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TOP STORIES
Iran on Tuesday dismissed calls
from the United States and Europe for curbs on its ballistic
missiles, but said it had no plans to increase their range. U.S.
President Donald Trump pulled out of a nuclear deal with Iran in May
and reimposed sanctions, saying the accord did not address the
Islamic republic's ballistic missiles and what he saw as its malign
influence on the region.
A payment mechanism the EU hopes
will save the Iran nuclear deal by bypassing US sanctions is ready,
diplomats said Monday, but is held up by disagreements among European
countries. The "Special Purpose Vehicle" is being put
together by Germany, France and Britain, the European signatories to
the 2015 accord that curbed Tehran's nuclear ambitions in return for
sanctions reilef.
Senior U.S. officials say an
international conference on the Middle East in Warsaw next month will
not have an anti-Iran agenda. "This is not an anti-Iran meeting
or coalition-building exercise," a senior U.S. administration
official told a January 28 telephone briefing with journalists. The
February 13-14 Ministerial to Promote Peace and Stability in the
Middle East will include sessions on the situations in Syria and
Yemen, missile development, terrorism and illicit finance, and
cybersecurity, U.S. and Polish officials have said.
UANI IN THE NEWS
...President Trump's national
security adviser John Bolton has previously mocked the E.U. for being
light on detail for how its evasion mechanisms will work. "The
European Union is strong on rhetoric and weak on
follow-through," he told the United Against a Nuclear Iran
campaign. "We do not intend to allow our sanctions to be evaded
by Europe or anybody else." Mr. Bolton also issued unsubtle
warnings to Iran's leaders: "We are watching, and we will come
after you."
SANCTIONS, BUSINESS RISKS, & OTHER ECONOMIC
NEWS
he United States has filed
criminal charges against Huawei, escalating its fight against the
Chinese tech giant and potentially complicating efforts by Washington
and Beijing to negotiate an end to their bruising trade war. The
Justice Department on Monday unsealed two cases against Huawei that
detail a slew of allegations. One indictment accuses Huawei of trying
to steal trade secrets from T-Mobile (TMUS), and of promising bonuses
to employees who collected confidential information on competitors. A
second indictment claims the company worked to skirt US sanctions on
Iran.
The European Union is on the
verge of launching an alternative channel to send money to Iran that
would sidestep US sanctions against the Islamic republic, Germany's
foreign minister said Monday. The "special purpose
vehicle," or SPV, is part of EU efforts to keep alive an
international agreement aimed at curbing Iran's nuclear ambitions.
The future of the UN Security Council underwritten pact was thrown
into doubt when President Donald Trump pulled out last year slamming
it as a "horrible, one-sided deal."
MISSILE PROGRAM
Tehran announced on Monday it
was not holding talks with France over its ballistic missile program.
"There has been no talks, whether secret or not secret, about
our missile program with France or any other country," Iranian
Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qasemi told a weekly news
conference, broadcast live on state TV.
PROTESTS & HUMAN RIGHTS
The Islamic Republic of Iran
publicly hanged a 31-year-old Iranian man after he was found guilty
of charges related to violations of Iran's anti-gay laws, according
to the state-controlled Iranian Students' News Agency. The
unidentified man was hanged on January 10 in the southwestern city of
Kazeroon based on criminal violations of "lavat-e be onf" -
sexual intercourse between two men, as well as kidnapping charges,
according to ISNA. Iran's radical sharia law system prescribes the
death penalty for gay sex.
A major international labor
union has called on Iran to immediately release several labor
activists whom it says appear to have been tortured in custody late
last year. The London-based International Transport Workers'
Federation made the appeal in a letter addressed to
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, shared with VOA Persian on Monday.
U.S.-IRAN RELATIONS & NEGOTIATIONS
The choice of Warsaw as a
staging ground for U.S. efforts to build an alliance against Iran has
done little to rally European Union nations, long at odds with Poland
over the erosion of democratic norms and media freedoms. Few have
answered the call before an unprecedented international summit
planned in Poland next month. Given the existing divide over the
Trump administration's decision to withdraw from the Iran nuclear
deal, it's instead fed controversy and underscored the challenge
of building a consensus with America's allies on Iran.
It has been 1,110 days since
Jason Rezaian, then The Washington Post's bureau chief in Tehran, was
released from Iran's notorious Evin prison. In that time, he has
recuperated, studied at Harvard on a fellowship, restarted his life
in Washington along with his wife, Yeganeh, and returned to The
Post's headquarters as an opinion writer. He also wrote a book about
the 544 days he endured in captivity.
"Prisoner," published earlier this month, is a
gripping, moving and sometimes absurd recounting of his prolonged
detention.
IRANIAN INTERNAL DEVELOPMENTS
A member of Iran's Expediency
Discernment Council (EDC) has said that after its latest meeting on
Saturday, January 26, he was threatened with death. Majid Ansari told
ISNA news agency he will ask Iran's security and judicial organs to
investigate the death threat against him, but he did not provide any
details as to exactly how the threat was made.
With the Iranian public's
growing discontent with moderate President Hassan Rouhani, the
country's Reformists are trying to keep him at arm's length. But this
has done little to appease voters who blame most of the government
inadequacies in recent years on the political behavior of
the Reform movement. The last litmus test for Reformists came in
2017 when they took over city council seats in the capital
Tehran and other major constituencies after landslide victories in local
polls held in parallel with the presidential vote.
With a young and increasingly
digitized population, Iran has witnessed a unique surge in the number
of domestically produced apps for Iranian smartphone users. Although
some of these apps mimic programs produced by Western companies that
cannot penetrate the Iranian market due to sanctions and censorship,
Iranian app developers have produced a number of inventive products
that allow users to exercise some political rights despite the rigid
censorship regime.
RUSSIA, SYRIA, ISRAEL, HEZBOLLAH, LEBANON & IRAN
The Israeli government has passed information to the
United Nations detailing the existence of additional
"underground infrastructure" belonging to Hezbollah along
the Israeli-Lebanese border, The Times of Israel has learned,
including tunnels headed toward Israeli territory that were not
destroyed in the IDF's recent Operation Northern Shield.
Iran struck economic and trade
deals with Syria on Monday, as it widens its role there after helping
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad reclaim most of his
country. Tehran has reached "very important agreements on
banking cooperation" with Syria, Iranian Vice President Eshaq
Jahangiri said in the Syrian capital Damascus. Iran will also
help repair power stations across Syria and set up a new plant in the
coastal province of Latakia, he added.
A senior Iranian Revolutionary
Guards commander on Monday threatened Israel with destruction if it
attacks Iran, state media reported. The comments by Brigadier General
Hossein Salami, deputy head of the elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard
Corps, followed an Israeli attack on Iranian targets in Syria last
week - the latest in a series of assaults targeting Tehran's presence
there in support of President Bashar al-Assad's government.
GULF STATES, YEMEN, & IRAN
Deadlines for a retreat of Houthi troops in Yemen,
agreed in talks last month, have had to be delayed, the UN special
envoy for Yemen, Martin Griffiths, has said. He also conceded plans
for prisoner exchanges have not gone to plan. Griffiths also had to
deny that the retired general Patrick Cammaert, appointed by the UN
to implement the ceasefire in the Red Sea port of Hodeidah, had quit
due to disagreements with Griffiths's team.
Iran's foreign minister says the
United Arab Emirates has adopted an "unacceptable approach"
toward Iranian businesses operating in this Gulf Arab state. The
semi-official Tasnim news agency quotes Mohammad Javad Zarif as
saying on Monday the UAE "has entered an unacceptable stage of
approach toward Iran." Zarif said despite "extensive
economic relations" between the two countries, the Gulf
federation has had made "strategic and political mistakes,
particularly over Yemen."
Every Friday, on the fourth floor of a hotel conference
center in this Arab business hub, several thousand Christians arrive
to worship in two-hour shifts at what may be the world's best-hidden
megachurch. There is no sign outside the center to guide people to
Fellowship. The Protestant congregation sprang up roughly a decade
ago in a place where Islam is the official religion, non-Muslim
practice has long been closely monitored and sanctioned church
buildings are limited and regulated.
AFGHANISTAN & IRAN
In the news that emerged from
Doha, the capital of Qatar, that apparently there is
an agreement between the United States and the Afghan Taliban,
the key word is "apparently." Appearances, chances,
possibilities and cautious optimism have accompanied the innumerable
talks that the Americans have held with Taliban representatives since
Afghanistan was occupied by the United States in 2001, in response to
the 9/11 attacks.
MISCELLANEOUS
Polish prosecutors are
investigating an anti-Semitic protest by dozens of far-right
nationalists outside the gates of Auschwitz. The incident took place
Sunday in Oswiecim, the southern Polish town where Nazi Germany
operated Auschwitz during World War II. It happened as Holocaust
survivors gathered nearby to commemorate the anniversary of the
camp's liberation, a day also recognized each year as International
Holocaust Remembrance Day.
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