AFP: World powers will meet for fresh talks with Iran on its controversial nuclear programme on Tuesday, as hopes rise for a more conciliatory approach from the new Tehran government.
World powers set for nuclear talks with Rouhani’s Iran
Iran nuclear talks pit UN demands against atomic treaty
Bloomberg: The political clash over Iran’s nuclear program reflects an equally implacable legal conflict between treaties that both sides say back up their positions. Iran, with enough enriched uranium to make 15 atomic weapons if it chooses, has called the sanctions illegal.
Broken promises on Iranian dissidents
Washington Times: Michael B. Mukasey feels betrayed. The attorney general under President George W. Bush gave his personal assurance to the president of the Iranian resistance that its dissidents would be protected by Iraqi troops, not massacred by Iraqi gunmen.
Kerry on Iran: Diplomatic window `cracking open’
AP: U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry says the window for diplomacy with Iran over its nuclear program is “cracking open,” but that “no deal is better than a bad deal.” Kerry made the comments in a speech Sunday via satellite from London to a foreign policy conference in California.
The slaughter intensifies under Rouhani
Iran Focus: Iran has registered 471 executions for the year as the world marked the Day Against the Death Penalty on October 10. Nearly half of those executions, 231, have occurred since the presidential election in June which brought to power Hassan Rouhani.
Iran rejects demand to ship out uranium stockpiles
Reuters: Iran will not ship enriched uranium stockpiles out of the country, the Iranian deputy foreign minister said on Sunday, rejecting one key demand of world powers due to resume nuclear negotiations with Tehran this week.
Iran Central Banker says he’s undoing Ahmadinejad policy
Bloomberg: Iran’s central bank Governor Valiollah Seif said he’s reversing policies introduced under former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that led to a surge in money supply, to curb one of the world’s highest inflation rates.
U.S. delegation to Iran talks includes sanctions expert
Reuters: The U.S. delegation to next week’s talks about Iran’s nuclear program includes one of the U.S. government’s leading sanctions experts, a hint that Washington may be giving greater thought to how it might ease sanctions on Tehran.
Lawmakers urge the U.S. to save 7 Camp Ashraf hostages
PRNewswire – In a Congressional briefing, a bipartisan group of lawmakers called on the United States Government to accept a significant number of the residents of Camp Liberty, members of the main Iranian opposition movement, the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK/PMOI), as political refugees.
Iran’s defiant nuclear expansion raises bar for Geneva talks
Reuters: When the U.N. Security Council first imposed sanctions on Iran in 2006 to try to make it halt its nuclear activity, the Islamic state had a nascent uranium enrichment program with a couple of hundred centrifuges it was testing.
