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TOP STORIES
Yemeni rebels' missile attack on the Saudi capital
Saturday could be considered an Iranian act of war, Saudi Arabia
said-a statement likely to further stoke tensions between the
archrivals. Saudi Arabia intercepted the ballistic missile east of
Riyadh's main airport after it flew more than 500 miles from Yemen,
fired by Houthi rebels, seen by Saudi Arabia as proxies of Iran...
Debris from the missile showed it was made in Iran, the statement
said, adding that the coalition "reserves its right to respond
to Iran in the appropriate time and manner, in accordance with
international law and based on the right of self-defense."
Prime Minister Saad Hariri of Lebanon said on Saturday
that he had quit his post, blaming Iran for interference in Arab
affairs and throwing his country, already awash with tensions and
regional rivalries, into deeper uncertainty. Mr. Hariri, speaking in
a televised address from the Saudi capital, Riyadh, issued a
blistering condemnation of Iran and its growing power and influence
in the region. He also assailed Iran's Lebanese ally, Hezbollah, the
Shiite militia and political party that is part of the national unity
cabinet he led.
Iran on Saturday displayed a surface-to-surface missile
as part of events marking the anniversary of the 1979 U.S. Embassy
takeover and hostage crisis amid uncertainty about its nuclear deal
with world powers. Thousands gathered at the former U.S. embassy in
downtown Tehran where a missile, believed to be a 1,243-mile-range
solid-fuel Sejjil, was on display. It was the first time Iran
displayed a missile during the annual gathering.
UANI IN THE NEWS
On October 31, the U.S. Treasury Department Office of
Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) updated its Specially Designated
Nationals (SDN) List, applying new sanctions to several individuals
and entities affiliated with Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps
(IRGC) for their role in supporting the IRGC's terroristic and
ballistic missile proliferation activities. The latest actions build
upon the Trump administration's announcement on October 13 that it
was designating the IRGC as a terrorist group pursuant to Executive
Order (E.O.) 13224.
U.S.-IRAN RELATIONS
President Trump decertified the Iranian nuclear deal,
known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), in part
because of the range of malign activities perpetrated by the Islamic
Republic at home and in the Middle East. But if stopping Iran from
destabilizing the region and continuing its development of
nuclear-capable missiles were easy, it would have already been
accomplished. Fulfilling the president's objectives will take some
heavy lifting.
BUSINESS RISK
Total has opened an office in
Washington in a bid to strengthen relations with the U.S.
administration as the French oil and gas company prepares to invest
billions in Iran.
SANCTIONS ENFORCEMENT
A trader accused of helping Iran evade sanctions invoked
the name of Turkey's president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, as part of a
scheme that U.S. prosecutors say was supported by Turkey's
government, according to court documents.
TERRORISM AND EXTREMISM
CIA Director Mike Pompeo has just
released hundreds of thousands of documents, long withheld by the
Obama administration, that were seized in the 2011 raid that killed
Osama bin Laden. There are no surprise revelations - but they more
fully document the years-long extensive cooperation between al Qaeda
and Iran that was still ongoing when bin Laden met his end.
A high-ranking Hamas delegation arrived
in Tehran on Saturday to participate in a memorial service for the
father of Qassim Suleimani, the commander of Iran's Islamic
Revolutionary Guard's elite Quds Force, a Hamas-linked media outlet
reported on Sunday. Suleimani's father, Hassan, died last Tuesday in
the southern Iranian city of Kerman.
HUMAN RIGHTS
Family members and advocates for a father and son
imprisoned in Iran are pressing the Trump administration to take
urgent action and set up a separate humanitarian channel with Tehran
to specifically negotiate the safe return of the pair. Siamak and
Baquer Namazi, a father and son who are citizens of both the United
States and Iran, have been held for more than a year and a half in
Iran's notorious Evin prison.
RUSSIA & IRAN
Russian gas giant Gazprom signed an initial agreement
with Iranian state-run investment fund IDRO to cooperate in
unspecified oil, gas and energy projects, Iran's state news agency
IRNA reported on Sunday.
On Nov. 1, Russian President Vladimir Putin went on a
working visit to Tehran for the second trilateral Caspian Summit. His
busy one-day agenda included encounters with Iranian Supreme Leader
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, President Hassan Rouhani and Azerbaijani
President Ilham Aliyev. This is Putin's third visit to Iran - the
last time being November 2015, two months after the start of Russia's
military campaign in Syria. Although this time the issue of energy
cooperation was central at the trilateral meeting, it was Putin's
discussions of Syria with Khamenei and Rouhani that for many outside
observers was the most intriguing part of the talks. Over the course
of the Syrian war, Russia and Iran have been crucial to one another
both politically and on the ground, with intelligence sharing and the
number of military contacts unprecedented in the modern history of
the two countries.
FOREIGN AFFAIRS
Bahrain has ordered its citizens to leave Lebanon amid
mounting tensions between regional Sunni powers and Iran that have
left the government in Beirut on the brink of collapse. The order
from Bahrain's Foreign Ministry reflects growing fears for Lebanon's
stability following the shock resignation of Prime Minister Saad
al-Hariri on Saturday.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday warned
that Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri's resignation should be a
"wake-up call" to the international community to the threat
posed by Iran's regional ambitions, which he said endanger not only
Israel but the entire Middle East. "The resignation of Lebanon's
Prime Minister Hariri and his remarks [on Iran] are a wake-up call to
the international community to take action against the Iranian
aggression, which is turning Syria into a second Lebanon,"
tweeted Netanyahu from London.
MILITARY MATTERS
Did the sanctions regime that preceded the Iran nuclear
deal enable the Iranian regime's most notorious actor, the Islamic
Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)? That's among the implications of a
recent New York Times piece by Thomas Erdbrink, which notes that by
hobbling the private sector, the sanctions bolstered the IRGC's
relative power within Iran... But a deeper look at the IRGC efforts
abroad instead suggests that the Revolutionary Guard largely
continued its normal activity during the sanctions period, advancing
longstanding Iranian objectives. Similarly, structural changes in the
Iranian economy to make it resistant to external pressures have gone,
and will likely continue to go, unrealized... In fact, it was only
after the JCPOA led to an infusion of cash back to Iran that Rouhani
increased the IRGC's budget by 145 percent, not during the sanctions.
The Revolutionary Guard's budget doesn't tell the full story of its relative
power before and after sanctions. But it does suggest that it was
constrained during sanctions, just as policymakers would have hoped.
Iran's state TV is reporting that the country's Supreme
Leader has appointed a new navy chief. The Sunday report by the TV's
website said that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei appointed Admiral General
Hossein Khanzadi as Iran's new navy commander. His predecessor,
Admiral Habibollah Sayyari, served in the post for 10 years.
Brigadier Khanzadi was a deputy commander in the Iranian Navy Forces
before the appointment.
SYRIA CONFLICT
Syrian government forces will advance soon to take Raqqa
city, which U.S.-backed fighters seized from Islamic State last
month, a senior Iranian official said on Friday. Ali Akbar Velayati,
the top adviser to Iran's Supreme Leader, also accused the United
States of seeking to divide Syria by stationing its forces east of
the Euphrates river.
IRAQ CRISIS
As the Iraqi forces come closer to expelling the Islamic
State (IS) terror group from their last remaining enclaves inside
Iraq, Shi'ite paramilitary groups aligned with Iran are attempting to
retain their power by integrating into the Iraq's political system.
Najmaldin Karim, the governor of the Kirkuk governorate,
was at his official residence on October 16 when American special
forces showed up. They warned him that the Popular Mobilization
Forces, an Iraqi Shiite militia controlled by Iran, was on its way to
the building. Karim, an ethnic Kurd who had twice been elected
governor of this ethnically mixed province, understood that they were
not coming to oust him or even to arrest him. They were coming to
kill him.
GULF STATES & IRAN
A cold war between Saudi Arabia and Iran, fought with
proxies seeded across the Middle East, is sharply escalating as the
two powers jockey to shape a regional order devoid of Islamic State.
With the extremist group's once-sprawling caliphate shrunk to a few
towns around the border between Syria and Iraq, the region is turning
its focus to the long-running Iran-Saudi struggle, as each strives to
carve out a dominant role based on divergent political and religious
visions. Iran is the main Shiite Muslim power in the Middle East. Its
vision of governance includes a blend of a parliamentary system
overseen by religious authority. Saudi Arabia, like other Sunni
countries in the Persian Gulf, has a monarchical system. The latest salvo
in the Iran-Saudi struggle came Saturday, when Lebanese Prime
Minister Saad Hariri abruptly resigned while in Saudi Arabia.
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