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TOP STORIES
European diplomats warned Monday that Iran is preparing
to abandon parts of a landmark nuclear deal in response to new U.S.
sanctions, a step that risks inflaming tensions after the Trump
administration dispatched warships to the Persian Gulf to deter
potential Iranian attacks. A senior European diplomat said
Iranian officials have been considering a partial withdrawal from
some parts of the multination accord that placed strict but
temporary limits on a broad swath of Iran's nuclear work.
Tensions escalated between the United States and Iran on
Monday as the Trump administration accused Iran and militias that it
backs of threatening American troops, and Iran signaled it might soon
violate part of the 2015 nuclear deal it reached under former
President Barack Obama. European diplomats in touch with senior
officials in Tehran said Iran would most likely resume research on
high-performance centrifuges used to produce nuclear fuel and put
restrictions on nuclear inspections in Iran.
U.S. intelligence showed that Iran has made plans to
target U.S. forces in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East,
triggering a decision to reinforce the American military
presence in the region in an effort to deter any possible moves
by Tehran, U.S. officials said Monday. The escalation in tensions
came as European diplomats said Monday that Iran appeared poised
to breach portions of the 2015 international nuclear pact that
restricted Tehran's nuclear program in exchange for relief from
economic sanctions.
NUCLEAR DEAL & NUCLEAR PROGRAM
Iran on Monday strongly suggested that it was about to
reduce compliance with the landmark 2015 nuclear deal because of
sanctions reimposed by President Trump when he repudiated the
Obama-era accord. Reports in Iran's state media said that the
Iranians intended to inform the other countries in the agreement of
unspecified changes ahead of the Wednesday anniversary of the
American withdrawal ordered by Mr. Trump. "The Islamic
Republic of Iran's government has decided to enforce specific
decisions to reciprocate," the semiofficial Fars News
Agency said.
Iran will restart part of its halted nuclear program in
response to the U.S. withdrawal from a landmark 2015 nuclear deal but
does not itself plan to pull out of the agreement, the state-run IRIB
news agency reported on Monday. Citing a source close to an
official commission which oversees the nuclear deal, IRIB reported
that President Hassan Rouhani would announce that Iran would reduce
some of its "minor and general" commitments under the deal
on May 8 - exactly one year after U.S. President Donald Trump
announced the U.S. pullout.
Iran is about to partially resume parts of its nuclear
program that were suspended within the frameworks of the 2015 nuclear
agreement with the world powers, or the Joint Comprehensive Plan of
Action (JCPOA). Iranian stat TV on Monday May 6 quoted "an
official close to the JCPOA Supervisory Board" as having said that
although the activities to be resumed are covered under articles 26
and 36 of the JCPOA, "Iran is not planning to withdraw from the
nuclear deal at the time being."
SANCTIONS, BUSINESS RISKS, & OTHER ECONOMIC
NEWS
Iran will reportedly soon announce reciprocal measures
in the face of the Donald Trump administration's revoking of
sanctions waivers allowing nuclear cooperation with Iran.
European officials have unofficially been notified of the decision,
according to media reports in Iran. May 8, when Iran is reportedly
set to make the announcement, will mark the one-year anniversary of
the US officially exiting the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action
(JCPOA)...
Alireza says he
used to dream of a better future in Iran and even saw himself getting
a new car or house, but those days are now gone after he lost his job
to reimposed US sanctions. "My purchasing power has been cut,
and my life is under pressure," said Alireza, an Iranian car
industry veteran. "I no longer see myself as middle-class.
It feels terrible," he said according to an AFP report Tuesday.
Oil prices were mixed on Tuesday as U.S. sanctions on oil
exporters Iran and Venezuela kept markets on edge while concerns that
an escalating Sino-U.S. trade dispute could slow the global economy
also kept crude somewhat in check. U.S. West Texas Intermediate
(WTI) crude futures were at $62.29 per barrel at 0135 GMT on Tuesday,
4 cents above their last settlement.
Iran has appointed a new chief of its national airline,
state news reported, replacing its first female CEO with a former
air-force commander who is on a U.S. blacklist. Turaj Dehghani
Zanganeh, a former air-force commander who features on a U.S.
Treasury sanctions list, was named CEO of Iran Air at a government
meeting on May 5. He will replace Farzaneh Sharafbafi, the
first Iranian woman with a PhD in aerospace, who ran the airline for
two years.
TERRORISM & EXTREMISM
Israel's ambassador to the United Nations said on
Monday that Iran is sponsoring terrorism in the Middle
East. "When we hear the words coming from Tehran, threatening
the U.S., threatening Israel, it shows that they're panicking because
the sanctions are working," said Ambassador Danny Danon on
"America's Newsroom." "But we are committed,"
Danon said. "We are committed to fighting terrorism, to
fighting the proxies of Iran in our region."
U.S.-IRAN RELATIONS & NEGOTIATIONS
The White House said Sunday it will deploy an aircraft
carrier strike group and a bomber task force to the Persian Gulf.
This isn't a provocation but a deterrence message for Iran, its
Middle Eastern proxies, and especially Iranian Maj. Gen. Qassem
Soleimani. "The United States is not seeking war with the
Iranian regime," national security adviser John Bolton said in a
statement.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Monday the
United States has seen activity from Iran that indicated a possible
"escalation," one day after the United States said it would
send a carrier strike group to the Middle East to counter a "credible
threat by Iranian regime forces." "We have continued
to see activity that leads us to believe that there's escalation that
may be taking place, and so we're taking all the appropriate
actions..."
Iran's top security body dismissed as
"psychological warfare" a U.S. announcement that a carrier
strike group and bombers are being sent to the Middle East as a
message to Tehran, the semi-official Tasnim news agency reported on
Tuesday. U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton said on
Sunday the United States was deploying the Abraham Lincoln carrier
strike group and a bomber task force to the Middle East.
Tensions between the United States and Iran are reaching
a boiling point as the first anniversary of President Trump's
withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal approaches. The Trump
administration on Sunday said a U.S. carrier strike group is headed
to the region in response to unspecified "troubling and
escalatory indications and warnings."
An announcement by U.S. National Security Advisor John
Bolton that Washington is sending an aircraft carrier group and
bomber task force to the Middle East is drawing mixed reactions from
countries in the region. Iran has condemned the move, while some U.S.
allies nod in agreement. Arab media announced the U.S.
deployment of the aircraft carrier group USS Abraham Lincoln and an
air strike force, amid reports of possible tensions with Iran and
threats by Iranian officials to "close the Strait of Hormuz,"
to shipping from the Gulf.
MILITARY/INTELLIGENCE MATTERS & PROXY WARS
Iranian lawmaker Alaeddin Boroujerdi dismissed the
possibility of war with the U.S. but touted the military capabilities
of the Islamic Republic in an interview aired on May 5.
Boroujerdi, a member of Iran's parliament who previously served
as the country's deputy foreign minister, was responding
to President Donald Trump's national security adviser John
Bolton, who on Sunday said that the USS Abraham Lincoln Carrier
Strike Group and a bomber task force would be deployed to the Persian
Gulf region...
Absent U.S. deterrence, the Iranian hardliners target
U.S. interests, hence the newly announced deployment of the USS
Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group to the Persian Gulf. With its
recent increase in U.S. Navy deployments near Iran, the Trump
administration wants to deter the Islamic Republic from threatening
maritime traffic in the Strait of Hormuz. Iran is very much on the
move, fomenting terrorism and paramilitary activity in the
region.
IRANIAN INTERNAL DEVELOPMENTS
The relationship between the state and the clerical
establishment in Iran has been unsteady over the last four
decades. The state has often criticized the Qom seminary for its
lackluster support for the Islamic Revolution and for its lack of
involvement in everyday matters of government, as it
limits itself to religious issues. Against this backdrop,
hard-liners have pushed the Qom seminary to engage more in everyday
political and social problems.
A village in southern Iran has been evacuated after a
fire broke out at the Ahvaz-Omidieh oil pipeline in the vicinity of
the village on Monday May 6. The fire broke out while workers were
doing some maintenance work on pipeline, Mehr news agency reported.
The fire started following a leakage after a loader blade pierced the
line and it went out of control in less than an hour. It is not clear
if the fire has been controlled in early evening local time.
RUSSIA, SYRIA, ISRAEL, HEZBOLLAH, LEBANON &
IRAN
Bahrain's highest court slapped 19 people with jail
terms after they were convicted of maintaining links with Iran's
Revolutionary Guards Corps and Lebanon's Hezbollah group, as reported
on Anadolu Agency. According to the Bahraini News Agency (BNA), the
Court of Cassation sentenced eight of those convicted to 25 years
each in prison, nine to 15 years, and two to ten years for
"communicating with a foreign country and a terrorist
organisation".
For two decades, the Shebaa farms have been the
epicentre of region influencing conflict, remained part of the reason
Hezbollah says it cannot disarm and given Lebanese politicians of all
stripes - but particularly from the Iran-backed paramilitary group -
the opportunity to burnish their nationalist credentials. Those in
Beirut says the area is Lebanese territory occupied by Israel.
Hezbollah says it must continue to carry arms to complete the total
liberation of Lebanese lands from their archival to the south.
Israel, and others including the UN, disagree over the true
ownership.
GULF STATES, YEMEN
& IRAN
UN envoy to Yemen Martin Griffiths' truce efforts
suffered a new disappointment as the Iran-backed Houthi militias
continued to refuse to implement the Sweden deal and redeploy from
the Hodeidah province, informed political sources in Sanaa said
Monday. "Houthi leader (Abdul Malek al-Houthi) told Griffiths
that he agrees to implement the first phase of the redeployment plan
in the two ports of Ras Isa and Saleef on condition that the Houthis
are allowed to keep their militias in control of security and
administrative affairs there," the sources added.
CYBERWARFARE
A lawmaker in Iran has revealed that the intelligence
and communication ministries joined forces to create and manage
diversionary social media apps to woo people away from secure
international platforms. Iran banned the popular Telegram
messaging app last year after mass protests and later two new
apps appeared, labelled Talagram (golden telegram in Persian) and
Hotgram, trying to attract users in Iran.
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