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TOP STORIES
The Trump administration accused Tehran on Tuesday of
plotting a terrorist attack against a regime opposition rally held in
Paris last month.
Indian refiners cut imports of Iranian oil last month as
they started weaning their plants off crude from the country to avoid
sanctions by the United States that are set to take effect in
November.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Tuesday accused
Iran of using its embassies to plot terrorist attacks in Europe and
warned Tehran that its actions have "a real high cost"
after it threatened to disrupt Mideast oil supplies.
UANI IN THE NEWS
Fundamentally, the JCPOA was founded on a flawed
doctrine: its supporters believed that by providing economic relief
to a rogue state, we could coax it into moderating its behaviour. In
reality, giving in to the demands of an aggressor may buy you some time,
but it will not secure long-term safety. The Iranian regime has
learnt that by posturing and threatening it can get what it wants
from the West. This is a lesson that must be unlearnt. Despite the
collapse of the agreement, the one thing on which all partners remain
aligned is the need to curb Iran's nuclear ambitions. This common
commitment must be used to bring the partners together once again to
find a new deal. Iran needs to be shown that the only route to
favourable business arrangements with western companies is to
demonstrate a credible, transparent and long-term commitment not to
pursue a nuclear arsenal at any time in the future.
SANCTIONS, BUSINESS RISKS, & OTHER ECONOMIC NEWS
Iran formally opened a secondary market for hard
currency Tuesday, abandoning after three months an effort to dictate
a single exchange rate for the rial against the dollar as the threat
of U.S. sanctions pressures the Iranian currency.
The United States will consider requests from some countries
to be exempted from sanctions it will put in effect in November to
prevent Iran from exporting oil, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo
said on Tuesday.
U.S. government teams spent three days in Saudi Arabia
discussing ways to cut off money flows to Iran without disrupting
energy markets as Washington presses nations to stop buying Iranian
oil by Nov. 4, a senior State Department official said.
Iran on Tuesday criticised India for not fulfilling its
promise of making investments in the expansion of the strategically
located Chabahar port and said New Delhi will stand to lose
"special privileges" if it cuts import of Iranian oil.
An 18-year old gymnast named Maedeh Hojabri is the
latest Iranian to confess to a crime on state television. Her
offense? Posting videos on Instagram that featured her dancing to
popular music without wearing a hijab... This kind of repression is
not uncommon in Iran, and there's usually very little the U.S. can do
about it besides issue a public condemnation. In this case, however,
President Donald Trump has a more forceful option: Re-imposing
sanctions on the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting, or IRIB, the
umbrella organization that controls the regime's foreign and domestic
state-run media.
The UN Human Rights Council on Friday appointed Javaid
Rehman, a British-Pakistani lawyer and academic, as the new special
rapporteur for human rights in Iran... The unrest should spur Rehman
to highlight not only Iran's longstanding domestic repression but
also the ongoing protests and the regime's bloody response to them.
In so doing, the new special rapporteur can demonstrate that the
world is watching - and that international pressure will not cease
until Tehran addresses its people's rightful demands.
PROTESTS & HUMAN RIGHTS
New details have emerged about several Iranian women
recently arrested in Iran for posting videos of themselves dancing on
social media - arrests that have sparked an international social
media backlash.
RUSSIA, SYRIA, ISRAEL, HEZBOLLAH, LEBANON & IRAN
A top adviser to Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali
Khamenei will visit Moscow on Wednesday to deliver a message to
President Vladimir Putin, state television reported.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met two senior Russian
officials in his office Tuesday and told them Iran must leave all of
Syria, just hours before flying to Moscow on Wednesday and a meeting
with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
A major purpose of Iran wanting to enlarge its footprint
in Syria may be to hide aspects of its nuclear program from the
International Atomic Energy Agency, former top IDF military
intelligence official Yossi Kuperwasser said Wednesday.
While America's closest allies in Europe viewed with a
sense of dread Trump's interest in partnering with Putin, three
countries that enjoyed unparallelled influence with the incoming
Administration-Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the U.A.E.-privately
embraced the goal. Officials from the three countries have repeatedly
encouraged their American counterparts to consider ending the
Ukraine-related sanctions in return for Putin's help in removing
Iranian forces from Syria.
OTHER IRANIAN INTERNAL DEVELOPMENTS
For much of his presidency, Hassan Rouhani has been at
loggerheads with Iran's military and conservative establishment, as
he forged diplomatic ties with the West to break his country's
international isolation. But now with his political survival in
question, Mr. Rouhani is sounding a lot like Iran's hard-liners.
IRANIAN REGIONAL AGGRESSION
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo ramped up his warnings to
Iran on Tuesday, saying that the U.S. and its Gulf Arab allies would
pay a "real high cost" for Tehran's "malign
behavior" in the Middle East and elsewhere.
GULF STATES, YEMEN, & IRAN
Dubai: Saudi Arabia has sent an official letter of
protest to the United Nations complaining about what it says are
"repeated infringements" by Iranian boats of its waters.
According to the Emirati news agency WAM, Iranian boats have
encroached on restricted areas of oil fields and platforms in the
Arabian Gulf, in violation of a martime boundary line that was set up
between the two countries in October.
By all accounts, Qassem Soleimani is not a brash man.
His humble background from a poor village in Iran's Kerman province
would not immediately make him a likely target for United States ire.
His decades in the top ranks of Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps,
however, do. Soleimani left his roots in 1979 soon after the Iranian
Revolution unfolded. He quickly became a committed follower of
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the Islamic republic's founder.
Soleimani then joined the Guards, a Khomeini invention that has
evolved into a powerful and secretive organisation, and which to this
day is tasked with protecting the Iranian revolution.
TERRORISM & EXTREMISM
The United States designated a Shiite militant group in
Bahrain as a foreign terrorist organization Tuesday to ramp up
pressure on Iran. The al-Ashtar Brigades are "yet another in a
long line of Iranian-sponsored terrorists who kill on behalf of a
corrupt regime," Nathan Sales, the coordinator for
counterterrorism at the State Department, said in a statement
detailing the designation.
Germany's federal prosecutor on Wednesday remanded in
custody an Iranian diplomat suspected of having been involved in a
plot to bomb an Iranian opposition rally in France but said the
suspect could still be extradited to Belgium.
OTHER FOREIGN AFFAIRS
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo arrived in Brussels
on Tuesday, where he plans meetings on the sidelines of the NATO
summit aimed at stepping up pressure on Iran and reassuring allies
about alternative oil supplies, a State Department official said.
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