane Bauer, and Sarah Shourd since they were arrested in a remote mountainous area on the Iraq/Iran border for illegal entry.
Geneva / Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The Iranian Foreign Ministry confirmed Monday that its officials will be in Switzerland Thursday 1 October for a six-party meeting “to discuss ways to end a standoff between the two sides,” according to the official Fars news agency. The Swiss government last week announced that it had accepted a request from Iran and the European Union to host a second meeting between EU High Representative, Javier Solana, and the Iranian chief nuclear negotiator, Saeed Jalili. Solana represents the world’s major powers in the talks over Iran’s nuclear plans: Germany, France, the UK, China, Russia and the US. The first meeting took place in July 2008 in Geneva. But Iran today said the meeting might take place in Geneva, as the Swiss government announced, or they might agree to meet in Bern, instead.
According to Fars: “Iran is under three rounds of UN Security Council sanctions for turning down West’s illegitimate calls to give up its right of uranium enrichment, saying the western demand is politically tainted and illogical. Tehran has repeatedly stressed that it considers its nuclear case closed after it answered the UN agency’s questions about the history of its nuclear programe.”
Iran tests long-range missiles during two days of tests
Iran drew heavy attention from around the world Monday for testing long range missiles (2,000 km) that can reach Israel and US military bases in the Middle East, with France and the UK promptly expressing their dismay but Russia urging calm.
Links to other sites: Aljazeera, Los Angeles Times, Reuters, Sydney Morning Herald, Xinhua
and video, Russia Today
China has begun supplying oil to Iran in the past month and already accounts for one-third of the country’s fuel imports, the Financial Times reports. Oil imports are not part of a United Nations sanction and the supplies are legal, but the move comes as G20 world leaders, meeting in New York Wednesday 23 September, discuss enforcing sanctions against Iran to discourage it from further developing its nuclear programme. Iran insists the nuclear programme is for peaceful purposes, as a source of energy, and that it is not building bombs. The country is one of the world’s largest oil producers, but its aging system is inefficient and it imports 120,000 barrels a day, according to the FT. China agreed in 2004 to purchase oil from Iran and to invest in its system. The $100 billion deal in 2006 prompted concern in the US, with observers saying that China appeared to be rushing to sign the deal ahead of sanctions. In the latest twist to the story China’s oil replaces that from companies such as BP which have stopped supplying Iran. Washington Post, 2006, Brookings Institution editorial, July 2009
The US has put on hold a plan to deploy missiles in Poland and a radar tracking station in the Czech Republic as a defense against possible Iranian nuclear missiles. The Czech prime minister, Jan Fischer, announced this afternoon 17 September that US President Barack Obama had called him just past midnight to inform him that the US “had reconsidered its intention to build a radar facility in the Czech Republic as a part of the missile defense system.”
The US signed an agreement with the Czech Republic and Poland in August 2008 to deliver and install 10 missile interceptors in Poland and the tracking station in the Czech Republic by 2012. They were meant to defend European countries from Iran and other “rogue” states. The BBC says that Obama ordered a review earlier this year, and the Pentagon has said that shelving the missile defense plan was a “major adjustment”.
The missile defense plan was “vigourously opposed” by Russia which saw it as a threat to its own nuclear arsenal. It was held to be an obstacle to talks meant to replace the 1980s era strategic arms reduction treaty, or Start, which expires in three months. BBC, Moscow Times
Iran’s new government contains one woman, Marzieh-Vahid Dastjerdi, as health minister, the first in the Islamic Republic’s history. The parliament approved most of the cabinet proposed by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, recently re-elected president, although it rejected two other women.
The new defense minister, Ahmad Vahidi, is a hardliner and former chief of the elite Quds force in the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. He is wanted by Interpol and the Argentine government for his alleged involvement in the 1994 explosion of the headquarters of Amia, a Jewish organization in Buenos Aires, which killed 85 people. He received the most votes from parliament. CNN, Reuters, Clarin (Spa)
The European Union reacted sharply Saturday 8 August to the trial in Iran of a French embassy and two British embassy employees, as well as a French student and teacher of French, saying that the Iranian government was acting against the EU itself, and it would respond accordingly. Twenty-four-year-old Clothilde Reiss apologized to the court and said she had been mistaken when she protested with others against the results of the recent Iranian election. She risks up to five years in prison. Hossein Rassam, a 44-year-old political analyst at the British Embassy, also reportedly apologized, in his case for inciting unrest, with the quotes coming from Iranian media, since international media were barred from the trial. Le Monde (Fre) and Times, UK
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Three experienced hikers who strayed into Iran, crossing over an unmarked border with Iraq, have been detained by authorities in Iran. Swiss diplomatic representatives have asked Iran for access to the three, in Switzerland’s role as representative of American interests in Iran, the Swiss Foreign Affairs Ministry in Bern told GenevaLunch. The US and Iran do not have diplomatic relations. Bern will not confirm whether or not they have been able to meet with the three and a spokesperson says that even if a meeting takes place there will be no confirmation unless the US State Department decides to announce it.
According to CNN “Kurdish officials identified the detained hikers Sunday as Shane Bauer, Sarah Shourd and Joshua Fattal. The fourth hiker, Shon Meckfessel, stayed behind in Iraq,” feeling unwell. The three were hiking in Iraq’s Kurdistan region.
Iran has reportedly released 140 detainees from northwestern Tehran’s notorious Evin prison after they posted bail, according to an Iranian news agency. The detainees, arrested during violent protests after the contested presidential election 12 June, were freed following a visit to the prison by members of a parliamentary commission on security. The visit was reportedly prompted by the death of the son of a prominent conservative politician. Leading clerics and some members of the establishment have called for the release of several hundred detainees. Another 150 across the country could be released soon. Al-Jazeera, CNN
Two days of talks billed as a “strategic and economic dialogue” between China and the US concluded Tuesday 28 July in Washington DC, with nothing concrete but with broad agreement on ways to combat the world recession and on climate change. The two say they are now closer on a variety of issues, among them US strategic concerns on Iranian and North Korean nuclear ambitions. On the economic front, the Chinese government worries about the value of its massive holdings of US treasury debt, given huge US budget deficits and the resulting danger of inflation, and very low US savings. The US wants China to increase domestic spending to reduce its reliance on the export market, and to show flexibility on its exchange rate. Both remain committed to open trade and say they vowed to resist protectionism. US President Obama has called for a concerted effort to reduce carbon emissions, but developing economies like China hesitate because they fear this will cramp their growth. BBC, CNN, Le Temps (Fre), NZZ (Ger)
A Caspian Airlines plane carrying 168 people crashed, killing all those aboard, about 15 minutes after takeoff, near the Iranian city of Qazvin, Iranian media report. The flight was headed towards neighbouring Armenai. The cause of the crash is not yet clear. The aircraft was a Tupolev Tu-154. Reuters
US vice president Joe Biden told ABC television Sunday 5 July that the US could not restrain Israel from taking military action if it felt threatened by a nuclear build-up in Iran. Biden has just returned from a Middle East trip. Israeli prime minister Benyamin Netanyahu has warned that Israel will not allow Tehran to acquire nuclear weapons. Israel bombed a nuclear reactor in Iraq in 1981. The Sunday Times of London reported 5 July that secret talks between Israel and Saudi Arabia raised the possibility that Israel would not be hindered if it flew through Saudi airspace on its way to Iran. BBC, Reuters
Update 22:55 The protests by thousands in Iran over disputed election results continued during the weekend despite a call Friday by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, to end them. The Iranian government said Sunday that 10 more people had died, bringing the death toll to 19, and dozens more were injured, but journalists, including foreign media, are “are subject to Iranian restrictions on their ability to report, film or take pictures in Tehran” reports Reuters. Amnesty International says that numbers are “perilously hard” to verify.
Iran has complained of Western interference in its internal affairs.
The BBC’s resident correspondent has been asked to leave, a Dubai TV station office remains closed and 23 local journalists and bloggers have reportedly been detained. The streets of Teheran were reportedly quiet Sunday, but there were reports of gunfire in northern suburbs, home to many followers of opposition leader Mirhossein Mousavi, who has called for more protests. Al Jazeera, BBC, The Globe & Mail, NPR, Xinhua
Thousands of supporters of the losing candidate in 12 June’s Iranian presidential elections, Mir Hussein Moussavi, took to the streets of Teheran again 18 June in a peaceful protest against what they say was voter fraud and official violence against the protesters. Thirteen people have reportedly died since 14 June at the hands of the authorities. The election was won by the incumbent president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but authorities have already said they would conduct a partial recount of the vote. Moussavi has asked for new elections.
Supreme leader Ayatollah Khameini is to appear today, 19 June at the University of Teheran, for a much anticipated speech on the situation. The university has been the scene of much violence, where civilian militia, the Basij, have targeted students. Foreign news agencies have been prevented from covering the unrest, and the authorities have disrupted cell phone service sporadically. BBC, CNN, Tehran Times, NYT
