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Qatar Tells Syrian Rebels Not to Kill Iranian Prisoners

Qatar, a major supporter of Syrian rebels, urged them on Sunday not to kill Iranians seized two months ago near Damascus, after the captors threatened to start killing their 48 prisoners.
Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jasim Al Thani made the appeal following a request from Iran to secure the release of captives.
Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi, in a phone talk, called on Qatar to seriously pursue the release of Iranian abductees in Syria.
“As a general policy in the state of Qatar, we don’t accept the killing of prisoners,” Sheikh Hamad told Al Jazeera television. “We also don’t accept further escalation of the situation in Syria. We agree that all parties have their demands, but the basic principle is not to kill prisoners.”
The Syrian rebel Al Baraa brigade said on Thursday it would start killing the Iranians unless the Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad freed Syrian opposition detainees and stopped shelling civilian areas.
A statement on the brigade’s Facebook page on Sunday said it had extended its deadline by 24 hours at the request of mediators. The rebels claim the captives are members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards. Tehran says they were pilgrims visiting shrines.
On August 4, 48 Iranian pilgrims who were traveling on a bus from Damascus International Airport to the shrine of Hazrat Zainab (AS) on the outskirts of Damascus, were abducted by foreign-backed members of the terrorist Free Syrian Army (FSA).

UN Impasse
Sheikh Hamad also urged Arab states to take action in Syria, given the impasse between major powers at the United Nations Security Council.
“The situation in the Arab world generally should move and something clear should be done,” he said.
“The Security Council represents a legal obstacle to any clear intervention to stop what’s happening in Syria and the American elections also cast their shadows on what’s happening at the moment.”
Western powers have made clear they are unwilling to intervene militarily and the Security Council will not sanction action against the wishes of Russia and China.
“There are some Arab states that think this (intervention) is a good idea ... while other states are neutral in this regard,” Sheikh Hamad said.
Saudi Arabia and Turkey also strongly back the mainly Syrian rebels.
Syrian authorities say Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey are to blame for the violence in Syria, where activists say 30,000 people have been killed, because they have sheltered, financed or armed anti-Assad rebels.

Help of Qatar, Turkey Sought
The Iranian foreign minister called on Turkey and Qatar to seriously pursue the release of Iranian abductees in Syria.
In separate telephone conversations with Qatari Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber Al-Thani, and the Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu on Saturday, Salehi urged the two countries to help secure the release of the abducted Iranian nationals.
The Turkish foreign minister told his Iranian counterpart that Ankara will continue efforts to secure the release of abductees.
In another telephone call to his Syrian counterpart Walid Al-Muallem on Saturday, Salehi also underlined the need for the serious pursuit of abductees’ release. Foreign Ministry Spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast also censured the prolonged captivity of the Iranians on Saturday urging their immediate release.
He added that the kidnappers and their allies are responsible for the safety of Iranian abductees in Syria.

Insurgents Warned
Deputy Foreign Minister Hussein Amir Abdollahian also warned the self-proclaimed FSA against harming the Iranian abductees.
“Abductors of the Iranian pilgrims are well aware of the Islamic Republic’s position and they know what dire consequences they will face if the welfare of these people is endangered,” Abdollahian said, ISNA reported on Saturday.
“According to our information, all 48 abducted Iranian nationals are in good health,” he said. The Iranian official said Tehran holds the so-called FSA terrorist group responsible for the fate of kidnapped pilgrims.

30 Currency Dealers Arrested

Tehran Prosecutor Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi said 30 more currency dealers have been arrested in continuation of the drive against the main players of forex crisis in the country.
According to the report of Tehran Prosecutor’s Public Relations Office on Saturday, Dolatabadi said a great deal of foreign currency, gold and gold coins have been seized from the detainees, IRNA reported.
The prosecutor added that the people are under investigation. He also declared that the suspects “have been recognized and are undergoing legal prosecution”.
Dolatabadi noted that investigations are continuing very fast and dossiers will be sent to the court promptly.
The prosecutor urged citizens to cooperate with his office and police, and purchase foreign currency only from official money-changers.
On Thursday, security forces arrested 16 people, accusing them of contributing to the currency crisis plaguing the country.
Those arrested “were the main players in recent fluctuations in the foreign currency market”, the judiciary said in a statement.
The judiciary did not identify the 16 arrested on Thursday. In a written statement, the judiciary said they “had used an atmosphere of psychological war created by the enemy” and colluded with “certain domestic and foreign groups to exacerbate conditions”. They traded extensively in ‘smuggled’ currencies “outside of the banking network” in order to increase the value of foreign currencies and disturb the public, the judiciary said, adding that they “amassed illegal fortunes”.
One of the accused had $300 million going through a bank account, the statement said.
It warned that others “are being accused as well and will be dealt with soon.” Last week, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad blamed “22 ringleaders” who the country’s intelligence services have determined are causing tension and manipulating currency.

UN: Iran’s Uranium Conversion a Confidence-Building Measure

In a bid to ease international concerns over its nuclear program, Iran has converted more than a third its enriched uranium into a powder for a medical research reactor that is difficult to reprocess for weapons production, experts and UN monitors say.
The work--noted in a technical report by the UN’s nuclear watchdog agency in late August--suggests Iran is trying to display enough goodwill to restart nuclear talks with world powers, while aiming to soften demands by the US and others to halt Tehran’s top-level uranium enrichment, AP reported on Saturday.
A spokesman of the Majlis National Security and Foreign Policy Commission, Hossein Naqavi, has said the country was taking a “serious and concrete confidence-building measure” by converting some of the 20 percent enriched stockpile into U3O8, or uranium oxide, in the form of powder.
The move also appears to be part of a wider strategy to seek relief from US-led sanctions in exchange for step-by-step plans to scale back uranium enrichment, which Washington and its allies say could lead to weapons-grade material.
Iran insists it only has peaceful nuclear ambitions.
UN Security Council has adopted four rounds of sanctions on Iran to curb its peaceful nuclear program. The US and EU also have imposed tighter sanctions over Iran’s oil export and banking system, which took effect respectively since June 28 and July 1.
Iran’s 20 percent enrichment program is among the core disputes. That’s because it can be boosted to weapons-grade more rapidly than the 3.5 per cent-enriched uranium used for Iran’s lone energy reactor.
Iran says it needs this degree of enrichment for its medical research reactor, which can produce isotopes for cancer treatment. The impasse has put talks on hold between Iran and a six-nation group, the permanent Security Council members plus Germany.
Iran and the P5+1 held several rounds of talks in Baghdad in May. The Baghdad meeting came after Iran and the six world powers resumed talks in Istanbul, Turkey, in April and scheduled a meeting in the Iraqi capital on May 23.
The two sides also continued their negotiations in the Russian capital, Moscow, on June 18 and 19. Moscow negotiations focused on Iran’s nuclear energy program, with Tehran reiterating its inalienable right to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes.
The latest round of talks between Iran and IAEA was held in the Austrian capital, Vienna, in August.
The UN’s IAEA confirmed in its Aug. 30 report Iran had made U308 -- uranium oxide -- from 71.25 kilograms of its total of 190 kilograms of 20 per cent enriched uranium produced until mid-August.
U308 is effectively off the table as a material for possible weapons production, experts say.
The powder is turned into fuel plates for the reactor, but it is complicated and dangerous to try to change the radioactive powder back into a gas state needed for the enrichment centrifuges, said an Iranian nuclear scientist, Rasoul Sediqi Bonabi, a professor at Sharif University of Technology in Tehran.
And, more importantly, Iran doesn’t possess the technology even to make an attempt, he added.
“Once converted into U3O8, it’s not usable for producing bomb grade uranium and of little proliferation concern,” Bonabi told The Associated Press.
Iran insists it does not seek atomic weapons and is only using nuclear technology for energy production and medical applications.
Naqavi, the senior parliament member, said the move is expected to facilitate talks between Iran and the world powers and pave the way for a diplomatic solution over Tehran’s nuclear activities.
“Iran has demonstrated” its rejection of nuclear arms, said the lawmaker Naqavi.

Reassuring Move
Mark Fitzpatrick, director of the Nonproliferation and Disarmament Program at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said Iran’s decision to produce U308 is “slightly reassuring.”
“It tends to confirm that there is a civilian purpose in enriching to this level,” he said in an emailed statement.

Vigilance Against Enemy Ploys Urged

From Page 1
“The IRGC is capable of disrupting enemy offensive systems and at the same time controlling different operation scenes through devising proper systems and mechanisms.”
Nilforoushan said the command and control systems of the IRGC, relying on domestic and impenetrable networks, can display the best tactics to control the battlefield.
He underlined that the enemies of the Islamic Revolution are well aware that if they dare to initiate any offensive against Iran, they will not be the ones to end the battle.
Nilforoushan underlined that the Iranians are prepared to sacrifice their lives to defend their aspirations and ideals.
Last month, Major General Mohammad Ali Jafari had said an enemy invasion of Iran is possible, but such a war would put an end to the life of the Zionist regime of Israel.
“Owing to the (high) speed (of the growth and development) of the Islamic Revolution, this cancerous tumor, Israel, is challenging us to war, but it is not clear when this war would take place,” Jafari said in Tehran in September.
“War may break out, but if Zionists start something, that will be the point of their annihilation and the endpoint of their story,” he added. Jafari, meantime, underlined that “no one dares to wage an extensive ground assault on Iran”.
The General said if the enemy were wise, there wouldn’t be any problem, “but the problem is that there is no guarantee for this rationality and we should be prepared too.”
Israeli regime and its close ally the United States accuse Iran of seeking a nuclear weapon, while they have never presented any corroborative document to substantiate their allegations. Both Washington and Tel Aviv possess advanced weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear warheads.
Iran vehemently denies the charges, insisting that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only. Tehran stresses that the country has always pursued a civilian path to provide power to the growing number of Iranian population, whose fossil fuel would eventually run dry.

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