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Reuters: "Iran briefly exceeded a limit
set by a deal with major powers under which sanctions against it were
lifted, the U.N. nuclear watchdog said on Friday, but Tehran then came
back within the permitted bounds. Under its July deal with the United
States, Russia, China, France, Britain and Germany, Iran is allowed to
have 130 tonnes of heavy water, a moderator in reactors like the one it
has disabled at Arak and a chemical it produces itself. 'On 17 February,
the agency verified that Iran's stock of heavy water had reached 130.9
metric tonnes,' the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which
polices the deal, said in a regular report on Iran's nuclear program sent
to its member states. By Wednesday, however, 20 tonnes of heavy water had
been shipped out of the country, bringing the stock back under the
threshold of 130 tonnes, apparently in keeping with a soft limit under
the terms of the July 14 deal, which is formally called the Joint
Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). 'All excess heavy water which is
beyond Iran's needs will be made available for export to the
international market,' one of the annexes in the deal stipulates, adding:
'Iran's needs are estimated to be 130 metric tonnes.' In Washington, a
U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity played down the
incident. 'Iran briefly exceeded its 130 metric ton heavy water stockpile
limit under the JCPOA by less than one ton. The IAEA has now verified
that Iran has shipped out 20 metric tons and is back well under this
limit,' said the U.S. official. 'Iran made no effort to hide anything it
was doing from the IAEA. Because of the enhanced monitoring and
verification provisions in the JCPOA, the IAEA immediately became aware
of this issue and raised it with Iran, and Iran fixed it,' he said."
http://t.uani.com/1nbIRTf
Reuters: "President Hassan Rouhani and
his allies won big gains in elections that could deepen Iran's engagement
with the world after his government ended years of sanctions by agreeing
to curb its nuclear program. The outcome in the results for Tehran on
Monday was a blow to the conservative Islamic establishment, although it
retains decisive power due to Iran's unwieldy dual system of clerical and
republican rule. Most of the lawmakers who did not make it to the new
parliament strongly opposed the nuclear deal, including Mehdi Koochakzadeh,
who called Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif 'a traitor', and
Roohollah Hosseinian, who threatened to bury the negotiators under cement
for agreeing to concessions to world powers. 'This election can be a
turning point in the history of the Islamic Republic,' said an editorial
in reformist newspaper Mardom-Salari, whose managing editor, Mostafa
Kavakebian, won a parliamentary seat in Tehran. 'The biggest achievement
of this election is the return of reformists to the ruling system ... so
they won't be called seditionists or infiltrators anymore,' he said,
referring to hardliners who accused reformists of links to the West.
Rouhani and allied centrists and reformers won 15 out of the 16 Tehran
seats in the 88-member Assembly of Experts, which is tasked with choosing
the country's next supreme leader, final election results for Tehran
showed. Two prominent conservatives, including the speaker of the
powerful clerical body, were among those ousted in the capital.
Candidates on the reformist list also took all 30 parliamentary seats in
the Tehran constituency, up from just two previously, final results
released by Interior Minister Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli showed. Beyond the
capital, their gains were more limited, with conservatives keeping hold
of many seats in both bodies." http://t.uani.com/1pkXh5f
Reuters: "In his first comments since
the elections, Iran's deeply anti-Western Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali
Khamenei, praised the high turnout but made no direct comment on the
results. However in a statement he appeared to set out the values he
would like to see in the newly elected bodies, suggesting they should not
be influenced by the West. 'Advancement doesn't mean getting absorbed by
global arrogance', he said, using a term for the United States. A more
toughly worded comment came from hardline judiciary chief Ayatollah Sadeq
Emoli Larijani, who accused reformists of working with 'American and
English media outlets' to block hardliners from winning seats the experts
assembly. 'Is this type of coordination with foreigners in order to push
out these figures from the Assembly of Experts in the interests of the
regime?' he said in a statement. The Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps,
a powerful hardline paramilitary organisation close to Khamenei, issued a
statement praising the turnout and implicitly accepting the results, but
it too described the anti-U.S. stance it would like to see. 'The election
winners will do their best to protect Iran's dignity, power and
independence; resolve the main issues for society and the people; and
defeat the global arrogance by their awareness and wisdom,' it said,
referring to the United States." http://t.uani.com/1RfuYf8
U.S.-Iran
Relations
AP: "Ten terrorist attack victims
who won financial claims against Iran can seize a $2.8 million judgment
owed to that country's defense ministry, a federal appeals court said
Friday. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled the seizure would not
violate agreements between Iran and the United States to resolve the Iran
hostage crisis. The court also said the money, which has grown to more
than $9.4 million with interest and attorneys' fees, was among assets
that had been frozen by an executive order... The victims include
survivors of a 1997 suicide bombing in Jerusalem. A lower court judge
determined that Iran provided training and other material assistance to
the bombers and ordered Iran to pay the victims damages ranging from $2.5
million to $15 million, according to the 9th Circuit ruling. Another
victim is the son of former Iranian prime minister Shapoir Bakhtiar, who
opposed Iran's Islamic regime and was murdered at his home in France in
1991. Iran won the $2.8 million judgment in 1997 against an American
defense company that had agreed to sell it an air combat system. The
sale, however, was disrupted by the 1979 Iranian revolution, and Iran
sought reimbursement. The 9th Circuit has previously ruled that a
separate group of terrorist attack victims who won financial judgments
against Iran could go after $17 million owed to an Iranian bank." http://t.uani.com/1Uu5mAv
Reuters: "Iran's judiciary signaled on
Saturday that Iranian-American businessman Siamak Namazi, detained since
October in a case being watched internationally, had not been given
access to a lawyer... Five Iranian-American groups have written to U.S.
Secretary of State John Kerry urging him to work to release Namazi, who
they said was 'left behind' after the prisoner swap. Namazi was detained
by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps while in Iran visiting
family. Officials have yet to announce charges against him. Namazi's
80-year-old father Baquer Namazi was arrested on Monday after traveling
to Iran to try to visit his son in Evin prison. On Saturday, judiciary
spokesman Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei mentioned the case in answer to
international media reports that Siamak Namazi had been denied access to
a lawyer, Tasnim news agency reported. He was quoted as saying:
'According to the criminal code, lawyers should be approved by the head
of the judiciary in security cases ... therefore if a lawyer is presented
according to these rules he will be accepted, whether on this case or any
other.' 'There is one law for all accused,' Ejei added. Iran does not
recognize dual nationality. Last week, the younger Namazi's attorney and
family said he had been denied access to his lawyer, Mahmoud Alizadeh
Tabatabaei. Tabatabaei said he was representing Namazi but had not been
informed of the charges his client faces." http://t.uani.com/24wXRgw
Sanctions
Relief
Reuters: "South Korean steelmaker POSCO
said on Monday that it has signed an initial agreement to help build a
$1.6 billion steel mill in Iran, looking to tap rising demand in the
Middle Eastern country as other markets falter. The lifting of economic
sanctions earlier this year on Iran's disputed nuclear programme is
expected to revive the biggest steel market in the Middle East at a time
when appetite in major consumer China is slowing. POSCO and its
affiliates plan to take 8 percent of the project to build the 1.6
million-tonne steel plant with Iran's Pars Kohan Diarparsian Steel (PKP)
in the port city of Chabahar, POSCO said in a statement. The world's
sixth-biggest steel producer aims to break ground on the plant next year,
with a plan to add facilities producing cold-rolled and galvanized steel
in 2019, a POSCO spokesman said... South Korean steelmakers controlled
over half the Iranian market before the Western sanctions were imposed,
according to POSCO's research centre. As part of the deal, POSCO plans to
transfer to Iran its so-called FINEX technology, which it touts as being
more environmentally-friendly and cost-efficient than standard
steelmaking methods. POSCO's construction unit, POSCO Engineering &
Construction, also plans to build a plant to generate power as part of
the project, using gas created by the steel factory. The construction
unit also expects to construct desalination facilities to produce 60,000
tonnes of water a day." http://t.uani.com/1RfoooR
Reuters: "Asian imports of Iranian oil
held steady in January from a year earlier, as most of Iran's biggest
crude buyers restrained their purchases until right before sanctions were
lifted last month as part of an agreement on Tehran's disputed nuclear
program. Iran's rehabilitation in the international commercial system is
likely to start feeding through to official buyer's data from March after
loading for exports surged this month and in late January, according to
data obtained earlier by Reuters. Imports by Iran's four biggest buyers -
China, India, Japan and South Korea - came to 981,000 barrels per day
(bpd) in January, down 0.1 percent from a year earlier, government and
tanker-tracking data show." http://t.uani.com/1ThI3uI
Reuters: "Switzerland said on Saturday
it had agreed on a 'road map' for building business, financial and other
links with Iran after Swiss President Johann Schneider-Ammann met his
counterpart Hassan Rouhani in Tehran. 'The aim is to relaunch various
dialogues between Switzerland and Iran,' Switzerland's department of
Economic Affairs, Education and Research said in a statement. 'These include
an economic and financial dialogue and a human rights and justice
dialogue; a dialogue on migration issues is already underway.'" http://t.uani.com/1RA7F26
PressTV
(Iran): "Iran
said on Sunday that it had signed a basic agreement with South Korea to
attract funds worth a total value of €5 billion for its development
projects. The agreement was signed between Iran's Finance Minister Ali
Tayyeb-Nia and the visiting South Korean Minister of Trade, Industry and
Energy Joo Hyung-hwan. Tayyeb-Nia told reporters that similar agreements
have been previously signed with South Korea including one with the
country's Exim Bank to provide a total of €8 billion to Iran to implement
its development projects. The Iranian minister further emphasized that
South Korea is expected to provide Iran with loans worth a total of $15
billion based on the agreements that have been sealed so far. Tayyeb-Nia
also said Minister Joo had told him that South Korea wants to invest in
Iran's auto industry as well as its tourism sector and its oil and gas
projects. In a separate development, Valiollah Seif, the governor of the
Central Bank of Iran (CBI), has been quoted by the media as saying that
Iran and South Korea have agreed to create a joint bank account to settle
the outstanding payments for Iran's oil sales to South Korea." http://t.uani.com/1T484xd
PressTV
(Iran): "An
Iranian container ship is heading to Europe for the first time in five
years, marking Tehran's return to international markets after the lifting
of sanctions, an official says. Chairman of the Islamic Republic of
Iran Shipping Lines (IRISL) Mohammad Saeidi said he expects the ship,
carrying a cargo of petrochemical products, to call at European ports in
the 'next few days.' 'This is a big event as we managed to revive
shipping to Europe after five years, thanks to the efforts of our
management and staff, and unlock the sea transportation lock to Europe,'
he said, quoted by the Mehr news agency. 'Fortunately, with the lifting
of sanctions and implementation of the JCPOA (nuclear agreement) over the
past five months...we managed to reopen the sea link and shipping routes
to Europe,' he added. IRISL has successfully lobbied with Germany and
Italy to establish a joint shipping company to cover northern and
southern Europe with their services, Saeidi added." http://t.uani.com/1RAa78S
PressTV
(Iran): "Iran
said on Sunday that the world's second largest shipping company MSC from
Switzerland will soon expand its services to the country's ports. Iran's
Ministry of Roads and Urban Development in a statement said an agreement
had been signed with the MSC by means of which the global shipping giant
will increase calls to Iran's Bandar Abbas, Chabahar and Bandar Imam
ports. The agreement - that has been signed with the Ports and Maritime
Organization Iran - will also facilitate the shipment of Iranian goods
from international ports to the country through MSC. This came at a time
that Swiss President Johann Schneider-Ammann is in Iran on a landmark three-day
visit. The media reported in January that the MSC had started calling at
the country's southern ports after a hiatus of six years. This came after
an MSC container ship has docked at Shahid Rajaie port in the Persian
Gulf coastal city of Bandar Abbas." http://t.uani.com/1LqlL6X
Terrorism
AFP: "The Palestinian Authority on
Sunday said Iran's direct financial assistance to the families of
Palestinians killed in a five-month wave of violence would be
unacceptable. Tehran announced last week assistance would be offered to
families of Palestinians killed in the wave of violence that erupted in
October, but the PA says such aid must follow official channels. Palestinian
presidency spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeina, cited by local media, said
bypassing the authority in handing out such funds would constitute
illegal interference in internal Palestinian affairs. Iran should 'send
this money through official channels to the (PA's) Martyrs and Prisoners
Foundation rather than relying on informal and circuitous routes,' Abu
Rudeina said. Iran's ambassador to Lebanon, Mohammad Fathali, said
Wednesday that Tehran would offer $7,000 to the families of each
Palestinian killed in what he called the 'Jerusalem intifada.'" http://t.uani.com/1QGvMZS
Iran-Saudi
Tensions
Reuters: "Hezbollah indicated there
would be no apology to Saudi Arabia over Lebanon's decision not to
condemn attacks on Saudi diplomatic missions in Iran, signaling no quick
end to a crisis seen as a risk to Lebanese economic and political
stability. The Lebanese central bank governor in an interview with
Reuters meanwhile urged the government to mend ties with Saudi Arabia,
but said reports on potential financial repercussions of the crisis were
overblown and there was no risk to the currency. The crisis came to a
head last week when Saudi Arabia halted a $3 billion aid package for the
Lebanese army in response to the government's failure to sign up to
statements condemning attacks on Saudi diplomatic missions in Iran. The
row reflects the wider conflict between Iran and Saudi Arabia. Lebanon
has been an arena for that struggle for the last decade during which
Saudi Arabia's Lebanese allies have struggled to confront the growing
power of Iran-backed Hezbollah." http://t.uani.com/1TMFJvh
Domestic
Politics
AFP: "Iranian hardliners suffered
another election setback Monday with two leading conservatives ejected
from the top clerical body, handing another victory to moderate President
Hassan Rouhani, whose reformist allies made gains. The public's rejection
of ayatollahs Mohammad Yazdi and Mohammad Taghi Mesbah-Yazdi when picking
the powerful Assembly of Experts came as final results were also awaited
for parliamentary polls after voting on Friday... State television
reported that Yazdi, the current chair of the assembly, and Mesbah-Yazdi,
a figure openly hostile to reformists and close to former hardline
president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, had failed to be re-elected. On Sunday
they had been placed 17th and 19th in the assembly ballot for Tehran, but
only 16 places were up for grabs in the capital... Yazdi, Mesbah-Yazdi
and a third hardliner in the assembly, Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, were
targeted by Rouhani supporters in the election campaign, with the public
being urged not to back them. However Jannati, chair of another influential
body in Iran, the Guardian Council, which must approve all election
results and which barred thousands of candidates from contesting the
polls, scraped re-election, taking 16th place, the last seat available in
Tehran. Rouhani was re-elected to the assembly in third place in Tehran,
with his ally and former two-term president Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi
Rafsanjani in first position." http://t.uani.com/1QgbIQS
Reuters: "Iran's hardline judiciary
chief on Sunday accused reformists of working with Westerners to block
hardliners from winning seats in Friday's elections for the Assembly of
Experts, an influential leadership body. In a statement, Ayatollah Sadeq
Amoli Larijani said reformists had coordinated with 'American and English
media outlets' to prevent what he called some servants of the people from
entering the assembly, which has the task of selecting the country's most
powerful figure, the supreme leader. 'Is this type of coordination with
foreigners in order to push out these figures from the Assembly of
Experts in the interests of the regime?' the statement, carried on
several news agencies, said." http://t.uani.com/1VMYjBl
Reuters: "Iran's hardline Revolutionary
Guards on Sunday said the winners of Friday's elections would protect the
Islamic Republic against foreign enemies, and the high turnout was evidence
of broad popular support of the ruling system. 'There is no doubt that
the election winners will do their best to protect Iran's dignity, power
and independence; resolve the main issues for society and the people; and
defeat the global arrogance (United States) by their awareness and
wisdom,' the Guards said in a statement carried on the Tasnim news
agency." http://t.uani.com/1QngMnS
Opinion
& Analysis
WSJ
Editorial: "One
of the Obama Administration's hopes for its nuclear deal with Iran was
that it would empower regime moderates. So it's no surprise that the
deal's cheerleaders are proclaiming Friday's election results as a
triumph for the Islamic Republic's 'moderate' and 'reformist' factions.
That depends on the meaning of the word 'moderate.' At stake Friday were
seats in the Majlis, or Parliament, and the Assembly of Experts, the body
that will select Iran's next Supreme Leader. Like all Iranian elections,
the vote was a carefully stage-managed process. Iranians picked from
among candidates prescreened for ideological orthodoxy by the unelected
Guardian Council and various security agencies. The Guardians
disqualified 6,000, or nearly half, of the original candidates to the
Majlis. Of the 801 candidates to the Assembly of Experts, only a quarter,
or 161, made it to the ballot. Most of the disqualified candidates
belonged to the reformist and moderate factions of the regime. Imagine
U.S. midterm elections in which the White House was able to ban all Tea
Party or even nonprogressive Democratic candidates from the ballot.
Western media are nonetheless describing the results as an 'embarrassing
defeat' for the regime's hard-liners and the moderates' 'best nationwide
electoral showing in more than a decade,' as the Associated Press put it.
Of particular note are the results in the capital, Tehran, a national
barometer where on Sunday it appeared that candidates on the moderate
list had swept all 30 seats in the Majlis. Some moderates. Consider
Mostafa Kavakebian. The General Secretary of Iran's Democratic Party, Mr.
Kavakebian is projected to enter the Majlis as a member for Tehran. In a
2008 speech he said: 'The people who currently reside in Israel aren't humans,
and this region is comprised of a group of soldiers and occupiers who
openly wage war on the people.' Another moderate is Kazem Jalali, who
previously served as the spokesman for the National Security and Foreign
Affairs Committee of the Majlis and is projected to have won a seat. In
2011 Mr. Jalali said his committee 'demands the harshest
punishment'-meaning the death penalty-for Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi
Karroubi, the two leaders of the pro-democracy Green Movement that was
bloodily suppressed after stolen elections in 2009. Those two leaders are
still under house arrest. As for new Assembly of Experts, many of the
'moderates' projected to have won seats were also listed on the
hard-liners' lists, since the ratio of candidates to seats was well below
two. The winners include Mohammad Reyshahry, a former Intelligence
Minister believed to have helped spearhead the 1988 summary execution of
thousands of leftists; Ghorbanali Dorri-Najafabadi, another former
Intelligence Minister believed to have directed the 'chain murders' of
the late 1990s; and Ayatollah Yousef Tabatabainejad, a fierce opponent of
women's rights who has called Israel 'a cancerous tumor.' The political
reality in Iran is that the Ayatollahs, backed by the Revolutionary
Guards, remain firmly in control." http://t.uani.com/1LPRJ7n
Eli Lake
in Bloomberg:
"If you are following the Iranian elections, prepare to be dazzled.
According to major news outlets from the BBC to the Associated Press, the
reformists beat the hardliners. But wait. Didn't Iran's Guardian Council
disqualify most of the reformists back in January? Of course it did, but
thanks to the magic of Iranian politics, many of yesterday's hardliners
are today's reformist. Take Kazem Jalali. Until this month, Jalali was
one of those hardliners whom President Barack Obama had hoped to
marginalize with the Iran nuclear deal. Jalali has, for example, called
for sentencing to death the two leaders of the Green Movement, who are
currently under house arrest. And yet, he ran on the list endorsed by the
reformists in Friday's election. Two former intelligence ministers,
accused by Iran's democratic opposition of having dissidents murdered,
Mohammad Mohammadi Reyshahri and Ghorbanali Dorri-Najafabadi, also ran on
the list endorsed by Iran's moderate president for the Assembly of
Experts, the panel that is charged with selecting the next supreme
leader. The initial Iranian reform movement of the late 1990s sought to
allow more social freedoms and political opposition of the unelected side
of Iran's government, such as the office of the Supreme Leader and the
Guardian Council. Over time however, the changes supported by the
reformists like Mohammed Khatami, who was president between 1997 and
2005, were stymied by these unelected institutions. When the next
generation of reform politicians ran for office in 2009 under the banner
of the green movement, the unelected part of the state arrested their
supporters when they demonstrated what they saw as a stolen election. On
Friday, many of the hardliners that opposed the reformists in the late
1990s and in 2009 are running under this banner. As Saeed Ghasseminejad,
an expert on Iranian politics at the Foundation for Defense of
Democracies, recently said: 'Putting a reformist or moderate label on
hardliners does not make them reformist or moderate.' In some cases, the
transformation happened so quickly that the candidates themselves were
surprised. Caitlin Shayda Pendleton, an analyst with the American
Enterprise Institute's Critical Threats Project, wrote last week, two of
the candidates on Rouhani's list for the Assembly of Experts told
reporters they weren't asked to be included among the alleged reformists.
These include Ayatollah Ali Movahedi Kermani, who defended the Guardian
Council's vetting process against the reformists; as well as Ayatollah
Mohammad-Ali Taskhiri, who told reporters 'I believe that the correct way
is Principalist, and the way of others, like Reformists or moderates, is
the incorrect way.' As Pendleton wrote on Sunday, 'Many (but far from
all) candidates described as Reformists in both the parliamentary and
Assembly of Experts elections are actually Moderates who were endorsed by
Reformist leaders as a fallback after the Guardian Council disqualified
most of the Reformists trying to run.' The headlines however tell a
different story. The Guardian, for example, says: 'Iranian elections deal
blow to hardliners as reformists make gains.' The BBC concludes:
'Reformists win all 30 Tehran seats.' And on it goes... The logic here is
that at the very least, voters could protest the most reactionary
hardliners in favor of the slightly less reactionary hardliners. This is
hardly a victory for democratic change in Iran. And that is what is
important for Westerners trying to make sense of Iran's elections. While
Iranian politicians have to make the best of a bad hand, we don't.
Western journalists and analysts don't need to confer legitimacy on
illegitimate elections, nor should we call hardliners 'reformists.' At
the very least, it's important to hold out a higher standard for the day
real reformers are allowed to compete fairly for power in Iran. And yet
many of Iran's alleged supporters in the West have gone along with the
spin. Trita Parsi, an Iranian-Swedish activist whose U.S. organization
played a key role in lobbying for the Iran nuclear deal, wrote on Sunday
evening that critics of Friday's election didn't misread what he
euphemistically called the 'flaws in the Iranian political system.'
Rather these critics 'misread the strength of the Iranian society and the
sophistication of the Iranian electorate, who once again have shown that
they have the maturity and wisdom to change their society peacefully from
within, without any support or interference from the outside.' It's quite
something when an Iranian who claims to support the opening of Iran's
society praises the 'maturity and wisdom' of an electorate offered
'reformists' who support the disqualification of reformers. But this is
the magic of Iran's elections. In the end, Iran's supreme leader doesn't
need to defend their legitimacy. He has plenty in the West eager to do it
for him." http://t.uani.com/1XViC0I
Aaron
David Miller in LAT:
"Iranians go to the polls Friday to elect a new parliament and
Assembly of Experts, the body that - at least on paper - chooses the next
supreme leader. The world is watching to see if the reformist camp will
gain ground, but expectations aren't high. That's just as well. Reality,
not idealized hopes or fantasies, needs to guide our view of what's
possible when it comes to liberalizing and democratizing authoritarian
societies. And that goes double when it comes to thinking that external
factors, such as the nuclear agreement Iran and world powers completed
last year, will produce significant internal change in the Islamic
Republic. Indeed, for the foreseeable future, that accord may have the
opposite effect. Here's why: America may have gotten what it needed with
the nuclear accord, but Iran got what it wanted - an accord that would
consolidate the government's power, not undermine it. The United States
obtained a slower, smaller, more easily monitored, time-limited Iran
nuclear program that preempted an Israeli military strike and made a U.S.
strike unnecessary. Iran got access to billions of dollars in frozen
assets, the prospect of billions more in trade deals with Europe and
Asia, and the capacity to develop nukes down the road if it wants to. An
improved economy co-opts pressure for change in Iran, even though it is
the elites, not the broader public, that will be the primary
beneficiaries. In all, the nuclear deal has created the perception and
reality that Iran has come in from the cold. None of this favors Iran's
pragmatists and centrists, let alone its reformers. In fact, as Ali Vaez
of the International Crisis Group notes, in Iran historically 'external
loosening' is balanced with 'internal stiffening.' That is what happened
after the 1988 cease-fire in the war with Iraq, and after the 2003
nuclear agreement with Britain, France and Germany, when the powerful
Guardian Council disqualified reformist candidates in the next elections
and conservatives regained their parliamentary majority. A step forward
in a highly authoritarian and ideological system can easily produce a few
steps back, or at least to the side. Indeed, fear of rapid change in Iran
compounds the worries of hard-liners who for reasons of ideology and
commercial or financial self-interest see threats to their interests in a
more open society." http://t.uani.com/1QQdjAj
Roshanak
Taghavi in FP:
"Speaking with Kaveh in 2014, all this seemed like an eternity ago.
Hassan Rouhani had been president for almost a year, and Iran and the
group of six world powers - the United States, France, Britain, China,
Russia, and Germany - had inked an interim nuclear agreement in Geneva.
For the first time in years, Kaveh no longer felt hopeless about the
future of his country. Members of the business community, like him,
believed Rouhani had the political grit necessary to fight corruption and
bring economic change. The prospects of a nuclear deal had them
revitalized, he told me. Kaveh had become a senior executive at a private
aviation firm and was especially excited because sanctions for aviation
had been relaxed; his company had launched talks with a European firm to
buy new airplanes. International delegations were trickling in for
business talks, and there was even talk of trade with America, Kaveh said
excitedly. Two years later, in 2016, Kaveh's attitude has again shifted.
Although there are glimmers of hope on the horizon of the Iranian
economy, he tells me true change will take longer than he once thought.
An aesthetic shift is underway in Iran, with refurbished mansions opening
as five-star hotels in historic cities like Kashan and luxury boutiques
such as Bulgari and Roberto Cavalli now dotting northern Tehran. Hotels
in the Iranian capital are constantly booked with business travelers
looking for investment opportunities. Inflation, which peaked at 40
percent as Rouhani took office in 2013, is on the decline and today
stands at about 13 percent. But the economy still suffers from deeply
ingrained systemic problems that will take years to overcome. Youth
unemployment is more than 25 percent, and though Tehran is peppered with new
high-rises and construction projects, many remain incomplete, as the
country endures the sector's longest slowdown in recent history. Prices
for basic foodstuffs remain high; the currency remains weak and is
expected to depreciate further by summer as the government promotes
exports. In the run-up to this week's parliamentary elections, Rouhani
has tried to inject a sense of hope among a population disappointed by
the lack of immediate economic improvement many thought would come with
the historic nuclear accord. But the fact is that many Iranians'
expectations for change greatly outpaced the economic reality: The Iran
deal finalized last July will allow the country to harness its vast
economic potential in the long term, but average Iranians won't feel change
in their daily lives for some time to come. 'We knew in the business
sector ... it would take five to 10 years to rebuild what was devastated
during the embargo period,' said Alireza Azimzadeh, whose legal advisory
firm, Persia Associates, facilitates negotiations between international
companies and local Iranian firms. 'We've had so many [business] meetings
that sometimes we're overwhelmed. But the population at large isn't
directly involved like us, so they don't feel that.' ... But Iranian
politics aren't the only thing holding up massive foreign investment in
Iran - American politics are playing a role, too. Game-changing
investments can't materialize until foreign banks feel comfortable
facilitating long-term financing and transactions. But for that to
happen, Western European banks will need their home governments to get
reassurance from the U.S. Treasury Department that they won't be
penalized or cut off from the U.S. banking system for working with Iran,
says Nigel Kushner, chief executive of W Legal, a law firm specializing
in international sanctions compliance. And that will largely depend on
Washington's assessment of how Tehran is adhering to its nuclear
commitments. In the last decade, European banks have paid billions in
fines and settlements for violating U.S. sanctions on Iran, Cuba, and
Sudan. In 2014, France's BNP Paribas paid a record $8.9 billion in fines
and was hit with a yearlong ban from conducting U.S. dollar transactions
for its oil and gas trade-finance unit. Kushner predicts a large British
bank may enter Iran within the next three to six months, if the United
States confirms to the British government that the bank won't be
penalized. For the time being, only a handful of small European banks are
facilitating money transfers for Iran-related trade. Iran's national
Melli Bank is reportedly able to transfer funds to its branch in London,
but Iran's Central Bank has yet to find a bank willing to engage with it
to facilitate transactions. So while Iran has enjoyed higher oil sales to
new customers since Europe's oil embargo was lifted, collecting those
revenues and more than $4 billion in old oil debts remains difficult, a
senior Iranian oil official told Foreign Policy. 'London-based Iranian
banks who are subsidiaries of Iranian parent banks are akin to a
restaurant that has opened for business and can only serve Coca Cola,'
said Kushner. 'They are open for business, but there's little they can do
because they do not yet have a correspondent bank they can work with, and
they don't have a bank they can exchange euros or sterling with in any
meaningful way.' It also remains to be seen how the U.S. Treasury
Department will ultimately proceed in its dealings with Iran. Will Iran
be allowed the same conventional financial freedoms most other countries
have, or will the United States encourage transactions through
centralized channels on a case-by-case basis? 'The expectations were
super high going in among all the parties,' said Erich Ferrari, a
Washington-based lawyer specializing in U.S. sanctions compliance. 'Those
have been mollified.' Rouhani and Oil Minister Bijan Zangeneh have sought
to dilute the presence of IRGC-led companies and subcontractors in Iran's
petroleum industry. They replaced many National Iranian Oil Company
(NIOC) executives aligned with former Oil Minister Rostam Ghasemi, who
led Khatam al-Anbiya before joining NIOC, and have publicly lambasted
IRGC-affiliated firms and subcontractors for taking over so many civilian
projects without a proper tender. They also criticized Khatam al-Anbiya
for the slow progression of key projects, such as the development of the
world's largest natural gas field, South Pars, which Iran shares with
Qatar. Yet the white-collar corruption that became an endemic part of
business in Iran hasn't changed. In 2015, Transparency International
ranked Iran's public sector equally corrupt as war-embattled Ukraine,
worse than key trading partners Russia and Pakistan, but brighter than
Venezuela, Iraq, and Nigeria. Some officials and businessmen fear that
Rouhani, looking to win a second term in office, no longer has the
political will to fight for serious reform. 'In order to fight
[corruption], you have to bring in new investors to replace them. Mr.
Zangeneh originally tried to stop [Khatam al-Anbiya's] operations in
South Pars, but later on he let it go because he didn't have an
alternative,' said a former senior official of the Iranian Central Bank,
speaking by phone from Tehran on condition of anonymity. 'He thought by
stopping the projects, other local private players or big international
players would come. But they didn't.'"http://t.uani.com/1nbOgd9
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