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TOP STORIES
President Trump appears poised next week to announce
that the landmark Iran nuclear agreement is no longer in the national
interest of the United States. The so-called
"decertification" would not be the fatal blow to the Iran
deal that Trump promised on the campaign trail, but it would kick the
issue back to Congress, which could potentially pull out of the deal
entirely.
Iran must pay $63.5 million to a former U.S. Marine who
was jailed in that country for more than four years, according to a
ruling by a U.S. judge announced Monday. Judge Ellen Huvelle of the
U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., on Friday granted Amir
Hekmati's motion for a default judgment after Iran failed to respond
to the complaint. Hekmati, who was released in January 2016 as part
of a prisoner exchange, alleged he was falsely imprisoned and
tortured.
The family of an Iranian-British woman serving a
five-year prison sentence in Tehran for allegedly plotting to topple
Iran's clerical establishment says a new case has been opened against
her. Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe's family said that the charity worker
faced a court hearing at Tehran's Evin prison on October 8 during
which she heard of the new charges being brought against her. An
October 9 statement said that the new charges included joining and
receiving money from organizations working to overthrow the Islamic
republic, and attending a demonstration outside the Iranian Embassy
in London.
IRAN NUCLEAR DEAL
President Trump will address U.S. policy toward Iran on
Thursday, doubtless focusing on his decision regarding Barack Obama's
badly flawed nuclear deal. Key officials are now briefing Congress,
the press and foreign governments about the speech, cautioning that
the final product is, in fact, not yet final. The preponderant media
speculation is that Trump's senior advisers are positioning him to
make a serious mistake, based on their flawed advice. Wishful
thinking about Iran's mullahs, near-religious faith in the power of
pieces of paper, and a retreat from executive authority are hallmarks
of the impending crash.
The nuclear deal with Iran was reached in 2015 by
President Obama's administration and the governments of Russia,
China, Britain, France and Germany. The agreement prohibits the U.S.
from reimposing the original sanctions on Iran's nuclear program, but
does not rule out tough sanctions on Iranian entities responsible for
terrorism, missile development, regional aggression, corruption and
human rights violations. These kinds of sanctions could exert the
pressure necessary to bring Iran back to the negotiating table.
The Trump administration, I believe, should not certify
compliance, not because the deal is not in American interests but
because there is insufficient evidence to show that Iran is in fact
adhering to the terms of the pact. Since the agreement went into
effect, Iran has been caught with possessing too many advanced
centrifuges and producing too much heavy water. The Islamic Republic
has tried to stiff international inspectors. None of these breaches
could have been accidental, but none has been considered material.
There is one breach, however, that would be both material and
uncured. That would be Iran's not ending its nuclear weapons cooperation
with the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
Sen. Bob Corker seemed to speak for many in Washington -
including a lot of Republicans - when he unloaded on President Trump
in an interview with The New York Times, in which he described the
president as "reckless" and his White House as a
"reality show." Earlier, Corker, the chair of the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee, designated Secretary of State Rex
Tillerson, Secretary of Defense James Mattis and White House Chief of
Staff John Kelly as the men who "separate our country from
chaos," the implication being without these "adults,"
hindering him, Trump would set the nation "on a path to World
War III."
President Trump certainly seems to have struck a nerve -
given Tehran's over-the-top response to reports he's about to
designate the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist group.
"If the news is correct about the stupidity of the American
government, then the Revolutionary Guards will consider the American
army to be like Islamic State," declared the group's commander,
Gen. Mohammed Ali Jafari.
The head of Iran's nuclear agency warned the United
States on Tuesday against undermining the 2015 nuclear deal, saying
international nonproliferation efforts as well as Washington's
international standing would suffer as a result.
During a phone call with her Israeli counterpart, the
prime minister said the deal "neutralised the possibility of the
Iranians acquiring nuclear weapons for more than a decade".
However, the UK's stance could leave it at odds with the United
States. President Trump is expected to announce soon he will not
recertify that Iran is in compliance with the deal.
Germany is worried that U.S. President Donald Trump will
decide this week that Iran is not respecting a two-year-old deal to
curb its nuclear programme and fears such a step will worsen the
security situation in the Middle East. Foreign Minister Sigmar
Gabriel said Germany was prepared to work with the United States to
change Iran's behaviour in the region but "we do not want to see
this agreement damaged." "We are looking with great concern
towards the United States," Gabriel told reporters in Berlin.
China said on Monday it hopes the Iran nuclear deal will
stay intact, playing an important role in keeping the peace, after a
senior U.S. official said President Donald Trump is expected to
decertify the agreement.
NUCLEAR & BALLISTIC-MISSILE PROGRAMS
Iran tried to obtain illicit technology that could be
used for military nuclear and ballistic missile programs, raising
questions about a possible violation of the 2015 agreement intended
to stop Tehran's drive to become an atomic armed power, according to
three German intelligence reports obtained by Fox News. The new
intelligence, detailing reports from September and October and
disclosed just ahead of President Trump's planned announcement
Thursday on whether the U.S. will recertify the Iran deal, reveals
that Iran's regime made "32 procurement attempts ... that
definitely or with high likelihood were undertaken for the benefit of
proliferation programs."
U.S.-IRAN RELATIONS
Iran told the United States on Tuesday that it will keep
"all options on table" if President Donald Trump designates
its elite Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) as a terrorist organization. It
came hours after the government said Washington itself would be aiding
terrorism if it took such an action. U.S. President Donald Trump is
expected to announce this week his final decision on how he wants to
contain Iran's regional influence.
CONGRESS & IRAN
I opposed the Iran nuclear agreement. I reached that
conclusion from the dozens of hearings I attended as the senior
Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, hundreds of hours of
briefings that included classified material, and meticulous
assessment of the negotiations and how the United States and its five
negotiating partners approached the most challenging issues. Today I
believe America's interests are best served by living up to our
commitments in the deal, aggressively enforcing it, cracking down on
Iran's other dangerous behavior, and continuing to look for ways to
make the nuclear agreement stronger.
BUSINESS RISK
On the eve of a crucial decision by President Trump
regarding the Iran nuclear agreement, the Iranian stock market is
showing signs of strength. Despite dropping one point four percent in
a week, the Tehran Stock Exchange is up two percent in a month, four
and a half percent in three months and seven point three percent in
six months. "The threat of decertification does have a huge
psychological impact," said Ramin Rabii, CEO of Turquoise
Partners. As head of Iran's leading investment firm catering to
foreign investors Rabii admits "risk is still a major
concern."
Front month ICE Brent crude for December delivery
experienced the largest one-day dollar decline since early July on
Friday, settling at $55.62 per barrel on Friday. United States Oil
(ticker: USO) and the iPath S&P GSCI Crude Oil Total Return Index
(OIL), both exchange-traded notes, tumbled, but appear to be on the
mend so far Monday morning. Goldman Sachs' Damien Courvalin says much
depends on the Trump administration's certifying to Congress that
Iran is compliant with the nuclear deal next week on Oct. 15.
HUMAN RIGHTS
Iran's state TV is reporting that a Zoroastrian member
of Yazd City Council has been suspended following a complaint. The
Monday report said that the Administrative Justice Court issued the
suspension for Sepanta Niknam following a complaint by a candidate
for the Yazd city council, purportedly over the fencing around the
city's famed "Tower of Silence".
FOREIGN AFFAIRS
In the United States, discussions of Iran have for the
last few years been mostly about the JCPOA-the nuclear deal
negotiated by President Obama. In the Middle East, things are
different. This is because while we have been debating, Iran has been
acting. And Israel has been reacting.
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