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TOP STORIES
The German foreign ministry declined to reveal
statistics covering illegal Iranian efforts to secure nuclear and
missile technology across Europe, according to a March 18 ministry
letter reviewed by The Jerusalem Post. "A statistic in the
field of foreign trade is not kept at the [German] customs criminal
office," in connection with the Iranian regime's attempts to
obtain the technology, wrote German state minister Niels Annen in the
letter.
President Donald Trump's national security team is
deeply divided over whether to let a small group of countries keep
buying Iranian oil after a U.S. deadline on sanctions waivers expires
in May. Now that fight is getting ugly. The division -- primarily
between John Bolton's National Security Council and Michael Pompeo's
State Department -- has led to rising frustration and flared tempers.
It's exposing fault lines over how the president's most senior
advisers approach the Iran issue, according to four people familiar
with the debate who asked not to be identified discussing the
internal deliberations.
Facebook Inc said on Tuesday it has removed more
accounts from Iran, Russia, Macedonia and Kosovo, citing what it
described as "coordinated inauthentic behavior." A
total of 2,632 pages, groups, and accounts were removed from Facebook
and Instagram for operations linked to the above mentioned countries,
the social media platform said. 513 of those accounts were tied
to Iran, while 1,907 were linked to Russia, Facebook said.
UANI IN THE NEWS
Israel and Egypt have been at peace for 40 years. In a
region beset by national, sectarian and tribal conflicts, the treaty
between the two nations has endured since its signing on March 26,
1979. It has withstood the assassination in 1981 of Egyptian
President Anwar Sadat, two Palestinian intifadas, two wars in Lebanon
and the election of the Muslim Brotherhood's Mohammed Morsi as
Egypt's president in 2012. Even though Mr. Morsi refused to deal
directly with the Israelis-or say "Israel"-he did not walk
away from the treaty during his year in power.
SANCTIONS, BUSINESS RISKS, & OTHER ECONOMIC
NEWS
South Korean government officials are expected to press
for extending a sanctions waiver on Iran's petroleum exports that
expires in May on a visit to Washington this week. South Korea's
Deputy Foreign Minister for Economic Affairs Yoon Kang-hyun and other
leaders will meet with U.S. State Department officials on Wednesday
and Thursday to discuss the waiver issued in November to keep buying
Iranian oil in exchange for having reduced such purchases, the Seoul
government said in a news release on Monday.
When the United States and allies struck a landmark
nuclear accord with Iran in 2015, a key selling point was that it
blocks Iran's paths to building an atomic bomb. But U.S. President
Donald Trump has denounced the deal, and in May 2018 he followed through
on a campaign promise to pull the United States out. His
administration argues the agreement allows Iran to bide its time,
preserving illicit nuclear know-how until provisions of the deal
sunset.
U.S.-IRAN RELATIONS & NEGOTIATIONS
U.S. President Donald Trump has recognized Israel's
sovereignty over the disputed Golan Heights -- the rocky plateau that
Israeli forces seized from Syria in the closing stages of the 1967
Six-Day War. Syria also tried to retake the Golan Heights from
Israeli forces during the 1973 Middle East war, but the surprise
assault was repelled. Signing a formal proclamation on March 25 at
the White House, Trump said the United States should have recognized
Israel's sovereignty over the Golan Heights "decades ago."
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif derided US
President Donald Trump for claiming that the United States, which was
behind creation and spread of Daesh (ISIL or ISIS), has managed to
defeat the terrorist group. "Trump & Co try to take
credit for the "defeat of ISIS"-which was created &
nourished by their invasion of Iraq & their fomenting of unrest
in Syria," Zarif wrote in a post on his Twitter account on Monday.
Former US ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley was received
with a standing ovation at the AIPAC policy conference in
Washington D.C. on Monday, "we have to isolate Iran," she
told the audience. "Nothing stop using the power of your
voice," she said, noting that under her term at the UN the US
left UINESCO, the Iran deal, and the UNHR council.
IRANIAN INTERNAL DEVELOPMENTS
The cultural adviser to the commander of the Islamic
Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) recently raised the idea of a
significant reform in the executive structure of the Islamic
Republic: the abolition of the presidency and the reinstatement of a
prime minister position. Mohammad Hossein Saffar
Harandi said that under such a change, the Iranian
parliament would then exercise the authority to remove and replace
the head of the government at its discretion and expediency at any
moment it finds such a figure unfit to rule.
While celebrating the beginning of the new Iranian year,
1398, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and the country's President Hassan
Rouhani both addressed the people, with their speeches having several
points in common. They both focused on Iran's resistance economy and
the need to challenge US sanctions through improving domestic
production. They also focused on domestic unity and its importance in
the face of external threats, along with the importance of Iranians
being aware of deceptive foreign propaganda against their country.
In his first new year speech on March 21, Iran's Supreme
Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei described U.S. leaders as "top
idiots", called Western diplomats "savages," labelled
Europeans as "traitors" and "back-stabbers". He
also denounced Saudi Arabia as "the worst state" in the
world. He also called on the Iranian people to bear the cost of
sanctions, adding that sanctions provided "opportunities"
for Iran.
At least 18 people were killed and around 100 others
were injured in flash floods in Iran's southern Fars province, the
semi-official Tasnim news agency reported on Monday, with more rain
forecast following days of devastating floods in the north. Some
26 provinces out of 31 now have flood warnings due to torrential rain
in a country more accustomed to drought. State TV said villages near
rivers and dams in several provinces had been evacuated for fear of
the rising water.
Iran's crude oil pipelines have avoided damage from
flooding in recent days and the transfer of oil is taking place
normally, Abbasali Jafarinasab, director of the Iranian Oil Pipeline
and Telecommunication Co, was quoted as saying on Tuesday by the oil
ministry's SHANA news website. At least 19 people were killed and
more than 100 injured in flash floods in Iran's southern Fars
province, the semi-official Tasnim news agency reported on Tuesday,
with more rain forecast following days of devastating floods in the
north.
The governor of Khuzestan, the biggest oil-rich province
in Iran, has banned government officials from leaving it despite the
danger of floods in the region, Radio Farda reports, citing a
statement by Gholamreza Shariati. "Since there are some concerns
over the basin of Karkheh River, forces have been assigned to check
the floodgates, and do whatever necessary to confront a possible
flash flood in the province," the Khuzestan governor said.
RUSSIA, SYRIA, ISRAEL, HEZBOLLAH, LEBANON & IRAN
Benny Gantz, who is posing a stiff challenge to Israeli
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in upcoming elections, said Monday
he would not hesitate to use force on Iran to contain the regional
rival. In a speech to the US pro-Israel lobby AIPAC, Gantz also
spelled out further his views on peace prospects with the
Palestinians, insisting that Israel's military will always control
security in the West Bank.
In January 2008, a team of U.S. Drug Enforcement
Administration agents travelled to Ottawa to meet with RCMP leaders.
They had stunning news. The DEA said an elite group of Middle East
narco-terrorists in Colombia was using Canada as a key money laundering
hub. According to a former senior U.S. official with knowledge of the
meeting, the DEA had "dirty calls" - meaning calls
providing criminal evidence of cocaine shipments and cash movements
in Canada - from narco-kingpins in Colombia to a network of operatives
in Halifax, Vancouver, Calgary, and London, Ont.
President Trump's tweeted last week that the U.S. will
formally recognize the Golan Heights as part of Israel. The decision
is strategically wise and morally important. Israel secured the Golan
Heights in 1967 after the Six Day War, a defensive conflict Israel
fought in response to attacks from Syria and other Arab nations.
Since then, the Golan has been a critical part of Israel's defenses.
Israel's military said it struck dozens of Hamas targets
in the Gaza Strip and the Islamist group launched numerous rockets
into its territory, raising the risk of a wide-scale conflict two
weeks before an Israeli election. The latest exchange of fire comes
after the Israeli military blamed Gaza-ruler Hamas for an attack
earlier Monday that hit a home in the small town of Mishmeret north
of Israel's commercial capital of Tel Aviv, injuring seven people.
CHINA & IRAN
Beijing is seen by some as the financial backstop that
countries can call on to bail them out when they fall foul of US
displeasure and face sanctions. Yet a close examination of the cases
of Russia and Iran instead shows that China is reactive to US
sanctions policy, to the detriment of its supposed strategic allies.
This reflects the attractiveness of the US market, the reach of
extraterritorial sanctions and the independence of some Chinese
institutions from Beijing's geopolitical interests.
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