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TOP STORIES
Joined by three Western allies, the United States on
Wednesday escalated pressure on Iran over its space launch last week,
saying the act disregarded a United Nations Security Council
resolution on the use of missiles and was "threatening and
provocative." In a letter to the Security Council and Secretary
General António Guterres, Ambassador Nikki R. Haley of the United
States and envoys from Britain, France and Germany said the Iranian
missile that carried a satellite into orbit was "inherently capable
of delivering a nuclear warhead." Under the Security Council
resolution, 2231, which endorsed the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement,
Iran is called upon "not to undertake any activity related to
ballistic missiles designed to be capable of delivering nuclear
weapons, including launches using such ballistic missile
technology."
Iran said new sanctions imposed by U.S. President Donald
Trump on Wednesday break the terms of its nuclear deal with the
United States and other world powers, and vowed an "appropriate
and proportional" response.
Iran's supreme leader on Thursday slammed the new U.S.
sanctions on Tehran signed by President Donald Trump the previous
day, and vowed his country would continue its missile program despite
international pressure. Washington will "use any excuse to make
a fuss" against Iran, said Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, speaking at a
ceremony marking the formal endorsement of President Hassan Rouhani
for his second term in office. "You launch a satellite-carrying
missile, they make noise," he said, describing the Iranian launch
as a "scientific and technical job that is routine and
necessary." "The response to the hostility is to become
stronger," Khamenei added and described the U.S government as
"the top aggressor and the most shameless "enemy of Iran.
IRAN NUCLEAR DEAL
Here is a look at the possible paths out of the Iran
deal for the U.S. and what the likely consequences would be. Just
walk away. U.S. assessments of Iranian adherence to the deal are
governed by a law passed in 2015 with bipartisan backing, the Iran
Nuclear Agreement Review Act. Under the act's broad language, there
may be room for the president to stop waiving sanctions on Iran
simply because he sees the deal as inadequate. Parts of the law
require Iran's adherence with the JCPOA, but others are more fungible
and depend on what the president determines are U.S. national
security interests... Walk away, but explain why. There are signs
that Trump is ready to make the case to the international community
that Iran is not in compliance as a predicate to pulling out...
Provoke Iran into leaving the deal... Experts touted this strategy
following Trump's election but before he assumed office. It would
involve abiding by the agreement, but increasing pressure through
non-deal related sanctions, targeting Iran's government for its
missile testing and adventurism, and possibly increasing U.S.
military presence in the region. According to this theory, the
resulting pressure by Iranian hardliners on the government of
President Hassan Rouhani, which favors the deal, would lead Iran to
pull out.
NUCLEAR & BALLISTIC MISSILE PROGRAM
The US is undermining the Iran nuclear deal by imposing
sanctions on the country, a ranking Iranian official has said on
state TV. "The main purpose of the United States in implementing
the sanctions against Iran is to destroy the JCPOA," Deputy
Foreign Minister Sayed Abbas Araqchi said... He added that Tehran
"will show a very clever reaction" to the imposition of
sanctions.
The U.S. says it persuaded France, Germany and the U.K.
to join in signing a letter of protest to the United Nations Security
Council about Iran's "threatening and provocative" launch
last week of a rocket that can carry a satellite into space. The four
powers, which brokered the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran along with
China and Russia, called the launch "inconsistent" with a
Security Council resolution that accompanied the nuclear agreement, which
eased economic sanctions in exchange for a reduction of the Islamic
Republic's nuclear program.
U.S.-IRAN RELATIONS
Qais al-Khazali, the secretary-general of Iraq's Asaib
ahl al-Haq armed group, has accused the United States, Israel, Saudi
Arabia and Turkey of supporting the Islamic State in Iraq and the
broader region, according to Iran's Fars News Agency. "The heroic
forces of Hashd al-Shaabi [Popular Mobilization Forces] easily chop
the heads of these forces," he said while describing the Islamic
State as the "special forces" of the United States and its
allies. Asaib Ahl al-Haq - or the League of the Righteous - is an
Iraqi Shiite militant group fighting in Iraq and Syria. The group is
funded by the Iran and reportedly has more than 10,000 fighters.
According to the U.S. government accounts, the Lebanese Hezbollah
upon a request by the Iranian government helped form and train AAH in
2005 to carry out attacks against the U.S.-led coalition forces in
Iraq. AAH has been accused of killing American soldiers and
committing human rights abuses against Iraqi Sunnis... Khazali has
reportedly pledged allegiance to Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei,
and his group takes orders from I.R.G.C. Quds Force Commander Qassem
Soleimani, rather than the government in Baghdad... Khazali was
arrested by the U.S. military in 2007 for his alleged role in
high-profile attack in Karbala that had killed five American service
members... AH and U.S.-backed Iraqi security forces have recently
been fighting against the Islamic State together, Khazali's
anti-American sentiment has not diminished. Last year, he hinted that
his fighters could blend in with Iraqi troops to kill American
advisers in Mosul.
The deputy head of the Iranian Armed Forces has
threatened to respond to the latest U.S. "insults" and
stressed that the United States has to leave the region... The
Iranian general emphasized that "the combatants of Islam"
will continue to fight "America's mercenaries" and that
"America has no option but to leave the West Asia
region".... It is not the first time that Jazayeri issues a
veiled threat against the U.S. military presence in the Middle East
and calls on Washington to leave the region... And last month, he
warned that the Islamic Republic will take action against U.S.
interests in the region in retaliation to the Trump administration's
regime change remarks"... Referring to the new U.S.
sanctions on Iran, the Iranian military official said: "We have
plans that will inflict a lot of damages to America."
Hours after President Donald Trump signed a legislation
imposing new sanctions on Iran (as well as on Russia and North
Korea), the Iranian government announced that it will take
"appropriate and proportionate" retaliatory measures,
including further empowering the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps
(I.RG.C.) and its elite Quds Force. "The aim of these sanctions
is to scare economic firms from dealing with Iran," said Deputy
Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi. "But Europe will continue
economic exchanges with Iran," he added. "To counter this
plan, we have entered the judicial power into the field and will
strengthen the Revolutionary Guards and the Quds Force." The new
U.S sanctions target both the I.R.G.C. and Quds Force for their
destabilizing role and support for terrorism in the region.
CONGRESSIONAL ACTION
House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) issued the following
statement after President Trump signed legislation to sanction Iran,
Russia, and North Korea: "Today, the United States sent a
powerful message to our adversaries that they will be held
accountable for their actions. These sanctions directly target the
destructive and destabilizing activities of Iran, Russia, and North
Korea. We will continue to use every instrument of American power to
defend this nation and the people we serve."
SANCTIONS ENFORCEMENT
On Iran, the package imposes new sanctions on people
involved in Iran's ballistic missile program and anyone who does
business with them. The measure would apply terrorism sanctions to
the country's Revolutionary Guards and enforce an arms embargo.
The legislation is aimed at punishing Moscow for
interfering in the 2016 U.S presidential election and for its
military aggression in Ukraine and Syria, where the Kremlin has
backed President Bashar Assad. The law also imposes financial
sanctions against Iran and North Korea. Trump said the
law will "punish and deter bad behavior by the rogue regimes in
Tehran and Pyongyang" and enhance existing sanctions on Moscow.
The measure also targets Iran's ballistic missile
program, its support for terrorism and human rights violations, and
yet it would still comply with the Iranian nuclear deal.
Specifically, it imposes sanctions on any foreign person or foreign
entity that does business with an entity already designated by the
administration that has a connection to Iran's ballistic missile
program. These sanctions, for example, could apply to any financial
institution or any foreign company that provides key parts or components
to Iran's missile program.
YEMEN CRISIS
Kuwait on Wednesday denied a Reuters report that Iran
was using the Gulf Arab state's waters to smuggle weapons and
equipment to Houthi forces in Yemen "The State of Kuwait refuted
news by the Reuters news agency regarding Iran's exploitation of
Kuwaiti waters to deliver arms and military assistance to the Houthis
in Yemen," a Foreign Ministry statement said. "A source at
the ministry said that the country's waters were under the total
control of the Kuwaiti navy and coast guard, adding that there were
no reports of suspicious marine movements or activities," said
the statement, carried by the official Kuwait news agency. The
ministry urged international media to investigate such matters
"more thoroughly". On Tuesday, Reuters cited sources
familiar with the matter as saying that Iran's Revolutionary Guards
had begun using a new route across the Gulf to funnel covert arms
shipments to their Houthi allies in Yemen's civil war.
SAUDI-IRAN TENSIONS
Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif's handshake and
brief conversation with his Saudi counterpart Adel al-Jubeir received
mixed reactions inside Iran. While some described their meeting as an
encouraging step to improving ties between the two neighbors, others
criticized Zarif for seeking friendship with Riyadh. The two top
diplomats exchanged diplomatic pleasantries on the sidelines of the
Organization of Islamic cooperation (O.I.C.) summit in Istanbul on
Tuesday. Hassan Hani-Zadeh, an Iranian international affairs analyst,
said the handshake indicates "Saudi Arabia's new approach toward
its neighbors, particularly Iran." He speculated that Turkey may
have played a role in organizing the meeting. But Hani-Zadeh
cautioned that Tehran must remain vigilant as Saudi Arabia may be
attempting to "create Iranian Shiites and Arab Shiites" -
citing the latest visit of prominent Iraqi Shiite cleric Muqtada
al-Sadr to the Kingdom.
On Aug. 1, the foreign ministers of Iran and Saudi
Arabia surprised political observers by shaking hands with each other
at the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) meeting in Istanbul.
Given that the encounter came in the wake of months of direct verbal
clashes between the two over regional developments, some saw the
unexpected greeting as potentially signaling a glimmer of hope for
improvement in the Iran-Saudi relationship. Following the warm
greeting, Mohammad Javad Zarif told Iranian journalists Aug. 1 that
what happened on the sidelines of the OIC summit was a
"diplomatic norm" and based on "mutual respect"
and a "long-standing friendship" with Adel al-Jubeir. He
added that the brief encounter was not groundwork for the resumption
of diplomatic relations, which Saudi Arabia cut following the
storming of its diplomatic facilities in Iran over its execution of a
dissident Shiite cleric.
HUMAN RIGHTS
Iran's judicial and security bodies
have waged a vicious crackdown against human rights defenders since
Hassan Rouhani became president in 2013, demonizing and imprisoning
activists who dare to stand up for people's rights, Amnesty
International said in a new report published today. Caught in a web
of repression: Iran's human rights defenders under attack details how
scores of human rights activists - often labelled "foreign
agents" and "traitors" by state media - have been
prosecuted and jailed on spurious "national security" charges,
dealing a crushing blow to hopes of human rights reform raised during
President Hassan Rouhani's first election campaign. Some activists
have been sentenced to more than 10 years behind bars for simple acts
such as being in contact with the UN, EU or human rights
organizations including Amnesty International.
After four years' imprisonment for "violating
national security", Iranian Christian Maryam Naghash Zargaran
was released from Tehran's Evin prison last night (1 August). She was
due to be released four days earlier, on 28 July, but, as Mohabat
News reported, this was delayed without explanation. Naghash
Zargaran, 39, a convert from Islam, was first questioned by
intelligence officers in January 2010 because of her work with
underground churches, or "house churches".
DOMESTIC POLITICS
Hassan Rouhani won the endorsement of Iran's supreme
leader for his second term of president on Thursday after an easy
election win, pledging to open Iran to foreign trade and investment
but facing internal hardline resistance and renewed U.S. antagonism. Under
Rouhani's watch, Iran emerged from international isolation in 2015
when it struck a deal with six world powers to curb its disputed
nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of financial and economic
sanctions in place for a decade.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani vowed to continue his
efforts to end the country's isolation as he was sworn in for a
second term, a day after US President Donald Trump signed a bill
increasing sanctions against the Islamic Republic. "We will
never accept isolation," Rouhani told a packed audience of
Iranian political and military officials in Tehran on Thursday.
"The nuclear deal is a sign of Iran's goodwill on the
international stage," he said, referring to the 2015 agreement
to curb its atomic programme in exchange for an easing of sanctions.
The
chief of staff of Iran's Armed Forces has called on the country's Sunni and Shiite communities
to join hands to maintain security at home and continue to battle
against America and Israel abroad. "Iran's Islamic revolution
has constantly been attacked by the Arrogance [U.S.] and the
child-killer regime of Israel," Major General Mohammad Hossein
Bagheri told a gathering of top Iranian security officials and
influential leaders of southwestern province of Sistan and
Baluchestan.
Iran is becoming less dependent on its neighbors for
natural gas with the launch of a pipeline to the northern provinces,
the government said. Iranian Energy Minister Bijan Zangeneh was on
hand for a ceremony for the launch of the Damghan-Neka natural gas
pipeline for the customers in the isolated north of the country, the
energy ministry's news website SHANA reported.
OPINION & ANALYSIS
The 2015 Iran nuclear accord and subsequent side deals
struck by the Obama administration to ransom U.S. hostages held by
Iran disproportionately enriched the Islamic Revolutionary Guard
Corps (IRGC) and its constituent Qods Force, its most elite unit.
With unfrozen assets bolstering the Iranian treasury, the Islamic
Republic decided to raise the Qods Force budget more than $300
million beyond the budgetary increase earlier granted to the IRGC as
a whole. It's against this backdrop that comments by Brigadier
General Esmail Qaani, deputy commander of the Qods Force, become so
telling... Qaani suggested that the 9/11 attacks in New York and
Washington were an inside job He then bragged to an assembled group
of Iranian veterans from fights in Syria and Iraq about how little
the United States has been able to do to counter the growth of
Iranian influence. Lastly, he bragged about "America has
suffered more losses from us than we have suffered losses from
them." This, of course, is not only a confession but also
outright bragging about how the Qods Force murdered Americans in
Iraq. It was the Qods Force, after all, that smuggled in
explosively-formed, armor-penetrating projectiles into Iraq for
insurgents to incorporate in improvised explosive devices.
"Across the Middle East, the
inevitable question is whether Washington's apparent willingness to
live with North Korean nuclear weapons-even those that can now be
delivered to the United States itself-foreshadows what is to come in
Iran... But there are key differences between the two situations, and
it is important to draw the right lessons from the North Korean
experience. There is still time to prevent Iran from following in
North Korea's footsteps, but only if leaders in Washington and
elsewhere are honest about the challenge and recognize not just what
is familiar about it but what is different as well... [A] key
difference is that a military option to prevent Iran from acquiring
the bomb remains viable as a last resort. In North Korea, military
preemption has long been precluded by the strategic reality that most
of the South Korean population, including the capital city of Seoul,
lies within range of thousands of North Korean rockets, and all of North
Korea's neighbors, including South Korea, oppose military action to
prevent proliferation.
Saudi Arabia has succession well in hand. Iran, on the
other hand, has designated no successor to the Supreme Leader and is
riven by deep political divisions united only in the belief that the
perpetuity of their rule is contingent on exporting the Islamic
Revolution. Lacking his predecessor Ayatollah Khomeini's
charisma and stature, Iran's Ayatollah Khamenei consolidated his rule
by placing loyal supporters of the Islamic Revolution in all branches
of government and granting the Revolutionary Guard unprecedented
economic and political power. These transformations yielded a
sectarian-driven expansionist and interventionist foreign policy, the
continuity of which vouchsafes the legitimacy of any Supreme Leader. The
bottom line: Saudi Arabia has already had its succession and is
forging ahead with needed reforms. With no clear successor, Iran's
factions will vie with one another to escalate sectarian policies
abroad in order to build revolutionary credentials for the next
Supreme Leader at home.
The Saudi-Iran rivalry is less an ancient religious
conflict and more a modern geopolitical proxy war cloaked in ethnic
(Arab vs. Persian) and sectarian (Sunni vs. Shia) garb. The two
countries are on opposing sides of horrific conflicts-in Syria,
Yemen, and Iraq-that have caused over a million civilian casualties,
the greatest refugee crisis since WWII, and the proliferation of
Sunni Jihadist groups such as ISIS and Shiite militias to counter
them. The most powerful man in each country-78-year-old Iranian Supreme
Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and 31-year-Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed
bin Salman (MBS)-are a study in contrasts. Khamenei is a deeply
traditional cleric who cautiously rules a predominantly modern
society; MBS has a modern outlook and bold ambitions but presides
over a deeply traditional society.
The passing of Iran's supreme leader and the Saudi king
represents a pair of known unknowns: leadership transitions that are
long anticipated and carefully planned, but whose realization will
provide rare openings for jockeying by domestic rivals, testing by
external adversaries, and possibly even mobilization on the streets.
Each ruling system is likely to survive, but only if leaders can
manage an array of new challenges such as the sense of political
entitlement among Iran's post-revolutionary generation, the fissures
within the Saudi royal family, and the structural distortions that
plague both economies.
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