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Taiwan's troubled Yang Ming Marine Transport Corp is
halting its container service to Iran, becoming the first foreign
shipping line to abandon the route a year after international
sanctions on Tehran were lifted, according to a company source. Yang
Ming, the world's ninth largest container shipping line, is a
comparatively small player in Iran, calling there just once a week.
Several larger shipping lines have begun serving Iran since sanctions
were lifted a year ago. An executive with Keelung-headquartered Yang
Ming said the firm had "ceased direct services to Iran on
concerns of rising tensions there". "We took into
consideration the recent sanctions against Iran as well as the
current geopolitical tensions in the region and what's been going on
between Iran, the U.S. and Europe," the executive said,
declining to elaborate further.... A U.S.-based pressure group that
lobbies companies to stop trading with Iran, United Against Nuclear
Iran, said Yang Ming's decision to withdraw was motivated by the risk
of doing business there. It released what it said was a letter from
Yang Ming's chairman Bronson Hsieh who described the decision to halt
the Iran route as part of a "strategic realignment
process". "Yang Ming is aware of political and legal trends
in the relationship of the United States with Iran," Hsieh wrote
in the letter released by the pressure group.
The Trump administration is stepping up its rhetoric
against Iran even as it acknowledges the country is in compliance
with a nuclear deal the president has long derided. Since fulfilling
a legal requirement to certify to Congress that Iran is complying
with the deal, administration officials have repeatedly slammed
Tehran. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson compared the country to
North Korea, and President Trump declared that Iran is violating the
"spirit" of the deal. The administration's actions were to
make sure that "the certification wasn't perceived as a newfound
approval of the [deal] as a mechanism for dealing with Iran,"
said Suzanne Maloney, an Iran expert at the Brookings Institution.
"The statements that we've seen from Tillerson are reflective of
what I see as an emerging focus on Iran as a major priority."
Trump has long railed against the 2016 deal between Iran and six
world powers that requires Iran to curb its nuclear program in
exchange for lifted sanctions.
When President Barack Obama announced the "one-time
gesture" of releasing Iranian-born prisoners who "were not
charged with terrorism or any violent offenses" last year, his
administration presented the move as a modest trade-off for the
greater good of the Iran nuclear agreement and Tehran's pledge to
free five Americans. "Iran had a significantly higher number of
individuals, of course, at the beginning of this negotiation that
they would have liked to have seen released," one senior Obama
administration official told reporters in a background briefing
arranged by the White House, adding that "we were able to winnow
that down to these seven individuals, six of whom are
Iranian-Americans."
IRAN NUCLEAR DEAL
The Trump administration is facing pressure to
definitively rule out a longstanding request by Iran to import 950
tons of natural uranium, according to government sources and
proliferation experts who spoke to THE WEEKLY STANDARD. Tehran has
signaled it will petition again for the yellowcake next week at a
quarterly meeting in Vienna regarding implementation of the 2015
nuclear deal. The Obama administration reportedly approved the
Iranian request in its final weeks, but it was ultimately blocked by
the United Kingdom. Iran has indicated of late that it will revive
the request, setting up a key test for the Trump administration,
which has placed the nuclear deal under a comprehensive review. Trump
officials suggested to TWS that the administration has not yet
decided whether it will overturn the Obama-era decision and prohibit
Iran from importing the natural uranium.
NUCLEAR & BALLISTIC MISSILE
PROGRAM
The White House responded cautiously Friday to claims by
an Iranian dissident group alleging that Iran's clandestine work on a
nuclear weapon has continued unabated by the landmark nuclear deal
that Tehran finalized with the Obama administration and five other
world powers two years ago. At a news conference in Washington,
members of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI)
brandished recent satellite imagery and intelligence purportedly
derived from informants inside the Iranian military to bolster their
claim that the Islamic Regime is still working covertly on what
nuclear experts call weaponization: the final station on the path to
nuclear weapons.
U.S.-IRAN RELATIONS
Iran's foreign minister mocked U.S President Donald
Trump's claim Tehran was "not living up to the spirit" of
the nuclear deal on Friday, saying Washington was flouting the
accord. "We'll see if U.S. prepared to live up to letter of
#JCPOA (nuclear deal) let alone spirit," Foreign Minister
Mohammad Javad Zarif tweeted. "So far, it has defied both.
Should I use my highlighter again?" Zarif is almost as avid a
user of Twitter as Trump despite it being officially banned in Iran.
A day earlier, he hit back at U.S. claims that the 2015 deal
with world powers was a failure by highlighting certain sections and
sharing them on Twitter.
Iranian-American groups attempted to deliver another
legal blow to President Donald Trump's efforts to keep refugees and
immigrants from six mostly Muslim nations out of the U.S. Those
groups, plus about a dozen people, asked a U.S. judge in Washington
Friday to block portions of the president's March 6 executive order
and to add that ruling to previous decisions from Maryland and Hawaii
federal courts that put parts of his edict on hold nationwide.U.S.
District Judge Tanya Chutkan immediately wanted to know what it was
those suing wanted from her. "What are you asking me to
enjoin?" the judge asked plaintiffs' attorney John Freedman when
he stepped to the podium, adding later that she didn't want to grant
or deny his clients' request, "just as an academic
exercise."
Iran's top diplomat Mohammad Javad Zarif advised US
officials, who have leveled a series of anti-Iran tirades in recent
days, to replace their hostile behavior toward the Iranian nation
with a "realistic and pragmatic" approach. "What US
officials need the most ... is to talk realistically and show wise
behavior based on an accurate approach unaffected by pressure of
others ... that are trying to fuel Iranophobia and distort realities
concerning the region and Iran," he told IRNA on Thursday. The
Iranian minister was responding to US Secretary of State Rex
Tillerson's bombastic reference to Iran as "the world's leading
state sponsor of terrorism" in a Tuesday letter to US Congress.
BUSINESS RISK
A UK law firm handling more than 60 complaints by
Iranian nationals who have had their UK bank accounts closed
allegedly because of their nationality has reported a continuation in
such closures since Donald Trump assumed office. Iranian nationals
living legally in the UK often have to go to extra lengths when
opening a bank account and many who already with one have complained
about their accounts being abruptly closed. Some banks refuse to
explain why, while others cite sanctions against Iran as the main
reason. Blackstone Solicitors represents a string of Iranians who
have taken high street banks to court over allegations of racial
discrimination. The firm said account closures have taken place
despite the lifting of sanctions after the 2015 nuclear agreement
between Iran and the world powers.
SANCTIONS RELIEF
An Iranian presidential candidate said Sunday the
landmark 2015 nuclear agreement with world powers has failed to lift
sanctions or improve the country's economy. Mostafa Mirsalim, a
conservative, told a news conference that President Hassan Rouhani's
outreach to the West had failed, adding that "sanctions remained
in place and were even intensified." Under the nuclear deal,
international sanctions were lifted in exchange for Iran curbing its
uranium enrichment, but separate U.S. sanctions related to Iran's
ballistic missile program have been tightened. Mirsalim said that, if
elected, he would abide by the nuclear deal. But he said U.S.
President Donald Trump's administration had already undermined the
agreement, without elaborating.
FOREIGN AFFAIRS
Iran sent its condolences Friday over the latest
extremist attack in Paris, but said France was feeling the blowback
from its "concessions" towards "brutal
terrorists" in Syria, state media reported. Foreign ministry
spokesman Bahram Ghasemi condemned Thursday night's shooting that
killed a policeman on the world-famous Champs Elysees avenue and
expressed sympathy with the French people, the ISNA news agency
reported. But he added: "Unfortunately, concessions and at
times supportive actions for brutal terrorists indicate a double
standard by the Western world in dealing with terrorism, and have
made terrorists bolder."
HUMAN RIGHTS
A British-Iranian woman detained in
Iran while on a trip with her toddler daughter has exhausted all
chance of having her five-year prison sentence overturned in court,
her family said on Monday. Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe is one of
several dual nationals held in Iran by hard-liners in the country's
judiciary and security services on espionage charges, likely to be
used as bargaining chips in future negotiations with the West.
Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who works for the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the
charitable arm of the news agency, found out this weekend her final
appeal to Iran's supreme court had been denied, her husband Richard
Ratcliffe said in a statement.
Richard Ratcliffe, separated from his
family for a year, opened his phone to a favorite video of his
2½-year-old daughter, Gabriella, dancing to Persian music and munching
pistachios. The 41-year-old British accountant checked the time and
calculated the hour in Tehran. If he called too late, Gabriella would
be asleep. When the Skype call connected, his daughter's pudgy face
appeared on the screen. "Hello, love," Mr. Ratcliffe said.
"Are you being a good girl?" Gabriella, born in London, has
forgotten most of her native language. She speaks to him in Farsi-or
gibberish, pretending to speak English. On this call, she waved and
laughed, then grabbed a crayon to draw on the carpet. "Are you
drawing on everything? Mommy will be very cross," Mr. Ratcliffe
said. Gabriella dropped her smile and gestured to a phone on a table,
"Mommy, mommy," she said. Earlier, her mother had called
from a prison in Iran.
OPINION & ANALYSIS
When
the Trump administration acknowledged this past week that Iran is
currently in compliance with the nuclear deal concluded by its
predecessor, the response from its critics was predictable. Obama
administration veterans smirked and liberals guffawed at what they saw
as yet another Trump flip-flop. The government led by the man who had
damned the nuclear agreement as the worst negotiation in history was,
they said, accepting that Obama's gamble had worked. Trump has done
some 180-degree reversals on policy, but this isn't one of them.
Those who focus on Iranian compliance are missing the big picture
about both the consequences of the nuclear deal and the chances for
reversing the colossal mistake Obama made with Iran. As Trump and his
foreign-policy team are realizing, the issue isn't so much whether
the letter of a deal that will expire within a decade is observed as
it is what role Iran is playing in the region while its economy
recovers and its nuclear program remains a long-term problem. The
threatening talk from Washington isn't a flimsy cover for a
flip-flop. It's a recognition that the Iranian threat was actually
exacerbated by Obama's gambit.
As with other foreign policy issues, the Trump
administration's approach to Iran has been full of mixed messages.
Yet amid the confusion, there has been an ominous tendency to
demonize Iran and misrepresent the threat it presents. This could
lead to an unnecessary and risky confrontation. The administration's
various and conflicting responses to the 2015 Iran nuclear deal are a
case in point. The deal, one of the Obama administration's major
triumphs, requires Iran to curb its nuclear activities in return for
a lifting of economic sanctions. During the campaign, President Trump
called it "one of the worst deals I've ever seen" and
promised to tear it up or renegotiate it if he won the election. Last
week, however, a letter from Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to the
House speaker, Paul Ryan, signaled Mr. Trump's intention to stick to
the deal. The letter certified that Iran was complying with the
agreement, negotiated by five world powers in addition to the United
States and Iran. The International Atomic Energy Agency, which
monitors the agreement with on-site inspectors and advanced
technology, reached the same conclusion in its most recent report.
There's no significance worth mentioning regarding the
victory of any candidate in the upcoming Iranian presidential
elections. It does not matter who will win as what's more important
here, is for Iran's domestic and foreign policy to change. As Iran
needs to quit playing the role of the regional dominating power that
has led itself and the region towards sectarian strife and
destruction. Iran, with its current regime which was established by
Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979, cannot continue to play this game because
it does not have a model to present inside or outside its borders.
Iran can seek destruction and make the region's countries depend more
on foreign powers, including America, "The Great
Satan."However, it cannot be a power that builds because this
will require more harmony among the region's communities and it will
mean investing in resources to serve citizens instead of squandering
huge sums of money to buy weapons. Will Iran still be needed if it
plays a constructive role and be useless to America or any other
country?
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