|
TOP STORIES
South Korea did not import any
Iranian oil for the third straight month in November, customs data
showed on Saturday, even though it has a waiver from sanctions
targeting crude supplies from the Middle Eastern country. South Korea
and seven other countries were in early November granted temporary
waivers from US sanctions that kicked in that month over Tehran's
disputed nuclear program.
Iranian authorities have
confirmed the death of a social media activist jailed on security
charges, the semi-official ISNA news agency reported on Sunday, after
Western rights groups said he had died following a 60-day hunger
strike in prison. "The political prisoner Vahid Sayyadi
Nasiri, on hunger strike since October 13, 2018 to protest the denial
of his right to counsel and inhumane prison conditions..., has died
at the Shahid Beheshti Hospital in Qom," the U.S.-based Center
for Human Rights in Iran said on its website.
Iranian Foreign Minister
Mohammad Javad Zarif on Saturday said US sanctions will have no
impact on the policies of the Islamic republic at home or abroad.
"It is obvious that we are facing pressure by the US sanctions.
But will that lead to a change in policy? I can assure you it
won't," Zarif told the Doha Forum policy conference in Qatar.
"If there is an art we have perfected in Iran and can teach to
others for a price, it is the art of evading sanctions," he
added.
NUCLEAR DEAL & NUCLEAR PROGRAM
Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu told a group of diplomats on Sunday that Israeli agents
continue to operate inside Iran as part of Israel's efforts to thwart
the nuclear ambitions of the Islamic republic. "We are fighting
all over the world in regards to Iran's nuclear program," he
said at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs headquarters in Jerusalem.
SANCTIONS, BUSINESS RISKS, & OTHER ECONOMIC
NEWS
Iran is intervening in the
foreign exchange market and threatening speculators to engineer a
dramatic recovery of its rial currency, easing pressure on the
oil-exporting economy as Tehran defies renewed U.S. sanctions. The
rial jumped to 105,500 against the U.S. dollar Wednesday, from
117,000 at the end of the previous week and 152,500 at the end of
October, according to foreign exchange website Bonbast.com.
Iranian Oil Minister Bijan
Zanganeh praised OPEC on Saturday for what he said was the producer
group's ability to reach agreement despite intense internal political
differences. The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting
Countries and its Russia-led allies agreed on Dec. 7 to cut output by
more than expected, despite pressure from U.S. President Donald Trump
to reduce the price of crude.
There is a fight over energy
in Iraq between the United States and Iran. Iraq
relies on Iranian gas for nearly half of its energy - gas that is now
subject to US sanctions on Iran. The Iraqi government originally
obtained a 45-day sanctions waiver from the US, but that waiver is
set to expire next week. Iraq is particularly sensitive to the issue
after protests against electricity cuts rocked Basra earlier in the
year and Iraq's new government is treading a thin line trying to keep
both the US and Iran happy, and its people satisfied.
Qatar's foreign minister
expressed a host of grievances over his Gulf counterparts' regional
activities on Sunday, calling out Saudi Arabia and the United Arab
Emirates (UAE) in particular - and not just for their blockade of his
country. "We cannot blame one country on the destabilization of
the region right now because the situation which we are suffering
from is the result of a series of policies of different
countries," Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al Thani told CNBC's
Hadley Gamble in Doha, when asked if Riyadh were to blame for
increased turbulence in the Middle East.
Iranian university students in
the UK are facing suspension from their courses because of President
Trump's newly reimposed sanctions on the country. Law student Parsa
Sadat of the University of Reading is among those Iranians
who risk being unable to graduate, and possibly having their student
visa removed, because they are unable to pay tuition fees. The
23-year-old's family has the money but he has been unable to get it
out of Iran because money transfers from the country have been targeted
by US sanctions.
PROTESTS & HUMAN RIGHTS
A semi-official Iranian news
agency says authorities detained an unspecified number of steel mill
workers after five weeks of protests over delays in salaries. ILNA's
report says the arrests took place on Sunday night. However, Kasra
Ghafouri, the head of state-owned National Iranian Steel Group,
insists the workers were only "summoned," not detained. The
report did not elaborate further.
A group of Iranian lawmakers is seeking caps on child marriage in the
country, a drive that seems to have little chance of success due to
fierce opposition from hard-liners. "It all dates back to 44
years ago," wrote hard-line daily Kayhan in a Nov.
26 editorial, "when US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger
placed the [National Security Study Memorandum 200] on President
Richard Nixon's desk. ... The document addressed the threat of human
development in America's rival countries and how population growth
could boost them."
Political prisoner and lawyer,
Narges Mohammadi, sent a letter to Iran's attorney general, saying
that she is not getting her right to receiving medical care and treatment
in prison. In 2015, the Islamic Revolutionary Court of Iran had
sentenced Mohammadi to 16 years in prison for "belonging to a
campaign protesting the death penalty, colluding against national
security, and spreading propaganda against the regime."
MILITARY/INTELLIGENCE MATTERS & PROXY WARS
Pakistan has lodged a protest with
Iran over the killing of six paramilitary troops who were ambushed by
militants while patrolling the border. The Foreign Ministry says it
summoned Iran's ambassador to demand it take action against the armed
group responsible for the attack. No one has claimed the attack, and
neither country has identified those responsible. Some 30 militants
attacked the Frontier Corps convoy on Friday, killing six soldiers
and wounding 14. Four attackers were killed in the shootout.
This week Iran confirmed that it
recently test-fired a missile, which the US categorized as a
medium-range ballistic missile "capable of carrying multiple
warheads," a transgression of a 2015 United Nations Security
Council resolution. Unfortunately, this was hardly news: Iran has
made a habit out of testing, using and even transferring ballistic
missiles across the Middle East. The US has reacted strongly with
sanctions both before and after it pulled out of the 2015 Iran nuclear
deal.
Iran says it is fully ready
for joint anti-terror operations with neighboring Pakistan
after terrorists killed six Pakistani troops in an ambush near
their joint border Friday. Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qassemi
strongly condemned the attack on a border checkpoint in Pakistan's
Balochistan province. He also expressed condolences to the
Pakistani government and people as well as the families of the
victims and those wounded in the terrorist attack.
IRANIAN INTERNAL DEVELOPMENTS
Two members of the Iranian parliament (Majles) say a
closed door session of the Majles has decided on Sunday December 16
to deposit only 10 percent of the country's oil revenue into the
National Development Fund rather than the 34 percent required by law.
The National Development Fund was set up to convert part of the oil
and gas revenue into sustainable wealth that would be invested on
productive economic activities that would guarantee the next
generations' wellbeing.
The website of Iran's
Revolutionary Guard is reporting that a general who fought in Syria
and Iraq has allegedly accidentally killed himself while cleaning a
gun. Gen. Ghodratollah Mansouri allegedly shot himself in the head by
accident while cleaning his pistol, according to the Sunday report.
The report added that Mansouri was veteran of the 1980s Iran-Iraq war
and a "defender of the shrine," a reference to Iranians who
fight against the extremist Islamic State group in Syria and Iraq.
The appointment of President
Hassan Rouhani's son-in-law as head of Iran's geological survey has
renewed accusations of nepotism and led on Sunday to the resignation
of a senior official, according to conservative media. The
appointment of Kambiz Mehdizadeh, in his early thirties and
reportedly married to Rouhani's daughter in a low-key wedding this
August, was widely criticised by Iranians on social media.
Iranian Parliament's National
Security and Foreign Policy Commission has rejected a proposal to
take Foreign Minister Javad Zarif's case to the Judiciary for his
recent comments on massive money laundering operations by some
institutions in Iran. On November 11, Zarif had said that those who
profit billions of dollars from money laundering are spending
millions of it to prevent the passage of bills requiring more
financial transparency in Iran.
For several years after the 1979
revolution, Iranians were visually indistinguishable from one
another; everyone looked and dressed more or less the same. The
country was united by a revolutionary atmosphere and the common
struggle against sanctions, followed by the war with Iraq. Even if
some people were rich, or were "old money," no one publicly
flaunted their wealth or used it to put down others.
Around two weeks ago, in a move
that caught many by surprise, Iran's security forces
arrested Iranian-Australian academic Meimanat
Hosseini-Chavoshi, a widely respected
population researcher at the University of Melbourne, as
she was leaving Iran. They also summoned her
colleague, Mohammad Jalal Abbasi-Shavazi, who is
a professor of demography at the University of Tehran and
director of Iran's National Institute of Population Research, for
questioning.
IRANIAN REGIONAL AGGRESSION
Not only did the statements from
Iranian and Turkish officials during the Doha Forum recently,
underline simmering tension within the Arab Gulf region and its US
ally, they demonstrated Qatar's risk of breaking away from the Arab
orbit and posing a serious threat to Saudi Arabia, the United Arab
Emirates and Bahrain, according to experts. In a sign of transforming
the forum into a platform to divide the Arab Gulf countries and
blasting the Arab treaties, Iranian and Turkish officials engaged in
slamming the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and its allies.
RUSSIA, SYRIA, ISRAEL, HEZBOLLAH, LEBANON & IRAN
The Israeli military says it has exposed a fourth
Hezbollah attack tunnel dug from Lebanon. The military said Sunday
that it has placed explosives in the tunnel as part of an open-ended
operation to identify and destroy the cross-border passageways.
Israel says the tunnels were built by Hezbollah militants to carry
out attacks against Israelis. Hezbollah, which used such tunnels
inside Lebanon in the 2006 war, has yet to comment on the operation,
which began two weeks ago.
Operation Northern Shield, to
locate Hezbollah's tunnels under the Lebanese border, is
entering its second week. So far the Israel Defense Forces has
reported the discovery of three tunnels, and the excavations are
continuing at several other sites along the border. This engineering
effort is expected to take more than a month, and even then the army
will probably have to make changes regarding preparedness at the
border fence.
Iran's current efforts to
increase its influence in Lebanon have not been adequately addressed
by the international community and some media outlets. For almost
seven months, Lebanon has been struggling to form a government. The
political deadlock forced Lebanese President Michel Aoun to
intervene. "The risks are greater than we can bear," he
warned. "We're launching an initiative... and it has to succeed,
because if it doesn't... there will be a catastrophe. We want to say
it with all frankness, and this is the reason for my
intervention."
IRAQ & IRAN
The Iranian Ambassador to Iraq,
Iraj Masjidi, pulled out abruptly on Saturday from an event he was
attending in Baghdad, organized by al-Binaa Alliance - on the first
anniversary marking victory over ISIS extremist group. Masjidi - who
is a lifelong member of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)
- was seen in a video during the event which was attended by Iraq's
President Barham Salih and the head of the Fatah Alliance Hadi
al-Amiri - leaving immediately following a request by the event's
mediator asking those in attendance to stand up in respect, toward
Iraq's martyrs.
TURKEY & IRAN
Turkish President Recep Tayyip
Erdogan said late on Friday that his government is willing to
strengthen tie with Iran, especially in economic sphere.
"Development of ties with Iran is of strategic significance for
Turkey," Erdogan said in a meeting with Iranian presidential
chief of staff Mahmoud Vaezi, Tasnim reported. Vaezi made a visit to
Ankara on Thursday and Friday to prepare the ground for a trip by
President Hassan Rouhani to Turkey. He was heading a high-ranking
political and economic delegation.
MISCELLANEOUS
For most people, looking back on
2018 will mean remembering the trips, the care free times with
friends and family, and perhaps posting that Facebook memory video to
their timelines. For the Iranian regime, looking back at 2018 will
mean looking back on a year of brutal crackdowns on its citizens, on
increasing sanctions and failed European terror attacks.
It was an unseasonably warm
morning, in northwestern Iran, although a fresh snow blanketed the
mountains. Civil unrest had persisted in the area for years amidst
the backdrop of war and regional unrest. Crowds gathered in the
Mahabad town square. They did not have to wait long. Qazi Muhammad,
the founder of the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iraq, ascended a
platform and delivered a fifteen-minute speech declaring the Kurds a
people apart and sharing the right to self-determination with other
nations.
|
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment