LATEST: Atomic Chief Abbasi-Davani — Bushehr Reactor “At 100% Capacity”

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President-elect Hassan Rouhani may be taking office with the campaign promise of engagement with the US as well as other foreign countries, but others in the regime are not being so kind in their words about America.

The Supreme Leader, in his Wednesday speech, took it relatively easy on Washington as he kept the door open for talks on Iran’s nuclear programme, merely referring to “some countries [who] have organised a united front against Iran and are misguiding the international community”.

However, Friday Prayer leader Ayatollah Kermani was in no mood to be polite, stating at a gathering in Ardabil on Thursday, according to Fars News, which is close to the Revolutionary Guards:

Global Arrogance, particularly America, will yield nothing else than hate and hatred of the war, massacres, and oppression that it has wrought in the world….

Against the strength of this nation, America and its allies have attempted to commit any [manner of] crimes using any opportunities that they have found, so that [they can] take away Islam and the truth of the revolution from this nation.

Fars News also reports that Kermani’s fellow Friday Prayer leader, Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami (pictured top of entry), was also shaking a finger at a gathering in Rasht, “All the conflicts of the World of Arrogance [the West] from the beginning of the Islamic revolution’s victory until now have been about religion.”

Khatami also put out a warning for Israel, “If the Zionist regime seeks to carry out the smallest attack against the Islamic Republic, we will destroy Tel Aviv and Haifa and do not fear anyone….The eminent Supreme Leader has clearly said that we will help any Palestinian group which seeks to fight the Zionist regime.”


Latest Updates, From Top to Bottom

IAEA Dialogue with Iran to Continue under Rouhani

Yukiya Amano, Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), has said that dialogue between the UN body and Iran will continue as before with the new President Rouhani.

Amano said the aim of these discussions is to ensure that Iran is only pursuing a peaceful programme, which will be aimed at achieving “concrete results” but “cannot be held endlessly.” He added that the IAEA position on Iran has not changed since the election of Rouhani.

Atomic Chief Abbasi-Davani: Bushehr Reactor “At 100% Capacity”

The head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, Fereydoon Abbasi-Davani, told reporters in St. Petersburg on Friday that the Bushehr nuclear reactor was operating at 100 per cent capacity “and had no problems”, Russian news agency Interfax reports.

“Three days ago, the Bushehr plant was put into operation at 100% capacity — 1,000 MWe. Fortunately, we were not told of any defects in the past several days,” Interfax cited him as saying.

According to Interfax, Abbasi-Davani added that after the Russian contractor — Rosatom — carried out several essential tests, the plant would be commissioned into operation.

Head of Basij Declares Economic Issues Priority

Mohammad Reza Naghdi, the head of the Basij, has declared economic issues to be the most pressing concern, because “The country is currently in a desirable condition in the political and security arenas, and from a cultural aspect we are at war.”

Naghdi offered his own solutions to Iran’s economic problems:

Small investments will create jobs, high efficiency and production increases in society, and [we] must use hidden capacities on socio-economic issues and challenges can be alleviated with a little effort. Another solution is using the economic resistance strategy, which the eminent Supreme Leader has emphasized the implementation of this design, and one of the fundamentals of this design is using existing capacities in society.

He also emphasised the role of the Basij in this process:

This year, in addition to jihadi activities that have been implemented in previous years, such as reconstructing schools, homes and building mosques in [low-income] areas, Basijis must increase production and efficiency in villages, and in those regions measures regarding job creation should be undertaken.

Update: Crude Oil Exports to Japan

Digging a little deeper into the claims by PressTV that Japan’s crude oil imports from Iran doubled in May compared to the same period last year reveals some interesting questions.

Earlier this month, a report by Reuters noted that Iranian crude oil “Sales in April had already taken a hit after Japan, the world’s third-biggest oil consumer, almost stopped Iranian imports entirely.” The report points out that on 1 April new contracts had only been signed to cover 3 tankers (later rising to 8), compared to 13 for the previous month.

The Reuters report therefore contradicts PressTV’s declaration of an increase in exports to Japan in May, which it acquired through a report by Bloomberg. Reuters suggested that the small number of contracts signed “indicates May imports were lower than a year earlier, because fewer ships were eligible to load Iranian oil. Loadings in May likely fell versus April, industry sources familiar with Iranian crude shipments said. One source pegged the volume at 120,000-130,000 bpd, about 60,000-100,000 bpd lower than April.”

This begs the question of what accounts for the significant bounce in May reported by PressTV – coming after the near shut-off in April – considering the much lower figures that were projected earlier this month?

In addition, Reuters reports today that “Despite the rise in May, Japan’s imports for the first five months of year are down by 20 percent from a year ago.”

Supreme Leader’s Adviser Claims Election Defeated “Foreign and Domestic Enemies”

Yadollah Javani, senior political adviser to the Supreme Leader, has declared that the success of the presidential election defeated “Foreign and domestic enemies” who by criticising the validity of the 2009 presidential election “attempted to delegitimize the Iranian elections… and achieve their desires in creating separation between the people the system.”

Javani claimed that through “the transformation of the [June 14] elections to a political epic not only were these tricks disrupted, but it was the ‘cheating claim’ that fell apart and was disproved.” The Supreme Leader’s representative to the IRGC added:

This was the art of the Islamic system and strategic management of the grand leader of the Islamic revolution, which, by transforming the scene of elections into a great opportunity for the system and the country, fulfilled several strategic goals simultaneously in the ray of elections with the creation of a political valor, and disproving “cheating claims” was one of these strategic goals that has yielded.

The system’s success in this matter was so prominent that it made foreign enemies and anti-revolutionary residents abroad confess and they discussed subjects that they would not even grudgingly point out before this.

Oil Exports to Japan Increased in May

Crude oil exports to Japan in May were more than double the same month in 2012 according to data released by the Japanese Ministry of Finance on Thursday. The figure was approximately 222,000 barrels per day (bpd) in May 2013, compared to approximately 106,000 bpd in May 2012.

However, the report also notes that exports in April 2013 were only marginally higher than May 2012, at roughly 107,000 bpd. Meanwhile, exports to China of crude reached 2.36 million tons in May, equivalent to about 555,557 bpd.

Larijani Discusses “Limit of Freedom” and Rights

Ali Larijani, the speaker of parliament, made some interesting comments on the role of the media and a free press in Iranian society and the tension between the “limit of freedom” and “other values and rights” yesterday.

Larijani began by hinting at a possible opening up of society, saying “Our thought regarding freedom and the press is that they must continuously cause social political growth in society… The limit of freedom is not related to security and the rest, rather it is related to creating a space for the growth of rights.”

However, he then went on to add that “Freedom is one of these rights and has a limit, which of course must not harm other values and rights.”

Rouhani Uses US-Based Academic To Promote Engagement with Neighbors

As Friday Prayer leaders Kermani and Ahmed Khatami stepped up their anti-US rhetoric on Thursday — as noted above — President-elect Hassan Rouhani continued to hint at a less aggressive, hard-line approach, using his official Twitter account to tweet a link to an Al Jazeera English analysis that suggests Rouhani might be able to solve the ongoing nuclear standoff between Iran and the West.

The analysis, by Columbia Professor Hamid Dabashi, cites Rouhani as saying — in 2006 — that “A nuclear weaponised Iran destabilises the region, prompts a regional arms race, and wastes the scarce resources in the region.”

While this quote from Rouhani, if accurate, is no different in substance from the line that the Islamic Republic has continued to put out — in other words, that Iran is not seeking a nuclear weapon — it is significant that the President-elect chose to tweet this quote from Dabashi: