|
TOP STORIES
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo
warned Iran on Thursday against launching three spacecraft in the
coming months, describing them as a cover for testing technology that
is necessary to lob a warhead at the United States and other nations.
His statement seemed intended to build a legal case for diplomatic,
military or covert action against the Iranian missile program. It was
surprising only because Iran has been launching modest space
missions, mostly to deploy satellites, since 2005.
The Iranian navy will send warships to deploy in the
Atlantic from March, a top commander said on Friday, as the Islamic
Republic seeks to increase the operating range of its naval forces to
the backyard of the United States, its arch foe. Iran sees the
presence of U.S. aircraft carriers in the Gulf as a security concern
and its navy has sought to counter that by showing the flag near
American waters. A flotilla will leave for the Atlantic early in the
Iranian new year, starting from March, Iran's naval deputy commander
said.
Iran's Police Chief Hosein
Ashtari has told Palestinian Islamic Jihad Leader Ziad al-Nakhaleh
that his forces are prepared to offer training to the
"Palestinian Resistance Front," ISNA reported on Wednesday
January 2. The "resistance front" is Iran's nickname for
groups such as HAMAS and Islamic Jihad in the Palestinian territories
and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
SANCTIONS, BUSINESS RISKS, & OTHER ECONOMIC
NEWS
Between 2016 and 2018, Iran's
energy sector was the main beneficiary of the lifting of
nuclear-related sanctions. Increased oil production and exports, the
return of international oil companies (IOCs), massive investments in
renewable energies, introduction of new technologies into upstream
and downstream sectors, etc., were among key developments in the
industry.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani
started his first cabinet meeting this year by sending messages on
both internal and foreign levels. He addressed his US counterpart
Donald Trump saying that the latter's administration has failed to
reduce Iran's oil exports to zero. This comes amid fears in Iran of
increased prospects for military confrontation after Washington
announced it would modify the presence of its troops in Syria and
Afghanistan.
The Trump administration is
"continuously evaluating" the waivers on sanctions against
Iran, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told Newsmax TV on
Thursday. "The sanctions and waivers are for six
months," Pompeo told Newsmax TV host John Bachman in an
exclusive interview at the State Department. "We are
continuously evaluating whether they make sense, given our policy.
"We still want to make sure we've got a well-supplied crude oil
market - but, at the same time, we want to ensure that we're
complying with the requirements."
MISSILE PROGRAM
Iranian Foreign Minister
Mohammad Javad Zarif rejected a U.S. warning against carrying out
space vehicle launches and missile tests, saying on Thursday they did
not violate a U.N. resolution. U.S. Secretary of State Mike
Pompeo issued a pre-emptive warning to Iran earlier on Thursday
against pursuing three planned space rocket launches that it said
would violate a U.N. Security Council resolution because they use
ballistic missile technology.
Iran must not to proceed with a
series of space-related tests that could disguise a ballistic missile
program, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo warned
Thursday. "The United States will not stand by and watch
the Iranian regime's destructive policies place international
stability and security at risk," Pompeo said in a statement.
"We advise the regime to reconsider these provocative launches
and cease all activities related to ballistic missiles in order to
avoid deeper economic and diplomatic isolation."
PROTESTS & HUMAN RIGHTS
Two high-profile women prisoners
at Iran's Evin jail are to go on hunger strike in protest at the
failure by authorities to give them proper medical treatment. Nazanin
Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a British-Iranian dual national, and Iranian
rights campaigner Narges Mohammadi jointly announced they would start
an initial three-day protest on January 14 and continue until their
demands were met.
U.S.-IRAN RELATIONS & NEGOTIATIONS
Secretary of State Michael Pompeo and National Security
Adviser John Bolton plan to crisscross the Middle East to reassure
nervous U.S. allies after President Donald Trump's surprise
withdrawal from Syria and Jim Mattis's resignation as defense
secretary. Bolton will depart Washington Friday for stops in Israel
and Turkey, he said on Twitter. Pompeo will visit the region next
week, according to an administration official.
U.S. national security adviser
John Bolton says he will travel to Israel and Turkey to discuss the
withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria and how Washington and its
allies intend to counter Iran's "malign behavior" in the
region. In a tweet posted on January 3, Bolton also said he will
discuss ways to prevent the "resurgence" of the Islamic
State (IS) militant group in the region.
IRANIAN INTERNAL DEVELOPMENTS
Iran's health minister has
resigned over proposed budget cuts, the official news agency IRNA
reported, amid an economic crisis wrought by the reimposition of U.S.
sanctions on Tehran. IRNA said on Thursday President Hassan
Rouhani accepted the resignation of Hassan Ghazizadeh Hashemi, widely
seen as the key official behind the 2014 launch of an ambitious plan
for universal medical insurance sometimes dubbed
"Rouhanicare".
Mohammad Yazdi, 87, a senior
influential ayatollah says that in forty years since the 1979
revolution, Iran has had 400 years' worth of progress. Iran's
conservative Student Agency reports that Yazdi on Thursday said,
"In these 40 years 400 years' worth of service has been rendered
to this country and we have had 400 years' worth of growth and
progress; technology, gadgets, various equipment, population and
lifestyle , and now it is totally different from the past".
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's
supreme leader, has appointed to a key post in the Islamic
establishment a hardline cleric sanctioned by the U.S. for human
rights abuses and accused by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo of
financial corruption. Sadeq Amoli Larijani, who has served as the
regime's powerful judiciary chief for the past decade, has now been
named chairman of the Expediency Council, a top consultative body.
As the leadership in Tehran
prepares to mark the 40th anniversary of the Khomeinist revolution, a
growing number of Iranians are wondering whether the time has come
for their country to close that chapter and resume its historic path
as a nation-state. The need for Iran to move beyond the Khomeinist
revolution was the theme of a seminar last month at Westminster
University in London where the return of Iran as a nation-state was
highlighted as an urgent need for regional peace and stability.
The leader of Iran's pro-reform
"Green Movement" has challenged the Islamic Republic's
Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, by calling for the release of
the uncensored video of their last meeting in 2009. Former Prime
Minister Mir Hossein Mousavi (1981-1989), who has been under house
arrest since 2011, was responding to footage recently published by
Khamenei's official website.
Iran's up-and-coming artist
Mehdi Yarrahi is believed to have been banned from performing a few days
after releasing his anti-war 'Pareh Sang' song. Yarrahi, an
Ahwazi Arab, is known for his highly controversial works and is one
of the very few artists who maintained a daringly close take on
social developments within the Iranian community.
RUSSIA, SYRIA, ISRAEL, HEZBOLLAH, LEBANON & IRAN
In the past four years American
troops have helped crush Islamic State (is) in Syria. But President
Donald Trump has had enough and he is bringing them home. All 2,000
are expected to be out in the next few months. The abrupt withdrawal
has startled America's allies in the region, notably Syria's Kurds,
and risks allowing the jihadists to regroup. It also cedes the
eastern part of Syria, rich in oil, gas and arable land, to the
government and its Iranian and Russian allies.
It did not take long for
America's decision to withdraw from Syria to be felt across the
Middle East. The Syrian regime, along with its Russian and Iranian
allies, rejoiced. Arab states hurried to make up with Syria's leader,
Bashar al-Assad. The Arab League will soon debate his return to the
fold. America's Kurdish allies, crying betrayal, urged him to help
fend off a looming Turkish invasion. Israel scrambled to contain the
damage.
A day after US President Donald
Trump said that "Iran can do what they want" in Syria,
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made clear that this is not exactly
the case, and that Israel continues to take action against Iran's
effort to entrench themselves there. During an address to cadets of
the IDF's officers course at a Bar-Ilan University symposium in honor
of IDF commando Emmanuel Moreno who was killed during the
Second Lebanon War, Netanyahu said that Israel acts with
determination against all those trying to endanger it.
Of course, the soldiers in
Operation Northern Shield are investing nearly all of their time
eliminating Hezbollah's cross-border attack tunnels. But this week we
learned loud and clear from IDF intelligence chief Maj.-Gen. Tamir
Heyman that the real primary goal of the month-old IDF operation is
deterrence. Not only that, but we learned that the next main goal of
the operation is setting the stage for any future conflict with
Hezbollah.
GULF STATES, YEMEN & IRAN
The theft of food aid in Yemen by Houthi rebels might be
only the tip of the iceberg, officials believe, as questions multiply
over international relief efforts in the famine-ravaged country. It
has emerged that aid officials have been aware for months that armed
groups - most prominently Houthi rebels in the capital, Sana'a - have
been diverting food aid into the key areas they control, including by
manipulating data in malnutrition surveys used by the UN.
Saudi Prince Khalid bin Salman posted a series of tweets
on Thursday discussing Houthis' recruitment of children in Yemen. In
his first tweet, he posted four pictures of children looking as young
as five years old, some dressed in military clothing and others
seemingly chanting.
OTHER FOREIGN AFFAIRS
The past year has been notable
for the attention "fake news" has received. In the Middle
East, however, fake news is old news. And the master of this is not
Russia, but Iran. Indeed, Iran's mischief making in the region is not
restricted to sponsoring foreign militias. It also includes funding,
supporting or encouraging dozens of Arab media outlets - satellite TV
stations, websites and social-media accounts - that are managed by
Tehran's allies.
MISCELLANEOUS
An Iranian cargo plane that has
been flagged as flying suspicious cargo to Damascus and Beirut made
dozens of flights in the fall of 2017, according to flight tracking
data. An analysis of the flights shows that this plane routinely
flies to Damascus and also has flown to Beirut, Qatar and Istanbul.
Western intelligence sources said in September that Fars Air Qeshm, a
civilian airline in Iran, was "suspected of smuggling weapons
into Lebanon," reports indicated.
|
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment