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TOP STORIES
Iran just endured the longest gap without sending oil to
its biggest customer in at least three years as imminent U.S.
sanctions pile pressure onto Tehran.
Iran's falling currency is causing many Iranians to
cancel vacations, business trips, college studies and medical
treatment abroad, a retreat in consumer spending that is weighing on
the country's troubled economy.
Unlike the 2012-2015 Western sanctions on Iran, this
time around only the United States is slapping sanctions on Iran's
economy and oil industry. But unlike in the previous round of
sanctions, the U.S. Administration has now expanded the scope of the
petroleum products that fall under sanctions. This time, not only
crude oil, but oil products will be affected.
SANCTIONS, BUSINESS RISKS, & OTHER ECONOMIC NEWS
For traders in Afghanistan's main currency exchange,
U.S. sanctions against Tehran have created the ultimate arbitrage
play -- one that involves frequent trips to neighboring Iran with
smuggled cash.
PROTESTS & HUMAN RIGHTS
A top adviser to Iran's president on human rights said
that the government "failed" to help a US permanent
resident imprisoned over spying allegations that she personally
invited to the country for a conference.
U.S.-IRAN RELATIONS & NEGOTIATIONS
United States President Donald Trump will later this
month chair a high-level United Nations Security Council meeting on
the situation in the Middle East, in a bid to tighten the diplomatic
screws on Iran. The American leader is expected to use the session to
focus the spotlight on Tehran's regional expansionism through its
proxies in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen; its ballistic missile
program; and its global arms sales-all of which, according to the
Trump administration, violate existing UNSC resolutions.
U.S. Secretary of State Michael Pompeo blasted Iran's
top leader for failing to speak out over China's reported detention
of large contingents of its Muslim minority population.
Former Secretary of State John Kerry should not try to
undermine President Trump's Iran strategy through his own outreach to
the regime, a senior State Department official warned Thursday.
President Trump blasted former Secretary of State John
Kerry for meeting with foreign diplomats after he left the State
Department.
Stealing documents off President Trump's desk isn't the
only way his top aides are trying to prevent him from taking action
on foreign policy. Several administration officials claim that
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has found another way to
"resist" the president's maximum-pressure strategy on Iran:
simply neglect to give the president a document he requested several
weeks ago.
RUSSIA, SYRIA, ISRAEL, HEZBOLLAH, LEBANON & IRAN.
The U.S., France and the U.K have begun discussing a
plan to attack Syria, should chemical weapons be used in an upcoming
military offensive. This is a rhetoric the Syrian government, Russian
and Iranian allies claim is an indication that the Western trio would
go so far as to fabricate a pretext to intervene in the war-torn
nation.
Hundreds of US soldiers and Syrian rebel fighters on
Thursday wrapped up a week-long military exercise, with an
anti-regime commander claiming the US could hit Iranian forces in the
country in a bid to force them out, Reuters reported.
Companies from dozens of countries have been showing
their wares at the Damascus International Fair this week, but those
from two in particular are getting special treatment - Russia and
Iran. Firms from the top two wartime allies of Syria's government are
set up in an entirely separate building, hinting at the preferred
status they hope to enjoy as the country tries to transition into
reconstruction.
The Trump administration has made clear that its top
priority in the Middle East is to thwart Iran's nuclear and regional
ambitions. So why is it so reluctant to lift a finger against
Tehran's most audacious gambit in Syria? That gambit is the
reconquest, by Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad and his Iranian and
Russian allies, of Idlib Province, the last major rebel holdout in
western Syria and home to about three million people.
GULF STATES, YEMEN, & IRAN
A senior advisor to Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad
Javad Zarif has confirmed that Iran has been holding "intensive
dialogues with the four European states and EU to pave the way for
solving the crises in Yemen and Syria." Hossein Jaber Ansari
told Iranian official news agency IRNA that Iran has been in talks
with European states on Yemen over the past months.
IRAQ & IRAN
The UK has condemned in "the strongest terms"
an Iran attack on an Iranian Kurdish opposition base in north-east
Iraq that killed at least 17 people. It follows a US rebuke of the
missile assault, that officials insist came from inside Iran, that
targeted The Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan at its base in
northern Iraq. "The UK further condemns in the strongest terms
any violence directed against diplomatic missions, including those of
the US, as we have witnessed in Basra and Baghdad in recent
days," a government spokesman said.
The chief of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards Corps
said on Thursday that Tehran's missile attack on an Iranian Kurdish
rebel base in northern Iraq last week was a warning to hostile
powers, Iranian state television reported.
A man wearing a white surgeon's mask sprays red paint at
pockmarks left in a white wall by shrapnel -- honouring comrades who
died in an Iranian missile attack in Iraqi Kurdistan. The man is a
member of the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran, a rebel group based
in northern Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region, whose headquarters were
targeted by the missile attack on September 8.
Now the US risks losing in Iraq again as enemies of
Washington seek to form a government coalition and Congress seeks to
sanction militias that hold sway in Baghdad.
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