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Iranian police arrested around 100 money changers on
Wednesday (Feb 14) as it scrambled to contain the decline of the
rial, which has lost a quarter of its value in six months.
Israel warned Syrian President Bashar Assad to stop
letting his war-torn country be used by Iran as a launching pad for
attacks, and tensions in the region remained high Tuesday following a
weekend skirmish and a new Syrian threat of "more
surprises."
"I think both sides don't want to go to war and the
very delicate decisions between escalation and containment will
continue to be the main dilemma for the decision makers in Tehran and
Jerusalem," said Amos Yadlin, a former Israeli army intelligence
chief. He's worried about Iran using the chaos in Syria as a pretext
to attack Israel. "This is about Iran building a force, a
military power and bases in Syria against Israel, and Israel's
determination not to let it happen," Yadlin said.
IRAN NUCLEAR DEAL
Back in 2015, Obama tended to pepper his statements
about the JCPOA with hopes and even expectations of moderation in
Iran, like election of Rohani, as well as improved relations with the
US and even with its regional neighbors... But what we have seen over
the past two and a half years is anything but moderation, neither
within Iran, nor in its foreign policies and rhetoric. The deal
ironically left Iran feeling emboldened to pursue its aggressive
regional policies due to the new level of support it had not only
from Russia, but from the EU as well.
NUCLEAR & BALLISTIC-MISSILE PROGRAMS
The United States' insistence on addressing Iran's
missile program and the newly expressed European willingness to
cooperate in this endeavor should be welcomed. To effectively cope
with the Iranian missile challenge, however, the administration
should abandon its current focus on long-range missiles, because the
threat is tied to the warhead, not the missile's range. Rather, the
United States and European countries should be encouraged to embrace
the already well-established "gold standard" for combating
missile programs capable of delivering weapons of mass destruction
that has existed for 30 years: namely, the Missile Technology Control
Regime, which they helped establish in 1987.
ISRAEL-IRAN-SYRIA CLASH
In a span of a week, another Israeli minister from the
12-member security cabinet has made tough statements about Iran's
presence in Syria, this time threatening President Bashar al-Assad.
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson should stop in Israel
during his current trip to the Middle East, after Israeli and Iranian
forces clashed over the weekend, a senior Democratic senator urged
Monday. "To omit a stop in Israel after Iran's escalation last
week would be nothing short of diplomatic malpractice and strategic
folly," New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez, the top Democrat on the
foreign relations panel, said Monday.
Israel's own campaign against Iran has been waged in
secret intelligence operations occasionally - according to foreign
media sources - also using proxies from the opposition groups to the
Islamist regime in Tehran. But at no point has there been a direct
military confrontation between the two countries... This sudden
departure from established Iranian strategy, in which the Revolutionary
Guards' Quds Force has for the first time carried out its own
incursion of Israeli airspace, still has many Israeli officials
baffled.
Israel will not sit back and watch Iran expand its
threat as it further entrenches itself in southern Syria. That means
that it will likely raise the stakes for the regime in Tehran along
with its puppet in Damascus. It would be helpful if the U.S. were to
adopt a similar position in actions-not just rhetoric-because when it
comes to Iran, the U.S. and Israel share the same goals. A more
forward-leaning American role would provide some balance to the
Russia-dominated chess game in Syria.
There are still many unanswered questions about the
reported incident with the Iranian drone in northern Israel last
week, but two things should be clear. First, the 12-year-old lull
between Israel and Hezbollah will come to an end if a new
understanding about the rules governing conflict in this region is
not reached. And second, Russia will need to help broker that new
understanding.
Tehran's vision of Syria as the ideal place to set up
militarily alongside Israel cannot go unchecked. Israel will be
spinning its wheels if it tries to thwart Iran's plans on its own. It
needs to team up with Washington. So far, though, that kind of
collaboration has been missing in action.
Iran properly felt harsh military consequences for
meddling with Israel this weekend - in a skirmish that could
foreshadow growing regional conflict if Russia doesn't move to rein
in its allies in Syria... Trump has made it a priority of his
presidency to cultivate a relationship with Putin. What is it good
for? Let's find out.
The wedge-shaped drone looks like a flying saucer when
seen in the black and white hues of a thermal scope. The Israeli
helicopter pilot is tracking its smooth, steady path from the cockpit
of an Apache. It's not hard to ID the model and owner of the unmanned
aircraft. It's flying from Syrian airspace and from a base staffed
with Iranian military. The shape and size of the drone pegs it as a
Simorgh, a pilotless jet with a stealthy shape.
Over the past few years, Israel has intervened
sporadically in its neighbor's civil war to prevent Iran from using
it as a conduit for weapons to Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon. What's
different is that now Iranian military forces are themselves at
Israel's door and Israel is engaging them directly, as opposed to
playing cat-and-mouse with Iranian proxies and arms convoys. That
means Syria could become the theater for a direct confrontation
between two of the most powerful states in the Middle East.
Are Israel and Iran at war? Will Israel be intervening
more in Syria's civil war? How will this affect Israel's dormant but
never-ending conflict with Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group and
Iranian proxy? Here's a rundown of what happened, where it's all
coming from and what - if anything - it means for the future of
Israel and its neighbors to the north.
U.S.-IRAN RELATIONS
Now is the time for Trump to re-establish a robust
military deterrent toward Iranian expansionism in close collaboration
with regional allies. His administration declared the Revolutionary
Guard a terrorist entity in October, and he should target key Guards'
bases and weapons in Syria accordingly. Such an approach could help
prevent a larger-scale conflict.
FOREIGN AFFAIRS
Like most moments in the passionate Turkish-Persian
relationship, incidents of Muslim-to-Muslim fraternity are
misleading. For the mullahs in Tehran, Turkey remains too western,
too treacherous, and too Sunni. For the neo-Ottomans in Ankara, Iran
remains too discreetly hostile, too ambitious, too untrustworthy, and
too Shiite.
SYRIA & IRAN
A war that began with peaceful protests against
President Bashar al-Assad is rapidly descending into a global
scramble for control over what remains of the broken country of
Syria, risking a wider conflict. Under skies crowded by the warplanes
of half a dozen countries, an assortment of factions backed by rival
powers are battling one another in a dizzying array of combinations.
Allies on one battlefront are foes on another. The United States,
Russia, Turkey and Iran have troops on the ground, and they are increasingly
colliding.
It has poured billions of dollars and hundreds of lives
into bolstering President Bashar al-Assad's government. Yet Iran may
struggle for a return on its investment in Syria. On paper, the
Iranian government and entities linked to the Iranian Revolutionary
Guards Corps have been granted big economic prizes in Syria - a
memorandum of understanding to run a mobile phone operator and a role
in one of its most lucrative phosphate mines. It has been given
agricultural lands, and plans to develop university branches. But
businessmen and diplomats in Syria say implementing those agreements
has been stalled by regime officials more eager to attract Russian
and Chinese business - and wary of Tehran's ambitions to increase its
influence.
IRAQ & IRAN
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson called on allies in the
fight against the Islamic State militant group to contribute more in
Iraq's reconstruction-but Iran has also pledged its support after
contributing heavily to the battle against the jihadis next door.
IRANIAN INTERNAL DEVELOPMENTS
On Jan. 28, at an event celebrating 50 years of capital
markets in Iran, the head of the Central Bank of Iran, Valiollah
Seif, publicly stated, "The formidable power of illegal
stakeholders on Iran's economy has rendered reforming the economy
difficult." These illegal stakeholders, who have also been
referred to as shady interest groups, are most accurately described
as "corrupt networks." One key question is why no Iranian
government has managed to push back against these networks... it is
difficult to conceive that the entirety of Iran's top leadership
wishes to combat corruption and fails miserably. The corrupt
practices in Iran are not invisible and, in fact, can be traced
clearly. Stakeholders openly speak about mafia structures in various
parts of the economy, such as the automotive sector, sugar imports,
football clubs and hard currency.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani's proposal to hold a
referendum to resolve the issues and differences between
conservatives and Reformists have led many to harshly attack him.
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