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TOP STORIES
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo
said on Saturday that Iran's government had just test-fired a
medium-range missile "that is capable of carrying multiple
warheads." The ballistic missile Iran tested has the ability to
hit parts of Europe and any location in the Middle East, the
secretary said, which he claimed would violate a U.N. Security
Council resolution that called Iran to not pursue "any activity
related to ballistic missiles designed to be capable of delivering
nuclear weapons, including launches using such ballistic missile
technology."
Iran said on Sunday it would
continue missile tests to build up its defences and denied this was
in breach of U.N. resolutions following U.S. allegations that Tehran
had tested a new missile capable of carrying multiple
warheads. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Saturday
condemned what he called Iran's testing of a medium-range ballistic
missile in violation of the 2015 international agreement on the
Iranian nuclear programme, from which Washington has withdrawn.
They read in simple, repetitive
sentences with a date, location, name, age and cause of death. It is
a seemingly endless list of those killed and maimed in Iraq by
weapons supplied by Iran and used in attacks on the U.S.
military. On April 4, 2004, in Baghdad, Army Spc. Robert Arsiaga, 25,
was killed in a combined attack in which members of the Mahdi Army
hit his unit with rocket-propelled grenades and small arms fire. On
Sept. 8, 2009, in Tikrit, Army Spc. Zachary Myers, 21, was killed
when an EFP detonated near his vehicle.
NUCLEAR DEAL & NUCLEAR PROGRAM
Russian President Vladimir Putin
reaffirmed support for the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)
during the G20 Summit in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on Friday.
Preserving the JCPOA will help prevent new wave of tensions
surrounding Iran's nuclear program, therefore, all necessary measures
should be taken to maintain the JCPOA, Putin said, IRNA reported.
SANCTIONS, BUSINESS RISKS, & OTHER ECONOMIC
NEWS
Iran and South Korea are working
to set up a mechanism to barter South Korean goods for Iranian oil
exports, an Iranian trade official was quoted as saying by the state
news agency IRNA on Saturday, as Tehran seeks ways to sidestep U.S.
sanctions. "According to the plan, goods will be given to
Iranian importers and their price will be subtracted from the price
of the oil exported to South Korea, and the importers will pay the
price of the goods to the Iranian government," said Hossein
Tanhaee, head of the Iran-South Korea Chamber of Commerce, IRNA
reported.
Iran has ended its seasonal ban
on rice imports, allowing importers to register their orders, Iranian
news agencies reported on Sunday. Deputy Agriculture Minister Ali
Akbar Mehrfard announced the end of the annual ban in a letter dated
Nov. 28, the ISNA semi-official news agency reported. Other agencies
carried similar reports. The government usually imposes the ban
for a few months each year to support local prices and help Iranian
growers during the harvest season.
"Assuming that the Trump
administration and Israel are not inclined to understate Iran's
spending abroad, the $16 billion estimate [of Iran's support to Syria
since 2012] is equivalent to $2.28 billion per annum,"
writes Mohammad Ali Shabani. "This would put the cost of
Iran's combined expenditures for operations across the region
- whether directly or via proxies - at 0.5% of the GDP. The
latter includes an estimated $6 billion in credit lines extended to
the Syrian government."
Iran's Economic Coordination Council
has forecast a more than 50 percent decline in the country's oil
sales in the next Iranian fiscal year which starts in March 2019. The
forecast puts Iran's oil exports next year at one million barrel per
day which is less than half of the figure forecast for the current
year, Iranian official news agency IRNA reported December 1.
An official working in Iran's
banking system said Sun. that the country has held several sessions
with a major European bank during which the bank has voiced readiness
to resume cooperation with Iran in the face of US sanctions. Ahmad
Taheri Behbahani made the remark during the unveiling ceremony for a
banking mobile application on Sunday.
MISSILE PROGRAM
Iran defended its contentious
ballistic missile program Sunday after U.S. allegations that the
regime was violating a U.N. resolution by continuing to develop
weapons capable of carrying nuclear warheads. U.S. Secretary of State
Mike Pompeo tweeted Saturday that Iran had just test-fired a
medium-range ballistic missile capable of carrying nuclear weapons.
He condemned the act and called on Iran to cease what he called
Tehran's growing missile testing and proliferation activity.
U.S. Secretary of State Michael Pompeo accused Iran of
testing a ballistic missile capable of hitting parts of Europe, and
issued a new warning about the risk posed by a regime that the Trump
administration has called a top threat to global security. "As we
have been warning for some time, Iran's missile testing and missile
proliferation is growing," Pompeo said in a statement on
Saturday. "We are accumulating risk of escalation in the region
if we fail to restore deterrence."
PROTESTS & HUMAN RIGHTS
Iranian semi-official ISNA news
agency is reporting that a revolutionary court has sentenced a female
pro-reform journalist to a nearly 13-year prison term over security
charges. The Saturday report said that Hengameh Shahidi can still
appeal the verdict that sentenced her to 12 years and 9 months in
jail. It did not elaborate. Shahidi, 43, has been in jail since June
after months at large during which she was active on social media.
The families of Americans and
other foreign nationals imprisoned in Iran are calling on world
leaders to confront the Islamic republic over its long legacy of
state-sponsored hostage taking. For decades the international
community has failed to summon the political will to tackle this
problem. But now there is growing momentum for rooting out a
long-established pattern of thuggish behavior by the Iranian regime.
MILITARY/INTELLIGENCE MATTERS & PROXY WARS
Iran's navy on Saturday launched
a domestically made destroyer, which state media said has
radar-evading stealth properties, as tensions rise with arch-enemy,
the United States. In a ceremony carried live on state
television, the Sahand destroyer - which can sustain voyages lasting
five months without resupply - joined Iran's regular navy at a base
in Bandar Abbas on the Gulf. The Sahand has a flight deck for
helicopters, torpedo launchers, anti-aircraft and anti-ship guns,
surface-to-surface and surface-to-air missiles and electronic warfare
capabilities, state television reported.
The military is warning the U.S.
government to prepare for a potential electromagnetic pulse weapon
attack, as countries like North Korea, Russia and Iran
develop the special arms. The shocking report, published by the Air
Force's Air University, reveals that the U.S. is dismally unprepared
for such an attack that could wipe out all electricity, kill 90
percent of the East Coast, and lead to utter chaos. And it could take
18 months to restore the electricity grid and social order.
IRANIAN INTERNAL DEVELOPMENTS
An Iranian fertility expert
accused of working with foreign "espionage networks" to
downplay the country's population crisis has been arrested, state
news agency IRNA confirmed Sunday. It did not give details of the
charges, but quoted a lawyer who named the expert as Meimanat
Hosseini Chavoshi. She is listed by the University of Melbourne as
working at its School of Population and Global Health, published
widely on Iran's once-lauded fertility and family-planning policies.
Videos and images published on
social media confirm that steel workers in Ahvaz, capital of oil-rich
Khuzestan province staged a large protest on Sunday and marched in
the main streets of the city. The steel workers have been on strike
and holding protests for the past 23 days; almost as long as their
peers at the Shush sugarcane mill' also in Khuzestan, are still
protesting despite the appointment of a new director at the factory.
RUSSIA, SYRIA, ISRAEL, HEZBOLLAH, LEBANON & IRAN
The US accused Iran of launching a new missile on
Saturday while Tehran boasted it had developed a "radar evading
stealth" warship. The two incidents are linked to increased
Iranian activity, including a flight to Beirut that allegedly brought
arms for Hezbollah, and Tehran's claims it has pioneered a new cyber
army. It shows that Iran is serious about challenging adversaries on
sea, land, in the air and online, in a full court press designed to
keep the region on alert for Tehran's next move.
Thursday night's incident in
Syrian airspace, which was painted in dramatic colors by Arab media
outlets, turns out to have been relatively minor. Syria's air
defenses, identifying what it considered to be unusual movements by
Israeli planes in southern Syria, fired 20 anti-aircraft missiles.
But contrary to Syria's claims, they hit no Israeli planes or
missiles.
U.S. Vice President Mike Pence
says Washington's pressure campaign against Iran is working, with
Tehran increasingly losing its ability to support regional proxy
militias. Pence touted U.S. efforts to press Iran to end its
perceived malign activities in a Friday speech to an annual
conference of the Israeli American Council (IAC) in Hollywood,
Florida. IAC is a nonprofit organization that seeks to build an
"engaged and united" community among the more than half a
million Israelis living in the United States. Israel, a close U.S.
ally, is Iran's main regional foe.
While relatively well known that
Iran has for decades projected power in Lebanon through its Hezbollah
proxy, analysts contend that recent events reinforce the West's
blindness to the degree to which the mullahs have systematically and
comprehensively taken over the country's political, military and
economic apparatuses.
GULF STATES, YEMEN, & IRAN
Iran's defense minister, Amir
Hatami, said his country has been supporting the Houthis in Yemen,
but claimed that the support was limited to the "moral
side", while other Iranian officials have repeatedly stressed
that such support includes arming and sending missiles, experts and
money. Speaking on Saturday at a meeting for the Basij (volunteer forces)
militia leaders affiliated to the Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC),
Hatami said: "Yemen is a thorn in the eyes of the
Americans," adding that Iran's support for the Houthis in Yemen
is "moral" As he puts it.
A political analyst has rejected
the idea that Iran is an enemy of all Saudis and by extension all
Sunnis. "This long held belief that Iran is an enemy of all
Saudis and by extension, all Sunnis is a lie," Catherine
Shakdam, researcher at al-Bayan Centre for Planning and Studies,
tells the Tehran Times. Shakdam says Iran as a country holds no anger
and no resentment towards the Saudi people.
The US administration appears to be losing the war of
perceptions over Yemen, and in some ways benefiting its primary
adversary, Iran. The US and Iran this week sought to position
themselves ahead of anticipated Yemen peace talks in Sweden that pit
their clients against each other at the negotiating table. On
Thursday a senior US official gave reporters a show-and-tell about
Iranian weapons allegedly recovered in Yemen, whilst Tehran's top
diplomat was in Geneva conferring with his Swedish counterpart about
upcoming Yemen peace talks to begin in the next week or so.
MISCELLANEOUS
Website Nile Net Online promises
Egyptians "true news" from its offices in the heart of
Cairo's Tahrir Square, "to expand the scope of freedom of
expression in the Arab world." Its views on America do not chime
with those of Egypt's state media, which celebrate Donald Trump's
warm relations with Cairo. In one recent article, Nile Net Online
derided the American president as a "low-level theatre
actor" who "turned America into a laughing stock"
after he attacked Iran in a speech at the United Nations.
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