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Reuters: "By launching nuclear-capable missiles
Iran has defied a United Nations Security Council resolution that
endorsed last year's historic nuclear deal, the United States and its
European allies said in a joint letter seen by Reuters on Tuesday. Iran's
recent ballistic tests involved missiles capable of delivering nuclear
weapons and were 'inconsistent with' and 'in defiance of' council
resolution 2231, adopted last July, said the joint U.S., British,
French, German letter to Spain's U.N. Ambassador Roman Oyarzun Marchesi
and U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon. The letter said the missiles used in the
recent launches were 'inherently capable of delivering nuclear
weapons.' It also asked that the Security Council discuss 'appropriate
responses' to Tehran's failure to comply with its obligations and urged
Ban to report back on Iranian missile work inconsistent with 2231.
Spain has been assigned the task of coordinating council discussions on
resolution 2231. Council diplomats have said the case for new U.N.
sanctions was weak, hinging on interpretation of ambiguous language in
a resolution adopted as part of a July nuclear deal to drastically
restrict Iran's nuclear work... The four powers' carefully worded
letter stopped short of calling the Iranian launches a 'violation' of
the resolution, which 'calls upon' Iran to refrain for up to eight
years from activity, including launches, related to ballistic missiles
designed with the capability of delivering nuclear weapons. Diplomats
say key powers agree that request is not legally binding and cannot be
enforced under Chapter 7 of the U.N. Charter, which deals with
sanctions and authorization of military force. But Western nations,
which view the language as a ban, say there is a political obligation
on Iran to comply... The letter said the four Western powers 'note with
concern that Iranian military leaders have reportedly claimed these
missiles are designed to be a direct threat to Israel.' Several
diplomats said the most Iran could expect would be a public rebuke by
the Security Council... But a council rebuke could provide a legal
springboard for European countries to consider new sanctions against
Iran, Western diplomats said." http://t.uani.com/1q1Ln0T
AFP: "Iran's supreme leader said
Wednesday that missile power was key to the country's future security,
slapping down moderates who say the focus should be on diplomacy.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the final say in all matters of state
in Iran, praised the powerful Revolutionary Guards for their 'show of
advanced and precise missiles' in recent tests that drew Western
criticism. 'In this jungle-like world, if the Islamic republic seeks
negotiations, trade and even technology and science, but has no defence
power, won't even small countries dare threaten Iran?' Khamenei said in
remarks published on his official website. 'Our enemies are constantly
enhancing their military and missile capabilities and given this how
can we say the age of missiles has passed?' His comments appeared aimed
at ex-president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a senior leader of the
reformist and moderate camp, who last week tweeted: 'Tomorrow's world
is the world of dialogue not missiles.' They also came a day after the
United States, France, Britain and Germany said Iran's recent ballistic
missile tests violate UN Security Council resolutions... Iran has twice
tested ballistic missiles since the July 14 deal, prompting Western
condemnation and new US sanctions. 'The enemies of the revolution...
use dialogue, economic trade, sanctions, military threats and any other
means to further their goals,' Khamenei said. 'We should be able to
confront and defend in all of these fields.' He said those who believe
only diplomacy is the key to Iran's future are acting out of 'ignorance
or treason.'" http://t.uani.com/1UsLYoP
NYT: "With an eye to President
Obama's legacy and his own, Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew on
Wednesday will hail the success of economic sanctions against Iran and
other global offenders, but warn that their overuse could threaten the
primacy of the United States and the dollar in the world economy. In
his prepared remarks and in an interview, Mr. Lew also answered
criticism from Congress and the Republican presidential candidates who
oppose the Iran deal and the lifting of international sanctions that
was part of it. He warned that if the United States had failed to
respond as the agreement called for after Iran dismantled its weapons
infrastructure, it would have lost credibility in threatening sanctions
in the future against other bad actors to change their behavior. 'If
you were sitting in Tehran now, it wouldn't necessarily feel like you'd
gotten very much relief,' Mr. Lew said in the interview this week. 'We
have to be very attentive to keeping our part of the bargain if we want
others to do the things that we're trying to use sanctions to create
the pressure for them to do.' Both in his speech at the Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace and in the interview, Mr. Lew
acknowledged the difficulty of relieving Iranians of nuclear-related
sanctions given their other offenses - support for terrorism and human
rights violations - that have provoked separate sanctions by both the
United States and its allies." http://t.uani.com/1Tipsxt
Regional
Destabilization
CNN: "A large weapons cache headed
for Somalia was discovered and seized by the French on March 20,
authorities said. It's the second large weapons seizure in the region
this month, and both may have been headed to Yemen from Iran. According
to a U.S. assessment, the arms that were most recently seized
originated in Iran, and their likely ultimate destination was Yemen,
Cmdr. Kevin Stephens, a spokesman for U.S. 5th Fleet, told CNN. Iran
has been accused of arming Houthis -- fellow Shiite Muslims fighting
against the government in Yemen's civil war -- before. Stephens would
not specify whether or not the United States believed this weapons
shipment was headed to Houthi rebels. Earlier this month, a similar
arms cache was discovered off the coast of Oman. U.S. authorities said
those weapons were believed to be initially sent from Iran and were
probably intended for Houthi rebels in Yemen by way of Somalia,
according to Lt. Ian McConnaughey with the U.S. Navy. The March 20
discovery is the third such weapons seizure since September, Stephens
said. French forces spotted the ship carrying the arms as part of
routine surveillance in the northern Indian Ocean. On board the vessel,
they found discovered 'several hundred AK47 assault rifles, machine
guns and anti-tank weapons,' according to a March 28 news release by
the Combined Maritime Forces. The CMF is a multinational naval
partnership -- which includes France -- that helps police more than 3
million square miles of international waters... This latest weapons
seizure would provide another example of forces inside Iran stoking
sectarian tensions in the Middle East if the U.S. assessment proves
correct." http://t.uani.com/25wgT7a
Nuclear
& Ballistic Missile Program
Reuters: "Iran's test launches of
nuclear-capable missiles did not violate a United Nations Security
Council resolution, the Interfax news agency cited a Russian foreign
ministry representative as saying on Wednesday. The United States and
its European allies said in a joint letter seen by Reuters on Tuesday
that the launches has defied the resolution that endorsed last year's
historic nuclear deal. 'The resolution does not ban (the tests),'
Interfax cited Mikhail Ulyanov, head of the ministry's department for
non-proliferation and arms control, as saying." http://t.uani.com/1q1I35O
Free
Beacon: "Iran
is covertly expanding an underground network of ballistic missile
construction and testing sites, despite new U.S. sanctions aimed at
deterring the Islamic Republic's illicit program, which is believed to
be focused on the delivery of a nuclear warhead. Iran's Revolutionary
Guard Corps, or IRGC, has clandestinely moved to expand a network of
front companies that primarily fuel the underground construction of
ballistic missiles, according to sources following the country's
procurement system. Iranian military leaders-who have recently
dismissed new U.S. sanctions-are now focused on perfecting
intercontinental ballistic missile technology, which would enable Iran
to fire a nuclear-tipped warhead over great distances. Iran maintains
the 'largest inventory of ballistic missiles in the Middle East,'
according to U.S. intelligence assessments. The country has recently
been moving materials to underground sites via a complex network of
IRGC-controlled companies, according to a brief on the procurement
activity released by the Foundation For Defense of Democracies' Center
on Sanctions and Illicit Finance." http://t.uani.com/1q1NaCV
Business
Risk
AFP: "Austrian President Heinz
Fischer has said it is unclear how long it will take for the West to
lift sanctions on Iran, in an interview with Iran's state television
news agency IRIB. 'Austria alone cannot lift the sanctions. The EU
cannot do it alone too, but it's the international community that
should do it,' Fischer said, in comments published late Monday by IRIB.
'The U.S. also plays a role in this regard,' the Austrian president
said. He was replying to a question about problems facing Iranian banks
who wish to use the international payments system SWIFT allowing the
resumption of foreign transfers. Some banks in Iran have been able to
reconnect to SWIFT since the lifting of sanctions was announced in
January. But banks accused of links to the country's elite
Revolutionary Guard remain under U.S. sanctions... Fischer, speaking in
anticipation of a two-day state visit to Austria by Iranian President
Hassan Rouhani that was postponed Tuesday, said the process of lifting
sanctions on Iran had 'started.' He added however: 'I cannot make any
predictions on how much longer it will take' before all sanctions are
lifted. 'But I hope that all sides will remain committed to the nuclear
deal so that all of Iran's sanctions are lifted in due and scheduled
time,' Fischer added." http://t.uani.com/1ROBVtR
Reuters: "Iranian President Hassan
Rouhani postponed a two-day visit to Austria indefinitely for security
reasons on Tuesday, the evening he was supposed to arrive in Vienna,
his Austrian counterpart's office said. It was not clear what the
security reasons were, a spokeswoman for Austrian President Heinz
Fischer's office said. A planned Rouhani visit to Baghdad immediately
before the Austrian trip had, however, also been postponed for security
reasons, Fischer's office and an Iranian official said. 'We were
working (on preparations) until 5, 5:30 p.m.,' the spokeswoman said,
underlining the short notice as Rouhani had originally been expected to
arrive around 7:30 p.m. local time. The visit was due to be Rouhani's
second to the European Union since international sanctions against his
country were lifted in January under a landmark nuclear deal with major
powers that was negotiated in Vienna last year. The Austrian Chamber of
Commerce had said 1 billion to 2 billion euros ($1.1 billion to 2.3
billion) of business deals would be signed, a sum dwarfed by Rouhani's
visits in January to Italy and France but still significant for much
smaller Austria. Rouhani, the chief architect of the nuclear deal and
keen to open Iran's economy to the world, had been due to meet Fischer
and other officials on Wednesday and Thursday." http://t.uani.com/1MSC6g7
Bloomberg: "Iranian President Hassan
Rouhani unexpectedly canceled a state visit to Austria this week citing
security reasons, according to an official Austrian government
statement. Iran said the decision was reached mutually to allow for
better preparation. Rouhani had been scheduled to meet Austrian
President Heinz Fischer and other Austrian leaders on Wednesday and
Thursday in only his second visit as president to Europe, after he
traveled to Rome and Paris in January. Fischer said he regretted the
cancellation. The Vienna-based Die Presse newspaper said Iran had
demanded that Austria prevent planned demonstrations over the Islamic
Republic's nuclear program during Rouhani's visit. The request, last
raised on Tuesday morning, was rejected by Austria, it said without
saying from where it got the information... Austria's Interior Ministry
had 'no concrete signs of a security threat' and the preparation for
Rouhani's visit had been 'completely ordinary and routine,' spokesman
Karl-Heinz Grundboeck told the Austrian Press Agency... The
postponement caught Iranian media by surprise as most had prepared
special sections detailing trade links between the two nations." http://t.uani.com/1UUoVTF
WSJ: "As the U.S. encourages
aircraft companies to seek licenses for exports to Iran, those
companies face potential diversions of their product to the military
and engagement with companies still under sanctions, exposing
themselves to significant compliance risks, experts say. Those risks,
in the months since the Iran nuclear deal was implemented in January,
have already come into stark relief: U.S. agencies have denied export
privileges in one case, and imposed new sanctions designations in
another. The U.S. Department of Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets
Control issued a 'statement of licensing policy' in January for the
sale of civilian aircraft, and spare parts, allowed under the deal. The
statement authorizes companies to seek a specific license for the
sales, so long as they're exclusively for civilian use. It 'establishes
a favorable licensing policy' for such sales, the statement said. And
last week, OFAC issued a general license authorizing transactions that
allow for the negotiation of, and entry into, 'contingent contracts'
for activity allowed under the statement of licensing policy. Treasury
said the general license 'will allow for more efficient processing' of
the specific licenses companies may seek. Experts told Risk & Compliance
Journal, though, that companies doing business in the aviation sector
need to do extensive due diligence on their customers, and they need to
ensure their exports don't end up in the wrong hands. Zachary Brez, a
partner at law firm Ropes & Gray, said the exemption to the
continued broad U.S. embargo on Iran for civil aviation sales 'has a
humanitarian bent,' because of the risk to passengers from the poor
state of Iranian air safety. However, he noted, aircraft parts are
interchangeable between war planes and civilian planes, and that can
pose problems for exporters because military use would breach
sanctions. 'A plane is a plane,' said Mr. Brez. As a result, 'U.S.
companies are going to be careful' before they sign deals with Iranian
airlines, he said. The risks of failing to comply with the
aviation-specific rules were already apparent by the end of January:
The U.S. Department of Commerce's Bureau of Industry and Security
issued a temporary denial order against three people and two entities
for attempting to sell aircraft to Caspian Airlines, which remains
under U.S. sanctions. And last week, the U.S. imposed sanctions on a
group of U.K.-based businessmen and companies for allegedly helping
Mahan Air acquire aircraft engines and other mechanical parts." http://t.uani.com/1RKw6am
Sanctions
Enforcement
WSJ: "The monitor overseeing
HSBC's compliance with a landmark anti-money-laundering settlement has
uncovered a range of potential lapses including loans to companies that
exported miniskirts to Iran and candy to Syria, and the opening of an
account by a man in Mexico who had thousands of dollars of cash in a
bag, according to a person familiar with the monitor's findings. In
2012, HSBC Holdings PLC agreed to pay a then-record $1.9 billion to the
U.S. Justice Department to settle allegations it failed to spot the
laundered proceeds of drug trafficking in Mexico and failed to flag
transactions with countries subject to economic sanctions, such as
Iran. The monitor's findings, which date from 2015, suggest that
despite three years of efforts to bring compliance systems up to U.S.
standards, HSBC still is struggling to meet the terms of the deal...
The monitor's investigators also found an HSBC client exporting Levi's
miniskirts from Brazil to Iran, a country that was under full U.S.
sanctions at the time, not to mention banning such clothing in public.
While the exports were a fraction of the bank customer's business, HSBC
should have flagged this trade for additional scrutiny but didn't, the
inspectors believed." http://t.uani.com/1UC704C
Sanctions
Relief
Reuters: "Iran is expected to add half
a million barrels of oil supply a day within a year from its existing
oilfields after the lifting of sanctions against Tehran in January, but
developing new fields would take time, the head of the International
Energy Agency said on Wednesday. Iran, previously OPEC's second-largest
exporter, would need to prove that the investment conditions were
profitable to the international investors and also that there was
predictability in the markets, Fatih Birol, IEA's executive director
told Reuters. Birol's estimate of Iran's supply increase from existing
oilfields was in line with previous market estimates. And increases in
Iranian gas supplies would come after oil, he said. 'It was misleading
to believe that there would be a huge amount of new Iranian crude and
natural gas production entering market in the short term,' Birol said
on the sidelines of an event in Beijing to mark the 20th anniversary of
cooperation between China and IEA. 'It would take some time in terms of
developing new oil fields, finding transmission routes and having the
necessary market conditions.'" http://t.uani.com/22OnM54
Reuters: "Iran's Ministry of Finance
has issued 5 trillion rials ($145 million at the free market exchange
rate) of lease-based Islamic bonds, expanding the range of the
government's funding tools and providing a much-needed pricing
benchmark for corporate issuers. The deal is the first time that Iran's
government has issued sukuk using an ijara format, selling them through
the country's over-the-counter securities market, known as Fara Bourse.
The four-year sukuk were listed on March 16 and pay a nominal rate of
18 percent, according to Fara Bourse data. The proceeds will be used to
settle debts owed by the government to Ayandesaz Pension Fund and Mahan
Air, according to Novin Investment Bank, which arranged the
transaction. The government would usually issue sukuk based on its own
assets, but in this case the transaction was based on the creditors'
assets, Fatemeh Khanahmadi, computational finance and risk manager at
Novin Investment Bank, told Reuters. 'The creditors accepted it as the
government is still guarantor to pay the principal and the interest to
investors.' While officials have said foreigners are permitted to buy
Iranian bonds, foreign portfolio investment in Iran is still very
small, so all or almost all of this month's sukuk issue is likely to be
held by domestic investors. In the wake of the lifting of economic
sanctions against Iran in January, authorities are rolling out a series
of initiatives to develop the country's capital markets and reduce
local firms' reliance on loans from a debt-laden banking sector. The
government has announced plans to issue 60 trillion rials worth of
Islamic Treasury bills this year, after a maiden sale in
September." http://t.uani.com/1V4HD9P
Opinion
& Analysis
David
Ignatius in WashPost: "Economic sanctions have become the 'silver bullet'
of American foreign policy over the past decade, because they're
cheaper and more effective in compelling adversaries than traditional
military power. But Treasury Secretary Jack Lew warns of a 'risk of
overuse' that could neuter the sanctions weapon and harm America. Lew
made his unusual case against 'sanctions overreach' in an interview
last week and in a speech prepared for the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace. His caution against overuse comes as some
Republican members of Congress are fighting to maintain U.S. sanctions
on the Iranian nuclear program, despite last year's deal limiting that
Iranian threat... Lew notes that U.S. sanctions against Iran's nuclear
program showed how effective this weapon can be when it's carefully
fashioned as part of a broad coalition. America's program of so-called
'secondary' sanctions didn't just ban U.S. companies from doing
business with Iran; they banned any company operating in Iran from
using U.S. banks or other financial institutions. That made Iran a
no-go zone for most Western companies. Contrast the success of this
coordinated effort in bringing Iran to the table with five decades of
unilateral U.S. sanctions against the Castro regime in Cuba, which Lew
rightly notes were 'ineffective,' to put it mildly. Lew's larger point
is that sanctions won't work if countries don't get the reward they
were promised - in the removal of sanctions - once they accede to U.S.
demands. 'Since the goal of sanctions is to pressure bad actors to
change their policy, we must be prepared to provide relief from
sanctions when we succeed. If we fail to follow through, we undermine
our own credibility and damage our ability to use sanctions to drive policy
change,' Lew explains in his speech. Congressional opponents of the
nuclear deal with Iran want to keep the U.S. financial system
off-limits. This case against 'Dollarizing the Ayatollahs' was made by
Mark Dubowitz and Jonathan Schanzer in a piece with that headline in
the Wall Street Journal on Monday. Lew counters such arguments in his
speech: 'By following through on our commitment to provide sanctions
relief, we sustain the powerful incentive for other malign actors to
change their behavior.'" http://t.uani.com/1PFs8OZ
Thomas
Friedman in NYT:
"ISIS is a rocket whose guidance system is a direct descendant of
the puritanical, anti-Shiite, anti-pluralistic Saudi Wahhabi ideology,
and its fuel system is a direct reaction to Shiite Iran's aggressive
push to keep Iraqi Sunnis permanently weak. As long as Iran and Saudi
Arabia are going at it, there will always be another ISIS. Which is why
the 'peace process' the Middle East needs most today is between Saudi
Arabia and Iran." http://t.uani.com/1MB96i3
President
of Yemen Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi in NYT: "In addition, it must be made
clear to Iran, which seeks to expand its sphere of control through its
Houthi proxies, that Yemen will not yield a single inch of territory to
outside forces." http://t.uani.com/1pKk4rc
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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
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.
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