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Iran
threatened to shoot down two US Navy surveillance aircraft flying close
to Iranian territory in the Persian Gulf over the weekend, the latest in
a series of recent provocations between Iran and the US military in the
region, three US defense officials with knowledge of the incident told
Fox News. On Sept. 10, a Navy P-8 Poseidon with a crew of nine and an
EP-3 Eries with a crew of roughly 24, were flying a reconnaissance
mission 13 miles off the coast of Iran, in the Strait of Hormuz and Gulf
of Oman, according to officials. Iran's territorial waters-like all
nations--extend 12 miles into the sea, according to international
maritime law. At some point during the flight, the Iranian military
warned the two aircraft to change course or risk getting shot down.
The US military planes ignored the warning and continued flying in
international airspace, although close to Iranian territory, the
officials told Fox. "We wanted to test the Iranian
reaction," one US official told Fox News when asked why the US jets
were flying close to Iran. "It's one thing to tell someone to get
off your lawn, but we weren't on their lawn," the official
continued. "Anytime you threaten to shoot someone down, it's
not considered professional."
Iranian
President Hassan Rouhani will pay visits to Caracas, Havana and New York,
his deputy chief of staff for communications and information, Parviz
Esmaeili, says. He said on Monday that the Iranian president will leave
Tehran for Venezuela on Friday to deliver a speech at the 17th
Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) summit, slated to be held in the island of
Margarita on September 13-18, and hand over the body's presidency to his
Venezuelan counterpart Nicolás Maduro... Esmaeili said the Iranian
president would then set off for Havana to hold talks with senior Cuban
officials, including revolutionary leader Fidel Castro... "At the
final stage of the trip, Rouhani will travel to New York for a two-day
visit and deliver a speech at the 71st session of the United Nations
General Assembly," Esmaeili said. Rouhani plans to meet world
political and religious leaders, political and economic elites and speak
to media in New York... Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif
will also head to the Venezuelan island of Margarita on Tuesday at the
head of a delegation to attend the 17th NAM meeting.
Lifting
sanctions doesn't land Iran trade boom | Gulf News
Sanctions
relief was to pave the way for a global trade boom, with many believing
billions of dollars of foreign investment would quickly follow Iran's
return to the international economy. But seven months on from January's
implementation day of the historic nuclear accord, many of those trying
to do business with Iran say that the United States is inhibiting the
boom. They say that sanctions that the US continues to impose have made
it near impossible for international banks to process financial
transactions tied to Iranian deals. "You effectively still have a
trade embargo in place," said Henry Smith, associate director in the
Dubai offices of Control Risks, a political risk consultancy... "The
dollar is fundamental to the banking system and it is hard to ring fence
transactions that are going to have any dollar component to them,"
an executive at a major Gulf bank told Gulf News, who asked to speak on
the condition anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter.
NUCLEAR
& BALLISTIC MISSILE PROGRAM
Iran
is ready to buy nuclear reactors from Japan if any proposed sales are
accompanied by "lucrative commercial support," according to the
head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran. "Of course if we
receive any suggestion or any proposal from Japan that would sound very
interesting to us, we would certainly be ready to enter negotiation in
that domain, Ali Akbar Salehi said in an exclusive interview with Kyodo
News on Sunday... After operating a Russian-built and supported
1,000-megawatt power plant in southern Iran since 2012, and starting
construction of two new ones with Russian help, Iran is going to construct
new small power plants on its southeastern coast. "Iran's fourth
power plant that we are going to build will be located in the Makran
region of southern Iran. Chinese have already visited that region for
site selection, but we have not come yet to a final agreement," he
said.
U.S.-IRAN
RELATIONS
A
series of close encounters between the U.S. navy and Iranian combat
vessels in the Gulf show the need for Iran and the United States to agree
rules of behavior to avoid risky miscalculations, the head of the U.S.
Navy said on Monday. Admiral John Richardson, the U.S. chief of naval
operations, said agreements of this type between the United States and
Russia and China had helped reduce such risks. "These are some of
these potentially destabilizing things, where a tactical miscalculation,
the closer you get to these sorts of things, the margin for error gets
smaller and the human error can play a bigger and bigger role,"
Richardson said "So it's very important that we eliminate this kind
of activity where we can. There's nothing good can come from it ... it
also advocates the power of a sort of leader-to-leader dialogue."
Iran's
Revolutionary Guard launched a new 55-metre-long naval ship on Tuesday
that is capable of transporting a helicopter and up to 100 men, according
to the website of state TV. The ship's launch in the port city of
Bushehr, comes at a time of high tension between Iran and the United
States over Gulf waters. U.S. officials says there have been more than 30
close encounters between U.S. and Iranian vessels in the Gulf so far this
year, over twice as many as in the same period of 2015... A banner posted
on the side of the ship at the launch read, "America should go to
the Bay of Pigs, the Persian Gulf is our house", a reference to the
botched U.S. attempt to overthrow Cuban leader Fidel Castro in 1961.
CONGRESSIONAL
ACTION
A
Republican congressman is asking the Treasury Department whether a recent
cash payment to Iran could be used to fund terrorism, and how the
department plans to keep that from happening. Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.)
said he's "gravely concerned with the nefarious possibilities"
of what Iran could do with $1.7 billion in cash from the United States.
He sent a letter sent Tuesday the Treasury under secretary for terrorism
and financial intelligence, outlining his fears.
New
admissions by the Obama administration that American officials physically
handed some $1.7 billion in cash to the Iranian government are fueling a
congressional investigation into still-hidden details surrounding the
deal, according to congressional sources and previously unreported-on
letters seen by the Washington Free Beacon. Lawmakers now suspect the
Obama administration may have dealt with members of the Iranian
Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and officials from its intelligence
ministry when carrying out the cash exchange, which coincided with the
release by Iran of several U.S. hostages. The Obama administration
recently disclosed to Congress that U.S. officials participated in the
handoff of at least $400 million to Iranian officials, but has withheld
key details about which parts of the Iranian government assumed control
of the cash, according to discussions with multiple sources familiar with
ongoing congressional investigation. Multiple sources familiar with the
matter told the Free Beacon it is possible IRGC members participated in
the exchange, raising new questions about the Obama administration's
dealings with an organization directly responsible for facilitating
terrorism and killing U.S. citizens.
HUMAN
RIGHTS
An
Iranian court has sentenced an Iranian-British dual national to five
years in prison on national security charges. The family of Nazanin
Zaghari-Ratcliffe told Human Rights Watch that Branch 15 of Tehran's
Revolutionary Court sentenced her on September 6, 2016. She is one of a
half-dozen Iranian dual nationals who have been arrested and prosecuted
on vaguely defined national security charges in the past two years...
"Ratcliffe's conviction and sentencing on unclear charges without
any semblance of a fair trial is what amounts to justice in Iran's
notorious revolutionary courts," said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle
East director. "The authorities should immediately release Ratcliffe
and other detained dual-nationals who have not been charged with a
credible offense."
A
mother jailed on "secret charges" while on holiday in Iran is
"distraught" after being sentenced for five years, her husband
has told Sky News... Mr Ratcliffe said his wife had begged him to do
"whatever you can" to secure her release from Evin prison, and
revealed that she had suffered hair and weight loss as a result of the
ordeal... He told Sky News his wife had spoken of her sadness at being
separated from her daughter for over a fifth of her child's life,
describing her treatment as "so hard and harsh".
OPINION & ANALYSIS
Since
January 2016, surface elements from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps
Navy (IRGC-N) have harassed U.S. naval vessels in the Gulf thirty times,
50 percent more than during the same period last year. In each case, the
Iranian vessel or vessels approached within weapons range. On at least
three occasions, they closed to a distance that could make a collision
more likely or could render U.S. ships nearly defenseless to a boat
packed with explosive charges. The latest challenges were posed by
Iranian harassment of the destroyer USS Nitze in late August and of the
coastal patrol boat USS Firebolt in early September. Incremental erosion
by Iranian vessels of the safety zone surrounding U.S. ships and a bias
by some U.S. commanders toward restraint have thus created a situation in
which Iranian warships are operating at distances that would have been in
the past, and should be at present, considered imprudent. This new normal
in the Gulf needs to be reversed through a three-pronged approach
(detailed below) involving quiet, indirect diplomacy and, when necessary,
ship action to restore a wider berth for U.S. vessels. Failure to do so
could result in an accident or incident involving U.S. and Iranian naval
forces that could adversely affect the broader U.S.-Iran relationship.
Indeed, the trend lines of U.S.-Iran interactions in the Gulf are heading
in the wrong direction, potentially setting the stage for an inadvertent
clash. Last year, the IRGC-N tallied three hundred close encounters with
U.S. Navy vessels, culminating in a highly provocative rocket launch near
the USS Harry S. Truman. In January of 2016, the IRGC-N seized ten
riverine command sailors who had strayed into its waters and directly
overflew the USS Harry S. Truman with an unmanned aerial vehicle. In the
last month, IRGC-N forces harassing four American ships drew so close
that their actions created a collision hazard. The USS Squall, a Navy
patrol craft, fired warning shots after aggressive IRGC-N maneuvers.
The
most important reservation regarding the JCPOA is the high probability
that after ten years, Iran will proceed with the production of highly
enriched uranium, and thus will have the capability to produce nuclear
weapons almost at will, with a breakout time reduced to two months, if
not less. Thus, the JCPOA is a setback for Iran, albeit probably
temporary. The deferment of the issue for ten years or less is minor in
the historical timescale. Iran knows how to be patient. There should be
little doubt that unless something dramatic changes in the Iranian regime
or its policies, it will seek this nuclear capability. Thus the euphoric
greeting of the JCPOA by at least some world leaders has eclipsed the
fact that this joy may be short-lived. The present atmosphere of focusing
only on having avoided the nuclear crisis is not conducive to almost any
preventive action regarding the potential scenario of an Iranian breakout
after 10-15 years. Under these circumstances, when the countdown ends we
will most likely find ourselves facing a nuclear Iran.
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