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TOP STORIES
Iran has not declared all its chemical weapons
capabilities to the global chemical weapons agency in The Hague, in
violation of an international non-proliferation convention, the U.S.
ambassador to the organization said on Thursday. Ambassador Kenneth
Ward told a meeting of the Organization for the Prohibition of
Chemical Weapons (OPCW) that Iran had failed to report a production
facility for the filling of aerial bombs and maintains a program to
obtain banned toxic munitions.
The Treasury Department on
Tuesday added a network of Russian and Iranian companies to its
blacklist for shipping oil to Syria in violation of sanctions. The
network helps fuel the Syrian war effort of President Bashar Assad
while providing revenue for Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps
and the militant groups Hamas and Hezbollah, Treasury Secretary
Steven Mnuchin said in announcing the sanctions.
The U.S. is pressuring Iraq to sever extensive energy
ties to Iran, enlisting American companies and allies such as Saudi
Arabia to develop alternatives and drive a commercial wedge between
Baghdad and Tehran. The push is part of a broader American effort to
curb Iran's influence in Iraq, where a 900-mile border, economic ties
and Shiite Muslim majorities have created closer ties between the
former enemies since the 2003 U.S. invasion. Despite its position as
a major oil producer, Iraq relies on Iran for natural gas that
generates as much as 45% of its electricity.
UANI IN THE NEWS
David Ibsen, President of United Against Nuclear Iran,
emails us..."The Iranian threat cannot be bargained away and
U.S. national security interests are not for sale. Iran needs to leave
Syria, Iran needs to end its support for terror, and Iran needs to
abandon its nuclear program. Period."
NUCLEAR DEAL & NUCLEAR PROGRAM
Iran is implementing its side of its nuclear deal with
major powers, the U.N. atomic watchdog policing the pact reaffirmed
on Thursday, two weeks after the latest wave of reimposed U.S.
sanctions against Tehran took effect. President Donald Trump said in
May he was pulling the United States out of the 2015 nuclear deal for
reasons including Iran's influence on the wars in Syria and Yemen and
its ballistic missile program, none of which are covered by the pact.
SANCTIONS, BUSINESS RISKS, & OTHER ECONOMIC
NEWS
On Oct. 29, one week before the
U.S. imposed sweeping economic sanctions against Iran, flag carrier
Iran Air dispatched 11 international flights. Two weeks later, a U.S.
ban on the airline firmly in place, it flew 13-touching down in
destinations including Paris, London, Hamburg and Doha. The failure
of sanctions to slow down Iran Air points to the challenge facing the
Trump administration in its campaign to use international isolation
to pressure Iran.
Those who doubt that U.S.
President Donald Trump's Iran sanctions will hit their target should
reconsider. It is true that their immediate impact on Iran's oil
export revenues will likely be minimal. But in the longer term, the
effects of the sanctions regime could be significant. In fact, it
could make it nearly impossible for Iran to sustain its current oil
production. Earlier this month, the United States reimposed bans on
Iranian oil exports after announcing its withdrawal from the Iran
nuclear deal in May this year.
The Trump administration on
Tuesday announced new sanctions designed to punish both Iran and
Syria and choke off illicit oil sales. The new actions target Syrian
national Mohammad Amer Alchwiki and his Russia-based company, Global
Vision Group, along with seven other entities including a subsidiary
of the Russian Ministry of Energy and a Russian employee who senior
administration officials said participated in a scheme shipping
"millions of barrels" of Iranian oil through Russia to
Syria.
PROTESTS & HUMAN RIGHTS
Iranian media say authorities
have released a prominent human rights lawyer after eight years in
prison. The semi-official ISNA news agency reported Wednesday that
Abdolfattah Soltani was reunited with his family after a
Revolutionary Court ruled to release him the day before. Soltani
co-founded a human rights group with Iranian Nobel Peace Prize laureate
Shirin Ebadi. He was sentenced to 10 years' imprisonment in 2011 on
charges of anti-government activities during the rule of hard-line
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Exiled Iranian dissidents
meeting under heavy police protection pushed for an uprising against
the government, as tensions with Tehran have erupted into armed
attacks and alleged cross-border assassination plots. A two-day
weekend conference in Copenhagen attended by nearly 200 people took
place against a backdrop of mass arrests by Iranian authorities
following a deadly separatist attack in Ahvaz in the country's
southwest. The attack in September killed 25 people at a military
parade, and put a spotlight on Iranian separatists made up from the
country's ethnic Arab minority.
As a little girl in a wheelchair
in Iran, Mahana Jami used to watch children playing on a slide and
wonder why she couldn't do the same. She made a promise to herself -
to always dream big and never let her disability stand in the way.
Many years later, as a 34-year-old woman, Jami is now pursuing a
dream of life in a free country somewhere in the West where her
disability is recognized and accommodated - and the chance to scale
the world's tallest towers using only her arms.
U.S.-IRAN RELATIONS & NEGOTIATIONS
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani called on Muslims
worldwide on Saturday to unite against the United States, instead of
"rolling out red carpets for criminals". Washington in May
reimposed sanctions on Tehran, after President Donald Trump pulled
out of a 2015 international nuclear deal with Iran under which they
had been lifted.
An Iranian Revolutionary Guards commander said on
Wednesday that U.S. bases in Afghanistan, the UAE and Qatar, and U.S.
aircraft carriers in the Gulf were within range of Iranian missiles,
as tensions rise between Tehran and Washington. "They are within
our reach and we can hit them if they (Americans) make a move,"
Amirali Hajizadeh, head of the Revolutionary Guards' airspace
division, was quoted as saying by Tasnim news agency.
IRANIAN INTERNAL DEVELOPMENTS
Iranian authorities said Monday
that the number of injured in the magnitude 6.3 earthquake in western
Iran the previous night has risen to 716. No fatalities were reported
from the temblor. According to Iran's state television, most of the
injured were immediately released from hospitals and suffered only
slight injuries in the quake on Sunday night. The TV said 37 remained
hospitalized. It said more than 160 aftershocks occurred in the
region, including two quakes stronger than magnitude 5. Dozens of rescue
teams and several rescue dogs were deployed to the region.
Just before imposing new
sanctions on Iran, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the
country's "cabinet is in disarray, and the Iranian people are
raising their voices even louder against a corrupt and hypocritical
regime." While this is clearly true, it's also true that
sanctions alone are unlikely to topple the government or force
democratic reforms. For that to happen, foreign governments and
domestic opposition leaders must take another critical step - to
finally acknowledge the importance of the country's ethnic minorities
and develop policies to address their demands.
IRANIAN REGIONAL AGGRESSION
Iran's President Hassan Rouhani on Saturday called
Israel a "cancerous tumor" established by Western countries
to advance their interests in the Middle East. Iran's leaders
frequently condemn Israel and predict its demise, but Rouhani, a
relative moderate, rarely employs such rhetoric. Addressing an annual
Islamic Unity Conference on Saturday, Rouhani said "one of the
ominous results of World War II was the formation of a cancerous
tumor in the region." He went on to refer to Israel as a "fake
regime" set up by Western countries.
RUSSIA, SYRIA, ISRAEL, HEZBOLLAH, LEBANON & IRAN
An Iranian energy ministry delegation will visit Moscow
on Nov. 28, RIA news agency cited the Iranian embassy in Moscow as
saying on Monday. The visit comes before a meeting of OPEC and
non-OPEC producers in Vienna on Dec. 6. The Russian energy ministry
declined to comment about the Iranian visit.
The Syrian regime naturalized thousands or even tens of
thousands of Iranians, including members of Iran's Islamic
Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) and Iran-backed militias like
Hezbollah that are deployed in southern Syria along the border with
Israel, according to a report by the Middle East Media Research
Institute (MEMRI). The report explained that "systematic action
by the regime to settle [them] throughout Syria" served two
purposes: concealing the fighter's presence and changing the
country's demography.
CHINA & IRAN
China's state-owned CNPC has replaced France's Total in
Iran's multibillion-dollar South Pars gas project, Iranian Oil
Minister Bijan Zanganeh said, according to the semi-official news
agency ICANA on Sunday. "China's CNPC has officially replaced
Total in phase 11 of South Pars but it has not started work
practically. Talks need to be held with CNPC ... about when it will
start operations," Zanganeh told ICANA, without giving further
details.
GULF STATES, YEMEN, & IRAN
The Houthi rebels who control
the key Yemeni port of Hudaydah have agreed to enter talks about
handing some control to the United Nations, its envoy to Yemen said
during a visit to the city on Friday. The initiative, although
tentative, added to momentum for peace talks expected to start in the
coming weeks, when the Saudi-led coalition and its Houthi foes are to
meet in Sweden as a humanitarian crisis threatens to tip millions of
Yemenis into starvation.
In "Don't Let Yemen Become
a Proxy of Iran" (op-ed, Nov. 17), Kamran Bokhari argues that
the U.S. should maintain its involvement in the barbaric Saudi war in
Yemen, largely to head off exaggerated fears of the threat posed by
Iran. The Saudi-led bombardment of Yemen preceded substantial Iranian
support for the Houthi rebels. Determination in Washington and Riyadh
to discourage Iranian involvement in Yemen has become a
self-fulfilling prophecy. Indeed, the Houthis rarely do Iran's
bidding directly; they have their own identity and their own set of
interests. They have fought prior wars with Saudi Arabia.
... Logically, if the goal is truly to positively
influence Iran's behavior, the objective should be to get it more engaged
in international diplomacy and conflict resolution, not to further
isolate it. In this regard, the recent push to end the war in Yemen
presents an opportunity. The JCPOA, despite achieving a freeze and
de-escalation in Iran's nuclear program, clearly had its limitations.
The Trump administration is correct to point out that the agreement
did nothing to limit Iran's rocketry or its influence in the region -
it wasn't meant to, at least not in the short run. Negotiations
consciously skirted these issues in order not to overshoot the target
- halting the weaponization of Iran's nuclear program.
OTHER FOREIGN AFFAIRS
Denmark is sending its ambassador back to Tehran after
he was recalled over Copenhagen's allegations about an Iranian plot
to kill an opposition activist in Denmark. Foreign Minister Anders
Samuelsen says Ambassador Danny Annan is returning to Iran "to
intensify diplomacy and coordinate closely with our European
partners." Samuelsen said on Tuesday the European Union had
"a renewed discussion" about "common steps against
Iran." He didn't elaborate.
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