|
TOP STORIES
Russia, Iran and Turkey met in Moscow on Tuesday to
work toward a political accord to end Syria's nearly six-year war,
leaving the United States on the sidelines as the countries sought to
drive the conflict in ways that serve their interests. Secretary of
State John Kerry was not invited. Nor was the United Nations
consulted. With pro-government forces having made critical gains on
the ground, the new alignment and the absence of any Western powers
at the table all but guarantee that President Bashar al-Assad will
continue to rule Syria under any resulting agreement, despite
President Obama's declaration more than five years ago that Mr. Assad
had lost legitimacy and had to be removed... At the meeting, Russia,
Iran and Turkey agreed to "the Moscow Declaration," a
framework for ending the Syrian conflict... Iran's presence is
significant, as well. The original evacuation deal was between Russia
and Turkey and involved only Aleppo. But Shiite militias loyal to Iran
and fighting on the side of Mr. Assad prevented the first buses from
leaving, demanding that the deal be renegotiated to include people
from two Shiite villages in Idlib Province. Iranian officials have
boasted about their fighters' role in Aleppo and that of the Lebanese
Shiite militia Hezbollah, which helped besiege eastern Aleppo before
the evacuation deal. "As Russia has allied with Iran in the
region, it is the coalition of Iran, Russia and Hezbollah that has
caused Aleppo's liberation, and very soon Mosul will also be
liberated," Yahya Rahim Safavi, a military aide to Ayatollah Ali
Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader, said last week. "It shows that
this coalition has an upper hand and the U.S.'s president-elect has
to face its weight."
"[Trump officials] are going to look at the
flight records and say, as per the letter of the law, we are not
going to allow an American company to sell airplanes to companies
that use airplanes to supply terror," a senior congressional
aide who works closely on the issue told TWS. "There are more
ways to [unravel the sale] than there are ways to keep it," the
aide said. "I would be shocked if any actual Boeing planes ever
touched down in Iran." Lawmakers say they have not received
guarantees from the Obama administration that Iran Air has stopped
engaging in illicit activities, despite the nuclear deal allowing
sales to the airline. Iran experts told TWS that the Trump
administration would likely discover sanctionable pursuits in its
review of the airline's activities, which would stymie the sale.
Iran and Russia are sharing a base in Syria to help
coordinate their support for President Bashar Assad's forces, a top
security official in Tehran said Tuesday... "We have a shared
base in Syria where Iran, with Russia's help, does advisory work to
help the Syrian army and the resistance forces," said Ali
Shamkhani, secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, quoted
by Tasnim news agency. He said Russia and Iran worked closely
together "to design the military aspect of the fight against
terrorism" and also coordinated on "the use of Iran's
airspace."
IRAN NUCLEAR DEAL
Iran's foreign minister has told the National Security
and Foreign Policy Committee of the Majlis that the JCPOA joint
commission meeting will be held on January 10. Committee spokesman
Hossein Naqavi Hosseini said on Monday evening that Zarif had briefed
the MPs on the recent developments regarding the nuclear deal between
Tehran and world powers, IRNA reported. Zarif had also said the call
for the JCPOA meeting comes along with the presidential orders to
take action against the extension of the Iran Sanctions Act for
another ten years.
SANCTIONS RELIEF
Rolls-Royce sold equipment to Iran for decades, a
confidential company memo reveals, exploiting a series of loopholes
in US sanctions to avoid breaking the law. The Iranian government
amassed the world's largest collection of the British engineering
group's signature turbine and booked millions of pounds of orders
each year, according to a briefing drafted in 2009 for the company's
then chief executive, Sir John Rose. Trading in Iran appears to have
carried on despite the enormous political risk of being seen to avoid
US sanctions. A quarter of Rolls-Royce's entire £14bn revenue is
generated in the US, with much of that reliant on military contracts.
The company signed orders worth $224m (£181m) from the Department of
Defense in the first half of 2015 alone... Between 1975 and 1995,
state-owned oil and gas firms in Iran procured almost 100 Rolls-Royce
industrial turbines, according to the memo. By 2009, 69 Avon turbines
had been acquired by the National Iranian Oil Company, which is cited
in US sanctions... The company generated £69m of orders in the
country between 2001 and 2009, according to the briefing, and also
signed a "technical assistance agreement" to support a
facility that carried out repairs and overhauls on about 10 turbines
each year.
British engineering company Rolls-Royce denied a
report in The Guardian newspaper on Wednesday that it had in the past
sold equipment to Iran by exploiting a series of loopholes in U.S.
sanctions. "Rolls-Royce refutes any accusation that it has
traded 'in secret' in Iran or that it circumvented U.S.
sanctions," said a Rolls-Royce spokesman in an emailed
statement. "We conduct business in all countries, including
Iran, in accordance with all relevant UK, EU or other national sanctions
and export control regulations. This includes applying for export
licenses, when they are required, and complying strictly with their
terms and conditions."
SYRIA CONFLICT
"Where are you, Oh Arabs, Oh Muslims, while we
are being slaughtered?" An old man's cry, in a video posted
online from Aleppo's ruins, poses an uncomfortable question for the
mainly Sunni Muslim Arab states backing rebels fighting President
Bashar al-Assad and his allies Iran and Russia. For Saudi Arabia,
locked in a regional struggle with Iran, Assad's capture of the rebel
haven reflects a dangerous tilt in the Middle East balance of power
toward Tehran. Dismayed by this boost to Iranian ambitions for a
"Shi'ite crescent" of influence from Afghanistan to the
Mediterranean, Riyadh is determined to reverse Tehran's gains sooner
or later... The monarchies are frustrated with President Barack
Obama's light touch approach to the war - relying on local fighters
instead of large U.S. military deployments or missile strikes.
President-elect Donald Trump poses an intriguing contrast.
TERRORISM
An Iranian Kurdish armed opposition group accused Iran
on Wednesday of a bombing that killed five of its fighters and an
Iraqi Kurdish policeman in northern Iraq. A twin explosion late on
Tuesday hit the offices of the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan
(PDKI) in Koy Sanjaq, east of Erbil, the capital of the autonomous
Iraqi Kurdish region. After the first blast, a second, larger one
went off as members of the group and police rushed to the spot, PDKI
central committee member Asso Hassan Zadeh told Reuters. "There
is no doubt that it's the Iranian regime," Hassan Zadeh said,
speaking at the fighters' funerals. "But in any case we will not
stop our struggle." In June and July, PDKI fighters fought
Iranian Revolutionary Guards in northwestern Iran, with several
killed on both sides. Hassan Zadeh said Iranian forces had initiated
those clashes.
HUMAN RIGHTS
Prof Homa Hoodfar is a dual national Canadian Iranian
who was held by Iranian intelligence and detained for over 100 days
at Tehran's Evin prison earlier this year. Recalling her time in
captivity, she tells Stephen Sackur: "They told me 'you're going
to be here 10 to 15 years and by then you'll be dead so we'll send
your body back to Canada in a casket'". They had sought to make
her and others cry but they failed in her case because "I had
accepted my fate". As a professor of anthropology she tells how
she turned the tables on them and started to observe their methods.
OPINION & ANALYSIS
When the JCPOA was concluded, every party, including
the Iranian negotiators, was aware of the sanctions stipulated under
the ISA. As such, they discussed the issue extensively and based on
Annex II of the JCPOA, Iran agreed that the US administration would
waive the enforcement of many ISA provisions that prevented Iran from
conducting business with the world. Upon confirmation of Iran's full
implementation of its initial nuclear-related obligations on January
16, 2016, the Obama administration waived the right to implement sanctions
for investment and involvement in Iran's gas, oil, and petrochemical
industries. Sanctions were also waived to allow for the sale of
gasoline to Iran and associated services to Iran's energy sector,
such as transportation of Iranian crude oil. In other words, the
situation remains the same today as it did when the nuclear accord
was signed. The extension of the ISA still grants authority to the US
administration to waive the sanctions under the ISA and the JCPOA
commits the US to waiving the enforcement of those sanctions. Nothing
has changed. As Kerry rightly said in his statement, "Extension
of the Iran Sanctions Act does not affect in any way the scope of the
sanctions relief Iran is receiving under the deal or the ability of
companies to do business in Iran consistent with the JCPOA. The Iran
Sanctions Act was in place at the time the JCPOA was negotiated and
has remained so throughout the deal's implementation."
The UK-based #FreeNazanin campaign gathered outside
Downing Street on December 19 to call for British Foreign Mininster
Boris Johnson to take immediate and direct action to release Nazanin
Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who has been detained in Iran since early April
2016. Zaghari-Ratcliffe's husband Richard Ratcliffe and family,
members of the Belsize community choir conducted by opera singer
Chelsea Hart, and dozens of supporters from the Ratcliffes'
neighborhood and across the capital, as well as Amnesty International
activists, took part in the #carolsforNazanin event outside Downing
Street, where both the prime minister and the chancellor of the
exchequer have their official residence. Carolers carried candles and
displayed #FreeNazanin and other posters, many of them calling for
Foreign Minister Johnson to "buck up" and help secure the
charity worker and mother's release. Also at the event was
Iranian-Canadian academic Homa Hoodfar, who was detained in Iran in
June and held in Evin Prison until her release on September 26.
"The second week I was there, I shared a cell with Nazanin for
one night," she told IranWire. "But they separated us once
they knew that there were two political prisoners in the same cell. I
did see her on other occasions, especially when they were
transporting us to court. We were in the same car, although we were
not allowed to talk." Hoodfar expressed anger and dismay at the
continued incarceration of Nazanin, a charity worker - as well
as at the hypocrisy of Iranian authorities. "For a state that
claims that family is so important, and that family morality is so
important, to treat a young mother in this way is really sad and
immoral," she said.
|
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment