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TOP STORIES
The European Union on Tuesday agreed to place a unit of
the Iranian Intelligence ministry and two of its staff on the EU
terrorist list for planning assassinations in Europe, the Danish
Foreign Ministry and EU diplomats said. The decision, which freezes financial
assets in the bloc belonging to the unit and the two individuals,
comes after Denmark said last year it suspected an Iranian government
intelligence service of carrying out an assassination plot on its
soil.
... Pompeo opens his trip in
Jordan and will deliver an address on Middle East policy in Egypt,
whose military ruler turned president, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, has been
a key partner of Trump. Another major focus of the tour will be
sustaining a regional coalition to counter Iran, the main enemy of US
allies Saudi Arabia and Israel. "This is a coalition that
understands that the largest threats -- terrorism and the Islamic
Republic of Iran -- are things that we ought to work on jointly and
we will be marshaling all of the resources, theirs and ours, to
achieve them," Pompeo said.
Iran has been holding an
American Navy veteran in prison on unspecified charges since late
July, when he was seized while visiting an Iranian girlfriend, his
mother said Monday. The imprisonment of the veteran, Michael R.
White, 46, from Imperial Beach, Calif., could further complicate
relations between the United States and Iran. Tension between the
countries worsened substantially after President Trump renounced the
nuclear accord with Iran last May and reimposed severe sanctions.
SANCTIONS, BUSINESS RISKS, & OTHER ECONOMIC
NEWS
Iran hopes India will strive to get another waiver from
U.S. sanctions as New Delhi plans to continue buying oil from Tehran,
Iran's deputy foreign minister for economic diplomacy Gholamreza
Ansari said on Tuesday. In November, the Unites States granted a six-month
waiver from sanctions to India and allowed New Delhi to continue to
import a limited quantity of Iranian oil.
Iranians contacted by NPR are losing income and looking
for who's at fault as U.S. sanctions start to bite.
In next Iranian budget $800 million has been set aside
to deal with the mess created by unlicensed credit institutions; a
considerable burden for a country in the throes of an economic
crisis. This sum is equal or greater than the budget of many
ministries, but the state has little choice in the matter. If these
institutions go under, angry people who would lose their savings
might trigger protests and unrest in the country.
MISSILE PROGRAM
Between 2004 and 2015, the European Union (EU)
coordinated a series of negotiations with Iran on its nuclear
program. In the early stages, the negotiations took place in the
format of the EU and E3-the United Kingdom, France, and Germany. In
2006, the negotiating framework evolved to the P5+1 format-the five
permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany. In 2015,
an agreement was finally reached, with the EU at the helm of the
negotiations, in the form of a Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).
Yet distrust of Iran continued after the signing of the JCPOA. One of
the strongest criticisms is that by excluding curbs on Iran's
ballistic missile program, the JCPOA left Iran with one part of the
formula for a fully functioning nuclear weapon, namely the delivery
vehicle.
PROTESTS & HUMAN RIGHTS
Iranian activist Esmail Bakhshi has been out of jail for
a month, but says he still bears the physical and psychological scars
from being tortured "to the verge of death" during his
25-day jail stay in Khuzestan Province. Bakhshi was arrested on
November 20 for his role in weeks-long protests over unpaid salaries
at a local sugar factory. He was charged with disruption of public
order and collusion against national security and spent weeks in jail
before his release on bail on December 12.
Responding to reports that the Iranian prison
authorities have prevented the jailed UK charity worker Nazanin
Zaghari-Ratcliffe from having a regular telephone call with her husband
Richard after an announcement that she and fellow detainee Narges
Mohammadi would begin a hunger strike protest against their
imprisonment next week, Kate Allen, Amnesty International UK's
Director, said: "It's utterly disgraceful that the Iranian authorities
are heaping more punishment on Nazanin and Narges like this."
If he's alive, retired FBI agent Robert "Bob"
Levinson remains the longest-held American hostage in history -
having disappeared in Iranian territory almost 12 years ago. But
there's no "if" in the eyes of his children, who refuse to
give up hope and are convinced he's very much alive, and being held
by the Iranian regime. "He is being held against his will, with
no human rights or access to his family," David Levinson, 31,
told Fox News in an interview last week. "It's inconceivable
that, almost 12 years later, we have no answers. The Iranian
government knows what happened to my father and needs to send him
now. We continue to push for more action by our government, and
awareness of his case worldwide."
Three years after his release from a Tehran prison,
Washington Post journalist Jason Rezaian is set to testify in federal
court Tuesday that he was taken hostage and psychologically tortured
by the Iranian government to extract U.S. concessions before the 2016
implementation of a historic pact limiting Iran's nuclear program.
Rezaian, 43, and family members are expected to take the witness
stand and provide the most detailed public accounting yet of his 18
months in captivity, from 2014 to 2016 and the two-month imprisonment
of his wife, Yeganeh Salehi.
U.S.-IRAN RELATIONS & NEGOTIATIONS
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo
is heading out on what may prove his toughest trip yet, a weeklong
swing through the Middle East in which he will give a major speech
about America's role in the region and privately reassure Arab allies
that the U.S. remains committed to them. In his speech, to be given
in Cairo, Pompeo plans to repudiate the Middle East vision of former
President Barack Obama, who famously delivered an address to the
broader Muslim world while in Egypt in 2009. Pompeo will slam Obama's
engagement with Iran, sources told POLITICO, while asserting that
President Donald Trump has the region's best interests at heart.
One of Washington's most vocal
critics of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal has joined the Trump
administration in a senior policy role, according to two sources
familiar with the matter. Richard Goldberg, who has called on US
President Donald Trump to bring Iran's economy "to its
knees," will become Director for Countering Iranian Weapons of Mass
Destruction at the National Security Council.
IRANIAN INTERNAL DEVELOPMENTS
An Iranian lawmaker says Tehran's foreign policy has
"a lot of unnecessary costs" which can "leave us
paralyzed on the streets of Tehran." In an unprecedented speech
before the start of parliament's official agenda on January 6, Jalil
Rahimi Jahanabadi said, "Unnecessary costs which are not a
priority should be removed." As an example of potential risks,
he cited the collapse of the former Soviet Union despite its nuclear
arsenal and influence around the world.
IRANIAN REGIONAL AGGRESSION
Last year was full of challenges for Iran. There were
countless pressures and challenges for the regime at the domestic,
regional and international levels. At the beginning of the year,
there were mass protests in cities and towns across the country, with
demonstrators chanting slogans such as, "No to soaring
prices." These quickly escalated, with protesters demanding the
fall of the regime and the end of its Wilayat Al-Faqih ideology.
RUSSIA, SYRIA, ISRAEL, HEZBOLLAH, LEBANON & IRAN
The US-based online payment service PayPal has shut the
account of The Third Way, a neo-Nazi party, after a series of
Jerusalem Post articles revealed the German group's links to
Hezbollah, Syrian President Bashar Assad and support for the
anti-Israel boycott, sanctions and divestment movement. The PayPal
donation section on Der Dritte Weg (the Third Way) website currently
states: "This recipient is currently unable to receive
money."
President Trump's sudden announcement that the U.S.
would pull out of Syria stunned the key players in the conflict,
prompted America's panicked Kurdish allies to turn to Syrian dictator
Bashar al-Assad, and led to the resignation of Defense Secretary
James Mattis. Between the lines: Nearly three weeks later, the
withdrawal seems to be getting less imminent by the day.
One of President Trump's final foreign policy decisions
of 2018 was also among his most controversial: the withdrawal of the
remaining 2,000 U.S. troops from Syria. The order was an astonishing
reversal of U.S. policy, and it raised concerns among Washington
national security professionals that the Kurds-who have served as
U.S. allies in the fight against the Islamic State, or ISIS-will
suffer losses while the Assad regime, Russia, and Turkey gain. This
weekend, the president's national security advisor, John Bolton,
seemingly reversed course again, announcing that U.S. forces would
remain in Syria until ISIS was defeated and the Turks provided
guarantees that they wouldn't strike the Kurds.
A heated public debate took place recently between
Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif and a reporter from the French
weekly Le Point. Le Point asked Zarif in an interview, among other
things, about Iran's intention to destroy Israel and why Iran's ballistic
missiles are inscribed with the words "death to Israel."
Zarif rejected the question out of hand. "When did someone say
that Iran would destroy Israel? Show me one person who said
this."
National Security Adviser John Bolton said in Israel
over the weekend that the removal of U.S. troops from Syria is
conditioned on defeating the remnants of the Islamic State. Mr.
Bolton was likely soothing allies concerned about the pace of
President Donald Trump's withdrawal plan. Otherwise, such a condition
would commit the United States to an endless deployment as a
combatant in someone else's civil war - and on behalf of an
adversarial power, Iran. Mr. Trump correctly observes that the United
States is doing Iran a favor by fighting ISIS. Hence, it makes no
sense to base American policy on removing a thorn from Tehran's paw.
Indeed, the president's logic suggests that the White House should
withdraw U.S. forces from Iraq as well as Syria.
GULF STATES, YEMEN & IRAN
Saudi Ambassador to Yemen Mohammed bin Saeed Al-Jaber
stressed on Monday that the Kingdom supports the political process in
the war-torn country and will not allow it to become a "new
Somalia." Speaking from Riyadh, he warned that the Iran-backed
Houthi militias must not become a "new Hezbollah" on Saudi
borders. "We hope the political course will succeed and believe
that it is the solution," he added.
Yemen's army shot down a Houthi military aircraft west
of Al-Jouf province on Tuesday, Saudi state news channel Al-Ekhbariya
reported. A statement issued on the Yemeni Ministry of Defense's
official website 'September Net' read that "the military forces
shot down a plane carrying explosives this morning in the Masloub
Directorate, and after examining the wreckage it was found to be made
in Iran."
IRAQ & IRAN
The number of Iranians working in Iraq has dropped from
20,000 to 5,000 since Baghdad stopped issuing work visas for the
citizens of the Islamic Republic, says the Governor General of
Kurdistan province, western Iran. Bahman Moradnia has not elaborated
on the reasons behind Iraq's decision to stop issuing work visas for
Iranians.
AFGHANISTAN & IRAN
Nearly 800,000 Afghan migrants returned or were deported
back to Afghanistan from Iran in 2018 -- an increase of two-thirds
compared to the previous year, the International Organization for
Migration (IOM) said on January 8. Laurence Hart, the chief of the
IOM mission to Afghanistan, said the trend was accelerated by the
renewed U.S. sanctions on Iran which sent the Iranian currency into freefall
and fueled inflation.
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