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TOP STORIES
The United States will host an
international summit next month to promote stability and freedom in
the Middle East, focusing on Iran's regional influence, said
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, in an exclusive Fox News interview,
while traveling in the Middle East. "We'll bring together dozens
of countries from all around the world," said Pompeo, announcing
the February 13-14 event in Poland. "Countries will all come
together to focus on Middle East stability and peace and freedom and
security here in this region, and that includes an important element
of making sure that Iran is not a destabilizing influence."
The US will work with allies to
"expel every last Iranian boot" from Syria, Secretary of
State Mike Pompeo says. Mr Pompeo warned there would be no US
reconstruction aid for areas controlled by Syrian President Bashar
al-Assad until Iran and its proxies had left. He also criticised
ex-President Barack Obama's Middle East policy, saying he had made
"dire misjudgements".
Iran will see its crude exports
severely curtailed for a third month in January as it is struggling to
find new buyers amid fresh U.S. sanctions even though its traditional
customers secured waivers, according to tanker data and industry
sources. Iran's crude exports in November plummeted to below 1
million barrels per day, from regular sales of 2.5 million bpd before
sanctions were imposed in May, and taking them back to where they
stood during the previous round of sanctions in 2012-2016.
NUCLEAR DEAL & NUCLEAR PROGRAM
Shortly after U.S. President
Donald Trump withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal, Supreme Leader
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei pledged that Iran would not tolerate
the simultaneous restriction of its economy and its nuclear program.
"This bad dream will never come true," Khamenei said in
June 2018. Yet Iran has accepted exactly that. Iran has continued to
comply with the restrictions on its nuclear program under the Joint
Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which was implemented three
years ago this month.
SANCTIONS, BUSINESS RISKS, & OTHER ECONOMIC
NEWS
Iraq's oil minister says Iraq
and Iran are jointly exploring two oil fields shared by the two
countries, despite U.S. efforts to isolate Iran from global oil
markets. Thamer Ghadhban says Iraq is honoring an existing
exploration agreement with neighboring Iran. He received Iranian Oil
Minister Bijan Zanganeh in Baghdad on Thursday. The U.S. has been
pressuring Iraq to break its energy dependence in Iran since it
reinstated sanctions against the Islamic Republic last year. Iraq
imports gas and electricity from Iran to meet its energy needs.
EU trade turnover has declined
significantly since the United States reimposed stringent sanctions
on Iran, including oil exports and banking. According to official
statistics, released by Iran's Trade Promotion Organization, European
Union's exports to the country declined 19% year-on-year to $6.792
billion during nine months of current Iranian fiscal year, which
started on March 21, 2018. Iran's non-oil exports to EU also shrank
19% to $868 million.
A Norwegian Air jet diverted
into Shiraz, Iran, last month because of a technical issue, but the
Boeing 737 MAX aircraft hasn't been able to leave the country
since. The 186 passengers left Dubai and were heading to Oslo,
Norway, when the incident occurred. Another aircraft was able to
pick up the passengers and all made it to Oslo a day later. The
original plane, however, still hasn't moved.
The government of Iran is prone
to belligerent defiance about the resilience of its economy in the
face of U.S. sanctions, but Radio Farda noted on Wednesday
that even the dubious data officially released by Tehran depicts a
country in "deep recession" with staggering unemployment
rates.
The modest sanctions imposed
against Iran this week by the European Union are a reflection of
Tehran's increasingly reckless approach to conducting terrorist
operations on European soil. And they also raise questions about why
the EU, when faced with compelling evidence of Iranian terrorist
activity on its own territory, still refuses to back the Trump
administration's decision to withdraw from the controversial nuclear
deal with Iran.
MISSILE PROGRAM
Iran will put two satellites
into orbit in coming weeks using domestically made missiles,
President Hassan Rouhani said on Thursday, a week after Washington
warned it not to pursue three planned space rocket launches.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo warned Tehran against pursuing
launches that he said would violate a U.N. Security Council
resolution because they use ballistic missile technology.
PROTESTS & HUMAN RIGHTS
Iran's Foreign Minister Javad
Zarif issued a stinging rebuttal to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's
Thursday speech on the Middle East, saying that "chaos,
repression and resentment follow" international actions taken by
the United States. Sharing a Twitter response to Pompeo's remarks,
which were made during a visit to Egypt, Zarif suggested the U.S. has
never gotten over its loss of Iran as an ally back in the late 1970s.
He also criticized Washington's human rights record.
A heated debate is taking place
over the torture of a prominent labor activist in Iran. Esmail
Bakhshi was arrested on November 20, 2018, along with journalist and
civil rights activist Sepideh Qolian during demonstrations by workers
demanding unpaid wages.
A video aired on Iranian state television has compared accusations
that Russia sought to influence the 2016 US presidential elections
with biased and fake news to the efforts of the UK-funded BBC to
influence Iranian domestic policy and topple its government - in
the process airing footage of the arrest of a jailed dual
British-Iranian citizen and her alleged links to outlawed
Iranian websites.
U.S.-IRAN RELATIONS & NEGOTIATIONS
U.S. Secretary of State Mike
Pompeo delivered a scathing rebuke of the Obama administration's
Mideast policies on Thursday as he denounced the former president for
"misguided" and "wishful" thinking that
diminished America's role in the region, harmed its longtime friends
and emboldened its main foe: Iran. In a speech to the American
University in Cairo, Pompeo unloaded on President Donald Trump's
predecessor for being naive and timid when confronted with challenges
posed by the revolts that convulsed the Middle East, including Egypt,
beginning in 2011.
Iran's foreign minister mocked
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's speech on Thursday in which he
said "when America retreats, chaos follows," by asserting
the opposite was true. "Whenever/wherever US interferes, chaos,
repression and resentment follow," Mohammad Javad Zarif wrote on
Twitter. "The day Iran mimics US clients & @SecPompeo's
'human rights models' - be it the Shah or current butchers - to
become a 'normal' country is the day hell freezes over. Best for the
US to just get over loss of Iran."
U.S. Secretary of State Mike
Pompeo brought the Trump administration's anti-Iran message to Gulf
Arab states on Friday, arriving in Bahrain to continue a nine-nation
tour of the Middle East aimed at reassuring America's partners that
withdrawing troops from Syria does not mean Washington is abandoning
the region. Pompeo was traveling to Bahrain and the United Arab
Emirates where he will call for increasing pressure on Iran and push
for unity among Gulf neighbors still embroiled in a festering dispute
with Qatar.
Iran has reacted to US Secretary
of State Mike Pompeo's speech in Cairo with both ridicule and
disdain, with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warning against
taking seriously anything coming out of the Donald Trump
administration - whether threats or promises. Why it
matters: In explaining his perception of the Middle East, US
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo portrayed Iran as the root
of all evil, promising intensified punishment for the Islamic
Republic until it abandons its nuclear and missile programs as well
as its present foreign policy priorities.
The first American detained
overseas during the Trump administration is being held in one of the
president's least favorite places: Iran. On Wednesday, Iran's
Foreign Ministry acknowledged that it had arrested Michael White, a
US Navy veteran, in the northeastern city of Mashhad. A lot of
questions remain, such as why White is being detained, and how long
he's been imprisoned. It's also unclear how White even received
a visa to Iran, a country that severely restricts the number of
American visitors.
MILITARY/INTELLIGENCE MATTERS & PROXY WARS
On the campaign trail in 2007,
Senator John McCain sang a parody to the tune of the Beach Boys'
"Barbara Ann": "Bomb, bomb, bomb ... bomb, bomb
Iran." That sentiment resonates in the Donald Trump
administration, and it's understandable. The Iranians continue to
push their influence throughout the Middle East: using proxies
to threaten U.S. allies; supporting Bashar al-Assad in Syria; fueling
the war in Yemen through support for Houthi rebels; and seeking to
destabilize Iraq and gain further influence in Lebanon.
Iran's Air Force kicked off a
massive military exercise in central region on Thursday, official
IRNA news agency reported. The annual war game, named Defenders of
Velayat Skies, began at Shahid Babaei air base in Iranian central
province of Isfahan. The drills' spokesman Alireza Angizeh said that
other air bases across the country would join the maneuvers.
IRANIAN INTERNAL DEVELOPMENTS
On Christmas Eve (not that it
matters in Iran), Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, one of
Tehran's most understated powerbrokers, died after a particularly
grueling year combating cancer. Despite his relative anonymity
outside Iran compared to his more outspoken and controversial
clerical colleagues, Shahroudi was a quintessential establishment
figure with unfettered access to the apex of power and, rather
unusually, reasonable relations across factional lines.
President Hasan Rouhani's
remarks at commemorations in Tehran on January 9 and 10 to mark the
second anniversary of former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani's
death has revealed rifts at the top level of Iran's political system.
This comes while Rafsanjani's death still remains shrouded in mystery
and conspiracy theories fanned by hardliners in Tehran and Qom and
occasional comments by the former president's family.
When an Afghan TV host
highlighted censorship on neighboring Iran's state-controlled
broadcaster, it didn't go down well with everyone. Former soccer
player-turned-sportscaster Ali Ansarian responded by suggesting that
Iranians are better off than Afghans. He said his Afghan counterpart,
Amanullah Qaisari, should stick to reporting and refrain from
commenting on the state of affairs in Iran.
Against the backdrop of an
ailing yet dominant banking system that is struggling to upgrade
its operations, Iranian fintech firms are slowly but steadily
fashioning a position for themselves. Local developments in the past
year have made it clear that fintech firms will be a major part if
not the architects of the future landscape of financial services in
Iran.
RUSSIA, SYRIA, ISRAEL, HEZBOLLAH, LEBANON & IRAN
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Thursday
Hezbollah is a major presence in Lebanon, but the U.S. won't accept
this as the status quo. Pompeo also described the United States was a
"force for good" in the Middle East and remained committed
to the "complete dismantling" of the Daesh (ISIS) threat
despite its decision to withdraw troops from Syria.
IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen Gadi Eisenkot said Lebanese
terrorist organization Hezbollah was planning to infiltrate 1,500
fighters into Israel through the series of tunnels the military has
recently discovered along the border. Eisenkot made the comments in
an interview with Hadashot News on Thursday. Israel embarked on
Operation Northern Shield in early December to expose and destroy
Hezbollah attack tunnels.
As Iran and Venezuela become increasingly isolated and
sanctioned by the U.S and much of the international community, the
two governments are said to be tightening their bond - with the help
of Tehran's proxy group, Hezbollah, in the middle of the action.
"Training between Iran and Venezuela has increased in the past
few years as part of a larger plan between the Venezuelan regime,
consisting of increasing the number of Hezbollah operatives and their
supporters across Latin America," Johan Obdola, President of the
Canada-based Global Organization for Intelligence (IOSI) and former
counter-narcotics chief in Venezuela, told Fox News. "(Hassan)
Rouhani and (Nicolas) Maduro have established a very firm and close
relationship, which was of course initiated by (Hugo) Chavez."
The U.S. military said Friday it has begun withdrawing
troops from Syria, initiating a drawdown that has blindsided allies
and sparked a scramble for control of the areas that American troops
will leave. U.S. forces have "begun the process of our
deliberate withdrawal from Syria," Col. Sean Ryan, the spokesman
for the U.S.-led coalition against the Islamic State said. "Out
of concern for operational security, we will not discuss specific
timelines, locations or troop movements."
A draft paper outlining US plans
for withdrawing from Syria includes leaving troops in place at a
position near the Iraqi and Jordanian border seen as a key stopgap
against Iranian entrenchment in the country. The document, described
as a proposal, was presented to Turkish officials as US National
Security Adviser John Bolton visited Ankara earlier this week to
discuss the planned pullout, according to London-based news
website Middle East Eye, citing an unnamed Turkish official.
A top Iranian general has said
Iran will annihilate Israel, boasted that Iran could easily defeat
Saudi Arabia, and threatened to overrun American military bases in
the Middle East. Brig. Gen. Mohammad Reza Naqdi, the Islamic
Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Deputy Commander for Cultural and
Social Affairs, said in a December 28 interview with the Iraqi
television network Al-Nujaba that the "Islamic revolution in
Iran will not back down" from the goal of "wiping out"
the Jewish state.
GULF STATES, YEMEN, & IRAN
A bomb-laden drone launched by
the Houthi rebels, which exploded on Thursday over a Yemeni military
parade at al-Anad Air Base in the southern province of Lahj, was most
likely manufactured by Iran, sources told Asharq Al-Awsat. The
attack, 50 kilometers north of Aden, left four troops dead and
another 20 injured. The government described the attack as
"a message of blatant defiance to the international community
and outright rejection to peace efforts."
The Yemeni Council of Ministers
denounced Iran's disobeying of UN resolutions on Thursday, saying
that "it won't stop until it is strongly deterred by the
International Community." The Yemeni legitimate government said
that Houthi militias are challenging the international community and
its decisions, in a press release.
Qatar did well by putting the
record straight and calling things by their names. It officially
announced, through its ambassador to Moscow, its true position
towards the Iranian occupation of Syria, by considering that Iran has
"legitimate" interests in Syria and supporting Tehran's
quest to maintain those interests; and that the "Syrian regime,
which oppressed its opponents, is responsible for allowing for
international and regional foreign intervention, which should not be
blamed on others."
IRAQ & IRAN
Iran and Iraq held a meeting
designed to boost their bilateral ties just one day after Secretary
of State Mike Pompeo met with Iraqi officials as part of a
broader Middle Eastern tour aimed at curbing Tehran's influence in
the region. Iranian Petroleum Minister Bijan Zangeneh met
Thursday with Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi, whose
office said he "confirmed the deep relations between the two
countries, the two neighboring peoples and the importance of
strengthening them in areas that serve the interests of the two peoples,
foremost of which is cooperation in the fields of oil and gas."
Iraq's large and well-armed Shiite militias are now
running many of the Sunni areas they helped liberate from the Islamic
State, fostering local resentments that could fuel a resurgence of
support for the extremist group. After winning nearly a third of the
seats in parliamentary elections last year, the Shiite militias,
including several ideologically aligned with Iran, are enjoying
unprecedented military and political power in Iraq.
CYBERWARFARE
Phishing attacks only work when
the target takes the bait. The email containing the link or
attachment that will compromise the target's computer has to look
legitimate, from a recognizable domain. A new report says that
someone - likely Iran - has been hijacking domains related to
entities across the Middle East and North America, which could allow
Iran to launch more, and more successful, cyber attacks.
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