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TOP STORIES
The State Department on Tuesday acknowledged
President-elect Donald Trump can exit President Obama's nuclear
agreement with Iran. "It's not a formal treaty, and, of course,
no one else can prevent any party to this agreement from walking
away," spokesman Mark Toner told reporters Tuesday, according to
The Washington Examiner... Toner added extending expiring legislation
that levied sanctions on Iran is not in violation of the agreement's
conditions. "We obviously reject those views," he said. "We've
been very clear that what we call a 'clean' extension of the Iran
Sanctions Act is entirely consistent with our commitments in the
[Iran deal]."
Iran's president said on Tuesday that he simply would
not allow President-elect Donald J. Trump to tear up last year's
nuclear agreement and warned of unspecified consequences if he did.
"He wants to do many things," Iran's president, Hassan
Rouhani, said of Mr. Trump in a speech. During the campaign, Mr. Trump
called the nuclear agreement "a bad deal" that he promised
to "tear up." "He wants to undermine the
J.C.P.O.A.," Mr. Rouhani said, referring to the agreement, the
Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. "He wants to tear up the
J.C.P.O.A. Will we or our nation allow this?" As Mr. Rouhani
posed the question, the audience began chanting, "Death to
America." In the speech, which was delivered at Tehran
University and televised nationally, Mr. Rouhani maintained that
"America cannot influence our determination, this nation's
resistance and its struggle." He continued: "America is our
enemy; we have no doubt about this. The Americans want to put as much
pressure on us as they can."
Britain will help Gulf states "push back"
against aggressive regional actions by Iran, Prime Minister Theresa
May told the Gulf Cooperation Council in Bahrain on Wednesday in a
televised address... "We must... continue to confront state
actors whose influence fuels instability in the region," May
told Gulf leaders at their annual summit. "So I want to assure
you that I am clear-eyed about the threat that Iran poses to the Gulf
and to the wider Middle East." She added: "We must... work
together to push back against Iran's aggressive regional
actions."
NUCLEAR & BALLISTIC MISSILE
PROGRAM
The UN's atomic watchdog has verified that Iran has
exported enough nuclear-grade heavy water to come back into line with
last year's landmark deal with the West, a diplomatic source said
Tuesday. The International Atomic Energy Agency has told member
states that it has "verified that 11 metric tonnes of
nuclear-grade heavy water have arrived at its destination," the
source told AFP. This brings Iran's stock of heavy water back below
the 130-tonne level set out in the nuclear accord with world powers
that came into force in January, the watchdog told its members. Heavy
water is not itself radioactive, but is used in certain types of
reactor. Plutonium for use in nuclear weapons can be extracted from
the spent fuel of such reactors.
U.S.-IRAN RELATIONS
Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian, who spent 18
months detained in an Iranian prison before his release in January,
will write a book about his ordeal for Ecco. The memoir, tentatively
titled "Hostage: 544 Days, 400 Million Dollars, the Nuclear Deal
& Me," is scheduled for publication in 2018. "Not
knowing when I would get out was an incredible ordeal for my family
and me to endure," says Rezaian, who is studying at Harvard on a
Nieman Fellowship. "Now that it's over, the hard work of putting
my life back together continues, and that, too, has included many
incredible and often surreal moments."
CONGRESSIONAL ACTION
Top Democratic lawmakers are challenging the Obama
administration's decision to keep a range of unclassified documents
related to the Iran nuclear deal away from the public eye, amid
mounting calls from Trump insiders and Republican lawmakers urging
the incoming Trump administration to release the documents.
Democratic senators who both supported and opposed the Iran deal told
THE WEEKLY STANDARD on Tuesday that the relevant documents, which
have been reported to include secret concessions to Iran, should not
be kept in the secure locations on Capitol Hill known as Sensitive
Compartmented Information Facilities (SCIFs), where they cannot be
accessed by the public and some congressional staffers. "Unless
there's a damn good reason to keep them out of the public eye, turn
them over," said Montana senator Jon Tester, who voted in favor
of the deal. "I'm more on the side of transparency than not,
that is for sure. ... But that's a first blush, not really knowing
what's in them." Delaware senator Chris Coons, who also voted
for the deal, questioned why the unclassified documents were being
held in a location normally used for top secret files. "If
they're unclassified, what are they doing in a SCIF?" he said.
"The entire purpose of a SCIF is to be a place where you can
read classified documents."
Iran's destabilizing actions across the Middle East
constitute a security threat that rivals that of Tehran's nuclear
ambitions, Republican and Democratic U.S. senators said Tuesday.
"Iranian proxies remain a direct threat to the United States and
our allies today," said the chairman of the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee, Republican Bob Corker of Tennessee, pointing to
Lebanese Hezbollah, Shia militias in Iraq, and Houthi insurgents
operating from Yemen, as well as Tehran's influence in Syria.
"American citizens, uniformed and civilian, have been victims of
Iranian terror. Iran-sponsored [entities], directed, trained and
equipped are a threat to U.S. forces and American citizens
today," said the committee's top Democrat, Senator Ben Cardin of
Maryland. "This is a problem that directly threatens U.S.
security. In my consultations with leaders in the region, it is crystal
clear that Iranian terrorism is on equal grounds with the nuclear
threat [posed by Tehran]," Cardin added.
SANCTIONS RELIEF
Royal Dutch Shell PLC is expected to agree on
Wednesday to develop a major Iranian oil field, a spokeswoman for the
country's oil ministry said, signaling that giant energy companies
won't be deterred by President-elect Donald Trump's pledge to undo
the Iran nuclear deal. Total SA of France on Wednesday is also
negotiating an investment in its second big Iranian energy
development, the spokeswoman told The Wall Street Journal. The oil
ministry initially said Total would be part of Wednesday's
announcement. The return of Shell would be a breakthrough for Iran's
energy industry, which has been slow to attract investments from the
world's biggest oil companies since the U.S. and other world powers
lifted sanctions related to Tehran's nuclear program... The
announcement will be for a so-called "heads of agreement,"
a nonbinding pact that falls short of a contract but publicly commits
the companies to begin hashing out a partnership with Iran's state
oil company.
Marriott International, the US-listed hotel operator,
said it was "very keen" to enter the Iranian market pending
the removal of legal barriers, with a spokesman from the hotel chain
saying there is strong demand in Iran for hotels. Alex Kyriakidis,
president and managing director for the Middle East and Africa at
Marriott, said that Iran represents a "substantial market"
to be responded to in terms of demand for hotels. "Today,
Marriott International, being a United States publicly-floated
company, is precluded from doing business in Iran. Depending on what
happens in the future and what agreements are reached between the
United States and Iran, if the doors open legally to do business in
Iran, we would be very keen to pursue that opportunity," he
said... In late October, a top spokesman at Viceroy Hotel Group, told
Gulf News the company was eyeing Iran, but would prefer to see other
hotels' experience in that market first before launching a property
there.
IRAQ CRISIS
In the early days of the assault on Islamic State in
Mosul, Iran successfully pressed Iraq to change its battle plan and
seal off the city, an intervention which has since shaped the tortuous
course of the conflict, sources briefed on the plan say. The original
campaign strategy called for Iraqi forces to close in around Mosul in
a horseshoe formation, blocking three fronts but leaving open the
fourth - to the west of the city leading to Islamic State territory
in neighboring Syria. That model, used to recapture several Iraqi
cities from the ultra-hardline militants in the last two years, would
have left fighters and civilians a clear route of escape and could
have made the Mosul battle quicker and simpler. But Tehran, anxious
that retreating fighters would sweep back into Syria just as Iran's
ally President Bashar al-Assad was gaining the upper hand in his
country's five-year civil war, wanted Islamic State crushed and
eliminated in Mosul. The sources say Iran lobbied for Iranian-backed
Popular Mobilization fighters to be sent to the western front to seal
off the link between Mosul and Raqqa, the two main cities of Islamic
State's self-declared cross-border caliphate.
HUMAN RIGHTS
The woman who leads female volunteers in Iran's
hard-line conservative militia, the Basij, has identified a new foe.
Minu Aslani has reportedly called the promotion of gender equality
illegal and demanded that the country's powerful judiciary take action
against people who speak out against such state-sponsored
discrimination. "These activities are in fact against our laws
and the judiciary should take action," the semiofficial Mehr
news agency quoted Aslani as telling reporters on December 2. In the
past, Aslani has condemned efforts to increase the number of women in
parliament and opposed campaigns to curb domestic violence as
perceived assaults on Iranian society and traditional family values.
Pushing for greater female participation threatens to
"distort" the identity of Iran's women, she has said.
DOMESTIC POLITICS
Iran's official IRNA news agency says that President
Hassan Rouhani's administration is proposing changing the name and
denomination of the country's currency. The report says the Cabinet
approved a measure on Wednesday calling for the change from the rial
to the toman. One toman would be worth 10 rials, or around 3,200 to a
dollar at official exchange rates, and 3,900 to a dollar at
unofficial rates.
OPINION & ANALYSIS
Like President-elect Donald Trump, we vigorously
opposed the Iran nuclear agreement, so we sympathize with his promise
to "dismantle" it. But we hope that he and his
administration will first try to aggressively enforce and then
renegotiate the deal beyond the confines of the nuclear issue to make
it better for us and the world. Before such renegotiations begin, the
Trump administration could strengthen its hand by closely consulting
with our allies in Iran's neighborhood - Israel and the Arab states.
They were missing from the group that developed and consented to the
Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), as the agreement is
formally known. That was wrong, for two main reasons: because the
Arab states and Israel are our allies and the Iranians are not, and
because the countries in the region have the greatest equities at
stake and should have a significant voice in the outcome. To date,
the Iranian regime has made clear it has no intent to honor the
spirit or letter of the JCPOA. Iran's pattern of reckless behavior
has accelerated over the past year. Its anti-American, anti-Israel
and anti-Arab rhetoric has grown stronger, and its actions have
matched its rhetoric. Last month, 11 Arab states publicly accused
Iran before the United Nations of meddling in their internal affairs.
In June, the State Department again designated Iran the world's
leading state sponsor of terrorism. The American people see clearly
what is happening. According to a recent survey by United Against
Nuclear Iran, a large majority of American registered voters view
Iran as the greatest state threat facing the United States - ahead of
North Korea, Russia and China. Only the Islamic State and al-Qaeda
are deemed bigger threats.
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