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TOP STORIES
European politicians treated Donald
Trump's new Iran policy as America going rogue. Europe's businesses
can't afford to be so dismissive... America does have the power to
take unilateral action that affects companies everywhere -- and has
used it in the past. Trump gave Congress 60 days to consider
re-imposing curbs on Iran. Some of them could apply to businesses
outside the U.S., potentially forcing them to choose between the
American and Iranian markets. "The bottom line for a company is,
will it be able to make a profit without getting sued?'' said Rouzbeh
Parsi, director of the Sweden-based European Iran Research Group,
which promotes cooperation between Europe and Iran.
President Donald Trump said Monday that he decertified
Iran's compliance with a landmark nuclear agreement because he is
"tired of being taken advantage of," while also hinting
that the U.S. could still fully pull out of the deal... The president
said Monday that he is waiting for "phase two" of the deal,
one that will either improve it or prompt him to withdraw the U.S.
entirely. Of the latter option, the president said, "some would
say that's a greater possibility."
Senior Trump administration officials said on Sunday
that the United States was committed to remaining part of the Iran
nuclear accord for now, despite President Donald Trump's criticisms
of the deal and his warnings that he might pull out. Nikki Haley,
U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said that Tehran is complying
with the 2015 nuclear accord intended to increase Iran's
accountability in return for the lifting of some economic sanctions.
IRAN NUCLEAR DEAL
President Trump's de-certification of the Iran deal was
both sensible and courageous. Faced with a chorus of opposition, the
president nevertheless persisted and challenged the very deficient
Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. However, a bold presidential
policy, if mishandled, may still end up not just prolonging the JCPOA
in its current form but also damaging America's credibility... The
de-certification of the agreement constitutes the first and
indispensable step in a long path of renegotiating it. Both Congress
and the White House must now do their part. Congress has to respond
to the president's move with a sanctions package of its own. And the
administration has to engage in delicate task of alliance management
while avoiding the likely Iranian ploy of entangling it in endless
diplomacy. After years of disunity and working at cross-purposes, the
two branches of U.S. government can finally come together in devising
an accord that reliably and permanently blocks all of Iran's path to
the bomb.
Negotiators warn never to take a hostage you can't
shoot. By announcing Friday that the administration would not certify
that the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran was in the national interest,
Donald Trump has taken a hostage. The hostage is the deal itself.
Contrary to belief, decertification neither violates nor cancels the
agreement. It does not betray our commitments to our allies and it
does not abrogate our obligations to the Iranians. It's an act of
domestic politics between two branches of the United States
government... But it's also a psychological step, a brash signal that
Trump is prepared to see the deal fail and accept the consequences,
including war, if he can't negotiate a better one. Since Iran insists
it won't budge, it sets Washington and Tehran on a path of
confrontation that can be averted only if one side or the other
blinks. Decertification is Trump saying: We won't blink.
In short, Trump's decertification of the nuclear deal is
a first, but necessary step, to counter the increased Iranian
aggression that has spread death and destruction across the Middle
East over the past eight years.
On Friday, President Trump announced he will not certify
Iran's compliance with the nuclear deal signed by his predecessor.
I'm sure most of us spent the weekend inundated with thought pieces
declaring this a major misstep or some kind of politically motivated
gambit that plays fast and loose with global security. But they're
all wrong. With this bold action, we're finally on the path toward a
safer Middle East.
Republicans have more or less coalesced into two primary
political camps regarding the nuclear deal with Iran. Call them
"the Fixers" and "the Walkers." Both see the
agreement as fundamentally flawed and would never have offered what
the Obama administration gave away. They recognize the deal as both
technically and structurally deficient, setting Iran on a patient
path toward nuclear weapons while tying America's hands until the
Iranian nuclear program is industrial in scale, lethal in scope, and
too costly and difficult to destroy from the outside.
Hillary Clinton is now complaining that President Trump
has broken America's word with his policy on the Iran nuclear
agreement, the JCPOA. For reasons I will explain below, this is a
subject on which she should really be silent.
After months of speculation and counter-speculation, US
President Donald Trump has unveiled his long promised "new
strategy on Iran." The 1370-word text released by the White
House on Friday morning is likely to surprise many, at times for opposite
reasons. The first to be surprised are those, especially in Europe,
who feared Trump to behave like a bull in a china shop, bent on
nothing but wanton destruction for the sake of making some noise.
That hasn't happened. Carefully crafted, the text avoids using diplomatic
jargon for obfuscation and, instead, opts for clarity.
The European Union on Monday reaffirmed its support for
a 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and world powers despite sharp
criticism of the accord by President Donald Trump, and it urged U.S.
lawmakers not to reimpose sanctions on Tehran. Trump defied both U.S.
allies and adversaries on Friday by refusing to formally certify that
Tehran is complying with the accord, even though international
inspectors say it is, and said he might ultimately terminate the
agreement.
U.S.-IRAN RELATIONS
President Donald Trump has levied a terrorism
designation against Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)
in its entirety pursuant to Executive Order (E.O.) 13224. Leading up
to last Friday's designation, the IRGC and the Islamic Republic
threatened the US over the move; one senior Iranian official called
it a "declaration of war." Since the designation, officials
have dialed down the rhetoric, but have continued attacking the
American president - particularly over his use of "Arabian
Gulf" instead of "Persian Gulf" and threat to abandon
the 2015 nuclear accord - and have sought to project a unified
position.
Despite the signing of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of
Action (JCPOA), Iran remains the most serious threat today to peace
and security in the Middle East, if not the world. With the
international community now rightfully returning its attention to
Iran, now is the time for an approach that focuses not only on
whether Iran is fulfilling the letter of the nuclear agreement but
also the myriad array of threats emanating from Tehran. The
international community must forcefully implement existing U.N.
Security Council resolutions and penalize those who defy them.
Iran's oil minister says President Donald Trump should
allow American oil firms to do business in the Islamic Republic.
Bijan Zanganeh's comments on Tuesday come as Americans and U.S.
companies are still barred from directly doing business with Iran.
That's even with the 2015 nuclear deal being in place. Zanganeh was
quoted as saying: "If they want to, we are ready to negotiate
American companies about development of oil and gas resources."
CONGRESS & IRAN
With President Trump declining to certify that the Iran
deal is in the best interest of the United States, Congress will be
faced with the decision of whether to take new steps to counter
Iranian aggression. There will be plenty of time in the coming months
to debate the details of any such legislation, but as Congress
considers what to do, lawmakers should operate under the premise that
they are under no obligations to honor former President Barack
Obama's promises to Iran. Any action Congress takes to counter Iran
will trigger outrage among supporters of the lousy deal, who will
charge that undermining the deal would send a message to the world
that the U.S. no longer honors its agreements and commitments. In
reality, any such international blowback should be blamed on one
person and one person only: Barack Obama.
U.S. Senator Bob Corker, the Republican chairman of the
Senate Foreign Relations Committee, urged President Donald Trump's
administration on Monday to work closely with European allies as it
develops its new Iran policy. "This is something that can only
work if the administration exercises tremendous diplomacy with our
European allies," Corker told reporters as the Senate returned
to the Capitol for the first time since Trump announced his Iran
policy.
FOREIGN AFFAIRS
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday called on
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif to shut down his
Twitter account. In a video message posted to his own social media
accounts, Netanyahu attacked Zarif for having tweeted on Saturday
that all Iranians, including women and children, support the Islamic
Revolutionary Guard Corps. A branch of the Iranian army, the IRGC was
in the news lately as the US administration leveled additional
sanctions against its officials and threatened to declare it a
foreign terrorist organization.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held talks
with Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu on Tuesday, saying his
country will not allow Iran to "establish itself militarily in
Syria." Both Russia and Iran, Israel's main enemy, are backing
President Bashar Assad's regime in the civil war in neighboring
Syria.
MILITARY MATTERS
Ask any American intelligence analyst or military
officer and they'll tell you that Qassem Soleimani, the head of the
Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' elite Qods Force, is a terrorist.
He's responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Americans and worked
assiduously to destabilize Iraq in the wake of its liberation to
signal to those across the region that American intervention was more
a curse than blessing. Ask many Iranians about Soleimani and they
will describe him as a hero. Many of Iran's leaders talk, but
Soleimani does. And while Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei lectures from a
chair behind a flower-decked dais, Soleimani drinks tea with Iranian
soldiers and the proxies Iran supports in the field.
The legacy of Iran's suspected nuclear weapons work has
emerged as a central issue for President Trump as he seeks to chart a
new policy toward Tehran this month. Senior administration officials
are indicating they want to reopen the question; in August, U.S.
ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley specifically demanded that
international inspectors be granted vastly expanded powers to enter
Iran's military sites as a means of guarding against any covert
atomic bomb development. If the administration plans to follow up on
that demand, it will need to answer important questions about the
timing, scope, and potential consequences of increased U.S. pressure.
Iran's paramilitary Revolutionary Guard faces new
sanctions from U.S. President Donald Trump as he accuses the country
of violating the spirit of the 2015 nuclear deal between Tehran and
world powers. But what is this organization? The Guard formed out of
Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution as a force meant to protect its
Shiite-cleric-overseen government and later enshrined in its
constitution. It operated parallel to the country's regular armed
forces, growing in prominence and power during a long and ruinous war
with Iraq in the 1980s. Though facing possible disbandment after the
war, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei allowed it to thrive,
granting it powers to expand into private enterprise. The Guard
answers only to Iran's supreme leader.
The popularity of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard
Corps (IRGC) has spiked, at least on social media, following US
President Donald Trump laying out a new strategy on Oct. 13 that
increases the likelihood of not only the collapse of the nuclear deal
between Iran and the six world powers, but also the likelihood of a
military conflict and aggressive efforts to bring about regime change
in Tehran. In the same strategy speech, Trump said he had authorized
the Treasury to impose additional sanctions on the IRGC, describing
it as "the Iranian Supreme Leader's corrupt personal terror
force and militia." A day after Trump's speech from the White
House, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif tweeted,
"Today, Iranians - boys, girls, men, women - are ALL IRGC;
standing with those who defend us & the region against aggression
and terror." On Oct. 11, President Hassan Rouhani also addressed
the IRGC and the possibility of US sanctions against them. He
remarked, "If America wants to commit its next big mistake and
take action against the IRGC, this is a mistake upon a mistake."
SYRIA CONFLICT
Israel's leader is warning Iran that he will not
tolerate an Iranian military presence in Syria. Benjamin Netanyahu
says his meeting with visiting Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoygu
on Tuesday focused mostly on Iran's efforts to establish a presence
next door. Netanyahu says that "Iran has to understand that
Israel will not allow this." The meeting comes a day after
Israel destroyed a Russian-made, anti-aircraft missile launcher that
took aim at its planes. Israel has largely stayed out of the fighting
in Syria but has carried out dozens of airstrikes on alleged weapons
convoys bound for Lebanese militant Hezbollah group. It is also
concerned arch-enemy Iran will plant itself on Israel's
doorstep.
IRAQ CRISIS
When decertifying the Iran nuclear deal last week, U.S.
President Donald Trump cited Tehran's destabilizing role in the Middle
East as a reason for his decision. Just days later, as if to confirm
Trump's argument, Iraqi Shiite militias aligned with Iran launched an
offensive on the Kurdish Peshmerga in the oil-rich, disputed
territory of Kirkuk. Trump now has an opportunity to prove that his
rhetoric on Iran is more than just grandstanding, and that he is
serious about confronting what he described as Iranian attempts to
sow "conflict, terror and turmoil" across the Middle East.
For months, there have been warnings that the Islamic
State's eventual defeat in Iraq and Syria would only spark a number
of far more complicated and arguably more dangerous conflicts. We may
now be seeing the first of those conflicts erupt in northern Iraq,
where two close U.S. allies have commenced combat over the future of
the nation. Adding to the dangerous mix is the alleged involvement of
Iranian-backed militia in the fighting, which comes just days after
President Trump singled out Tehran's "destabilizing"
activities across the Middle East as he announced his plans to
decertify the nuclear agreement with Iran. Any rash decisions on
Trump's part could be a boon for exactly the Iranian activities he
has denounced.
The United States is scrambling to defuse tensions
between two allies in the fight against the Islamic State that have
turned on each other, leaving its Iraq policy in disarray and opening
the door for greater Iranian influence in the country. On Sunday
night, U.S.-armed and -trained Iraqi government forces clashed with
U.S.-armed and -trained Kurdish forces in the disputed city of
Kirkuk. By Monday, Iraqi forces had reclaimed the city, a military
base, the airport, and major oil fields nearby while thousands of
Kirkuk residents fled north.
If President Trump wants to stop Iran from making the
entire country of Iraq a subsidiary of the Revolutionary Guard, he'll
need to intervene in the burgeoning crisis in Kurdistan - and fast.
On Monday, Iraqi forces trounced Kurdish fighters and emerged
victorious in a short fight for control of the oil-rich northern
Iraqi town of Kirkuk.
A senior Iranian official praised the Iraqi forces and
Tehran-backed Popular Mobilization Forces (P.M.F.) for seizing the
disputed province of Kirkuk and "thwarting" the Iraqi
Kurdish leadership's push for independence. Ali Akbar Velayati, a
member of Iran's Expediency Council, accused Masoud Barzani, the
president of the Iraqi Kurdistan region, of advancing Israeli agenda
in the region. "Barzani's, and behind the scenes Israel's,
objective was seizing Kirkuk's oil wells in favor of Israel. For
years, no group or minority in the region had proudly raised the flag
of the Zionist regime (but the Kurdish region's authorities recently
did)," said Velayati, who is a senior aide to Supreme Leader Ali
Khamenei on international affairs. He made the remarks after Iraqi
armed forces, backed by Popular Mobilization Forces, took control of
the disputed city of Kirkuk on Monday.
On Sunday October 15, the Pentagon encouraged Iraqi
Security Forces and Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) Peshmerga to
"avoid escalatory actions," as Iraq gave the Kurds an
ultimatum to withdraw from areas around the city of Kirkuk. The United
States said it opposed "violence from any party," and that
any action could risk destabilizing Iraq and distracting from the war
on Islamic State.
IRANIAN DOMESTIC POLITICS
An article in reformist Shargh daily has urged the
Rouhani government to abstain from impulsive measures to retaliate
against the Trump administration latest anti-Iran sanctions and
statements. The piece entitled "Neutralizing Trump's Bombs"
argues that the best course of action for Tehran would be to focus on
consolidating its latest gains in Syria and Iraq and facilitating
foreign investment in the country even by American companies.
Iran's oldest social media network announced Monday it
is shutting down after years of battling censors, saying they had
allowed foreign sites such as Instagram to take over. Cloob website
was launched 12 years ago as the Iranian answer to Facebook and Google's
now-dead Orkut, and at its peak had some two million users in the
country. But the challenge of monitoring the deluge of photos from
women not to show hair and removing politically sensitive comments
led to frequent clashes with the authorities. "Cloob.com was
entirely blocked three times and the last time it took 28 days to
unblock it," said company director Mohammad Javad Shakouri
Moghadam in a blog post. "Like a farmer, a webmaster knows how
hard it is to rejuvenate a land that has dried up for 28 days,"
he wrote, adding that his team no longer had the "energy or
enthusiasm" to keep fighting.
Although it had been expected for months, US President
Donald Trump's unveiling of his new strategy on Iran seems to have
taken the ruling elite in Tehran by surprise, intensifying the power
struggle within it. The radical faction close to "Supreme
Guide" Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had expected Trump to tear-up the
so-called nuclear deal, depriving the rival faction known as
Rafsanjani's orphans led by President Hassan Rouhani, of their main
propaganda plank. That Rouhani is anxious to pretend that the
nuke deal remains intact is a sign of his faction's failure to work
out any alternative policy. If he denounces the deal, he would be validating
Trump's claim that Tehran never intended to abide by the rules. Such
move would, in turn, persuade the Europeans and perhaps even Russia
and China to tone down their support for Tehran against Washington.
"We intend to remain committed to the nuclear deal,"
Rouhani said Friday night, "for as long as others continue to
respect it."
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