World Press on Iran, Turkey and the Caucasus (July 14, 2011)

The Washington Post reported that Iran has established an international exchange for crude oil in a free trade zone on the Persian Gulf island of Kish. During a ceremony marking the launch, Ali Salehabadi, who oversees Iran’s exchanges, said the market would supply crude in the Middle East. He invited international traders to participate. Iran ranks second in output among OPEC countries and controls about 5 percent of the global oil supply. It has sought to wield its oil resources as a bargaining tool in its standoff with the West over its nuclear program. Iran planned the crude market in 2005 and established an exchange for other oil products in 2008.

The same information agency published the article headlined “The rise and fall of Iran’s Ahmadinejad.” It says that while Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s demagoguery and Holocaust revisionism on the world stage have earned him alarmist comparisons to Adolf Hitler, his recent, ignoble fall from grace reveals the Iranian president for what he really is: the dispensable sword of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Ahmadinejad’s pious populism resonated among Iran’s working classes, and his revolutionary zeal and willingness to attack Khamenei’s adversaries endeared him to the supreme leader, whose backing of Ahmadinejad in the 2005 presidential election proved decisive. The balance of power between the two was exhibited during Ahmadinejad’s inauguration, when the new president prostrated himself before Khamenei and kissed his hand.

“Turkey may freeze EU ties” is an article published by the Turkish information agency Hurriyet. It says that Turkey and the EU ‘cannot continue relations’ if Greek Cyprus takes over the bloc’s presidency on its own in 2012, according to Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu. Allowing Greek Cyprus to take over the rotating EU presidency in July 2012 without a unification deal for the divided island would “freeze” relations between Turkey and the European bloc, the Turkish foreign minister said Wednesday. Responding to Davutoğlu’s remarks later in the day, EU Commissioner Fuele said it was “not the right time to make these sorts of statements.” Turkey’s chief EU negotiator took a softer tone, saying the situation would not be so different than it is currently even if a divided island takes over the EU presidency.

The Iranian information agency Press TV reported that Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has laid out a new “step-by-step” approach that would enable Iran to take steps to address questions raised by the UN nuclear agency on the country's nuclear program. Lavrov made the suggestion in a press conference following his talks with US President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at the US State Department in Washington on Wednesday. According to the plan, Iran can revive negotiations to alleviate individual concerns of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) about its nuclear activities and be rewarded along the way by partial removal of sanctions. The approach would start out with the easiest questions and move onto more complicated ones that would require a longer time to respond to, according to the Russian official.