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TOP STORIES
Iran test-fired a new missile that it said could carry
several warheads, state media reported late Friday, in a move that
looked set to ratchet up tensions with Washington. State-run IRIB
released video of a rocket being launched just before midnight local
time on Friday (just before 4:30 p.m. ET Friday). It did not report
the location. "Iran successfully tested the long-range
Khorramshahr ballistic missile," IRIB reported, adding that this
was the country's third test of a missile with a range of around
1,240 miles.
Frequent breakdowns of advanced uranium enrichment
devices have inadvertently helped Iran comply with restrictions in
the international agreement curbing its nuclear program, according to
a new report by a Washington-based think tank. Iranian compliance
also is due to tougher policing by U.S. President Donald Trump's
administration of the 2015 pact to prevent Tehran from developing
nuclear weapons, the Institute for Science and International Security
said in a report due on Friday.
President Donald Trump criticized the Obama-era nuclear
deal with Iran and other world powers on Saturday, tweeting that the
U.S. doesn't have "much of an agreement" after Tehran
test-fired a ballistic missile. International sanctions on Iran have
been lifted under the deal in exchange for curbs to Tehran's nuclear
program.
UANI IN THE NEWS
After its purge from Mosul and with the collapse of ISIL
positions in Raqqa all but complete, the nature of the beast is
changing. ISIL is often seen as an urban and a viral force...
What has been less clear is that ISIL is a phenomenon of the desert
and land between two rivers, the Tigris and the Euphrates. The battle
focus has now shifted to that terrain and with it, a new factor has
emerged. The ground fight against ISIL is also a fight against
Iran's attempt to open a land corridor to the Mediterranean. David
Petraeus, the former CIA chief, central command head and leader of
the Iraqi surge, pinpointed how the two battles have now morphed, at
a conference organised by United Against a Nuclear Iran this
week.
IRAN NUCLEAR DEAL
Tillerson told Fox News on Tuesday night that "the
president really wants to redo that deal" but also that the U.S.
would need "the support, I think, of our allies, the European
allies and others, to make the case... to Iran that this deal really
has to be revisited." So for now, the U.S. strategy is to
convince its European allies that the deal should be reworked, which
is having some success.
Dozens of security experts, former military officials
and top diplomats are pushing President Trump to withdraw from the
Iran nuclear deal. Forty-five former security officials, including
many who served in Republican administrations in senior positions
overseeing nuclear weapons, arms control, nonproliferation, and
intelligence, wrote Trump Wednesday calling on him to pursue a plan
offered by former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton. Bolton's plan calls
for abrogation of the deal, in consultation with U.K., France,
Germany, Israel, and Saudi Arabia, over what he considers
"outright violations and other unacceptable Iranian
behavior" under the Iran deal's Joint Comprehensive Plan of
Action (JCPOA). His approach also calls for more stringent new
sanctions to bar permanently the transfer of nuclear technology to
Tehran. He also urges new sanctions in response to Iran's sponsorship
of terrorism and efforts and provocative actions that have
destabilized the Middle East.
The United Arab Emirates said on Friday it considers
that Iran violates both the "letter and spirit" of the 2015
nuclear deal agreed between the Islamic Republic and world powers.
"Two years have passed since Iran's nuclear agreement with no
sign of change in its hostile behavior; it continues to develop its
nuclear program and violates the letter and spirit of that
agreement," UAE foreign minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed
al-Nahayan told the U.N. General Assembly.
Iran's foreign minister on Thursday rejected any new
negotiation with the United States over extending the length or
conditions of the 2015 nuclear accord, saying that Iran would talk
about changing the accord only if every concession it made -
including giving up nuclear fuel - were reconsidered. In an
interview, the foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, said that
would mean Iran would retake possession of the stockpile of nuclear
fuel it shipped to Russia when the accord took effect.
In 2015, China, France, Germany, Russia, the United
Kingdom, the United States, the European Union and Iran adopted a
plan that was to ensure Iran's nuclear program will used for peaceful
ends, and in exchange, sanctions against the oil producer were
lifted. But U.S. participation could end, and the possible demise of
the Iranian nuclear deal is one of the most underappreciated
geopolitical risks in the oil market, says Helima Croft, RBC Capital
Markets commodity strategist. President Donald Trump's speech at the
United Nations this week and statements by senior administration
officials, "underscored just how precarious U.S. participation
in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) really is, as well
as the strong possibility that the White House will opt to decertify
Iran next month," Croft writes.
As concerns grow every day about whether or not the
United States will abandon the nuclear deal with Iran, Tehran is
weighing its options in different possible scenarios. Donald Trump
has long vowed to tear up the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action
(JCPOA), pledging such a move even before he was elected as
president. However, despite his apparent personal desire to do so,
this has not happened yet. Most analysts attribute this to the
opposition shown by European parties to the JCPOA, as well as the
resistance of Trump's own advisers and Cabinet members.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Friday
dismissed the notion of renegotiating the agreement curbing Iran's
nuclear weapons development, maintaining U.S. concerns about Iran are
beyond the scope of the deal. "
NUCLEAR & BALLISTIC-MISSILE PROGRAMS
Iran's elite Revolutionary Guard has displayed the
country's sophisticated Russian-made S-300 air defense system in
central Tehran. This is the first time that the S-300 air defense
system has been displayed in public. The public show in Tehran's
Baharestan square near the Parliament building square exhibited
different missile systems, including ballistic missiles, solid-fuel
surface-to-surface Sejjil missiles and the liquid-fuel Ghadr.
U.S.-IRAN RELATIONS
As he considers what to do about the 2015 international
agreement with Iran that he disdains, President Trump may be about to
lob the ball into the international community's court. Rather than
pulling the United States out of the deal as he has long threatened,
Mr. Trump may instead agree to stick with it at least for the coming
months - and challenge the US partners in the seven-nation agreement
to address what he sees as its grave shortcomings.
SANCTIONS RELIEF
Bpifrance, the country's state
investment bank, will finance investment projects of French companies
in Iran from 2018, granting up to 500 million euros ($598 million) in
annual credits, its CEO said in a newspaper interview on Sunday.
"Excluding a force majeure case, we will be on their side in
early 2018. We are the only French bank that can do it without
risking U.S. sanctions for a posssible breach of remaining embargo
rules," Nicolas Dufourcq told Le Journal du Dimanche.
NORTH KOREA AND IRAN
President Trump's upcoming decision on whether to toss
out the landmark nuclear deal with Iran could have ripple effects
half-a-world away. Experts on both sides of the political spectrum
say that whatever happens with Iran will have effects on North Korea
and vice versa. Opponents of the Iranian nuclear deal argue that Iran
is watching North Korea's belligerence to see what they might be able
to get away with. Supporters of the deal, meanwhile, say scrapping it
would send a signal to Pyongyang that the United States cannot be
trusted in any potential future negotiations.
Japan's Foreign Minister Taro Kono asked his Iranian
counterpart Javad Zarif to reach out to North Korean leader Kim Jong
Un to defuse an increasingly hostile war of words with President
Donald Trump.
FOREIGN AFFAIRS
Setting aside years of increasing Turkey-US hostility,
President Trump's introductory remarks for the cameras were glowing
as he met Turkey's controversial President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan
one-on-one, winding up a flurry of bilateral diplomacy on the
sidelines of the UN General Assembly's annual opening in New York...
But seen from Turkey, the picture is far different. The scuttling of
a US weapons sale this week for Erdoğan's presidential security
detail was just the latest point of friction feeding Turkey's
disillusion with the US and its NATO allies - and one more reason for
its deepening embrace of two historic rivals, Russia and Iran.
Iran is seeking to consolidate its network of influence
across the Middle East and attempting to broker a reconciliation
between Palestinian militant group Hamas and the embattled Syrian
president Bashar al-Assad, after the two had a bitter falling out
over the Syrian civil war. Hamas had an established base in Damascus,
Syria, where many of its leaders remained even after the group
assumed power in the Gaza Strip in 2007. However the Syrian civil war
saw the Sunni militant group, an affiliate of the Muslim Brotherhood,
break with the Alawite president (a sect of Shia Islam) and back
Sunni rebels attempting to oust the government in Damascus, leading
to the group's governing body to relocate to Qatar in 2012.
CYBERWARFARE
A move by President Donald Trump to discard the
Obama-era nuclear deal with Tehran could bring a swift retaliation
from an increasingly aggressive Iranian hacker army. Some of those
attacks might target America's power plants, hospitals, airports and
other pieces of critical infrastructure, multiple cyber experts who
track Tehran's hackers are warning. Iran's current Western hacking is
limited almost entirely to commercial espionage and dissident
surveillance, but the country could quickly redirect its efforts in
the event of a rupture of the nuclear pact.
SYRIA CONFLICT
Iran is working to restore a lost link in its network of
alliances in the Middle East, trying to bring Hamas fully back into
the fold after the Palestinian militant group had a bitter fall-out
with Iranian ally Syria over that country's civil war. Iran and its
Lebanese ally Hezbollah are quietly trying to mediate a
reconciliation between Syria and Hamas. If they succeed, it would
shore up a weak spot in the alliance at a time when Iran has
strengthened ties with Syria and Iraq, building a bloc of support
across the region to counter Israel and the United States' Arab
allies.
IRAQ CRISIS
In late May, an Iraqi cleric called Akram Kaabi visited
militia fighters in a desolate Iraqi town near the Syrian border.
Kaabi, who heads a Shi'ite Muslim militia named Harakat Hezbollah al
Nujaba, was decked out in a camouflage uniform and led the fighters
in prayer on mats laid on the dusty ground. A video of the session
showed heavily armed militiamen standing guard. The event took place
in Qayrawan, a town the Nujaba militia had seized back from Islamic
State, the radical Sunni Muslim group. Nujaba, whose name means 'the
Virtuous,' have also fought across the border in Syria, where they
have lent support to President Bashar al-Assad in the fight against
Islamic State and others.
Iran has halted flights to airports in Iraqi Kurdistan
at the request of the central government in Baghdad, the
semi-official Fars news agency reported on Sunday, a day before a
Kurdish independence referendum. The agency quoted Keyvan Khosravi,
spokesman for Iran's top security body, as adding that Iran was also
closing its airspace to flights originating in Iraqi Kurdistan.
SAUDI-IRAN TENSIONS
Saudi Arabia clearly demanded Qatar to commit to the
principles of the international law in fighting terrorism, calling on
Doha to abide by commitments laid out in the Riyadh agreements of
2013 and 2014. Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir on Saturday told
the United Nations General Assembly at its 72 sessions that Doha's
practices of financial support to terror while disseminating hate
speech is unacceptable, and so is providing safe havens to those who
violated the law and should be brought to justice. "Riyadh will
continue to counter terrorism in all forms and manifestations,"
Jubeir added. Referring to terrorism as "the biggest challenge
facing the world," Jubeir said Qatar was jeopardizing Saudi
Arabia's policy of combating extremism and terror financing. The position
taken by the four States was meant to demand that Qatar follow the
principles of international law in fighting terrorism, he explained.
OPINION & ANALYSIS
President Donald Trump has sensibly insisted that the
Iran nuclear deal-formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of
Action-has to be revised. The reaction in some quarters, mainly among
many of the former Obama administration officials who negotiated this
bad deal, has been horror. Unfortunately, the media have uncritically
swallowed many of the false assumptions and naive arguments of the
deal's supporters, and the elite consensus is that the agreement must
be preserved lest the White House bumble us into a crisis-or worse,
another war in the Middle East.
At this point Trump should consider appointing a special
envoy for fixing the Iran deal. Ideally, this candidate should be a
critic of the agreement who will not fall into the trap of Obama's
negotiators who believed the rapport built with Iranian envoys would
lead to a rapprochement with the regime. Finally, Trump's new envoy
should be someone with years of experience in arms control and
international law. In other words, it should be someone like John
Bolton, the former acting U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
Unfortunately, Bolton has already made it clear that he opposes the
nuclear deal altogether. He recently published his plan for
withdrawing it. The ideal candidate to negotiate for the Trump
administration would be an opponent of the original deal: That stance
gives a negotiator credibility.
A note about the Iran section of President Donald
Trump's speech to the U.N. General Assembly. While his lambasting of
the nuclear deal garnered the greatest attention, it would be a
mistake to overlook his extended focus on the plight of the Iranian
people. It's almost certainly significant - an important indicator of
the administration's future direction when it comes to Iran policy.
Congress need not police the Trump administration's
policy to Iran as vigilantly as it did the previous administration's
Iran nuclear deal, a top Trump aide said Thursday. It was the latest
sign that Trump is unlikely to tell Congress next month that the 2015
Iran nuclear deal advances U.S. national interests. The comments come
as Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said Iran would not be willing to
renegotiate the landmark deal, but was open to talk about other
issues.
Iran is increasingly nervous about Iraqi Kurdistan's bid
for a referendum on an independent Kurdish state. This nervousness
arises because of two factors. First, declaring an independent
Kurdish state would encourage Kurdish separatism within the Islamic
Republic of Iran. Second, a new Kurdish state would undermine Iran's
ambition to establish a 'Shia crescent' from Tehran to Baghdad, Damascus,
and Beirut, because a Kurdish state might have better relations with
Sunni partners in the region than with Iran.
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