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TOP STORIES
The Trump administration on Thursday sanctioned the
brother of Iran's top spy master and military strategist for alleged
human-rights violations, amid growing calls by Congress for the White
House to confront Tehran and bring home U.S. citizens still
imprisoned in the country. Successive U.S. administrations have
fixated on curtailing the activities of Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani,
commander of international operations of Iran's elite military unit,
the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. U.S. intelligence agencies
believe Gen. Soleimani is overseeing Iran's military operations in
Syria, which are designed to prop up the regime of President Bashar
al-Assad. The U.S. and its Middle East allies also said they have
seen Gen. Soleimani's hand in Revolutionary Guard military activities
in Iraq, Yemen, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories. On Thursday,
the U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned Gen. Soleimani's brother,
Sohrab Soleimani, who has been accused of committing human-rights
violations as head of the Tehran Prisons Organization.
Foreign ministers from Russia, Syria and Iran presented
a unified front in support of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on
Friday, saying the U.S. and international accusations of a chemical
strike by the regime in Damascus were fabrications. Russian Foreign
Minister Sergei Lavrov called for an international investigation into
the April 4 chemical attack on the town of Khan Sheikhoun in northern
Syria, an incident that Washington has blamed on Mr. Assad's forces.
"The amount of evidence is multiplying that it was staged,"
Mr. Lavrov said following a meeting with his counterparts from Syria
and Iran, adding that U.S. actions were aimed at "finding a
pretext to initiate regime change." The U.S. military last week
launched a cruise-missile strike on the Shayrat air base in Syria,
saying it was used for the attack on Khan Sheikhoun.
Iranian media say more than 600 candidates have
registered to run in next month's presidential election. At least 638
have registered in the first three days of the process through
Thursday, more than twice the number that had registered during the
same period in 2013. Registration closes on Saturday. More people
tend to run when a moderate is in office because the political sphere
is more open. More than 1,000 people registered in 2005, under
reformist President Mohammad Khatami The Guardian Council, a clerical
body that oversees elections, is expected to bar most candidates and
will announce an approved list by April 27.
SANCTIONS ENFORCEMENT
Iran said Friday that new U.S. sanctions imposed against
the brother of the high-profile commander of the Revolutionary
Guards' foreign operations arm, Qassem Soleimani, were
"illegal" The U.S. Treasury added Sohrab Soleimani, along
with the Tehran Prisons Organisation which he recently oversaw, to
its list of individuals and entities facing sanctions Thursday for
alleged human rights violations. "The U.S government with its
failed domestic and international record is not in a position to
comment or act on the human rights situation in other
countries," foreign ministry spokesman Bahram Ghasemi said.
The United States on Thursday sanctioned Sohrab
Soleimani, the brother of the commander of Iran's Revolutionary
Guards, for his role in abuses in Iranian prisons. The action freezes
any assets Soleimani might have in the United States and bars U.S.
citizens from conducting transactions with him. Soleimani is the
"supervisor of the office of the deputy for security and law
enforcement of the state prisons organization," the U.S. Treasury
Department said. He is also the former director general of the Tehran
Prisons Organization, which was also sanctioned on Thursday.
Soleimani's brother Qassem Soleimani leads Iran's Quds Force, the
elite special forces arm of the Revolutionary Guards. Qassem Soleimani
had previously been sanctioned, the White House said. "The
sanctions against human rights abusers in Iran's prisons comes at a
time when Iran continues to unjustly detain ... various foreigners,
including U.S. citizens," White House spokesman Sean Spicer told
a press briefing.
An executive at the Turkish state-owned bank Halkbank on
Thursday pleaded not guilty to charges he violated US. sanctions
against Iran in a politically charged case that has drawn the ire of
Turkey President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Mehmet Hakan Atilla, a
deputy general manager at Halkbank, entered his plea through his
lawyer at a hearing in Manhattan federal court. The lawyer, Victor
Rocco, said his firm also counts the Republic of Turkey as a client,
adding another potential conflict of interest to be vetted by the
court. U.S. prosecutors arrested Atilla last month, accusing him of
conspiring with Turkish gold trader Reza Zarrab to conduct hundreds
of millions of dollars of illegal transactions through U.S. banks on
behalf of Iran's government and other entities in Iran. Zarrab, also
present in court, submitted a not guilty plea to a superseding
indictment. The dual national of Iran and Turkey had been arrested in
2013 in a corruption probe of people close to Erdogan, who was prime
minister at the time.
SANCTIONS RELIEF
Iran secured a contract with a third Western aircraft
supplier on Thursday since the easing of sanctions by completing a
deal to buy 20 regional turboprops from Europe's ATR, part of an
effort to modernise the nation's creaking fleet. After months of
talks that required navigating a way through separate U.S. sanctions
and regulations still in place, ATR and Iranian officials said the
contract with national carrier IranAir was signed in Tehran. Iran
initially announced the signing on Monday, but ATR said at the time
elements were still being finalised. The first plane in the deal may
be dispatched in days from the ATR factory in Toulouse, France, where
it has been sitting for months. It will be joined in coming weeks by
three further aircraft already painted in IranAir colours. Jointly
owned by Airbus and Italian company Leonardo, ATR said the deal was
worth $536 million at list prices and included options for a further
20 aircraft. Commercial aircraft are typically sold at a discount.
SYRIA CONFLICT
CIA Director Mike Pompeo said Thursday that the U.S.
cruise missile strike on a Syrian airfield last week signaled to Iran
that the United States is prepared to use force to protect American
interests. In his first public remarks since taking over the
intelligence agency, Pompeo also criticized the anti-secrecy website
WikiLeaks, labeling the group a "hostile, non-government,
intelligence service" and calling its founder, Julian Assange, a
celebrity-seeking narcissist. On Iran, Pompeo linked last week's 59
Tomahawk missile salvo fired from a U.S. warship against an airfield
in Syria where jets carrying chemical weapons took off prior to a
recent nerve agent attack to Iran's compliance with an international
nuclear accord.
DOMESTIC POLITICS
A month before Iranians head to the polls for the
presidential and council elections, a heated exchange between the
judiciary and the Intelligence Ministry has highlighted the growing
tension over social media between different political factions in the
Islamic Republic. Several administrators of 12 reformist channels on
the popular Telegram application who were arrested in March 2017 have
found themselves at the center of the exchange. With an
estimated 20 million users in Iran, Telegram is the country's leading
social media app, according to a survey published by the Iranian
Students Polling Agency in December 2015. Weeks passed with no one
taking responsibility for the arrests of the admins, which were
either carried out by the Intelligence Ministry, operating under
President Hassan Rouhani, or the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps
(IRGC), which answers only to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
OPINION & ANALYSIS
The horrific pictures we have seen from the recent
chemical weapons attack carried out by the Syrian regime on its own
citizens speak thousands of words. Yet, we have been witness to these
heartbreaking images for the past six years. This fact also raises
thousands of questions. Maybe the most important one is this: Why has
the enlightened world been silent on Syria? Whereas the US military
strike on a Syrian air force base sent an important message to the
Assad regime, that message will soon be forgotten unless it is
reinforced with a clear demonstration of outrage in the west. Why are
there no demonstrations in the streets of Europe or on American
college campuses? Where are those who are so quick to organize
protests against Israel (e.g. the BDS movement) when it comes to the
war crimes of the Syrian regime?
When dealing with Iran, President Donald Trump aspires
to make it clear that he does not adhere to the policy of his
predecessor. On February 2, 2017 then-National Security Advisor
Michael Flynn put Iran "on notice" in reaction to an
Iranian missile test and an attack on a Saudi warship by
Iranian-backed Houthi rebels. On the following day Trump tweeted,
"Iran is playing with fire - they don't appreciate how 'kind'
President Obama was to them. Not me!" "It's one of the
worst deals ever made." This is how Trump repeatedly described
President Barack Obama's hallmark foreign policy achievement - the
nuclear deal with Iran. These statements indeed signal a major
departure from Obama's approach to Iran. The Obama administration's
chief objective was to reach a deal with Iran that would restrict its
nuclear program and protect the deal after implementation
starts.
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