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TOP STORIES
The U.S. said Tuesday that a
controversial conference on Middle East stability next month in
Poland, jointly hosted by the State Department, won't be focused on
Iran and will have a broader agenda. The acting U.S. ambassador to
the U.N., Jonathan Cohen, told the Security Council the meeting in
Poland wasn't a "venue to demonize or attack Iran" or to
reopen arguments about the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement.
Iran has spent $7 billion annually on terror in the
Middle East, including in the West Bank, where it wants to open a
fourth front against Israel, Ambassador to the United Nations Danny
Danon told the Security Council on Tuesday. "The Iranian
regime's obsession with Israel is not just well-known," he said.
"It is expensive. Seven billion dollars annually are directed
toward the never-ending attempts to destroy Israel." Danon spoke
before the council's monthly meeting on the Middle East.
The Department of Homeland Security on Tuesday issued an
emergency directive to all non-national-security agencies requiring
them to take steps to protect their networks against a
cyber-hijacking campaign that private-sector researchers suggest may
be linked to Iran. According to a directive issued by Christopher
Krebs, head of the DHS Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security
Agency, attackers have affected "multiple executive branch"
agencies by redirecting and intercepting Web and mail traffic.
SANCTIONS, BUSINESS RISKS, & OTHER ECONOMIC
NEWS
Iran has adequate currency
supplies to cover trade, and the rial has stabilized after "a
heavy attack" from the U.S.-led economic sanctions imposed on
the Islamic Republic, the head of the country's central bank said.
Iranians need to adjust their spending habits and "take
seriously" sustained efforts by the U.S. to destabilize the
economy, while Iran has to confront "very high" levels of
corruption that are exacerbated by exploitative currency trading
practices, Abdolnaser Hemmati, the head of the Central Bank of Iran
said in an interview with Iranian state television.
Iran has discovered oil in the
southwestern Abadan region for the first time, Oil Minister Bijan
Zanganeh was quoted as saying by the Mehr news agency on
Wednesday. The oil was found at a depth of 3,570 meters in
an exploratory well and is "very light and sweet", Zanganeh
reportedly said. "This is the first time we've reached oil
in the Abadan region," the minister was quoted as
saying.
Iran's Foreign Ministry has
denounced as "hasty and incorrect" a German ban on Iran's
Mahan Air from landing in the country. The official IRNA news agency
Tuesday quoted Bahram Ghasemi, ministry spokesman, as saying the ban
on the airline was in defiance of "mutual relations"
between the two countries. Mahan Air is on a U.S. sanctions list and
Germany said Monday it banned the airline from landing in the country
immediately, citing security concerns and the airline's involvement
in Syria.
US Ambassador Richard Grenell is
claiming a diplomatic victory after German officials decided to ban
the Iranian airline Mahan Air from operating within the country.
Grenell, who has ruffled a few feathers since President Donald
Trump picked him for the post last May, told The Wall
Street Journal that the move had come after
"months of pressing" from the United States.
On Dec. 14, technical issues
forced a Norwegian Air flight from Dubai to make an unscheduled
landing at Shiraz International Airport in the south of Iran. No one
was hurt. But the diversion launched a logistical and diplomatic
quagmire that has left the aircraft, which had only been in operation
for two months, grounded in Iran ever since. The incident is
illustrative of the impact US sanctions on Iran can have on
multinational companies.
PROTESTS & HUMAN RIGHTS
Two labour rights activists who
were rearrested after speaking out about beatings and other abuse
they suffered in detention last year are at grave risk of further
torture, Amnesty International has warned. Esmail Bakhshi and
Sepideh Gholian were violently arrested in Ahvaz, Khuzestan province,
on 20 January in apparent reprisal for talking publicly about the
torture they have said they endured in detention during November and
December 2018, provoking a public outcry.
U.S.-IRAN RELATIONS & NEGOTIATIONS
Iran said Tuesday it had
formally protested the F.B.I.'s arrest of an American newscaster who
works for the Iranian government's Press TV, and her family said
rallies in Washington and elsewhere were planned if she was not
freed. The arrested American, Marzieh Hashemi, has been held for more
than a week as a material witness in an unspecified criminal case and
has appeared before a grand jury in Washington twice. She has not
been charged with a crime.
Iran's Foreign Ministry has
summoned the Swiss envoy in Tehran over the "illegal"
detention of an American-born anchorwoman on Iranian state
television. The Tuesday report by the official IRNA news agency
quotes Bahram Ghasemi, ministry spokesman, as saying Tehran lodged a "strong
protest" over the detention of Marzieh Hashemi in a meeting with
the Swiss ambassador. The Embassy of Switzerland looks after
Washington's interests in Tehran.
Branding the threat from Iran as
"very real", US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Tehran
was still striving to reduce Iraq's freedom and independence. Pompeo
also said he was "very hopeful" that progress can be made
towards ending Yemen's war. America's top diplomat said he would
speak later Tuesday with UN envoy for Yemen Martin Griffiths, who has
been trying to bridge gaps between its Saudi-backed, internationally
recognised government and Iran-aligned Al Houthi militia.
MILITARY/INTELLIGENCE MATTERS & PROXY WARS
The US Army has concluded that
Iran was the only victor of the eight-year US campaign to remove
Iraqi president Saddam Hussein and replace him with a democratic
regime. That's one of the findings of a massive historical study
released Jan. 17, the first major military review of the Iraq war's
lessons. Commissioned in 2013 by General Ray Odierno, then the Army's
top commander, it was conducted by half a dozen field grade officers
at the US Army War College.
From the halls of parliament to
the lightning-fast rumor mills of social media, pro-Iran factions are
demanding US troops withdraw from Iraq in a challenge to the
country's fragile government. The political wrangling is another
indication of Iraq's precarious position as it tries to balance ties
between two key allies - the United States and Iran. Calls for a US
pullout have intensified since President Donald Trump's shock
decision last month to pull troops from neighboring Syria, while
keeping American forces in Iraq.
IRANIAN INTERNAL DEVELOPMENTS
In his latest letter to the
Islamic Republic's Supreme Leader, former President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad calls the heads of all three branches of government a
"gang," and accuses them of abusing their power to imprison
his allies. The letter published January 21 on the pro-Ahmadinejad
website Dolat-e Bahar (the Government of the Spring), was sent to the
Islamic Republic's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei December 18.
Several ministers in the
government of President Hassan Rouhani have signed and sent a letter
to Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei requesting his help to finalize
anti-corruption legislation related to the Financial Action Task
Force (FATF). The ministers demanded the urgent discussion of the
government proposal by the Expediency Council, which has powers to
approve Iranian bills.
"There are several pictures
and videos showing the brutal treatment of citizens in the form of
beatings in public. So, you can imagine the extent of torture that
takes place in dark prison cells." This is how Kurdish activist
and media personality, Hassan Karimi, explained his experience in
Iranian prisons. Karimi was unfortunate enough to be imprisoned three
times by the Iranian regime for the mere fact that he had a sectarian
identity, as he put it.
RUSSIA, SYRIA, ISRAEL, HEZBOLLAH, LEBANON & IRAN
Twenty-one people were killed by Israeli airstrikes
Monday in Syria. The dead reportedly including 12 members of the
Iranian Revolutionary Guard. The latest round of attacks between
Israel and Iran began with a series of Israeli airstrikes Sunday on
Iranian targets in Syria, attacks that have become almost routine.
But this time the missile strikes took place during the day and
Israeli officials openly took responsibility for them. Israel usually
neither confirms nor denies these strikes.
With its troops and military
infrastructure stationed just 50 kilometres from the Israeli border,
Iran is threatening a military confrontation that could further
destabilise the region, create a humanitarian catastrophe and send
thousands more refugees fleeing for safety. Israel launched air
strikes against Iranian military targets inside Syria on Sunday,
killing four soldiers and injuring many more. They came after the
Israeli Iron Dome defence system intercepted missiles fired towards
the disputed Golan Heights.
Israel, in cooperation with the
United States, has conducted a new test of its Arrow
3 ballistic missile defense system. Though both countries said
this was a long-planned event, it is hard not to see it, at least in
part, as a signal to Iran, which Israeli authorities blamed
for a recent rocket launch at their territory from Syria. The
Iranians also failed to put a satellite into orbit earlier in January
2019, a launch the U.S. and Israeli governments condemned as a cover
for the development of long-range ballistic missiles.
GULF STATES, YEMEN & IRAN
Sudan's embattled president flew Tuesday to Qatar, the
tiny but wealthy Gulf state that has offered him help as he faces
protests initially sparked by the country's economic woes but which
soon shifted to calling on him to step down. Qatar's official news
agency said President Omar al-Bashir, in power since 1989, will meet
Wednesday with the emirate's ruler, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani,
to discuss "brotherly relations and ways to bolster them."
It is time for the international community to "call
a spade a spade" when it comes to Houthi violations of the Yemen
peace deal, Dr Anwar Gargash, the UAE's Minister of State for Foreign
Affairs, said on Wednesday. The Houthis have reportedly been
violating the Sweden Agreement made in December, which declared a
ceasefire in the strategically important port city of Hodeidah.
International organisations are attempting to maintain the peace as clashes
continue breaking out.
OTHER FOREIGN AFFAIRS
Poland's President Andrzej Duda
said on Wednesday that the government had still not decided whether
to invite Iran to a summit about the Islamic Republic. US
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo recently announced a global summit
will be held in Poland mid-February to discuss issues in the Middle
East, particularly in regard to Iran.
The traffickers told Fardin
Gholami that a fishing boat would take him from France to England at
midnight, but when he and five other Iranian asylum seekers got to
the beach, all they found was an inflatable dinghy with nobody to
sail it. Gholami had paid 16,000 euros to human traffickers to
take him from Kamyaran, in western Iran, to Britain. But on the
seashore near Calais he realised he and his compatriots would now
have to fend for themselves.
MISCELLANEOUS
In February 1979, the people of
Iran threw off the rule of one dictator, only to watch as religious
extremists installed another. Ayatollah Khomeini's rise to power had
far-reaching consequences for the Iranian people and for much of the
world. The 40th anniversary of the Iranian Revolution represents an
important opportunity to examine those consequences and reassess
collective approaches to dealing with the regime and helping its
people.
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