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WSJ: "Concerns in the financial
community about doing deals in Iran are hampering Airbus Group SE's
ability to close a multibillion-dollar aircraft deal with Tehran, the
European plane maker's head of sales said Wednesday. 'We have to find
ways to get money out of Iran through the banking system,' said John
Leahy, Airbus Chief Operating Officer for customers. While progress has
been made, it has been slower than expected, Mr. Leahy said. Banks
remain reluctant to do deals now that the U.S. and European governments
are looking to foster transactions, after facing fines imposed by U.S.
regulators on lenders with Iran dealings when western sanctions were in
place. 'They are all very shy,' Mr. Leahy said... IranAir Chief
Executive Farhad Parvaresh acknowledged that the banking issue is one
of the biggest hurdles to closing plane deals. The airline is also in
talks Boeing Co., the world's largest plane maker by deliveries, about
a potential order. IranAir has now met twice with the U.S. company and
talks are progressing, Mr. Parvaresh said in an interview with The Wall
Street Journal. He wouldn't say when a deal might be sealed. The
banking issue goes beyond the airplane sector. Oil companies also have
struggled to line up big banks to back deals. They have, in some cases,
had to resort to barter arrangements or using smaller banks. That is a
system also working for plane makers. Franco-Italian turboprop maker
ATR is putting together to a mix of banks and lessors to help finance
the euro-denominated sale of 40 of its planes to Iran, the plane
maker's Chief Executive Patrick de Castelbajac said. The company hopes
to deliver the first of its regional planes by the end of the year...
The reluctance of bankers isn't the only obstacle to completing agreements
for jetliner sales. Airbus and others are still waiting approval to
sell their planes from the U.S. Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets
Control. Mr. de Castalbajac said a decision was expected months ago.
The U.S. government is facing a flood of license applications, not just
for aircraft deals, he said." http://t.uani.com/1sLoSOu
AP: "National Public Radio should
consider avoiding grants such as one the Ploughshares Fund provided for
coverage of the Iran nuclear agreement and related issues, the radio
network's ombudsman said. The White House recently identified
Ploughshares as a group that helped sell the multinational deal to a
skeptical public. The ombudsman's report was published on NPR's website
last week, following an Associated Press story about a $100,000 grant
Ploughshares gave the network last year. The money supported 'national
security reporting that emphasizes the themes of U.S. nuclear weapons policy
and budgets, Iran's nuclear program, international nuclear security
topics and U.S. policy toward nuclear security,' according to
Ploughshares' 2015 annual report. Ploughshares also funded reporters
and partnerships with other news outlets, according to its website.
That raised questions about journalistic independence after Ben Rhodes,
President Barack Obama's deputy national security adviser, described
how the White House set up an 'echo chamber' of organizations, experts
and even friendly reporters to advocate for the deal that curtailed
Iran's nuclear activity and U.S.-led economic sanctions on Tehran.
Rhodes credited Ploughshares for its help in a New York Times magazine
profile about him... 'In this case, NPR's money came from one side of a
very partisan debate on a specific issue to fund reporting on a
specific topic. And the money was not from a sponsor who in exchange
would get on-air credit; in this case the sponsor money was going
directly to support the reporting,' Jensen wrote. 'In the case of
grants such as the one from Ploughshares, which are intended to fund
reporting on specific, highly controversial issues, my suggestion is
that NPR consider not accepting them in the future if they contain such
specific language.'" http://t.uani.com/1VvTqiI
The
Hill: "A pair
of Democratic senators is pushing to extend sanctions on Iran until
President Obama can guarantee its nuclear material is for peaceful purposes.
Democratic Sens. Tim Kaine (Va.) and Chris Murphy (Conn.) have
introduced legislation that would extend the Iran Sanctions Act,
currently set to expire at the end of the year, 'in order to effectuate
the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action in guaranteeing that all nuclear
material in Iran remains in peaceful activities.' Under their proposal,
the sanctions would be lifted when the president is able to certify to
Congress that the International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA) director
general 'has reached a broader conclusion ... that all nuclear material
in Iran remains in peaceful activities.' ... The Kaine-Murphy
legislation doesn't specify when the president would be able to make
that certification, but it could set up the sanctions law to be lifted
on the deal's 'transition day.' 'Transition day' will occur eight years
after the deal was adopted, or 'upon a report from the director general
of the IAEA ... stating that the IAEA has reached the broader
conclusion that all nuclear materials in Iran remains in peaceful
activities, whichever is earlier,' according to the European Union's
outline of the deal's implementation plan. Amy Dudley, a spokeswoman
for Kaine, said that under the Kaine-Murphy legislation '[if] Iran
breaks the terms of the deal and the President is unable to make this
certification, ISA is extended in an open-ended manner. This is to
prevent a non-compliant Iran having a sanctions expiration date in its
sights.' The legislation comes as lawmakers have pledged to extend the
sanctions law but failed to build momentum behind one proposal.
Supporters of an extension argue it's needed so sanctions can be
'snapped back' if Iran violates the deal." http://t.uani.com/1XPkE45
Congressional
Action
Free
Beacon: "New
legislation could force the Obama administration to disclose if it paid
Iran $1.7 billion in taxpayer funds as part of a 'ransom payment'
earlier this year to secure the release of 10 U.S. sailors who were
abducted at gunpoint by the Iranian military, according to a copy of
the legislation and conversations with lawmakers. The bill, jointly
filed by Rep. Mike Pompeo (R., Kan.) and Sen. John Cornyn (R., Texas),
comes on the heels of a Washington Free Beacon report disclosing that
the Obama administration has been suppressing potentially 'shocking'
details related to the January abduction of the sailors, who were held
at gunpoint by Iranian soldiers and forced to apologize on camera. The
legislation, dubbed the No Impunity for Iranian Aggression at Sea Act,
would compel the Obama administration to issue a report to Congress
detailing whether it paid Iran a $1.7 billion settlement as part of the
hostage release. It also would level sanctions against Iran for
possible breach of Geneva Convention rules governing legal military
detainment. Lawmakers and others have suspected for months that
taxpayer money was partly used to secure the release of the sailors and
other imprisoned Americans, though the administration has been adamant
the issues are not linked. The new legislation would require the White
House to certify whether any federal funds, including January's $1.7
billion payment, were doled out to Iran as part of a 'ransom' to secure
the release of these sailors and citizens imprisoned in Iran. The
legislation noted that the administration released the money to Iran
just a day after it freed several U.S. citizens from prison." http://t.uani.com/1spSP6N
Sanctions
Relief
Reuters: "Indian oil refiners will
clear around 6 billion euros ($6.7 billion) of outstanding debt to Iran
through Turkey's Halkbank soon, a senior Iranian economy official said
on Wednesday. India is one of the biggest buyers of Iranian crude and
built up a payments backlog when Iran was under Western sanctions, with
its refiners owing about $6.5 billion to Iran. They cleared around $770
million in euros through Halkbank to the National Iranian Oil Co (NIOC)
in May. 'As per the instructions of the Central Bank of Iran, the local
banks in India will transfer the money to Halkbank,' Sadegh Akbari,
Iran's general director for foreign economic relations, told reporters
at a conference in Istanbul. Asked when the remaining funds would be
cleared, he said 'in a short period of time' but declined to comment
further. The refiners had been holding back some payments to Iran after
a channel through Halkbank was closed in 2013, although payment of some
of the funds was allowed after an initial temporary deal to lift
sanctions... He also said the Turkish and Iranian central banks had
reopened their connection on the SWIFT global transaction network, in a
sign of normalising banking ties." http://t.uani.com/25AJjiU
Bloomberg: "Iran plans to invite
international companies to bid for oilfield development rights in June,
a government official said, as the Persian Gulf country seeks to revive
its energy industry after years of crippling sanctions. The Oil
Ministry will solicit bids in a tender round starting June 21 and
running for a month, state-run Islamic Republic News Agency reported
Tuesday, citing Mehdi Hosseini, chairman of the ministry's oil
contracts revision committee. National Iranian Oil Co. is working on a
model investment contract for any development agreements, he
said." http://t.uani.com/1r2DqYW
AFP: "Iran's first vice president
has asked Oil Minister Bijan Zanganeh to amend new petroleum contracts
aimed at facilitating foreign investment in the post-sanctions era, a
government website reported on Tuesday. 'Thank you for your efforts to
take critical views into account: please present the government with
your proposals for amendments for adoption as soon as possible,' the
site reported Ehsaq Jahangiri as writing to Zanganeh. In November, a
new model for contracts was presented at a Tehran conference attended
by 183 Iranian companies and 152 foreign firms including oil majors. At
the time, Zanganeh said the new contact models were 'not perfect or
ideal, but an effective and responsive model for both sides'. He said
Iran hoped to attract $25 billion in oil and gas investment with the
new standard contract after international sanctions were lifted in
January following a deal with world powers on Iran's nuclear programme.
The new Iran Petroleum Contract (IPC) was intended to replace the old
'buy back' system under which a foreign firm developed an oil or gas
field, but then an Iranian company took over production. The IPC will
instead launch joint ventures for crude oil and gas production with
international companies being paid a share of the total output,
officials said. The Iranian partner in a joint venture must have a
majority stake of at least 51 percent. But in the months since the new
model was introduced, there has been growing criticism, particularly
among conservatives who say it gives too many advantages to foreign
companies." http://t.uani.com/1WwFnuk
Reuters: "Singapore imports of Iranian
residual fuel oil were 84,785 tonnes in the week to May 25, data from
International Enterprise (IE) Singapore released on Thursday showed.
Total imports of Iranian fuel oil into Singapore since the start of the
year have risen to almost 688,000 tonnes since the lifting of U.S. and
EU imposed sanctions in mid-January." http://t.uani.com/1spSalL
Extremism
Tehran
Times:
"French cartoonist Zeon, who was arrested for his anti-Zionist
work in March 2015, and Iranian artist Arash Forughi have won first
prizes at the 2nd International Holocaust Cartoons Contest in Tehran.
Zeon was awarded a cash prize of $12,000 in the cartoon section and
Forughi received a cash prize of $7,000 in the caricature category
during a ceremony held at the Art Bureau on Monday. Speaking at the
ceremony, the secretary of the competition, Masud Shojaei-Tabatabai
said, 'One of the subjects we asked cartoonists to focus on was why the
Western countries arrest any scholar who doubts the Holocaust while
they put no limit on freedom of speech in other categories.' 'The other
subject was why Palestinians should pay for the Holocaust... we are
concerned about the modern Holocaust that is being sought by the
Zionist regime, which is known as a child killer government,' he added.
In the cartoon section, the second prize went to Jitet Koestana from
Indonesia while the third prize was presented to Mahmud Nazari from
Iran... Iran's House of Cartoon and the Sarcheshmeh Cultural Complex
organized the second edition of the contest. An exhibition displaying a
selection of submissions to the contest was also held at the Art Bureau
from May 14 to 30." http://t.uani.com/1WYx2zx
Times
of Israel: "An
Iranian museum on Tuesday kicked off a 'Zionist caliphate' cartoon
contest, with 'Zionism, terrorism and racism' and 'ISIL terrorism and
genocide in the name of religion and to the benefit of the Zionists'
the designated themes. The contest by Iranian Cultural-Art Masaf
Institute will offer one $5,000 award for best cartoon, $1,000 for best
caricature and four $500 awards to the other top entries, according to
the semi-official Fars News Agency. In its portrait session,
participants are asked to focus on Theodor Herzl and Queen Elizabeth.
The competition is dedicated to the 'Nakba,' or displacement of
Palestinians in 1948 with the establishment of the State of Israel,
according to the report. The 'Zionist caliphate' contest was announced
a day after Iran's annual Holocaust cartoon contest - which has been
condemned by Israel, Germany, the US, and UNESCO - concluded." http://t.uani.com/1UgWjyF
Human
Rights
NYT: "A popular Iranian actress
whose latest movie won two awards at the recent Cannes Film Festival
threw her native country into an uproar on Tuesday after images emerged
suggesting that she had a feminist tattoo on her arm. At a news
conference on Monday celebrating the return of the cast of the movie,
'The Salesman,' to Tehran, cameras captured what appeared to be a
tattoo of the 'woman power' symbol of a raised fist sticking out from
under the sleeve of the lead actress, Taraneh Alidoosti, 32, known by some
as the Natalie Portman of Iran. On Iran's vibrant social media scene,
hard-liners were quick to criticize Ms. Alidoosti, who is married and
has a daughter, saying the symbol meant she supported abortion rights
and was against the family. Her many fans came to her defense on
Twitter. 'Now that I think about it, I have been feminist from the very
beginning,' wrote one woman. Other Twitter users were less flattering.
'You are advertising foreigners,' said one." http://t.uani.com/1Y2rrId
Opinion
& Analysis
David
Albright, Serena Kelleher-Vergantini & Andrea Stricker in ISIS: "On May 27, 2016, the
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) released its second report on
Iran's compliance with United Nations Security Council (UNSC)
resolution 2231 (2015). UNSCR 2231 codified into international
law the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), an agreement
reached between the P5+1 and Iran in July 2015 aimed at limiting Iran's
nuclear program. Although Iran appears to be living up to most of its
general commitments, the IAEA report continues to lack technical
details about critical implementation issues. The following is a
list of questions about missing information or data that the IAEA has
routinely detailed in earlier reports, but that has been missing from
both of the Post-Implementation Day reports. It would greatly increase
transparency of the JCPOA's implementation if the IAEA released this
missing information. Without this information, an independent
determination of whether Iran is complying with the JCPOA is not
possible. The lack of information also inevitably leads to
questions about the adequacy of the IAEA's JCPOA verification effort.
The IAEA strategy, evident in the first two reports, appears to be that
it is committed to only report violations in detail. However,
this strategy is not credible and undermines confidence that the JCPOA
is being verified. It also raises a fundamental question: if the
IAEA is unwilling to provide routine and adequate transparency, can it
be trusted to be transparent every time a violation occurs? It is
in fact unclear if the IAEA has reported all the violations thus
far. It also appears that the IAEA is not reporting information
relevant to loopholes in the agreement that Iran is exploiting." http://t.uani.com/1Y1kiru
Mohamad
Bazzi in Reuters:
"On May 30, Iraqi special forces stormed the southern edge of
Falluja under U.S. air cover, launching a new assault to recapture one
of the last major Iraqi cities under the control of Islamic State
militants. Iraq's elite forces who are leading the fight have been
trained by U.S. advisers, but many others on the battlefield were
trained or supplied by Iran. It's the latest example of how Washington
has looked the other way as Iran deepened its military involvement in
Iraq over the past two years. In recent weeks, thousands of Iraqi soldiers
and Shi'ite militia members supported by Iran assembled on the
outskirts of Falluja for the expected attack on the Sunni city. In the
lead-up to the assault, General Qassem Soleimani, commander of the Quds
Force, the special operations branch of Iran's Revolutionary Guards,
met with leaders of the Iraqi coalition of Shi'ite militias known as
the Popular Mobilization Forces. Sunni politicians in Iraq condemned
the involvement of Soleimani and other Iranian advisers in the
battlefield preparations, saying it could fuel sectarian tension and
unleash a new round of Sunni-Shi'ite bloodletting. They also cast doubt
on the Iraqi government's assurances that the offensive is purely an
Iraqi-led effort to defeat Islamic State. 'Soleimani's presence is
cause for concern,' said an Iraqi member of parliament from Falluja.
'He is absolutely not welcome in the area.' Leaders of the Shi'ite
militias have pledged that they will not take part in the main
offensive on the city, and will instead help secure nearby towns and
lay siege to Islamic State fighters. But the battle over Falluja
highlights Iran's growing military and political influence over Iraq, a
country wracked by a complex civil war that leaves it open to outside
manipulation. If there is one regional player that gained the most from
America's gamble in Iraq, it is Iran. With its invasion in 2003, the
United States ousted Tehran's sworn enemy, Saddam Hussein, from power.
Then Washington helped install a Shi'ite government for the first time
in Iraq's modern history. As U.S. troops became mired in fighting an
insurgency and containing a civil war, Iran extended its influence over
all of Iraq's major Shi'ite factions. Today, the Iranian regime is
comfortable taking a lead role in shaping the military operations of
its Iraqi allies. There is no one to restrain Tehran, and the rise of
Islamic State, which views Shi'ites as apostates, threatens the
interests of Iran and all Iraqi Shi'ite factions." http://t.uani.com/1TJHUM1
Mortimer
B. Zuckerman in U.S. News & World Report: "Whatever the case for
impeding Iran's advance to nuclear status, we are letting a tiger out
of the cage by releasing more than $100 billion in frozen assets
without a commitment on how it will be spent. Some of this money may be
spent wisely, but Iran remains a central banker for Murder Inc.
Millions of dollars will go to sustain the vision of restoring a
Persian empire. Of course the language of Iranian President Hassan
Rouhani is that they seek more closeness, unity, brotherhood and better
relations. Tell that to the families of more than 200,000 Syrians
killed during that country's civil war, courtesy of Iran's lethal
investment. Tell it to the nearly 5 million Syrian refugees begging for
sanctuary in Jordan, Turkey, Iraq and Lebanon. Tell it to the people of
Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen coping with subversion
financed by Iran. Tell it to the relatives and colleagues of officials
murdered in Lebanon. And prove your fine words by stopping adventurism.
Stop encircling your Arab states while inciting their Shiite
population. Stop menacing Israel with funding with your proxy Hezbollah
installations of more than 100,000 rockets and missiles to strike deep
into Israel. Stop joining with Qatar in rebuilding Gaza. Stop trying to
kill Jews wherever they may be. We must sustain our fight for human
rights by maintaining sanctions against Iran until it behaves like a
civilized nation. We should stop money from reaching the Iranian
Revolutionary Guard and the business entities it owns. Obama never
submitted the Iranian nuclear deal to the Senate for ratification for
he knew it would have no chance of passing. No wonder it will go down
in American history as one of the most counterproductive diplomatic
efforts by any American administration, for this deal grants legitimacy
to the Iranian regime after improving its economy and strengthening its
international stance, even though Iran will likely violate it as well.
As Panetta said: 'And you know my view, talking with the president,
was: If brought to the point where we had evidence that they're
developing an atomic weapon, I think the president ... is not going to
allow that to happen.' When asked would you make that assessment now?
He said, 'Probably not.' No wonder Americans feel less safe. They are.
The focus on Iran's nuclear future is inevitable, but the nightmare is
irrefutable now. In eight months there will be a new administration and
Rhodes can get back to his former life. Which, as he put it, involved,
'drinking and smoking pot and hanging out in Central Park.' And
presumably writing more fiction." http://t.uani.com/1ZcZtI5
Michael
Kugelman in FP:
"On May 21, after a drone strike obliterated a car and its two
occupants in Pakistan's Balochistan province, local officials
discovered a Pakistani passport, miraculously intact, amid the
smoldering wreckage and two bodies charred beyond recognition. The
passport belonged to a man identified as Wali Muhammad. Its photo bore
an uncanny resemblance to Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour, the supreme
leader of the Afghan Taliban targeted by the drone strike, who lay dead
close by. According to reports in the Pakistani press, the passport
indicated that its owner, presumably Mullah Mansour, had been returning
from Iran, where he had been since April 26. He had also traveled there
for several weeks in February and March. Mullah Mansour's decision to
visit Iran and leave his sanctuary in Balochistan - where the Afghan
Taliban's top leadership had long been safely ensconced - is odd. After
all, Tehran is no friend of the Taliban; on the contrary, it has
formally aligned itself with Afghanistan's Northern Alliance and other
anti-Taliban actors. It played an instrumental role at the 2001 Bonn
Conference that established a post-Taliban government. In the early
years of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, Tehran gave Washington maps
showing Taliban positions, and its military offered to train 20,000
Afghan troops. Iran also has good reason to distance itself from the
Taliban. Simple sectarian considerations - Iran is Shiite, the Taliban
is Sunni - offer one explanation. But the divergences run deeper: The
Taliban harbors links to Jundallah, an anti-state Sunni terror group in
Iran. It oversees a flourishing narcotics trade that feeds Iran's
crippling heroin epidemic, and it has been blamed for the killings of
nearly a dozen Iranian diplomats at their consulate in the Afghan city
of Mazar-e-Sharif in 1998, which brought Iran and Taliban-run
Afghanistan to the brink of war (according to some accounts, the
Pakistani anti-Shiite militant group Sipah-e-Sahaba was behind that
attack). Western authorities have a simple explanation for Mullah
Mansour's presence in Iran: He was there to receive medical treatment,
according to a European official quoted in the New York Times, in order
to avoid Pakistani hospitals and the watchful eye of his patron,
Pakistan's intelligence agency. No specifics were given as to what he
was being treated for. The Wall Street Journal, curiously, has reported
that Mullah Mansour was actually in Iran to visit family. In any case,
U.S. officials knew of his whereabouts and, aided by communications
intercepts, were able to track him there. According to a tweet by NPR
correspondent Tom Bowman, Washington even had his SIM card number.
Mullah Mansour's trip to Iran may well have been a simple trip to the
doctor. But the trip may have had more nefarious purposes, too. Despite
the differences between Tehran and the Taliban, they share some key
interests and have often cooperated operationally. Indeed, Tehran and
the Taliban have a more symbiotic relationship than meets the eye. In
particular, they are both wary of the West and particularly the United
States. And each seeks to undercut Washington's influence. Thomas
Joscelyn, an international security analyst and senior editor with the
Long War Journal, has presented a compelling case of long-standing
links between Iran and the Taliban. These links date back to 2000,
when, according to unclassified U.S. government memos, Mullah Mohammed
Omar tasked Khirullah Said Wali Khairkhwa, the Taliban governor of
Herat province, with improving relations between the organization and
Tehran. As a result of this outreach, Iran agreed to supply the Taliban
with mines and small arms. (On two separate occasions in 2007 and 2011,
international forces in Afghanistan intercepted arms shipments from
Iran destined for the Taliban.) The two sides also inked an open border
agreement that enabled the Taliban to smuggle money, goods, and
fighters into Iran. Khairkhwa's outreach laid the groundwork for a
later, major triumph of Iran-Taliban cooperation: the 2012 opening of a
Taliban office in the Iranian city of Zahedan, home to many of the
several million Afghans residing in Iran." http://t.uani.com/1WYw0ni
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Eye on Iran is a periodic news summary from United Against
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email Press@UnitedAgainstNuclearIran.com
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