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TOP STORIES
Syrian rebels say the United States and its allies are
sending them more arms to try to fend off a new push into the
southeast by Iran-backed militias aiming to open an overland supply
route between Iraq and Syria. The stakes are high as Iran seeks to secure
its influence from Tehran to Beirut in a "Shi'ite crescent"
of Iranian influence through Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, where Sunni
Arab states have lost out in power struggles with Iran. Tensions
escalated in the southeastern region of Syria, known as the Badia,
this month when government forces supported by Iraqi Shi'ite militias
deployed in a challenge to rebels backed by President Bashar
al-Assad's enemies. This has coincided with a march toward the Syrian
border by Shi'ite militias from Iraq. They reached the frontier
adjoining northern Syria on Monday. A top Iraqi militia commander
said a wider operation to take the area from Sunni jihadist Islamic
State would start on Tuesday and this would help Syria's army.
An influx of cash that was the byproduct of the deal
Iran struck with a group of world powers to curtail its nuclear
program may not be changing the way Iran goes about wielding
influence across the Middle East and beyond. A top U.S. military
official says rather than using any additional monies to invest more
heavily in conventional forces, there are indications Tehran
continues to focus on cultivating special operators to help lead and
direct proxy forces. "If anything, increased defense dollars in
Iran are likely to go toward increasing that network, looking for
ways to expand it," U.S. Special Operation Forces Vice Commander
Lieutenant General Thomas Trask told an audience in Washington late
Tuesday.
Just 10 days after President Donald Trump called on
Muslim countries to stand united against Iran, a public feud between
Qatar and some of its Gulf Arab neighbors is jolting his attempt to
tip the regional balance of power against Tehran. Saudi Arabia and
the United Arab Emirates (UAE) are incensed by Qatar's conciliatory
line on Iran, their regional arch rival, and its support for Islamist
groups, in particular the Muslim Brotherhood, which they regard as a
dangerous political enemy. The bickering among the Sunni states
erupted after Trump attended a summit of Muslim leaders in Saudi
Arabia where he denounced Shi'ite Iran's "destabilizing
interventions" in Arab lands, where Tehran is locked in a tussle
with Riyadh for influence.
U.S.-IRAN RELATIONS
The lawyer for a charity formed to promote the history
and culture of Iran told a jury on Tuesday that the U.S. government
was trying to destroy it by seeking to seize a skyscraper that
provides most of its revenue. "This misguided case is looking to
wipe us off the face of the planet," attorney John Gleeson told
jurors at the start of a civil trial to determine the fate of the
36-story office building near Rockefeller Center in Manhattan.
"Something is deeply wrong in this case." Gleeson urged
jurors to reject the arguments of Assistant U.S. Attorney Martin
Bell, who said the building's operation has violated U.S. economic
sanctions imposed against Iran in 1995. The U.S. government wants to
turn over proceeds from a sale of the building and other properties
to holders of more than $5 billion in terrorism-related judgments
against the government of Iran, including claims brought by the
estates of victims killed in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Jurors in Manhattan federal court on Tuesday settled in
for a weeks-long trial to decide the fate of a Manhattan office tower
built for the shah of Iran, which the U.S. government is trying to
seize for the benefit of people who have won terrorism-related court
judgments against Iran. The government claims the nonprofit Alavi Foundation,
the majority owner of 650 Fifth Avenue, knowingly acted on behalf of
the government of Iran, violating U.S. sanctions. In an opening
statement on Tuesday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Martin Bell told jurors
that Alavi knew that its co-owner, Assa Corp, was backed by Iran's
state-controlled Bank Melli and was an agent of Iran's government. He
urged jurors to hold Alavi "accountable" for funneling
money to Iran and providing other services.
Islamic State's self-declared caliphate in eastern Syria
is surrounded by some of the world's strongest military powers. Their
forces are advancing on several fronts. The battlefield odds aren't
even close. That's why the commanders of those armies -- in Washington,
Moscow and Tehran, as well as Damascus and Ankara -- are looking
beyond the coming showdown with the jihadists. When they're killed or
driven out, who'll take over? It's an especially sharp dilemma for
President Donald Trump. Because for the second time this century, the
U.S. risks defeating one Middle Eastern enemy only to see another
one, Iran, emerge as the big winner. The U.S. invasion of Iraq in
2003 toppled Iran's bitter rival Saddam Hussein and replaced him with
a sympathetic Shiite-led government. In Syria today, Iranian ally
Bashar al-Assad has survived six years of civil war during which U.S.
leaders repeatedly insisted that he had to go. His army, fighting
alongside militias loyal to Tehran, is driving into Islamic
State-held territory, setting up a race with U.S.-backed forces to
liberate it. Even the areas where the Americans arrive first may
eventually revert to Assad's control.
TERRORISM
Hezbollah and Hamas Movement officials were reluctant
Tuesday to confirm a media report that meetings were taking place in
Lebanon between members of the Palestinian group and the Iranian
Revolutionary Guard to restore financial ties with Iran. Hamas officials
refused to confirm or deny the report, insisting the movement had
always been engaged in discussions with its allies. "Relations
between Hamas and all Arab and Islamic powers didn't stop at any
period in time," a source from Hamas told The Daily Star.
"We have wide Islamic and Arab relations and we preserve these
relations in order to support Palestine, the resistance and the
continuation of coordination between the Hamas Movement and all these
parties." However, the source did not outright deny that the
talks, reported by Saudi newspaper Asharq al-Awsat Tuesday, were
taking place. A Hezbollah official contacted about the meeting
declined to comment, but also did not outright deny the claims.
IRAQ CRISIS
Iran-backed militias in Iraq have advanced against the
Islamic State militant group (ISIS) on the nation's border with
Syria, where the units hope to link up with a parallel anti-ISIS
offensive run by the Syrian army and its allies. Armed groups under
the umbrella of the majority-Shiite Muslim Popular Mobilization
Forces (PMF), also called Al-Hashd Al-Shaabi, have
strategically pushed westward, battling the remains of ISIS'
self-proclaimed Sunni caliphate along the Syrian border. The militias
are part of an alliance that includes the Iraqi military, Kurdish
forces and a U.S.-led coalition currently battling ISIS in its final
Iraqi stronghold of Mosul. As partner forces engage the remnants of
ISIS' control in Mosul, the PMF have successfully cut ISIS off
outside the city and on Monday retook a number of villages on the
Syrian border, Reuters reported.
HUMAN RIGHTS
For Iranian viewers sitting down for
this year's primetime historical drama during the Muslim holy month
of Ramadan, there was a shock: you could see women's hair. The
director's trick: popping across the border to neighbouring Armenia
to film women without headscarves in front of a "green
screen" and then super-imposing them into the background of
Iranian scenes. "This is a technical achievement for our cinema
and television that can be of service in future," director Jalil
Saman said in Wednesday's Haft-e Sobh newspaper. The month of
Ramadan, which started on Saturday, is always a showcase for
high-profile TV serials and this year it is Saman's "Nafas"
(or "Breath"), about a nurse being dragged into the
revolutionary tumult of the late 1970s, that has garnered the most
attention. Iranian TV can show foreign films with unscarved women --
although too much leg or cleavage gets blurred out or hidden behind a
digitally inserted object such as a lamp.
DOMESTIC POLITICS
Iran's election watchdog certified President Hassan
Rouhani's reelection as fair on Tuesday, dismissing claims by the
defeated hardline candidate who had asked for investigation into
alleged widespread fraud. "The Guardian Council confirmed today
in a letter the results of the 12th presidential election in Iran,"
Salman Samani, the spokesman of the interior ministry, was quoted as
saying by the state media Rouhani easily secured reelection for a
second term in the May 19 vote, winning more than 57 percent of the
vote. His main challenger, hardline judge Ebrahim Raisi, received 38
percent.
OPINION & ANALYSIS
In early April 2017, Ali Akbar Salehi, the head of the
Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, stated that Iran has initiated
"mass production" of several advanced centrifuges, in
particular the IR-2, IR-4, and IR-6.3. The mass production of any of
these centrifuges (or their components) would greatly expand Iran's
ability to sneak-out or breakout to nuclear weapons or surge the size
of its centrifuge program if the deal fails or after key nuclear
limitations end. Therefore, the
statement deserves careful scrutiny to determine its
veracity, and if true, a determination of where all these components
are being made and in what number. Furthermore, the international
community needs to understand whether the IAEA is able to verify or
disprove Salehi's statement under current arrangements. This activity
would contradict Iran's commitments under the Joint Comprehensive
Plan of Action (JCPOA) and possibly rise to the level of a material
breach of the JCPOA.
During his trip to the Middle East last week, President
Donald Trump had one consistent theme and he never wavered from it:
The region needs to unite to stop Iran. Mutual antipathy for Tehran
has driven Arab regimes such as Saudi Arabia to make common cause
with Israel. It was also the motivation for the massive $110 billion
arms deal Trump struck with the Saudis, who believe that President
Obama's nuclear agreement with Iran has endangered their security.
But while Trump talks tough about the Iranians, the normally
bellicose Islamist regime has been restrained, at least by its
standards, in response. Why? The Iranians may be unhappy with Trump's
effort to orchestrate the creation of a Middle East NATO that would
oppose their dream of regional hegemony, but they are actually quite
pleased with other elements of his administration's Iran policy. For
all of Trump's bluster, his decision not only to leave the nuclear
agreement in place but to erect no obstacles to a major U.S.
commercial deal with Iran may have convinced the ayatollahs that the
president isn't quite as hostile as he wants to seem.
Pro-Iranian regime analysts and commentators pretend and
promote that the regime is a regional power and should not be
ignored. Such a claim is usually made under the guise of deceitful
patriotism at a time when crisis and instability is rampant in the
Middle East and this regime is the main reason behind it. The Iranian
regime claims that it is a regional power and commentators some times
bargain intentionally in its favor, assuming that such claims may be
true. The reality on the ground is that Iranian regime, or its
proxies, are present in Yemen, Bahrain, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and are
involved in killings, ethnic cleansing, destruction and instability
in these countries. The fight to liberate Mosul from ISIS is a case
in point. Heads of tribes of Arab Nineveh Province in Iraq demanded
from the international community to kick out militants belonging to
Hashad al-Shaabi, or Popular Mobilization Forces, from Mosul and its
surroundings in order to end the dominance of the region by the
Iranian regime and its proxies.
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