AFP: The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Yukiya Amano, will visit Iran on Sunday to try to advance cooperation over its contested nuclear drive, the organisation said. Amano, who last went to Tehran in November, is due to hold talks with Iranian leaders and senior officials, the IAEA said.
IAEA says chief to visit Iran for nuclear talks Sunday
Iran to drill south pars gas as it reviews oil contracts
Bloomberg: Iran plans to finish developing its giant South Pars gas field within three years, regardless of the sanctions on its economy, and is rescheduling a campaign to woo U.S. and European oil companies with investor contracts. Iran, holder of the world’s largest natural gas reserves, expects to expand production at the Persian Gulf deposit that it shares with Qatar.
Iraq’s Maliki finally steps aside, paving way for new government
Reuters: Nuri al-Maliki finally bowed to pressure within Iraq and beyond on Thursday and stepped down as prime minister, paving the way for a new coalition that world and regional powers hope can quash a Sunni Islamist insurgency that threatens Baghdad. Maliki ended eight years of often divisive, sectarian rule and endorsed fellow Shi’ite Haider al-Abadi in a televised speech.
Still no help for Iranian dissidents
The Hill: Consider three principles. First, in Plato’s Republic, one definition of justice is to give each person that which is due. Second, Martin Luther King stated, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” Third, King also said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” It is intolerable for the State Department to ignore virtual imprisonment by Baghdad of Iranian dissidents stuck in Iraq.
Why Iran fears Iraq’s Kurds
Daily Beast: At the end of June, Nechirvan Barzani, the prime minister of Iraqi Kurdistan, visited Tehran to meet with Rear Admiral Ali Shamkhani, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council. When Shamkhani met Barzani he was dressed in full navy uniform. “I intentionally met with Nechirvan Barzani in uniform so that he would understand that for us the integrity of Iraq is important,” Shamkhani said after the meeting.
Maliki plans to carry bid for power to Iraq courts
New York Times: Nuri Kamal al-Maliki said Wednesday that he would press ahead in the Iraqi courts with his increasingly unlikely bid to retain power, and would not turn to the army. With so many political forces now aligned against Mr. Maliki, including the United States and Iran, and with his retreat from veiled threats to use force, the political crisis that has gripped Baghdad in recent days diminished in intensity.
Chennai petroleum plans Iran oil imports after two years
Bloomberg: Chennai Petroleum Corp. (MRL), a unit of India’s largest refiner, plans to resume crude imports from Iran after a two-year gap as insurers return to the market. “This year, we plan to restart Iran oil purchases,” Managing Director S. Venkataramana said in a phone interview. “We are already talking to the re-insurers for this, and we are getting positive responses so far.”
Iran retakes top spot in money-laundering risk ranking index
Wall Street Journal: Iran is once again the country posing the largest money-laundering risk, taking the spot back from Afghanistan in the latest edition of the Basel AML Index. The 2014 edition of the index, published by the Basel Institute on Governance, covers more than 160 countries, and said it is the only country-level rating of money laundering and terrorist financing risk by a nonprofit.
With gas byproduct, Iran sidesteps sanctions
New York Times: Iran is finding a way around Western sanctions to export increasing amounts of an ultralight oil to China and other Asian markets, expanding the value of its trade by potentially billions of dollars a year. The exports come during a slight thaw in Iran’s relations with the West as negotiations over its nuclear program continue.
Iranian Stanford professor first woman to win top maths prize
Reuters: Iranian mathematician Maryam Mirzakhani on Wednesday became the first woman to be awarded the Fields Medal, mathematics’ equivalent to the Nobel Prize.The professor at Stanford University in California was among four Fields Medal recipients at the International Congress of Mathematicians held in Seoul, and the first female among the 56 winners since the prize was established in 1936.
