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TOP STORIES
When Iran's president on Saturday compared the country's
economic distress under hardening American sanctions to the miseries
Iran endured during its worst war, it was a signal that Iranians are
suffering deeply under the Trump administration's tightening
financial chokehold. But in his address to political activists,
President Hassan Rouhani also seemed to send a second signal: Iran
has no intention of capitulating. He appeared to throw cold water on
White House hopes that it can push Iran back into a room to
renegotiate a nuclear deal.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has changed the schedule
for his latest trip to Europe, substituting a stop in Brussels for
one in Moscow to discuss Iran and other issues with European
officials. A State Department official says Pompeo, who departed
Sunday night, is still expected to meet Tuesday in Sochi with Russian
President Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. The
official isn't authorized to discuss the itinerary by name and
requested anonymity.
Saudi Arabia said two of its oil tankers were attacked
while sailing toward the Persian Gulf, adding to regional tensions as
the U.S. increases pressure on Iran. The Saudi tankers were damaged
in "a sabotage attack" off the United Arab Emirates coast
on Sunday, state-run Saudi Press Agency reported. The vessels were
approaching the Strait of Hormuz, the world's most important
chokepoint for oil shipments. The U.A.E. foreign ministry on Sunday
reported an attack on four commercial ships near its territorial
waters.
UANI IN THE NEWS
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani is calling for unity
and says that his country is facing 'unprecedented' pressure as the
U.S. continues to ratchet up sanctions. Tehran said last week it will
no longer comply with portions of the negotiated nuclear agreement,
an agreement which the U.S. left last year, while several European
countries remain committed to the deal. Iran's threat to no longer
comply is widely seen as an ultimatum meant to pressure European
countries to convince Washington to back off of increased sanctions
demands. European countries have indicated they will reject any
ultimatums.
Since the Islamic Revolution of 1979, Iran has been
ruled by a hardline theocratic leadership motivated by the concept of
"exporting the Islamic revolution". To this end, Iran has
dedicated an entire arm of its military to supporting terrorism. It
is called the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or IRGC. Given the
fact that the international media too often ignores the destructive
role of Iran and the IRGC in the region, it's important to ask: What
would the Middle East look like without the IRGC?
NUCLEAR DEAL & NUCLEAR PROGRAM
The European Union fully supports the international
nuclear accord with Iran and wants rival powers to avoid any further
escalation over the issue, EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini
said on Monday. "We will continue to support it as much as
we can with all our instruments and all our political will,"
Mogherini told reporters before a meeting with the foreign ministers
of Britain, France and Germany, who are signatories to the
deal.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian has described
Tehran's threat to resume nuclear work -- in what would be a
contravention of its commitments under the 2015 Iran nuclear deal --
as a "bad reaction", calling on Tehran to show
"political maturity". "Iran has had a bad reaction,
faced with a bad US decision to withdraw from the Vienna agreements
and impose sanctions," Le Drian said in an interview published
online by Le Parisien, referring to the 2015 deal signed in Vienna.
...For Iran, the pressure phase looks nowhere near over;
just this week, the United States dispatched an aircraft carrier
and other military assets to the region and imposed yet
another round of sanctions, as Trump has done repeatedly since pulling
out of what he called the "disastrous" nuclear deal a year
ago. But Trump also said this week that he wished the Iranians
would call him, and his administration has frequently held out
the prospect of negotiations-perhaps a lot like the ones with Kim.
SANCTIONS, BUSINESS RISKS, & OTHER ECONOMIC
NEWS
Saudi Arabia's stock market fell on Sunday, in line with
most Gulf markets, after the U.S. Pentagon approved the deployment of
a warship and Patriot missiles to the Middle East. The Tadawul
All-Share Index was down 1.8 percent to 8,699 points, its lowest
level since the end of March. The benchmark is down almost 7 percent
this month. "The increased military tension between the
U.S. and Iran are pressuring markets down," said Mohammed Ali
Yasin, chief strategy officer at Al Dhabi Capital in Abu Dhabi.
Farzaneh Sharafbafi, the first-ever female CEO of Iran
Air, has just lost her job, a victim of U.S. sanctions on the Islamic
Republic. Appointed in July 2017, Sharafbafi's tenure was dogged by
failures beyond her control. Of the 200 aircraft Iran ordered from
Boeing, Airbus, and ATR, only 21 were delivered before the U.S.
Treasury revoked the relevant licenses as part of the Trump
administration's "maximum pressure" campaign on Iran.
A top aide to Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei says EU
has two months to prevent the demise of the nuclear deal with Iran by
operationalizing the European financial channel INSTEX set up to help
Iran. Chairman of Iran's Strategic Council of Foreign Relations
(SCFR) Kamal Kharrazi delivered the message while currently visiting
France.
An Iranian trade official has insisted that complying
with international financial transparency rules has nothing to do
with Europe's efforts to facilitate trade with Iran. The UK, Germany
and France have established the Instrument for Trade and Exchanges
(INSTEX) in a bid to satisfy Iran's demands for trade despite U.S.
sanctions. Iran in turn has set up a matching channel called Special
Trade and Finance Instrument (STFI).
A senior Iranian official has been criticised after
bemoaning the cost of more than three million Afghan refugees living
in the country, claiming US sanctions are making it hard to support
them. Iran's Deputy Foreign Minister Seyyed Abbas Araghchi said that
displaced Afghans are taking up the country's jobs, school places and
clogging up its healthcare system, in an interview with Irna, a
state-linked news agency, on Saturday.
TERRORISM & EXTREMISM
It is a common misconception that since Iran's
theocratic establishment is Shiite, it will not cooperate with
non-Shiite terrorist groups and militias. For example, some policy
analysts, scholars and politicians continue to promote the argument
that Tehran and Al-Qaeda are not natural allies due to their
religious differences. Analyses that view the Iranian regime solely
through the prism of religion are extremely simplistic.
PROTESTS & HUMAN RIGHTS
Iran said on Monday it had sentenced an Iranian woman to
10 years prison for spying for Britain, as tension rises between
Tehran and some Western countries over its nuclear and missile
programs. "An Iranian who was in charge of Iran desk in
the British Council and was cooperating with Britain's intelligence
agency... was sentenced to 10 years in prison after clear
confessions," Gholamhossein Esmaili, a judiciary spokesman, said
on the state television.
Iran's parliament struck a blow for women's rights by
overwhelmingly voting to confer citizenship on children born to an
Iranian mother and foreign father. Currently, children of "mixed
marriages" are only eligible for citizenship if their Iranian
parent is a man. If the decision is approved by the Guardian Council,
a powerful body of senior clerics and judges, then the offspring of
mixed marriages would be eligible for citizenship, regardless of
whether their mother or father is the Iranian national.
Iranian authorities shut down a reformist magazine that
had urged negotiations with the United States, local media reported
Sunday. The weekly magazine Seda was handed a suspension order
Saturday by a court in Tehran, the reformist newspaper Arman reported.
Seda's most recent front page had shown a U.S. aircraft carrier fleet
and the caption "At the crossroads between war and peace."
U.S.-IRAN RELATIONS & NEGOTIATIONS
Iranian officials rebuffed President Donald Trump's
suggestion that they call him to try to defuse frictions as the U.S.
ratcheted up its actions against Tehran. Several top Iranian
aides and lawmakers predicted Sunday that the current tensions
wouldn't lead to war, calling the U.S. deployment of an aircraft
carrier, warship, bomber jets and missile defenses to the Middle East
a propaganda stunt. Antagonism between the countries, already high,
has worsened this month since Trump eliminated exceptions to U.S.
sanctions on Iranian oil.
President Hassan Rouhani called on Saturday for unity
among Iran's political factions to overcome conditions which he said
may be harder than those during the 1980s war with Iraq, state media
reported, as the country faces tightening U.S. sanctions. U.S. President
Donald Trump on Thursday urged Iran's leaders talk with him about
giving up their nuclear program and said he could not rule out a
military confrontation.
Britain warned Monday that conflict might break out
"by accident" between the United States and Iran amid
rising tensions, as European Union powers gathered to thrash out ways
to keep afloat the nuclear deal with the Islamic Republic. The
warning came after the United States announced the deployment of the
USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier strike group to the Persian Gulf
to counter an alleged but still-unspecified threat from Iran, the
latest in a long line of such deployments to the strategic region.
A U.S. aircraft carrier strike group rushes toward the
Persian Gulf. Decades-old B-52 bombers rumble down runways at desert
air bases. The Pentagon, meanwhile, routes a Patriot missile battery
and an amphibious supply ship to return to the region. These military
deployments in the Persian Gulf, beginning with a sudden May 5 order
from the White House citing still-unspecified threats from Iran,
comes as Tehran has begun setting its own deadlines over its
unraveling nuclear deal that President Donald Trump pulled America of
out of a year ago.
Iran is an active threat to American interests as
it sows chaos in the Middle East, but the White House would
"of course" welcome the opportunity to negotiate with
Tehran, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Saturday. Speaking
with CNBC's Hadley Gamble, America's top diplomat said he's seeing
increased threats from Iran, and that President Donald
Trump'sadministration is reinforcing its capacity to respond to any
offensive action from Iran.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani last week threatened to
resume uranium enrichment unless the European signatories of the 2015
Iran nuclear deal resumed trade with his country in violation of
United States sanctions. This came one year to the day
after President Trump withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal,
formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, and the
decades old Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Weapons.
MILITARY/INTELLIGENCE MATTERS & PROXY WARS
A senior Iranian Revolutionary Guards commander said on
Sunday the U.S. military presence in the Gulf used to be a serious
threat but now represents a target, the Iranian Students' News Agency
(ISNA) reported. The U.S. military has sent forces, including
an aircraft carrier and B-52 bombers, to the Middle East in a move
that U.S. officials said was made to counter "clear
indications" of threats from Iran to American forces in the
region.
The US government has approved the deployment
of a Patriot missile defence battery and another warship to the
Middle East amid increasing tensions between the US and Iran. The USS
Arlington, which transports marines, amphibious vehicles, and rotary
aircraft, will join the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group,
which already passed through Egypt's Suez Canal on Thursday, and
is currently sailing in the Red Sea, according to CNN.
Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) rejected
negotiations with Washington and denied the likelihood of a US
attack. This came a day after President Donald Trump urged Iran's
leaders to hold talks on giving up their nuclear program, adding that
he couldn't rule out a military confrontation. "No talks will be
held with the Americans, and the Americans will not dare take military
action against us," Yadollah Javani, the IRGC's deputy head for
political affairs, was quoted as saying by Tasnim news agency on
Friday.
Would Iran close the Strait of Hormuz, could it, and
would the United States reply by force of arms if Tehran made the
attempt? Maybe, maybe, and yes. There is precedent: it assailed
merchant and naval shipping during the "Tanker War" of the
1980s. Then, it was attacking the export earnings of its archfoe
Iraq. The United States, the mullahs' Great Satan, isn't nearly so
dependent as was Saddam Hussein's Iraq on merchantmen plying the
Persian Gulf.
IRANIAN INTERNAL DEVELOPMENTS
Iran's president, Hassan Rouhani, has called for
unity among political factions to overcome conditions that he said
may be harder than those during the 1980s war with Iraq, state media
reported, as the country faces tightening US sanctions. Donald Trump
on Thursday urged Iran's leaders to talk with him about giving
up their nuclear programme and said he could not rule out a military
confrontation.
Iranian authorities have launched an investigation into
"disturbing" social media videos
of schoolgirls dancing to a pop song. Education
minister Mohammad Bathaei said a team of specialists had been
appointed to trace the source of the videos, featuring the music of
US-Iranian rapper Sasy. "The enemy is trying different ways to
create anxiety among the people including by spreading these
disturbing videos," he said.
RUSSIA, SYRIA, ISRAEL, HEZBOLLAH, LEBANON & IRAN
An Israeli cabinet minister warned on Sunday of possible
direct or proxy Iranian attacks on Israel should the stand-off
between Tehran and Washington escalate. The United States has
increased economic and military pressure on Iran, with President
Donald Trump on Thursday urging its leaders to talk to him about
giving up their nuclear program and saying he could not rule out an
armed confrontation.
Files leaked to the New York Times from Venezuela's
security services apparently confirm Hezbollah's presence in the
country and its ties to one of embattled President Nicolas Maduro's
closest confidantes. Venezuelan Industry Minister Tareck El Aissami
has been investigated for his alleged ties to the country's criminal
underworld and Hezbollah, which is thought to have expanded its
presence in the Triple Frontier area of Argentina, Brazil and
Paraguay to include operations within Venezuela.
Syrian security officers hung Muhannad Ghabbash from his
wrists for hours, beat him bloody, shocked him with electricity and
stuck a gun in his mouth. Mr. Ghabbash, a law student from Aleppo,
repeatedly confessed his actual offense: organizing peaceful
antigovernment protests. But the torture continued for 12 days, until
he wrote a fictional confession to planning a bombing.
IRAQ & IRAN
The National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) decided May
4 to open an economic representative office in Iraq. The
decision was made during a meeting bringing together executives at
Iraq's Oil Ministry and Iranian oil industry equipment producers, on
the sidelines of the Iran Oil Show 2019. Ramin Gholampour
Dezfouli, NIOC's director for support, construction and goods
supply, said only Iranian companies approved by the
NIOC will be able to partake in Iraqi Oil Ministry projects.
Few in Iraq's oil capital, Basra, look forward to the
fetid humidity of summer, when temperatures can soar to 55C. But for
Adel Abdul Mahdi, Iraqi prime minister, the coming months will be
especially nerve-racking, as his government races to prevent a repeat
of protests over electricity blackouts that brought Basra to its
knees last year. But to do this, he requires the help of neighbouring
Iran.
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