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TOP STORIES
The Central Intelligence Agency has established an
organization focused exclusively on gathering and analyzing
intelligence about Iran, reflecting the Trump administration's
decision to make that country a higher priority target for American
spies, according to U.S. officials. The Iran Mission Center will
bring together analysts, operations personnel and specialists from
across the CIA to bring to bear the range of the agency's
capabilities, including covert action. In that respect it is similar
to a new Korea Mission Center that the CIA announced last month to
address North Korea's efforts to develop long-range nuclear missiles.
The CIA didn't publicly announce the new Iran organization. The
agency declined to comment.
Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain
severed their ties with Qatar on Monday, accusing it of supporting
terrorism and opening up the worst rift in years among some of the
most powerful states in the Arab world. Iran -- long at odds with
Saudi Arabia and a behind-the-scenes target of the move --
immediately blamed U.S. President Donald Trump for setting the stage
during his recent trip to Riyadh. Gulf Arab states and Egypt have
already long resented Qatar's support for Islamists, especially the
Muslim Brotherhood which they regard as a dangerous political enemy.
The coordinated move, with Yemen and Libya's eastern-based government
joining in later, created a dramatic rift among the Arab nations,
many of which are in OPEC. Announcing the closure of transport ties
with Qatar, the three Gulf states gave Qatari visitors and residents
two weeks to leave. Qatar was also expelled from the Saudi-led
coalition fighting in Yemen.
Iran has stayed within limits on its nuclear activities
imposed by a 2015 deal with world powers but is close to once again
breaching a ceiling on its stock of one chemical, a quarterly report
by the U.N. atomic watchdog showed on Friday. The report was the
second since the January inauguration of U.S. President Donald Trump,
who has called the pact between six powers and Iran "the worst
deal ever negotiated" and branded Tehran an enemy in contrast
with his predecessor Barack Obama. Iran's stock of low-enriched
uranium as of May 27 was 79.8 kg (175.5 pounds), well below a
202.8-kg (446-pound) limit, and the level of enrichment did not
exceed a 3.67 percent cap, the International Atomic Energy said in a
confidential report sent to IAEA member states and seen by Reuters.
NUCLEAR & BALLISTIC MISSILE PROGRAM
Iran is believed to be developing advanced
nuclear-related capabilities that could significantly reduce the time
it needs to build a deliverable nuclear weapon, according to
statements by Iranian officials that have fueled speculation among
White House officials and nuclear experts that the landmark accord
has heightened rather than reduced the Islamic Regime's nuclear
threat. The head of Iran's nuclear program recently announced the
Islamic Republic could mass produce advanced nuclear centrifuges
capable of more quickly enriching uranium, the key component in a
nuclear weapon. Work of this nature appears to violate key clauses of
the nuclear agreement that prohibits Iran from engaging in such
activity for the next decade or so.
U.S.-IRAN RELATIONS
Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei lashed out
on Sunday against U.S. President Donald Trump and Saudi Arabia's
leaders for their new regional alliance against Tehran, saying it
would bear no fruit. Trump singled out Iran as a key source of
funding and support for militant groups during his visit to Saudi
Arabia in late May, two days after the Iranian election in which
pragmatist President Hassan Rouhani won a second term. During Trump's
visit to Riyadh, the U.S. sealed a $110 billion arms deal with Saudi
Arabia, Iran's regional arch-rival. Khamenei called the visit a
display of brazenness. "The U.S. president stands alongside the
leaders of a tribal and backward system and does the sword dance, but
criticizes an Iranian election with 40 million votes," the supreme
leader said in a speech broadcast live on state TV.
I ran on Sunday joined the international chorus of
criticism against President Donald Trump's decision to withdraw from
the Paris climate agreement, saying it would further isolate the
United States. "The withdrawal of the United States from the
Paris accord indicates the government's lack of responsibility
regarding the global community and it will increasingly isolate
them," foreign ministry spokesman Bahram Ghasemi said, according
to the IRNA news agency. Trump announced on Thursday that the United
States would withdraw from the 2015 Paris agreement on climate
change, joining Syria and Nicaragua as the only non-signatories to
the agreement. "Non-compliance with commitments in the Paris
accord by a government which is the second-largest producer of
greenhouse gases and is one of the most polluting countries, is
unacceptable," said Ghasemi.
BUSINESS RISK
Turkcell's $4.2 billion lawsuit against South Africa's
MTN over a disputed Iran license will go ahead in a South African
court after years of delay, the Turkish mobile operator said on
Thursday. Turkcell alleges that the South African mobile company used
bribery and wrongful influence to win a lucrative Iran license
originally awarded to Turkcell. MTN has rejected the allegations and
on Thursday reiterated its stance that the lawsuit had "no legal
merit". Istanbul-based Turkcell first brought the suit against
MTN in the United States in 2012. A year later it withdrew the U.S.
suit and filed in South Africa, where the case has been stuck in
procedural wrangling since. Turkey's top mobile operator is no
stranger to protracted lawsuits and is itself the subject of a
decade-long struggle between three of its shareholders.
India's National Aluminium Company Ltd (NALCO) has put
all its overseas projects on hold, including one in Iran, in order to
focus on expanding domestic capacity, its chairman said on Monday.
NALCO last year signed an agreement with Iran's mining development
body to explore the possibility of building an aluminium smelter.
"Iran's proposal is attractive as long as gas prices are
attractive, but not much of an indication in that area has
come," Chairman Tapan Kumar Chand told Reuters. Late last year,
the Indian government asked NALCO to re-think its global expansion
plans, including Iran, citing the need to be self-sufficient in
aluminium production. NALCO had also looked at setting up a
500,000-tonnes-per-year smelter and an associated power plant in the
Middle East.
SANCTIONS RELIEF
Oiltanking GmbH is pleased to announce the expansion of
its investment in the port of Bandar Imam Khomeini in Iran by
acquiring an additional stake of the indirect ownership in Exir
Chemical Terminal PJSCo. Through this transaction Oiltanking will
increase its indirect stake from 35 percent to a majority share of 70
percent. Exir Chemical Terminal, which was commissioned in January
2010, is a joint venture established between Oiltanking Odfjell GmbH
and private Iranian investors. The facility is strategically situated
in the Petrochemical Special Economic Zone (PETZONE) of Bandar Imam
Khomeini. It is connected by pipelines to jetties of the PETZONE at
the Persian Gulf and consists of 18 tanks and a capacity of 22,000
cbm.
FOREIGN AFFAIRS
China supports Iran's membership of the Shanghai
Cooperation Organization (SCO) security bloc, jointly led by China
and Russia, and the subject will be discussed at the group's summit
this week, a senior diplomat said on Monday. The SCO refused to
initiate Iran's accession last year despite a request from Russia
which backs Tehran's bid. Assistant Chinese Foreign Minister Li
Huilai said Iran is an observer at the SCO and has for a long time
"proactively participated" in its activities and has made
positive contributions to the SCO's development, according to
channelnewsasia.com. "China highly appraises this. China
welcomes and supports Iran's wish to become a formal member of the
SCO," he told reporters, ahead of the summit in Kazakh capital
Astana which President Xi Jinping will attend. "I think that at
this meeting all sides will continue to conscientiously study the
issue of Iran becoming a member on the basis of the SCO's relevant
rules and consensus through consultations."
TERRORISM
Attacks by the Islamic State group in Europe and
elsewhere show that Western policies in the Middle East have
backfired, Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on
Sunday. "Today, Daesh (IS) is being pushed out from its birthplace
in Iraq and Syria and is moving to other countries -- Afghanistan,
Pakistan and even the Philippines and European countries,"
Khamenei said in a televised speech. "This is a fire that
(Western powers) themselves ignited and now has backfired on
them," he told a gathering of senior officials in Tehran at a
ceremony to mark the anniversary of the death of revolutionary leader
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1989. Khamenei used the speech to push
back against some of the reformist rhetoric used by President Hassan
Rouhani during his successful bid for re-election last month.
SAUDI-IRAN TENSIONS
Bruce Riedel explains that the "Saudi-orchestrated
bloc of Sunni Muslim states celebrated at US President Donald Trump's
visit to Riyadh is splintering less than two weeks after the summit.
There is growing unease with the summit's intense animosity toward
Iran and increasing concerns that the Saudis are inflaming the
sectarian divide between Sunnis and Shiites. Trump's domestic
troubles are also raising doubts over whether Washington is
reliable." There is well established bad blood in the region
because of Iran's actions throughout the Middle East. But linking
Iran, even implicitly, to the Islamic State (IS) and al-Qaeda, in
addition to being mistaken, may ultimately serve only to fuel
"the fires of sectarian conflict and terror," as Trump
accused Iran of doing.
DOMESTIC POLITICS
Mostafa Meisami has given up on the farming life,
trading his old job raising cattle for a better-paying gig ferrying
commuters through the notoriously traffic-clogged streets of the
Iranian capital Tehran. The 38-year-old father-to-be plies his trade
in a brand-new, locally assembled Chinese hatchback, scrolling for
fares using an app on his Samsung smartphone. Yes, even in Iran,
there's an app for that - and quite a few other things too. The
Islamic Republic remains in many ways cut off economically from the
rest of the world. Big-name Western brands shun the market for fear
of violating sanctions that remain in place even after the country's
landmark 2015 nuclear deal with world powers.
OPINION & ANALYSIS
As President Donald Trump's recent Middle East tour
demonstrated, the one thing uniting the United States, Israel, and
much of the Arab world is opposition to Iran's regional activities.
Whereas the Obama administration seemed to acknowledge that coercion
alone was unlikely to change Iran's behavior, and thus favored a
carrot-and-stick approach, the Trump administration appears inclined
to seek ways of tightening the screws on Iran. The basic logic of that
approach is clear. The goal is to pressure Iran with increased
regional isolation and the threat of sanctions and, more assertively,
confront Iranian-backed groups in Syria and Yemen, thus compelling
the Islamic Republic to draw back or abandon its regional footprint.
There's just one small problem: Iran is unlikely to back down.
Donald Trump's recent sojourn in the Middle East leaves
the United States where it was before the president departed: His
administration remains committed to containing Iran while
philosophically adopting a pre-9/11 approach to combating Sunni
Islamic militancy. Sunni Arab leaders have reason to be content.
However much Candidate Trump wanted to avoid wars and costly
alliances, President Trump clearly isn't going to abandon the
southern Middle East to Iranian aggression. His Riyadh "Islam
speech," which was more about the Islamic Republic than anything
else, signaled that Trump wasn't particularly moved by the reelection
of the foreign-investment-loving Iranian president Hassan Rouhani.
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