Friday, January 27, 2017

Eye on Iran: Netanyahu: Trump Understands 'Danger' of Iran Nuclear Deal


   EYE ON IRAN
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President Donald Trump understands the "danger" of the Iran nuclear deal, the Israeli prime minister said on Thursday, adding that Israel will take all measures necessary to stop Tehran from getting atomic weapons... Netanyahu said that despite what he described as a revival of anti-Semitism in the West, the greatest danger "comes from Iran." The Shiite power and Israel's archenemy is "calling outright for the destruction of the Jewish state," Netanyahu said, adding that the Iranian regime's calls to "wipe out every Israeli" have been met with "deafening silence" by the world. Netanyahu said he believes the Trump era will change that. "I spoke a few days ago to President Trump and he spoke about the Iranian aggression. He spoke about Iran's commitment to destroy Israel. He spoke about the nature of this nuclear agreement and the danger it poses. We spoke about it together," Netanyahu said... Netanyahu was speaking at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem on the eve of International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Theresa May has warned about "Iran's malign influence in the Middle East" in a speech delivered to Republicans in Philadelphia. The Prime Minister said pushing back on "Iran's aggressive efforts" to increase its "arc of influence from Tehran through to the Mediterranean" was a priority for the UK, taking a markedly tougher tone since reestablishing diplomatic relations 18 months ago... Ms May said while the deal was "controversial" it had been successful in neutralising the threat posed by the country. However, she warned that it should be "rigorously policed" and any potential breaches of the deal should be dealt with "firmly and immediately".

Iranian human rights defender and writer Golrokh Ebrahimi Iraee, sentenced to six years in prison for writing a story about the cruel practice of stoning, was rearrested on Sunday and the judicial review of her conviction is being illegally blocked, said Amnesty International today. Golrokh Ebrahimi Iraee was returned to Evin prison after being picked up by Revolutionary Guard officials while on the way to visit her gravely ill husband, human rights defender Arash Sadeghi, in hospital. She had been on temporary prison leave since 3 January, awaiting a judicial review by Iran's Supreme Court of her six-year imprisonment for writing an unpublished, fictional story. The review is being deliberately held up in the courts by the Revolutionary Guards.

SANCTIONS RELIEF

Supertankers from Iran's state-owned oil fleet are sailing to Europe for the first time since sanctions were eased last year, as one of the world's biggest crude shippers moves to step up deliveries. The National Iranian Tanker Company currently has two giant vessels called 'Snow' and 'Huge' steaming towards the storage and trading port of Rotterdam after loading at Kharg Island earlier this month. While European refiners have been taking small cargoes of Iranian crude since the loosening of sanctions linked to the nuclear deal with Tehran last year, these are the first vessels operated by the NITC rather than independent shippers. Each of the very large crude carriers (VLCCs) are capable of carrying more than 2m barrels of oil. Sirus Kianersi, NITC managing director, said last week that there had been a "resolution" of the insurance and international certification issues that had delayed the Iranian oil shipper from sending its own vessels to European ports.

Iran's monthly oil exports are set to climb slightly in February, as Indonesia takes its first shipment since sanctions on Tehran were lifted last year, a person with knowledge of Iran's tanker loading schedule said. Volumes remain below last September's high, however, suggesting that Iran has had difficulty finding more buyers for its oil, even after being exempt from production cuts agreed by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and other exporters last November... Indonesia is expected to lift nearly 34,000 bpd in February, according to the source... The Netherlands is lifting its first crude and loading nearly 70,000 bpd this month, according to the source. It earlier bought condensate from Iran... In the last month supertankers owned by Greek and Croatian owners have hauled Iranian crude from Kharg Island to Spain, Italy and Thailand according to ship tracking data on the Reuters Eikon terminal.

HUMAN RIGHTS

Last month alone, two prominent Iranian soccer players found themselves summoned to the Ethics Committee of the Iranian soccer federation. Masoud Shojaei was called in for discussing corruption in Iranian soccer in an interview with a foreign media outlet. One week later, on Dec. 10, Mehdi Rahmati, the goalkeeper and current captain of the Esteghlal Football Club, was summoned for taking a picture with a woman who was not wearing a headscarf during a team camp in Armenia... Critics say the Ethics Committee's interference in players' personal lives is inappropriate and in violation of a FIFA statute.

OPINION & ANALYSIS

Iran announced last week that it would start feeding its first IR-8 centrifuges with uranium hexafluoride gas (UF6). The 2015 Iran nuclear deal states that Tehran's breakout time (the time needed to enrich uranium enough for a nuclear bomb) is one year, but that is based on Iran only using the first-generation, less-efficient IR-1 centrifuges. With more powerful IR-8s and other advanced centrifuges, Iran could enrich uranium for a weapon much faster. In three to four years, the country could be able to deploy large numbers of advanced centrifuges - if it can convince the international community that its nuclear program is peaceful and that it should be treated like any other nation, without restriction on its nuclear and enrichment activities... The Trump administration will need to act quickly. Once Iran is technically able to construct an IR-8 demonstration plant, and once the IAEA reaches a broader conclusion, rolling back Tehran's enrichment capacity will no longer be in the cards. Instead, Iran will have an expanding nuclear program with increasing uranium enrichment capacities - with all of the dangerous ramifications for the region and the world that such a scenario would bring.

The death of Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, one of the Islamic Republic of Iran's founding fathers, represents not just the loss of an elder statesman. It's a political blow to the fortunes of reformists and moderates in Iran for three main reasons: Rafsanjani's revolutionary street cred; his absence from the Assembly of Experts-the body that selects the next Supreme Leader; and his promotion of republicanism within Iran.

Ehud Barak, Israel's Prime Minister from 1999 to 2001, believed his country's Arab adversaries would be more afraid if Tel Aviv behaved in an unpredictable way. As long as Israel was predictable, Barak's thinking went, outrageous acts of terrorism would continue to be inevitable. Known as "the landlord went crazy," the strategy was employed by Dan Halutz, the then Israel Defense Force chief of staff, in the Second Lebanon War in 2006 and the Gaza operation in 2008. The confession of Hezbollah secretary general Hassan Nasrallah, after the Second Lebanon War, that if had he known Israel would "go crazy" in response to the ambush and abduction of its soliders, he would not have made such a mistake, reveals the effectiveness of the crazy-landlord strategy, and indeed Israel's failure to convey that message to the terror group at the time. Similarly, the United States has failed to convey an adequate message of deterrence to the Iranian regime during the past 37 years. Since 1979, Iran has adopted a unique posture involving the export of its own particular brand of Islamism; defiance of international norms; a pursuit of hegemony over the Middle East; a quest for nuclear weapons; and, most consequentially of all, declaring jihad against the United States.






Eye on Iran is a periodic news summary from United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) a program of the American Coalition Against Nuclear Iran, Inc., a tax-exempt organization under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. Eye on Iran is not intended as a comprehensive media clips summary but rather a selection of media elements with discreet analysis in a PDA friendly format. For more information please email press@uani.com.

United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) is a non-partisan, broad-based coalition that is united in a commitment to prevent Iran from fulfilling its ambition to become a regional super-power possessing nuclear weapons.  UANI is an issue-based coalition in which each coalition member will have its own interests as well as the collective goal of advancing an Iran free of nuclear weapons.

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