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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".
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