|
TOP STORIES
Iran's short, intense presidential campaign kicks off
Friday with the first televised debate featuring six candidates in a
race widely seen as a referendum on whether Iranians feel they have
benefited from the nuclear deal that took effect last year. The May
19 vote will see the moderate incumbent, President Hassan Rouhani,
facing off against conservative and reformist challengers, including
a hard-line cleric with backing from the country's religious
establishment. Iran's influential Guardian Council, a body of senior
clerics and jurists appointed by the supreme leader, vets the
candidates each election. This year, Rouhani's approved challengers
include the hard-line mayor of Tehran, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf; a
conservative former culture minister, Mostafa Mirsalim; Vice
President Eshaq Jahangiri, a moderate; and former vice president
Mostafa Hashemitaba, a reformist.
Royals from Gulf Arab countries met on Thursday in Saudi
Arabia to discuss regional security and try and formulate a unified
voice on rival Iran. The meeting in Riyadh included the defense,
interior and foreign ministers of the six-nation Gulf Cooperation
Council, a tightly allied bloc led by Saudi Arabia that also includes
the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman and Bahrain. A joint
statement after the meeting said the ministers discussed ways to
enhance cooperation to combat terrorism, including efforts to build
up a military alliance of Muslim-majority countries. The alliance of
mostly Sunni countries was announced by Saudi Arabia in late 2015 and
doesn't include Shiite-ruled Iran, or Syria and Iraq.
Syria's military said Israel struck a military
installation southwest of Damascus International Airport before dawn
Thursday, setting off a series of explosions and raising tensions
further between the two neighbors. Apparently seeking to interrupt
weapons transfers to the Hezbollah group in Lebanon, Israel has
struck inside Syria with increasing frequency in recent weeks, making
the war-torn country a proxy theater for Israel's wider war with
Iran. The increasing tempo of attacks risks inflaming a highly
combustible situation drawing in Israel, Syria and the Iranian-backed
Hezbollah, a staunch ally of President Bashar Assad's government with
thousands of fighters in Syria. Israel's military said later Thursday
that its Patriot Missile Defense system intercepted an incoming
projectile from Syria over the Golan Heights. An Israeli defense
official said the Patriot hit a drone, and the military is checking
if it was a Russian aircraft that entered the Israeli side by mistake
or if it was Syrian. He spoke on condition of anonymity in line with
protocol.
UANI IN THE NEWS
A cadre of German companies seeking to engage in
business with Iran is remaining silent in the face of calls by an
international advocacy group to shun working with the Islamic
Republic until it disavows its institutionalized anti-Semitism and
hatred of Israel. United Against Nuclear Iran, or UANI, has
petitioned more than a dozen major German companies, asking them to
sign a declaration promising to not do business with Iran until its
leadership stops denying the Holocaust and calling for the
destruction of the Jewish state. The declaration, which was sent to
the companies ahead of Holocaust Remembrance Day, has not been signed
by a single German company thus far, according to UANI, which has
advocated against doing business with Iran since the landmark nuclear
agreement was signed.
A global conference in London promoting trade with Iran
has drawn a warning from a leading advocacy group opposed to the
Tehran regime's nuclear program about the "severe political,
financial and reputational risks associated with doing business in
the Islamic Republic of Iran." In a full page advertisement published
in the UK's Telegraph newspaper to coincide with the
Global Trade Review's (GTR) 2017 Iran Trade Business Briefing in
London, United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) listed ten major risks
associated with doing business in Iran. These include the dangers of
unwittingly trading with front companies for the Iranian
Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), violating international sanctions
and money laundering rules, the potential harassment and even kidnap
of employees working in Iran, and inadvertently aiding the Islamist
regime's internal repression.
U.S.-IRAN RELATIONS
U.S. diplomats used a meeting with their Iranian
counterparts to press the release of Americans being detained in
Iran, the Trump administration said Thursday. It is the first public
acknowledgment of direct U.S.-Iranian discussions since President
Donald Trump took office. State Department spokesman Mark Toner said
the talks occurred on the sidelines of a meeting in Vienna this week
that focused on implementation of the Iran nuclear deal. Trump has
railed against the seven-nation accord that President Barack Obama's
administration led to completion in 2015. But Trump's aides recently
certified that Iran was upholding its commitment to not advance its
nuclear program toward weapons capability.
SANCTIONS ENFORCEMENT
A Singaporean man was sentenced on Thursday to 40 months
in a U.S. prison for his role in exporting to Iran radio frequency
modules, some of which were later found in bombs in Iraq, the U.S.
Justice Department said in a statement. Lim Yong Nam, also known as
Steven Lim, 43, pleaded guilty in December to illegally exporting the
modules through Singapore, and later to Iran, knowing that the export
of U.S. goods to Iran was a violation of U.S. law, the statement
said. Of the 6,000 modules that Lim and others routed from the United
States to Iran in 2007 and 2008, 14 were later recovered in Iraq
being used to remotely detonate improvised explosive devices, it
said.
SANCTIONS RELIEF
IranAir has abandoned plans to take early delivery of a
Boeing 777-300ER jetliner because the passenger plane is no longer
available, the head of the Islamic Republic's national flag carrier
was quoted as saying by Iranian media. Iran had been expected to
receive the first of 80 aircraft ordered from the U.S. planemaker in
April or May 2018, but Iranian media and industry sources said this
month it might get the first Boeing jet a year earlier than expected
under a proposal to swap deliveries with Turkish Airlines.
"Boeing had proposed to hand over a 777-300ER by summer after
Turkish Airlines withdrew its order for it. We welcomed it ...
However, when we were almost certain that we wanted the plane, it was
no longer available," Chairman Farhad Parvaresh was quoted by
Iran's English language Press TV as saying.
Saudi Arabia, the world's biggest crude exporter, is
losing market share to Iraq and Iran as a result of OPEC's agreement
to curb supplies to bolster prices, according to the head of research
at Abu Dhabi Investment Authority. "If you're talking about winners,
you can count Iran and Iraq," Christof Ruehl said Wednesday at a
conference in Dubai. The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting
Countries agreed to production limits for most of its members at a
meeting in November and brought 11 other nations on board with the
deal in December. Saudi Arabia, OPEC's biggest producer, agreed to
cut output by 486,000 barrels a day while Iraq said it would cut
210,000 barrels a day. Iran was permitted to increase output by
90,000 barrels a day, according to the OPEC accord.
MILITARY MATTERS
Last year, Russia fulfilled all its commitments under
the contract to deliver S-300 air defense systems to Iran, said
Sergei Chemezov, the CEO of Russia's state corporation Rostec.
"We also completed the S-300 deliveries to Iran. We fulfilled
all our commitments," Chemezov said at a meeting with Russian
President Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin. The $800 contract with Iran
to deliver S-300 surface-to-air missile systems, capable of engaging
aircraft or short-and medium-range ballistic missiles, was concluded
in 2007. It was suspended in 2010 due to fierce objections from
Israel and United States.
PROXY WARS
Iran's official IRNA news agency is reporting that the
country's foreign ministry has summoned the Pakistani envoy to
protest an attack on Iranian guards near the border with Pakistan
that left nine dead. The Friday report said the Iranian side demanded
"essential and serious" action by Pakistan to punish the
"terrorists" and applying measures to prevent such
incidents in the future. Iran says the attackers opened fire
Wednesday from the Pakistan side on the guards and killed nine. An
earlier report put the death toll at 10. Three others were injured.
The area in southeast Iran is the scene of occasional clashes between
Iranian forces and the Sunni militant group Jaish-ul-Adl, as well as
armed drug traffickers. It lies on a major drug smuggling transit
route.
HUMAN RIGHTS
A female Iranian football has been
kicked out of the national team for playing without a hijab while on
a personal trip to Switzerland. Shiva Amini was on holiday when she
took part in a kick-about with a group of men and officials from the
Iranian Futsal Federation waded through her social media accounts to
find a picture of her playing in a pair of shorts and without a
headscarf. The veil has been a mandatory dress requirement for women
in Iran since the Islamic Revolution in 1979, and officials suspended
her from the national team.
DOMESTIC POLITICS
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani defended his economic
record on Thursday, three weeks ahead of Iran's presidential
election, and called for further engagement with other countries as
the key to economic growth. His remarks contrasted with the view of
the country's ultimate authority, Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali
Khamenei, who has called on the six presidential candidates not to
rely on foreign investment to revive the country's economy. The
pragmatist president, who is seeking re-election in the May 19 vote,
said Iran's economy had improved since his election in 2013 on a
platform of ending the country's isolation and creating a freer
society. "We should avoid scaring away foreign and
domestic investors ... we can attract 140 billion dollars of
investment that can help to tackle unemployment," Rouhani said
in a live radio program.
In the first televised interview of the six Iranian
candidates approved to run in the presidential election, Ebrahim
Raisi, the custodian of Iran's largest religious endowment, described
a dark economic condition in Iran and said he would be able to fix
it. Ebrahim Raisi expressed support for economic policies that led to
high inflation in Iran. "In my own life I've tasted
poverty," Raisi began when asked what his plans are for the
poor. "And since I became the custodian of the Astan-e Quds
Razavi, I've encountered men and women who are dealing with numerous
difficulties." In March 2016, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali
Khamenei appointed Raisi as custodian of the shrine of Imam Reza, the
holiest (and wealthiest) site in Iran for Shiite Muslims. Since his
appointment, he began taking trips to poor villages outside the
northeastern city of Mashhad, where the shrine is located.
Outgoing Iranian President Hassan Rouhani criticized the
meddling of security bodies with the country's economy. In a speech
delivered three weeks ahead of Iran's presidential elections, Rouhani
underlined the influence of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps
(IRGC), without naming it, on the Iranian economy and the private
sector in particular, which has driven foreign investors out.
"How can we think of productivity while the economic
atmosphere is not competitive," the president asked.
"We should not disappoint employers and intimidate
investors," Rouhani warned, according to ILNA news agency.
Rouhani also called for preserving the "path of moderation"
to overcome current challenges, noting: "Extremism and violence
did not lead to happiness in any country."
OPINION & ANALYSIS
On April 18, the State Department certified Iran to be
in compliance with its commitments under the Iran nuclear deal (Joint
Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA). As France's iconic foreign
minister, the Marquis de Talleyrand, once reportedly said: "This
was worse than a crime; it was a mistake." The applicable
statute not only did not require such a certification, it openly
invited President Trump not to make one if circumstances warranted,
as they clearly did here. More seriously, the certification raises
fundamental questions whether the State Department's bureaucracy
knows or cares that U.S. Iran policy has changed with the Trump
administration's advent.
"The real war" with the West, Iran's supreme
leader declared in a recent speech, "is a cultural war." It
unfolds not on Middle East battlefields, but on the "many
television and internet networks which are busy diverting the hearts
and minds of our youth away from religion, our sacred beliefs,
morality, modesty and the like." Ayatollah Ali Khamenei would
know. After all, thousands of Iranians languish in his regime's
notorious prisons for the high crime of opposing its radical Islamist
ideology. By contrast, notwithstanding his commendable insistence on
deploying the phrase "radical Islamist terrorism,"
President Trump has portrayed the Iranian threat largely in military
terms, devoting little attention to the regime's longstanding human
rights abuses. Yet precisely because Tehran's dogma guides the full
range of its malign behavior in the Middle East, a robust effort to
challenge Tehran's domestic repression would advance America's
self-interest. The Trump organization should recognize that any U.S.
strategy to counter Iran requires Washington to combat the regime's
authoritarian creed.
|
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment