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Top Stories
NYT:
"One day after Iran's president took the stage here seeking to
assure the world that his country did not aspire to develop nuclear
weapons, Secretary of State John Kerry pushed back on Friday, challenging
him to demonstrate that the Iranian nuclear program was peaceful. 'He
told you that Iran has no intention of building a nuclear weapon,' Mr.
Kerry said in a speech to the World Economic Forum. 'Starting now, Iran
has the opportunity to prove these words beyond all doubt to the world.'
Mr. Kerry laid down several requirements for the comprehensive nuclear
agreement that Iran and six world powers are now preparing to negotiate,
saying that Tehran must accept extensive verification, abandon plans to
build a heavy-water reactor that can produce plutonium, and resolve
longstanding concerns by the International Atomic Energy Agency over past
Iranian compliance." http://t.uani.com/1jWKpKw
NYT:
"A three-year study by the Pentagon has concluded that American
intelligence agencies are 'not yet organized or fully equipped' to detect
when foreign powers are developing nuclear weapons or ramping up their
existing arsenals, and calls for using some of the same techniques that
the National Security Agency has developed against terrorists. The study,
a 100-page report by the Defense Science Board, contends that the
detection abilities needed in cases like Iran - including finding
'undeclared facilities and/or covert operations' - are 'either
inadequate, or more often, do not exist.' ... The report implicitly
called into question whether administration officials should be so
confident that they would detect if Iran ever violated the nuclear accord
that began this week." http://t.uani.com/1jAXDyT
NYT:
"When President Hassan Rouhani of Iran commandeered the spotlight
this week in Davos, Switzerland, with a message of peaceful intentions
and a desire for dialogue, it was an eerie echo of 10 years ago, when
Iran's last would-be change agent, Mohammad Khatami, delivered the very
same message at the World Economic Forum... 'In contrast to Khatami,
there is a widespread perception that Rouhani is working with, rather
than against, the supreme leader to carry out détente abroad and
reconciliation at home,' said Karim Sadjadpour, an Iran expert at the
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Still, he added, 'Rouhani has
been winning global accolades by using a similar - although less
articulate and arguably less genuine - script than Khatami began using in
1997.' ... Mr. Rouhani, unlike Mr. Khatami, has shown little appetite for
opening up Iranian society or challenging the authority of its clerical
institutions." http://t.uani.com/M4sXba
Nuclear Program & Negotiations
AFP:
"A senior Iranian official Saturday dismissed the need for a Tehran
office for UN inspectors tasked with monitoring Iran's partial nuclear
freeze, Mehr news agency said. The head of the International Atomic
Energy Agency had said the watchdog may ask Iran for permission 'to set
up a temporary office to provide logistical support,' for its inspectors.
UN inspectors are in Iran to monitor the implementation of a nuclear deal
with Western powers that took effect on Monday, after Iran stopped
enriching uranium above five percent fissile purities at its Natanz and
Fordo facilities. 'In our opinion, by considering the volume of nuclear
activities in the country, there is no need for setting up a nuclear
watchdog office in Iran,' said Reza Najafi, Tehran's envoy to the
IAEA." http://t.uani.com/1d4Jj9L
Sanctions
Relief
AFP:
"Iran's charm offensive is working, China and Japan really are not
getting on very well and bankers still have a hard time saying sorry. As
far as the serious stuff was concerned, those were the main things this
reporter took away from the 2014 World Economic Forum (WEF14)... Hassan
Rouhani, the Iranian president, was the star turn this year and he will
have flown home encouraged by the willingness of Western oil executives
to seek him out for private meetings here... Rouhani got to deliver a
keynote address and bolstered the cuddly, Twitter-wit image that is
helping Iran as it seeks to normalise relations with the United States
and other Western powers." http://t.uani.com/1jWH5iv
Reuters:
"Turkey's state-owned Halkbank is expected to continue processing
payments for Iranian oil imports to Turkey, U.S. Treasury Undersecretary
David Cohen said on Monday. 'Halkbank has for some time been involved in
handling oil payments for importing oil from Iran into Turkey and we
expect that to continue,' David Cohen, Undersecretary for Terrorism and
Financial Intelligence told reporters." http://t.uani.com/1clqFP9
AFP:
"Iran is working full throttle to develop its South Pars natural gas
field, the world's largest, amid hopes of sanctions relief and the return
of Western oil majors. 'We would welcome foreign companies and investors
if they want to come back,' said Hamid Reza Massoudi, chief engineer at
an unfinished South Pars refinery near the town of Assaluyeh, 920
kilometres (570 miles) south of Tehran. 'They would definitely speed up
the progress,' Massoudi said, as work proceeded on the refinery's
structure." http://t.uani.com/1mNMRm5
Sanctions
Enforcement
AP:
"Companies should 'hold off' doing business in Iran because many of
the sanctions against the country are still in place despite an interim
nuclear deal, the top U.S. Treasury official warned Monday. Speaking in
Turkey, which is looking to expand business opportunities with its
neighbor Iran, David Cohen, the U.S. secretary for terrorism and
financial intelligence, said a significant portion of sanctions against
Iran remained, including in the banking, energy and shipping sanctions.
'Iran is not open for business,' Cohen said. 'Businesses interested in engaging
in Iran really should hold off. The day may come when Iran is open for
business, but the day is not today.'" http://t.uani.com/1mNQpF5
Syria Conflict
AFP:
"Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif Friday denied his
country had sent Hezbollah militants to fight in Syria, saying the
Tehran-backed Shiite extremist group was making its own decisions... The
usually smiling Iranian diplomat, who has been seen as the new face of
the Islamic republic since coming to office in August, was unusually combative
in a tense panel session held in the Swiss mountain town of Davos. Under
constant questioning about Iran's role in shoring up Syrian President
Bashar al-Assad, Zarif said it was 'preposterous' to suggest that Tehran
was supporting extremist groups fighting in Syria." http://t.uani.com/19Xa4BY
Domestic
Politics
AFP:
"Iran on Saturday handed a daughter of former president Akbar
Hashemi Rafsanjani a suspended jail sentence for spreading lies about the
authorities, her lawyer told the official IRNA news agency. 'The verdict
was issued by the court and my client has been sentenced to a six-month
suspended jail term,' Vahid Abolmoalayee said. Fatemeh Hashemi's sentence
was suspended for the next two years, said Abolmoalayee, adding that he
would appeal against the sentence. Her trial was held at a branch of
Tehran's revolutionary court on January 18." http://t.uani.com/1f6kVqL
Opinion &
Analysis
Dennis Ross in
Politico: "Why are both sides
so downbeat? And what will give us the best chance of producing a lasting
agreement? To begin with, the comprehensive deal will be difficult to
achieve precisely because it is about rollback. The interim agreement,
officially called the Joint Plan of Action, was essentially a 'cap for a
cap.' The Iranians cap their program in the sense that they agree not to
add to the number of centrifuges or to the overall amount of enriched
uranium they have accumulated at the 5 percent level (though they must
reduce to zero the 20 percent enriched material they have already accumulated).
The Iranians are, however, allowed to build new centrifuges to replace
ones that are damaged or break down, and they may continue research on
even more modern and efficient centrifuges. In return, the United States
promised to adopt no new sanctions for the next 6 months, while relaxing
sanctions related to petrochemicals, precious metals and the Iranian
automobile industry and allowing Iran to access $4.2 billion in
previously blocked funds. Producing a cap for cap was not easy, but is
far less difficult than producing a rollback for a rollback. And that is
what the negotiations are now about: Can the United States and its allies
get the Iranians to roll back their nuclear program and infrastructure in
return for a rollback of the sanctions on banking, commerce, shipping and
insurance that have proven so onerous to the Iranian economy? ... With
the Iranians proclaiming that their nuclear infrastructure is about their
dignity and independence-and that international demands are about denying
them each-one can assume that they will resist an extensive rollback of
their program. Yet, they will not get the extensive sanctions rollback
they seek without a massive reduction in their nuclear infrastructure.
While the Obama administration is not demanding zero enrichment and the
complete dismantlement of Iran's enrichment facilities, as some on
Capitol Hill are calling for, it is not prepared to accept Iran as a
nuclear threshold state. In other words, Iran must not be left with a
nuclear infrastructure that is sufficiently robust and advanced that it
can break out to nuclear weapons at a time of its choosing... So how can
Obama break the impasse? The only chance of getting Iran to give up this
objective is for Iran to believe that the cost of pursuing it is simply
too high. President Rouhani's desire to end Iran's isolation and the
sanctions that have done such damage to its economy has largely stopped
the clock on the Iranian nuclear program. Clearly, Ayatollah Khamenei has
accepted enough of Rouhani's logic to support him at least to this point.
It was not inducements that got us this far, but the pressure of the
sanctions. And that highlights an interesting gap between the White House
and Congress. Senators like Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) and Mark Kirk (R-Ill.)
believe that we must keep up the pressure if we are to have any chance of
getting the Iranians to agree to roll back their nuclear program. The
president and Secretary of State John Kerry argue that additional
pressure now-at least in the form of a new sanctions bill-would undercut
Rouhani, empower the hard-liners around the supreme leader and give the
Iranians an excuse to walk away from the negotiations. Some in the White
House have gone so far as to say that those who support sanctions now are
choosing a path of war. Not surprisingly, such rhetoric has not won the
White House more adherents... Is it possible to reconcile Congress's
belief that we need to adopt sanctions with the administration's view
that it will undercut diplomacy? I think so. But it will require
lawmakers to accept the argument that adopting new sanctions now will
allow the Iranians to walk away while our P5+1 partners blame us instead
of them. Even the French, who tend to adopt the hardest line among the
P5+1, now buy into this logic. Diplomacy is about taking away excuses,
not giving them. If Congress needs to recognize that, the administration
needs to recognize the importance of being willing to add to the pressure
and of working with the Hill to that end. For example, if the Iranians
can create facts in anticipation that diplomacy might not work, so should
we. When the Iranians are doing work on new and more advanced
centrifuges-ones more powerful than their current IR-2s, which are
already 4-5 times more efficient than their first-generation
centrifuges-they are sending a signal to us about what they will do if
diplomacy fails. The administration can match that by agreeing with key
members of Congress on which new sanctions it would be prepared to adopt
if there is no follow-on agreement to the Joint Plan of Action. This is
an elegant solution: Congress would not adopt the new sanctions during
the life of the Joint Plan of Action, but the Hill would know that the
administration is preparing the ground to increase the pressure in a meaningful
way-and so would the Iranians, our partners and the international private
sector, which is exploring the new business climate in Tehran. We would
be giving the negotiations a chance while denying the Iranians an excuse.
A deal with the Iranians may or may not be possible, but one with
Congress? That should be much easier." http://t.uani.com/1aXGfQ4
John B. Bellinger
III in WSJ: "Last week, the six-month interim
agreement between Iran and the P5+1 countries to freeze Iran's nuclear
program went into effect. As the U.S. and its allies now prepare to
negotiate a permanent agreement with Tehran, the Obama administration
should review the status of the last bilateral agreement between the U.S.
and Iran-the Algiers Accords, signed 33 years ago this month and still in
force but now largely obsolete. The accords, negotiated in the waning
days of the Carter administration and signed on Jan. 19, 1981, the day
before President Reagan's inauguration, are best known for producing the
release of the 52 American hostages held captive in Iran. But the
agreement also created an international claims tribunal in The Hague to
resolve the complex contractual and property disputes between the two
countries. The Iran-U.S. Claims Tribunal, which began operation in July
1981, was expected to decide all claims within a few years, yet it
remains in operation three decades later. While the tribunal has
performed well as a claims settlement mechanism, it has outlived its
original purpose, is expensive to operate, and remains a symbol of the
nadir in U.S.-Iranian relations... In recent years, the tribunal has been
hearing large claims by the Iranian government against the U.S.
government for allegedly blocking exports of billions of dollars in
military equipment ordered by the shah of Iran during the 1970s. As one
can imagine, such claims have often been contentious. The Iranian
government has often engaged in disruptive behavior, including late
payments into the joint account established to fund the tribunal,
frivolous challenges to the U.S. and third-country judges, and
orchestrating the resignation of Iranian judges. Yet overall Tehran has
observed the terms of the Algiers Accords, including participating in
tribunal hearings and paying final awards to U.S. claimants. Nevertheless,
instead of having the tribunal continue to arbitrate claims relating to
transactions from the 1970s, Iran and the U.S. should agree on an overall
financial settlement for all remaining claims. To the extent more claims
are outstanding by Iran against the U.S., the Obama administration could
release certain funds claimed by Iran in the U.S. and lift sanctions on
additional Iranian funds in foreign banks. Even if this current
rapprochement between the U.S. and Iran proves short-lived, it still
makes little sense to allow the tribunal to operate." http://t.uani.com/1b0IRtc
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Eye on Iran is a periodic news summary from United Against
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