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AP: "Iran has rejected an
assessment by the U.N. nuclear agency that it did past work on nuclear
arms but is praising some aspects of the agency's investigation of the
issue, reflecting satisfaction that the more than decade-long probe has
ended. Closure of the file means that some questions about the alleged
weapons work may never be resolved. Before the 35-nation board of the
U.N's International Atomic Energy Agency adopted a resolution last month
ending the investigation, IAEA chief Yukiya Amano told the meeting that
his investigation couldn't 'reconstruct all the details of activities
conducted by Iran in the past.' ... The probe had to be formally ended as
part of the July 14 nuclear agreement. The IAEA board closed the books on
the investigation last month, even though Amano repeated an assessment he
made in his final report on the issue in November that Iran worked on 'a
range of activities relevant' to making nuclear weapons, with coordinated
efforts up to 2003 tapering off into scattered activities into 2009...
The Iranian note rejected Amano's assessment that an 'organizational
structure' worked on nuclear arms. It also said that any Iranian interest
in 'dual-use technologies have always been for peaceful civilian or
conventional military uses' and not to develop an atomic bomb." http://t.uani.com/1J0K1LY
AP: "Iran's
deputy nuclear chief on Tuesday denied a report that the core of the
country's nearly finished heavy water reactor has been dismantled and
filled it with concrete as part of Tehran's obligations under the nuclear
deal with the West. Ali Asghar Zarean, in remarks to state TV said that
Iran will first sign an agreement with China to modify the Arak reactor,
a deal that is expected next week. 'Definitely, we will not apply any
physical change in this field until a final agreement is finalized,'
Zarean added, without specifically mentioning the Fars news agency
report. On Monday, Fars said that technicians had dismantled the core of
the Arak reactor and filled it with concrete. The agency, which is close
to Iranian hard-liners, cited unnamed sources for the report." http://t.uani.com/1OoMoF7
AFP: "President Hassan Rouhani
pledged Monday that Iran was about to enter 'a year of economic
prosperity', with sanctions lifted, and said his government had delivered
on its promises... 'I promise the nation of Iran that next year, with
sanctions behind us and by young people's efforts, will be a year of
economic prosperity,' he said in a speech broadcast on state television...
'This government is running the country with $30 oil and not with $147
dollar oil,' he said, comparing the current price of crude to its value
during the era of his hardline predecessor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. 'The
government is running the country under sanctions not under normal
circumstances. God willing, in the coming days we will witness a wrapping
up of the sanctions scroll in this country.'" http://t.uani.com/1RA22nl
Congressional
Action
Bloomberg: "President Barack Obama is
coming under pressure from his own party to advance new penalties to
punish Iran for its recent ballistic missile tests even as a landmark
nuclear deal, which would loosen international sanctions, is on the verge
of being implemented. Several Democratic senators who supported the deal
say they're worried that the Obama administration's delay in issuing new
sanctions may undermine the U.S.'s ability to enforce the agreement. Bob Casey,
a Pennsylvania Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, and Chris Coons,
a Delaware Democrat who's a member of the Senate Foreign Relations panel,
said Monday they want the administration to move forward with additional
sanctions after the missile tests that Iran conducted late last year.
Both senators supported the July agreement that would ease economic
sanctions on Iran in exchange for curbs on the country's nuclear program.
'I am concerned that as implementation of the JCPOA moves forward, the administration
has not taken steps to hold Iran accountable for its actions and to
demonstrate that there will be swift consequences for violations of the
JCPOA,' Casey said, referring to the nuclear deal known as the Joint
Comprehensive Plan of Action that was reached by six world powers and
Iran. 'Chinese and Russian obstructionism is blocking UN Security Council
action, so I urge the administration to sanction the individuals or
entities responsible for this violation.' He added, 'I am concerned that
although Treasury prepared new designations, they have not been formally
announced and implemented.' ... 'I am urging them publicly and privately
to move ahead with' new sanctions designations, Coons said on a
conference call with reporters on Monday. 'I am concerned with the
hesitation.'" http://t.uani.com/1PUnCiX
The Hill: "Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) is
calling for President Obama to move forward with new sanctions against
Iran over a pair of recent ballistic missile tests. 'I don't know why the
administration has hesitated, but I am urging them publicly and privately
to move ahead with those designations,' he told reporters. 'I am
concerned with the hesitation to move forward with the ballistic missile
related designations.' Coons is among a growing number of Democrats,
including some who supported the Iran nuclear deal, who have called on
the president to take a firm response to two missile tests late last
year. They argue that the administration's response should show Iran that
it will not be able to cheat on the nuclear agreement. The Obama
administration suggested late last year that it was preparing new
sanctions against individuals tied to Iran's missile program, before
walking back those statements... Coons, who supported the Iran nuclear
deal, said it was 'very clearly communicated and it played a role in my
decision' to support the nuclear agreement that the United States was
still able to sanction Iran on non-nuclear issues including its missile
program or support for terrorist groups." http://t.uani.com/1PUfTS1
Al-Monitor: "President Barack Obama will
tout his nuclear deal with Iran as a key foreign policy accomplishment
that will keep the nation safe during his last State of the Union the
evening of Jan. 12. Hours later, House Republicans will vote to dismantle
it. The Jan. 13 vote on legislation that would prohibit the president
from delivering on sanctions relief called for under the deal is an early
sign that Republicans may hold multiple such votes in the runup to the
2016 presidential elections." http://t.uani.com/1J0Nt9y
Sanctions
Relief
AFP: "The Renault-Nissan alliance is
ready to expand its manufacturing footprint in Iran once sanctions are
lifted, but will be 'extremely careful' about the execution, chief Carlos
Ghosn said Monday. 'Iran is a very promising market,' Ghosn said on the
sidelines of the Detroit auto show. 'Today it's more than one million
cars, it has the potential to go to 1.5 or 2 million.' ... 'We're ready
to go, but we want to go in a way which is sustainable,' Ghosn told
reporters. 'You don't want to go too precipitously and create for
ourselves a bigger problem than we need. So I think yes, lots of
potential in Iran, but still the timing is going to need to be
politically correct and completely clear from a legal point of view.' An
official with Pars Khodro told The Wall Street Journal in July that the
Renault was negotiating taking a minority stake in the state-owned
automaker. The official also said Renault was in talks to buy facilities
like the auto factories of Pars Khodro parent Saipa." http://t.uani.com/1PUjE9Q
AFP: "Former German chancellor
Gerhard Schroeder held talks Monday with top officials in Tehran on
boosting trade links and Iran's diplomatic crisis with Saudi Arabia...
'We envisage a good future for Iran-Germany relations after the final
implementation of the nuclear deal,' he told Foreign Minister Mohammad
Javad Zarif, according to an official statement from Iran. 'German
companies and business owners are ready to participate in all economic
and industrial fields' in Iran, he said. Schroeder also stressed Iran's
role in regional peace and security. 'After the closing of the nuclear
file, Europe and Germany hope to make utmost use of Iran's great
potential to solve regional crises,' he said. Zarif said Tehran was
entering 'a new phase of relations with Germany'... Schroeder was to meet
the ministers of oil and transport, and President Hassan Rouhani, on
Tuesday, a German embassy official said. Schroeder is the honorary
chairman of NUMOV, the Berlin-based German Near and Middle East
Association, which works to boost trade." http://t.uani.com/1ZiiGXC
Syria
Conflict
AFP: "Iran is equipping and training
Syrian government forces but not providing 'direct aid', its interior
minister said Monday on a trip to Damascus... Interior Minister Abdolreza
Rahmani Fazli said Iran was providing both Syria and Iraq with aid 'in advisory
form'. That 'means transferring experience and offering expert help and,
if necessary, we will provide training too,' he said, speaking in Farsi
at a press conference in Damascus. 'Iran's attitude is not of direct aid,
but in the form of equipping, training and transferring experience to the
Syrian youth and people under the supervision of the Syrian
government.'" http://t.uani.com/1TSmWeM
Regional
Destabilization
AFP: "Kuwait on Tuesday sentenced
two defendants to death, including an Iranian being tried in absentia,
after they were convicted of 'spying for Iran' and plotting attacks in
the Gulf country. The Iranian, Abdulreda Hayder, was on trial along with
25 Kuwaiti Shiites on charges of spying for Iran and hiding large
quantities of arms and ammunition in underground depots. The court said
Hayder is an Iranian spy who recruited the Kuwaiti Shiites and arranged
for their travel to Lebanon, where they received military training from
Iran-backed Shiite militia group Hezbollah. The other man sentenced to
death, Kuwaiti Hasan Abdulhadi Ali, had been a member of Hezbollah since
1996 and was 'the mastermind of the cell', the court said. It sentenced
another defendant to life in prison. Nineteen were jailed for between
five and 15 years, two of them in absentia. Three were acquitted and one
was fined 5,000 dinars ($16,500). The court said Ali had reached out to
an Iranian diplomat at Tehran's embassy in Kuwait City and later
travelled to Iran, where he was in contact with the Revolutionary Guard.
The ruling said that Ali arranged with the Revolutionary Guard to smuggle
large quantities of arms and explosives into Kuwait. The defendants were
also convicted of spying for Hezbollah, smuggling in and assembling
explosives, and possessing firearms and ammunition... Kuwaiti authorities
said in August they had dismantled an Iran-linked cell and seized large
quantities of arms, explosives and ammunition." http://t.uani.com/1PUsgxh
Human
Rights
IHR: "Seven prisoners were
reportedly hanged in southern, western, and northern Iran. According to
Iran state run media, Javan, three prisoners were hanged at Larestan
Prison (in the southern provine of Fars) on armed drug trafficking
charges. The executions were reportedly carried out on Sunday January
10... According to the human rights group, HRANA, one prisoner was hanged
at Khorramabad Prison (in the western province of Mazandaran) on murder
charges. The prisoner, who has been identified as Ghodrat Garavand, was
reportedly executed on Sunday Janaury 10. Iranian official sources,
including the Judiciary, have been silent on Garavand's execution.
According to the Mazandaran Judiciary's press department, three
unidentified prisoners were hanged at Sari's central prison (in the
northern province of Mazandaran) on drug charges." http://t.uani.com/1PpjqEU
ICHRI: "The poet Hila Sedighi, who was
arrested and held for two days amidst an intensifying crackdown on
independent artistic and cultural figures in Iran, has posted a
description of her 48-hour detention on her Facebook page, stating
that she was watched throughout her detention 'as if they were watching a
murderer.' On Thursday night, January 7, 2015, Sedighi was taken into
custody at Imam Khomeini International Airport upon return from a trip
with her husband to the United Arab Emirates. 'The first night after my
detention, I was held in solitary confinement at the airport's detention
center. For the second night, I was in Shapour Detention Center. It's
famous for being the most horrific and dangerous place for prisoners. I
was in a four-square-meter room alongside eight dangerous prisoners.
(Dangerous is a common term for these individuals but they are still
human beings with rights and I am worried about their fate.) Their
treatment was worse and more heinous than you could imagine. The
situation there is so bad that at first the Shapour Police Investigative
Unit refused to admit me into the facility,' Sedighi wrote. 'They
transferred me in the city in a cage, and I was watched like a criminal,'
she added." http://t.uani.com/1PUelap
CPJ: "Iranian authorities should
immediately release Farzad Pourmoradi, Meysam Mohammadi, and all
journalists detained for their work, the Committee to Protect Journalists
said today. Authorities should furthermore lift the ban on the daily newspaper
Bahar, CPJ said. The arrests and the ban on the newspaper come ahead of
legislative elections scheduled to begin February 26. 'Iranian
authorities are clearly trying to intimidate the press ahead of
parliamentary elections, and in the process they are undermining the
legitimacy of the vote,' said CPJ Middle East and North Africa Program
Coordinator Sherif Mansour. Officers from the Revolutionary Guards
arrested Farzad Pourmoradi, a freelance journalist who has contributed to
the Kermanshah Post and Navai Vaghat newspapers, as he left his home on
January 3, according news reports and the Human Rights Activists News
Agency (HRANA)... Officials on Friday sent Meysam Mohammadi, the former
editor of the reformist daily newspaper Kalameh Sabz, to Tehran's Evin
Prison to begin serving a four-year prison term, according to news
reports... Prosecutors on January 2 ordered the reformist daily newspaper
Bahar to cease publishing on the grounds that it 'propagandized against
the state and published material harmful to the foundation of the Islamic
Republic,' according to local news reports." http://t.uani.com/1JHJij0
RSF: "Reporters Without Borders
(RSF) condemns the latest wave of harassment of media outlets in Iran,
which has included the arrest of a journalist and the closure of a
pro-reform daily newspaper in the past few days, and the interrogation of
other journalists. The authorities seem to be trying to intimidate the
media and journalists as part of a preventive crackdown two months ahead
of parliamentary elections. Four journalists - Afarine Chitsaz of the
daily Iran, Ehssan Mazndarani, the editor of the daily Farhikhteghan,
Saman Safarzai of the monthly Andisher Poya and Issa Saharkhiz, a
well-known independent journalist - have been held since their arrest on
2 November. According to the information obtained by RSF, several other
journalists have been summoned and interrogated, and two of them are
being held in the Revolutionary Guard intelligence section... With a
total of 37 journalists and citizen-journalists currently detained,Iran
is still one for the world's five biggest prisons for news and
information providers and is ranked 173rd out of 180 countries in the
2015 Reporters Without Borders press freedom index." http://t.uani.com/1l2TNSi
Domestic
Politics
AFP: "Iran has sacked a senior
security official over his failure to stop the ransacking of Saudi
Arabia's embassy, which led the Sunni-ruled kingdom to sever diplomatic
relations. Safar Ali Baratlou's replacement as security deputy to
Tehran's governor general was already under review, but the interior ministry
said 'a blind eye could not be turned' to what happened at the embassy.
The mission and the Saudi consulate in Mashhad, Iran's second city, were
attacked and torched on January 2 in anger over Riyadh's execution of
Nimr al-Nimr, a prominent cleric from the kingdom's Shiite minority.
'After initial investigations, failures... were confirmed' in connection
with the 'assault on the Saudi embassy', the ministry said late Sunday,
cited by the official IRNA news agency. 'Because of the importance of the
matter, the interior ministry cannot overlook the smallest failures and
factors that led to this incident,' the statement added of the attack and
Baratlou's dismissal." http://t.uani.com/1Q2CxcN
Foreign
Affairs
AP: "Long one of Iran's few Sunni
Arab partners, Sudan has cut ties with Tehran in the latest step in its
move toward Saudi Arabia as Khartoum seeks to end its isolation and right
its economy. The impoverished East African state followed Riyadh in
severing relations with Iran, saying it was responding to attacks on
Saudi diplomatic missions in Iran after the execution of a Saudi Shiite
sheikh... Iranian warships used to stop over in Port Sudan across the Red
Sea from Saudi Arabia. But it was a 'relationship of convenience,' said
Magdi al-Gizouli, an independent analyst. 'I don't think there's a strong
ideological commitment.' The partnership soured in September 2014, when
Sudanese officials ordered the closure of an Iranian cultural center in
Khartoum, accusing its employees of preaching Shiism in majority Sunni
Sudan." http://t.uani.com/1RzWSHX
Opinion
& Analysis
Dennis
Ross in Politico:
"Few issues have confronted President Barack Obama with tougher
dilemmas than Syria. Over the course of the nearly five years of the war
within Syria, Obama has faced choices on how the United States should
respond and he consistently decided to do the minimum. From the outset,
when Bashar Assad's response to calls for reform was draconian and turned
peaceful demonstrations into an uprising, the president's first instinct
was avoidance. He looked at Syria and he saw entanglement in another
ongoing Middle East conflict where our involvement would be costly, lead
to nothing, and potentially make things worse. In nearly every meeting on
Syria when presented possible options to affect the Syrian civil war, the
president would ask 'tell me where this ends.' He was surely right to ask
this question. But he failed to ask the corollary question: Tell me what
happens if we don't act? Had he known that not acting would produce a
vacuum in which a humanitarian catastrophe, a terrible refugee crisis, a
deepening proxy war and the rise of ISIL in Iraq and Syria would occur,
his responses might have been different... In many ways, the vacuum in
Syria has been compounded by the sense that the U.S. is retrenching in
the region, creating a larger void that has helped to produce the
increasing competition between Iran and Saudi Arabia. The Iranians saw
they ran little risk with the United States as they ramped up their
regional activism and made the Qods force-the action arm of the
Revolutionary Guard outside of Iran-more prominent in both the Syrian and
Iraqi conflicts. Indeed, Qassem Suleiman, the head of the Qods forces,
who was previously a shadowy figure, has become a very public presence
appearing at times on the ground during the battles over Tikrit in Iraq,
al Qusayr in Syria, and other places in both countries. For the Saudis,
the nuclear deal and the greater Iranian regional involvement fed their
perception that the Obama administration was not prepared to set any real
limits on Iran-or act on its red lines. As a result, it has decided to
draw its own lines. It has done so in Yemen and will probably find it
difficult to extract itself. Its execution of Shia cleric, Nimr al-Nimr,
may have been done as much for domestic reasons, particularly given the
number of Sunni Al Qaeda operatives that were being executed at the same
time, but the Saudis knew the Iranians would react. They had, after all,
threatened the Saudis with retribution if they put him to death." http://t.uani.com/1TSxNpa
Jackson
Diehl in WashPost: "Saudi
Arabia's execution of a Shiite cleric produced a predictable explosion of
sectarian enmity across the Middle East last week. Less noticed - and
perhaps less excusable - was the narrow, partisan and more or less
sectarian reactions it prompted in Washington... The Obama administration
was meanwhile leaning toward Shiite Iran, which furiously denounced the
execution and allowed militants to sack the Saudi E mbassy in Tehran. The
State Department carefully refrained from blaming the regime of Ayatollah
Ali Khamenei for the violence and adopted a neutral position on the
bilateral dispute - an extraordinary stance given the decades of U.S.
alliance with Saudi Arabia and enmity with the Islamic Republic. It
quickly became clear that the White House's overwhelming priority boiled
down to avoiding any words or action that would disrupt the ongoing
implementation of the Iranian nuclear deal. That was of a piece with its
last-minute retreat on Dec. 30 from imposing sanctions on Tehran for
missile launches that violated a U.N. Security Council resolution and a
promise to waive new congressional restrictions on visas for foreigners
who visited Iran... The Obama administration, of course, has hardly
abandoned the Saudi rulers; since the Iran deal, it has been heaping
Riyadh with fresh weapons. But Republicans are probably right in arguing
that Obama's feckless accommodation of Iran is spurring Saudi
belligerence, thereby making the sectarian fight worse. The embarrassing
retreat from imposing missile sanctions was particularly damaging. The
administration first accused Tehran of violating a U.N. Security Council
resolution linked to the nuclear deal by testing long-range missiles,
then pulled back a relatively mild set of financial penalties on
companies and individuals hours after notifying Congress they were
coming. Officials called the delay 'technical' - but 11 days later, the
sanctions have still not been issued. The resulting message, true or not,
is that Washington lacks the will to punish Iran for clear violations."
http://t.uani.com/1Q2BARN
NYT
Editorial: "The
United States should lift sanctions on Iran; no, it should impose new
sanctions on Iran. The short answer is that the Obama administration
should do both. The sanctions imposed to press Iran to negotiate curbs on
its nuclear program should be lifted as promised when the recent nuclear
agreement goes into effect, maybe as early as next week. The Obama
administration is wisely planning a separate set of new sanctions in
response to Iran's two recent tests of ballistic missiles, which violated
United Nations resolutions. Critics of Iran and the nuclear deal say the
missile tests are proof that the agreement failed. But ending Iran's
production of ballistic missiles was not the focus of the agreement. The
greater threat by far has always been Iran's nuclear program, which was
coming closer to producing a bomb until the agreement halted the process.
That does not mean the missile tests in October and November should not
be addressed. Iran is advancing the range and mobility of its ballistic
missiles and vowing to accelerate production. Most worrisome is a
collaboration with North Korea, which has nuclear weapons and provided
Iran with many of its first missiles, and still supplies key components.
A recent Congressional Research Service report called their cooperation
'significant and meaningful.' Iran has long rejected the United Nations
Security Council's attempts to curb the ballistic program, saying it is
vital for defense.... New sanctions on Iran's ballistic missiles must
still be pursued. The people and agencies most responsible for Iran's
program were hit with sanctions years ago; the new measures would add 11 new
individuals and entities to a long list. That should not be so onerous
that Iran would walk away from the economic relief it stands to gain from
the nuclear deal. And it is an important and necessary way of keeping
pressure on Iran to cease its unacceptable activities." http://t.uani.com/1JI0rJc
Shahryar
Bazargan in IranWire:
"Iran must attract foreign investment if it is to become a dynamic
force able to play a part in the world economy. For years, international
sanctions, coupled with the structural problems of the Iranian market,
have prevented any foreign capital from coming into the country. Now that
a nuclear deal has been reached and sanctions are being lifted, Iran has
high hopes that foreign investment will give the economy the boost it
needs. The Iranian economy has been stagnant for a long time. Despite all
efforts, the best that policy-makers and decision-makers have achieved is
to remove the minus symbol from the country's growth index. In all these
years international sanctions was the excuse given for failing economic
growth. Sanctions made it difficult - if not impossible - for foreign
capital investment in Iran. It was these sanctions that forced Iran's
foreign partners to put their wallets in their pockets and leave Iran,
even though the Iranian market provided many opportunities. But now that
the international climate for potential partners is experiencing a
resurgence, the fundamental problems of Iran's economy are clear, making
investment a risky business. For this reason, foreign investors remain
wary about entering the Iranian market. Smaller components - tax laws,
the ubiquitous bureaucracy, political instability, lack of security for
capital, the high cost of facilities, inflation, unreliable economic
conditions, unstable macro-economic policies and, more recently,
stagnation or, in other words, low demand - have fused together to create
an obstacle to the business environment that will not be easily
shifted." http://t.uani.com/1Sg6mYO
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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
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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
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