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TOP STORIES
Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad
Zarif of Iran announced Monday that he was resigning, in what seemed
a sudden end to the tenure of one of the Islamic Republic's
best-known figures abroad. Mr. Zarif, an American-educated diplomat
who was an architect of the Iranian nuclear deal, announced that he
was stepping down in a post on his Instagram account. It was not
immediately clear why he was quitting or whether his resignation
would be accepted.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad
sought to boost economic ties with Iran as he met the country's
leaders on Monday, his first public visit to a regional ally that has
helped him reassert control over Syria after eight years of war. Iran
"stood beside us [in the war] and it is necessary to
congratulate you and all the Iranians for the current success,"
Mr. Assad told Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, according to
Iranian state media.
The UK is to ban membership of or support for
Hezbollah's political wing, the home secretary has announced, as he
accused the Lebanese Islamist movement of destabilising the Middle
East. "We are no longer able to distinguish between their
already banned military wing and the political party," Sajid
Javid said. "Because of this, I have taken the decision to
proscribe the group in its entirety."
UANI IN THE NEWS
Russia accused United Against
Nuclear Iran, a prominent group that opposed the 2015 Iran nuclear
deal, of attempting to "intimidate Russian business,"
prompting U.S. National Security Advisor John Bolton to come to
UANI's defense. "Any attempts to intimidate Russian business are
a continuation of the indecent acts by the current U.S.
administration," said Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson
Maria Zakharova on Friday, citing a series of letters that Mark
Wallace, UANI chief executive and a former ambassador with the U.S.
mission to the United Nations, as an example.
SANCTIONS, BUSINESS RISKS, & OTHER ECONOMIC
NEWS
Indian traders will export raw
sugar to Iran for March and April delivery, five trade sources said,
the first Indian sugar sales to Tehran in at least five years as Iran
struggles to secure food supplies under sanctions imposed by the
United States. Under the sanctions, Iran is blocked from the
global financial system, including using U.S. dollars to transact its
oil sales. Iran agreed to sell oil to India in exchange for rupees
but it can only use those rupees to buy Indian goods, mainly items it
cannot produce enough of domestically.
Iran's stock market dropped
around 2,000 points on Tuesday on news that Foreign Minister Mohammad
Javad Zarif had announced his resignation, the Islamic Republic News
Agency (IRNA) reported. Zarif announced his resignation in
an Instagram post on Monday but President Hassan Rouhani did not
confirm that he had accepted it.
MISSILE PROGRAM
On the third day of military
drills, the Islamic Republic of Iran's navy successfully launched a
cruise missile from a submarine in the Persian Gulf. The drill was
part of a weeklong military drill named Velayat 97, after the current
Iranian calendar year 1397 (ending March 20, 2019). The exercise took
place in the Strait of Hormuz, an important strait between the
Persian Gulf and the Sea of Oman in which a large percentage of the
world's oil passes through - a point Iranian officials periodically
remind the world when responding to attempts to embargo Iranian oil.
PROTESTS & HUMAN RIGHTS
Some Iranian Instagram
stars have culled photos on their personal pages - leaving only
pictures of themselves wearing a hijab. The stars,
including mahdis_food who commands over 400,000 followers, have
also declared obedience 'to the laws of the Islamic Republic of Iran.'
Reports in Iran suggest the actions are off the back of an effort
from the Iranian Cyber Police (FATA) to exert more control over
posting on Instagram which they deem 'un islamic'.
An Iranian woman has been
sprayed in the face with tear gas after going outside without a
hijab, campaigners say. Video of the altercation shows the
woman arguing with a man - believed to be an undercover morality
officer - about the country's oppressive religious regime. The
woman can be heard calling the man 'blind' and 'ill-fated' for
following the government, before he turns around to confront her.
IRANIAN INTERNAL DEVELOPMENTS
For more than a year, since
December 2017, protests and civil disobedience have been a fixture of
life in Iran. Many of the political and economic grievances fueling
this unrest will be familiar to foreign observers. But one major
reason for these disturbances has gone overlooked: the country's dire
water shortages. One cause of this water crisis is changing weather
patterns.
A member of the Iranian
Parliament (Majles) has disclosed that the country's Supreme National
Security Council has banned the publication of news reports about
water-related problems including shortage and misuse of resources.
The disclosure appears to have happened inadvertently when the
official news agency IRNA quoted Ardeshir Nourial, a lawmaker on
Saturday February 23 as having said that officials in Isfahan
Province, ignore government directives including the ban on
publication of news reports on water shortage.
Mohammad Javad Zarif, a devout
and faithful servant of the Islamic Republic, was always a suspect
quantity in the eyes of the West-and yet it is somewhat odd that
Iran's foreign minister, who tendered his resignation Monday, was
even more suspected by the radicals in his own country. Zarif just
had too many friends and admirers among the unbelievers abroad. He
was too worldly. His English was too good-it was perfect, in fact,
wonky, witty, and unnervingly fluent, albeit spoken with a disarming
lisp, a facility honed during Zarif's graduate studies at the Josef
Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver.
Iranian Foreign Minister Javad
Zarif, who led his country's nuclear negotiations with world powers
and was widely viewed as a proponent of engagement rather than
confrontation, resigned on Monday in an unexpected move he announced
on the picture-sharing service Instagram. "I am no longer able
to continue to serve," Zarif said in the post, giving no reason.
The resignation was confirmed by state news agencies and the foreign
ministry.
President Hassan Rouhani said
the investment arm of Iran's main social security provider must be
privatized as part of a wider effort to scale back inefficient
public-sector involvement in the economy. "The promise I have
made to the parliament and people is that next year will be the year
of privatization of large companies, including Shasta," Rouhani
said on Monday, according to the state-run Iranian Labour News
Agency. The company's formal name is Social Security Investment Co.
Iran's new calendar year begins March 21.
Fighting between parties and
factions in Iran is a "deadly poison" undermining foreign
policy, Mohammad Javad Zarif was quoted as saying in an interview
published on Tuesday, a day after he resigned as Iranian foreign
minister. Zarif's comments suggest he may have quit over pressure
from hardline elements who have long criticized his role in
negotiating a landmark 2015 nuclear deal with world powers. We first
have to remove our foreign policy from the issue of party and
factional fighting," Zarif told the Jomhuri Eslami newspaper.
Iran President Hassan Rouhani on
Monday brushed off attacks against his telecom minister over charges
of failing to create a "safe environment" in social media
and leaving Iranian data vulnerable to espionage, state television
reported. According to the judiciary, 2,000 people in the
southwestern city of Ahvaz and the general prosecutor's office have
lodged a complaint against the minister, Mohammad Javad
Azari-Jahromi.
RUSSIA, SYRIA, ISRAEL, HEZBOLLAH, LEBANON & IRAN
Syrian President Bashar Assad
visited Iran and met with officials there on a rare trip abroad in
which he thanked the Islamic Republic for its support throughout
Syria's conflict, official news agencies in Syria and Iran said.
Assad met with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President
Hassan Rouhani on the trip - the first time he has traveled anywhere
other than Russia since the Syrian civil war erupted nearly eight
years ago.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu voiced satisfaction on Tuesday over the resignation of
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif. "Zarif has
gone. Good riddance. As long as I am here, Iran will not have nuclear
weapons," Netanyahu said on Twitter.
An Israeli ex-minister was
sentenced to 11 years in prison on Tuesday for spying for his
country's main enemy Iran after a plea bargain in the case, the
prosecutor said. Gonen Segev, who served as Israel's energy and
infrastructure minister from 1995 to 1996, had previously agreed to a
plea bargain on charges of serious espionage and transfer of
information to the enemy.
The Israeli military detected
and blocked an attempt by Iran to infiltrate its missile warning
system in 2017, preventing a potentially life-threatening situation
in which Israeli citizens could no longer rely on the sirens that
alert them to an incoming attack, a senior cyber defense official
told the Bloomberg news outlet on Monday.
GULF STATES, YEMEN & IRAN
An American citizen who was abducted nearly 18 months
ago in the Yemeni city of Sana was freed last week and has been
reunited with his family, President Trump announced on Monday. Danny
Lavone Burch, an engineer at a Yemeni oil company, has been
"recovered and reunited with his wife and children," Mr.
Trump tweeted aboard Air Force One as he flew toward Vietnam, where
he is to meet this week with Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader.
The Saudi Project for Landmine Clearance (MASAM) in
Yemen extracted 14 anti-personnel mines, 625 anti-vehicle mines, 67
explosive devices and 665 unexploded ordnance - totaling 1,371 mines
- during three weeks of February. A total of 44,743 mines have been
extracted since the beginning of the project. An estimated 1 million
mines have been planted by the Iranian-backed Houthi militias in
Yemen over the past three years claiming hundreds of civilian lives.
OTHER FOREIGN AFFAIRS
Syrian President Bashar Assad
has made an unannounced trip to Iran, where he met with the supreme
leader and other top officials to discuss the planned U.S. troop
withdrawal and Turkey's efforts to set up a buffer zone in northern
Syria, state media reported Monday. Assad met with Supreme Leader
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Hassan Rouhani on the rare trip
abroad - his third since the civil war broke out in 2011. The other
two trips were to Russia.
Germany's President Frank-Walter
Steinmeier came under fire over a congratulatory telegram sent to
Iran on the 40th anniversary of the Islamic revolution, with a Jewish
community leader on Monday joining a chorus of criticism. Taking aim
at Steinmeier for failing to include criticisms of the Islamic regime
in the message, Josef Schuster, who heads Germany's Central Council
of Jews, said that "routine diplomacy appears to have overtaken
critical thinking".
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