Back to Brief on Iran
BUENOS AIRES - Argentina told Iran Tuesday it was unhappy over what it called Tehran's lack of cooperation with probes into two bombings of Jewish groups here that left 115 people dead, a foreign ministry spokesman told AFP.
"There is a sharp cooling in bilateral relations," Eduardo Airaldi, undersecretary for foreign policy, told Iranian official Abdolrajim Sadatifar.
At issue are investigations into the March 1994 car bombing of the headquarters of the Argentine Jewish Groups Federation and the 1992 blast at the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires.
Federal Judge Juan Jose Galeano has been probing possible Iranian involvement in the as-yet unsolved blasts, a theory the United States and Israel support.
Airaldi said Argentina was unhappy over "not having seen signs of good faith" cooperation from Iran since authorities here added alleged pro-Iranian terrorist organization members to their list of suspects.
"Iran could over the years
have supplied some kind of information from its intelligence services"
about the alleged terrorists, he added.
FBI Suspects Hizbollah Network in South America, Reuter, May 13
BRASILIA - The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation suspects Iranian-backed Hizbollah guerrillas are building a support network in Brazil at the borders with Paraguay and Argentina, agency head Louis Freeh said on Wednesday.
"We are concerned and do have some information that some Hizbollah groups who have the potential to conduct terrorist activity have a supporting network in that area," he said.
U.S. Concerned Over Iran's Submarines, Reuter, May 13
DUBAI - The commander of U.S. naval forces in the Gulf said Wednesday that Iran's recent deployment of three Russian-built submarines in military exercises caused "significant concern" in the region.
"Submarines are offensive weapons, not defensive ones and any torpedo capability would obviously give them (Iran) the ability to interdict shipping through the Strait of Hormuz," said Vice-Admiral Thomas Fargo, commander of the Fifth Fleet.
Iran's "Ettehad" (Unity) exercises, held last month near the strategic Strait of Hormuz through which half of the world's oil exports passes, were the first in which the Islamic republic operated its three kilo-class diesel submarines together.
"The Strait of Hormuz is
the commercial lifeline of this region...so that's something we are watching
very carefully," Fargo said.
Officials Summoned to Explain Economic Crisis, Agence France Presse, May 12
TEHRAN - Three economic officials were summoned to a closed-door session of the Iranian parliament Tuesday to explain the country's deepening economic crisis, the official IRNA news agency reported.
Parliament spokesman Mohammad-Baqer Nobakht said the MPs "stressed the need to eliminate the unemployment problem to ensure security for investment, pay attention to non-oil exports and fight inflation."
The drop in Iranian crude prices to around 12 dollars a barrel has severely hit the country's economy, which is heavily dependent on oil exports.
"With only 10 billion dollars how can we both subsidize basic commodities and feed the industry," Nurbakhsh said.
He was referring to billions
of dollars the government pays in subsidies each year for such basic goods
as medicine, bread and fuel to make them affordable to the swelling numbers
of poor people.
Iran's Dependency on Oil Revenues Above Expectations, Dow Jones News, May 13
LONDON - The Iranian government's dependency on oil revenues was more than the 40% predicted in last year's budget, said Yahya Aghalu, director general of the treasury at the Ministry of Economy and Finance, Tuesday.
Speaking at the fifth gathering to review the financial issues of the country's regional water organizations, Aghalu said that the central bank sold an equivalent of 10,428 billion Iranian rial (IRR) in foreign exchange earned from oil exports, which was equal to 55-56% of the government's total budget.
Aghalu said that in the absence of oil revenues, there would not have been custom duties and taxes on imported goods, indicating that the true share of oil revenues in the national budget is even higher than the above mentioned 55-56% of the government's overall revenues.