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TOP STORIES
Iran raised the stakes in its standoff with the U.S. and
Europe on Thursday, warning that if the 2015 nuclear agreement
unravels, it would follow the path of North Korea and quit a treaty
aimed at stopping the spread of nuclear weapons. The threat, voiced by
an Iranian official to reporters, marked the first time Tehran has
explicitly used its participation in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation
Treaty, or NPT, as leverage in its talks with European officials over
keeping its commitments in the separate 2015 deal.
Diplomats said Iran is on course to breach a threshold
in its nuclear agreement within days but U.S. President Donald Trump,
who has ratcheted up pressure on the Middle Eastern country, said
there was "absolutely no time pressure" on the
issue. The prospect that Tehran could soon violate its nuclear
commitments, a week after Trump called off air strikes on Iran at the
last minute, has created additional diplomatic urgency to find a way
out of the crisis.
Secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council
Ali Shamkhani has warned that Iran's retaliatory actions against U.S.
will target America's allies in the region, and around the world. He
also warned that U.S. sanctions imposed on the Islamic Republic's
Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, could lead to the
mobilization of people across the globe who "are in love with
the Islamic Revolution."
NUCLEAR DEAL & NUCLEAR PROGRAM
Iran's UN ambassador said Europe isn't acting with
enough urgency to stop his country from breaching terms of the 2015
nuclear deal. European Union members said Wednesday that Instex, a
payment vehicle intended to circumvent U.S. sanctions, was almost
ready, but Ambassador Majid Takht Ravanchi said that may not suffice.
"Personally, I don't think it will be enough," he told
reporters in New York on Thursday. "It took them more than a
year to put this in place, and it's still not operational. It's as if
you have a beautiful car, you enjoy looking at it, but there's no gas
inside. So all you can do is look."
An Iranian official says Iran's growing stocks of
enriched uranium don't violate the international accord aimed at
curbing its nuclear development. Amid growing tensions with the U.S.,
Iran is poised to push its low-enriched uranium stocks beyond a
300-kilogram limit that is part of the 2015 deal with world powers.
The Iranian official said Iran was 2.8 kilograms below the limit as
of Wednesday and another assessment won't be done until "after
the weekend."
President Donald Trump arrived at a gathering of world
leaders Thursday searching for support for a new deal to curtail an
increasingly aggressive Iran. He's not likely to find any. Not only
do other countries still support a 2015 nuclear pact, they're
skeptical Trump can strike a better agreement within the time
constraints of his fast-approaching reelection campaign, especially
after Iran recently proclaimed the end of diplomacy with the U.S.
Iran said Friday's meeting in Vienna between the
remaining signatories of the nuclear deal was the "last
chance" to save the accord after the U.S. withdrawal last year
and warned Tehran would not accept "artificial" solutions
to U.S. sanctions. Iran is threatening to exceed the maximum
amount of enriched uranium allowed it by the deal, in retaliation for
crippling U.S. economic sanctions imposed in the past year. It
is just days away from that limit, diplomats say, and going over it
could unravel the accord.
SANCTIONS, BUSINESS RISKS, & OTHER ECONOMIC
NEWS
European signatories to the Iran nuclear deal are
scrambling to get a barter-trade arrangement with Tehran up and
running this week, in an effort to persuade Tehran not to breach
limits on enrichment set out in the agreement. Iran has threatened to
break the limit on its stockpile of low-enrichment uranium as
early as Thursday. But it is considered likely to hold off until
after a meeting in Vienna on Friday with the remaining signatories:
Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the European Union.
With the U.S. already sanctioning almost 1,000 Iranian
entities, President Donald Trump had limited choices when he opted to
impose new penalties to punish Iran's downing of a U.S. Navy drone in
the Persian Gulf last week. In the event, he went big, directly
targeting Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, among other
officials. Through his position, Khamenei, 79, oversees extensive
holdings in Iran.
The U.S. policy of maximum economic pressure on Tehran
is working but the sanctions do not give Iran the right to breach its
nuclear commitments, a senior U.S. official said on Monday. U.S.
Special Representative on Iran Brian Hook was speaking in an
interview before a meeting with senior French, British and German
diplomats in Paris to convince them that the Trump administration's
policy of crippling sanctions was the best way to get Iran back to
the negotiating table.
Asia's crude oil imports from Iran fell in May to the
lowest in at least five years after China and India wound down
purchases amid U.S. sanctions, while Japan and South Korea halted
imports, data from government and trade sources showed on
Friday. Total imports from Asia's top four buyers came to
386,021 barrels per day (bpd) of Iranian crude in May, down 78.5%
from a year ago to the lowest monthly level since the data began to
be collected by Reuters in 2014.
U.S. Special Representative for Iran Brian Hook has said
the United States is denying Tehran up to $50 billion in oil revenue
exports as a result of sanctions imposed on Iran. Since the
imposition of U.S. sanctions on Iran in 2018, daily oil exports have
dropped from more than two million barrels a day to around 300,000.
U.S.-IRAN RELATIONS & NEGOTIATIONS
Acting Secretary of Defense Mark Esper urged North
Atlantic Treaty Organization allies on Thursday to join the U.S. in
countering what he called Iran's malign activities in the Persian
Gulf, in a first outing on the world stage for the former industry
executive-turned-Pentagon chief. Mr. Esper, who had been serving as
Army secretary until this week, presented a forceful case in
public remarks here for why all alliance nations should be concerned
about Iran, asking them to publicly denounce Tehran as well as take
part in initiatives to monitor and counter disruptive Iranian
actions.
Acting U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper said tensions
with Iran risk escalating "out of control" and urged the
Iranian regime to take up President Donald Trump's offer of
negotiations. Speaking in Brussels after his first meeting with
counterparts from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Esper also
stepped up a call for "like-minded" nations to team up to
protect shipping in the Persian Gulf area after recent attacks on oil
tankers that the U.S. has blamed on Iran.
The United States does not want a full-blown war with
Iran, although it still is seeking to build up international defenses
in the region just in case of a conflict, President Donald Trump's
special envoy to the country said Thursday. The big question is whether
other countries are ready to join with Washington. So far, Europe is
favoring diplomacy instead. Iran is poised to surpass a key uranium
stockpile threshold, threatening an accord it reached in 2015 with
world powers aimed at curbing its nuclear activity.
Acting U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper appealed to
NATO allies on Thursday to publicly denounce Iran's hostile actions
and consider participating in a still-evolving plan to better
safeguard strategic waterways around the Strait of
Hormuz. Esper, at NATO headquarters in his international debut
as Pentagon chief, also called for help moving tensions with Iran
from a military path - which included Iran's downing of a U.S. drone
last week and an aborted U.S. military response - to a diplomatic
one.
Acting U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper says he came
away with no firm commitments from NATO allies to participate in a
global effort to secure international waterways against Iran. He says
the U.S. will provide more details to allies next month on how the
Iranian threat has escalated and how they can work together to deter
further aggression. The U.S. has blamed Iran for recent attacks on
oil tankers near the Persian Gulf.
Iran's foreign minister said on Twitter on Thursday that
US President Donald Trump's view that a conflict with Iran would be a
"short war" was an illusion and that his threat of
"obliteration" amounted to threatening
"genocide." "'Obliteration'=genocide=war crime,"
Mohammad Javad Zarif said on Twitter "'Short war' with Iran is
an illusion."
Is the president of the United States bouncing off the
walls in different directions from one moment to the next when it
comes to Iran? That is how one Democratic senator, Tammy
Duckworth, describes his standard operating procedure. "It's
endangering our nation on national security," she tells me. To
be fair, Mr Trump did consult congressional leaders about whether to
take retaliatory strikes after Iran shot down that unmanned US drone
last week.
TERRORISM & EXTREMISM
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is not
listed in its entirety as a terrorist entity by the government of
Canada, despite its long record of support for acts of terror.
Instead, only the Qods Force, the armed wing of the IRGC, is listed
as a terrorist group. It is of grave concern to both the grassroots
Jewish and Iranian communities in Canada that only one segment of an
infamous state-sponsored terrorist army is recognized as a terrorist
group.
MILITARY/INTELLIGENCE MATTERS & PROXY WARS
The deputy commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard
Corps downplayed the risk of military conflict with the United
States. Speaking at a June 27 IRGC ceremony introducing new
commanders, Ali Fadavi said, "Despite the passing of 30
years since the end of the war [with Iraq] ... no one has dared
fire at us during this time." He added, "The military
strength of the Islamic Republic of Iran has resulted in America and
its allies not daring to fire one bullet at
us."
IRANIAN INTERNAL DEVELOPMENTS
Iranian authorities have seized about 1,000 bitcoin
mining machines in two abandoned factories, state television
reported, after warnings that the activity had led to a spike in
consumption of government-subsidized electricity. "Two of these
bitcoin farms have been identified, with a consumption of one
megawatt," Arash Navab, a power official in the central province
of Yazd, told the television.
CONGRESS & IRAN
The Senate is set to vote on a bill requiring President
Donald Trump to seek congressional approval for any military action
in Iran -- one of the few measures considered by the Republican-led
chamber to curtail his war-making ability. Senate Majority Leader
Mitch McConnell allowed the vote, but it wasn't easy to schedule. It
will begin early Friday morning for senators trying to head home for
the Independence Day recess, and it could stay open for much of the
day to allow the six senators running for president to fly back from
the Democratic debates in Miami.
Political unease over the White House's tough talk
against Iran is reviving questions about President Donald Trump's
ability to order military strikes without approval from Congress. The
Senate is heading toward a vote Friday on an amendment to a sweeping
Defense bill that would require congressional support before Trump
acts. It's not expected to pass. But lawmakers say Trump cannot
continue relying on the nearly two-decade old war authorizations
Congress approved in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.
RUSSIA, SYRIA, ISRAEL, HEZBOLLAH, LEBANON & IRAN
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday vowed to
continue to act against Iranian entrenchment in Syria, days after a
high-level trilateral meeting with the US and Russia. Netanyahu also
warned that an Israeli retreat from the Jordan Valley in the West
Bank would lead to war, speaking at a ceremony for pilots graduating
from the Israeli Air Force's 178th flight school training program.
"We will continue to act against Iran's attempt to establish
itself in Syria, with the air force having a central role,"
Netanyahu told the new pilots.
As Iran is the main party fueling Palestinian
resistance factions, questions are being raised regarding the stance
of these factions if a military confrontation were to break out
between Iran and the United States. What are the chances of such a
confrontation leading to a new clash between factions and Israel,
which is the key US ally against Iran in the Middle East?
After Iran downed a US drone June 20, the odds of a
US-Iran military confrontation peaked.
Kosovo has now included Hezbollah on its list of
terrorist organizations. The World Jewish Congress lauded the move as
a "principled step in the critical quest for international peace
and security." "The global community has been terrorized
for more than three decades by Hezbollah and its operatives, who have
executed their violent actions under the patronage of the Islamic
Republic of Iran across nearly every continent," declared World
Jewish Congress president Ronald S. Lauder in a statement on Thursday.
OTHER FOREIGN AFFAIRS
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said her summit meeting
with U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday would cover a wide range
of topics including trade, investments, West Africa, counter-terrorism
and Iran. Speaking to reporters ahead of the bilateral meeting
on the sidelines of the Group of 20 (G20) leaders' meeting in Osaka,
western Japan, Trump called Merkel a "great friend of mine"
and praised trade between the two countries.
Scott Morrison says Australia has not yet been
asked to take part in any military action in Iran but says any
request from the Trump administration will be considered
"seriously and on its merits". The US secretary of
state, Mike Pompeo, has asked Australia to toughen its stance on
Tehran and play a key role in a new "global coalition"
against the regime. Tensions between the US and Iran are at their
worst point since the White House pulled out of what the president
said was an "unfair" nuclear deal known as the joint
comprehensive plan of action in May last year.
CYBERWARFARE
A cyber attack on Iranian missile systems, claimed by
the US last week, would have had to exploit a flaw in the
heavily-guarded network, experts say. Citing US official sources,
American media last week reported that the Army Cyber Command had
crippled the Iranian Revolutionary Guard's air defence units that
shot down a sophisticated drone on June 20.
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