Press review on Iran, Turkey and the Caucasus (January 18, 2012)

The Washington Post published the article headlined “Iran is finding fewer buyers for its oil.” It says that the Chinese cut their imports from Iran roughly in half for January, trimming 285,000 barrels per day from their average last year of about 550,000 barrels per day, according to Nat Kern, the publisher of Foreign Reports, a respected industry newsletter. Iran’s reduced sales to its biggest oil customer resulted from a dispute over payment terms, Kern explains. But it’s an early sign of what may be significant reductions in Iranian exports to Europe and Asia, as buyers there hedge against the likelihood of tighter sanctions. The oil-market action shows how pressure by the United States and its allies is affecting the Iranian economy. Analysts reckon that, even if sanctions are only partly successful, Iran is likely to lose about 20 percent of its oil export volume and 25 percent of its revenues. For an economy that is already weak, that loss of revenue will be painful.

The same agency reported that a military attack on Iran would destabilize the region while new sanctions against Tehran would “stifle” the Iranian economy and hurt its population, Russia’s foreign minister said Wednesday. Sergey Lavrov said that Russia is seriously worried about the prospect of a military action against Iran and is doing all it can to prevent it. “The consequences will be extremely grave,” he said. “It’s not going to be an easy walk. It will trigger a chain reaction, and I don’t know where it will stop.” Sergey Lavrov also warned that sanctions on oil exports considered by the European Union could stymie efforts to solve the Iranian nuclear standoff through talks.

The New York Times reported that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran has ordered extra security for scientists because of the drive-by assassination last week of the deputy director of the country’s primary uranium enrichment facility, which he attributed to “the evil hands of arrogance and Zionist agents,” the state-run news media reported Tuesday. The nature of the extra security was not disclosed, but it was reported a day after Iran’s Parliament speaker, Ali Larijani, another outspoken promoter of Iran’s nuclear independence, said that investigators had identified and detained an unspecified number of suspects in the assassination of Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, the deputy director at the Natanz enrichment site. Mr. Roshan was killed in broad daylight last Wednesday by a motorcyclist who slapped a magnetized bomb on the scientist’s car during Tehran’s morning rush and escaped, according to Iran’s official accounts.

The Turkish information agency Hurriyet reported that Peace and Democracy Party Co-Chair Selahattin Demirtaş vowed yesterday that his party would “defend the freedom of Kurdistan,” as he called on all democratic forces in Turkey to unite against “the fascism” of the ruling Justice and Development Party. “If there is no justice for the Kurds, the thing they should do is resist. We will not give way to AKP fascism. We will win,” Demirtaş said in a speech to his party’s parliamentary group. “We want education in our mother tongue. We will not step back. We will defend the freedom of a Kurdistan which is part of the Turkish Republic,” he said. Demirtaş said the government had yet to explain last month’s botched air raid at the Iraqi border, in which 34 civilians perished, and asked why the four-hour footage of the incident which Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan mentioned has not yet been revealed.