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TOP STORIES
A
monitor assigned to HSBC Holdings Plc told federal prosecutors
about suspicious transactions linking Huawei Technologies Co. with
Iran, adding evidence to a U.S. investigation that led to the arrest
of the Chinese company's finance chief, according to a person familiar
with the matter. The monitor, Exiger, was enlisted by the Justice
Department to oversee HSBC's compliance efforts in 2013 following a
$1.9 billion deferred-prosecution agreement with the bank that
exposed a range of weaknesses in its internal controls.
Iranian
officials have announced that a special channel to conduct trade with
European countries has been established and will be implemented soon
in order to facilitate trade while bypassing US sanctions
and keeping the Iran nuclear deal alive. Ali Akbar Salehi, head
of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization and one of the top nuclear
negotiators of the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)
said Dec. 6 at the sidelines of a conference in Iran, "For
some time, the Europeans have been committed to helping
Iran compensate for the damages it has incurred as a result of
the JCPOA and to create a mechanism so that Iran can benefit from the
economic conditions of the JCPOA."
Saudi
Arabia's energy minister said he wasn't confident OPEC would reach a
deal on Friday to cut oil output as sources said the producer group's
leader had yet to agree on exemptions for sanctions-hit Iran. The
Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries resumed discussions
in Vienna at around 0900 GMT, before a meeting later in the day with
non-OPEC oil producers led by Russia.
NUCLEAR DEAL & NUCLEAR PROGRAM
Iran
on Saturday launched a ballistic missile that can deliver nukes - and
the near-complete silence of the media aside, it's a big deal. The
latest test revealed, once more, the flaws in the Iranian nuclear
deal and the confusion of our European allies, who are alarmed by the
mullahs' behavior but fear losing the deal that enables it.
United States President Donald
Trump has vowed not to allow Iran acquire nuclear weapons.
"We cannot let the world's leading sponsor of terror, a regime
that chants death to America and threatens Israel all the time with
annihilation and constantly screams out death to Israel, to possess
the deadliest weapon on earth. We will not allow that to
happen," the US President told a select Jewish audience Thursday
at the White House reception for Hanukkah.
SANCTIONS, BUSINESS RISKS, & OTHER ECONOMIC
NEWS
China's
Iranian oil imports are set to rebound in December after two
state-owned refiners in the world's largest oil importer began using
the nation's waiver from U.S. sanctions on Iran, according to
industry sources and data on Refinitiv Eikon. Sinopec resumed
Iran oil imports shortly after Tehran's biggest crude buyer received
its waiver in November, while China National Petroleum Corp
(CNPC)will restart lifting from its own Iranian production in
December, three sources with knowledge of the matter told Reuters.
Iraq
needs at least two years to boost the country's gas production to
stop importing Iranian gas used to feed its power stations, a senior
Iraqi energy official said Thursday. Hayan Abdul-Ghani, head of
state-run South Gas Co., told reporters that Iraq's gas output is set
to reach 1.3 million cubic feet per day by the end of 2020, an
increase of 400 mcf/d from current levels. "Iraq's current
production of gas is not enough to meet our power stations' demand
and therefore we are still importing gas from Iran. We need at least
24 months to operate new gas projects and start production," he
said.
Iraq,
OPEC's second-largest oil producer and one of Iran's largest trade
partners might come to enjoy even longer sanction waivers from
Washington than the eight countries that scored a 180-day sanction
relief last month. The reason: curbing Iran's influence over its
neighbor is a long-term goal, not something that could be done with
sanctions inside a year, writes Natasha Turak for CNBC.
Blockchain
technologies, especially cryptocurrencies, have become a hot topic in
Iran during the past few years, just as in most other countries.
Few tangible results have materialized so far, but US officials may
have actually done Iran a favor as they have significantly
accelerated development of blockchain-based projects. The unilateral
reimposition of US sanctions and a local drive for transparency have
prompted Iranian authorities to increasingly turn to blockchain and
everything it enables.
TERRORISM & EXTREMISM
At
least two policemen died and 48 people were injured in a rare suicide
car bomb attack by a Sunni militant group on a police headquarters in
the port city of Chabahar in southeast Iran Thursday, state media
reported. While suicide bombings are rare in Iran, such groups have
carried out several attacks on security forces in recent years in
Sistan-Baluchestan province, where Chabahar is located.
PROTESTS & HUMAN RIGHTS
Iran
on Thursday executed 12 prisoners in Kerman Central Prison, most of
them convicted of drug charges. Four of the executed prisoners were
identified as, Abdolghani Ghalandarzehi, Yaghub Ghalandarzehi, Jalil
Khodabakhsh and Yousef Jalaledin, all from Iran's ethnic Baluch
minority. According to witnesses, the bodies of 12 people executed
today were handed over to their families. More recently, on November
21, the Iranian authorities, hanged three
prisoners collectively in public in Shiraz on charge of
moharebeh (fighting with God).
U.S.-IRAN RELATIONS & NEGOTIATIONS
In February 2008, Army Staff Sgt. Christopher Hake wrote
a letter to his infant son. The neatly scripted, single-page message
told little Gage how special the boy was to this first-time father,
how the night he left on this second Iraq deployment was the hardest
he'd face, how he'd kept picking up the boy, kissing him, putting him
back down and then picking him up again. "I never wanted to let
you go," Hake wrote. But the 26-year-old staff sergeant had a
mission. He had to go. As he closed the letter, he made promises to
his son. "I will be with you again. I will teach you to ride
your first bike, build your first sand box, watch you play sports and
see you have kids also," Hake wrote. "I am always with you.
Dadda," he signed off. Those words were read this week in
federal court by Kelli Hake, Christopher's wife.
IRANIAN INTERNAL DEVELOPMENTS
On
December 4, 2018, Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei asked the Majlis
(Iran's parliament) to correct its recent bill on retirees saying,
"There are some gaps in the law which should be addressed."
Although he stressed the necessity and importance of the "No
Retirees Law," he said it needed to be modified after some
officials asked him to allow a number of retired managers to be
reinstated. The rule was approved by parliament in September
2018 and banned retirees from being re-employed in the public sector.
More
than 700,000 undocumented Afghans have returned from Iran this year
as the Iranian economy tightens, with a knock-on effect on the Afghan
economy, according to data from the UN's migration agency. In a
report covering the period up to December 1, the International
Organization for Migration said a total of 752,325 Afghans had
returned from Iran and Pakistan, including 721,633 from Iran.
IRANIAN REGIONAL AGGRESSION
Farouk Baakar was on duty as a medic at al-Rashid
hospital the day a bleeding man was brought into the emergency room
with gunshot wounds and signs of torture. He'd been whipped across
the back and hung by his wrists for days. The patient, Baakar
learned, had been left for dead by the side of a highway after being
held captive in a prison run by the Houthi rebels who control
northern Yemen. Baakar spent hours removing bullets and repairing
ruptured intestine. He tended to the patient's recovery for 80 days
and, at the end, agreed to pose for a selfie with him. Weeks later,
Houthi security officials grabbed the man again. They searched his
phone and found the photo. Then they came for Baakar.
Secretary-General
of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) Abdulatif Al-Zayani said that
the Iranian regime had no choice but to reconsider its political path
and abide by the basic principles governing relations between States,
based on the United Nations Charter and the international law. He
noted that Iran's role in the region would be one of the topics of
discussion by Gulf leaders during a summit in Riyadh on Sunday.
GULF STATES, YEMEN, & IRAN
Iran
sought to send a high-level official to Yemen peace talks but was
rebuffed by the Donald Trump administration, Al-Monitor has learned.
The Iranian Foreign Ministry recently informed Sweden, which is
hosting this week's UN-sponsored talks, of its desire to send a
senior adviser to Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif to the
shuttle diplomacy between the Houthi rebels and the internationally
recognized government of Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi in Stockholm.
IRAQ & IRAN
Iraq
is no stranger to foreign influence in its politics, economy and way
of life. It has been the crossroads for trade between Asia, Europe
and Africa from time immemorial. Having had only an occasional stint
of total independence and local dominance (the Mesopotamian Empire
and a few other occasions in the last couple of thousand years), the
people of the fertile crescent have had their very DNA imprinted with
becoming chummy with the current dominant neighbor and thriving at
the same time.
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