TEHRAN, July 11, (Agencies): Opposition leader Mehdi Karroubi has said Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards back sanctions against Tehran as they make “astronomical profits” from the punitive measures, a website said on Sunday.

“I believe that part of the Iranian rule as well as the Revolutionary Guards are in favour of sanctions as they make gigantic and astronomical profits from them,” Karroubi was quoted as saying on opposition website Rahesabz.net.

The Guards regularly shrug off international sanctions imposed on Iran for its defiant nuclear programme, with some top commanders expressing willingness to take on projects abandoned by Western companies, including in the energy sector.
Karroubi, who steadfastly opposes the government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, again blamed the hardliner for the latest sets of sanctions imposed by the UN Security Council, the European Union and the United States.
“Imprudence in (Iran’s) foreign policy and the lack of political sanity in the actions and political and diplomatic words of the man in charge of the government have imposed high costs on the country,” the reformist cleric said in a direct attack on Ahmadinejad.
“We should not give an excuse through shallow words and bungling actions and allow others to easily impose sanctions against Iran,” the website quoted Karroubi as saying on Saturday at a meeting with families of detained opposition members.
Iran is under four sets of UN sanctions for its sustained pursuance of the nuclear programme, all of which have been imposed since Ahmadinejad first became president in 2005.
Western governments suspect Iran’s nuclear programme is a cover for a weapons drive, something Tehran has repeatedly denied, maintaining it is aimed solely at power generation and medical research.
Karroubi, along with Iran’s other main opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi, continue to level accusations that Ahmadinejad’s re-election last year was the result of a massive vote rigging.
Clerics
The Iranian government said it will send hundreds of clerics into Tehran’s schools this fall to fight Western influence and the appeal of the political opposition, local newspapers reported Sunday.
The move is seen as an attempt by the government to tighten its grip on the schools in the aftermath of last year’s disputed presidential elections in which many Iranian youth flocked to the opposition.
Mohammed Boniadi, deputy director of the Tehran education department, said some 1,000 clerics will descend on the schools of the capital to make students aware of “opposition plots and arrogance,” a reference to the attitude of Western nations.
He described the clerics as “officers” in an ideological war with the West.
Tehran has become increasingly concerned with foreign encroachment and the threat of Western-backed “soft revolutions” after months of domestic protests that followed the controversial election, which the opposition alleged was rigged.
Authorities have repeatedly emphasized the need to battle the reach of Western media, viewpoints and culture, which resonate strongly in a country where nearly half the population was born after the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Boniadi said that the Iranian education department had previously failed to “reform and renovate the thoughts” of students. “We have to take full advantage of this opportunity.”
Boniadi did not say which school grades the clerics would be assigned to.
Stoning
Iran’s judiciary chief has temporarily halted the execution by stoning of a woman accused of adultery, state news agency IRNA reported on Sunday, quoting a judiciary official.
“Although the verdict is definitive and applicable, the verdict has been halted due to humanitarian reservations and upon the order of the honourable judiciary chief and it will not be carried out for the moment,” Malek Ajdar Sharifi, head of the judiciary in East Azerbaijan province, told IRNA.
The woman, Sakineh Mohammadi-Ashtiani, a 43-year-old mother of two, had been sentenced to death by stoning after she was found guilty of adultery by an Iranian court, a ruling that has sparked outcry in Western countries.
But Sharifi said the move was temporary and her death sentence could be carried out as decided by the judiciary chief, Sadeq Larijani.
“Whenever the judiciary chief deems it expedient, the verdict will be carried out regardless of Western media propaganda,” Sharifi said.
Mohammadi-Ashtiani was convicted on May 15, 2006 of having an “illicit relationship” with two men, according to her lawyer and London-based rights watchdog Amnesty International.
Amnesty said she received 99 lashes as per her sentence but was subsequently accused of “adultery while being married” in September 2006 during the trial of a man accused of murdering her husband.
Regimes
“Irrational regimes” like Iran cannot be allowed to have nuclear arms and it is a mistake to think Tehran’s ambitions can be contained, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on US television.
Netanyahu, who met President Barack Obama last week during a visit to Washington and New York, told “Fox News Sunday” that Iran was “just moving on with its efforts” to develop nuclear weapons — a prospect he called “very, very dangerous.”
Asked whether a nuclear Iran could be contained, he said: “No, I don’t. I think that’s a mistake, and I think people fall into a misconception.”
“I don’t think you can rely on Iran,” Netanyahu said in a taped interview. “And we should not allow irrational regimes like Iran to have nuclear weapons. It’s the ultimate terrorist threat today.”
Netanyahu declined to say whether he had any deadline for allowing diplomacy with Iran to run its course.
“We always reserve the right to defend ourselves,” he said, reiterating a core policy of Israel, which does not confirm or deny widely held beliefs that it has the only nuclear arsenal in the Middle East.
Iran says its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only. But the United States and its allies fear Tehran is pursuing an atomic weapons program and have pushed a series of United Nations and unilateral sanctions against Iran.
“There’s only been one time that Iran actually stopped the program and that was when it feared US military action,” Netanyahu said.
“So when the president (Obama) says that he’s determined to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons and that all options are on the table, I think that’s the right statement of policy.”
Enriched uranium
Iran said on Sunday it has produced around 20 kilogrammes of 20 percent enriched uranium, in defiance of the world powers who want Tehran to suspend the controversial nuclear work.
“We have produced around 20 kilogrammes of 20 percent enriched uranium and we are working to produce the (fuel) plates,” Iran’s atomic chief Ali Akbar Salehi told ISNA news agency.
World powers led by Washington want Tehran to suspend its uranium enrichment activity which they suspect masks a nuclear weapons drive, and on June 9 backed a UN Security Council resolution for a fourth set of sanctions on Iran.
Enriched uranium can be used as fuel to power nuclear reactors as well as to make the fissile core of an atom bomb.
Tehran says its nuclear programme is entirely peaceful.
On Sunday, Salehi reiterated his previous claim that by September next year Iran will on its own “deliver the fuel for the Tehran research reactor.”
He previously said that Iran has acquired the technical know-how to make the actual fuel plates which power the reactor, a claim dismissed by Western powers.
They say that the Islamic republic does not possess the technology required to convert the 20 percent enriched uranium into fuel plates for powering the reactor.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad ordered the refining of uranium to 20 percent after a swap deal, aimed at providing nuclear fuel for the Tehran reactor and drafted by the UN atomic body in October, hit a deadlock.
Brazil and Turkey brokered a counter proposal in Tehran on May 17 under which Iran would send its low-enriched uranium to Turkey in return for research reactor fuel to be supplied later.
But the world powers cold-shouldered that proposal and voted through a fourth set of sanctions, which had the effect of further tightening financial and military restrictions on Tehran.
On Sunday, in a separate report on ISNA, Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said Iran was ready to talk with the so-called Vienna group over the fuel swap deal as brokered by Brazil and Turkey.
He said that the Vienna group — comprising Iran, France, Russia, the UN atomic watchdog and the United States — “has accepted” the presence of Brazil and Turkey in these talks.
Mottaki added that Iran has two options for getting the fuel — through the swap deal or by producing it on its own.
“We are ready for whatever they (world powers in the Vienna group) choose,” he said.
The Vienna group was formed to work out the fuel swap deal for the Tehran reactor.