|
TOP STORIES
Iran has challenged the need for it to ship sensitive
material abroad if its stock exceeds a limit set by its nuclear deal
with major powers. The challenge raises the prospect of a
confrontation with the new U.S. administration of President Donald
Trump because diplomats say Iran is only months away from reaching
that cap. The 2015 deal restricts Iran's atomic activities in
exchange for the lifting of sanctions against Tehran. One restriction
is on its stock of heavy water, a moderator used in a type of reactor
that can produce plutonium, like an unfinished one at Arak that had
its core removed under the accord. Iran has already exceeded the
130-tonne limit on its heavy water stock twice. The latest standoff
with Washington over the issue was only defused in December when Iran
shipped the excess amount to Oman, where the heavy water is being
stored until a buyer can be found. In a letter to the U.N. nuclear
watchdog circulated to member states on Thursday and posted on the
agency's website, however, Iran argued that the deal does not require
it to ship excess heavy water out of the country.
Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said on
Monday the government's economic policies had fallen short and called
for a new "resistance economy" to create jobs, piling pressure
on the president before May elections. Hardliners led by Khamenei
have repeatedly criticised President Hassan Rouhani, particularly for
the terms of the nuclear deal he reached with world powers which
lifted economic sanctions and was supposed to boost the economy.
"I feel the pain of the poor and lower class people with my
soul, especially because of high prices, unemployment and
inequalities," Khamenei said in his New Year's message.
"The government has taken positive steps but they do not meet people's
expectations and mine," he added, setting out a clear battle
line before the presidential vote.
Iran's hardline judiciary has sentenced the daughter of
late Iranian president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani to jail for
"anti-state propaganda, spreading lies against the judiciary and
the Revolutionary Guards Corps", the opposition website Kalemeh
reported on Friday. The Islamic Republic has piled pressure on the
pro-reform opposition ahead of a presidential election on May 19,
when hardline rivals of pragmatist President Hassan Rouhani hope to
regain control of executive power. "Again Faezeh Hashemi has
been sentenced to six months' jail because of her critical remarks
about Judiciary and the Guards," Kalemeh reported. Judicial
officials were not immediately available to comment. The 55-year-old
Hashemi, a women's rights activist and a former member of parliament,
has 21 days to appeal the sentence. She was also jailed for six
months in 2012 for "spreading anti-state propaganda".
U.S.-IRAN RELATIONS
Iran dismissed as "nonsense" comments made
after U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis met with Saudi Deputy Crown
Prince Mohammed bin Salman that condemned Tehran's destabilizing
regional influence, state news agency IRNA reported on Friday. Mattis
and Prince Mohammed, who is the kingdom's defense minister, met on
Thursday and discussed U.S.-Saudi military cooperation in the fight
against Islamic State. A statement issued by the Pentagon said they
also discussed tackling "Iran's destabilizing regional
activities." IRNA cited Iran's foreign ministry spokesman,
Bahram Qasemi, blaming the Saudi prince for the comments. "This
Saudi official, who is one of the key players in the Saudi war
against innocent people in Yemen, Syria, Bahrain and other countries
in the region ... has made an irrelevant remark out of
desperation," Qasemi was quoted as saying.
BUSINESS RISK
After international sanctions on Iran were relaxed last
year, Iranian-Americans started looking to invest money in their
homeland. With Donald Trump in the White House, many are planning to
pull it out. "For the first part of last year we were getting a
lot of calls from people looking to explore business opportunities in
Iran," said Erich Ferrari, a U.S. sanctions lawyer based in Washington.
"That has pretty much stopped since the election. We have in the
last month or so been getting a lot of requests for licensing to sell
property or to move assets." Optimism among the estimated 1
million Americans of Iranian descent has dimmed given Trump's
labeling of Iran's 2015 nuclear deal with world powers as a
"disaster" and his vow to deal aggressively with the
Islamic Republic. A recent Iranian missile test triggered a warning
from Washington that it was putting the country "on
notice."
SANCTIONS RELIEF
Total is seeking a 50 percent stake in a $4 billion
project in Iran's giant South Pars gas field, the French energy firm
said in a regulatory filing on Friday detailing talks held with
Iranian officials on several projects in 2016. Total signed a
preliminary deal for the South Pars project last year, becoming the
first Western oil major to sign an energy agreement after the
European Union and the United States eased sanctions as part of a
pact to curb Iran's nuclear ambitions. In a filing to the U.S.
Securities and Exchange Commission, Total said the South Pars 11
project would require investment of about $4 billion, with the French
firm financing 50.1 percent with equity contributions and payments in
non-U.S. currency. If finalised, Total would operate the project with
a 50.1 percent stake, China's CNPC would own 30 percent through one
of its subsidiaries and Iran's Petropars would have 19.9 percent.
Iran will increase oil exports to Europe by 60 percent
by the next two months, National Iranian Oil Company's managing
director said, IRNA reported on Saturday. "Currently, oil
exports to Europe stands at 500 thousand barrels per day and we are
planning to raise it to 800 thousand barrels per day by the next two
months," IRNA quoted Ali Kardor as saying. After the lifting of
the sanctions, Shell and Total each have imported two consignments of
Iranian oil, each to the tune of two million barrels, he said.
"Eni has also bought two million barrels of oil. Moreover, we
have exported some oil to Spain," Kardor explained. The
International Energy Agency (IEA) has predicted that Iran will expand
its oil production capacity by 400,000 bpd to reach 4.15 million bpd
in 2022.
EXTREMISM
In honor of Iranian mother's day, supreme leader
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei took to Twitter Sunday to share his views on
gender issues, asserting that the West considers women to be
"goods and means of pleasure" and that this is the product
of the "Zionists' plot." The seven-tweet ramble came on the
birth anniversary of Fatimah Zahra, the daughter of Islam's Prophet
Mohammed, which is also designated as mother's day in the country.
Accordingly, Khamenei began his message by identifying Fatimah's
positive traits that make her the "perfect role model for Muslim
women." These included "grandeur & stature beyond
human's understanding and imagination."
SYRIA CONFLICT
In a sign of the Iranian government's increasing
openness over its involvement in Syria's civil war, state television
will air a documentary during the Iranian New Year known as
"Nowruz" praising the thousands of pro-Iranian fighters who
died in Syria over the years. The documentary is in 13 parts and will
air for 13 days, corresponding with the 13-day celebration of New
Year in Iran. The documentary, which will present pro-Iranian
fighters as the guardian of Zeinab shrine, a major Shi'ite holy site
in Syria, will be aired on Iran's official TV Channel, IRIB 2 in a
show titled "From Heaven." Experts say that by airing the
documentary during Nowruz, Iran wants to ensure that it reaches most
of its citizens in the country, because television viewership increases
dramatically during the holiday season in the country.
Gholamali Khoshroo also on Sunday called on the United
Nations Security Council to register Iran's statement on the peaceful
settlement of the Syria crisis as an official document at the
international body. He made the request in a note sent to Matthew
Rycroft, the president of the Security Council for the month of
March. The note was released through a Telegram channel by Iranian
Deputy Foreign Minister for Arab and African Affairs Hossein Jaberi
Ansari. Khoshroo said the Islamic Republic welcomes the peaceful
settlement of the armed conflict in Syria as stressed in a joint
statement by the foreign ministers of Iran, Russia and Turkey in Moscow
on December 20, 2016 and the communique issued at the end of two-day
intra-Syrian talks which concluded in the Kazakh capital of Astana on
January 24.
SAUDI-IRAN TENSIONS
Reacting to the recent meetings between U.S. and Saudi
officials, Iran's Foreign Ministry lambasted Riyadh on Friday for
acting under the illusion that security is a "buyable"
luxury, saying it is committing a "big mistake" in
prompting foreign intervention in the Middle East. "The history
of the region teaches a lesson to all and those countries who thanks
to petrodollars and acting under the illusion that security is
buyable keep giving the green light to foreign actors to meddle (in
the region) that they commit a big mistake," Foreign Ministry
spokesman Bahram Qassemi said on Friday. "Foreign intervention
has always caused instability, division, expansion of terrorism and
violence, and has never benefitted the people of the region."
U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis met with Saudi Deputy Crown
Prince Mohammed bin Salman on Thursday and they discussed U.S.-Saudi
military cooperation in the Middle East, two days after a meeting
with business-minded President Donald Trump.
Iranian pilgrims will participate in this year's annual
Hajj, Saudi Arabia has said, after an absence last year during
tensions between the regional rivals. "The ministry of hajj and
the Iranian organisation have completed all the necessary measures to
ensure Iranian pilgrims perform Hajj 1438 according to the procedures
followed by all Muslim countries," the official Saudi Press
Agency said on Friday, referring to this year in the Islamic
calendar. For the first time in nearly three decades, Iran's pilgrims
- which would have numbered about 60,000 - did not attend the Hajj in
2016 after the two countries failed to agree on security and
logistics. Riyadh and Tehran have no diplomatic relations, and
tensions remain as Sunni-majority Saudi Arabia repeatedly accuses
Iran of fuelling regional conflicts by supporting armed Shia
movements in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Bahrain.
HUMAN RIGHTS
Iranian MPs have criticized the arrests of journalists
and social media organizers ahead of the presidential election in
May, with one directly accusing the elite Revolutionary Guards in a
letter published Saturday. The arrests in recent days are alleged to
have targeted unnamed people who run channels on the popular
messaging site Telegram supporting reformists and the moderate
government of President Hassan Rouhani. Two prominent journalists -
Ehsan Mazandarani and Morad Saghafi - have also been detained.
Mahmoud Sadeghi, a reformist MP, wrote an open letter to
Revolutionary Guards commander Mohammad-Ali Jafari, calling on the
organization to stay out of politics.
When Sadegh married his college sweetheart, he never
thought he'd end up as one of those Iranians facing ruin and even
prison because of huge sums demanded by his wife's family. But the
"mehrieh" (affection) system, in which future husbands
agree to pay a number of gold coins to the bride in the event of
divorce, has left thousands of men in Iran languishing in jail and
many more destitute. "Our mehrieh was high, around 800 gold
coins, but when we were planning the wedding, we didn't think about
how it might end," said Sadegh, who was divorced last year after
eight years of marriage. Each gold coin is worth around 10 million
rials ($300). A worker on Iran's average wage would need 50 years to
earn 800 gold coins. But then his wife's family got involved, and
suddenly Sadegh found himself in court where he was told to pay 110
coins instantly or go to jail. "The thought of ending up in
prison for this, like in the movies, seemed ridiculous," he
said.
OPINION & ANALYSIS
Iran will hold another Potemkin election in May, and we
can already predict the media narrative if one of the so-called
hard-liners wins the Iranian Presidency. The blame will lie with the
Trump Administration for failing to show sufficient respect for
"moderate" incumbent Hasan Rouhani. Except Mr. Rouhani's
rule hasn't been moderate. Witness the latest repression targeting
the mullahs' usual suspects. Tehran's Prosecutor-General on Sunday
announced it had sentenced a couple to death because they had founded
a new "cult." The announcement was short on details, but
the charges could mean anything from running a New Age yoga studio to
a political-discussion club. The authorities have also detained Ehsan
Mazandarani, a reporter with the reformist newspaper Etemad
("Trust"), according to the New York-based Committee to
Protect Journalists. The nature of the charges against Mr.
Mazandarani isn't clear, and his relatives say he is on hunger strike
in Tehran's Evin Prison. He had previously served most of a two-year
sentence on trumped-up security charges.
Iran's conservatives have been vocal in their criticism
of President Hassan Rouhani, dismissing his outreach to the West as
naive and the nuclear deal he championed as an economic failure. But
when it comes to challenging the moderate Rouhani for reelection in
May, the hard-liners, who oppose expanding political and social
freedoms, are struggling to agree on a message or candidate. Ten
possible candidates put forward by a bloc of political leaders this
month are all seen as lacking the stature to oppose the first-term
incumbent. Arguably the country's most respected conservative,
parliamentary speaker Ali Larijani, has thrown his support behind
Rouhani. While the field of aspirants won't be finalized until April,
analysts say it is becoming clear that Rouhani - a soft-spoken cleric
who has staked his presidency on ending Iran's isolation and
reopening its economy to foreign investment - is likely to secure a
second term in the May 19 vote.
After six years that UN human rights chief Zeid Ra'ad
al-Hussein described to the UN Human Rights Council as "the
worst man-made disaster since World War II," encouraging news
came from Astana, Kazakhstan, last week. The third round of Russia-led
talks on reconciliation in Syria began with an announcement that a
special team would be set up to supervise the implementation of the
ceasefire on the ground. The members of the team will be Turkey,
Russia, and Iran. According to a statement by Alexander Lavrentiev,
head of Russia's delegation to the talks, the parties agreed to
provide maps showing the location of terrorist groups such as Islamic
State and Jabhat Fateh al-Sham (formerly known as the al-Nusra
Front). But in case anyone thought, even for a moment, that any light
was visible at the end of this blood-drenched tunnel, the reports
from Damascus brought them back to reality: two terror attacks, one
at the Damascus court complex and the other at a nearby restaurant,
that killed more than 25 people.
|
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment