Monday, December 11, 2017

Eye on Iran: US Considers How to Curtail Iran's 'Malign Influence'





   EYE ON IRAN
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TOP STORIES


Even as the Pentagon remains focused on deterring North Korea and fighting ISIS, multiple US officials tell CNN that Defense Secretary James Mattis is asking planners to think about what action to take on Iran. Discussions are taking place on how to use the US military to deter and contain Iranian activities in neighboring countries, short of a direct conflict.


On Nov. 4, Yemen's tribal insurgents launched a short-range ballistic missile from a remote valley in the northwestern governorate of Amran over 1,000 miles to the outskirts of Saudi Arabia's capital, its warhead exploding on the edge of the King Khalid International Airport. The brazen strike appears to have claimed no victims, but the missile debris left in its wake provided an evidentiary trail for U.N. investigators struggling to test claims by Washington and Riyadh that the Yemeni Houthis' increasingly advanced missile program is being supplied by Iran. An examination of key missile fragments, documented last month in a confidential U.N. report, supported U.S. claims that the missile was comprised of Iranian hardware. But the report, which was reviewed by Foreign Policy, provided a new twist: The weapon also included a component that was manufactured by an American company.


The Trump administration plans to install a political appointee at the State Department to a key position managing policy on Iran and Iraq, a move that will replace a career diplomat with a loyal supporter of the president. Andrew L. Peek, a former captain in the U.S. Army Reserve and member of the president's State Department transition team, will become the new deputy assistant secretary of state covering Iran and Iraq, according to three State Department officials familiar with the matter.

NUCLEAR & BALLISTIC-MISSILE PROGRAMS


During Friday prayer in Tehran today, a senior Iranian cleric said that the Islamic Republic will further enhance the range and power of its ballistic missiles to threaten America and annihilate Israel, Iran's Fars News Agency reported. 

SANCTIONS ENFORCEMENT


Looking nervous and somber, the FBI's star witness entered from the lockup and shuffled across the New York federal courtroom in a beige prison smock. The Turkish-Iranian gold trader took a seat at the witness stand for the hearing on Nov. 29, the second day of testimony in a money laundering and sanctions-evasion case brought by the U.S. government. Asked to state his name, he said he was Reza Zarrab.

HUMAN RIGHTS


British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson held almost an hour of talks with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on Sunday after flying to Tehran to seek the release of a jailed British-Iranian aid worker. 


Britain's foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, left Tehran on Sunday without a clear public resolution on the fate of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, the imprisoned British-Iranian dual citizen whose plight he had been accused of worsening. But Ms. Zaghari-Ratcliffe's husband, Richard Ratcliffe, said he was encouraged by the progress made toward her release.


Since her arrest on 3 April 2016, the British-Iranian charity worker has been sentenced to five years in prison - for allegedly plotting against the Iranian government. She maintains her innocence, saying she was on holiday in Iran visiting family.


The Iranian authorities' transfer of an imprisoned US doctoral student within Tehran's Evin prison heightens fear for his safety, Human Rights Watch said today. On December 6, 2017, Xiyue Wang, a Princeton Ph.D. student and US citizen, was moved to Evin's Ward 7 and was threatened by another inmate there in front of a guard, a knowledgeable source said.

Iranian Media Workers Warn of 'Death of Independent Journalism' | Al-Monitor

"Working as a professional journalist is subject to obtaining a journalist's license from the Media Governance Organization [MGO] of the Islamic Republic of Iran." This sentence is part of Article 52 of the [MGO] Bill, which is currently being reviewed by the administration's Cultural Commission... An independent journalist living in Iran and identifying herself only as Mina... said... "This bill reminds me of what we have heard about the conditions surrounding the political factions, journalist committees and writers under the Stalin regime in the Soviet Union..." ... She believes that the bill will result in more censorship and further elimination of independent journalism from the mainstream of Iranian media.

RUSSIA & IRAN


Iranian Defense Minister Amir Hatami plans to visit Russia soon, the RIA news agency reported on Friday, citing a source at the Iranian defense ministry.

FOREIGN AFFAIRS


Somewhere in the mountains of northern Yemen, the missile lifted off in a dense cloud of fire and smoke and began its arc over Saudi Arabia. After roaring north for some 600 miles, the Iranian-made Qiam-1 reached its target, the international airport just outside of Riyadh. The Saudis claimed they blew the missile out of the sky with a U.S.-supplied Patriot interceptor, but experts said the incoming missile exploded upon impact, narrowly missing the domestic airport terminal.


The chief of staff of the Iranian Armed Forces said President Donald Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital will "usher in a new intifada against the Zionist occupying regime." 


In response to President Donald Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital, the Iranian government today staged nationwide anti-American and anti-Israeli rallies. Protestors chanted "Down to America" and "Down to Israel" slogans and burned the two countries' flags. Iranian leaders also called for an uprising against Israel and stressed that Washington's move will only accelerate the annihilation of the Jewish state.


A senior Iranian cleric called during Friday prayers for Palestinians to "rage" against Israel after US President Donald Trump declared Jerusalem as the capital of the Jewish state. After the prayers Iranians took to the streets of Tehran and other cities to protest against Trump's decision, calling for "death" to Israel and the United States and burning their flags.

MILITARY MATTERS

On 31 October 2017, the Iranian military launched a multiday military exercise named "Devotees of Velayat Airspace-7" near Isfahan to showcase its latest military capabilities. While the exercise included bombing runs with F-4, F-5, and indigenous Saeqeh ["Lightening"] jets (derived from the F-5), the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)-affiliated Tasnim News highlighted the use of smart bombs dropped from unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).

PROXY WARS


Shi'a Iran has been steadily recruiting, training, and equipping Shi'a foreign fighters from Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, and their capabilities are growing. Shi'a foreign fighters have participated in conflicts throughout the region, including in Yemen, Syria, and Iraq. There is evidence the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps is providing the training to transform these fighters into a professional transnational militia proxy force modeled after Lebanese Hezbollah. The formalization and expansion of these networks risks exacerbating geopolitical and sectarian tensions throughout the region.


On November 21, Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani, commander of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force (IRGC-QF), sent a letter to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in which he declared victory over the Islamic State (IS) "caliphate" in Syria and Iraq. In his reply, Khamenei called on all "Mojahed" forces (i.e., fighters in the name of God) to maintain readiness for meeting future regional challenges. In that vein, recent statements by IRGC chief Maj. Gen. Mohammad Ali Jafari and other commanders have emphasized the "Basij of the Islamic World" (Basij-e Jahan-e Islam, or BJI) as an emerging model for international Shia mobilization under Soleimani's leadership. Armed forces chief of staff Maj. Gen. Mohammad Bagheri believes a combination of this model and Iran's expanded military capacities can unite allied countries to prevent an IS resurgence, especially in Afghanistan and parts of Pakistan, which Iranian commanders see as future flashpoints with the group. In addition to continuing the momentum against IS, this expanding "resistance front" will be asked to soldier on "until the destruction of Israel and expulsion of the last American service member from the region," according to a November 24 statement by acting general staff chairman Brig. Gen. Masoud Jazayeri.


World powers attempted to shore up Lebanon's stability on Friday by pushing Saudi Arabia and Iran to stop interfering in its politics and urging Hezbollah to rein in its regional activities. 

SYRIA CONFLICT


Russian President Vladimir Putin told Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on Monday he wanted to work with Iran and Turkey to kick-start the Syrian peace process, Russian news agencies reported. 

IRAQ CRISIS


As Iraq emerges from three years of war with the Islamic State group, the U.S. is looking to roll back the influence of neighboring Iran and help the central government resolve its dispute with the Kurdish region, the American envoy to the country told The Associated Press.


Iraq has agreed to swap up to 60,000 barrels per day of crude produced from the northern Iraqi Kirkuk oilfield for Iranian oil, Iraqi Oil Minister Jabar al-Luaibi said on Saturday. The agreement signed by the two countries provides for Iran to deliver to Iraq's southern ports, on the Gulf, "oil of the same characteristics and in the same quantities" as those it would receive from Kirkuk, Luaibi said in a statement.

GULF STATES, YEMEN, LEBANON, AND IRAN


The majority-Sunni Muslim kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and the home of Shiite Islam, Iran, have for decades been locked in a cold war for geopolitical, economic and sectarian influence-with devastating effects on the region. 


President Hassan Rouhani says Iran is ready to restore ties with Saudi Arabia if it stops bombing Yemen and cuts its alleged ties with Israel.

IRANIAN DOMESTIC ISSUES


Iranian President Hassan Rouhani proposed to parliament on Sunday a conservative state budget of about $104 billion for next year, with the outlook for the economy and state revenues clouded by tensions with the United States.


Iranian President Hassan Rouhani submitted a $337 billion draft budget to parliament that earmarks about $100 billion for public service programs that would create jobs, address a banking crisis and introduce a new social security program.


Iran's judiciary says the former head of the country's largest state-controlled bank who fled to Canada amid a massive embezzlement case has been handed a lengthy prison sentence in absentia.







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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