The Washington Post published the article headlined “Slowing Iran’s nuclear ambitions.” It says that he July 22 editorial “Iran, undeterred” correctly observed that sanctions have not led Iran to end its pursuit of nuclear weapons. But the editorial’s critique that sanctions are not slowing those pursuits ignored the most vital component of that assessment: that Iran has difficulties acquiring the materials necessary for its nuclear program. A panel of experts tasked by the United Nations with evaluating the sanctions said in a recent report that sanctions “are constraining Iran’s procurement of items related to prohibited nuclear and ballistic missile activity and thus slowing development of these programs,” including Iran’s advanced centrifuges. A comprehensive strategy using sanctions to build diplomatic leverage and international pressure will be needed to convince Tehran that it has nothing to gain and much to lose by developing a nuclear weapons capability.
The Los Angeles Times reported that Iran said the victim of a deadly shooting Saturday was a university student, not a physicist involved in the country's nuclear program as state media had first reported. A mix-up over the victim's name apparently led to the confusion. investigation later determined that the slain man was Darioush Rezaeinejad, an electronics student at Khajeh Nasir Toosi University of Technology in Tehran. The initial reports raised concerns because the attack appeared similar to recent assassinations of Iranian scientists that the government blamed on the U.S. and Israel.
“Survivor of Attack Leads Nuclear Effort in Iran” is an article published by the New York Times. It says that eight months after he narrowly survived an assassination attempt on the streets of Tehran, Fereydoon Abbasi, the nuclear physicist whom Iran’s mullahs have put in charge of the country’s Atomic Energy Organization, is presiding over what intelligence officials in several countries describe as an unexpected quickening of Iran’s production of nuclear material. Filtering out the hyperbole surrounding recent proclamations about Iran’s tangible progress is always difficult, especially at a time when the country is determined to show that neither the Stuxnet computer worm, which crippled part of its nuclear infrastructure last year, nor Western sanctions have proved to be more than modest setbacks.
The Turkish information agency Hurriyet reported that Moscow's most wanted Islamist militant Doku Umarov warned that Russia would be the target of a newly strengthened insurgency in a video posted on an Islamist affiliated website on Monday. A decade after federal forces drove a separatist government from power in Chechnya, Moscow is struggling to contain an insurgency that seeks to carve an Islamic state out of Russia's North Caucasus region. He has also promised a year of "blood and tears" for Russia ahead of parliamentary elections in December and a presidential poll in 2012. Security will be a main priority leading up to the elections for both President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who led the country into a second devastating war against Chechen rebels in 1999.
The Iranian information agency Press TV published the article subtitled “Iran to produce gasoline from gas.” It says that Majlid Hedayat said on Monday that a pilot GTL production plant is expected to be operational within the next two weeks in the Iranian capital city, Tehran, to produce gasoline “for a 3-month trial,” Mehr news agency reported. GTL is a refinery process which converts natural gas into gasoline or diesel fuel. “Six hundred million dollars would be invested in GTL industry,” Hedayat further explained. The Iranian official also noted that the country is planning to set up two “industrial and semi-industrial plants” to produce 13,000 barrels of gasoline per day.
