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TOP STORIES
Iran will break the uranium stockpile limit set by
Tehran's nuclear deal with world powers in the next 10 days, the
spokesman for the country's atomic agency said Monday while also warning
that Iran has the need for uranium enriched up to 20%, just a step
away from weapons-grade levels. The announcement indicated Iran's
determination to break from the landmark 2015 accord, which has
steadily unraveled since the Trump administration pulled America out
of the deal last year and re-imposed tough economic sanctions on
Iran, sending its economy into freefall.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Sunday that the
United States is "considering a full range of options"
regarding rising tensions with Iran, including military options, but
emphasized that President Donald Trump has said that he does not want
to go to war. "The United States is considering a full
range of options. We have briefed the President a couple of times,
we'll continue to keep him updated.
The country's top paramilitary force is maintaining
support for armed groups in the Middle East and finding new sources
of funding, defying U.S. efforts to curb its activities abroad as
tensions between Washington and Tehran soar following fresh attacks
in the Gulf of Oman. Iran's government has struggled to support an
economy under pressure from U.S. sanctions, but its elite defense
force has found new sources of revenue, including recently-signed
infrastructure contracts in Syria and Iraq as well as expanded
smuggling networks, according to advisers to the Guard and the U.S.
government.
UANI IN THE NEWS
Even supporters of Mr. Trump's tougher approach to Iran
acknowledge the credibility challenge. Mark Wallace, the executive
director of United Against Nuclear Iran and a strong critic of Mr.
Obama's nuclear agreement with Iran that Mr. Trump has since repudiated,
said the government needs to rely on its career professionals to
inform the public about Tehran's activities. "The one way of
doing that is place the burden of persuasion and validating the facts
on the military and intelligence community that at least is more
immune to the politically charged atmosphere that we live in,"
said Mr. Wallace, who was a diplomat at the United Nations under Mr.
Bush. "With Iran, I've been surprised actually that it's been
relatively depoliticized."
In the U.S. and Europe, much of the mainstream media has
swallowed a narrative about Donald Trump and Iran. While Iran is an
aggressive authoritarian state, the story goes, it is nonetheless a
victim of American belligerence. Tehran was adhering to the Joint
Comprehensive Plan of Action, negotiated by the Obama administration,
when the truculent Mr. Trump abruptly abandoned the accord. For more
than a year, according to the narrative, the mullahs have shown
patience by continuing to abide by the agreement, even with the
resurrection of punishing American sanctions.
UANI Senior Advisor Norman Roule: Well, I think we have
to separate this from the nuclear process in general. The United
States has undertaken a campaign for some time to roll Iran back in
the region. Doing so would sooner or later cause Iran to push back,
and they're doing so. We're watching this, look at how the attacks
too place on boats, ship attacks, Iran does this for several reasons.
First, it pays no price. Second, it's one of those things that you
could describe as attributable to Iran but Iran can deny
it.
NUCLEAR DEAL & NUCLEAR PROGRAM
A Morristown woman pleaded guilty Tuesday to conspiring
with an Iranian national to smuggle thousands of airplane components
- worth an estimated $2 million - to Iran. Joyce Eliabachus, also
known as Joyce Marie Gundran Manangan, 52, pleaded guilty
in Newark Federal Court to one count of conspiracy to violate the
International Emergency Economic Powers Act in connection with her
role in an international procurement network.
Iran announced plans on Monday to stop complying with
the landmark 2015 nuclear deal, which the United States withdrew
from last year, leaving the door open to an "unlimited
rise" in Iran's stockpile of enriched uranium amid escalating
tensions between the two nations. The announcement by Iran's Atomic
Energy Organization was the country's latest signal that it will
abandon the pact unless the other signatories to the deal help Iran
circumvent punishing United States economic sanctions imposed by
President Trump.
Iran said it would exceed limits on its stockpile of
enriched uranium in 10 days, jeopardizing European
efforts to save the international nuclear deal amid heightened
military tensions in the Persian Gulf. Iran will go above the cap set
in the 2015 nuclear deal for its stockpile of enriched uranium by
June 27 and would further increase its production in early July,
said Iran's atomic agency spokesman Behrouz Kamalvandi. He said
Tehran could reverse that step if European countries revive trade
with Iran and curtail the impact of U.S. sanctions.
Iran will announce further moves on Monday to scale back
compliance with an international nuclear pact that the United States
abandoned last year, the semi-official Tasnim news agency reported on
Sunday. "Iran's Atomic Energy Organisation tomorrow at the
Arak heavy water site will announce preparatory steps that have been
taken to further decrease Tehran's commitments under the deal,"
Tasnim said, without citing sources. The organization will
announce moves to increase stocks of enriched uranium and production
of heavy water at Arak, Tasnim reported.
Iran will continue scaling back compliance with a
nuclear deal unless other signatories to the pact show "positive
signals", the Iranian president said on Saturday as tensions
with the United States escalated over tanker attacks in the Gulf region. Iran
stopped complying in May with some commitments in the 2015 nuclear
deal that was agreed with global powers, after the United States
unilaterally withdrew from the accord in 2018 and ratcheted up
sanctions on Tehran.
The EU's second most senior diplomat affirmed the bloc's
support for the nuclear deal between world powers with Iran,
including via the use of a new payment system for barter-based trade
designed to circumvent U.S. sanctions. Helga Schmid, the secretary
general of European Union external action service, visited Tehran on
June 15. She helped negotiate the deal in 2015.
Iran is expected to announce a further retreat
from its commitments under the 2015 nuclear deal with world powers
today, according to the country's Tasnim news agency. The report says
Iran will likely begin increasing enriched uranium stocks and
producing heavy water at the Arak facility. Tehran stopped abiding by
some obligations of the deal last month.
SANCTIONS, BUSINESS RISKS, & OTHER ECONOMIC
NEWS
Two Iraqi officials say the United States has given Iraq
a new 90-day extension for an Iran sanctions waiver allowing Baghdad
to import electricity and natural gas from Tehran. An Iraqi official
told The Associated Press on Saturday that Baghdad was informed about
the waiver during a call the previous day between U.S. Secretary of
State Mike Pompeo and Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi. Another
official confirmed the waiver, saying it will start June 19.
The United States has allowed Iraq to import Iranian gas
for its power grid for another three months by extending a waiver to
sanctions - but insists that Baghdad seek alternative sources.
Iraq has had several extensions to the waiver first granted last year
after Washington reimposed sanctions on Tehran's oil sector
forbidding countries from purchasing Iranian energy. "An
additional 120-day waiver was granted to allow Iraq to continue to
pay for electricity imports from Iran," the U.S. State
Department said in an emailed statement.
Saudi Arabia called for swift action to secure Gulf
energy supplies and joined the United States in blaming Iran for
attacks on two oil tankers in a vital shipping route that have raised
fears of broader confrontation in the region. Thursday's tanker
attacks in the Gulf of Oman exacerbated the antagonistic fallout from
similar blasts in May that crippled four vessels. Washington, already
embroiled in a standoff with Iran over its nuclear program, has
blamed Tehran and Saudi Arabia's crown prince also accused Iran on
Saturday.
An Iranian government advisor has warned that if US
President Donald Trump does not "abandon" sanctions against
Iran, the world will be driven into an "unavoidable war."
"If American people really don't want to go to war with Iran,
the US president should abandon the current course of policy in
regard to sanctioning Iran. Otherwise, rising tensions automatically
will drive us to an unavoidable war, sooner or
later," tweeted Diako Hosseini, a senior analyst at
Tehran's Centre for Strategic Studies (CSS), on Friday.
PROTESTS & HUMAN RIGHTS
A British-Iranian woman who has been imprisoned in
Tehran has begun a new hunger strike to demand her freedom, her
husband said as he vowed to support her by fasting outside the
Iranian Embassy in London. The woman, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, was
a project manager with the Thomson Reuters Foundation when she was
arrested in April 2016 at a Tehran airport as she headed back to
Britain with her young daughter, Gabriella, after a family visit.
Efforts by hijab enforcers in Iran to oblige women to
observe a strict dress code have led to more incidents in public, as
citizens resent strangers admonishing them about their appearance.
Islamic Republic's religious laws allow any citizen to stop another
person who is not observing the proper dress code. But this vigilante
activism almost always impacts younger women who prefer the lightest
head-covering possible.
Iran's ambassador to the United Kingdom, Hamid
Baeidinejad, says the husband of a dual national, British-Iranian
woman jailed in Iran has blocked the doorway to the embassy. Nazanin
Zaghari-Ratcliffe's husband, Richard, spent Saturday night in a tent
near the embassy in Kensigton, London in solidarity with her wife who
went on hunger strike on the same day at Evin Prison in Tehran.
U.S.-IRAN RELATIONS & NEGOTIATIONS
As Iran and the United States face off in the Gulf of
Oman, the risk may not be just at sea, but in Tehran and Washington,
where both Iranian and American hard-liners are seizing on the moment
for political advantage. The attacks this week on two tankers in the
gulf, instantly attributed to Iran by Secretary of State Mike
Pompeo and then President Trump, emboldens the hard-liners in
both countries, each able to argue their longtime adversary is
itching for war.
One constant in President Trump's malleable foreign
policy has been his fierce criticism of Iran and what he described as
a weak and dangerous nuclear compact the United States and other
countries negotiated with Tehran. Threats and sanctions, and lots of them,
have been his go-to response, lately leavened with vague offers of
future negotiations. Trump's reaction to attacks on two commercial
tankers near the Strait of Hormuz on Thursday fits the pattern, but
it may also reveal the limits of his administration's strategy...
As more countries openly accuse Iran and its
Revolutionary Guards for the attacks on two oil tankers in the Gulf
of Oman, top Iranian officials, religious leaders and media mostly
keep a low profile. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and President Hassan
Rouhani have been conspicuously silent about the reports on IRGC's
involvement. Rouhani has mainly repeated the usual anti-Washington
rhetoric since the attacks.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has once again
blamed Iran for the recent attack on two oil tankers in the Gulf of
Oman but has reiterated Washington is not seeking war. It is
"unmistakable" that Iran was responsible for last week's
attacks on oil tankers Pompeo said in an interview on June 16.
"We don't want war," Pompeo told Fox News, but he added
that Washington would "take all the actions necessary,
diplomatic and otherwise," to guarantee free navigation through
the Strait of Hormuz.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe asked Iranian leaders
during his Tehran visit to release Americans detained by the country
at the request of US President Donald Trump, a Japanese government
source said Friday. At least four Americans, including a navy veteran
who has been sentenced to 10 years in prison, are being detained in
Iran. Abe is believed to have requested the releases during his talks
with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on Wednesday and Supreme Leader
Ali Khamenei on Thursday, the source said.
So, is America going to war? For the first time in over
15 years, perhaps, that's a very sensible question. The answer is:
likely not. At least not in the Middle East. Ships have been attacked
in the Strait of Hormuz. The Iranians have denied responsibility. The
Trump administration says it has videos proving otherwise.
I was at a conference Friday and ran into Ilan Goldenberg, formerly a
top aide to Secretary of State John Kerry (the guy who signed off on
the Iran nuclear deal, for better or worse) who now directs the
Middle East program at the Center for a New American Security.
IRANIAN INTERNAL DEVELOPMENTS
Iran's government has no plans to remove Oil Minister
Bijan Zanganeh from his post, a government spokesman said on Sunday,
according to the Iranian Students' News Agency (ISNA). A senior
Iranian lawmaker said last month he was gathering signatures in parliament
to support a motion to oust Zanganeh for his inability to counter
U.S. sanctions on Iran's oil sales.
Iran's Guardian Council said Saturday it sent a bill
that would allow Iranian mothers married to foreigners to confer
citizenship on their children back to parliament, citing
"security" concerns. In a statement on its website, the
council said it did not have an issue with the spirit of the bill,
but rather the absence of any clauses allowing authorities to address
"security" issues potentially arising from the activities
of foreign fathers.
GULF STATES, YEMEN, & IRAN
Yemen's Houthi movement launched fresh drone attacks
targeting Jizan and Abha airports in southern Saudi Arabia, the
group's Al-Masirah TV said on Saturday, adding the installations were
out of service. The Saudi-led coalition said in a statement that it
had intercepted and downed a Houthi drone targeting the southwestern
city of Abha. The Iran-aligned group said multiple drone strike
targeted control rooms at Jizan airport and a fuel station at Abha
airport.
The Houthi militia launched a large attack in Yemen on
Sunday, targeting sites controlled by the joint forces in Hodeidah as
a new escalation threatens the UN peace efforts in the port city. The
Houthis had attacked sites controlled by Al Amalikah Brigades in Kilo
16, east of the city, Arab Coalition spokesman Col Wathah Al Dubaish
told The National on Sunday. The rebels also attacked Al Amalikah
divisions in Al Fazah, in the south of Hodeidah, pushing towards the
coast to try to cut the main route linking the southern districts.
Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said in
remarks published Sunday that the kingdom will not hesitate to
confront Iranian threats to its security. He joined the U.S. in
accusing its bitter rival Iran of being behind the attacks on two oil
tankers traveling near the Strait of Hormuz, a vital trade route for
Arabian energy exports. Tensions in the Persian Gulf have escalated
since the U.S. sent an aircraft carrier strike group and other
military assets to the region in what it says is defensive posturing
against alleged Iranian threats.
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said Saudi Arabia would
"not hesitate" to defend its interests as Riyadh joined the
US in blaming Iran for last week's attacks on two oil tankers in the
Gulf. Prince Mohammed, the kingdom's de facto leader, said
Saudi Arabia did not want a conflict in the region, but his comments
were indicative of rising tensions in the oil-rich Gulf.
Mohammed bin Salman has spoken publicly for the
first time since a second attack on Saudi oil tankers in the Gulf of
Oman, blaming arch-rival Iran and vowing that Saudi Arabia
"won't hesitate to deal with any threat" to the kingdom's
interests. According to an interview for pan-Arab daily Asharq
al-Awsat, published on Sunday, the crown prince said: "We do not
want a war in the region ... But we won't hesitate to deal with any
threat to our people, our sovereignty, our territorial integrity and
our vital interests.
Saudi Arabia's crown prince blamed Iran for attacks on
two oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman and called on the international
community to take a "decisive stand" but said in an
interview published on Sunday that the kingdom does not want a war in
the region. Attacks on two oil tankers on Thursday, which the
United States also blamed on Iran, have raised fears of broader
confrontation in the region. Iran has denied any role in the strikes
south of the Strait of Hormuz, a vital shipping route and major
transit route for oil.
Houthi rebels in Yemen recently shot down a U.S.
government-operated drone with assistance from Iran, the U.S.
military said in a statement on Sunday. Lt. Col. Earl Brown, a
spokesman for the U.S. Central Command, said the altitude at which
the MQ-9 drone was shot down on June 6 marked "an improvement
over previous Houthi capability," a fact that led the military
to conclude the rebel group had help from Iran.
OTHER FOREIGN AFFAIRS
Iran on Saturday summoned the British ambassador to
Tehran after London blamed it for attacks on oil tankers in the Gulf
of Oman, the semi-official Students News Agency ISNA reported, a
claim denied by the British government. "During the meeting
with Iran's foreign ministry official, Iran strongly condemned the
unfounded allegations and criticized Britain's unacceptable stance
regarding the attacks in the Gulf of Oman," it said.
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