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TOP STORIES
All of Israel is within range of Hezbollah's missiles,
Commander of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) Maj.-Gen.
Mohammad Ali Jafari said in an interview with Iranian media on
Sunday. "The current status quo and the current capabilities of
the Resistance Front of the Islamic Revolution are all the unique
accomplishments of the Islamic Revolution which cannot be verbally
described and they rather should be sensed," he said in an
interview with the Persian-language Soroush Magazine.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo
plans to push back against Iran's "maligned" regional
interests by visiting Israel, Kuwait and Lebanon this week. "In
each of those places, [we have] a different mission set, but the
common thing in each of those places is helping those countries bolster
their efforts to push back against the Islamic Republic of
Iran," Pompeo told Fox and Friends on Friday as he described his
March 19-23 visit to the Middle East.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani
said on Monday that the government would file a legal case in Iran
against U.S. officials who imposed sanctions on the country as a
precursor to action in international courts. Rouhani said in a
speech broadcast live on state television that U.S. sanctions had
created difficulties including a weaker rial currency that has fed
into higher inflation.
SANCTIONS, BUSINESS RISKS, & OTHER ECONOMIC
NEWS
Iranian Oil Minister Bijan
Zanganeh said on Saturday frequent U.S. comments about oil prices had
created market tensions, the ministry's news website SHANA
reported. U.S. President Donald Trump, who has made the U.S.
economy one of his top issues, has repeatedly tweeted about oil
prices and the Organization of the Petroleum Producing Countries.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani
formally inaugurated four new phases of South Pars, the world's
largest gas field, on Sunday, according to a statement posted by the
Iranian oil ministry on Twitter. Iran has invested $11 billion
to complete the four phases and they will increase the country's gas
production capacity by up to 110 million cubic meters per day, the
statement said.
Iran's state-controlled news
outlets and politicians have put significant emphasis on the
relationship between Baghdad and Tehran after Iranian President
Hassan Rouhani last week made a surprise trip to Iraq - his first
visit to the neighboring country since he became president in 2013.
Rouhani's first visit to Iraq points to several important issues.
Oil prices are expected to rise
by at least $5 per barrel if the US administration does not extend
Iran sanction waivers granted to eight countries following the
reimposition of sanctions on the Islamic Republic late last year,
analysts said. "If [US President Donald] Trump does not renew
waivers and takes Iranian exports off the market, we expect oil
prices to rise by approximately $5. A final figure around this number
also depends on the timing of disruptions from Venezuela," said
Jaafar Al Taie, managing director of Manaar Energy group.
Secretary of Iran's Expediency
Discernment Council, Mohsen Rezaei, says the EU needs to Guarantee
oil purchase from Iran if it wants Iran to ratify the bills required
by FATF, the Financial Action Task Force. Two of the four bills that
would join Iran to international conventions against money laundering
and funding terrorism and ensure transparency of the Islamic
Republic's international financial transactions are stuck at the Council,
which is the arbiter between the Iranian Parliament and the
constitutional watchdog Guardian Council.
A mechanism similar to the EU's
INSTEX trade channel, to be called the Special Trade and Finance
Institute (STFI), will be registered in Tehran, the head of Iran's
central bank (CBI) said on March 15. Germany, France and Britain
launched Instrument for Supporting Trade Exchanges (INSTEX) in
January to facilitate business between Europe and Iran in face of
tough U.S. economic sanctions.
PROTESTS & HUMAN RIGHTS
Iranian authorities handed down
a 10-year prison sentence to U.S. Navy veteran Michael White, who has
been held since last July, his attorney said Saturday. Mr. White,
whose arrest was confirmed in January by Iranian authorities,
was detained as he and his Iranian girlfriend attempted to leave
the country from Mashhad, Iran's second-largest city, in July.
Mark Zaid, Mr. White's U.S. attorney, said he has had no direct
contact with his client and heard about the sentence through the
State Department, which was informed of it by representatives of the
Swiss government.
Iranian human rights lawyer
Nasrin Sotoudeh will not appeal a 12-year prison sentence imposed on
her last week for "encouraging corruption and debauchery",
her husband said on Sunday. "She said she wouldn't want to
appeal, and the reason is that the judicial process is unfair and
such protests will do no good," Reza Khandan told AFP over
telephone.
In a letter published on March
15, more than 40 human rights organizations have supported the
renewal of the mandate for the UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights
Situation in Iran. In the letter, a copy of which was published by
the New York-based Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI), 42
organizations have called the members of the UN Human Rights Council
(UHRC) to extend Javaid Rehman's assignment.
U.S.-IRAN RELATIONS & NEGOTIATIONS
On his first trip to Beirut this week, US Secretary of
State Mike Pompeo will be walking a fine line between continuing
support for Lebanon's institutions while waving the threat of
sanctions if evidence emerges that their funds are being diverted to
militant group Hezbollah. Mr Pompeo, who leaves on Tuesday for a
four-day-trip to the Middle East, is expected to arrive in Lebanon on
Saturday after visiting Kuwait and Israel.
Iran's president is urging
Iranians to put a curse on the United States, Israel and Saudi Arabia
- blaming the U.S. and its allies for his country's ailing economy.
Monday's televised remarks by Hassan Rouhani were meant to deflect
criticism of his administration's performance amid a spiraling
economy after the Trump administration pulled out of the nuclear deal
and re-imposed sanctions on Tehran last year, targeting Iran's vital
oil sector
In July 2017, Ahmadreza
Doostdar, a dual U.S.-Iranian citizen, visited the Oriental Institute
Museum at the University of Chicago, where FBI agents surveilled him
performing what appeared to be a surreptitious exchange of
information - a brush pass - with a woman in one of the museum's
rooms. After leaving the museum, Doostdar walked toward two nearby
Jewish centers, snapping photos with his phone camera, appearing to
pay particular attention to entrances and exits, including a wrought
iron fence at the perimeter of one the buildings.
IRANIAN INTERNAL DEVELOPMENTS
A conservative politician in
Iran, who was minister of culture in the first administration of
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has proposed to eliminate the presidency in the
Islamic Republic. Speaking in a television program on March 17,
Mohammad Saffar Harandi who is now a member of Iran's Expediency
Council proposed to replace the president with a prime minister.
Harandi is also affiliated with the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps,
IRGC.
A member of the Iranian
reformist Supreme Council for Policymaking says Vice President Es'haq
Jahangiri continues to serve in his post after Supreme Leader
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei rejected his resignation. Reports about
Jahangiri's resignation made headlines in recent months, but
Rouhani's administration has denied it.
RUSSIA, SYRIA, ISRAEL, HEZBOLLAH, LEBANON & IRAN
The military chiefs of staff of
Syria, Iran and Iraq will hold a rare meeting in Damascus to discuss
"ways to combat terrorism", the pro-Syrian government
al-Watan daily reported on Monday. The paper gave no further
details of what would likely be discussed at the meeting, or its
timing and location. Iran has been one of the most steadfast
supporters of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad during eight years of
civil war, and is also a close ally of Iraq.
Brian Hook, the State
Department's special representative on Iran, says the U.S. campaign
of economic pressure on Iran has had "a lot of progress" to
the extent that Tehran has decreased its military budget and its
client, the Lebanese Hezbollah is making public appeals for
donations. Speaking in an interview with Alhurra television on
March 15, Hook said, "What you can expect to see as the result
of our sanctions on Iran is further denying the regime of its revenues.
GULF STATES, YEMEN, & IRAN
Yemen's Houthi militia warned on
Saturday they could launch attacks against the capitals of Saudi
Arabia and the UAE. The threat came as the United Nations was trying
to salvage a truce deal in Yemen, seen as crucial to diplomatic
efforts to end the country's four-year war. The Iran-backed Houthis
have targeted Saudi border towns and Riyadh with ballistic missiles.
Last December, Yemen's
government and Houthi rebels signed a UN deal in Sweden known as the
Stockholm Agreement. The deal called for the withdrawal of troops on
both sides from the major port city of Hodeidah in order to admit
humanitarian aid to Yemenis afflicted by famine due to four years of
civil war. But the Houthis have since failed to uphold their end of
the agreement on the pullout.
IRAQ & IRAN
An Iranian guard was killed in a
fight with an armed group near the western border with Iraq, local
media reported on Monday. Iran's armed forces have been stepping
up their presence along its borders to prevent smuggling, illegal
immigration and militant infiltration. "Last night around 9
p.m., the border guards who were trying to stop armed smugglers
entering the country had a fight with armed bandits," Tasnim
news agency quoted Kiumars Sheikhi, commander of the border guards in
Kermanshah province as saying.
Will the Middle East's shattered
Christian villages, towns and cities somehow retain their religious
and cultural heritage - which dates back to the first century?
No one knows for sure, but due to Iranian aspirations, the answer is
far from encouraging. In November 2014, I visited the
devastated survivors of Islamic State's genocide who were sheltering
in Erbil, Kurdistan (Iraq).
OTHER FOREIGN AFFAIRS
Iran recalled its ambassador to
Kenya because of a court decision upholding sentences for two
Iranians in jail, foreign ministry spokesman Bahram Qassemi said
Sunday, according to the Iranian Students' News Agency. Iran also
lodged a formal complaint with the Kenyan ambassador in Tehran on
Saturday because of the Kenyan court decision in the case of Ahmad
Abolfathi and Seyed Mansour Mousavi.
Tyrannical regimes seek to
control what their populations read, see and hear, lest the people
obtain information that might encourage them to question the power
that subjugates them. Some go to extraordinary lengths, reaching far
outside their borders, to prevent that happening. One obvious example
was the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Saudi Arabia's
consulate in Turkey last October.
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