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TOP STORIES
Few countries have benefited from the oil market's
2016 recovery like Iran. Since sanctions on its economy were eased in
January, the Persian Gulf producer has doubled exports as prices
rallied and won approval from OPEC last month to pump even more while
other members cut. The key to continued growth will be attracting
foreign investment to the energy industry. "Iran is definitely
better off than they started the year," said Carsten Fritsch, an
analyst at Commerzbank AG in Frankfurt. "Further expansion plans
for production have reached a plateau. They need foreign
investment." ... While the country has reached several
preliminary agreements with international companies, it has yet to
sign any concrete deals to boost crude production since Oil Minister
Bijan Namdar Zanganeh outlined more than 50 potential projects at a
Tehran conference in November of last year.
The appointment of ultra-conservative hardliner
Gholam-Hossein Gheibparvar as the new commander of Iran's Basij, a
volunteer militia under the authority of the Revolutionary Guards,
has raised fears of increased intimidation and repression of anyone
deemed guilty of political dissent. Brigadier General Gheibparvar
believes, in contrast to the Constitution, that the Revolutionary
Guards holds the authority to interfere in all aspects of life in the
Islamic Republic to protect the revolution. His track record of
iron-fist policies significantly contributed to his rise in Iran's
military apparatus. His predecessor, Mohammad Reza Naghdi-who was put
on the U.S. sanctions list in 2011 for "being responsible for or
complicit in serious human rights abuses in Iran since the June 2009
disputed presidential election"-was similarly appointed as Basij
commander in 2009 because of his reputation as the ruthless head of
Tehran' police intelligence unit in the 1990s.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) says it expects
Iran's economic growth to reach as high as 6.6 percent for the
Persian calendar year that started in March 2016. The IMF announced
in a statement that higher oil production and exports would be
particularly instrumental in boosting Iran's economic growth that was
in recession last year. "Higher oil production and exports,
after implementation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action
(JCPOA) should allow real GDP growth to rebound to 6.6 percent in
2016/17," the Fund added in its statement. "Growth is
projected to ease to 3.5 percent in 2017/18 as oil production
normalizes and non-oil sector growth remains modest." On
Saturday, Iran's Finance Minister Ali Tayyebniya said Iran's average
economic growth for the current Calendar year had already exceeded
expectations and reached above 5 percent.
NUCLEAR & BALLISTIC MISSILE
PROGRAM
Iran's atomic agency says it will begin exporting less
heavy water because of an oversupply in the international market.
State TV quotes agency spokesman Behrouz Kamalvandi as saying on
Tuesday that Iran will export some 20 tons of the material annually
from now on. That's much less that the 70 tons of heavy water that
the country exported to the United States, Russia and Oman since last
year's nuclear agreement went into effect in January. A recent report
by the U.N. nuclear watchdog said that Iran had exceeded its heavy
water limit by 100 kilograms (about 220 pounds) over the 130 metric
tons allowed.
Spokesman of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran
(AEOI) Behrouz Kamalvandi announced that the country would inject gas
into its latest generation of centrifuge machines, IR8, in the next
few weeks. "The IR8 tests have ended and they will enter the
stage of gas injection in the next few weeks," Kamalvandi told
reporters in a press conference in Tehran on Tuesday. The gas
injection into the IR8 will be carried out under a paragraph of the
nuclear deal that allow research activities on the eighth generation
of Iran's centrifuge machines, known as the IR8... Iranian Deputy
Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araqchi had announced in August 2015 the
country's plans to produce the necessary fuel for 5 to 6 nuclear
reactors using its IR8 centrifuges in the next 15 years.
SANCTIONS RELIEF
The Central Bank of Iran, in its latest report on the
country's economic growth, said the gross domestic product during the
first half of the current fiscal year (started March 20) grew 7.4%
compared with last year's corresponding period. According to the CBI
report, most of the growth came from the oil sector.
Central Bank of Iran (CBI) announced that the gross
domestic product grew 7.4 percent in the first half of the current
fiscal year (started March 20) compared to the figure for the same
period last year. CBI figures further indicated that Iran's economy
recorded a 9.2-percent growth in the second quarter of this fiscal
year. This was the highest economic growth in the last 15 years and
among the top in four decades... In the auto sector,
car-manufacturers increased production by 30 percent in the first
half of the year, which constituted one percent of the 7.4-percent
economic growth. Auto makers may account for up to two percent of the
country's GDP growth by the end of the current fiscal year...
Meanwhile, the high economic growth has raised a question. "Why
do the people not feel the impacts of the 7.4-percent economic growth
on their lives?"
Iran and Germany's Medio Energy company have inked an
MoU worth about 104 million dollars over construction of two wind and
solar power plants in the south of Iran.
Khuzestan Regional Electricity Company of Iran and
Germany's Medio Energy Invest GmbH & Co. KG have sealed two
Memoranda of Understanding (MoUs) with an aggregate total value of
approximately 104 million dollars in order to build two solar and
wind power stations in southern Iranian cities of Shushtar and
Bandar-e Mahshahr. Mahmoud Dashtbozorg, Managing Director of
Khuzestan Regional Electricity Company, expounded on details of the
two agreements with Germans saying "the cooperation agreement
with Medio Energy company has been signed in line with development of
renewable energy technologies as well as investment attraction."
"The deal covers construction and implementation of a
20-megawwat solar power house in Shushtar through direct investment
worth 24 million euros in addition to building and operation of a
wind power plant in Bandar-e Mahshahr with a capacity of 50 megawatts
and value of 80 million euros," he added.
Iran's oil minister said Total will equip Phase 11 of
the country's South Pars gas field with a pressure booster station to
regularly pomp 2 billion cubic feet of gas per day for nearly 20
years as part of a deal between Tehran and the French energy giant.
Speaking to Tasnim on Monday, Bijan Namdar Zanganeh said, "Total
will accept the responsibility to install a pressure booster station
in Phase 11 to fix its output at 2 billion cubic feet per day for 15
to 20 years". Earlier, Iran and Total signed an agreement over
the development of South Pars Phase 11. The deal involves a
consortium led by Total, which also includes the China National
Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) and Iran's Petropars.
German auto giant, Volkswagen, has signaled keenness
to ground up natural gas vehicles (NGV) in Iran, an official said.
Director of the CNG project of the National Iranian Oil Products
Distribution Company Ali Mehrabi has told a press conference on
Sunday that foreign companies, including Germany's Volkswagen have
welcomed projects to manufacture NGV parts in Iran. "In
order to manufacture and sell car parts in Iran, foreign companies
must build factories inside the country," he said.
Russia's media say the country's aviation giant Sukhoi
has signed a basic agreement with Iran to sell its Superjet 100
planes. Interfax news agency announced in a report that the agreement
- which has been signed with an unnamed Iranian company - enables both
sides to study the projected sales. The news agency quoted an
anonymous Russia aviation official as confirming the development. The
official added, however, that the agreement was still not binding.
Hossein Alaei, the head of Iran's Aseman Airlines, had earlier said
his company was negotiating with Sukhoi as well as several other
leading global plane makers to renovate its fleet. Alaei added that
Sukhoi had carried out trial flights of its Superjet 100 last week in
Tehran - what he said had been carried out at the invitation of
Aseman Airlines.
Poland's biggest oil refiner PKN Orlen said on
Wednesday it bought 1 million barrels of Iranian Light oil from
National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC). The state-run PKN, which mostly
refines Russian oil, said that the Iranian oil will be delivered to
Naftoport in Gdansk in January and then transported to PKN's refinery
in Plock. "The processing of the feedstock most recently
delivered from Iran will be a basis for further plans regarding
supplies from that direction," PKN said in a statement.
Talks were underway at Iran's Elecomp for cooperating
with Germany's CeBIT, the global event for digital business held
every year in Hannover. "CeBit and Elecomp are two events of
similar nature and features representing a large spectrum of
technologies and IT services, and there are grounds for mutual
cooperation," said Martina Lübon, the executive director of
CeBIT. "We decided to take the first step in that direction by
setting up our booth at Elecomp 2016 and registered Iran's National
ICT Guild Organization at CeBit 2017 to update one another on the
events as well as provide an opportunity for industrialists and
players in the field to get familiar with the abilities and
potentials in both countries," she added.
SYRIA CONFLICT
On Friday, photos emerged of Qassem Soleimani, the
commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Qods Force,
in conquered eastern Aleppo, Syria. Another photo showed him by the
Citadel of Aleppo. It was not immediately clear when the photos were
taken.
The US State Department said on Monday that top
Iranian commander Qassem Soleimani's visit to Syria's besieged city
of Aleppo this week violated UN Security Council resolutions
regarding the nuclear deal, but said the US would not lay out steps
to address the behavior. "We do intend to consult with our
partners on the security council about how to address our concerns
with this," State Department Spokesman John Kirby said during a
press briefing. "We've long said that Iran needs to choose
whether it's going to play a positive role in helping peacefully
resolve conflicts, such as in Syria, or whether it will choose to
prolong them. And you're absolutely right, his travel was a
violation. "He's one of the designated individuals. No exemption
to the travel ban was sought, and so it does constitute a violation
of UNSCR 2231. As I said, we will - we fully anticipate bringing this
up inside the council."
IRAQ CRISIS
Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei on Sunday praised
the mainly Shiite government-sanctioned Iraqi Popular Mobilization
Units (PMU) as a "national treasure," his official website
said... Khamenei went on to describe PMU as an "asset for the
present and the future that should be supported." In late
November, the Iraqi parliament gave PMU its legal status, making it a
"back-up and reserve" force for the military and police and
empower them to "deter" security and terror threats facing
the country. Khamenei made his remarks during a meeting with the head
of the Shiite Iraqi Islamic Supreme Council Ammar al-Hakim... A
number of PMU officials also ratified the allegiance of the militias
to Tehran, including Hamid al-Jaziri when he said "the popular
Mobilization leaders were raised in the arms of the Iranian
regime," the Iranian Press agency Mizan quoted him as saying.
Jaziri also added that PMU considers itself a "state under the
jurisdiction of the Guardianship of the Islamic Jurist [Khamenei],
and does not recognize borders."
TERRORISM
Annie Murray had no idea how her champagne-colored
2009 Toyota Land Cruiser made its way from her hometown of Columbus,
Ga., to a dirt parking lot in West Africa. She drove that car to
church every week until circumstance, bad luck and the repo man took
it away last winter. Her Toyota landed in Benin-at a car lot U.S.
officials have alleged was a front for a global money-laundering
network benefiting Hezbollah, the Shiite militant group backed by
Iran. The Land Cruiser had traveled more than 5,700 miles along a
well-worn U.S.-Benin trade route that federal agents thought they had
cleaned up five years ago in a terror-finance case. The U.S. alleged
at the time that hundreds of millions of dollars from overseas car
sales were mixed with profits from Latin American drug cartels and
deposited at a Lebanese bank that cooperated in the money laundering.
Hezbollah took a cut for handling the deal, and some money returned
to U.S. car dealers to buy more vehicles, according to federal
investigators and a 2011 lawsuit filed by the U.S. attorney's office
in New York.
HUMAN RIGHTS
In an interview with the International Campaign for
Human Rights in Iran, Iranian Nobel Laureate Shirin Ebadi held
President Hassan Rouhani directly responsible for "every
Intelligence Ministry violation" and criticized his failure to
uphold the Constitution. "I warn Mr. Rouhani and hold him
responsible for the unlawful actions taking place in the Intelligence
Ministry because the ministry is part of his cabinet," said
Ebadi on December 10, 2016, Human Rights Day. "Mr. Rouhani
should at least say he has no authority over the Intelligence
Ministry," added Ebadi, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in
2003. "But he hasn't said it and until he clearly does, he's
responsible for every Intelligence Ministry violation, including the
imprisonment of people based on false and biased Intelligence
Ministry reports." The Intelligence Ministry is directly
involved in imposing illegal and arbitrary restrictions on the
activities of independent and non-governmental organizations,
activists and dissidents. In addition to directing and aiding
hundreds of cases of arbitrary arrests every year and laying false
charges against the defendants, the ministry also illegally
interferes with judicial processes.
Prisoner of conscience Nazanin Zaghari Ratcliffe, a British-Iranian
charity worker held in Tehran's Evin Prison, told her husband on 25
November that Revolutionary Guard officials had pressured her to
choose between moving her two-year-old daughter, Gabriella Ratcliffe,
into Section 2A of Evin Prison with her for up to three days a week
or sign a document to say that she does not want "the right to
be with her young daughter". There are no suitable facilities
for children inside Evin Prison. In her last phone call with her
husband on 2 December, Nazanin Zaghari Ratcliffe said that neither
choice is acceptable to her and what she requests from the
authorities instead is more regular visits - either a day-long visit
or two half-day visits each week - with her daughter. She is
currently allowed to have only one hour-long visit per week.
In a public letter the former Italian Ambassador to
Iran, Roberto Toscano, condemned the arrest and now three-month
detention of dual Iranian-American citizen Karan Vafadari and his
wife, Afarin Niasari, whom he called among "the most dignified
people I have met during the five years I spent as Italy's ambassador
to Tehran." Ambassador Toscano, in an open letter shared with
the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran and published
here for the first time, wrote that it was "impossible" for
him to remain silent after learning of the arrests. The couple, art
gallery owners in Tehran and prominent in the Iranian artistic and
cultural community, have been held at Evin Prison, without access to
counsel, ever since their arrest in July 2016 by agents of Iran's
Revolutionary Guards Intelligence Organization-allegedly for
"engaging in corruption and depravity" and serving alcohol
at their home.
A state crackdown on social media ahead of Iran's 2017
presidential election has resulted in the Cyber Police (FATA)
requiring Iranian-owned channels with more than 5,000 followers on
the country's most popular messaging application, Telegram, to seek
official permits. Meanwhile, several Iranian-owned Telegram channels
have been hacked by state agents, according to an investigation by
the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran. In early
December 2016, FATA targeted Telegram channels with 300,000 to
500,000 members that mainly contained posts about entertainment and
other non-political issues. The accounts of these channels were
hacked just a few days after their administrators were summoned and
questioned by FATA. In one case, state hackers accessed a Telegram channel
administrator's Yahoo email account-after hijacking his two-step
password verification process on Yahoo-which enabled them to gain
access to his Telegram account.
Tehran's police chief officer announced the arrest of
1,200 Internet users in the Iranian capital Tehran during a period of
eight months on "moral and social charges, embezzlement, fraud,
data theft, and prohibited activities on social media and smartphone
apps." Gen. Hussein Sajdi Nia said that 986 men and 298 women were
captured during this period after being detected by the
anti-cyber-crimes police FATA, according to "Basij Press"
of the Basij militias. According to Tehran's police chief, many of
the crimes like data theft occurred through social networking
applications such as Tango, Telegram, and Instagram.
FOREIGN AFFAIRS
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani is to set off for a
tour of three Asian countries to discuss ways of improving mutual
relations. Heading a high-ranking politico-economic delegation,
Rouhani will leave Tehran for Armenia on Wednesday on the first leg
of his Asian tour, which will also take him to Kazakhstan and
Kyrgyzstan, Iranian president's deputy chief of staff for
communications and information, Parviz Esmaeili, said on Sunday...
During his day-long visit to Yerevan, Rouhani plans to hold talks
with Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan on the expansion of
cooperation... He said the Iranian chief executive will then travel
to the Kazakh capital, Astana, for a one-day visit. Rouhani is
scheduled to meet with Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev and
attend a joint press conference with him while high-ranking
delegations of the two countries will also hold a meeting and senior
officials will sign documents for further cooperation, he added. On
the last leg of his regional tour, Rouhani will head for Bishkek to
hold talks with Kyrgyz President Almazbek Atambayev and senior
officials of the country, Esmaeili said.
DOMESTIC POLITICS
They loiter on pedestrian bridges, puffing on pipes.
They squat behind bushes and palm trees in leafy parks to get their
fix. Even doctors and nurses are users. Iran's drug problem has
become a national epidemic, health ministry officials and local
doctors say, drawing the poor as well as the affluent, the secular as
well as the pious, to an assortment of hard drugs including crystal
meth, painkillers, synthetic hallucinogens and heroin and opium
trafficked from neighboring Afghanistan. "No walk of society is
immune. Even the sons of Islamic clerics are patients in our
clinics," said Dr. Hasan Razavi, who runs a small rehabilitation
center in western Tehran. The United Nations Office of Drugs and
Crime says Iran has one of the gravest addiction crises in the world.
Health ministry officials estimate there are 2.2 million drug addicts
in this country of 80 million, 2.75% of the population, but
doctors who operate some of the hundreds of government-sanctioned
rehab clinics nationwide believe the actual figures are higher.
At the Dec. 11 ceremony to introduce Gholamhossein
Gheybparvar as the new head of Iran's paramilitary Basij, Gen.
Mohammad Shirazi, the head of military affairs at the Office of the
Supreme Leader, recounted that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei realized that a
number of "ill-tempered" individuals were angry with
Gheybparvar when he visited the southern city of Shiraz. In Shirazi's
telling, rather than being upset, Khamenei saw this as showing
Gheybparvar's "perseverance and [being on the] correct
path." While this story at first glance seems inconsequential,
the supreme leader has presented it in Iranian media as a ringing
endorsement.
OPINION & ANALYSIS
One of the major questions for policymakers following
Donald Trump's election as U.S. president is what to do about Iran?
This is a puzzle not just in Washington but in Europe, too. Since the
conclusion of nuclear negotiations with the Islamic Republic,
European countries have signed hundreds of memoranda of understanding
and declarations of intent, and have engaged in negotiations for
contracts in practically every field of economic activity: banking,
finance, oil and gas, transportation, infrastructure, engineering,
even dual-use technologies that could see both civilian and military
applications. Italy has led the way. Following former Prime Minister
Matteo Renzi's example, government ministers have announced dozens of
initiatives and programs with their Iranian counterparts. These
initiatives involve not only trade but also defense. The Italian
Navy, for example, has carried out joint anti-piracy exercises with
Iran. The nuclear deal has represented the best opportunity for all
those who have vested interests in Iran's supposedly lucrative market
to promote a misleading depiction of the country's ruling regime.
According to this deeply flawed narrative - seemingly taken for
granted by most European institutions and member states - President
Hassan Rouhani's Iran has suddenly stopped being a major threat to
international and regional stability. The truth could not be more
different. Major sectors of the Iranian economy are dominated by the
Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, an internationally recognized
terrorist organization - as was pointed out at a recent conference on
Iran held at the Italian Senate and sponsored by United Against
Nuclear Iran. It is difficult to do business in the country without
enriching the armed group and its front companies and helping to
support its activities, which include kidnapping, politically motivated
arrests, terrorism, cyber espionage and cyber terrorism. Iran's
Western partners risk having blood on their hands.
With much regret, Rosen said his goodbyes and left
Iran in 1969 and moved to Washington, D.C. In the mid 70s he worked
as chief of Voice of America's Central Asian Service. But in late
1978, as revolutionary feeling in Iran was escalating, the US Embassy
there sought to hire more Farsi speakers, and Rosen was offered a job
there as the embassy's press attaché... "The big error in my
life was going back to Iran in March of that year," Rosen says.
"I should have thought more about my family and my wife and
young children, but I somehow thought this would be important and
exciting." In November 1979, student supporters of Ayatollah
Khomeini stormed the embassy and took Rosen and 51 of his colleagues
hostage for 444 days. "The living conditions were
horrible," he says. "In some places, the cells were in
total darkness. I thought that it was pure torture. Sometimes in the
middle of the night, they would open up the cells and point automatic
weapons at our heads. Those were moments of great terror. I'm
terribly angry about how they treated us." ... Rosen's captors,
he says, looked with greater suspicion on those embassy staff that
spoke Farsi. "There was always this idea that I was a member of
the CIA or whatever. They accused me of plotting against the regime.
They were going to put me on trial." ... Rosen was released,
along with his colleagues, on January 20, 1981. After Donald Trump
was elected president on November 8, 2016, IranWire asked Rosen how
the Trump presidency would affect US-Iran relations. "I think
Trump will want to renegotiate the nuclear agreement and will do it
because the spirit of the agreement hasn't held," Rosen says.
"He might even go as far as abrogating the nuclear
agreement." Iran, he says, continues its human rights violations
at home and terrorism abroad. He cites the example of Syria. He also
points out that he and the 51 other embassy staff held hostage in
1979 have yet to receive compensation for their ordeal. "I'd
rather have the money go to us for pain and suffering than go to Iran
as sanctions relief," he says.
While the attorney general does not have any big role
to play directly in terms of the Iran deal, he is, however,
responsible for enforcing and prosecuting key legislation that could
affect the deal. Suppose, for example, that he decided to prosecute
an Iranian for procuring dual-use items that are covered under the
deal's procurement channel, but does not first use the dispute
resolution mechanism that is in place under the Iran deal. What kind
of tension might this cause between Washington and Tehran? In fact,
the Obama administration has been quite mindful of these
perceptions-deciding to take a hands-off approach to pursuing new
indictments that may rock the boat so far as the deal is concerned.
The FBI, for example, has several cases that are essentially on hold
out of fear of upending the agreement. In other words, the Justice
Department's actions can carry a ripple effect... If Sessions'
Justice Department aggressively pursues violations of non-nuclear
sanctions, export controls, or other criminal violations against
Iranian entities, Tehran may claim foul. Suppose, for example, that
the FBI is free to move forward its cases that have been on hold
since the negotiations. If the United States does not first use the
dispute resolution mechanism, Tehran may view Washington as acting in
bad faith.
Victory in Aleppo matters enormously for both sides,
but when the dust finally settles in Aleppo, it counts for more in
Iran. Securing Syria's second city and industrial heart is much less
to do with re-establishing state sovereignty than about asserting its
own influence and agenda in the strategic heart of the region. Aleppo
is a crossroads in Iran's project to build a land corridor to the
Mediterranean coast. It is also likely to be a new centre of Tehran's
geopolitical projection, which has been on open display elsewhere in
the conflict. Iranian officials have directly negotiated with the
opposition militia, Ahrar al-Sham, about the fate of the battered
opposition-held town of Zabadani, west of Damascus. Iran proposed a
swap of the town's Sunnis, who would be sent to Idlib province, for
the residents of Fua and Kefraya, who would in turn be relocated to
Zabadani. "The Iranians want no Sunnis between Damascus and the
Lebanese border," said one senior Lebanese official yesterday.
"There is a very clear plan to change the sectarian tapestry of
the border." In the Damascus suburb of Darayya, where opposition
communities surrendered in August, and accepted being flown to Idlib,
300 Shia families from Iraq have moved in. Further to the west, near
the Zainab shrine, Iran has bought substantial numbers of properties,
and also sponsored the arrival of Shia families, securing the area as
a bridgehead before Zabadani. Securing corridors of influence with
Shia communities marks, potentially, Iran's most assertive moment
since the Islamic revolution of 1979, after which Tehran's proxies
have gradually projected its influence, through Hezbollah, through
the US invasion of Iraq - which switched political power from Sunnis
to Shias - and now through the chaos of Syria.
It's the "dumbest" deal he's ever seen. On
the hustings, that was Donald Trump's constant refrain about
President Obama's Iran nuclear deal - the Joint Comprehensive Plan of
Action (JCPOA). And given that he pegs NAFTA as the "worst trade
deal maybe ever signed anywhere, but certainly ever signed in this
country," that must make the JCPOA pretty, pretty dumb. That
means it would be dumb not to fix it. The president-elect has a
golden opportunity to do just that. He need not rip up the agreement.
He just needs to do what he committed to do: Restore constitutional
order... For his part, Trump has been ambiguous, perhaps
strategically so, on how he intends to handle the Iran deal,
variously suggesting that he would tear it up, restructure it, or -
in a significant departure from the Obama administration - hold the
mullahs to its strict letter. I would propose a different tack: Trump
should treat the Iran deal the way it should have been treated all
along - as a treaty. Doing so would help President Trump accomplish
two critical objectives in one fell swoop. First, without necessarily
dismantling any benefits Obama may have secured, Trump would lawfully
transfer to himself the power to renegotiate the deal on better terms
- the signature skill on which he built his successful White House
bid. Second, he would reverse a perilous constitutional setback that
purports to create American legal obligations through international
proceedings in which powers hostile to the United States - Russia,
China, and Iran itself - weigh in, but the American people's elected
representatives are frozen out. It cannot be stressed enough that the
Iran deal is not law, at least for the most part (more on that caveat
momentarily).
Today's competition between Turkey and Iran is the
latest iteration of an old power game: a struggle their progenitors,
the Byzantine and Persian empires, started over the control of
Mesopotamia - today's Iraq and Syria. While the rivalry outlived
their transformation from empires to nation-states, they have managed
to keep the peace between themselves for nearly 200 years. Yet Turkey
and Iran are now on a collision course, mostly because of their
involvement as the region's major Sunni and Shiite powers in the
deepening sectarian conflicts in Iraq and Syria. Their inability to
accommodate each other has the potential to undermine or even undo
the strong ties they have developed over the past two decades, as
their economies became increasingly intertwined. How the two
countries choose to deploy their power and whether they can overcome
their differences are vitally important to determining the future of
the Middle East. Left unchecked, the present dynamics point toward
greater bloodshed, growing instability and greater risks of direct -
even if inadvertent - military confrontation.
This holiday season, as families in the United States
gather, we are reminded of all the missed holidays, bittersweet
birthdays, and family occasions where a mother, brother, friend, or
neighbor was missing because a government chose to muzzle their
voices and lock them up. So throughout this holiday season, the
United States government will be profiling the cases of prisoners
unjustly held around the world and the families they leave behind.
The stories of these individuals will highlight the broader struggle
faced by so many families of political prisoners, who have to
commemorate countless family occasions with loved ones behind bars.
It is, of course, fitting to launch such a campaign on Human Rights
Day, as these prisoners were detained for exercising their universal
rights. These prisoners represent thousands of other prisoners
unjustly detained around the world... Narges Mohammadi, a prominent
human rights defender, had been arrested before for her work against
the death penalty and oppression in Iran. But this time, she wasn't
released as she had been before. In May 2015, she was arrested,
convicted, and sentenced to 16 years in jail. She is critically ill
and requires ongoing specialized medical care, which she cannot
receive in prison. Her young twin children have been awaiting their
mother's return for Nowruz, the most important holiday for Iranians.
Nowruz means a "new day" when all family members get
together to celebrate the New Year. Imagining a Nowruz without Narges
around the table is unbearable for the family, especially for her
children. We call on the Government of Iran to release Narges
Mohammadi immediately and reunite her with her family.
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