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Stories
Reuters: "The United States on Monday
vowed to continue pushing for United Nations Security Council action on
Iran's recent ballistic missile tests and accused Russia of looking for
reasons not to respond to Iranian violations of a U.N. resolution. 'This
merits a council response,' U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power told reporters
after a closed-door meeting of the 15-nation Security Council convened at
Washington's request. 'Russia seems to be lawyering its way to look for
reasons not to act,' she said. 'We're not going to give up at the
Security Council, no matter the quibbling that we heard today about this
and that.' Power was referring to comments from Russian Ambassador Vitaly
Churkin, who made clear that in the view of veto-wielding Russia, Iran's
ballistic missile tests did not violate council resolution 2231, adopted
in July, that endorsed an historic nuclear deal between Tehran and six
world powers. 'A call is different from a ban so legally you cannot
violate a call, you can comply with a call or you can ignore the call,
but you cannot violate a call,' Churkin said. 'The legal distinction is there.'
Resolution 2231 'calls upon' Iran to refrain from certain ballistic
missile activity. Western nations see that as a clear ban, though council
diplomats say China and other council members agree with Russia's and
Iran's view that such work is not banned. Iran's U.N. mission issued a
statement opposing Monday's council discussion of its missile tests. It
added that statements Iranians made about Israel were merely a response
to Israeli threats." http://t.uani.com/1YVJZs2
AP: "Iran's foreign minister said
Tuesday that he had deliberately negotiated the wording of the latest
United Nations resolution restraining his country's nuclear program to
ensure that the test-firing of nuclear-capable Iranian missiles would be
legal. Mohammad Javad Zarif said in a speech at the Australian National
University that Security Council Resolution 2231, which was adopted after
the Iranian nuclear deal was signed last year, did not bar Iran from
testing the type of nuclear-capable ballistic missiles that it launched
last week. 'It doesn't call upon Iran not to test ballistic missiles, or
ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear warheads ... it calls
upon Iran not to test ballistic missiles that were designed to be
capable,' Zarif said. 'That word took me about seven months to negotiate,
so everybody knew what it meant,' he said, referring to 'designed.' ...
Zarif on Tuesday became the first Iranian foreign minister to visit Australia
since 2002. He was welcomed by key Australian officials, including Prime
Minister Malcolm Turnbull." http://t.uani.com/1MklqOn
AP: "Iran's state TV says the
country has retrieved thousands of pages of information from devices used
by 10 U.S. Navy sailors briefly detained by Iran in January. The Tuesday
report quotes Gen. Ali Razmjou saying the information was retrieved from
laptops, GPS devices and maps. Razmjou is a naval commander in the
powerful Revolutionary Guard. Gen. Razmjou said the move falls within
Iran's rights under international regulations. He says the information
fills about 13 thousand pages. The nine men and one woman were detained
for less than a day in January after they drifted into Iranian waters off
of Farsi Island, an outpost in the middle of the Persian Gulf that has
been used as a base for Revolutionary Guard speedboats since the
1980s." http://t.uani.com/251Xniz
Nuclear
& Ballistic Missile Program
IBT: "A report by Washington's
Congressional Research Service (CRS) raised suspicions that Iran boosted
its missile development by taking help from North Korea and may still be
dependent on the Kim Jong Un regime to get some materials for the
ballistic missiles, Yonhap reported. The CRS report cited the
intelligence community to say that North Korea's cooperation with Iran
was significant until the 2000s. 'Iran has likely exceeded North Korea's
ability to develop, test and build ballistic missiles. But Tehran may, to
some extent, still rely on Pyongyang for certain materials for producing
Iranian ballistic missiles, Iran's claims to the contrary
notwithstanding,' the report said, according to Yonhap: 'For example,
some observers argue that Iran may not be able to produce even its Scud B
and Scud C equivalents - Shahab-1 and Shahab-2, respectively - without
some foreign support for key materials or components.'" http://t.uani.com/1plEGFQ
Sanctions
Relief
Reuters: "South Korea's imports of
Iranian crude oil surged 91 percent in February from a year earlier with
the United States lifting sanctions on Tehran in January, customs data
showed on Tuesday. Seoul brought in 1,064,337 tonnes of Iranian crude oil
last month, or 269,020 barrels per day (bpd), almost two times higher
than 557,174 tonnes imported a year earlier, the data showed. In the
first two months of the year, the world's fifth largest crude oil
importer brought 1,923,560 tonnes, or 486,196 bpd, of crude from the
Middle Eastern country, versus 830,800 tonnes in the same period in 2015,
according to the data." http://t.uani.com/1MkmGRB
Terrorism
AFP: "Iran Monday rejected a U.S.
court ruling that the Islamic republic pay more than $10 billion in
compensation over the Al-Qaeda-claimed 9/11 attacks, calling it
'ridiculous.' A New York court last week ordered Tehran to pay $7.5
billion to victims of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade
Center and the Pentagon - and $3 billion to insurers over related claims
- after ruling that Iran had failed to prove that it did not help the
bombers. 'This judgement is so ridiculous ... more than ever before, it
damages the credibility of the U.S. judicial system,' state television
quoted an Iranian foreign ministry spokesman as saying. 'Such judgements
also send a very dangerous message to terrorists and to their supporters:
Kill people ... not only will we not prosecute, but we will even target
your greatest enemies instead,' Hossein Jaber Ansari said. 'We also see
the U.S. administration as a partner in such verdicts,' Ansari said.
Mohammad Javad Larijani, secretary general of Iran's High Council for
Human Rights, also criticized the ruling. 'If they (the United States)
want to prosecute anyone over the September 11 incident, it should be
their allies in the region who created Al-Qaeda and funded it,' he
said." http://t.uani.com/1prmKdy
Syria
Conflict
WSJ: "The possibility, raised by the
U.S. last month, that Syria might not stay whole if the conflict there
didn't end soon could lead to 'Armageddon' in the Middle East, Iranian
Foreign Minister Javad Zarif said. Tehran opposed any redrawing of
borders, which would raise the prospect of an even wider conflict
engulfing the region, Mr. Zarif said Tuesday during a visit to Australia.
'How do you draw the lines?' he asked just days after peace talks aimed
at ending the five-year-old conflict got under way. 'That would be the
beginning of our region's 30-year war. So let's not even go to that
territory.' ... 'Changing borders will only make the situation worse.
That will be the beginning - if you believe (in religious texts) - of
Armageddon.'" http://t.uani.com/1YVDghM
Regional
Destabilization
Fars
(Iran):
"Commander of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps Major General
Mohammad Ali Jafari said foreign military threats have turned into
opportunities for Iran in the push to spread the Islamic Revolution's
dialogue in the world. 'Foreign military and security threats have all
turned into an opportunity for Iran to spread the Islamic Revolution's
dialogue across the globe,' General Jafari said, addressing a ceremony in
Tehran on Tuesday. He said enemies have also targeted the resistance
front in order to curb and contain the Islamic Revolution and its
discourse, but this threat has become an opportunity too." http://t.uani.com/1S1UO93
Daily
Star (Lebanon):
"Hezbollah should bear the consequences of interfering in the
affairs of Gulf countries, a high-ranking security official in the UAE
said Tuesday, accusing the party's chief of war crimes in Syria. 'As long
as Hezbollah [chief Sayyed Hasan] Nasrallah chooses to harm our Gulf
states, then it should bear the resulting confrontation,' Dubai's General
Security chief Dhahi Khalfan Tamim said in the first of a series of
tweets. The Gulf Cooperation Council, the Arab Interior Ministers and
Arab Foreign Ministers separately designated Hezbollah a 'terrorist
organization' recently. The development came as tension soared between
the party and Saudi Arabia, the leading GCC country... 'Nasrallah's
hatred toward Arabs will make him taste the humiliation and hatred that Arabs
will inflict on him and his terrorist supporters,' Tamim said. He called
on Arabs to start a campaign against Nasrallah by boycotting the leader
and cutting all ties with Hezbollah. Bahrain's Interior Ministry Monday
announced the deportation of a number of Lebanese it accused of belonging
to or supporting Hezbollah, a day after Riyadh said it would punish
anyone with ties to the group. 'Nasrallah chose to import [military]
training, smuggling, bombing and terrorism to our countries. He should be
taught a lesson,' the official added. The security chief described
Nasrallah as the 'head of terror,' chastising his pride in his ties with
Iran. 'Shame on him.' 'Shiites in Lebanon deem him (Nasrallah) as an
Iranian agent targeting Arabs,' he continued, accusing the Hezbollah
chief of being a 'war criminal in Syria.'" http://t.uani.com/1YVCIZf
Saudi-Iran
Tensions
IranWire: "In a sharply worded speech,
commander of the Iranian expeditionary Qods Force Ghasem Soleimani said
Saudi Arabia's government was 'illegitimate' and condemned the country's
military engagement in Yemen. 'It has always been the Saudis who have
engaged in adventurism against Islam, and against us,' he said. The
speech, delivered to a crowd in the provincial capital of Kerman,
southeastern Iran, was the first time Soleimani had explicitly and
publicly criticized Saudi Arabia. Prior to this, he had openly condemned
various individual Saudi policies, but never attacked the entire
political system and the House of Saud outright. Praising the Iranian
political system, the special forces commander said that as the center of
Islam and the Shi'a faith, Iran enjoys democracy, while in Saudi Arabia
the power is monopolized by one family. Soleimani used the speech to
praise Iran's political system and to celebrate its military achievement.
He described Iran as a 'decent, peace-loving, and tolerant' nation and
said that, since the 1979 revolution, Iran had never behaved in a hostile
manner against Saudi Arabia or other neighboring countries. He dismissed
accusations made by some international media and political commentators
that Iran's involvement in the Syrian conflict was reckless and risky.
Without a doubt, Soleimani said, Iran would continued to defend
itself, but he stopped short of saying what Iran's next steps in Syria
might be." http://t.uani.com/1Rk7sgA
MEMRI: "On March 8, 2016, Saudi
journalist Muhammad Aal Al-Sheikh wrote in his column in the Saudi daily
Al-Jazirah that today, Iran is the No. 1 enemy of Saudi Arabia and the
Gulf countries, supplanting the historical enemy Israel. Any citizen of
the Gulf who disagrees with this assessment, he added, is a traitor.
Arguing that Iran is exploiting the Palestinian issue as a pretext for
'infiltrating deep into the Arab world, shredding its Arab fabric, and
dragging Arab society into supporting its expansionary plan,' he
emphasized that the Palestinians should expect no salvation from Iran. He
also warned the Gulf Shi'ites that they were mere pawns for Iran, which
was using them to promote Persian national aspirations." http://t.uani.com/1WnwDmQ
Human
Rights
ICHRI: "Data privacy and censorship
concerns are driving Iranian companies and individuals to foreign
Internet servers because domestic providers are powerless to protect
their customers against state spying and control. 'Company executives
have told me in private that they prefer to have their servers managed
abroad because if they are filtered they won't lose their foreign
customers,' said Communications and Information Technology Minister
Mahmoud Vaezi at a technology conference in Tehran on March 8, 2016. 'Since
2015, all Iranian application developers must sign a contract that is
sent to their address and provide identification documents. That means
the complete annihilation of personal privacy. By contrast, international
companies such as Google or Apple do not require any of this. If you want
to offer an app, all you need to do is open an account and pay a
membership fee,' an Iranian web provider told the International Campaign
for Human Rights in Iran. Iranian Internet service providers are
particularly handicapped by strict censorship and 'security' laws that
expose their customers' information and online activities. 'Since a few
years ago, web hosting companies have been forced to cooperate with
Internet monitoring agencies and as a result they can order the removal
of any content,' said the web provider, speaking on condition of
anonymity." http://t.uani.com/1RLyNJh
Reuters: "Iran's legal vetting body has
approved a bill that will see female victims of road traffic accidents
paid the same compensation as men, in a small step toward gender equality
in the conservative Islamic country. The Third Party Insurance Bill, likely
to be made law in the coming weeks, will bind insurance companies to
compensate victims of road accidents regardless of their gender, state
broadcaster IRINN said on Monday. The bill was approved by the Guardian
Council, a 12-member Islamic body responsible for ensuring legislation
conforms to Sharia (Islamic) law, which had rejected a similar measure
passed by parliament in 2008. In Iranian law, third party vehicle
insurance is governed by the Koranic concept of 'blood money' whereby the
victim of injury, or their family in the case of death, can claim
compensation from the perpetrator. 'Once they accept that men and women
are equal... in terms of blood money when there is a car accident, that
means they have accepted the principle, so that can set a precedent,'
said Ziba Mir-Hosseini, a professorial research associate at SOAS, part
of the University of London." http://t.uani.com/1Rk6bGr
Domestic
Politics
Reuters: "Iran will hold run-off
elections next month for 69 parliamentary seats where no candidate
secured 25 percent of votes cast in a general election on Feb. 26, state
radio said on Tuesday. Results so far show moderate allies of President
Hassan Rouhani making big gains from the conservative Islamic
establishment but neither faction has a majority, meaning the run-offs
will decide who controls the 290-seat parliament." http://t.uani.com/1QUvnpO
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Eye on Iran is a periodic news summary from United Against
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