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Eye on Iran will
not publish on Monday, December 24 and Tuesday, December 25 in
observance of the holiday season. It will resume Wednesday, December
26.
TOP STORIES
It's getting more difficult for
Israel to keep its greatest foe away from its borders. Donald Trump's
snap decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria surprised allies and
rivals alike, and has left Israel feeling more vulnerable to threats
from its arch-enemy Iran. Hezbollah, Iran's proxy army in Lebanon, has
already dug tunnels into Israeli territory and benefited from the
chaos of Syria's war by opening up weapons-supply lines from Tehran.
Iran faces new criticism from
Baha'i activists for its delayed release of an ailing Baha'i leader
imprisoned for a decade and for its threat to jail a Baha'i woman for
11 years. The Baha'i International Community (BIC) said Iran released
the last of seven imprisoned former leaders of the country's Baha'i
minority on Thursday. BIC sent VOA Persian photos of 56-year-old Afif
Naeimi, a father of two from Tehran, with loved ones who greeted him
with flowers after he emerged from the city's Evin prison.
This morning, many Slack users
with ties to Iran discovered their accounts had been abruptly
deactivated. The bans affected users living as far as Finland, Canada
and the United States, many with few remaining ties to Iran in either
citizenship or physical presence. "In order to comply with
export control and economic sanctions laws...Slack prohibits
unauthorized use of its products and services in certain sanctioned
countries," the notice from Slack read.
UANI IN THE NEWS
Many EU policymakers are deeply
resentful of President Trump's decision to leave the Iran nuclear
deal. This resentment has fueled several shortsighted proposals that
will only harm EU businesses and institutions. This approach to Iran,
championed by High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security
Policy Frederica Mogherini, is increasingly discordant with the
direction taken by national governments in Europe. Foreign ministers
in the Council have said that they will examine imposing sanctions on
the Iranian regime, while the Danish government has called for
stronger action. Furthermore, the implementation of these misguided
schemes has been stifled by unenthusiastic European business leaders,
whose consent and cooperation are necessary to put most of the plans
into motion.
NUCLEAR DEAL & NUCLEAR PROGRAM
As the Trump administration
works to unravel Iran's 2015 nuclear deal with word powers, the
producers of the country's famed Persian carpets fear they will lose
vital markets. Before the U.S. withdrew from the deal and began
restoring crippling sanctions earlier this year, the $425 million a
year industry preserved an ancient tradition while providing
much-needed income to Iranians as well as Afghan refugees, who create
much of the more luxurious hand-woven pieces. Iran produces some 400
tons of carpets a year and exports 80 percent of them.
SANCTIONS, BUSINESS RISKS, & OTHER ECONOMIC
NEWS
The U.S. has granted Iraq a
90-day Iran sanctions waiver to allow it to continue to import
electricity from Tehran. Iraq's power sector is in disrepair and does
not generate enough electricity to meet domestic demand. U.S.
sanctions that went into effect in November have threatened to cut
the country off from its chief supplier, Iran. The U.S. initially
granted Iraq a 45-day waiver to allow it carry on buying electricity
and gas from its neighbor while arranging for new suppliers.
Turkey's president has again
criticized U.S. sanctions on Iran and vowed to continue to cooperate
with Tehran. Recep Tayyip Erdogan made the comments on Thursday
at a joint news conference with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani.
Erdogan says Turkey aims to increase bilateral trade with Iran to $30
billion from the current $11 billion. U.S. President Donald Trump pulled
America out of the 2015 nuclear deal Iran struck with world powers in
May and re-imposed sanctions.
Despite being home to massive
oil and gas reserves, Iran's energy sector has been far from steady
over the past few decades. Iranian energy has had more than its fair
share of ups and downs thanks to extended periods of political
turmoil following the major upset of the Iranian Revolution of 1978
and 1979, but even since the premiership of Mohammad Mossadegh in the
1950s patterns of volatility can be seen in the nation's energy
history.
TERRORISM & EXTREMISM
Palestinian terrorists in the
pay of the Iranian regime committed the Lockerbie atrocity, it has
been claimed. The daughter of a former terrorist has said her
father admitted to relatives that his cell leader, Ahmed Jibril, led
the 1988 plot to down Pam Am 103, which was blown up 30 years ago
today by an explosive stored in a suitcase in the hold. Her claim
adds credence to the long-held theory that Tehran ordered the attack
on the New York-bound flight, transporting mainly American civilians,
as payback after a missile from a US Navy cruiser shot down Iran
Air flight 655 five months earlier, killing 290 civilians.
PROTESTS & HUMAN RIGHTS
What do farmers in Esfahan,
unemployed youth in Rafsanjan, teachers and students in Hamadan, and
fraud victims in Kerman all have in common? On the face of it, not
much other than being Iranian. But there is another
commonality: They all staged protests on the same day,
December 12. Reporting on Iran tends to focus on the
country's nuclear program or squabbling of its leaders, while the
diverse array of protests that regularly erupt across the country go
underreported.
U.S.-IRAN RELATIONS & NEGOTIATIONS
Iran is blaming the United
States and Israel for Albania's expulsion of two Iranian diplomats
accused of engaging in criminal activities that threatened the small
European country's security. The official IRNA news agency quoted
Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Ghasemi as saying "Albania has
become an unintentional victim of the United States, Israel and some
terrorists groups."
U.S. President Donald Trump has
thanked Albania for expelling the Iranian ambassador and another
diplomat for allegedly engaging in illegal activities that threaten
Albania's security. Trump's letter to Albanian Prime Minister Edi
Rama, dated Dec. 14, thanked him "for your steadfast efforts to
stand up to Iran and to counter its destabilizing activities and
efforts to silence dissidents around the globe." The U.S.
Embassy in Tirana published the letter on its Facebook page
Thursday.
IRANIAN INTERNAL DEVELOPMENTS
The 91-year-old chairman of
Iran's conservative watchdog says some members of parliament are not
sufficiently literate and have not read the constitution "even
once". Ahmad Jannati who has long served as the head of Iran's
Guardian Council (GC) accused some members of parliament of ignorance
about "the most basic issues", at a gathering on December
19. He proposed that elected person receive training before assuming
their office.
Name-calling and thinly veiled
insults on the screen are no novelty for Iran's state
broadcaster, but a recent feud between the country's harshest film
critic and a sharp-tongued talk show host has spilled to other media
outlets, causing the show to go off-air. The controversy started
Nov. 30, when Arash Zellipour, the young TV host of "I and
You," a one-on-one interview show, decided to take on
Masoud Farasati, arguably Iran's most-feared film critic.
RUSSIA, SYRIA, ISRAEL, HEZBOLLAH, LEBANON & IRAN
The Israeli military says it has begun destroying a
network of cross-border tunnels built by Lebanon's Hezbollah militant
group. Israel this month announced the discovery of the tunnels,
which it says were part of a Hezbollah attack plot. So far, it has uncovered
four tunnels in an open-ended operation meant to destroy the entire
network.
The Ramallah-based BDS International Committee had its
online donation account frozen on suspicion of ties to terrorism by
its fundraising site Donorbox, according to a Ministry of Strategic
Affairs report on Friday. The American website, DonorBox, a popular
fundraising platform for non-profits, which serves as the umbrella
organization of the Palestinian Boycott Coalition, announced that it
is freezing the accounts of the BDS National Committee (BNC), which
operates from Ramallah and is headed by an Israeli resident, Omar
Barghouti.
Turkey and Iran are wasting
little time as they seek an advantage in Syria after President Donald
Trump's order to withdraw American troops from the war-torn country.
Less than an hour after Trump's abrupt decision on Wednesday,
President Hassan Rouhani's plane touched down in Ankara for a
previously planned visit. The Iranian leader was given a gun salute
at a welcoming ceremony with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan the
following day.
Israel will escalate its fight
against Iranian-aligned forces in Syria after the withdrawal of U.S.
troops from the country, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
said on Thursday. Some Israeli officials have said U.S.
President Donald Trump's move, announced on Wednesday, could help
Iran by removing a U.S. garrison that stems the movement of Iranian
forces and weaponry into Syria from Iraq.
President Donald Trump's abrupt
announcement Wednesday to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria has alarmed
Trump allies and opponents alike, sparking fears it will backfire on
American goals in the region. Critics warn the dramatic policy
turnaround will hurt U.S. counterterror operations, diminish its
influence on the ground, and bolster freedom of movement for Iran and
remaining Islamic State, or ISIS, militants in Syria. In an even more
unexpected move, the U.S. will end all its air activities - including
strikes against ISIS - as part of the withdrawal, Reuters reported
Thursday.
The sudden announcement by
President Donald Trump to withdraw 2,000 US troops from Syria has
surprised leaders and analysts around the world.
Trump, claiming that the Islamic State has been
"defeated," reportedly made the decision days after he
spoke with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erodgan. American
politicians have criticized the move, which will
leave US-backed Kurdish forces in Syria in limbo. Iran has not
yet officially reacted to the decision.
"We have defeated ISIS in
Syria," President Donald Trump tweeted on Wednesday, and
U.S. officials told reporters that U.S. troops and diplomats would be
withdrawn soon, to wrap up operations there after several years
of supporting the mostly Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces fighting
ISIS. This extraordinary reversal in U.S. policy threw into question
the administration's commitment to its allies on the ground, and
potentially could lead to new problems in Syria as Russian, Iranian
and Turkish forces fight over the vacuum left by the United States.
TURKEY & IRAN
Turkish President Recep Tayyip
Erdogan and Iranian counterpart Hassan Rouhani on Thursday
vowed to work closer to end the fighting in Syria. But the two
leaders made no comment on US President Donald
Trump's announcement that he was pulling US troops out of the
war-ravaged nation, declaring a victory over the Islamic State of
Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS).
OTHER FOREIGN AFFAIRS
Iran was hit by yet another
terrorist attack on Dec. 6. This time, a rare target: the
strategic port city of Chabahar, where a suicide attack on a police
station killed four and wounded 42. Located in the
southeastern Sistan and Baluchistan province,
the 1,200-acre port with 10 active berths lies on the coast
of the Gulf of Oman. It is Iran's sole oceanic port, bridging the
country to the Indian Ocean via the Gulf of Aden and the Arabian
Sea.
A private school in London
founded by the Iranian government has been given a formal warning by
the Department for Education after Ofsted found several failings,
including in its policies for spotting radicalisation. The School of
the Islamic Republic of Iran, in Maida Vale, received an
"inadequate" Ofsted rating in September. This year the
government has sent 126 warning notices to private schools after
critical reports from inspectors.
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