Reports: Iran, Turkey sign trade pact potentially worth $30 billion

Both nation’s leaders touted the agreement as something that could provide huge mutual economic benefit, according to their respective state media. Tehran, especially, played up the deal as evidence of a new era in relations.

"Iran and Turkey are two countries that complete each other," Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said, according to Turkey’s official Anadolu news.

The agreement capped the nations’ 22nd annual joint economic meeting, evidence that Tehran and Ankara have a long working relationship. Still, it comes amid Iran’s nuclear tensions with the United States -- a staunch ally of Turkey. Continued…

 Egypt’s real parallel to Iran’s revolution

Washington Post-- A specter is haunting the West. In 1979, the United States watched a street revolution in the Middle East and saw its stalwart ally, Iranian Shah Reza Pahlavi, ousted, only to be replaced by a theocratic Islamic Republic. Now, watching another street revolution in another Middle Eastern country, many people seem spooked by this memory. Fears of an Islamic takeover are not limited to Glenn Beck, with his predictions that the fall of Hosni Mubarak will lead to the rise of an Islamic caliphate bent on global domination. (Beck’s policy recommendation to Americans was even more out there: "store food.") Serious conservative politicians such as Mitt Romney and John McCain describe Egypt’s Islamic opposition in terms not so dissimilar from Beck’s. On the left, The Post’s Richard Cohen writes, "The dream of a democratic Egypt is sure to produce a nightmare." Leon Wieseltier believes the Islamists will attempt a Bolshevik-style takeover.

All these things may indeed come to pass, but there is little evidence so far to support the scare scenarios. The Egyptian protests have been secular; the Muslim Brotherhood is one of many groups participating, all of whom have demands that are about democracy and human rights. Egypt is not Iran in a dozen important ways. Its Sunni clergy play no hierarchical or political role the way they do in Iran. Perhaps most important, the current Iranian regime is not a popular model in the Arab world. Egyptians have seen Mubarak and the mullahs and want neither - Pew polling in 2010 found that a large majority supports democratic governance. Continued..

Iran unveils homemade satellites, carrier

Xinhua-- Iran unveiled four domestically- manufactured satellites on Monday, two years after it launched the first self-developed satellite into orbit, the local satellite Press TV reported.

Four national satellites, Fajr (Dawn), Rasad (Observation), Zafar (Victory) and Amirkabir I, and a satellite carrier Kavoshgar 4 (Explorer 4) were unveiled on Monday by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the report said.

The satellites would be put in orbit in the near future, Ahmadinejad was quoted as saying.

Fajr is the first sensing satellite of the country, manufactured by Iran’s defense ministry, with the ability to change from the elliptical orbit of 300-450 kilometers to a circular orbit of 450 kilometers which increases the life expectancy of the satellite by one year and a half, according to the report.

Also, Rasad is the country’s first satellite for photography and carries remote measuring equipment and the images taken by it would be used in meteorology and identifying sea borders.

On Sunday, Iranian Defense Minister Brigadier General Ahmad Vahidi unveiled two domestically-manufactured fixed ground stations and one mobile station for receiving remote sensing images, Press TV said.

The Iranian minister said the Geographical Department of Iran’s Defense Ministry will use the stations to receive and process images with an accuracy of one meter and provide them to users across the country.

He noted that each station would be able to cover an area within a radius of 2,500 kilometers and to prepare images within an area estimating 10 million cubic meters every 24 days.

Kabul denies agreeing to buy all fuel from Iran

AFP— Afghanistan on Monday dismissed a claim by Tehran that the two countries had reached an agreement for Iran to supply all of its private sector fuel, drawing out a long-running dispute between the neighbours.

Ghulam Mohammad Aylaqi, deputy commerce minister, denied comments made Sunday by Iranian Oil Minister Masoud Mirkazemi that an agreement was made under which the private sector would buy "all its needed products" from Iran.

Aylaqi said Kabul could not afford such a deal with Iran.

"We have offered to buy the (fuel) needs of western and southwestern Afghanistan (from Iran). We have not agreed and will not agree to buy all our supplies from Iran," Aylaqi said.

He added that it was not viable to buy from Iran for north and east Afghanistan because imports from nearby central Asia and Pakistan were cheaper.

About one third of Afghanistan’s fuel needs, imported from Russia, Turkmenistan and Iraq, transit through Iran.

The transport of the fuel has become a sensitive issue as the Islamic republic has prevented the passage of trucks carrying the supplies to Afghanistan.

Thousands of fuel trucks were left stranded on the Afghan-Iranian border in a dispute between the two sides over fuel earlier this year although the backlog has now been largely cleared.

Tehran has hinted to Kabul that it suspected the fuel in the trucks would be used to supply US and other foreign troops fighting a Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan.

Finance Ministry spokesman Aziz Shams also said Afghanistan could not afford to import all its fuel supplies from Iran.

"We have never agreed to purchase all our fuel from Iran. We can’t do that," he told AFP.

Iran Court Sets Second Hearing for Held Americans, Lawyer Says

Blooomberg--The Iranian Revolutionary Court trying three Americans charged with espionage and illegal entry into Iran scheduled a second hearing for the case, their lawyer Masoud Shafiei said.

The trial opened yesterday and the next session will be held “in the near future,” though a date hasn’t been specified, Shafiei said in a phone interview in Tehran today. “It was my belief that the trial should end on the first day,” he said.

Josh Fattal, Shane Bauer and Sarah Shourd are being charged with espionage and entering the country illegally, after they were detained in July 2009. The U.S. government has said the trio mistakenly wandered across the border during a hiking trip in Iraqi Kurdistan.

Bauer and Fattal were present at the session and were in “good spirit” Shafiei said. Shourd, who was released in September 2010 on bail of $500,000, leaving the country immediately, was also represented by Shafiei and tried in absentia. All three entered pleas of not guilty, Shafiei said.

The detentions have increased tension between Iran and the U.S., which accuses the Persian Gulf country of seeking to build atomic weapons under cover of its nuclear program. Iran rejects the allegation.

Shourd used to live with Bauer in the Syrian capital, Damascus, where she learned Arabic and taught English, according to freethehikers.org. Bauer, 28, is a freelance journalist and photographer, while Fattal, 28, is an environmentalist who was visiting Damascus before they headed to Iraq, according to the website.