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TOP STORIES
The top U.S. general said Thursday that he hasn't seen
a change in Iranian behavior since President Trump put the country
"on notice" earlier this month. "No, I haven't
detected a change in Iranian behavior," Chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joseph Dunford told a crowd at the Brookings
Institution. "From my perspective, the major export of Iran is
actually malign influence across the region," Dunford said, a
phrasing he's used in the past. "You've got a very aggressive
proxy war; we've seen that in Yemen. We see their influence in Syria.
We see their malign influence in Lebanon, as well as in Iraq and the
rest of the region. So, I haven't seen a change, certainly in the
past month." Trump and former national security adviser Michael
Flynn said in early February that Iran was "on notice"
after it conducted its first ballistic missile test since Trump took
office. They also cited Iran's support for groups such as the Houthi
rebels in Yemen.
BASF said it was in talks with Iran over a possible
investment of its oil and gas division in the country but no decision
was on the cards because of uncertainty over the status of economic
sanctions. "We can't see that the lifting of sanctions is being
implemented at the speed that was initially expected," BASF
Chief Executive Kurt Bock told a news conference after the release of
2016 earnings. "We are trying to assess whether it's possible
for our oil and gas business to gain a foothold in Iran. We have been
invited by the national authorities. The evaluation process is
ongoing," he said, adding the outcome was uncertain. He
specified that such talks were limited to investments in oil and gas
exploration and production and did not extend to downstream
petrochemical processing plants.
Bidding to ease public anger over a mounting
environmental crisis, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on Thursday
visited an oil-rich southwestern province that has been crippled by
sandstorms and power blackouts. Residents of Khuzestan province have
long struggled with high levels of dust because of desertification,
but the problems worsened this month when severe rains washed the
fine particles into power transmission equipment. That caused several
days of electricity blackouts last week in Ahvaz, the provincial
capital and home to more than 1 million people. Schools and
government agencies in much of the province were closed temporarily,
and water supplies were disrupted, forcing residents to buy jerrycans
of water to drink. Many residents took to the streets of Ahvaz to
protest until police issued a warning that anyone participating in
"illegal gatherings" would be punished. Authorities in
Tehran, the capital, also prevented a demonstration planned last week
to show solidarity with Khuzestan.
SANCTIONS RELIEF
An economic delegation led by New Zealand's Primary
Industries Minister Nathan Guy is scheduled to arrive in Tehran on
Saturday to scope out trade opportunities in agriculture and dairy
industries, Iran's ambassador to New Zealand, Jalaledin Namini
Mianji, announced. The delegation includes, among others, the
representative of Fonterra Cooperative Group, the world's largest
dairy exporter. "Iran's butter imports from Fonterra once
reached $150 million a year, making it the biggest customer of the
company. Encouraging the company to invest in northern Iranian
provinces like Golestan has been pursued by the Iranian Embassy in
Wellington," IRNA quoted Mianji as saying.
German Athos Solar GmbH (link is external) recently
became the first investor to install and launch two high-performance
solar parks in Iran. The two systems reach a combined peak output of
14 MWp. The two solar parks cover an area of 100,000 square meters,
making them the first of their scale in Iran. In early February, the
two systems officially commenced operations, with both German
Ambassador Michael Klor-Berchtold and Iranian Energy Minister Hamid
Chitchian attending the ceremony. "Construction of large-scale
solar-energy plants in Iran only became possible since the spring of
2016, when the sanctions were lifted, meaning our systems are the
first of their kind," explains Christian Linder, CEO of Athos
Solar. "The joint endeavour was initiated by two business
partners from Iran and England, who also developed the rights to the
project and sold them to the newly founded joint holding. We realised
the project together with our trusted partners from Germany, and
contracted Iranian providers for both preparatory landscaping work
and subsequent electrical work."
SYRIA CONFLICT
After at first covertly sending thousands of
undocumented Afghans to fight on the Syrian front, Iran is trumpeting
their sacrifice with increasingly public funerals for the fallen and
a giant rally planned for Friday in a Tehran square. Authorities in
Kabul and human rights groups have roundly criticized the Iranian
government for sending Afghans living in Iran to Syria to fight
alongside forces of the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah and Iran's
Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in support of the government of
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Thousands of Afghans from Iran are
in the "Fatemiyon Brigade," the second-largest group of
foreigners fighting for Assad in Syria. Western media estimate their
numbers at between 10,000 and 12,000. Many of the Afghans were
reportedly sent against their will, Human Rights Watch reported, or
agreed to fight because of economic remuneration to their families...
According to Iranian pro-state Mashregh News, the Tehran municipality
will hold a ceremony on Friday to honor at least four members of the
Afghan militia killed in Syria. "A commemoration ceremony for
the Fatemiyon Brigade martyrs will be held on Friday in Tehran,"
the pro-IRGC news portal said. Sayed Hassan Sajjadi, a high-ranking
conservative cleric with links to the IRGC, has been reportedly
invited as a keynote speaker to the event.
HUMAN RIGHTS
Four Iranian ethnic Azerbaijanis have been issued long
prison sentences for peacefully defending their rights, the Campaign
for Human Rights in Iran has learned. One defendant, Alireza Farshi,
told the Campaign that Branch 1 of the Tehran Revolutionary Court had
sentenced him to 15 years in prison and two years in exile while
three of his colleagues-Akbar Azad, Behnam Sheikhi and Hamid
Manafi-had each been sentenced to 10 years in prison and two years in
exile. The four men were arrested by Intelligence Ministry agents in
2014 during a peaceful event marking International Mother Language
Day (February 21) and released on bail after being charged with
"forming an illegal group" and "assembly and collusion
against national security." The written verdict against the
four, obtained by the Campaign, alleges that their activities were
"secessionist" in nature. They plan to appeal their
sentences within the 20-day time limit, said Farshi.
OPINION & ANALYSIS
Both sides have kept their part of the bargain; the uranium
and the centrifuges are dealt with, Iran shows no sign of deliberate
cheating, and the UN Security Council's nuclear-related economic
sanctions have all been lifted. Although Donald Trump has inveighed
against the deal, in office he has shown no sign of seeking to scrap
it. Most observers, including even the Israeli army and intelligence
services, think it would be a mistake to do so. However-and this is a
crucial point-other sanctions on Iran remain. America, in particular,
still has a large array of them, imposed a decade earlier to penalise
a number of Iranian transgressions, especially human-rights abuses,
support for terrorism and the development of weapons of mass
destruction, including the missiles that can be used to deliver them.
These sanctions were tightened several times by the generally doveish
Barack Obama to punish Iran for a missile test. The law that mandates
them was extended for ten more years in December. The vote in
Congress was hardly a cliffhanger: the Senate backed the extension by
99-0 and the House by 419-1. American firms are still banned from
doing business with Iran, though the president can always waive
sanctions. After the nuclear deal, Mr Obama did so in many areas, for
instance letting Boeing join Airbus in selling planes to Iran. None
of these prior sanctions had anything to do with the nuclear
programme and everything to do with Iran's record of making trouble,
which it continues unabated. Iran is helpful in taking on Islamic
state. But, as Mr Lieberman noted, it still poses the largest threat
to the stability of the Middle East. Its Shia proxy armies, aided by
the Quds force, its own overseas special-forces unit, have extended
its hard power far beyond its borders. Iraq is now virtually an
Iranian client state. Hizbullah, an Iranian marionette, is the
strongest force in Lebanon and menaces Israel. In Syria Iran props up
the vile regime of Bashar al-Assad. In Yemen it arms and trains the
Houthi rebels who overthrew the government two years ago. Bahrain and
Saudi Arabia, which both have large Shia populations, accuse it of
organising terror cells in their countries. America should not tear
up the nuclear deal. It is not perfect, but it was better than
confronting an Iran only months from possessing nukes. But sticking
with the nuclear deal does not stop America from being tough
elsewhere. Indeed, responding to missile-tests and other
transgressions signals that the world will react to nuclear breaches,
too. Until Iran stops acting as though it is hellbent on recreating
the Sassanian empire, Mr Trump is right to apply targeted sanctions
against the individuals and companies that are helping the Middle
East's chief empire-builder puff itself up.
Chaotic, fractious and bafflingly inconsistent though
the Trump administration may be, on one issue it appears united:
Iran. There is ample evidence that since the signing in mid-2015 of
the deal to curb Iran's nuclear programme, known as the Joint
Comprehensive Plan of Action, Iran has taken advantage of the easing
of sanctions and the unfreezing of about $100bn worth of overseas
assets to project its power across the region with greater boldness.
Barack Obama, the new team believe, let it off the hook. Since the
deal, Iran has stepped up its support for Bashar al-Assad in Syria to
the point where, with Russian air support, his regime's survival
appears assured for the foreseeable future. Iran has also worked with
Russia to supply Hizbullah, a Lebanese Shia militia fighting in Syria,
with heavy weapons. It has poured other Shia militias into Syria from
Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. In Iraq, meanwhile, Iranian-backed
militias are fighting alongside American-supported Iraqi security
forces against Islamic State (IS). But once IS is ejected from Mosul,
they will be a potent weapon in Iran's attempt to turn Iraq into a
dependent satrapy. In Yemen the civil war is a proxy struggle between
Sunni Gulf Arabs, who back the recognised government, against Shia
Houthi rebels whom Iran supplies with training and weapons, including
anti-ship missiles that have been fired at American warships in the
Red Sea. Meanwhile, Iran's elite Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps
has conducted a series of tests of ballistic missiles capable of
delivering a nuclear warhead in defiance, though not clear violation,
of UN Security Resolution 2231, which underpins the nuclear deal. The
latest, on January 29th, resulted in the US Treasury slapping new
sanctions on several Iranian individuals and companies connected to
the missile programme. The response was measured (and probably dusted
off from something prepared by the Obama administration). But it was
backed up by a statement from the short-lived national security
adviser, Mike Flynn, that Iran was "officially being put on
notice" about its behaviour.
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