World Press on Iran, Turkey and the Caucasus (November 11-14, 2011)

The Washington Post reported that Iran rejects Bahrain’s allegations that a terror cell uncovered in the tiny island nation has links to the Shiite powerhouse’s Revolutionary Guard, an Iranian deputy foreign minister said. Bahrain’s public prosecutor on Sunday alleged the cell planned attacks against high profile sites, such as the Saudi Embassy in the Bahraini capital Manama and a Gulf causeway linking Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. The cell purportedly had contact with Iran’s Guard, according to a Bahrain News Agency report, which gave no further details to back up the allegations. Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Amir Abdollahian said the claims were “baseless and fabricated” and urged the Bahraini government to focus instead on repairing the “deep schism” between its ruling Sunni monarchy and Shiite majority.

The same agency published the article headlined “GOP candidates embrace covert action in Iran.” It says that Former House speaker Newt Gingrich (Ga.) has long been an advocate of using the CIA in Iran, and he pushed that during the South Carolina debate. Asked what “non-war means” the United States could employ to deal with Iran’s apparent nuclear weapons program, Gingrich said he would institute “maximum covert operations to block and disrupt the Iranian program, including taking out their scientists, including breaking up their systems, all of it covertly, all of it deniable.” He also called for “maximum coordination with the Israelis in a way which allows them to maximize their impact on Iran.” Last winter, news reports described a sophisticated computer worm named Stuxnet that set back Iran’s nuclear program. Although it was never confirmed, the worm was attributed to Israeli and U.S. intelligence.

“Turkey: Ferry Hijacker Killed” is an article published by The New York Times on Saturday. It says that A Kurdish militant who had hijacked a ferry with 18 passengers on board Friday afternoon in northwestern Turkey was shot to death by Turkish commandos. The militant had threatened to detonate explosives if he failed to get media exposure, local officials said. The governor of Istanbul, Huseyin Avni Mutlu, told The Associated Press that the passengers were all safe and that the hijacker “was a member of the terrorist organization.” Earlier, Binali Yildirim, the transportation minister, told the semiofficial Anatolian News Agency that four or five militants, identifying themselves as members of a subdivision of the Kurdistan Workers Party, had overpowered the captain and demanded food and fuel. The ferry, named Kartepe, was en route to Golcuk from Izmit, both coastal towns on the Sea of Marmara.

The Turkish information agency Hurriyet Daily News published the article subtitled “McManus: Facing a nuclear Iran.” It says that The United Nations report on Iran's nuclear program released last week should end the debate, if any debate remained, over whether Iran is moving toward acquiring the ability to build a nuclear weapon. In cautious but convincing detail, the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency listed evidence that Iran is still conducting research that would lead to an atomic bomb, much of it in secret military laboratories. And Iran has refused to answer the U.N.'s questions or allow U.N. inspectors to see much of what it's doing, the easiest way to refute its critics' charges. Experts outside the U.S. government estimate that Iran still needs about a year, working at full speed, to build a functioning nuclear bomb — six months to enrich the uranium, longer to fashion it into a weapon. But the U.N. didn't find evidence that such a crash program is underway.