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TOP STORIES
Cyber attackers in Iran could be
behind a wave of hacks on government and communications
infrastructure that will require a coordinated global response to
repel, according to cybersecurity firm FireEye Inc. FireEye
researchers have identified attacks on dozens of Internet sites
belonging to entities across the Middle East, North Africa, Europe
and North America, the firm said in a report published Thursday.
The actor or actors have "a nexus to Iran," it said.
Iran said on Wednesday that it
would reciprocate after the European Union added two Iranian
individuals and an Iranian intelligence unit to the bloc's terrorist
list. EU ministers agreed on Tuesday to add the names to the
list and freeze their assets, effective from Wednesday, as the
Netherlands accused Iran of two killings on its soil and joined
France and Denmark in alleging Tehran plotted other attacks in
Europe.
The European Union on Tuesday imposed new sanctions
against Iran for the first time since the Joint Comprehensive Plan of
Action came into effect. This is a welcome, if belated,
acknowledgment that the 2015 nuclear deal has failed to change
Tehran's behavior. Over the summer European authorities prevented a
bomb attack on Iranian dissidents in Paris coordinated by Iranian intelligence
across the Continent. In October Denmark announced it had stopped a
plot to assassinate an Iranian opposition figure on Danish soil. The
Dutch government has also accused Iran of assassinating two Dutch
citizens of Iranian origin in the Netherlands in recent years.
NUCLEAR DEAL & NUCLEAR PROGRAM
By now, it has escaped few that
rather than a new beginning between Iran and the West, the Joint
Comprehensive Plan of Action has become another chapter in a long saga
of broken promises. But beyond empty pledges on the part of Europe,
and more so the United States - which withdrew from the landmark
accord last May - the Iranians have also broken their promises
to themselves.
MISSILE PROGRAM
Iran's president said Thursday
the Islamic Republic soon will send two new satellites into orbit
using Iran-made rockets, despite U.S. concern the launch could help
further develop its ballistic missiles. President Hassan Rouhani's
comments, during a commemoration for the late President Akbar Hashemi
Rafsanjani, confirmed the rocket launches would take place. Iran
typically displays achievements in its space program in February,
during the anniversary of the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
SANCTIONS, BUSINESS RISKS, & OTHER ECONOMIC
NEWS
In what seemed to be fresh
diplomatic pressure on Iran, the European Union announced Jan. 8
that it was freezing assets belonging to a unit of Iran's
Intelligence Ministry and two of its officials. But that's not where
it came to an end. The Netherlands also leveled accusations against
Iran, saying Tehran had plotted two murders on its soil. In doing so,
Dutch officials joined French and Danish counterparts in implicating
Iran in alleged attacks on European soil.
When a technical error forced a
Norwegian Air jet to land at Shiraz Airport in Iran last month, the
Boeing 737 touched down in uncharted territory. The airline, known
for cheap long-haul flights from Europe, does not have a base in
Iran. It had never flown there before. And nearly a month after it
left Dubai, the brand-new American-made jet, delivered to Norwegian
Air only in October, was still sitting in Shiraz.
Iranian Oil Minister Bijan
Zanganeh said on Thursday U.S. sanctions against his country were
"fully illegal" and Tehran would not comply with
them. Zanganeh, speaking at a joint news conference in Baghdad
with Iraqi Oil Minister Thamer al-Ghadhban, said Iran would not
discuss the volume or destination of its oil exports while it
remained under U.S. sanctions. Ghadhban said Iraq had not yet
reached an agreement with Iran to develop joint oilfields.
South Korean oil buyers are
expected to restart Iranian oil imports in late January or early
February, the head of South Korea's SK Innovation, which owns South
Korea's biggest oil refiner SK Energy, said on Wednesday. In
November, South Korea won a six-month waiver from sanctions imposed
by the United States allowing the purchase a limited amount of
Iranian oil, but the country has not imported any crude from the
country since September.
Unemployment rates rose
dramatically in Iran as US sanctions continue to take effect,
according to a report on Radio Farda. Omid Ali Parsai, chairman of
the Iranian Statistical Center (ISC), announced that the official
unemployment rate among Iranian youth has reached 27 percent, and has
surpassed 40 percent for university graduates. Parsai added that
since March, 550,000 jobs have been created. However, 900,000 new
jobs is the target figure needed annually to create the needed amount
of employment opportunities, a number unlikely to be reached before
the end of the Iranian year.
Satellite imagery broadcast on
CNN on Tuesday January 7, showed Iran apparently preparing to launch
a remote-sensing satellite into the space. Researchers at Middlebury
Institute of International Studies at Monterey told CNN that
"The high-resolution satellite images, captured by Planet Labs
on January 4, 6 and 7, show activity at the Imam Khomeini Space
Center consistent with steps that were taken prior to a previous
launch in 2017."
The European Union on Tuesday
passed a series of pathetic sanctions on Iran. These follow Iran's
repeated terrorist acts and attempts on European soil. While lauded
by European multilateralists, the sanctions are too weak to affect
Iran's future cost-benefit analysis of terrorist plotting. Indeed,
their weak quality will likely embolden Iranian terrorist plotters.
Of course, EU officials see things differently.
TERRORISM & EXTREMISM
The European Union has named two
Iranian officials who, along with Iran's intelligence services, have
been targeted by fresh sanctions for their suspected involvement in
assassination plots in France, Denmark, and the Netherlands. The
listings in the EU's terrorism sanctions list were agreed to on
January 8 and published on January 9 in the EU's Official Journal.
The two individuals were identified in the Official Journal as
Assadollah Asadi and Saeed Hashemi Moghadam.
PROTESTS & HUMAN RIGHTS
Iranian State TV has aired
previously unseen footage of what appears to be the arrest of jailed
Iranian-British dual national Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe in Tehran in
April 2016. The approximately minute-long video, which has been
edited, shows Zaghari-Ratcliffe being pulled aside by someone off
camera at an airport and questioned, according to Mashregh
News. In the line of questioning a man asks her about her travel
intentions and informs her that there is a warrant for her arrest and
that she is not permitted to leave the country.
A female civil rights activist
who was arrested in November and spent close to one month in
detention has talked about "brutal torture" of her and a
labor activist arrested with her. Sepideh Qolian was at the
Haft-Tapeh Sugar Mill in November, where workers were on strike and
protesting for their unpaid wages, when security officers attacked
and detained her with several labor activists.
U.S.-IRAN RELATIONS & NEGOTIATIONS
Iran confirmed on Wednesday it
had arrested an American, confirming U.S. media reports about a case
that risks further worsening relations with Washington. The New
York Times reported on Monday that Michael White, a 46-year-old U.S.
Navy veteran, was arrested while visiting Iran and had been held
since July on unspecified charges.
As expected, the Iranian
intelligence minister, Mahmoud Alavi, warned on 25 December, 2018,
that efforts and consultations are intensifying among the non-Persian
ethnic nationalities, the nationalist parties, and the Iranian
opposition groups. They seek to unite their ranks to overthrow the
rule of the velayat-e faqih, i.e., the rule of Shiite theocracy in
Iran.
MILITARY/INTELLIGENCE MATTERS & PROXY WARS
The Islamic Republic of Iran Air
Force (IRIAF) has launched two days of military exercises, involving
bombers, drones and missiles, with the aim of testing its
capabilities in protecting the country's airspace against possible
enemy threats. The eighth edition of the annual drills, dubbed
Defenders of Velayat Skies, began at Shahid Babaei Air Base in
the central province of Isfahan on Thursday following days of
preparations.
IRANIAN INTERNAL DEVELOPMENTS
Iran's National Cyberspace
Council is planning to block Instagram, the last social-media
platform freely accessible in the country. This is unlikely to
trouble Iranian Instagrammers, who will continue to use the platform
through virtual private networks, or VPNs, that route traffic through
internet connections abroad. This easy workaround allows Iranians to
evade government filters and access banned platforms like Twitter,
Facebook and YouTube, and use messaging apps like WhatsApp and
Telegram.
RUSSIA, SYRIA, ISRAEL, HEZBOLLAH, LEBANON & IRAN
A former Israeli government
minister charged with spying for archenemy Iran will serve 11 years
in prison as part of a plea bargain with authorities, Israel's
justice ministry said Wednesday. The ministry said Gonen Segev agreed
to the deal after confessing to severe espionage and passing
information to an enemy. The plea bargain will be brought to a judge
next month and no further information was provided.
Contradicting
President Donald Trump's announcement that he plans to
completely withdraw US forces from Syria, the United States
reportedly plans to keep some troops in the country to counter Iran.
National Security Adviser John Bolton just returned from a trip
to Turkey, where he had aimed to coordinate the withdrawal
of 2,000 US troops from Syria. US forces are in the country to
counter ISIS, but last month, Trump declared the terrorist group
defeated and announced his plan to bring US troops home.
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut
Cavusoglu has called for joint control with Russia and Iran of US
troops' withdrawal from Syria, saying Washington is facing
"certain difficulties" with the planned exit. "The
United States [has] been facing certain difficulties with the process
of the troops' withdrawal from Syria. We want to coordinate this
process with Russia and Iran, with which we had arranged work in the
framework of the Astana process," Cavusoglu said Wednesday.
GULF STATES, YEMEN, & IRAN
In their continuous attempts to abort the Sweden peace
agreement brokered by the United Nations - the pro-Iranian Houthi
militias launched on Thursday, a drone attack targeting a military
parade by the Yemeni National Army in al-Anad military base in Lahaj
province. Al Arabiya news channel correspondent reported that six
soldiers of the Yemeni Army were killed and 20 others injured, among
them journalists as well as the governor of Lahaj, the deputy chief
of army staff, the head of the intelligence unit, the
commander of the military police and the army commander of the fourth
region.
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
Iraqi leaders implored Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to
maintain a U.S. troop presence in the country, seeking U.S.
reassurances after the Trump administration announced plans to
withdraw troops from elsewhere in the region. Mr. Pompeo's visit to
Iraq on Wednesday underscored the challenge U.S. officials face in
persuading regional partners that the administration will remain
involved in the turbulent region after President Trump's decision in
December to withdraw troops from Syria and to reduce troop levels in
Afghanistan.
OTHER FOREIGN AFFAIRS
As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was
recently blaming Iran's influence on Palestinians for
the lack of progress in peace talks, Iran seemed more than happy
to accept responsibility. In an interview with Globo TV
during his Jan. 1 visit to Brazil, Netanyahu said, "Half of
them [Palestinians] are already under the gun of Iran and of radical
Islam."
Iran and Israel have been bitter enemies since
1979, when Iranian revolutionaries toppled the Pahlavi regime and
established the Islamic Republic in its stead. The hostility has
since spilled over into regions beyond the Middle East - its hot spot
- and affected the national security and foreign policies of
nations across the world. South America with
its revolutionary history and traditionally leftist politics is one
such region where Tehran and its Lebanese proxy Hezbollah have
sought, with relative success, to undermine Israeli interests.
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