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As one of China's few truly international technology
companies, ZTE is often held up by Beijing as part of a new
generation of firms that is able to compete beyond Chinese borders.
On Tuesday, the United States government made an example of ZTE in a
different way. As part of a settlement for breaking sanctions and
selling electronics to Iran and North Korea, ZTE agreed to plead
guilty and pay $1.19 billion in fines, the United States Department
of Commerce said in an announcement. The penalty is the largest
criminal fine in a United States sanctions case. The action is the
latest in a series of skirmishes between the United States and China
over technology policy. It also offered a chance for President
Trump's young administration to make a statement about the
seriousness of United States sanctions. In addition to ZTE, the
Commerce Department is also investigating the company's larger
Chinese rival, Huawei, for violating United States sanctions.
More than 2,000 fighters sent from Iran have been
killed in Iraq and Syria, the head of Iran's veterans' affairs office
said on Tuesday. "Some 2,100 martyrs have been martyred so far
in Iraq or other places defending the holy mausoleums," Mohammad
Ali Shahidi told the state-run IRNA news agency. Shahidi, who is head
of Iran's Foundation of Martyrs and Veterans Affairs, was speaking at
a conference on martyrdom culture in Tehran. The figure was more than
double the number he gave in November, which referred only to Syria.
Iran is, with Russia, the main military backer of Syrian President
Bashar al-Assad, and also organises militias fighting the Islamic
State group in Iraq. Shahidi did not provide details on the
nationalities of those killed. Iran oversees "volunteer"
fighters recruited from among its own nationals as well as Shiite
communities in neighbouring Afghanistan and Pakistan. The families of
those killed in battle are given Iranian citizenship under a law
passed last May.
U.S. President Donald Trump's administration pledged
on Tuesday to show "great strictness" over restrictions on
Iran's nuclear activities imposed by a deal with major powers, but
gave little indication of what that might mean for the agreement. The
2015 deal between Iran and six major powers restricts Tehran's
nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of international economic
sanctions against the Islamic Republic. Trump has called the
agreement "the worst deal ever negotiated". His
administration is now carrying out a review of the accord which could
take months, but it has said little about where it stands on specific
issues. The
Trump administration also gave few clues about any potential policy
shift on Tuesday in a statement to a quarterly meeting of the U.N.
nuclear watchdog's Board of Governors. "The
United States will approach questions of JCPOA interpretation, implementation,
and enforcement with great strictness indeed," the statement to
the International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA) 35-nation board said,
citing the deal's full name: The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.
But the U.S. statement, the first to the Board of Governors since
Trump took office in January, also repeated language used by the
administration of former U.S. president Barack Obama, for whom the
deal was a legacy achievement.
U.S.-Iran Relations
Ten years after a former FBI agent working on an
unauthorized CIA mission disappeared in Iran, his family hopes U.S.
President Donald Trump will do something America's last two
presidents have been unable to achieve: Finally bring him home.
Robert Levinson's family told The Associated Press this week that
Trump's background as a deal-making businessman and his harder line
on Iran could be an asset in finally determining what happened to the
investigator, whose 69th birthday is Friday. They described the heartbreak
of seeing other American prisoners in Iran freed while the mystery
surrounding his disappearance remains. They also acknowledged the
challenge of keeping his case in the public eye, as he now has been
held captive longer than any American in history, if he remains
alive. "We believe people can survive 10 years under any
circumstances. In the worst places, people survive. We know Bob is
alive," his wife, Christine Levinson, told the AP.
"Everyone else has gotten out of Iran, but Bob has been left behind
every single time. It's now time for him to be returned home to his
family." Levinson disappeared from Iran's Kish Island on March
9, 2007. For years, U.S. officials would only say that Levinson, a
meticulous FBI investigator credited with busting Russian and Italian
mobsters, was working for a private firm on his trip In December
2013, the AP revealed Levinson in fact had been on a mission for CIA
analysts who had no authority to run spy operations. Levinson's
family had received a $2.5 million annuity from the CIA in order to
stop a lawsuit revealing details of his work, while the agency forced
out three veteran analysts and disciplined seven others.
A U.S. Navy ship changed course toward Iranian
Revolutionary Guard vessels in the Strait of Hormuz on Saturday, a
guard commander was quoted as saying on Wednesday while issuing a
warning. A U.S. official told Reuters on Monday that multiple
fast-attack vessels from the Revolutionary Guard had come within 600
yards (550 meters) of the USNS Invincible, a tracking ship, forcing
it to change direction. But guard commander Mehdi Hashemi said the
incident, the first of note between the countries' navies in those
waters since January, was the fault of the U.S. ship, telling the
Fars news agency: "The unprofessional actions of the Americans
can have irreversible consequences," Years of mutual animosity
eased when Washington lifted sanctions on Tehran last year after a
deal to curb Iran's nuclear ambitions. But major differences remain
over Iran's ballistic missile program and conflicts in Syria and
Iraq. Iranian president Hassan Rouhani, without referring to the
Hormuz incident, also gave a warning on Wednesday. "If Iran's
ignorant enemies think about invading Iran they should know that our
armed forces are much stronger than 1980 when Iraq attacked," he
said in a speech broadcast live on state TV.
Iran said Tuesday it was "completely unfair"
for US lawyers to try to seize its overseas assets as compensation
for the victims of the September 11, 2001 attacks. In 2012, a New
York judge ordered Iran to pay $7 billion in damages to the families
and estates of victims from the attacks, arguing that the country had
aided Al-Qaeda by allowing the group's members to travel through its
territory. Since Iran rejects the accusation and refuses to pay the
money, the lawyers are now trying to access $1.6 billion of Iranian
money frozen in a Luxembourg bank, according to a report in The New
York Times on Monday. "Some opponents of the Islamic republic of
Iran... have tried to broaden a US domestic law -- which is
completely unfair and baseless -- to apply outside America,"
said deputy foreign minister Majid Takht Ravanchi, according to the
IRNA news agency. The Iranian central bank's legal affairs director
Ardeshir Fereydouni said Tehran's assets cannot be touched before a
verdict. Quoted by IRNA, he also called the US efforts "against
international law" and "unenforceable". Billions of
dollars in Iranian assets were frozen in the US and Europe as part of
efforts to push Tehran into a nuclear deal with world powers, which
was finally signed in July 2015.
For more than a year, 80-year-old Baquer Namazi has
been imprisoned in Iran, held in solitary confinement with a
worsening heart condition that has twice required hospitalization. In
another part of Tehran's Evin Prison, Namazi's son, Siamak, is also
behind bars, sleeping on the floor because his jailers haven't given
him a bed, family members say. U.S. and Iranian officials had been
negotiating a possible release of American Iranian dual nationals
imprisoned in Iran - including the Namazis - until talks broke down
in the final days of the Obama administration, according to family
lawyers. Now their hopes for freedom lie with President Trump, who
prides himself on being a deal-maker but has rapidly escalated
tensions with the Islamic Republic. In the six weeks since Trump took
office, officials in Washington and Tehran say there has been no
official contact between negotiators. Trump has slapped fresh
sanctions on Iran and threatened to renegotiate the deal under which
Tehran agreed to curb its nuclear program.
Congressional Action
The Trump administration is under increasing criticism
from Republican lawmakers for continuing Obama-era policies to
provide material support to the Iranian regime, including airplanes,
which many have warned could be used to illegally ferry weapons across
the Middle East on behalf of the Islamic Republic's war effort,
according to lawmakers and veteran congressional insiders who spoke
to the Washington Free Beacon. The Trump administration's Treasury
Department informed the Free Beacon on Monday that it would continue
to grant licenses to companies such as Boeing so that they can pursue
multi-billion dollar deals with Iran. This policy, started by the
Obama administration as part of the nuclear deal with Iran, is
opposed by many on Capitol Hill and runs counter to campaign trail
promises by President Donald Trump to end such agreements. Iran
announced in February that it had found a "foreign company"
to finance the country's purchase of at least 77 new planes from
Boeing and Airbus.
Business Risk
Just after the European Union lifted sanctions on
several of Iran's biggest banks last year, Bank Sepah International
PLC creaked back to life. The Iranian-owned, British-licensed bank,
located on a prime street in London's financial district, was all but
mothballed for nearly a decade due to sanctions designed to force
Iran to abandon its nuclear program. Then in 2015, Iran reached a
landmark agreement on the program with the U.S. and other world
powers, paving the way for Iranian banks to reconnect to the global
financial system. Bank Sepah, which once processed more than 2,000
transactions a month and had a $1.5 billion balance sheet, was eager
to get back to business. Yet, more than a year after the nuclear deal,
Bank Sepah still hasn't processed a single commercial transaction,
other than paying 28 employees and some vendors, because it is still
effectively frozen out of the financial system, especially in the
U.K., by big banks unwilling to risk dealing with Iranian entities.
Sanctions Relief
Iran's crude oil exports hit a record 3 million
barrels per day in the Iranian month of Esfand (late February to late
March), the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) reported on Tuesday,
citing the oil minister. Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh credited
Iran's nuclear agreement with Western powers in 2015, which removed a
number of sanctions in exchange for curbs on the Islamic Republic's
nuclear program, for the boost in exports. "Before the [nuclear
agreement] we struggled to export one million barrels per day,"
IRNA quoted Zanganeh as saying. Iran's oil exports have, on average,
more than doubled since that time, Zanganeh said.
In a significant deal, a Long Range I tanker has been
chartered for delivering a parcel of 55,000 mt of Iranian naphtha to
Japan next month, several brokers, owners and charterers said Monday.
A 2009-built, Bahamas-flagged tanker, the 75,000 dwt Gulf Cobalt has
been placed on subjects by Mitsui and loading is scheduled in the next
two weeks at one of the Iranian ports, shipping industry sources
tracking the developments told S&P Global Platts. Mitsui
officials could not be immediately reached for comment but shipping
sources tracking the deal said that there is also an option to take
the cargo to other parts of North Asia. The deal is important because
if the option to discharge the cargo at one of the Japanese ports is
exercised, it will be one of the first LR1 tankers to deliver Iranian
naphtha into the country after the sanctions were eased on the
Persian Gulf nation last year.
Foreign Affairs
A 31-year-old Pakistani man is going on trial in
Berlin on allegations he spied for Iran on Israeli and Jewish
institutions in Germany and elsewhere in Europe. Syed Mustufa H.,
whose full name was not giving for privacy reasons, is due in court
Wednesday on espionage charges. H., who came to Germany in 2012 to go
to university, is accused of having collected information on a
professor at a university in Paris, the former president of the
German-Israel Society and others in Western European countries.
Prosecutors say he then passed the information to a contact person
with the Iranian intelligence agency. He's alleged to have received
at least 2,052 euros ($2,170) for his spying activities. H., who was
arrested in July 2016, faces a possible five years in prison.
Nigerian carpenter Bashir Muhammad has never been to
Iran, but he would fight to the death for the country. "If Iran
wants our help, we are ready to go and help it, even with our
blood," he said. "Donald Trump needs to know that Iran has
followers all over the world ready to help defend it against
America." Touring the narrow unpaved streets of Zaria in
Nigeria's predominantly Muslim north, Muhammad shows Iran's success
in building enclaves of fervent support way beyond the Middle East
and the limits of any harsher foreign policy planned by the U.S.
president to contain it. The 30-year-old is among an increasing
number of converts to the Shiite brand of Islam that Iran has been
exporting since its 1979 revolution. As the world adjusts to the
Trump era, the message for Washington and its allies is that Iran
wields growing influence in unexpected places. The Islamic power has
been able to expand its reach regardless of the economic sanctions
that excluded it from much of the global oil market until last year.
Domestic Politics
President Hassan Rouhani should apologize to the
Iranian people if he cannot show that the economy has improved, one
of Iran's most prominent hardliners said on Tuesday, setting a battle
line for a presidential election in May. Rouhani is opposed by
hardliners who resent the nuclear deal he struck with world powers
including the United States which lifted economic sanctions and was
supposed to boost the economy. Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, the head of
the Assembly of Experts, a body that selects Iran's supreme leader,
starkly criticized that policy and what he said was Rouhani's failure
to improve the economy over his four years in office. "If the resistance
economy has not been followed in the way that it should and must have
been, then he must apologize and tell them (Iranians) the
reasons," Jannati told a meeting of the Assembly where Rouhani
was present, Fars News reported. Rouhani said that his administration
would present a full economic report by the end of the Iranian
calendar year, in late March, according to the state TV's website.
While hardliners, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei,
have criticized Rouhani's economic record in recent weeks, the
president has sought to move the political discourse to other matters
that might appeal to moderate voters.
The Iranian journalist and human rights activist
Narges Mohammadi was a thorn in her government's side. Now she is in
prison. Her husband and children still hope she will be released. A
portrait of an incomplete family. "The
ministry official told me we had to go," Narges Mohammadi wrote
from her prison cell in an August 2015 letter addressed to her
children, Kiana and Ali. "I tried to get Kiana off me. She was
hanging on with all her strength, her arms wrapped around my neck.
She was wailing." Mohammadi was writing about the day that
"broke her heart." It was the first time that her children
had to watch as their mother was taken from her home and thrown in
prison. They had just started kindergarten at the time. Over the next
couple of years, the children had to witness many similar situations.
Each time they watched helplessly as their mother - or sometimes
their father, who has also been persecuted for his journalism - were
arrested at their home and then taken off to jail. The twins cannot
recall any happy family memories: Too often, one of their parents was
absent, and the fear of the next separation is too present. Now 10
years old, Kiana and Ali have lived in exile in France with their
father, Taghi Rahmani, since July 2015. Their mother is in Tehran's
infamous Evin prison. Last May, a court in Iran's capital found her
guilty on several counts and sentenced her to 16 years.
Military Matters
Iran has unveiled a new helicopter designed for
offshore operations, medical evacuations and surveillance. The
official IRNA news agency says Tuesday that the four-bladed Saba-248
has two engines but its capable of operating with just one, and that
it can fly in temperatures ranging from minus 25 to 55 degrees
Celsius (minus 13 to 131 degrees Fahrenheit). Iran has been producing
its own weapons and military equipment, including missiles, fighter
jets and submarines, for more than two decades.
Proxy Wars
Nearly half of all shipping docks in Iran are operated
by the regime's military, and it is using shell companies to smuggle
weapons and other illicit goods, according to a new report. A total
of 90 docks have been taken over by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards
Corps (IRGC), which is using them to circumvent sanctions and fund
terrorist activities in the Middle East and beyond, according to the
anti-regime People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK).
"Based on the direct order of the current supreme leader, Ali
Khamenei, no authority is allowed to oversee the activities of the
IRGC at border areas, be it on the ground, sea or air, and it can import
anything in any quantity without paying any customs fee," PMOI
officials said in a statement provided to Fox News. "The IRGC
uses these docks for its unlawful activities." The PMOI adds
that in order to fund its activities, the Revolutionary Guard engages
in smuggling oil, gas, chemical products, cigarettes, narcotics,
alcohol, mobile phones, pharmaceuticals, hygiene material and energy
drugs and supplements. The importing and exporting of these illicit
goods has allowed the IRGC to net $12 billion annually, the group
estimates.
Opinion & Analysis
Last month, the Donald Trump administration noted that
it was contemplating whether to designate Iran's Islamic
Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a foreign terrorist organization,
a State Department listing that includes Hamas, Hezbollah, the
Islamic State (also known as ISIS), and many other groups. But the
administration's critics decried even this as an unwise provocation,
despite the fact that the United States has for the past three
decades officially denounced Iran as the leading sponsor of
terrorism. What's more, in 2007, a number of Democratic and
Republican politicians, including then-Senators Hillary Clinton and
Barack Obama, cosponsored a bill known as the Iran
Counter-Proliferation Act that called on the administration of U.S.
President George W. Bush to report on its efforts to designate the
Revolutionary Guard as an FTO. But the bill did not pass. From the
IRGC's inception in 1979, terrorism has been its defining feature.
The 125,000-strong force has always been commanded by reactionary
religious ideologues. During the 1980s, the IRGC conducted vicious
campaigns against all forms of dissent as well as against ethnic
minorities, especially the Kurds and the Baluchis. Throughout the
1990s, the group attacked the Iranian reform movement and became even
more feared than Iran's intelligence ministry, which had a reputation
for human rights abuses. In 1999, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei
unleashed the IRGC to crush student protests, a move that President
Hassan Rouhani, then the secretary of the Supreme National Security
Council, had passionately supported. In the summer of 2009, the
guards also squashed the pro-democracy Green Revolution, arresting
thousands and torturing hundreds. Since its foundation, the IRGC has
overseen a terror apparatus that has assassinated intellectuals,
journalists, dissident politicians, and literary figures.
Iran's leaders describe homosexuality as "moral
bankruptcy" or "modern western barbarism". Amnesty
International estimates that 5,000 gays and lesbians have been
executed there since the 1979 Iranian revolution. Although it is less
common now, it still occurs. In the summer of 2016 a 19-year-old boy
was hanged in Iran's Markazi province: in 2014 two men were executed.
The threat of blackmail is now a huge problem for gay men, explains Saghi
Ghahraman, founder of the Iranian Queer Organization. This is because
Iran's complex laws around homosexuality mean that men face different
punishments for consensual sexual intercourse, depending whether they
are the "active" or the "passive" participant.
The passive person faces the death penalty, but the active person
only faces the same punishment if married. The laws can lead to
distrust between partners, as if caught, the only defence for the
passive partner is rape. This also creates an atmosphere for
blackmail. And in a remarkable piece of legislation, fathers and
grandfathers are given the right under Iranian law to kill their
offspring, making "honour" killings legal. "From an
early age, children learn starting in the home that the world is very
hostile to LGBT people," says Ghahraman. The government's
treatment of the transgender community is not so black and white.
Since 1983, when Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa permitting the
acceptance of transgender people in society, sex reassignment surgery
has been available and Iranians can take out loans for the surgery.
In fact, except for Thailand, Iran carries out more sex reassignment
operations than any other country in the world. It's a double edged
sword for some in the LGBT community though - the operations have
become a controversial solution for gay men trying to reconcile their
faith with their sexuality and the government refuses to recognise
transgender people who don't want surgery.
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