World Press on Iran, Turkey and the Caucasus (July 19, 2011)

The Washington Post reported that a prominent Iranian hardliner has called for attacks against U.S.and European airline offices, over their refusal to supply fuel to Iranian aircraft. Hossein Shariatmadari, a representative of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, says in an editorial in his Kayhan daily on Tuesday that American and European airlines should be “taught an unforgettable lesson.” Iran has already banned the supply of jet fuel to European airlines in a tit-for-tat move.

The same information agency published an article saying that Iran is installing new and efficient centrifuges aimed at speeding up its nuclear enrichment, amid fears Tehran is moving toward weapon-grade enriched uranium. A spokesman for the Iranian Foreign Ministry, Ramin Mehmanparast, said the International Atomic Energy Agency is monitoring the work, but he did not elaborate on the specifications of the machines. The move comes despite four rounds of U.N. Security Council sanctions over Tehran’s refusal to halt enrichment.

The Guardian published an article headlined “Iran refuses to let in UN's human rights monitor.” It says that Iran has announced that it will not permit the UN special rapporteur assigned with investigating its record of human rights to enter the country. Ahmad Shaheed, the former Maldivian foreign affairs minister, was appointed by the UN in June to look into human rights violations in Iran, leading to much criticism from the regime in Tehran. Shaheed's appointment was the result of concerted warnings by various human rights organisations about Iran's current record of human rights. In recent years, rights groups have expressed concerns over the arbitrary arrests of political activists, the sharp rise in the country's rate of executions and claims of torture and rape inside Iran's prisons.

The Turkish information agency Hurriyet reported that Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev is in hospital in Germany, but it is unclear what he is being treated for, the Bild daily reported on Tuesday. The 71-year-old "secretly" checked himself into the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf in northern Germany, and is being guarded by a heavy security detail, the paper said, without saying where it got the information. The report also said that the German foreign ministry had acted as a mediator in having the energy-rich Central Asian republic's president admitted to the clinic.

“Iran installing new centrifuges” is an article published by the Iranian information agency Press TV. It says that Iran is installing a new generation of uranium-enrichment centrifuges in the country's nuclear facilities to enhance the Islamic Republic's peaceful nuclear program. “Iran's progresses in the field of peaceful nuclear activities are being made with the installment of the new generation of centrifuges with higher speeds and quality,” IRNA quoted Iran's Foreign Ministry Spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast as saying on Tuesday. "All the country's peaceful nuclear activities are in cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and Iran has informed the agency about the details of the activities," he added.