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TOP STORIES
The European Investment Bank has balked at an EU
proposal to do business in Iran to help offset U.S. sanctions and
save the 2015 nuclear deal, EU sources told Reuters, under pressure
from the United States - where the bank raises much of its funds.
Iran announced on Tuesday that it had completed a new
centrifuge assembly center at the Natanz nuclear site, in a first
step to increasing its enrichment capacity. While Iran said it would
keep enrichment within limits set by the 2015 nuclear accord, the
center's opening seemed to signal that it could swing to
industrial-level enrichment if that agreement, which the United
States withdrew from last month, should further unravel.
A controversial tweet by Iran's top leader has many
(once again) questioning Twitter's terms of service. On Sunday, the
"supreme leader" Ayatollah Ali Khamenei took his
long-standing hatred of Israel to social media, tweeting,
"Israel is a malignant cancerous tumor in the West Asian region
that has to be removed and eradicated: it is possible and it will
happen." Twitter's rules dictate: "You may not make
specific threats of violence or wish for the serious physical harm,
death, or disease of an individual or group of people." And yet,
when the tweet was reported to Twitter management, the reply was,
"there was no violation of the Twitter Rules against abusive
behavior."
UANI IN THE NEWS
[UANI Senior Adviser and former National Intelligence
Manager for Iran Norm Roule:] "The Iranians have enhanced their
strategic posture throughout the Middle East by developing a Shia
militancy numbering in the tens of thousands and capable of fighting
with Iran's support in different countries and against different
adversaries at the same time. Within a space of only a handful of
years, Iran has gone from a regional pariah to claiming that it
should have a role in the destinies of four Arab capitals."
As EU chiefs scramble to implement a "blocking
statute" to thwart impending U.S. sanctions on companies doing
business with Iran in the wake of President Trump's May 8 decision to
withdraw from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), now is
a good time to revisit all those business deals that were signed
during the "full" JCPOA. During the almost three years of
"JCPOA-Max" since July 2015, Iranian news outlets trumpeted
the signing of a deal between a western firm and an Iranian
counterpart once a week, on average... Yet - even during JCPOA-Max -
this "mountain of MOUs" turned out to be an anthill of real
business.
NUCLEAR DEAL & NUCLEAR PROGRAM
Iran's declaration that it could increase its uranium
enrichment capacity if a nuclear deal with world powers falls apart
risks sailing close to the "red line", France's foreign
minister said on Wednesday.
SANCTIONS, BUSINESS RISKS, & OTHER ECONOMIC NEWS
The Obama administration secretly sought to give Iran
access - albeit briefly - to the U.S. financial system by
sidestepping sanctions kept in place after the 2015 nuclear deal,
despite repeatedly telling Congress and the public it had no plans to
do so.
The United States warned governments and the private sector
on Tuesday to crack down on what it described as Iranian efforts to
exploit them to fund its support for terrorism, destabilizing actions
in the region and rights abuses at home.
European signatories to a nuclear deal with Iran have
written to top U.S. officials to stress their commitment to upholding
the pact, which Washington has quit, and to urge the United States to
spare EU firms active in Iran from secondary sanctions.
Dozens of major American companies are preparing to pull
out of Iran as the Trump administration closes a narrow legal window
that has allowed firms to operate there without violating U.S.
sanctions. The companies using the exemption include big
conglomerates like Honeywell International Inc., Dover Corp. and
General Electric Co. and insurers like Chubb Ltd., many of which
sought to profit from growth in the Iranian energy industry.
Senior European officials conceded in a letter to the
Trump administration that their efforts to save the Iranian nuclear
accord by maintaining major trade and investment with Tehran are
buckling in the face of planned U.S. sanctions.
SYRIA, RUSSIA, ISRAEL, HEZBOLLAH, LEBANON & IRAN
A Russian troop deployment in Syria near the Lebanese
border this week caused friction with Iran-backed forces including
Hezbollah which objected to the uncoordinated move, two non-Syrian
officials in the regional alliance backing Damascus said.
Iran has multiplied its support for the Lebanese
militant group Hezbollah to more than $700 million a year, according
to US estimates. The new figure is more than three times as much as
previous estimates of funding for the group.
Lebanese Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri said Iranian and
Hezbollah forces will not withdraw from Syria until the country is
"liberated" and its "territorial integrity is
restored", Russia's RIA news agency reported on Wednesday.
According to recent media reports, some Israeli
officials and military assessments have concluded that Hezbollah is
trying to undo its reputation as an "Iranian puppet." Such
claims do not necessarily indicate that the terrorist group seeks
actual independence from Tehran; if anything, their relationship has
become closer than ever in the past few years. Rather, the reports
suggest that both partners are trying to sequester Hezbollah from
Iran's brewing regional conflict with Israel.
The Khamenei and Assad regimes are seeking to achieve
two objectives: keeping the Damascus regime intact and keeping Iran's
military and intelligence presence and its militias in Syria and
negotiate over anything except that. The most recent US proposal though
is the opposite: keeping the Assad regime is conditional on ending
Iran's presence in Syria while the rest is negotiable.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is meeting
opposition in European capitals to his aggressive stance against
Iran.
PROTESTS & HUMAN RIGHTS
Iran's judiciary reportedly created a very short list of
lawyers approved to represent people accused of national security
crimes - commonly used to prosecute activists - in Tehran's courts
during the investigative stage of the case. Of the 20,000-plus
members of Tehran's Bar association, only 20 lawyers made the list,
which, unsurprisingly, excluded women and human rights lawyers.
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