Eye on Iran: In Iran, Hopes Fade for Surge in the Economy

Join UANI           Top Stories NYT: "Suffering in an economy dragged down by years of mismanagement and the effects of international sanctions, Iran's increasingly impoverished middle class voted in huge numbers last summer for President Hassan Rouhani, who promised to reignite growth by restoring ties with the rest of the world. But more than six months after Mr. Rouhani took office, hopes of a quick economic recovery are fading among ordinary Iranians, business owners and investors, while economists say the government is running out of cash. Although Mr. Rouhani has managed to stabilize the national currency, halt inflation and forge a temporary nuclear deal that provides some relief from sanctions, delivering on his promises of economic growth has proved far more difficult. On taking office, he discovered that the government's finances were in far worse condition than his predecessor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, had ever let on. Now, with a lack of petrodollars and declining tax revenues, Mr. Rouhani has little option but to take steps that in the short-run will only increase the pain for the voters who put him into office. With the start of the Iranian new year, on Friday, the government will begin phasing out subsidies on energy, the start of a process that will send the prices of gasoline and electricity, and other utilities, soaring by nearly 90 percent, economists say. The shortage of funds is also forcing the government to wind down a system of $12 monthly payments to nearly 60 million Iranians, with only the poorest eligible to reapply. In return, Mr. Rouhani's government can promise only a reduction in the inflation rate to 25 percent next year, from 42 percent last year and 32 percent currently." http://t.uani.com/1kPkJAo Reuters: "Iran is meeting its commitments under a landmark nuclear pact with world powers but has yet to complete a facility it will need to fulfill the six-month deal, a U.N. agency report showed on Thursday. The planned plant is designed to convert low-enriched uranium gas (LEU) into a less proliferation-sensitive oxide form. The apparent construction delay means Iran's LEU stockpile is almost certainly continuing to increase for the time being, as its production of the material has not stopped. The confidential report - a monthly update on the interim deal's implementation - by the International Atomic Energy Agency to member states said Iran, in a letter on Monday, had informed the IAEA that the conversion facility would begin operations after commissioning due to start on April 9... 'Iran seems to be fulfilling all its requirements under the agreement,' one Vienna-based diplomat said. 'However, this is a dynamic process and it will be kept under close review each month.'" http://t.uani.com/NzNy7w NYT: "Iran is building a nonworking mock-up of an American nuclear-powered aircraft carrier that United States officials say may be intended to be blown up for propaganda value. Intelligence analysts studying satellite photos of Iranian military installations first noticed the vessel rising from the Gachin shipyard, near Bandar Abbas on the Persian Gulf, last summer. The ship has the same distinctive shape and style of the Navy's Nimitz-class carriers, as well as the Nimitz's number 68 neatly painted in white near the bow. Mock aircraft can be seen on the flight deck. The Iranian mock-up, which American officials described as more like a barge than a warship, has no nuclear propulsion system and is only about two-thirds the length of a typical 1,100-foot-long Navy carrier. Intelligence officials do not believe that Iran is capable of building an actual aircraft carrier. 'Based on our observations, this is not a functioning aircraft carrier; it's a large barge built to look like an aircraft carrier,' said Cmdr. Jason Salata, a spokesman for the Navy's Fifth Fleet in Bahrain, across the Persian Gulf from Iran. 'We're not sure what Iran hopes to gain by building this. If it is a big propaganda piece, to what end?'" http://t.uani.com/1iKbMIq        Sanctions Relief Reuters: "China's February crude oil imports from Iran rose 6 percent from a year ago to 552,613 barrels per day (bpd), customs data showed on Friday, keeping imports in 2014 close to levels before Western sanctions were applied more than two years ago. Iran's exports have been rising the past four months, ever since the breakthrough November deal that eased some sanctions on Tehran in exchange for curbs on its nuclear programme. Under the temporary deal, Iran's exports are supposed to be held at an average 1 million barrels bpd for the six months to July 20. But shipments to Asia have topped that level at least since November, according to customs and ship tracking data." http://t.uani.com/1gORRaL Terrorism CBC: "An Ontario judge has ordered the seizure of more than $7 million worth of bank accounts and property belonging to Iran, in a historic ruling that will turn over the assets to victims of militant groups that it bankrolled. The decision represents a groundbreaking victory for likely an array of litigants ranging from the families of two Americans who were held hostage in Beirut to a B.C. dentist who was badly burned in a 1997 Jerusalem suicide bombing. Some of the plaintiffs had long ago won multimillion-dollar U.S. judgments against Tehran, but then spent years in American and Canadian courts trying to collect from a regime that uses front companies to hide vast real estate and financial holdings in the West... Judge Brown's ruling marks what is believed to be the first time in Canada that victims will collect damages from a foreign state over its support for extremist groups." http://t.uani.com/1etScyG AP: "The U.S. and Britain called Thursday for a U.N. investigation of Israel's claim that it intercepted an Iranian shipment of rockets headed for the Gaza Strip. U.N. officials have said that if Israel's claims are true, Iran would be in violation of Security Council sanctions. U.S. deputy ambassador Rosemary DiCarlo urged the Security Council committee that monitors sanctions against Iran to investigate the incident. She said 'the committee should be prepared to impose real consequences, such as possible sanctions designations on those responsible.' British Ambassador Mark Lyall Grant called for a similar investigation, saying Israel's claim is 'deeply worrying.' 'This is not the first time that we have seen reports of potential arms transfers to Gaza involving Iran,' Lyall Grant noted. The envoys spoke after a council briefing on the sanctions committee's latest report. The report said Iran had still not replied to inquiries last year on two other incidents: Iran's launches of Shahab 1 and 3 missiles and an intercepted arms shipment in Yemen. Australia's U.N. Ambassador Gary Quinlan, who chairs the committee, said it continues to call on Iran to provide explanations. Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin urged the committee to refrain from taking any actions that could compromise efforts by six world powers and Iran to reach an agreement on Tehran's nuclear program." http://t.uani.com/1gOSNf4 Human Rights Reuters: "Israel declared dead on Thursday eight Iranian Jews who disappeared while trying to leave Iran in the 1990s, saying its Mossad intelligence service had proof that they had been murdered. The men were among 12 members of the Islamic republic's Jewish minority whose disappearances in 1994 and 1997, and the attendant silence from Tehran, have been cited by the U.S. State Department as pointing to possible anti-Semitic persecution." http://t.uani.com/1lWc4Mi Domestic Politics AFP: "Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Friday that only a strong nation could avoid being oppressed by foreign powers, as he called for economic and cultural independence. 'A nation that is not strong will be oppressed,' Khamenei, the country's top decision-maker, said Friday in the northeastern city of Mashhad in an address in honour of the Persian New Year. 'The extortionists in the world will blackmail a weak nation, insult it, attack it, and trample it under their feet,' he said in remarks broadcast live on state television, in an apparent reference to the United States and other Western powers... Khamenei added that culture is 'even more important than the economy.' 'It is the air you breathe. If it is clean it has one effect, and another if it is dirty,' said Khamenei, who has long warned of a so-called soft war by the West against Iran's Islamic ideals and values. 'The focus of the enemy is on the culture more than anything else,' Khamenei said." http://t.uani.com/1d7xqXc JPost: "Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei questioned the Holocaust on Friday morning in an address marking Nowruz, the Persian New Year. The 'Holocaust is an event whose reality is uncertain and if it has happened, it's uncertain how it has happened,' Khamenei was quoted as saying on his Twitter account. In the latest instance of an Iranian leader's refusal to recognize the Holocaust, Khamenei claimed that Europe remained silent over its occurrence... In his speech made to large crowds in Iran's northeastern city of Mashhad, Khamenei turned to the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and chided the US in its role in what he said were failed negotiations. He also accused the US alongside Israel of conspiring to rid the region of Palestinians - both Muslim and Christian. 'The US has failed in Palestine. They devised a scheme against Palestine and spared no efforts [in carrying it out],' Iran's official Press TV quoted Khamenei as saying." http://t.uani.com/1hNvtMX AFP: "Iran marked the Persian New Year, or Nowruz, with a rallying cry from its leaders on Thursday to revive the troubled economy sagging under international sanctions... President Hassan Rouhani said inflation was being tackled and calm restored to currency markets since last August when he took office after a surprise presidential election victory. 'The next year will be the year of economic growth - as we will take serious steps to slow down inflation,' Rouhani vowed... 'We brought to a halt the sanctions chariot,' he said of the interim deal, under which Iran agreed to curb parts of its nuclear activities in exchange for modest sanctions relief. 'This will continue, as we hope to strike a final deal,' Rouhani added." http://t.uani.com/1l9Xi7s Free Beacon: "The Iranian parliament's recent investigation into a scheme to import luxury cars instead of medicine threatens to erode the credibility of a leading pro-Iran lobbying group that has long claimed that economic sanctions are preventing access to medicine in Iran. An investigation by Iranian lawmakers recently revealed that nearly $2 billion that had been allocated to the importation of medicine into Iran was actually spent on the purchase of luxury cars, according to Farsi and English reports. While it had long been suspected that the Iranian government was squandering funds for medicine, pro-Tehran advocacy groups like the National Iranian American Council (NIAC) used the medicine shortage as a hook to claim that sanctions were causing the shortage." http://t.uani.com/1dwQqsV LAT: "Lake Urmia, long counted among the world's largest saltwater lakes - almost 90 miles in length and stretching 34 miles at its widest point - is today a pitiful shadow of its former self. Vast expanses of the onetime holiday haven have been transformed into stretches of sunbaked mud so solid that 'pickup trucks and tractors can drive on it for miles,' said Hojjat Jabbari, a scientist working in the environmental department in Urmia. In the last two decades, experts say, a toxic combination of wasteful irrigation practices, the damming of feeder rivers, prolonged drought and a warming climate has accelerated the decline of the storied lake, noted in the historical accounts of various civilizations dating back millenniums. Today, according to experts at Iran's environmental agency, the lake, in a broad plain flanked by steep mountains, contains only 5% of the amount of water it did just 20 years ago. The decline is part of a broader problem facing the Islamic Republic, much of which is already desert. Some analysts suggest that water rationing may have to be imposed in Tehran, the densely populated capital and metropolitan area home to more than 12 million people." http://t.uani.com/1h16fc5 Opinion & Analysis Tony Badran in NOW Lebanon: "Last week, Al Jazeera aired a documentary on the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in December 1988. Although the bombing has been blamed squarely on Libya, the documentary made the case that the operation in fact was commissioned by Iran and executed by the pro-Syrian group, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC). The argument itself is not new. In fact, it had been the prevailing view in the media and in US intelligence assessments in the couple of years following the Lockerbie bombing. Yet it was the Al Jazeera documentary that was first to publicize the testimony of a defected former Iranian intelligence officer, Abolghasem Mesbahi, who contends that the plot was commissioned by the top leadership in Tehran and sanctioned by Ayatollah Khomeini himself. But what's most curious about Al Jazeera's revelation is its timing... Al Jazeera's documentary established the context for the years preceding the Lockerbie bombing. Iran's immediate motive for the operation was revenge for an Iranian commercial flight that was accidentally shot down by the cruiser USS Vincennes in the Gulf in July 1988. Khomeini vowed retaliation and American intelligence at the time established that days after the Iranian flight was downed, the Iranians went to Ahmad Jibril's PFLP-GC in Beirut and contracted them for the job. The man who quarterbacked the operation was Iran's former ambassador to Damascus, then Interior Minister Ali Akbar Mohtashami, who according to a 1989 Defense Intelligence Agency memo 'conceived, authorized and financed' the operation. To be sure, Mohtashami's prominence in the story hardly precludes a role for the Libyans and the Syrians. In fact, Mohtashami sat at the intersection of Iran's relations with Libya and Syria, as well as with the various groups operating within their orbit. Mohtashami is best known as the godfather of Hezbollah, and during his tenure as ambassador to Syria, Mohtashami helped organize and supervise the group. From his perch in Damascus, he coordinated the 1982 entry of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards contingent to the Beqaa, which, under the command of current Defense Minister Hossein Dehghan, trained Hezbollah and guided its attacks on US and Western targets in Lebanon. Even after he assumed his post at the Ministry of Interior in 1986, Mohtashami remained deeply involved with the party and with managing Iranian policy in Lebanon. Mohtashami also belonged to a faction of Iranian revolutionary cadres that had cultivated strong ties to Libya since before the success of the revolution. The faction, led by Mohammad Montazeri until his killing in 1981, worked closely with the Palestinians and maintained an alliance with Libya, from which they would later procure arms. Montazeri also established the Office of Liberation Movements (OLM), which developed ties with militant groups abroad. Mohtashami, like most of the founding figures of the OLM, had lived and trained with the Palestinians in Lebanon in the 1970s. With his long history in Lebanon and his posting in Damascus, Mohtashami was a point-man with militant groups like the PFLP-GC operating there. And while the PFLP-GC answered first and foremost to Damascus, it also intersected with Libya and Iran... The Al Jazeera documentary cast light anew on this enduring relationship, and on Tehran's role in terrorism against the US. This focus may have been an attempt to prod the Obama administration, which has identified Sunni terrorism, and not Iran-sponsored terrorism, as the number-one threat to the US." http://t.uani.com/1d7x0QD Emanuele Ottolenghi & Saeed Ghasseminejad in IBT: "Since Hassan Rouhani's election as the new president of Iran in June 2013, the Islamic Republic has been on a 'charm offensive.' Rouhani and his team captivated large segments of Western public opinion and decision-makers, no doubt thanks to their mild-mannered eloquence and polished personae. Since Hassan Rouhani's election as the new president of Iran in June 2013, the Islamic Republic has been on a 'charm offensive.' Rouhani and his team captivated large segments of Western public opinion and decision-makers, no doubt thanks to their mild-mannered eloquence and polished personae. In truth, there has been little change in Iran's policies - Rouhani's human rights' record is even worse than his predecessor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and Iran's long-term nuclear aspirations remain unchanged. Whether the IRGC and Rouhani are locked up in a struggle over policy rather than [spoils] remains to be seen. But let's assume the Guards feel 'threatened' by the Iranian president's new course. There is no guarantee that major concessions would help Rouhani contain the IRGC, given that the IRGC's military might and its considerable clout over Iran's economy are what makes the IRGC such an influential player. A more prudent course of action would be to undermine the 'hardliners' without making premature concessions, by going after their economic power. The IRGC are, after all, under U.S. and European sanctions as the custodians of Iran's nuclear and ballistic missile programs. Many of their companies have already been targeted due to their role in procuring technology for both programs. Increasing pressure on the IRGC is well within the purview of existing sanctions, which both the U.S. and the EU can enforce even as they implement the nuclear interim deal signed with Iran last November. Targeting IRGC companies has an added value: it would reinforce the U.S. refrain, voiced since the interim deal was signed, according to which 'Tehran is not open for business'. It is hard to imagine that the U.S. and Europe would wish sanctions' relief to ultimately benefit those who are likeliest to oppose any nuclear compromise. It is even harder to fathom that the IRGC would not benefit from sanctions' relief, given the extent of its economic influence." http://t.uani.com/1oELmJY Eye on Iran is a periodic news summary from United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) a program of the American Coalition Against Nuclear Iran, Inc., a tax-exempt organization under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. Eye on Iran is not intended as a comprehensive media clips summary but rather a selection of media elements with discreet analysis in a PDA friendly format. For more information please email Press@UnitedAgainstNuclearIran.com United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) is a non-partisan, broad-based coalition that is united in a commitment to prevent Iran from fulfilling its ambition to become a regional super-power possessing nuclear weapons.  UANI is an issue-based coalition in which each coalition member will have its own interests as well as the collective goal of advancing an Iran free of nuclear weapons.