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TOP STORIES
US. prosecutors have charged several former top aides to
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan with involvement in a conspiracy
to secretly help Iran evade U.S. sanctions. In an indictment filed in
the U.S. District Court in Manhattan on September 6, former Turkish
Economic Minister Mehmet Zafer Caglayan was charged with taking tens
of millions of dollars in bribes in cash and jewelry to assist and
cover up a scheme to help Iran process transactions through the U.S.
financial system in violation of sanctions law.
In her new report on the state of human rights in the
Islamic Republic, UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation
in Iran Asma Jahangir has emphasized that Iran still faces grave
human rights challenges. Jahangir stresses in particular that in the
absence of an independent judicial system, the Justice Department,
especially the "Revolutionary Courts" have forced Iran into
a critical situation. "Without reforming the judicial system,
improving the human rights situation in Iran will be
impossible," says Jahangir in her new report, adding, "For
improving its human rights record, the government of Iran has no option
other than reforming the judicial system and, in the meantime,
guarantee its independence".
Iran's
clandestine spy network has been threatening and blackmailing scores
of journalists, even going so far as to detain and threaten the
family members of these reporters, in order to ensure positive
coverage in global media outlets, according to a new report that
estimates at least 50 international journalists have been threatened
in just the past year.
IRAN NUCLEAR DEAL
France's foreign minister said on Wednesday he was
worried that U.S. President Donald Trump could put into doubt a
nuclear deal between Iran and a group of major world powers.
SANCTIONS RELIEF
Iran's Oil Ministry reported that Brazil may be
interested in extending support to the exploration and production
side of the sector in the Persian Gulf. Brazilian Energy Minister
Fernando Coelho Filho met this week in Tehran with his Iranian
counterpart, Bijan Zangeneh. According to SHANA, the official news
site for the Iranian Oil Ministry, both sides discussed ways that
Brazilian companies could offer support to activities off the Iranian
coast
FOREIGN AFFAIRS
As Iran becomes
more vocal about its opposition to the upcoming Kurdish independence
referendum in Iraq, there's some speculation about Tehran's true
concerns. Iranian armed forces Chief of Staff Maj. Gen. Mohammad
Hossein Bagheri's recent visit to Turkey found its place in history
as the first visit by a senior Iranian general to Turkey in 38 years.
Although the subject was not on the official agenda, it wasn't
difficult to guess that the parties discussed the referendum the
Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) has scheduled for Sept. 25.
MILITARY MATTERS
The air defence branch of the Iranian military has
revealed that it is using the Chinese-made JY-10 radar processing and
control system to help integrate its air defence network. The use of
the JY-10 was confirmed during an interview with air defence
commander Brigadier General Ismaili Farzad Esmaili that was broadcast
on 2 September. The supporting footage included a close up of a
poster for Iran's new Negah system that said it includes the JY-10,
which it identified as a Chinese-made product.
SAUDI-IRAN TENSIONS
Iran's foreign minister said Tuesday his country is
prepared to open a dialogue with regional rival Saudi Arabia, but the
kingdom appeared not willing to engage. Both major oil producers,
Iran is a majority-Shiite Muslim country and Saudi Arabia is
majority-Sunni Muslim. and they have been locked in a battle for
influence for decades. Their rivalry has increasingly come into the
spotlight as their allies shape conflicts throughout the Middle East.
DOMESTIC POLITICS
Female
Iranian MPs have spoken out against a ban on women entering sports
stadiums after some fans were prevented from watching a World Cup
qualifying match in Tehran between Iran and Syria. Both genders were
initially allowed to purchase tickets for Tuesday night's game, but
the option for women to make purchases was removed by officials who
blamed a "technical glitch". A group of women who went to
Tehran's gigantic Azadi stadium were told they could not enter. When
they started demonstrating they were threatened with arrest.
A double standard by Iranian
authorities -- who allow foreign women to attend male sporting events
while banning Iranian women -- came under fire during a World Cup
qualifying soccer match between Iran and Syria. Iranian women, even
those who had managed to buy tickets (apparently due a technical
glitch), were denied entry and kept behind locked gates at Tehran's
Azadi Stadium, where the match was held on September 5.
OPINION & ANALYSIS
If Iranian compliance is not certified, Trump may be
able to have the best of both worlds. He could signal to his
supporters that he is keeping his campaign promise by instructing Secretary
of State Rex Tillerson to rule against Iran. And yet he still would
not have killed the nuclear deal; he would simply have punted to
Congress. At that point lawmakers could vote whether or not to
re-impose the crippling secondary sanctions that effectively cut Iran
off from the global economy.
Drowned out in the ferocious backlash against President
Trump's decision to rescind the Deferred Action for Childhood
Arrivals program was perhaps the most thoughtful and telling foreign
policy speech of this presidency. Naturally, it came not from Secretary
of State Rex Tillerson but from U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations
Nikki Haley. The speech is worth reading in full if only for the
historical accounting of the Iranian regime's behavior, its nuclear
program and its support for terrorist organizations such as
Hezbollah. Haley deftly explained that there are three separate
consideration with regard to the Iran nuclear agreement, or Joint
Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).
Though North Korea's Kim Jong Un is grabbing headlines,
the nuclear weapons evil facing the United States has multiple horns
- and available responses. Undoing the harm done by the Iran nuclear
deal needs to share the top of the agenda. In mid-October President
Trump will bump up against a "certification" deadline
imposed by the Iran Nuclear Agreements Review Act. The prompt was
intended to ensure a much closer look at Iranian behavior and the
Iran nuclear deal known as the "JCPOA."
Things are quickly changing on the ground in Syria. The
civil war is concluding, with Bashar Assad still in power. As the
U.S.-backed coalition drives the Islamic State from its remaining
strongholds, Iranian-backed forces are racing to fill the void,
seizing strategic territory with the goal of making Syria the heart
and possibly the Iranian logistical center of a "Shia
Crescent" - replete with land, air and naval bases - creating an
Iranian sphere of influence stretching from Tehran through Baghdad
and Damascus to Beirut and the Mediterranean.
The accompanying article discusses a new video game
recently released by the Iranian army, called the "Battle in the
Gulf of Aden 2." The game's scenario is described as the Iranian
Navy's "powerful presence fighting pirates in international
waters in the Gulf of Aden." The game was unveiled at the
country's top computer and electronic expo before a group of senior
Iranian military officials. The first version of the game hit the
market in 2012 and quickly became the most popular computer game in
Iran supplanting the "Age of Heroes," a three-dimensional
game based upon the stories of the Shahnameh, Iran's national epic.
Kurds living in Iran have long been restive. Kurdish
resistance to Tehran's centralized control dates back almost a
century. In the 1920s and 1930s, Reza Shah-the father of the Iranian
monarch ousted in 1979-brutally crushed tribal resistance to the
central government. In 1946, Kurds (including the father of Masoud
Barzani, the President of the Iraqi Kurdistan Region, or IKR) briefly
claimed an independent state in and around Mahabad, in northwestern
Iran, but the Iranian army pacified it within a year. The 1979
Islamic Revolution compounded the disenfranchisement many Iranian
Kurds felt: Not only were they ethnically different from many
Persians but because Kurds are predominantly Sunni, they found
themselves discriminated against twice over-ethnically and
religiously-by a government which based itself on Ayatollah
Khomeini's exegesis of Shi'ite theology and political philosophy.
Against this backdrop, violence in Iranian Kurdistan has never been
far below the surface. The Iranian military and security forces
deploy a disproportionate number of troops to keep order in the
mountainous region, and the Iranian judiciary imprisons and often
executes Iranian Kurds it suspects of joining Kurdish cultural or
nationalist groups.
While all eyes are on North Korea, Iran is advancing its
weapons technology. The country recently tested and announced the
success of their new Bavar 373 long range, mobile, anti-missile
defense system. Everything in the system is manufactured in Iran; it
requires no support from outside sources.
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