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Continuing a
pattern of provocative actions, Iran this weekend test-fired a pair
of ballistic missiles and sent fast-attack vessels close to a U.S.
Navy ship in the Strait of Hormuz, U.S. officials confirmed to Fox
News. One of Iran's ballistic missile tests were successful,
destroying a floating barge approximately 155 miles away, two U.S.
officials with knowledge of the launch told Fox News. The launches of
the Fateh-110 short-range ballistic missiles were the first tests of
the missile in two years, one official said. It was not immediately
clear if this was the first successful test at sea -- raising
concerns for the U.S. Navy, which operates warships in the area, one
of which had an "unsafe and unprofessional" interaction
with Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. boats on Saturday. The IRGC
boats approached to within 600 yard of the tracking ship USNS
Invincible and then stopped, officials confirmed to Fox News. The
Invincible was accompanied by three ships from the British Royal Navy
and all four ships were forced to change course, Reuters reported.
The Iranian provocations were partially obscured by a worldwide focus
on North Korea's own ballistic missile tests.
The chief of the U.N. atomic watchdog said on Monday
he was confident following a visit to Washington of "very good
cooperation" with the United States on Iran's nuclear deal,
despite President Donald Trump's hawkish comments. The 2015 agreement
between Iran and major powers restricts Tehran's nuclear activities
in exchange for the lifting of sanctions against the Islamic
Republic, but Trump has called it "the worst deal ever
negotiated" and said he wants to "police that contract so
tough (the Iranians) don't have a chance". "I am confident
that we can have very good cooperation with the United States in the
future," Yukiya Amano, chief of the International Atomic Energy
Agency (IAEA), told a news conference in Vienna. Amano met U.S.
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in Washington last Thursday. During
his confirmation hearing Tillerson had called for a "full
review" of the deal, which extends the time Iran would need to
produce a nuclear weapon if it chose to. Since Trump took office in
January, however, his administration has given little indication of
what concrete stance it will take on the Iran agreement.
On Monday, Ayatollah Khamenei pointed to the
eight-year war imposed by the former Iraqi regime on Iran during the
1980s, saying the enemy dared to wage a war against Iran when it saw
weak points in the nation back then. "If you seek to dissuade
enemies from undertaking any act of aggression, never show weakness
and demonstrate your power," Ayatollah Khamenei advised. The
Leader further warned of enemy attempts to launch a "cultural
war" against the Iranian nation. "Enemies are making
efforts and hatching plots in their think tanks to transform the
nation's culture," said Ayatollah Khamenei, emphasizing that
"a cultural invasion is even more dangerous than military
threats." The Leader called for more productivity in the area of
culture as a means of confronting "the cultural plots by
ill-wishers," saying a powerful culture could pave the way for
political and economic strength in a country which is rich in
resources.
U.S.-Iran
Relations
Multiple
fast-attack vessels from Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps
came close to a U.S. Navy ship in the Strait of Hormuz on Saturday,
forcing it to change direction, a U.S. official told Reuters on
Monday. The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the
boats came within 600 yards (meters) of the USNS Invincible, a
tracking ship, and stopped. The Invincible and three ships from the
British Royal Navy accompanying it had to change course. The official
said attempts were made to communicate over radio, but there was no
response and the interaction was "unsafe and unprofessional."
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps could not immediately be
reached for a comment. Years of mutual animosity eased when
Washington lifted sanctions on Tehran last year after a deal to curb
Iran's nuclear ambitions. But serious differences remain over Iran's ballistic
missile program and conflicts in Syria and Iraq. While still a
presidential candidate in September, Donald Trump vowed that any
Iranian vessels that harassed the U.S. Navy in the Gulf would be
"shot out of the water."
Iran said Tuesday
it would continue its retaliatory measure of barring US visitors in
response to President Donald Trump's updated travel ban on
predominantly Muslim countries. "Our earlier counter-measure
against Trump's previous order is still in place," said deputy foreign
minister Majid Takht Ravanchi at a conference entitled "What to
do about Trump's America". "There is no need for a new
decision," he said, according to the ISNA news agency. Iran's
foreign ministry announced in January it would ban Americans from entering
the country in response to Trump's "insulting" order
restricting arrivals from Iran and six other Muslim states. It called
the decision "illegal, illogical and contrary to international
rules". The White House re-issued the ban on Monday - this time
excluding Iraq but still targeting Iranians - following legal
challenges. Iranians have been the most affected by the ban since
more than one million live, work and study in the United States.
Business
Risk
President Donald
Trump's company helped develop a property in Azerbaijan with a pair
of local businessmen whose family is said to have extensive ties to
the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, according to a report in The
New Yorker. The Trump Organization's partner for the Trump Tower
Baku, for which the firm licensed its name, was a company owned by
Anar and Elton Mammadov, the respective son and brother of Ziya
Mammadov, who served as the country's transportation minister until
February of this year. According to the report in The New Yorker,
Ziya Mammadov - who is described in US diplomatic cables published by
Wikileaks as "notoriously corrupt even for Azerbaijan" -
granted a number of multimillion dollar contracts as transportation
minister to the Iranian construction firm Azarpassillo, whose
chairman Keyumars Darvishi previously headed the IRGC construction
company Raman and fought in the Iran-Iraq war.
Sanctions
Relief
Iran's crude-oil
exports touched 3 million barrels a day for the first time since the
1979 Islamic Revolution. That level, lasting just one day, was
reached in the current Iranian month that began Feb. 19, Oil Minister
Bijan Namdar Zanganeh said, according to state news agency IRNA. The
Islamic Republic's exports tumbled in 2011 as international sanctions
targeted its oil industry, cutting production. Since restrictions
ended in January 2016, Iran has recovered quickly, raising output
near pre-sanctions levels of about 4 million barrels a day. It's
targeting 5 million a day by 2021 with the help of foreign investors,
though none has yet signed a definitive contract. Iran's crude
exports have averaged 2.45 million barrels a day since Feb. 19,
Bloomberg tanker-tracking data show. The country in November won an
exemption from output cuts agreed on by the Organization of Petroleum
Exporting Countries, saying it was still recovering from sanctions.
Terrorism
Over the last
two decades, since Congress carved out a terrorism case exception to
the general rule that people cannot use American courts to sue
foreign governments, victims of attacks have racked up more than $50
billion in default judgments against Iran. Those judgments provided
symbolic justice but came with little realistic expectation that Iran
- which did not bother to contest the evidence - would actually pay
all it owed, aside from its limited assets frozen in the United
States. But now, those cases are colliding with another major legal
and national security event: the Iran nuclear deal. In the first case
of its kind, a group of attack victims - including estates of people
who were killed - who won one of the default judgments against Iran
has gone to a European court to try to enforce it. A judge in
Luxembourg has quietly put a freeze on $1.6 billion in assets
belonging to Iran's central bank, according to people familiar with
the case. The fight is part of increasing instances in which domestic
civil lawsuits against foreign entities over terrorist attacks have
raised diplomatic and national security complications.
Domestic
Politics
The Nights of Zayandeh-rood, a film by acclaimed
director Iranian Mohsen Makhmalbaf, was swiftly locked away in the
archives of the Iranian censorship committee after its first
screening 1990. Now, in the wake of a mysterious effort to smuggle
the footage out of Iran, the film, originally titled Shabhaye
Zayandeh-rood, has been released to the public for the first time. As
Saeed Kamali Dehghan reports for the Guardian, the Curzon Bloomsbury
theater in London first screened The Nights of Zayandeh-rood on Saturday.
While only 63 of the film's original 100 minutes remain intact, the
London screenings are nevertheless a promising new chapter in the
turbulent history of the film. The Nights of Zayandeh-rood follows an
anthropologist and his daughter through the Iranian Revolution of
1979, when protestors ousted the ruling Pahlavi dynasty and replaced
it with an Islamic republic. Suicide is an ever-present trope, a
metaphor for the dashed hopes of a nation.
Continuing
a pattern of provocative actions, Iran this weekend test-fired a pair
of ballistic missiles and sent fast-attack vessels close to a U.S.
Navy ship in the Strait of Hormuz, U.S. officials confirmed to Fox
News. One of Iran's ballistic missile tests were successful,
destroying a floating barge approximately 155 miles away, two U.S.
officials with knowledge of the launch told Fox News. The launches of
the Fateh-110 short-range ballistic missiles were the first tests of
the missile in two years, one official said. It was not immediately
clear if this was the first successful test at sea -- raising
concerns for the U.S. Navy, which operates warships in the area, one
of which had an "unsafe and unprofessional" interaction
with Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. boats on Saturday. The IRGC
boats approached to within 600 yard of the tracking ship USNS
Invincible and then stopped, officials confirmed to Fox News. The
Invincible was accompanied by three ships from the British Royal Navy
and all four ships were forced to change course, Reuters reported.
The Iranian provocations were partially obscured by a worldwide focus
on North Korea's own ballistic missile tests.
The
chief of the U.N. atomic watchdog said on Monday he was confident
following a visit to Washington of "very good cooperation"
with the United States on Iran's nuclear deal, despite President
Donald Trump's hawkish comments. The 2015 agreement between Iran and
major powers restricts Tehran's nuclear activities in exchange for
the lifting of sanctions against the Islamic Republic, but Trump has
called it "the worst deal ever negotiated" and said he
wants to "police that contract so tough (the Iranians) don't
have a chance". "I am confident that we can have very good
cooperation with the United States in the future," Yukiya Amano,
chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), told a news
conference in Vienna. Amano met U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson
in Washington last Thursday. During his confirmation hearing
Tillerson had called for a "full review" of the deal, which
extends the time Iran would need to produce a nuclear weapon if it
chose to. Since Trump took office in January, however, his
administration has given little indication of what concrete stance it
will take on the Iran agreement.
On
Monday, Ayatollah Khamenei pointed to the eight-year war imposed by
the former Iraqi regime on Iran during the 1980s, saying the enemy
dared to wage a war against Iran when it saw weak points in the
nation back then. "If you seek to dissuade enemies from
undertaking any act of aggression, never show weakness and
demonstrate your power," Ayatollah Khamenei advised. The Leader
further warned of enemy attempts to launch a "cultural war"
against the Iranian nation. "Enemies are making efforts and
hatching plots in their think tanks to transform the nation's
culture," said Ayatollah Khamenei, emphasizing that "a
cultural invasion is even more dangerous than military threats."
The Leader called for more productivity in the area of culture as a means
of confronting "the cultural plots by ill-wishers," saying
a powerful culture could pave the way for political and economic
strength in a country which is rich in resources.
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