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TOP STORIES
The EU has warned Iran over
the progression of ballistic missile testing and its behaviour in the
wider region. In a 12-point statement issued on Monday the bloc,
which remains part of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action to curb
Iran's nuclear ambitions, said it is "gravely concerned"
over the state's missile activity. "Iran continues to undertake
efforts to increase the range and precision of its missiles, together
with increasing the number of tests and operational launches ...
These activities deepen mistrust and contribute to regional
instability," the statement read.
Iran's top judge said on Monday
that Tehran would never accept the "humiliating conditions"
set by the European Union for non-dollar trade intended to evade U.S.
sanctions, the semi-official Tasnim news agency reported. France,
Germany and Britain have opened a new channel for non-dollar trade
with Iran to get around the sanctions, reimposed on Iran after
President Donald Trump's decision in May to exit a 2015 nuclear deal
between Tehran and six major powers.
Iran's oil minister on Tuesday
criticized Greece and Italy for not buying its oil despite U.S.
waivers and said they had not offered Tehran any explanation for
their decision. The United States granted the two countries
exemptions along with six others - Turkey, China, India, Japan, South
Korea and Taiwan - allowing them to temporarily continue buying
Iranian oil as Washington reimposed sanctions on Iran's banking and
energy sectors.
UANI IN THE NEWS
...Norman Roule, a former senior
U.S. intelligence official and a senior adviser to United Against
Nuclear Iran, also agreed with Coats. He told JNS, "Israel has
now conducted hundreds of strikes, and the Iranians continue to build
this infrastructure. Thus, the logical explanation is what Israel is
doing is not yet a sufficient deterrent to Iran and the Quds Force to
keep it from conducting these activities in the future. ... The
Iranians have yet to be deterred. ... Iran has been able to move the
border of confrontation to its adversary's doorsteps, while at the
same time removing it from its own border."
NUCLEAR DEAL & NUCLEAR PROGRAM
When President Donald Trump pulled the United States out of
the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in May, Iran was
expecting the European signatories to the deal to engage in serious
efforts to uphold it. Indeed, on the very same day as the US
withdrawal, President Hassan Rouhani announced in a televised
speech his government's plans to launch intense, short-term
negotiations with Europe to determine whether Iran should remain in
the pact.
MISSILE PROGRAM
Iran dismissed European Union
criticism of its missile program, regional policies and rights record
on Tuesday, highlighting their increasingly testy relationship as
both sides seek to salvage a troubled nuclear deal. Iran's
comments came a day after the bloc criticized the Islamic Republic's
ballistic missile tests and expressed concern at Iran's role in
growing Middle East tensions.
The EU warned Tehran over its
ballistic missile programme and interference in the Syria conflict
Monday, while welcoming a new mechanism to trade with Iran while
bypassing US sanctions. In a long-awaited statement on Iran that has
been the subject of more than a week of wrangling in Brussels, the EU
restated its commitment to saving the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran and
took aim at Washington for abandoning the pact and reimposing
sanctions.
MISSILE PROGRAM
Iran has mounted
precision-guided warheads on its most advanced, longest-range
missiles, the regime-affiliated Fars news agency reported Sunday.
With a range of some 1,250 miles, the Khoramshahr-2 missile can reach
Israel as well as U.S. bases in the Gulf. "The new generation of
missiles with guided warheads has been named Khoramshahr-2 and they
can be controlled until hitting the target and are able to carry
warheads weighing nearly 2 tons," the report said.
The Iranian military has
displayed two new long-range weapons during events commemorating the
40th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution that saw a clerical Shiite
Muslim leadership oust an absolute monarchy backed by the West. The
Iranian armed forces successfully tested the Hoveizeh cruise
missile and the Khorramshahr 2 ballistic missile, which has
been fitted with precision warheads.
MILITARY/INTELLIGENCE MATTERS & PROXY WARS
Iran is marking the 40th anniversary
of the 1979 Islamic revolution. Yet, within a year and a half of the
revolt, neighbouring Iraq declared war and invaded, backed by
Western and Arab allies. Decades later, Iranians speak of the
revolution and the war in the same breath, two major upheavals that
transformed the country and remain inextricably linked in the minds
of Iranians.
PROTESTS & HUMAN RIGHTS
An Iranian dissident in Berlin
told German police that he was attacked by three men who called him by
name and threatened him in Persian before beating him and stamping on
him. If linked to Iranian government agents, the attack could further
strain Iran's ties with the European Union, which last month imposed
sanctions on an Iranian intelligence unit. The Netherlands has
accused Iran of two killings on its soil.
IRANIAN INTERNAL DEVELOPMENTS
As Iran prepares to mark the
fortieth anniversary of the Islamic Revolution, the question of who
will succeed the ill and aging supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei
is resurfacing. No matter who that cleric might be, Iran is likely to
be ruled by another religious figure who is far less powerful than
Khamenei and more beholden to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps
(IRGC). Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, who died in late December,
had been considered the leading contender to replace Khamenei.
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini
betrayed the principles of the Iranian revolution after sweeping to
power in 1979, his first president told Reuters, leaving a "very
bitter" taste among some of those who had returned with him to
Tehran in triumph. Abolhassan Bani-Sadr, a sworn opponent of
Tehran's clerical rulers ever since being driven from office and
fleeing abroad in 1981, recalled how 40 years ago in Paris, he had
been convinced that the religious leader's Islamic revolution would
pave the way for democracy and human rights after the rule of the
Shah.
IRANIAN REGIONAL AGGRESSION
Prior to Iran's 1979 revolution,
Iranian-Israeli ties were normal. Afterward, however, Ayatollah
Ruhollah Khomeini deemed the Palestinian issue more important than
these ties, using Palestine as a strategic tool to infiltrate the
Arab world. Since then, the Iranian regime's voice has been projected
across the Islamic world with fiery speeches opposing Zionism and,
with it, heading an "Axis of Resistance" and rejecting any
relations with Israel.
RUSSIA, SYRIA, ISRAEL, HEZBOLLAH, LEBANON & IRAN
Hezbollah Secretary-General
Hassan Nasrallah on Monday accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
of inciting Western powers against Lebanon, a day after the
premier blasted the country for including the Iran-backed
terrorist group in its newly formed government. "The new
Lebanese government is not controlled by Hezbollah," Nasrallah
said in a speech broadcast by Hezbollah's al-Manar TV channel.
GULF STATES, YEMEN & IRAN
Representatives of the Iran-backed Houthi militias at
the Redeployment Coordination Committee (RCC) in Hodeidah rejected a
UN plan to redeploy in the city, Yemeni government sources told
Asharq Al-Awsat. Representatives from the legitimate government, on
the other hand, have accepted the proposal, made by UN appointed
chair of the RCC, retired Dutch general Patrick Cammaert, said the
sources.
IRAQ & IRAN
Iraq's president and many other
politicians in the country denounced President Trump's plan for U.S.
troops in Iraq to monitor neighboring Iran, as Baghdad tries to
balance ties to its two most important allies, Washington and Tehran.
Mr. Trump, in an interview Sunday on CBS News, said he wants to
maintain a military presence in Iraq to keep an eye on Iran
"because Iran is a real problem." The president said the
U.S. had "spent a fortune" on a base in western Iraq he
visited in December and should hold on to it.
President Donald Trump's pledge
to use a US base in Iraq to "watch" Iran has triggered a
furious reaction from Baghdad. Why it matters: Amid bipartisan
push-back against his decision to pull US troops out of Syria, the
president told CBS in an interview that ran Sunday that Al-Asad
base in Anbar province, which the president visited just after
Christmas, could deal with the Iranian threat.
AFGHANISTAN & IRAN
Unprecedented negotiations in Qatar between US special
envoy to Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad and the Taliban
have created cautious optimism for lasting reconciliation.
"We made significant progress on vital issues,"
Khalilzad wrote on Twitter,
adding: "Nothing is agreed until everything is agreed, and
'everything' must include an intra-Afghan dialogue and comprehensive
ceasefire."
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