Eye on Iran: Canadian-Iranian Professor Arrested in Tehran by Revolutionary Guards

Join UANI               Top Stories Guardian: "Iranian authorities have arrested a Canadian-Iranian professor of social anthropology, the latest in a string of cases involving dual nationals which has prompted concern over the country's political atmosphere. Homa Hoodfar was arrested earlier this week after nearly three months of repeated questioning by the Iranian intelligence service, her sister told the Guardian on Wednesday. Hoodfar is the latest in the ever-expanding list of dual nationals targeted in recent months. Several Iranian dual nationals from the US, the UK, Canada and France are currently behind bars or facing regular questioning, often accused of espionage or collaborating with a hostile government. The 65-year-old scholar travelled to her home country in February, principally for personal reasons, but she also continued her academic research while in the country, her family said. Her trip coincided with parliamentary elections during which a record number of women were elected as MPs, mostly allied with the moderate administration of Hassan Rouhani. In March, members of Iran's powerful Revolutionary Guards raided Hoodfar's flat a day before she was due to fly to London, where she planned to join her family for the Persian new year and the 70th birthday of her brother. The authorities confiscated her belongings and her three passports, and summoned Hoodfar for regular questioning. Hoodfar's family had chosen not to go public until now because they believed the interrogations were the result of a misunderstanding and would soon end, according to her sister, Katayoon Hoodfar." http://t.uani.com/24CB7ZP AFP: "Iran's economy faces tough years ahead despite a nuclear deal with world powers that the government hoped would spur investment and revive stagnant growth, ministers have warned. Speaking to members of parliament on Monday and Tuesday, the industry and interior ministers painted a bleak picture of chronic underinvestment, surging inflation and unemployment in the Islamic republic. Interior Minister Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli warned on Monday that the country may achieve growth of only between 1.5 and three percent per annum. 'With that sort of growth, unemployment and inflation will double in the short term. We need foreign investment,' he said. His predictions fall far short of the growth target of eight percent President Hassan Rouhani set in January to tackle double-figure inflation and high unemployment... Rahmani Fazli said a total of 3.5 million Iranians -- some 11 percent of the workforce -- are unemployed. 'I myself have three unemployed university graduates at home,' he said. New investment cannot come soon enough for some sectors. 'Gradually increasing in the industrial and mining sector between 2000 and 2011, investment has fallen since 2012,' Industry Minister Mohammad Reza Nematzadeh told parliament on Tuesday. The lack of investment had created 'a catastrophe in the industrial sector', he said." http://t.uani.com/1thkBTE The Hill: "The State Department is backing off from its decision to close the book on an investigation into an edited video of a 2013 press briefing. Despite claiming last week that the department would not continue to dig to find out who deleted the roughly eight minutes of videotape from a YouTube archive of the briefing, it has reversed course following an order from Secretary John Kerry. 'We're going to continue to look at additional troves of information in an effort to find out, again, what happened,' spokesman Mark Toner told reporters on Wednesday. 'That is basically because the secretary said he wants to dive deeper into this, look more into what happened, and try to get to the bottom of what happened. 'And so, what our office of legal adviser did was go back and look at what are other areas where there could be information.' Criticism has mounted on the State Department following the revelation early this month that someone within the public affairs office had ordered portions of the video be deleted. The missing video snippet - which has since been restored - featured a discussion between then-spokeswoman Jen Psaki and a Fox News reporter about nuclear negotiations with Iran, and whether it would be appropriate for the government to lie in order to advance diplomacy. So far, the department has been unable to determine who ordered the edit." http://t.uani.com/1PLorye Business Risk WSJ: "Presumptive Republican White House nominee Donald Trump would consult with Congress and federal agencies on a number of his signature foreign policy initiatives, including reworking a nuclear deal with Iran and a proposed ban on the entry of Muslims into the U.S., a top adviser said Wednesday. Walid Phares, one of Mr. Trump's senior foreign policy advisers, said the candidate would seek domestic and international 'consensus' on a range of foreign policy initiatives... Mr. Trump has called a recent nuclear deal with Iran 'terrible' and 'horrible' but Mr. Phares said Mr. Trump wouldn't immediately attempt to negate it once in office. 'He is going to be revising, reviewing, and maybe trying to modify the Iran deal,' Mr. Phares said. One option, he said, would be to resubmit the deal - or something like it - to Congress for a vote, a process whose outcome would depend on the makeup of Congress next year. Many bankers are watching the U.S. election closely and waiting for a clearer understanding of future U.S. policy towards Iran before doing business with the country. Mr. Phares's suggestion Mr. Trump would revise the agreement instead of completely voiding it could influence the way some financial institutions deal with companies in Iran seeking access to global markets." http://t.uani.com/1Upvmcn Sanctions Relief Reuters: "South Korea, Asia's largest buyer of condensate, will step up purchases of the ultra light oil from Iran by more than 50 percent in June, two sources said, as competitive pricing squeezes out rival oil from Qatar. While South Korea does not provide separate data on imports of condensate, traders said the expected June shipments from Iran of at least six million barrels, or 200,000 barrels a day, would be a record level. Iranian condensate imports could gain further momentum in the fourth quarter, if Iran clinches a deal with Hyundai Chemical to supply the company's new splitter. Talks between Hyundai Chemical and the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) on a term supply deal are under way, a third source familiar with the matter said. South Korea, the world's fifth-largest crude buyer, has more than doubled its oil imports from Iran in the first four months of this year to about 248,000 barrrels a day after Western sanctions on Iran were removed in January... Two South Korean buyers, refiners SK Energy and Hanwha Total Petrochemical Co, are set to lift at least six million barrels of Iranian South Pars condensate in June, up from about 3-4 million barrels in April and May, two sources with knowledge of the matter said. A Hanwha spokesman said the refiner planned to import about 2 million barrels of Iranian condensate in June, as it was cheaper than oil from Qatar and the company wanted to diversify its sources of supply." http://t.uani.com/1sxeiuI Reuters: "Iran expects a row with Germany over unpaid state export guarantees to be resolved soon, its industry minister was quoted as saying in a German newspaper on Thursday, a step which would remove a big hurdle to reviving trade relations. Iran owes Germany about 500 million euros ($570 million) under so-called Hermes covers, a German government arrangement that protects German companies if foreign debtors fail to pay. Mohammad Reza Nematzadeh told Germany's Handelsblatt newspaper in an interview that there were only a few small problems left to be resolved. 'After my meeting with Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel it looks like the last problems will be able to be solved quickly,' Nematzadeh said. He added that he expected that Gabriel, who was forced to cancel a trip to Iran last month due to illness, would now head to Tehran in October. 'By then we hope that all remaining problems will be solved,' he said. A spokesman for Germany's economy ministry said that talks with Iran were still ongoing, but Berlin was optimistic that the government could soon offer fresh state export guarantees to companies that plan to do business with Iran... Nematzadeh said big German firms including Volkswagen, Daimler, Siemens, Linde, BASF and Airbus, were already in negotiations about doing business in Iran." http://t.uani.com/1tcSswq Press TV (Iran): "The Islamic Republic of Iran and Germany's Aurubis AG are set to look into ways of cooperating in the area of copper industry. Mehdi Karbassian, director of Iran's Mines and Mining Industries Development and Renovation (IMIDRO), a major state-owned holding company active in the mining sector, has announced a plan by a team of Germany's Aurubis AG to visit Iran for economic cooperation in the near future. The official pointed to his recent trip to Germany and his visit to Aurubis HQ in Hamburg, where he said German company officials pointed to their readiness to cooperate with Iran and invest in its copper industry, Tasnim news agency reported. Karbassian said Aurubis, which is the largest copper producer in Europe and the biggest copper recycler in the world, declared its intention to send a team to Tehran in the near future when the two sides will discuss cooperation further." http://t.uani.com/1PIa9yr Domestic Politics Tehran Times: "The World Bank cut its forecast of Iran's gross domestic product (GDP) growth for 2016 to 4.4 percent, the organization said in an update to its January 2016 Global Economic Prospects report. In the January report, the World Bank had forecasted Iran's GDP will grow by 5.8 percent in 2016 and by 6.7 percent in 2017. The report said Iran's economy expanded by 1.9 percent in 2015." http://t.uani.com/1tcWIvR Opinion & Analysis UANI Chairman Senator Joseph I. Lieberman & UANI CEO Ambassador Mark D. Wallace in AIPAC: "There is a dangerous misconception, perpetuated largely by Iranian interests, that the implementation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) signals that Iran is now open for business. But in reality, the nuclear agreement was very narrowly focused on one issue. It was transactional, not transformational. Today, Iran remains the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism and its abysmal record and behavior on so many important issues demonstrates that it should never get the benefit of the doubt, let alone the benefit of the world's business. Since the nuclear accord went into effect, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, President Hassan Rouhani, Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, and many other regime officials have complained bitterly that the West-namely the United States-should be doing more to ensure the speedy flow of foreign investment into Tehran's troublesome economy. On May 31, Foreign Minister Zarif dubbed the reluctance to engage with Iran by some of the powerhouses of the global financial system-including Deutsche Bank, Société Générale, and HSBC-a 'psychological barrier' to doing business with Iran that the United States has a special responsibility to remedy. But the political class in the Islamic Republic has no one to blame but themselves for the risks inherent in investing in the Ayatollah. United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) has written to hundreds of banks, corporations, institutional investors, and related entities, warning them of the multiple and specific risks associated with Iran. Those risks include: banking risk; unavailability or deficiency of insurance coverage; enforcement and imposition of sanctions independent of the JCPOA; unwittingly doing business with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC); and impairment of corporate reputation and future business opportunities outside Iran... Finally, a company that shortsightedly embraces business opportunities in Iran will likely be cut off from more lucrative opportunities in countries that oppose its hegemonic policies. The choices can be stark. Invest in the economies of, for instance, the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, the other Arab Gulf countries and even Israel with a combined GDP of over $32 trillion, or take a gamble on Iran's economy with a GDP of under $400 billion. There is a real risk that companies investing in Iran will lose market share or will be banned entirely from some of these markets. In the end, betting on Tehran for the sake of short-term financial gain is not worth the long-term peril-for companies, their investors, and their reputations. It's a no-brainer." http://t.uani.com/1UihaWz Eli Lake in Bloomberg: "One of the unexpected results of President Barack Obama's new opening to Iran is that U.S. taxpayers are now funding both sides of the Middle East's arms race. The U.S. is deliberately subsidizing defense spending for allies like Egypt and Israel. Now the U.S. is inadvertently paying for some of Iran's military expenditures as well. It all starts with $1.7 billion the U.S. Treasury wired to Iran's Central Bank in January, during a delicate prisoner swap and the implementation of last summer's nuclear deal to resolve a long-standing dispute about Iran's arms purchases before the revolution of 1979. For months it was unclear what Iran's government would do with this money. But last month the mystery was solved when Iran's Guardian Council approved the government's 2017 budget that instructed Iran's Central Bank to transfer the $1.7 billion to the military. Saeed Ghasseminejad, an associate fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, spotted the budget item. He told me the development was widely reported in Iran by numerous sources including the state-funded news services. 'Article 22 of the budget for 2017 says the Central Bank is required to give the money from the legal settlement of Iran's pre- and post-revolutionary arms sales of up to $1.7 billion to the defense budget,' he said. Republicans and some Democrats who opposed Obama's nuclear deal have argued that the end of some sanctions would help to fund Iran's military. But at least that was Iran's money already (albeit frozen in overseas bank accounts). The $1.7 billion that Treasury transferred to Iran in January is different. A portion of it, $400 million, came from a trust fund comprising money paid by the government of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, a U.S. ally, for arms sold to Iran before the 1979 revolution. Those sales were cut off in 1979 after revolutionaries took over the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and held the American staff hostage for 444 days. The remaining $1.3 billion represents interest on the $400 million principle over more than 36 years... The irony here is that Iran has been pleading poverty in recent months. The country's supreme leader and foreign minister have publicly complained that Iran's economy has not seen the benefits expected from the Iran nuclear deal. And yet Iran's 2017 $19 billion defense budget has increased by 90 percent from 2016, according to Ghasseminejad. We now know where $1.7 billion of that came from." http://t.uani.com/1Xc2Jpd Gary Kleiman in IntelliNews: "Since the January implementation of the nuclear deal that enabled the partial lifting of sanctions, Iranian officials from the supreme leader to the central bank governor have lambasted foreign banks for their so-called 'Iranophobia', mainly due to the US dollar and financial system curbs that remain in effect. These restrictions, directed particularly at the Revolutionary Guard with its pervasive economic control, are enshrined in domestic US legislation due to expire at year-end and have subjected major Asian and European banks to billions of dollars in penalties. However, Tehran's political leaders and technocrats, joined most recently by the International Monetary Fund's (IMF) deputy director on a maiden visit to the country, also acknowledge the pressing need for a clean-up of the state-dominated banking sector. The Iranian banking system's reported non-performing loan ratio stands at 15%, and businesses are starved for credit at mandatory near 20% 'return' rates under the no-interest Islamic framework. President Hassan Rouhani's advisers and local experts also emphasize the further development of the debt and equity markets, which contribute only marginally to savings mobilization and company financing, and have yet to attract much in the way of foreign investment, which is only 1% of the activity on the Tehran Stock Exchange. The lack of progress on a comprehensive financial sector reform agenda cannot be blamed on Washington or disappointing nuclear deal implementation, and Iranian policymakers and the just-elected parliament must reverse this state of affairs if they are to eventually earn global banking confidence. The IMF's number two, David Lipton, praised Iran's economic stabilization strides during his brief visit in May, but cited a long list of unfinished fiscal, monetary and structural adjustments already taken by rival frontier markets... Without serious internal accountability taking the place of external scapegoating, fears over a financial system meltdown and foreign investor fright will intensify over the next sanctions deal phase." http://t.uani.com/1Upx9Ox Peter Huessy in Defense News: "Every day, two-thirds of all oil consumed world-wide passes through seven ocean choke points. The most vital of these, the Strait of Hormuz, is the gateway to the Persian Gulf's oil shipment ports, and is bordered by Iran, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates. General Hossein Salami, deputy commander of Iran's powerful Revolutionary Guard, recently said Iranian forces will close the Strait of Hormuz if the United States 'threatens' Iran. In the past, similar threats by Iran have largely been dismissed. Why? Because America and its allies believe the presence of a strong U.S. navy in the region makes such threats empty. But should the threat now be taken seriously? Unfortunately, the U.S. Navy's ability to keep the Strait open is weaker than in the recent past, and Iranian military capabilities are measurably stronger. It is not as if we had no warning of the problem. In a Pentagon wargame in 2002 to test U.S. ability to keep the Strait open, the U.S. Navy failed spectacularly. A carrier and ten cruisers were 'sunk' as a retired U.S. Marine general carried the day for the Red Team, simulating Iranian unconventional tactics to great effect... Five years ago, Admiral Habibollah Sayari, then the Iranian navy commander, said closing the strait was 'as easy as drinking a glass of water.' At that time, most military analysts were unimpressed. Max Boot and Bradley Russell with the Council on Foreign Relations, shrugged off the threat, retorting, 'Actually it would be about as easy as drinking an entire bucket of water in one gulp.' They added that 'Iran tried this trick before and failed miserably,' referring to April 18, 1988, when President Reagan ordered the U.S. Navy to end Iranian naval harassment in the Gulf. Operation Praying Mantis was launched, the Navy's biggest surface combat action since World War II, and Iranian attacks on Persian Gulf shipping ceased. Fast forward to 2016. Could Iran now successfully close the Strait of Hormuz? New factors suggest the answer to that question is 'Yes.' ... Would U.S. support of a regional Arab coalition be able to counter these Iranian objectives? Yes, but only if we implement a cooperative regional strategy that includes bolstering U.S. Air Force and U.S. Navy conventional capabilities, battle planning with our allies to keep the straits open, deploying additional missile defense systems, adopting a regional counter-Iran strategy, and executing an Iranian denuclearization plan that jettisons the failed Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). JCPOA, the Iranian 'nuclear deal,' is seen by many as a way for the United States to assist Iran's push for regional power. As Dennis Ross writes:  'Iranian regional hegemony, especially as Iran's behavior in the Gulf has been more aggressive, not less so, with regular Iranian forces joining the Revolutionary Guard now deployed to Syria, wider use of Shiite militias, arms smuggling into Bahrain and the eastern province of Saudi Arabia, and ballistic missile tests.' Without America as a partner, our Gulf allies cannot stand up to growing Iranian terrorism that is bolstered by $150 billion provided by JCPOA, funds equivalent to at least 50 times more per capita than what the U.S. provided 17 European nations under the Marshall Plan at the end of World War II." http://t.uani.com/25NJHdU         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.