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TOP STORIES
Canadian authorities in Vancouver have arrested Huawei
Technologies Co.'s chief financial officer at the request of the U.S.
government for alleged violations of Iranian sanctions, the latest
move by Washington to crack down on the Chinese cellular-technology
giant. A spokesman for Canada's justice department said Meng Wanzhou
was arrested in Vancouver on Dec. 1 and is sought for extradition by
the U.S. A bail hearing has been tentatively scheduled for Friday,
according to the spokesman. Ms. Meng, the daughter of Huawei's
founder, Ren Zhengfei, serves as the company's CFO and deputy
chairwoman.
A wealthy businessman who until
recently was head of the company that feeds American troops in
Afghanistan has been charged in federal court with violating
sanctions against trade with Iran, along with other offenses. The
federal indictment charged Abul Huda Farouki, 75, a
Jordanian-American and philanthropist from Virginia with longstanding
ties to Bill and Hillary Clinton, with conspiracy to commit money
laundering, violating sanctions against Iran, and fraud.
The UN Security Council will
hold a meeting in the coming days on the uncovering of Hezbollah
terror tunnels that have penetrated into Israel, the country's
Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon said on Wednesday. Danon said the
meeting will deal with Hezbollah's infringement of Israeli
sovereignty, as well as the violation of UN Security Council
Resolution 1701 from 2006 that called for southern Lebanon - the area
from the Litani River to the border with Israel - to be free of
foreign forces.
UANI IN THE NEWS
...Analysts have taken a more
cautious tone, pointing out that the identity of the man in the video
is not clear and that the tunnel shown was very likely not just
discovered. "It could be Hezbollah checking on its tunnels, but
it could just be two curious guys who decided to go and have look at
what's going on," David Daoud, Lebanon and Hezbollah research
analyst at United Against Nuclear Iran, told TRT World. "I
don't think they [the Israelis] discovered it today. There is a
propaganda dimension to this war. Hezbollah plays it much better. The
Israelis occasionally know how to make something look good, and this
is 'Oh, look what we found.' They've probably been aware of this
tunnel for some time - they probably have a map already laying this
out. I doubt the IDF is going into this blind."
SANCTIONS, BUSINESS RISKS, & OTHER ECONOMIC
NEWS
Iran is looking to be exempted
from any OPEC oil output cuts because of U.S. sanctions, Iranian Oil
Minister Bijan Zanganeh told reporters ahead of Thursday's OPEC
meeting. "We should be excluded from any decision about the
level of production in the future till the lifting of the imposed
illegal sanctions," Zanganeh told reporters upon arriving in
Vienna.
On the eve of the OPEC meeting,
the senior U.S. official overseeing sanctions on Iran made a rare
foray into the group's home turf, for a discreet Viennese breakfast
with the cartel's most powerful member. Brian Hook, the U.S. special
representative for Iran, met one-on-one with Saudi Energy Minister
Khalid Al-Falih on Wednesday morning in the Austrian capital, said a
person familiar with the matter, who asked not to be named because
the talks were private.
It's no secret that Iran and
Saudi Arabia are not the best of friends on the global geopolitical
stage, but the arch-rivals have to share a space when the
influential oil producing group OPEC meets Thursday. CNBC spoke to
oil market experts to get their take on how and whether Saudi Arabia
and Iran manage to keep OPEC talks strictly professional when they
clash so frequently in the real world and over oil.
The Trump administration on
November 20, 2018 announced new sanctions designed to disrupt an
alleged Iranian and Russian scheme to ship oil to Syria, billing it
as part of Washington's "maximum pressure" campaign on
Tehran and a push to cut off fuel supplies for Syrian leader Bashar
Assad.
U.S. banks are pushing for
changes to the Treasury Department's Iran sanctions language to allow
them to avoid a conflict between European Union law and the stringent
financial penalties aimed at Iran and businesses that work with
it. The banks' concern comes from a side effect of the Trump
administration's decision to withdraw from the Iran deal without
coordinating an agreement with the EU.
The Iranian government has lost
two thirds of its funding, according to statements from the head of
the Islamic Republic's Planning and Budget Organization (PBO) that
were quickly removed from official websites. Mohammad Bagher Nobakht
painted the dire fiscal picture December 4 while speaking at a
gathering of representatives of disabled people assembled at the PBO
to protest cuts to government funds allocated to support them.
A prominent Iranian economist
says selling essential goods to foreigners in Iran's border area
markets is "looting" and should not be counted as
"export". "This is not export, it is indeed looting
local people's essential goods by foreigners", Hossein Raghfar
told the state-run Iran Labor News Agency (ILNA) December 5, adding,
to call the sweeping of people's essential goods by foreigners is a
tragedy that cannot be mitigated by labeling it as
"export".
PROTESTS & HUMAN RIGHTS
In recent weeks, moral outrage
has been stirred by the barbaric war that Saudi Arabia has waged in
Yemen, by the Saudi government's brutal murder of journalist Jamal
Khashoggi and by President Trump's failure to condemn and sanction
these offenses, out of concern for damaging economic interests, real
or exaggerated. At the same time, however, another human tragedy has
been gathering in Iran, and it is one we might still avert, before it
is too late.
The family of former FBI agent
Robert Levinson and the relatives of nearly a half dozen
others held captive in Iran say they "shall remain quiet no
longer" about demands for world governments to help secure
the release of those hopelessly detained in the Islamic
Republic. The declaration came in an open letter addressed to
"World Leaders, Rights Organizations and Media Outlets"
that was published by the group earlier this week. The
families have "banded together now to come to you as one
voice," the letter stated.
Iranian authorities are
continuing to commit crimes against humanity by concealing the fate
and whereabouts of thousands of political dissidents who were
secretly executed in prison 30 years ago, according to Amnesty
International. In a report published on December 4, the
London-based human rights group called on the United Nations to
establish an "independent, impartial and effective international
mechanism" to help bring those responsible for the extrajudicial
executions to justice.
A population expert at the
University of Melbourne has been detained in Iran. Dr Meimanat
Hosseini-Chavoshi, a dual Iranian-Australian citizen who works at the
Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, was in the capital
Tehran when she was reportedly arrested. The Department of
Foreign Affairs and Trade said it was offering assistance to the
family of an Australian "who has been detained in
Iran". "As the travel advice has noted for some time,
Iran does not recognise dual nationality and it is highly unlikely
Australian officials will be given consular access to dual
nationals," DFAT said in a statement.
U.S.-IRAN RELATIONS & NEGOTIATIONS
The U.S. government confirmed
that Saudi Energy Minister Khalid al-Falih met with U.S. special
representative for Iran Brian Hook in Vienna on Wednesday,
contradicting a Saudi denial that the talks had taken place. Sources
familiar with the meeting said earlier that Hook, a senior policy
adviser to U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, had spoken with Falih
a day before the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries
was due to debate oil output cuts.
IRANIAN INTERNAL DEVELOPMENTS
At least three people died and
24 others were injured in a suicide car bomb attack on the police
headquarters in Iran's southeast on Thursday, state media reported,
adding that the perpetrator was killed. Television also reported
shooting in the area, located in the region of Sistan-Baluchestan,
which is home to a Sunni Muslim minority in the largely Shi'ite
country and has long been plagued by violence from both drug
smugglers and separatists.
Despite mounting criticisms,
member of parliament Mohammad Reza Aref - a one-time
presidential candidate - was recently re-elected as the chairman of
the Reformists' Supreme Council for Policymaking, an appointment
that may widen the gaps within the Reformist camp and further
diminish its social capital. The council was formed in 2015 with the
aim of organizing and mobilizing all Reformist groups.
The Iranian government
implemented a new retirement law
in September intended to abolish a decades-long
practice of re-employing public sector managers already
past retirement age, making room for young Iranians in the
sector. From the outset, controversy surrounded the law and its
implementation as it excluded the president, presidential
deputies, the judiciary chief, lawmakers, members of the Guardian
Council, top military commanders and those who could win
a special exemption from the country's supreme leader.
In the past few months, Iranian
women have been arrested for dancing and detained for riding
bicycles. Why do women's seemingly benign actions generate such
backlash from the Iranian government? Women's bodies are supposed to
be subjects of the state-used by the government to project a desired
societal image. But women in Iran are increasingly defying
restrictive laws and fatwas-and leveraging the power of social media
to challenge state control. Regulating women's bodies is a common
practice internationally. In a number of European countries, there is
an effective ban on niqabs and burkas.
RUSSIA, SYRIA, ISRAEL, HEZBOLLAH, LEBANON & IRAN
The Tri-Border Area (TBA) of Argentina, Brazil, and
Paraguay has long been a safe haven for transnational crime and
terrorist organizations like Hezbollah. Weak border enforcement,
corruption and lack of government presence have given criminal groups
free reign to operate virtually unchecked for years. The U.S.
maintains strong security relations with the governments of
Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay, but the effectiveness of our
cooperation has been limited. As a result, illicit activities in the
TBA have spilled over into other parts of Latin America, impacting
regional security, breeding greater levels of corruption and crime,
funding drug consumption around the world, and enabling Hezbollah to
carry out terrorist attacks to support Iran's geopolitical
objectives.
GULF STATES, YEMEN, & IRAN
As the Jewish community around the world celebrates
Hannukah this week, a state-run book fair in Qatar has raised eyebrows
among Jewish organisations in the United States for promoting
anti-Semitic textbooks and publications that incite hatred. The
annual Doha International Book Fair, which is in its 29th year, is
coming under attack for promoting anti-Semitic content. The
exhibition that runs until Friday is carrying Arabic books that
spread conspiracies and falsehoods about the Jews, and air denials
about the Holocaust while also promoting authors affiliated with
bigoted and racist organisations.
CYBERWARFARE
A U.S. grand jury indicted two
Iranian nationals over claims they carried out a March ransomware
attack against the city of Atlanta, crippling its computer systems
and causing millions of dollars in losses. Faramarz Shahi Savandi and
Mohammed Mehdi Shah Mansouri used ransomware known as SamSam to
infect about 3,789 servers and workstations in Atlanta, the Justice
Department said Wednesday in a release citing the indictment. The
cyberattack took place from around March 10 until March 22.
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