TOP STORIES
Donald Trump as president will be positioned to
swiftly pull the U.S. out of the Obama administration's landmark
nuclear agreement with Iran, as he suggested during his campaign. A
much harder task for Mr. Trump, however, is to convince other global
powers to join him and dismantle a deal that President Barack Obama
says has diminished the threat of another war in the Mideast and
opened a path for reduced tensions in the region. During his
campaign, Mr. Trump said the Obama administration negotiated badly.
He alternately said he would scrap the deal and that he would
renegotiate its terms. "My number one priority is to dismantle
the disastrous deal with Iran," he told the American Israel
Public Affairs Committee in March. Tehran has been found to have
briefly violated its pledges twice since the deal was reached in
mid-2015, according to U.S. and European officials. Yet international
commitment to the agreement remains strong, and the parties who
negotiated it-China, Russia, France, Germany, the U.K. and the
U.S.-have pledged to promote it.
'I've got a pen and I've got a phone" was
President Obama's favored path to a foreign-policy legacy. Oops. President-elect
Donald Trump may now use his own pen and phone to erase it...
"The water that John Kerry has been carrying for Iran is enough
to fill many oceans," says David Ibsen, president of the
advocacy group United Against Nuclear Iran. Trump, he added, will
likely be less forgiving... The Obama administration has been
encouraging American companies to enter Iranian markets to assure the
deal's viability. Ibsen's organization, however, works to deter them
from doing so. Friday, Veterans Day, UANI plans to mobilize veterans
to remind some of America's largest corporations that Iran is
responsible for the deaths of 1,000 American soldiers, and that it's
a risky place to do business. Trump can follow suit, bleeding the
Iran deal to death with cut after cut to its participation in the
global economy.
Donald Trump isn't going to rip up the Iran nuclear
deal on day one as president, but his vows to renegotiate the terms
and increase enforcement could imperil an agreement that has put off
the threat of Tehran developing atomic weapons. Emboldened Republican
lawmakers are already considering ways to test Iran's resolve to live
up to the deal. As a candidate, Trump issued a variety of statements
about last year's pact. He called it "stupid," a
"lopsided disgrace" and the "worst deal ever
negotiated," railing against its time-limited restrictions on
Iran's enrichment of uranium and other nuclear activity, and
exaggerating the scale of U.S. concessions. Trump said that he doesn't
want to simply tear up the agreement. Instead, he spoke of reopening
the diplomacy and declared that unlike President Barack Obama's
diplomats, he would have been prepared to walk away from talks.
Trump's exact plans are vague, however, and a renegotiation would be
difficult. Iran has little incentive to open talks over a deal it is
satisfied with. And none of the other countries in the seven-nation
accord has expressed interest in picking apart an understanding that
took more than a decade of stop-and-go diplomacy and almost two full
years of negotiation to complete.
NUCLEAR & BALLISTIC MISSILE
PROGRAM
The Iran nuclear deal would fall apart if a US
administration walked away from it, as President-elect Donald Trump
has vowed to do, the State Department said Thursday... "Any
party -- and I'm speaking very hypothetically here, because I don't
want in any way to attempt to hypothesize about what the incoming
administration's going to do -- I'm just talking purely about an
agreement that any party can walk away from," State Department
spokesman Mark Toner said. "And that will have profound consequences
on the integrity of the agreement." Toner said that the Iran
deal was not a legally binding treaty, but that the current US
administration believes it is in Washington's interest to continue
it.
U.S.-IRAN RELATIONS
It is home to beautiful mountains, breathtaking
historical buildings and priceless artwork - but it's also the
subject of strongly worded U.S. State Department warnings. For
Americans, Iran may not be the first place that comes to mind when
planning a vacation, even decades after the 1979 U.S. Embassy
takeover following the country's Islamic Revolution. "Death to
America!" can still be heard at hard-line mosques and protests,
and Iranians with Western ties can face arbitrary arrest. However,
one luxury tour company in the U.S. is promoting a new trip to the
country for those willing to take the risk, describing it as the
first opportunity to see an Iran opening up to the West after last
year's nuclear deal. "We feel that Iran is one of the most
exciting places that someone can travel to at this point in time,
given the current climate in the country and what sort of changes
have been taking place recently," said Stefanie Schmudde, product
manager of Americas and Middle East for the Downers Grove,
Illinois-based tour company Abercrombie & Kent... Abercrombie
& Kent has planned its first Iran trip in early May, leaving just
ahead of the country's presidential election. They say that interchange
between American tourists and the Iranian people will help bridge the
gap between the two nations. "I would not hesitate to send
anybody," Schmudde said. "It's a very exciting destination
that's really and truly on the cusp of change."
CONGRESSIONAL ACTION
Republicans in Congress who vigorously opposed Donald
Trump's run for president are now preparing to work with the incoming
Trump administration on a number of foreign policy and national
security issues where their policies overlap. First on their agenda
is drastically increasing sanctions on Iran. "There are several
issues that I can work with the new president on, the Iran deal being
number one," Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), who voted for
independent candidate Evan McMullin, told me. "Trump has been
right about the Iran deal, it needs to be renegotiated. I'm going to
create leverage for him." On the first day Congress is back in
session, Graham said he and Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman
John McCain (R-Ariz.) will reintroduce the Iran Ballistic Missile
Sanctions Act, which was first introduced by outgoing Sen. Kelly
Ayotte (R-N.H.). The legislation would expand the non-nuclear related
sanctions on Iran to include entire sectors of the Iranian economy
that aid in Iran's ballistic missile program. It would also sanction
any Iranian companies or organizations that support the missile
program.
SANCTIONS ENFORCEMENT
Four Turkish and Iranian nationals from the same
family have been indicted on charges they violated U.S. sanctions
against Iran by conducting hundreds of millions of dollars of
transactions for Iran's government and Iranian metals companies.
According to an indictment made public on Thursday in the U.S.
District Court in Manhattan, Habibollah Zarei, Nesteren Zarei Deniz,
Bora Deniz and Abdullah Evren Erdem conspired to evade U.S. sanctions
from 2014 until at least January 2016. The defendants were accused of
helping three Iranian companies import and export large quantities of
copper and steel to and from Iran, and arranging for U.S. banks to
transfer at least $100 million to further the scheme. "These
defendants conspired and schemed to hide millions of dollars' of
financial transactions specifically to evade U.S. sanctions
laws," and deserve to face "strong legal action," U.S.
Attorney Preet Bharara in Manhattan said in a statement. All of the
defendants are at large.
SANCTIONS RELIEF
Iran, which has said it's exempt from OPEC's accord to
cut production, told the group it raised output by the most since
international sanctions were lifted. Iraq, unwilling to curb its
supplies, reported a higher level than OPEC's estimates. Freed from
curbs on its oil trade in January, Iran said it increased output by
210,000 barrels a day to 3.92 million a day in October from the
previous month, according to a report from the Organization of
Petroleum Exporting Countries.
FOREIGN AFFAIRS
ran's foreign minister visited the Czech capital of
Prague to talk business Friday, including the development of a
nuclear program after the sanctions against his country were lifted.
Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif's visit comes just six months
after the head of Iran's nuclear program met Czech leaders in May to
discuss developing bilateral nuclear cooperation. Iran is seeking
help from European nations to improve its civilian nuclear program.
The Czechs heavily rely on nuclear energy and plan to build more
reactors... Accompanied by a delegation of Iranian business leaders,
Zarif was also to meet Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka and the
speaker of Parliament's lower house, Jan Hamacek.
SYRIA CONFLICT
Iran's official IRNA news agency is reporting that a
funeral ceremony has been held for 10 soldiers who were killed in
Syria. The Thursday report said the families and relatives of the
deceased soldiers, as well as authorities and local citizens,
attended the funeral in holy city of Qom, some 80 miles (130
kilometers) south of the capital Tehran. It called the soldiers
"defenders of shrine," but did not identify them or provide
additional details on their deaths. In August, Iran said that the families
of at least 400 fighters killed fighting in Iranian brigades in Syria
had been referred to the Martyr Foundation to receive financial
support.
OPINION & ANALYSIS
The improvised explosive device (IED) cut my skull in
half, from the left corner of my temple down through my jaw, and
killed my partner Staff Sgt. William Brooks. The Iranian-made
roadside bomb that destroyed my Humvee while on patrol in Iraq in
2005 was part of Iran's mission to exploit American interventions in
Iraq and Afghanistan by targeting U.S. servicemen. Deploying
IEDs through its agents and proxies, Iran sought to kill and maim as
many of us as possible. And their mission succeeded, as the regime was
responsible for a quarter of American casualties during the operation
in Iraq. If this is news to those of you reading this, that is
because Iran escaped nearly all accountability for their deadly
actions. Now, twelve years later, Iran remains an international
outlaw and force for instability as the leading state sponsor of
terrorism. Over the course of the last several years, Iran has also
managed to effectively position itself as a worthy global partner, a
dangerous misconception that was bolstered by the signing of the
Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in July 2015. The
nuclear deal signaled to the world that Iran is open for business.
Now, American-affiliated companies like General Electric, Shell, and
Fiat-Chrysler, as well as dozens of other companies around the world
with significant business interests in the United States, see Iran as
the next great economic frontier, a bastion of opportunity. What
these companies fail to see, or worse, ignore, is Iran's continued
support for terrorist groups worldwide. Iran is aligned with the same
enemies that thousands of U.S. servicemen risk their lives every
single day to stop-the same enemies that maim and kill our men and
women in uniform... American companies that do business in Iran are
choosing profit over responsibility. And on this Veterans Day,
when American lives are still the bottom line, there should be no
executive, board of directors, or shareholder who aligns themselves
against the safety and wellbeing of our citizens. The severity of the
risks make this choice crystal clear: Iran is no ally, nor partner
for American business.
During his campaign for the presidency, Donald Trump
often dismissed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the
nuclear agreement signed between the United States and Iran. His
critique, while vague, was sensible. The JCPOA did concede too much
residual enrichment capacity, its sunset clauses were too short, and
it offered sanctions relief that was too generous. On top of that,
the White House indulged in its own cash-and-carry program, trading
hostages for money. It is hard to see how a prudent Iran policy can
coexist with the JCPOA as it stands today. An actual Iran policy
needs to move beyond arms control and emphasize ways of putting stress
on the country's theocratic regime and pushing back on its ambitions
in the Middle East. The future Trump administration now has the
opportunity to develop just such a comprehensive Iran policy. Because
the JCPOA is not a treaty ratified by the Senate, it is not binding
on any administration. It's important to note that the House of
Representatives actually rejected the accord while 56 U.S. senators
similarly went on the record with their opposition. The Trump
administration can thus render JCPOA null and void simply by
declaring it so. But repealing the accord will also imply a
willingness to negotiate a more robust agreement. That's why the new
administration would be prudent to first articulate its own arms
control precepts. In the process of transacting its flawed accord,
President Barack Obama's team abandoned many of its own standards,
and it is time to restore worthy principles as the basis of any new
agreement. This means that the scope of the Islamic Republic's
nuclear program has to be defined by national needs. Given that an
oil-rich Iran really does not require nuclear energy, this would mean
at best a modest and symbolic program.
Iran has the largest missile force in the Middle East,
consisting of more than a thousand short- and medium-range ballistic
missiles, and possibly land-attack cruise missiles. Although its
missiles are conventionally armed, many could deliver a nuclear
weapon if Iran were to acquire such a capability. While the recent
nuclear accord with Iran -- the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action --
will likely defer such an eventuality, it did not impose new
constraints on Iran's missile program. On the contrary, it loosened
them -- and included provisions for their lifting in eight years, if
not sooner. Iran's missile force could double or triple in size by
the time the major limits imposed by the nuclear deal are supposed to
be lifted, fifteen years from now. By then, Iran's growing missile
and cyber capabilities will pose major challenges to regional missile
defenses, military and critical infrastructure targets, and civilian
population centers. For this reason, any attempts to improve on the
nuclear deal with Iran should address Iran's missile program as well.
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