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TOP STORIES
The attack on Syria Sunday night apparently targeted
major arms caches, including surface-to-surface missiles that Iran
seeks to deploy in Syria, according to assessments.
The United States is urging its European allies and
others to impose sanctions on Iran to curb its missile programme,
calling it an international threat to peace and security.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo arrived in Saudi Arabia
on Saturday on a hastily-arranged visit to the Middle East as the
United States aims to muster support for new sanctions against Iran.
NUCLEAR DEAL
Newly confirmed Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Friday
said President Trump is "unlikely" to stay in the Iran
nuclear deal unless he can get "substantial" fixes.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is using the Middle East
leg of his first trip abroad as America's top diplomat to call for
concerted international action to punish Iran for its missile
programs. He's also urging Saudi Arabia and its neighbors to resolve
a long-festering dispute with Qatar that U.S. officials say Iran is
exploiting to boost its influence in the region, including in Yemen
and Syria.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Sunday gave a warm
boost of support to Israel in its standoff against Iran, saying
"the United States is with Israel in this fight."
French President Emmanuel Macron and Iranian President
Hassan Rouhani spoke by telephone on Sunday and agreed to work
together in coming weeks to preserve the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement,
the Elysee Palace said in a statement. In a conversation lasting more
than an hour, the French president also proposed that the discussions
be broadened to cover "three additional, indispensable
subjects", Macron's office said, citing Tehran's ballistic
missile programs, its nuclear activities beyond 2025, and "the
main regional crises" in the Middle East.
The "current conduct of the United States would be
in breach of the JCPOA," Rouhani said, referring to the Joint
Comprehensive Plan of Action. He said that the Trump administration's
negative comments about the deal had created "fear and ambiguity
for different countries and businesses for their relations with
Iran," possibly damaging the country's economy.
The Trump administration moved closer [last] week to
dropping out of the landmark Iran nuclear agreement, after efforts by
Europe's leaders to persuade President Donald Trump to remain in the
accord appear to be falling flat.
"People tend to think about these economic
sanctions like an easy 'on-off' switch that can be flipped as
required to aid diplomacy, but you are really unleashing financial
furies that, once free, are very hard to call off their
targets," said Juan Zarate, a former Treasury Department
official who helped craft the sanctions and the current chairman of
the Financial Integrity Network. Iran never fully reintegrated into
the global financial system, even with the nuclear agreement, Zarate
said. "In an environment in which the United States is going to
expand sanctions, the private market and international banks will
likely find it too risky once again to do business with Iran."
French President Emmanuel Macron's talk this week of a
"new deal with Iran" may not, in fact, represent anything
new nor a deal with Iran... Macron's "new deal," at first
glance, appeared an effort to re-brand something already under discussion
between the United States and three European allies - Britain, France
and Germany - to try to save the existing agreement.
Facing imminent deadlines, President Donald Trump and
German Chancellor Angela Merkel largely papered over their
differences on trade and the Iran nuclear accord on Friday, stressing
instead ties between the longtime allies and their shared goal of a
nuclear-free North Korea... Still, Merkel's brief visit, coupled with
French President Emmanuel Macron's more lavish stopover earlier in
the week, made clear that the U.S. president's divisions with
European allies remain substantial.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, standing alongside US
President Donald Trump at the White House, said Friday that the
existing international accord on Iran is not enough to curb the
Islamic republic's nuclear ambitions.
U.S. President Donald Trump has until May 12 to decide
whether to perhaps fatally undermine a years-in-the-making nuclear
deal with Iran, with the consequences likely to be felt from Middle
East war zones to oil markets... So what's at stake if the U.S.
withdraws?
President Trump on Saturday spoke with Israeli Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about concerns regarding Iran as the U.S.
considers withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal.
The president should stop waiting for Congress or the
Europeans to get serious about renegotiating the JCPOA. Instead, he
should force everyone's hand and restore American leverage by
reimposing sanctions now. If the president wants an opportunity to
demonstrate his deal-making ability, he should drag everyone to the
negotiating table and put their commitments to nonproliferation to
the test.
Here's What Trump Should Do with the Iran Deal
| New York Post Editorial Board
Europe, of course, wants to protect its economic
interests by ensuring its companies can keep trading and investing in
Iran... So much of this seems an effort to buy time. But the global
threat from Iran remains unchanged - and is growing on a daily basis,
despite the Obama deal. It's long past time to genuinely mend it, or
end it.
MILITARY/INTELLIGENCE MATTERS & PROXY WARS
The U.S. military will not openly confront Iran, but
will instead use indirect means to limit its expansion in Syria, a
top commander said... as Western nations consider stepping up their
response to Tehran's support for armed groups across the Middle East.
U.S.-IRAN RELATIONS
The United States is deeply concerned by Iran's
"destabilising and malign activities," new Secretary of
State Mike Pompeo said after meeting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu on Sunday.
US and Israeli officials issued tough warnings about
Iran's activities in Syria and beyond on Thursday, in the lead-up to
President Donald Trump's May 12 decision on whether to stay in the
Iran nuclear deal.
Iran on Saturday welcomed steps towards detente between
North and South Korea but warned that the United States was
unqualified to play a role since it did not "respect its
commitments."
CONGRESS & IRAN
Much like the Global Magnitsky Act, which allows the
United States to sanction officials of foreign governments of
human-rights abuses, the Iran Human Rights and Hostage-Taking
Accountability Act is intended to make Iranian officials pay a
personal cost for their bad deeds. This could include seizing
property owned by Iranian officials in the United States, imposing
travel bans on officials (and their families), and blocking them from
making personal financial transactions. Nothing the United States has
tried has deterred Iran from continuing this particular bad habit.
Making punishment personal for those who enable, carry out and defend
Tehran's terrible tradition of hostage-taking might just be the
answer to this decades-old puzzle.
SYRIA, ISRAEL & IRAN
Direct conflict between Israeli and Iranian forces is
increasingly likely in Syria as Tehran pursues a permanent military
presence there, US Secretary of Defense James Mattis warned on
Thursday.
Israel's envoy to the United Nations said on Thursday
that Iran had recruited at least 80,000 Shiite fighters which it was
training at a base just over five miles from Damascus.
SANCTIONS
U.S. citizens provided services, materials, and
equipment for use by their company in Tehran, Iran.
ECONOMIC NEWS
To say the apparent breakthrough in relations between
North Korea and South Korea could prove to be of major historical
significance is an understatement, but the Middle East remains the
geopolitical hot spot more likely to send ripples through global markets
in the weeks ahead. Indeed, expectations that President Donald Trump
in May will pull the U.S. out of the international agreement designed
to curb Iran's nuclear program, effectively reimposing sanctions on
one of the world's largest crude exporters helped send oil futures to
more-than-three-year highs this month.
HUMAN RIGHTS
"About 100 indictments" have been issued in
connection with protests that took place in late December 2017 and
early January 2018, the Prosecutor of Tehran Province, Gholam-Hossein
Esmaili, announced in an interview with Mizan, the Iranian
Judiciary's official news agency, on April 26.
Iran confirmed on Sunday that it had arrested a
British-Iranian academic on security charges, state media reported,
the latest in a string of arrests of dual nationals in the Islamic
Republic over the past few years.
A week before International Labor Day, when labor rights
groups typically hold demonstrations around the world, at least 13
labor activists have been summoned in Iran's Western provinces of
Khuzestan and Kurdistan, the Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI)
has learned.
Human rights attorney Mohammad Najafi is facing charges
from three different courts and years of imprisonment in Iran for
publicly arguing that local police concealed the true cause of death
of a young man in their custody.
IRANIAN REGIONAL AGGRESSION
Iran's regional militia allies have vowed retaliation
for the death of Houthi leader Saleh al-Sammad in Yemen, the Iranian
media reported. The Houthi rebels as well as Iran's regional militia
proxies said they would hold not only Saudi Arabia but also the United
States accountable for the killing of al-Sammad.
IRANIAN INTERNAL DEVELOPMENTS
Iran has developed an experimental local cryptocurrency,
a government minister said on Saturday, days after the country's
central bank banned trading in digital currencies including bitcoin.
NORTH KOREA & IRAN
"I don't think Kim Jong Un is staring at the Iran
deal and saying, 'Oh, goodness, if they get out of that deal, I won't
talk to the Americans anymore,'" Pompeo said. "There are
higher priorities, things that he is more concerned about than
whether or not the Americans stay" in the Iran deal.
Defense Secretary Jim Mattis played down concerns on
Thursday about whether a potential U.S. withdrawal from the Iran
nuclear deal would undermine attempts to strike an agreement with
North Korea to dismantle its nuclear weapons program. "Some
people point out that this could impact on the North Korea
negotiations. But I would say in that case, in light of Kim's family
and himself breaking every international treaty, every agreement
they've ever made ... I'm less concerned with that ripple effect
right now," Mattis told a Senate hearing.
Friday's historic pledge by the leaders of the two
Koreas to work to denuclearize the Korean peninsula should give U.S.
President Donald Trump a stronger hand to renegotiate the treaty
curtailing Iran's nuclear programme, Israel's intelligence minister
said.
GULF STATES, YEMEN, & IRAN
Lucrative Qatari hostage payments bankrolled a feared Al
Qaeda-linked militant group in Syria, one that has grown to become
the most effective and powerful extremist faction in the war-ravaged
country where it has imposed its extremist vision and kidnapped an
American journalist, wealthy Gulf royals, UN peacekeepers, and even a
group of nuns. In at least one of those cases - the kidnap of nine
Qatari royals and 16 Qatari nationals by a Shiite militia in southern
Iraq - Doha siphoned millions, according to Iraqi officials, to that
very group: the Nusra Front, now leading an Islamist alliance known
as Hayat Tahrir Al Sham (HTS).
IRAQ & IRAN
Iran has emerged as the most influential foreign player
in Iraq since U.S.-led forces toppled Saddam Hussein's regime in
2003. Iran and Iraq are Shiite-majority countries that share
centuries-deep cultural and religious ties - and a 900-mile border.
The Islamic Republic has used these advantages to permeate Iraq's
political, security, economic, and religious spheres.
MISCELLANEOUS
A man armed with a BB gun and Buck knife burst into
Iran's consular offices in Washington on Wednesday morning, held a
male victim at gunpoint and caused about 10 people to lock themselves
in a bathroom out of fear of violence.
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