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TOP STORIES
Iran's Revolutionary Guards said
on Monday they plan to upgrade their speed boats in the Gulf with
radar-evading stealth technology and new missile launchers as
tensions rise between Tehran and Washington in the vital oil shipping
route. Ending a long absence of U.S. aircraft carriers in the
region, the USS John C. Stennis entered the Gulf last week, and was
shadowed by the Revolutionary Guards' speed boats.
Iran's Guardian Council, a top
political chamber of clerics and lawyers, has rejected for a second
time an anti-terrorism financing bill aimed at bringing the lending
sector closer to international standards, the semi-official Tasnim
News agency reported. The council, which vets major parliamentary
decisions and new legislation, said the bill was not yet compatible
with Iran's constitution and Islamic law, Tasnim reported, citing a
letter from the council to Parliament on Sunday.
India's finance ministry has
exempted rupee payments made to the National Iranian Oil Co (NIOC)
for crude oil imports from a steep withholding tax, according to a
government order reviewed by Reuters. The exemption, put in
place December 28 but backdated to November 5, will allow Indian
refiners to settle about $1.5 billion of outstanding payments to
NIOC.
SANCTIONS, BUSINESS RISKS, & OTHER ECONOMIC
NEWS
An agreement for a long-term
strategic cooperation between Iran and Syria was announced Sunday in
Tehran to help the two countries avoid international sanctions that
affected banks, companies and individuals. The agreement was
signed by Minister of Economy and Foreign Trade Mohammad Samer
al-Khalil and Iranian Minister of Roads and Urban Development
Mohammad Eslami in attendance of ambassadors of the two countries,
reported Syrian state agency SANA.
Iran will invest about 15
billion rupees to expand a refinery run by Chennai Petroleum
Corp. in south India, the company's managing director said, amid U.S.
sanctions on the Persian Gulf nation that have severely hit its oil
exports. The state-run company is boosting capacity at its
Nagapattinam facility by nine-fold to process 9 million tons per year
and the investment is Naftiran Intertrade Co.'s share of the 275
billion rupees ($4 billion) expansion plan, Managing Director S.N.
Pandey said in an interview in Chennai last week.
Financial pressure on the
Iranian regime has been rising, and there exists no indication that
Tehran will receive any sanctions relief for the next few years. US
President Donald Trump is determined to sustain the primary and
secondary sanctions that the Department of Justice re-imposed on Iran
following Washington's withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan
of Action. These sanctions are critical due to the fact the they are
choking off Iran's oil output, as well as restricting its banking and
financial operations.
A plan for Iranian airlines to
buy Russian-built passenger jets appears to have collapsed as a
result of U.S. sanctions, marking a further set-back for the
country's beleaguered aviation sector. Iranian airlines have been
struggling to find ways to replace their ageing fleets ever since
President Donald Trump announced in May 2018 that he was going to
pull the U.S. out of the Iranian nuclear deal and reimpose sanctions.
PROTESTS & HUMAN RIGHTS
Iran deployed scores of
policemen to disperse a brief protest in downtown Tehran over a bus
crash last week that killed 10 people, including eight students.
Monday's rally - which saw about 200 protesters gather - was the third
consecutive day of demonstrations over the accident. Earlier protests
took place inside the Azad University campus in northern Tehran.
Protesters demand the dean and other university officials resign.
UK foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt
has accused Iran of keeping a British-Iranian dual national in prison
as a tool for diplomatic leverage, calling it "monstrous."
Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was arrested in April 2016 at the
international airport in Tehran, when she was leaving the country
after a visit with her family. She was charged with ambiguous
accusations of spying and plotting against the Islamic Republic and sentenced
to five years in prison.
With respect to my return from
Iran to the UK (British-Iranian academic detained in Iran since April
returns to UK, 25 December), it should be pointed out that, during my
detention and confinement, my family and I neither sought nor
received any consular support from the UK government. In addition,
the Foreign Office was only informed about my return to the UK by
Imperial College London, where I work.
U.S.-IRAN RELATIONS & NEGOTIATIONS
Iranian Major General Mohammad
Bagheri headed on Monday to the occupied Emirati island of Abu Musa
amid Iranian-US tension in the Gulf Sea. Bagheri was quoted as saying
by Fars news agency, "Iran's regional enemies should know that
alongside a pacifist doctrine, Iran has a powerful military force
that are ready to protect Iran's territorial integrity, and also hold
accountable countries that proposed (the US
presence)." Bagheri's threats come two months after US
introduced sanctions against Iran.
IRANIAN INTERNAL DEVELOPMENTS
By appointing a conservative ally to head the
influential Expediency Council, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali
Khamenei appears to have made a move to strengthen the hard-line camp
and weaken the moderates -- and also may have cleaned up his line of
succession. "This is not good news for the moderates within the
establishment," Paris-based political analyst Taghi Rahmani said
of Ayatollah Sadeq Amoli Larijani's appointment to both head the
Expediency Council and take a seat the powerful Guardians Council.
Security forces clashed with
students in Iran on Monday in the third day of protests over a deadly
bus crash, online videos showed, adding to officials' fears that
rising public unrest could threaten national security.
President Hassan Rouhani has ordered an investigation into the
accident at Tehran's Azad University that killed 10 students last
week. Students have protested over the aging transport fleet and lack
of accountability from the authorities.
Ayatollah Sadeq Amoli Larijani -
the chief of Iran's hardline judiciary who has been blacklisted by
Washington - was named on Sunday as the new head of the powerful
Expediency Council, state television reported. The council is
intended to resolve disputes between parliament and a watchdog body,
the Guardian Council. Larijani, 57, was appointed by Iran's Supreme
Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who also made him a member of the
Guardian Council, which vets laws and elections for compliance with
Iran's Islamic constitution, state television reported.
Eighteen lawmakers representing
constituencies from the central Iranian province of Esfahan, where
water scarcity has reached an alarming state, have resigned
collectively in a symbolic move against what they believe is an
unfair distribution of water resources. In response, their
counterparts from three other provinces, which share the same water
supplies, hit back.
RUSSIA, SYRIA, ISRAEL, HEZBOLLAH, LEBANON & IRAN
A group of 22 U.S. citizens is suing Hezbollah in
Brooklyn Federal Court for the harm the terror group caused by
lobbing rocket and missile attacks at northern Israel while they were
living there in 2006. The group simultaneously filed a lawsuit
against Bank Saderat Iran and Bank Saderat in the same court Monday,
accusing the banks of providing Hezbollah with the material support
to carry out the attacks.
Fars Air Qeshm cargo 747 airliner left Tehran at 8 a.m.
on Sunday and landed in Damascus at 10:30 a.m., returning to Tehran
at 5 p.m. The 747 allegedly transported weapons to Hezbollah in
September, according to a report from Fox News that was based on
Western intelligence assessments. The aircraft also made suspicious
flights in July and August to Damascus and Beirut.
Iran could use its growing clout
in Iraq to turn it into a springboard for attacks against Israel, the
chief of Israeli military intelligence said on Monday. Israel
sees the spread of Tehran's influence in the region as a growing
threat, and has carried out scores of air strikes in civil war-torn
Syria against suspected military deployments and arms deliveries by
Iranian forces supporting Damascus.
Iran has denounced plans by
Brazil's newly elected president to move its embassy to Jerusalem.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Ghasemi said Monday that such a
move "will not help with peace, stability, security and
retrieval of the Palestinian people's rights." He added,
however, that "relations with Brazil will eventually be
continued." Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is
visiting Brazil, said Sunday it is only a matter of time until Brazil
moves its embassy to Jerusalem.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike
Pompeo said on Tuesday that the United States would continue to
cooperate with Israel over Syria and in countering Iran in the Middle
East, even as President Donald Trump plans to withdraw U.S. troops
from Syria. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said as he
met with Pompeo in the Brazilian capital that he planned to discuss
how to intensify intelligence and operations cooperation in Syria and
elsewhere to block Iranian "aggression."
Israel resumed its airstrikes on
Syria this week, according to foreign reports. The reason was
provided Wednesday night by a senior Israeli official who spoke with
The Associated Press. Over the summer, Russia promised
Israel it would keep Iranian forces 80 kilometers from Israel's
border in the Golan Heights. In exchange, Israel promised not to
interfere with the Assad regime's efforts to regain
complete control over southern Syria.
Iran is asserting its dominance
in Syria's post-war reconstruction drive, at a time when Gulf states
are pushing for the reinstatement of diplomatic relations with the
cash-strapped government in Damascus. Iranian public and private
companies will be granted priority in Syria's post-war
reconstruction, Syria's Minister of Economy and Foreign Trade
Mohammad Samer Al Khalil said on Sunday, after signing a long-term
economic cooperation agreement with senior Iranian officials in
Tehran.
Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu said Monday that Arab countries viewed Israel as an
"indispensable ally" fighting Iran and the Islamic State
group. That evaluation, he told Brazil's Globo TV during a visit to
Rio, has caused "a revolution in relations with the Arab
world." The comments came as Israel has stepped up air strikes
on Iranian positions in neighboring Syria, and as Israel digested an
abrupt decision by President Donald Trump to withdraw US troops from
Syria.
As the foreign policy
establishment in the United State and abroad argue over the
implications of President Trump's decision to withdraw American
forces from Syria, the focus has been on how the Iranian regime
will take advantage of this sudden vacuum. While there is merit in
keeping an eye on Tehran's next moves in Syria, Washington's
attention should also be focused on America's longtime ally in the region, Bahrain.
GULF STATES, YEMEN & IRAN
When Mohammed Bamuftah arrived
at the post office to pick up his salary one day in 2015, he said a
rebel fighter stopped him to inspect his ID card. The 55-year-old
lawyer was from Aden, where Yemen's internationally recognized
government was based. That was enough to get him arrested. By
the time Bamuftah emerged from prison three years later, he had
suffered shocks from an electric prod, he said. He had been hanged
from a ceiling with his hands cuffed for three-hour stretches and
beaten with rubber-coated electric cables.
The United Nations cast doubt Sunday on claims by
Yemen's Shiite rebels to have withdrawn from the Red Sea port of
Hodeida, saying such steps can only be credible if all other parties
can verify them. Stephane Dujarric, spokesman for U.N.
Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, said the rebels, known as
Houthis, also failed to honor an agreement to open a
"humanitarian" corridor between Hodeida and the capital,
Sanaa, to deliver assistance. Both cities are under rebel control.
The U.N. World Food Programme says food aid meant for
starving Yemenis is being stolen and sold in some areas controlled by
the Houthi movement.
IRAQ & IRAN
It often happens that an excuse
is even worse than the deed it seeks to justify. However, it is very
rare to see so many people defending an excuse like we've seen after
the Iranian ambassador to Baghdad, Iraj Masjedi, left an official
celebration marking the first anniversary of Iraq's declaration of
victory against ISIS. The movie appeared more of a deliberate act on
his part and not an unintended faux pas, and a reflection of Iran's
policy towards Iraq.
AFGHANISTAN & IRAN
The Taliban discussed
Afghanistan's "post-occupation situation" with Iran in
their latest meeting, the group said Tuesday, as Tehran makes a more
concerted and open push for peace ahead of a possible US drawdown.
The remarks come after Iran confirmed Monday that the Taliban had
visited Tehran for a second round of talks in just a few days that
are aimed at ending the 17-year conflict.
Iran said Taliban
representatives from Afghanistan negotiated with Iranian officials in
Tehran on Sunday, as the Islamic Republic seeks to advance peace
talks in the neighboring country to curb the influence of other
Islamist groups. The talks were held with the knowledge of
Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani and were intended to set
parameters for negotiations between the Taliban and the Afghan
government, Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Bahram Qasemi said on
Monday.
OTHER FOREIGN AFFAIRS
Six Iranian men have been found
on a beach in southeastern England after crossing the English
Channel, the latest in a wave of migrants coming from France that has
raised concern in both countries. The men made the trip in an
inflatable boat with a rigid hull on December 30, landing in
Kingsdown, according to the British Home Office. They were handed
over to immigration authorities after receiving medical attention.
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