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TOP STORIES
Iranian officials and clerics vowed retaliation Friday
against the United States for congressional approval of an extension of
nuclear-related sanctions, but Middle East analysts say they expect no
substantive response from Iran in the waning weeks of the Obama
administration... In Tehran, the government officially referred the
issue to a committee charged with implementing the agreement. But
denunciations of the extension rang out from the legislature, mosques
and government offices. Leaders of Friday prayers called the vote a
clear violation of the nuclear deal signed between Tehran and six world
powers, including the United States... "If you are to tear down
the JCPOA, we will set it afire," said Ayatollah Mohammad Ali
Movahedi Kermani, a prayer leader in Tehran.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani criticized U.S.
lawmakers on Sunday for, in his view, undermining a landmark nuclear
agreement but said Tehran had no intention of abandoning the deal. In a
speech to parliament, Rouhani slammed a Senate vote last week to extend
for 10 years a longstanding package of trade, energy, defense and
banking sanctions against Iran... The moderate president's speech was
aimed mainly at pacifying hard-line domestic critics who say the
nuclear accord has not delivered the economic benefits he promised...
"The benefits of the nuclear deal are clear for everybody,"
Rouhani said. "We can now, under the nuclear deal, export as much
oil as possible. International transportation and shipping are much
less inexpensive, and many trade and foreign investment contracts and
agreements have been signed." ... Iranian media reported Sunday
that 145 lawmakers - half of the 290-member parliament - have signed a
petition to boycott all American-made products. If enacted, it could
imperil a reported $25-billion agreement with Boeing to upgrade Iran's
passenger airline fleet, the biggest U.S.-Iran business deal since
Washington cut diplomatic ties with Tehran following the 1979 Islamic
revolution. When Rouhani said a special committee of Iran's national
security council would issue a report on implementation of the nuclear
deal, chants of "Death to America!" echoed through the
chamber.
An American-Iranian dual national and his wife have been
in detention in Iran without charge or access to lawyers since their
arrest by elite Revolutionary Guards in July, a New York-based rights
group said on Friday. The International Campaign for Human Rights in
Iran (ICHRI) said Karan Vafadari and his wife Afarin Niasari, who run
an art gallery in Tehran, were being held in Tehran's Evin Prison. The
Islamic Republic does not recognise dual nationality, a position that
prevents Western embassy officials from visiting such detainees.
"Yet another case of a dual national snatched and held without
charge or access to a lawyer represents an alarming continuation of a
judicial system run by intelligence agencies with no respect for the
law and no accountability," said Hadi Ghaemi, executive director
of the human rights group. The statement said families of the arrested
couple decided not to publicize their cases, hoping it would be
resolved. "Then when the family started receiving anonymous phone
threats and demands for money, they decided to go public and write a
letter to Iran's supreme leader," the statement said.
IRAN NUCLEAR DEAL
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani demanded on Sunday that
Barack Obama block an extension of sanctions passed by the U.S.
Congress, saying Tehran would otherwise "firmly respond"...
"America's president is obliged to exercise his authority by
preventing its approval and particularly its implementation ... and if
this gross violation is carried out we will firmly respond,"
Rouhani said in the speech, carried live by state television. President
Obama is expected to sign the legislation into law, the White House
said on Friday... On Sunday, 264 lawmakers in Iran's 290-seat
parliament issued a statement calling on the government to implement
counter measures, including relaunching nuclear enrichment halted under
the atomic deal, the official news agency IRNA reported.
A U.S. Senate vote to extend the Iran Sanctions Act
(ISA) for 10 years shows the world that Washington cannot be relied
upon to act on its commitments, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad
Zarif said on Saturday... "To the world community, the extension
of sanctions against Iran shows the unreliability of the American
government," state broadcaster IRIB quoted Zarif as saying on
arriving in India for an official visit. "America is acting
against its commitment."
A senior Iranian official has warned the U.S. of a
"firm and strong reaction" if it persists in actions he says
are endangering a nuclear deal aimed at curbing programs Tehran could
use to make atomic arms. Iranian nuclear chief Ali Akbar Salehi is
alluding to a bill before President Barack Obama that would extend U.S.
sanctions by 10 years. The bill was submitted to Obama after the U.S.
Senate voted to extend it last week... Speaking at a nuclear security
conference, Salehi urged Washington on Monday to desist from
"irrational and provocative" moves.
The private files outlining hidden agreements in the
Iran nuclear deal may be released in one of President Donald Trump's
first actions in office. Senior officials who will be part of the Trump
administration are already discussing what so-far-unseen information
about the Iran agreement they will be able to make public after
January, according to an individual who has participated in those
conversations. Releasing Iran nuclear deal documents would be cheered
on by hawkish lawmakers who have opposed the agreement, and bolstered
by cabinet appointees who have long called for transparency about it.
Michael Flynn, who has been tapped for national security adviser, and
Mike Pompeo, who has been picked for CIA director, have both long been
bullish on providing transparency on internal information regarding
Iran.
Implementation of the Iran nuclear deal should not be
"affected by any changes in the domestic situations" of
countries involved, China's foreign minister warned Monday, as US
president-elect Donald Trump threatens to abandon it... The agreement's
implementation is the "joint responsibility and duty of all
parties" and "should not be affected by any changes in the
domestic situations of the countries concerned", Chinese foreign
minister Wang Yi told a press conference after meeting his Iranian
counterpart Mohammad Javad Zarif. "What is important is to honour
commitments and place emphasis on good faith when it comes to
differences or possible differences" over the deal, he said.
CONGRESSIONAL ACTION
The Senate's vote to renew sanctions against Iran for
another 10 years has delivered a symbolic warning to Tehran and a bipartisan
snub of the White House, which worries the move could raise tensions
with Iran. Secretary of State John Kerry and other officials had
discreetly lobbied lawmakers to drop the measure, arguing that the U.S.
president already has sweeping authority to reimpose sanctions that
were lifted under a nuclear agreement with Iran. American officials
also unsuccessfully warned that even threatening to revive sanctions
could undercut the more moderate elements of the clerical regime, led
by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, who is pressed to show his public
the benefits of the nuclear deal before elections in 2017. But
lawmakers who backed the legislation on Thursday - including Democrats
who supported the Iran nuclear agreement signed last year - said it was
vital to convey that Tehran would be held accountable if it violated
the terms of the nuclear deal. And they emphasized that extending the
Iran Sanctions Act, which was first adopted in 1996, did not violate
the nuclear accord. "Congress' action today should send a signal
to the Iranian government and to the world that the United States is
serious about enforcement of the nuclear agreement," Sen. Ben
Cardin (D-Md.), top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee,
said in a statement after Thursday's 99-0 vote.
EXTREMISM
On September 24, 2016, the Iranian news agency Raja
News, which is close to Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps
(IRGC), published an interview with Child and the Future Cultural
Center director Hamid Sadeghi about an event held during the second
half of September that is a military-religious amusement park, called
The City of Games for Revolutionary Children. Sadeghi, who operates
under the aegis of the Mashhad municipality and also runs the
Sharbehesht.ir website, said that his center had set up and inaugurated
the City of Games park, and that it is open free of charge to children
aged eight through 13. It should be noted that this is the second City
of Games event held by the Mashhad municipality; the first was last
summer.
TERRORISM
Iran urged Kenya on Friday to immediately release two
Iranians charged with collecting information for a terrorist act after
filming the Israeli Embassy in Nairobi, the semi-official Tasnim news
agency reported. The two Iranian nationals and their Kenyan driver were
arrested in a car belonging to the Iranian Embassy on Tuesday. The
diplomatic status of the two Iranians was unclear. Tasnim said the
Kenyan ambassador to Tehran was summoned on Thursday by the Iranian
Foreign Ministry over the arrest and that the "necessity for the
immediate release of the two Iranians was underlined during the
meeting". A Foreign Ministry spokesman denied any wrongdoing by
the arrested men, saying they were university teachers in Tehran.
SAUDI-IRAN TENSIONS
State-sponsored hackers who unleashed a digital bomb in
key parts of Saudi Arabia's computer networks over the last two weeks
damaged systems at the country's central bank, known as the Saudi
Arabian Monetary Agency, according to two people briefed on an ongoing
investigation of the breach... The attacks, which afflicted at least
eight government entities, used a computer-killing malware known as
Shamoon that is linked to Iran, the two people said. They had the
potential to inflict damage on targets across several critical sectors,
including finance and transportation... The Shamoon malware used in the
attacks is the same one that was used in a devastating attack on Saudi
Aramco in 2012 that destroyed 35,000 computers within hours. U.S.
officials have said Iran was behind that attack.
HUMAN RIGHTS
An Iranian musician serving a three-year jail term in
Iran bemoaned his sentence and the deplorable conditions of his imprisonment.
Since June, Mehdi Rajabian, 27, has been jailed in Tehran's notorious
Evin prison along with his brother, Hossein, a 31-year-old filmmaker,
after they were found guilty of "spreading propaganda against the
system" and "insulting the sacred" in 2015. For more
than a month, the brothers went on a hunger strike in protest over
their treatment. Rajabian's medical condition deteriorated to the point
that authorities released him on furlough and let him be hospitalized
in his home province of Mazandaran. He is expected back at Evin on
Sunday, but managed to contact the outside world using a smartphone in
the hospital. Rajabian communicated with WorldViews via a messaging
app, detailing the physical and mental hardship he has endured in
recent months. Starting at the end of October, he and his brother
commenced a hunger strike that, despite a few interruptions, goes on.
They drink water but refuse food in prison. Rajabian claims to have
lost 33 pounds and "40 percent of his vision" during this
time. Rajabian says his brother, who is still in prison, is suffering
from a kidney infection. In the hospital, Rajabian was treated for
internal bleeding in his stomach, among other aliments.
The European Union has been urged to urgently clarify
whether it is helping to fund Iranian anti-narcotics programmes linked
to mass executions. In a letter seen by The Independent, human rights
charity Reprieve raises concerns that as part of a "new page"
in EU-Iran relations announced earlier this year, the EU and member
states could be actively seeking to fund UN programmes linked to
support for Iran's drug police - a body responsible for hundreds of
executions in the country. Reprieve has called for "urgent clarification
of the European Commission's policy on funding counter-narcotics
operations in Iran", following "deeply concerning"
reports in the Iranian media that a senior official in the UN Office on
Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said the EU was actively seeking to provide
support for Iranian drug enforcement operations.
DOMESTIC POLITICS
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani proposed on Sunday a
state budget of about $100 billion for next year, loosening the purse
strings to support economic growth as Donald Trump's election threatens
to put renewed pressure on Tehran... Rouhani announced a draft budget
for the Iranian year that will start on March 21 of 3,200 trillion
rials ($99.7 billion at the official exchange rate), excluding state
enterprises. That is up 9 percent from the plan for the current year.
"Maintaining the growth rate that was launched in the (current)
year is the main economic issue for the country and all economic
policies should be designed around this axis," Rouhani told
parliament in a speech carried live by state television.
Iran's supreme court has upheld the death sentence of a
billionaire businessman who was involved in a high-profile fraud case,
but overturned the sentences of two others who were convicted alongside
him. Babak Zanjani, an Iranian oil billionaire, who had accumulated
astronomical sums thanks to his connections to Iran's powerful elite,
was sentenced to death for economic crimes in March, after failing to
repay the government €2.7bn ($3bn) accumulated by selling crude oil on
behalf of the authorities. Domestic media reported on Saturday that the
Supreme Court had confirmed his death sentence, but overturned those of
Mehdi Shams and Hamid Fallah Heravi... The Zanjani case is part of
president Hassan Rouhani's pledge to fight corruption and investigate
multi-billion-dollar corruption scandals that proliferated under the
fundamentalist government of Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad. The government had
repeatedly called for Zanjani not to be hanged because his death would
bury many of his secrets, protecting the identity of the powerful elite
who helped him accumulate wealth through circumventing sanctions.
FOREIGN AFFAIRS
Israel was embroiled in fresh controversy on Sunday over
its purchase of submarines from German company ThyssenKrupp after
reports that the country's arch-enemy Iran holds a stake in the firm...
Israel sees Iran as its main enemy in the region, and suggestions that
the Islamic republic would benefit from the Jewish state's defence
purchases have made headlines... Media reported that Iranian holding
company IFIC continues to own a 4.5 percent stake in the German firm.
"Israeli money, Iranian profits," a headline in the newspaper
Yedioth Ahronoth said Sunday. ThyssenKrupp told AFP that IFIC owned
around seven percent of the company until May 2003, when it fell below
five percent, without providing details on the size of its current
stake, if any.
OPINION & ANALYSIS
The military officials I spoke with say that Mattis is
the quintessential Marine; it defines everything he does and believes,
from how he treats his soldiers and disciplines his commanders to how
he views the world. Most critically, perhaps, for the United States and
its future, Mattis has embraced the Marine Corps' longstanding
grievance against Iran, one that goes back to the 1980s. In fact,
Mattis' anti-Iran animus is so intense that it led President Barack
Obama to replace him as Centcom commander. It was a move that roiled
Mattis admirers, seeding claims that the president didn't like
"independent-minded generals who speak candidly to their civilian
leaders." But Mattis' Iran antagonism also concerns many of the
Pentagon's most senior officers, who disagree with his assessment and
openly worry whether his Iran views are based on a sober analysis or
whether he's simply reflecting a 30-plus-year-old hatred of the Islamic
Republic that is unique to his service. It's a situation that could
lead to disagreement within the Pentagon over the next four years-but
also, senior Pentagon officials fear, to war. "It's in his
blood," one senior Marine officer told me. "It's almost like
he wants to get even with them."
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