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Stories
Reuters: "A U.S. House of
Representatives panel will debate legislation on Thursday intended to
block Boeing Co's planned sale of dozens of commercial aircraft to Iran,
which could also affect other planemakers, including Airbus if they
became law. A Financial Services subcommittee will debate three
measures, including one that would prohibit the U.S. Treasury from
licensing the sale announced last month. Another would bar the Treasury
secretary for authorizing transactions by U.S. financial institutions
connected to the export of aircraft. A third measure would bar the
Export-Import Bank from financing involving any entity that does
business with Iran or provides financing to another entity to
facilitate transactions with Iran. 'I am extremely concerned that by
relaxing the rules, the Obama administration has allowed U.S. companies
to be complicit in weaponising the Iranian regime,' Representative Bill
Huizenga, chairman of the Monetary Policy and Trade Subcommittee, said
in a statement on Wednesday. If the bills became law, they would affect
other firms' sales to Iran because virtually all modern jets have more
than 10 percent U.S. content, the threshold for requiring export
licenses. A House committee aide said the full financial services
committee was likely to approve the bills, but a vote had not yet been
scheduled. However, the measures showed the extent of concern by
Republicans, who control majorities in both the House and Senate, about
the Iran deal and the potential Boeing sale." http://t.uani.com/29BP0XD
JPost: "German Chancellor Angela
Merkel stated on Thursday that Iran has run afoul of UN Security
Council regulations to stop its illicit military rocket program. Her
comments follow a startling report from Germany's domestic intelligence
agency, which stated in its late June report that Iran has
continued to seek illegal nuclear technology. Chancellor Angel
Merkel said in the Bundestag Iran 'continued unabated to develop
its rocket program in conflict with the relevant provisions of the UN
Security Council.' Merkel said that NATO's anti-missile system targets
Iran's rocket program and was 'developed purely for defense.' ...
Germany's intelligence agency, the Federal Office for the
Protection of the Constitution, said in the report, that Iran's '
illegal proliferation-sensitive procurement activities in Germany registered
by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution persisted
in 2015 at what is, even by international standards, a quantitatively
high level. This holds true in particular with regard to items which
can be used in the field of nuclear technology.' The report noted 'a
further increase in the already considerable procurement efforts in
connection with Iran's ambitious missile technology program which
could, among other things, potentially serve to deliver nuclear
weapons. Against this backdrop it is safe to expect that Iran will
continue it sensitive procurement activities in Germany using
clandestine methods to achieve its objectives.'" http://t.uani.com/29wX2A5
DW: "A few weeks ago, Ahmadinejad
reappeared, touring the countryside and giving ever more public
lectures. To the cheers of his supporters, he has railed against the
nuclear deal that Iran signed with China, Russia, the United States, the
UK, France and Germany. 'He has harshly criticized the Rouhani
administration at such appearances,' the Berlin-based Iranian-born
publisher Bahman Nirumand said. 'He says that the Islamic Republic is
on the wrong path, that the principles of the Iranian Revolution are
being betrayed, and that Rouhani is leading the country astray.' Iran
will elect a new president in the spring of 2017. Observers believe
that Ahmadinejad is positioning himself to run for the office again.
His former government spokesman has supposedly filed papers with the
election board to that end. Further, the Iranian daily newspaper Shargh
recently reported on 'plans for a big comeback campaign.' In the wake
of their parliamentary election losses this spring, hard-liners in Iran
are looking for a strong candidate for the next ballot. Many believe
that the former president is just the man." http://t.uani.com/29z0E6a
Business
Risk
Greentech
Media: "Solar
firms rushing into Iran's nascent renewable energy market may face
challenges due to lingering trade restrictions. In June, for example,
the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), an international
anti-money-laundering body, opted to keep Iran on a blacklist of
high-risk territories, although counter-measures against the country
have been lifted for a year... These remaining trade restrictions
'could be a problem, particularly for U.S. firms,' said Ali
Izadi-Najafabadi, a renewables expert at Bloomberg New Energy Finance.
'In particular, financing can be challenging unless backed by
development banks or an institution with no or limited exposure to the
U.S. banking system. Chinese firms are likely to have fewer problems.'
... Building on longstanding close commercial ties between Italy and
Iran, Italian solar players Genesis, Denikon and Carlo Maresca signed
memorandums of understanding for a total of 1.5 gigawatts of solar. And
Iran's Tasnim News Agency in May claimed China's Shanxi International Energy
Group was set to build 600 megawatts of PV capacity in the
country." http://t.uani.com/29RmyxA
Sanctions
Enforcement
WSJ: "When a Chinese businessman was
blocked from the U.S. financial system in 2009 for suspected
missile-part sales to Iran, he renamed his companies, adjusted his
address and kept sending wire transfers through New York, according to
court documents. Several New York banks noticed the similarities with
banned firms, filing more than 40 reports with the government flagging
the transactions as suspicious. The banks' actions led the Justice
Department in 2014 to publicly identify $8.5 million in allegedly
illegal transactions by the businessman, regulators disclosed in May.
More than at any time in their history, banks are being asked to work
hand-in-hand with the U.S. government, serving as deputized watchmen
for suspicious activity. That has been happening to some extent since
legislation passed after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, but
banks' responsibilities have steadily increased. For more than a
decade, financial institutions have been required to file 'suspicious
activity reports' and have been fined billions of dollars for allegedly
failing to do so adequately." http://t.uani.com/29wUfGP
Sanctions
Relief
Reuters: "Trading house Trafigura has
loaded its first major cargo of Iranian crude oil for delivery to Asia,
industry sources and ship tracking showed. Trafigura loaded the crude
onto the Olympic Target tanker, capable of holding 2 million barrels of
oil at the end of June, according to a shipping source. The tanker left
Iran's main export terminal Kharg Island on June 26 and was now heading
to Asia, according to Reuters shipping data. A spokeswoman for
Trafigura said the company did not comment on day-to-day commercial
activities. Iran's state oil firm is strict about the re-selling of its
crude once it has reached an agreement with a buyer, which complicates
deals with trading houses, industry sources said. With this cargo,
Trafigura appears to have beaten its competitors Glencore and Vitol in
securing a deal." http://t.uani.com/29v7c2j
Tasnim
(Iran):
"Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and India's Prime Minister
Narendra Damodardas Modi voiced determination to implement the
agreements signed between the two countries, particularly a project to
develop Iran's southeastern port city of Chabahar. In a telephone
conversation with the Indian premier on Wednesday, President Rouhani
said Tehran is prepared to upgrade the level of ties with New Delhi to
that of a strategic partnership. He also stressed the need for
immediate implementation of the agreement the two countries signed
during Modi's visit to Iran in May, particularly a contract to develop
Chabahar. 'Iran's port of Chabahar, which links different countries in
the region together, such as India, Afghanistan and Central Asia, is a
symbol of cooperation between Tehran and New Delhi,' President Rouhani
added. And Modi, who called the Iranian president to congratulate him
on Eid al-Fitr, said India will do its utmost to carry out agreements
with Iran, including the one regarding Chabahar." http://t.uani.com/29n8ydJ
Domestic
Politics
Daily
Beast: "In an
unprecedented escalation in the last two decades, Iranian Kurdish
rebels have broke a unilateral ceasefire with a series of attacks
against the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in the mountainous
Kurdish cities in northwestern Iran. A series of ongoing attacks by
Kurdish rebels from the Kurdistan Democratic Party in Iran (KDPI) on
the Revolutionary Guard, dozens from both sides have been killed.
(Exact numbers are difficult to come by given competing claims.) Rostam
Jahangiri, a member of the political office of the KDPI confirmed to
The Daily Beast that clashes have taken place in the surrounding
mountainous areas of Marivan, Saghez, Piranshahr, Sardasht, Oshnavieh,
Mahabad, Urmia and Sarvabad-all cities in the West Azerbaijan and
Kurdistan Provinces of Iran. One reason why the KDPI has been stepping
up it's military activities against the Islamic Republic, Mustafa
Hijri, the party's leader, said is that 'Iran has been increasingly
clamping down on the civic and political activities in the Kurdish area
more than elsewhere in Iran' and 'Iran has left us no alternative.' The
center-left KDPI, the oldest Kurdish party in Iran, insists that
its presence in Iranian territory is defensive in nature.
Nevertheless, Hijri told The Daily Beast that the Kurds might turn to
an 'offensive mode' if conditions continue to deteriorate." http://t.uani.com/29klwIg
AP: "Iran's official news agency
says 'armed bandits' killed four Iranian border guards in an ambush
near the Pakistani border. IRNA says the attack took place midday
Wednesday in the southeastern Sistan-Baluchistan province. It said
several of the gunmen were killed or wounded in the clashes, without
giving an exact figure. Last month police killed five members of the
Sunni Jaish al-Adl militant group and lost one of their own in clashes
in the same region." http://t.uani.com/29khT5d
Opinion
& Analysis
UANI
Advisory Board Member Dennis Ross in WINEP: "All this means that Iran's
breakout time will essentially be reduced to zero by 2030 at the
latest, even it complies with every last letter of the JCPOA. When
these points were raised during the debate over the agreement,
administration officials argued that Iran was already just two months
from breakout, and that a deal was needed to increase that warning time
to roughly a year. Since then, the Iranians have reduced their
operating centrifuges by roughly half to 5,061, shipped out all but 300
kilograms of enriched uranium, filled the core of their heavy-water
reactor with cement, and allowed outside monitors to establish an
extensive verification system, so it is fair to say that the immediate
nuclear threat has indeed been reduced. Yet that does not lessen the
need to bolster deterrence given the size of Iran's permitted nuclear
infrastructure and what will, in time, become a very small breakout
gap. Should Americans have confidence that everything is being done to
signal Iran about the consequences of potential violations?
Unfortunately, the answer appears to be no -- Tehran has already
committed several unmistakable violations of UN Security Council
Resolution 1929, such as conducting ballistic missile tests,
transferring conventional arms, and flouting international travel bans.
To be sure, Resolution 2231 endorsed the JCPOA, supplanted the previous
resolutions, and softened some of these prohibitions, but the fact remains
that Iran has not faced any meaningful consequence for continuing
behaviors that are clearly provocative. Moreover, as nuclear expert Eli
Levite has pointed out, Iran is resisting efforts to have the
procurement channel -- which the JCPOA mandates for the acquisition of
certain dual-use materials -- operate under a clear set of
requirements. Here again, the Obama administration appears to have
little appetite for challenging Tehran or raising the costs of such
behavior. Two additional developments are worth noting. First, in
response to Tehran's complaints that it is not receiving the full
economic benefits of the JCPOA, the administration has actively worked
to convince foreign companies that they are free to do business with
Iran, seemingly fearing that President Hassan Rouhani and other
'pragmatists' will suffer at the hands of regime hardliners if they
cannot demonstrate the nuclear deal's economic benefits soon. Yet one
of the main reasons why such benefits have been slow to come is that
Iranian banks still need to undergo thorough reform to meet
international standards on money laundering and terrorist financing.
Major international banks will hesitate to finance deals or otherwise
do business with Iran so long as these standards are not met, since they
might otherwise be subject to large fines. That is not an American
responsibility, it is an Iranian responsibility. When the
administration acts defensively about the slow pace of economic
benefits, it makes itself appear to be in the wrong, and also gives the
impression that the United States will bend over backwards to address
Iran's complaints but not necessarily its violations... At this point,
the Obama administration probably won't alter its approach to the
Iranian nuclear issue -- it believes that its policies are working, and
it seems to fear any action that might provoke the hardliners into
further undercutting the pragmatists. Yet the problem is that the JCPOA
has constrained the nuclear program temporarily without requiring Iran
to forsake a nuclear weapons option, since Tehran retained the right to
enrich later on and the necessary infrastructure. Thus, the next
administration will need to do more than reiterate its willingness to
fulfill U.S. obligations under the JCPOA if Tehran does so -- it will
also need to bolster deterrence to reduce any temptation Iran might
have to present the world with a nuclear fait accompli... Finally,
while the JCPOA addressed only the nuclear issue, efforts to bolster
deterrence would be more credible if the United States also increased
the cost of Iran's threatening and destabilizing behavior in the
region, which has hardly changed since the deal was signed. Here,
Washington should be guided by the same logic that got the Iranians to
the table on the nuclear issue: raising the price for not altering
their behavior, but still leaving them a way out. This means addressing
Tehran's actions vis-a-vis Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and Palestinian
terrorist groups. Iran can have a place in a regional security system,
but not if it threatens its neighbors and seeks domination. The high
cost of sanctions is what produced some semblance of movement in
Iranian policy, in the form of Rouhani's election. So if Washington
wants to bolster deterrence and strengthen Rouhani's camp, it must make
the adventurist policies of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps and
their elite Qods Force too costly for Iran." http://t.uani.com/29BQv86
William
Tobey in FP:
"Two specks of uranium might determine whether or not the Iran
nuclear deal succeeds or fails. 'The Obama administration has concluded
that uranium particles discovered last year at a secretive Iranian
military base likely were tied to the country's past, covert nuclear
weapons program,' the Wall Street Journal reported last month. The
International Atomic Energy Agency first disclosed the discovery in a
footnote to a key report last December. The IAEA dismissed the matter,
saying that the number of particles was too small to prove a connection
to illicit activities. The U.S. government, however, has capabilities
that may exceed those of the IAEA. As U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest
Moniz said last year, when the White House was pushing for the Iran deal,
'We have plenty of evidence of exquisite environmental sampling that
will reveal traces of nuclear work.' If President Barack Obama
and his administration - which has repeatedly downplayed the importance
of past Iranian nuclear weapons activities - is revealing its
suspicions, there is probably something to them. So why should two
mites of uranium matter? There are three reasons. First, the particles
of anthropogenic uranium are prima facie evidence of nuclear material
without safeguards in Iran. A larger quantity of uranium left them
behind. IAEA verification rests on a complete and correct declaration
of all relevant nuclear materials and activities, followed by
inspection of those materials and activities by the agency to ensure
that they are solely for peaceful purposes. Iran denied rather than
disclosed any nuclear activity at Parchin. So the uranium never should
have been there. The particles support the IAEA's charge that Iran
exploded a device using unenriched uranium to test manufacturing capabilities
and weapons design. The agency, however, does not know how much uranium
was used, whether or not it was part of a larger undisclosed stock,
where it came from, or what has become of it. These are important gaps
in the agency's ability to verify Iran's compliance, not only with its
past obligations, but also with the current deal. Second, the dispute
over the particles undermines the Obama administration's defense of a
24-day (or more) delay for access to suspect sites. Moniz justified the
failure to secure anytime-anywhere inspections with a straw man: 'There
have been various analogies to throwing things down toilets etc. This
is not so simple with nuclear materials.' He then referenced
'exquisite' sampling capabilities. In other words, never mind that the
Iranians will have weeks to clean up a covert site before inspectors
are admitted, because sampling and analysis will catch illicit activity
anyway. Yet in the very first test case, in a place where the IAEA
concluded that Iran's concealment activities 'seriously undermined the
agency's ability to conduct effective verification,' we are left with
an ambiguous situation, in which Tehran contends that it did nothing
wrong, the agency reports that the evidence is inconclusive, and the
U.S. government sees weapons activity. For Iran's purposes, cleanup
does not have to be perfect, only good enough to create uncertainty...
What then should be done about the Parchin particles? First, the IAEA
should take more samples at the site, and not under the unprecedented
procedures during which Iranian officials were permitted to collect the
swipes - an inspection selfie. It is unfathomable that the agency would
not respond to ambiguity by collecting more data... The U.S. government
and the IAEA must not let the issue of the Parchin particles drop. In
matters atomic, even minutiae can be critical." http://t.uani.com/29qiuV4
James
Jeffrey in WINEP:
"The JCPOA's reverberations continue to echo throughout a Middle
East that is arguably less secure than it was last July, in part
because of the agreement. The problem lies not so much in the deal's
terms, which will complicate any Iranian effort to obtain nuclear
weapons capability for at least ten years. Rather, the region perceives
that its political effects have encouraged, even enabled Iran's
hegemonic quest, and there is enough truth in this view that the burden
is on Washington to show it is not the case. Regional powers generally
recognize this and have responded in various ways, from full-scale
opposition by Saudi Arabia, to mixed approaches by Turkey and other
Gulf states, to accommodation by Iraq and Oman. Coupled with what some
perceive as weak U.S. leadership, this uncoordinated sloshing about
risks a descent into greater chaos. Initially, states throughout the
region (other than Israel, at least officially) welcomed the JCPOA,
though the Saudis did so with at best tepid language. Arab populations
were split on the agreement, according to the 2015 Arab Opinion Index,
with 40 percent supportive and 32 percent opposed. Those opposed,
significantly, cited the agreement's potential to facilitate Iranian
mischief-making. Dutifully, all the Gulf states that attended the
U.S.-GCC Summit in Saudi Arabia this April signed onto language
supportive of the JCPOA, but the lack of enthusiasm for the underlying
American approach to Iran was palpable -- a sentiment also evident in
King Salman's absence from both the 2016 Nuclear Security Summit in
Washington and the first U.S.-GCC Summit in 2015 (three of the five
other GCC heads of state skipped the latter as well). It is those
underlying effects -- with the wind in Iran's sails conjured by the
deal -- rather than any JCPOA specifics that so concern most regional
states. These effects flow from two anticipated outcomes of the
agreement. First, the deal has given Iran the means to expand its
regional heft through diplomacy, money, surrogates, and violence,
namely by allowing the regime to profit from the release of many tens
of billions of dollars of previously blocked oil earnings and renewed
oil exports, to leave the negotiating table flush with arguable
'victories' (i.e., maintaining the right to enrich uranium and avoiding
a confession about its weaponization program), and to become newly
attractive as a global trading partner. Second, the Obama
administration, bereft of diplomatic successes elsewhere, has become so
indebted to Iran for the agreement that it has avoided challenging Iran
and, worse, seems to view the agreement as a transformative moment with
Tehran, a 'Havana in the sand.' ... The administration mainly appears
interested in preserving the accord and its new channels with Tehran
while running its still-limited campaign against the Islamic State.
Left to their own devices and faced with an Iran on the march, regional
states are responding in an incoherent and dangerous fashion, including
Turkish shootdowns of Russian aircraft, the intractable Yemen conflict,
and Israeli strikes into Syria. To the extent the JCPOA enabled this,
it has degraded Middle East security." http://t.uani.com/29qHFcF
Amb.
Marc Ginsberg in HuffPost: "For those who hoped the Iran nuclear agreement
would usher in a new era of Iranian moderation in the Middle East, as
we say in Brooklyn: 'fgetahboutit.' Actually, every move Iran has taken
in the Middle East suggests otherwise. As Henry Kissinger once said,
Iran needs to decide whether it is 'a nation or a cause.' The Ayatollah
Khamenei stubbornly prefers Iran remain a 'cause.' The record of
meddlesome, terror-laden interference throughout the Middle East by
Tehran is growing longer by the day. The oppressive military
dictatorship may be fronted by a so-called 'moderate' President
Rouhani, but Iran is undeniably under the control of the Revolutionary
Guards and their political hacks within the Ayatollah Khamenei's
clerical politburo. As it stubbornly clings to the cause of
belligerence and revolution the regime has been resuscitated and
emboldened by a nuclear agreement that has imposed nary a speed bump on
its road to fulfilling its regional ambitions. Cases in point: the
incendiary and venomous anti-Israel/anti-Semitic rhetoric emanating
from the highest reaches of the regime have become more dangerous and
more provocative than ever. The terror-funding money laundered cash
flowing into Hezbollah and Hamas coffers has accelerated, fueled in
part, from U.S. and European unfrozen asset transfers and sanctions
relief. Elie Weisel's passing was met with another Holocaust-denying
tirade from several high level hardliners. The number of Iranians
hanging from the gallows under President Rouhani has reached tallies
higher than under his predecessor: the notorious Ahmadinejad.
Oppression has escalated against average Iranians as the regime stomps
hard on any effort to leverage assets relief for fear of breathing new
life into Iran's suppressed democratic movement." http://t.uani.com/29ASojk
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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
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email Press@UnitedAgainstNuclearIran.com
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