|
TOP STORIES
An American student from Princeton University was
arrested in Iran and has been sentenced to 10 years in prison on
charges he was spying for the United States, an Iranian judiciary
official said on Sunday, an action bound to aggravate relations
between the two countries. The arrest and sentencing of the American,
Xiyue Wang, a graduate student in history, was announced months after
he had vanished in Iran, where he was doing research for a doctoral thesis.
There had been rumors of his arrest, but the announcement on Sunday
from Iran was the first official confirmation. A spokesman for Iran's
judiciary, Gholam Hossein Mohseni-Ejei, said at a weekly news
conference that one of "America's infiltrators" had been
prosecuted, but he did not identify Mr. Wang by name or nationality.
The judiciary's Mizan News Agency provided his name and his age, 37,
saying he had "spider connections" with American and
British intelligence agencies.
Walk into almost any market in Iraq and the shelves are
filled with goods from Iran - milk, yogurt, chicken. Turn on the
television and channel after channel broadcasts programs sympathetic
to Iran. A new building goes up? It is likely that the cement and
bricks came from Iran. And when bored young Iraqi men take pills to
get high, the illicit drugs are likely to have been smuggled across
the porous Iranian border. And that's not even the half of it. Across
the country, Iranian-sponsored militias are hard at work establishing
a corridor to move men and guns to proxy forces in Syria and Lebanon.
And in the halls of power in Baghdad, even the most senior Iraqi
cabinet officials have been blessed, or bounced out, by Iran's
leadership. When the United States invaded Iraq 14 years ago to
topple Saddam Hussein, it saw Iraq as a potential cornerstone of a
democratic and Western-facing Middle East, and vast amounts of blood
and treasure - about 4,500 American lives lost, more than $1 trillion
spent - were poured into the cause.
Iran on Saturday blamed what it called Donald Trump's
"arbitrary and conflicting policies" for global security
threats, rejecting the U.S. president's description of Tehran as a
rogue state Tensions between Iran and the United States have
heightened since the election of Trump, who has often singled out
Tehran as a key backer of militant groups. "(Trump) ought
to seek the reason for subversion and rebellion in his own arbitrary
and conflicting policies and actions, as well as those of his
arrogant, aggressive and occupying allies in the region," said
foreign ministry spokesman Bahram Qassemi, quoted by Iran's state
news agency IRNA. President Trump said on Thursday that new
threats were emerging from "rogue regimes like North Korea, Iran
and Syria and the governments that finance and support them".
Senior Iranian officials have blamed U.S-allied Saudi Arabia,
Iran's Sunni Muslim regional rival, for instability and attacks in
the Middle East, including last month's assaults that killed 18
people in Tehran.
UANI IN THE NEWS
Critics of the deal reiterated that its underlying
strategic goal was to shift the regional balance of power in Iran's
favor, while enabling the regime to develop a nuclear weapon within
weeks of the "sunset clause" of the JCPOA - which
effectively removes international oversight of Iran's nuclear program
- being implemented in 2030. "The JCPOA was sold to the public
on false premises, mainly that it would ensure the peaceful nature of
Iran's nuclear program and empower forces of moderation within the
regime," David Ibsen - the president of advocacy organization
United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) - told The Algemeiner on
Friday. "After two years, it is clear these assertions were
unfounded." UANI is now urging the Trump Administration to
pursue an improved deal with Iran that would permanently shut down
the regime's path to a nuclear weapon.
IRAN NUCLEAR DEAL
Iran's top diplomat Sunday accused President Trump of
violating the international nuclear deal. "The United States has
failed to implement its part of the bargain," Iran foreign
minister Javad Zarif told CNN's "Fareed Zakaria GPS." He
pointed to Trump's recent meetings in Germany with world leaders as
evidence of the US violating the two-year-old deal. "President
Trump used his presence in Hamburg during the G-20 meeting, in order
to dissuade leaders from other countries to engage in business with
Iran. That is violation of not the spirit but of the letter of the
JCPOA, of the nuclear deal," Zarif said. "I believe the
United States needs to bring itself into compliance with its party of
the obligation under the deal."
House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce on
Saturday slammed the Iran nuclear deal - days before President Donald
Trump is to decide whether Tehran is complying with it - saying it
allows the regime, "even without cheating, keep a path to a
nuclear weapon" "Two years after President [Barack] Obama
announced his 'deal' with Iran, the ayatollah is still working toward
a nuclear bomb," the California Republican said in a statement
posted on Twitter. "The Iranian regime has accelerated its
illicit ballistic missile program, and there have been multiple
reports of Iran not living up to the agreement. "Just this past
week, we learned German intelligence caught Iran trying to buy
illegal nuclear weapons technology. "If Iran has not materially
breached the agreement, it's only because the JCPOA is so deeply
flawed," Royce said, referring to the Joint Comprehensive Plan
of Action, the formal name for the deal.
United Nations Secretary General António Guterres has
stressed the importance of "sustained commitment" of all
parties to the obligations under the landmark nuclear agreement
between Iran and the P5+1 group of countries. Guterres issued a
statement overnight marking the second anniversary of the historic
agreement, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA),
aimed at ensuring the exclusively peaceful nature of Iran's nuclear
program. He added that the JCPOA stakeholders' "sustained
commitment is essential for the long-term viability and success of
the agreement." He welcomed the recent recommitment to the
"full and effective implementation" of the deal expressed
by the JCPOA parties during their 7th meeting of the Joint Commission
monitoring the deal's implementation in the Austrian capital of
Vienna on April 25, calling on them to continue to work together
"in good faith and reciprocity." He said that both Iran and
the P5+1 group should support further pursuit of the JCPOA and
pledged that he would do the same.
U.S.-IRAN RELATIONS
The US has called on Iran to immediately release
American citizens detained on "fabricated" national
security charges, on the same day Iran sentenced an American man to
10 years in prison. The Center for Human Rights in Iran has named the
man as Xiyue Wang, a 37-year-old Princeton University researcher of
Chinese origin. Separately, a US university professor who advised
Xiyue has defended his former student as innocent of all charges
against him. Stephen Kotkin told the Associated Press news agency on
Monday that Xiyue is a "remarkable, linguistically gifted
graduate student" who studied governance in 19th- and
early-20th-century Muslim regions. Iran's judiciary announced on
Sunday that the convicted American citizen had been accused of
"infiltrating" Iran and passing confidential information to
the US government and research institutions abroad. But Kotkin said
the documents Wang collected in Tehran were 100 years old. "We
call for the immediate release of all US citizens unjustly detained
in Iran so they can return to their families," the Department of
State said on Sunday.
SYRIA CONFLICT
Iranian senior diplomat Houssein Jaberi Ansari has said
that the presence of Iranian troops in Syria will not be limited by
any Russian-US deal. The Foreign Ministry's Deputy for Arab-African
Affairs stressed that his countries' troops in Syria remain
unaffected by stances of regional or international role-players. The
diplomat was speaking after a meeting with Russian President's
Special Envoy on Syria Alexander Lavrentiev who had earlier in the
day held talks with Secretary of Supreme National Security Council
Ali Shamkhani in Tehran. "Even if others sign agreements [on
areas] covering Iran's presence [in Syria], these pacts would have no
real impact," IRNA quoted Ansari as telling reporters on
Saturday The two diplomats led the Iranian and Russian delegations in
Astana peace talks on Syria, whose fifth round was held on July 4-5.
Ansari said they discussed in detail the latest Syrian developments
and reviewed ways of resolving differences among players in the
conflict blocking a political settlement.
HUMAN RIGHTS
A Chinese-American graduate student
sentenced to 10 years in prison in Iran for allegedly
"infiltrating" the country and sending confidential
material abroad is innocent of all charges against him, his advising
professor at Princeton University said on Monday. The university said
separately that it is "very distressed" by the charges
leveled against Xiyue Wang while he was carrying out scholarly
research in the Islamic Republic. It has been working Wang's family,
the U.S. government, lawyers and others to secure his release, it
added. "His family and the university are distressed at his
continued imprisonment and are hopeful that he will be released after
his case is heard by the appellate authorities in Tehran," the
university said. Iran's judiciary announced Wang's conviction during
a routine press conference on Sunday; he was not previously known to
be among the handful of Americans detained in Iran.
DOMESTIC POLITICS
The brother of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, Hossein
Fereydoun, has been arrested on financial crime charges, the
judiciary said on Sunday. "Multiple investigations have been
conducted regarding this person, also other people have been
investigated, some of whom are in jail," deputy judiciary chief
Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejeie said in a televised press conference.
"Yesterday, bail was issued for him but because he failed to
secure it he was referred to prison," Ejeie said about
Fereydoun, Rouhani's special aide.
OPINION & ANALYSIS
For the second time during the Trump administration, the
State Department has reportedly decided to certify that Iran is
complying with its 2015 nuclear deal with the Security Council's five
permanent members and Germany, known formally as the Joint
Comprehensive Plan of Action ("JCPOA"). If true, it will be
the administration's second unforced error regarding the JCPOA. Over
the past two years, considerable information detailing Tehran's
violations of the deal have become public, including: exceeding
limits on uranium enrichment and production of heavy water; illicit
efforts at international procurement of dual-use nuclear and missile
technology; and obstructing international inspection efforts (which
were insufficient to begin with). Since international verification is
fatally inadequate, and our own intelligence far from perfect, these
violations undoubtedly only scratch the surface of the ayatollahs'
inexhaustible mendaciousness.
July 14th marks two years of a controversial
nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action
(JCPOA), brokered between the international community, represented by
the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council -
China, France, Russia, United Kingdom and United States - and
Germany, with Iran. Where are we now? Has Iran changed for the
better? Or has Tehran taken advantage of the Obama administration's
concessions to further advance their domestic crackdown, foreign
meddling and nuclear/ballistic missile programs? We are now at a
crucial juncture. The Trump administration is currently weighing all
options, including regime change, in their evaluation of a
comprehensive Iran policy. As wars in various countries and
appeasement with Iran have all proved disastrous, regime change by
supporting the Iranian people and their organized opposition is the
best viable option.
Today marks the two year anniversary of the Joint
Comprehensive Plan of Action. Speaking from Vienna on July 14, 2015,
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry heralded the nuclear agreement
with Iran as "a measureable step away from the prospect of
nuclear proliferation, towards transparency and cooperation."
Instead, the past two years have been characterized by secrecy and
obfuscation. As a result, it is difficult to assess how well the
agreement is working, and in particular Iran's compliance with its
terms. Supporters of the deal claim success; its critics decry violations.
More public transparency is needed for an impartial evaluation of the
agreement. The Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act of 2015 (INARA)
offers a good opportunity to get it.
A pervasive perception in US policy circles and among US
allies is that Iran seeks hegemony in the Middle East. Israel and
other regional states often claim that Iran wishes to "revive
the Persian Empire." While such claims would be dismissed as
farcical by any Iranian official, it is important to note that such
sentiment lies at the root of the current standoff between Iran, its
regional rivals and the United States. Rather than perpetuating
mantras about Iranian expansionism, the United States and its
regional allies should take a closer look at the origins of Iranian
threat perceptions. Contrary to mantras such as the above,
Iranians broadly view their contemporary history as one of falling
victim to aggressive outside powers and struggling to maintain a
sense of security. Since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, a series of
events and factors have led Tehran to believe that Washington and its
regional allies seek regime change and Iran's territorial
dismemberment. This perception is fueled by comments such as that of
US Defense Secretary James Mattis earlier this week, who said that
regime change will be necessary before the US and Iran can have
substantially positive relations.
With the recapturing of Mosul, the rein of ISIS in
northern Iraq is coming to an end. This, however, can lead to the
reemergence of a far more dangerous threat for the future of this
fledgling democracy. Iran and its destructive meddling Mesopotamia
has devastated this entire nation, leaving at least tens of thousands
killed, scores more wounded, injured and displaced. Tehran has
continuously targeted the Sunni community in Iraq and taken advantage
of the war against ISIS to change the very fabric of this minority.
Sunni provinces have been the target of this wrath especially after
Nouri al-Maliki, described by many as Iran's puppet in Iraq, reached
the premiership in 2006.
|
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment