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Iran to inaugurate
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Esmaeilpour and
Mohammadian claim silver
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New York museum to display
works by Iranian artist Monir
Farmanfarmaian
S P O R T S
I N T E R N A T I O N A L D A I L Y
12 Pages Price 5000 Rials 36th year NO.12196 Monday FEBRUARY 2 2015 Bahman 13 1393 Rabi’ al-Thani 12 1436
Iranian oﬃcial meets Egypt’s Sisi 2
Congress can’t go
against world to
annul a deal with
Iran: professor
‘Iran should not fall into the
Republican and Israeli trap’
Zarif embarks on tour of Africa
TEHRAN —
Irani-
Political Desk an Foreign Minister
Mohammad Javad Zarif on Sunday
started a four-leg tour of Africa which
will take him to Kenya, Uganda,, Burun-
di, and Tanzania.
Heading a high-ranking political and
economic delegation, Zarif is set to discuss avenues for strengthening bilateral ties between Iran and the four East
INTERVIEW
TEHRAN — Farhang Jahanpour of Oxford University’s Faculty of Oriental Studies says the Republican-dominated Congress won’t be able to rescind
a possible nuclear deal with Iran because it will go
against the wishes of the American voters and the
international community who greatly favor a nuclear pact with Iran.
“If an agreement is reached, Congressmen will
not be able to go against the wishes of their constituents,” Jahanpour tells the
Tehran Times in an exclusive
interview.
“The decision by the Republicans to impose new
sanctions on Iran has many
strong opponents
both at home and
abroad,” he says.
Contd. on P. 2
NEWS
Syria’s prime minister said on Sunday that the country wanted to drive all insurgents out of its territory in 2015 and was
prepared to back any attempts to ﬁght global militancy.
Speaking in parliament, Syrian Prime Minister Wael
Nader al-Halqi said Syria’s main aim was to “ﬂush out all
terrorists from its land” this year and it would “back any
initiatives (initiative) to ﬁght global terrorism,” a broadcast on state television showed.
He said Syria would not allow its enemies “to destroy
the land of religions and cradle of civilizations” and
praised the army for its eﬀorts.
Syria has repeatedly said it wants to coordinate with
other countries to ﬁght armed groups in its country. It describes all anti-government forces in Syria as terrorists, unlike Western countries and their Arab allies who distinguish
between the terrorists and more mainstream rebel ﬁghters.
Syria’s uprising started in 2011 with anti-government
protests and has descended into a civil war pitting a range
of armed groups against the military. Hard-line terrorist
groups such as the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant
(ISIL) and al-Qaeda’s Nusra Front have gained ground.
U.S-led forces started an airstrike campaign against
ISIL in Syria and Iraq last year when the terrorist group
captured tracts of land in both countries.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said in a magazine
interview published last week that U.S.-led air strikes
should be subject to an agreement with Damascus and
Syrian troops should be involved on the ground.
Washington supports opposition forces ﬁghting for
the past four years to topple Assad, but its position
has become complicated since ISIL and other hard-line
groups emerged as the most powerful insurgent factions. But it has rejected the idea of allying itself with the
Syrian government despite them now having a common
enemy.
(Source: Reuters)
U.S. drone strike kills
four in south Yemen
A U.S. drone strike has claimed the lives of four people in
Yemen’s southern province of Shabwah, tribal sources say.
The sources said the airstrike was carried out on Saturday, when the aircraft ﬁred four missiles at a vehicle
transporting the four.
The attack comes less than a week after another
drone strike killed three people in a desert area between
Shabwah and the neighboring province of Ma’rib (Marib).
The drone attacks come amid political tensions in Yemen.
Washington says political void in Yemen will not
affect its so-called anti-terrorism campaign in the
Arab country.
Contd. on P. 11
Minister for African and Middle Eastern
Aﬀairs Hossein Amir-Abdollahian highlighted the importance of Africa, particularly the African Union, in Iranian
foreign policy.
Contd. on P. 2
Iran won’t give in U.S.
pressure, Larijani says
By Javad Heirannia
Syria aims to ‘flush out
all terrorists’ in 2015
African states.
Iran has set an expansion of political,
economic, and cultural ties with African
countries as a foreign policy priority.
Last month, Iranian Deputy Foreign
TEHRAN — Iranian
Political Desk Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani has deplored U.S. president’s “inability” to take a wise decision regarding Iran’s “ﬂexibility” in
nuclear talks.
Addressing an open session of parliament on Sunday, Larijani censured
the U.S. policy of pressure on the Islamic Republic over its nuclear energy program, emphasizing that Tehran
will not give in to Washington’s excessive demands.
Larijani said the U.S. is seeking
to pressure Iran into accepting
its demands over the country’s
nuclear issue. “With such a
wrong policy during [nuclear]
negotiations, he [Obama]
would be responsible for
Iran says ready to seal nuclear
safety pact with regional states
TEHRAN — Iran’s
Political Desk nuclear chief says
Tehran is ready to seal nuclear safety
pacts with other regional states.
Ali Akbar Salehi made the remark
during a ceremony signing a cooperation agreement between the Atomic
Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI)
and the Department of Environment
on issues related to radioecology.
“We are ready to create a regional safety convention for the
supervision of the regional countries’ power plants operations in
a way that such activities will be
supervised and controlled permanently within the framework of a
regional safety convention,” he
stated.
“Regional countries, especial-
ly the Persian Gulf littoral states,
have stepped into the arena of
peaceful nuclear activities. For instance, the Emirates [the UAE] is
building 4 nuclear power plants
and other countries have also announced plans to build nuclear
power plants,” he noted.
He added, “Iran is also interested
in exchanging data with its neighbors
on radio-ecological issues for making
necessary preparations to reduce
damage of any possible incident in
the future.”
The United Arab Emirates is building four 1,400 megawatt units to
produce nuclear power in Abu Dhabi’s western region’s Baraka area
bordering Saudi Arabia. The units will
become operational one by one from
2017 through 2020.
Saudi Arabia has also announced plans to construct 16 nuclear power reactors over the next
20 years at a cost of more than $80
billion, with the first reactor on
line in 2022.
‘UK territory used for CIA interrogation, torture’
The CIA carried out interrogations on
British territory, according to a senior Bush administration oﬃcial. The
claims, if true, contradict the oﬃcial
line of the British government that
it was not complicit in torture in the
years after 9/11.
Speaking to Vice News, Lawrence
Wilkerson, who was Colin Powell’s
former chief of staﬀ, said the British
territory of Diego Garcia was used as
a “transit location” for the CIA to carry out interrogations and other “nefarious activities” when other bases
were unavailable.
“What I heard was more along the
lines of using it as a transit location
when perhaps other places were full
or other places were deemed too
dangerous or insecure, or unavailable
at the moment,” he said.
“So you might have a case where
you simply go in and use a facility
at Diego Garcia for a month or two
weeks or whatever and you do your
nefarious activities there.”
Wilkerson was in the U.S. State
Department between 2002-2005, but
was not witness to the CIA’s activities
until he left the administration.
The 69-year-old is an army veteran
who served in the U.S. Paciﬁc Com-
mand in the 1980s.
Diego Garcia, located in the Indian Ocean, has been an important
British military outpost since 1966.
The previous Labour government
admitted the location was used to
facilitate rendition flights by the
U.S., but did not comment on torture or interrogation techniques on
the island.
“No one has indicated there was a
detention site there, not in so many
words,” Wilkerson said.
“What they indicated is that interrogations took place there.”
It is the ﬁrst time a U.S. oﬃcial has spoken on record about the British territory
and its role in CIA rendition programs,
which remain shrouded in secrecy.
On whether the British government
was aware of illegal activities on the island, Wilkerson said it would be “diﬃcult” to imagine that long-term actions
would have occurred “without the British knowing.”
“That doesn’t mean London
knew,” he added. “But I just don’t,
myself, I can’t see how we could have
used Diego Garcia for almost any
function other than maybe a bouncein and bounce-out and even that, the
bounce-in and bounce-out, they’d be
aware of.”
The British government has not commented on Wilkerson’s statements.
Last year, British Prime Minister
David Cameron said Britain was investigating allegations that MI6 intelligence oﬃcers were involved in the
torture of foreign detainees.
Amnesty International and others have criticized the investigation, arguing that the government
retained a right to withhold information it deemed detrimental to
national security.
The revelations come weeks after
the publication of the CIA ‘torture report’ by the U.S. Senate Committee.
“The U.S. president should know
that the Iranian nation will not surrender and with such a wrong policy
in the negotiations, he should be held
accountable for the (possible) failure
of the talks.”
The U.S. Senate Republicans are
seeking to put an Iran sanctions bill
up for an immediate vote despite
that fact that Iran and the 5+1 group
(Russia, China, the United States,
Britain, France, and Germany) are
seeking ways to strike a permanent
nuclear deal.
Contd. on P. 11
the (possible) failure of negotiations
since he thinks that he can make Iran
incur the cost of his weakness in resolving the internal problems [of the
United States].”
He also referred to the recent remarks of the U.S. president who said
Washington will continue pressing
Tehran until it yields to America’s
views on its nuclear issue.
“The U.S. president has said recently that they pressure Iran to accept
their view on the nuclear issue. Now
the goal that they pursue through
holding negotiations with Iran has become clearer; they say that we should
surrender to their demand. In which
part of the world such a behavior is
called ‘negotiation’,” he said.
Contd. on P. 11
NEWS
36 Years
of Victory:
Reflections
on the
Islamic Revolution
in Iran
By Yuram Abdullah Weiler
“T
he success of the Islamic revolutionary ideology is the novel and teleologically distinct mark of
the Islamic Revolution in Iran.”
Said Amir Arjoumand
As the lunatic fringe in Washington tightens its grip on the levers of
power after gaining control of both
houses of the U.S. Congress, the noble people of Iran are celebrating
the 36th anniversary of the victory of
the Islamic Revolution, when they released themselves from the clutches
of the American installed and supported despot, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.
The Islamic Revolution, like any
successful revolution, caused a major upheaval in the political structure of the country and ended with
the ouster of the previous ruling regime. What stands out in the case
of Iran is that, unlike the frenzied
bloodbaths that accompanied revolutions in France, Russia and China,
the amount of violence was relatively low. This phenomenon would
appear to be a consequence of the
almost universal consensus among
Iranians that the only way to rid the
country of the U.S.-supported tyrant
was to unite behind the powerful
unifying force of Islam. This unifying
force, tawhid, combines din (religion), dunya (worldly existence) and
dawla (state) into an inseparable
unity in a way that is neither accepted nor well understood in the west.
By unifying the people through
their historical connection to Islam,
the revolution in Iran also stands
apart from the French, Russian and
Chinese revolutions in that it was a
logical conclusion to a historical trend
that began in the sixteenth century
when Iranians overwhelmingly embraced the Shi’a Islamic school of theology.
Contd. on P. 11
2
I NTE R NATI O NAL DAI LY
MEDIA MONITOR
TEHRAN – Iran and Morocco
resume diplomatic ties after
six years, Tabnak news website reported on Saturday.
Iran’s new Ambassador
to Morocco, Mohammad
Taghi Moayed, submitted his
credentials to Moroccan Foreign
Minister Salaheddine Mezouar in
Rabat on Saturday.
Mezouar stated that Morocco
welcomes the Iranian ambassador’s initiatives and plans to boost
bilateral relations.
Morocco also plans to appoint
an ambassador to Iran and reopen
its embassy in Tehran. It cut diplomatic ties with Iran in 2009.
House
speaker
breaches
more than
protocol
by inviting
Netanyahu:
article
House Speaker John Boehner
did more than just violate protocol when he invited Israeli
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to speak about Iran
before a joint session of Congress, Livingstone Daily said in
a commentary on Sunday.
Boehner breached the intended separation of powers
in foreign aﬀairs.
The Federalist Papers make
clear that the intention was for
the president to manage relationships with other countries,
including negotiating agreements.
President Barack Obama is negotiating an agreement with Iran on its
nuclear program. Members of Congress, including a number of Democrats, claim that he will reach a weak
one that leaves Iran too close to being able to build a bomb.
That, however, doesn’t give them
license to try to interfere with the
negotiations. Yet they are trying to
do so by passing additional standby
sanctions that set standards for an
acceptable agreement and asking
Netanyahu to speak to Congress.
LIVINGSTON DAILY
TABNAK
Iran and
Morocco
resume
diplomatic
ties
TEHRAN – Sorena Sattari, the
vice president for scientiﬁc
and technological aﬀairs, has
said that Iran will launch a
satellite within the next few
days, Tasnim news agency reported on Sunday.
He did not provide further details.
Sattari also announced that an
ocean-going ship will be launched soon.
He said the reason behind the delay to launch the ship was that it was
not completely ﬁnished. “We have no
plan to unveil half-ﬁnished projects.”
Turkmenistan’s
naval police
shoot Iranian
fishermen
TEHRAN – Turkmenistan’s
naval police shot a number
of Iranian ﬁshermen in the
Caspian Sea without any prior
warning, IRNA reported.
According to witness sources,
one of the ﬁshermen’s boats was
sunk after being shot by the Turkmenistan’s police.
One of the ﬁshermen was killed
and the others were arrested by
Ashgabat naval police.
According to IRNA, Turkmenistan’s hostile behaviors against
Iran have been increased and the
only Shia mosque in Ashgabat is
on the verge of destruction.
IRNA
PRESS TV
Iranian
mother
writes to
Japanese
mom on his
son taken by
ISIL
TASNIM
Iran to launch
satellite
within days
An Iranian mother has written a letter to sympathize
with the mother of the Japanese freelance journalist,
Kenji Goto Jogo, held captive
by ISIL militants.
Atefeh Talqani, a female social media activist, stated in her letter that the terrorist group’s policies
have nothing to do with Islam, Press
TV reported on Saturday.
In a recent video posted online,
ISIL militants showed the Japanese captive holding the photo of
a dead body allegedly belonging
to Haruna Yukawa, another Japanese hostage that had been captured by ISIL.
In a letter to the Japanese prime
minister last week, Goto’s mother,
Junko Ishido, begged Shinzo Abe
to secure his son’s release.
In reaction to Ishido’s appeal,
Talqani said the ISIL militants are
not Muslims contrary to what
they proclaim.
Reports surfaced on Sunday that
ISIL has beheaded Goto. The move
prompted Abe to vow to step up
humanitarian aid to the group’s opponents in the Middle East and help
bring his killers to justice.
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h t t p : / / w w w . t e h r a n t i m e s . c o m / p o l i t i c s
Congress can’t go against world
to annul a deal with Iran: professor
Contd. from P. 1
Jahanpour, a former dean of the Faculty of Foreign
Languages at the University of Isfahan, also says,
“It has been established beyond any reasonable
doubt that Iran does not have a nuclear weapons
program … Therefore, the main problem regarding Iran’s nuclear program is no longer a technical
issue, but has to do with the political will on both
sides to reach an agreement.”
He advised Iran “not to fall into the Republican
and Israeli trap” and try to clinch a nuclear deal as
“it is in everyone’s interest that the nuclear issue is
resolved and Iran is allowed to play a bigger role in
establishing peace and security in the Middle East.”
Following is the full text of the interview:
What is the motive behind the U.S. Congress
push for new sanctions on Iran while nuclear talks
are underway?
This is an aspect of the domestic rivalry between the Republicans and the Democrats. In the
same way that there are some hardliners in Iran
who are opposed to a reasonable deal with the
West that involves some compromise from both
sides, there are also some hardliners in the United States who do not want their government to
make any compromises on Iran’s nuclear program.
They believe that Iran should not be allowed to
have any nuclear enrichment capability, even if it
is for purely peaceful purposes, although it is completely contrary to the NPT regulations that allow
all those who have joined the NPT to have the full
range of nuclear activities short of manufacturing
nuclear weapons.
This opposition is partly due to domestic political diﬀerences, and it is not only conﬁned to the
Iranian nuclear issue that the now Republican majority in both Houses of Congress uses against the
Obama Administration. They have also opposed
his immigration, healthcare, and taxation policies,
as well as President Obama’s recent opening to
Cuba after 50 years.
The other reason for the Republican opposition
to a deal with Iran is due to strong pressure exerted by Israel and to a lesser extent by Saudi Arabia
who do not wish to see a rapprochement between
Iran and the West. Both Israel and Saudi Arabia
see Iran as a powerful regional rival and they are
working very hard to keep Iran under sanctions
and internationally isolated in order to reduce her
regional inﬂuence.
The push to pass new sanctions legislation
against Iran in the new Congress shows that the
Republicans do not believe in diplomacy with Iran.
Will they derail the talks and possible future agreements if the Republicans gain control over the
White House in next U.S. presidential election?
Some Republicans and even some pro-Israeli
Democrats are strongly beholden to the Israeli
Prime Minister Netanyahu. Only a short time ago,
Senator Lindsey Graham, a senior Republican senator, went to Jerusalem [East al-Quds] and told
Netanyahu: “I’m here to tell you, Mr. Prime Minister, that the Congress will follow your lead…”
A day after President Obama delivered his State
of Union address and said that he would veto any
resolution that would impose new sanctions on
Iran, the Republican Majority Leader John Boehner invited Netanyahu to address a joint session of
Congress in February, which was later postponed
to March so that Netanyahu could also take part
in the annual meeting of the powerful pro-Israeli
lobby group AIPAC.
The aim is clearly to oppose President Obama
and sabotage the talks, but the decision to invite
“The decision to invite Netanyahu
(to speak to a joint session of the
House and Senate) has given rise
to a great deal of opposition by
many people in the United States,
including among Republicans, who
see Netanyahu’s involvement in the
nuclear issue as an intrusion in their
domestic affairs and a great act of
discourtesy to the president.”
Netanyahu has given rise to a great deal of opposition by many people in the United States, including
among Republicans, who see Netanyahu’s involvement in the nuclear issue as an intrusion in their
domestic aﬀairs and a great act of discourtesy to
the president. It is very unusual and against the
normal diplomatic protocol for the head of a foreign state to be invited to address the joint session
of Congress (for the third time) without consultation with the White House, and it is most likely that
it will backﬁre and will have the opposite eﬀect to
what is intended.
Some Republicans and even some pro-Israeli Democrats are
strongly beholden to the Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu.
If the Republicans can derail the talks, they would
certainly like to do so. However, in some ways, it is better if all the debates and controversy takes place prior
to the reaching a comprehensive agreement, because
they would be unable to sabotage it later on. In the
same way that President Obama’s opening to Cuba has
shown, although many Republicans are unhappy about
it, once the decision has been taken they will see that
their options are limited. Numerous polls have shown
that the majority of American voters are strongly in favor of resolving the nuclear conﬂict with Iran through
diplomatic means. The American people know that the
alternative to a peaceful resolution of the conﬂict with
Iran will be a climate of heightened hostility, which
might ultimately even lead to war with Iran. This is
something that the vast majority of Americans oppose,
as after Afghanistan and Iraq and now the serious
menace posed by ISIS they do not favor another major
conﬂict in the Middle East that would make the earlier
conﬂicts seem insigniﬁcant by comparison.
If an agreement is reached, Congressmen will
not be able to go against the wishes of their constituents. President Obama’s instinct about the issue is
correct and he enjoys the support of American public, as well as all U.S. allies abroad.
Russia and China have always called for the
resolution of Iran’s nuclear issue through peaceful
means. However, on January 1 British, French, and
German foreign ministers, who are the other members of the P5+1 group, and the high representative
of the European Union for foreign aﬀairs and se-
“When an agreement comes to force “It has been established beyond any
and it is accepted by all the major
reasonable doubt that Iran does not
powers involved, the Republicans
have a nuclear weapons program
whether they are in power after the
… Therefore, the main problem
next American presidential election
regarding Iran’s nuclear program is
or not will not be able to go against
no longer a technical issue, but has
the international consensus and
to do with the political will on both
impose new sanctions on Iran.”
sides to reach an agreement.”
curity policy, Frederica Mogherini, in a joint Op Ed
in the Washington Post argued against new sanctions on Iran, and pointed out: “… new sanctions
legislation at this point would set us back.” Earlier
in the month when the British Prime Minister David
Cameron was visiting the White House, in a press
conference with President Obama, he too strongly
opposed new sanctions. Therefore, it seems that
the decision by the Republicans to impose new
sanctions on Iran has many strong opponents both
at home and abroad.
If all the sanctions against Iran are removed
during Obama’s presidential term, will the next
U.S. administration remain committed to Obama
administration’s nuclear agreements with Iran?
It depends on how the sanctions are removed.
If it is done by an executive order without Congressional legislation, it will not bind the Congress. The
president can only suspend the sanctions imposed
by Congress, but he cannot rescind them. That
would require Congressional legislation. In any
case, Congress can always impose new sanctions.
However, as pointed out earlier, if the agreement
that is reached between Iran and the P5+1 is one
that is acceptable to the majority of Americans and
to the international community, it is unlikely that
Congress would oppose it.
Both sides of the nuclear talks have expressed
their optimism about reaching a political agreement by the spring. To what extent can a political
agreement pave the way for comprehensive nuclear agreement?
It seems that all technical details regarding Iranian nuclear program have been resolved, and
all that is needed is a political decision to seal an
agreement. It has been established beyond any
reasonable doubt that Iran does not have a nuclear
weapons program. All that the P5+1 and especially
the Americans are demanding is a long “breakout”
period. In other words, they want to have the certainty that Iran will not have the possibility of moving towards a weapons program at some point in
the future. Although this requirement is contrary to
NPT regulations, in order to reach a comprehensive
deal, Iran has said that she will consider it provided
that it is for a short duration.
Therefore, the main problem regarding Iran’s
nuclear program is no longer a technical issue,
but has to do with the political will on both sides
to reach an agreement. It should be borne in mind
that the negotiations are not only with the United
States, but with all the permanent members of the
Security Council, plus Germany. What is essential is
that as a part of a ﬁnal deal, Security Council resolutions are amended within a reasonable time, and
European Union sanctions are also lifted. When
an agreement comes to force and it is accepted
by all the major powers involved, the Republicans
whether they are in power after the next American
presidential election or not will not be able to go
against the international consensus and impose
new sanctions on Iran.
Therefore, it is essential for Iran not to fall into
the Republican and Israeli trap and fail to reach
an agreement, because once a political agreement has been reached it will pave the way for a
comprehensive nuclear agreement and even for
greater cooperation between Iran and the West
on many regional crises. The Middle East is in turmoil, and Iran is a major regional and international
player. Therefore, it is in everyone’s interest that
the nuclear issue is resolved and Iran is allowed to
play a bigger role in establishing peace and security in the Middle East.
“The Middle East is in turmoil,
and Iran is a major regional and
international player. Therefore, it
is in everyone’s interest that the
nuclear issue is resolved and Iran
is allowed to play a bigger role in
establishing peace and security in
the Middle East.”
Iranian official meets Egypt’s Sisi
TEHRAN – A top Ira-
Po l i t i c a l D e s k nian diplomat has
held talks with the Egyptian President,
voicing their strong opposition to the
scourge of terrorism in the Middle East
region particularly in Iraq and Syria
The meeting between Hossein
Amir-Abdollahian, the Iranian deputy
foreign minister for Arab and African
aﬀairs, President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi
took place on the sidelines of the 24th
African Union summit in Addis Ababa,
Ethiopia, on Sunday.
Amir-Abdollahian highlighted the
necessity to strengthen unity in the
Islamic world and ﬁght against the takﬁri groups who were created by extraregional states.
He also condemned the recent
terrorist attacks on the Egyptian
forces in Sinai and called for partnership of all political groups and
national unity in Egypt.
Among the Arab countries, Egypt
has emerged as strong force against
terrorism and extremism.
Also on Sunday, Amir-Abdollahian
met with South African President Jacob Zuma discussing bilateral ties and
regional developments.
During the meeting, the Iranian
deputy foreign minister emphasized
that Tehran prioritizes broadening ties
with South Africa.
The South African president
voiced satisfaction lauded efforts by
the South African and Iranian foreign
ministers to broaden mutual cooperation. He also said he would visit
Iran soon.
Iran is an observer member of the
African Union and has shown an active presence in previous AU summit
meetings.
Zarif embarks on tour of Africa
Contd. from P. 1
“The Islamic Republic of Iran attaches signiﬁcance to
cooperation with the African Union, especially the
African Union’s Commission for Human Resources,
Science and Technology,” Amir-Abdollahian said in a
meeting with Paul Martial Ikunga, AU commissioner
for human resources, science, and technology.
Amir-Abdollahian said despite pressures and sanctions imposed on Iran by hegemonic powers, the Islamic Republic has achieved great capabilities in the
ﬁelds of human resources, science and technology,
and is prepared to have comprehensive cooperation
with African countries in these areas.
The Iranian diplomat visited Addis Ababa on Saturday and Sunday to attend the AU summit.
h t t p : / / w w w . t e h r a n t i m e s . c o m / i n t e r n a t i o n a l
FEBRUARY 2, 2015
INTERNATIONAL
ISIL says it has beheaded second
Japanese hostage Goto
The Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) terrorist group said it had beheaded a second Japanese hostage, journalist Kenji Goto, prompting Japanese Prime
Minister Shinzo Abe to vow to step up humanitarian
aid to the group’s opponents in the Middle East and
help bring his killers to justice.
“I feel intense indignation at this utterly cruel and
despicable act of terrorism,” a grim-faced Abe told an
emergency Cabinet meeting early on Sunday, shortly
after a video surfaced purporting to show the beheading of Goto, after the failure of international eﬀorts to
secure his release through a prisoner swap.
The hardline terrorist group, which controls large
parts of Syria and Iraq, released the video showing a
hooded man standing over Goto with a knife to his
throat, followed by footage of a head put on the back
of a human body. Japanese Defense Minister Gen Nakatani said the video appeared to be genuine.
The video was released exactly a week after footage appearing to show the beheaded body of another
Japanese hostage, Haruna Yukawa.
“I will never forgive these terrorists,” Abe said.
“Japan will work with the international community to
bring those responsible for this crime to justice. Japan
will never give in to terrorism.”
When ISIL ﬁrst threatened Goto, 47, and Yukawa,
42, two weeks ago, it justiﬁed its move by citing Abe’s
pledge of $200 million in aid to countries battling the
terrorist group.
But in a show of deﬁance, Abe on Sunday vowed to
increase Japan’s food, medicine and other humanitarian aid for the Middle East.
ISIL had said Goto was held along with a Jordanian
pilot. Eﬀorts to win their release had focused on the
possible release in exchange of an Iraqi would-be suicide bomber jailed in Jordan 10 years ago. The video did
not mention the pilot.
The militant had the same British accent as the man
featured in previous ISIL videos showing the beheadings. Goto wore an orange jumpsuit like ISIL captives
in past footages.
Abe’s government had put high priority on seeking
the release of Goto, a veteran war correspondent captured by ISIL terrorists in late October when he went to
Syria seeking Yukawa’s release. Yukawa was seized by
the terrorists in August after going to Syria to launch a
security company.
(Source: Reuters)
At least 7 dead in Lebanese pilgrim bus blast in Damascus
A blast on a Lebanese bus carrying Shia
pilgrims in a central district of the Syrian
capital Damascus killed at least seven
people and wounded up to 20 on Sunday, media reports said.
The Syrian Observatory for Human
Rights reported that seven people were
killed and 20 wounded in the attack,
which took place in the Souq al-Hamadiyeh neighborhood of Damascus.
Skynews Arabia conﬁrmed the Lebanese media reports saying the bus was
Lebanese and carried Lebanese Shia visitors.
The explosion was also reported
by Syrian state media, with the oﬃcial SANA news agency saying at least
four people had been killed and 19
wounded.
Observatory director Rami Abdel
Erdogan: I want to be
like Queen of UK
Despite living in the world’s biggest
residential palace that cost £384
million, Recep Tayyip Erdogan insists he is not seeking to be a sultan,
but more like the British Queen.
The Turkish president referred to
Britain as an example for Turkey to
follow as he explained that changes
to the role of the president would
not alter the Turkish republic’s democracy.
“In my opinion, even the UK is a
semi-presidency. And the dominant
constituent is the Queen,” Erdogan
told Turkish state broadcaster, TRT.
Britain has a constitutional monarchy in which parliament decides
and makes laws and the Queen’s
role is largely ceremonial.
Erdogan’s comments, reported
in Hurriyet Daily News, included an
attack on those who said Turkey
was becoming like a monarchy and
that he aspired to be like an Ottoman sultan despite other countries
also having presidents.
“Look, is there a ‘padishah system’ in the U.S. at the moment?
When it is the USA, it is not a padishah system; when it is Brazil, it is
Rahman said the bus was reportedly
carrying Shia Muslim pilgrims visiting religious sites in the capital.
Parts of Damascus have remained
relatively unscathed by the ﬁghting raging in much of Syria since an uprising
erupted in March 2011.
But rebels regularly ﬁre rockets into
the capital from rear bases in the surrounding countryside and the city has
also been hit by bombings.
More than 200,000 people have been
killed in Syria since the conﬂict started,
and around half of the country’s population has been displaced.
At least three million refugees are registered refugees in neighboring countries, in
what the United Nations calls the biggest
humanitarian emergency of our era.
(Source: The Daily Star)
Almost 1,400 Iraqis killed in January
violence
not a padishah system; when it is
South Korea, it is not a padishah
system, when it is Mexico, it is not
a padishah system. Why is it only a
padishah system when an idea like
this is floated in Turkey?”
Padishah refers to the formal
title used for Ottoman sultans during the empire. Those critical of Erdogan believe he is becoming more
authoritarian because of his actions
including taking the reins on foreign
policy and chairing a cabinet meeting this month.
Ahmet Necdet Sezer and Abdullah Gul - the last two presidents of
Turkey - had never chaired a government meeting.
Erdogan was elected as president
in August last year after 11 years as
the country’s prime minister - the
first time the country directly elected an individual to the post.
His palace is four times the size
of Versailles, the palace in which
Louis XIV, the “Sun King” of France
resided with 1,000 rooms covering a
total floor area of 3.1 million square
feet.
(Source: The Daily Telegraph)
In one of Iraq’s deadliest months in
years, 1,375 people were killed and
2,240 were wounded in acts of “terrorism or violence” in January, the United
Nations reported.
In monthly statistics released on Sunday, the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) said civilians represented more than half of the casualties,
with 790 killed and 1,469 wounded.
The dead also included 585 members of the Iraqi army which is struggling to rebuild itself after the Islamic
State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) terrorist group militants seized large parts
of the country last year.
January’s total casualty ﬁgure of
3,615 was higher than in any month in
2014 - which the UNAMI says was the
deadliest year since 2008.
UNAMI said Baghdad was the worst
aﬀected province in January with 1,014
civilian casualties (256 killed, 758 injured), while Anbar suﬀered a total of
779 civilian casualties (195 killed and
584 injured).
Diyala province was the next worst
aﬀected with a total of 114 killed and 49
injured. The deaths appear to include
more than 70 unarmed civilians who
were reportedly killed in the village of
Barwanah last week as they ﬂed from
ISIL terrorists.
Iraq’s Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi
hosted a security summit in the capital
on Saturday with political and religious
leaders, in a bid to unite the country’s
factions against ISIL. At the talks, Abadi
made an apparent reference to the alleged massacre in Diyala province.
“I have said it before and will say it
today - those who were conducting killings and kidnapping crimes in Baghdad
and other cities are no less dangerous
than terrorists,” he said.
Meanwhile, the UNAMI recorded
100 killed and 52 injured in Salahuddin
(Saladin) province in January, Nineveh
(Ninewa) recorded 85 killed and 12 injured and Kirkuk recorded 14 killed and
six injured.
The UN says its numbers “have to
be considered as the absolute minimum” because they do not include territories held by ISIL or those who lost
their lives due to “secondary eﬀects of
violence ... [including] exposure to the
elements, lack of water, food, medicines and healthcare”.
(Source: Al Jazeera)
Jordan vows to do ‘everything’ to save life of ISIL-held pilot
Jordan vowed on Sunday to do all that it could to save
an airman held by the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) terrorist group after the terrorists killed a
Japanese journalist they had been holding.
The kingdom “will do everything it can to save the
life and secure the release of its pilot,” Maaz al-Kassasbeh, who was captured by the terrorists after his plane
crashed in Syria in December, government spokesman
Mohammad al-Momeni told the oﬃcial Petra news
agency.
ISIL has been demanding the release of a convicted
Iraqi terrorist on death row in Jordan in exchange for
Kassasbeh’s life, a demand the government has ex-
pressed readiness to accept provided it is given proof
he is still alive.
“All state organizations have been mobilized to secure the proof of life that we require so that he can be
freed and returned to his home,” Momeni said.
He condemned the ISIL’ murder of Japanese journalist Kenji Goto after days of intensive eﬀorts through
intermediaries to save him.
“We spared no eﬀort, in coordination with the Japanese government, to save his life,” Momeni said.
Goto was the second Japanese hostage in a week
to be executed by the ISIL terrorist group in what they
have said is punishment for Tokyo’s pledge of $200 mil-
lion (175 million euro) in aid to countries aﬀected by its
bloody seizure of swathes of Iraq and Syria last year.
Last week, ISIL claimed responsibility for the beheading of Haruna Yukawa after the expiration of a
72-hour ultimatum.
ISIL wants freed -- Sajida al-Rishawi -- was sentenced to death for her role in the 2005 bombings of
three Amman hotels by al-Qaeda in Iraq which killed
60 people.
Her husband was one of the three suicide bombers and the court found that she had would have
been a fourth but for the failure of her detonator.
(Source: AFP)
INTERNATIONAL DAILY
3
Bombings kill 14 people
around Baghdad
A series of bombings in and around the Iraqi capital killed
14 people on Saturday and a senior Kurdish commander
died in clashes with the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) terrorists in northern Iraq.
A bomb exploded near a sheep market on Saturday
morning in the town of Madain, about 20 kilometers (14
miles) southeast of the Iraqi capital Baghdad, killing four
people and wounding 11, police oﬃcials said.
A second blast struck near a string of car repair shops
in central Baghdad, killing three people and wounding 10.
Authorities said another explosion also struck an army
patrol in the town of Taji, just north of Baghdad, killing
two soldiers and wounding four.
At night, a bomb blast near a cafe in Baghdad’s district
of Ameen killed two people and wounded nine others.
Also, police said a bomb attached to a minibus exploded in Baghdad’s southeastern district of Zafaraniya, killing three passengers and wounding six others.
Medics conﬁrmed the casualty ﬁgures. All oﬃcials
spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not
authorized to speak to journalists.
Meanwhile, two Kurdish security oﬃcers said on Saturday that Kurdish Brig. Gen. Hussein Mansour was killed
on Friday night by a sniper shot near the oil rich city of
Kirkuk during clashes between ISIL ﬁghters and Kurdish
security forces, known as peshmerga.
The two oﬃcials said that Mansour had just replaced
Brig. Gen. Shirko Fatih, who was killed early on Friday
after ISIL militants attacked peshmerga positions near
Kirkuk.
Iraq is facing its worst crisis since the 2011 withdrawal
of U.S. troops. Terrorists from the ISIL group now control
about a third of the country. They are being resisted by
a combined force of Iraqi soldiers, Kurdish peshmerga,
and volunteer Shia militiamen, backed by U.S.-led coalition airstrikes.
(Source: Military Times)
Kurdish forces free oil
workers at Kirkuk crude
station
Iraqi Kurdish forces on Sunday found and freed workers who had gone missing a day earlier when the Islamic
State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) terrorists seized a small
crude oil station near the northern city of Kirkuk, the provincial governor and a provincial councilman said.
The Kurds retook the crude oil separation unit in Khabbaz on Saturday evening but had been unable to immediately determine the fate of the employees, whom they
found in an underground room.
“All of them were rescued and they are all
safe,” Kirkuk Governor Najmaldin
(Najmiddin)
Karim told Reuters by phone, denying reports that some of
the workers had been taken hostage.
Earlier reports said 15 workers had gone missing, but
provincial councilman Ali Mehdi said the number could
be as high as 25. Mehdi conﬁrmed that the workers had
all been freed.
One senior Kurdish commander was killed in Saturday’s
attack, the most serious assault on Kirkuk since the summer.
ISIL terrorists seized at least four small oilﬁelds when
they overran large areas of northern Iraq last summer
and began selling crude oil and gasoline to ﬁnance their
operations.
Khabbaz is a small oilﬁeld 20 km (12 miles) southwest
of Kirkuk with a maximum production capacity of 15,000
barrels per day. It was producing around 10,000 bpd (barrels per day) before the attack.
(Source: Reuters)
Lieberman: Third Lebanon
war, fourth Gaza operation
inevitable
Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman has described
as “inevitable” a third war with Lebanon and a fourth aggression in the besieged Gaza Strip in the wake of a recent retaliatory attack by Hezbollah.
“A fourth operation in the Gaza Strip is inevitable, just
as a third Lebanon war is inevitable,” Avigdor Lieberman
said in an interview with Israel’s Ynet on Sunday.
“There’s no doubt the rules of the game have been
changed, what Hezbollah forced upon us. We don’t respond, but rather decide to contain this incident,” Lieberman said, adding that the Lebanese resistance movement is “more determined.”
The Israeli oﬃcial also said that another war on the
Gaza Strip was on the horizon, adding that Hamas was
already rebuilding its military capacities.
“We saw 10 rockets being ﬁred at the sea last week. We
see every week how they’re rebuilding [their arsenal],” he
said, referring to the Palestinian resistance movement.
Israel regime says Hezbollah killed two Israeli soldiers
and destroyed at least nine Israeli military vehicles in a
retaliatory attack on a military convoy in northern occupied territories on January 28. Tel Aviv said a 20-year-old
sergeant and a 25-year-old captain were killed.
Following the attack, Hezbollah said the move was in
retaliation for Israel’s January 18 attack on the Syrian section of Golan Heights, where six Hezbollah members and
an Iranian commander lost their lives.
Jihad Mughniyeh, the son of martyred Hezbollah top
commander, Imad Mughniyeh, was among those killed in
the attack.
(Source: Press TV)
4
I NTE R NATI O NAL DAI LY
E C O N O M Y
FEBRUARY 2, 2015
h t t p : / / w w w . t e h r a n t i m e s . c o m / e c o n o m y
Iran to inaugurate development
projects worth $2.5b in coming days
NEWS
Iran’s 10-month direct tax
income rises 52%: official
TEHRAN — Iran’s direct tax income rose
current Iranian calendar year (March 21, 2014- January 20, 2015),
compared to same period last year, according to the Iranian
National Tax Administration Director Ali Askari.
The country’s direct tax income amounted to 480 trillion
rials (about $13.88 billion) during the ten-month period, the
Fars News Agency quoted Askari as saying on Sunday.
In November 2014, Askari said that tax and duty incomes
account for about 50 percent of the national budget bill for
Iranian calendar year 1394 (March 2015-March 2016).
In June 2014, Iranian Finance and Economic Aﬀairs Minister
Ali Tayyebnia said Iran’s economy is heavily dependent on oil
revenues, which accounts for about 70 percent of the national
budget in the current Iranian calendar year.
However, the government is determined to reduce
dependence on oil through improving the tax system and the
boosting of economic activities, he added.
In December 2014, Iran’s government spokesman
Mohammad Baqer Nobakht said the government can manage
the country even without oil revenues.
Germany’s Merkel says
she doesn’t see another
Greek debt cut
German Chancellor Angela Merkel is underlining the refusal
of Greece’s European creditors to consider forgiving part of
the debt-ridden country’s rescue loans though stressing that
Berlin’s aim remains to keep Greece in the eurozone.
Greece’s new government insists it will honor pre-election
promises to seek a cut on the country’s rescue debt and scrap
painful budget measures that were demanded in exchange
for the loans.
Merkel said in an interview with the daily Berliner
Morgenpost published Saturday that Europe will continue
showing solidarity with Greece and other strugglers “if these
countries undertake their own reform and saving eﬀorts.”
Asked whether there will be a debt cut for Greece, she
replied that Athens already was forgiven billions of euros
by private creditors and added: “I don’t see a further debt
haircut.”
(Source: Huﬃngton Post)
Bank of Industry and
Mine invests in Lorestan
Petrochemical Complex
TEHRAN — Bank of Industry and Mine has invested €233
million in Lorestan Petrochemical Complex development
plan.
The ethylene production unit of the petrochemical
complex will be inaugurated today. It is projected to produce
300,000 tons of ethylene per day.
The project will create 580 job opportunities, which will be
increased to 5,000 job opportunities in the future.
TEHRAN STOCK EXCHANGE
Index
Value
Main Board
Change
Percent
Index
Industry Index
48283.9
33.7
0.07
54893.3
-9.3
-0.02
Overall Index
65545.7
2.9
0
Free Float Index
74463.6
44.8
0.06
Secondary Index
128915.9
-201.1
-0.16
OVERALL INDEX DETAILS
First
65542.8
Max Value
65601.3
Min Value
65534.3
Closing
65545.7
Variety
2.9
Change end of year(%)
722.77%
Historical highest
89500.6 (2014/01/05)
Source: tse.ir
MAJOR CURRENCIES
Currency
To U.S.
Dollars
To U.S.
Dollars
Currency
To IR.
Rial*
1
34580
UAE dirham
0.272
9470
1.506
52620
Euro
1.128
39500
US dollar
British Pound
To IR.
Rial*
*The free market rates
(Sources: Mehrnews.com & xe.com)
MAJOR COMMODITIES
Light Crude $ / barrel
48.24
Silver $ / troy ounce
Gold $ / troy ounce
1,279.20 Platinum $ / troy ounce
Copper $ / pound
2.49
Wheat ¢ / bushel
17.21
1,238.20
502.75
Source: cnnmoney.com
TEHRAN
—
Hundreds
of
Economic Desk development projects, valued at
$2.5 billion, will come on stream in Iran during the TenDay Dawn celebrations (February 1-11), marking the
anniversary of the victory of the Islamic Revolution.
Some 400 industrial and mining projects, valued at
51.244 trillion rials (about $1.483 billion) are planned
to come on stream in the country, creating jobs for
15,390 persons, the Fars News Agency reported on
Sunday.
Meanwhile, eight new power generation units will
come on stream at a cost of 2.128 trillion rials (about
$61.609 million) plus €907.6 million - totally about $1.1
billion - in four combined cycle power plants.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has announced
that the cabinet plans to increase the development
budget by 50 trillion rials (about $1.47 billion) in the
national budget bill for the next Iranian calendar
year compared to the current year’s national budget.
He added that the cabinet is considering a proposal to allocate 461 trillion rials (about $13.96 billion) for
the development budget for the next Iranian calendar year, which begins on March 21, 2015.
Rouhani said the government has already allocated over 200 trillion rials (about $6 billion) for the
implementation of national development projects
in the current year, adding that the ﬁgure will be increased to 300 trillion rials (about $9 billion) by the
end of the current year.
Mexico cuts spending by $8.4 billion
due to oil price drop
MEXICO CITY (ABC News) —
Mexico said it will cut government
spending by $8.4 billion this year
because of a drop in revenues due
to declining oil prices.
Finance Minister Luis Videgaray
said the government will put on hold
plans for a high-speed rail project
that has been marred by allegations
of favoritism.
Mexico has seen prices for
its oil fall in recent months from
around $100 to $38.42 per barrel. The government relies on oil
revenues for about a third of its
budget.
The cuts, to be borne mainly by
the state-owned oil and electricity
companies, are equivalent to about
0.7 percent of Mexico’s GDP.
A Mexican ﬁrm allied with Chinese companies won the high-speed
rail contract in November. They
were the only bidders for the proposed railway, which would connect
Mexico City with the nearby city of
Queretaro. Other potential bidders
complained they had not been given
enough time to come up with an offer.
The contract award was cancelled
just before local media revealed the
Mexican ﬁrm built a mansion for ﬁrst
lady Angelica Rivera.
Another train project in the Yucatan peninsula has been cancelled.
U.S. Treasury allows personal
remittances to and from Crimea
WASHINGTON
(Sputnik) — U.S.
persons and banking institutions will
be allowed to transfer money to and
from Crimea so long as the transaction
is non-commercial, the U.S. Treasury
announced, revising the sanctions
regime in the region.
“U.S. persons…[and] U.S. registered
money transmitters are authorized to
process transfers of, funds to or from
the Crimea region… in cases in which
the transfer involves a noncommercial,
personal remittance,” the Treasury said.
The transfer cannot be “by, to, or
through any person whose property
and interests in property are blocked
pursuant to” four executive order
sanctions targeting Russian and
Crimean individuals, entities and
companies, the Treasury said.
Another
revision
clariﬁes
“noncommercial, personal remittances
do not include charitable donations of
funds to or for the beneﬁt of an entity or
funds transfers for use in supporting or
operating a business, including a familyowned business.”
In light of the situation with Crimea,
the United States, European Union and
a number of other countries imposed a
series of sanctions against Moscow. The
latest restrictions, imposed in December
2014, speciﬁcally target Crimea and
include new sanctions against certain
individuals and entities operating in the
region.
Moscow, Seoul sign agreement on energy cooperation in Far East, North Korea
MOSCOW
(Sputnik) — Russian
RusHydro hydroelectricity company
and
South
Korean
K-Water
governmental
agency
signed
an agreement Friday on energy
cooperation in Russia’s Far East and
North Korea, brokered by the Ministry
for Development of the Russian Far
East.
“We have agreed on the creation
of a working group, so that we will be
able to formulate deﬁnitive proposals
on direct investments in the Far East
and on collaboration between RusHydro and K-water by mid-April,” Minister for Development of the Russian
Far East, Alexander Galushka, said.
According to Galushka, North Ko-
IBM boss gets bonus despite
company’s woes
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — IBM boss
Virginia Rometty will get a $3.6
million bonus for her performance
last year, even though the company›s
sales and proﬁts declined in 2014.
Rometty and other top executives
did not take bonuses for 2013, after
IBM turned in disappointing results
for that year. But even though IBM
is still struggling to catch up with
recent shifts in the way corporate
customers buy technology, it
disclosed a new pay package that
appears to be a vote of conﬁdence
in her eﬀorts.
IBM has said it›s making progress
by selling oﬀ less proﬁtable divisions
and investing in new businesses
Shell,
ConocoPhillips
to cut billions
in spending
as oil price
continues
sliding
NEWS IN BRIEF
Economic Desk 52 percent in the ﬁrst ten months of the
agreed on an “energy-bridge” project to South Korea through North
Korea and the reconstruction of the
levee on Russia’s Bolshoi Ussuriysky
Island. The sides also discussed other
projects related to the modernization of infrastructure and the power
industry in North Korea, according to
Galushka.
U.S. economy misses its mark
at end of 2014
including data analytics, cloud
computing and mobile software.
As CEO, Rometty is also getting a
6.7 percent raise in her base salary,
which has been $1.5 million since
she took the top job in 2012. She will
get $1.6 million in 2015, the company
said in a regulatory ﬁling Friday.
IBM is also raising her target
bonus to $5 million for 2015. In
addition, the company said she›ll
be eligible for up to $13.3 million in
potential stock grants that would
be awarded for her performance
over the next three years, up from
a maximum of $12.75 million in longterm incentive grants that were
reported last year.
Royal Dutch Shell and
ConocoPhillips, two of
the world’s largest energy
groups, have announced
plans to reduce investment
programs by billions of
dollars because of falling oil
prices. The companies have
taken the decision in the
wake of capital expenditure
cuts recently announced by
other oil companies around
the world. Shell said it will
cut its capital spending by
$15 billion in 2015-2016 and
cancel or postpone around
40 projects. The overall
costs in 2015 are expected
to be slightly less than the
$35 billion spent by the
company in 2014.
rea has not ruled out possible participation in the projects.
“Our North Korean partners have
agreed that the Russian side, including RusHydro, will negotiate with our
South Korean partners on the implementation of trilateral projects,” he
said.
RusHydro and K-Water have also
Oil output
in Russia in
2015 may
stay at 2014
level: energy
minister
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — The
U.S. economy gained steam last year,
but it closed out the year with a big
disappointment, raising more questions
about 2015.
America’s economy grew only 2.6% in
the ﬁnal three months of the year, much
lower than the estimate of 3.3%.
Overall for 2014, U.S. gross domestic
product, the broadest measure of
economic activity rose 2.4%. That’s the
highest mark in four years, according
to the Commerce Department, but
economist and policymakers want to see
growth this year of a lot closer to 3%.
There are many signs the economic
recovery is stronger. The U.S. had its best
year of job growth since 1999 last year.
Russian Energy Minister
Alexander Novak discussed
the oil price drop and
the future prospects
of investment projects
with heads of oil and gas
companies, the ministry
reported. According to
preliminary estimates, the oil
output in Russia will stay at
the level of 2014, Novak said.
In 2014, Russian oil output
reached 527,000 million tons
of oil, which is a 0.6% rise
compared with the previous
year, said the Central
Dispatching Department of
the Fuel and Energy Complex
(CDU TEK), an agency that
provides data and analysis to
the Energy Ministry.
The Federal Reserve ended its stimulus
program in October, which is like taking
oﬀ the training wheels. Consumer
conﬁdence levels hit their highest mark
in 2014 since the recession began.
The disappointing growth at the end
of the year comes on the heels of the
economy’s incredible 5% growth in the
third quarter, which was the best since
2003.
“There were these grand hopes for
3% growth and it still seems elusive on a
sustainable basis,” says Peter Boockvar,
chief market analyst at The Lindsey
Group. “We still can’t get out of this 2 to
2.5% GDP growth rate box you could call
it. I don’t expect anything diﬀerent in
2015.”
Morgan
Stanley
predicts
Russia’s GDP
to slump 5.6%
in 2015
U.S. Investment Bank
Morgan Stanley predicts
Russia’s GDP to fall by 5.6%
in 2015 and 2.5% in 2016, the
news agency Bloomberg
reported. Morgan Stanley’s
updated forecast for
Russia’s GDP decline in
2015-2016 is worse than its
previous outlook, which
predicted that the Russian
economy would shrink
by 1.7% in 2015 and grow
by 0.8% in 2016. Morgan
Stanley analyst Alina
Slyusarchuk said recession
in Russia would last
longer compared with the
economy’s quick recovery
during the crisis of 2009.
h t t p : / / w w w . t e h r a n t i m e s . c o m
FEBRUARY 2, 2015
HISTORY & HERITAGE
Hamadan once an illustrious
city of the ancient world
Also known as Ecbatana, Hamadan, situated in west-central Iran, was once one of
the greatest cities of the ancient world.
Pitifully little of antiquity remains, but
signiﬁcant parts of the city centre are
given over to excavations and there is a
scattering of historical curiosities.
Sitting on a high plain, Hamadan is
graciously cool in August, but snowprone and freezing cold from December to March.
The city, although certainly an older
foundation, has records only from the
1st millennium BC. According to Britannica Encyclopedia, Hamadan has had
many names: it was possibly the Bit Daiukki of the Assyrians, Hangmatana, or
Agbatana, to the Medes, and Ecbatana
to the Greeks. One of the Median capitals, under Cyrus II (the Great; died 529
BC) and later Achaemenian rulers, it
was the site of a royal summer palace.
A little east of Hamadan is the Mossala
(Musalla), a natural mound the debris
of which includes the remains of ancient Ecbatana. The modern city is built
partly on this mound.
Hamadan was captured by the Arabs in 641 or 642 and for some centuries remained a provincial capital. During this period the city was the home
of some of the great thinkers and artists of the Islamic period.
The poet and anthologist Abu Tammam composed his Hamasah there in the
early 10th century. The noted writer al-
made it their capital, and so it remained
for 50 years. To this period dates the
building of Gonbad-e ?Alaviyyan, a mausoleum with ﬁne stucco work.
About 1220 Hamadan was destroyed
by the Mongols; in 1386 it was sacked by
Timur (Tamerlane), a Turkic conqueror,
and the inhabitants massacred. It was
partly restored in the 17th century and
First major exhibition of Hellenistic bronzes to tour internationally
Beginning in March 2015, the Palazzo
Strozzi, Florence; the J. Paul Getty
Museum, Los Angeles; and the National Gallery of Art, Washington,
D.C., will present Power and Pathos:
Bronze Sculpture of the Hellenistic
World, the ﬁrst major international
exhibition to bring together approxi-
mately 50 ancient bronzes from the
Mediterranean region and beyond
ranging from the 4th century BC to
the 1st century CE.
During the Hellenistic era, artists
around the Mediterranean created
innovative, realistic sculptures of
physical power and emotional in-
tensity. Bronze—with its reﬂective
surface, tensile strength, and ability
to hold the ﬁnest details—was employed for dynamic compositions,
graphic expressions of age and character, and dazzling displays of the human form.
(Source: Popular Archaeology)
5
C L O S E - U P
Feb. 2, 1943:
Battle of Stalingrad ends
Avicenna’s
mausoleum
in Hamadan
Hamadhani was born there a generation
later, as was the great Persian-language
poet Baba Tahir, whose mausoleum is located in the city. The physician and philosopher Avicenna died in Hamadan in 1037.
The list of luminaries with connections to Hamadan continued in later
generations. In the second half of the
12th century, the Seljuk Turkish sultans
INTERNATIONAL DAILY
subsequently changed hands often between Iranian ruling houses and the Ottomans. In modern times its strategic
position caused a revival.
Hamadan was severely damaged during the Iran-Iraq War (1980–88). Modern
development is modest. In summer the
pleasant climate makes Hamadan a resort, but the winters are long and severe.
On this day, the last German troops in the Soviet city of
Stalingrad surrender to the Red Army, ending one of the
pivotal battles of World War II.
On June 22, 1941, despite the terms of the
Nazi-Soviet Pact of 1939,
Nazi Germany launched a
massive invasion against
the USSR. Aided by its
greatly superior air force,
the German army raced
across the Russian plains,
inﬂicting terrible casualties on the Red Army and
the Soviet population.
With the assistance
of troops from their Axis
allies, the Germans conquered vast territory, and
by mid-October the great A street fight in Stalingrad
Russian cities of Leningrad and Moscow were under siege. However, the Soviets held on, and the coming of winter forced a pause to
the German oﬀensive.
(Source: history.com)
O N T H I S D AY
1653 New Amsterdam becomes a city (later renamed New York)
1878 Greece declares war on Turkey
1901 Queen Victoria's funeral takes place
1920 Estonia declares its Independence from Russia
1924 International Ski Federation (FIS) forms
1931 1st use of a rocket to deliver mail (Austria)
987 Philippines adopts constitution
2014
Protest in Ukraine turn violent after parliament passes
legislation that outlaws protest
I NTE R NATI O NAL DAI LY
INTERNATIONAL
6
Turkey, Armenia and the tragedies of wars
FEBRUARY 2, 2015
h t t p : / / w w w . t e h r a n t i m e s . c o m / i n t e r n a t i o n a l
Gallipoli is a good place to start for resolving the historic dispute between Turkey and Armenians.
The Battle of Gallipoli was one of
the most critical scenes in Turkey’s
history. Britain and France opened
an overseas front in Gallipoli in East
Thrace and tried to overcome the
Ottomans. The Russian Empire was
promised the capital Istanbul by the
two of Entente Powers of World
War I. It was a fight for the survival of a nation, a struggle for life or
death.
The victory in Gallipoli didn’t help
Turks win the war but it gave hope
to resist and start the war of independence a couple of years later.
The resistance is honored every
year on March 18 in Gallipoli and on
the shores of the Dardanelles.
Gallipoli is of significant importance to others like Australia and
New Zealand. Each year, on April 25,
they commemorate the Australian
and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) who died in Gallipoli. This is
known as ANZAC day.
It was a battle away from home.
It wasn’t even their war. They were
dominions of the British Empire
when the war broke out. Gallipoli
is now a symbol of their national
identity and existence. Their nations
were born there.
Honor and remembrance
Both commemorations are based
on remembering and honoring - not
celebrating. Australians who come
to visit Gallipoli are always welcomed by the Turks who were their
enemies once. After all, places like
Gallipoli are memorials - not only for
the people on the side of the Allies,
but also for all those involved in the
tragedies of wars. There, the Memeds and the Johnnies are resting
side by side.
This year is the 100th an-
niversary of the Battle of Gallipoli. Turkish President Recep
Tayyip Erdogan has invited more
than 100 world leaders, including Armenian President Serzh
Sargsyan, to attend centennial
commemoration
ceremonies.
The UK’s Prince Charles and the
prime ministers of Australia and
New Zealand are expected to
take part in the ceremonies as
well.
Turkey will commemorate the
centennial on April 24 instead of
the regular memorial date, March
18, in a symbolic gesture of compassion. April 24 also marks the start
of the deportation of Armenians by
Turkish unionist authorities - it is the
day Armenians around the world
traditionally commemorate their
ancestors who were killed in that
campaign.
On April 23, 2014, Turkey issued
a first-of-its kind statement offering condolences to the descendants of slain Ottoman Armenians. Erdogan, then prime minister,
highlighted the “shared pain” endured during the events of 1915,
expressing condolences on behalf
of the Turkish state.
It is upsetting that Sargsyan
has decided to reject the invitation, which would have helped
lead us one step closer to understanding and reaching closure
on the tragic events of 1915. The
invitation, after all, was yet another historic move following Erdogan’s statement.
The Turkish public still largely
refuses to accept what happened
a century ago. Turkey is only just
coming to terms with the Unionist/Kemalist ideology, which was
The Turkish public still largely refuses to accept what happened a century ago, writes Oruc
the root of the animosity against
Armenians, and the official nationalist interpretation of history
is now collapsing.
Taboo talking points
Ten years ago, merely talking
about 1915 was a feat of bravery,
but now there is no taboo when
discussing anything out loud. Explaining why he had rejected Erdogan’s invitation, Sargsyan said
he viewed it as an attempt to
overshadow the centenary of the
Armenian genocide. But while
Turkey is taking historic steps,
despite the sentiments of the
majority of its people, it would
have been more constructive for
Armenia to have responded favorably.
Discussing and understanding
history is more conducive to pro-
gress than being stuck at the same
point for years, and Gallipoli is one
of the most appropriate places to
start.
Historians who write about
Gallipoli hardly mention Armenians - and writings about Armenians rarely mention Gallipoli. But
prominent researchers, even the
ones who accept what happened
in 1915 as genocide, say there is a
Discussing and understanding historical reality is more favorable than
being stuck at the same point for years, and Gallipoli is one of the most
appropriate places to start.
FOR RENT
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Tel : 0912 370 4799
Mrs.Hashemi
strong link between the Gallipoli
campaign and the Armenian deportations.
Taner Akcam, a leading international authority on the subject,
draws attention to that link in his
2006 book “A Shameful Act”:
“It was not a coincidence that
the Armenian genocide took place
soon after the Sarikamis disaster
and was contemporaneous with
the empire’s struggle at Gallipol
… a nation that feels itself on the
verge of destruction will not hesitate to destroy another group it
holds responsible for its situation
… a prediction made by the German Ambassador Wangenheim is
worth mentioning. With the outbreak of the war in August 1914,
Henry Morgenthau warned him
that the Turks would massacre the
Armenians in Anatolia, to which
Wangenheim replied: ‘So long as
England does not attack Canakkale … there is nothing to fear.
Otherwise, nothing can be guaranteed.’“
While another historian, Ronald
Suny, provides evidence that the
crisis precipitated by the Entente
bombardment of the Dardanelles
fortresses in March 1915 was a trigger, Donald Bloxham, a professor
of modern history, believes that
the arrests of the Armenian intelligentsia on April 24 came after
the news that the British and the
French were about to land their
troops at Gallipoli.
That doesn’t mean Gallipoli is
an excuse for what happened,
but understanding this history will
help us take significant steps and
achieve results.
(Source: Al Jazeera)
h t t p : / / w w w . t e h r a n t i m e s . c o m / i n t e r n a t i o n a l
FEBRUARY 2, 2015
INTERNATIONAL
INTERNATIONAL DAILY
Could Tsipras’ win upset balance
of power in Europe?
By Spiegel staﬀ
Greek
election
victor Alexis
Tsipras wants
an entirely
different
Europe from
the one
envisioned
by Angela
Merkel. His
success is
likely to stoke
anger over
Germany’s
EU
dominance.
Leaders in
France and
Italy are also
hoping for
an end to
austerity.
A
lexis Tsipras couldn’t have picked a more
symbolic place to show his voters that he is
a prime minister like no other Greece has seen
before -- -- and that he is truly serious about
standing up to the Germans.
On Monday, right after he was sworn in, he
was chauﬀeured in his sedan to the Kesariani
riﬂe range, a memorial to Greek resistance
ﬁghters that is revered in the country as the
“altar of peace.”
It was here, on the outskirts of Athens, that
German occupying troops shot a total of some
600 resistance ﬁghters -- some just before the
end of the war, on May 1, 1944 -- along with
roughly 200 communists from the Haidari
concentration camp. The youngest victim was
only 14 years old.
As Tsipras stepped out of his car and made
his way through the park to the memorial stone,
several hundred people crowded around him.
People reached out to touch, congratulate, hug
and kiss him. The few bodyguards surrounding
the politician barely shielded him from the
crowd. Alexis Tsipras, 40, the youngest prime
minister in Greek history, also intends to be
its most unusual leader -- a man of the people
who is determined to fundamentally change
his country.
As he laid ﬂowers at the foot of the austere
memorial, his fans applauded. And they
chanted: “Resistance is the path that the
nations must take!” “The German occupation
is ﬁnally over,” said a delighted pensioner.
Afterwards, Tsipras stood front of the memorial
for a minute of silence.
It was a gesture of resistance -- and one
that contained a barely concealed message.
His remembrance of the suﬀering under the
German occupation was coupled with the
accusation that the Germans were subjugating
Greece once again.
Tsipras never tires of saying that he wants
to “give the Greeks back their dignity.” And
dignity is an important word for those who seek
to understand what has happened in Greece. If
so many Greeks didn’t feel humiliated by their
own corrupt political class, by their dwindling
prosperity -- but also by the Germans and the
other Europeans -- Tsipras would have never
been elected.
Tsipras is a man whose career was spawned
by the euro crisis. The currency that was
designed to unite Europe has eﬀectively divided
its people. In an economic community in which
some feel that they have been hoodwinked
and others feel oppressed, Tsipras’ fans revere
him as a rebel. Many Greeks see him as a man
who has what it takes to free them from
oppression. At the same time, many Germans
see him as a terrifying extremist. They view
Tsipras as Europe’s nightmare. Tsipras is the
anti-Merkel, and he never would have achieved
this kind of political success were it not for the
German chancellor.
And now these individuals constitute the
two antipodes in a Europe in which there is a
growing lack of mutual understanding.
How could it come to this point? Right
from the start, the euro was more than just
a currency. It was a pledge to heal the rifts
created by war and blind nationalism in Europe.
When then-German Chancellor Helmut Kohl
signed the Maastricht Treaty on Feb. 7, 1992,
he hoped that the common currency would
irreversibly unite the Continent.
Now, the euro appears to be stirring up
the very antagonistic sentiments that it was
supposed to eliminate. In Greece the crisis has
brought a government to power that features
an entirely new mixture of left-wing radicals
and right-wing populists, whose only common
ground is the joint struggle against Merkel’s
austerity dictate.
But Tsipras is also Merkel’s unintended
creation. His rise to power cannot be explained
without a deep understanding of the frustration
that Europe’s policy of austerity has sparked.
This may seem irrational. After all, it was the
Greeks who amassed such huge debts that
their country could no longer bear the burden
in April 2010. But by morphing Merkel into an
austerity dominatrix, Tsipras has created an
artiﬁcial ﬁgure upon whom he can project all of
the Greeks’ negative feelings.
Opposite poles
Europe is gazing with a mixture of
fascination and horror at the new strongman in
Athens. Is the EU dealing with a loose cannon
who is driving his country over the precipice?
Amid the euphoria of his victory, will he truly
seek to make good on his campaign promises?
The current rhetoric reﬂects just how far
apart Europeans have drifted. When Merkel
and Tsipras speak of solidarity, they mean
two diﬀerent things. The word “austerity,”
which half of Europe employs as a synonym for
Merkel’s allegedly callous savings measures, is
not used by the chancellor herself. She prefers
to speak of structural reforms.
The two politicians, Merkel and Tsipras, form
opposite poles within the EU. Not surprisingly,
few in Europe are willing to publicly side with
the new prime minister in Athens. His tone
is too shrill and his coalition partners are too
unsavory. Panos Kammenos, a right-wing
politician who is the new defense minister,
made headlines when he recently claimed that
Jews in Greece pay no taxes.
Secretly, though, many politicians in Europe
hope that the shock of the elections in Greece
will upset the balance of power. Ever since
he took oﬃce in May 2012, French President
François Hollande has been pushing for a
more relaxed approach to the debt limit. He
is supported not only by Italian Prime Minister
Matteo Renzi, but also by EU Commission
President Jean Claude Juncker.
But the conﬂict also has to do with
hurt feelings, which makes it all the more
complicated. In the days of the deutsche
mark, Germany’s cherished erstwhile currency,
Northern Europeans gazed somewhat
disparagingly to the South, where the Italian
lira and the Greek drachma steadily declined in
value.
For their part, the Italians and the Greeks
made jokes about the Germans and their
obsessive deutsche mark fetishism. Now that
they are all united with the same currency,
everyone is complaining. The Germans feel as
if they have been coerced into spoon-feeding
the spendthrifts in Greece, while the Greeks
feel like a colony in Merkel’s austerity empire.
Each side has grown accustomed to sketching
the other as a caricature.
‘We are not planning a clash’
For a while, it looked as if the euro crisis had
been resolved. It had virtually disappeared from
the headlines for over two years. But now, with
Tsipras’ election, it has returned to the political
agenda with a radical twist. The uproar goes
well beyond the austerity measures that the
Greek leader intends to roll back. With the
selection of his coalition partner, Tsipras has
charted a course that fundamentally calls into
question whether he shares the values of the
European Union. He has broken with European
political norms.
“We are not planning a clash that would be
equally catastrophic for both sides,” Tsipras said
during his ﬁrst cabinet meeting on Wednesday,
“but we will not pursue the disastrous policy of
submission.”
Last week, his government startled the
designed to stimulate growth and create jobs.
With a mixture of both approaches, other
countries that were plunged into debt after
2010 managed to take a turn for the better.
Ireland, Portugal and Spain had to accept
rescue funds, but have managed to put the
crisis behind them. Meanwhile Greece has
lagged further and further behind the rest of
Europe.
Tsipras also won the election because he
pledged to make a break with the nepotism of
the old political system under the established
political parties, Pasok and Nea Dimokratia
(ND). Tsipras’ victory was also based on his
portrayal of Merkel as the enemy during his
election campaign.
A manifestation of resistance to Merkel
In short, Tsipras is the most extreme
manifestation of the growing resistance in large
parts of Europe to the German chancellor’s
austerity drive. He belongs to a movement
that now extends from Southern Europe
all the way to American universities. These
opponents are united in the belief that Europe
is on the wrong course. Belt-tightening during a
recession does not lead to growth, they argue,
but rather to endless stagnation. The longer
Europe’s economic slump continues, the more
people join the burgeoning ranks of those who
oppose the current approach. Indeed, it could
be that Tsipras is more than just an unfortunate
isolated episode, but rather a politician at the
vanguard of a new generation of European
populists who oppose mainstream politics
-- and could use this approach to win further
elections.
The Greek prime minister’s success is also
the story of the Europe’s largely inept response
to the populist forces in Greece. By the spring
of 2012, it was clear that Tsipras would play
a key role in his country’s political future, as
conﬁrmed by all of the opinion polls. But when
representatives of the troika -- comprising the
EU, the International Monetary Fund (IMF)
and the European Central Bank -- were asked
during behind-the-scenes discussions whether
they would also meet with Tsipras and include
him in the process, they dismissed the idea out
of hand.
IMF head Christine Lagarde even entered
the fray as an election campaigner of sorts and
openly expressed her conﬁdence in the two
big parties. Lagarde said that only the centerright ND or its socialist counterpart Pasok
includes security personnel at schools and
the legendary cleaning ladies who, dressed in
smocks and rubber gloves, threw their support
behind Syriza’s campaign in the weeks leading
up to the vote.
Nobody knows quite how Tsipras intends
to pay for it all. But for the moment, Syriza is
basking in election glory. The “president,” as
Tsipras’ supporters call him, has managed to
unite the fractured left -- former communists,
Greens, Trotskyists, Maoists, eco-socialists and
diverse radicals.
Syriza is more than just a protest party.
Because of the crisis, it has “become a bigtent party,” says economist Jens Bastian,
who spent two years with the European
Commission’s Task Force for Greece as a
banking expert. In addition to its supporters in
the leftist scene and protest voters, the party
has been able to attract middle class voters and
retirees as well.
‘He has matured politically’
That has much to do with Tsipras himself.
He comes across neither as a fervent ideologue
nor as an aggressive enfant terrible. “There
is no reason not to like him when you meet
him,” says author Petros Tatsopoulos,
who left Syriza early last year following
controversial comments he made regarding
the party’s stance on terrorism. People in
Berlin government circles likewise say that
he has “charisma” and handles himself well
in public. Tsipras holds a university degree in
construction engineering and city planning,
is the father of two children, and is partnered
with an IT engineer named Peristera Baziana.
But he keeps his private life largely to himself
and there are very few pictures of Baziana.
The couple didn’t even appear together when
Tsipras cast his ballot last Sunday.
But is Tsipras more than just a populist?
Will he be able to guide Greece out of the
crisis? “Tsipras has changed signiﬁcantly,”
says Antonis Liakos, a 68-year-old professor of
history and an expert on Greek political parties.
“He has matured politically and become ﬁrm
in his convictions.” Furthermore, he adds, “he
doesn’t have any of the big families behind
him,” referring to the political dynasties that
have run the country for decades.
Many, both within Greece and in Europe
at large, are hopeful that Tsipras will end the
corruption associated with the established
parties in the country. “People have taken
Tsipras is a man whose career was spawned by the euro crisis. The currency
that was designed to unite Europe has effectively divided its people.
In an economic community in which some feel that they have been hoodwinked
and others feel oppressed, Tsipras’ fans revere him as a rebel. Many Greeks
see him as a man who has what it takes to free them from oppression.
At the same time, many Germans see him as a terrifying extremist. They view
Tsipras as Europe’s nightmare. Tsipras is the anti-Merkel, and he never would have
achieved this kind of political success were it not for the German chancellor.
rest of the EU with its Russia-friendly stance.
Skeptics wonder, though, whether Tsipras
really hopes to enhance his image -- and return
the Greeks’ sense of dignity -- by siding with
Russia.
There is nothing new about the leftist Syriza
party’s close ties to Russia. It has a great deal
to do with the traditional friendly contacts
between Greece and Russia. Here, too, Merkel
is his antipode. Her top priority is to convince
the 28 EU states to close ranks against Russia.
It is virtually her only trump in her struggle with
Putin.
Tsipras and his Syriza party largely owe their
political victory to the aftermath of the austerity
measures that Greece has been forced to
implement in recent years: a 30 percent drop
in income, unemployment oﬃcially running at
26 percent, and 51 percent among 15 to 25-yearolds, long lines at soup kitchens, closed stores
in posh neighborhoods and a shockingly large
number of panhandlers on the streets.
Tsipras’s predecessors failed to implement
many of the structural reforms that were
could guarantee that the country remained in
the euro zone. But the more the Europeans
attempted to brand Tsipras as an outcast, the
greater his popularity grew in Greece.
Refusing to look reality in the face
Tsipras is the product of the Greeks’ unique
ability to refuse to look reality in the face. The
introduction of the euro gave the country an
unprecedented level of prosperity. This was
based primarily on loans that the Greeks
could suddenly receive far more cheaply on
the ﬁnancial markets. Even in the aftermath
of the crisis and record recession, Greece’s
industrial output remains at the same level
as when it entered the euro zone. Blaming
Merkel alone for the country’s current debt
crisis is, at the very least, a one-sided view of
the situation.
But Tsipras likes to make things easy for
himself. He had barely entered oﬃce before
his government announced its intention
to rehire the 9,500 civil servants who had
been laid oﬀ as part of the cost-cutting
measures undertaken in recent years. That
stock of what Samaras and Papandreou have
achieved and have drawn a line,” Bastian says.
A troubling coalition partner
But then, Tsipras chose as his coalition
partner the right-wing populist Independent
Greeks (ANEL), whose leader Panos
Kammenos spent decades proﬁting from the
nepotism with the Nea Dimokratia party of
outgoing Prime Minister Antonis Samaras. It
was only when Kammenos began opposing
policies imposed by the troika in 2012 that he
was thrown out of Nea Dimokratia together
with 20 others.
Since then, Kammenos has been railing
nonstop against the EU and the German
chancellor. “Greece is an occupied country and
the head of government gets his orders from
Angela Merkel,” he rants. He has compared
the EU with a “Fourth Reich” that Germany
allegedly aspires to and has said he will not
approach Merkel “on my knees.” Instead, he
has demanded, as has Syriza, that Germany
pay reparations stemming from the World War
II occupation of the country, particularly for
7
loans the Nazis forced Greece to pay.
Leaders within Syriza are aware that their
political platform has little overlap with that of
the right-wing populists. But like Syriza, ANEL
is also seen in Greece as being opposed to the
political system that has ruled until now. The
two also focus on the same enemy: Angela
Merkel.
Among the paradoxes of the euro crisis
is the fact that Merkel, who triggers such
passionate emotion in Greece, employs a
governing style that is largely free of emotion.
In contrast to Tsipras, she seems a model
of sobriety. When speaking to small groups
about the euro crisis, she tends to focus on
unit labor costs, interest rates and debt levels:
She is implacably matter-of-fact. Her closest
Europe advisor once sketched her crisis logic
on a piece of paper. The drawing made clear
that, because the problems which led to crisis
originated from individual countries, they must
be solved there too -- by way of austerity and
reforms.
To be sure, she has not shied away from
dramatic statements. “If the euro fails, then
Europe will fail as well,” she said in a speech
to German parliament on May 19, 2010. In a
smaller group, she also once said that Germany
had to remain committed to Europe and the
euro because of the two world wars for which
it is responsible. That is why she decided in the
summer of 2012 to keep Greece in the euro
zone.
Time is short
Now, two-and-a-half years later, many
parts of the Continent are in much better
shape and the euro would likely be able to
withstand a Greek insolvency without serious
upheaval. That, though, is what makes Tsipras
so aggressive. His shrill tone is in part intended
to distract from the fact that he has become
a predictable variable in Merkel’s broader
recovery equation -- even if she has not yet met
him personally.
Until shortly before the election, Merkel
believed that Samaras would succeed in
getting re-elected. That is why she agreed to
his December request to extend the current
aid program by just two months instead of by
six or nine months. That, as has now become
apparent, was a mistake. Now, time is short,
with the program expiring at the end of
February.
Merkel knows Tsipras primarily from the
almost daily reports compiled by the German
ambassador in Athens and sent to Berlin.
They describe Tsipras as a clever, good looking
champion of the people who is particularly
attractive to female voters. “Sexy Alexi” is one
of his nicknames in Greece.
Jörg Asmussen is one of those in the Merkel
administration who knows Tsipras personally.
Until the fall of 2013, Asmussen was a member
of the European Central Bank Executive
Board and was responsible for international
and European relations. Currently, he is
state secretary in the Labor Ministry, but he
continues to informally use the communication
channels he established while at the ECB,
although not in an oﬃcial capacity.
One important contact person in Athens is
Bank of Greece Governor Yannis Stournaras,
who served as the country’s ﬁnance minister
until early last su nd the European Commission
are depending on him to make clear to the new
government just how precarious the country’s
position is and what the consequences would
be were Athens to terminate the EU aid
program.
Thus far, Merkel has followed a clear path
when it comes to saving the common currency:
solidarity in exchange for solidarity. And one
certainly can’t accuse the chancellor of being
overly parsimonious: Germany now guarantees
some €100 billion in loans to euro-zone crisis
countries. Were Tsipras to be successful with
his demands for a debt cut, Germany could lose
billions.
For the time being, of course, Tsipras isn’t
likely to represent much of a danger to Merkel
because he is asking for too much. France
and Italy are likewise uninterested in granting
Greece a debt haircut.
United front
Plus, there are plenty of countries now in
the euro zone that have gone through tough
cost-cutting programs, such as Spain, Portugal
and Ireland. The governments of these
countries do not see why Tsipras should be
granted an exception just because he screams
the loudest. At a meeting of euro-zone ﬁnance
ministers on Monday, the front against Tsipras
was uniﬁed to the point that German Finance
Minister Wolfgang Schäuble could remain in
the background.
Indeed, conservative German politicians
have long since begun to speak openly about
the possibility of a “Grexit,” as the country’s
departure from the euro zone is often called.
“The eﬀects of the country’s exit would
likely be less problematic for the euro than a
softening of the criteria for everyone,” says
Bavarian Finance Minister Markus Söder, a
member of the Christian Social Union, the
sister party to Merkel’s Christian Democrats.
Germany’s commissioner in Brussels, Günther
Oettinger, also now believes that a Grexit is
possible. “Of course we are looking at worstcase scenarios,” he says. “But nobody is
actively seeking Greece’s departure from the
euro zone.”
Contd. on P. 11
8
I NTE R NATI O NAL DAI LY
NEWS IN BRIEF
Researchers boost solar
cells performance by antiaggregates
TEHRAN (ISNA) — Iranian researchers have designed and
built solar cells doing well in converting solar energy into
electricity, using nano-technology.
Dr. Mojgan Hossein-Nejad, the lead author of the study
said the project is using low-price and available material. The
“results of the plan can be used in centers using powers and
solar cells.”
She further added that Iran holds massive potentials to
generate power from solar energy and can generate 5000
MW/CK power from solar panels.
According to the researcher, the study synthesizes organic dyes useful for solar cells. It also investigates materials
as aggregates in the titanium dioxide nanostructure, examining performance of solar cells.
Dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) are of high eﬃciency for
converting light into electricity. The organic dyes used in the
cells can well aggregate on the titanium dioxide nanostructure.
Use of anti-aggregates combinations is one of the practical methods to destroy or lessen the dyes aggregates.
How would doctor know if
you have Chikungunya or
rheumatoid arthritis?
A new research shows that people infected with Chikungunya virus and those who are diagnosed with rheumatoid
arthritis show similar symptoms and test results hence it is
important to identify their travel and medical histories make
accurate diagnosis.
The researchers identiﬁed Chikungunya illness as a condition present and common in India, Caribbean, Central
and South America and Africa, caused by a mosquito bite.
Among the symptom of this disease are fever and rash that
last for days and severe joint pain can continue for some
months, sometimes more than a year.
Apparently, the same symptoms appear for patients
with rheumatoid arthritis according to the analysis of researchers from the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. With the same symptoms and test results,
this often leads to misdiagnosis and mistreatment.
(Source: SMN Weekly)
The surprise inside an
exploding star
Rather than having uniform layers of ejected material, the
new 3-D map found the supernova remnant has frothy cavities that were possibly created by radioactive nickel during
the explosion that decays to form iron.
In a star that is massive enough, the star explodes in a supernova when it runs out of nuclear fuel, combining lighter
elements through fusion reactions until it reaches iron, at
which point the star’s inner core collapses. Elements heavier than iron are thought to be formed during the explosion.
A supernova is so violent and bright that many can be observed with the naked eye and are a common occurrence
in our universe. Having exploded some 340 years ago, Cassiopeia A is relatively young and close to Earth, making it an
ideal case study, researchers said.
“We’re sort of like bomb squad investigators. We examine
the debris to learn what blew up and how it blew up,” Dan
Milisavljevic of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
told Smithsonian Science. “Our study represents a major step
forward in our understanding of how stars actually explode.”
(Source: Abc.News)
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M E D
&
S C I
FEBRUARY 2, 2015
h t t p : / / w w w . t e h r a n t i m e s . c o m
Did researchers just discover the
cause of pancreatic cancer?
By Sean Williams
Although no cancer diagnosis is welcome, perhaps no cancer type comes
with a more frightening outlook than
pancreatic cancer.
According to data from the American Cancer Society, pancreatic cancer
is the twelfth most commonly diagnosed type of cancer. In 2014 alone,
an estimated 46,420 cases were newly
diagnosed. But what’s truly disconcerting is that pancreatic cancer is the
fourth-leading cause of cancer-related
death, behind only lung, colon, and
breast cancer, which are far more
prevalent on the basis of diagnosis.
Further evidence of the tough battle being fought against pancreatic
cancer is observed in the ﬁve-year survival rates presented by ACS. Combining all stages of pancreatic cancer, the
ﬁve-year survival rate is a mere 6%, the
lowest of all of the major cancer types.
Metastasized pancreatic cancer results
in a ﬁve-year survival rate of just 2%
compared to localized pancreatic cancer, where ﬁve-year survival rates are a
better, but still disappointing, 24%.
To say that pancreatic cancer needs
targeted therapies as soon as possible
would be a vast understatement. However, ﬁnding those therapies begins
with better understanding the mechanism by which pancreatic cancer begins. The good news is that signiﬁcant
progress may have just been made on
this front.
Researchers make major headway
on pancreatic cancer
According to research conducted
by the University of Utah Health Sciences and published in the most recent edition of eLife, researchers may
have identiﬁed the method by which
pancreatic cancer forms.
University of Utah researchers
combed through previously published
study data and discovered a receptor
for sphinogosine 1-phosphate, or S1P2,
that’s critical for a process known as
extrusion.
Extrusion is where cells are
squeezed out of overcrowded tissue
to die. When the researchers focused
on pancreatic cancer, they observed
that a reduction in S1P2 levels led to
reduced extrusion -- and as you might
have surmised, reduced extrusion led
to the formation of masses.
Interesting ﬁndings
One the most interesting ﬁndings
of the study was that not only did reduced S1P2 levels result in mass formation about half of the time, but it also
led to cells being extruded underneath
overcrowded tissue layers rather than
on the outside of overcrowded tissue.
It was proposed by the researchers
that this could be the mechanism by
which pancreatic cancer becomes invasive.
Also, researchers tested whether
or not defective extrusion could be
“bypassed” with the addition of focal
Curiosity rover team questions
report on potential microbe traces
In a paper published last month in
the journal Astrobiology, geobiologist Nora Noe drew attention to
features in Martian rocks that she
suggested bore striking resemblance
to trace fossils of microbial mats on
Earth.
Not everyone agreed with her interpretation. As Curiosity’s project
scientist Ashwin Vasavada explained
to other news outlets (including
Space.com), the team had evaluated
the features as non-biological, likely
having been shaped by erosion or
the transport of sand in water. Vasavada had also raised questions about
the decision to publish the report.
Astrobiology Magazine reached
out to members of the Curiosity
team for clariﬁcation, to Dr. Noe
for further comments, as well as to
the managing editor of the journal
Astrobiology for insight into the review process.
“I’m intrigued by the topic, and
skeptical about the interpretation,”
said Jack Farmer, a geobiologist at
Arizona State University and member of the Curiosity team. “But she
does provide a valuable set of observations, and a hypothesis that is potentially testable in the future.”
“We want hypothesis-driven
science, but we should always be
striving to disprove our own hypotheses,” he added. “Science has
been described as the orderly accumulation of rejected hypotheses. We
need multiple and integrated lines of
evidence to show that the features
are not easily explained by non-biological processes.”
Linda Kah, a geobiologist the University of Tennessee and a co-investigator on the Curiosity rover team,
said the team carefully investigates
all outcrops, and that in the Gillespie
outcrop they did not see anything
that could not have been explained
via abiotic processes.
“There cannot simply be the assumption of biogenicity,” Kah said.
“In science, the null hypothesis (that
these are abiotic) must be disproved
in order to accept biogenicity.”
However, Noe argues that her
report does take into account nonbiological explanations. The “third
part of my article describes potential abiotic modes of formations for
these structures, and also explains
why they point towards a possible
biological origin,” she said.
She also notes that the distribution patterns of microbial structures
on Earth vary depending on where
they are found, and also change in
a speciﬁc way over time. She argued
that the distribution patterns of the
Martian structures are consistent
with those for microbial structures
on Earth.
“Again, I do not claim to have
found fossil life on Mars,” she said.
“My paper is carefully framed as a
founded hypothesis, and I only go as
far as the data allows me to.”
(Source: space.com)
adhesion kinase inhibitors, or FAK inhibitors.
FAK inhibitors control extrusion cell
death under normal circumstances. To
the amazement of researchers, adding FAK inhibitors returned cell death
to normal, signaling that FAK inhibitors should be explored further as a
therapy to slow or halt pancreatic cancer cell progression as well as in other
forms of solid tumors such as lung cancer.
Obviously, more testing needs to
be conducted on FAK inhibitors and
the factors that ultimately contribute
to pancreatic cancer, but the University of Utah’s ﬁndings are a substantial
leap forward that could help researchers hone in on new therapies designed
to ﬁght pancreatic cancer.
If we can find a silver lining in
what’s otherwise an unfortunate diagnosis, it’s that a number of new
pathways are currently being explored by drug developers to treat
pancreatic cancer.
This drug was acquired from Pfizer
in 2012 and has been shown in a number of phase 1 studies to be safe.
Later-stage studies will dig into
whether or not the drug is truly effective. While it’s currently being directed at lung and ovarian cancer, as
well as mesothelioma, it’s not out of
the question that Verastem will expand its study of VS-6063 to include
pancreatic cancer in the future, especially following the University of
Utah’s encouraging findings.
Three other unique pathways to
fighting pancreatic cancer that could
yield positive results include hypoxiatargeted drugs, cancer immunotherapies, and cancer stem cell-focused
drugs.
(Source: Motley Fool)
Unusually thin and strong fibers of
British spider attract researchers
Researchers from Oxford University
are trying to uncover another secret
of nature. Their focus is a common
British spider Uloborus plumipes, also
known as ‘garden center spider’ or
‘feather-legged lace weaver’, which
can be frequently spotted in garden
centers. The creature is helping the
researchers to understand the technique of strengthening synthetic ﬁbers. Most spiders produce silk for their
web, which is sticky and several micrometers thick. However, ﬁlaments
formed by Uloborus plumipes have
thickness of just a few nanometers.
The study has been published in the
journal Biology Letters.
To understand the production
of this unusual silk, the researchers
closely examined the spider. These
spiders do not use glue on the threads
for capturing their prey. Their dry capture threads, composed of thousands
of nano-scale ﬁbers, are capable of
generating electric charges. To have a
better understanding about the technique, the researchers collected adult,
female Uloborus spiders from Hampshire, UK garden centers. While the
spiders were creating web, their photos and videos were taken and their
silk generating organs were examined
with the aid of three diﬀerent microscopy techniques.
The cribellum was found to be the
most interesting part which included
one or two plates densely covered in
small silk nozzles. Till the year 1991,
only 180 types of spiders having cri-
bellum were known. Dr. Katrin Kronenberger of Oxford University’s Department of Zoology said “Uloborus
has unique cribellar glands, amongst
the smallest silk glands of any spider,
and it’s these that yield the ultra-ﬁne
‘catching wool’ of its prey capture
thread. The raw material, silk dope, is
funneled through exceptionally narrow and long ducts into tiny spinning
nozzles or spigots. Importantly, the
silk seems to form only just before it
emerges at the uniquely-shaped spigots of this spider.”
Researchers explained that Uloborus has a cribellum having thousands of silk producing units. In these
units the ducts are 500 nanometers
long and spigots are 50 nanometers
in length. Vollrath, also of Oxford’s
Department of Zoology, stated “The
swathe of gossamer, made of thousands of ﬁlaments, emerging from
these spigots is actively combed
out by the spider onto the capture
thread’s core ﬁbers using specialist
hairs on its hind legs. This combing
and hackling – violently pulling the
thread – charges the ﬁbers and the
electrostatic interaction of this combination spinning process leads to
regularly spaced, wool-like ‘puﬀs’
covering the capture threads. The
extreme thinness of each ﬁlament,
in addition to the charges applied
during spinning, provides Van der
Waals adhesion. And this makes
these puﬀs immensely sticky.”
(Source: Daily Science Journal)
h t t p : / / w w w . t e h r a n t i m e s . c o m / s p o r t s
FEBRUARY 2, 2015
S
P
O
R
T
S
Esmaeilpour and Mohammadian claim
silver medals in at Paris Grand Prix
Masoud Esmaeilpour and Moham-
S p o r t D e s k mad Hossein Mohammadian from
Iran won the silver medals on the opening day of the Paris
Grand Prix international wrestling tournament on Sunday.
Esmaeilpour lost to Magomed Muslimov from
Azerbaijan 6-3 in the 65kg ﬁnal bout.
Mohammad Hossein Mohammadian also
claimed a silver medal being beaten by Sharif Sharifov also from Azerbaijan 6-4 in the 97kg ﬁnal match.
In the 74kg, Mohammad Maktabdar snatched
a bronze medal by defeating Krystian Brzozowski
3-0 in the 74kg weight category.
Results – Medal Finals
Freestyle
57kg
Gold – Tony RAMOS (USA) df. Adama DIATTA
(SEN), 4-0
Bronze – John PINEDA (CAN) df. Youssup DELIEV (FRA) by TF, 10-0 (2:18)
Bronze – Yashar ALIYEV (AZE) df. Mirjalal
HASANZADE (AZE), 6-2
65kg
Gold – Magomed MUSLIMOV (AZE) df. Masoud ESMAEILPOUR (IRI), 6-3
Bronze –Haji ALIEV (AZE) df. Istvan NEMETH
(HUN) by TF, 12-2, 3:20
Bronze – Brent METCALF (USA) df. YEERLANBIEKE Katai (CHN), 8-0
74kg
Gold – Rashid KURBANOV (UZB) df. Osman
ISAKOV (RUS) by forfeit, 5:19 (10-2)
Bronze – Mohammad MAKTABDAR (IRI) df.
Krystian BRZOZOWSKI (POL), 3-0
Bronze – Zelimkhan KHADJIEV (FRA) df. Giorgi
TIGISHVILI (GEO) by fall, 4:39 (9-0)
97kg
Gold – Sharif SHARIFOV (AZE) df. Mohammad
Hossein MOHAMMADIAN (IRI), 6-4
Bronze – Magomed MUSAEV (KGZ) df. Manjot
SANDU (CAN), 8-4
Bronze – Pavlo OLIYNIK (UKR) df. CUI Xiaocheng (CHN) by TF, 10-0, 4:35
Iranian skier killed in Darbandsar avalanche
TEHRAN – Iranian
S p o r t D e s k skier Ali Mousavi
was killed in an avalanche in Darbandsar ski resort on Saturday.
The rescuers found two skiers and
one of them was taken to the hospital
immediately but died of asphyxiation.
The 21-year-old victim was part of a
group of three, according to teamiran.
net.
Darbandsar is located in the Alborz
mountain range, which is the enor-
mous mountain range lying to the
north of the capital, Tehran and is one
of the four ski resorts in the mountain
range.
Mahdavikia urges Iran Football Federation to renew Queiroz’s contract
Iran football legend Mehdi
S p o r t D e s k Mahdavikia believes that the
country’s federation should not hesitate to extend Carlos Queiroz’s contract.
“Queiroz knows everything about Iran’s football and I think he is the best man to coach Team
Iran. Football federation officials should not
waste any time to extend his contract. The 2018
World Cup qualifications will start in a couple of
month and we have to be prepared for the competition,” Mahdavikia told reporters.
Iran coach Carlos Queiroz stated in a TV interview that if nothing changes he will definitely
resigns.
Iran is struggling to hold training camps
and organizing friendly matches due to lack
of budget in the football federation and Queiroz believes that he can’t continue with this
conditions.
Iran failed to advance to the semi-final under
tutelage of the Portuguese coach, being beaten
by Iraq 7-6 on penalties.
Drogba: I’ll be at Chelsea
next season
Chelsea striker Didier Drogba says he will
remain at the club next season, despite
his current deal expiring in the summer.
The 36-year-old returned to Stamford
Bridge in July after stints with Shanghai
Shenhua and Galatasaray, signing a oneyear contract with the Blues.
Drogba has made 27 appearances,
many as a substitue, in all competitions for Jose Mourinho’s men this
season and says he is happy to continue in west London.
"My project for next year will be on
a pitch with Chelsea," he told Telefoot.
Drogba was left out of Chelsea’s
starting line-up for the clash with
Manchester City on Saturday, despite
Diego Costa’s suspension, featuring
only as a late substitute as the Blues
drew with Manuel Pellegrini's men.
Loic Remy was preferred to the Ivorian
and scored the opening goal of the game,
but Drogba says he has no problems with
the decision to start him on the bench.
"He played a great game against City.
That shows that he is resourceful," he added.
"We’ve showed that we can present a strong oﬀensive force despite
the absentees.
"It's obvious that I would like to
play, but I’m not miserable."
(Source: Goal)
Wolfsburg: No agreement with
Chelsea yet for Schurrle
Wolfsburg have admitted that negotiations to sign Chelsea winger
Andre Schurrle have stalled.
With the Blues having agreed to
meet the €35 million buy-out clause for
Fiorentina winger Juan Cuadrado, coach
Jose Mourinho is willing to allow Schurrle leave for the Volkswagen Arena.
However, Wolfsburg have now
revealed that Chelsea have not accepted their bid for Schurrle and
have warned Jose Mourinho's men
that time is running out to complete a deal, with the winter window set to close on Monday.
"There is no agreement at the
moment," sporting director Klaus
Allofs told Wolfsburger Nachrichten. "The clock is running out.
Our options are getting less hour
by hour.
“It depends on money. We still
would like to sign him."
Schurrle, who was a part of
the Germany squad that won last
year's World Cup in Brazil, joined
Chelsea from Bayer Leverkusen
for €21 million in the summer of
2013, but the versatile attacker has
failed to nail down a regular berth
in Mourinho's starting line-up.
(Source: Soccerway)
Djokovic reigns supreme at Australian Open
(Reuters) - Novak Djokovic may have
garnered a reputation as the crown
prince of pranksters in tennis but on Sunday he ﬁrmly established him as the king
of Melbourne's blue hardcourts with his
ﬁfth Australian Open title.
The 27-year-old Serb clinched his
fourth title in the past ﬁve years, and
eighth grand slam overall, with the
7-6(5) 6-7(4) 6-3 6-0 victory over Andy
Murray, a loss for the Briton that was
his fourth in as many Melbourne ﬁnals.
Three of those have been at the
hands of Djokovic, while he also lost to
Roger Federer in 2010.
Since Djokovic won his ﬁrst grand
slam title in 2008 he has compiled a
47-3 record in Melbourne. His reign
means he has the record for most Australian Open titles in the Open era, one
behind Australia's Roy Emerson who
dominated in the 1960s.
"I'm so privileged and grateful to be
standing here as a champion for the
ﬁfth time," Djokovic said after Emerson presented him with the trophy.
"To be in the elite group of players,
with Roy Emerson as well. It is an honor playing in front of you."
Despite Murray's poor record
against the Serb -- he had lost seven
of their past eight encounters -- he had
arguably entered the ﬁnal as a slight
favorite.
TENSE MATCH
Fittingly, Murray and Djokovic were
involved in a tense boxing match on
Sunday, examining each other for
any weakness, landing a body blow,
taking one themselves, or counter
punching as they scrambled around
trying to stay alive.
Several times, Murray had a limping and puffing Djokovic -- the Serb
having turned his ankle during the
match and suffered from a virus before the tournament - wobbling and
down on one knee, ready to be finnished off and he knew it.
By the end of the third set, after Djokokovic had found himself 2-0 down and
nd
then won six of the next seven games,
es,
Murray's frustrations boiled over as he
slammed his racquet into the ground,
d,
causing the crowd to turn on him.
The ﬁght appeared gone from Mururray and when Djokovic jumped to a 3-0
-0
lead in the fourth, he buried his head
beneath a towel, and then metaphorically threw it in to meekly surrender.
"I would like congratulate Novak on
n
his ﬁfth Australian Open," Murray said.
d.
"Fantastic, an incredible record, and
d
thoroughly deserved.
"It has been probably my most con-sistent grand slam throughout my ca-
reer and I just haven't been able to win.
"I did not quite make it tonight, a bit
closer than
I was a few months
ago, and
I will try to come
back next
year, and hopefully have
a slightly diﬀerent
outcome
in
the ﬁnal."
INTERNATIONAL DAILY
9
TENNIS
Iran’s Andranik Teymourian
in Asian Cup dream team
Goalkeeper: Mat Ryan
The Australian custodian has had a terrific time of it
in Europe since moving to Belgium's Club Brugge, but
he came into this tournament carrying some nagging
doubts at international level.
The World Cup seemed, at times, to be an overwhelming stage for Ryan, and while he did not commit any
blooper-tape mistakes, he certainly was not as assured as
he might have been, particularly in the match against The
Netherlands, when he failed to get down to a low Mephis
Depay shot, which proved the winning goal for the Dutch.
Defender: Zhang Linpeng
Spare a thought for China who topped their group
with three wins only to face hosts Australia in the second round. It signalled their end and that of their aggressive defender Zhang Linpeng, who stood out in his
unfamiliar role as a central defender.
A right-back by trade, Linpeng displayed his diverse skill
range that makes him the best Chinese Super League player in
the opinion of Guangzhou Evergrande coach Marcello Lippi.
Defender: Kim Young-gwon
Considered the best young defender in the country a few
years ago, some errors in big games had aﬀected his stock
and he had to win his way back into the side. Came in for the
second game of this tournament and hasn't looked back.
Kwak Tae-hwi joined him in the third game and they've
been inseparable since.
Defender: Trent Sainsbury
Defenders almost never win individual awards and
that is a shame for Trent Sainsbury, who has played
every minute for Australia and been, arguably, the Socceroos' most consistent performer.
The youngster is developing into one of the players who
will make up the spine of the national team for the better
part of the next decade. His distribution is a standout feature
but so too are his tackles, aerial duels and positioning.
Defender: Vitaly Denisov
The 27-year-old Uzbek wing-back is one of a number
of players who could have been chosen in this role. Normally the left-back position is a difficult one to fill, but
this Asian Cup has been characterised by a number of
good operators in the wide defensive area.
Defensive midfielder: Andranik Teymourian
One of the disappointments of the 2015 Asian Cup
was that Iran's superb midﬁelder was limited to only four
games on Australian soil.
It is fair to say that Iran weren't the most entertaining team
but at the heart of their industrious and disciplined game was
this veteran midﬁelder. Teymourian was not only their defensive and tactical linchpin but emerged as the central cog in the
counter-attacking style of play Iran displayed in the tournament.
Consistent with set pieces, his three assists in four
games is a testament to his credentials in attack that
would have otherwise been overshadowed by his crunching tackles and reading of the game.
Midfielder: Ki Sung-yueng
The South Korean skipper has plenty of links with Australia, the country where he got much of his early football
education, having been schooled at Brisbane's John Paul
College for four years as a teenager.
Calm and cool on the ball, the Swansea City midﬁelder's
metronomic eﬃciency in recycling and retaining possession makes him a key part of Uli Stielike's side.
Ki provides balance and intelligence and links the play between defence and attack, providing passes for the likes of
Son Heung-min to create dangerous opportunities near goal.
Midfielder: Ali Mabkhout
All eyes were on the fuzzy-haired creator Omar Abdulrahman and perhaps the lack of attention allowed Ali
Mabkhout to shine.
The United Arab Emirates winger was equally as
impressive as his counterpart and his five goal-haul
highlights that. His finishing will be what Australians
remember him for but his pace, movement and positioning brought about his chances.
Midfielder: Massimo Luongo
The ﬁnd of the tournament for the Socceroos, the
22-year-old from England's third tier has played like a footballer capable of reaching higher levels in the near future.
The former Tottenham youngster, who moved to
Swindon to get regular game time after failing to break
through at White Hart Lane, has been a revelation in the
centre of the park for Australia.
Energetic, dynamic, speedy and skilful, Luongo shapes
as a classic box-to-box midﬁelder who is also capable of
weighing in with a goal when needed – as he did in Australia's opening game against Kuwait.
Midfielder: Omar Abdulrahman
A certainty for the Golden Ball, Abdulrahman has
turned this Asian Cup into his own personal plaything.
There's not one match he hasn't wielded enormous
influence over, with Australian crowds wowed at his
seemingly limitless range of skills.
Went into the tournament as the Middle East's most
promising player but comes out of it competing with
Keisuke Honda and Son Heung-min for the title of Asia's
best player. Big clubs in Europe will be sorely tempted
to test Al-Ain's resolve with a huge bid, probably in the
range of $15million to $20 million.
Striker: Tim Cahill
Just when you thought Cahill couldn't deliver anything
more for the Socceroos, he's taken it up another notch this
tournament. His game time has been monitored carefully
by Ange Postecoglou and that's allowed him to play in each
match without looking tired — quite a feat for a 35-year-old.
His goal against Kuwait turned the momentum in Australia's favour on the opening night and when his nation needed
a solution to break down China, he scored two of his ﬁnest
goals in the green and gold. Says he won't retire after the
Asian Cup and given how important he still is, who can blame
him? If Tony Abbott wants a way to restore his popularity with
a local knighthood, Sir Tim wouldn't get many objections.
10
I NTE R NATI O NAL DAI LY
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
S O C I E T Y
FEBRUARY 2, 2015
h t t p : / / w w w . t e h r a n t i m e s . c o m / s o c i e t y
Cigarettes kill 50k Iranians each
year: health official
Hookah display to be banned soon
TEHRAN — Irani-
S o c i a l D e s k an Deputy Health
Where words are restrained, the eyes often talk a great
deal.
Samuel Richardson
LEARN ENGLISH
Training Inexperienced
Employees
Kazuko: I really appreciate you helping with the
training of the newbies. I couldn’t have done it without you.
Martin: Don’t mention it. I remember when I was
still wet behind the ears and the veterans in the company gave me the benefit of their time and expertise.
They propped me up until I could stand on my own
two feet.
Kazuko: I can’t imagine you as a novice. Everybody
here thinks of you as the cornerstone of the institution.
Martin: Well, that may be, but you should have seen
me in the early years. I was naive and reckless. I may
be more adept at my job now, but I felt inept for years.
Kazuko: I saw you talking with some of the new recruits. What advice did you give them?
Martin: I gave them the same advice that an old
hand gave me when I first started: Take every piece of
advice you get with a grain of salt!
(Source: eslpod.com)
Words & Phrases
Newbie: an inexperienced newcomer to a particular
activity.
wet behind the ears: lacking experience; immature.
Veteran: a person who has had long experience in a
particular field.
Expertise: expert skill or knowledge in a particular
field
prop someone up: Support or assist someone or
something that would otherwise fail or decline.
stand on one’s (own) two feet: to act in an independent and forthright manner.
novice: a person new to and inexperienced in a job
or situation.
cornerstone: something of great importance that
everything else depends on.
naive: (of a person or action) showing a lack of experience, wisdom, or judgment.
reckless: not showing proper concern about the
possible bad results of your actions.
adept: a highly skilled or well-trained person.
inept: lacking skill or ability.
recruit: a new member of an organization, especially the army.
old hand: someone who is experienced at doing
something.
take something with a grain of salt: to consider
something to be not completely true or right.
WORD
OF DAY
vertiginous
\ver-TIJ-uh-nus\
(adjective)
1 a : characterized by or suﬀering from vertigo or dizziness
b : inclined to frequent and often pointless change :
inconstant
2 : causing or tending to cause dizziness
3 : marked by turning
As a window washer for some of the city’s tallest skyscrapers, Victor had to quickly master working at vertiginous heights.
“The cheapest seat in the house—a perch in the vertiginous reaches of the upper balcony—would set me
back $59.” — Deanna Isaacs, Chicago Reader, December
3, 2014
(Source: merriam-webster.com)
DID YOU KNOW
Did you know
the Taj Mahal
in India is
made entirely
out of marble?
Minister Ali Akbar Sayyari said on Sunday that each year 50,000 Iranians die
by smoking related causes, IRNA reported.
5.3 million people are presently
smoking cigarettes in Iran, Sayyari told
a press conference.
Sayyari added that each year smoking cigarettes takes the lives of six million people in the world out of which
600,000 are secondhand smokers.
Cigarette smoking shortens one’s
lifespan by 20 to 30 years, he said,
adding that it increases the risk of lung
cancer by 30 times and stroke by 2-4
times.
The deputy health minister blamed
cigarettes for 90 percent of lung cancer in men and 80 percent in women.
He also said that one of the main
strategies to discourage smoking is to
raise cigarette prices through imposing higher levy on its retail prices.
Smoking can be reduced by eight
percent, if an additional 10 percent tax
is levied on cigarettes, while currently
sales tax on retail cigarettes is 11 percent in Iran, he explained.
He also said that smoking a hookah equals to 40 to 100 fags of cigarette, while some people mistakenly
believe that hookahs are harmless
since the smoke passes through wa-
ter.
In campaign against the tobacco
smoking, besides increasing the
cigarette prices more tobacco reha-
bilitation centers are needed in the
country, Sayyari added.
At the same conference, Behzad
Valizadeh, a senior official at Iran’s
Tobacco Control Headquarters, said
that display of hookahs and tobacco
products behind shop windows will
soon be banned.
Avalanche takes life of snow skier in Darbandsar
TEHRAN — An oﬃcial at the Teh-
S o c i a l D e s k ran emergency center on Sunday
reported the death of a male snow skier in Darbandsar, a ski piste located 60 kilometers in northeast of
Tehran.
Hassan Abbasi, in an interview with IRNA, said
that when the emergency center received a call re-
garding an eruption of an avalanche in Darbandsar
ski resort, the rescuers quickly deployed two ambulances to the scene.
Abbasi added that a total of three skiers were
trapped in the avalanche out of which two were salvaged by the rescue team, however the other skier,
the 21-year-old young male, lost his life after being
buried under the avalanche for two hours.
In a separate incident on Friday, a climbing team
with 12 members was planning to conquer Saka peak
in Dasht-e Havij region in Lavasan when they got hit
by a huge avalanche that took the life of one of them.
Dasht-e Havij is also located in northeast of
Tehran.
Record number of teachers disciplined for corporal punishment
A record high number of teachers were disciplined for
using corporal punishment on their students in Japan
in ﬁscal 2013, according to a survey by the Ministry of
Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology.
The survey said 3,953 teachers were suspended or
ﬁred for hitting 8,880 students at 2,848 schools, TBS
reported Saturday. It was the highest number ever
recorded.
Furthermore, results also showed that the number of teachers suspended or ﬁred for having
screamed inappropriate and or hurtful words at their
pupils was 205, while 20 teachers were punished for
sexual oﬀenses, the ministry said.
The survey was prompted by an incident in December of 2012, when a student of the Osaka Municipal Sakuramiya High School committed suicide after
having repeatedly received corporal punishment at
the hands of his teachers.
Commenting on the survey results, Education
Minister Hakubun Shimomura told a news conference: “Such things should not be permitted in our
country and we should strive to teach our children
without the use of violence.”
(Source: Japan Today)
UK witnesses ‘dramatic’ jump in road fatalities after slashing traffic cop jobs – report
Road deaths have continued to surge for a third
consecutive quarter, new ﬁgures are anticipated to
show, after a signiﬁcant number of traﬃc patrols
have been eliminated from Britain’s road system.
The Department for Transport on Thursday is expected to conﬁrm an alarming trend among those
killed or seriously injured (KSI) in automobile accidents. In the ﬁrst six months of 2014, the percentage
of KSIs had surged 4 percent, to 24,580, while the latest quarterly results are expected to take that ﬁgure
even higher, the Independent reported.
UK transport minister Robert Goodwill warned
a parliamentary road safety conference last week
to prepare for “bad news” ahead of Thursday’s announcement, telling attendees to expect a “rise” in
road fatalities.
Road safety activists blame the surge in road
deaths on austerity measures that have cut road police numbers by 12 percent across the country, with
some regions losing up to 40 percent of their trafﬁc police force, according to road safety watchdog
Brake.
The steep cuts in police numbers follow a ﬁve-year
decline in police budgets as the government adheres
to austerity measures.
Jayne Willetts, Vice Chair of the Constables Central Committee, said oﬃcers are “absolutely frustrated” by the increase in road deaths, explaining that
the numbers could be reduced if there were “more
oﬃcers in marked cars acting as a deterrent,” she
told The Independent.
Willetts suggested that the police may be relying
too much on technology to solve particular road issues, like drink driving.
“We welcome hi-tech developments…but the
increasing reliance on automated technology and
cameras can’t compensate for the decline in traﬃc
police, who are the most eﬀective way of combating dangerous drivers, drink drivers and people using
mobile phones while driving.”
Meanwhile, police departments from around
the country have released independent ﬁgures that
show a marked rise in road deaths in 2014, including
in the Thames Valley region – up 36 percent, to 78; in
Lincolnshire – up 14 percent, to 40; and in Northern
Ireland – up 38 percent, to 79 deaths.
(Source: RT)
6 tools for discovering and fulfilling your life’s purpose
Here are six ways to gain greater clarity regarding
your life’s purpose:
Establish a connection with the core intelligence of your being
All the intelligence of the universe resides within
you. Open a dialogue with that intelligence and ask it
to reveal your life purpose. Be open to the many avenues through which those answers can come—internally, externally, through friends, acquaintances,
circumstances, and synchronicities.
Use meditation and introspection
Practice meditation to create greater inner clarity and awareness. Use introspection to discover
yourself more fully. Use both as ways to dialogue
with your core being. If you are new to meditation
or want to deepen your practice, there are Chopra
Center-certiﬁed instructors throughout the world
who are passionate about sharing the gifts of meditation with others.
Aﬃrm your unlimited potential
Give yourself daily reminders that your true nature
is pure, unlimited potential. You may beneﬁt from
creating aﬃrmations that you write out and post in
places where you will see them every day—such as a
bathroom mirror or your car dashboard. Some people use apps that they can program to send themselves positive, personalized messages throughout
the day. Get creative in aﬃrming your unlimited potential. As you do, you will naturally release fearful
thoughts and self-imposed limitation, opening the
way to identifying and living your life’s purpose.
Follow your bliss
Find the things you are most passionate about.
Identify those things and activities that are most joy-
ful, meaningful, and interesting for you. These provide good clues to where your life’s purpose lies.
Use relationships as messengers from your
core intelligence
Pay attention to what others are saying to you
regarding your talents, skills, and gifts, especially if
you hear similar things from multiple people. Relationships are one of the primary ways our core intelligence communicates with us.
Set your intentions and pay attention to synchronicities
Use intentions to either create greater clarity about
your purpose or to help achieve your purpose. Then
pay close attention to the various synchronicities that
play out in your life. Interpret these as responses to
your intentions and then act on them accordingly.
(Source: chopra.com)
h t t p : / / w w w . t e h r a n t i m e s . c o m / i n t e r n a t i o n a l
Contd. from P. 1
So while the French, Russian and
Chinese revolutions were marked
by a radical departure from their respective historical pasts, the Islamic
Revolution in Iran was distinguished
by a culmination of four centuries
of inseparable aﬃliation between
Iranians and Shi’a Islam. Western
leaders have repeatedly failed to
comprehend the depth of this historical tie, which one right wing pundit
described dismissively as “a brilliant
amalgamation of nationalism and religious fervor.”
Those leaders in America with
any semblance of sanity remaining
would do well to reﬂect on the signiﬁcance of the Islamic Revolution
in Iran as the country celebrates the
36th anniversary, particularly at a
time when the reactionary Republican regime seems obsessed with
scuttling any possibility of a permanent agreement with Iran on its
peaceful nuclear energy program.
Anyone who attempts to derail a nuclear agreement between Iran and
the P5+1 group of countries—the
U.S., France, Britain, Russia, China
and Germany — “should be isolated by the international community,
even if it is the U.S. Congress,” Iran’s
Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad
Zarif stated emphatically. Nevertheless, the Republican reactionaries remain undaunted.
Among the loudest voices in Congress launching verbal volleys against
Iran is the ranking Democrat on the
U.S. senate foreign relations committee, Senator Robert Menendez from
New Jersey. In a recent session, upon
hearing from U.S. Deputy Secretary of
State Anthony Blinken who testiﬁed
against imposing additional sanctions
upon Iran, Menendez quipped, “The
more I hear from the [Obama] Administration and its quotes, the more
it sounds like talking points that come
straight out of Tehran.” Would that
only be true, but regrettably, such
prattle appears eﬀective in putting the
proponents of diplomacy with Iran on
the defensive.
Considering that the U.S. engineered the CIA coup restoring dictator
Mohammed Reza Pahlavi in 1953, has
engaged in acts of war against Iran by
economic sanctions since 1979, supported Saddam with weapons and
intelligence in his murderous 8-yearlong war that by the most conservative estimates killed 213,000 Iranians,
and downed a civilian Iranian airliner
killing all 290 passengers on board,
it is remarkable, and a credit to Iran’s
principled leaders, that Tehran would
even consent to negotiate with the
Washington warmongers. Yet in spite
of these historical incitements by the
U.S., Menendez has accused Iran of
inﬂammatory actions. “Iran is clearly
taking steps that can only be interpreted as provocative,” he insisted, as
his collaborator, house speaker John
Boehner, has taken the incendiary
step of inviting the Iranophobic Zionist
leader Benjamin Netanyahu to address
a joint session of the U.S. Congress on
Iran.
In an age of rampant Iranophobia,
WORLD IN FOCUS
FEBRUARY 2, 2015
36 Years of Victory: Reflections
on the Islamic Revolution in Iran
I suppose I could be called an Iranophile, for after visiting Iran with my
wife several years ago I fell in love
with the country and the people.
However, most U.S. leaders, unlike
me, have not even bothered to visit
the country that they so vehemently
vilify. One exception is former Kansas Congressman Jim Slattery, who,
after a recent visit to Iran noted,
“Very few American policy-makers
have ever been to Iran and even fewer know key leaders in the Islamic
Republic.” Indeed, Slattery is the
ﬁrst former U.S. Congressman to visit Iran since the victory of the Islamic
Revolution. Conﬁrming my own experiences in visiting the Islamic Republic, Slattery remarked, “I walked
the streets of Tehran freely without
fear. ... The Iranians I encountered
were friendly and interested in the
United States.”
Iran’s successes in the wake of
the 1979 Islamic Revolution are numerous and can be seen in all social,
political, military and technological
areas. Iran leads the world in scientiﬁc output, which is now at a rate
eleven times the global average.
For the beneﬁt of the society as a
whole, Iran’s government has invested oil revenues in the construction of schools, hospitals, highways,
railroads, airports, power plants and
other needed facilities. In addition,
governmental initiatives in the areas
of healthcare, education and social
welfare have not only caused a sizeable increase in the middle class, but
also transformed the country into a
strong regional power.
Iran has also achieved impressive
economic gains since the victory of
the Islamic Revolution despite the
eight-year imposed war, economic
sanctions and diplomatic isolation by
the west, even managing to pay oﬀ
loans from U.S. banks within the ﬁrst
two years of its existence. The increasingly severe U.S.-imposed regimen of economic sanctions forced
the ﬂedgling Islamic Republic to
pursue economic policies of self-sufﬁciency and practice pragmatic diplomacy. This conﬂuence of social,
economic and political forces over
time have forged Iran into a powerful nation and a key regional player
that cannot be ignored diplomatically or militarily.
Iran has advanced dramatically in
the area of healthcare since the time
of the Islamic Revolution in 1979 and,
as a result, not only has life expectancy risen from 55 to over 71, but
also infant mortality has fallen over
70 percent. Iran’s health care system, known as Integrated Primary
Health Care (IPHC), has been so successful, that doctors in the American
state of Mississippi, the state with
the highest poverty rates and poorest healthcare outcomes in the U.S.,
looked to Iran for help in designing a
cost-eﬀective healthcare system.
Iran has also done a better job of
expanding the non-oil sector than
neighboring petroleum exporting
countries. In the face of the U.S.-imposed economic sanctions, Iran has
managed to become self-suﬃcient,
or nearly so, in a number of critical industries such as steel, copper, paper
and cement. Iran also produces a
wide range of industrial equipment,
including pumps, compressors, piping and related components for its
petrochemical industries, as well
as electronic equipment, pharmaceuticals and telecommunications
devices. With the largest stocks of
industrial robots in the region, Iran
has also become an exporter of automobiles.
Most important, and perhaps
most impressive, is the striking
reduction in poverty that the government of Iran has achieved by
holding fast to the principles of
the Islamic Revolution. According
to data from the World Bank, less
than 2 percent of Iranians are living in poverty, a lower percentage
than most other large-population
middle income countries, including
Brazil, China, Egypt, India, Mexico,
Pakistan, South Africa, Turkey and
Venezuela.
Finally, there is the fact that Iranian women are far ahead of their
counterparts in other Persian Gulf
nations socially, politically, educationally and health-wise. Governmental policies, again stemming
from the principles of the Islamic
Revolution, support women by
granting them six months paid
maternity leave plus an extra hour
of paid leave per day for eighteen
months, maternity benefits that
exceed International Labor Organization standards not to mention
those in the U.S. and other western
countries. As a footnote of pride,
the first two Muslim women to
climb Mount Everest are from Iran.
And, of course, the brilliant Iranian
mathematician Maryam Mirzakhani
is the first woman to win the prestigious Fields Medal in 2014.
These positive gains in economic
and social development in Iran after
the victory of the Islamic Revolution
stemmed from maintaining tawhid,
the strong uniﬁcation of religion, Most important,
daily life and gov- and perhaps
ernment, and rig- most impressive,
orously shunning
the secular con- is the striking
cepts of the west. reduction in
Iran’s Islamic government has done poverty that
much more in alle- the government
viating poverty, ex- of Iran has
panding education
and providing ac- achieved by
cess to healthcare holding fast to
than the deposed
shah’s
regime the principles
ever did, despite of the Islamic
full U.S. backing. Revolution.
These accomplishments ﬂy in the face of the perpetual
U.S.-promulgated propaganda that
continually characterizes Iran as a
country poised on the precipice of
another revolution.
With the Islamic Revolution now
entering its 37th year of victory,
many in the west have spent their
careers analyzing the shah’s downfall. “A privately hated regime may
enjoy widespread public support
because of people’s reluctance to
take the lead in publicizing their
opposition. The regime may, therefore, seem unshakeable, even if its
support would crumble at the most
minor shock,” explained economist
Timur Kuran with
simple clarity. The In an age
same words could of rampant
apply to the United States, which at Iranophobia, I
present also seems suppose I could
unshakeable. The be called an
fatal minor shock
in
Washington’s Iranophile, for
case could be a after visiting Iran
failure to conclude
successfully
the with my wife
negotiations with several years
Iran.
ago I fell in love
Ellie
Geranmayeh, a policy with the country
fellow at the Eu- and the people.
ropean
Council
on Foreign Relations, has warned,
“[T]he United States must not allow a myopic and obstructionist
Congress to derail a deal that is in
Washington’s long-term interest
and strengthens global security.”
Washington would be well advised
to consider that unless it changes
its obstructionist approach to Iran, it
may suﬀer the same fate as the shah
it once so staunchly supported.
Could Tsipras’ win upset balance of power in Europe?
Contd. from P. 7
In the Berlin Chancellery, anxiety is at a minimum.
“The Greeks now have to tell us exactly what they
want,” said one Chancellery source. The source added that they are open to a dialogue about interest
rates on the €240 billion aid package already paid out
and on the amount of time allotted to Athens to repay the loans.
‘Exit by accident’?
A diﬀerent scenario is causing the chancellor
more acute concerns. Tsipras has proven himself as
a demagogue, but he has little practical political experience -- to the point that Merkel’s team is worried
that he could inadvertently maneuver Greece out of
the euro zone. In Berlin, such a scenario is referred
to as “exit by accident.”
It is already clear that Greece would be unable to
meet its liquidity needs on the open market. “Greece
would not yet be able to establish complete and regular access to international capital markets at acceptable conditions,” reads an internal assessment
compiled by the German Finance Ministry. “The
country continues to be sensitive to changing market conditions and investor moods.”
Yet the EU aid program expires on Feb. 28, with
just €1.8 billion left to be paid out. Tsipras himself
would have to apply for an extension, which would
be humiliation following the campaign he just ran.
Should he not do so, however, the country would
be faced with a disorderly insolvency. Furthermore,
partner countries would be unable to give him more
money from the emergency backstop fund because
without a formal request for aid, his departure
would be seen as being unilateral. Not long later,
Tsipras would run out of money and be unable to pay
pensions or civil servant salaries. He would also be
unable to service the €20 billion in debt that Greece
currently has with the ECB, meaning the European
Central Bank would be forced to stop lending Athens
money. The Grexit would be complete.
A Game of Chicken
Merkel doesn’t want things to get that far.
She’s prepared to grant the Greeks a further aid
program, even if it requires approval from the Bundestag. However, the €10 billion that was being
considered only weeks ago will not suffice. Berlin
government experts believe Greece will require
up to €20 billion considering that tax revenues are
plummeting and privatizations haven’t happened.
The money would have to come from the ESM -no one else would be prepared to lend the country
money. The precondition for the new aid is that
Tsipras must accept the reform requirements and
subject the country to the supervision of the hated troika. That, though, seems unlikely. On Friday,
new Greek Finance Minister Gianis Varoufakis said
Athens would no longer work with the troika. The
game of chicken has begun.
“The last two weeks weren’t good ones for us,”
concedes one high-ranking government official in
Berlin. An inexperienced but very self-confident
anti-Merkel government is now steering the ship
in Greece. The European Central Bank made the
decision to purchase over a trillion euros in government bonds and other assets in the euro zone
against Germany’s will. And now, EU Commission
President Jean-Claude Juncker, with the help of
France and Italy, is seeking to loosen the euro
Stability and Growth Pact. “Could it be that we’re
losing control right now?” asks one senior government official.
Perhaps. The Syriza election victory sends a
message to the rest of Europe. It arouses hope in
movements with similar political platforms in many
European countries, including the Front National in
France and Podemos in Spain.
In Portugal, the leftists parties -- the Socialist PS,
the communist PC and the Marxist Bloco de Esquerda BE -- all celebrated Syriza’s election victory. Many
there hope it will alter the discourse in Europe and
that proposals for a debt conference for the Southern European countries and for reconstruction plans
for those countries worst hit by the debt crisis will be
debated in Brussels.
At the same time, Tsipras’ success could also
strengthen the European leaders who hope to
change current EU policies, even if they aren’t interested in fulﬁlling Syriza’s demands for a debt
cut. Leading the pack are French President Hollande
and Italian Prime Minister Renzi. Indeed, during Hollande’s 2011 campaign, he at times sounded a lot like
Tsipras. He said he wanted to “reorient Europe” and
to liberate the people of Europe from “austerity”.
(Source: Spiegel.de)
I N T E R NAT I O NALDAI LY
11
JUMP
Iran won’t give in U.S.
pressure, Larijani says
Contd. from P. 1
“The U.S. president should know that the Iranian nation will not surrender and with such a wrong policy in
the negotiations, he should be held accountable for the
(possible) failure of the talks.”
The U.S. Senate Republicans are seeking to put an Iran
sanctions bill up for an immediate vote despite that fact
that Iran and the 5+1 group (Russia, China, the United
States, Britain, France, and Germany) are seeking ways
to strike a permanent nuclear deal.
Tehran has said imposing new sanctions runs counter
to the Joint Plan of Action, an interim accord signed in
Geneva in November 2013.
The Iranian parliament has unambiguously threatened
that it will force the government to expedite nuclear activities, including enriching uranium to higher purity usable in powering medical research reactors and ships.
‘UK territory used for CIA
interrogation, torture’
Contd. from P. 1
The report, which was published in December, revealed that U.S. intelligence oﬃcers had engaged in acts
of torture on foreign detainees after 9/11, including “enhanced interrogation techniques” such as rectal feeding,
sleep deprivation, and threatening family members.
(Source: RT)
U.S. drone strike kills
four in south Yemen
Contd. from P. 1
The United States acknowledges using drones as part
of its targeted killing campaign in Muslim countries to
eliminate what it regards as militants. However, it does
not comment publicly on individual cases of the aerial
bombing campaign.
The U.S. administration claims that the drones target
al-Qaeda militants, but local sources say civilians have
been the main victims of the airstrikes.
The U.S. drone strikes in Yemen have led to the death
of many civilians over the past few years in a blatant violation of international law, according to Human Rights
Watch.
(Source: Press TV)
Ukraine death toll mounts
after talks collapse
At least 19 soldiers and civilians were killed in clashes
across eastern Ukraine as ﬁerce ﬁghting raged between
government forces and rebels following the collapse of
ceaseﬁre talks.
Ukraine’s military said on Sunday that 13 soldiers had
died and 20 were wounded over the past 24 hours, pushing the military death toll over the past two days to 28,
according to the AFP news agency.
Six civilians also died in ﬁghting across the rebels’
self-declared Donetsk People’s Republic and in Kiev-controlled towns in Luhansk (Lugansk) region, government
oﬃcials and separatists said.
The latest casualty reports came as Ukraine’s two warring sides looked further than ever from agreeing a peace
deal after the collapse of truce talks on Saturday at the
Belarusian capital Minsk.
Al Jazeera’s Charles Stratford, who is in Donetsk, reported hearing a “barrage of shelling” forcing people to
take cover on Sunday afternoon.
“The streets are virtually deserted and those people
that can are hiding in their basements,” he said, adding
that many people have been trapped in their “cold and
damp” houses in the middle of winter, without running
water or electricity.
Yevdokiya Bugay, an 86-year old pensioner from Yenakievo, was pulled out from her destroyed house.
“I’m trembling I live alone I was sitting in the corner
and I only just survived,” she told Al Jazeera.
Mediators and Ukrainian representatives accused the
separatists of refusing an agreement despite growing international pressure to defuse a bloody upsurge in ﬁghting that has left scores dead in recent days.
The Organization for Security and Co-operation in
Europe (OSCE), which is involved in the talks along with
Russia, said that rebel negotiators in Minsk “were not
even prepared to discuss implementation of a ceaseﬁre
and withdrawal of heavy weapons.”
Instead the rebel representatives called for a total revision of an earlier Kremlin-backed peace plan signed in
September that has formed the basis for all negotiations,
the OSCE said in a statement.
Redrawing demarcation lines
The rebels said they now want to redraw the demarcation line between the two sides to include gains they
have made since ripping up a shaky truce and pushing
into Ukrainian territory.
Kiev has rebuﬀed this demand and said the rebels’ position has thrown any future peace talks into doubt.
“Unfortunately the peace process is now under
threat,” Valeriy Chaly, the deputy head of Ukraine’s presidential administration wrote on his Facebook page.
The ﬁercest ﬁghting on the ground is focused around
the strategic town of Debaltseve, a railway hub between
rebel bastions Donetsk and Luhansk, where rebels are
trying to encircle government forces.
(Source: AFP)
b
Poem of the day
I N T E R N AT I O N A L D A I L Y
‘Behold that dishonorable fellow who will never
See the face of prosperity.
http://www.tehrantimes.com/culture
SINCE 1979
Swedish children to enjoy
“A Heart Bigger
than the World”
TEHRAN — A Swedish translation of “A
Culture D e s k Heart Bigger than the World” by Iranian
children’s book author Erfan Nazar-Ahari has recently been
published in Sweden.
Nazar-Ahari attended a
ceremony at the Imam Ali
Islamic Center in Stockholm
on Saturday to promote the
book, which was translated
by Hushang Kowsari.
She is scheduled to hold
review sessions in the cities
of Jonkoping, Karlskrona
and Malmo this week.
The book was released
with a CD, which contains
Reza Kharaqani’s animation
based on the book.
Mohammad Nosrati is the
composer of the music in the
A poster for the English version of animated movie.
Erfan Nazar-Ahari’s “A Heart Bigger
The book was one of 22
than the World”
entries to the Peace Story
project of the Nami Island International Book Festival in
South Korea in 2010.
Ali Buzari is the illustrator of the book, which was published
by the Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children
and Young Adults in Persian, English, French and Italian.
The book tells story of a little girl who has been wishing
to come to the world for the past 1000 years, but God has
denied her requests. She ﬁnally is allowed to come to the
world, but she leaves her heart in paradise, which compels
her to spend all of her life searching for her heart.
Parisian center to hold
Persian calligraphy
exhibition
Art
Sadi
No. 18, Bimeh Lane, Nejatollahi St., Tehran, Iran
P.o. Box: 14155-4843
Zip Code: 1599814713
NEWS
Managing Director: Ali Asgari
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Prayer Times
Noon:12:18
Printed at: Kayhan - ISSN: 1017-94
Evening: 17:51
Dawn: 5:38 (tomorrow)
Sunrise: 7:03 (tomorrow)
New York museum
to display works by
Iranian artist Monir
Farmanfarmaian
Art
TEHRAN — The
D e s k Guggenheim
Museum in New York will be hosting
an exhibition of mirror works and
drawings by Iranian artist Monir
Farmanfarmaian, which will be held
from March 13 to June 3.
Entitled “Inﬁnite Possibility”, this
exhibit includes plaster and mirror
reliefs, large-scale mirror sculptures
that the artist refers to as “geometric
families”, and works on paper.
Many examples of these works
have not been displayed publicly since
the 1970s, the museum announced on
its website.
This body of work is characterized
by a merging of visual and spatial
experience, coupled with the aesthetic
traditions of Islamic architecture and
decoration.
After formative years in New York
from 1945 to 1957, during which
Farmanfarmaian met artists Milton
Avery, Willem de Kooning, Joan
Mitchell, Louise Nevelson, Barnett
Newman, and, later, Andy Warhol,
among others, the Iranian artist
returned to Iran.
She began to develop her artistic
sensibility through encounters with
traditional craftsmanship, indigenous
art forms such as jewelry and clothing,
and teahouse paintings (a popular
form of Iranian narrative painting).
She later focused on drawing,
“Geometry of Hope”, a mosaic mirror created by Monir Farmanfarmaian in 1975
collage, commissions, and carpet
and textile design. In 2004, she
reestablished her studio and resumed
Iranian cineastes condemn Charlie Hebdo’s insulting cartoons on Prophet Muhammad (S)
Art
TEHRAN — A large
D e s k number of Iranian
cineastes, who attended the opening
ceremony of the 33rd Fajr Film Festival
in Tehran on Saturday, signed a statement to censure the French satirical
weekly, Charlie Hebdo, for publishing
cartoons insulting Prophet Muhammad (S).
The ceremony was held at Milad
Tower and the secretary of the festival, Alireza Rezadad, and cineastes
Mahtab Karamati, Roya Teimurian,
Hanieh Tavassoli, Sareh Bayat, Hossein
Yari and Rima Raminfar were among
those who signed the statement.
The opening ceremony continued
with short speeches delivered by oﬃcials and cultural ﬁgures.
Rezadad called the festival a beginning for ﬁlm screening and togetherness, and wished success to and expressed happiness for Iran’s cinema
and Iranian cineastes.
The cineastes that passed away last
year were later commemorated by the
screening of a music video at the ceremony.
Addressing the audience, Minister
of Culture and Islamic Guidance Ali
Jannati expressed thanks to the cineastes who tried to create a positive
and constructive atmosphere in which
to work.
“One of the positive points of this
year’s festival is the strong participa-
TEHRAN — The Patronage Laïque
D e s k Jules Valles Center in Paris will
host an exhibition of
Persian calligraphy from
February 9 to March 13.
A
collection
by
Bahman
Panahi
will
be showcased at the
exhibition.
He is also scheduled to
hold a workshop on the
sidelines of the exhibit
on March 7.
Panahi is currently
preparing a doctoral
thesis on musicality lines
and points at PantheonSorbonne University in
A calligraphy work by Bahman Panahi Paris.
PICTURE OF THE DAY
By Sina Shiri/Mehr
Tehran to host meeting of
Iranian, Afghan literati
TEHRAN — The 5th Meeting of Iranian
Culture D e s k and Afghan Literati will be held in Tehran
in late February.
The meeting is held biennially, Mohammad Sarvar Rajaii,
the director of the Afghanistan Literature House, which is the
organizer of the meeting, told the Persian service of MNA on
Sunday.
The biennial aims to conduct mutual conversations
according to the numerous cultural aﬃnities between two
nations, he added.
“We also plan to honor Afghan composer and poet Aref
Jafari for his achievements over past two decades,” he added.
The Afghanistan Literature House will hold the meeting with
the help of Iran’s Islamic Ideology Dissemination Organization.
61 Thousand Books
Donated to the Library of
Astan Quds Razavi
TEHRAN — Head of Library Services of Astan Quds Razavi
Akhtari Tousi stated more than 61 thousand books donated to
the Library of Astan Quds Razavi.
He said from a total of 154 thousand book and audio-visual
material, 61 thousand and 448 volumes of the good tradition are
donated and 92 thousand and 798 volumes were purchased for
the library collection.
“New resources for libraries across the country, welcomed
by researchers, scholars, students, students and enthusiasts,”
Head of Library Services of Astan Quds Razavi said.
Akhtari Tousi noted Astan Quds library is considered a cultural
institution with 28 thousand 800 square meters of space, with
10 studies and research and special libraries in the center and 38
branch libraries throughout the country and a library in India.
working with some of the same
craftsmen with whom she had
collaborated during the 1970s.
Actor Mohammad-Ali Keshavarz gestures to the audience before receiving a lifetime achievement award during the opening ceremony of the 33rd Fajr
Film Festival at Tehran’s Milad Tower on January 31, 2015.
tion of young talents who have made
ﬁlms. They must know that they owe
their innovations and creativity to the
eﬀorts and assistance of the veterans
who helped them ﬂourish,” the minister added.
The Labor, Cooperatives and Social
Welfare Minister Ali Rabiei in his short
speech stated that he regarded ﬁlm as
the only media art that has made the
visualization of man’s imagination possible.
Art fair turns India’s
capital into art hub
NEW DELHI (Reuters) — India’s
biggest art fair opened in New Delhi
this week with a focus on homegrown
artists and exhibits inspired by
contemporary themes such as the
worst ﬂoods in the Kashmir region in
more than a century.
A smorgasbord of works by 1,100
artists lured art lovers, gallerists and
gawkers to a cavernous exhibition
space in the capital, cementing the
annual fair’s reputation as one of
South Asia’s top cultural events.
Each year, an estimated 100,000
visitors ﬂock to the four-day fair with
entry tickets that cost no more than
$6.
The city’s glitterati strolled past
exhibits by 85 galleries at Thursday’s
preview clutching glasses of red wine,
with several displays sold before the
seventh edition of the fair opened for
public viewing on Friday. The show
runs until Sunday.
“We’ve had ﬁve or six sell-out
booths and several galleries have
done exceptionally well,” founder
Neha Kirpal told Reuters.
India’s art scene has been
expanding for the past few years, with
auctioneer Christie’s second Mumbai
auction in December generating sales
of $12 million. A report by analysts
ArtTactic said conﬁdence in the market
was at its highest since 2007.
Iconic Les Paul “Black Beauty” guitar to hit auction block
NEW YORK (Reuters) — One deeppocketed bidder will get a chance to
own a piece of rock and roll history
when the iconic Les Paul guitar known
as “Black Beauty” goes up for auction
in New York in February.
The electric instrument, which is
the original prototype for the Les Paul
Custom guitars made the Gibson Guitar
Company, will be sold by Guernsey’s
Auctions at the Arader Galleries on
Feb. 19th.
No pre-auction estimate, or reserve
price, has been put on the instrument.
But some music experts believe it
could exceed the record auction price
of $965,000 paid in 2013 for the guitar
owned and played by Bob Dylan at
his ﬁrst electric performance at the
Newport Folk Festival in 1965.
“This instrument”, said Guernsey’s
President Arlan Ettinger, “is referred
to as the grail, the Holy Grail, because
it was the ﬁrst Les Paul guitar made
by Mr. Les Paul that gave birth to
the thousands and thousands of
instruments that bear that name and
that resemble this instrument.”
Paul, a pioneering musician and
inventor, collaborated with guitar
makers Gibson, who approached
him in the early 1950s to build a true
electric guitar.
The solid body guitar was delivered
to him in 1954 and continuously
modiﬁed as Paul sought to perfect its
sound until it was last used in 1976,
when he gave it to his close friend
Tom Doyle. The black guitar with gold
hardware features ﬁne inlays and
bindings around the entire instrument.
Ettinger said the instrument
originally had diﬀerent hardware and
attachments and the pickguard did
not look the same.
“But through the next 20 years it
evolved as he was experimenting to
get new sounds and the maximum
excitement of what he created,” he
said.
Many people, Ettinger added,
suggest the guitar’s electric sound
gave birth to rock and roll.
The upgrades, modiﬁcations and
changes on the “Black Beauty” set the
standard for other Les Paul guitars,
which are owned by musicians such as
Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, Neil Young
and Jeﬀ Beck.
The February sale will be a litmus
test in the auction market for vintage
guitars.
When a bidder bought Dylan’s 1964
Fender Stratocaster for its record
price it was nearly double its pre-sale
estimate and surpassed the $959,500
paid in 2004 for Eric Clapton’s Fender
Stratocaster.
Last year, however, an auction
featuring 265 prized guitars from
California collector Hank Risan
produced disappointing results.