CNN: State media: Iran MPs want Moussavi prosecuted

More than 150 Iranian members of parliament have signed letters advocating the prosecution of former presidential candidate Mir Hossein Moussavi, state media reported Saturday.

Mohammad Taghi Rahbar, the head of parliament’s clerical faction, said lawmakers who have signed the two letters of complaint against Moussavi have done their “duty, which was to defend the integrity of the system” and filed complaints against the leaders of what he called a “conspiracy,” official news agency Iran Newspaper’s Web site (INN) reported.

“People want to see the convictions of the leaders of the conspiracy, because they are rioters and have abused the peoples lives and property,” he said, according to INN.

The letter come after Moussavi, the Iranian opposition leader and symbol of anti-government fervor, lashed out against Iranian authorities last week, saying remnants of the “tyranny” and “dictatorship” that prevailed under the toppled Shah of Iran’s regime persist today.

AFP: Internet down in Iran ahead of demos

Iran said on Sunday its Internet connections will remain slow this week due to technical problems, ahead of anticipated protests by opposition supporters.

Connections have been slow since last week and some email accounts have been unavailable for several hours each day.

“The cause of the reduced Internet speed in recent days is that part of the fibre-optic network is damaged,” Communications Minister Reza Taghipour told Iran’s state broadcaster.

“The breakage will be repaired by next week and the Internet speed will be back to normal,” he added.

The Iranian week runs from Saturday to Friday.

Taghipour said the undersea optic fibre across the Gulf between the Iranian port of Jask and Fujairah in the United Arab Emirates had been damaged due to shipping traffic and anchoring.

He also acknowledged that text messaging in Iran had been disrupted, blaming it on “changing software.”

Internet connections have slowed to a crawl on past protest days and mobile phone networks been disrupted.

WSJ: Iranian President Orders Nuclear Program Progress

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad ordered his country’s nuclear agency to begin enriching uranium for use in a medical-research reactor, ratcheting up Tehran’s defiance over Western demands that it curb its nuclear ambitions.

The statement was carried Sunday on state TV as the country celebrates the 31st anniversary of the Iranian revolution. It came amid a flurry of announcements in which Mr. Ahmadinejad has attempted to project an image of strength, even as the regime faces the threat of further domestic unrest later this week.

It also seemed to contradict Mr. Ahmadinejad’s statements last week that Iran was willing to embrace a deal brokered last year by the International Atomic Energy Agency for Iran to ship the bulk of its lower enriched uranium overseas to be further enriched to the 20% purity level needed for its medical reactor.

Speaking at a laser-technology exhibition on Sunday in Tehran, Mr. Ahmadinejad called on Ali Akbar Salehi, head of Iran’s atomic agency, who was sitting in the audience, to begin enriching uranium to 20% purity. Mr. Ahmadinejad said Iran “was still open to negotiations on the issue” with the international community, according to state media. Mr. Ahmadinejad and other officials have threatened before to enrich the fuel on their own if a deal with the IAEA fell though.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Sunday he believed there was still time for sanctions to work to halt Iran’s nuclear program despite the Iranian president’s decision. Asked at a news conference in Rome whether he believed the president’s order to produce higher-grade uranium made military action more likely, Mr. Gates said that as long as the international community is able to present a united front, sanctions can still be effective.

“If the international community will stand together and bring pressure to bear on the Iranian government, I believe there is still time for sanctions and pressure to work,” Mr. Gates said following meetings with his Italian counterpart. “But we must all work together.”

The Washington Post’s coverage of the same:  While the 20 percent threshhold is substantially below the 90 percent plus needed to make fissile warhead material, any move by Iran to enrich to 20 percent would raise international alarm bells because it would bring Iran substantially closer to weapons capacity.

That is because enriching from 20 percent to weapons grade can be done much more quickly and with much less equipment than from the low-enriched stockpile Iran now posesses.

David Albright, whose Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security tracks suspected proliferators, said that it would take 2,000 centrifuges about a year to turn Iran’s 1.8 ton stockpile of 3.5 percent uranium into enough weapons grade uranium for one warhead. But he said it would only take 500 to 1,000 centrifuges, and half a year, to move from 20 percent to 90 percent plus enriched material.

By enriching its present 3.5 percent uranium stockpile to 20 percent, “it would be going most of the rest of the way to weapon-grade uranium,” he said.

CNN: Clinton defends Obama’s engagement strategy on Iran, N. Korea

In an interview broadcast Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union, Clinton replied with a blunt “no” when asked by CNN Senior Political Correspondent Candy Crowley if Iran had taken up Obama on his offer in his inaugural address last year to “extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.”

“But the fact is, because we engaged, the rest of the world has really begun to see Iran the way we see it,” Clinton said in the interview conducted Thursday.

Clinton pointed out that a year ago, much of the world, including Russia, did not share the U.S. perception that Iran’s nuclear program posed a major threat.

Now there is greater awareness of the threat, Clinton said, due to “a very slow and steady diplomacy plus the fact that we had a two-track process.”

“Yes, we reached out on engagement to Iran, but we always had the second track which is that we would have to try to get the world community to take stronger measures if they didn’t respond on the engagement front,” Clinton said.

On Friday, Iran’s foreign minister had said he believed a solution will be reached over the proposed deal to export uranium for enrichment abroad, as demanded by Western nations worried that Tehran plans to use its program to build nuclear weapons.

However, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Sunday he had ordered Iran’s atomic chief to increase the nation’s enrichment of uranium at home. Ahmadinejad did not set a deadline for the increase.

AFP: Al-Qaeda threat to US greater than Iran: Clinton

The Iranian nuclear threat is real but the United States faces an even greater danger from Al-Qaeda, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned in an interview Sunday.

“In terms of a country, obviously a nuclear-armed country like North Korea or Iran pose both a real or a potential threat,” Clinton told CNN’s “State of the Union”, making it clear the Iranians don’t yet possess an atomic weapon.

“But I think that most of us believe the greater threats are the trans-national non-state networks,” she said, referring to Al-Qaeda and its affiliates in Afghanistan, North Africa, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Yemen.

Clinton voiced concerns about Al-Qaeda’s level of “connectivity” and warned that Osama bin Laden’s followers were increasing the sophistication of the attacks they were planning.

While Al-Qaeda was not getting any stronger and its capacity had been “degraded” in Afghanistan and Pakistan, Clinton cautioned the terror network was evolving to become “more creative, more flexible, more agile.

“They are unfortunately a very committed, clever, diabolical group of terrorists who are always looking for weaknesses and openings and we just have to stay alert.”

Reuters: Iran sets up national energy fund, oil minister says

Iran has established an energy fund backed by the Central Bank and other Iranian banks to help finance investments in the sector, Oil Minister Massoud Mirkazemi said on Sunday.

“The National Energy Fund, with the help of the resources of four local banks and the Central Bank, has been established to help finance major parts of the oil industry’s activities,” the official IRNA news agency quoted Mirkazemi as saying.

“Several rounds of talks were held in this regard and it was approved by the president (Mahmoud Ahmadinejad),” he said.

Mirkazemi said the fund would pave the way for both local and foreign firms to take part in Iranian energy projects.

“By using domestic resources we would pave the way for the presence of local firms in oil and gas projects, but at the same time we won’t block attracting foreign resources,” he said.

“It is necessary to invest in the country’s oil and gas development projects, particularly in joint fields with the neighbouring states,” said Mirkazemi, who did not provide any figures.

Washington Post: Report: Iran detains 7 suspected of spying for US

Iran’s state media says Tehran has arrested seven people linked to the U.S.-funded Radio Farda and accused some of them of working for American spy agencies.

State radio and the official IRNA news agency reported Sunday the suspects played a key role in provoking protesters during a violent anti-government demonstration in Tehran in late December.

The report, based on an Intelligence Ministry statement, claimed the suspects were trained in “sabotage.”

It did not identify the suspects or say when they were detained.

Radio Farda broadcasts in Farsi into Iran. It is based in Prague, Czech republic, and Washington, D.C.

LA Times: The lies of Iran, in pictures

In 1979, the Iranian people wanted to believe the lies that followed her sons’ deaths because they came from a government the people had recently ushered into power. Today, she says, the lies that followed Agha-Soltan’s death have fallen on deaf ears because they came from a government so many Iranians had voted to remove from power — only to see their votes ignored. And so, says Nahid, the government has reason to be scared.

Haaretz: Iran announces successful test of radar-evading aircraft

Iran has successfully tested a radar-evading aircraft, a commander said on Sunday, in the country’s latest announcement of technological advances as it marks the anniversary of the 1979 Islamic revolution.  The semi-official Fars News Agency, citing senior air force official Aziz Nasirzadeh, said the prototype of a radar-evading aircraft named Swordfish had been test-flown. “The prototype of this aircraft … Completed all radar evading characteristics considered by us,” he said. “We are evaluating the data from the test flight and it will go into production after completing additional tests.”