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TOP STORIES
U.S. Special Representative for Iran, Brian Hook,
blasted Iranian President Hassan Rouhani's visit to Iraq and accused
his government of trying to control Iraq by fueling sectarian
conflict in the country. In an interview with Alhurrha TV, Hook said
Rouhani's visit is not in the best interest of the Iraqi people,
adding that Iran does not support the security and sovereignty of
Iraq.
A senior Iranian security
official on Wednesday accused regional powers of spending money on
"suspicious nuclear projects", and warned that such threats
would force Tehran to revise its defense strategy. Ali
Shamkhani, the secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council,
did not name the countries - but a proposed transfer of U.S. nuclear
technology to Saudi Arabia has raised concerns in Tehran.
Israel said a Hezbollah operative accused of killing
U.S. troops is establishing a terror network in the disputed Golan
Heights, spotlighting threats the militant group poses to its
security as the Netanyahu government pushes for sovereignty over the
strategic area. The U.S. charged Ali Mussa Daqduq with orchestrating
the 2007 kidnapping and murder of five American soldiers in
Iraq
SANCTIONS, BUSINESS RISKS, & OTHER ECONOMIC
NEWS
Iran is discreetly scouring the
globe for second-hand oil tankers to replace its ageing fleet and
keep crucial crude exports flowing as U.S. sanctions start to bite,
Iranian and Western sources said. Since U.S. President Donald
Trump reimposed sanctions in November, exploratory talks with South
Korea for up to 10 new supertankers have stalled, Panama has removed
at least 21 Iranian tankers from its registry and Tehran is now looking
for extra vessels in places such as Vietnam, the sources said.
Oil prices rose on Wednesday,
pushed up by ongoing supply cuts from producer group OPEC and by U.S.
sanctions against Iran and Venezuela. International Brent crude oil
futures were at $66.95 a barrel at 0751 GMT, up 28 cents, or 0.4
percent, from their last close. U.S. West Texas Intermediate
(WTI) crude futures were at $57.23 per barrel, up 36 cents, or 0.6
percent, from their last settlement.
The U.S. has not ended the
exemption to sanctions for purchases of Iranian oil - received by
India and seven other countries last November when sanctions came
into effect - following its withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive
Plan of Action (JCPOA) or the "Iran Deal". This was
conveyed in an email to The Hindu by a State Department
spokesperson. The exemptions were initially meant to last six months
and therefore due to expire in March.
TERRORISM & EXTREMISM
Iranian-Hamas relations have
been growing warmer, especially after the new Hamas leadership
was elected in May 2017, which re-established the movement's
relationship with Tehran and resolved all differences that resulted
from Hamas' neutral stance on the conflict in Syria in 2012.
Commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' Quds
Force Qasem Soleimani said during an event held in the northern
Iranian city of Babol on Feb. 21 that Hamas was one of Tehran's
friends in the Arab region, praising what he called "the firm
foundations" of Lebanese Hezbollah and the Palestinian Hamas
movement with Iran.
PROTESTS & HUMAN RIGHTS
Prominent Iranian human rights
lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh has been sentenced to 38 years in prison and
148 lashes, according to her family. Sotoudeh is well known for
representing human rights defenders, dissidents and women who
protested against the compulsory wearing of a headscarf in
Iran. According to IRNA, Iran's state-owned news service, the
human rights lawyer was convicted of "gathering and colluding to
commit crimes against national security" and for "insulting
the Supreme Leader."
Iranian human rights lawyer
Nasrin Sotoudeh has been sentenced to an extra 10 years in jail on
top of the five-year term she is already serving, her husband Reza
Khandan said on Tuesday. Sotoudeh is an award-winning rights activist
who was arrested last June and told she had been found guilty in
absentia of espionage charges and sentenced to five years.
U.S.-IRAN RELATIONS & NEGOTIATIONS
U.S. Secretary Of State Mike
Pompeo will meet with top oil executives before he addresses a
conference on Tuesday, seeking to get them to help the
administration's effort to boost crude exports to Asia and to support
its policy of isolating Iran, according to three people at two
companies briefed on the agenda. The outreach represents a
significant new effort to sway industry executives to the Trump
Administration's "energy dominance" agenda that seeks to
advance diplomatic and policy objectives through rapidly expanding
U.S. oil and gas exports.
Iran's Hassan Rouhani is
on a hectic trip to neighboring Iraq, his first official visit to the
country since he became president in 2013. A diverse political and
economic agenda with implications for Iran, Iraq and the wider region
at a critical time has made the state visit highly significant. At
home, Rouhani's trip served as a point of convergence for rival
political factions, which rarely see eye to eye on foreign policy.
"Deal in Mesopotamia," wrote moderate daily Iran,
using the ancient name to underline the historical affinity Iran
holds with Iraq.
IRANIAN INTERNAL DEVELOPMENTS
Hardline cleric Ebrahim Raisi
has swiftly emerged as one of Iran's most powerful figures and a
contender to succeed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Last
week, he was named chief of the judiciary and on Tuesday he was
elected deputy chief of the 88-member Assembly of Experts, the
clerical body responsible for choosing the supreme leader.
Iran's newly appointed head of
all-powerful Judiciary has also been elected as deputy chairman of
the Assembly of Experts, which elects the Supreme Leader in Iran.
Ebrahim Raeesi (Raeisi) was elected on Monday with 43 votes out of 78
members present, defeating the former head of the Judiciary,
ayatollah Sadeq Amoli Larijani and Fazel Golpaygani, Mehr news agency
reported on Tuesday.
As part of its strategy to counter US economic sanctions, Iran
has effectively granted subsidized foreign currency to importers of
essential goods. The aim of this has been to ensure that the prices
of basic products such as food and medicine do not rise considerably
despite the drastic drop in the value of the rial on the open market.
Yet food prices have soared significantly over the past few
months, indicating that the allocation of cheap hard currency to food
importers has been ineffective.
top Iranian military figure
known for his shadowy role in Iran's foreign intervention in Iraq and
Syria has received his country's highest military honor at a ceremony
Monday alongside supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Major General
Qassem Soleimani, the commander of the Revolutionary Guards'
expeditionary Quds Force, became the first Iranian general to
receive the Order of the Zulfiqar since the 1979 Islamic
Revolution that overthrew a West-sponsored monarchy.
RUSSIA, SYRIA, ISRAEL, HEZBOLLAH, LEBANON & IRAN
Iran will respond firmly to any
Israeli naval action against its oil shipments, Iran's defence
minister said, a week after Israel warned its navy could act
against what it called Iranian oil smuggling to evade US sanctions.
US President Donald Trump last year quit a nuclear deal with
Iran and reimposed some sanctions, aiming to cut Tehran's oil exports
to zero.
Russia's push to bring Bashar al-Assad
back into the Arab fold and open the doors to reconstruction is
facing opposition from some of Donald Trump's Arab allies. Bolstered
by military assistance from Russia and Iran, Assad has regained
control of most of the country after eight years of civil war. But a
lack of unity among Arab governments, and concerns about spreading
Iranian influence, have put the brakes on its efforts to win the
peace.
In the run-up to elections, Turkish government officials tend
to claim that Turkey and Iran will conduct a joint operation
against outlawed Kurdish militants along the border. When Turkey was
preparing for the general elections in June 24, 2018, Turkey's
Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu had announced that Turkey and
Iran were planning to launch joint operations on the Qandil
Mountains, where the headquarters of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers
Party (PKK) is located.
The visit of Iranian President
Hassan Rouhani to Baghdad this week - his first since he took office
six years ago - comes amid heavy pressure on the Iraqis exerted by
the Tehran regime, which wants to use Iraq as an escape route away
from American sanctions. Given these pressures and threats, do we
have to worry that Iraq will become an Iranian satellite? Tehran
succeeded in entering the Iraqi arena following the fall of Saddam
Hussein's regime.
GULF STATES, YEMEN & IRAN
The Iran-backed Houthi militias in Yemen attacked on
Tuesday the government team of the Redeployment Coordination
Committee in Yemen's Hodeidah city, reported the Saudi Press Agency.
The militants fired a Katyusha rocket at the gatherers of a meeting
that was preparing to carry out the first phase of the redeployment.
A prominent Yemeni Baha'i leader is expected to appear
in a Houthi court on Tuesday, amid international concerns of rebel
persecution against the religious minority group. Hamed bin Haydara,
52, who has been in Houthi detention in Sanaa since 2013, was
sentenced to death by a Houthi court for charges of espionage and
apostasy. UN human rights representatives have called for the rebels
to overturn his death sentence.
IRAQ & IRAN
In the contest for Iraq's
loyalty, geography is proving irresistible. Baghdad is being urged to
take sides in the U.S.-Iran confrontation that's escalated into one
of the Middle East's top flash-points. President Donald Trump is
pushing Iraq to stop buying natural gas and electricity from its
neighbor. President Hassan Rouhani wants it to purchase more
to ease the pain imposed by American sanctions. So far,
Rouhani's winning.
OTHER FOREIGN AFFAIRS
Iran's foreign ministry warned
the UK on Tuesday that giving diplomatic protection to a
British-Iranian mother jailed in Tehran would not make the situation
"easier", state news agency IRNA reported. Britain on
Friday extended the status to Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who was
arrested in Tehran in 2016. "What is certain is that the British
government's move lacks goodwill and is in no way constructive or
positive," said ministry spokesman Bahram Ghasemi on Tuesday.
The absence of a deal and the dynamics of the February
North Korea-US summit in Vietnam showed the importance of stopping
Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons, INSS Arms Control Director Emily
Landau has said. In a recent INSS post she co-authored with former
senior foreign ministry official Shimon Stein, Landau wrote that,
"For the international community the lesson is clear: Iran must
be stopped before it reaches its goal."
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