Friday, July 20, 2018

Eye on Iran: Japan's Last Imports of Iranian Oil Could Be In Oct - Industry Body



   EYE ON IRAN
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TOP STORIES


Japanese oil refiners will likely stop loading Iranian crude by mid-September with final shipments arriving in the first half of October, the head of the nation's oil refiners association said on Thursday, as the U.S. pressures countries to halt such imports.


An Iranian newspaper's revelation that the head of a once massive credit institution has been on trial for embezzlement in Tehran has thrust the problem of corruption back into the spotlight for many Iranians. 


An exiled Iranian news outlet focusing on Iran's Gonadabi Dervish minority says six community members have received prison terms of five to seven years for joining anti-government protests earlier this year.

SANCTIONS, BUSINESS RISKS, & OTHER ECONOMIC NEWS


U.S. relations with India will face a test in coming months as tightening sanctions on Iran and Russia collide with longstanding efforts to broaden the India-U.S. partnership. 

PROTESTS & HUMAN RIGHTS


Iranian dissidents and congressional opponents of the hardline ruling regime in Tehran are pushing Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to end a secret deal with Iran that has prevented the United States from leveling sanctions on the Islamic Republic's chief propaganda network, which has been working to quash a wave of popular protests, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter.


Police task forces found late Wednesday night the body of a Kurdish anti-Iran civilian activist in Penjwen, 96 km east of Sulaymaniyah, in northeastern Iraq's autonomous Kurdistan region. Iqbal Muradi, 48, was killed by bullets fired from close range, police sources reported. They confirmed that it referred the case to the Kurdish security service given that the incident is a suspected political assassination.


A dual Iranian-American citizen who was imprisoned in northern Iran for roughly a year has filed a federal racketeering lawsuit against the Iranian government and several top officials in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), who he holds responsible for his unjust arrest and detention.
  

In the words of Mohammad, a graphic designer out of work for four months, life in Iran is "like being a fish in a rapidly shrinking puddle of water, under scorching sun in the middle of desert." On the surface the 28-year-old's comments speak to the country's grave environmental challenges... But Mohammad, who relies on his father's pension for survival, like a "leech feeding on blood" as he puts it, is not speaking about the environment. Instead he is referring to a wider crisis he says has created a sense of hopelessness permeating Iranian society, which few have seen on such a scale since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

MILITARY/INTELLIGENCE MATTERS & PROXY WARS


Israel's Mossad spy agency thwarted a terror attack in a Paris suburb last month, giving authorities in France, Germany, and Belgium crucial intelligence that led to arrests of a cell headed by an Iranian diplomat, Hebrew media reported Thursday.

CONGRESS & IRAN


Accusing Iran of continuing to hold Americans hostage, U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton introduced legislation Thursday that would slap sanctions on their Iranian captors.

RUSSIA, SYRIA, ISRAEL, HEZBOLLAH, LEBANON & IRAN


President Bashar al-Assad is set to recover control of the Syrian frontier with the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights in a major victory over rebels who have agreed to surrender terms, sources on both sides said on Thursday. Backed by Russian air power and unopposed by Assad's foreign adversaries, government forces have swept through southwestern Syria in the last month in one of the swiftest campaigns of the war, forcing surrender on massively outgunned rebels. 


Russia plans to defy the renewed U.S. sanctions on Iran and pursue "a number of large-scale projects" with that country, a Russian diplomat said Thursday.


President Vladimir Putin's top Syria adviser met Wednesday with senior Iranian officials to relay the results of discussions between the Russian leader and President Donald Trump on Syria, where a recent deal has allowed the evacuation of two pro-government villages behind enemy lines.


Alexander Lavrentiev, President Vladimir Putin's special envoy for Syria, traveled to Tehran July 18 to update the Iranians on the results of the much-publicized summit between the American and Russian presidents in Helsinki earlier in the week. Lavrentiev reportedly met for two hours with Saeed Irvanii, deputy for foreign policy and international security of the Supreme National Security Council.


Israel is the only country explicitly mentioned at the Putin-Trump Helsinki summit. But Trump's conduct casts a shadow on the understandings.


[W]hile Russia may seek to restrict Iran's presence inside Syria, it is by no means clear that it will pressure Iran to leave Syria entirely. In any case, such a move would not likely succeed... These developments underscore the potential risks that would stem from the U.S. dialing back sanctions on Russia to achieve a brittle modus vivendi in Syria of uncertain duration and viability.


Russia and the U.S. are on board to limit Iran's military presence in Syria. For Israel, that's a start.
  
GULF STATES, YEMEN, & IRAN


The Iranian-aligned Houthi movement in Yemen said it had attacked a Saudi Aramco refinery in Riyadh on Wednesday using a drone, but the oil company said a limited fire at the plant was due to "an operational incident." 
  
OTHER FOREIGN AFFAIRS


Iran will sign a cooperation treaty with Southeast Asia at an upcoming meeting that will also be attended by U.S. Secretary of State Michael Pompeo and North Korean officials, a Singaporean diplomat said.


An expensive railway connecting Armenia to neighboring Iran will not be constructed anytime soon, Transport and Communications Minister Ashot Hakobian acknowledged on Thursday. The Armenian and Iranian governments have discussed the extremely ambitious project since the early 2000s.






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.

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