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TOP STORIES
U.S. Central Command is requesting
additional defensive capabilities that could lead to as many as
5,000 to 10,000 additional troops being sent to the Middle East
to deter Iran, a U.S. official told ABC News. There will be a meeting
at the White House on Thursday where the Central Command request will be
considered, according to two U.S. officials, who stressed that it
is unclear which portions of the CENTCOM request could be
approved at this White House meeting.
Iran has made a dramatic shift in how it confronts the
United States, abandoning a policy of restraint in recent weeks for a
series of offensive actions aimed at pushing the White House to rethink
its efforts at isolating Tehran, say diplomats and analysts. With the
Trump administration tightening economic sanctions and intensifying
military pressure, Iran is now seeking to highlight the costs it could
also impose on the United States - for instance, by disrupting the
world's oil supply - without taking actions likely to trigger an all-out
war.
Islamic Republic's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has openly
shrugged off responsibility for the nuclear agreement Iran concluded with
world powers in 2015. Khamenei, who was speaking to hand-picked
representatives of Iranian students on Wednesday, May 22, expressed his
dissatisfaction with the way President Hassan Rouhani and his team
handled the nuclear deal also known as JCPOA.
NUCLEAR DEAL & NUCLEAR PROGRAM
As tensions with the U.S. mount, Iran's supreme leader has
said the country's president and foreign minister didn't act as he wished
in implementing the 2015 nuclear deal with world powers. The comments
Wednesday night, posted on Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's official website, are
the first time he's blamed both President Hassan Rouhani and Foreign
Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif by name in his concerns about the deal.
A senior German diplomat is in Tehran to press Iran to
continue to respect the landmark nuclear deal, despite the unilateral
withdrawal of the US and increasing pressure from Washington. The Foreign
Ministry says Political Director Jens Ploetner is meeting with Iran's
Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi on Thursday. The visit comes amid
mounting tensions in the region.
SANCTIONS, BUSINESS RISKS, & OTHER ECONOMIC NEWS
Ankara stopped importing oil from Iran at the beginning of
May out of "respect" for American sanctions despite disagreeing
with them, a Turkish official said on Wednesday. "As a strategic
ally" of the United States, "we respect" the sanctions,
said the official, who asked to remain anonymous, during Turkish Deputy
Minister of Foreign Affairs Yavuz Selim Kiran's visit to Washington.
Since pulling out of the landmark Iran nuclear deal a year ago, President
Donald Trump's administration has hit Iran with severe sanctions
prohibiting the export of Iranian oil, as well as targeting countries
that continue to purchase it.
MISSILE PROGRAM
Deterring regional adversaries from threatening Iran is the
primary reason Tehran has amassed the largest ballistic missile
force in the Middle East. The missile program actually began under
the Shah, but it was accelerated during the Iran-Iraq War in order to
threaten Saddam Hussein with strikes deep in Iraqi territory. Since then,
Iran has worked with countries like Libya, North Korea and China in order
to develop a large and diverse arsenal of ballistic and cruise missiles
that form one part of its three-leg deterrent strategy.
TERRORISM & EXTREMISM
The Washington Institute released an interactive map
showcasing Iran's growing influence in the Middle East by detailing the
whereabouts, operations and force deployments of Iran-backed militias in
the region. The American think tank said that the information and sources
used to create the map was compiled mainly from primary source data,
including contacts within militia circles and social media analysis
collected for nearly ten years.
PROTESTS & HUMAN RIGHTS
A female singer in Iran has been summoned to appear in court
after performing solo in public, according to media reports. Negar
Moazzam sang for a group of tourists in the historic village of Abyaneh
last week, wearing the traditional costume of that part of Isfahan
Province, until local Cultural Heritage Organisation staff cut short her
performance, Fars news agency reports.
U.S.-IRAN RELATIONS & NEGOTIATIONS
In its campaign to throttle Iran into submission, the Trump
administration has in the last several weeks applied smothering force -
blocking the country's last avenues for selling
oil, classifying the elite Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps
as a terrorist organization and deploying ships and bombers to
the Persian Gulf. But if the goal of increased pressure was to force Iran
to change its behavior or to send angry Iranians into the streets to
ultimately sweep the nation's clerical leadership from power, it has so
far achieved neither.
Rising tensions between the United States and Iran prompted
some Democratic and Republican lawmakers on Wednesday to call for the
repeal of a law that presidents have used for two decades to justify U.S.
military action around the world. Representative Barbara Lee, a
Democrat, and Thomas Massie, a Republican, held a news conference with
other members of the House of Representatives to call for the repeal of
the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF), passed days
after the Sept. 11 attacks on New York on Washington.
The United States and its supporters do not dare attack Iran
because of its "spirit of resistance", a senior Revolutionary
Guards commander was quoted on Wednesday as saying. Tensions have
spiked between Iran and the United States after Washington sent more
military forces to the Middle East, including an aircraft carrier, B-52
bombers and Patriot missiles, in a show of force against what U.S.
officials say are Iranian threats to its troops and interests in the
region.
Iran's youth will witness the demise of Israel and American
civilization, Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on
Wednesday in comments published on his official website. "You
young people should be assured that you will witness the demise of the
enemies of humanity, meaning the degenerate American civilization, and
the demise of Israel," Khamenei said in a meeting with
students. He gave no further details.
There has always been a fair and symmetrical formula for the
United States and Iran to resolve the full range of their differences:
full normalization for full normalization. Donald Trump, who may
- but probably doesn't - want a war with the Islamic republic,
should propose it, publicly and in detail, and see what happens. It will
be clarifying for everyone. What is normalization? From the U.S. side, it
would mean the immediate suspension of every economic and diplomatic
sanction imposed by this or previous administrations.
The Senate has struggled to pass a long-stalled Syria
sanctions bill since 2016, even as the House has unanimously passed the
largely noncontroversial legislation several times. The Senate Foreign
Relations Committee finally advanced the Caesar Syria Civilian
Protection Act by a 20-2 vote today. But first, lawmakers had to vote
down an amendment barring the Donald Trump administration from attacking
Iran.
MILITARY/INTELLIGENCE MATTERS & PROXY WARS
In yet another milestone on Tehran's path to becoming a
self-sustaining regional power, Iranian state
news announced the Iranian Navy has commissioned its first
homemade submarine. The new Fateh-class vessel was unveiled by Iranian
President Hassan Rouhani late last week, at a ceremony held at the Bandar
Abbas naval base.
IRANIAN INTERNAL DEVELOPMENTS
The spokesman of Iran's hardliner-dominated Guardian
Council, Abbasali Kadkhodaei has criticized President Hassan Rouhani for
complaining about his "limited powers." Kadkhodai tweeted that
"Iranian Presidents have always had extensive powers," adding
that "even more authority has been vested in the president in this
presidential term in view of the country's situation." The hardliner
spokesman of the Guardian Council then asked Rouhani "Have you used
these extensive powers to solve the country's problems?"
As the United States and Iran have traded threats these past
weeks and inched closer to the brink of a military confrontation, Iranian
hard-liners have identified a new "political plot" by an
"enemy" who is "trying different ways to create anxiety
among the people," Education Minister Mohammad Bathaei warned.
Bathaei was not speaking about the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike
group or a bomber task force dispatched to the region earlier in May.
RUSSIA, SYRIA, ISRAEL, HEZBOLLAH, LEBANON & IRAN
This week, United Nations Special Coordinator for Lebanon
Jan Kubis wrote that he met with Hezbollah's Deputy Secretary-General
Naim Qassem. In shocking and concerning comments, Kubis also said that he
was grateful to the Hezbollah leader for "substantive" comments
and for giving him a copy of his book. The UN coordinator said the book
was "necessary reading."
GULF STATES, YEMEN & IRAN
Yemen's Iran-backed Houthi group said today it had carried
out another drone attack on Najran airport in south-western Saudi Arabia
near the Yemeni border. "Houthis' Qasef K2 combat drones hit Saudi
Arabia's Najran Regional Airport for the second time in 24 hours," a
military source told the group's Lebanon-based Al-Masirah. The source
added that the airstrike was targeting a hanger at the airport containing
warplanes.
The Iran-backed Houthis intend to expand attacks on Saudi
Arabia to "no fewer than 300 military and other vital targets in
Saudi Arabia" and are "capable of reducing Saudi oil exports to
zero," wrote Sa'dollah Zarei in an editorial in Iran's Kayhan
newspaper, according to MEMRI. Hossein Shariatmadari, the hard-line
editor-in-chief of Kayhan, also serves as the representative of the
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khameni, according to the New York Times.
IRAQ & IRAN
The Iranian Customs Administration closed Soumar border
crossing in Western Iran on Tuesday May 21, bringing export of Iranian
goods to Iraq to a halt, Mehr news agency reported. A statement issued by
the Iranian Customs Administration orders transportation companies
"To stop sending export goods to the Soumar border until further
notice." The Iranian Customs Administration has issued the statement
reportedly after a huge backlog was built up at the border with Iraq.
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