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TOP STORIES
Iranian leaders are pushing to contain a deepening
economic crisis that is slashing the buying power of Iranians and
pressuring Tehran's ruling elite even before the bite of looming U.S.
sanctions.
India's Hindustan Petroleum Corp (HPCL) cancelled the
purchase of an Iranian oil cargo earlier this month after its
insurance company refused to provide coverage for the crude because
of U.S. sanctions, three sources with knowledge of the matter said.
A U.S.-based cybersecurity firm has uncovered a new
"highly active" espionage group believed to be based in
Iran that is breaking into networks of government organizations and
other firms located in the Middle East. Symantec released information
early Wednesday on the hacking collective, which researchers have
dubbed "Leafminer."
NUCLEAR DEAL & NUCLEAR PROGRAM
Four days after President Trump's stern warning via
Twitter to Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, national security
adviser John Bolton is scheduled to hold a meeting Thursday of
Pentagon and other top officials on the administration's emerging
strategy on Iran.
Iran will never take part in one-sided negotiations with
the United States under threat, foreign ministry spokesman Bahram
Qassemi said on Wednesday.
Europe is girding for the return of U.S. nuclear
sanctions on Iran next month, and the spectacle in Brussels isn't
exactly edifying. The Continent is choosing resistance to the U.S.
that is likely to fail... [T]here isn't much Europe can do to
force Washington to change course-except join the Trump
Administration in pressing for a better deal... If Europe wants to
preserve the commercial opportunities promised by the 2015 agreement,
leaders should admit the deal is fatally flawed and focus their
diplomacy on securing a pact that truly restricts Tehran's nuclear
ambitions.
SANCTIONS, BUSINESS RISKS, & OTHER ECONOMIC NEWS
One of Iran's most famous export industries is warning
of disaster when American sanctions snap back into place next month.
The country's carpet making industry employs hundreds of thousands of
skilled weavers and earns hundreds of millions of dollars in export
revenue. President Donald Trump's decision to quit the Iran nuclear
deal and reimpose sanctions threatens to kill that market.
Iran is moving ahead with a plan to introduce a national
cryptocurrency, partly as a way of busting U.S. sanctions.
As the regime's strategy for countering the Trump
administration continues to falter, will its traditional two-step of
provocation and restraint give way to wider escalation?
Iranian Vice President Eshaq Jahangiri said July 25 that
his country will soon witness what he called a "great show of
internal unity," with national figures coming together to fight
off economic pressures.
MILITARY/INTELLIGENCE MATTERS & PROXY WARS
Iran's Quds force chief Qassem Soleimani warned U.S.
President Donald Trump against war on Thursday, saying it would
"destroy all that you possess", the website of Iran's
Arabic language Al Alam TV reported.
A senior Iranian military commander said on Thursday
Donald Trump should address any threats against Tehran directly to
him and he mocked the U.S. president as displaying the ethics of
"night clubs and gambling halls", the Iranian Young
Journalists' Club reported. The comments by Major-General Qassem
Soleimani, who heads the Quds Force of Iran's powerful Revolutionary
Guards Corps, were the latest salvo in a war of words between the two
countries which has reached a new level of bellicosity.
Iran's Quds force chief Qassem Soleimani said on
Thursday that the Red Sea was not secure with the presence of
American troops in the area, Iran's Arabic-language Al Alam
television reported.
U.S.-IRAN RELATIONS
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said Wednesday that the
country does not need to trade barbs with President Trump, but
instead should respond with action.
Ali Larijani, speaker of the Iranian parliament and a
close advisor of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, dismissed US President
Donald Trump's recent warnings to Iran as the "empty words"
of a "charlatan," according to a report by the semi-official
Iranian Student's News Agency.
The Donald Trump administration is moving to increase
pressure on Iran from Iraqi Kurdistan by appointing an Iran expert to
head the US Consulate in Erbil. The move comes as armed Iranian
Kurdish opposition groups have intensified their attacks on Islamic
Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) positions in western Iran.
CONGRESS & IRAN
Rep. Michael McCaul wants Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu to know he has his back when it comes to Israel's demand
that Iran leave Syria for good.
RUSSIA, SYRIA, ISRAEL, HEZBOLLAH, LEBANON & IRAN
The U.S. base near southern Syria's al-Tanf border
crossing was set up to train local Syrians to fight Islamic State
militants, but it also serves as a counterweight to Iranian
activities in the war-torn country, U.S. officials and experts tell
VOA.
"Ironically, when it comes to the issue of Iran in
Syria, we have a rare case of Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, Benjamin
Netanyahu, Hassan Rouhani and Bashar al-Assad all sharing a common
interest," a very senior military source told Al-Monitor on
condition of anonymity. "All of these leaders want Iranian
forces to get out of Syria."
In the absence of a unified government plan ensuring the
displaced Syrians' return to their country, Hezbollah moved to
facilitate the return, which some parties welcomed while others
prefer the Lebanese state take charge of this dossier.
Protests in Baalbek over the killing of a wanted person
by Lebanon's security services have emphasized the Shiite community's
discontent with "Hezbollah" and strong criticism of its
secretary general, Hassan Nasrallah.
OTHER IRANIAN INTERNAL DEVELOPMENTS
A hard-line daily close to the office of Iranian Supreme
Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has quoted a spokesman for the Yemeni
Houthi rebels as a warning to Western companies to leave Riyadh,
Dubai, and Abu Dhabi... Following the exchange of threats between Iranian
President Hassan Rouhani and U.S. President Donald Trump, two
pro-reform daily newspapers in Iran have criticized Rouhani for
threatening the United States.
Iranian security forces have prevented devotees of fans
of late poet Ahmad Shamlou, who pushed for greater freedoms and had
some of his work banned under successive governments, from marking
the 18th anniversary of his death.
GULF STATES, YEMEN, & IRAN
Saudi Arabia said on Thursday it was suspending oil
shipments through a strategic Red Sea lane after Yemen's Iran-aligned
rebels attacked two tankers in the waterway, underscoring the risk of
an escalation in tensions in the region.
When the Saudi-led coalition agreed to cease the
offensive in Hodeidah at the beginning of this month, it was in
support of UN attempts to secure a peaceful outcome to the Yemeni
conflict. That month-long ceasefire is now nearly at an end, during
which time the Houthi rebels have shown no sign of abating their
campaign of aggression, nor made concessions. Instead, as Yemeni
Foreign Minister Khaled Al Yemany told The National, the militia were
stalling for time to further entrench themselves in the Red Sea port
city and deploy more fighters to in the hope of engaging the
coalition in street warfare.
OTHER FOREIGN AFFAIRS
The Iranian regime's potent espionage and assassination
network in Europe has operated largely without interruption since the
Islamic revolution of 1979. European governments have caught and
imprisoned individual terrorists, yet they fail to deter Tehran
because they only punish the perpetrators, not the regime that gives
them their orders.
MISCELLANEOUS
[T]here is a worrying tendency for the United States to
define the Iran problem in a matter that highlights the urgency of
confrontation, boast about its own capabilities, make demands
amounting to regime change, and issue threats (including public
ones)-all of which amount to the so-called 'roll back'
strategy-without backing these up with effective policy.
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