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Stories
Al-Monitor: "In a letter published on the
president's website, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has thanked
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei for approving the nuclear deal
between Iran and five permanent members of the UN Security Council.
Rouhani's letter seemed to downplay Khamenei's 'conditional approval'
of the nuclear deal Oct. 21, and focused more on using the 'win-win'
strategy for future prospects of cooperation between Iran and other
countries. Rouhani's Oct. 22 letter said that Khamenei's 'stamp of
approval for the results of the administration and the negotiators ...
will start a new chapter toward excellence for the Islamic Republic of
Iran.' The letter added, 'The oppressive international economic, trade,
and financial sanctions or the unilateral sanctions by the [UN]
Security Council, European Union, and America against the Islamic
Republic of Iran, have been eliminated.' In the letter, Rouhani
optimistically said that as a result of the nuclear deal, Iran's 'role
as a primary provider of stability and security in the region' has been
set. The letter also stated that the 'Zionist project' to demonize Iran
has failed for the first time in decades. Rouhani also praised what he
called unprecedented accomplishments in international agreements, such
as, 'for the first time in the history of the United Nations, [nuclear]
enrichment by a non-permanent member was directly accepted by the
UNSC.' He also wrote that for the first time, 'six binding resolutions
of the Security Council ... have been suspended at once through
negotiations and the 'win-win' approach of the JCPOA has become a model
of resolving peacefully complex world problems.' Newspapers supportive
of the nuclear deal downplayed Khamenei's conditions while those
critical focused on his warnings about the United States and his doubts
about the deal." http://t.uani.com/1LRQsju
CSM: "The key to unlocking decades
of mutual US-Iran hostility - and to ending the 15-month imprisonment
of Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian - was once widely believed to
be the historic nuclear deal agreed to last July. But instead of a new
era of budding US-Iran cooperation, a retrenchment is under way in
Tehran that favors hard-line suspicions of the West, and especially the
United States. Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has set
the tone, referring since September to America as the 'Great Satan'
that used the nuclear negotiations only to 'penetrate' and damage Iran,
'open the way for imposition' of its influence, and 'change' the
calculations of Iranian officials. Mr. Khamenei has explicitly
forbidden any further negotiations with the US, and has accused
President Barack Obama of lying about not wanting to overthrow the
Islamic Republic. In a letter that conditionally accepted the nuclear
deal Wednesday, he pointedly told President Hassan Rouhani that the US
'has shown nothing but hostility' toward Iran and will always do so.
Those moves undermine Mr. Rouhani's stated aim to reengage with the US
and the West, and reportedly include the arrest of another US-Iranian
dual citizen last week. Negotiators from both the US and Iran had
indicated to each other that the nuclear deal could herald a broader
though limited cooperation on thorny regional issues like the
self-declared Islamic State and the wars in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen. And
in September, Rouhani said it was 'an impossibility' to think that
US-Iran animosity would continue 'until the end of the world.' But
Khamenei's comments have halted any forward dynamic for now,
underscoring the challenge of moving beyond the entrenched distrust of
the US that has been a pillar of Iran's revolution for decades. The
warnings about US 'infiltration' appear to have also affected the case
of Mr. Rezaian. A torrent of new details about the espionage
allegations against him has been made public in recent days." http://t.uani.com/1Gm9fDi
Fars
(Iran):
"Tehran's provisional Friday Prayers Leader Ayatollah Seyed Ahmad
Khatami warned against the plots hatched by the US to penetrate into
Iran. Addressing a large and fervent congregation of the people on
Tehran University campus on Friday, Ayatollah Khatami said, 'It is now
100 days since Iran and the world powers reached a nuclear agreement in
Vienna on July 14 and Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Seyed Ali
Khamenei has warned over 70 times against the threat of political,
cultural and economic penetration of the US; therefore officials should
take good care not to allow an enemy that was expelled 36 years ago to
come back.' He said those who are optimistic about the empty promises
made by the US are politically immature, and added, 'A Cuban envoy said
that although the US has promised to lift Washington's sanctions on
Cuba, the US has not fulfilled its duty yet.'" http://t.uani.com/1S0KiOQ
Nuclear
Program & Agreement
AP: "The Iranian government will
begin fully implementing the landmark nuclear deal reached with world
powers 'with good will,' and the work will be done while keeping in
mind concerns voiced by Iran's supreme leader, President Hassan Rouhani
said Thursday. A letter posted on Rouhani's website, president.ir,
addressed to supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Iran will be
keeping close watch to make sure other parties to the deal fulfill
their obligations. 'The government of the Islamic Republic of Iran will
start full implementation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action
with good will and based on Your Excellency's considerations and
requirements and the decisions of the Supreme National Security Council
and the Parliament,' Rouhani said in the letter. 'The other side's
fulfillment of its obligations will be vigilantly monitored and the
Supreme National Security Council will adopt the needed decision to
take the proper course of action,' he said. Khamenei on Wednesday
endorsed the deal but warned the government to be vigilant, saying the
United States cannot be trusted. He also said the agreement 'suffers
from multiple structural weaknesses and ambiguous points that can lead
to present and future great harms to the country in the absence of
precise and constant vigilance.' He added that 'any remarks saying the
structure of sanctions will remain in place are considered a breach' of
the agreement." http://t.uani.com/1OW9RRf
Reuters: "Russia's U.N. envoy on
Thursday said the United Nations Security Council will examine the
technical details of a ballistic missile test by Iran, which the United
States and its European allies have said violated U.N. sanctions. The United
States, Britain, France and Germany called on Wednesday for the
council's Iran sanctions committee to take action over the launch,
which they said involved a ballistic missile 'inherently capable of
delivering a nuclear weapon.' Reporters asked Russian Ambassador Vitaly
Churkin if Moscow believed it was a violation that would necessitate
punitive steps by the committee. 'We need to be very careful about
those things, we will look into technical details and then, of course,
we need to take into account the political circumstances,' Churkin
said. 'One has to be professional about it. It's not a sensational kind
of issue.'" http://t.uani.com/1MXnFuB
WSJ: "The U.S. closely monitored
Israel's military bases and eavesdropped on secret communications in
2012, fearing its longtime ally might try to carry out a strike on
Fordow, Iran's most heavily fortified nuclear facility. Nerves frayed
at the White House after senior officials learned Israeli aircraft had
flown in and out of Iran in what some believed was a dry run for a
commando raid on the site. Worried that Israel might ignite a regional
war, the White House sent a second aircraft carrier to the region and readied
attack aircraft, a senior U.S. official said, 'in case all hell broke
loose.' The two countries, nursing a mutual distrust, each had
something to hide. U.S. officials hoped to restrain Israel long enough
to advance negotiations on a nuclear deal with Iran that the U.S. had
launched in secret. U.S. officials saw Israel's strike preparations as
an attempt to usurp American foreign policy. Instead of talking to each
other, the allies kept their intentions secret. To figure out what they
weren't being told, they turned to their spy agencies to fill gaps.
They employed deception, not only against Iran, but against each other.
After working in concert for nearly a decade to keep Iran from an
atomic bomb, the U.S. and Israel split over the best means: diplomacy,
covert action or military strikes." http://t.uani.com/1NryS56
Military
Matters
IRNA
(Iran): "Iranian
Navy fleet gave berth at Russian port of Astrakhan amid welcome by
local officials of Astrakhan and the Russian Defense Ministry, IRNA
reported on Thursday. The Iranian Navy fleet is on an expedition for
four days to Russian Federation. Iran's strategic naval fleet is
composed of Damavand destroyer and two missile-carrier warships named
Peykan and Joshan. The expedition of the high-profile fleet of Iranian
Navy aims to develop cooperation on maintenance of security of the
Caspian Sea as well as maritime cooperation and cultural relations.
Another Iranian Navy fleet visited Russia for the first time in
2013." http://t.uani.com/1GZ4REX
Sanctions
Relief
Reuters: "Russian Energy Minister
Alexander Novak said on Friday Kremlin-controlled gas producer Gazprom
has offered gas supplies to Iran under a swap arrangement, and similar
oil deals were also under consideration. Moscow has boosted efforts to
foster political and economic ties with Tehran and increased its
activity after a decision in July to lift international sanctions on
Iran in principle... Novak said Iran normally supplies gas to its
northern regions from the south of the country and the proposed swap
deals would help to cut its transportation costs. 'We could supply gas
through to Iran's north and receive gas from the south (of Iran) via
swap deals in the form of liquefied natural gas or pipeline gas,' Novak
told Russian state-run TV Rossiya-24. 'Similar swaps could be done with
oil. This is a reduction of transportation costs. Our colleagues have
given a positive response to the idea,' he added." http://t.uani.com/1GYXLAr
Sanctions
Enforcement
Reuters: "A dual U.S.-Iranian citizen
who pleaded guilty to trying to export sensitive information about U.S.
military jets to his native Iran could be sentenced to up to 10 years
in federal prison at a hearing on Friday. Mozaffar Khazaee, who had
worked as an engineer at U.S. defense contractor Pratt & Whitney,
was arrested in January 2014 as he tried to leave the country with
sensitive material about the engines for the U.S. Air Force's F-35
Joint Strike Fighter and F-22 Raptor aircraft in his luggage. Khazaee
also had exchanged e-mails containing information about the programs
with Iranian contacts." http://t.uani.com/1W8OZqn
Syria
Conflict
Reuters: "A former bodyguard of Iran's
hardline former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been killed in Syria
while defending a religious site near Aleppo, the semi-official Fars
news agency reported on Friday. 'Abdollah Bagheri Niaraki, who for a
while was the bodyguard of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was martyred near
Aleppo yesterday (Thursday),' Fars reported, adding that he had been
fighting to defend a shrine." http://t.uani.com/1W9c3us
Regional
Destabilization
Guardian: "The propaganda war between
Iran and Saudi Arabia, bitter rivals on opposite sides of the Middle
East's biggest current crises, is hotting up, with near daily exchanges
and insults between ministers and state media outlets. In the past week
alone senior figures from both countries have cast diplomatic niceties
to the desert winds and attacked each other publicly. Adel al-Jubeir,
the Saudi foreign minister, said on Monday that Iran was 'occupying
Arab lands' in Syria - where it supports Bashar al-Assad. Hossein
Amir-Abdollahian, Iran's deputy foreign minister, retorted that the
Saudis were in no position to complain as they were 'occupying' Yemen -
where Tehran backs the Houthi rebels. Iran ramped up its anti-Saudi
rhetoric after the recent hajj tragedy in Mecca but it went on the
offensive at the start of the Saudi-led campaign in Yemen in March,
with a Revolutionary Guard commander predicting the 'collapse of the House
of Saud ... in the footsteps of Zionist Israel'. Saudi-affiliated media
began highlighting the situation in Ahwaz (Khuzestan or Arabistan), in
south-western Iran, where Arabic-speaking citizens complain of
discrimination, a subject clearly calculated to raise hackles in
Tehran." http://t.uani.com/1S0F3P6
Opinion
& Analysis
Yaroslav
Trofimov in WSJ:
"By entering the Syrian war, Russia has joined hands with Iran in
trying to rescue President Bashar al-Assad's regime. But is this a
durable alliance-or just a temporary convergence of interests that may
implode as the conflict progresses? Militarily, Russia's air power,
signals intelligence and advanced weapons perfectly complement the
ground troops and human intelligence provided by Iran's Revolutionary
Guard Corps. Both nations share the immediate goal of preventing a
collapse of the regime in Damascus, and of helping it regain some land
recently lost to the rebels. For now, this united front between Russia
and Iran in the Middle East presents a formidable challenge to the U.S.
and its allies, projecting power from the Caspian to the Mediterranean
seas-and forestalling Tehran's opening to the West in the wake of this
year's nuclear deal. But both countries' Syrian policies are driven by
fundamentally different long-term approaches. That could result in real
tension, especially if the fighting doesn't go as planned in coming
months-and later if peace talks on how to divide the spoils of war
become serious. 'So far, Russia and Iran have been pretty efficient in
projecting the illusion that their agenda is similar in Syria. But it
is a very wrong impression,' said Jean-Pierre Filiu, a specialist on
the region at Sciences Po university in Paris and a former diplomatic
adviser to the French prime minister. For Moscow, the Syrian war fits
into its global strategy of creating a 'multipolar' world in which
Russia would re-emerge as one of the key powers alongside a declining
America. The Kremlin is focused on preventing 'color revolutions' and
regime changes such as those in Ukraine or Egypt. Following this logic,
Moscow views propping up Mr. Assad as establishing a precedent that
further regime changes would no longer be tolerated-a message intended
as much for the West as for opponents of President Vladimir Putin at
home. Second come Moscow's other considerations, such as the need to
secure its naval facility on the Syrian coast, Russia's only outlet in
the Mediterranean Sea. Iran, by contrast, remains a revolutionary
nation seeking to transform the region and to bolster the sway of
fellow Shiites all the way to Lebanon and Yemen. Iranian officials
openly call for regime change in Saudi Arabia and other Sunni Gulf
monarchies, let alone the elimination of the state of Israel. Iran's
way of operating in Iraq, Lebanon-and now in Syria-is to weaken these
states by building up proxy Shiite militias. Stoking sectarian strife,
however, isn't something that appeals to Russia, where as much as 15%
of the population are Sunni Muslims, in some regions with a history of
unrest. 'The objectives facing the two countries are completely
different, and are not conducive to creating a bloc,' said Nikolay
Kozhanov, a fellow at the Royal Institute of International Affairs in
London and a former Russian diplomat in Tehran. 'For Moscow, Iran has
always been a suspect ally, and in recent years the two have been
competing in Syria.' Russia is traditionally vexed by the adjective
Islamic in the name of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and by the Iranian
attempts to play the Shiite card and the Islamic card.' ... So far,
these differences between Moscow and Tehran remain muted. Part of the
reason is that Mr. Putin and Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei,
both want to prevent Iran's drift closer to the West in the aftermath
of this year's nuclear deal with five world powers. 'The deal provided
for Iran getting out of the cold, opening for business, and Moscow was
due to lose its position of a privileged partner,' explained Pavel
Baev, a professor at the Peace Research Institute in Oslo and a former
Soviet academic. 'The Syrian adventure has reconstituted and
reformatted the partnership-but it doesn't signify an essential
compatibility of security interests.'" http://t.uani.com/203DDZm
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Eye on Iran is a periodic news summary from United Against
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