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TOP STORIES
President Trump suggested the U.S. could have reason to
pull out of the Iran nuclear deal, he said in an interview published
Tuesday and Wednesday. "I think they'll be noncompliant,"
Mr. Trump told the Wall Street Journal, in reference to Iran's
observance of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, which comes up for
recertification in three months. "I think they're taking
advantage of this country," the president said. Mr Trump
campaigned against the Iran deal during his run for the White House
and has repeatedly called it "one of the worst deals in
history." The president also established that he would be
comfortable overruling recommendations from his staff regarding the
Iran Deal.
Two enemies of America are poised for upcoming rocket
launches, two senior U.S. officials told Fox News, with another North
Korean intercontinental ballistic missile launch expected as soon as
Wednesday night and Iran on the verge of sending its own vehicle into
space. Iran's Simorgh space-launch vehicle is believed to be carrying
a satellite, marking the second time in more than a year that Tehran
has attempted to put an operational satellite into orbit -- something
the Islamic Republic has never done successfully, according to one of
the officials who has not authorized to discuss a confidential
assessment. Iran's last space launch in April 2016 failed to place a
satellite into orbit, the official said. The intelligence community
is currently monitoring Iran's Semnan launch center, located about
140 miles east of Tehran, where officials say the "first and
second stage airframes" have been assembled on a launch pad and
a space launch is expected "at any time," according to the
official.
The U.S. Congress has struck a deal to send President
Donald Trump a bill that could limit his power to lift sanctions
against Russia. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob
Corker said he reached an agreement with leaders in the House of
Representatives to vote on their version of the legislation, passed
Tuesday in a 419-to-3 vote. It includes sanctions on North Korea that
Corker previously said could hold the bill up. The original Senate
bill addressed only Iran and Russia and passed that chamber by 98-2
last month. "The Senate will move to approve the Iran and Russia
sanctions it originally passed six weeks ago, as well as the North
Korea sanctions developed by the House," Corker, the Tennessee
Republican, said in a statement. "Going forward, the House has
committed to expeditiously consider and pass enhancements to the
North Korea language, which multiple members of the Senate hope to
make in the very near future." Passage would force Trump to
either sign away part of his authority for unilateral action on
sanctions against Russia or veto a bill that appears to have enough
support to override an attempt to block it from becoming law.
IRAN NUCLEAR DEAL
The Trump administration is pushing for inspections of
suspicious Iranian military sites in a bid to test the strength of
the nuclear deal that President Donald Trump desperately wants to
cancel, senior U.S. officials said. The inspections are one element
of what is designed to be a more aggressive approach to preventing
Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. While the Trump administration
seeks to police the existing deal more strictly, it is also working
to fix what Trump's aides have called "serious flaws" in
the landmark deal that - if not resolved quickly - will likely lead
Trump to pull out. That effort also includes discussions with
European countries to negotiate a follow-up agreement to prevent Iran
from resuming nuclear development after the deal's restrictions
expire in about a decade, the officials said. The officials weren't
authorized to discuss the efforts publicly and spoke on condition of
anonymity. The inspections requests, which Iran would likely resist,
could play heavily into Trump's much-anticipated decision about
whether to stick with the deal he's long derided.
U.S.-IRAN RELATIONS
Since his brother and father were arrested and
imprisoned while visiting Iran nearly two years ago, Babak Namazi has
been trying to persuade the U.S. government to step up its fight for
their freedom. Both inmates - 45-year-old Siamak Namazi and 81-year-old
Baquer Namazi - are Iranian American dual nationals who were
convicted of espionage in a secret trial last year and are now
serving 10-year sentences in Tehran's Evin Prison, notorious for its
harsh conditions. "You always think the worst and it paralyzes
me," said Babak Namazi. Now it appears that the family's quest
for their release is gaining traction. The U.S. House passed a bill
Wednesday calling for Iran to release all U.S. citizens and legal
residents being held for political purposes. The White House had
already started to elevate the issue. Last week, it threatened
"new and serious consequences" if Iran did not release all
imprisoned U.S. citizens. That prompted Iran to call for the U.S. to
release Iranians it is holding, suggesting to some experts that Iran
is willing to negotiate a trade.
CONGRESSIONAL ACTION
U.S. lawmakers are near an agreement that would pave the
way for the Senate to vote on legislation imposing new sanctions on
Russia and Iran, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee said on Wednesday. Republican Senator Bob Corker told
reporters he expected an agreement would be announced as soon as
Wednesday evening However, he did not say whether the Senate version
of the bill would strip out language imposing sanctions on North
Korea, as he had suggested earlier in the day. The sanctions
bill passed the House of Representatives nearly unanimously on
Tuesday, in a rebuke to Republican President Donald Trump, whose
administration had lobbied against some aspects of the measure
The House passed a resolution on Wednesday urging Iran
to release American prisoners being held as hostages. Lawmakers
approved the resolution by a voice vote a day after passing a
sanctions package that included measures targeting Iran for its
ballistic missile development. "I hope that this resolution
sends a strong message to Iran that this practice will not be
tolerated," said Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), the author
of the resolution and former chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs
Committee. "I hope that it sends a strong message to our own
administration that Congress is heavily invested in the fate of
Americans being held by Iran," she added. The bipartisan
resolution was cosponsored by Reps. Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.), Ted Poe
(R-Texas) and Ted Deutch (D-Fla.). The Iranian government has taken
several American citizens and permanent residents as prisoners in
recent years as a way to demand concessions from the U.S.
SANCTIONS ENFORCEMENT
Iran will reciprocate if the United States imposes new
sanctions on it, president Hassan Rouhani said on Wednesday according
to state media, casting further doubt over the outlook for the 2015
Iran nuclear accord. The U.S. House of Representatives voted on
Tuesday to slap new sanctions on Iran, Russia and North Korea,
although it was unclear how quickly the bill would make its way to
the White House for President Donald Trump to sign into law or veto.
State media quoted Rouhani as citing a verse from the Koran
saying: "If the enemy puts part of their promises underfoot then
we will also put part of it underfoot. And if they put all of their
promises underfoot then we will put promises underfoot." But he
added: "The Koran also advises that if enemies are really
pursuing peace and want to put enmity aside and act appropriately
toward you, then you should do the same." He said that
parliament would take the initial steps in responding to any U.S.
moves and that any necessary further steps would also be pursued.
Russia and Iran warned they were edging closer to
retaliation against Washington after the House of Representatives
backed new U.S. sanctions, while the European Union said the move
might affect its energy security and it stood ready to act too. The
lower house of the U.S. Congress overwhelmingly voted to impose new
sanctions on Iran, Russia and North Korea Tuesday and to force
President Donald Trump to obtain lawmakers' permission before easing
any punitive measures on Russia. "This is rather sad news from
the point of view of Russia-U.S. ties," said Dmitry Peskov, a
Kremlin spokesman. "We are talking about an extremely unfriendly
act," that would hurt bilateral ties and international trade, he
said. He said President Vladimir Putin would decide if and how Moscow
would retaliate once the fresh sanctions became law, while Russia's
deputy foreign minister warned the move was taking bilateral
relations into uncharted waters, killing off any hope of improving
them in the near future. The sanctions still need to be approved by
the Senate and by Trump himself.
SANCTIONS RELIEF
When Zuao Ru Lin, a Beijing entrepreneur, first heard
about business opportunities in eastern Iran, he was skeptical. But
then he bought a map and began to envision the region without any
borders, as one enormous market, reads a New York Times article
published on Tuesday. Excerpts follow: "Many countries are close
by, even Europe," Lin, 49, said while driving his white BMW over
the highway connecting Tehran to the eastern Iranian city of Mashhad
recently. "Iran is at the center of everything." For
millenniums, Iran has prospered as a trading hub linking East and
West. Now, that role is set to expand in coming years as China unspools
its "One Belt, One Road" project, which promises more than
$1 trillion in infrastructure investment-bridges, rails, ports and
energy-in over 60 countries across Europe, Asia and Africa. Iran,
historically a crossroads, is strategically at the center of those
plans.
DOMESTIC POLITICS
The two opposition leaders who disputed the results of
Iran's 2009 presidential election, triggering mass protests, are in
poor health and one has been hospitalized after a heart attack, news
outlets cited family members saying. Mirhossein Mousavi and fellow
reformist Mehdi Karroubi became figureheads for Iranians who took to
the streets after the vote they believed was rigged to bring back
hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Dozens of protesters were
killed and hundreds arrested in the crackdown that followed,
according to human rights groups. The pair have been under house
arrest since 2011, along with Mousavi's wife Zahra Rahnavard, after
they called for demonstrations in Iran in solidarity with the
pro-democracy uprisings that swept the Middle East in that year.
Their continued detention is a highly divisive issue in Iran. One of
President Hassan Rouhani's top campaign promises before he was
re-elected in May was to work for their release, infuriating
hardliners who view them as traitors. The news that the pair are in
poor health is likely to raise pressure on Rouhani from his
supporters to push harder for their release. It could unleash more
protests if they were to die under house arrest.
OPINION & ANALYSIS
There's trouble in the Gulf, where a hijacked news
website has helped kick off a blockade of Qatar. Saudi Arabia, the
United Arab Emirates, and their allies have cut off a fellow member
of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), citing as justification fake
news stories that the Emiratis themselves allegedly planted. The
conflict started when several statements attributed to Qatari Emir
Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani appeared on the Qatar News Agency's website
and the government's official Twitter feed. The comments, which the
Qataris quickly dismissed as the result of a hack, strayed from the
Arab Gulf consensus on hot-button issues such as relations with Iran,
Hamas, Hezbollah, and Israel. The Saudi-led bloc rejected that
explanation and on June 5 severed diplomatic relations with Doha and
also halted air, sea, and land transportation to the gas-rich state.
Despite the mounting evidence that the offending news stories were
contrived, the blockade has remained in place through extensive
diplomatic intervention from abroad. The confrontation, which
threatens stability in a region critical to U.S. interests, is bad
enough.
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