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TOP STORIES
If European countries do not meet their commitments
under a nuclear deal then Iran will "strongly" take more
steps to reduce its own obligations, a senior Iranian parliamentarian
said on Thursday, according to the semi-official Fars news
agency. U.S. President Donald Trump withdrew from the 2015 deal
last year and reimposed sanctions to pressure Iran to negotiate
further on its nuclear program as well as on its ballistic missiles
and regional policy.
Iran has called on Britain to release its seized oil
tanker and warned foreign powers to "leave the region
because Iran and other regional countries are capable of
securing the regional security". The Royal Marines seized
the tanker last week on suspicion it was breaking European
sanctions by taking oil to Syria. Iran's foreign ministry spokesman,
Abbas Mousavi, told the IRNA news agency: "This is a dangerous
game and has consequences ... The legal pretexts for the capture are
not valid ... The release of the tanker is in all countries'
interests."
President Trump's pick to become the military's
next top officer says Iran has raised
its "intensity of malign activity" since the U.S.
pulled out of a landmark 2015 nuclear deal. Army Chief of Staff
Gen. Mark Milley's comments Thursday come following the Islamic
Republic's harassment of a British oil tanker yesterday in the Strait
of Hormuz. Five Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps gunboats
tried to seize the vessel but backed off after a British warship
approached, a senior U.S. defense official told Fox News.
UANI IN THE NEWS
...While on July 7, Pompeo advocates further isolation
and sanctions, Russia and China are impediments to Tehran's
isolation. Per a report, by United Against Nuclear Iran. But it is
highly likely the workaround will be ineffective. Hence, China and
Russia may fill the vacuum created by EU retreat from Iran. UANI CEO
Ambassador Mark D. Wallace said, "By increasing their ties to
Iran, both Russia and China are revealing the shallowness of their
past commitments to fighting terrorism and controlling the spread of
nuclear weapons."
NUCLEAR DEAL & NUCLEAR PROGRAM
Saudi Arabia has called on the international community
to take a firm stand against Iran's nuclear program, stressing the
importance of stopping Iran's transgressions and breaches of
international agreements and treaties related to its nuclear program.
The Kingdom's statement came at a special session of the
International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA) Board of Governors
meeting in Vienna on Wednesday.
A special meeting of the Vienna-based International
Atomic Energy Agency Board of Governors wrapped up Wednesday
with no formal action on Iran's two recent violations of the 2015
nuclear agreement, known as the JCPOA. The meeting let both the U.S.
and Iran spell out their starkly different views, and came amid continuing
tensions: Iran has given Europe - which is attempting to get trade
going with Iran - a 60-day time frame to save the nuclear deal, and
President Trump threatened more sanctions even as the IAEA meeting
was taking place.
Iran was plainly looking to seize a British oil tanker
Wednesday - but HMS Montrose motored to the rescue. It's a sign
of Tehran's growing bellicosity - and not just over the 2015 nuclear
deal. The aborted hijacking was the work of several armed Revolutionary
Guard boats, who'd ordered the British Heritage to sail into Iranian
waters as it entered the Strait of Hormuz. Montrose, monitoring from
five miles away, intervened in time.
SANCTIONS, BUSINESS RISKS, & OTHER ECONOMIC
NEWS
The United States has decided not to impose sanctions on
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif for now, two sources
familiar with the matter said on Thursday, in a sign Washington may
be holding a door open for diplomacy. Treasury Secretary Steven
Mnuchin on June 24 had said Zarif would be blacklisted that week, an
unusual public stance because the United States typically does not
preview such decisions to keep its targets from moving assets out of
U.S. jurisdiction.
A British warship forced three Iranian boats to back off
after they sought to block a British tanker from passing through the
Strait of Hormuz, the Defense Ministry said on Thursday, in the
latest escalation of tensions between Tehran and the West.
"Contrary to international law, three Iranian vessels attempted
to impede the passage of a commercial vessel, British Heritage,
through the Strait of Hormuz," the British government said.
"We are concerned by this action and continue to urge the
Iranian authorities to de-escalate the situation in the region."
Iran's decision to ramp up uranium enrichment is
prompting debate over whether the U.S. should -- or even can --
invoke a threat that negotiators built into the 2015 nuclear
agreement but hoped would never be used: a "snapback" of
international sanctions. Although President Donald Trump withdrew
from the accord last year, the administration is being pressured by
some American hard-liners to invoke a mechanism that ultimately would
trigger a return to United Nations Security Council sanctions beyond
those the U.S. is already imposing unilaterally.
Senior administration officials now agree that China
defied U.S. sanctions when it imported more than a million barrels of
crude oil from Iran last month. But they are grappling with whether -
and how - to hit back, according to three U.S. officials. The State
Department had considered issuing a waiver allowing Chinese companies
to receive Iranian oil as payment in kind for their investment in an
Iranian oil field, but that idea has been abandoned.
Iran may have stood down from its hardline stance that
conditioned negotiations with the United States by Washington's
return to the nuclear deal it left in May 2018, before imposing hard
sanctions on Tehran. Although President Hassan Rouhani and Foreign
Minister Zarif have repeatedly said that Washington's return to the
nuclear deal, also called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action
(JCPOA), was Tehran's precondition for negotiating with the United
States, Tehran appears to have softened its stance recently.
Chief of the Joint Staff of the Iranian armed forces
says "Iran will not pay the cost for stopping the flow of drugs
to Europe if sanctions continue." According to Iranian State TV,
Mohammad Hossein Baqeri made the remark during a flag raising
ceremony in Mashhad in northeastern Iran on Thursday July 11. The
threat has been made several times before by other officials
including Iran's current and former police chiefs in an apparent
attempt to frighten Europeans and encourage them to persuade the U.S.
to reduce its pressure on Iran.
TERRORISM & EXTREMISM
Twenty five years ago this month, the
world watched in horror as rescuers in Buenos Aires picked through
the rubble of a Jewish community center, searching for survivors
of a suicide bombing that leveled the building, killing
85 people, including a five-year-old
boy, and wounding 300 more. Every year since, the
international community has mourned the loss of
life, holding rituals of remembrance and issuing
demands for accountability for the Iranian and
Hezbollah terrorists who organized the massacre.
Argentina's government is planning on designating the
Lebanese-based Hezbollah group as a terror organization for its role
in the terror attacks against the Israeli embassy and the AMIA Jewish
community center in Buenos Aires, Argentinian newspaper La Nacion
reported on Tuesday. "We are evaluating different possibilities.
One of them is to pass a decree," sources in the Ministry of
Security and the Financial Intelligence Unit told the newspaper. The
two entities have been tasked by President Mauricio Macri to find the
"most rapid" solution to achieve the goal of including the
Iranian-backed group in the list of terror organizations.
PROTESTS & HUMAN RIGHTS
Global rights defender Reporters Without Borders (RSF)
has expressed concern over three imprisoned Iranian journalists who
have been on hunger strike for weeks. The Paris-based international
organization says, photojournalist and blogger, Soheil Arabi has been
on hunger strike for more than twenty days, while two reporters
working for a student magazine, Ms. Sanaz Allahyari and Amir Hossein
Mohammadifar, have also gone on hunger strike since last week.
The Iranian Human Rights News Agency, HRANA, reported on
Wednesday July 10 that outspoken political activist Mohammad
Nourizad, has been jailed. Nourizad was one of the signatories of a
statement by 14 Iranian activists who called on Iran's Supreme Leader
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to resign in order to end the country's
political deadlock. Nourizad had said on Monday that he was going to
Tehran's Evin Prison, where he was summoned to offer explanations
about his visit to flood stricken areas in northern Iran in April.
U.S.-IRAN RELATIONS & NEGOTIATIONS
President Donald Trump spoke with Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu about Iran on Wednesday, the White House said, the
same day the U.S. president threatened to "substantially"
increase sanctions on Tehran to curb its nuclear activities.
Iran recently started enriching uranium beyond a limit established in
a 2015 nuclear agreement with world powers, a deal from which Trump
withdrew. Trump has since intensified economic sanctions on Tehran,
and tensions have escalated.
In the wake of months of tensions between the United
States and Iran, President Donald Trump's pick to serve as the
Pentagon's top military official downplayed the potential for
conflict with Tehran in his confirmation today. Gen. Mark Milley,
currently the Army's top officer, said in Senate testimony that
Iran's military activity in the Middle East has increased since
Trump opted to withdraw from the 2015 nuclear deal in May 2018...
The standoff in the Persian Gulf may seem like a battle
between Washington and Tehran. However, if the situation
worsens, U.S. allies are at risk of becoming a focal point in the
dispute. At worst, they could become collateral damage. On Thursday,
it was the Brits who found themselves in troubled waters as a
British tanker transited the Strait of Hormuz, a waterway used for
much of the world's oil shipments.
The British Heritage super tanker is owned by BP,
under a British flag, and on charter to an Anglo-Dutch company, so
it's unsurprising that the ship appeared to abandon suddenly its
plans over the weekend as it sailed within sight of Iran. Anger
in Iran had been growing over the seizure of one of its tankers
by British commandos off the coast of Gibraltar last week, and the
country's military had threatened some kind of retribution.
It's hardly a secret that European leaders
dislike Donald Trump. Over the past two years, the U.S.
President's divisive personal style, and his confrontational rhetoric
on everything from Europe's deficient defense
spending to bilateral trade, have severely strained
trans-Atlantic relations. And yet, on at least one issue - Iran -
European countries are slowly but surely drifting into alignment with
the White House, even if they are doing so grudgingly.
As key leaders in the United States government escalate
another conflict with threats of violence, we must find a creative
way to avoid another war and transform the conflict into an
opportunity for mutual growth. How can we do this? We can shift our
approach and reasoning to a just peace framework. This offers more
creative possibilities and potential for sustainable peace.
MILITARY/INTELLIGENCE MATTERS & PROXY WARS
Iran's armed forces present the most "formidable
conventional and unconventional" threat in the Persian Gulf as
the U.S. tries to press the Islamic Republic to end its nuclear
program, President Donald Trump's nominee to lead the Joint Chiefs of
Staff said. Despite rising tensions, the U.S. "does not want war
with Iran," General Mark Milley said in written responses to
lawmakers' questions for his hearing Thursday before the Senate Armed
Services Committee.
IRANIAN INTERNAL DEVELOPMENTS
Iran's housing sector is in a dire state, with prices
skyrocketing and sales plummeting across the country, especially in
metropolises. The government of President Hassan Rouhani and the
parliament have several major initiatives in the works, but do they
really stand a chance at turning the faltering sector around? When
President Donald Trump announced in May 2018 that the United States
was withdrawing from Iran's nuclear deal with world powers and
unilaterally imposing harsh economic sanctions, a currency crisis developed
in Iran that shot up inflation.
CHINA & IRAN
The Trump administration tends to view Iran in isolation
or as a Middle Eastern problem-a regional nemesis with nuclear
ambitions that threatens Israel and America's Arab allies. This is a
mistake. Iran sits at the critical cross section of the Middle East,
Central and South Asia, and the vital trade routes cutting across the
Asian continent. At the moment, though Donald Trump doesn't seem to
see it, the administration's Iran policy is reverberating across the
globe and helping China in particular, in part by hurting the U.S.'s
staunch ally, India.
OTHER FOREIGN AFFAIRS
Iran called on Britain on Friday to immediately release
an oil tanker that British Royal Marines seized last week on
suspicion it was breaking European sanctions by taking oil to Syria,
a foreign ministry spokesman told state news agency IRNA.
"This is a dangerous game and has consequences ... the legal pretexts
for the capture are not valid ... the release of the tanker is in all
countries' interest," the spokesman, Abbas Mousavi, said.
Iran has warned of reciprocal measures if the tanker is not released.
Britain is concerned about action by Iranian vessels to
stop a commercial oil tanker, Prime Minister Theresa May's spokesman
said on Thursday, calling for a de-escalation of tensions.
Earlier on Thursday, the British government said three Iranian vessels
tried to block the passage of a BP-operated tanker through the Strait
of Hormuz but withdrew after warnings from a British warship.
"We are concerned by this action and continue to urge the
Iranian authorities to de-escalate the situation in the region,"
the spokesman told reporters.
French President Emmanuel Macron's special envoy to
Tehran had brought a proposal to reduce tensions between Iran and the
United States, but Iran has accepted the proposal in its current
form, Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif told reporters on
Thursday July 11. Zarif made the remark one day after he held talks
with Macron's special envoy to Tehran, Emmanuel Bonne, on Wednesday.
On the same day, Bonne had also separately met Iran's security chief
Ali Shamkhani.
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