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TOP STORIES
Iran successfully tested a rocket that can deliver
satellites into orbit, state television reported on Thursday, an
action the United States said breaches a U.N. Security Council
resolution because of its potential use in ballistic missile
development... The rocket launch violated United Nations Security
Council Resolution 2231, State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert
said on Thursday. That resolution, which endorsed a 2015
nuclear deal between Iran and world powers, calls upon Iran not to
undertake activities related to ballistic missiles capable of
delivering nuclear weapons, including launches using such technology.
It stops short of explicitly barring such activity.
President Trump, frustrated that his national security
aides have not given him any options on how the United States can
leave the Iran nuclear deal, has instructed them to find a rationale
for declaring that the country is violating the terms of the accord.
American officials have already told allies they should be prepared
to join in reopening negotiations with Iran or expect that the United
States may abandon the agreement, as it did the Paris climate accord.
And according to several foreign officials, the United States has
begun raising with international inspectors in Vienna the possibility
of demanding access to military sites in Iran where there is
reasonable suspicion of nuclear research or development. If the
Iranians balk, as seems likely, their refusal could enable Washington
to declare Tehran in violation of the two-year-old deal. Mr. Trump
has enormous latitude to abandon the accord.
Singapore-based technology company CSE Global Ltd has
agreed to pay more than $12 million to settle 104 apparent violations
of Iran sanctions by its subsidiary, the U.S. Department of Treasury
said on Thursday. The subsidiary, CSE TransTel Pte Ltd, "caused
at least six separate financial institutions to engage in the
unauthorized exportation or re-exportation of financial services from
the United States to Iran," in 2012 and 2013, U.S. Treasury said
in a statement on its website.
NUCLEAR & BALLISTIC MISSILE PROGRAM
Iran successfully launched a missile into space on
Thursday, state media reported, two days after the United States
House of Representatives approved a bill that would impose additional
sanctions against the country, and Russia and North Korea.
Iran's launch on Thursday of a rocket it says can
deliver a satellite into space was a provocative action that violates
a U.N. Security Council resolution as well as the spirit of the Iran
nuclear deal, the U.S. State Department said. "We consider that
to be continued ballistic missile development," State Department
spokeswoman Heather Nauert told a news briefing. "We believe
that what happened overnight and in the morning is a violation of the
spirit of the JCPOA," she added, referring to the Iran nuclear
deal.
U.S.-IRAN RELATIONS
Iran responded angrily Thursday to reports that the
Trump administration would push for inspections of military
facilities to ensure Tehran is complying with the 2015 nuclear deal.
"Iran will not succumb to further pressure," Hamid Reza
Taraghi, a hard-line analyst who is close to Iran's leadership, told
The Times. Taraghi did not say whether Iran would refuse inspectors
access to military facilities but insisted the Islamic Republic was
complying with the agreement, which required Iran to shelve its nuclear
program in exchange for relief from economic sanctions... Associated
Press reported Thursday that Trump was pushing for inspections of
"suspicious Iranian military sites," either to prove that
Iran was violating the deal or force it to refuse, which could cause
the agreement to collapse.
National Security Advisor Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster has
removed Derek Harvey, the top Middle East advisor on the National
Security Council (NSC), from his post Thursday, according to a source
with knowledge of the personnel move. The White House confirmed the
decision, but the reason behind it was not immediately clear. The two
men had a long relationship that dated back to their Army service in
Iraq and their shared mentor of retired Gen. David Petraeus, but they
had been known to have butted heads during their short time together
in the Donald Trump administration... Harvey was also known for being
a hawk on Iran and had been pushing proposals to expand the U.S.
military mission in Syria to go after Iranian proxy forces more
aggressively. Defense Secretary James Mattis had pushed back on these
proposals.
BUSINESS RISK
In Iran, concerns are growing that banks may be facing
the same fate as credit and financial institutions (CFIs), many of
which are believed to be on the verge of collapse. CFIs, many of them
unlicensed, have caused major disruption in the Iranian financial
system in the past decade. The Central Bank of Iran (CBI) is under
rising pressure from the parliament to immediately regulate these
nonbank credit institutions, as an increasing number of depositors
protest delays in settlement of dues by a number of troubled CFIs.
The situation has become so dire that the Supreme National Security
Council has been dragged in. Now, there are fears that banks could be
next. To avoid this scenario, pundits are suggesting that the CBI be
granted more autonomy by the parliament so that it will take more
serious disciplinary measures against all financial institutions when
necessary. As he prepares to begin his second term, Iranian President
Hassan Rouhani is faced with the prospect of a major banking crisis.
The $4.8-billion-dollar deal between Iran and France's
Total, the huge multinational oil and gas company, has become very
controversial. Considering the unilateral U.S. sanctions and
increasing measures against Iran, why has Total risked signing such a
deal? There are a variety of possibilities. Total will be developing
phase 11 of Iran's mammoth South Pars gas field, the largest in the
world, along with a state Chinese firm and an Iranian subsidiary. The
project is set to render 2 billion cubic feet of gas per day,
equivalent to 400,000 barrels of oil. Iran's domestic market will
receive the supply in 2021. The first stage is set to cost $2
billion, with an end price of up to $5 billion and production
forecasted to start within 40 months. As we speak, however,
Washington continues to impose sanctions on Tehran and the Trump
administration's comprehensive Iran policy has yet to be defined.
Therefore, why did Total accept such a risk?
CYBERWARFARE
Hackers believed to be working for the Iranian
government have impersonated a young female photographer on social
media for more than a year, luring men working in industries
strategically important to Tehran's regional adversaries, according
to research published Thursday. The so-called Mia Ash persona has
been active on sites including LinkedIn, Facebook Inc, WhatsApp and
Blogger since at least April of last year, researchers at Dell
SecureWorks said. The campaign showed Iran engaged in a social
engineering plot to ensnare its targets with a "honey pot",
a classic espionage trap often involving seduction, more commonly
used by criminal hackers. Dell SecureWorks observed Mia Ash sending
specific malware, concealed as a "photography survey" with
an attachment, to a victim that matched malware sent by Iranian
hacking group Cobalt Gypsy during an unsuccessful
"spearphishing" email attempt to the same victim's employer
in January.
HUMAN RIGHTS
Lebanese national and U.S. permanent
resident Nizar Zakka thanked the U.S. Congress after the approval of
House Resolution 317 - calling for the "unconditional
release" of American nationals held for "political
purposes" by Iran. "Mr. Zakka wants to thank members of the
American Congress, and through them the American people, for standing
by his side and supporting his case," a statement from his
lawyer, Antoine Abou Dib, read. "Never has it happened in
history where a government invites a person, sends them a visa and
then arrests him, especially in a country like Iran, known worldwide
to be hospitable," the statement added. Resolution 317 was
passed by the Foreign Affairs Committee Wednesday. Zakka's son,
19-year-old Omar, spoke prior to the vote, pushing for his father's
release.
Iranian Judiciary Chief Sadegh Larijani
has responded to the Trump administration's recent demand that Iran
free imprisoned US citizens by demanding that the US free Iranians held
in US prisons. The judicial official's comments did not address the
fact that US citizens who have been and are currently imprisoned in
Iran have been sentenced in secret trials on vague national security
charges with scant or non-existence evidence in cases marked by the
denial of due process. "Not America, not any country has the
right to interfere" in the Islamic Republic of Iran's
affairs," said Larijani in a meeting with senior judicial
officials on July 24, 2017, adding that, "Iranian prisoners should
be freed immediately" from US prisons. Larijani was responding
to a White House statement issued on July 21 warning that
"President Trump is prepared to impose new and serious
consequences on Iran unless all unjustly imprisoned American citizens
are released and returned."
President Hassan Rouhani is expected to
introduce nominees for his second-term cabinet in the coming weeks,
and the question on many minds is whether a woman will be appointed
minister. During the election campaign, Rouhani passionately defended
women's participation in the public sphere, saying his administration
"does not accept gender discrimination and injustice." The
women and family chapter of his draft comprehensive plan for his next
administration included several steps, such as "increasing
women's participation in high-level management positions." But
the president is said to be having "reservations" about
appointing a female minister, according to Fatemeh Saeedi, a female
parliamentarian from Tehran who met with the president about cabinet
appointments Now, alarmed by the prospect of women being shut out of
a senior cabinet position, women's rights defenders are pushing back.
DOMESTIC POLITICS
After reports that opposition leader Mehdi Karroubi
became ill and needed medical care, four Iranian parliamentarians
requested to visit the former parliament speaker who has been under
house arrest since 2011. According to Tehran parliament member Ahmad
Mazani, a member of the Reformist Central Council of Hope, the
parliament members felt that visiting Karroubi would be "in the
interests of the country." Karroubi, along with Mir Hossein
Mousavi and Mousavi's wife, Zahra Rahnavard, were put under house
arrest for challenging the outcome of the 2009 presidential election.
Mousavi was prime minister during the 1980s. Their call for street
protests against Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's re-election brought about the
country's biggest internal crisis since the post-revolutionary era.
Mazani said, "A lot of time has passed since the environment of
2009, and we have to create an environment ... that continues the
path of win-win of 2013 [President Hassan Rouhani's election]."
OPINION & ANALYSIS
One almost has to admire Iran's chutzpah. On Wednesday
after the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill, 419-3, which
would impose sanctions on Iran's ballistic-missile program, its
foreign ministry called the legislation "illegal and insulting."
On Thursday Iran made a scheduled launch of a huge missile, which it
says will put 550-pound satellites into orbit. The only people who
should feel surprised or insulted by this are Barack Obama and John
Kerry, who midwifed the 2015 nuclear-weapons agreement with the
untrustworthy Iranians. State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert
rightly called the missile launch a violation of the spirit of that
agreement. That is as far as she can take it because Iran's
ballistic-missile program wasn't formally in the nuclear agreement,
despite Mr. Kerry's statements of concern during negotiations. In the
end he wanted a deal more than limits on those missiles. We assume
Iran's missile engineers are at least as competent as those in North
Korea, which is approaching the ability to deploy intercontinental
ballistic missiles.
During a week in which all signs point to Republicans
enshrining President Obama's top domestic achievement into law, it's
now looking like Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has tricked
President Trump into keeping the main pillar of Obama's foreign
policy legacy in place indefinitely: the disastrous Iran deal. On
Thursday, the Associated Press reported that as part of Trump's move
to certify Iran's compliance with the deal, the administration is
pushing to "test" the deal with more inspections. On the
surface, this may seem like a move to step up enforcement and lay the
groundwork to unwind the deal - theoretically consistent with Trump's
vow to "get tough" on Iran. But in practice, it looks like
a stalling tactic designed by Tillerson and Obama holdovers in the
State Department to handcuff Trump, with endless bureaucratic delays,
from ever being able to pull out of the deal. Last week, Iran deal
supporters in the administration, led by Tillerson, talked Trump into
sticking with the deal and certifying Iran compliance for the second
time of his presidency, even as he told the Wall Street Journal,
"If it was up to me, I would have had them noncompliant 180 days
ago."
President Trump seems determined to pull out of the Iran
nuclear deal, with no reason apart from the fact that he wants to.
His hostility to the deal-based largely on a misunderstanding of its
contents-doesn't mean that he can cancel America's obligations by
himself. But he can trigger a process in which Congress-much of which
is equally hostile to the deal-votes to withdraw.
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