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TOP STORIES
France's Total has signed a deal with Iran to further
develop its part of the world's largest gas field, becoming the first
western energy company to sign a major deal with Tehran since the
lifting of international sanctions earlier this year. Total confirmed
on Tuesday it had signed a heads of agreement with National Iranian
Oil Company (NIOC) for the Phase 11 development of South Pars in the
Gulf, which extends into Qatari waters where it is known as the North
field. The SP11 project will progress in two stages, the first
costing an estimated $2 billion, Total said. The produced gas will be
fed into Iran's gas network. The French company has already played a
key role in Iran's energy industry, including the development of
phases 2 and 3 of South Pars in the 2000s, before pulling out of the
country after international sanctions were imposed in 2010... Total
said it would operate the SP11 project and have a 50.1 percent stake
in it. Petropars, a subsidiary of the National Iranian Oil Company,
will have a 19.9 percent stake while state-China National Petroleum
Corp (CNPC) will have a 30 percent stake.
French oil company Total SA said it would avoid U.S.
sanctions on Iran by using its own euro-denominated cash to finance
the first Western energy deal in the Islamic Republic since
international restrictions over its nuclear program were lifted this
year. "This confirms we have a capacity to work with the Iranian
government and that there is reciprocal trust," Total's Chief Executive
Patrick Pouyanné said Tuesday... Mr. Pouyanné said Total will avoid
the remaining sanctions still applied on Iran by the U.S. by using
its own cash to finance its share of the investment. The Iranian
government will pay Total in gas condensates, which the company can
then sell on the international markets, bypassing the Iranian
financial system.
A senior Iranian official says the Islamic Republic
expects to see no change in the behavior of the United States toward
Iran with the coming and going of different American presidents.
"We have witnessed Reagan, Bush, Clinton, and Obama
presidencies," said Ali Akbar Velayati, making passing
references to presidents who took office in the US after the Islamic
Revolution of 1979. "They all treated Iran the same way, and not
one of them is different from the others." Velayati, who advises
Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei on
international affairs, was speaking in a televised interview on
Sunday night. Remarking on the characteristics of the competing US
presidential candidates, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, Velayati
said they were "the two sides of the same coin." "One
shows the US's true face, and the other is the face of America with
make-up. This gentleman (Trump) is the un-retouched face of America,
and that lady (Clinton) is the US's retouched face."
SANCTIONS ENFORCEMENT
The brother of a Turkish gold trader has been charged
in a U.S. indictment accusing both men of conspiring to conduct
hundreds of millions of dollars in transactions on behalf of Iran's
government and Iranian entities, prosecutors said on Monday. Mohammad
Zarrab, a dual citizen of Turkey and Iran, was charged in an
indictment filed in Manhattan federal court, two months before his
brother Reza Zarrab was set to face trial following his arrest
earlier this year. The new indictment added new claims that Reza
Zarrab, 33, participated in transactions to benefit Iran-based Mahan
Air, which the U.S. government has sanctioned for providing services
to Iran's Quds Force as well as Hezbollah.
SANCTIONS RELIEF
Italian oil refiner Saras (SRS.MI) has paid 160
million euros ($177 million) of the debt it owes Iran for crude oil
bought before sanctions were imposed and its chief financial officer
said the total debt to Tehran will be cleared next year. Analysts
have estimated the company's Iranian debt at about 350 million euros
and the company said it paid 50 million euros in the second quarter
and 110 million euros in the third. "A further 100 million euros
will be paid by year-end," CFO Franco Balsamo told analysts in a
conference call on Monday's third-quarter results. "The rest
will be paid in 2017."
FOREIGN AFFAIRS
Iran's Mohammad Javad Zarif on Monday became the first
foreign minister to meet Lebanon's new president, underscoring
Tehran's struggle with its regional arch-rival Saudi Arabia for
influence in Beirut. He met Michel Aoun, a Christian leader who was
elected president last week. Aoun is a close ally of Lebanon's
Hezbollah, an Iran-backed Shi'ite Muslim group, and Iran welcomed
Aoun's election as a victory for Hezbollah. Speaking at a joint press
conference with Lebanese Foreign Minister Gibran Bassil, Zarif said
Lebanon's presidential election should serve as an example to other
politically troubled countries in the region. "The Lebanese
people showed it is possible to reach a solution acceptable to all,
or what we call a win-win situation," Zarif said. Aoun also met
an envoy sent by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad earlier in the day.
HUMAN RIGHTS
Iran blinded a man on Tuesday after convicting him of
throwing chemicals in face of a four-year-old girl and depriving her
of sight, a judicial official was quoted as saying. It was the second
time this year that Iran had carried out the strict eye-for-eye
punishment that can be imposed for such crimes in the Islamic
republic, the head of criminal affairs for the Tehran prosecutor's
office, Mohammad Shahriari, said. "In 2009, this man threw lime
into the face of a little girl of four years in the Sanandaj region,
leaving her blind," the ISNA news agency quoted him as saying. "Today,
the law of retribution was applied in my presence and that of
experts," he said, without giving details. The law of
retribution is a central part of Islam's sharia code but has been
condemned by international human rights groups.
OPINION & ANALYSIS
The latest idea de jour on how the next U.S.
administration should deal with Iran, trumpeted especially by the
Hillary Clinton camp, is the need to be tougher and more aggressive
in confronting Tehran. Only a stiff spine in standing up to the
mullahcracy, as the argument goes, will block its expansionist
desires and prevent a rising Iran from dominating the region. This
muscle-flexing approach, if done in a knee-jerk manner, is unwise and
unnecessary, exaggerating both Iranian power and inflating the United
States' capacity to stop it. Instead, Washington should focus on
containing Iran where it threatens vital U.S. interests and
cooperating with Tehran where it serves those interests. That said,
it would be a mistake to carry a torch for the Islamic Republic. It's
a cruel and nasty regime-a serial human rights abuser at home and a
promoter of policies in the region that are clearly at odds with many
U.S. interests and those of its partners and allies. And it would be
foolhardy to conclude that the nuclear agreement with Iran will be
the last that the world sees of its flirtation with nuclear weapons.
But creating a new Middle East bogeyman and scaring ourselves into a
policy that mandates a more confrontational posture, particularly
without the means and will to carry it out, makes little sense.
Donald Trump has threatened to abrogate or renegotiate the Iranian
nuclear agreement. Clinton has defended the accord, but her advisers
seem bent on checking Iranian power in the region without outlining
how they will do this or what the consequences might be. Given the
near universal unhappiness in Congress with the Iranian nuclear
agreement and worries that the current administration of President
Barack Obama has been far too risk-averse and acquiescent in the face
of Iranian expansion, a mindless default position has emerged:
getting tough with Tehran without thinking through the consequences
of such a policy and whether it can achieve its objectives without
compromising other important U.S. interests and priorities. Lost in
all of this is the politically inconvenient fact that the Iranian
regime-along with Israel and perhaps Turkey-is one of the three most
functional non-Arab polities in a region torn by conflict and
instability, and is a rising power that isn't so easy to push around
or ignore.
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