The president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has abruptly fired his foreign minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, and replaced him with the current head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, Ali Akbar Salehi, state media reported 13 December. Mottaki was on an official trip to Senegal. The government says that its foreign and nuclear policies remain unchanged.
Rumours of Mottaki’s imminent departure have been heard for the past few years, according to CNN. He was seen as standing in the way of Ahmadinejad’s control of foreign policy and was backed by Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. His replacement was Iran’s top envoy to the International Atomic Energy Agency, which is trying to bring Iran’s nuclear ambitions in line with its international committments.
Several Iranian diplomats have defected recently and publicly joined the growing Iranian opposition movement following disputed elections in June 2009, reports Le Temps.
Links to other sites: AFP, New York Times
One Iranian nuclear scientist has been killed and another injured in identical bomb attacks in downtown Tehran, according to local news reports 29 November. Majid Shahriari, a member of Tehran’s Shahid Beheshti University’s nuclear research faculty, was killed when a motorcycle rider attached a bomb to Shahriari’s car and rode off. Fereydoun Abbasi and his wife were injured in a separate attack. Iranian officials quickly blamed Israeli and US intelligence for the attacks.
An Iranian nuclear scientist was killed by a bomb in a similar way outside his home in January 2010. Iran suspects foreign agents are trying to disrupt its secret nuclear energy programme.
Links to other sites: Al Bawaba, Al-Jazeera, Haaretz
Sarah Shourd, a hiker who has spent the past 14 months in Tehran’s Evin prison, has been released and flown to Muscat, Oman. The woman was released 14 September after a $500,000 bail was posted. Shourd was detained by Iranian authorities when she and two companions allegedly strayed over the border from Iraq. They were accused of spying, charges they and the US authorities deny.
Government supporters are thronging to the central Azadi (Freedom) Square to hear an hour-long speech by Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, while opposition supporters have been prevented from rallying by the Baseej, the government militia, using pepper spray and tear gas, and in some cases bullets. Iranians are celebrating the 31st anniversary of the revolution that toppled the shah Thursday 11 February amid tensions between the government of Ahmadinejad and the opposition Green Movement, which disputes the legitimacy of the elections in June 2009 which Ahamdinejad won overwhelmingly.
Ahmadinejad announced that the country’s nuclear engineers had enriched the first batch of uranium from 3.5 percent to about 20 percent purity for medical research purposes, and said Iran was a “nuclear state”. He denied that Iran wanted to develop nuclear weapons. A majority of Iranians, including prominent members of the opposition, support the government’s bid to develop an independent nuclear capability, according to an analysis of Iranian opinion polls published by the University of Maryland’s Program of International Policy Attitudes.
Members of the press are escorted to Azadi Square and are limited in their ability to report on opposition meetings. The government has blocked text messaging and internet traffic is reportedly very slow, to deny the opposition the ability to organize.
Links to other sites: CNN, Daily Dish, New York Times, PIPA site, Reuters
Credit Suisse may pay $536 million
Zurich, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Swiss banking giant Credit Suisse has announced it is close to an agreement with US financial regulators concerning its dealings with countries that are subject to US economic sanctions. The bank says that it has closed its representative office in Tehran, Iran as part of its own probe into the investigation by US and New York regulators.
As part of the deal Credit Suisse may pay a $536 million fine, and says it has booked a pre-tax CHF445 million provision in the current quarter.
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.
A closed Tehran court has sentenced a senior local employee of the British embassy in Tehran, Hossein Rassam, to four years in prison for fomenting violence, reports say. The sentence has not been communicated officially. The UK Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, said the sentence was unacceptable, and dismissed the charges as “wholly without foundation”, reports the Times.
Rassam, the embassy’s political counsellor, was arrested late June with eight other embassy employees, following the mass disturbances after the disputed presidential election. He was put on trial with a Frenchwoman. He is free on bail after having been released from Tehran’s notorious Evin prison in August. Reuters,The Times
