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TOP STORIES
The Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that victims of
terrorist attacks cannot seize Iranian antiquities currently on loan
to a museum in Chicago in order to help satisfy a $71.5 million
dollar judgment against Iran.
The United Nations Security Council should not condemn
Iran in a resolution to renew sanctions on Yemen, Russia's U.N.
ambassador said on Wednesday, resisting a Western bid to denounce
Tehran for failing to stop Yemen's Houthi group getting its missiles.
The Trump administration has embarked on a new campaign
to try to repair ties and pull Turkey out of its deepening alliances
with Russia and Iran.
UANI IN THE NEWS
Ambassador Mark D. Wallace, CEO of the United Against
Nuclear Iran NGO, endorsed McMaster's speech on Wednesday, stating,
"We fully support General H.R. McMaster's call for businesses to
comprehend the risks of engaging with Iran." "No business
can be assured that by doing business with Iran, they are not
engaging with the IRGC, which was recently sanctioned by the Trump
administration for its support of terrorist activities," Wallace
added. "With the IRGC immeasurably engaged in Iran's economy,
businesses that choose to enter Iran run the risk of supporting an
organization that actively finances and carries out terrorist
activity in the Middle East and across the globe."
IRAN NUCLEAR DEAL
President Trump's latest quick-fix approach to the Joint
Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) on Iran's nuclear program
creates an untenable policy dilemma. Because the deal sacrificed
significant U.S. leverage upfront, right now there is currently
little Congress can accomplish singlehandedly in trying to strengthen
it, and much the administration would place at risk in abruptly
leaving it. To truly fix the JCPOA, the United States should stay in
it for the time being, so Congress and the administration can focus
on rebuilding pressure on Iran to negotiate a better agreement.
Iran will withdraw from the landmark 2015 nuclear deal
if there is no economic benefit from it and major banks continue to
fail to do business with the Islamic Republic, Iranian Deputy Foreign
Minister Abbas Araqchi said on Thursday.
NUCLEAR & BALLISTIC-MISSILE PROGRAMS
Israel and its U.S. ally say they have successfully
tested an anti-missile system that would protect the Jewish state
from a potential long-range missile attack by its regional rival,
Iran. Monday's test of the Arrow 3 interceptor comes eight days after
Iran displayed what it called a new version of a Ghadr missile with a
2,000-kilometer range that would put Israeli territory within reach.
MILITARY/INTELLIGENCE MATTERS & PROXY WARS
On Feb. 13, US Director of National Intelligence (DNI)
Daniel Coats presented the 2018 "Worldwide Threat
Assessment," an annual compendium of challenges to American
security. These unclassified statements function as an analytical least
common denominator, offering a window into the intelligence
community's thinking... On select measures of the Iran threat, the
2018 document is remarkably consistent with themes from the 2017,
2016, and 2015 assessments.
U.S.-IRAN RELATIONS
The Trump administration has denied asylum to more than
100 Iranian Christian and other refugees who face possible
persecution in their home country, despite White House promises to
relieve the plight of religious minorities in the Middle East.
ECONOMIC NEWS
Iran is negotiating a wheat import deal with Russia that
would allow it to increase flour exports to neighbouring Iraq, the
secretary general of the Iran Federation of Food Industry
Associations told Reuters on Saturday.
Late last year, there were reports that the Iranian
government was keen on the Bitcoin cryptocurrency as a way of
bypassing economic sanctions. However, the government has now said
this is not the case at all. According to the independent Iranian
news site Iran Front Page, the country's central bank has denied ever
recognizing Bitcoin as an official currency, along with the idea that
it was actively facilitating Bitcoin transactions... According to the
IFP report, the central bank also said it was working on a mechanism
to "control and prevent digital currencies in Iran."
IRANIAN REGIONAL AGGRESSION
[T]he short-sighted policy of Western powers aided the
mullah regime's grand plan of ascendancy. The obsessive focus on the
war against the Islamic State terrorist group in Iraq and Syria left
the door wide open for Iranian-controlled Shiite militia. In Iraq,
the Obama administration even provided air cover to the same groups
that during the 2003 U.S.-led intervention murdered American troops.
Khamenei could not have hoped for a better outcome.
FOREIGN AFFAIRS
The recent tensions along the Israeli-Syrian border have
been mainly aerial. But due to developments in the Syrian civil war,
real changes are also taking place on the ground in the Golan
Heights. The Assad regime, which has gained the upper hand in the
war, is now focusing on aggressively attacking rebel enclaves east of
Damascus and in the northern Idlib province. But it is also gradually
bolstering its presence in southern Syria, including in the Syrian
Golan Heights. And accordingly, Israel is altering its deployment to
prepare for what's to come.
SYRIA & IRAN
Bashar Assad's Syrian military committed more atrocities
this week, bombing the opposition stronghold of Eastern Ghouta and
killing at least 200. Rescue workers had to haul dead civilians from
the rubble, including a family of five. As everyone deplores the
killings, the point to keep in mind is that the driving political
power here is Iran and its attempt to make Syria part of its growing
Shiite-Persian empire.
Germany has urged Russia and Iran to pressure the Syrian
government to end the "massacre" in a rebel-held Damascus
suburb that an independent monitor says has killed at least 250
civilians in two days.
On Monday night, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan
phoned Iran's President Hassan Rouhani. Sources fed local rosy
statements to media about "cooperation in the fight against
terrorist elements" and Rouhani said the two leaders discussed
"plots to disintegrate regional states." But behind the
scenes Iran is quietly opposing Turkey's operation in the mostly
Kurdish Afrin region in northwest Syria. Tehran is a key ally of
Damascus but is reticent to confront Turkey, with which it enjoys
amicable relations.
GULF STATES, YEMEN, & IRAN
After issuing a rare rebuke of Iran's repeated calls for
Israel's destruction on Monday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey
Lavrov added that Moscow also opposes "attempts to view any
regional problem through the prism of fighting Iran."
Unfortunately for him, that's precisely the way most of the Middle
East does view many regional problems, as revealed by a stunning
informal poll which an Al Jazeera talk show host conducted among his
tens of thousands of Arabic-language Twitter followers on February
10. Asked which side they supported in a recent Israeli-Iranian clash
in Syria, fully 56 percent-12,800 people-said they backed Israel.
IRAQ & IRAN
In June 2014, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, one of the
leading Shiite clergyman in the world, called on all able-bodied
Iraqis to defend their country against the Islamic State... Sistani's fatwa mobilized
a 100,000-strong fighting force known as the Hashd al-Shaabi,
or Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), whose mostly Shiite fighters
were instrumental in the fight against isis. The PMF is comprised of
multiple Shiite militias who were established after 2014 as volunteer
groups that took up arms in response to Sistani's fatwa... The
majority of these groups are aligned with the Iraqi state and take
their orders from the Iraqi government. But residing within the PMF
are Iran-aligned groups who have become the Forces' most-powerful
militias.
IRANIAN INTERNAL DEVELOPMENTS
Former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose 2009
re-election prompted mass unrest over alleged vote rigging, has
called for "free" presidential and parliamentary elections
in an open letter to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
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