Wednesday, May 1, 2019

Eye on Iran: U.S. Special Envoy To Brief UN Security Council On Iran Policy


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The U.S. special representative for Iran is traveling to the United Nations to update permanent members of the Security Council on U.S. policy toward Iran, as Washington looks to step up pressure on Tehran. The U.S. State Department said in a statement that Brian Hook would be in New York on April 30 and May 1 for the meetings. "He will underscore the importance of holding Iran accountable for its defiance of UN Security Council resolutions on the development and testing of ballistic missiles," the statement said.


Iran's economy is on the brink thanks to the Trump administration's sanctions, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Iran is in a deep recession, with inflation at roughly 40 percent, the organization said, marking the highest such level since 1980. The crisis is intensifying a chasm between President Hassan Rouhani's allies and those who oppose diplomatic exchanges with the U.S. government, the Financial Times noted.
  

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani signed a bill into law on Tuesday declaring all U.S. forces in the Middle East terrorists and calling the U.S. government a sponsor of terrorism. The bill was passed by parliament last week in retaliation for President Donald Trump's decision this month to designate Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards a foreign terrorist organization.

NUCLEAR DEAL & NUCLEAR PROGRAM


The 2015 nuclear deal is close to collapse after the U.S. tightened oil sanctions against Iran again last week, Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has said. "We have given diplomacy enough time but enough is enough," the minister, who was one of the architects of the deal, wrote in the Wednesday edition of the Etemad newspaper. He said the latest U.S. sanctions and the powerlessness of the other signatories to the deal to do anything about them had left Iran feeling hopeless.

SANCTIONS, BUSINESS RISKS, & OTHER ECONOMIC NEWS  


U.S. President Donald Trump's unexpected decision to ban all Iranian oil purchases after May 1 - ending exemptions for eight nations - came after hawkish economic and security advisors allayed the president's fears of an oil price hike, according to three sources familiar with the internal debate. The unprecedented move to fully sever Tehran's financial lifeline - finalized just days before the April 22 announcement - underscores the strong influence of hard-liners within Trump's inner circle. 


Iran's supreme leader, senior military commanders, top diplomat and the president have all in recent days attacked US sanctions imposed on Tehran. Battle-ready warships are patrolling the high-traffic Strait of Hormuz, with Iranian officials saying if they can't sell oil through the strait, no one will. Al Jazeera's Zein Basravi reports from the Strait of Hormuz near Iran's southern coast.


In the 40 years of Iran's Islamic Republic, 2019 is shaping up to be among the worst for an economy that's weathered wars, sanctions and oil slumps. Even before the U.S. decided to tighten oil sanctions against Iran last week, the rial currency had lost two-thirds of its value against the dollar, and the International Monetary Fund expected gross domestic product to shrink 6 percent.


Kuwait has announced its concern following Iran's threat to close the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow waterway that links the Persian Gulf with the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman. It is the main artery for the transport of oil from the Middle East. Adm. Alireza Tenksiri, commander of the naval forces of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, stated last week that Iran would close the waterway to all traffic if Tehran were prevented from using it.


Late last month, the Trump administration kicked its "maximum pressure" campaign against Iran into high gear when it announced that it would no longer provide waivers to countries like China, India and Japan to continue buying Iranian oil without facing sanctions. These countries and their respective companies now face the prospect of being excluded from the American market if they don't immediately stop buying Iranian crude.

PROTESTS & HUMAN RIGHTS


Iran secretly executed two teenagers last week, according to rights group Amnesty International, which criticized the country for its "utter disdain for international law and the rights of children." The 17-year-old cousins, Mehdi Sohrabifar and Amin Sedaghat, were executed on April 25 at a prison in the southern city of Shiraz "following an unfair trial," Amnesty said in a statement on Monday. The teens had been convicted on multiple rape charges.


The defense lawyer of two Iranian-American dual nationals sentenced to jail in Iran for "collaboration with a belligerent state," says he is going to demand their "conditional release". The announcement by the lawyer comes less than a week after Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif put forward the idea of a prisoners swap between Iran and the United States, and one day after Tehran's prosecutor allegedly "resigned."

U.S.-IRAN RELATIONS & NEGOTIATIONS
  

Iran criticized a U.S. plan to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said in Doha on Wednesday. "The U.S. is not in position to (..) start naming others as terror organizations and we reject by any attempt by the U.S. in this regard," he told reporters on a sideline of a conference. "The U.S. is supporting the biggest terrorist in the region, that is Israel."

Iran replaced the commander of its powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) less than two weeks after the United States designated it a "foreign terrorist organization." Given the wider global agenda advanced by the new IRGC commander, the replacement is a clear signal from Tehran that bowing to Washington's pressure is not an option. On April 22, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei appointed Hossein Salami as the IRGC's new chief, ending Mohammad Ali Jafari's tenure of over a decade.
  
MILITARY/INTELLIGENCE MATTERS & PROXY WARS


On April 21, Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) got a new leader: Brig. Gen. Hossein Salami, who replaces Maj. Gen. Mohammad Ali Jafari. The change of personnel was unexpected; Jafari's tenure, which started in 2007, had just been extended by three years in 2017. He will now preside over the Hazrat Baqiatollah al-Azam Cultural and Social Headquarters, an office for countering the so-called Western soft war against Iran.

IRANIAN INTERNAL DEVELOPMENTS


Massive crowds accompanied the April 29 funeral procession of Mostafa Ghasemi, a 46-year-old cleric who was shot and killed in broad daylight in the western Iranian city of Hamedan last week. Within 24 hours of the murder, security forces killed the alleged assailant in a gun battle, leaving behind unanswered questions as well as debates among Iranians. Responding to the murder, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei ordered law enforcement authorities to get tougher on the arms trade. 


The state-run Iranian Students News Agency ISNA reported an unusual rise in the price of bread in Iran on Tuesday April 30. However, the chairman of the trade union for traditional bakers has told the agency that the rise in the price of bread is "illegal." Bread has always been the cheapest essential food in Iran and usually heavily subsidised by the government to make sure that everyone gets the minimum ingredient for a cheap meal.

GULF STATES, YEMEN & IRAN 


Amnesty International called on Yemen's Houthi movement, which controls the capital Sanaa, to free 10 journalists held for nearly four years on what the rights group described as trumped-up spying charges. The Iran-aligned Houthi group ousted the internationally recognized Yemeni government from power in Sanaa in late 2014, prompting a Saudi-led Sunni Muslim military coalition to intervene in the war in 2015 to try to restore the government of Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi.

OTHER FOREIGN AFFAIRS    


Iran has reacted to the flare up of tensions and violence in Venezuela by reiterating its support for the embattled president Nicholas Maduro, but also calling for negotiations between the opposing sides. Earlier on Tuesday, opposition leader Juan Guaido called for a "final phase" to push out Maduro and called for the people and the military to support the constitution. Iran's foreign ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi said, "Unrest and chaos in no way can solve political differences in Venezuela".







Eye on Iran is a periodic news summary from United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) a program of the American Coalition Against Nuclear Iran, Inc., a tax-exempt organization under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. Eye on Iran is not intended as a comprehensive media clips summary but rather a selection of media elements with discreet analysis in a PDA friendly format. For more information please email press@uani.com.

United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) is a non-partisan, broad-based coalition that is united in a commitment to prevent Iran from fulfilling its ambition to become a regional super-power possessing nuclear weapons.  UANI is an issue-based coalition in which each coalition member will have its own interests as well as the collective goal of advancing an Iran free of nuclear weapons.

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