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TOP STORIES
Republicans in Congress are pressing Secretary of State Rex
Tillerson to change his tune on the Iran deal. They want him not to
certify that Iran is complying with the nuclear deal it struck with the
United States and five other nations, which could pave the way for Congress
restoring various sanctions. Four leading GOP senators wrote to Tillerson
on Tuesday about the Iran deal, which he is required by law to weigh in
on every 90 days. In April, Tillerson disagreed with other Trump
administration officials and decided to certify that Iran was in
compliance with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action and that sanctions
relief was in the national security interest of the United States. At the
time, Tillerson wrote to House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) to say he
still believed that "Iran remains a leading state sponsor of terror,
through many platforms and methods," but said that the Trump
administration was in the middle of its Iran policy review and therefore
was not ready to make any big changes to their approach.
A confidential U.S.-Russian cease-fire agreement for
southwestern Syria that went into effect Sunday calls for barring
Iranian-backed foreign fighters from a strategic stretch of Syrian
territory near the borders of Israel and Jordan, according to three
diplomatic sources. President Donald Trump hailed it as an important
agreement that would serve to save lives. But few details of the accord
have been made public. U.S. Defense Department officials - who would have
responsibility for monitoring the agreement - appeared to be in the dark
about the pact's fine print. The pact is aimed at addressing demands by
Israel and Jordan - the latter is a party to the agreement - that Iranian
forces and their proxies, including Hezbollah, not be permitted near the
Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, which separates Syria from Israel, or
along the Jordanian border. But former U.S. diplomats and observers
question whether the agreement is truly enforceable, expressing doubts
that Russia could act as a reliable guarantor for a cease-fire involving
the Syrian regime, Iran, and its proxies.
For the last 38 years, it's been illegal
for women to attend soccer matches in Iran. Two of the country's most
prominent names in the sport say it's time to change that. "This is
the demand of millions upon millions of female fans who'd like to watch
soccer matches and other events up close," Ali Karimi, a former
Bayern Munich midfielder and current coach of one of Iran's most popular
teams, said told Iranian news agency ISNA this week (via RFE/RL).
"This important issue is not impossible, this dream of female sports
fans can be achieved through correct planning." Karimi's comments
follow those made late last month by current Iranian national team star
Masoud Shojaei, who in a video shared by Radio Farda and other sites
insinuated that women being allowed in stadiums would benefit the sport.
IRAN NUCLEAR DEAL
Senior Iranian and Russian officials have held talks about
the landmark 2015 nuclear agreement reached between Iran and the P5+1
group of countries ahead of a scheduled meeting of the Joint Commission
monitoring the implementation of the deal. In a meeting between Iranian
Deputy Foreign Minister for Legal and International Affairs Abbas Araqchi
and Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov in Tehran on Tuesday,
the two sides discussed technical cooperation on civilian nuclear technology,
particularity within the framework of the nuclear agreement, known as the
Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). Araqchi reaffirmed Iran's
full compliance with the JCPOA and said the sustenance of the nuclear
deal, as a multilateral international document, requires all sides'
complete fulfillment of their commitments.
U.S.-IRAN RELATIONS
The European Union respects the United States' review of the
2015 deal with Iran but will make clear to Washington that it was an
international accord endorsed by the United Nations, the EU's foreign
policy chief said on Tuesday. "The nuclear deal doesn't belong to
one country, it belongs to the international community," Federica
Mogherini told a news conference alongside Russian Foreign Minister
Sergei Lavrov. "We have the responsibility to make sure that this
continues to be implemented." The historic deal between Iran and six
major powers restricts Tehran's nuclear program in exchange for the
lifting of oil and financial sanctions against the Islamic Republic. The
administration of U.S. President Donald Trump said in April it was
launching an inter-agency review of whether the lifting of sanctions
against Iran was in the United States' national security interests.
Secretary of Defense James Mattis seriously angered Iran's
radical regime after he called for a change in government in a recent
interview. Iranian Minister of Defense Gen. Hossein Dehqan responded to
Mattis claiming he "talks like a patient who has hallucinations due
to high fever." "Instead of deciding for other nations, the
U.S. defense secretary and the country's ruling body had better care
about the resolution of their own internal problems and examine the
underlying causes that, most probably and in the not too distant future,
will both wipe out the current U.S. government, and bring more serious
challenges for the country's political system," said Dehqan on
Tuesday, according to Tasnim News, a state-affiliated outlet.
CONGRESSIONAL ACTION
What began as a bill slapping sanctions on Iran for
ballistic missile development and human rights violations is being mired
in minutiae over a single added word-"Russia." Leadership in
both chambers and parties have expressed resolve about passing sanctions
on the Kremlin. But the joint Russia-Iran legislation has repeatedly hit
difficulties, in part due to the politically charged nature of its
subject. The sanctions bill incorporates penalties on the Kremlin over
election interference and would trigger congressional review in case the
administration tries to ease or suspend sanctions on Russia.
Administration officials have raised concerns that the bill will hamstring
the president in talks with the Kremlin. The bill passed the Senate 98-2
in June. Since then, the Senate agreed on a fix to a constitutional
issue, raised by the House, which requires that bills dealing with
revenue originate in the lower chamber.
BUSINESS RISK
Iran's state rail company and its Italian counterpart signed a final
agreement worth 1.2 billion euros ($1.37 billion) on Tuesday to build a
high-speed railway between the cities of Qom and Arak, the Fars news
agency reported. The agreement was signed in a ceremony in Tehran
attended by Saeed Mohammadzadeh, head of the Islamic Republic of Iran
Railways, and Renato Mazzoncini, CEO of Italy's state rail company
Ferrovie dello Stato (FS). A framework of "cooperation
agreement" was signed in April 2016, when former Italian Prime
Minister Matteo Renzi visited Tehran seeking a strong foothold in a
nation hungry for infrastructure investment as it emerges from financial
isolation. Iran rejoined the global trading system in 2016 after a deal
with world powers to lift crippling sanctions in exchange for limiting
its nuclear activities.
Iran is forming a government commission to oversee its deal
with France's Total to develop the South Pars gas field, the first major
Western energy investment in the Islamic Republic since the lifting of sanctions
last year. The commission will include representatives from the
judiciary, the head of parliament's energy commission and of its planning
and budget commission, speaker Ali Larijani said Wednesday, according to
state media. The South Pars project will cost up to $5 billion,
including an initial stage of around $2 billion, and production is
expected to start within 40 months, the oil ministry said this month. Total will be the project's
operator with a 50.1 percent stake, Chinese state-owned oil and gas
company CNPC will hold 30 percent, and National Iranian Oil Co subsidiary
Petropars will have 19.9 percent.
Iran expects to sign deals with Russian companies on
exploration and development of its oil and gas resources within the next
5-6 months, Iran's deputy oil minister Amir Hossein Zamaninia told
reporters on Wednesday. Zamaninia earlier said Russian firms Lukoil and
Gazprom have expressed interest in oil exploration projects in Iran.
FOREIGN AFFAIRS
A Palestinian parliamentary delegation from the Fatah
movement participated July 1 in the annual Iranian opposition conference
for the People's Mujahedeen Organization of Iran, or Mujahedeen-e-Khalq
(MEK), in Paris. During the conference, member of parliament Najat
al-Astal delivered a speech in which she stressed "supporting the
struggle of the Iranian opposition for freedom, democracy and human
rights, as well as eliminating the mullahs' regime in Iran and replacing
it with a free democratic regime that will bring justice to the Iranian
people." Palestinians criticized the Fatah parliamentary bloc's
participation in the Iranian opposition conference held recently in
Paris, and considered it to be interference in Iran's internal affairs.
The stance the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Fatah have taken against
the Iranian regime stems from two main points.
SAUDI-IRAN TENSIONS
The recent changes in Saudi leadership were not a surprise
to Iran. "We all knew this was coming. It was only a matter of
time," a senior Iranian official told Al-Monitor on condition of
anonymity. While the elevation of Mohammed bin Salman was no surprise to
many observers in Tehran, his de facto rule over Saudi Arabia is raising
serious concerns in Iran. In fact, last October, long before the
appointment of Mohammed bin Salman as Saudi Arabia's new crown prince,
Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani told a gathering in Tehran,
"Mohammed bin Salman, the second crown prince, is in a hurry and
wants to set aside the first one [Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef], and
might even kill his own father to replace him." The Iranian major
general recalled a conversation that allegedly took place between
Mohammed and a Syrian official in Russia sometime in 2016, quoting the
Syrian official as saying that the Saudi royal "asked about [Syrian
President] Bashar al-Assad, how he is, how his family is."
OPINION & ANALYSIS
Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi arrived in Mosul on
Sunday, dressed in a black military uniform, and announced the
"liberation" of the city where Islamic State declared its
so-called caliphate in 2014. "The world did not imagine that Iraqis
could eliminate Daesh," he remarked, using the Arabic acronym for
the group. But this war is far from over. A growing number of Iraq's
Sunnis are disenchanted with the slow pace of reconstruction and
frustrated with a Baghdad government they consider too friendly to Iran.
At both The Weekly Standard and the Jerusalem Post, the Foundation
for Defense of Democracy's Benjamin Weinthal exposes German intelligence
reports that suggest that the Islamic Republic of Iran continues to work
toward the goal of possessing nuclear weapons...In short, it looks like
Iran may be cheating. As I document in Dancing with the Devil, whenever
reports of cheating threaten to derail non-proliferation agreements,
governments invested in those agreements are willing to bury the evidence
to make a quick buck. Often, the State Department is willing to look the
other way in order to keep the process alive. That was the case with Iraq
in the 1980s, North Korea in the 1990s, and Iran in the first half of the
last decade. With regard to Germany, however, the triumph of appeasement
over intelligence is déjà vu all over again.
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