Iran and Syria express support for Sudan's unity and integrity

Iran and Syria express support for Sudan's unity and integrity
Source: Arab Monitor - www.arabmonitor.info
Date: Thursday, 02 December 2010

(Kuwait City, 2 December) - In a meeting between Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki and his Syrian counterpart's deputy, Faisal al-Miqdad, on the sidelines of the International Donors and Investors Conference on Eastern Sudan, both officials expressed their countries' commitment to the unity and integrity of Sudan and their opposition to ongoing efforts to cut the African country into two parts. Mottaki and al-Miqdad pointed out to the significance and importance of the huge north eastern African country in and for the Organization of the Islamic Conference, the Non-Alligned Movement, the Arab League as well as the African Union.

Sudan's North Darfur wali meets Iranian delegation currently visiting Alfashir

North Darfur wali meets Iranian delegation currently visitng Alfashir
Source: SUNA - www.sunanews.net
Date: Sunday, 31 October 2010:

(Alfashir, western Sudan) - Wali of North Darfur state Osman Mohamed Yousif Kibir met this morning at the visitors palace in Alfashir the Iranian government delegation currently visiting the country, headed by Ali Miami the minister of energy and water resources and the Iranian Ambassador to Sudan Gwad Tirka Badi, accompanied by eng. Abul Gasim Ahmed president of the compensation commission in the interim executive regional authority of Darfur and a number of the interim authority officials,representatives of the federal ministry of international cooperation, a number of the states governmet members and the security committee

The wali welcomes the Iranian delegation pointing that this visit is consiered a good opportunity for the delegation to get acquainted to the real situation in Darfur , affirming the significance of the role the Iranian could play in Sudan specially in Darfur, pointing to the historical relations between the two nations

On his side the Iranian Ambassador at Sudan expressed his hapiness by Alfashir visit, saying that its an opportunity for reviewing with the state's government the joint future interests between the two countries in the spheres of development and rehabilitation

Meanwhile president of the compensation commission in the intirim authority in Darfur said the visit of the Iranian delegation comes within the context of reviewing means of solving Darfur issue in the development and services spheres, affirming that the coming period will witness more cooperation and coordination specially in the field of the Iranian efforts to support Sudan and Darfur through the Solar Energy projects to be implemented for rehabilitation of the arable lands.
E.M

IAEA visits Khartoum - Egypt and Sudan move forward on "peaceful" nuclear plans

Technicians load the Bushehr nuclear plant this week in Iran. (ISNA)
Hat tip: gatewaypundit.firstthings.com - Sunday, August 22, 2010. Check out comments.

Sudan plans nuclear program
Report by JPOST.COM STAFF (via Jerusalem Post)
Sunday, 22 August 2010 - excerpt:

Sudan plans to build a nuclear reactor for peaceful purposes by 2020, the SUNA state news agency reported Sunday.

Sudan has noted economic and political ties with Iran, which has been facing increasing sanctions and international pressure over its nuclear program.

Like Iran, Sudan is under US sanctions, and has been since 1997.

The International Atomic Energy Agency is planning to travel to Sudan on August 23 to discuss importing a nuclear reactor for “research purposes.”

SUNA said Sudan began plans to develop a nuclear program early this year.

Although Sudan has built dams along the Blue and White Nile Rivers, large parts of the country do not have regular electricity, Reuters reported.

Muhammad Ahmed Hassan el-Tayeb, director-general of the Sudanese Atomic Energy Agency, was quoted as saying “The Ministry of Electricity and Dams has already started preparing for the project to produce power from nuclear energy in cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency and is expected to build the first nuclear power plant in the year 2020.”

- - -

News from The New York Times -

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Sudan

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AUGUST 20, 2010

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animal

More at Blogrunner »

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News from Google's Sudan newsreel
Monday, 23 August 2010 at 09.40 AM GMT UK

Sudan plans nuclear program

Jerusalem Post - ‎14 hours ago‎

Report: Sudan plans to build nuclear reactor

Ha'aretz - ‎15 hours ago‎

Sudan to build 1st nuclear plant

Press TV - ‎1 hour ago‎

Sudan Moves Forward on 'Peaceful' Nuclear Reactor

Arutz Sheva - Maayana Miskin - ‎13 hours ago‎

IAEA delegation to visit Sudan this week to

assess plans to import nuclear reactor

Sudan Tribune - ‎Aug 21, 2010‎

Iran, Sudan stress expansion of mutual co-operation

Copy of a report from Fars News Agency - Tuesday, 03 August 2010:
Iran, Sudan Stress Expansion of Mutual Cooperation

TEHRAN (FNA)- Iran's envoy to Khartoum and Sudan's Interior Minister Ibrahim Mahmoud Hamid in a meeting in the Sudanese capital explored ways to bolster mutual cooperation.

During the meeting held at the Sudanese Ministry of Interior on Monday, Iran's Ambassador to Sudan Javad Turkabadi stressed the need for the two countries' police forces to boost and expand mutual cooperation in drug campaign and counter-terrorism measures.

"The two countries should adopt the necessary measures to expand and develop this cooperation through drawing precise plans," the Iranian diplomat noted.

Turkabadi also extended an invitation to the Sudanese minister to pay a visit to Tehran in the near future.

Mahmoud Hamid, for his part, said that he would plan a visit to Tehran as soon as possible.

He pointed to Iran's "useful" experience in anti-drug measures, counter-terrorism and social order, and called for continued cooperation between the two states.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's administration has striven hard to maximize relations with the African continent.

Tehran has prioritized promotion of its economic and political ties with the African states and the country is now considered as one of the African Union's strategic partners.

Tehran's efforts to boost ties and cooperation with Africa have led to its acceptance as an observing member of the African Union (AU), where it has shown an active presence in the AU summit meetings.

UN votes for new sanctions on Iran over nuclear issue

The UN Security Council imposes fresh sanctions on Iran in a bid to pressure the country to stop its controversial enrichment of uranium.

UN approves new sanctions on Iran

The UN Security Council votes in favour of a fourth round of sanctions against Iran over its controversial nuclear programme.

Last resort or lost opportunity?

Analysis: More to come

Key targets of new sanctions

Full story: BBC News - Wednesday, 09 June 2010

UN votes for new sanctions on Iran over nuclear issue

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/10276276.stm

Ahmadinejad felicitates re-election of Umar al-Bashir

Ahmadinejad Felicitates Reelection of Umar al-Bashir
From Fars News Agency, Wednesday, 28 April 2010:

TEHRAN (FNA) - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Wednesday felicitated his Sudanese counterpart Umar Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir for his victory in the general elections in the African state.

According to a statement issued by the presidential media office, President Ahmadinejad sent a message of congratulation to Bashir and felicitated the government and the people of Sudan on his reelection.

In his message, the Iranian president expressed the hope that joint efforts by Iran and Sudan's officials would open a new chapter in the expansion of mutual and international cooperation in line with the common interests of the two countries and materialization of peace and justice in the world.

Results of the five-day Sudanese general elections, ended on April 15, showed that incumbent President Umar al-Bashir was reelected as the African country's president with nearly 68% of the votes cast.

Shadow of Iran hangs over Iraqi elections

Iraq's days as a battlezone may be over, but as election day arrives, the country's powerful neighbours are still meddling in its affairs, reports Richard Spencer in Baghdad.

Shadow of Iran hangs over Iraqi elections
From Telegraph.co.uk
By Richard Spencer in Sadr City
Published: 7:00AM GMT 07 Mar 2010

HIS hopes of being elected may or may not come true on Sunday, but life has already improved remarkably for Hakim al-Zamili.

Two years ago, he was on trial in a Baghdad court, charged with using his post as Iraq's deputy health minister as cover for running Shia death squads. He was accused of financing killing sprees against Sunnis, and even using ambulances as hearses to ferry murder victims to secret graves.

Now, after a trial that collapsed amid widespread claims of witness intimidation, Mr Zamili is busy presenting himself not as a warlord, but a democrat. Sitting under a portrait of Moqtada al-Sadr, the Iran-backed Shia cleric whose militia waged war against both British and US troops and fellow Iraqis, he talks earnestly of the need for "technocratic government" and the fight against corruption.

"I want to serve my people," said Mr Zamili, who claims the charges against him were the result of a smear campaign. "I want to remove the obstacles from their path."

Like Mr Zamili himself, there is much else about Sunday's polls that begs the benefit of the doubt. On the surface, a vibrant campaign has been fought, defeating the best efforts of al Qaeda suicide bombers to derail it, and engaging both Sunnis and Shia Muslims with equal vigour. It is likely that Nuri al-Maliki, the uncharismatic but astute prime minister, will be returned to office - the first time in Iraq's history that its people will have stuck with a leader voluntarily. But as the country's 19 million war-weary voters visit the ballot boxes today, they will do so under the shadow of Iran, their powerful neighbour to the east.

Nowhere are those shadows more strongly felt than in Sadr City, the vast, two million-strong Shia slum to the east of Baghdad that is Mr Zamili's power base.

Named after Moqtada al-Sadr's late father, a leading Shia ayatollah, it has long been a strong hold of militants with close ties to the Shia mullahs who control Iran. It was here, somewhere in its crumbling, litter-strewn public housing blocks, that the British hostage Peter Moore is believed to have been held hostage for a time, and it was here, between 2004 and 2008, that US forces fought running battles with Shia gunmen trained by the al-Quds Brigade, the elite guerrilla warfare unit of Iran's Revolutionary Guard.

Today, the roadside bombs and kidnap gangs that once made it perilous for Western troops and reporters alike are gone, and a two-mile-long concrete blast wall erected by the Americans to restrict the movements of militiamen is smothered in election posters. Yet nobody around here really believes that Tehran's influence has waned. While Mr Zamili denies US claims - backed by evidence from weapons cache seizures - that the Iranians provided guns for Shia militants, he does not deny the continued presence of al-Quds operatives on his patch. "Because of the occupation Iraq became wide-open for all the movements, all the groups," he said. "Al-Qaeda, al-Quds - Iraq became an open playing field."

It was the al-Quds Brigade that was accused of planning and overseeing the kidnapping of Mr Moore, the British IT expert who was seized along with his four bodyguards from the Baghdad finance ministry building in 2007. He alone was freed just before New Year, in what was widely regarded as an exchange for the release from American custody of Qais al-Khazali, the leader of another Iranian proxy militia.

Yet while that was widely viewed a triumph for the politics of the gun, Iran's strategic goals in Iraq are also well served by allowing electoral democracy to take its course. For one thing, many senior players in Iraq's current Shia-dominated government spent time in exile in Iran during their years of opposition to Saddam's Sunni rule, the mullahs having welcomed in the enemies of the man who invaded Iran in the 1980s. And for another, with roughly 60 per cent of Iraqis being Shias, majority rule tends naturally to produce a government that will be friendly to Iran. For all the efforts of Iraq's fledgling secular parties to appeal across the Sunni-Shia divide, many of today's votes will still be cast on unquestioningly sectarian lines.
Asked why he would be supporting the Iraqi National Alliance, the Shia coalition of which the Sadrists are part, Usam Abdullah, a young and fashionably dressed shop-keeper in Sadr City, replies simply. "They are my sect".

As such, the perception of many parties is that the Iranians are free to their own loyalists - including men like Mr Zamili - into key positions in government. "We have to face the facts," said Raad Mukhlus Mawloud, a Sunni candidate. "Everyone knows the depth of Iranian influence."

Such talk is dismissed as "paranioa" by some Western diplomats in Baghdad. But it refuses to go away, not least because of a recent Iraqi government decision to ban 145 election candidates on the grounds of past links to the Ba'ath Party of Saddam Hussein - widely seen as a thinly-veiled attack on the community that harbours deepest distrust of Iran.

The chairman of the election commission responsible for the ban was none other than Ahmed Chalabi, the former Iraqi exile and former Washington ally whose faulty intelligence on weapons of mass destruction spurred the 2003 US invasion in the first place.

Once the darling of the US, he is now stands accused by the Pentagon of being an Iranian agent, and is likewise a prominent candidate on the Sadrist electoral coalition. Leaks of US intelligence reports have also recently claimed that Iran is funding the Sadrists to the tune of $8 million a month, and that Mr Chalabi had discussed with an al Quds commander tactics for ensuring a clean sweep to victory in the elections.

"They've had several meetings in Iran," said General Ray Odierno, the US forces commander, who openly accused Mr Chalabi and another commission official, Ali al-Lami, of being directly controlled by Tehran. "And we believe they're absolutely involved in influencing the outcome of the election."

The anti-Ba'athist election ban, which led to threats of a boycott of the polls by some Sunni parties and fears of a re-kindled civil war, has since been partly lifted following strong US pressure, but many feel the damage has already been done. "This has polarised the election atmosphere," said one diplomat. "It means that nearly everybody will vote on sectarian lines." And either way, Tehran stands to profit from the outcome of today's polls. A heavy defeat for Sunni candidates would trigger renewed violence by Sunni militants, many with links to al-Qaeda, dragging Iran's other enemy, America, back into the quagmire.

True, few people at the moment expect Iraq to become another theocracy like Iran. Tehran's mullahs have enough of their own problems at the moment from their home-grown pro-democracy movement to export their Islamic revolution abroad at present. And besides, many Iraqis are so weary of violence that they now reject all foreign interference, be it American or Iranian. Even Mr Zamili maintains a distance from Tehran, in public at least. "If the Iranians come, be sure that we will fight them as we fought the Americans," he said.

But by asserting itself as leader of a wider Shia world, Iran has the potential to cause trouble across Iraq to the Gulf countries and Saudi Arabia, whose substantial Shia minority occupies the country's richest oil fields. That "trouble" could be activated were Iran to come under military attack from Israel or America over its alleged nuclear bomb program.

As such, it will most likely continue to court the likes of Mr Zamili, who is clearly at home with either the bullet or the ballot: for all that he relishes his new role as a political campaigner, he continues to defend the Mahdi army's resort to force.

And should his party be elected to power, its leader, the firebrand cleric Moqtada Sadr, will be better placed than any Iraqi politician to be receptive to Iran's concerns. Having officially declared a truce agains the US and British armies that he fought so hard against, he is now enrolled in a theology course - in the Iranian city of Qom.

U.S. denies killing Iran scientist Massoud Ali Mohammadi

The US has dismissed allegations by Iran that American and Israeli agents were responsible for the killing of a physics professor in Tehran.

The US State Department described the accusation as "absurd".

Physicist Massoud Ali Mohammadi died in a bomb blast on Tuesday, Iranian media reported, describing him as a nuclear scientist and a government supporter.

But later reports suggested he was not involved in Iran's nuclear programme and had signed an opposition petition.

Mr Ali Mohammadi, 50, was killed by a remote-controlled bomb near his home.

Full story by BBC News at 22:15 GMT, Tuesday, 12 January 2010:
US denies killing Iran scientist Massoud Ali Mohammadi