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TOP STORIES
The United States has started issuing licences
unblocking the sale of Western passenger jets to Iran, aviation
sources said.The U.S. Treasury has issued two licences allowing the
export of some European Airbus jets to Iran and is expected to start
approving sales of Boeing jets within days, the sources said. A
spokesman for Airbus confirmed it had received two U.S. licences
covering a total of 17 aircraft slated for early delivery. Although
based in Europe, Airbus needs U.S. approval because of the high
number of U.S. parts in its jets. Both planemakers have agreed
to sell or lease more than 100 aircraft each to flag carrier IranAir
as Iran rebuilds its aviation sector following last year's agreement
between Tehran and major powers over the lifting of nuclear-related
sanctions.
Iran's chief of staff of the armed forces said
Wednesday a $38 billion aid deal between the United States and Israel
makes Iran more determined to strengthen its military... During
a separate parade Wednesday in the southern Iranian port of Bandar
Abbas, Iran unveiled a new missile, known as Zolfaghar. It was
carried by military truck which bore a banner printed with a 2013
anti-Israeli quote by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei saying
that Iran will annihilate the cities of Tel Aviv and Haifa should
Israel attack Iran.
Iran marked the anniversary of its 1980 invasion by
Iraq by showing off its latest ships and missiles and telling the
United States not to meddle in the Gulf. At a parade in Tehran
on Wednesday, shown on state TV, the military displayed long-range
missiles, tanks, and the Russian-supplied S-300 surface-to-air
missile defense system. At the port of Bandar Abbas on the Gulf,
the navy showed off 500 vessels, as well as submarines and
helicopters, at a time of high tension with the United States in the
strategic waterway. U.S. officials say there have been more than
30 close encounters between U.S. and Iranian vessels in the Gulf so
far this year, over twice as many as in the same period of 2015.
UANI IN THE NEWS
Heard at "United Against
Nuclear Iran (UANI)
2016 Iran Risk Summit" at the Roosevelt Hotel in
New York -- Joe Lieberman on why most Democrats supported the
Iran deal: "I was strongly opposed to the agreement... Having been
in the Senate for the first term of Obama, outside since, but talking
to colleagues, the president got more involved personally in the
advocacy before Congress on behalf of the Iran nuclear agreement than
he did on any other issue. He was personally and directly involved in
appealing to Democrats to stick with him." Lieberman's
advice to the presidential candidates: "Aggressively
oversee the deal. Don't give anybody, particularly the regime in
Tehran, the feeling that the U.S. is closing its eyes on any
violations of the agreement. Also, to aggressively enforce the
considerable non-nuclear sanctions that remain against Iran. And it
sounds like both candidates for presidents may have that in mind. We
will see. My reaction to questions about the campaign this year, I
end up chuckling for some reason. I don't know what that is."
Tzipi Livni on the first anniversary of the Iran
deal: "The deal postponed the doomsday. This is something
we should acknowledge. But the situation is still the same. We are
facing an Iran with the same ideology, with an aspiration for nuclear
weapons, and we need to address it... And it's wrong to have this
state sponsor of terror be embraced by the international community
just because they have agreed not to advance their nuclear program
right now. Israel is not the only state that is being threatened by
Iran... For so many years, I heard more about the Iranian threat in
Arabic than I had heard about it in Hebrew. Stopping Iran from
continuing to sponsor regional terrorism should not be done as a
favor to Israel or even to the moderate Arab countries. It is the
world's own interest."
SANCTIONS RELIEF
Only six months after signing of the energy agreement
with the MAPNA Group, Siemens has shipped the first F-class gas
turbine for the project Bandar Abbas to Iran. This is the first stage
of the bilateral contract covering the transfer of know-how for
F-class gas turbine technology between Siemens and MAPNA. As part of
the Bandar Abbas gas-fired power plant, this turbine along with the
rest of the equipment which will be provided by MAPNA, will help to
cover the country's continuously rising demand for electricity. In
March 2016, Siemens concluded a far-reaching agreement with MAPNA,
Iran's largest power plant EPC contractor, to collaborate on the
transfer of know-how for the F-class gas turbine technology to
modernize the Iranian power supply system.
Switzerland's MECI Group International signed an
agreement with Iran's government to build a 750 million-euro ($839
million) wind farm.
The project, located in the mountainous region in
northern Iran, will have 270 megawatts installed capacity, according
to a statement from the Swiss holding company. Turbine testing is
already happening onsite, according to MECI Chairman Jeremiah
Josey... MECI, which also agreed to build a 100-megawatt
combined heat and power plant that will burn natural gas, will
finance the project with a bond issue and equity partners, according
to Josey. Josey anticipates signing agreements for another 500
megawatts of renewable-energy plants once the wind farm progresses.
MECI has a target to install 1 gigawatt of clean power in Iran, which
will be a mix of solar and wind.
HUMAN RIGHTS
This is the third time Kamran Foroughi has flown here
from London for the U.N. General Assembly, a private citizen hoping
for success where diplomats have failed. Two years ago, he
delivered a letter to the Iranian mission pleading for his ailing
father's release from prison. Last year, he managed to attend a
dinner for President Hassan Rouhani and handed an aide a second
letter. Now, he has another letter asking Rouhani to release Kamal
Foroughi, 77, on humanitarian grounds. The British-Iranian dual
national has cataracts, spent 18 months in solitary confinement, and
is more than halfway through his seven-year sentence on espionage
charges. He has company in his quest. Foroughi came to New York
with Richard Ratcliffe, whose wife, Nazanin, also a British-Iranian
dual national, was sentenced last month to five years in prison on
espionage charges while visiting her parents.
Multiple
arrests in Iran as Rouhani arrives in New York | Al-Monitor
Iranian authorities appear to be stepping up their
crackdown on media workers amid President Hassan Rouhani's
just-concluded tour of Latin America and his arrival in the United
States to address the UN General Assembly's annual meeting. On
Monday, reports surfaced of the arrest of Sadra Mohaghegh, the
society editor of the Reformist Shargh Daily. His sudden detention
has caused an outcry among journalists, activists and Iranian
netizens, who have turned Mohaghegh's name into a hashtag -
especially after Mohaghegh's Twitter account was taken down on
Tuesday for unknown reasons. According to Basij News, Mohaghegh was
arrested "during an intelligence operation by security forces,"
without specifying which agency was responsible for his arrest. Media
reports accuse him of having collaborated with
"counter-revolutionary" foreign media. The detention comes
only days after the arrest of another Iranian journalist, Yashar
Soltani, who is in charge of Memari News, a website that focuses on
urban news and architecture. The two arrests appear to be related.
Mohaghegh and Soltani had both recently published a set of
declassified reports involving Iran's General Inspection Office, an
organization linked to the Judiciary. The reports focused on the
transfer of property held by the Tehran Municipality to a number of
cooperatives and select managers below market value.
OPINION & ANALYSIS
President Barack Obama's administration would like to
give companies and banks the green light to financial transactions
with the world's largest state sponsor of terrorism, but here's the
reality: It can't. Unfortunately, the U.S. government doesn't know
the full scope, scale, and reach of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard
Corps (IRGC), the military branch charged with enforcing Iran's
theocratic rule at home and "exporting the revolution"
abroad. The IRGC's tentacles are well hidden in the Iranian economy,
making the risk of becoming entangled with the organization an
impossible-to-quantify possibility... CEOs, bankers, and board
members around the world know that business with Iran is far more
complicated than that. Ensuring an Iranian entity is clean exceeds
the grasp of even the world's most capable intelligence agencies -
much less any bank or company. Say an international company
wants to invest in Iran, though it cannot find out much about its
Iranian partner on the ground. It proceeds anyway, lured by the
encouragement of the Iranian regime and the promise of profit. After
some broken promises, it turns out that the company's Iranian partner
is linked to the IRGC, either through a previous designation or a
recent action, as the Treasury Department's poster evolves to track
the Iranian partner's connection to the IRGC. Then the international
company is in a bind: Either it violates U.S. sanctions by continuing
to do business in Iran, thus forfeiting access to the American market
and many others, or it risks losing its investment. That
lose-lose situation could have been avoided. As the former head of
two small businesses, I know the legal and reputational risks - not
to mention the weighty moral dynamics of these sorts of decisions... Obama
and Secretary of State John Kerry expect that a friendly meeting is
all companies need to overcome this heavy risk. But companies should
remember: Those two officials will move on, but a criminal conviction
does not... The responsible choice? Steer clear of business with
Iran.
Regardless of whether one believes the payment, the
result of a settlement agreement related to decades-old legal claims
between the two countries, was ransom, one thing is certain: The
nature of the payment - all cash, some delivered in the middle of
night and ferried to Iran by an airline known for its connections
with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, without limits to ensure
Iran would not use the funds for terrorism - is troubling. Cash
transactions raise serious terrorism financing risks. According to
the Financial Action Task Force, the international body that sets
global standards for preventing money laundering and terrorist
financing, "the physical cross-border transportation of currency
... [is] one of the main methods used to move illicit funds, launder
money, and finance terrorism." These risks are particularly
acute in the case in question; the State Department has identified
Iran as one of the leading state sponsors of terrorism and the
country actively supports terrorist organizations such as Hezbollah
and Hamas, and assists Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in his
murderous assault on civilians... historical examples suggest
that the U.S. did not have to provide these funds in
cash... other, less opaque options existed that would have
allowed fast delivery of the money. Moving forward, the
administration - and Congress if the president is unwilling - should
ensure that any payments it makes to Iran are facilitated through the
formal financial system. Current bills in the House of
Representatives and the Senate are steps in the right direction. The
United States should also take steps to reduce the risk that Iran
uses such funds to support terrorism or Assad. These steps should
include: holding the funds in escrow accounts, verifying that the end
recipients of the funds are not sanctioned Iranian parties, and
requiring the funds be released in tranches, with a certification
provided by the Secretary of the Treasury that prior tranches have
not been diverted to sanctioned persons. While Republicans and
Democrats can disagree about the wisdom of providing funds that - at
the very least - appeared to Iranian officials to be a ransom
payment, the administration should not have sent this money in cash
and risked inadvertently funding Iran's support for terrorism. It can
and should do better in the future.
In recent weeks, the Obama administration has
repeatedly argued that legal and pragmatic concerns accounted for its
decision to use cash for a $1.7 billion payment to Iran. This claim
lacks credibility: U.S. law expressly permits direct transactions
between the American and Iranian financial systems to resolve
outstanding claims before the Iran-United States Claims Tribunal,
thereby enabling Washington to track whether Tehran uses the funds
for illicit ends. In fact, the circumstances surrounding the payment
suggest that the Iranian regime likely demanded a cash payment - and
that the administration, eager to secure the release of hostages in
time for the nuclear deal's Implementation Day, hurriedly consented
to its demands... Congress will continue to investigate the
administration's ransom payment in a hearing before the Senate
Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Subcommittee on National Security
and International Trade and Finance. Lawmakers in the House and
Senate are also considering legislation - introduced earlier this
month by Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-KS) - that
would prohibit future ransom payments (H.R. 5940 and S. 3285). On
September 14, the House Foreign Affairs Committee passed a similar bill
(H.R. 5931), introduced by Rep. Ed Royce (R-CA), by voice
vote. The Obama administration must provide a public accounting
of the circumstances surrounding the ransom that fully explains the
legal and strategic options at its disposal as well as Iran's potential
demand for cash. At the same time, the White House should pledge to
refrain from providing future cash payments to Tehran for any reason,
and condition any future settlement of financial disputes on tangible
Iranian steps to halt its regional aggression, human rights abuses,
and illicit ballistic missile tests. In the meantime, Congress should
work to pass new economic sanctions on Iran - and keep up the
pressure on the administration.
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