Eye on Iran: Deputy FM: US Marines' Detention Displays Iran's Power

Join UANI               Top Stories Fars (Iran): "Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araqchi said the IRGC seizure of two the US Navy boats and detention of the 10 US marines in the Persian Gulf indicates Iran's might and power. 'This shows Iran's internal power as we powerfully seized the military vessel of the world's big military power and then freed its personnel powerfully after ensuring of their unintentional entry into our territorial waters,' Araqchi said on Wednesday. 'This is a sign of our might,' he added. The IRGC seized two US Navy boats on Tuesday and detained them on Iran's Farsi Island in the Persian Gulf. Nine men and one woman arrived in Iran's territorial waters in the Persian Gulf illegally when they were captured by the IRGC Navy. Following the capture, two US and French aircraft carriers as well as their accompanying fleets and military choppers started maneuvering near Iranian waters. IRGC Navy Commander Rear Admiral Ali Fadavi blamed the US navy for its excited and unprofessional moves after Iran arrested the 10 US marines, warning that his forces' coast-to-sea missiles were awaiting orders to hit the American aircraft carrier deployed in the region." http://t.uani.com/1PvUprI AP: "Defense Secretary Ash Carter said Thursday it appears a navigational error caused the crews of two Navy boats to stray into Iranian waters in the Persian Gulf, where they were detained overnight by Iran and released. 'They obviously had misnavigated ... that's how they believe they ended up in this circumstance,' Carter said in an interview in Miami with Fusion network. 'They did not report this navigational error at the time. It may be that they were trying to sort it out at the time they encountered Iranian boats. ... We don't know that fully yet.' Carter later flew to Tampa to meet with leaders of U.S. Central Command, which oversees the U.S. military in the Middle East. At a news conference at Central Command headquarters, he declined to discuss the circumstances in more detail. He said it would be prudent to first finish debriefing all 10 returned sailors. Asked his view of the video released by Iranian media showing the Americans kneeling aboard their boats with their hands on the heads, Carter said, 'Obviously I don't like to see our people being detained by a foreign military.' He said this was the scene as depicted by Iranian media and that he wants to hear from the U.S. crews before commenting further. 'We need to give these guys the opportunity to tell us what was really going on.' ... The Navy has given no indication that the 10 were injured or mistreated or that the weapons or equipment aboard the boats were tampered with while in Iranian custody. Gen. Lloyd Austin, head of Central Command, said the equipment is being inventoried. 'For the most part ... the gear that we deployed with was largely there when we got the boats back. Whether or not there are singular pieces of equipment missing, we'll determine that once we've completed the inventory,' he said." http://t.uani.com/234zjLc Reuters: "Iran's crude oil exports are on target to hit a nine-month high in January as buyers prepare for the lifting of sanctions against the Middle Eastern country within days. Iran is on track to ship 1.10 million barrels a day (bpd) of crude excluding condensate this month, according to an industry source with knowledge of the OPEC member's tanker loading schedule. The preliminary number, 21 percent higher than December, is likely to add to worries over a global supply glut that pushed the oil prices to 12-year lows this week... Iran plans to load 495,000 bpd of crude bound for China, the biggest buyer of Iranian crude, according to the source. This is the highest amount since August. Iran is targeting loadings of 168,000 bpd this month to Indian refineries, down from about 203,000 bpd in December. Ships bound for Japan are set to lift 166,000 bpd this month, the most since February, after loading 132,000 bpd in December, the source said. South Korean-bound shipments are on track to be 161,000 bpd, unchanged from December. Taiwanese shipments are set to be 65,000 bpd, the first shipments since September, said the source. Iran will load 106,000 bpd in January for arrival in Turkey, unchanged from December. Iran is additionally seen storing more than 60,000 bpd of crude into its offshore storage this month, the source added. The figures don't include loadings for condensate, an ultra light form of crude that Iran also exports." http://t.uani.com/1nnD4L3 U.S.-Iran Relations Tasnim (Iran): "Chairman of the Iranian Parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Commission Alaeddin Boroujerdi said the IRGC's recent capture of US sailors who had trespassed Iran's southern territorial waters showed that the Persian Gulf's security is in Iran's control. In a message to the Commander of Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) Navy Rear Admiral Ali Fadavi, Boroujerdi said the 'brave' move by the Iranian forces in the Persian Gulf indicated that Iran controls the security of this sensitive region. It also showed that the United States cannot refuse to observe the rules of the game in this body of water, he added in the letter. The clear message that the move sent to regional countries was that the Islamic Republic of Iran feels responsible for the security of Persian Gulf, he stated. Boroujerdi further stressed that when Iranian forces show such a reaction to a superpower like the US, they (certain regional states) should be cautious not to make the same mistakes." http://t.uani.com/1PfUr6I Congressional Action AFP: "Congressional Republicans gathering for their annual winter retreat Thursday assailed the Obama administration for a lack of 'backbone' in dealing with Iran, warning that US weakness is destabilizing an already-volatile region... Speaking a day after a crisis was averted with Tehran's release of 10 US Navy sailors whose ships drifted into Iranian waters, House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Ed Royce said Washington was getting 'rolled' by the Islamic republic over the nuclear deal reached last year with world powers, and in the latest Gulf incident. Iran's navy also test-fired rockets near a US warship in December, two months after it provoked the West by launching a medium-range missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead. 'This is very destabilizing in the region,' Royce told reporters, accusing the administration of failing to tamp down the 'aggressive' posturing by Iran. 'Iran is on a roll, and the perception is that the... administration is getting rolled at this moment,' he added. 'We need to see more backbone, not backing down.' ... 'The morning of a State of the Union address, the fact that Iran would actually capture two naval vessels... and that the president of the US would not even talk about that, would almost ignore the fact that we've got problems with national security,' Steve Scalise, the number three House Republican, told reporters at the retreat. 'That would have never happened if our enemies were afraid of America's strength in the world.' Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump shared the assessment of several lawmakers at the retreat, that the Gulf incident was a US embarrassment. 'Do you think Iran would have acted so tough if they were Russian sailors? Our country was humiliated,' the celebrity billionaire posted on Twitter hours before he and other Republican candidates take the stage for their latest presidential primary debate." http://t.uani.com/1KhpvBM Sanctions Relief Reuters: "With Iran ready to resume business as usual with the world under a historic nuclear deal, Tehran will target India, Asia's fastest-growing major oil market, and old partners in Europe with hundreds of thousands of barrels of its crude... Tehran plans to lift exports by 500,000 barrels per day (bpd) post-sanctions and gradually raise shipments by the same amount again... Iran has 22 Very Large Crude Carriers (VLCCs) floating off its coast, with 13 fully or almost fully loaded, mapping data on Thomson Reuters' Eikon showed, carrying enough crude to meet India's import needs for almost a week. A senior Iranian source close to supply negotiations said that the country - which has the world's fourth-biggest proven oil reserves - was targeting India as its main destination for crude... Iran hopes to raise its exports to India by 200,000 bpd, up from the 260,000 bpd currently shipped under sanctions' restrictions, the official said... 'We have a long-lasting relationship with Iran and post lifting of sanctions we will evaluate the scenario,' said L K Gupta, managing director of India's Essar Oil. 'It makes sense to buy oil from nearby options (like Iran),' said H. Kumar, managing director of another Indian oil firm, Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals, but added 'intake will depend on prices.' ... The Iranian official said Tehran planned to revive supply deals with European partners in order to ramp up exports. Prior to sanctions, Iran was exporting up to 800,000 bpd to Europe with the main buyers being oil majors Royal Dutch Shell, Italy's ENI and France's Total Greek Hellenic Petroleum and Spain's Repsol and Turkish firms... Iran's Mehr news agency quoted officials from the National Iranian Tanker Company (NITC) as saying on Friday that as soon as sanctions are lifted some 200,000-220,000 bpd would be exported to France, Britain, Italy, Spain and Germany. Shipping industry association BIMCO confirmed that European clients would be among the first post-sanctions." http://t.uani.com/1UUzUZM Iraq Crisis AP: "In Iraq, the United States is pounding the Islamic State with air strikes but losing the airwaves. Rhode Island Sen. Jack Reed said Thursday that 80 percent of the news media in Iraq is directly or indirectly controlled by Iranian or Shia Muslim entities. That means the U.S. is getting little credit helping the Iraqi government become more stable and defeat IS militants, he said. 'The popular media is significantly influenced by Shia and Iranian opinion,' Reed, the top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, told reporters. 'That tends to minimize our contributions and that, I think, we should correct.'" http://t.uani.com/1KhpWvW Human Rights IHR: "Reports of one execution in central Iran and ten prisoners in the north of the country. Iran state run media, Ashkezar News, reports on the execution of one prisoner on the morning of Thursday January 14 at Yazd's central prison (central Iran)... According to the Kurdistan Human Rights Network, six prisoners were hanged at Orumiyeh's central prison (northern Iran) on murder charges. The executions were reportedly carried out on Wednesday January 13... According to the human rights group, HRANA, four prisoners were hanged at Karaj's central prison (northern Iran) on drug charges. The executions were reportedly carried out on the morning of Tuesday January 12." http://t.uani.com/1QaR71W Foreign Affairs AFP: "Spain's conservative Popular Party on Thursday demanded explanations from far-left party Podemos after the media reported that police had opened an investigation into alleged illegal party financing from Iran. Podemos leader Pablo Iglesias 'must explain... the role he played in the very serious affair of illegal financing by a regime like the Iranian regime', the Popular Party's spokesman in parliament, Rafael Hernando, said. 'If it is true, we are facing one of the biggest cases of corruption in recent years,' he told journalists in parliament... Conservative daily newspaper ABC and online news site El Confidencial reported that police were probing payments allegedly made to Iglesias for his work presenting 'Fort Apache', a programme broadcast by Iran's Hispan TV. El Confidencial said the US Drug Enforcement Administration had information provided by a former top Venezuelan government official regarding 'an agreement between Iran and Venezuela to finance Podemos.'" http://t.uani.com/234uzFn Opinion & Analysis Eli Lake in Bloomberg: "After the return of 10 U.S. sailors from Iranian custody Wednesday morning, the Obama administration has been eager to claim a diplomatic victory. What looked like the beginning of a hostage crisis on Tuesday night, unfolding as the president gave his last State of the Union address, was instead resolved by Wednesday morning. The key to this success, we are told, was that the U.S. and Iran had a reliable diplomatic channel because of nuclear negotiations to defuse this potential crisis. On Wednesday, a senior State Department official briefed reporters about five phone calls between Secretary of State John Kerry and his Iranian counterpart, Javad Zarif. Kerry made it clear that the most important issue was getting the Americans released, unharmed -- turning this into 'a good story for both of us,' Kerry told Zarif, according to the briefer. You can't argue with results. The sailors are freed and safe. There is no hostage crisis now. When British sailors were detained in 2007 by Iran in a similar incident, it took nearly two weeks for Iran to release them. In this case it took less than a day. Kerry himself said Wednesday the resolution of the issue was 'a testament to the critical role diplomacy plays in keeping us safe, secure and strong.' But trumpeting this as a diplomatic success also presents a moral hazard. Iran's handling of the situation violated international norms, and to pretend otherwise is -- to borrow a phrase from sociology -- to define deviancy down. Let's start with the incident itself. Two small U.S. sea craft transiting between Kuwait and Bahrain strayed into Iranian territorial waters because of a mechanical failure, according to the U.S. side. This means the boats were in distress. That is hardly unprecedented. International maritime law spells out the appropriate response -- and in a situation like this, it does not give Iran the right to board these boats or detain the sailors, as the Iranian navy did. And yet Vice President Joe Biden on Wednesday morning described the incident at Farsi Island as 'standard nautical practice.' On CBS, he said: 'One of the boats had engine failure and drifted into Iranian waters. The Iranians picked up both boats, as we have picked up Iranian boats that needed to be rescued.' Biden added, 'That is the way nations should do it.' Senator John McCain, a Republican and former Navy pilot, a few hours later pointed out how absurd this was. 'Under international law, sovereign immune vessels like navy ships and boats do not lose their sovereign immune status when they are in distress at sea,' he said. 'Under international law, sovereign immune naval vessels are exempt from detention, boarding, or search. Their crews are not subject to detention or arrest.' Then there is the issue of how the crews of these boats were treated. The U.S. military, no doubt, is learning more about that now as the sailors are being debriefed, but Iranian news outlets already published photos of the sailors kneeling with their hands behind their heads. There is now a video circulating online that appears to show one of the sailors apologizing to a reporter. Such photos and confessions are violations in and of themselves of the Geneva Conventions, which prohibits the circulation of photos of detainees. When asked about this Wednesday, State Department spokesman Mark Toner said, 'I mean, generally speaking, you're not supposed to show images of detained prisoners of war.' But he also said the State Department was still checking the authenticity of the photos and video that were released online. Representative Mike Pompeo, a Republican member of the House Intelligence Committee and former U.S. Army officer, on Wednesday called for an investigation into whether Iran violated the Geneva Conventions during the detention of the 10 American sailors. That is inconvenient for the 'good news' story that Zarif and Kerry have sought to spin. Under their strategy, administration officials have praised Iran for treating the sailors well and resolving the situation quickly. Officials have glossed over the bad behavior that escalated a mechanical failure into a crisis in the first place. There is a logic to this. Kerry and President Barack Obama engage with Zarif's faction of the Iranian government and look past the provocations of Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps, which has been testing Obama's resolve since Zarif agreed to the nuclear deal in July. This approach creates a strange dynamic. Zarif's domestic opponents test ballistic missiles, fire past U.S. ships in the Persian Gulf and allow rioters to torch the Saudi Embassy, while Obama and Kerry do their best to stop Congress from punishing Iran for such provocations... If this is how Iran's military acts now, before it has received the incentives of the nuclear pact, imagine how Iran will behave when $100 billion flows into its coffers. Kerry and Obama are counting on Zarif to put out any new fires his opponents will cause once the deal is implemented. But in Iran, the firefighter and the arsonist work for the same supreme leader." http://t.uani.com/1ZABcjr Adam Klein in Lawfare: "There's an interesting IHL angle to Iran's seizure and subsequent release of ten American sailors in the Persian Gulf: As several observers have already noted, publishing photographs and videos of the sailors may implicate Article 13 of the Third Geneva Convention, which provides that 'prisoners of war must at all times be protected ... against insults and public curiosity.' The requirement of protection against 'public curiosity' is widely understood to prohibit publishing precisely the kinds of photos and videos that Iran has released here. The ICRC takes the position that it is unlawful to disseminate any photographs in which individual POWs can be identified. And even if one takes the narrower view that prohibited photographs must reflect some further 'intention to humiliate,' Iran's blatantly propagandistic intent in releasing these images surely satisfies that more stringent standard. In the past, ICRC officials have denounced similarly staged POW videos. State practice accords with this reading of Article 13. The Department of Defense's Law of War Manual bars 'displaying detainees publicly with the purpose of exposing them to ridicule and humiliation.' '[I]n order to protect detainees against public curiosity,' DOD policy also prophylactically 'prohibit[s] the taking of photographs of detainees except for authorized purposes' like facility administration and intelligence. The military manuals of other countries, including the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Peru, also specifically prohibit dissemination of images like those at issue here. It bears noting that the photographs are not the only aspect of Iran's conduct that potentially violates IHL: The treatment recorded by the Iranian cameras may independently breach Iran's obligations under the Third Geneva Convention. Article 14 provides that '[p]risoners of war are entitled in all circumstances to respect for their persons and their honour.' Some of the conduct depicted plausibly violates that obligation; for example, forcing the female sailor to wear a headscarf not required by her own religious beliefs (assuming that is what happened). There's a potential catch, however-one hinted at by Hudson's Michael Pregent, who commented that these 'sailors weren't necessarily prisoners of war.' The prohibitions in Articles 13 and 14 apply during an  'armed conflict' between two or more contracting parties. And the United States and Iran are not at war-at least as a matter of common usage (more on that later)... Ultimately, the existence or nonexistence of an 'armed conflict' for purposes of the Geneva Conventions is more interesting as an intellectual exercise than for any practical significance. Any consequences Iran suffers for this behavior would stem from U.S. retaliation (which appears unlikely) or international opprobrium, and neither of those turns on this technicality. Rather, what matters for those purposes is that parading captured sailors as propaganda trophies is inhumane and outrageous. Whether in war or peace." http://t.uani.com/1Khugv2 Roland Elliott Brown in IranWire: "On Tuesday January 12, Iranian forces arrested 10 US sailors who had unintentionally entered Iranian territorial waters off Farsi Island, the site of an Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps naval base. US Secretary of State John Kerry moved quickly to negotiate their release, and Iran freed the sailors on January 13. Kerry has thanked Iran, and emphasized the uses of US-Iran diplomacy in keeping the Americans safe. Even so, the incident wasn't wholly benign. The Revolutionary Guards naval unit that arrested the sailors passed images of the arrest scene to Iranian state media. The pictures showed the sailors on their knees with their hands behind their heads, while presumably being held at gunpoint. Iranian state broadcasters later released a video of one of the sailors, apparently a naval lieutenant, being interrogated about how he and his crew had entered Iranian waters. The lieutenant replies, 'It was a mistake, it was our fault, and we apologize for our mistake.' In another clip, he thanks his captors for their hospitality. While supporters of the Obama administration emphasized diplomacy, other observers alleged Iranian maritime misconduct, and deplored Iran's exploitation of the sailors for propaganda. Republican Senator Tom Cotton asked why Iran had detained the sailors and not merely escorted them back to international waters. Michael Pregent of Veterans Against the Iran Deal tweeted that the display of captured troops was 'shameful' and violated the Geneva Convention. Article 13 of the convention affords soldiers unable to fight protection from 'insults and public curiosity.' One commentator, John Allen Gay of National Interest magazine, drew an analogy with Iranian state media's long history of broadcasting videotaped forced confessions of prisoners under duress. He tweeted, 'Reminder: airing forced confessions cost Iran its UK broadcasting license.' Gay was referring to the case of IranWire's founder, Maziar Bahari, who was imprisoned in Iran in 2009, and forced to confess to spying in an interview broadcast on Iranian television. Iran's international broadcaster, Press TV, later aired sections of the interview, and lost its UK broadcast license following Bahari's complaint to the UK communications regulator OFCOM. Bahari's 2012 documentary Forced Confessions explains how his experience fits into Iranian security forces' media strategy. Although Iran held the US sailors only briefly, and did not level any serious charges against them, the sailors were likely aware that at least three Americans - former marine Amir Hekmati, Washington Post journalist Jason Rezaian and Christian pastor Saeed Abedini -have been imprisoned for years in Iran in heavily politicized cases. Even if the young lieutenant in the video said what he felt to be true, he would also have felt pressure to speak in a manner pleasing to his captors. Whether he and his crew would have been released so quickly if they had declined to appear on camera is another salient question. A further matter, raised by Michael Rubin of the American Enterprise Institute, is how Iranian hardliners will use the footage of captured Americans ahead of Iran's Parliamentary elections in February. When Iran seized British sailors in 2007, he writes, footage of their captivity later appeared in the campaign videos of hardline candidates, including long infomercials promoting President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.  So while optimists see the episode as a sign of better US-Iran relations to come, skeptics see that a cynical security state still calls the shots in Iran." http://t.uani.com/1Q2VCcR Lee Smith in TWS: "It's worth noting that Iran's latest hostile action has given us a clearer picture of how the regime actually functions. As the event unfolded, CNN and other American media spoke of the 'two Irans,' meaning the hardliners and the moderates. This has been the administration's working theory, which holds that the former comprises the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. The 'moderates' in this view are figures like President Hassan Rouhani and Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif. In this scenario, it was the 'hardliners' who were responsible for detaining the 10 Americans, and it was thanks to the diplomatic channel that John Kerry opened with Zarif while negotiating the nuclear deal that the sailors were freed without much delay. This theory posits that the hardliners kidnapped the Americans in an effort to embarrass the moderates, who want warmer relations with the White House. Therefore, the fact that the moderates prevailed signals a great victory for moderation and American diplomacy-for 'principled diplomacy,' to use Obama's phrase. This scenario may be possible, but it isn't likely. If there really is a split in the regime, why would the hardliners put themselves in a position to lose an intra-regime battle against the moderates? It would show the world that they're not only weaker than the moderates, they're also weaker than the moderates' new partners, John Kerry and Barack Obama. Indeed, if it was the moderates who liberated the sailors from the grip of the extremists, it means the supreme leader himself required them to free the Great Satan's seamen. Which would mean that the supreme leader has sided with the moderates and the Americans against the extremists. That's a stretch, to say the least. What is far more likely is that there is no such split between moderates and hardliners. The two camps-if there are indeed two camps-work in tandem. The hardliners take prisoners and the moderates negotiate the price of their release. Iran's moderates are a ministry of bagmen sent out to collect on behalf of the hard men. In short, the regime with which the White House has negotiated the future of American national security is still a regime that takes Americans hostage. Unless you believe that hijacking a U.S. Navy boat, humiliating its crew, photographing them with their hands above their heads, and broadcasting their apologies on state television is a demonstration of peaceful, moderate intentions." http://t.uani.com/1SRZY9s         Eye on Iran is a periodic news summary from United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) a program of the American Coalition Against Nuclear Iran, Inc., a tax-exempt organization under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. Eye on Iran is not intended as a comprehensive media clips summary but rather a selection of media elements with discreet analysis in a PDA friendly format. For more information please email Press@UnitedAgainstNuclearIran.com United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) is a non-partisan, broad-based coalition that is united in a commitment to prevent Iran from fulfilling its ambition to become a regional super-power possessing nuclear weapons.  UANI is an issue-based coalition in which each coalition member will have its own interests as well as the collective goal of advancing an Iran free of nuclear weapons.