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TOP STORIES
Cyberattacks linked to Iranian
hackers have targeted thousands of people at more than 200 companies
over the past two years, Microsoft Corp. said, part of a wave of
computer intrusions from the country that researchers say has hit
businesses and government entities around the globe. The
campaign, the scope of which hadn't previously been reported, stole
corporate secrets and wiped data from computers.
Iran hopes a new trade channel
with Europe aimed at cushioning the blow of reimposed U.S. sanctions
will be working within weeks, its deputy foreign minister said on
Wednesday. France, Britain and Germany have set up the new
mechanism for non-dollar trade with Iran in response to Washington's
withdrawal from the landmark 2015 nuclear deal that lifted
international sanctions against the Islamic republic in exchange for
restrictions on its atomic activities.
An Iranian cleric known for his
role in condemning thousands of political prisoners to death in the
1980s will take leadership of Iran's powerful judiciary this week, in
a move that is expected to keep the post under the influence of
hard-liners. Ebrahim Raisi is set to take oath as Iran's new
chief of judiciary on Friday, according to an Iranian lawmaker quoted
in state media. He succeeds Sadegh Larijani, another conservative
cleric, who served as chief justice for 10 years before being named
in December as head of head of a council that advises Supreme Leader
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
UANI IN THE NEWS
Well, puzzling as the North Korea leader always seems to
be, what's really unusual about this is that apparently South Korean
intelligence saw this beginning of the reconstruction of the missile
testing launching site before Kim Jong Un went to meet President
Trump in Hanoi. So what was that? Was that to send a message to the
president that this would happen if they didn't reach an agreement. I
don't know, but I think it all says to us that the president was
right to take a walk, as he said.
NUCLEAR DEAL & NUCLEAR PROGRAM
Iran's deputy foreign minister
says Tehran has received "strong support" from all remaining
parties to the landmark 2015 nuclear deal with his country since the
U.S. pulled out unilaterally last year. Abbas Araghchi told reporters
in Vienna on Wednesday that Germany, France, Britain, Russia and
China have "acknowledged that the deal can only survive if Iran
can receive the benefits of the deal," and remain committed to
making it work.
The chairman of the Senate Armed
Services Committee said he will push to ensure the U.S. never rejoins
the 2015 Iran nuclear deal negotiated by former President Barack
Obama and repudiated last year by President Trump. Sen. Jim
Inhofe, Oklahoma Republican, told reporters on Tuesday he intends to
include language in the next defense authorization act to
cement Mr. Trump's decision to pull out of the deal and
reinstate harsh economic sanctions on Tehran.
Iran and world powers discussed
the latest steps in ongoing efforts to offset the impact of US
withdrawal from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal during a meeting in Vienna
on Wednesday, which also intended to flesh out a newly established
European mechanism to circumvent American sanctions. The meeting
was the first convened by Iran and members of the Joint
Commission-which is tasked with monitoring the implementation of the
nuclear deal-since Europe set up INSTEX (Instrument in
Support of Trade Exchanges) to conduct non-dollar trade with Tehran
via a system that would help avert US penalties.
SANCTIONS, BUSINESS RISKS, & OTHER ECONOMIC
NEWS
India wants to keep buying
Iranian oil at its current level of about 300,000 barrels per day
(bpd), as it negotiates with the Washington about extending a
sanctions waiver past early May, two sources in India with knowledge
of the matter said. India has reduced its purchases of Iranian
oil but has been in talks on extending its sanctions waiver, a senior
India official said in January.
Oil prices crept up on Thursday
amid ongoing OPEC-led supply cuts and U.S. sanctions against
exporters Venezuela and Iran, but gains were capped by record U.S.
crude output and rising commercial fuel inventories. Brent crude
futures were at $66.12 per barrel at 0757 GMT, up 13 cents, or 0.2
percent, from their last close.
PROTESTS & HUMAN RIGHTS
A prominent Iranian lawyer who
defended women arrested when they defied Iran's head-covering rule
has been convicted of security-related crimes in a secret trial and
could face a "very lengthy sentence," a human-rights
monitoring group reported Wednesday. The group, the Center for
Human Rights in Iran, said it had learned of the conviction of the
lawyer, Nasrin Sotoudeh, from her husband. She was seized at her home
by security agents last June and placed in Evin Prison in
Tehran.
MILITARY/INTELLIGENCE MATTERS & PROXY WARS
Iran's state broadcaster is
currently airing "Last Station of Lies," a
controversial documentary series that claims to reveal the truth
about outside forces seeking to overthrow the Islamic Republic.
Part two of the series focuses on Amad News. Founded in
2015 by Ruhollah Zam, an exiled journalist based in
Paris, Amad News has long been demonized by the Islamic
Republic, cast as a news source that incites violence and promotes
regime change through the dissemination of fake news.
IRANIAN INTERNAL DEVELOPMENTS
The deputy of General Qassem (Ghassem) Soleimani has
said that Iran's Qods force brought Syria's Bashar Assad to Tehran
last week. Esmail Qa'ani deputy commander of the Qods force is quoted
by Iran's ISNA as saying that "those who were supposed to know
[about the trip], knew about it". Bashar Assad paid an
unannounced visit to Iran last week, which prompted a controversy as
Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif was not invited to his meetings
with Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and President Hassan Rouhani.
When Iranian Foreign Minister
Javad Zarif tried to quit last week, the move looked another
troubling defeat for his country's beleaguered moderates. Highly
intelligent, sophisticated, and U.S.-educated, Zarif always made an
unlikely chief diplomat of the world's most anti-American regime.
Totalitarian governments, wrote Hannah Arendt, "invariably
replace all first-rate talents, regardless of their sympathies, with
those crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity
is still the best guarantee of their loyalty."
In a strange twist some Iranian
reformists have welcomed the likely appointment of hardliner cleric
Ebrahim Raeesi as Iran's next Judiciary chief. This comes less than
one week after Abdolkarim Soroush, a prominent reform figure
characterized Ayatollah Rouhollah Khomeini, the founder of the
Islamic Republic, as one of the most knowledgeable men in Iran's
history. Even some conservatives have interpreted the move as a way
of pleasing the hardline-dominated establishment to garner a share for
reformists in the country's political life.
The phenomenon of
"dirty" or suspicious money appears to have increasingly
found a new haven: Iran's cinema and TV production industry. In 2015,
Interior Minister Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli spoke of an issue that had
existed for a long time but was rarely confirmed: "dirty
money." The term has since come to be used in Iran to refer
to money laundering or financing with unclear sources. Mentioning the
"large amount of money" in the Iranian economy,
Rahmani Fazli said in 2015, "A portion of this [type]
of money has entered politics and has been used by individuals in
elections etc."
RUSSIA, SYRIA, ISRAEL, HEZBOLLAH, LEBANON & IRAN
Israel's navy could take action
against Iranian oil smuggling, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said
on Wednesday, urging world powers to foil any effort by Tehran to
evade U.S. sanctions. The Israeli leader told naval officers
that Iran was still resorting to clandestine measures to ship fuel
that it first used prior to a 2015 nuclear deal easing Western
sanctions on its oil sector. U.S. President Donald Trump last
year quit the nuclear deal and reimposed some sanctions, aiming to
cut Iran's oil exports to zero.
GULF STATES, YEMEN & IRAN
An American hostage who was freed in Yemen in February
after nearly 18 months in captivity was rescued in an armed raid led
by the United Arab Emirates with help from the United States,
according to American and Yemeni officials. The hostage, Danny Lavone
Burch, had been held by a criminal Yemeni gang with a record of
kidnapping Westerners for ransom. The gang was known to sell hostages
to a powerful local affiliate of Al Qaeda, the officials said.
Yemen's deputy culture minister, Abdulhadi al-Azazi,
remembers standing two years ago amid the rubble of a national museum
in his war-torn hometown, Taiz. Objects he had admired as a youngster
- ancient limestone carvings, gilded Torah scrolls, bejeweled Islamic
daggers, a spindly 2,500-year-old mummy - were missing amid the
charred debris and shattered display cases.
CYBERWARFARE
Microsoft has detected
cyberattacks linked to Iranian hackers that targeted thousands of
people at more than 200 companies over the past two years. That's
according to a Wall Street Journal report Wednesday that the hacking
campaign stole corporate secrets and wiped data from computers.
Microsoft told the Journal the cyberattacks affected oil-and-gas
companies and makers of heavy machinery in several countries,
including Saudi Arabia, Germany, the United Kingdom, India and the
U.S., and caused hundreds of millions of dollars in damages.
Iranian hackers working to
penetrate systems, businesses and governments around the world have
caused hundreds of millions of dollars in damages, a report said
Wednesday. Researchers for tech giant Microsoft said the attackers
stole secrets and wiped data from computer networks after targeting
thousands of people at some 200 companies over the past two years,
according to The Wall Street Journal. Microsoft did not
immediately respond to an AFP query on the report.
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