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TOP STORIES
Iranians should not thank Hassan Rouhani's policy of
detente with the West for any reduction in the threat of war, supreme
leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Sunday, stepping up his
criticisms of the president as elections approach. In comments that appeared
to favor hardline candidates in the May 19 vote, Khamenei played down
the benefits of Rouhani's landmark agreement to curb Iran's nuclear
activities in return for a lifting of international sanctions.
"Some say since they took office the shadow of war has been
faded away. This is not correct," Khamenei was quoted as saying
by state media. "It's been people's presence in the political
scene that has removed the shadow of war from the country."
The European Union
rallied behind Iran's nuclear deal during a high-level visit to the
country over the weekend, vowing to safeguard the accord despite U.S.
threats to scrap it and pledging to support the Islamic Republic's
economy. With less than three weeks before Iran's presidential
elections, the EU's push to bring the country into the international
fold pits Brussels against Washington, which is ratcheting up
pressure on Tehran for "not living up to the spirit" of the
2015 nuclear agreement-even as it fulfills its commitments.
Differences over the Iran deal come as the EU puzzles over the U.S.
stance on critical policies, while President Donald Trump seeks to
execute a central campaign promise: rolling back his predecessor's
landmark initiatives, including efforts to fight climate change and
enact global trade agreements.
A dissident Iranian television
executive was assassinated in Istanbul on Saturday evening, months
after he was sentenced in absentia to a six-year prison term by an
Iranian court for spreading propaganda. Saeed Karimian, the owner of
Gem TV, a network of television channels that broadcasts in Farsi and
other languages, was shot as he drove through an upscale neighborhood
of northern Istanbul "minutes after leaving his office,"
Gem announced on Sunday. Also killed was his Kuwaiti business
partner, whose name has not been released. The assailants fled, and
their vehicle was found abandoned and partly destroyed in another
part of Istanbul, according to reports by Gem and several Turkish news
outlets. Sukru Genc, the mayor of the district in Istanbul where the
attack occurred, confirmed the killing in an interview.
NUCLEAR & BALLISTIC MISSILE PROGRAM
The Islamic Republic and the European Union will start
the construction of an advanced nuclear safety center in Iran in the
near future, Iran's nuclear chief says. Head of the Atomic Energy
Organization of Iran (AEOI) Ali Akbar Salehi made the remarks in a
joint press conference on Saturday with European Climate Action and
Energy Commissioner Miguel Arias Canete, who is in Tehran to take
part in the first-ever Iran-EU Business Forum on Sustainable Energy.
Salehi added that the nuclear safety center would extend services to
regional countries as well. He added that he has now held three
rounds of talks with the EU commissioner over the past 1.5 years,
adding that "very good achievements" have since been made
and a large portion of the agreements have been implemented.
U.S.-IRAN RELATIONS
Iran has acknowledged discussing the fate of detained
dual nationals with the United States, saying there have been
"positive results" for prisoner trades in the past.
Monday's comments by Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram
Ghasemi mark the first official government acknowledgement of
discussing prisoners with the U.S. at a recent meeting in Vienna.
That meeting last week focused on implementation of the Iran nuclear
deal. Ghasemi told journalists: "In the past ... we had talks
for humanitarian reasons with Americans over (swapping) some
(American) prisoners with Iranian prisoners jailed in the U.S. and it
had positive results too." Among the dual nationals held in Iran
are Iranian-American businessman Siamak Namazi and his 81-year-old
father, Baquer Namazi. They are serving 10-year prison sentences for
"cooperating with the hostile American government."
Economic sanctions have often been seen as a crude
political tool with varying effectiveness in bending the will of
governments, whether it was Cuba, North Korea or apartheid South
Africa. But the continuing US sanctions against Iran have given some
measure of personal satisfaction to dozens of American families who
have begun to receive cash payments as compensation for the loss or
maiming of loved ones in what the US has judged to be state-sponsored
acts of terrorism. Among the recipients are the 53 Americans taken
hostage in 1979 and held at their embassy in Tehran for 444 days.
More than $1bn has been disbursed from a fund established by
Congress. The money comes from nearly $9bn in penalties and fines the
US government imposed on French Bank BNP Paribas for moving Sudanese,
Iranian and Cuban deposits through the financial system in violation
of American sanctions. The fund is expected to add to its coffers
when Chinese telecom maker ZTE Corporation pays out more than $1bn in
settling another sanctions case.
SANCTIONS RELIEF
Iran said on Sunday it was now self-sufficient in
petroleum production as President Hassan Rouhani opened a refinery in
the southern city of Bandar Abbas.The Persian Gulf Star refinery has
the capacity to produce 12 million litres of Euro IV petrol. Once fully
operational, the refinery will produce 36 million litres of petrol.
"By the opening of the first phase of this refinery an old dream
came true ... We are self-sufficient in petrol production and in near
future we will be able to export," Rouhani was quoted as saying
by the oil ministry's news agency SHANA.
FOREIGN AFFAIRS
Wary of U.S. President Donald Trump's tough talk on
Iran, the European Union is courting Tehran to show Iranians
preparing to vote in a May 19 presidential poll that it is committed
to a nuclear deal and they stand to benefit, EU diplomats say.
Europe's energy commissioner is leading more than 50 European firms
in a business forum in Tehran over the weekend - the latest bid to
foster new ties in the 16 months since Iran curbed its nuclear
program in exchange for sanctions relief. Of the six major powers who
engineered the deal - the United States, Britain, France, Germany,
China and Russia - EU nations bore the brunt of the oil embargo on
Iran and stand to gain the most from a thaw they view as a victory
for European diplomacy.
Tehran protested to Islamabad Friday over a cross-border
raid by armed rebels who killed 10 Iranian guards in the restive
southeast. "We expect those responsible for this terrorist
attack to be arrested and prosecuted," President Hassan Rouhani
said in a letter to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. The foreign ministry
also called in the Pakistani ambassador to protest over Wednesday
evening's raid in the Mirjaveh district of Sistan-Baluchistan
province. The province has a large Sunni community and has seen
repeated attacks by Sunni militants against the security forces of
mainly Shiite Iran. The porous border region with Pakistan has also
been prey to violence by drug smugglers.
SAUDI-IRAN TENSIONS
When U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis greeted Saudi Arabia's
foreign minister at the Pentagon last month, the first thing he did
was joke about the time "the Iranians tried to murder you."
Mattis' reference to a foiled 2011 plot, denied by Iran, was a
telling sign of how much more aligned President Donald Trump's
administration is with Gulf allies about what they perceive to be the
Iranian threat, a shift that seems to be setting the stage for
greater U.S. involvement in Yemen, in particular. After long seeking
to distance itself from Yemen's brutal civil war, the United States
under Trump now appears increasingly to see the conflict through the
Gulf's prism of Iranian meddling, even as Washington prioritizes a
parallel fight against al Qaeda.
HUMAN RIGHTS
An Iranian filmmaker imprisoned over
his work has been released from prison after serving about five
months of his yearlong sentence. Keywan Karimi told The Associated
Press on Sunday that he did not receive any of the 223 lashes that
was part of his sentence. Karimi says: "I want to continue
filmmaking, but I don't know how and in which country." Karimi
is best known by international film critics for his 2013
black-and-white minimalist film, "The Adventure of the Married
Couple." He is one of several artists, poets, journalists,
models and activists arrested in a crackdown on expression led by
hard-liners who oppose President Hassan Rouhani's more moderate
policies and efforts to promote openness with the outside world. His
release comes ahead of Iran's May presidential election.
There is a renewed focus on the handful
of American citizens who remain locked up in Iran, after Politico
recently reported that the Iranian prisoners released by the Obama
administration last year were set free despite being deemed potential
threats to national security. It was in January 2016 that we learned
a group of American citizens in Iranian custody were finally being
released as part of ongoing negotiations over the Iran nuclear
agreement. Their return came in exchange for the release of several
Iranians by the U.S., individuals who were described by
then-President Obama as "civilians" who had never been
"charged with terrorism or any violent offenses." As the
president pointed out at the time, however, not every American
believed to be trapped in Iran was coming home, and some are still
missing to this day. Here is a list of Americans still being
held in Iran.
DOMESTIC POLITICS
Hardline conservative challengers accused Iranian
President Hassan Rouhani in an election debate on Friday of failing
to revive the economy even after a diplomatic thaw with the West he
has touted as the key to attracting new investment. During a
three-hour debate carried live on state television, the pragmatist
Rouhani's opponents sought to denigrate his economic record and said
that the Islamic Republic would be harmed if he were re-elected on
May 19. Rouhani secured Iran's nuclear accord with world powers in 2015,
welcomed by many Iranians, but discontent has risen over the lack of
broad improvement in living standards despite the lifting of most
international sanctions in 2016 under the deal.
Just a few days ago, hard-line cleric Ebrahim Raisi was
the contender to watch in the race to unseat Iranian President Hassan
Rouhani. By the weekend, his candidacy was already in doubt. In the
harsh, fast-paced politicking typical of Iran's campaign season,
Raisi's candidacy quickly foundered after his poor performance in a
live television debate. Six candidates approved by Iran's Guardian
Council, a clerical oversight body, took the stage Friday in the
first of three planned debates ahead of the May 19 election. Debates
have become a popular feature of the country's elections, drawing
large audiences and producing some of the most memorable moments of
recent campaigns. They can also make or break candidates in an
election period that takes place over a period of just a few weeks.
Iran's May 19 election is seen as a referendum on the
policies of President Hassan Rouhani, the moderate cleric who
championed integrating Iran with the global economy and accepted
limits on his nation's nuclear work in exchange for relief from
sanctions. He entered his reelection campaign facing criticism from
conservatives and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei over his
economic policies. The economy was a main theme of the first of three
televised debates among Rouhani and his five challengers.
President Hassan Rouhani told Iranians on Saturday they
could face greater authoritarianism if they replace him with a
hardline rival in May's election. Rouhani was the surprise winner of
the last presidential vote, in 2013, after eight years of Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad whose re-election for a second term in 2009 caused mass
protests and a severe security crackdown. He now faces serious
competition from hardliners, some of whom are close to Iran's supreme
leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has criticized Rouhani's economic
record, saying his detente with the West and concessions on Iran's
nuclear work had yet to yield economic benefits.
OPINION & ANALYSIS
Crafting a new Middle East security policy is a daunting
task. However, despite the war in Syria, the missile threats from
Hamas and Hezbollah, the ongoing terrorist violence in Iraq, and the
conflict in Yemen, 2017 may be, ironically, a particularly propitious
time for U.S. security policy to move in a different direction, while
also preserving what is right about U.S. policy and changing what is
wrong. Iran's hostile behavior is of a long standing nature, having
been initiated in 1979 and continued through this past decade. It is
not new and is not a reaction to bad American actions. It is rooted
in the very nature of the Iranian regime. Unless we face that
reality, our efforts to eliminate Iran's pursuit of both nuclear
weapons and a hegemonic role in the Middle East will be for naught.
The conversation in Washington about the nuclear deal
with Iran has been on tactical issues like how many months it might
take for Iran "to breakout" from constraints of the
agreement-length of time Tehran would need to produce enough highly
enriched uranium to make one nuclear weapon. To extend breakout time,
the accord requires a restriction on uranium enrichment at two key
sites, Fordow and Natanz, and that the core of a heavy-water reactor
in Arak be rendered inoperable. Without doing so, a plutonium
byproduct might have been reprocessed into weapons-grade material,
which would be another route for Iran to acquire the Bomb Nuclear
weaponization is the conduct of experimentation on large-scale high
explosives.
Recent reports have indicated that the Obama
administration's nuclear deal with Iran is even worse than its
critics thought. Besides releasing over $130 billion dollars to a
regime that has renounced neither its hopes for nuclear weapons nor
its support for terrorism, the previous administration also released
Iranians involved in high-tech smuggling. These revelations, along
with provocations like banning international inspectors from military
sites, provide excellent reasons for President Trump not only to
discontinue the deal, but also to open a broader offensive against
the Iranian regime. Deal or no deal, Iran's leadership has made plain
its intention to continue its drive for nuclear weapons. This
objective is not surprising, since the promise of nuclear weapons is
the only accomplishment they have to offer the Iranian people.
Since being elected, President Trump has reversed or
softened a number of problematic positions he took during last year's
campaign. He has decided not to declare China a currency manipulator,
he has not withdrawn the U.S. from the North American Free Trade
Agreement - as he threatened to do if Canada and Mexico didn't agree
to "immediately" renegotiate its terms - and he hasn't
followed through with a promise to "dismantle the disastrous
deal with Iran" that placed limits on that country's nuclear
program in exchange for relief from economic sanctions. Yet on Iran,
the president continues to send dangerously mixed signals that could
jeopardize the nuclear agreement, divide the United States from its
allies and embolden hard-liners in Iran. Trump is right to be
concerned about Iran's support for militant groups in Lebanon, Yemen
and Afghanistan, and its insistence on testing ballistic missiles
that potentially could be used to deliver nuclear weapons. But he can
respond to those provocations without repudiating - or hinting that
he will repudiate - an agreement that is as much in this country's
interest as it is Iran's.
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