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President Donald Trump is expected to announce on Friday
that he won't certify Iran is complying with the 2015 multinational
nuclear agreement and will take Tehran to task more broadly for
practices ranging from missile tests to support of violent groups,
U.S. officials said. The refusal to certify Iran's compliance doesn't
mean the U.S. will pull out of the deal, the officials added, and Mr.
Trump isn't expected to ask Congress to re-impose economic sanctions
that had been lifted as part of the agreement. But it could send the
White House down a road of trying to change a deal that U.S. allies
still support.
President Donald Trump plans to deliver a broad and
harsh critique of Iran in a speech Friday declaring that the landmark
Iran nuclear deal is not in America's national security interests,
according to U.S. officials and outside advisers to the
administration. Trump's speech from the White House will outline
specific faults he finds in the 2015 accord but will also focus on an
array of Iran's troubling non-nuclear activities, four officials and
advisers said. Those include Tehran's ballistic missile program,
support for Syrian President Bashar Assad, Lebanon's Hezbollah
movement and other groups that destabilize the region.
In the 21 months since a landmark nuclear agreement
freed Iran's economy from crippling economic sanctions, investors
eager to tap the country's energy reserves and its 80 million
consumers have waited for signs it was safe to enter the market in
full force. Donald Trump is about to signal that they should keep
waiting. The U.S. president is poised to announce on Friday that the
multinational deal that eased sanctions in exchange for curbs on
Iran's nuclear program isn't sufficiently beneficial to the U.S. That
will heighten the uncertainty for businesses such as Boeing Co.,
Airbus SE and General Electric Co. that have ventured into Iran and
for others that were already hesitating.
IRAN NUCLEAR DEAL
President Trump will make good on Friday on a
long-running threat to disavow the Iran nuclear deal that was
negotiated by his predecessor, Barack Obama. But he will stop short,
for now, of unraveling the accord or even rewriting it, as the deal's
defenders had once feared. In a speech on Friday afternoon, Mr. Trump
will declare his intention not to certify Iran's compliance with the
agreement. Doing so essentially kicks to Congress a decision about
whether to reimpose sanctions on Iran, which would blow up the
agreement.
Donald Trump is expected to disavow the Iran nuclear
deal in a speech on Friday denouncing the government in Tehran, but
he will not call for the US to abandon the agreement, according to
officials briefed on the president's intentions. European officials
expressed relief that the White House speech did not appear to
represent a US abrogation of the 2015 deal. Since Trump signaled in
recent months that he did not want to constantly certify to Congress
a deal which he detested, European diplomats have been lobbying
intensively in Washington to stop the US walking out of the accord
entirely. "Of all the places it could have been on the
spectrum, this is very much at the better end," one European official
said.
U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has spoken with
senior officials of Britain, China, France and Russia in recent days
to discuss President Donald Trump's planned announcement on Iran on
Friday, the State Department said without giving details. "I
would describe them as listening calls, consulting calls and having
conversations about the overall rollout, if you will, of the plan ...
which the president will announce tomorrow," State Department
spokeswoman Heather Nauert told reporters...
President Donald Trump will lay out a more
confrontational strategy toward Iran by the United States on Friday
in a speech in which he is likely to strike a blow at an
international Iran nuclear deal, complicating U.S. relations with
European allies.
President Trump hasn't been shy expressing his distaste
for the Iran nuclear deal negotiated under his predecessor. He has
called the 2015 agreement disastrous, horrible, and one-sided, and he
has vowed to get rid of it or renegotiate the terms. Trump has
already given his approval twice to preserve the agreement, albeit
grudgingly. But now, he is poised to go a step further, potentially
setting it on the path to oblivion. Trump must decide by Sunday
whether to certify again that Iran is complying with its commitments
under the deal.
U.S.-IRAN RELATIONS
The head of U.S. Central Command said he was concerned
about Iran's long-term activities in the region and he would continue
to focus on protecting U.S. troops, even as Iran has said U.S.
regional military bases would be at risk if further sanctions were
passed. "Iran is kind of a long-term destabilizing actor in the
region and so we remain concerned about their activities as
well," U.S. General Joseph Votel told reporters. Trump is
expected to unveil a broad strategy on confronting Iran this week,
likely on Friday. "Leadership will make the decisions and we
will be prepared to do what we need to do to continue to protect
ourselves and particularity to protect our interests in the
region," Votel added.
On the eve of President Trump's decision on the
certification of the Iran nuclear deal, CIA Director Michael Pompeo
lashed out Thursday at the Islamic Republic in a speech at the
University of Texas, calling it "a thuggish police state"
and a "despotic theocracy," and comparing its ambitions to
those of ISIS. The hardline speech, delivered as the keynote at a
national security forum in Austin sponsored by the university, is "setting
the stage" for the Trump administration's announcement on the
nuclear agreement, expected Friday afternoon, said one senior U.S.
intelligence official.
CONGRESS & IRAN
Politics of the Iran deal. National Security Advisor Lt.
Gen. H.R. McMaster delivered a classified briefing to Republican
lawmakers - and Republicans only - on the administration's plan for
the 2015 agreement to halt Iran's nuclear program Wednesday night.
Democrats also huddled with former Secretary of State John Kerry to
talk through their response if president Trump claims Iran is not in
compliance with the agreement this week, as he is expected to.
Republicans in the U.S. Congress, long the staunchest
opponents of the Iran nuclear deal, may be the best hope for
preserving it if President Donald Trump declines on Friday to certify
that Tehran is complying with the pact. Every Republican in Congress
opposed the international accord reached under Democratic former
President Barack Obama two years ago. Joined by several Democrats,
they nearly passed legislation to kill the deal in which Iran agreed
to curb its disputed nuclear programme in exchange for sanctions
relief. However, with the agreement in place and strongly
supported by co-signers Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China,
many Republicans who still abhor the pact nevertheless do not want to
blow it up for fear that doing so would erode U.S. credibility. They
want to find other ways to clamp down on Tehran.
BUSINESS RISK
What's At Stake
for Boeing in the Iran Deal | NPR
When the landmark nuclear agreement with Iran was signed
in 2015, Boeing was seen as one of the big winners. Most other U.S.
firms are still prevented from doing business with the Islamic
Republic because of remaining sanctions. But the nuclear deal gave a
special nod to aircraft manufacturers like Boeing and its main
competitor, Airbus. Boeing quickly signed deals with Iranian airlines
for $20 billion. And the first is to be delivered next year. Now the
company is in a wait-and-see situation. Gordon Johndroe is a
spokesperson for Boeing.
TERRORISM
Soon after the Shah of Iran was forced from power in
1979, a small group of the uprising's young leaders suggested the
creation of a national guard, tasked with preserving the new Islamic
revolution and counterbalancing the country's conventional military.
Ayatollah Khomenei, the charismatic cleric who soon became the
country's supreme leader, hesitated to call the members of the new
force "guards", fearing the word was too close to the
French word widely used to refer to the ousted monarch's elite
personal force. Instead he opted for sepah, a
Persian word for soldiers with historical connotations, and the new
force became known asthe sepah-e-pasdaran or
"army of the guardians". Most foreign governments,
however, refer to it as the Islamic revolutionary guard corps - a
force that, 38 years later, has become a key player both inside Iran
and across the region. Reports that the US government is poised to
designate the IRGC as a terrorist group have sparked jitters in
Tehran, overshadowing Donald Trump's expected plan to tear up the
landmark nuclear deal.
One of the most useful maxims is to beware of the
pitfalls of conventional wisdom. It is said that Iran and Al-Qaeda
could not have any relationship because of the deeply entrenched
Sunni/Shia difference between them. Perhaps, this divide does exist
but there has been an operational relationship between the two sides,
which has spanned for decades. This relationship began in early
1990's in Sudan, which developed further when Al-Qaeda was in
Afghanistan and continued even after the September 11 attacks. In
July 2011, the United States formally accused Iran of having direct
ties with Al Qaeda which resulted in the September 11 attacks. There
is strong evidence for such a cooperation which includes Iran
providing sanctuary to Al Qaeda operatives and its senior leadership
inside the country, in addition to allowing the supply of money,
weapons and fighters to the organization through a vital logistics
lifeline.
HUMAN RIGHTS
As President Donald Trump prepares to announce whether
he'll certify Iran's compliance with the deal to curb its nuclear
program, U.S. and European negotiators at the United Nations are on
another collision course -- this time over the Islamic Republic's
human rights record.
FOREIGN AFFAIRS
Reading through the Iranian foreign minister's article
in The Atlantic this week, one is struck by paradox. It is so full of
lies, distortions, and half-truths that in the end it yields one
fundamental truth-it's not a set of errors, it's a methodology. The
goal is to turn Iran into a regional nuclear power. The method is to
make the West believe it isn't happening.
If the Persian language had a term for chutzpah,
it should have been the title for Javad Zarif's recent essay in The
Atlantic. Written by Iran's foreign minister and master
propagandist, a man who has perfected the art of spoon-feeding
credulous Westerners his spin, the article depicts an odious Iranian
regime that has spread chaos and destruction throughout the Middle
East as a magnanimous democratic force for regional stability. The
narrative spun by the foreign minister not only contradicts the
historical reality of Iran's behavior but is also at odds with the
Farsi-language narratives of Iranian politicians who openly boast of
the Islamic Republic's hegemonic ambitions.
SYRIA CONFLICT
President Donald Trump is reportedly about to extend a
terrorism designation to Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps
(IRGC) in its entirety. The IRGC is both the dominant force inside
Iran and the instrument through which the Islamic Republic projects
power abroad. Operating throughout the region, the IRGC is deeply
entrenched in Lebanon; the domain of Hezbollah. For years, while
acknowledging that Lebanese Hezbollah is backed and "inspired"
by Iran, many policymakers and analysts have treated the group as an
independent actor driven by its "resistance" to Israel and
one that would not fight on behalf of Syria's Bashar al Assad for
fear of compromising its stature as the premier anti-Israel
resistance group. The Syrian war has shown otherwise.
IRAQ CRISIS
More than two weeks after the Sept. 25 independence
referendum in Iraqi Kurdistan, Iran has yet to take any meaningful
action against the Kurdish region despite its rhetoric, including
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's labeling of the plebiscite as
treason and a threat to the region in his meeting with Turkish
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Oct. 4... While Iranian officials,
including Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani, have not hidden their
anger and frustration at the way the Iraqi Kurdish leadership handled
the referendum, they appear to be wary of a possible US plan to
change the borders of the region in favor of the Kurds.
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