AP: Inside a Kuwaiti palace, military brass hosted senior NATO envoys to discuss closer ties and possible joint naval maneuvers. At the same time in Tehran, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was belittling the Western-allied Gulf states for casting Iran as a regional menace.
Gulf between Arab-Iran rivals grows stormy
Iran’s NIOC names new head of international affairs, Shana says
Bloomberg: Mohsen Qamsari was appointed as the National Iranian Oil Co.’s new international affairs director, Shana. the Oil Ministry’s official news website reported.
Iran lawmakers review delays in nuclear plant start, Arman says
Bloomberg: Delays to the start of Iran’s first nuclear power plant, Bushehr, are being reviewed by parliament’s energy committee and discussed with the country’s Atomic Energy Organization officials, Arman reported, citing the committee’s head, Hamid-Reza Katouzian.
Iran: No emergency OPEC meeting
AP: Iran’s OPEC governor on Tuesday dismissed the possibility of the producer bloc holding an emergency meeting, arguing that the surge in oil prices was linked to factors over which the group had no control.
Iran encourages volunteers to transfer from Tehran, Donya says
Bloomberg: Iran is calling on public workers to agree to a transfer out of Tehran, as part of an effort to decrease the capital’s population, Donya-e-Eqtesad said, citing the city governor’s deputy for planning, Nematollah Torki.
Iran wants to retrieve satellite built in Italy
AFP: Iran is pressing Italy over a satellite, Mesbah-1, built by an Italian company in 2005 but never delivered to Tehran, a top Iranian space official said Tuesday.
Siemens’ business surges in Iran
Wall Street Journal: A year after German engineering giant Siemens AG pledged to retreat from Iran under international pressure, it is grappling with a thorny problem: a big jump in revenue in the Islamic republic.
Army says no to ‘Khomeini rule’ in Egypt
AFP: Egypt will not be ruled by “another (Ayatollah) Khomeini,” the country’s military said on Monday, in reference to the cleric who led Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution, the official MENA news agency reported.
US general voices concern over Iran-Venezuela ties
AFP: The United States is worried about increasingly close ties between Venezuela and Iran, a top US military official told lawmakers Tuesday.
Merkel intervenes to stop Indian oil payments for Iran – report
Reuters: German Chancellor Angela Merkel has intervened to stop billions of euros of Indian oil payments from reaching Iranian accounts via Germany, a newspaper reported on Tuesday.
