Thursday's Daily Briefing on Iran

DoctorZin reports, 3.30.2006:

UN Security Council gives Iran 30 days to stop.

• The Times Online reported that the UN Security Council has given Tehran a month to halt its uranium enrichment program.

Rice: We have tools to use against Iran.

• The Washington Post reported that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told the US Senate that Iran was a menace for reasons other than its alleged drive to build a nuclear bomb and that the U.S. and its allies have "a number of tools" if Tehran does not change its ways. She said: "I think there's no doubt that Iran is the single biggest threat from a state that we face."

US Intelligence: Sanctions won't work.

• Insight Magazine reported that the U.S. intelligence community has concluded that U.N. Security Council sanctions would fail to stop Iran's nuclear weapons program.

Iran threatens the US dollar?

• The Christian Science Monitor argued why they believe Iran's threat to use its new oil bourse to weaken the US dollar is a fantasy.

Straw again says no to military action on Iran.

• The Guardian reported that Jack Straw today insisted that military action against Iran would be neither "appropriate or conceivable."

Germans stop shipments of equipment to Iran.

• The New York Times reported that German prosecutors claimed that several million dollars' worth of equipment that could be used for a nuclear program had been shipped from Germany to Iran, via a Russian company.

Blogs under new attack in Iran.

• USA Today reported that blogs are now under attack by Iran's hard-line regime.

Iran's Katyusha rockets now used against Israel?

• Ha'aretz reported that Palestinians have for the first time fired the powerful Katyusha rocket believed by many to be of Iranian manufacture.

Iranian military to start maneuvers in the Persian Gulf.

• Yahoo News reported that thousands of Iranian troops will on Friday start a week-long military maneuver in the Gulf to ready armed forces for warding off "threats."

Here are a few other news items you may have missed.

• Reuters reported that three members of Iran's Revolutionary Guards were killed in a clash with Kurdish separatists.
• CNSNews reported that the head of the Arab League called on the world's Arab states to pursue "peaceful" nuclear energy programs.
• World Tribune reported that Nigeria has sought Iranian help in establishing a defense industry.
• Middle East Economic Survey reported that the Joint Economic Committee of the US Congress issued a report which states that "support for terrorism and economic mismanagement by the government have damaged oil and gas development in Iran." Full text of the report.
• Amir Taheri, The Wall Street Journal reported how Iran's Hassan Abbasi, the principal foreign policy voice in President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, believes the US will be forced from the Middle East. A must read.

Keyword: Iran