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TOP STORIES
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee approved on
Thursday the most sweeping sanctions against Iran since the United
States and five other nations reached an agreement with Tehran in
2015 to sharply limit that nation's nuclear capability, and the
committee warned Russia that it was almost certain to be the next
target. Because Iran has complied with the nuclear accord, the Senate
committee had to find other reasons to impose the sanctions, and
linked the penalties to Iran's continued support for terrorism and
its human rights violations, among other concerns. But the timing of
the long-planned punishment was awkward, coming right after Iranians
overwhelmingly re-elected President Hassan Rouhani, who has moved to expand
personal freedoms in the country and integrate its economy with the
West.
The Lebanese Shi'ite group Hezbollah said on Thursday
Saudi Arabia was on a losing path to more bloodshed in its struggle
with Iran and instead urged Riyadh to seek dialogue and negotiations
with Tehran. Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, leader of the Iran-backed
group, said Riyadh aimed to pull the United States into its conflict
with Tehran after a summit where President Donald Trump signaled firm
backing for Saudi Arabia while criticizing Iran. Nasrallah's group is
designated as a terrorist organization by the United States. "I
advise Saudi to set aside struggle, hatred and war. Your only
solution for the sake of all Muslims, the whole region ... is
dialogue with Iran and to negotiate with Iran," Nasrallah said
in a televised speech. "This path you are taking will only lead
to spending billions more dollars and spilling more blood and you
will be the ones who lose. You will fail," he said.
Iran is trying to gain a military base near the
Israeli-Syrian border, a bipartisan pair of lawmakers warned the
Trump administration. "A permanent Iranian military base in
Syria, potentially near the border with Israel or Jordan, would
increase Iran's operational capacity to inflict serious damage
against two of our closest allies in the region," Rep. Peter
Roskam, R-Ill., and Rep. Ted Deutch, D-Fla., wrote in a letter to
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. That warning points to the
strategic significance of the Syrian civil war, beyond the importance
of defeating the Islamic State. Trump's team has authorized an
intense barrage of airstrikes on ISIS, while opening the door to
cooperation with Russia; a senior State Department official recently
attended a peace talks summit between Syrian President Bashar Assad
and opposition forces that was led by the Russians. But Russia is
propping up Assad in partnership with Iran, which means the defeat of
ISIS could inaugurate a new phase of regional rivalry.
NUCLEAR & BALLISTIC MISSILE PROGRAM
Recently re-elected Iranian President Hassan Rouhani
lashed out at the Trump administration this week, describing it as
ignorant and saying that Iran "needs missiles" to confront
the United States and its allies, according to recent remarks certain
to rile leaders in Washington, D.C. Just days after President Donald
Trump blasted the Islamic Republic for its illicit ballistic missile
program and support of terrorism in the Middle East, Rouhani
confirmed that Iran would not cease its missile activity, despite
repeated calls by U.S. officials. "We need missiles and the
enemy should know that we make everything we need and we don't pay an
iota of attention to your words," Rouhani was quoted as saying
on Wednesday during a meeting with Iranian cabinet members. "The
remarks by the enemies of the Iranian nation against Iran's missile
power are out of ignorance."
SANCTIONS RELIEF
Iran hopes to sign groundbreaking deals with oil majors
such as Total and Lukoil this year as the re-election this month of
reformist Hassan Rouhani to the presidency should boost investments.
Iran's veteran oil minister, Bijan Zanganeh, told Reuters in an
interview he saw his country adding around a quarter to its
production capacity in the next five years thanks to new projects
with international companies. The development of new fields as well
as improved oil recovery from mature reservoirs should allow Iran,
OPEC's No.3 oil producer, to have the capacity to pump 5 million
barrels per day, or 5 percent of global crude, versus 4 million bpd
now. Gas condensate output capacity should increase to 1 million bpd
from about 600,000 bpd now. "One important step was the
election, because in this election Iranian people said 'yes' to
positive interaction with the world," Zanganeh said in Vienna
after a meeting of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting
Countries.
An Iranian bank sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury
Department has opened its first branch in Italy, Iranian state media
reported Wednesday. The official Islamic Republic News Agency
reported Saman Bank has opened a branch in Rome following meetings
between officials with the Central Bank of Iran and Italian delegates
last month. "Saman Bank opened its first agency in Rome in order
to provide financing, investment, banking, and legal consulting
services and also to create conditions for investment, and to
introduce investment opportunities to the European, especially
Italian, investors," the report read.
Norway, Denmark and Sweden will negotiate with Iran on
May 29-30 aiming to modernize and liberalize commercial air travel
agreements, the Norwegian Ministry of Transportation and
Communications said in a statement on Friday. Top Scandinavian
carriers SAS and Norwegian Air Shuttle currently do not fly to Iran.
TERRORISM
IRGC Quds Force Commander Maj. Gen Ghassem Soleimani
congratulated Ismail Haniyeh on his election as new leader of the
Political Bureau of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas). "We
are hopeful about your efforts on institutionalizing Resistance along
the Hamas' jihadi line and a virtuous fate for Palestinians at your
hands," Soleimani has said in his message. He underlined the
evil plots of Zionism and global Arrogance who seek weakening the
Islamic Ummah; "they are trying to distract Ummah's jihad from
its Islamic path and are seeking seizure of the Holy Qudas while the
supporters of the city lack the will to save it."
SAUDI-IRAN TENSIONS
The chief of Lebanon's Hezbollah group is telling Saudi
Arabia that dialogue with Iran is the only way forward, lashing out
at the kingdom's lavish royal welcome of U.S. president Donald Trump.
In a speech Thursday, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah says the U.S. president
is 'only interested in money' and is the most 'racist' U.S. president
against Arabs and Muslims. He says the Saudi welcome and deals signed
are a sign of the kingdom's weakness. Nasrallah was speaking days
after Trump signed a $110 billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia aimed
at bolstering Saudi security, and after the U.S. State Department
announced sanctions on senior Hezbollah leader Hashem Safieddine.
HUMAN RIGHTS
The re-election of President Hassan
Rouhani on May 19, 2017 was due in large part to the perception by
the Iranian citizenry that his government would do more to improve
human rights in Iran than his rivals-an outcome clearly desired by a
majority of voters. During Rouhani's campaign rallies, not only did
he make explicit references to issues of political and social freedom
and promises to uphold such freedoms in his second term, his
supporters also repeatedly made clear their demands for improvements
in human rights. Despite Iran's tradition of giving the incumbent a
second term, Rouhani's re-election was uncertain.
DOMESTIC POLITICS
For Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, winning
re-election may have been the easy part. His wide-margin victory over
a hard-line rival shows a majority of Iranian voters prefer his
promises of greater liberalization at home and deeper engagement with
the world It is a win that brings hope to Iran's reform-minded
urbanites and bulging youth population, who long to see their country
move past its image as an oppressive and insular nation cut off from
the West. That was clear from the throngs of chanting, clapping and
dancing supporters who poured into Tehran's streets to celebrate his
victory. "I hope we can enjoy more freedom and security in the
next four years," said one, Ramin Mirzai, a 21-year-old Tehran
University student. "I expect Rouhani to lift the house
arrest" of opposition leaders, said another, drafting technician
Farnoosh Kazemi, 26. "Work with neighboring and other
international countries to make a better atmosphere in the country.
We need more investment."
A majority of Iranians voted May 19 to give moderate
incumbent President Hassan Rouhani a second term, but conservatives
appear unwilling to accept the results of the balloting.
Conservatives have been protesting the election process since the
first hours of election day and are now accusing the Rouhani
administration of violating the law. Such is not unprecedented. In
2016, prominent Iranian conservative Gholam-Ali Haddad Adel claimed
that the government had violated the law during parliamentary
elections, but without documentation to substantiate his claim. That
election saw moderates and Reformists voted into parliament in large
numbers.
OPINION & ANALYSIS
The quixotic American pursuit of Middle East peace is a
perennial. It invariably fails, yet every administration feels
compelled to give it a try. The Trump administration is no different.
It will fail as well. To be sure, no great harm has, as yet, come
from President Trump's enthusiasm for what would be "the
ultimate deal." It will, however, distract and detract from
remarkable progress being made elsewhere in the Middle East. That
progress began with Trump's trip to Saudi Arabia, the first of his
presidency - an unmistakable declaration of a radical reorientation
of U.S. policy in the region. Message: The appeasement of Iran is
over. Barack Obama's tilt toward Iran in the great Muslim civil war
between Shiite Iran and Sunni Arabs led by Saudi Arabia was his reach
for Nixon-to-China glory. It ended ignominiously.
On May 19, Iran held presidential elections. The
moderate incumbent, Hassan Rouhani, won a second four-year term by a
landslide. Rouhani ran on a platform of engagement with the world,
including the United States and Iran's Gulf Arab neighbors, and
domestic social, political, and economic reforms. The hardliners ran
on a populist and isolationist platform, and they lost the election
by a large margin. But that doesn't mean that the battle is over;
hardliners are now seeking to oppose Rouhani more forcefully by
creating a shadow government. The idea of a shadow government has
floated around Iran's political circles in the past. In 2005,
reformists who had lost the election to hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
raised the possibility. But it never materialized, mostly because the
regime tends to favor stability and continuity and likes to present
an image of unity. But campaign seasons, although short in Iran, can
be brutal.
More than 40 million Iranians voted last Friday in a
presidential election to choose their country's future path: between
one of engagement and diplomacy with the West and one based on a
self-reliant economic populism. With a 73 percent turnout, Iranians
overwhelmingly chose moderate incumbent Hassan Rouhani in what was a
clear defeat for the main conservative challenger, Ebrahim Raisi, and
a major setback for the conservative camp. The uncertainty and high
stakes involved in the election yet again confirms the importance of
genuine electoral competition within the bounds of the Iranian
political system and the serious role given to popular input and
participation - as opposed to other Muslim states in the Middle East.
Complaints of media bias seem to be reaching a fever
pitch-from conservatives and liberals alike. Right-wingers accuse a
broad swath of the press of trying to undermine the presidency of
Donald Trump. Left-wingers lament the airtime and credence outlets give
to Trump supporters. Both groups object to what the media report and
how they report it, but they point fingers at different culprits.
Neither seemed to notice last week that one big story was narrated
the same way by virtually every outlet: the presidential election in
a country where chants of "Death to America" are a routine
occurrence. "In the closing stretch of Iran's presidential race,
it's a moderate reformer against a hard-line cleric," PBS
NewsHour reported in the run-up to Iran's May 19 election. Those
who know anything about life in Iran-or how many of its citizens have
been deprived of it in the last few years-should have bristled to
discover that the "moderate reformer" was incumbent
president Hassan Rouhani.
Supporters of the "Countering Iran's Destabilizing
Activities Act of 2017" (S.722) will claim that it provides more
tools for the United States to counter Iran's support for terrorism
in the region. It sounds strong. Members of Congress are seeking to
disrupt Iran's capabilities to aid violent extremism and destabilize
the Middle East, and at first glance, it appears this bill attempts
to do just that. But in reality it is a symbolic move that would
accomplish little other than delivering on a political talking point
to be "tough on Iran," while carrying with it risks that
Iran and other signatories to the deal will interpret it as signaling
a lessening of the United States' commitment to the deal.
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