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TOP STORIES
Iran's president said on
Wednesday the country was facing its toughest economic situation in
40 years, and the United States, not the government, was to
blame. U.S. President Donald Trump last year pulled out of an
international nuclear deal with Iran and re-imposed
sanctions. Workers, including truck drivers, farmers and
merchants, have since launched sporadic protests against economic
hardships, which have occasionally led to confrontations with security
forces.
France, Britain and Germany, defying threats from
Washington, are this week executing their plans to set up a
special-payments company to secure some trade with Iran and blunt the
impact of U.S. sanctions. In the short term, the new company
is expected to struggle to achieve even its initial goal of
enabling Tehran to import vital food and drugs at affordable prices.
The U.S. State Department
announced on January 29 that its top counterterrorism official is
visiting Europe to discuss Iran's terror related activities.
Ambassador Nathan A. Sales will visit Denmark, Sweden and Norway this
week to "discuss Iran-backed terrorism in Europe, prosecuting
foreign terrorist fights, and combatting terrorist
travel."
NUCLEAR DEAL & NUCLEAR
PROGRAM
Iran is still abiding by the
terms of the 2015 nuclear deal despite the US pullout from the
multinational agreement, CIA chief Gina Haspel said Tuesday. "At
the moment technically they are in compliance" with the Joint
Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), Haspel told the Senate
Intelligence Committee. "I think the most recent information is
the Iranians are considering taking steps that would lessen their
adherence to JCPOA as they seek to pressure the European to come
through with the investment and trade benefits that Iran hoped to
gain from the deal," she said.
SANCTIONS, BUSINESS RISKS, & OTHER ECONOMIC
NEWS
Stepping from a car into a muddy
industrial site in the Iranian desert, a 22-year old European Bitcoin
investor raised his voice to be heard over the roar of a gas-fired
generator. His Iranian counterparts - a bespectacled
information-technology specialist, a self-described ''hard-core
Bitcoiner'' and the businessman running the site - walked their
foreign visitor over to gray shipping containers containing thousands
of small computers.
The oil sanctions that U.S.
President Donald Trump levied on Venezuela Monday represent
Washington's strongest effort yet to oust embattled leader Nicolás
Maduro by starving his regime of funds. But the move could exact a
larger strategic cost. The new U.S. sanctions, which could take lots
of Venezuelan oil off the market, also will likely make it that much
harder to put the screws to Iran with tougher restrictions on
Tehran's oil sales later this spring.
Earlier this month, Iranian and Indian officials finally reached an
agreement on how India will pay for its oil imports from Iran. The
agreement was finalized during Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad
Javad Zarif's visit to New Delhi on Jan. 7-10, in which he headed a
high-ranking economic and political delegation. The accord stipulates
that Iran's revenues from oil exports to India will be deposited in a
rupee account in the state-owned UCO Bank.
MISSILE PROGRAM
The European demand to stave off
the dangers of the Iranian missile program has seen no progress as
Tehran continue to pressure for the financial mechanism to circumvent
US sanctions. This comes amid controversy in Tehran over the
consequences of late compliance with money laundering and terrorist
financing standards as the international deadline approaches.
PROTESTS & HUMAN RIGHTS
The mother of a U.S. Navy
veteran detained in Iran is calling for his immediate
release. Michael White, 46, has been in an Iranian prison for
more than six months. Joanne White said she prays every day that her
son Michael will be freed from prison in Iran before it's too late.
She worries his recurring cancer could come back and he could die.
The Iranian constitution after the 1979 revolution
provides limited freedoms for religious minorities, and it does not
recognize the Baha'i community, with more than 300,000 members in the
country. Instead, for four decades, the Islamic Republic has routinely
harassed, prosecuted, and imprisoned Baha'is solely for
practicing their faith.
Iran has detained one of its
Baha'i citizens and released another as part of a long-running
crackdown on members of the religious minority in the Islamic
republic. Iran's Human Rights Activist News Agency published a report
saying intelligence agents detained Farzad Rouhani Manshadi, a Baha'i
man living in the central city of Yazd, on Monday while he was taking
his child to school. It said the agents also searched Manshadi's home
and seized some of his belongings.
U.S.-IRAN RELATIONS & NEGOTIATIONS
A new American intelligence assessment of global threats
has concluded that North Korea is "unlikely to give up" all
of its nuclear stockpiles, and that Iran is not "currently
undertaking the key nuclear weapons-development activity" needed
to make a bomb, directly contradicting two top tenets of President
Trump's foreign policy.
Dan Coats, the director of
national intelligence, appeared to undermine two premises of
President Donald Trump's foreign policy on Tuesday. First he
said that North Korea was not likely to give up its nuclear weapons.
Then he said that Iran was still complying with the international
agreement to pause its own nuclear program. This was the
instant headline for most news organizations.
Iran's President Hassan Rouhani
slammed his critics on Wednesday, defending the political
achievements of a landmark 2015 nuclear deal and calling the US an
"oath-breaker". "One should not condemn the government
or the great Islamic system instead of America -- this is the
greatest damage that can be done," he said on state TV.
Hardliners have repeatedly hammered the 2015 nuclear deal with six
world powers since the early stages of negotiations, calling it a
fool's errand and a deception.
IRANIAN INTERNAL DEVELOPMENTS
Iranian police say a double-bombing has lightly wounded
three police in the southeastern city of Zahedan. Gen. Mohammad
Ghanbari, the provincial police chief, told the official IRNA news
agency that the second bomb went off as police raced to the scene of the
first explosion. He says the bombs were handmade and that police are
investigating. Zahedan is the capital of Sistan-Baluchistan province,
which has seen past attacks by Baluch separatists and drug
traffickers.
Iran's capital city has banned the public from walking
pet dogs, as part of a long-standing official campaign to discourage
dog-ownership. Tehran Police Chief Hossein Rahimi said "we
have received permission from the Tehran Prosecutor's Office, and
will take measures against people walking dogs in public spaces, such
as parks". He told the Young Journalists
Club news agency that the ban was due to dogs "creating
fear and anxiety" among members of the public.
RUSSIA, SYRIA, ISRAEL, HEZBOLLAH, LEBANON & IRAN
Hezbollah's explicit support for Venezuela President
Nicolás Maduro could be the first step in confirming links between
the South American nation's government, the terrorist organization
and organized crime groups.
Despite difficulties in securing high-level attendance
from the European Union and the expected absence of Russia, US
officials are in the final stages of preparing the Warsaw ministerial
meeting on the Middle East in the Polish capital on February 13-14.
Working groups and follow-up meetings will come out of Warsaw, and US
officials insist now that it is "not an anti-Iran meeting or
coalition-building exercise." As the name suggests, they said on
a call with reporters, it's a meeting "to promote a future of
peace and security in the Middle East."
There are fears that flights in and out of the country
could be targeted if state-sponsored hackers manage to breach the
cybersecurity systems protecting Israeli civil aviation programmes.
Israeli officials have long suspected Iran of seeking to hack into
important systems and also believe Tehran could try to interfere with
April 6 elections. The Islamic Republic has also been named by other
Western powers as a rising force in cyberwarfare.
The governments of Syria and Iran have agreed steps that
will allow bank transactions between the countries, officials said on
Tuesday, a move aimed at boosting trade and investment as Damascus
looks to its ally Tehran to help rebuild from war. The deal was
one of several concluded during a visit to Damascus by Iranian Vice
President Eshaq Jahangiri, whose country's support has been vital to
President Bashar al-Assad during the war.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has met with a
delegation of senior Russian officials to discuss the situation in
neighboring Syria. Netanyahu's office said Tuesday he met with
Russia's special envoy for Syria, Alexander Lavrentiev, and Russian
Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Vershinin. It said the talks focused
on Iran, Syria and "strengthening the security coordination
mechanism between the militaries" to prevent friction.
GULF STATES, YEMEN & IRAN
A bomb attack in a market killed seven Yemeni civilians
including a photographer for a UAE television channel in the
government-controlled town of Mokha, medics and military sources said
Tuesday, January 29. At least 20 people were wounded in the overnight
blast in the Red Sea town, where pro-government forces backed by a
Saudi-led coalition battling the Houthi rebels are based. The
improvised explosive device was planted on a motorcycle parked in the
middle of the market, an official in the pro-government forces told AFP.
The Iran-backed Houthi militias attacked on Tuesday a
United Nations demining team that is operating in the coastal city of
Hodeidah. Legitime government spokesman Rajeh Badi revealed that
government officers and the UN team were working on removing mines in
the Kilo 13 region when they were attacked by the terrorist militias.
He stressed that the UN team had coordinated its operation with the
Houthis before heading to the scene.
OTHER FOREIGN AFFAIRS
The EU's delicate diplomacy to
preserve the Iran nuclear accord has stumbled into an unexpected mud
patch: An old-fashioned spat between Spain and Italy over who gets to
sit at the proverbial grown-ups' table. Infuriated by
Italy's induction into an expanded version of the so-called E3 club -
the trio of France, Germany and the United Kingdom that helped
negotiate the nuclear deal along with the European External Action
Service - Spain has blocked proposed language on Iran intended for
approval by EU governments.
CYBERWARFARE
An Iranian cyber espionage group
called APT39, which was mainly targeting telecommunications industry
in the Middle East, has been exposed by California-based
cybersecurity firm FireEye. "APT39 marks the fourth Iranian
cyber threat actor that FireEye has elevated to the designation
Advanced Persistent Threat (APT)," said Benjamin Read, senior
manager of cyber espionage analysis at FireEye. APT is a computer
network attack in which an individual or a group gains unlawful
access to a network and remains undetected for a long period.
Iran appears to be broadening its presence in
cyberspace, stealing information that would allow its cyber spies to
monitor and track key political and business officials. As part of
this growing focus, Iranian-linked cyber actors are using phishing
emails and stolen credentials to infiltrate telecommunication
companies and the travel industry in order to steal personally
identifiable information they can use in future operations.
The European Union warned Monday
that Iran will likely expand its cyber espionage activities as its
relations with Western powers worsen. "Newly imposed sanctions
on Iran are likely to push the country to intensify state-sponsored
cyber threat activities in pursuit of its geopolitical and strategic
objectives at a regional level," the European Union Agency for
Network and Information Security (ENISA) said in a report.
Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu on Tuesday accused arch-foe Iran of regularly launching
cyber-attacks on Israel that the Jewish state blocks each day.
"Iran attacks Israel on a daily basis," he told a cyber
conference in Tel Aviv. "We monitor these attacks, we see these
attacks and we foil these attacks all the time." The head of
Israel's Shin Bet internal security agency is reported to have warned
that Israel was bracing for a state-driven cyber intervention in its
April 9 general election.
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