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When Iran signed its landmark deal with world powers in
2015, curbing its nuclear programme in exchange for sanctions relief,
many expected an investment gold rush. But despite thousands of
business delegates flooding into Tehran from all over Europe, Asia
and beyond, big deals have been slow to emerge. That makes Monday's
agreement with French energy giant Total -- which will lead to a
20-year, $4.9 billion project to develop an offshore gas field in
Iran -- a potential breakthrough for the country. Who has done deals
so far? Major investments have been few and far between.
The head of Iran's Revolutionary Guards on Tuesday
described Saudi Arabia as a "terrorist state" as he
announced his position had been extended for three years. Major
General Mohammad Ali Jafari's 10-year stint as commander of the elite
military force was due to expire in three months. But in a speech
carried by the semi-official Fars and Tasnim news agencies, he said
it would continue until at least 2020. In a speech at a Guards
meeting in Tehran, he highlighted the threat from Saudi Arabia, which
backs opposing sides to Iran in several regional conflicts.
"Today, the Saudis are becoming a terrorist state in the
region," he said. "Today in our region only the countries
that are powerful enough will remain safe," he added. "We
face an enemy that only understands the language of force, so we
cannot speak to the enemy with another language." However,
Jafari said there was still room for negotiations.
Iranian artist Hadi Asadi has beaten hundreds of other
contestants to win first place in a "Trumpism" cartoon
contest held in Tehran - his winning caricature depicting President
Trump as a flame-haired man wearing a suit made of dollar bills,
drooling onto a pile of books. The competition, called the
International Trumpism Cartoon and Caricature Contest, was announced
last month. It was organized by a group that has also organized
cartoon contests on themes such as the Islamic State and the
Holocaust (the group says the latter was designed to highlight double
standards on free speech).
UANI IN THE NEWS
Wallace, the letter writer and a co-founder of the
Counter Extremism Project, is a former diplomat who served as part of
the U.S. delegation to the United Nations under former President
George W. Bush. He was also an adviser to the presidential campaign
of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), the 2008 GOP nominee. More recently,
Wallace has also served as the chief executive of another nonprofit,
United Against Nuclear Iran, a group that engaged in a similar
letter-writing campaign urging against stepped-up investment in the
Islamic Republic in the wake of a nuclear agreement that removed some
sanctions. And while the Counter Extremism Project's letter on Qatar
does not specifically address Iran, the relatively warm relationship
between the two nations plays a significant role in tensions between
the Qatari government and the blockading states. Iran, a rival to
Saudi Arabia for influence in the Islamic world, is seen as hostile
by the nations that are blockading Qatar, which has much warmer relations
with Iran than its neighbors.
IRAN NUCLEAR DEAL
U.S. prosecutors said in a court filing on Friday that a
former consultant to Iran's mission to the United Nations recruited a
United States-based atomic scientist to meet with Iranian officials
about Iran's nuclear program. The filing regarding the former
consultant, Ahmad Sheikhzadeh, does not contain criminal charges, but
was made to support prosecutors' request for a tough prison sentence
for him for tax fraud and conspiracy to violate sanctions against
Iran. Sheikhzadeh pleaded guilty last November to the charges, which
do not involve the Iranian nuclear program. In the filing,
prosecutors said that, starting around 2005, Sheikhzadeh helped
arrange meetings between the scientist and Iran's current president,
Hassan Rouhani, previously the country's chief negotiator on nuclear
issues, and Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, formerly Iran's
permanent representative to the United Nations.
The US Senate on June 15 overwhelmingly passed a bill to
impose new sanctions against Iran The Countering Iran's Destabilizing
Activities Act targets Iran's ballistic missile program, its alleged
support for terrorism and its human rights violations. It also
includes new sanctions against Russia. The House of Representatives
has found that the Senate bill violates a constitutional requirement
that any bill that raises revenue for the government must commence in
the House, thus stalling its finalization. Iranian officials and
scholars disagree on whether the US Senate's new sanctions bill
against the Islamic Republic violates the nuclear deal. While
US officials claim that the Senate bill complies with the 2015 Joint
Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), there are disagreements between
Iranian officials and scholars in the interpretation of the move and
its impact on the nuclear deal. At the very least, a majority agree
that the new sanctions hurt the spirit of the JCPOA.
NUCLEAR & BALLISTIC MISSILE PROGRAM
Chairman of the Iranian Parliament's National Security
and Foreign Policy Committee Alaeddin Boroujerdi said the decision
has been made as part of the plan to counter hostile actions of US
government who equips terrorist groups inside the region against the
Resistance Front; "as a strategic policy, Islamic Republic of
Iran will seriously confront terrorists." "Given that
Americans and their regional allies have been backing groups like
ISIL and Jabhat al-Nusra as evidenced by presence of their injured
members in hospitals of the Zionist regime, it can be concluded that
enemy seeks to put a new wave of pressure against Iran,"
highlighted the officials a
U.S.-IRAN RELATIONS
Iranian Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani says the United
States is pursuing plans aimed at undermining the Islamic Republic's
standing in the region. Addressing a national forum on the occasion
of the Judiciary Week in Tehran on Sunday, Larijani said the contents
of and pretexts for some of the bills put forward in the US Senate
were indicative of such anti-Iran policy. "The Americans have
been expressing their [anti-Iran] policies in a much more transparent
way in recent months," he said, adding that Washington has taken
up a more overt stance against Tehran. He emphasized that missile
program, human rights issue and terrorism are merely pretexts by the
US Senate to exert more pressure on the Islamic Republic.
Vice president of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the US
armed forces Jack Keane has lauded both Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed
bin Salman and Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed for
confronting the Iranian expansion in Yemen and the Arab region.
"Thanks to each of the young leaders, Prince Mohammed bin Salman
and Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, for standing against the strategy of
the Iranian regime in Yemen," Keen said in the annual general
conference of the Iranian resistance in Paris. "The Iranian
regime strategy is based on getting US forces out of the region, and
control of the region... Iran is moving steadily towards regional
dominance, and we must stop it," he added. "We are meeting
as people who respect freedom because of one reason, only for Iran to
be free," he said.
BUSINESS RISK
France's Total signed a deal with Tehran on Monday to
develop phase 11 of Iran's South Pars, the world's largest gas field,
marking the first major Western energy investment in the Islamic
Republic since the lifting of sanctions against it. Total will be the
operator with a 50.1 percent stake, alongside Chinese state-owned oil
and gas company CNPC with 30 percent, and National Iranian Oil Co
subsidiary Petropars with 19.9 percent. The project will have a
production capacity of 2 billion cubic feet per day, or 400,000
barrels of oil equivalent per day including condensate, Total said in
a statement, adding that the gas will supply the Iranian domestic
market starting in 2021. The first stage of the South Pars
development will cost around $2 billion, Total added. The project
will cost up to $5 billion and production is expected to start within
40 months, Iran's oil ministry said in a statement.
Volkswagen AG plans to sell cars in Iran for the first
time in 17 years, taking advantage of easing sanctions to expand amid
concerns about stalling growth in Europe and China. Volkswagen has
signed a contract with local importer Mammut Khodro to offer Tiguan
compact SUVs and the Passat family car, mainly at dealerships in the
Tehran area, VW said in a statement. Expanding into emerging
economies is part of VW's strategy to reduce its reliance on its main
markets and add new sources of revenue. "By returning to Iran,
the Volkswagen brand is filling another blank spot on the global
automobile map," Anders Sundt Jensen, the company's project
manager for Iran, said in the statement.
Official figures show the volume of Iran's non-oil
exports to the European Union (EU) saw a gigantic increase over the
first four months of 2017. Figures - as reported by Iran's IRNA
news agency - showed that the value of Iran's exports to the EU from
January to April 2017 reached as high as €3.4 billion. This, IRNA
added, was an increase of five folds compared to the same period last
year when Iran's exports to the Union stood at around €0.7 billion.
Other figures showed that the overall volume of Iran's
trade with the EU over the same period had reached around €6.5
billion - an increase of around 127 percent compared to last year
when mutual trade had been recorded at below €3 billion. To the same
degree, EU exports to Iran rose by 44 percent from January to April at
a total value of €3.1 billion. In 2016, the figure stood at €2.1
billion.
TERRORISM
Ontario's Court of Appeal upheld a US$1.7-billion
judgment against the government of Iran in favour of American victims
of terrorism, rejecting the state's immunity and accusing Tehran of
trying to derail Canada's Justice for Victims of Terrorism Act. The
appeal court's resounding rejection of Iran's appeal is another
victory for victims of terrorism holding Iran accountable for its
support of Hamas and Hezbollah during terror campaigns from the 1980s
through to 2002. "The terrorist attacks out of which the
respondents' U.S. judgments arise are repugnant to civilized society.
The fact that a foreign government would engage in the sponsorship of
such atrocities is chilling," wrote Justice Justice C. William
Hourigan, on behalf of a panel of concurring judges.
Prince Turki al-Faisal, chairman of the King Faisal
Center for Islamic Studies, said in his speech Saturday at the
Iranian opposition conference in Paris that "the Iranian government
is the greatest sponsor of terrorism" in the world. Al-Faisal
said, "Khomeini sought to export revolutions and coups to the
region." Al-Faisal stressed that the Iranian elections are
undemocratic and illegitimate because Khamenei appoints the candidates,
saying, "the behavior of the Iranian regime does not qualify it
to be a democratic system." Prince Al-Faisal said,
"Officials of the Iranian regime should be presented to the
International Criminal Court." Several figures who participated
in the Iranian opposition conference in Paris called for supporting
the struggle of the Iranian people calling for change by overthrowing
Tehran's regime.
FOREIGN AFFAIRS
Iran's leaders have been noticeably restrained in their
response to the Qatar crisis, and for good reason, analysts say. Not
only have they welcomed it, they would be happy to see it quietly
drag on. Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates
cut diplomatic and commercial ties with Qatar last month for what
they said was its financing of terrorism and working too closely with
Iran. They then delivered a list of 13 demands that Qatar has
dismissed as a grave infringement on its sovereignty and threatened
further sanctions if those were not met. On Sunday, they extended the
deadline to meet the demands by 48 hours to late Tuesday. For
Tehran's clerical leaders, the confrontation between putative Persian
Gulf allies came at a particularly auspicious time - when the entire
Sunni Arab world seemed lined up against them after President Trump's
visit to Saudi Arabia in May.
Iran's President Hassan Rouhani on Monday criticized
Turkey's construction of dams upstream from Syria and Iraq, saying
such projects can be "dangerous" for the whole region. He
did not name Turkey, but appeared to be referring to several dams built
by Turkey on the Tigris and Euphrates in recent decades. Turkey has
water sharing agreements with both Syria and Iraq, but disagreements
arise from time to time. "Many of these sorts of activities
should be stopped," Rouhani said. "Construction of dams
without sufficient studies can be dangerous for the future of the
region," he added, without elaborating. He was speaking at a
conference on preventing or minimizing sandstorms. Experts have
linked the storms, which afflict Iran's capital and other regions, to
upstream dam projects.
SAUDI-IRAN TENSIONS
Iran will be allowed to set up temporary consulates in
Saudi Arabia during the hajj pilgrimage despite the absence of
diplomatic ties between the two rivals, the foreign ministry in
Tehran said Tuesday. "Some officials from the foreign ministry's
consular section will be deployed to Jeddah, Mecca and Medina to
provide consular services to Iranian pilgrims during the hajj,"
spokesman Bahram Ghasemi was quoted as saying by the ISNA news
agency. Iranians were unable to attend the hajj last year after talks
on security and logistics fell apart. But an agreement was
reached earlier this year to allow Iranians to take part in this
September's hajj. The two countries severed diplomatic ties in
January 2016 after Iranians stormed Saudi Arabia's embassy in Tehran
in response to the execution of a prominent Shiite cleric.
DOMESTIC POLITICS
Iranian authorities have rounded up at least 150 people
in Tehran and in the Kurdish areas in the west of the country
following the June 7 terrorist attacks in the capital, which claimed
18 lives. Iranian authorities have rounded up a large number of
terror suspects in Kurdish areas following the June 7 attacks in
Tehran. The five young attackers who pledged allegiance to the
Islamic State (IS) in a video released shortly after the attacks
appear to have traveled from Kermanshah province to Tehran undetected
in early June. The rare but deadly strikes targeted two of the most
guarded locations in the capital: the parliament and the mausoleum of
the founder of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
OPINION & ANALYSIS
One message of President Trump's is popular at home with
his political base and embraced abroad by key Middle Eastern allies:
The Islamic Republic of Iran is imperialist, repressive, and-unless
we adopt a new strategy-on its way toward possessing nuclear weapons.
To keep the threat at bay, Mr. Trump should take a page from the
playbook Ronald Reagan used against the Soviet Union. In the early
1980s, President Reagan shifted away from his predecessors'
containment strategy toward a new plan of rolling back Soviet
expansionism. The cornerstone of his strategy was the recognition
that the Soviet Union was an aggressive and revolutionary yet
internally fragile regime that had to be defeated.
War and poverty have scattered Afghans across the globe
like pieces of shrapnel. Millions of Afghans came of age in refugee
camps in Pakistan and Iran or as workers in the Persian Gulf nations.
The migration continues. The past few years have added a new lethal
geography to the Afghan diaspora: the battlefields of President
Bashar al-Assad's Syria. Two years ago, Abdol Amin, 19, left his home
in the Foladi Valley in Bamian, one of Afghanistan's poorest
provinces, to find work in Iran. Two million undocumented Afghans and
a million Afghans with refugee status already lived in Iran. His
sister and brother-in-law lived in Isfahan. He hoped to improve on
his life of subsistence farming in impoverished Bamian. Two-thirds of
the population in Bamian Province lives on less than $25 a month. The
intense poverty and the absence of opportunity forces thousands of
young Afghans from Bamian to travel illegally to Iran in search of
work. Many, like Mr. Amin, end up fighting other people's wars.
Mocking presidents of the Great Satan, the United
States, has long been standard practice during state-backed rallies
in Iran, where anti-Americanism is ingrained in state ideology. For
decades, Iranian revolutionary families would work late into the
night to make sock puppets, cartoons and effigies of every American
president since Jimmy Carter, then proudly parade them around during
an anti-American protest and burn them in a bonfire. Some would dress
up with Uncle Sam top hats, Bill Clinton imitators would always have
a big cigar hanging from his puppet mouth, and George W. Bush would
be decorated with stars of David, to highlight the special
relationship with Israel. But as even the staunchest hard-liners
would admit, the number of zealous protesters had dwindled over the
years. In recent times, most people have been content just to pick up
posters given to them by the authorities. Barack Obama's outreach to
Iran, brokering a nuclear agreement and giving up on regime change,
was not good for the local sock puppet and effigy industry.
Six years after the outbreak of civil war in Syria, the
eastern part of the country has become a critical hotspot that could
determine the balance of power between the various domestic and
international forces involved. The race to recapture eastern Syria may
soon lead to direct confrontation between the US-led coalition and
Syria's Russian and Iranian allies. While the United States is
becoming increasingly assertive in keeping the Syrian army and its
allied forces away from the Iraqi border, Syrian President Bashar
al-Assad's main allies, namely Iran and Russia, have started to
redefine their strategies to preserve their vital interests in the
war-torn country. The United States' shooting down of a Syrian
fighter jet on June 18 was regarded as an indicator of elevated US
military activism in Syria in support of its partners.
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