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TOP STORIES
Iran's top leader struck a belligerent tone Tuesday in
an escalating confrontation with the West, promising further Iranian
violations of the fraying nuclear agreement and retaliation for what
he called the piracy of an Iranian tanker by "the vicious British."
The defiance expressed by the top leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei,
contrasted with what seemed like a less confrontational stance taken
at the White House.
Federal prosecutors in New York have charged three
Iranians with illegally exporting "many tons" of carbon
fiber, a controlled material with military and nuclear uses, to
Iran. Geoffrey S. Berman, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of
New York, announced the charges Tuesday following the successful
extradition of one of the three, Behzad Pourghannad, from Germany on
Monday. The other two defendants, Ali Reza Shokri and Farzin
Faridmanesh, remain at large, according to federal authorities.
Iran on Tuesday said its ballistic missile program was
not up for negotiation after U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told
a White House cabinet meeting that Iran had signaled it was prepared
to negotiate about it. "Iran's missiles ... are absolutely
and under no condition negotiable with anyone or any country,
period," Alireza Miryousefi, spokesman for the Iranian mission
at the United Nations, wrote on Twitter.
UANI IN THE NEWS
A leading advocacy group on Iran has called on the UK to
re-evaluate its stance on Tehran, and further pressure the country
after its increasingly aggressive behaviour. In the past few weeks,
there have been attacks on commercial vessels in the Gulf of Oman and
an attempted attack on an oil tanker in the Strait of Hormuz,
prevented by the presence of a British Royal Navy
frigate. "Iran's manoeuvres in recent weeks make plain the cost
of the UK and EU's middle-course" on the nuclear deal signed by
world powers and Iran, said David Ibsen, president of United Against
Nuclear Iran. "The seizure of an Iranian supertanker by British
Royal Marines off Gibraltar, apparently destined for Syria and Bashar
Al Assad's murderous regime, only underlines the price of
appeasement."
NUCLEAR DEAL & NUCLEAR PROGRAM
Iran said it has detained a French-Iranian scholar on
unspecified charges, complicating French President Emmanuel Macron's
efforts to salvage the 2015 nuclear deal and defuse tensions in the
Middle East. Iran's judiciary confirmed Tuesday the arrest of Fariba
Adelkhah, one of France's leading experts on Iran and the author of
several related books, a day after Mr. Macron raised the issue with
Tehran and demanded access to the prisoner.
Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei on
Tuesday said the Islamic Republic
will continue to pull back from its commitments in the 2015 nuclear
deal because the European powers that remain in the deal have been
shirking their obligations.
SANCTIONS, BUSINESS RISKS, & OTHER ECONOMIC
NEWS
Oil eked out a gain, after its biggest loss in two
weeks, as the Trump Administration rekindled fears about global
demand with a threat of new China tariffs and signaled a possible
easing of tensions with Iran. Futures edged higher in New York after
tumbling 3.3% on Tuesday. President Donald
Trump reiterated that he could impose additional duties on
Beijing if he wants after agreeing to a trade-war truce with his
counterpart Xi Jinping last month, while Secretary of State Mike Pompeo
said Iran indicated it would be open to talks if some
conditions were met.
Iran is ready to invest in the expansion of a South
Indian refinery, an Iranian official said in New Delhi on Tuesday, as
the country seeks new avenues of growth amid debilitating U.S.
sanctions. Iran has seen a massive drop in export earnings
which is eating into funds for social development. This has raised
questions that it might not invest in the expansion of a refinery in
South India where it already holds a minority stake.
Last November, the Trump administration reinstated
sanctions on Iran, mainly the ones that had been lifted under the
2015 nuclear deal, in order to batter Iran's economy, however,
according to official data, they have so far failed to lessen foreign
arrivals to the Islamic Republic. Although the sanctions together
with anti-Iran propaganda campaigns have decreased Western tourists
but the country has managed to compensate and even improve by doing
its best to attract more from neighboring states.
MISSILE PROGRAM
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Tuesday that Iran
appeared willing to negotiate over its missile program "for the
first time," in what he and President Trump presented as
evidence that sanctions and military pressure were working, less than
a month after the president halted a planned military strike
against Iran. But within hours of the statement to reporters,
delivered before a cabinet meeting at the White House, the idea was
shot down by Iran's foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, who was
in New York for a meeting at the United Nations.
Iran hit back at US President Donald Trump's
call for new nuclear negotiations that encompass its ballistic
missiles programme, accusing Washington of bringing the Middle
East to the brink of "explosion" by selling arms to
allies in the Gulf. Mohammad Javad Zarif, Iran's foreign
minister, made the comments in a wide-ranging interview that aired
on NBC News on Monday.
President Donald Trump has responded to Iran's top
diplomat raising the idea of talks about its missile program by
saying Iran cannot test ballistic missiles that are seen by the U.S.
as vehicles to carry nuclear bombs. Speaking to reporters
Tuesday at a White House Cabinet meeting, Trump said that in addition
to his belief that Iran must not develop a nuclear weapon, "they
can't be testing ballistic missiles, which right now under that agreement
[the 2015 Iran nuclear deal] ... they would be able to do."
PROTESTS & HUMAN RIGHTS
Jailed British-Iranian aid worker Nazanin
Zaghari-Ratcliffe has been transferred from prison to a hospital
psychiatric ward, the campaign group seeking to free her said on
Wednesday. Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a project manager with the
Thomson Reuters Foundation, was moved from Tehran's Evin prison to
the psychiatric ward of Imam Khomeini hospital in the capital, the
Free Nazanin Campaign, which is led by Zaghari-Ratcliffe's husband
Richard Ratcliffe, said in a statement.
Members of the Iranian diaspora are planning to protest
against the National Iranian American Council (NIAC) in Washington DC
on Friday, with the hashtag #ProtestAgainstNIAC gaining
traction as protesters accuse the council of lobbying on behalf of
the Iranian regime. Despite NIAC's claim to be a nonprofit and
nonpartisan organization, it has been repeatedly accused of lobbying
on behalf of the Iranian regime and against the interests of the
Iranian disapora in the US, whom it claims to represent.
U.S.-IRAN RELATIONS & NEGOTIATIONS
Iran and the United States sent mixed signals on Tuesday
about resolving their disputes as Iran's supreme leader threatened to
further breach the 2015 nuclear deal while the U.S. president cited
"a lot of progress." Tensions have risen since U.S.
President Donald Trump last year abandoned the major powers' nuclear
deal with Iran under which Tehran agreed to curtail its nuclear
program in return for the lifting of global sanctions crippling its
economy.
U.S. President Donald Trump said on Tuesday a lot of
progress had been made with Iran and that he was not looking for
regime change in Iran. Trump, who made the remarks at a Cabinet
meeting in the White House, did not give details about the progress,
but U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said at the meeting Iran had
said it was prepared to negotiate about its missile program.
Donald Trump's nominee to become the first permanent US
defence secretary in more than six months, has said that the US is
not seeking war with Iran and needed to "get back on
the diplomatic channel". Mark Esper, who is currently the army
secretary, also told the Senate armed services committee that
the Trump administration does not have congressional
authority to wage war on Iran on the basis of the mandate issued by
Congress in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.
Iran says remarks by the country's foreign
minister about Iran's missile program possibly being up for
negotiations with the US meant to challenge Washington's arms sales
policy to the region - and were not meant to indicate a readiness by
Tehran for any such talks. The Foreign Ministry's spokesman, Abbas
Mousavi, tweeted late on Tuesday that Mohammad Javad Zari's comments
"threw the ball into the US court while challenging America's
arm sales" to its Mideast allies.
The United States has tightly restricted the travel of
more than a dozen Iranian diplomats and their families living in New
York, according to a U.S. diplomatic note to sent to the Iran mission
to the United Nations and seen by Reuters on Tuesday. The diplomats
are subjected to the same rules imposed by the United States on
Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, who arrived on Sunday
amid heightened tensions between the two countries.
US President Donald Trump's pick to succeed Jim Mattis
as the Pentagon's permanent chief insisted Tuesday that passive
patrols of the Gulf were deterring Iranian attacks on tankers after
an uptick in tensions in the region in recent months. Army Secretary
Mark Esper said at a confirmation hearing Tuesday that the Trump
administration continues to pursue a 20-nation maritime coalition in
a ramped-up surveillance mission that would aim to "foreclose
the opportunity for any miscalculation and misunderstanding" by
passive patrolling in the Strait of Hormuz and Gulf of Oman "to
deter any provocative acts."
Iranian Kurdish opposition groups will meet with Iranian
government officials in Oslo for a third round of talks in August,
Al-Monitor has learned. The meetings, to be mediated by a
Norwegian organization devoted to conflict resolution, mark the
first time the Iranian regime has sat at the same table with multiple
Kurdish groups since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, and the first
time that it has met with any Kurdish party in the presence of
foreign facilitators.
Here's the most intriguing fact about
Iran's apparent seizure on Saturday of a small oil tanker
about 240 miles northwest of here: Thus far, it has brought only a
muted response from the United Arab Emirates, in whose waters the
vessel had been operating, and from the United States, which is
quietly organizing a multinational effort to protect shipping in the
Persian Gulf. If this were a boxing match, you'd say that the United
States is trying to let Iran punch itself out.
IRANIAN REGIONAL AGGRESSION
A small oil tanker from the United Arab Emirates
traveling through the Strait of Hormuz entered Iranian waters and
turned off its tracker three days ago, leading the U.S. to suspect
Iran seized the vessel amid heightened tensions in the region.
Iranian state media quoted its Foreign Ministry spokesman early
Wednesday as saying the Islamic Republic had aided a foreign oil
tanker with a malfunction, but the report didn't explain further.
Tracking data shows an oil tanker based in the United
Arab Emirates traveling through the Strait of Hormuz drifted off into
Iranian waters and stopped transmitting its location over two days
ago, raising concerns Tuesday about its status amid heightened
tensions between Iran and the U.S. Iran vowed on Tuesday, as
the world wondered where the tanker had gone, that the seizure of one
of its own crude oil tankers by British military forces earlier in
July would not go "without a response."
RUSSIA, SYRIA, ISRAEL, HEZBOLLAH, LEBANON & IRAN
During a trilateral meeting between the national
security advisers of Israel, the US and Russia in late June,
Jerusalem and Washington demanded that Moscow ensure the withdrawal
of Iran's forces from Lebanon and Iraq, as well as from Syria,
Channel 13 news reported Tuesday. The demand was seen as a condition
for US and Israeli support for a long-term arrangement to secure
peace in war-ravaged Syria.
Israel's military will provide anti-missile protection
to 20 strategic sites across the country as well as build additional
hardened aircraft hangers to protect against the threat posed by
Hezbollah's missile arsenal. According to a report in Jane's Defence
Weekly, the Israeli Air Force is looking to build an unspecified
number of strengthened aircraft hangars at a cost of $10 million in
an area of about 4,000 sq.m.
An Israeli NGO petitioned Gibraltar's top court Tuesday
to sell an impounded Iranian oil tanker to compensate parents of an
Israeli child allegedly killed by the Iran-backed Palestinian terror
group Hamas. Shurat Hadin, which wages legal battles worldwide on
behalf of terror victims, won a $178.5 million US court judgement
against Iran and Syria in 2017 over the death of an American infant
killed in an attack in Jerusalem.
GULF STATES, YEMEN & IRAN
The Saudi-led coalition fighting in Yemen intercepted
and downed three drones launched by the Iran-aligned Houthi movement
towards the southwestern Saudi cities of Jizan and Abha, state TV
reported on Tuesday. Earlier the Houthis' Al Masirah TV quoted a
Houthi military spokesman as saying the group had carried out drone
attacks targeting the King Khalid air base near the southwestern
Saudi city of Khamis Mushait and drone hangars at Jizan airport.
The Iranian Foreign Ministry has said that security
forces recently came to the aid of a foreign oil tanker in the Strait
of Hormuz, hours after reports that Iran might have seized a tanker
from the United Arab Emirates in the area. Abbas Mousavi, the Foreign
Ministry spokesman, said that Iranian forces had rushed to the aid of
an unidentified tanker that had sent a distress call after a
"technical glitch," according to reports Tuesday night from
the semiofficial Iranian news agency Press TV. He said that tugboats
had towed it toward Iranian waters for repairs.
OTHER FOREIGN AFFAIRS
Portugal's foreign minister says his country has
temporarily stopped granting visas to Iranians "for security
reasons." Foreign Minister Augusto Santos Silva told a
Portuguese parliament committee about the decision on Tuesday but
declined to elaborate on the rationale for it. He said he would
provide details privately to lawmakers on the committee. Portugal has
long had diplomatic relations with Iran, though trade and ties are
minor compared with other European Union countries.
Viewers have accused the BBC of undermining its
credibility after a Huffington Post report exposed a deal between the
BBC and Tehran in which the BBC agreed not to share reports from
inside Iran on its BBC Persian network. In exchange, the BBC was
granted access for a foreign correspondent to enter Tehran, but the
conditions of the deal have angered viewers.
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