|
|
|
Join UANI
Top
Stories
FT: "Some of Europe's biggest
banks are to resist rising political pressure to do more business in
Iran when they meet the US secretary of state and the British foreign
secretary on Thursday. John Kerry and Philip Hammond plan to call on
the banks to do more to reconnect with Iran and to finance British
companies seeking to win contracts in the Middle East's second-largest
economy. But the continuation of many US sanctions relating to other
issues, such as facilitating terrorism, has made many western banks wary
of working with Iranian institutions and individuals. This is causing
growing frustration among officials in Iran, the US and Europe about
the slow pace with which Tehran is being reconnected to the global
financial system. 'We want our banks to be able to support British
companies working in Iran,' Mr Hammond said in a statement sent to the
Financial Times before Thursday's meeting in London's Mayfair district.
'It is in our economic interest, as well as Iran's, that legitimate
business is supported. After many years of restricted relations some
challenges remain, but we are working through them with international
partners, Iran and the banking community.' His pleas are likely to
largely fall on deaf ears among the bankers invited to attend the
meeting, including executives at Standard Chartered, HSBC, Barclays,
Deutsche Bank, BNP Paribas, Santander, Lloyds Banking Group and Royal
Bank of Scotland. StanChart told the FT it would be 'happy to share the
practical and legal considerations behind our stated position regarding
Iran: we will not accept any new clients who reside in Iran, or which
are an entity owned or controlled by a person there, nor will we
undertake any new transactions involving Iran or any party in Iran'.
Banks including StanChart and HSBC have paid more than $15bn in fines
for breaching sanctions in various countries over the past five years.
The costliest was the $8.9bn penalty for France's BNP Paribas in
2014... Bankers doubt Mr Kerry will be able to change their cautious
approach to Iran. They fear that even if they receive assurances from
the US Treasury department, US prosecutors and independent regulators
might adopt a different and stricter interpretation of the rules. They
add that Iran presents multiple challenges for banks other than the
prospect of breaching US sanctions, including the risk of inadvertently
aiding money laundering, financing terrorism and financial crime in a
country that has for many years been in the financial wilderness and
remains 'off the grid' for most compliance systems. With a US election
looming in November, one banker said: 'Kerry is not long for this
world,' adding that Donald Trump, the likely Republican party nominee
for president, has expressed much more negative views about the Iran
nuclear deal." http://t.uani.com/24NZ4iy
WSJ: "U.S. Secretary of State John
Kerry met with heads of some of Europe's biggest banks in London on
Thursday to address their concerns about doing business in Iran, in a
controversial push to ensure that Tehran sees the relief that the U.S.
and other world powers pledged it in a nuclear accord that took effect
in January. After a roughly hourlong meeting, Mr. Kerry said that he
hoped to glean from bankers the obstacles they see to doing business
with Iran and address them. 'We want to make it clear that legitimate
business, which is clear under the definition of the agreement, is
available to banks as long as they do their normal due diligence and
know who they're dealing with,' Mr. Kerry told reporters. ' They're not
going to be held to some undefined and inappropriate standard.' 'They
[the Iranians] have an expectation that the sanctions that are supposed
to be lifted are in fact lifted.' Mr. Kerry said Thursday. British
Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said the U.S., U.K and other world
powers that negotiated the deal were actively working 'to support
European businesses in resuming normal trade and investment patterns
with Iran.' ... Top bankers at the meeting on Thursday included John
Cryan, chief executive of Deutsche Bank AG, and Antó nio Simõ es, chief
executive of HSBC Bank PLC, part of HSBC Holdings PLC. Other attendees
included Tracy Clarke, regional chief executive for Europe and Americas
at Standard Chartered PLC and Michael Roemer, group head of compliance
at Barclays PLC. British Bankers' Association Chief Executive Anthony
Browne, who also attended, is helping to coordinate banks' views and
concerns on Iran business. A U.S. official said Mr. Kerry told the
bankers he's aware that Iran hasn't done anything to lessen banks'
concerns about doing business in the country. 'He specifically
mentioned our acknowledgment that Iran, despite the fact that they're
meeting their obligations in the [nuclear accord], continues to conduct
destabilizing support for terrorists, ballistic-missile activity,' the
official said. 'They continue to provoke and to destabilize the region
in other unhelpful ways and we understand that that is also causing a
measure of skittishness.' ... A further meeting between banks and U.S.
officials is to be held in Washington, D.C. next week, the person said.
Some banks say that they have made up their minds on not doing business
with Iran, in part because they have agreements in place with U.S.
agencies that may take a different view than the official government
stance on Iran." http://t.uani.com/1NrBdAX
Bloomberg: "Iranian crude production
rose to levels last seen before sanctions were imposed more than four
years ago, helping to drive OPEC output to the highest in almost eight
years, according to the International Energy Agency. Iran pumped 3.56
million barrels a day last month, a rate last reached in November 2011
before trade restrictions were imposed over the country's nuclear
program, the IEA said Thursday. Exports soared more than 40 percent to
2 million barrels a day -- near pre-sanctions levels -- as the nation worked
to regain lost market share. While Iraq and the United Arab Emirates
also boosted output, Iran's addition of 300,000 barrels a day was the
key contributor to OPEC's production gain to 32.76 million barrels a
day, the highest since August 2008... Iran's exports jumped by around
600,000 barrels from March, 'with China buying big and Europe loading
substantially more,' the IEA said in its monthly report... China was
the biggest buyer of Iranian crude in April, lifting more than 800,000
barrels a day, a 57 percent gain from March, according to the IEA.
Purchasers in Europe loaded roughly 500,000 barrels a day, more than
double the previous month, with Total SA and Tupras Turkiye Petrol
Rafinerileri AS leading the orders." http://t.uani.com/24NZFAM
Nuclear
& Ballistic Missile Program
Reuters: "The United States switched
on an $800 million missile shield in Romania on Thursday that it sees
as vital to defend itself and Europe from so-called rogue states but
the Kremlin says is aimed at blunting its own nuclear arsenal. To the
music of military bands at the remote Deveselu air base, senior U.S.
and NATO officials declared operational the ballistic missile defense
site, which is capable of shooting down rockets from countries such as
Iran that Washington says could one day reach major European cities.
'As long as Iran continues to develop and deploy ballistic missiles,
the United States will work with its allies to defend NATO,' said U.S.
Deputy Defence Secretary Robert Work, standing in front of the shield's
massive gray concrete housing that was adorned with a U.S. flag...
Before the ceremony, Frank Rose, deputy U.S. assistant secretary of
state for arms control, warned that Iran's ballistic missiles can hit
parts of Europe, including Romania." http://t.uani.com/220jZgJ
Free
Beacon:
"Iran's military recently publicized a third underground missile
facility and showed the launch of a new ballistic missile through the
top of a mountain. U.S. intelligence agencies said in a recent internal
report on the launch that the new underground missile facility was
disclosed by Iran in March. It was the third time since October that
Tehran showed off an extensive network of underground missile
facilities. The new video, however, for the first time shows a missile
launch from one of the country's underground launch facilities... The
latest video was disclosed March 9 by the Mehr New Agency, run by the
hardline Islamic Propagation Office, which is in turn affiliated with the
Qom seminary... The video begins with grainy footage showing an
underground tunnel where missiles are stored on either side. The video
then shifts to a concrete cavern where what appears to be a Qiam-1
ballistic missile is being set up beneath a launch tube in the ceiling
of the cavern. The video then shows a news announcer stating that on
March 8 a Qiam missile was launched 'from the depths of the earth.' The
final scene shows a missile lifting off through the top of a
mountain." http://t.uani.com/1YnHYEn
Congressional
Action
AP: "The Senate on Wednesday
blocked a Republican effort aimed at undercutting last year's landmark
international nuclear deal with Iran. The Senate fell three votes short
of the 60-vote threshold - 57-42 - to move ahead on the amendment
sponsored by freshman Republican Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas. Cotton's
proposed provision would have barred the United States from using
taxpayer dollars to buy any more Iranian 'heavy water.' The proposal
had triggered a war of words with the White House. Heavy water is not
radioactive but has research and medical applications and can also be
used to produce weapons-grade plutonium. Under the nuclear deal, Iran
is allowed to use heavy water in its modified Arak nuclear reactor, but
must sell any excess supply of both heavy water and enriched uranium on
the international market. The Obama administration bought 32 metric
tons of heavy water from Tehran last month, an $8.6 million deal that
helped Iran meet the nuclear agreement's terms." http://t.uani.com/1THv93z
Al-Monitor: "Congress hasn't managed to
pass a single Iran-related bill since the nuclear deal went into effect
last year, but that doesn't mean its supporters can breathe easy.
Behind the scenes, lawmakers in both chambers and both parties have
been working together on comprehensive legislation that will seek to
punish Iran for its human-rights abuses, ballistic missile tests and
other activities. That strategy could help explain why a bill to renew
sanctions on Iran's energy sector that expires at the end of the year
has been bottled up in the Senate banking panel for the past 11 months
despite bipartisan support for its passage. 'My sense on the Republican
side is that the leadership is not going to accept a mere extension [of
the Iran Sanctions Act] without additional sanctions,' said Sen. Robert
Menendez, D-N.J. 'Certainly I want to get it done, period. But if it
helps drive a bigger package, that's a good thing.' Menendez, a member
of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee who opposed the Iran deal,
has been working for months with panel chairman Bob Corker, R-Tenn., on
broader sanctions legislation. That effort is on the verge of
succeeding, Corker told Al-Monitor May 11. 'We have a bipartisan bill,'
Corker said, 'and we're getting ready to roll it out real soon.'
Menendez said a recent New York Times magazine profile of Obama's
foreign policy advisor, Ben Rhodes, has only energized deal-skeptic
lawmakers because of the dim view it takes of Congress... House members
likewise have increasingly been signaling their intentions to go after
Iran with everything they can muster... House Foreign Affairs Committee
Chairman Ed Royce, R-Calif., and ranking member Eliot Engel, D-N.Y.,
have been working on such legislation for several months... The top
Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Sen. Ben Cardin,
D-Md., said he supports renewing the Iran Sanctions Act and
strengthening ballistic missile sanctions, but that the Republican
leadership appears to want more. 'I think we could do both and
get broad consensus,' Cardin said, 'but I do not sense a lot of
enthusiasm by the Republican floor leadership to move in that
direction.' As a result, he said, there has been 'no progress' in his
talks with Corker, suggesting that the chairman may end up releasing
his bill with Menendez on board but not Cardin." http://t.uani.com/1THvF1s
Extremism
WashPost: "This weekend, Iran will
stage its third cartoon exhibition about the Holocaust. The images on
display, pooled from submissions that came in from various parts of the
world, mock a history of genocide and Jewish suffering. The event has
garnered global notoriety and is a persistent mark against an Iranian
regime that has tried over the past year to show that it's ready to
emerge from international isolation... as myriad observers have noted,
Holocaust denial within the Iranian regime did not begin and end with
Ahmadinejad. Rather, it starts at the top with the supreme leader,
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who just this year questioned the 'reality' of
the genocide on Holocaust Remembrance Day. 'Senior Iranian officials
have for many years systematically promoted Holocaust denial and
distortion,' said Tad Stahnke, who heads the U.S. Holocaust Memorial
Museum's Initiative on Holocaust Denial and Antisemitism. He added that
the contest 'discredits Iran and its people' and is an 'affront' to the
victims and survivors of the Holocaust, which include some Iranians
themselves." http://t.uani.com/1WsogcU
RFE/RL: "The United States Holocaust
Memorial Museum has called on the Iranian government to disavow a
Holocaust cartoon contest that is due to kick off next week. Iran's
foreign minister has denied any affiliation with the event, which
begins on May 14 and features prizes ranging from $5,000 to $12,000 for
the top three entries. But the Washington-based museum, which is funded
by U.S. government and private donations, has suggested the event has
government links, and ought to be canceled or condemned... Influential
Iranian officials have minimized the killings in the past. Supreme
Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has questioned the Holocaust and referred
to it as 'an event whose reality is uncertain.' And former President
Mahmud Ahmadinejad, who was known for frequently making anti-Israeli
remarks, regularly questioned the Holocaust and called it 'a myth.' ...
Officials at the Holocaust Museum told reporters on May 11 that the
contest organizers, including the House of Cartoon and the Sarcheshmeh
Cultural Center both have ties to state entities, including the Islamic
Revolutionary Guards Corps and the Culture Ministry." http://t.uani.com/1TRxuMr
Saudi-Iran
Tensions
AP: "Iran will not send pilgrims
to Saudi Arabia this year for the annual hajj pilgrimage, an Iranian
official said Thursday, the latest sign of tensions between the two
Mideast powers after a disaster during the event last year killed at
least 2,426 people. Iran said Saudi 'incompetence' caused the Sept. 24
crush and stampede in the holy city of Mina during the hajj, which is
required of all able-bodied Muslims once in their life. The Islamic
Republic has said the disaster killed 464 of its pilgrims. Negotiations
between Shiite power Iran and the Sunni kingdom had been trying to
'resolve the issue' of security for months, but failed to make any
headway, said Ali Jannati, Iran's minister of culture and Islamic
guidance. 'We did whatever we could but it was the Saudis who
sabotaged' it, Jannati said in comments carried by the state-run IRNA
news agency. 'Now the time is lost.'" http://t.uani.com/1T8ll3i
Domestic
Politics
NYT: "Minoo Khaleghi easily won a
seat in the Iranian Parliament in February, part of a wave of
independents and reformists who now have the numbers to wrest authority
from the hard-liners. On Wednesday, however, a powerful state committee
demonstrated that the conservative forces would not relinquish power
without a fight. Citing 'evidence' that had emerged against her, the
Dispute Settlement Committee of Branches, a part of Iran's generally
conservative judiciary, ruled that Ms. Khaleghi could not be sworn in as
a new member of Parliament, the semiofficial Fars News Agency reported.
The evidence, it turned out, consisted of photographs of Ms. Khaleghi,
'leaked' on social media last week, showing her in public in Europe and
in China without the obligatory Islamic head scarf. Hard-liners
immediately accused her of 'betraying the nation.' But
opposition-aligned analysts and Ms. Khaleghi shot back that the case
against her was politically motivated, more about curtailing and
marginalizing prominent reformists - and a woman - than about her
traveling abroad without a head scarf. While acknowledging that all
Iranian women are obliged to cover themselves in public, even when
traveling abroad, they said there was a problem with the evidence. The
photographs were, Ms. Khaleghi said in a statement to the official
government newspaper Iran, malicious fakes." http://t.uani.com/1Opf5SC
Reuters: "On a podium decorated as a
bunker from the Iran-Iraq war, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad woos a crowd of
hundreds with an anti-Western speech reminiscent of his fiery addresses
as Iran's president. At the end of the event in Jiroft in southeast
Iran, held partly to honor victims of the 1980-88 war, some of the
crowd chant: 'The slogan of any man is that Ahmadinejad is coming
back.' After nearly three years out of the public eye following two
terms as president, Ahmadinejad has made a handful of appearances in
the past few weeks, including his speech last week in Jiroft, which
have stoked talk of a political comeback." http://t.uani.com/1T8kkrW
Opinion
& Analysis
Nikahang
Kowsar in Times of Israel: "Twenty years ago, a group of leading Iranian
cartoonists lobbied the mayor's office to get a small building as
Iran's first Cartoon House. I was one of them; a young and ambitious
editorial cartoonist who wanted to push the red lines of the regime
through cartooning. I was in charge of the classes and setting up a
curriculum. I remained an active member until 2003, when I fled my
country after receiving death threats for my work as a cartoonist. A
couple of weeks ago, Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif told The New
Yorker that the Iranian government had nothing to do with the Holocaust
cartoon contest. 'It's not Iran,' Zarif told his interviewer, Robin
Wright. 'It's an NGO that is not controlled by the Iranian government.
Nor is it endorsed by the Iranian government.' The claim that the
Iranian government doesn't control this platform for spewing hate and
denying the Holocaust is a pure lie, coming from a pathological liar
whose previous absurd claim, exactly a year before this one, was 'we do
not jail people for their opinions.'" http://t.uani.com/24O1dLg
|
|
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.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment