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TOP STORIES
The U.S. military said on Thursday it had bolstered its
"combat power" in southern Syria, warning that it viewed
Iran-backed fighters in the area as a threat to nearby coalition
troops fighting Islamic State. The remarks by a Baghdad-based
spokesman for the US.-led coalition battling Islamic State was the
latest sign of tension in the region, where the United States has
forces at the base around the Syrian town of At Tanf supporting local
fighters. "We have increased our presence and our footprint and
prepared for any threat that is presented by the pro-regime
forces," said the spokesman, U.S. Army Colonel Ryan Dillon,
referring to Iran-backed forces supporting Syrian President Bashar
al-Assad. Dillon estimated that a small number of Iran-backed forces
had remained inside a so-called "deconfliction" zone meant
to ensure the safety of U.S.-led coalition forces since a May 18 U.S.
strike on their advancing formation.
He is known as the Dark Prince or Ayatollah Mike,
nicknames he earned as the Central Intelligence Agency officer who
oversaw the hunt for Osama bin Laden and the American drone strike
campaign that killed thousands of Islamist militants and hundreds of
civilians. Now the official, Michael D'Andrea, has a new job. He is
running the CI.A.'s Iran operations, according to current and former
intelligence officials, an appointment that is the first major sign
that the Trump administration is invoking the hard line the president
took against Iran during his campaign. Mr. D'Andrea's new role is one
of a number of moves inside the spy agency that signal a more
muscular approach to espionage and covert operations under the
leadership of Mike Pompeo, the conservative Republican and former
congressman, the officials said. The agency also recently named a new
chief of counterterrorism, who has begun pushing for greater latitude
to strike militants.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan says his country
plans to build walls along its borders with Iraq and Iran, similar to
the one currently being erected along the frontier with Syria.
Erdogan said Thursday that Turkey has so far completed the
construction of a 650-kilometer (403-mile) stretch of the wall along
the 911-kilometer border with Syria. Turkey began building the wall
in 2014 to boost its security by preventing infiltrations of Kurdish
militants and Islamic State group fighters as well as refugees from Syria.
Erdogan said Turkey aims to build along its entire border with Syria.
He added: "We'll do the same along the Iraqi border and in
appropriate places along the Iranian border."
SANCTIONS ENFORCEMENT
Despite posing potential conflicts of interest, Rudolph
W. Giuliani and another prominent lawyer were allowed on Thursday to
continue to represent a Turkish-Iranian gold trader facing federal
charges in Manhattan. The businessman, Reza Zarrab, 33, faces trial
on Oct. 30 on charges of conspiring to commit money laundering, bank
fraud and violating the United States sanctions on Iran. He has
pleaded not guilty. Mr. Zarrab, whom prosecutors have depicted as a
man of considerable wealth and influence in Turkey, retained Mr.
Giuliani, the former New York City mayor, and Michael B. Mukasey, a
former attorney general in President George W. Bush's administration,
to explore a possible diplomatic resolution to his case, outside of
normal plea bargaining channels. In a court filing in April, Mr.
Mukasey described the effort as seeking "a state-to-state
resolution of this case."
SANCTIONS RELIEF
Iran is in talks with the Russia-led Eurasian Economic
Union (EEU) to forge a free-trade pact, state-run media said, amid
problems in securing fresh Western investment despite the lifting of
most global sanctions against Tehran. Iran's economy has revived only
slowly since its curbed its disputed nuclear activity under a 2015
deal with world powers because many foreign investors remain cautious
for fear of incurring penalties from remaining unilateral U.S.
sanctions. In turning to the EEU, Iran would be building on
increasing trade, economic and military ties with Russia, including
the two countries' support of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in his
war with rebels and militants trying to topple him.
Gazprom Neft, OMV to work together in Iran
under MoU | Reuters
Russia's Gazprom Neft and Austria's OMV will work
together in Iran's oil sector under a memorandum of understanding,
OMV said on Friday. "Preliminary possible spheres of cooperation
include analysis, assessment and study of certain oil deposits
located in the territory of the Islamic Republic of Iran in
cooperation with the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC)," OMV
said. OMV could help Gazprom Neft in the initial geological
assessment of two blocks in Iran, Vadim Yakovlev, first deputy
general director at Gazprom Neft, said in the statement. OMV started
operations in Iran in 2001 as the operator of the Mehr exploration
block in the west of the country. It halted operations in 2006 due to
sanctions imposed on Iran.
PROXY WARS
There are indications that Iran is planning on spending
more money on building up its elite military forces in the coming
years, U.S. Special Operation Forces Vice Commander Lt. Gen. Thomas
Trask said at a event in Washington earlier this week. Those forces,
like the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) are active in
training and equipping proxy forces in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria and
elsewhere. "If anything, increased defense dollars in Iran are
likely to go toward increasing that network, looking for ways to
expand it," Trask said. "We've already seen evidence of
them taking units and officers out of the conventional side that are
working with the IRGC in Syria," the general added. "We're
going to stay focused on these proxies" and "we're going to
continue to plan primarily against that network of proxies and
unconventional warfare that Iran pushes out to create that buffer for
the regime," he said.
HUMAN RIGHTS
The desecration of a mass grave site in
Ahvaz, southern Iran that contains the remains of at least 44 people
who were extrajudicially executed would destroy vital forensic
evidence and scupper opportunities for justice for the mass prisoner
killings that took place across the country in 1988, said Amnesty International
and Justice for Iran. Photo and video evidence obtained by the
NGO Justice for Iran and reviewed by Amnesty International shows
bulldozers working on a construction project directly alongside the
mass grave site at Ahvaz, as well as piles of dirt and construction
debris surrounding the grave. Although the Iranian authorities have
made no official announcements about Ahvaz, families learned through
a construction worker that the plan is to ultimately raze the
concrete block marking the grave site and build over the area.
Two Iranian artists will have been
behind bars for a full year as of June 5, sentenced for their
peaceful artistic activities. Today, artists and supporters of
artistic freedom from Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe and the
Middle East called for their release in an open letter sent by
Freemuse and the Center for Human Rights in Iran to newly re-elected
President Hassan Rouhani. "The continued imprisonment of Mehdi
and Hossein Rajabian is unacceptable and in complete violation of
international human rights laws ratified by Iran," said the
signatories. "We call on the Iranian government to immediately
and unconditionally release Mehdi and Hossein Rajabian and all other
artists imprisoned for their creative expressions."
"Rouhani must fulfill the demands of Iran's artistic community,
which strongly supported his re-election," said CHRI's Executive
Director Hadi Ghaemi.
DOMESTIC POLITICS
Growing strains with the United States and political
infighting at home threaten Iranian President Hassan Rouhani's plans
to expand social freedoms, create jobs and draw in foreign
investment, officials and analysts say. Anti-Western hardliners
defeated by Rouhani in the presidential election in May appear
determined to take revenge by denying the pragmatic cleric an
economic dividend, they believe. The hardliners' strategy is to stoke
already-simmering tension with Washington and its Gulf Arab allies,
injecting fresh political risk into a country that had been seen as a
safer bet since its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers. "To
weaken Rouhani, they will try all possible ways, from provoking hawks
in Washington to imposing more political limitations at home ... and
isolating Iran economically," said a senior official who asked
not to be named.
OPINION & ANALYSIS
Iran's 12 presidential election was held on May 19,
2017, throughout the country. The incumbent Hassan Rouhani was
"re-elected" amidst various cases of fraud, vote rigging
and embarrassing measures to portray the polling stations as crowded.
However, Iran's president is subordinate to the supreme leader Ali
Khamenei. Iran's elections is far from free or fair. The president is
first vetted as a candidate by a clerical panel called the Guardian
Council, affiliated to the supreme leader. The supreme leader stands
at the apex of Iran's complex political-religious dictatorship. He
has veto power over all policies and ultimate control of the security
forces. Iran's supreme leader controls much of economy through 14
main entities, including the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps
(IRGC). Rouhani's freedom of action in foreign policy is also heavily
circumscribed by the Supreme Leader's authority.
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