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TOP STORIES
U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Wednesday
accused Iran of 'alarming ongoing provocations' to destabilize
countries in the Middle East as the Trump administration launched a
review of its policy toward Tehran.Tillerson told reporters the
review, which he announced on Tuesday, would not only look at
Tehran's compliance with a 2015 nuclear deal but also its behavior in
the region which he said undermined U.S. interests in Syria, Iraq,
Yemen and Lebanon. His tough words matched those of U.S. Defense Secretary
Jim Mattis, who said in a visit to Saudi Arabia on Wednesday that
Iran's destabilizing influence would have to be overcome to end the
conflict in Yemen.
After her first UN Security Council meeting on the
Middle East in February, U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley knocked the
organization's "anti-Israel bias." On Thursday, Haley will
try to turn the spotlight from Israel to Iran, the latest target of
the Trump administration's tough talk. Haley, who holds the rotating
presidency of the United Nations' top decision-making body for April,
wants to use a monthly meeting on "the situation in the Middle
East, including the Palestinian question" to tackle Tehran's
role in Yemen and Syria and its support for Hezbollah, topics she
sees as more central to the theme of Middle East peace.
Companies from China and Iran will this weekend sign the
first commercial contracts to redesign an Iranian nuclear plant as
part of an international deal reached in 2015 over Iran's nuclear
program, China's Foreign Ministry said on Thursday. The fate of the
Arak reactor in central Iran was one of the toughest sticking points
in the long nuclear negotiations that led to the agreement, signed by
Iran with the United States, Britain, France, China, Russia and
Germany. In the redesign, the heavy water reactor will be
reconfigured so it cannot yield fissile plutonium usable in a nuclear
bomb. Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said the contracts for the plant's
redesign would be signed on Sunday in Vienna with initial agreements
having already been reached in Beijing, describing it as an important
part of the Iran nuclear deal.
U.S.-IRAN RELATIONS
The Trump administration is not shy about taking on
global adversaries with tough rhetoric. This week, it turned some of
its attention toward Iran. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson slammed
Iran on Wednesday as a state sponsor of terrorism responsible for
"alarming, ongoing provocations" across the Middle East.
(Think: threats against Israel, support for Syrian President Bashar
al-Assad and harassment of U.S. naval vessels in the Persian Gulf.)
In formal remarks to reporters, Tillerson suggested the United States
was considering whether to punish the Islamic republic by reimposing
sanctions that were lifted under the 2015 nuclear agreement.
Defense Minister Hossein Dehqan has warned the American
leaders against bullying other countries and intervening in their
internal affairs, saying "such era has come to an end."
Dehqan's remarks came amidst growing tension between Tehran and
Washington as they increasingly accuse each other of sponsoring
terrorism. On Tuesday, U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis accused
Iran of creating chaos in the region "Iran has been
spreading chaos and havoc in several regional countries, including
Yemen. The Houthis and ousted Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh are
like puppets controlled by Iran; they do what the Iranians tell them
to do," Mattis claimed Tuesday during his visit to Saudi Arabia.
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Wednesday that the
landmark nuclear deal has failed to squash Iran's ability and
determination to develop atomic weapons, arguing that the country's
ambitions still threaten international peace and security. "An
unchecked Iran has the potential to follow the same path as North
Korea and take the world along with it," Tillerson said in
remarks to reporters in the formal setting of the State Department's
Treaty Room. "The United States is keen to avoid a second piece
of evidence that strategic patience is a failed approach."
President Trump's team is working to "checkmate
Iran" through enhanced coordination with Saudi Arabia and other
U.S. allies, according to Defense Secretary Jim Mattis. "What
we're seeing is the nations in the region and others elsewhere trying
to checkmate Iran and the amount of disruption, the amount of
instability they can cause," Mattis told reporters in Riyadh
following a meeting with Saudi Arabian Ministry of Defense.
"It's got to be ended."
SANCTIONS RELIEF
Iran's return to the world economy is helping
plane-makers cope with a downturn in global demand, providing homes
for airplanes orphaned by reversals in the growth plans of airlines
elsewhere.Plane-makers are also gambling that the early delivery of
such aircraft could help prop up a nuclear sanctions deal between
Iran and world powers, threatened by conservative opponents in both
Washington and Tehran, western sources said. Since sanctions were
lifted under the deal to reopen trade and limit Iran's nuclear
program, the Islamic Republic, trying to boost its economy after
years of isolation, has joined a waiting list of up to eight years
for 200 new aircraft.
FOREIGN AFFAIRS
A general from Iran's Revolutionary Guards assumed the
post of ambassador to Iraq on Wednesday, in a sign of the key role
the military force is currently playing in its neighboring country.
Iraj Masjedi previously worked as adviser to Qassem Soleimani in
Iraq, according to the Tasnim news site. Soleimani is head of the
Quds Force, the branch of the Revolutionary Guards responsible for
operations outside of Iran. Since Islamic State took control of
swathes of Iraq in 2014, Soleimani worked with top Iraqi security
officials to fight the militant Islamist group, primarily through a
Shi'ite volunteer force known as Popular Mobilization Units.
YEMEN CRISIS
U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said on Wednesday that
Iran's destabilizing influence in the Middle East would have to be
overcome to end the conflict in Yemen, as the United States weighs
increasing support to the Saudi-led coalition fighting there. At least
10,000 people have been killed and more than 3 million displaced in
the war in Yemen, now in its third year. Millions of people are also
struggling to feed themselves. "We will have to overcome Iran's
efforts to destabilize yet another country and create another militia
in their image of Lebanese Hezbollah, but the bottom line is we are
on the right path for it," Mattis told reporters in Riyadh after
meeting senior Saudi officials. Mattis said the goal was for there to
be a political solution through U.N.-brokered negotiations to resolve
the conflict in Yemen.
HUMAN RIGHTS
The Islamic Republic of Iran arrested
more than 30 men who are believed to be gay at a private party last
week in the Esfahan province. The prominent Canadian NGO
Iranian Railroad for Queer Refugees (IRQR) first reported on the
violent crackdown, saying the men were between the ages of 16 and 30.
"IRQR received several reports in last few days and were able to
confirm that police attacked guests and physically beat them. Police
detained them all at the Basij (Revolutionary Guard Militia) Station
and then transferred them to Esfahan's Dastgerd Prison. A few people
managed to escape and we received reports that there were several
heterosexual individuals among those arrested," the human rights
NGO wrote in its website on Thursday.
Authorities in Iran are threatening new restrictions on
non-Muslims seeking to run in next month's local elections. Just one
week before parliament is to approve a list of candidates, a letter
published this week by Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, the head of the
Guardian Council, declared it is against Sharia (Islamic law) for
non-Muslims to be candidates in Shia Muslim-majority areas in city
and village council elections. These contests, along with the
presidential election, are set for May 19.
OPINION & ANALYSIS
President Trump has flip-flopped many times during his
first months in office. But none may be as consequential as his
decision on April 18 to certify that Iran is abiding by the nuclear
deal of 2015, paving the way for further waiving of sanctions. In
just a few months, Mr. Trump has gone from promising to "tear
up" the nuclear deal to allowing its extension. The
administration has now said it will conduct a 90-day review of
whether lifting sanctions - as required by the nuclear deal - will be
in line with American national security interests. But that timeline
is not long enough to save the deal and stop the United States and
Iran from sliding dangerously back to a path toward war.
Despite Donald Trump's insistence during the
presidential campaign that the 2015 nuclear agreement with Iran - the
Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) - was the "worst deal
ever" and Iran's failure to fully comply with this agreement, the
Trump administration Tuesday certified to Congress that Iran is in
compliance with the agreement and will continue to receive sanction
relief. The administration added, however that the agreement is
under review. Make no mistake: this is a huge win for the Obama administration
and the permanent foreign policy bureaucracy - the so-called swamp -
who desperately want to protect this flawed and dangerous agreement
at all costs. The certification probably indicates the outcome of the
Trump administration's review of the JCPOA is a forgone conclusion
just like a similar review in 2001 by the Bush administration of a
deeply-flawed nuclear agreement with North Korea.
We failed to prevent North Korea from developing nuclear
weapons. As a result, our options to stop them from developing a
delivery system capable of reaching our shores are severely limited.
The hard lesson from our failure to stop North Korea before they
became a nuclear power is that we MUST stop Iran from ever developing
or acquiring a nuclear arsenal. A nuclear Iran would be far more
dangerous to American interest than a nuclear North Korea. Iran
already has rockets capable of reaching numerous American allies.
They are in the process of upgrading them and making them capable of
delivering a nuclear payload to our shores. Its fundamentalist
religious leaders would be willing to sacrifice millions of Iranians
to destroy the big Satin (United States) or the little Satin
(Israel).
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