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TOP STORIES
The US administration may extend Iran sanction waivers
granted to eight countries if oil prices continue to rise in the next
two months to over $70 per barrel, analysts said. US allowed eight
countries - including China, India, Italy, Greece, Japan, South Korea,
Taiwan and Turkey - to continue to import oil despite reimposition of
nuclear related sanctions on the Islamic Republic from November last
year. In May, the US government is expected to take a decision
whether it will continue with the exemptions policy or stop the eight
countries from importing Iranian oil.
It's been nearly a year since Donald Trump made the
decision to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal, to loud cries
that it would bring nothing but woe to the United States and our
interests in the Middle East. So far, the result has been closer to
the opposite.
US forces still have not departed from eastern Syria,
yet Tehran is already rushing to fill the void. Iranian agents have
been offering cash, food, ID cards, public services and free
education to war-weary Syrians, particularly in localities near the
Iraq-Syria border like Al-Bukamal. In areas freshly liberated from
Daesh's pernicious ideology, these Iranian schemes include offers to
join proxy militia forces and convert to Khomeinist theological
principals.
NUCLEAR DEAL & NUCLEAR PROGRAM
An earthquake measuring 4.4 on the Richter scale has hit
Khourmowj area near Bushehr, in southern Iran, on the Persian Gulf.
According to the Seismological Center of Iran, the jolt happened in a
depth of 18 kilometers, however, no accurate reports have been
published yet on the epicenter of the quake. Earthquakes in Bushehr
area are significant as the city hosts Iran's nuclear power plant in
an complex which is over four decades old.
SANCTIONS, BUSINESS RISKS, & OTHER ECONOMIC
NEWS
An assertive anti-Iranian regime policy by the US
Ambassador to Germany and American sanctions targeting the Islamic
Republic of Iran's economy caused a 9% decrease in German exports to
Iran in 2018. According to Ulrich Nussbaum, a state secretary at the
Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy, German exports
plummeted from €3.15b in 2017 to €2.7b in 2018.
The Speaker of the Iraqi Parliament Mohammad al-Halbousi
has called on the United States administration to extend sanctions
waiver on Iran for Iraq once more. According to Arabic-language Iraqi
al-Sumeria news agency, Speaker of the Iraqi Parliament Mohammad
al-Halbousi said on a visit to the United States "we hope
that Iraq is once again exempted from the US sanctions on Iran."
Al-Halbousi also expressed hope that the US will extend the Iran
sanctions waiver until it can stand on its feet.
The Iranian Ministry of Industry, Mining and Commerce
has banned the export of onions and potatoes. The ban will become
effective on April 4. Prices for for onions and potatoes have risen
to unusual levels in the Iran in recent weeks. One kilogram of onions
is now 160,000 rials (roughly $1.25), which is a high price as
minimum wage earners make ends meet with around $100 per months. The
ministry said the ban was imposed in order to regulate domestic
markets.
IRANIAN INTERNAL DEVELOPMENTS
Every year, Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei delivers
a few speeches, with the annual address in Mashhad, a city in
northeast Iran, considered to be the most important. It is imperative
to meticulously examine the points made by Khamenei in this speech,
which is delivered after the Persian New Year. The comments by the
most powerful man in Iran outline the path the Islamic Republic will
take in the next year.
Iran said on Saturday it faced an emergency in a
southwestern province threatened by flooding and worked to evacuate
dozens of villages as forecasters predicted more of the heavy rains
that have killed at least 45 people this week, state media
reported. Some 56 villages lying near the Dez and Karkheh rivers
in the oil-rich southwestern province of Khuzestan may have to be
evacuated as officials released water from two major dams along the
rivers due to forecasts for more rain, the provincial governor,
Gholamreza Shariati, told state television.
Authorities in Iran worked on Saturday to evacuate
villages threatened by flooding in southwestern areas as forecasters
predicted more of the heavy rains that have killed at least 45 people
this week, state media reported. State television said at least 11
villages lying near the Dez and Karkheh rivers in the oil-rich
southwestern province of Khuzestan were being evacuated as officials
released water from two major dams along the rivers due to forecasts
for more rain.
Iranian authorities barred international journalists
from covering the disastrous floods that have stricken most of the
country's provinces and caused death and mayhem during the normally
festive two-week Nowruz holidays that follow the Iranian new year. Not
even the smattering of foreign journalists still huddled precariously
in Tehran were granted permission to head to Golestan and Mazandaran
provinces or even Shiraz to speak with victims, rescue workers, and
good Samaritans-something reporters do during natural disasters all
over the world, including recent floods
in Nebraska and Mozambique.
Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei tried hard
to strike an optimistic note in his March 21 address, on the occasion
of the Iranian new year, which he wishfully dubbed "the year of
the economic upswing." Khamenei's optimism, however, is unwarranted.
Iran and Iranians are likely to face old problems in the new year and
a closer look at Khamenei's address reveals the Iranian leader
himself expects a difficult year ahead.
Prominent hardline cleric Ayatollah Mohammad Taqi Mesbah
Yazdi has claimed that Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has not
made "even one single mistake during the past three decades as
the leader of the Islamic Republic." Mesbah Yazdi said "It
is strange that someone leads a nation for 30 years and faces the
most complicated social problems and still does not make a mistake
while other world leaders have committed numerous mistakes."
A prominent reformist politician and activist in Iran
has asked the government to reconsider its policy towards consumption
of alcohol, saying that the ban on drinking is a "failed"
policy. Mostafa Tajzadeh, who is a former official and has served
time in prison for his political views, spoke on March 31 about new
incidents of alcohol poisoning. Recently, there have been dozens of
deaths in Iran among people who buy homemade alcohol.
IRANIAN REGIONAL AGGRESSION
The Arab quartet committee on Iranian interventions
expressed deep concerns about Tehran's methods in inciting sectarian
violence in Arab states, including its support and arming of
terrorist militias in some countries, which leads to chaos and
instability in the region that threatens Arab national security. The
quartet committee, comprising of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab
Emirates, Bahrain, and Egypt as well as the Secretary-General of the
Arab League, held its meeting here on the sidelines of the
preparatory meeting of the Arab Foreign Ministers ahead of the Arab
Summit in its 30th ordinary session.
Iran's foreign ministry spokesman has welcomed the Arab
League's support for Syria's territorial integrity, related to Golan
Heights but has rejected parts of a statement Arab leaders issued at
their summit in Tunis. Bahram Ghasemi (Qassemi) told reporters on
April 1 that Iran "has carefully reviewed developments" in
the Arab summit on March 31, which condemned President Donald Trump's
decision to recognize the Golan Heights as part of Israel.
RUSSIA, SYRIA, ISRAEL, HEZBOLLAH, LEBANON & IRAN
Mohammed Mikdad used to spend his Friday afternoons at
the fence that runs along Gaza's border, taking part in weekly
demonstrations against Israel. They were fun, he said, and he didn't
have much else to do. But after being shot in the leg by
an Israeli sniper in May, Mikdad, 35, has spent recent Fridays
begging outside the local mosque, unable to continue his work as a
doorman and struggling to support six children and service his debts.
GULF STATES, YEMEN & IRAN
Yemen's army shot down the fourth Houthi drone in March
while it was in Nihm district of the Sanaa governorate airspace,
Saudi news agency SPA reported on Saturday. This is the seventh drone
the army shoots down in Nihm since the start of the year, sources
said. Earlier this month, the Saudi-led Arab coalition raided two
caves in Sanaa used by Houthi militants to store drones.
IRAQ & IRAN
On March 15, 2019, Hassan Rouhani became the first
sitting president of the Islamic Republic of Iran to be received
by Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the most prominent source of
emulation in the Shiite world. Iranian authorities sought to
spin the meeting as "historic," a sign of their reach,
Shiite unity, and perhaps even Najaf's endorsement for Iran's
clerical regime.
AFGHANISTAN & IRAN
An impoverished teenager, Mehdi, joined the wave of
Afghans who left their homeland, dreaming of reaching Europe to find
work. Where he ended up was entirely different: On the battlefields
of Syria's civil war, in a militia created by Iran. Mehdi was one of
tens of thousands of Afghans recruited and trained by Iran to fight
in support of Tehran's ally, Syrian President Bashar Assad. In Syria,
he was thrown into one of the war's bloodiest battles, surrounded by
the bodies of his comrades, under fire from Islamic militants so
close he could hear their shouts of "Allahu akbar" before
each mortar blast.
Too poor to even buy pens and notebooks for school, Mehdi
left his home in Afghanistan soon after his 17th birthday and headed
to Iran, hoping to make his way to Europe and find work. Instead,
Mehdi ended up fighting in Syria's civil war, a conflict he had
nothing to do with, 2,000 kilometres from home. He was one of tens of
thousands of Afghans recruited, paid and trained by Iran to fight in
support of Tehran's ally, the head of the Syrian regime, Bashar
Assad.
OTHER FOREIGN AFFAIRS
Arab leaders on Sunday invited non-Arab Iran to work
with Arab countries on the basis of good neighborly ties and without
interfering in each others' internal affairs. "We affirm
that cooperative relations between Arab countries and the Islamic
Republic of Iran be based on good neighborliness," they said in
a statement at the end of a summit in Tunis.
CYBERWARFARE
Iran, which is accused of launching various
state-sponsored cyber espionage attacks against the Middle East in
the past, continues to be a major threat to businesses and government
institutions across the region in 2019. Government and defence sectors
in the UAE and Saudi Arabia - the Arabian Gulf's two largest
economies - will be the main targets, as Iran seeks geopolitical
prominence, according to a report released by California-based
cybersecurity technology firm CrowdStrike.
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