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TOP STORIES
After more than a year of wrangling, senators announced
a bipartisan bill Thursday to impose mandatory sanctions on Iran over
its spate of ballistic missile tests and support for a group that
President Trump may soon dub a terrorist organization. The measure
from top Republicans and Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee comes despite Iranian Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's repeated
warnings that expanding sanctions against Iran would jeopardize the
nuclear deal struck in 2015 - a deal that Trump promised to undo
during his presidential campaign. Leading Democrats resisted an
effort last year from Chairman Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) and high-ranking
Democrat Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) - both of whom opposed the Iran
deal - to impose similar sanctions over fears that it would put the
nuclear deal in a precarious position. The Obama administration also
opposed efforts to expand sanctions against Iran, over fears it could
adversely affect the controversial deal.
Both chambers of Congress are introducing bipartisan
Iran sanctions bills this week just in time for the main pro-Israel
lobby's annual conference in Washington. Legislation from House
Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce, R-Calif., would require
the Donald Trump administration to sanction Iranian and foreign individuals
and entities that support Tehran's ballistic missile program,
according to a copy obtained by Al-Monitor. The panel's top Democrat,
Rep. Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., is co-sponsoring the bill, according to an
aide. Meanwhile, in the Senate, Foreign Relations Chairman Bob
Corker, R-Tenn., and Robert Menendez, D-N.J., introduced broader
legislation March 23 that would also target Iran over its human
rights violations and terrorism. It would notably extend terrorism
sanctions to the Islam Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and sanction
anyone found to violate the international arms embargo against Iran.
The Trump administration is planning to roll out new
targeted sanctions on Iran as soon as Friday, multiple sources tell
CBS News. The sanctions will target foreign entities that have helped
Iran with its ballistic missile program, but they are not believed to
be a violation of the Obama-era international deal to freeze Iran's
nuclear program. Although President Trump has publicly criticized
that deal, European diplomats say they have been informed that Mr.
Trump has agreed to honor it. But earlier this week, Mr. Trump said
on camera at the start of a meeting with the Iraqi Prime Minister
that "nobody knows why" his predecessor agreed to the deal
which was also co-signed by Russia, China, Germany, Britain and
France. "One of the things I did ask is, 'why did President
Obama sign that agreement with Iran?' because nobody has been able to
figure that one out," Mr. Trump said.
U.S.-IRAN RELATIONS
Iran maintains a network of spies and lobbyists who
clandestinely push the Islamic regime's agenda in Washington, D.C.,
and elsewhere, according to the head of Iran's ministry of
intelligence, who touted the pro-Iran network's ability to spread its
ideology to the West. Mahmoud Alavi, Iran's intelligence minister, in
recent remarks independently translated by the Washington Free
Beacon, bragged about the Islamic Republic's ability to operate an
unnamed "lobby group" in D.C. that helps to push the
regime's hardline agenda. Alavi disclosed that Iranians with dual
citizenship in the United States, Canada, and England, remain devoted
to the "Islamic revolution" and are working to promote this
agenda in their adopted homelands.
BUSINESS RISK
Chinese telecommunications group ZTE fell as much as 2
per cent on Friday morning after the company announced a loss for
2016 following a $1.2bn fine for violating US sanctions on Iran and
North Korea. ZTE reported after market close on Thursday a net loss
of Rmb2.36bn ($342m) for the twelve months to December , which it
said was primarily linked to a $892m fine imposed by the US
Departments of Justice and Commerce. The company's revenue rose 1 per
cent to Rmb101.23bn on growth from carrier's networks and its
consumer business. ZTE said it expects to see new growth
opportunities this year as technologies including virtual reality, 5G
and smart cities drive market developments. It also forecast rapid
growth in network data flow. Shares eased from the early fall to be
down 0.3 per cent at HK$14.80. The benchmark Hang Seng index was up
0.1 per cent.
HUMAN RIGHTS
Amid a widening crackdown on
journalists and activists in Iran ahead of the country's May 2017
presidential election, security agents arrested Morad Saghafi, the
reformist editor-in-chief of Goftegoo (Conversation) magazine, on
March 15, 2017 His lawyer, Hamed Zargar, said on March 16 that
Saghafi had a phone conversation with a family member the day after
he was arrested, and has little chance of being released on bail
before the start of the Iranian New Year on March 21. Saghafi owns
the Shirazeh (Essence) publishing house and is the executive director
of Yek Shahr (One City), a non-governmental organization that aims to
"elevate the people's ability to enjoy their rights as citizens
and improve their lives."
DOMESTIC POLITICS
Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has
final say on all state matters, used his most important speech of the
year to criticize President Hassan Rouhani and his administration's
economic performance. With presidential elections two months away,
Khamenei's criticism opens the door for other conservatives to attack
the president on a vulnerability. The supreme leader's Nowruz
(Iranian New Year) speech is similar to the State of the Union
Address in the United States and delivered at the shrine of the 8th
Shiite imam in the city of Mashhad, the most important site in the
country for Iranian Shiites. In his speech on March 21, Khamenei
discussed not only the previous year, but also laid out the most
pressing issues for the upcoming year. Khamenei also proclaimed that
this year, 1396, would be the "Year of Resistance Economy:
Production and Employment." The president is largely responsible
for managing the economy, so it is up to the president and his
administration to ensure that Khamenei's economic objectives for the
year are met.
OPINION & ANALYSIS
Iranian Principlists are finding that getting their
house in order ahead of an election is becoming more complicated than
ever. As the conservative camp takes measures to agree on a single
candidate who can challenge incumbent Hassan Rouhani in the May 19
presidential election, reports of internal strife continue to
surface. In an attempt to unite behind a consensus nominee, some
Principlists announced the formation of the Popular Front of
Revolutionary Forces, known by its Persian acronym JAMNA, on Dec. 25.
The founders of this group are 10 Principlist figures who many have
speculated will be potential presidential candidates. Among them is
former Minister of Health and Medical Education Marzieh Vahid
Dastjerdi, one of the Principlists' top prospects. However, JAMNA has
yet to get the broader conservative camp to agree on a single
candidate.
In Venezuela's Toxic Brew, Failed Narco-State
Meets Iran-Backed Terrorism | Emanuele Ottolenghi and John Hannah for
Foreign Policy
As if the political and economic chaos wracking
Venezuela wasn't worrying enough, a couple of recent stories underscore
the potential national security threat brewing there. First, last
month's designation of Venezuela's vice president, Tareck El Aissami,
as a drug kingpin by the U.S. Department of Treasury. Second, a CNN
investigative report revealing that Venezuela's embassy in Iraq was
allegedly selling Venezuelan passports and identity documents to
Middle Eastern nationals - raising the disturbing prospect that
Caracas is facilitating the entry of Islamist militants to Latin
America. Indeed, the CNN report echoed revelations from 2013 that the
Venezuelan embassy in Syria was issuing passports to terrorists under
the direction of Ghazi Atef Nassereddine, a Treasury-sanctioned,
FBI-wanted Venezuelan diplomat who happens to be a key Hezbollah
operative. Put all this together and what do you get? A rabidly
anti-American failed state that appears to be incubating the
convergence of narco-trafficking and jihadism in America's own
backyard.
None of nature's most vicious have an
instinct for barbarism and cruelty like that of the Iranian Basij -
Basij Mostazafan (mobilisation of the oppressed) - the foot soldiers
of the Iranian regime. Acting out the role of morality police, they
prowl the streets of Iran enforcing a code of conduct, mercilessly
hunting down any women who disobey the rules on decency set down by
the country's leading clerics, attacking those who do in the most
horrendous way. In response to women breaking these laws, which have
been enforced in Iran since the 1979 revolution, whether a women is
inappropriately veiled and not wearing long loose fitting clothes
such as a chador in public, or is seen to be wearing lipstick, or it
is just a case of a young teenage girl seen to be
"fraternizing" with a lad in public, such violations are
all classed by the Iranian regime's hardliners as a sin in the
spirit, or committing "indecent" behavior.
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