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TOP STORIES
Syria's army accused Israel of hitting
one of its positions, killing two people in an attack earlier the
same day that a monitor said targeted a site where the regime
allegedly produces chemical weapons. "We are determined to
prevent our enemies harming, or even creating an opportunity to harm,
the security of Israeli citizens," Avigdor Lieberman said in
Hebrew, in remarks broadcast on Israeli television. "We shall do
everything in order not to allow the existence of a Shiite corridor
from Tehran to Damascus." The site struck near Masyaf, between
the central city of Hama and a port used by the Russian navy, is
reportedly used by forces from Syria's allies Iran and the Lebanese
Shiite militia Hezbollah. Israel has long warned it would not allow
the transfer of sophisticated weaponry to Hezbollah and has accused
Iran of building sites to produce "precision-guided
missiles" in both Syria and Lebanon.
Within recent days, prominent opponents of the Iran
nuclear deal have begun quietly briefing Trump administration
officials on a new argument they say makes it impossible for the
president to re-certify the deal... The new argument rests on
technical disclosures the Obama administration made to Congress under
the Corker-Cardin law - the 2015 legislation that established
congressional oversight over the Iran deal... The argument: The
certification language requires the president to certify that Iran is
both complying with the nuclear deal and with "all related
technical or additional agreements." Influential opponents of
the deal say that because the Obama administration sent Congress a
draft of the UN Security Council Resolution 2231 as part of its
package of documents submitted under the law, that therefore makes
the Resolution a "related" agreement.
The U.S. military is keeping a wary eye on Iran's most
violent proxy militia in Iraq, which has vowed to start killing
Americans again once the Islamic State is expelled. With the Islamic
State's defeat in Iraq coming closer - the U.S. estimates that the
once 25,000-strong terrorist group is down to a few thousand
followers at most holding only pockets of resistance - the danger
from the Hezbollah Brigades is fast approaching. A commander in the
Shiiite battalion, also known as Kata'ib Hezbollah (KH) and the
largest and most ruthless Iranian-trained militia fighting in Iraq
and Syria, warned Americans on Sunday that they must leave Iraq or face
a new war, Iran's Fars News Agency reported.
SANCTIONS ENFORCEMENT
The head of a New York-based metallurgy company was
sentenced to four years and nine months in prison on Thursday for conspiring
to illegally export missile-grade metallic powder to Iran. Erdal
Kuyumcu, 45, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Dora Irizarry in
Brooklyn after pleading guilty in June 2016 to conspiring to violate
the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, court records show.
SANCTIONS RELIEF
Austria's Oberbank will sign a deal with Iran this month
enabling it to finance new ventures there, its chief executive said,
among the first European lenders to do so since sanctions were eased.
The deal Tehran struck in 2015 with six major powers lifted many
sanctions in exchange for restrictions on its nuclear activities and
technically paved the way for international business deals with Iran.
However, many banks have stayed away for fear of inadvertently
breaking remaining U.S. sanctions, which could lead to huge fines.
EXTREMISM
Iran provides arms and military equipment to Taliban
guerrillas in Afghanistan, an army chief has claimed, marking the
first confirmation from a high-ranking official of the war-torn
country. President Ashraf Ghani raised the matter with his
Iranian counterpart during his recent visit to Tehran, Lt. Gen.
Mohammed Sharif Yaftali, chief of general staff for the Afghan
National Army, told the BBC Persian Service.
IRAQ CRISIS
Plans for an independence referendum in Iraqi Kurdistan
have angered Ankara and Tehran, but little has changed for Iranian
Kurdish rebels at rear bases in the mountains of northern Iraq. A
spokesman for the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (PDKI) said
reports of a joint Turkish-Iranian military operation against Kurdish
rebels in Iraq were mainly intended to unsettle Iraqi Kurds.
HUMAN RIGHTS
A protest was met with tear gas in the city of Baneh in
northwestern Iran on September 5, 2017, after people gathered in
front of the local governor's office to demonstrate against the
killing by Iranian border guards of two "kulbars," the
Farsi word for border-crossing couriers. Ghader Bahrami (45) and
Heydar Faraji (21) were transporting goods by foot through a mountainous
trail near Iran's border with Iraq when they were shot and killed by
a border guard unit near Baneh in Iran's Kurdistan Province on
September 4. Kulbars are forced into the dangerous work out of
necessity. High unemployment has forced them to brave the elements and
conduct unofficial cross-border trade between Iran and Iraq for
minimal income.
DOMESTIC POLITICS
Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif
is planning to implement some structural changes in the Iranian
Foreign Ministry as he begins his second term in office - and it is
not clear how successful these changes will be. A great part of
Zarif's first four years as foreign minister was spent resolving
Iran's nuclear file, a task that also engaged two of his key
deputies, namely Majid Takht-Ravanchi, the deputy foreign minister
for European and American affairs, and Abbas Araghchi, the deputy for
legal and international affairs.
OPINION & ANALYSIS
[S]hould the Trump administration go ahead and not
certify - essentially, setting the stage to walk away from the deal -
it will isolate the United States from the IAEA and the other nations
that negotiated the nuclear understanding with Iran. Sending a signal
of unhappiness with Iran is understandable, particularly given what
Iran is doing in Syria and throughout the Middle East. But our aim at
this point should be to isolate Iran, not ourselves. We want the
world riveted on Iran's bad behaviors, and not what some of our
allies will see as ours.
Israel has previously targeted Iranian and Syrian rocket
supplies to the Lebanese Hezbollah, but this attack is far more
aggressive than usual. And in that sense, I believe Israel is sending
two different messages; one to Iran and Assad, and one to the United
States. Israel's message to Iran and Assad is clear: "Do not
think we will sit idle as you develop advanced weapons with which to
threaten us."
Putin's Russia is the perfect partner for the Islamic
Republic. Unlike the Soviet Union, Russia today doesn't pose an
ideological temptation for Iranian youth and intellectuals. It no
longer poses a geographical challenge. Iranians may whimper endlessly
about the injustice of czarist conquests, ignominiously imposed by
the Treaties of Gulistan (1813) and Turkmenchay (1828), but there is
no sentiment for recapturing lands all Iranians know are lost to
Persian culture. There is no more friction, except for the occasional
spat on the Caspian Sea, over who has done more to ruin caviar
production. Iranian nationalism is real and vibrant, stronger today
than it was in 1979, in great part because theocracy has been so
unpleasant and Islamic brotherhood beyond Iran's borders has proven
so illusory. The more nationalist Iranians are, the more they flinch
when it comes to strategic Iranian-Russian cooperation. But for the
ruling elite, who are the ones that matter, the Islamic-Iranian
mélange, which is the building block of the modern Persian identity,
focuses religious-nationalist anger overwhelmingly in one direction:
against the West and its cutting edge, the United States.
Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution was not only a political
revolution but also an ideological one. Adherence to the Islamic
Republic's values and morals is mandatory, and the Iranian government
has inaugurated multiple security agencies to ensure that Iranians
obey and submit to the ideology of the regime. The expansion of the
internet, particularly social media, however, poses an increasing
challenge to Iranian security forces. To deal with this challenge,
the Iranian government set up a cyber-police force charged with
policing the internet and social media.
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has, like
last year, sent a team to participate in the International Army
Games, an annual exercise and competition founded by the Russian
Ministry of Defense which this year Russia and China jointly host.
Numerous teams participate, most of which tend to be in the Chinese
and Russian policy orbit, including Zimbabwe, Venezuela, Nicaragua,
Angola, South Africa, Laos, and Iran. The excerpted article from a
news portal closely aligned with the IRGC discusses the Iranian
special operations airborne team's departure for China and its first
days drilling with the Chinese.
Before Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini took power in Iran
through a violent revolution in 1979, his plan was in place for his
own form of Shiite utopia, which would be led by clerics that adhered
to the Twelver Shiite Muslim tradition of Muhammed al-Mahdi... Adding
his accumulated knowledge to that of past Persian dynasties, Khomeini
knew exactly how to manipulate the Iranian masses, and exploiting
their jealously guarded perception of their Persian identity, and
that of the misrule of Mohammed Reza Shah, he propelled himself to
power.
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