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TOP STORIES
Japanese oil refiners will likely stop loading Iranian
crude by mid-September with final shipments arriving in the first
half of October, the head of the nation's oil refiners association said
on Thursday, as the U.S. pressures countries to halt such imports.
An Iranian newspaper's revelation that the head of a
once massive credit institution has been on trial for embezzlement in
Tehran has thrust the problem of corruption back into the spotlight for
many Iranians.
An exiled Iranian news outlet focusing on Iran's
Gonadabi Dervish minority says six community members have received
prison terms of five to seven years for joining anti-government
protests earlier this year.
SANCTIONS, BUSINESS RISKS, & OTHER ECONOMIC NEWS
U.S. relations with India will face a test in coming
months as tightening sanctions on Iran and Russia collide with
longstanding efforts to broaden the India-U.S. partnership.
PROTESTS & HUMAN RIGHTS
Iranian dissidents and congressional opponents of the
hardline ruling regime in Tehran are pushing Secretary of State Mike
Pompeo to end a secret deal with Iran that has prevented the United
States from leveling sanctions on the Islamic Republic's chief
propaganda network, which has been working to quash a wave of popular
protests, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter.
Police task forces found late Wednesday night the body
of a Kurdish anti-Iran civilian activist in Penjwen, 96 km east of
Sulaymaniyah, in northeastern Iraq's autonomous Kurdistan region.
Iqbal Muradi, 48, was killed by bullets fired from close range,
police sources reported. They confirmed that it referred the case to
the Kurdish security service given that the incident is a suspected
political assassination.
A dual Iranian-American citizen who was imprisoned in
northern Iran for roughly a year has filed a federal racketeering
lawsuit against the Iranian government and several top officials in
the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), who he holds
responsible for his unjust arrest and detention.
In the words of Mohammad, a graphic designer out of work
for four months, life in Iran is "like being a fish in a rapidly
shrinking puddle of water, under scorching sun in the middle of
desert." On the surface the 28-year-old's comments speak to the
country's grave environmental challenges... But Mohammad, who relies
on his father's pension for survival, like a "leech feeding on
blood" as he puts it, is not speaking about the environment.
Instead he is referring to a wider crisis he says has created a sense
of hopelessness permeating Iranian society, which few have seen on
such a scale since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
MILITARY/INTELLIGENCE MATTERS & PROXY WARS
Israel's Mossad spy agency thwarted a terror attack in a
Paris suburb last month, giving authorities in France, Germany, and
Belgium crucial intelligence that led to arrests of a cell headed by
an Iranian diplomat, Hebrew media reported Thursday.
CONGRESS & IRAN
Accusing Iran of continuing to hold Americans hostage,
U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton introduced legislation Thursday that would slap
sanctions on their Iranian captors.
RUSSIA, SYRIA, ISRAEL, HEZBOLLAH, LEBANON & IRAN
President Bashar al-Assad is set to recover control of
the Syrian frontier with the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights in a
major victory over rebels who have agreed to surrender terms, sources
on both sides said on Thursday. Backed by Russian air power and
unopposed by Assad's foreign adversaries, government forces have
swept through southwestern Syria in the last month in one of the
swiftest campaigns of the war, forcing surrender on massively
outgunned rebels.
Russia plans to defy the renewed U.S. sanctions on Iran
and pursue "a number of large-scale projects" with that
country, a Russian diplomat said Thursday.
President Vladimir Putin's top Syria adviser met
Wednesday with senior Iranian officials to relay the results of
discussions between the Russian leader and President Donald Trump on
Syria, where a recent deal has allowed the evacuation of two
pro-government villages behind enemy lines.
Alexander Lavrentiev, President Vladimir Putin's special
envoy for Syria, traveled to Tehran July 18 to update the Iranians on
the results of the much-publicized summit between the American and
Russian presidents in Helsinki earlier in the week. Lavrentiev
reportedly met for two hours with Saeed Irvanii, deputy for foreign
policy and international security of the Supreme National Security
Council.
Israel is the only country explicitly mentioned at the
Putin-Trump Helsinki summit. But Trump's conduct casts a shadow on
the understandings.
[W]hile Russia may seek to restrict Iran's presence
inside Syria, it is by no means clear that it will pressure Iran to
leave Syria entirely. In any case, such a move would not likely
succeed... These developments underscore the potential risks that
would stem from the U.S. dialing back sanctions on Russia to achieve
a brittle modus vivendi in Syria of uncertain duration and viability.
Russia and the U.S. are on board to limit Iran's
military presence in Syria. For Israel, that's a start.
GULF STATES, YEMEN, & IRAN
The Iranian-aligned Houthi movement in Yemen said it had
attacked a Saudi Aramco refinery in Riyadh on Wednesday using a
drone, but the oil company said a limited fire at the plant was due
to "an operational incident."
OTHER FOREIGN AFFAIRS
Iran will sign a cooperation treaty with Southeast Asia
at an upcoming meeting that will also be attended by U.S. Secretary
of State Michael Pompeo and North Korean officials, a Singaporean
diplomat said.
An expensive railway connecting Armenia to neighboring
Iran will not be constructed anytime soon, Transport and
Communications Minister Ashot Hakobian acknowledged on Thursday. The
Armenian and Iranian governments have discussed the extremely
ambitious project since the early 2000s.
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