By MICHAEL CORKERY, JESSICA SILVER-GREENBERG and THOMAS ERDBRINK APRIL 17, 2014
President Obama has warned that Iran is not open for business, even as the United States has loosened some of its punishing economic sanctions as part of an interim nuclear pact.
Yet, on Tuesday morning, Iran had an unlikely visitor: a plane, owned by the Bank of Utah, a community bank in Ogden that has 13 branches throughout the state. Bearing a small American flag on its tail, the aircraft was parked in a highly visible section of Mehrabad Airport in Tehran.
April 20th 2014
CNN’s FAREED ZAKARIA GPS features an interview with professor at the Harvard Business School, and Director at the Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness, Michael Porter. Porter spoke about “The Social Progress Index”, a new report that ranks countries on how well their citizens live. He discussed why the United States rank 16th.
By: Mahmood Monshipouri 20 April 2014
By: Thomas L. Friedman
IT occurred to me the other day that the zealously pro-Israel billionaire Sheldon Adelson and Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, actually have one big thing in common. They are both trying to destroy Israel. Adelson is doing it by loving Israel to death and Khamenei by hating Israel to death. And now even Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey inadvertently got drawn into this craziness.
What’s the logic? Very simple. Iran’s leaders want Israel destroyed but have no desire, in my view, to use a nuclear bomb to do it. That would expose them to retaliation and sure death. Their real strategy is more subtle: Do everything possible to ensure that Israel remains in the “occupied territory,” as the U.S. State Department refers to the West Bank, won by Israel in the 1967 war.
By Parisa Hafezi and Fredrik Dahl
(Reuters) – Iran said it hopes enough progress will be made with major powers this week to enable negotiators to start drafting by mid-May a final accord to settle a long-running dispute over its nuclear program.
The Islamic Republic and six world powers will hold a new round of talks in Vienna on Tuesday and Wednesday intended to reach a comprehensive agreement by July 20 on how to resolve a decade-old standoff that has stirred fears of a Middle East war.
By Amir Paivar April 3rd 2014
The honeymoon with the new government is over. Iranians are coming back from their New Year holidays to see their utility bills go up, some by 24%.
Petrol prices are also due to rise, a move that usually prompts discontent and triggers inflation.
Starved of cash, President Hassan Rouhani’s government has no choice but to cut state subsidies for fuel and energy.
By: Laurence Norman, Nour Malas and Benoît Faucon April 6, 2014
Difficulties Could Hinder Negotiations for a Comprehensive Agreement
Iran has been unable to withdraw much of the unfrozen oil revenue it was to receive under a November interim nuclear deal, a possible complication for efforts to end the decadelong standoff over Tehran’s nuclear ambitions.
The problems were outlined in interviews with nearly a dozen Western and Iranian officials and diplomats, bankers and lawyers with knowledge of the issue.
theguardian.com, Monday 7 April 2014
The popularity of consumerist culture has raised dowry expectations to unrealistic extremes
It drives poor families into the clutches of organ harvesters and loan sharks, compels betrothed couples to spend years in pre-marital purgatory, and pushes a nation known for strong family values to the brink of a population crisis. Still, for some Iranians, losing a kidney or signing off on a Faustian bank loan is a lesser evil than the dishonor, or aberoorizi, of failing to provide an acceptable dowry for their daughters.
By Ben Armbruster on April 7, 2014 at 12:50 pm
A group of Israeli experts last week laid out what they believe would be a “reasonable” final nuclear deal with Iran, namely allowing Iran some civilian enrichment capacity, widening the time it takes for Iran to build a nuclear weapons should it choose that path, and making sure the Iranians come clean about its past nuclear weapons work.
“From my point of view,” said retired Israeli Defense Forces Brigadier General Shlomo Brom at an event last week sponsored by the Center for American Progress and Molad, a progressive Israeli think tank, “a reasonable deal is a deal that lessens the break out time so there will be enough time to react if Iran will decide to break out towards a nuclear bomb.”
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