|
TOP STORIES
Hopes that Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe might be
released from a Tehran jail as part of a prisoner swap have suffered
a setback after the Iranian foreign minister appeared to retract the
proposal and the UK foreign secretary said he could not be party to
any deal that presumed she was guilty of spying. Mohammad Javad Zarif
specifically referred to Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a British-Iranian dual
national held in Iran since April 2016, in a speech in New York on
Wednesday in which he said he had the power to authorise her
release in return for the freeing of an Iranian woman held in
Australia.
South Korea will likely return to a familiar game plan
to replace Iranian oil it will no longer have access to after May now
that the United States intends to tighten sanctions on Iranian
exports. South Korea is the biggest buyer of Iranian condensate, an
ultra-light oil prized by the country's refiners as a raw material
for petrochemicals manufacturing. SK Incheon Petrochem Co Ltd,
Hyundai Oilbank Corp and Hanwha Total Petrochemical are set to once
again scan the world for alternative, but more expensive, condensate
supplies and snap up heavy naphtha oil products for their processing
units, known as splitters, industry sources and analysts said.
President Donald Trump will not succeed in forcing Iran
to capitulate to U.S. economic pressure because Tehran has a
"Ph.D. in sanctions busting," Iran's Foreign Minister Javad
Zarif said on Thursday. Speaking to reporters during a visit to New
York, Iran's top diplomat also said his country would not seek a
confrontation with the United States or try to cut off the
Strait of Hormuz unless Washington succeeded in imposing a total
economic blockade.
NUCLEAR DEAL &
NUCLEAR PROGRAM
The US maximum pressure campaign on Iran includes
sanctions to bring Iranian exports to zero, and designating the
Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a foreign terrorist
organization, but does not include prohibiting foreign companies from
working on Iran's civilian nuclear reactors under the terms of the
Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), or Iran nuclear deal.
Joe Biden's key foreign policy role as Barack Obama's vice president
and his record of support for Israel make him one of the candidates
best positioned to defend the nuclear deal with Iran as he enters the
2020 presidential race today. Unlike his rivals, the former chairman
of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee boasts a decades-long
relationship with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu,
potentially helping Biden to fend off Republican attacks against
his support for Obama's signature foreign policy effort.
Mahmoud Sadeghi, an Iranian Reformist parliamentarian,
has questioned the benefits of Iran staying in the Joint
Comprehensive Plan of Action, the nuclear deal between Iran and five
permanent members of the United Nations Security Council plus Germany
and the European Union, given the exit of the United States and
Europe's inability to provide the promised economic dividends under
the deal.
SANCTIONS,
BUSINESS RISKS, & OTHER ECONOMIC NEWS
There is an Iranian proverb that goes, "You
can tell a good year from its spring." Judging from the
massive damage caused by the recent floods in Iran, one has to
conclude that the new Iranian year (beginning March 21) will be
a bad one for the economy. The economic consequence of the recent
floods will include a minimum of $2.5 billion in direct
damages and even more in indirect losses.
Iran's foreign ministry has said that Tehran will not
allow any country to take away its share of the global oil market.
The United States, which sanctioned Iranian oil exports in November,
announced on April 22 that it will stop exemptions temporarily
extended to a handful of countries for buying limited amounts of oil
from Iran. Iran reacted harshly to the U.S. decision, since it will
take more than a billion dollars of export revenues away from the
battered Iranian economy.
While Washington fixates on the Mueller Report and the
hordes entering the 2020 presidential race, the Trump administration
is making a quiet, seismic shift in US foreign policy that will
outlast arguments over tweets and impeachment. Foreign policy requires
a combination of diplomacy, carrots and sticks - and sanctions, when
employed strategically, can be a pretty effective stick. The textbook
case is international financial pressure on South Africa that forced
an end to apartheid and free elections.
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, blasted new exemptions
reportedly granted by the administration to recent sanctions against
Iran. "These reports are deeply troubling," he said in
a statement on Thursday. "I hope they are mistaken.
"Any policy that includes significant exemptions and waivers is
less than maximum pressure, and leaves the Ayatollahs with access to
additional resources that they will use to undermine the security of
America and our allies, to build up their nuclear and ballistic
missile programs..."
MISSILE PROGRAM
Mehr news agency in Iran says Iran has "designed
and manufactured" three new types of missiles. According to
Mehr, the three air-launched missiles are Heydar, Qamar Bani Hashem,
and Dehlavieh. The missiles have been developed by the Iranian
Ministry of Defense in collaboration with the army's Helicopter Unit,
the report said. Mehr reported the range of these missiles as eight
kilometres, adding that they are capable of carrying searching
devices.
TERRORISM &
EXTREMISM
The newly appointed Commander of Iran's Revolutionary
Guard Corps Hossein Salami has called to expand the group's
operations against its "enemies", local media reported.
"The Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards has crossed
mountains and plains to end America's dominance in the eastern
Mediterranean, and reached the Red Sea, and turned the Islamic land
to land of jihad," he said. "We have to expand our
capabilities from the region to the world, so the enemy has no safe
point around the world," he added.
U.S.-IRAN
RELATIONS & NEGOTIATIONS
Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has
confirmed that he has received a letter from U.S. Special
Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs Robert C. O'Brien. During
his ongoing visit to New York, Zarif has repeatedly said that he did
not receive any response to his call for a prisoners swap with the
United States. He repeated once again on Thursday April 25 during a
meeting with reporters at the UN headquarters that he is willing to
discuss a prisoner exchange with America.
Iran's foreign minister said a small group of Middle
Eastern and U.S. officials is trying to steer President Trump into a
conflict with Tehran in the hope of undermining Iran's influence in
the region. Foreign Minister Javad Zarif insisted Thursday that Iran
wasn't seeking a military confrontation with Washington. He said he
didn't think President Trump was eager for a conflict either.
This week, Iran's foreign minister returned to the city
that he once called home, and he made his old neighbor, Donald Trump,
an offer that the president can't refuse. At the Asia Society on
Wednesday, Mohammad Javad Zarif - who worked in Iran's United Nations
mission for years and professes to feel most comfortable in New York
- made clear his readiness to complete a swap with the United
States for Americans held in Iran, in exchange for Iranians held
here.
IRANIAN INTERNAL
DEVELOPMENTS
Director-General of Intelligence Ministry's Office in
East Azarbaijan province, northwest Iran, says sixty individuals, who
had contacts with the dissident group Mojahedin Khalq Organizations
(MKO), have been arrested in the past year. The intelligence official
introduced as Qodtrat Diyalameh said on Wednesday, April 24, that the
MKO members taking advantage of the recent economic and social
problems in the country, expanded their activities during last
Iranian year (March 21, 2017-March 20, 2018). "MKO members were
looking for weapons and ammunition to disturb the security in the
province, before being captured," Diyalameh maintained. He also
said another fifty members of the MKO were also identified and
"restrained."
Iranian police are using text messaging to warn female
drivers and passengers who take off their hijab (scarves) or ignore
the Islamic dress code while driving or riding in cars. Hundreds of
women in the capital city of Tehran recently received phone text messages,
summoning them to the "Morality Police" station. After days
of uncertainty about the origin of the messages, finally police
announced the messages are official warnings.
RUSSIA, SYRIA,
ISRAEL, HEZBOLLAH, LEBANON & IRAN
Russian President Vladimir Putin says he will meet with
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Iranian President Hassan
Rohani at a summit in Russia during August. Putin made the
announcement to journalists in Beijing on April 26 after meeting with
Aliyev on the sidelines of China's so-called Belt and Road forum - an
initiative aimed at building trade and transportation infrastructure
that links China with South and Central Asia, Europe, and Africa.
Israel's raids and various military operations in Syria,
as well as the economic situation in Iran, prompted Tehran to give up
a large part of its plans and limit its objectives in Syria,
according to Israeli intelligence sources. The sources said that Iran
did not change its strategic objectives in the region, but it had to
"let go" of some of these objectives. At the same time,
Tehran increased its expectations in Iraq to overcome the decline of
its status in Syria.
"When I shot the woman," Yahya Haj
Hamed told investigators, "I saw there were three or four
children in the car, but I didn't fire in their direction. We got back
into our car and drove off." Yahya, a member of a Hamas terror
cell, had already "fired in the direction" of the woman's
husband, the children's father, "who was killed on the
spot." The killings in October 2015 of Eitam and Na'ama Henkin,
to avenge an arson attack on the home of a Palestinian family,
made headlines around the world.
GULF STATES, YEMEN, & IRAN
The United States urged Yemen's Iran-backed Houthi
militia to end the mistreatment of members of the Baha'i faith, as
Houthi court sentenced believer to death on "absurd"
allegations. The Baha'i community said that Hamed bin Haydara, who
has been detained since 2013, will face an appeal hearing on Tuesday
in the Houthi-controlled capital Sanaa. The US State Department said
it was "deeply concerned" that the Houthis have targeted
dozens of Baha'is and voiced alarm over accounts that Haydara has
endured "physical and psychological torture." "This
persistent pattern of vilification, oppression and mistreatment by
the Houthis of Baha'is in Yemen must end," State Department
spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus said in a statement.
OTHER FOREIGN AFFAIRS
Britain has rejected a prisoner-swap proposal by Iran's
foreign minister, calling it a "vile" diplomatic maneuver.
British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt on April 25 said "what is
unacceptable about what Iran is doing is that they are putting
innocent people in prison and using it as leverage." The
previous day, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif suggested
a swap between Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a British-Iranian citizen
who is in prison in Tehran after being convicted of sedition, and Negar
Ghodskani, an Iranian citizen being held in Australia on a U.S.
extradition warrant.
|
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment