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Eye on Iran will
be suspended on Monday, February 18, in observance of Presidents Day
and will resume Tuesday, February 19.
TOP STORIES
Vice President Mike Pence lashed
out at Washington's major European allies for helping what he called
a "murderous" Iran escape U.S. sanctions, warning at a
global conference here that their actions would exacerbate a divide between
Europe and the U.S. "The Iranian regime openly advocates another
Holocaust and it seeks the means to achieve it," Mr. Pence said,
in a speech delivered in a country where occupying Nazi forces housed
the Auschwitz extermination camp during World War II.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo warned on Thursday of
the growing influence of the militant group Hezbollah in Lebanon,
while reaffirming the commitment of the US to a partnership with
Beirut and its people. Speaking on the margins of the Warsaw
conference, Mr Pompeo told Al Hurra television station that
"Hezbollah is definitely more powerful than they were four or
five years ago." "I regret that" he said in the
interview.
Iran's government is celebrating
four decades of "revolution." Since 1979, it has exported
violent destabilization to Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and my country,
Yemen, and sponsored terrorist attacks on almost every continent.
Iran's leaders have enriched themselves at the expense of their
people, and intimidated nations far beyond their borders. Happy 40th
anniversary! But leave us out of it. For four years, war has
afflicted Yemen's people, precipitated by the Iran-backed Houthi
militias' coup in Sana'a and attempted takeover of the country.
UANI IN THE NEWS
...Former Sen. Kelly
Ayotte (R-N.H.) has joined nonprofit advocacy group United
Against Nuclear Iran as senior adviser. Ayotte is the third
former senator advising the group: former Sen. Joe
Lieberman (I-Conn.) serves as chairman and Sen. Mark
Kirk (R-Ill.) is on the group's advisory board. Ayotte has
stayed busy since losing a tight reelection in 2016. The former
senator has joined the board of directors of BAE
Systems and Caterpillar and the board of advisers for
the Foundation for Defense of Democracies' Center on Military
and Political Power. She's also a senior adviser to Citizens for
Responsible Energy Solutions.
NUCLEAR DEAL & NUCLEAR PROGRAM
More than 30 heads of state and
government and 80 defense and foreign ministers are meeting in Munich
for an annual security conference known for its frank exchanges and
backroom diplomacy. Vice President Mike Pence, who heads the U.S.
delegation, set the tone in Warsaw on Thursday, accusing Britain,
France and Germany of trying to "break" American sanctions
on Iran and calling on them to withdraw from the 2015 nuclear deal
with Tehran.
SANCTIONS, BUSINESS RISKS, & OTHER ECONOMIC
NEWS
South Korea resumed imports of
Iranian oil in January after a four-month hiatus, customs data showed
on Friday, but shipments were down 76 percent from the same month
last year. The world's fifth-largest crude importer won a
six-month waiver in November from U.S. sanctions on Tehran's oil
exports, but did not immediately start imports, mainly due to payment
and insurance issues.
TERRORISM & EXTREMISM
The U.S. Department of Justice last year designated
Hezbollah, a Lebanese political party and militant group, as a
transnational criminal organization, thanks to its long-standing and
well-documented partnership with Latin American drug cartels. A focal
point of Hezbollah operations in the Western Hemisphere is the
Tri-Border Area of Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay, a sanctuary for
all sorts of organized crime. Numerous terrorism financing, money
laundering, and drug trafficking cases in U.S. courts involve
Hezbollah-aligned Lebanese nationals who operate there. Argentina and
Brazil have shown an increased readiness to take action against
Hezbollah, but Paraguay, the country where Hezbollah is most
vulnerable to action, is the most reluctant to recognize the
challenge.
Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has sent
condolences to the families of the victims of a suicide car bombing
that struck a bus carrying Iran's elite Revolutionary Guard troops,
killing at least 27 people. An al-Qaida-linked group, Jaish al-Adl,
claimed responsibility for Wednesday's attack in Iran's restive southeastern
Sistan and Baluchistan province. Tehran linked the bombing to an
ongoing U.S.-led conference in Warsaw largely focused on Iran.
The U.N. Security Council is
condemning "in the strongest possible terms" the bombing in
Iran that killed 27 people, calling it a "heinous and cowardly
terrorist attack." All 15 members, including the United States,
which is a strong critic of Iran's leaders, "expressed their
deepest sympathy and condolences to the families of the victims and
to the government of Islamic Republic of Iran."
Senior Iranian officials have
vowed a furious response to the suicide bombing which targeted a
Revolutionary Guard bus and killed nearly 30 and injured 13 in
Zahedan city, the capital of Sistan-Baluchestan province. While
Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei ordered the Revolutionary Guard
(IRGC) to launch an investigation into "possible oversight"
leading to the attack, President Hassan Rouhani accused the United
States and its allies and urged neighboring countries to "do
their due diligence in upholding values of good neighborliness."
PROTESTS & HUMAN RIGHTS
Iranian teachers have staged
peaceful rallies in at least six cities to protest what they see as
government suppression of their rights and to call for better working
conditions in their poorly paid profession. Images verified by VOA
Persian and sent from social media users inside Iran showed teachers
rallying Wednesday outside education departments in the northern
cities of Ardabil and Urmia, the northwestern cities of Kermanshah,
Marivan and Sanandaj, and in the northeastern city of Mashhad.
Amid worsening diplomatic and
economic isolation, Iran is continuing its crackdown on perceived
dissidents. Among the targets: environmental scientists. A recent
Amnesty International report claimed the Islamic Republic in 2018
arrested more than 7,000 rights defenders, in what was referred to as
Iran's "year of shame." The organization highlighted that
at least 63 environmental activists and researchers were detained,
with some remaining in prison on dubious charges and without access
to legal representation.
U.S.-IRAN RELATIONS & NEGOTIATIONS
Vice President Mike Pence used an American-convened
conference on Middle East security to lash out at Washington's three
closest European allies on Thursday, accusing them of trying "to
break American sanctions against Iran's murderous revolutionary
regime." Mr. Pence delivered his critique of the allies,
Britain, France and Germany, in an address at a Warsaw conference
organized by the Trump administration.
U.S. Vice President Mike Pence accused Washington's
European allies on Thursday of trying to break U.S. sanctions against
Tehran and called on them to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal.
"Sadly, some of our leading European partners have not been
nearly as cooperative. In fact, they have led the effort to create mechanisms
to break up our sanctions," Pence said during a conference on
the Middle East organized by the United States in Warsaw.
Vice President Mike Pence told a conference of European
and Middle East leaders on Thursday that Iran is plotting to
eliminate Israel from the face of the earth, and seeks to unleash a
'new Holocaust.' With Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
watching, Pence said in Poland that Tehran poses 'the greatest threat
to peace and security' in the region. Hours earlier, Secretary of
State Mike Pompeo told reporters that 'confronting Iran' is a
necessary step for any nation that wants to 'achieve peace and
stability in the Middle East.'
US Secretary of State Mike
Pompeo underlined the need for different foreign policy approaches to
Iran and North Korea in comments published Thursday, describing
Tehran as more "destabilizing" than Pyongyang. "We've
made very clear that these situations are very different. We take
each of them where we find them," he told US television station
CBS in excerpts of a transcript released by the State Department.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike
Pompeo met with the EU's top diplomat in Brussels on Friday, a day
after Vice President Mike Pence accused America's traditional
European allies of trying to undermine U.S. sanctions against Iran.
The meeting with Federica Mogherini, the EU's foreign policy chief,
was scheduled before Pence's rebuke of European powers during a
Middle East peace conference in Warsaw on Thursday, which Mogherini
missed, citing a scheduling conflict at NATO.
MILITARY/INTELLIGENCE MATTERS & PROXY WARS
The former U.S. Air Force intelligence analyst, her
brown hair now hidden underneath a mandatory hijab, stood before an
Iranian ayatollah as a television camera filmed behind her. It was
2012 and Monica Elfriede Witt offered Ayatollah Hadi Barikbin the
pledge of faith all Islam converts must recite: "There is no god
but God and Muhammad is His messenger."
IRANIAN INTERNAL DEVELOPMENTS
Iran forty years after its
Islamic revolution is facing a grave economic crisis and growing
popular discontent. It continues to commit acts that deepen its
isolation even as it benefits from the mistakes of its adversaries.
US sanctions are more punishing than anticipated but will probably
not cause Iran to alter policies of greatest concern to Washington,
such as regional interventions and ballistic missile development, and
are instead strengthening hardline elements as Iran approaches a key
political transition.
RUSSIA, SYRIA, ISRAEL, HEZBOLLAH, LEBANON & IRAN
The president of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro, called the
self-declared interim president and opposition leader Juan Guaido
"a CIA agent who serves the interests of the United States and
the Zionists" in an interview with the Hezbollah-affiliated
Lebanese media group, Al-Mayadeen. He added in the interview posted
on Tuesday that he feels "love for the noble Palestinian
cause," and sent words of "encouragement to the Palestinian
and Arab prisoners confined in Israeli jails."
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani
said on Thursday that the presence of its arch foe the United States
in the Middle East harmed countries in the region and called on
Washington to fully withdraw its troops from the country.
"The presence of U.S. in Syria and other countries in the region
is not useful .... America should reconsider its Middle East
policy," Rouhani said after a summit on Syria between Iran,
Russia and Turkey in southern Russia.
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday told his
Turkish and Iranian counterparts that the presence of what he called
terrorist groups in Syria's Idlib region should not be tolerated.
Putin was speaking at a summit he is hosting in the Black Sea resort
of Sochi to discuss the future of Syria with Turkish President Tayyip
Erdogan and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani.
Iran, Russia and Kazakhstan are making progress on
organising finance for a long-planned wheat deal that could double or
triple supplies to Iran, the secretary general of Iran's Federation
of Food Industry Associations said. Talks started a year ago, but
stalled due to a lack of financing. The deal involves Russia and
Kazakhstan supplying wheat to Iranian millers, who in turn would
supply flour to Iraq - a market dominated by Turkey and other
countries.
GULF STATES, YEMEN, & IRAN
The time has come to add tiny, gas-drenched Qatar to
America's list of nations to contain. Containment is a Cold War-era
concept hatched by U.S. foreign service officer George Frost Kennan
just after World War II, while he served in America's embassy in
Moscow.
The Iranian regime remains the
biggest threat to stability in the region 40 years after its
revolution under ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the Saudi ambassador to
the US said. "Forty years ago, the Ayatollah landed in Iran and
ushered a reign of terror and destruction," Prince Khalid bin
Salman said on Wednesday night on Twitter. Saudi Arabia, the UAE and
their Gulf allies accuse Iran of funding armed groups that operate in
Lebanon, Iraq, Syria and Yemen.
The US on Thursday accused Iran of prolonging the war in
Yemen with its support for the Houthis and called on Tehran to help
make a ceasefire agreement a success. Speaking to Arab News at the
Middle East conference in Warsaw, Washington's special represenative
for Iran Brian Hook said there had been extensive discussion at the
meeting of the war, which is now in its fifth year.
TURKEY & IRAN
As Trump administration
officials presided over the second day of an international conference
in Warsaw dominated by calls to ratchet up pressure on Iran, one
longtime U.S. ally and NATO member was noticeably absent -
Turkey. Snubbing the gathering in Poland, Turkish President Recep
Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday attended a rival conference in the Black
Sea resort of Sochi, where he planned to meet his Russian and
Iranian counterparts to work out a final settlement of the war
in Syria.
OTHER FOREIGN AFFAIRS
Paris has announced that a
French ambassador would return to Tehran "soon", in a sign
of improved relations between the two countries. Paris also said that
a new Iranian ambassador is expected to land in the French capital.
The announcement was made on Wednesday, the first day of a US-led
meeting in Warsaw where Washington mobilized the largest
international gathering against Iranian policies.
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