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TOP STORIES
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani
scrambled Tuesday to avert a political crisis from the resignation of
the country's top diplomat, praising his fellow moderate foreign
minister on live television and dispatching senior officials to urge
him not to quit. Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, an architect of
the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, resigned unexpectedly Monday on
Instagram. His exit was prompted by his exclusion from an unannounced
visit by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Iranian officials said,
and will likely embolden conservatives opposed to the nuclear deal.
Al-Quds Brigades, the armed wing
of the Islamic Jihad movement, has announced the development of a new
accurate missile, which said it is capable of reaching Tel Aviv and
Netanya in the center of Israel, threatening to turn Israeli cities
into "hell" in any future confrontation. In a documentary
broadcast on Iranian television, the Brigades' military spokesman
said that the missile was made with the help of Iran, adding that the
first missile to be launched by the movement towards Tel Aviv
"will be Iranian-made."
Japanese refiners are in a rush
to buy as much Iranian crude as they can before the sanction waiver
window granted by the U.S. Treasury Department closes in May, S&P
Global Platts reports, citing unnamed sources. The sources said
local refiner Cosmo Oil had ordered a cargo of 900,000 barrels of
Iranian heavy crude, to be loaded early next month and this will
likely be the last cargo of Iranian crude to be shipped to Japan.
UANI IN THE NEWS
This week, the Vietnamese capital of Hanoi will serve as
the backdrop for President Donald Trump's anticipated second meeting
with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Observers have speculated that
the talks will center on denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula - which
Trump has repeatedly called for since his first visit with Kim. As
the president deals with Kim, he understands that North Korea cannot
be viewed in a vacuum. He must also consider the repressive,
theocratic regime in Iran - especially in the context of successful
actions he has taken against the dictatorship of Nicolas Maduro in
Venezuela.
In the 40 years since the 1979 founding of the Islamic
Republic of Iran, Tehran's unelected management - namely the supreme
leader and his mullahcratic appointees - has been consistently
anti-Western, anti-American, and anti-Semitic. In contrast, the
elected leadership - the president and the speaker of parliament-have
been more malleable, and, in many cases, yesterday's hardliners have
become today's moderates and vice versa. But in the end, the
revolution always trumps political evolution in Tehran.
SANCTIONS, BUSINESS RISKS, & OTHER ECONOMIC
NEWS
Indian traders will export raw
sugar to Iran for March and April delivery, five trade sources said,
the first Indian sugar sales to Tehran in at least five years as Iran
struggles to secure food supplies under sanctions imposed by the
United States. Under the sanctions, Iran is blocked from the global
financial system, including using US dollars to transact its oil
sales, Reuters reported on Tuesday.
Iraq's semi-autonomous region of
Kurdistan continues to keep oil exports and economic
relations with Iran despite the U.S. sanctions on Tehran, a
spokesperson for the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) has
said. "We cannot abandon our historic connection just
because of a political decision," the NRT news outlet quoted KRG
spokesperson Safin Dizayee as saying to Jame Kurdi. Kurdistan and
Iran have common economic, political, security, social, and cultural
interests, according to the KGR spokesman.
IRANIAN INTERNAL DEVELOPMENTS
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani
rejected the resignation of his top diplomat Wednesday, in a bid to
quell the political turbulence growing around the government as it
comes under intensifying pressure from the U.S. Foreign Minister
Javad Zarif, an architect of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, quit
late Monday apparently angry at being excluded from an
unannounced visit by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. His resignation
threatened to throw the Rouhani government deeper into crisis and
strengthen the country's hard-liners.
Iran's parliament will look into
the resignation of Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif in a meeting
on Tuesday, the assembly's news website ICANA
reported. "With attention to the internal and international
situation, sanctions and the pressure from America, I emphasize that
more than any other time we need internal unity and solidarity,"
said Ali Najafi Khoshroodi, spokesman for parliament's National
Security and Foreign Policy Commission which will hold the meeting.
Iran's Oil Minister Bijan
Zanganeh is not resigning, a spokesman for his ministry said on
Tuesday, according to the Iranian Students' News Agency (ISNA).
The comments from the spokesman, Kasra Nouri, came after an Iranian
parliamentarian said Zanganeh had submitted his resignation, one day
after Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif announced he was
resigning.
RUSSIA, SYRIA, ISRAEL, HEZBOLLAH, LEBANON & IRAN
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu on Wednesday was set to meet Russian President Vladimir
Putin to discuss how to prevent Iran from "entrenching in
Syria". "From our point-of-view, the focus of the
talks will be preventing Iran from entrenching in Syria, the
entrenchment of a country which explicitly says that its goal is to
wipe us out," Netanyahu said before his trip, according to his
press-service. Iran, Hezbollah and Russia are allies of Syrian
President Bashar al-Assad.
GULF STATES, YEMEN & IRAN
The Houthi militia's occupation of parts of Yemen has
increased people's suffering, which has been falsely blamed on a
"Saudi blockade," said the British ambassador to Yemen.
"It's no coincidence that the number of people in need of aid,
now at a staggering 24 million, has increased enormously since the
Houthis took over parts of the country," Michael Aron told Arab
News in an exclusive interview.
OTHER FOREIGN AFFAIRS
President Trump kicked off a round of high-stakes
summitry with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in his trademark
improvisational style-with a one-on-one pre-dinner chat at a hotel in
the Vietnamese capital on Wednesday. The two leaders' meetings here
present a serious test of their ability to make tangible headway
toward curbing Pyongyang's nuclear programs, after their first
meeting last year in Singapore yielded plenty of bonhomie but little
concrete progress.
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