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TOP STORIES
President Hassan Rouhani of Iran is racing to sign as
many oil deals with Western companies as he can before hard-liners at
home and President-elect Donald J. Trump have a chance to return the
Mideast country to cultural and economic isolation... Iran's oil
industry, the lifeblood of its economy, was devastated by the
cumulative impact of the nuclear sanctions, which halved petroleum
exports and left the country ostracized economically. The international
nuclear agreement that lifted those sanctions nearly a year ago, one of
the Obama administration's signature foreign policy initiatives, has
enabled Iran to partly recover. But Mr. Trump has warned that he may
dismantle the deal, a threat that has injected new urgency into Iran's
push to build up its oil industry before Mr. Trump takes power next
month... A provisional agreement this week with Royal Dutch Shell to
develop two of the country's largest oil fields is the latest sign of
interest in Iran from international energy companies. Over the last
four weeks, Tehran has negotiated similar agreements with the oil field
services giant Schlumberger and companies from China, Norway, Thailand
and Poland. The deals, if completed, would bring much-needed expertise
and foreign investment. Just as important, though, the agreements could
provide a lifeline to the rest of the world, experts say, cementing
relations with a number of European and Asian countries. That, they
say, could provide an insurance policy of sorts against any punitive
actions taken next year by the Trump administration and the
Republican-dominated Congress.
A further worry for the Syrian opposition is that the
Assad regime's victory will solidify Iran's hold on Syria, which is the
crown jewel of Tehran's sphere of influence in the Middle East. Despite
Donald Trump's outreach to Assad's sponsors in Moscow, the Syrian
opposition is now hoping that the Trump administration will view Syria
as worthy of action, in order to push back against Iran. The Syrian
opposition is in contact with the incoming administration... A clearly
frustrated Western diplomat sheepishly admitted that both the U.S. and
Europe had focused too much on pressuring Moscow and too little on
squeezing Iran to stop the violence in Syria. The diplomat attributed
that hesitation to American concern over disrupting the nuclear deal
with Iran, and European concern about squandering investment
opportunities resulting from that agreement. Iran sanctions are
"more third-rail" than Syria sanctions because of the
commercial interests, this diplomat said.
Hawks critical of the Obama administration's outreach to
Iran over the past eight years were in a distinctly upbeat mood as they
took over an ornate Senate caucus room Thursday to promote their cause.
The incoming Trump administration, many said, understands their case
and the threat posed by the regime in Tehran far better than President
Obama ever did. Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain
and Democratic Sen. Robert Menendez, a longtime member of the Senate
Committee on Foreign Relations, were among the lawmakers saying Mr.
Trump and the team he is assembling will clearly be more skeptical of
Iran and ready to call out any violations of the multinational nuclear
deal Mr. Obama helped negotiate in 2015... Mr. McCain said he was
heartened by Mr. Trump's choice of James N. Mattis to head the Defense
Department, saying the retired Marine general was deeply familiar with
the threat posed by Tehran to the U.S. and its regional allies. Gen.
Mattis has criticized the Iran nuclear deal as "imperfect"
and said in an April speech that "the Iranian regime, in my mind,
is the single most enduring threat to stability and peace in the Middle
East." "I don't know, frankly, what Donald Trump wants to do
[about Iran], but I do know the people he has selected so far for major
positions I've been very pleased to see," the Arizona Republican
said.
SYRIA CONFLICT
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's imminent victory in
Aleppo will increase Syrian and Iranian influence in Lebanon, the
leading Lebanese Druze politician said on Thursday, as Assad said
Lebanon could not remain unscathed by regional conflicts... "This
means that (Assad's) influence in Lebanon will increase, and the Iranian-Syrian
grip on (Lebanon) will strengthen," he told As-Safir, a Lebanese
daily close to the Iran-backed Lebanese Shi'ite Muslim group Hezbollah,
which is fighting on Assad's side in neighboring Syria.
OPINION & ANALYSIS
Those who led the fight against the deal, such as United
Against Nuclear Iran (UANI), are not calling for the deal to be torn up
on Day 1. But they are calling for a step-by-step strategy to
"aggressively enforce and renegotiate the deal beyond the confines
of the nuclear issue to make it better for us and the world,"
former Sen. Joseph Lieberman, chairman of UANI, and the group's Chief
Executive Mark Wallace, wrote in The Washington Post. But they are also
signaling that the US is willing to work with Iran and even normalize
relations with it if Iran curbs its regional aggression and domestic
repression of human rights. In recent a panel held in Congress, former
Sen. Lieberman saw in the Trump administration a "sea change in
the right direction" on Iran. But Congresswoman Ileana
Ros-Lehtinen announced that the next Congress will continue its
oversight, will hold Iran accountable. Other voices in Congress
counseled the new administration to be careful in talking about
destroying the deal. Congressman Eliot Engle advised the US not
"to cut off your nose to spite your face." But Engle said it
is important for the US to make sure Iran fulfills its commitments on
the deal and to monitor the situation until the threat is
"dissipated." Other experts also advised the new
administration to focus on Iran's "malign" activities both
domestically and in the region, and suggested designating the
Revolutionary Guards as a whole as a terrorist organization, and not
only its Quds Force as is the case now. UANI endorsed that designation
and suggested that President Trump could "support legislation in
Congress punishing sectors of the Iranian economy that support Iran's
ballistic missile program," and "propose measures to curb
Iranian access to the US dollar."
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