Eye on Iran: Another Arab Spring Builds, Driven by "Discontent Approaching Despair"

TOP STORIES Another Arab Spring Builds, Driven by "Discontent Approaching Despair" | UANI Senior Adviser Norman T. Roule for the Cipher Brief In early January, Tunisia and Iran witnessed remarkably similar periods of spontaneous and widespread unrest... Although the scale of Iran's initial unrest captured much of the world's attention, policymakers and investors would be well advised to consider the two events together. To do so shows that protests in each country were driven by the same complaints that ignited the Arab Spring, leaving few doubts that the region remains susceptible to further and sudden fractures. Anti-Money Laundering Body Again Delays Iran Penalties | Wall Street Journal Iran risks new penalties in June if it doesn't bolster oversight of terrorism financing and money laundering within its borders, the Financial Action Task Force said Friday. Tehran failed to secure support to remove it from a global terror-finance blacklist. Its bid to exit the international standards-setting body's blacklist had gained traction in some European capitals in the months leading up to a plenary meeting of the task force this week. Companies and governments have cited the FATF listing as a reason to hold back investment in the Iranian economy in the years since the landmark 2015 nuclear deal... But a flurry of visits by a top U.S. Treasury Department official last week to Germany France, Belgium and the Netherlands tempered European support for Iran, according to people familiar with the matter. The administration warned that keeping Iran on the FATF terrorism-finance list is a top priority, and that Washington would aggressively pursue that policy. Iran Says Damascus Suburbs Assault to Continue As Fighting Rages | Reuters Iran said pro-Damascus forces would press ahead with attacks on an insurgent enclave near the Syrian capital, as ground fighting raged on there in defiance of a U.N. resolution demanding a 30-day truce across the country. IRAN NUCLEAR DEAL Europeans Look for a Way to Preserve Nuclear Deal While Punishing Iran and Satisfying Trump | Washington Post When French President Emmanuel Macron called this month for new international sanctions and "surveillance" over Iran's ballistic missile program, there was one person in particular he hoped was listening. France, Germany and Britain have been scrambling for months to convince President Trump that they want to join him in cracking down on bad Iranian behavior - missile tests, terrorism support and regional meddling. If they can sway him, they hope he will agree to preserve intact the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement he has argued is fatally flawed. Rewrite Iran Deal? Europeans Offer a Different Solution: A New Chapter | New York Times President Trump's threat to rip up the Iran nuclear deal has touched off an urgent scramble in European capitals to preserve the agreement - not by rewriting it, but by creating a successor deal that would halt Iran's ballistic missile program and make permanent the restrictions on its ability to produce nuclear fuel. BUSINESS RISK Iran Wants to Join the World Order It Undermines | Eli Lake for Bloomberg If you are a fan of unintentional comedy, I recommend checking out the Financial Action Task Force. This is the global organization of big banks and government agencies dedicated to combating money laundering and terrorism finance. This week it met in Paris to discuss, among other things, whether or not Iran's banking system should receive a clean bill of health... [T]the world body dedicated to stopping the finance of terrorism punted. In the dry prose of bureaucrats, it called on Iran to "fully address its remaining action items"... And yet, the door remains open if the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism could just address some of these technical details. IRANIAN REGIONAL AGGRESSION Russia Sets Stage for U.N. Veto of Western Bid to Call Out Iran | Reuters Russia has laid the groundwork for a likely veto on Monday of a British, U.S. and French bid for the United Nations Security Council to call out Iran over its weapons falling into the hands of Yemen's Houthi group. FOREIGN AFFAIRS Iran's Eastern Shift Shows Patience Running Out with the West | Agence France-Presse Iran's supreme leader has signalled a decisive shift in favour of relations with China and Russia, indicating that patience is running out with efforts to improve ties with the West. IRANIAN INTERNAL DEVELOPMENTS Avant-Garde Mosque Angers Hard-Liners in Iran | Associated Press A newly built avant-garde mosque in the heart of Iran's capital would have hard-liners shouting from the minarets - if there were any. The architects behind the Vali-e-Asr mosque dispensed with the traditional rounded domes and towering minarets, opting instead for a modern design of undulating waves of gray stone and concrete... The new structure has infuriated hard-liners, who see it as part of a creeping secular onslaught on the Islamic republic. An editorial posted on the Mashregh news website compared the curvature to that of a Jewish yarmulke, accusing authorities of "treason" for approving it.  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.