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NYT: "Boeing has been invited to talks with
Iranian officials about modernizing Iran's aged commercial aircraft
fleet, the country's transport minister said Thursday, in what could be
a precursor to the biggest business arrangement with an American
company after more than three decades of estrangement. The talks would
be among the first tangible results of a less-hostile climate between
the United States and Iran since a landmark international agreement on
Iran's disputed nuclear activities took effect in January... The
Iranian transport minister, Abbas Akhondi, was quoted by Iran's
semiofficial Tasnim News Agency as saying that officials from Boeing
had been invited to visit Iran regarding the purchase of Boeing
aircraft. He did not specify the date for such a visit. Boeing said
last month that as an outcome of the nuclear agreement, it had received
a license from the United States government to conduct planning
discussions with Iran about an aircraft fleet, a step meant to assess
Iran's needs before any negotiations for purchases. Reached for comment
about Mr. Akhondi's statement, a spokesman for Boeing, John Dern,
declined to specify whether those planning discussions had even begun,
but he said 'any engagement we have with the Iranians will be limited
to the license.' A separate license from the United States government
would be required for Boeing to sell aircraft to Iran... While Boeing
has lagged in the newly opened Iranian market, Iran's interest in
purchasing Boeing jetliners is well known. Iranian aviation officials
have been quoted in the domestic media as saying they would like to
purchase equal numbers of Boeing and Airbus planes. Tasnim quoted the
deputy transport minister, Asghar Fakhrieh Kashan, as saying that Iran
wants Boeing 737s, one of the world's most widely used jetliners.
Despite the engagement with Boeing, Iran largely remains off limits
commercially to American businesses because many other sanctions
unrelated to the nuclear accord remain in effect, most notably a
wide-ranging embargo on direct trade in many goods and services." http://t.uani.com/1TvLvSB
AP: "The United Nations' children agency issued
an appeal on behalf of an 80-year-old Iranian-American detained in
Tehran along with his son, saying it hopes he 'will be reunited soon
with his wife and loved ones.' Baquer Namazi, a former Iranian
government official under the shah who worked for UNICEF for years, has
been held since late February. The reason for Namazi's incarceration
remains unclear, though a lawyer trying to represent him has said his
detention is 'for some investigation only' and that he likely won't be
charged. In its appeal, UNICEF noted his commitment to children and his
'spiritual courage and moral convictions.' As a UNICEF representative,
Namazi survived a 1994 shooting in southern Egypt targeting a U.N.
convoy that killed five people. 'Mr. Namazi dedicated many years of his
career to improving the lives of some of the world's most disadvantaged
and vulnerable children, often working in difficult and even dangerous
circumstances,' the statement released Thursday said." http://t.uani.com/21KjWJ
ICHRI: "The civil rights activist
Esmail Ahmadi-Ragheb has been sentenced to six months in prison for
'propaganda against the state' by Branch 1 of the Revolutionary Court
in Shahriar, Tehran Province, for posting content on social media that
was critical of government policy. In an interview with the
International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, Ahmadi-Ragheb said
that his comments and photos on Facebook were used as evidence for the
anti-state propaganda charge. 'One of the things I had mentioned a lot
in my Facebook posts was the term religious dictatorship. That was
taken as evidence, so was my participation in a rally in support of
[human rights lawyer] Nasrin Sotoudeh in front of the Bar Association
as well as my meeting with Sattar Beheshti's [a blogger murdered by his
interrogators in prison] mother and my participation in gatherings in
support of political prisoners. They told me all these activities were
illegal,' he said. Ahmadi-Ragheb, known by his nickname of Zartosht,
said he will appeal the sentence but must also appear in another trial
on March 8, 2016 at Branch 1044 of the Revolutionary Court to defend
himself against the charge of 'disturbing public order.'" http://t.uani.com/1RMEIA2
U.S.-Iran
Relations
Fox
News: "It was
more than 19 years ago when two suicide bombers struck in a Jerusalem
mall, but victims and their families are now on the brink of making the
killers' Iranian financiers pay for the monstrous act thanks to a
federal court ruling last week. The ruling by the 9th Circuit Court of
Appeals clears the way for nine victims of the Sept. 4, 1997, attack at
the Ben Yeduda pedestrian mall in downtown Jerusalem to collect $9.4
million in funds frozen in a U.S. bank account since 1979. The attacks
killed five and wounded more than 200. Another plaintiff is part of the
suit to collect from the same funds for damages incurred in another
attack. 'We've been trying for more than a decade to bring the
perpetrators and the financiers of these terrible terrorist attacks to
justice without much luck,' said Daniel Miller, a plaintiff in the
case. 'We've had symbolic luck, but not much actual luck and this is
the first case that we really feel like Iran is going to have to pay
for what they did.' The plaintiffs had already won civil suits against
Iran, which U.S. courts found responsible for underwriting attacks
carried out by Tehran's terrorist proxy in Israel, Hamas. Collecting on
the judgments had been another matter until Monday's decision, which
allows the plaintiffs to collect from funds Iran once paid to a
California defense contractor... In Friday's ruling, the federal court
rejected the Iranian Ministry of Defense's appeal and affirmed the
district court's grant of a lien on the funds. According to the court,
the Cubic Defense money is considered a 'blocked' asset under the
Terrorism Risk Insurance Act, and can be used to satisfy the judgment
won by Miller and his fellow plaintiffs." http://t.uani.com/1So7V6G
Sanctions
Relief
Tehran
Times: "After
seven years, the first consignment of Iranian petrochemical products to
Europe will arrive in the Port of Hamburg within the next few days,
said the Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines (IRISL) Managing
director Mohammad Saeidi. Following 2520 days of travel, Saeidi said,
the ship would first dock at the Port of Hamburg and then it would set
sail for the port of Antwerp in Belgium, the Tasnim news agency
reported on Wednesday." http://t.uani.com/1UF5flM
Bloomberg: "'Made in Germany' should
mean money for companies tapping Iran's underdeveloped but potentially
enormous solar market, according to a government-commissioned report.
With economic sanctions against Iran lifted, German solar firms have a
'huge sales' opportunity, said BSW Solar, a Berlin-based industry
group. Iran has reinstated 20-year power purchase agreements and set
feed-in-tariffs at 'highly profitable' rates of 17 to 30 euros cents
($0.33) per kilowatt-hour, according to the 134-page report paid for by
Germany's Foreign Office. 'The political will in Iran to realize
success in this market is abundantly clear,' said report author and BSW
head, Joerg Mayer. 'What counts now for German firms is the speed and
determination to build business relations' with Iran... 'German
companies are among the most trustworthy companies in Iran,' said the
BSW report, which collaborated with the Tehran-based Iran-Wind Group to
collect data." http://t.uani.com/1Rt8uak
Terrorism
JPost: "Iranian operational
instructions on how to prepare swarm-like boat attacks, and is
preparing such capabilities for clashes with Israel, according to a
senior naval source... 'Hamas is building up its ability to cause much
damage from sea-based attacks,' the navy source told The Jerusalem Post
this week. 'It is improving its diving commando units, and creating sea
forces that are much more capable than they were before. Hamas has
received battle doctrines from Iran - which is also building up its sea
capabilities - on how to deliver stings through swarms,' the source
said. 'They will try to attack our vessels with swarms.'" http://t.uani.com/1QvLxqI
Regional
Destabilization
NOW
Lebanon: "A
top official in an anti-Iranian Kurdish party has claimed Tehran aims
to control the strategic Sinjar region along Iraq's border with Syria
that has become a flashpoint for inter-Kurdish tensions. Kurdistan
Freedom Party military commander Hossein Yazdanpah accused the Iranian
Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) of taking an increasingly active role
in Sinjar, claiming that the commander in the Revolutionary Guard's
elite Quds Force toured the region two months ago alongside Hadi
al-Ameri, a leader in the Tehran-backed Iraqi paramilitary Popular
Mobilization Forces. 'The visit comes amid Iran's ongoing attempt to
control the ground route connecting Iran and Syria that stretches
across the Kurdistan region's territory, and to secure a passageway for
weapons and fighters in Syria,' Yazdandah-a harsh critic of Tehran-told
Saudi-owned Asharq Alawsat. 'Iran wants to take control of the
strategic Sinjar Mountain,' he said, adding that a number of other IRGC
officers had traveled to the Yazidi-populated area via Baghdad." http://t.uani.com/1OVag2d
Iran-Saudi
Tensions
Al-Monitor: "Iranian officials and media
have condemned the recent decision by the Gulf Cooperation Council
(GCC) to designate the Lebanese group Hezbollah a terrorist
organization. GCC Secretary-General Abdul Latif bin Rashid Al Zayani
said March 2 that the designation was the result of Hezbollah's
'hostile acts' in Syria, Yemen and Iraq. He also accused Hezbollah of
trying to recruit youths in the GCC countries. The spokesman for Iran's
Foreign Ministry, Hossein Jaber Ansari, condemned the GCC statement.
Ansari said Hezbollah 'gave Arabs and Muslims the first victory in the
history of anti-Zionist conflict and became the leading symbol of
resistance against Zionist occupation.' Deputy Foreign Ministry for
Arab and African Affairs Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said that people who
designate Hezbollah a terrorist organization 'intentionally or
unintentionally are targeting Lebanon's security.' He called Hezbollah
the 'most effective resistance movement' and said that ignoring Israeli
crimes 'is the latest mistake that is not in the benefit of stability
and security in the region.'" http://t.uani.com/24G8EF7
Human
Rights
RFE/RL: "Iranian Nobel Peace Prize
Winner Shirin Ebadi says agents tricked her husband into cheating in
2009 in order to exert pressure on them. Ebadi revealed the incident in
her new book, titled Until We Are Free: My Fight for Human Rights in
Iran, which is to be published on March 8. An excerpt of the book was published
on March 3 in the New York Times. Ebadi wrote that Iranian agents
videotaped a romantic conversation between her husband and a woman, as
well as their physical encounter at a Tehran apartment. The husband was
then taken to the Evin prison where he was flogged for having drunk
alcohol, and was later sentenced to stoning for committing adultery,
according to Ebadi. And in a video message, he was forced to denounce
his wife as a Western agent in order to gain his freedom. The couple
has since divorced. Ebadi wrote that Iranian intelligence agents 'were
prepared to do anything - crush people's families, their marriages - to
achieve their ends.' Ebadi has come under pressure by the Iranian
establishment for highlighting human rights abuses in Iran." http://t.uani.com/1OVfbAg
RFE/RL: "A hard-line Iranian lawmaker
has come under fire for declaring that women should not be allowed to
serve in parliament. 'The parliament is not a place for women, it's a
place for men,' lawmaker Nader Ghazipur said in a video posted online
in which he appears to suggest that women can be abused and places
women in the same category as 'donkeys,' a term used to insult a
person's intelligence. 'We didn't easily win control over the country
to send every fox, kid, and donkey there. The parliament is not a place
for donkeys,' he said. Ghazipour, 57, was reelected to Iran's
parliament last week in his hometown of Orumiyeh in West Azerbaijan
Province. He appears to have made the comments during a meeting at his
campaign headquarters." http://t.uani.com/1UF36X2
Opinion
& Analysis
Omar S.
Bashir & Eric Lorber in Foreign Affairs: "In particular, the nature of
the sanctions relief provided as part of the Iran nuclear
agreement-which seems less likely to unravel after the election-may
actually undermine U.S. sanctions in the future, in part by encouraging
foreign companies to re-enter Iranian markets and decrease their
reliance on the U.S. financial system. It is worth taking that risk
into consideration as some policymakers cheer the outcome of the
election and what it may mean for Iranian politics and the future of
the nuclear agreement... Yet, as policymakers have become enamored with
these tools, they have paid much less attention to how they can be
unwound effectively-and what the specifics of the unwinding will mean
for the United States' ability to successfully use sanctions in the
future. The implications are easy to see in the case of the sanctions
relief provided to Iran on implementation day. Whereas the EU and other
states have largely relaxed their Iran sanctions programs, the United
States has only discarded some of its restrictions. The different paces
at which the United States and EU are unwinding their sanctions
programs pushes European and Asian companies to avoid conducting
transactions in U.S. dollars and in U.S. markets and so could diminish
the United States' ability to impose biting financial sanctions in the
future. Following implementation day, most EU sanctions and U.S.
secondary sanctions-which applied to non-U.S. entities-were removed.
European companies interested in doing business in Iran's financial and
banking industry (and its energy sector) are no longer prohibited from
engaging in a wide range of activities. At the same time, extensive
prohibitions remain on U.S. companies and individuals thinking about
doing business in Iran, and European companies cannot use the American
financial system for Iran-related transactions without running afoul of
those sanctions... This is not to say that the United States should
remove all of its sanctions on Iran just to match Europe. The United
States has maintained those restrictions for good reason: as Iran's
recent activities have shown, it is still a state supporter of
terrorism, routinely abuses the human rights of its citizens, and is
actively seeking to destabilize the Middle East. Aggressive enforcement
of a robust sanctions regime will continue to allow the United States
to pressure the country to abandon such activities. Policymakers and
regulators tasked with protecting the U.S. financial system from
exposure to illicit activity know that financial crimes, including
bribery, other corruption, and money laundering, remain pervasive in
the Islamic Republic. Iran ranked 130 of 167 countries in Transparency
International's 2015 Corruption Perceptions Index. U.S. officials know
that allowing Iranian business to be conducted through the U.S. banking
system might enable more such crimes. But at the very least,
policymakers need to recognize that they face a difficult choice. In
their attempts to unwind certain sanctions on Iran while maintaining
some economic pressure on the country, they may be hurting their
ability to employ financial sanctions against Iran or other targets in
the future. Given that policymakers have increasingly turned to these
economic tools in recent years, they should understand the tradeoff and
develop ways to maintain the United States' ability to impose biting
financial measures. Only then will it be able to preserve these
powerful tools into the foreseeable future." http://t.uani.com/1Rt9DyJ
Potkin
Azarmehr in The Commentator: "The statement below was made by Sadeq Ziba-Kalam,
an English educated Iranian academic and prominent 'reformist'
political analyst in Iran, in an interview with the Guardian newspaper,
published on 26th February, 2016. 'I agree Reyshahri has killed a lot
of people. He has no democratic background, but he is also not against
democracy and freedom. And also, what other options do we have?' Perhaps
just quoting that above statement is enough for the penny to drop for
the more astute followers of Iranian current affairs to comprehend the
intellectual poverty and ineptness of Iran's so-called reformists. But,
allow me to shed some more light in this article. The cleric,
Reyshahri, whom Ziba-kalam is referring to in the above statement, was
on the reformists' recommended list of candidates for the Assembly of
Experts elections in Iran, which were held last Friday. Reyshahri has
the revolutionary credentials of being a former chief judge of the
Military Revolutionary Tribunal, which tried political dissidents and
sentenced thousands to death in the 1980s, but there is a lot more to
this so-called neo-reformist candidate that's worth knowing. Reyshahri
married a 9 year old girl while in his twenties. This vile act is no
state secret. He proudly writes about his marriage to the 9 year old
daughter of a fellow Shia cleric and a former head of the Assembly of
Experts, Ayatollah Meshkini, in his own memoires. 'I asked my mother
and my aunt to go to Qom and ask her parents to marry their daughter to
me. They went and saw her and liked her and wrote back to me 'she is
very nice but very young' - she was 9 yeas old at the time'. (From
Reyshahri's memoires, published by Islamic Revolution Documentation
Centre, 2004.) If a political party or movement anywhere else in the
world, chose to have a paedophile executioner as one of their election
candidates, would any sane person refer to them as 'moderates' or
'reformists'? Another person on the list of the so-called reformist
candidates in Iran's recent 'elections' was Dori-Najaf Abadi. A former
minister of intelligence in the Islamic Republic of Iran, who was
implicated in the extra judicial murder of dissidents, intellectuals
and true reformists in the late 90s. Iran's present day 'reformists',
however, have an incredible talent for reinventing and regurgitating
former criminals and paedophiles as 'reformist candidates'. The foreign
media, never researches the track records of these 'moderate' or
'reformist' candidates. Iranians often refer to the image of preserving
these characters in a pickle jar. They are preserved in a pickle jar
and lie dormant until memories fade and they are needed again to be
re-packaged into whatever is required and fashionable at the time. This
re-invention is usually followed by claims that 'the reformists have
won the elections', but in reality their only victory worth mentioning
is hijacking the word 'reformist'. To most readers in the West, the
word reformist, may conjure up an image of political reform movements
in the past like the women's suffragates, the US civil rights movement,
or Poland's Solidarity, but unlike these examples Iran's reformists are
not engaged in organising any campaigns of civil disobedience, strikes
or protests in order to bring about change or gain concessions.
Instead, their main hub of activity is to show up during the elections
in Iran and somehow find a way to justify and encourage massive
participation in elections that give the regime its legitimacy. They
are, if anything, a force for maintaining the status quo, not a force
to bring about change in Iran." http://t.uani.com/24G9YI7
Saeed
Ghasseminejad in TNI: "Iranians went to the ballot box last Friday to cast
their votes for the Assembly of Experts and the Majles, Iran's
parliament. Reading the headlines in U.S. media, one might think
reformists had won a landslide victory in both elections. It's a narrative
that could not be further from the truth. The pragmatic camp of
President Hassan Rouhani lost the Assembly of Experts to hard-line
revolutionaries, and the Majles race remains neck and neck. Moreover,
the 'reformists' touted as the winners are not reformist at all, even
by the skewed standards of the Islamic Republic. The
eighty-eight-member Assembly of Experts, whose members serve for eight
years, chooses and supervises the supreme leader. Given Supreme Leader
Ali Khamenei's poor health, the coming Assembly may well choose his
successor and shape the Islamic Republic's future over the next few
decades. The Majles, by comparison, is a much weaker institution, as
all its bills must be approved by the Guardian Council-an institution
charged with ensuring fidelity to the revolution whose members are
chosen by the supreme leader and the head of the judiciary (whom the
supreme leader appoints). As a result, the election for the Assembly
was the more consequential of the two. In January, the Guardian Council
disqualified 80 percent of candidates to the Assembly, leaving just 1.8
candidates for every seat (similarly, it nixed half of all
parliamentary candidates). The bulk of those disqualified were
self-described reformists or moderates. Still, if you believe the headlines,
the disqualified reformists somehow rose from the dead and dominated
the elections. The results, however, show that in the Assembly of
Experts, the radicals won 75 percent of seats, while the rest were
shared by independents and the pragmatic alliance led by Rouhani and
ex-presidents Hashemi Rafsanjani and Mohammad Khatami. As for the
Majles, its fate will depend on three questions: Will the Guardian
Council try to change the results of races where Rouhani's allies won
by a narrow margin? What will be the fate of the roughly one-fifth of
seats for which no candidate got a majority, and which will be decided
in a runoff election in April? How will independent members-making up
another one-fifth of seats-ultimately caucus and vote? Some of the
confusion is understandable. After so many of their candidates were
disqualified, the pragmatist camp chose to round out its list with
radicals, in order to defeat a handful of ultra-hard-liners whom they
view as their greatest threats... Friday's election was not a landslide
victory for the pragmatists. They lost the Assembly of Experts with a
wide margin, and just barely improved their position in the Majles.
Labeling radicals as 'moderates' or 'reformists' does not make them so.
As Wendy Sherman, the lead negotiator of last summer's nuclear deal,
noted this month, Iranians face a choice not between moderates and
hard-liners, but hard-liners and 'hard-hard-liners.' After this
election, as before, the reins of power in the Islamic Republic will
remain theirs." http://t.uani.com/1Yban0O
Shirin
Ebadi in NYT:
"The story of how Iranian agents caught my husband with another
woman, threatened to stone him to death and then forced him to denounce
me." http://t.uani.com/1LEmn94
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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
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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
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