|
TOP STORIES
President Trump will again waive sanctions against Iran
that were lifted as part of the landmark 2015 nuclear deal, the White
House said Friday. But the Trump administration is imposing new,
nonnuclear sanctions in response to Iran's ballistic missile activity
and its crackdown on anti-government protestors. Trump also warned
that this will be the last such waiver, calling for a follow-on deal
with Europeans and a legislative fix from Congress.
Two of the detained young men killed themselves, and
another was a terrorist who died in a clash with security forces,
Iran's government officials have declared with finality. But in an
extraordinary display of audacity, many Iranians, including a number
of lawmakers and a top entertainment star, have assailed such
conclusions. The three young men were among more than two dozen
Iranians who died in the wave of antigovernment protests that swept
the country a few weeks ago, the most serious unrest to confront the
Islamic republic's political-religious hierarchy in nearly a decade.
The men's personal stories that have since emerged have struck a
nerve among many Iranians, who see glaring contradictions in the
official accounts of the facts.
A United Nations panel has concluded that Iran violated
an arms embargo imposed on Yemen by failing to prevent the Houthi
rebels in that war-ravaged nation from obtaining Iranian missiles,
including one fired hundreds of miles into Saudi Arabia two months
ago.
IRAN NUCLEAR DEAL
AEOI spokesman Behrouz Kamalvandi has said in Iran no
figure is authorized to give access to IAEA to visit military sites,
and there is essentially nothing included in the Safeguards Agreement,
Additional Protocol, and JCPOA, regarding the issue. Dismissing the
quartet conditions of the President of the United States Donald
Trump, regarding JCPOA renegotiation, Kamalvandi said "in the
past, the United Nations' nuclear watchdog inspected Iran's Parchin
military site and the case was closed, and now there is no request
from IAEA to have access to a military site in the country."
Iran said on Saturday it would retaliate against new
sanctions imposed by the United States after President Donald Trump
set an ultimatum to fix "disastrous flaws" in a deal
curbing Tehran's nuclear program.
Iran said Saturday it won't accept any changes to its
2015 nuclear deal with world powers after President Donald Trump
vowed to pull out of the accord in a few months if European allies
did not fix its "terrible flaws."
Iran's president says the United States has failed to
undermine a nuclear deal between Tehran and the world's major powers,
and hailed the accord as a "long-lasting victory" for Iran,
state television reported.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Monday
that Moscow will work to preserve the existing Iran nuclear deal
despite Washington threatening to withdraw from it.
French President Emmanuel Macron spoke with Israeli
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and pressed the importance of
maintaining Iran's nuclear accord, the Elysee Palace said on
Saturday.
President Trump, by demanding on Friday that European
allies agree to rewrite the Iran nuclear deal within 120 days or he
will kill it, set himself a diplomatic challenge that would be
formidable even for an administration with a deep bench of
experienced negotiators. For Mr. Trump, who has filled his national
security ranks with retired military officers and allowed his State
Department to languish, the challenge is even more profound.
IRAN PROTESTS
Iranian officials said Sunday that hundreds of people
detained in recent weeks during anti-government protests have been
released and acknowledged that at least 25 people were killed during
the unrest.
Iran on Saturday lifted restrictions on the messaging
app Telegram, the state news agency IRNA said, after blocking the
popular service as security forces sought to contain the most
widespread public protests in the country since 2009.
As the available data on unemployment show, the recent
protests in small cities are likely to be associated with high
unemployment rates. The data suggest that joblessness rate is not
merely an economic issue and could have political implications. In
fact, the unexpected involvement of towns and small cities in the
recent demonstrations exhibits how unemployment can become a basis of
political action and trigger radical anti-government protests that
challenge the entire political system.
Plenty of force was on display as Iran's authorities
stamped out protests over the past two weeks. Something more
unexpected emerged as well: a political debate. The last time
Iranians took to the streets en masse, in 2009, the clampdown was swift
and absolute. Then-President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad characterized
protesters as "dirt and dust." This time, too, there have
been hundreds of arrests, and at least 25 deaths. But both main
factions in Iranian politics claimed to see something legitimate in demonstrators'
demands -- even if they disagree about what it is. Analysts see
several reasons for the difference. Unrest didn't spread to Tehran,
or draw in the influential middle class, making it less threatening.
SYRIA & IRAN
With the Islamic State (IS) on the run across Syria, the
Donald Trump administration has committed to using US armed forces in
the country to counter Iranian influence.
|
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment