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TOP STORIES
The Republican leaders of the U.S. House of
Representatives plan a vote as soon as mid-November on a 10-year
reauthorization of the Iran Sanctions Act, congressional aides told
Reuters on Tuesday, setting up a potential showdown with the White
House and Senate. The Iran Sanctions Act, or ISA, which expires on
Dec. 31, allows trade, energy, defense and banking industry sanctions
over Iran's nuclear program and ballistic missile tests. Its fate is
one of the major pieces of unfinished business facing lawmakers when
they return to Washington on Nov. 14 for the first time after the
Nov. 8 elections. U.S. Representative Ed Royce, the Republican
chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, is expected to
introduce the 10-year renewal as soon as Congress gets back, aides
said. Congressional aides said a "clean" renewal, meaning
unchanged from the current legislation, was likely to pass the House.
Its fate in the Senate was much less certain, and a White House
spokesman would not say whether President Barack Obama would sign it
into law... Obama's administration had asked Congress to hold off on
renewing the ISA, saying it has enough power to reimpose economic
sanctions if Iran violates the nuclear agreement even if it expires.
White House spokesman Josh Earnest declined to say how Obama would
respond to the bill if it passed both houses of Congress and reached
his desk. "I won't prejudge at this point whether or not the
president would sign that bill," Earnest told reporters
traveling with the president in Los Angeles.
The Iranian government in recent weeks has handed down
a string of lengthy prison sentences to American citizens born in
Iran, a move that experts say could signal the country's interest in
a prisoner swap or payoff. A San Diego man received an 18-year
sentence on Monday, according to his girlfriend, who spoke over the
phone with him after he was convicted of collaboration with a hostile
government - the United States - and blasphemy. Reza
"Robin" Shahini's conviction, first reported by Vice News,
comes one week after two U.S. citizens, Siamak Namazi and his
80-year-old father, Baquer Namazi, each got 10 years in prison on the
same charge of collaborating with the U.S. government. The sentences
underscore a power struggle within Iran in advance of March
elections, with the country's hard-liners angling for leverage to get
some kind of deal, said several Iran scholars."They're
bargaining people's lives as if they're trading Persian
carpets," said Karim Sadjadpour, a Middle East analyst at the
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "Oftentimes, these
almost comically harsh sentences are simply meant to increase the
value of these prisoners in the event of any quid pro quo with the
United States."
Iran on Wednesday urged Asian companies to invest in
the country, saying the lifting of nuclear-linked sanctions had
opened vast opportunities, but campaigners warned firms they might
end up aiding "terrorism". Central bank governor Valiollah
Seif told a business summit in Singapore that reforms put in place
since President Hassan Rouhani took office in 2013 helped restore
economic stability, while the lifting of sanctions had reintegrated
the economy with the rest of the world... Advocacy group United
Against Nuclear Iran cautioned foreign companies against doing
business with Tehran, running a full-page advertisement in the
Financial Times Asia edition Wednesday panning the summit. "Any
international company doing business in Iran could find itself
inadvertently supporting terrorism -- from Hamas and Islamic Jihad to
Hezbollah and the Houthis in Yemen," said Mark D. Wallace, chief
executive of UANI. But Seif said the lifting of the nuclear-linked
sanctions "has created unprecedented opportunities for
investors" in Iran.
U.S.-IRAN RELATIONS
Iran's intelligence minister normally does not find
himself on the receiving end of criticism by fellow hard-liners
asking how he could possibly have overlooked a visit by a gay state
legislator from the United States. But that is what happened on
Tuesday in Iran's Parliament, where the minister, Mahmoud Alawi,
faced tough questioning about a six-day visit this summer by Jim
Dabakis, a state senator from Utah and the Democratic Party's state
chairman, who is gay. Mr. Alawi's answer: His agents knew the
visitor's every move... Mr. Alawi's disclosure was news to Mr.
Dabakis, an art dealer in Salt Lake City who has advocated cultural
exchanges between the United States and Iran to ease the countries'
decades-old estrangement. He also visited Iran in 2010. "I'm
just surprised that Iranian intelligence doesn't have anything better
to do," Mr. Dabakis said in a telephone interview. Mr. Dabakis
said Tuesday that he had planned to travel to Iran again next year,
but the uproar caused by his recent visit was giving him second
thoughts. "I wouldn't feel comfortable going unless I get a
personal invitation from the supreme leader," he said.
Iran's carpet makers are distancing themselves from
their government in promoting their handmade work as they seek to
regain valuable U.S. sales and protect jobs following the removal of
economic sanctions. "Iranian carpets are produced by female and male
weavers who are managed by the private sector, so the government does
not have a big influence," Hamid Kargar, head of the Iran
National Carpet Center, said in an emailed response to questions for
the Reuters Middle East Investment Summit... "We are trying to
show in our advertisements that Iranian carpets are independent from
the government, that they are artistic products that carry a message
of peace and friendship to the world," Kargar, who runs the
business promotion body that sits within Iran's commerce ministry.
Almost a month has passed since the government of Iran
sentenced U.S. Legal Permanent Resident Nizar Zakka to 10 years in
captivity and fined millions of dollars. Mr. Zakka was unlawfully
detained by Iranian officials in September 2015 in Tehran and has
since been held hostage by the Iranian regime. In addition to the
denial of due process, Mr. Zakka has yet to receive necessary medical
attention as his health has rapidly declined and becomes more
critical. Mr. Zakka's U.S. attorney, Jason I. Poblete, has released
the following statement urging the United States government and other
responsible parties to take immediate action to secure his
unconditional release on humanitarian grounds.
SANCTIONS RELIEF
A new round of talks between Iran and UOP LLC
Petroleum industry company of America has kicked off over investment
and supply of new technologies. Association of Petrochemical Industry
Corporations (APIC) announced that a fresh round of negotiations has
begun between Iran's petrochemical officials and three major American
and European petrochemical companies with the main axes of talks
being construction of new polymer units, knowledge and technology
transfer as well as issuance of license for new petchem plans. On the
sidelines of K Trade Fair 2016, the world's premier fair for the
plastics and rubber industry in Germany, high ranking officials of
Iran's petrochemical industry held meetings with authorities of
France's Total and Air Liquide as well as America's UOP, formerly
known as Universal Oil Products.
India and Iran aim to strike a deal by March to
develop an Iranian gas field with estimated in-place reserves of
18.75 trillion cubic feet, the Indian government said in a statement
on Wednesday. A consortium headed by ONGC Videsh Ltd (OVL), the
overseas investment arm of Indian explorer Oil and Natural Gas Corp ,
discovered the Farzad B gas field in the Farsi offshore block in
2008. The consortium, which also includes Oil India and Indian Oil
Corp, could not obtain permission to develop the field due to Western
sanctions against Iran's nuclear programme, but those sanctions were
removed earlier this year. OVL is preparing a master plan for
development of the gas field, while also working on a pricing
formula, the statement said.
The U.K. removed its sanctions on Bank Saderat. The
U.K. Treasury's Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation said
Monday in a brief notice that the U.K. removed its sanctions on
Iran-based Bank Saderat, as well as London-based Bank Saderat PLC. It
did so, according to the notice, because a European regulation
published in April, following the implementation of the nuclear deal
with Iran, held that sanctions would remain on the two branches until
Saturday, Oct. 22. "As that date has now passed, Bank Saderat
Iran and Bank Saderat PLC are no longer subject to the restrictive
measures set out in the regulation, including the asset freeze,"
the notice said.
MILITARY MATTERS
Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards said on Wednesday
they had developed a "suicide drone" capable of delivering
explosives to blow up targets at sea and on land. The new drone is
primarily for maritime surveillance and "has not been designed
to be armed with missiles," the Tasnim news agency, which is
close to the Guards, reported. "(But) it can carry heavy
payloads of explosives for combat missions to launch suicide attacks.
"Flying at a high cruising speed near the surface of the water,
the aircraft can collide with the target and destroy it, either a
vessel or an onshore command centre."
TERRORISM
The Islamic Jihad Islamist movement staged a public
show of force in the Gaza Strip on Friday, with its leader praising
Iran and criticising Arab states... Islamic Jihad leader Ramadan
Shalah spoke via a video link, using his speech to accuse some Arab
countries of abandoning the Palestinian cause. "If the Arabs
turn their backs on Palestine and embrace Israel, they can no longer
condemn the resistance for taking support from Iran," Shalah
said, without naming any countries. "(Iran) is the only country
which commits to the unending support of the Palestinian cause."
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