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TOP STORIES
A small Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard vessel
pointed its weapon at a U.S. military helicopter in the Strait of
Hormuz on Saturday, two U.S. defense officials told Reuters on
Monday, an action they described as "unsafe and
unprofessional." The incident is the latest in a series of
similar actions by Iranian vessels this year, but the first reported
since Republican Donald Trump won the U.S. presidential election on
Nov. 8. During his campaign, Trump vowed that any Iranian vessel that
harassed the U.S. Navy in the Gulf would be "shot out of the
water," if he was elected. Trump is due to take office on Jan.
20... The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the
incident took place when a Navy MH-60 helicopter flew within half a
mile (0.8 km) of two Iranian vessels in international waters. One of
the vessels pointed a weapon at the helicopter, the U.S. officials
said. "The behavior by our standards is provocative and could be
seen as an escalation," the officials said. At no point did the
crew of the helicopter feel threatened, they added.
The US dollar is once again at the center of attention
in the Iranian currency market with its recent pattern on the upside,
the only notable difference this time around being that the higher
prices come as the central bank is anticipating a unified currency
rate by the end of March... The upset victory of the Republican
Donald Trump in the US presidential election became an added source
of concern and pushed up forex rates. On the first day in Tehran
after the elections, the US dollar sold for 36,580 rials, up from the
previous day's close of 36,400. The dollar even crossed 37,000 rials
briefly and it was reported that due to the wild swings in the market
some moneychangers had pulled down their shutters. However, three
weeks after the chaotic vote in the US, the dollar's rising
trajectory shows no sign of abating. On Sunday, it broke the 38,000
rials threshold -a point few thought it would cross- and reached
38,400 rials in latest pricings. This entails a more than 6,000 rials
discrepancy between the unofficial and official rates which
undermines the Central Bank of Iran's repeatedly emphasized plan to
unify the rates before the fiscal year is out in March.
Iran's President Hassan Rouhani hailed as a
"relentless warrior" the Cuban leader Fidel Castro, who
died aged 90 Friday. In a message to the late leader's brother
President Raul Castro, Rouhani said the death of the leader of the
Cuban revolution caused him "great grief and sorrow."
"In this age - when oppressed nations around the world suffer
from violations of the most obvious and fundamental human principles
such as peace, justice and freedom - it is fortunate there are free
men and warriors who do not give up fighting until the last days of
their lives to keep the flag of justice high," he said in the
message. Rouhani met Raul and Fidel Castro in September in Cuba.
Castro had met Iranian officials, including supreme leader Ayatollah
Ali Khamenei, on a visit to Iran in 2001.
UANI IN THE NEWS
Doing business with Iran is a dangerous proposition,
German companies were warned on Monday in a full-page advertisement
published by an advocacy group in a major Frankfurt newspaper. The
ad, authored by the advocacy group United Against Nuclear Iran
(UANI), ran in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung as a two-day
economic conference - titled "Market Opportunities in Iran"
- got underway in the German financial hub. In a statement released
on Monday, UANI senior adviser and former director of Germany's
Federal Intelligence Service Dr. August Hanning said: "The only
way for German companies to avoid the risks inherent in the Iranian
market is to abandon these business pursuits entirely. The Iranian
regime remains a bad actor in the global community, given its ongoing
extensive support of terrorism and its high profile and deliberate
promotion of Holocaust denial. German business leaders should not
reward this noxious regime until substantial and permanent reforms
are implemented." As was reported by The Algemeiner, a similar
UANI ad published in the Financial Times "soured the mood"
at the Iran Investment Summit in Singapore last month.
U.S.-IRAN RELATIONS
The U.S. military presence in the Gulf poses the main
risk of conflict in the region, an Iranian military official said on
Tuesday after Washington said an Iranian vessel had pointed its
weapon at a U.S. helicopter in the strategic Strait of Hormuz...
"Everybody knows that the main problem in the Persian Gulf is
the U.S. presence," an unidentified official in the
Revolutionary Guards was quoted as saying by Tasnim news agency.
SANCTIONS RELIEF
MTN Group, Africa's biggest mobile phone company, is
planning to expand in Iran, from where it has only just managed to
begin reptratiating profits. The move is part of MTN's 10-year plan
to cement its leading position in risky but lucrative frontier
markets in the Middle East and Africa, where it aggressively expanded
a decade ago... "We're very excited about Iran and the
possibilities there," MTN's newly appointed head of strategy,
mergers and acquisitions, Stephen van Coller, said in an interview
with Reuters. "That digital economy in Iran is going to move fast."
The company had been unable to repatriate its accumulated dividends
until recently. It said in October it had started receiving the cash
and this process would take at least six months. Another potential
risk is U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's threat to scrap the
nuclear agreement with Iran, which could bring back secondary
sanctions on non-U.S. entities. Asked if Trump's win could deter or
impact further investment in Iran, Coller said: "That's a tough
question, I don't know really."
Iran is pulling ahead in the race for market share in
the world's fastest-growing oil consuming nation, India, weakening
the hold of rival OPEC members amid the group's struggle to agree on
output cuts. Iran, which dramatically boosted crude sales in 2016
after they were curbed for years by sanctions over its nuclear
program, is challenging the sway of Saudi Arabia and Iraq as it
offers perks for refiners to help rebuild its standing in Asia's
third-largest economy. Cargoes to fill strategic petroleum reserves
helped Iran emerge last month as India's biggest supplier for the
first time in 2016, according to data compiled by Bloomberg...
Iranian supplies in October rose 56 percent to 759,700 barrels per
day from a month ago, while shipments from Saudi Arabia were 717,000
barrels per day and Iraq's 488,000 barrels a day, shipping data
compiled by Bloomberg show... Iran has offered attractive terms like
80 percent freight discount and 90 days of credit this financial
year, Indian Oil Corp.'s Director Finance A. K. Sharma told Bloomberg
in September.
The volume of trade between Oman and Iran has surged
since international sanctions were lifted against Iran earlier this
year. Oman's imports from Iran shot up by 396.2 per cent to OMR183.1
million in the first half of this year, from OMR36.9 million in the
same period last year, according to the latest data released by the
National Centre for Statistics and Information (NCSI). Also,
re-exports from Oman soared by 23 per cent to OMR63.2 million in the
first half of 2016, against OMR51.4 million in the corresponding
period last year. Iran is expected to emerge as a significant trading
partner of the Sultanate following the end of trade sanctions.
According to experts, bilateral trade between Oman and Iran is likely
to touch US$5 billion within five years, from the current $1 billion.
FOREIGN AFFAIRS
Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Iranian
counterpart Hassan Rouhani on Monday expressed support for OPEC's
plans to limit the cartel's output ahead of a crucial meeting this
week. In a telephone conversation, the two leaders said the cartel's
efforts were "an essential element" for returning stability
to global oil prices, a Kremlin statement said. "The importance
of steps taken by OPEC to limit the production of commodities was
emphasised as an essential element for stabilising world oil
markets," it said.
After more than a year in power, the Trudeau
government's plans to re-establish diplomatic relations with Iran
haven't led to any concrete results. The Iranian embassy in Ottawa
remains shuttered and there isn't a Canadian ambassador in Iran - a
country Canada still officially considers a state sponsor of terror.
That didn't stop Liberal MP Majid Jowhari from privately hosting a
delegation of Iranian parliamentarians at his Richmond Hill
constituency office earlier this month. Jowhari, who in September
sponsored a petition submitted by the Iranian Canadian Congress lobby
group that called for the restoration of diplomatic ties with Iran,
said the meeting took place at the request of the Iranian
parliamentarians... The Iranian delegation with whom Jowhari met
consisted of Alim Yarmohammadi, Yonathan Betkolia and Mehrdad Lahooti
- who are MPs in the Iranian parliament, or Majlis - and Ali
Bahraini, who is not an elected MP but is identified, by Jowhari's
office and elsewhere, as secretary of a development committee. The
Iranian delegation was in Canada to meet with officials at the
International Civil Aviation Organization, which is headquartered in
Montreal. Photos on Lahooti's Instagram account show they also
visited the International Air Transport Association and CAE Inc., a
Montreal company that specializes in aviation, defence and security
training and flight simulation products.
SYRIA CONFLICT
But buttressed by Russian air power, Iranian expertise
and recruits that include Iran-trained Iraqi and Afghan militias and
fighters from the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, the Assad
government has reversed the tide, steadily regaining ground it lost
earlier in the war. "The Russian and Iranian intervention has
completely changed the dynamic for Assad," said Robert S. Ford,
a former American ambassador to Syria and now a senior fellow at the
Middle East Institute. "Look at the fighting in Aleppo," he
added. "There are at least as many Lebanese Hezbollah and
Iraqi-Iranian militia fighters as there are soldiers born in Syria,
so the war of attrition that was going against Assad is no longer
doing that because of Iranian manpower." But the darker side is
what kind of country would be left. "So Assad stays there and
the Russians and Iranians prevail, but they govern over a half-dead
corpse, and Syria is just this gaping wound that stretches as far as
the eye can see," Mr. Ford said. Mr. Assad would also be
beholden to his two sponsors, Russia and Iran, reviled by many of his
own citizens in the Sunni-majority country and rejected by some of
the main Sunni powers in the Middle East. That could mean he would
face efforts from Iran to solidify its regional reach by expanding
Shiite influence in Syria and demanding a role in conquered areas
such as Aleppo, perhaps even assigning Iranian-backed Shiite militias
there, some experts said.
SAUDI-IRAN TENSIONS
For decades, Saudi Arabia has had its way at OPEC. All
of a sudden the position has turned: Riyadh finds its power waning
against a resurgent Iran and Iraq. As Organization of Petroleum
Exporting Countries ministers gather for a meeting on Wednesday, Saudi
Arabia is trying to reassert its authority by hinting it's prepared
to walk away from the negotiations. Genuine warning or bluff, Tehran
and Baghdad may be willing to take the risk. Both have seen Saudi
Arabia gain market share and neither is as dependent on oil prices as
Riyadh. "Iran and Iraq have assumed that Saudi Arabia will cut
unilaterally because it wanted higher prices and thought they could
put the Saudis into a corner," said Amrita Sen, chief oil
analyst at Energy Aspects Ltd. "Riyadh has effectively said it
isn't in a corner and will not do a deal unless everyone else
contributes." ... Saudi Arabia is sticking to its same offer:
cut production, but only if Iran freezes at current levels and Iraq
also reduces output. Iran and Iraq are also holding to their own
positions. The first wants to be able to recover to its pre-sanctions
level of 4 million barrels per day and the second to freeze, rather
than cut... Both sides fought to the very last barrel: the Saudis
told Tehran it needs to cap output at 3.707 million barrels a day;
Tehran offered in exchange a cap at 3.975 million barrels a day. The
difference, a mere 0.3 percent of global oil supply, could still
scupper the deal. Iran's frustration was evident. In an article
published on Monday by the official news service, Shana, Oil Minister
Bijan Zanganeh said reviving the country's oil output was "the
national will and demand of the Iranian people."
HUMAN RIGHTS
Despite the Iranian regime's best efforts to stop the
spread of Christianity, a large underground church movement is
growing. Hundreds of Iranian citizens have been converting to
Christianity, and many are being baptized in large ceremonies in
underground churches held in private homes across the country. This
month, Christian ministry ELAM estimated that more than 200 Iranian
and Afghans were secretly baptized in a service just across the
Iranian border. "It's an astronomical increase," Mani
Erfan, CEO and founder of CCM Ministries, which has been involved in
Iran's underground church movement for more than two decades, told
FoxNews.com. "And it's been predominately young people. We call
it an awakening." Erfan says much of Iran's young population has
grown tired of the regime's oppressive religious rule, which often
distorts Islamic teachings.
When Richard Ratcliffe's wife, Nazanin was arrested in
Iran on her way back from a two-week holiday, he was convinced it was
all a terrible mistake. A project manager for Thomson-Reuters
Foundation, the charity worker had taken their baby daughter,
Gabriella to meet her parents for the first time. Once authorities
realised they were simply visiting relatives, both would surely be
home within a matter of weeks. More than eight months have passed,
and Richard is still alone in their West Hampstead flat, while
Nazanin, a dual British and Iranian citizen, is serving a five-year
prison sentence in a tiny cell, shared with another inmate.
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