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TOP STORIES
Britain on Thursday ruled out exchanging an Iranian
tanker detained by Gibraltar for a British-flagged tanker seized by
Iran in the Gulf. "We are not going to barter: if people
or nations have detained UK-flagged illegally then the rule of law
and rule of international law must be upheld," Foreign Secretary
Dominic Raab said while on a trip to Bangkok.
U.S. allies criticized Washington's decision to
impose sanctions on Iran's foreign minister and vowed to keep their
own diplomatic channels open, in the latest spat between the White
House and European countries over how to deal with Tehran.
Even as it has said it is willing to meet with Iran without
preconditions, the Trump administration on Wednesday blacklisted
Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif-freezing any assets he might
have in the U.S. and potentially restricting his travel across U.S.
borders.
Three women held in custody for "disrespecting
compulsory hijab," or the so-called Islamic dress code, have
been sentenced to a total of 55 years and six months. A
"Revolutionary Court" in the capital city of Tehran
delivered the verdict to Monireh Arabshahi, Yasamin Ariany, and
Mojgan Keshavarz who are behind bars in the notorious Qarchak prison.
Arabshahi and Ariany's legal counsel, Amir Raeesian, told Ensaf News
website August 1 that if the verdict is upheld, his clients would be
sentenced to ten years to serve, each.
NUCLEAR DEAL & NUCLEAR PROGRAM
U.S. President Donald Trump referring to his withdrawal
from the 2015 nuclear agreement has said Iran wants to negotiate a
deal "so badly". In a campaign rally speech in Cincinnati,
Ohio, Trump said it was to protect American security that he withdrew
from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or JCPOA, as the nuclear
accord is known. "Iran is a much different country than 2 ½
years ago when I took over. It was all over... Now...Now they just
want to negotiate a deal so badly", Trump told the audience
attending the rally.
President Hassan Rouhani said on Thursday Iranian
officials were ready for the worst as they tried to salvage their
nuclear deal with world powers, but he was sure they would eventually
prevail. "We have a hard battle ahead, but we shall surely
win," Rouhani said on live television. Iran faces an
uphill battle as U.S. sanctions reimposed after Washington withdrew
from the 2015 nuclear accord take a toll on the economy.
SANCTIONS, BUSINESS RISKS, & OTHER ECONOMIC
NEWS
Iranian officials reacted with unified irritation on
Thursday to the Trump administration's decision to sanction Iran's
foreign minister, calling the move petty and provocative - further
evidence, they said, of Washington's insincerity when it talks of
peace. The foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, an
American-educated diplomat who negotiated the 2015 nuclear deal that
President Trump rejected last year, is one of Iran's best-known
leaders and perhaps its most effective in making his country's case
to the West.
OPEC's output, already at the lowest since 2014, slid
again last month as U.S. sanctions took a further toll on exports
from Iran. Iran has been pumping the least crude since the mid-1980s
as the U.S. imposes penalties on any country or company that deals with
Tehran, part of President Donald Trump's campaign to pressure the
country over its nuclear program. Iranian production dropped by
70,000 barrels a day last month to 2.21 million a day, according to a
Bloomberg survey.
Iran's crude oil exports last month were either less
than two supertankers' worth, or as much as one of the giant vessels
every two days, depending on who has the most accurate data.
The huge discrepancy between industry experts and analysts on the true
volume of Iran's exports shows just how difficult it has become to
get accurate figures since the United States ended sanctions waivers
for the country's top eight buyers.
PROTESTS & HUMAN RIGHTS
An "Islamic Revolutionary Court" in Tehran has
upheld a thirty-year sentence against a prominent Iranian lawyer and
defender of human rights. A member of the Iranian Bar association and
defender of several political activists, Amirsalar Davoudi, was
initially sentenced to thirty years last June. He refused to appeal,
and the sentence was automatically upheld on Tuesday, July 30.
A Swedish-Iranian medical doctor and researcher who has
been in jail in Iran since 2916 on charges of "espionage"
with a death sentence, has been moved to an unidentified place, the
inmate's wife told Radio Farda on Thursday August 1. Ahmad Reza
Jalali (Djalali) was arrested by Iranian intelligence while visiting
Iran to attend a scientific conference at the invitation of the
University of Tehran in May 2016.
U.S.-IRAN RELATIONS & NEGOTIATIONS
With tensions rising with Iran, the United States and
Britain have been shopping for European support to bolster patrols in
the Persian Gulf around the Strait of Hormuz, a vital passage way for
global oil supplies. But so far the American requests for help to
escort shipping in the Gulf have been met with silence or rejection,
including a blunt "no" on Wednesday from Germany.
IRANIAN INTERNAL DEVELOPMENTS
The U.S. Department of Treasury's sanction against
Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif came at the worst of
times for him. The sanctions were announced on July 30, during a hard
week when Zarif received a lukewarm reply from Supreme Leader Ali
Khamenei to a letter in which he had complained about "insults
and slander" levelled at him by the state TV. All along the
previous month, a popular TV series aired on the network operating
under the aegis of Khamenei portrayed him for "passivity and
inaction," and not being firm enough against
"infiltrators" and "spies."
RUSSIA, SYRIA, ISRAEL, HEZBOLLAH, LEBANON & IRAN
Masan Nahas, head of the Iran - Syria Chamber of
Commerce says Iran has agreed to open three factories in Syria before
Eid al-Adha (August 12). Two of the factories are going to produce
skimmed milk and medicine for cancer, and the third, will be a car
manufacturing factory, Nahas told Al-Vatan newspaper. The development
coincides with the sharp decline in the output of Iranian factories
as a result of U.S. sanctions that have made procuring raw material
and spare parts impossible as observed by Iran's Industry Ministry.
Two airstrikes on Shiite militia targets took place in
Iraq last month. No country or organization has taken responsibility,
but there are strong reasons to think they were carried out by
Israel. If so, these would be the Jewish state's first air raids on
Iraq since the destruction of Saddam Hussein's Osirak nuclear reactor
in 1981. The first of the raids, on July 19, targeted a militia base
near the town of Amerli in Salah al-Din province, north of Baghdad.
The second, three days later, struck Camp Ashraf, a former U.S. military
base in Iraq's Diyala Province. Both the Ashraf and Amerli bases are
now controlled by the Badr Organization, a Shiite militia cum
political party, in apparent cooperation with Iran.
GULF STATES, YEMEN, & IRAN
Saudi Arabia's envoy to Yemen accused Iran of being
behind an attack on a military parade in Aden on Thursday that the
Iran-aligned Houthi movement has claimed responsibility for.
Envoy Mohammed bin Saeed Al Jabir, in a Twitter post, also blamed
Iran for a separate attack on a police station in the southern port
city, which no one has claimed yet. Yemen's Prime Minister Maeen
Abdulmalik Saeed, in separate tweets, said the attacks were
coordinated under "Iran's administration".
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