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TOP STORIES
The United States should expect a "strong slap in the
face" if it underestimates Iran's defensive capabilities, a
commander of the elite Revolutionary Guards said on Wednesday, as Tehran
concluded war games. Since taking office last month, U.S. President Donald
Trump has pledged to get tough with Iran, warning the Islamic Republic
after its ballistic missile test on Jan. 29 that it was playing with fire
and all U.S. options were on the table "The enemy should not be
mistaken in its assessments, and it will receive a strong slap in the
face if it does make such a mistake," said General Mohammad Pakpour,
head of the Guards' ground forces, quoted by the Guards' website
Sepahnews. On Wednesday, the Revolutionary Guards concluded three days of
exercises with rockets, artillery, tanks and helicopters, weeks after
Trump warned that he had put Tehran "on notice" over the
missile launch. "The message of these exercises ... for world
arrogance is not to do anything stupid," said Pakpour, quoted by the
semi-official news agency Tasnim. "Everyone could see today what
power we have on the ground." The Guards said they test-fired
"advanced rockets" and used drones in the three-day exercises
which were held in central and eastern Iran.
Officials from both countries say Iran and North Korea
want to strengthen relations. A Sunday report by ICANA.ir, the news
agency of Iran's Parliament, quotes parliament speaker Ali Larijani as
saying: "We have always been after stability of relations with North
Korea." Larijani was addressing Choe Thae-bok, visiting chairman of
North Korea's Supreme People's Assembly He also said both countries should
improve economic relations. Thae-bok responded, saying: "North Korea
is seeking improved relations with Iran." He also praised Iran's
economic and defense improvements.
Everything was in place on Tuesday for a gala celebration
at Iran's annual conference in support of Palestinians. Awaiting the
hundreds of guests was a table piled high with cakes and fruit, with
plenty of tea to wash it all down and a placard saying, "Netanyahu:
Go to Hell." The theme for this year's gathering was "All
Together for Palestine." Prominent seatings were reserved for the
heads of Parliament for Zimbabwe, Tanzania and Syria, as well as the
leaders of Islamic Jihad, Hamas and the Lebanese group Hezbollah. All
three of those groups are considered terrorist organizations by the
United States. Iran's support for them is one of the main reasons the
White House has, for years, and particularly now, in the Trump era,
labeled Iran perhaps the biggest state sponsor of terrorism in the
world... All three have offices in the Iranian capital and all have
received money, intelligence and even weapons from Iran - at least in the
past. On Monday, the evening before the conference, Iranian state
television broadcast an hourlong interview with the leader of Hezbollah,
Hassan Nasrallah, who warned that his organization was capable of
striking Israel's nuclear facilities.
U.S.-IRAN RELATIONS
An Iranian semi-official news agency is quoting a
Revolutionary Guard commander alleging that a U.S. permanent resident
sentenced to 10 years in prison in Iran confessed he tried to
"encourage decadence" in the Iranian society. Nizar Zakka, a
Lebanese with resident status in the United States, disappeared in
September 2015 during a trip to Iran to attend a conference. It wasn't
possible to independently confirm the alleged confession. Zakka's
supporters deny accusations he is a spy and note he was invited to Tehran
by the government. The Mehr news agency Wednesday quoted Gen. Sayyari of
the Guard's intelligence service, as saying that Zakka tried to corrupt
"Iranian women and families."
BUSINESS RISK
Air India Express, the low-cost unit of the South Asian
nation's flag carrier, has put on hold a plan to fly to Tehran amid
renewed tensions between the U.S. and Iran after President Donald Trump
imposed fresh sanctions on the Persian Gulf country. Since some of Air
India Ltd.'s plane purchases were funded by the Export-Import Bank of the
United States, it won't be able to fly to places where the U.S.
government imposes sanctions, K. Shyamsundar, the airline's chief
executive officer, told Rishaad Salamat in a Bloomberg Television
interview in Singapore on Tuesday. The carrier may now fly to Bahrain via
Doha instead, he said.
SANCTIONS ENFORCEMENT
U.S. prosecutors are pushing forward on an Iran sanctions
investigation that had languished during the multiyear period when
Washington and Tehran were negotiating their nuclear pact, according to
people briefed on the matter. The Justice Department is continuing to
examine whether Clearstream Banking SA and its parent company, Deutsche
Boerse AG, provided a conduit for illegal Iranian transactions and made
false statements to regulators during a review of Deutsche Boerse's
unsuccessful 2012 bid to buy the New York Stock Exchange, two people with
knowledge of the matter said. The investigation is being run by the
office of Preet Bharara, the U.S. attorney in Manhattan, a holdover from
the Obama administration who was asked to stay on by President Donald
Trump.
SANCTIONS RELIEF
Iran announced on Tuesday it will begin selling 100,000
barrels of oil a day to Russia within the next 15 days and receive
payment half in cash and half in goods and services, the Iranian
Students' News Agency (ISNA) reported. Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Namdar
Zanganeh provided details about the deal after meeting Russian energy minister
Alexander Novak in Tehran, ISNA said. "Of course we were ready to
sign the contract tonight but our Russian counterpart was in a hurry and
had to go to the airport," Zanganeh said. He added that a number of
Russian companies have already signed memorandums of understanding with
Iranian companies.
HUMAN RIGHTS
Iranian-born Swedish resident Ahmadreza Jalali, detained
in Iran since April 2016, began a second hunger strike in Evin Prison on
February 15, 2017 to protest against his lawyers being dismissed by the
judge shortly before his trial, the Campaign for Human Rights in Iran has
learned. Jalali's wife, Vida Mehran-nia, also told the Campaign that her
husband was moved to solitary confinement as punishment for his decision
to go on hunger strike. "Ahmadreza asked the judge why he had
accepted his lawyers at first, but decided to dismiss them now that the
trial is approaching," she said. "He also called for the
[Intelligence Ministry] official who had promised to review his case, but
Judge (Abolqasem) Salavati replied that Ahmadreza would never see that
official again," she added. "So, when my husband returned to
prison (from Salavati's office), he phoned the family and told them what
had happened and said he was going on hunger strike again."
To most observers, nothing stood out about Dorsa
Derakhshani last month when she competed at the Tradewise Gibraltar Chess
Festival. The 18-year-old female grand master fared fine on the board,
twice using the Four Knights defense, and looked like any other teenager
you might see in the British territory that borders southern Spain. But
to the head of the Iranian Chess Federation, Derakhshani practically
committed an act of treason. Mehrdad Pahlevanzadeh didn't have a problem
with Derakhshani's play, but her headwear. Derakhshani wore a simple
headband in her long hair, instead of a hijab, Iran's traditional
headscarf, which became a compulsory accessory for women after the 1979
revolution. As a result, Pahlevanzadeh announced on Monday that
Derakhshani would be kicked off the national team. Derakhshani's younger
brother Borna, 15, who also entered the tournament, was also kicked off
the team. His offense was agreeing to play an Israeli opponent, a strict
no-no in the country that doesn't recognize Israel as a state.
A Lebanese national held in Iran on charges of cooperating
with the United States was visited last week by the Lebanese ambassador
to Iran for the first time since he was arrested 17 months ago. The
family of Nizar Zakka said in a statement that the meeting was
"positive and fruitful." The two "discussed his case and
official documentation received by the embassy." Zakka, a resident
of the U.S. at the time of his arrest, led the Arab ICT Organization, or
IJMA3, an industry consortium. Zakka had been invited to attend a
conference in Iran on economic opportunity. He disappeared on Sept. 18,
2015. Several weeks later, Iranian state television reported he was in
custody, charged with cooperating with the U.S. government.
DOMESTIC POLITICS
Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's refusal of an offer to
achieve "national reconciliation" in Iran by ending the
six-year extrajudicial house arrests of three opposition leaders has
crushed hopes that the state's crackdown on dissidents, which intensified
in response to the nationwide protests against the results of the
disputed 2009 election, would finally end... By slamming the door shut on
any kind of compromise on the issue of the house arrests, Khamenei has
made the prospect of reform in Iran highly unlikely. During a February 7
speech, four days before the 38th anniversary of Iran's 1979 revolution,
former President Mohammad Khatami (1997 to 2005) suggested that releasing
presidential candidates Mir Hossein Mousavi, Mehdi Karroubi, and Zahra
Rahnavard would allow the Islamic Republic, which has been in a state of
internal conflict and political polarization since 2009, to move towards
unity and stability. Khamenei dismissed Khatami's offer by offering a
revisionist version of the country's recent history. "What do the
people want reconciliation for?" he said during a speech televised
on state TV on February 15. "Are they in conflict with each other?
There's no conflict."
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