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TOP STORIES
Iran will not negotiate with the United States over its
nuclear and missile programs, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei
said on Wednesday, after President Hassan Rouhani signalled talks
with Washington might be possible if sanctions were lifted.
Washington withdrew last year from an international nuclear deal
signed with Tehran in 2015, and it is ratcheting up sanctions in
efforts to shut down Iran's economy by ending its international sales
of crude oil.
A U.S. conclusion that Iran was behind recent strikes on
oil tankers has reignited concern about Iran's ability to wage
guerrilla warfare in one of the world's most vital waterways. The
U.S. believes Iran used mines to strike four tankers in the Gulf of
Oman this month, White House national security adviser John Bolton
said Wednesday, without providing more details. Iran called Mr.
Bolton's allegations "laughable." Both sides say they don't
want war.
The Trump administration escalated its battle with
European allies over the fate of the Iran nuclear accord, threatening
penalties against the financial body created by Germany, the U.K. and
France to shield trade with the Islamic Republic from U.S. sanctions.
Sigal Mandelker, the Treasury Department's undersecretary for
terrorism and financial intelligence, signaled in a May 7 letter
obtained by Bloomberg that Instex, the European vehicle to sustain
trade with Tehran, and anyone associated with it could be barred from
the U.S. financial system if it goes into effect.
UANI IN THE NEWS
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's Supreme Leader, has long
maintained that the U.S. will never be satisfied with Iranian
concessions until the Islamic Republic itself is conceded. This view
informs the long-standing position of Iranian officials that they will
not negotiate with the U.S. under pressure. Unsurprisingly, the
Iranian response to the recent intensification of the Trump
administration's "maximum pressure" campaign has been to
test and expose the limits of American resolve, by triggering a
series of sabotage and proxy attacks, against oil tankers--two Saudi,
one Emirati and one Norwegian-and oil pumping stations in Saudi
Arabia.
SANCTIONS, BUSINESS RISKS, & OTHER ECONOMIC
NEWS
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has not made a
decision on extending a 90-day U.S. waiver exempting Iraq from
sanctions to buy energy from Iran, a State Department spokeswoman
said on Wednesday. The State Department said on March 20 it
would allow Iraq to keep purchasing electricity from its neighbor
Iran for another 90 days without imposing sanctions, but urged
Baghdad to find alternative sources of energy. "The
secretary has not made a decision on this," spokeswoman Morgan
Ortagus told reporters.
Hong Kong dismissed U.S. warnings that it could face
penalties if it it does business with an oil tanker headed for the
city that allegedly violated sanctions on Iran. The city's government
has "strictly" implemented United Nations Security Council
sanctions, which don't impose "any restrictions on the export of
petroleum from Iran," a spokesperson for Hong Kong's Commerce
and Economic Development Bureau said on Wednesday in response to a
question about the U.S. warning.
Various industry sources and news agency reports say
that Iran's oil exports in May have mostly stopped, with a maximum of
400 barrels per day (bpd) being shipped to unknown Asian
destinations. Reuters news agency says Iranian crude exports have
fallen sharply in May to around 400,000 (bpd), according to tanker
data and two industry sources. Bloomberg says no tanker
departures from Iran's export terminals have been observed.
U.S.-IRAN RELATIONS & NEGOTIATIONS
U.S. allies, looking to buck American control over
international trade, are developing alternate systems that don't rely
on U.S. currency. The catalyst was the Trump administration's
decision last year to reimpose trade sanctions on Iran after pulling
out of the 2015 nuclear-weapons deal. The U.K., Germany and France
didn't support the sanctions, which include a ban on dollar
transactions with Iranian banks. So they are fine-tuning a system to
enable companies to trade with Iran without using dollars.
Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei says his
country will not negotiate on issues related to its military
capabilities. During a meeting with university professors on
Wednesday, Khamenei said "Negotiations on defensive issues means
that we give up our defensive capabilities." He said negotiating
with the U.S. would bring nothing but harm. Khamenei also said Iran
is not looking to acquire nuclear weapons "not because of the
sanctions or America," but because nuclear weapons are forbidden
under Islamic Sharia law.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo heads to Europe on
Thursday to meet with officials from two governments that maintain
close ties with Iran, just days after President Trump suggested he
would welcome negotiations with Tehran over its nuclear program.
Pompeo's itinerary includes three days in Switzerland, an unusually
long time for him to spend in any one country.
Iran will not negotiate over its nuclear and missile
programs with the United States, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali
Khamenei said on Wednesday, after President Hassan Rouhani signaled
talks with Washington might be possible if sanctions were
lifted. Khamenei was quoted as saying on his website: "We
said before that we will not negotiate with America, because
negotiation has no benefit and carries harm."
Iran's powerful Revolutionary Guards said on Wednesday
that Washington's long-awaited Israeli-Palestinian peace plan was
doomed to fail and that the Palestinian resistance movement would
respond firmly to those who proposed such deal. U.S. President
Donald Trump has touted the plan as the "deal of the
century" but Palestinian officials have already spurned it,
believing it will be heavily biased in favor of Israel.
John Bolton, President Trump's national security
adviser, accused Iran on Wednesday of directly carrying out attacks
this month on four ships in the Persian Gulf, ratcheting up
pressure on Tehran while administration officials said they hope to
avoid war. The new accusation represented the latest in a steadily
escalating series of U.S. moves to counter Iran, although Mr. Bolton
said Wednesday that it wouldn't be met by a U.S. military response.
Donald Trump's phone rings in the middle of the night.
"It's the Iranians," he says, jolting upright in bed in his
underwear. But it isn't Tehran on the other end of the line, only a
salesman shilling hair-loss treatments. This scene, conjured by an
Iranian animator after the U.S. president urged the Islamic Republic
to "call me," has gone viral, capturing the
derision many Iranians feel for the U.S. president who's trying to
bring their country to heel.
The top general in the U.S. military on Wednesday said
that he viewed recent threats from Iran that precipitated U.S.
deployments to the region as different because they were "more
of a campaign" than previous threats. "What's not new are
threat streams. What was new was a pattern of threat streams that
extended from Yemen, so threats emanating from Yemen, threats in the
Gulf and threats in Iraq," Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Gen. Joseph Dunford said...
Over the past few weeks, the Trump administration has
turned up the heat on Tehran. Way up. As part of a "maximum
pressure" campaign aimed at curbing the malign international
activities of Iran's ruling regime, the White House has dramatically
intensified sanctions, blacklisted the country's clerical army, and
put foreign buyers of Iranian crude on notice that they need to pull
out of the Iranian market or face potentially catastrophic
consequences.
While tensions between
the U.S. and Iran have intensified this month,
the Trump administration does not seek war with Tehran, acting U.S.
Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan said Wednesday. "When the
president says he doesn't want a war with Iran, I think that is
pretty clear," Shanahan told reporters traveling with him to
Indonesia. "I don't think anyone wants a war with Iran," he
added, saying that the U.S. had credible intelligence Tehran was
preparing for an attack.
Amid heightened tensions and fears of conflict, the
U.S. and Iran both said Wednesday that they are open to
talks, but only on their own terms - seeming to rule out the
possibility unless the other side changed. The slight opening to
diplomacy was a welcome step over the threats of military action that
has raised concern for weeks now, but statements on both sides show
just how far apart they remain.
Striking a hawkish tone, Republican Senator Tom Cotton
of Arkansas strongly supported President Donald Trump's buildup of
U.S. troops last week in the Middle East. "The reason why
we've deployed additional troops and resources ... to the Middle East
is not to take action against Iran. It's to deter Iran from taking
action against us, and, if necessary, to retaliate if provoked,"
Sen. Cotton said on Wednesday's Powerhouse
Politics podcast.
In repeating his readiness to pursue a new nuclear
dealwith Iran, President Trump this week left unmentioned his
administration's aim to hobble what officials call Tehran's
"expansionist foreign policy" - an ambitious priority that
is far more likely to lead the United States into war. The expansive,
open-ended mission of wrestling with Iran's diplomacy and military
activity could prompt armed conflict well before any
showdown over a nuclear program, according to lawmakers, former
government officials and analysts.
IRANIAN INTERNAL DEVELOPMENTS
Iranian activists have called the early release of Vida
Movahedi a "huge victory" for women in the Islamic Republic
after the protester was arrested in March for her opposition to
compulsory hijab laws. Omid Memarian, Deputy Director at the Center
for Human Rights in Iran, told Newsweek that Movahedi, like
the African American civil rights figure Rosa Parks, had reset the
expectation for what was acceptable in Iran with her protest.
RUSSIA, SYRIA, ISRAEL, HEZBOLLAH, LEBANON & IRAN
The European Union called on Wednesday for a ceasefire
in Syria's Idlib province and said Russia, Turkey, Iran and the
Syrian government must protect civilians under siege. At least
180,000 people have fled an surge in violence in the province in
northwest Syria, the last major stronghold of rebels who have fought
against President Bashar al-Assad's government since 2011. Government
bombing has killed dozens in the past three weeks.
Six months after the Israeli military declared an end to
Operation Northern Shield, the IDF has begun destroying the final and
largest cross-border tunnel dug by Hezbollah into Israeli territory.
The tunnel began in the Lebanese village of Ramiyeh and stretched one
kilometer before infiltrating several meters into northern Israel,
close to the communities of Zarit and Shtula.
CHINA & IRAN
An oil tanker belonging to China's state-owned Bank of
Kunlun departed on May 16 from the Soroush oil terminal off
the coast of Iran. Laden with 2 million barrels of crude, Pacific
Bravo is now reportedly heading eastward, with China being the
likely destination. If the oil is indeed offloaded in the Asian
powerhouse, it would be the first time a country has openly purchased
Iranian oil since the Donald Trump administration last month revoked
sanctions waivers extended to eight nations.
GULF STATES, YEMEN, & IRAN
Iran sabotages ships in the Persian Gulf and threatens
to resume enrichment of uranium for its nuclear program. Russia
dispatches troops to beleaguered dictator Nicolás Maduro of
Venezuela, while China sends logistical support. China resists a trade
truce with the U.S. and seeks to drive a wedge between the U.S. and
allies like Jordan and Saudi Arabia by selling them armed drones.
Russia sends bombers and fighters into Alaska's Air Defense
Identification Zone. Iran, Russia and China all work tirelessly to
keep Syrian dictator Bashar Assad in power.
On May 14, Iran-aligned Houthi rebels in Yemen launched
multiple drone strikes against Saudi Arabia's oil facilities. These
drone strikes targeted a major oil pipeline located just west of
Riyadh and sparked fears of an escalation of tensions in the Persian
Gulf, where just two days earlier two Saudi oil tankers were
sabotaged off the coast of Fujairah in the United Arab Emirates, near
the Strait of Hormuz.
The U.S. sent additional troops directed to the Middle
East to Saudi Arabia and Qatar as America's standoff with Iran shows
few signs of abating, Acting Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan
said. "I don't see a change in any behavior," Shanahan told
reporters Wednesday en route to Indonesia, when asked about Iran. "The
situation still remains tense. It is a high-threat environment."
Saudi Arabia's foreign minister on Thursday urged Muslim
nations to confront recent attacks in the region that the U.S. and
its allies have blamed on Iran with "all means of force and
firmness." Ibrahim al-Assaf made the comments at a meeting of
foreign ministers of the 57-nation Organization of Islamic
Cooperation ahead of a series of summits in the kingdom beginning
Thursday.
It took the threat of war with Iran to force Gulf Arab
rivals into a show of unity. Qatar said that Prime Minister Sheikh
Abdullah Bin Nasser Al Thani will attend regional summits in Saudi
Arabia on Thursday, in the highest-level visit since the kingdom and
its allies imposed an embargo on their neighbor in 2017. The visit,
the first concrete step toward ending a rift that severed diplomatic
and trade ties, comes amid fears the region may be sliding into
conflict as the U.S. raises economic and military pressure on
Iran.
Iran's foreign ministry spokesman on Wednesday dismissed
remarks by U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton that Iranian
naval mines were likely used in attacks on oil tankers off the coast
of the United Arab Emirates this month. Abbas Mousavi was
quoted as saying by Fars news agency: "Raising this ludicrous
claim in a meeting of those with a long history of anti-Iran policies
is not strange... Iran's strategic patience, vigilance and defensive
prowess will defuse mischievous plots made by Bolton and other
warmongers."
CYBERWARFARE
A U.S. cybersecurity company says a recently discovered
pro-Iran social media network that engaged in deceptive targeting of
Americans is more sophisticated than a similar campaign it identified
last year. In a report published Tuesday, California-based FireEye
said it recently uncovered a network of English-language social media
accounts that engaged in "inauthentic behavior and
misrepresentation" in support of "Iranian political
interests." It said it made the determination about the
network's support of Iranian political interests with "low
confidence."
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