TOP STORIES
The United Nations' atomic agency has heeded calls by
the U.S. and Israel to inspect a site that Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu claimed last fall was housing Iranian nuclear
equipment and material, according to officials familiar with the
agency's work. But the visit may have come too late to yield proof of
the claims. The International Atomic Energy Agency first sent a team
of inspectors to the site, which is in Tehran, in February, according
to the officials. The agency's staff took a series of environmental
samples that are currently being analyzed, they said. It isn't clear
when the IAEA first asked for access to the site.
Mike Pompeo, the US secretary of state, has appealed for
unity to confront "great power" challenges from Russia,
China and Iran on the 70th anniversary of Nato. "We have
rightly sought peace through strength here in NATO. We must continue
to do so, especially in this new era of great power competition from
Russia, from China, and the Islamic Republic of Iran," he told a
meeting of the alliance's foreign ministers.
Exiled Iranian opposition activists say Iran's Islamic
Revolutionary Guard Corps has fired on protesters who tried to stop
it from diverting floodwaters in a southwestern town, resulting in a
protester's death. The activists said the protester died after being
shot by IRGC forces in Wednesday's predawn confrontation in the
Dasht-e-Azadegan district of Khuzestan province. They said minority
Iranian Arab residents of the area, also known as Ahwazis, were
trying to stop the IRGC from destroying a dyke and diverting
floodwaters into their farmland.
NUCLEAR DEAL & NUCLEAR PROGRAM
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif has
raised doubts on the ability of European powers to bypass sanctions
imposed on Tehran by the US after it withdrew from the 2015 Iran
nuclear deal. "The Europeans at first viewed the JCPOA
(nuclear deal) as an achievement, but maybe they were not prepared
to, and certainly they were not capable of standing up against US
sanctions," Zarif said on Thursday in an interview
with Khamenei.ir, the official website of Iran's Supreme Leader Ali
Khamenei.
Any Iranian hopes of Europe salvaging the Joint
Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) are quickly fading nearly a year
after the United States reneged on the nuclear deal between
Iran and the five permanent members of the UN Security Council
plus Germany. Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif on April 3
had some harsh words for Europe in an interview with
Khamenei.ir, the official website of Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah
Ali Khamenei.
SANCTIONS, BUSINESS RISKS, & OTHER ECONOMIC
NEWS
The United States has revealed the results of its
so-called "maximum pressure campaign" against Iran, even
as the head of the world's top nuclear agency argued
Iran still honored the terms of a 2015 nuclear deal designed to
protect it from such sanctions. President Donald Trump scrapped the
deal in May, accusing Iran of using the sanctions relief
given in exchange for curbing nuclear production in order to
fund militant groups and develop ballistic missile
technology.
PROTESTS & HUMAN RIGHTS
Mehdi Rajabian, 29, is on temporary bail from the
brutality that lurks behind the walls of Tehran's notorious Evin
prison - but he wants the world to know the oppression and fear he
and many more face at every moment under the iron thumb of the
regime. His crime? A childhood love of music. "I was born in a
small province in Iran. I was always passionate about music, I would
drown in the imagination of color and fairytale while listening to
music," Rajabian told Fox News from Iran, which he is
forbidden to leave.
IRANIAN INTERNAL DEVELOPMENTS
Flooding has caused hundreds of millions of dollars of
damage to Iranian agriculture, an official said on Thursday, as the
parliament speaker questioned whether government funds would be
adequate to compensate communities and farmers. About 1,900
cities and villages have been affected by floods and exceptionally
heavy rains since March 19. The disaster, which has so far
killed 62 people, has left aid agencies struggling to cope and seen
86,000 people moved to emergency shelters.
IRANIAN REGIONAL AGGRESSION
Saudi Arabia intends to invest $1 billion in development
projects in Iraq and open a consulate in the capital, reversing a
longstanding policy of disengagement there as it seeks to curb rival
Iran's growing influence in the Middle East. A Saudi ministerial and
business delegation is in Iraq this week to discuss investment ideas
for some of the kingdom's biggest companies, including oil
giant Aramco, Saudi Basic Industries Corp. and the Maaden mining
corporation, Saudi Commerce and Investment Minister Majid Al-Qasabi
said in Baghdad.
RUSSIA, SYRIA, ISRAEL, HEZBOLLAH, LEBANON & IRAN
Russian President Vladimir Putin met Thursday with
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Moscow to discuss the
situation in Syria and ways to foster cooperation. The two leaders
also tackled Iran's role in Syria. An Israeli official said that
Netanyahu called on Russia to use its influence in Syria to prevent
Iran from securing a lasting presence in the country. Putin stressed
the special significance of keeping communication between the two
countries.
GULF STATES, YEMEN & IRAN
It is a good idea in theory: Assemble a coalition of
Sunni Arab states, call it the Middle East Strategic Alliance (MESA),
and create a multinational military force meant to serve as a bulwark
against Iranian aggression, terrorism, and extremism. Such an
alliance would finally allow the U.S. to lessen its Middle East
footprint, as the 2017 National Security Strategy recommended, and
allow the Pentagon to redeploy some capabilities toward China and
Russia - two of the "Big 4" countries that pose the
greatest menace to the United States according to the latest U.S.
intelligence community's Worldwide Threat Assessment. It is also
hoped that such a self-sufficient Arab military pact would help bring
some much-needed stability to the region.
CYBERWARFARE
With the Israeli Presidential election just days
away, cyber experts are warning about an uptick in Iranian cyber
interference and the spread of disinformation. "Iran is using
tactics very similar, if not the same, that Russia used in the 2016
U.S. election," Jeff Bardin, chief intelligence officer of
Treadstone71 who specializes in Iranian activity, told Fox News.
"Starting in January of 2017, Iran created a website that was
very likely to kick off this effort - Countdown2040.com."
Iran uses a network of websites, which are misleading
and registered with "false" data, to spread its digital
propaganda in the Arab world, according to a study published by
Oxford University. The study, titled "Iranian Digital
Interference in the Arab World," points out that the network
mainly attacks Saudi Arabia. The study was prepared by three
researchers from the Project on Computational Propaganda (COMPROP)
based at the Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford.
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