Monday, September 25, 2017

Eye on Iran: Iran Tests New Ballistic Missile, State Media Reports


   EYE ON IRAN
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Iran test-fired a new missile that it said could carry several warheads, state media reported late Friday, in a move that looked set to ratchet up tensions with Washington. State-run IRIB released video of a rocket being launched just before midnight local time on Friday (just before 4:30 p.m. ET Friday). It did not report the location. "Iran successfully tested the long-range Khorramshahr ballistic missile," IRIB reported, adding that this was the country's third test of a missile with a range of around 1,240 miles.


Frequent breakdowns of advanced uranium enrichment devices have inadvertently helped Iran comply with restrictions in the international agreement curbing its nuclear program, according to a new report by a Washington-based think tank. Iranian compliance also is due to tougher policing by U.S. President Donald Trump's administration of the 2015 pact to prevent Tehran from developing nuclear weapons, the Institute for Science and International Security said in a report due on Friday. 


President Donald Trump criticized the Obama-era nuclear deal with Iran and other world powers on Saturday, tweeting that the U.S. doesn't have "much of an agreement" after Tehran test-fired a ballistic missile. International sanctions on Iran have been lifted under the deal in exchange for curbs to Tehran's nuclear program.

UANI IN THE NEWS


After its purge from Mosul and with the collapse of ISIL positions in Raqqa all but complete, the nature of the beast is changing.  ISIL is often seen as an urban and a viral force... What has been less clear is that ISIL is a phenomenon of the desert and land between two rivers, the Tigris and the Euphrates. The battle focus has now shifted to that terrain and with it, a new factor has emerged.  The ground fight against ISIL is also a fight against Iran's attempt to open a land corridor to the Mediterranean. David Petraeus, the former CIA chief, central command head and leader of the Iraqi surge, pinpointed how the two battles have now morphed, at a conference organised by United Against a Nuclear Iran this week. 

IRAN NUCLEAR DEAL


Tillerson told Fox News on Tuesday night that "the president really wants to redo that deal" but also that the U.S. would need "the support, I think, of our allies, the European allies and others, to make the case... to Iran that this deal really has to be revisited." So for now, the U.S. strategy is to convince its European allies that the deal should be reworked, which is having some success.


Dozens of security experts, former military officials and top diplomats are pushing President Trump to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal. Forty-five former security officials, including many who served in Republican administrations in senior positions overseeing nuclear weapons, arms control, nonproliferation, and intelligence, wrote Trump Wednesday calling on him to pursue a plan offered by former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton. Bolton's plan calls for abrogation of the deal, in consultation with U.K., France, Germany, Israel, and Saudi Arabia, over what he considers "outright violations and other unacceptable Iranian behavior" under the Iran deal's Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). His approach also calls for more stringent new sanctions to bar permanently the transfer of nuclear technology to Tehran. He also urges new sanctions in response to Iran's sponsorship of terrorism and efforts and provocative actions that have destabilized the Middle East.


The United Arab Emirates said on Friday it considers that Iran violates both the "letter and spirit" of the 2015 nuclear deal agreed between the Islamic Republic and world powers. "Two years have passed since Iran's nuclear agreement with no sign of change in its hostile behavior; it continues to develop its nuclear program and violates the letter and spirit of that agreement," UAE foreign minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed al-Nahayan told the U.N. General Assembly.


Iran's foreign minister on Thursday rejected any new negotiation with the United States over extending the length or conditions of the 2015 nuclear accord, saying that Iran would talk about changing the accord only if every concession it made - including giving up nuclear fuel - were reconsidered. In an interview, the foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, said that would mean Iran would retake possession of the stockpile of nuclear fuel it shipped to Russia when the accord took effect.


In 2015, China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom, the United States, the European Union and Iran adopted a plan that was to ensure Iran's nuclear program will used for peaceful ends, and in exchange, sanctions against the oil producer were lifted. But U.S. participation could end, and the possible demise of the Iranian nuclear deal is one of the most underappreciated geopolitical risks in the oil market, says Helima Croft, RBC Capital Markets commodity strategist. President Donald Trump's speech at the United Nations this week and statements by senior administration officials, "underscored just how precarious U.S. participation in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) really is, as well as the strong possibility that the White House will opt to decertify Iran next month," Croft writes.


As concerns grow every day about whether or not the United States will abandon the nuclear deal with Iran, Tehran is weighing its options in different possible scenarios. Donald Trump has long vowed to tear up the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), pledging such a move even before he was elected as president. However, despite his apparent personal desire to do so, this has not happened yet. Most analysts attribute this to the opposition shown by European parties to the JCPOA, as well as the resistance of Trump's own advisers and Cabinet members.


Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Friday dismissed the notion of renegotiating the agreement curbing Iran's nuclear weapons development, maintaining U.S. concerns about Iran are beyond the scope of the deal. "

NUCLEAR & BALLISTIC-MISSILE PROGRAMS


Iran's elite Revolutionary Guard has displayed the country's sophisticated Russian-made S-300 air defense system in central Tehran. This is the first time that the S-300 air defense system has been displayed in public. The public show in Tehran's Baharestan square near the Parliament building square exhibited different missile systems, including ballistic missiles, solid-fuel surface-to-surface Sejjil missiles and the liquid-fuel Ghadr.

U.S.-IRAN RELATIONS


As he considers what to do about the 2015 international agreement with Iran that he disdains, President Trump may be about to lob the ball into the international community's court. Rather than pulling the United States out of the deal as he has long threatened, Mr. Trump may instead agree to stick with it at least for the coming months - and challenge the US partners in the seven-nation agreement to address what he sees as its grave shortcomings.

SANCTIONS RELIEF


Bpifrance, the country's state investment bank, will finance investment projects of French companies in Iran from 2018, granting up to 500 million euros ($598 million) in annual credits, its CEO said in a newspaper interview on Sunday. "Excluding a force majeure case, we will be on their side in early 2018. We are the only French bank that can do it without risking U.S. sanctions for a posssible breach of remaining embargo rules," Nicolas Dufourcq told Le Journal du Dimanche.

NORTH KOREA AND IRAN


President Trump's upcoming decision on whether to toss out the landmark nuclear deal with Iran could have ripple effects half-a-world away. Experts on both sides of the political spectrum say that whatever happens with Iran will have effects on North Korea and vice versa. Opponents of the Iranian nuclear deal argue that Iran is watching North Korea's belligerence to see what they might be able to get away with. Supporters of the deal, meanwhile, say scrapping it would send a signal to Pyongyang that the United States cannot be trusted in any potential future negotiations.


Japan's Foreign Minister Taro Kono asked his Iranian counterpart Javad Zarif to reach out to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to defuse an increasingly hostile war of words with President Donald Trump. 

FOREIGN AFFAIRS


Setting aside years of increasing Turkey-US hostility, President Trump's introductory remarks for the cameras were glowing as he met Turkey's controversial President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan one-on-one, winding up a flurry of bilateral diplomacy on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly's annual opening in New York... But seen from Turkey, the picture is far different. The scuttling of a US weapons sale this week for Erdoğan's presidential security detail was just the latest point of friction feeding Turkey's disillusion with the US and its NATO allies - and one more reason for its deepening embrace of two historic rivals, Russia and Iran.


Iran is seeking to consolidate its network of influence across the Middle East and attempting to broker a reconciliation between Palestinian militant group Hamas and the embattled Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, after the two had a bitter falling out over the Syrian civil war. Hamas had an established base in Damascus, Syria, where many of its leaders remained even after the group assumed power in the Gaza Strip in 2007. However the Syrian civil war saw the Sunni militant group, an affiliate of the Muslim Brotherhood, break with the Alawite president (a sect of Shia Islam) and back Sunni rebels attempting to oust the government in Damascus, leading to the group's governing body to relocate to Qatar in 2012.

CYBERWARFARE


A move by President Donald Trump to discard the Obama-era nuclear deal with Tehran could bring a swift retaliation from an increasingly aggressive Iranian hacker army. Some of those attacks might target America's power plants, hospitals, airports and other pieces of critical infrastructure, multiple cyber experts who track Tehran's hackers are warning. Iran's current Western hacking is limited almost entirely to commercial espionage and dissident surveillance, but the country could quickly redirect its efforts in the event of a rupture of the nuclear pact.

SYRIA CONFLICT


Iran is working to restore a lost link in its network of alliances in the Middle East, trying to bring Hamas fully back into the fold after the Palestinian militant group had a bitter fall-out with Iranian ally Syria over that country's civil war. Iran and its Lebanese ally Hezbollah are quietly trying to mediate a reconciliation between Syria and Hamas. If they succeed, it would shore up a weak spot in the alliance at a time when Iran has strengthened ties with Syria and Iraq, building a bloc of support across the region to counter Israel and the United States' Arab allies.

IRAQ CRISIS


In late May, an Iraqi cleric called Akram Kaabi visited militia fighters in a desolate Iraqi town near the Syrian border. Kaabi, who heads a Shi'ite Muslim militia named Harakat Hezbollah al Nujaba, was decked out in a camouflage uniform and led the fighters in prayer on mats laid on the dusty ground. A video of the session showed heavily armed militiamen standing guard. The event took place in Qayrawan, a town the Nujaba militia had seized back from Islamic State, the radical Sunni Muslim group. Nujaba, whose name means 'the Virtuous,' have also fought across the border in Syria, where they have lent support to President Bashar al-Assad in the fight against Islamic State and others.


Iran has halted flights to airports in Iraqi Kurdistan at the request of the central government in Baghdad, the semi-official Fars news agency reported on Sunday, a day before a Kurdish independence referendum. The agency quoted Keyvan Khosravi, spokesman for Iran's top security body, as adding that Iran was also closing its airspace to flights originating in Iraqi Kurdistan.

SAUDI-IRAN TENSIONS


Saudi Arabia clearly demanded Qatar to commit to the principles of the international law in fighting terrorism, calling on Doha to abide by commitments laid out in the Riyadh agreements of 2013 and 2014. Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir on Saturday told the United Nations General Assembly at its 72 sessions that Doha's practices of financial support to terror while disseminating hate speech is unacceptable, and so is providing safe havens to those who violated the law and should be brought to justice. "Riyadh will continue to counter terrorism in all forms and manifestations," Jubeir added. Referring to terrorism as "the biggest challenge facing the world," Jubeir said Qatar was jeopardizing Saudi Arabia's policy of combating extremism and terror financing. The position taken by the four States was meant to demand that Qatar follow the principles of international law in fighting terrorism, he explained.

OPINION & ANALYSIS


President Donald Trump has sensibly insisted that the Iran nuclear deal-formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action-has to be revised. The reaction in some quarters, mainly among many of the former Obama administration officials who negotiated this bad deal, has been horror. Unfortunately, the media have uncritically swallowed many of the false assumptions and naive arguments of the deal's supporters, and the elite consensus is that the agreement must be preserved lest the White House bumble us into a crisis-or worse, another war in the Middle East.


At this point Trump should consider appointing a special envoy for fixing the Iran deal. Ideally, this candidate should be a critic of the agreement who will not fall into the trap of Obama's negotiators who believed the rapport built with Iranian envoys would lead to a rapprochement with the regime. Finally, Trump's new envoy should be someone with years of experience in arms control and international law. In other words, it should be someone like John Bolton, the former acting U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Unfortunately, Bolton has already made it clear that he opposes the nuclear deal altogether. He recently published his plan for withdrawing it. The ideal candidate to negotiate for the Trump administration would be an opponent of the original deal: That stance gives a negotiator credibility.


A note about the Iran section of President Donald Trump's speech to the U.N. General Assembly. While his lambasting of the nuclear deal garnered the greatest attention, it would be a mistake to overlook his extended focus on the plight of the Iranian people. It's almost certainly significant - an important indicator of the administration's future direction when it comes to Iran policy.


Congress need not police the Trump administration's policy to Iran as vigilantly as it did the previous administration's Iran nuclear deal, a top Trump aide said Thursday. It was the latest sign that Trump is unlikely to tell Congress next month that the 2015 Iran nuclear deal advances U.S. national interests. The comments come as Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said Iran would not be willing to renegotiate the landmark deal, but was open to talk about other issues.


Iran is increasingly nervous about Iraqi Kurdistan's bid for a referendum on an independent Kurdish state. This nervousness arises because of two factors.  First, declaring an independent Kurdish state would encourage Kurdish separatism within the Islamic Republic of Iran. Second, a new Kurdish state would undermine Iran's ambition to establish a 'Shia crescent' from Tehran to Baghdad, Damascus, and Beirut, because a Kurdish state might have better relations with Sunni partners in the region than with Iran.







Eye on Iran is a periodic news summary from United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) a program of the American Coalition Against Nuclear Iran, Inc., a tax-exempt organization under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. Eye on Iran is not intended as a comprehensive media clips summary but rather a selection of media elements with discreet analysis in a PDA friendly format. For more information please email press@uani.com.

United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) is a non-partisan, broad-based coalition that is united in a commitment to prevent Iran from fulfilling its ambition to become a regional super-power possessing nuclear weapons.  UANI is an issue-based coalition in which each coalition member will have its own interests as well as the collective goal of advancing an Iran free of nuclear weapons.

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