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TOP STORIES
A few days after Donald Trump's shock election victory,
U.S. aviation salesman Adam Meyer took the kind of call he knew was
coming -- a small Iranian airline wanted to know if its plan to repair a
fleet of aging American jets would still be possible. "We have to
wait and see," Meyer, Middle East and Africa managing director for
Minnesota-based Brite Air Parts Inc., recalled telling the concerned
executive. "Trump can definitely make it difficult for us as an American
company, but I'm trying to stay on the side of optimism." Brite Air
is among scores of foreign and Iranian businesses, from oil majors to car
makers, whose prospects were dented when Trump became president-elect.
Plans are hinged on an Iran open for business after most sanctions were
lifted by last year's nuclear agreement, a deal attacked by Trump as ripe
for renegotiation or shredding... Meyer at Brite Air says Europeans
businesses have forged ahead in Iran as U.S. firms await export licenses.
He's spent three years laying the groundwork to sell parts and engines to
Iranian carriers, and was attending an international air show on Iran's
Kish Island -- a free-trade zone in the Persian Gulf -- at the time of
the Congress vote.
Donald Trump's victory and the war on Islamic State have
given Iran's hard-line Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps what it sees as
a unique opportunity to claw back economic and political power it had
lost. Sidelined after a nuclear deal was reached with Iranian reformist
leaders and the administration of President Barack Obama and major
nations, the IRGC is determined to regain its position in Shi'ite Iran's
complex governing structure. Republican Trump said in the campaign that
he would abandon the 2015 deal that curbed Iran's nuclear ambitions in
return for the lifting of economic sanctions. His tough stance, in
contrast to Obama's olive branch, is expected to empower hard-liners who
would benefit from an economy that excludes foreign competition. In
addition, the Quds force, that conducts IRGC policies overseas, has
played a successful and key role on the battlefields of Iraq increasing
the Guards' kudos at home. "Trump and the Islamic State militants
were gifts from God to the IRGC," said a senior official within the
Iranian government, speaking to Reuters on condition of anonymity like
other figures contacted within Iran. "If Trump adopts a hostile
policy towards Iran or scraps the deal, hard-liners and particularly the
IRGC will benefit from it," a former reformist official said...
"If Trump's presidency scares away foreign investors from Iran, then
it is the IRGC that will regain its economic power," said a former
reformist official close to Rouhani. "More economic involvement of
the IRGC means a riskier market for foreign investors. It will hinder
Rouhani's planned economic growth and will give more political power to
the IRGC and their hard-line backers," the reformist official added.
BP has created a new executive committee to explore
business in Iran which will exclude its American chief executive Bob
Dudley in a bid to avoid potential violations of U.S. sanctions still in
place. The new committee is headed by BP's chief financial officer Brian
Gilvary, who is a British national. Gilvary will coordinate the oil
major's operations in Iran and any discussions with the country's
national oil company, according to industry sources. The move highlights
the lengths to which multinationals will go to exploit lucrative new
business in Iran, which is only slowly emerging from years of isolation
that crippled the OPEC member's energy-reliant economy... BP's new
executive committee also includes Bernard Looney, upstream chief
executive, who is Irish, Dev Sanyal, chief executive of alternative
energy and executive vice president, regions, an Indian national, and
General Counsel Rupert Bondy, a Briton. "The separate governance
structure does not involve Bob or any other U.S. citizens and was set up
for Bob's own protection," one source said... Last month, Dudley
said: "Iran is a large oil and gas province ... We're going to have
to be very careful. We don't want to violate any sanctions."
NUCLEAR & BALLISTIC MISSILE PROGRAM
Iran said on Tuesday it had sent 11 metric tonnes of heavy
water to Oman as part of its obligations under last year's nuclear deal
with world powers. Ali Akbar Salehi, head of Iran's Atomic Energy
Organisation, said the heavy water has been sold to an unnamed third
country. Heavy water is not itself radioactive, but is used in certain
types of reactor which can produce plutonium that is used in a nuclear
bomb. "Eleven tonnes of heavy water has been sent to Oman and the
other party has announced its readiness for the purchase," Salehi
said, according to the IRIB news agency. In a report this month, the
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said Iran's stocks of heavy
water had crept 100 kilos above the 130-tonne level set out in the
nuclear deal with world powers that came into force in January.
Iran will likely use the Obama administration's final
weeks to try to procure nuclear-related materials in violation of last
summer's landmark nuclear deal, a top lawmaker told the THE WEEKLY
STANDARD. While Iran is prohibited from purchasing civil nuclear and
so-called dual-use goods outside of the procurement channel set up under
the deal, recent reports indicate that the country has yet to fully use
the channel and has instead tried to obtain goods using unofficial means.
The State Department effectively denied those reports in a statement to
TWS this week. "The Procurement Channel is fully functional and we
are confident that it will continue to effectively review proposals that
it receives," an official said. "The United States retains a
wide range of multilateral and unilateral tools to address any proscribed
Iranian procurement activities - including interdiction and sanctions -
and we continue to deploy those tools where needed." Lawmakers have
cast doubt on the administration's assurances. House Foreign Affairs
Committee chairman Ed Royce told TWS that Iran would likely intensify its
attempts to import technology outside the procurement channel in coming
weeks.
IRAN NUCLEAR DEAL
Senior Obama administration officials in their final days
in office are seeking to cover up key details of the Iran nuclear deal
from Congress, according to documents and sources who spoke to the
Washington Free Beacon about continued efforts by the White House to
block formal investigations into secret diplomacy with Tehran that
resulted in a $1.7 billion cash payment by the United States. As leading
members of Congress petition the Obama administration for answers about what
many describe as a $1.7 billion "ransom" payment to Iran, Obama
administration officials are doubling down on their refusal to answer
questions about the secret negotiations with Iran that led to this
payment. Sen. Marco Rubio (R., Fla.), a vocal opponent of last year's
nuclear deal with Iran, has been seeking answers from senior Obama
administration officials since at least late September. However,
officials continue to stonewall the senator's inquiries, according to
senior congressional sources and formal communications between Rubio and
the State Department obtained by the Free Beacon.
SANCTIONS ENFORCEMENT
A former consultant to Iran's mission to the United
Nations pleaded guilty on Monday to charges that he filed a false tax
return substantially understating how much he was paid and conspired to
violating a U.S. sanctions law. Ahmad Sheikhzadeh, 60, entered his plea
in federal court in Brooklyn to charges that he conspired to violate the
International Emergency Economic Powers Act and aided in the preparation
of false individual income tax returns. As part of a plea deal,
Sheikhzadeh agreed to not appeal any sentence of 5-1/4 years in prison or
less, said Steve Zissou, his attorney. Sheikhzadeh, who has also agreed
to pay over $147,000, is scheduled to be sentenced on March 30.
Sheikhzadeh was arrested in March, two months after when world powers led
by the United States and the European Union lifted crippling sanctions
against Iran in return for curbs on Tehran's nuclear ambitions.
SANCTIONS RELIEF
The Lloyd's of London insurance market has announced plans
to launch offices in Iran - a move that could help the country's efforts
to open its economy to post-sanctions investments. Inga Beale, the CEO of
the world's leading specialty insurer, was quoted by Iran's domestic
media as saying that Lloyd's of London would establish branches in Iran's
free trade zones. To the same effect, two Lloyd's directors will soon
travel to Tehran to discuss the technicalities for this, Beale was quoted
as saying by Iran's state news agency IRNA. She made the remarks in
a meeting with Abdolnasser Hemmati, the head of Iran's Central Insurance
Company, during a visit to London on Friday. Beale further added that
Lloyd's syndicates are interested in returning to the Iranian market.
The insurance regulator chief also met with Victor
Peignet, chief executive of the French insurer [SCOR] in London on
Friday. "[SCOR] was a leading reinsurer covering major risks for
Iran, including risks in petroleum and petrochemical industries,"
Hemmati said... Peignet said his company is willing to start
collaboration with Iran, in line with comments by the Paris government to
partner with Tehran in key industries. "We are ready to start
collaboration, as the leader reinsurer, in accordance with the CII
framework," he said and added that [SCOR] is ready to hold training
courses for Iranian insurance managers over risk management and pricing
policies. Hemmati also held talks with Munir Kabban, president of UIB
Group, an international insurance and reinsurance company headquartered
in London. He acknowledged the firm's efforts in training Iranian
insurance experts.
German Linde Group has received green lights from Euler
Hermes, a credit insurance company to become the greatest contractor of
Iran's LNG projects. New round of Iranian officials and Germany's Linde
Group sat to discuss the LNG projects. The former had signed a deal to
provide technical support for Kian Petrochemical Complex earlier and
signaled its participation in country's greatest petrochemical projects
during new round of talks with the Imam Khomeini Petrochemical Complex.
New investments, technology transfer, training, and research and
development projects constituted the topics of discussion. The new rise
in German company's willingness is attributed to assurances Euler Hermes
Credit Insurance Co., which would provide insurance coverage to enterprises
acting in Iranian setting, which would have been impossible without
provisions of JCPOA.
Officials of German Linde Company in a meeting with
directors of Iran's Bandar Imam Petrochemical Company voiced their
willingness to cooperate with Iran. Bandar Imam Petrochemical Managing
Director Reza Amiri said that Linde has opened up its office in Iran.
"The officials of the two companies got together to consider
opportunities of investment, transfer of technology and partnership in
Iran's projects," Amiri added. Amiri said Linde had launched
activity in various domains like petrochemical section after the Joint
Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).
Iran and Poland held negotiations in Tehran over launching
a joint shipping line for transport of crude oil, petrochemical products
as well as liquefied gas. A fresh round of talks was conducted in Tehran
between National Iranian Tanker Company (NITC) and Poland's Ciech Trading
S.A. to establish a joint company to transport petrochemicals and
liquefied gas in addition to development of bunkering industry. Tomasz
Grzela, Managing Director of Ciech Trading S.A., said at the meeting that
his company eyes expansion of ties with NITC in the post-JCPOA era;
"accordingly, we are eager to begin joint investment in a wide
variety of fields like bunkering as well as carrying of petrochemical
products and liquefied natural gas (LNG)." The Polish official
asserted that a joint firm will be formed by NITC and Ciech Trading S.A.
in order to bolster relations.
The executive vice president of the Finnish Outotec sees
the prospect of relationships with Iranian companies in the field of
mineral industry. The Finnish company has been present in the Iranian
market as of the 1970s and today, ties with Iranian companies is
strengthening, Adel Hattab told the Tehran Times. Outotec Oyj is a
Finland-based company active within the mineral industry, providing
process solutions, technologies, and services for the mining and
metallurgical industries. "We have been here working in Iran since
1976. We are working within the steel and copper value chain. We look
forward to working the within zinc, aluminum, gold and many other
commodities," he said.
EXTREMISM
Commander of Iran's Basij (Volunteer Force) Brigadier
General Mohammad Reza Naqdi underlined that the Palestinian territories
will be freed from Israel's occupation in the next 10 years. Addressing
elite students in Alborz province near Tehran on Monday, Naqdi expressed
the hope that the notions, thoughts and ideology that led to Iran's
Islamic Revolution would help Palestinians get rid of Israel in the next
10 years. Elaborating on his reasons for predicting the liberation of
Palestine and annihilation of Israel by 2025, he said that the Islamic
Revolution helped Iran get rid of the US over 35 years ago, rescued the
country from Saddam Hussein's aggression and helped the Lebanese to get
rid of the Americans. "Considering these developments, liberation of
Palestine by the Islamic Revolution is not unlikely at all," Naqdi
said. In relevant remarks earlier this month, General Naqdi underlined
that the US will collapse in less than 20 years, adding that
President-elect Donald Trump will speed up the process.
TERRORISM
Iran is smuggling weapons and ammunition to Hezbollah
through commercial flights from the Islamic Republic to Lebanon,
according to intelligence information revealed by Israel's UN ambassador
to the Security Council, which was cleared for publication on Tuesday. UN
Ambassador Danny Danon sent an urgent letter to the Security Council
members in which he revealed the smuggling route from Iran's
Revolutionary Guards to Hezbollah: "The Iranian Al-Quds Force packs
weapons, ammunition and missile technology to Hezbollah in suitcases and
puts them on Mahan Air flights." Danon added that "these planes
fly directly to the airport in Lebanon or Damascus and from there the
weapons are transferred on the ground to Hezbollah." The UN envoy
wrote that "Iran continues to violate Security Council resolutions,
including Resolutions 1701 and 2231." Iran arms terrorist
organizations in the Middle East and works to undermine stability in the
entire region, he added.
SYRIA CONFLICT
More than 1,000 soldiers deployed by Iran to Syria to back
the government side in its civil war have been killed, an Iranian
official said, underlining Tehran's increasing presence on front lines of
the conflict. It was a major increase in the reported death toll from
just four months ago, when the Islamic Republic announced that 400 of its
soldiers had died on Syria's battlefields... Although many of the
soldiers the Shi'ite Muslim Iran sends are its own nationals, it is
casting its recruitment net wide, training and deploying Shi'ites from
neighboring Afghanistan and Pakistan as well. Half of the death toll
reported in August were Afghan citizens. "Now the number of Iran's
martyrs as defenders of shrine has exceeded 1,000," Mohammadali
Shahidi Mahallati, head of Iran's Foundation of Martyrs, which offers
financial support to the relatives of those killed fighting for Iran, was
quoted as saying by Tasnim news agency.
IRAQ CRISIS
These are the Shiite militias, and their goal is Tal Afar,
on the main road to the Syrian city of Raqqa, the capital of IS'
self-declared caliphate... Officially, the Iraqi government and top
militia leadership say that only Iraqi army units will enter Tal Afar,
once dominated by Shiites but now primarily Sunni Turkmen, a minority in
the country with cultural and historic links to nearby Turkey to the
north. But some of the militias' most powerful units, as well as field
commanders and troops - all backed by a newly empowered Iran - tell a
different story. Jaafar al-Husseini, spokesman for Iraq's Hezbollah
Brigades, said it is the militias backed by Shiite-heavy army units and
Iranian weapons that will lead the charge into Tal Afar to drive out IS
extremists. "The Iranians are with us," he said, adding that
Tehran was supporting the militias directly, including strategy from
Revolutionary Guards commander Gen. Qassem Soleimani, who is in charge of
a crescent of Shiite power stretching from Tehran to Beirut. "Our
mission and that of the (Iraqi Shiite) Badr Brigades is to encircle Tal
Afar from the east. Then we will storm it," he said, adding that
Soleimani visited a nearby staging ground three days ago.
HUMAN RIGHTS
Dozens of businesses in Iran owned by members of the
Baha'i faith have been indefinitely shut down by the authorities after
some owners closed their establishments to honor the birthdays of two of
the faith's holiest figures... Between November 6-10, 2016 the police
closed down several Baha'i shops in Karaj, the Campaign has learned. The
Baha'i World News Service also reported that 104 Baha'is shops in the
cities of Noshahr, Shahsavar, Tonekabon, Amol, Bahmanir, Kerman, Bandar
Abbas, and Sari "were sealed by Iranian authorities after they were
temporarily closed to observe Baha'i holy days on 1 and 2
November." According to the Baha'i calendar, November 1 is the
birthday of the Bab, the faith's prophet, and November 2 is the birthday
of Bahá'u'lláh, the faith's founder.
At first, it sounds like a charming love story: Playmates
who grow up side by side in an Iranian village go on to get married. But
when Leila was wedded to Ali, she was 10 years old. He was 15. "It
was nighttime and I was asleep. My neighbors rang the doorbell and came
in and put a ring on my finger," Leila, whose name has been changed
to protect her privacy, told RFE/RL's Radio Farda in an interview.
"That's how I got married." At 22, Leila has been married more
than half her life. In a way, she's not alone. There are tens of
thousands of child brides in Iran, where the legal age of marriage for
girls is 13 with parental consent -- and girls even younger can be
married with permission from a judge. For boys, the age is 15... The UN
Committee on the Rights of the Child warned this year that the number of
child brides in Iran is increasing and called on the Islamic country to
change laws that allow girls as young as 9 to be married.
OPINION & ANALYSIS
In summer 2015 Congressman Mike Pompeo and Senator Tom
Cotton visited the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna,
where they learned of two secret codicils to the Iranian nuclear deal.
The Obama Administration had failed to disclose these side agreements to
Congress. When pressed on the details of the codicils, Secretary of State
John Kerry claimed never to have read them. We're reminded of this
episode on news that Donald Trump has asked Congressman Pompeo to lead
the Central Intelligence Agency. The Kansas Republican is being denounced
by liberals as a "hardliner," but the truth is that he has
shown an independent streak that has allowed him to raise thorny
questions and gather vital information that Administration officials want
suppressed. Isn't that what Americans should expect in a CIA director?
That goes double regarding the Iranian nuclear deal, which Mr. Pompeo
opposed in part because of the diplomatic legerdemain he and Sen. Cotton
uncovered in Vienna. Of the two secret deals, one concerned the nuclear
agency's inspection of the Parchin military facility, where the Iranians
were suspected of testing components of a nuclear deal. The other
concerned Iran's non-answers to questions about the possible military
dimensions of its nuclear program... Undoing the strategic damage of the
Iran deal won't happen overnight, and the Trump Administration will have
to move carefully to avoid diplomatic missteps with allies and
adversaries. Having Mr. Pompeo at CIA gives more confidence that at least
the U.S. will be honest when Iran is breaking its commitments.
As President-elect Donald Trump prepares to take office
over the coming months, one of the thorniest foreign policy questions he
will have to address is what to do about the Iran nuclear deal... Yet,
while the JCPOA is imperfect, tearing up the agreement during Trump's
first few weeks in office would carry significant consequences. Although
the president could walk away from the agreement and re-impose sanctions,
Iran has already received approximately $100 billion. Walking away would
allow Iran to continue its work on the nuclear program while enjoying
this significant financial windfall... However, there are still actions
Trump can take to strengthen U.S. leverage over Iran, which has become
more aggressive since agreeing to the nuclear deal. On day one of his
presidency, Trump can take at least three steps that will make it more
difficult for Iran to continue its support of terrorism, engage in human
right abuses, test ballistic missiles in contravention of United Nations
sanctions, and ensure that, if Iran continues to see economic relief from
the nuclear deal, such relief does not end up in the coffers of terrorist
organizations like the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
Supporters of Obama's Iran diplomacy should respond to its
prospective unravelling with introspection as well as outrage. The
administration managed a historic feat in achieving a negotiated
resolution to the nuclear crisis, and its officials then waged and won an
epic, innovative battle to sell the deal to a skeptical Congress and to
the American people. However, the deal's architects failed in one
difficult but vital task: Ensuring the agreement's sustainability beyond
the administration's lifespan. Thanks to entrenched Republican opposition
to the negotiations, the American commitment to the JCPOA hangs from the
narrow thread of executive authority: The president's power to
temporarily waive or suspend economic sanctions on Iran. The presumption
was that the deal's success in deferring Iran's nuclear ambitions would
persuade any future administration to retain it-a proposition that is
proving uncomfortably iffy. It may be tempting to cast blame for this
scenario on Republican obstructionism, but the hyperpartisanship of the
Obama era wasn't entirely a one-way street. And since the negotiators
realized the deal would not have a broad domestic mandate, greater
attention to resilience in the framework for implementation might have
avoided the current precarious outcome. Instead, as many observers noted
at the time of its signing, the deal incorporated sufficient ambiguity on
sanctions to ensure that every future application of American pressure on
Iran would be strenuously contested by Tehran-and that concerns about
eroding Iranian commitment to the deal would compromise Washington's
vigilance in enforcing the residual measures. In this respect, the JCPOA
contains the seeds of its own subversion from both Washington and Tehran.
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