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AP: "Iran test-fired another
ballistic missile, the latest in a spate of tests following the
implementation of the nuclear deal with world powers earlier this year,
according to a report Monday by the country's semi-official Tasnim news
agency. The test-firing of the missile was carried out two weeks ago,
the agency quoted Gen. Ali Abdollahi, deputy chief of the armed forces'
headquarters, as saying. Tasnim is close to the country's powerful
Revolutionary Guard, which is in charge of Iranian ballistic missiles
program. The agency said the missile has a range of 2,000 kilometers,
or 1,250 miles - enough to reach much of the Middle East. Iranian
military commanders have described them as a strategic asset and a
strong deterrent, capable of hitting U.S. bases or Israel in the event
of a strike on Iran. Iran insists the ballistic tests do not violate
the nuclear deal and is likely seeking to demonstrate it is making
progress with its ballistic program, despite scaling back on the
nuclear program following the deal that led to the lifting of
international sanction on Tehran. Abdollahi said the latest missile
tested is very accurate, within 8 meters (yards). 'Eight meters means
nothing, it means it's without any error,' he said. He did not
elaborate. Last month, Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, chief of the Guard's
airspace division, said a new, upgraded version of the Sajjil - a solid
fuel high-speed missile with a range of 1,200 miles that was first
tested in 2008 - would soon be ready. But it was not immediately clear
if the missile Abdollahi referred to was the new Sajjil. In March, Iran
test-fired two ballistic missiles - one emblazoned with the phrase
'Israel must be wiped out' in Hebrew - that set off an international
outcry." http://t.uani.com/1Ok961s
Guardian: "A British-Iranian woman is
being held in solitary confinement in Iran, away from her two-year-old
daughter, after they attempted to return to the UK from a family visit.
Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a 37-year-old project manager with the
Thomson Reuters Foundation, the news agency's charitable arm, was
arrested in early April in Tehran by members of Iran's elite
Revolutionary Guard at Imam Khomeini airport, where she and her
daughter, Gabriella, were about to board a flight back to the UK. The
mother has since been separated from her daughter, who is British and
does not have Iranian nationality; she has been placed in the care of
Zaghari-Ratcliffe's family in Iran and her passport confiscated. Her
father, Richard Ratcliffe, who has been advised not to travel to Iran,
says he has not seen or held his daughter since she went holiday, or spoken
to his wife since her arrest. 'It is now nearly two months since I saw
or held my little girl. I cannot get her back: her passport is
confiscated, I have no visa, and I have been advised not to try and go
to Iran,' Ratcliffe said... 'It is hard to understand how a young
mother and her small child on holiday could be considered an issue of
national security. She has been over to visit her family regularly
since making Britain her home,' her husband said in a statement. He has
not been able to speak to his wife since the arrest. 'The cruelty of
the situation seems both outrageous and arbitrary - that a young mum
and baby can be treated as some national security threat is absurd, far
outside any reality our family was familiar with,' he said. 'But it is
also very real. In its isolation and pressures on her, it is a cruelty
that is clearly deliberate and designed. And I have been powerless to
stop it. After 36 days we have gone public, against the advice of the
[Foreign Office], in the hope that with others and with public pressure
that might change.'" http://t.uani.com/1No70Tl
Politico: "Jaws dropped in Washington's
tight-knit foreign policy community when Ben Rhodes, a deputy national
security adviser and one of President Barack Obama's closest aides, was
quoted in the New York Times Magazine deriding the D.C. press corps and
boasting of how he created an 'echo chamber' to market the
administration's foreign policy. Marbled with the kind of overly candid
observations that sank Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the wartime general who
was quoted mocking Vice President Joe Biden in a 2010 Rolling Stone
profile, the article, written by David Samuels, hit like a bomb. It portrayed
Rhodes as a real-life Holden Caulfield, a prep-school brat with
literary pretensions whose greatest work of fiction was crafting the
White House's 'narrative' to defend the Iran nuclear deal from its
critics. 'The way in which most Americans have heard the story of the
Iran deal presented - that the Obama administration began seriously
engaging with Iranian officials in 2013 in order to take advantage of a
new political reality in Iran, which came about because of elections
that brought moderates to power in that country - was largely
manufactured for the purpose for selling the deal,' Samuels claimed in
the article, which the agreement's conservative critics see as
validation of what they have been saying all along. Rhodes pushed back
with a post on Medium late Sunday evening, arguing that the
administration had made no attempt to mislead, while offering an
apology of sorts to any reporters he might have offended." http://t.uani.com/1T6W4bQ
Bloomberg
Radio:
"Former Senator Joe Lieberman, Chairman of UANI-United Against
Nuclear Iran, discusses why his organization is warning companies that
re-entering the Iranian market is risky business." http://t.uani.com/1Wkk5jT
Nuclear
& Ballistic Missile Program
Press
TV (Iran): "A
group of Iranian lawmakers have called on President Hassan Rouhani to
stop implementing a nuclear agreement if the US continues violating the
accord and maintains its hostile policies. As many as 102 legislators
on Monday urged President Rouhani to set a deadline for reconsidering
Iran's voluntary implementation of nuclear-related measures under the
agreement. They asked the government to resume all nuclear activities
under the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in case the US refuses to
return some $2 billion recently taken away from frozen Iranian assets.
They accused the US administration of backpedaling on the June 2015
agreement, sabotaging the deal and blackmailing over the removal of
sanctions. The lawmakers asked the government to respond in kind, with
regard to the seizure of Iran's frozen assets by the US." http://t.uani.com/1ZwO0ms
Business
Risk
Trend: "Iran is holding an
international oil, gas, and petrochemical industrial exhibition in
which a strong sense of hope prevails regarding the future possibility
of Iran-world business boom as the country is now free of sanctions.
However, a general inquiry from various companies which have set up
booths around the fairground tells of one running theme: the banking
problems that still hinder transfer of money to or from Iran. 'Banking
is a real problem. We have many projects that are currently let down
because Iranian companies have no financer,' Roberto Epicoco, manager
of projects at the Italian Skem industrial consultation firm told Trend
May 7. He pointed out that his company is overseeing many petrochemical
projects in Iran, including a major one in the production of
polyolefin, all of which are waiting for banking relations to be
established. The financing problem continues despite sanctions in that
many major Western banks still lack confidence to start business with
Iran. Another major problem is that US primary sanctions which include
a ban on the use of the dollar in business with Iran are still in
place. 'Iran has one of the biggest markets all around the world. It
needs recovery by foreign companies, but financing is needed to do
that,' said the manager of a South Korean company, speaking on
condition of anonymity. Trend also spoke with Shayan Mesri, the media
relations officer of the Society of Iranian Petroleum Industry
Equipment Manufacturers which is an umbrella organization with over 700
companies. 'Iranian companies have to deal with a lot of problems.
There is the banking issue, but also insurance, tax, raw material procurement,
customs laws, brain drain, liquidity. A chain of problems in fact,' he
said." http://t.uani.com/1YhHLCT
Sanctions
Enforcement
Reuters: "Warren Buffett's Berkshire
Hathaway Inc said on Friday it recently learned that one of its foreign
units made sales through a third-party distributor to customers in
Iran, despite U.S. sanctions against that country. In its quarterly
report filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Omaha,
Nebraska-based Berkshire said it alerted federal authorities including
the Department of the Treasury on Friday about the transactions in
question. It said the customers 'include or may include parties that
meet the definition of the Government of Iran.' The transactions took
place from June 2013 to November 2015, and generated about $2,500 of
profit on $45,000 of revenue, Berkshire said. Berkshire did not
identify the unit involved or when it learned there might be a problem,
but said the unit has stopped shipments to the Iran parties and does
not intend to resume them. It also said it has hired outside lawyers to
help it conduct an internal probe, and will cooperate with government
agencies." http://t.uani.com/1ZwF8gy
Sanctions
Relief
Sky
News: "Some
of Britain's biggest banks will hold talks this week with John Kerry,
the US Secretary of State, as they wrestle with the implications of
last year's move to lift economic sanctions against Iran. Sky News has
learnt that the British Bankers' Association (BBA) has circulated a
note to its members inviting them to send senior representatives to a
meeting with Mr Kerry, who will be in London to attend an
anti-corruption summit. The discussions will be held against an
uncertain backdrop for UK banks, some of which are keen to do more
business with Tehran but remain nervous about the consequences of deals
which may be frowned upon by Washington. Mr Kerry has sought to allay
concerns among foreign banks about forging new ties in Iran, saying
last month that the US 'is not standing in the way, and will not stand
in the way, of business that is permitted in Iran since the [nuclear
deal] took effect'. 'There are now opportunities for foreign banks to
do business with Iran. 'Unfortunately there seems to be some confusion
among some foreign banks and we want to try and clarify that.' This
week's meeting will take place just weeks after the banking industry's
main lobbying group moved to establish a high-level panel to navigate
the removal of western sanctions against Iran." http://t.uani.com/1VQozhI
Reuters: "German auto parts supplier
Robert Bosch is opening an office in Tehran and plans to hire 50 staff
by the end of this year because it sees growing potential for Iran's
car market following the lifting of international sanctions. 'We are
delighted to be back in Iran. In our quest to pick up speed quickly, we
are benefiting first and foremost from re-establishing contact with
former local partners and customers,' said Uwe Raschke, Bosch's
management board member responsible for Europe, the Middle East and
Africa. 'The country's potential is tremendous. We expect to see the
Iranian economy grow by just under 5 percent this year. The medium term
is also highly promising.' A number of foreign carmakers, including
Renault, Daimler, Peugeot Citroen and Suzuki Motor Corp have announced
plans to re-enter Iran or step up production there since the United
States and Europe partially lifted sanctions in January, under a deal
with Tehran to limit its nuclear program." http://t.uani.com/1s7iRvT
Tehran
Times:
"Renowned international companies from 38 countries across the
globe are participating in the 21st International Oil, Gas, Refining
and Petrochemical Exhibition of Iran (Iran Oil Show 2016), which is
being held at Tehran Permanent International Fairground from May 5 to
8. On the sidelines of the oil show and in their meetings with Iranian
senior officials, representatives of the foreign companies have sought
avenues to have a share in Iranian lucrative oil sector via making
joint venture and signing MOUs." http://t.uani.com/1q8Z2lL
Tasnim
(Iran):
"Dutch Economics Minister Henk Kamp who arrived in Tehran early on
Sunday, is scheduled to hold talks with Iranian officials on promotion
of mutual cooperation between the two nations. Heading a high-ranking
economic delegation, Kamp is planned to sit down with Iran's
Agriculture Minister Mahmoud Hojjati on Sunday to explore avenues for
the expansion of bilateral ties between Tehran and Amsterdam. The two
ministers will discuss contribution of the private sector in various
fields of farming industry, joint investment in agricultural projects,
and the transfer of technology. The Dutch minister will also pay an
official visit to the 21st Iran International Oil, Gas, Refining and
Petrochemical Exhibition underway at Tehran International Permanent
Fairground. Several cooperation documents in the fields of oil and
energy are expected to be signed between Iran and the Netherlands on
the sidelines of the international event, which will come to an end on
May 8. This is Kamp's second visit to Tehran after a lasting nuclear
deal between Iran and the Group 5+1 (Russia, China, the US, Britain,
France and Germany) in July 2015, which took effect on January
16." http://t.uani.com/1TxXsBS
Tehran
Times: "A
36-member Malaysian commercial delegation will start its four-day trip
to Iran next Monday to hold talks with Iranian companies and officials
from Iran Chamber of Commerce, Industries, Mines and Agriculture
(ICCIMA). The Malaysian delegation, as IRNA reported on Friday, is
headed by Dzulkifli Mahmoud Chief Executive Officer of Malaysia
External Trade Development Corporation (MATRADE) and is comprised of
directors and representatives of 27 private sector companies. The visit
comes a week after Malaysian foreign Minister Anifah Aman's journey to
Tehran last Tuesday where he met President Hassan Rouhani, Foreign
Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, and Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh.
In his meeting with Zarif, Aman called for expansion of ties between
the two countries in various spheres, especially economy." http://t.uani.com/24Gn6zF
Reuters: "Iran's oil and gas
condensate exports have reached 2,450,000 barrels per day, Oil Minister
Bijan Zanganeh was quoted as saying by ministry news agency SHANA on
Saturday. He also said there was no obstacle to Iran regaining its lost
share of the oil market after the lifting of international sanctions
against Tehran in January." http://t.uani.com/1UMtJKs
Extremism
IranWire: "Iran's most powerful
official, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, says the Holocaust is
a myth. But Iranian Jews who lived in Europe during the Second World
War knew better. They experienced first-hand the Nazis' genocidal
ambitions and had to evade the Gestapo, or Nazi secret police. Some
European Jews who fled the Nazis, meanwhile, traveled to Iran as
refugees. This year, in recognition of Holocaust Remembrance Day,
IranWire reports on little-known stories of Iran and the Holocaust."
http://t.uani.com/24GvP1i
Syria
Conflict
AP: "More than a dozen members of
Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards were killed this week during an
attack by militants in northern Syria in what shows Tehran's deep
involvement in the Syrian civil war. Iran has been one of President
Bashar Assad's strongest backers and has, along with Lebanon's
Iran-backed militant Hezbollah group, sent fighters to battle on the government's
side. Iran's semi-official Fars news agency quoted Hossein Ali Rezaei,
a spokesman for the Revolutionary Guard in the northern province of
Mazandaran, as saying that 13 members were killed and 21 were wounded.
Rezaei did not say when or where the incident occurred but another
semi-official news agency, Tasnim, quoted a Revolutionary Guard
spokesman in the same area as saying that they were killed when a
coalition of insurgents, including al-Qaida's branch in Syria known as
the Nusra Front, seized the northern village of Khan Touman from
pro-government forces... The announcement in Tehran came as a senior
Iranian official met with Assad in Damascus and vowed continued support
for his government in the country's five-year-old civil war. Ali Akbar Velayati,
an adviser to Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was quoted
by Syria's state news agency SANA as saying that Tehran will always
stand by Syria because it 'knows that terrorism does not target Syria
but the whole people of the region.'" http://t.uani.com/1TxWRAc
Human
Rights
Amnesty: "Iranian spiritual teacher
and prisoner of conscience Mohammad Ali Taheri has been in pre-trial
solitary confinement for five years, and has launched over a dozen
hunger strikes in protest at his detention. His mother Ezat tells us of
her long fight for his release.'" http://t.uani.com/1q8VLTH
AFP: "An Iranian director
sentenced to 223 lashes for making a film that has never been
officially shown in his homeland said Friday he just wanted to be left
alone to work rather than 'be turned into a hero'. Keywan Karimi ran into
trouble with Iran's powerful Revolutionary Guards over a documentary he
shot called 'Writing on the City' about graffiti in the capital Tehran.
He spent 15 days in solitary confinement in 2013 and was accused of
making 'propaganda against the regime' and 'insulting religious
values'. But since then, the young avant-garde filmmaker told AFP,
several other 'ridiculous' charges have been added including drinking
alcohol, having extramarital affairs and making pornography. 'All I was
doing was filming what was being written on the walls of Tehran,' said
the 33-year-old, who comes from the country's Kurdish minority. Karimi
was sentenced to six years in prison in 2015 but after an international
outcry in which acclaimed Iranian directors including Jafar Panahi and
Mohsen Makhmalbaf rallied to his support, five years of the term was
suspended. The threat of the 233 lashes has not however been lifted,
and the prison authorities are now demanding that the punishment be
carried out. 'I am not a political activist,' Karimi told AFP in a
telephone interview. 'I am not being sent to prison because I oppose
the regime but because I am a filmmaker.'" http://t.uani.com/24GhEwq
Foreign
Affairs
Costa
Rica Star:
"Iran's top diplomat, Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif will
begin a diplomatic tour of Latin American states on Sunday, May 8,
according to Iran's Ministry of Foreign Affairs. 'The Iranian foreign
minister's 6-day-long visit to Brazil, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Venezuela
and Cuba will start on May 8,' Foreign Ministry Spokesman Hossein
Jaberi Ansari said. During the trip, Zarif will discuss different ways
to 'further expand bilateral political and economic relations' with
Latin American states, and will be accompanied by an Iranian trade
delegation, Ansari said. 'Tehran and [Latin American] nations have
forged an alliance against the imperialist and colonialist powers and
are striving hard to reinvigorate their relations with the other
independent countries which pursue a line of policy independent from
the U.S.,' Iran's semi-official FARS news agency said in reporting the
upcoming visit." http://t.uani.com/1QWnNrl
Opinion
& Analysis
Roger
Cohen in NYT:
"Perhaps nothing is more important to President Obama's foreign
policy legacy than the success of the Iran nuclear deal. It bears his
personal imprimatur and will stand or fall on whether it prevents Iran
from producing a bomb over the 15-year term of the agreement and
beyond. If an Iranian hard-liner returns to power in the presidential
election next year, replacing President Hassan Rouhani, the likelihood
of the deal unraveling will increase. The balance between the reformist
Rouhani and the hawkish Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei produced
the political conditions in which the accord became possible. But today
America is undermining that balance, reinforcing Iranian hawks and
putting the hard-won deal that reversed Iran's steady advance to the
nuclear threshold at risk. It's a shoot-yourself-in-the-foot policy
after a major diplomatic achievement. The growing cry in Tehran is that
Rouhani and his foreign minister Javad Zarif were had by Washington
because Iranian concessions - the slashing of the number of centrifuges
and its uranium stockpile - have not produced promised economic
benefits. Hard-liners are baying: 'Where's the beef?' The chief problem
is that European banks are terrified that if they provide financing to
Iran they will fall foul of United States sanctions that are still in
place. Many of these banks - including BNP Paribas, Commerzbank and
Société Générale - have paid hefty fines in recent years. In all, European
banks have handed over more than $15 billion since 2012 for
infringement of U.S. financial sanctions on Iran. From a risk-reward
standpoint no European bank can make enough revenue in Iran to offset
the possibility of being slapped with a big fine. Secretary of State
John Kerry attempted to break the logjam last month by saying that, 'We
have no objection and we do not stand in the way of foreign banks
engaging with Iranian banks and companies, obviously as long as those
banks and companies are not on our sanctions list for non-nuclear
reasons.' But the ownership structure of Iranian corporations is often
opaque, making it difficult for European companies to be sure there is
not, for example, a Revolutionary Guard Corps interest. Knowing exactly
who the customer is may be arduous. One international businessman based
in Tehran told me he'd received a letter from United Against Nuclear
Iran, an American advocacy organization, warning him that he might be
working with the Revolutionary Guards and could get into trouble. 'You
can be sure that letter is going to all the European banks,' he
said." http://t.uani.com/1s7lfCS
David
Samuels in NYT:
"Rhodes's innovative campaign to sell the Iran deal is likely to
be a model for how future administrations explain foreign policy to
Congress and the public. The way in which most Americans have heard the
story of the Iran deal presented - that the Obama administration began seriously
engaging with Iranian officials in 2013 in order to take advantage of a
new political reality in Iran, which came about because of elections
that brought moderates to power in that country - was largely
manufactured for the purpose for selling the deal. Even where the
particulars of that story are true, the implications that readers and
viewers are encouraged to take away from those particulars are often
misleading or false. Obama's closest advisers always understood him to
be eager to do a deal with Iran as far back as 2012, and even since the
beginning of his presidency. 'It's the center of the arc,' Rhodes
explained to me two days after the deal, officially known as the Joint
Comprehensive Plan of Action, was implemented. He then checked off the
ways in which the administration's foreign-policy aims and priorities
converged on Iran. 'We don't have to kind of be in cycles of conflict
if we can find other ways to resolve these issues,' he said. 'We can do
things that challenge the conventional thinking that, you know, 'AIPAC
doesn't like this,' or 'the Israeli government doesn't like this,' or
'the gulf countries don't like it.' It's the possibility of improved
relations with adversaries. It's nonproliferation. So all these threads
that the president's been spinning - and I mean that not in the press
sense - for almost a decade, they kind of all converged around Iran.'
In the narrative that Rhodes shaped, the 'story' of the Iran deal began
in 2013, when a 'moderate' faction inside the Iranian regime led by
Hassan Rouhani beat regime 'hard-liners' in an election and then began
to pursue a policy of 'openness,' which included a newfound willingness
to negotiate the dismantling of its illicit nuclear-weapons program.
The president set out the timeline himself in his speech announcing the
nuclear deal on July 14, 2015: 'Today, after two years of negotiations,
the United States, together with our international partners, has
achieved something that decades of animosity has not.' While the
president's statement was technically accurate - there had in fact been
two years of formal negotiations leading up to the signing of the
J.C.P.O.A. - it was also actively misleading, because the most
meaningful part of the negotiations with Iran had begun in mid-2012,
many months before Rouhani and the 'moderate' camp were chosen in an
election among candidates handpicked by Iran's supreme leader, the
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The idea that there was a new reality in Iran
was politically useful to the Obama administration. By obtaining broad
public currency for the thought that there was a significant split in
the regime, and that the administration was reaching out to
moderate-minded Iranians who wanted peaceful relations with their
neighbors and with America, Obama was able to evade what might have
otherwise been a divisive but clarifying debate over the actual policy
choices that his administration was making. By eliminating the fuss
about Iran's nuclear program, the administration hoped to eliminate a
source of structural tension between the two countries, which would
create the space for America to disentangle itself from its established
system of alliances with countries like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Israel and
Turkey. With one bold move, the administration would effectively begin
the process of a large-scale disengagement from the Middle East... In
the spring of last year, legions of arms-control experts began popping
up at think tanks and on social media, and then became key sources for
hundreds of often-clueless reporters. 'We created an echo chamber,' he
admitted, when I asked him to explain the onslaught of freshly minted
experts cheerleading for the deal. 'They were saying things that
validated what we had given them to say.' When I suggested that all
this dark metafictional play seemed a bit removed from rational debate
over America's future role in the world, Rhodes nodded. 'In the absence
of rational discourse, we are going to discourse the [expletive] out of
this,' he said. 'We had test drives to know who was going to be able to
carry our message effectively, and how to use outside groups like
Ploughshares, the Iran Project and whomever else. So we knew the
tactics that worked.' He is proud of the way he sold the Iran deal. 'We
drove them crazy,' he said of the deal's opponents." http://t.uani.com/1SYBnjN
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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
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email Press@UnitedAgainstNuclearIran.com
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