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TOP STORIES
The powerful Lebanese Hezbollah militia has thrived for
decades on generous cash handouts from Iran, spending lavishly on
benefits for its fighters, funding social services for its
constituents and accumulating a formidable arsenal that has helped
make the group a significant regional force, with troops in Syria and
Iraq. But since President Trump introduced sweeping new restrictions
on trade with Iran last year, raising tensions with Tehran that
reached a crescendo in recent days, Iran's ability to finance allies
such as Hezbollah has been curtailed.
Middle East tensions appeared to ease over the weekend
after the Trump administration moved to de-escalate two
weeks of crisis, while Saudi Arabia and Iran toned down their
threatening rhetoric in an attempt to avoid military conflict. Saudi
Arabia and arch rival Iran lashed out at each other last week
following attacks on the kingdom's oil assets, for which Riyadh and
some U.S. officials blamed Tehran. Iran denied the allegations
and accused its rivals of trying to frame it to provoke a
confrontation after the U.S., citing unspecified intelligence,
flagged increased threats from Iran and its allies.
A rocket hit the Green Zone in Baghdad on Sunday night,
home to Iraqi government offices and those of other foreign
governments, where tensions were already high amid a standoff with
Iran. No one was hurt, said Gen. Yahya Rasool of the Baghdad Joint
Command, which includes American and Iraqi forces. He confirmed that
a Katyusha rocket had landed in the heavily fortified zone and said
it had been fired from across the Tigris River. The American Embassy
said that there was no damage to American facilities and that no one
had claimed responsibility.
UANI IN THE NEWS
But the EU has now been forced to wade into the bitter
spat after the Iranian regime confirmed it would break its
commitments under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) and
resume its nuclear programme. David Ibsen, president of United
Against Nuclear Iran, told Express.co.uk the EU strategy on Iran
would be stuck after it broke the "only promise that maintained
the EU in the Iran deal". He said: "If the decision of the
US to exit the Iran deal last year marked the death of JCPOA, today
should be regarded as the day it is buried for good. "Now is the
time for European and US leaders to work together on a new direction
which holds Iran genuinely accountable for the domestic abuses of the
regime and for its aggressive behaviour abroad."
SANCTIONS, BUSINESS RISKS, & OTHER ECONOMIC
NEWS
Iran has adopted new tactics and new destinations in
shipping its oil exports following the re-imposition of U.S.
sanctions, a senior Iranian maritime official was quoted as saying on
Saturday by the semi-official ILNA news agency. "The Oil
Ministry's tactics in exporting oil and petroleum products have
changed, ... and perhaps the destinations of oil cargoes from our
ports have changed," Hadi Haqshenas, maritime affairs deputy
director at Iran's Ports and Maritime Organization, told ILNA.
Across Iran's capital, the talk always seems to come
back to how things may get worse. Battered by U.S. sanctions and its
depreciating rial currency, Iran's 80 million people struggle to buy
meat, medicine and other staples of daily life. Now they wonder aloud
about America's intentions as it rushes an aircraft carrier and other
forces to the region over a still-unexplained threat it perceives
from Iran.
Sources in the Iraqi oil industry and a senior Iraqi
official said Saturday that Exxon Mobil, an American oil and gas
corporation, had begun evacuating its entire foreign staff
- around 60 people - from the West Qurna 1 oil field in the
southern Iraqi province of Basra. The evacuation came just days after
the US pulled out its nonessential staff from its
embassy in Baghdad, citing a threat from Iran, which has close
ties with Iraq.
PROTESTS & HUMAN RIGHTS
Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards force has raided three
underground modeling agencies, accusing the companies and their
aspiring models of flouting strict Islamic dress codes for women, Iranian
news agencies reported on Saturday. General Mohsen Karimi, a
Guards commander in the central city of Arak, said staff at the
agencies had been arrested for "promoting vulgarity",
partly through sharing portfolio pictures of models on social media,
the semi-official news agency Fars reported.
Iran's supreme court has upheld the death sentence of an
Iranian man for killing an American woman seven years ago to steal
her car, the state-run daily Iran reported on Saturday. The mother of
three, identified as Theresa Virginia, had been reported missing in
2012 when she had traveled to Iran to visit her Iranian husband's
family, the newspaper said.
U.S.-IRAN RELATIONS & NEGOTIATIONS
Commercial airliners flying over the Persian Gulf risk
being targeted by "miscalculation or misidentification"
from the Iranian military amid heightened tensions between the
Islamic Republic and the U.S., American diplomats warned Saturday,
even as both Washington and Tehran say they don't seek war.
Two years ago, almost to the day, a convoy of 20
vehicles drove toward a stretch of desert in southern Syria, near the
Jordanian border. This terrain was unremarkable but for the fact that
it encircled a military base known as al-Tanf where 200 American
soldiers, most of them Marines and Special Forces, were garrisoned
alongside British counterparts and an Arab counterinsurgency group.
President Trump said in a Sunday night Fox News
interview that he doesn't want to go to war with Iran but emphasized
he will never allow the nation to develop nuclear weapons. "I
will not let Iran have nuclear weapons," Trump told Fox News
host Steve Hilton. "I don't want to fight. But you do have
situations like Iran, you can't let them have nuclear weapons - you
just can't let that happen."
A top Republican lawmaker said Friday that the threat
from Iran picked up by U.S. intelligence - which sparked a U.S.
military deployment to the Middle East and heightened tensions across
the region - was very specific and involved the possible kidnapping
and killing of American soldiers. "To the extent I can discuss
it, it was human intelligence," Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas,
the ranking Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told
USA TODAY on Friday. He was referring to intelligence information
that prompted the Pentagon to deploy an aircraft carrier, along with
B-52 bombers and other military forces, to the Middle East.
President Trump warned Sunday that threats from Iran
against the United States would mark that nation's "official
end" - taking a sharply more aggressive tone after a rocket
landed inside Baghdad's fortified Green Zone near the U.S. Embassy
amid increasing tensions in the region. No one has claimed responsibility
for the incident, which caused no injuries or serious damage, but
suspicion among Iraqi officials and Western diplomats fell on one of
the Shiite militias that draw their strength from Iranian support.
U.S. President Donald Trump threatened Iran in a tweet
on Sunday, raising concerns about a potential U.S.-Iran conflict at a
time when tensions between Washington and Tehran have risen. If
Iran wants to fight, that will be the official end of Iran. Never
threaten the United States again," Trump said in a tweet.
Trump has tightened economic sanctions against Iran, and his
administration says it has built up the U.S. military presence in the
region. It accuses Iran of threats to U.S. troops and interests.
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said on
Saturday he did not believe a war would break out in the region as
Tehran did not want a conflict and no country had the "illusion
it could confront Iran", the state news agency IRNA
reported. Tensions have escalated in recent days, with growing
concerns about a potential U.S.-Iran conflict. Earlier this week the
United States pulled some diplomatic staff from its embassy in
Baghdad following weekend attacks on four oil tankers in the
Gulf.
Iran is not pursuing war, the head of the elite
Revolutionary Guards said on Sunday, according to the Fars news
agency. "The difference between us and them is that they
are afraid of war and don't have the will for it," Major General
Hossein Salami said.
A rocket was fired into the Iraqi capital Baghdad's
heavily fortified Green Zone, which houses government buildings and
diplomatic missions, on Sunday night, falling near the U.S. Embassy
but causing no casualties, the Iraqi military said. The attack
came two weeks after U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo warned Iraqi
leaders during a surprise visit to Baghdad that if they failed to
keep in check Iran-backed militias, which are expanding their power
in Iraq and now form part of its security apparatus, the United
States would respond with force.
The Federal Aviation Administration has issued an
advisory to U.S. commercial airliners flying over the waters of the
Gulf and the Gulf of Oman to exercise caution as tensions between
Washington and Tehran continue to simmer. The advisory, issued
by the FAA on Thursday and circulated late on Friday, said the
warning came amidst "heightened military activities and
increased political tensions in the region which present an
increasing inadvertent risk to U.S. civil aviation operations due to
the potential for miscalculation or mis-identification".
U.S. President Donald Trump issued a new threat to
Tehran on Sunday, tweeting that a conflict would be the "official
end" of Iran, as Saudi Arabia warned it stood ready to respond
with "all strength" and said it was up to Iran to avoid
war. The heightened rhetoric follows last week's attacks on
Saudi oil assets and the firing of a rocket on Sunday into Baghdad's
heavily fortified "Green Zone" that exploded near the U.S.
embassy. "If Iran wants to fight, that will be the
official end of Iran. Never threaten the United States again!"
Trump said in a tweet without elaborating.
Blunt, ignorant and confused are some of the criticisms
voiced by allies on U.S. policy toward Iran. But none sees the Trump
administration preparing for war. Governments worldwide are alarmed
at the tension between Washington and Tehran, concerned about the
risk of escalation or military miscalculation and frustrated at a
lack of communication about U.S. goals. What keeps the anxiety in
check from Berlin to Moscow to Ankara is President Donald Trump's
oft-stated aversion to starting fresh wars.
Sometimes it's important to write a column about
something you're pretty sure isn't going to happen. In this case,
that thing is war with Iran, which Donald Trump clearly doesn't want,
and which he will therefore probably avoid. But since the president's
current foreign policy is making war more likely, it's still worth
saying clearly that it would be a terrible idea for the
United States to enter into a serious armed conflict with the Islamic
Republic of Iran.
President Donald Trump appears to be paving
the way for negotiations with Iran as tensions in the
Middle East steadily escalate and send oil prices higher this week.
However, energy industry watchers and experts in the region
believe the Iranian leadership in Tehran is not ready for talks. They
say the Islamic Republic will first seek to strengthen its hand after
the Trump administration tightened sanctions on the
nation's lifeblood, oil exports, and designated the Iranian
Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist group.
Former CIA Director David Petraeus
warned Iran that it is going to have to be "very
careful" as tensions between the Middle Eastern
nation and the United States continue to ratchet up. "They
are going to have to make a decision. Either they are going to have
to really tighten their belt and keep tightening, because it's going
to get worse," Petraeus said on ABC's "This Week."
White House national security adviser John
Bolton is becoming a flashpoint in the internal Republican
debate over how to respond to Iran amid a fast-developing military
buildup in the Middle East that has stoked war fears on Capitol Hill.
Bolton's hawkish stance on the Islamic republic is stirring up
concerns among GOP lawmakers who are scrambling to make sense of
confusing signals coming from the Trump administration.
MILITARY/INTELLIGENCE MATTERS & PROXY WARS
Adam Schiff, the combative chairman of the House
Intelligence Committee, didn't contest the recent intelligence that
the Trump administration said was behind its newly aggressive posture
toward Iran. Nor did he accuse the White House of misrepresenting it.
Instead he returned to a critique that Democrats have made of Trump's
hawkish Iran policy from the start: that it will lead America down
the path of an ill-planned confrontation.
GULF STATES, YEMEN, & IRAN
Issham Beshir is two years old. She's twig-thin and so
badly malnourished she's yet to take her first steps. The world is
trying to help her and nearly 16 million more hungry people in Yemen
by sending food. But, according to UN reports and CNN reporting on
the ground, some of that food is being stolen by Iranian-backed
Houthi rebels, on a scale far greater than has been reported before.
Iran was "highly likely" behind the attacks on
the four tankers off the coast of the United Arab Emirates, according
to the official assessment by the US. The US has evidence - photos of
the damage and forensics - linking Iran or its proxies to the
attacks, reported NBC News. Explosive charges were used to
damage the four ships, two from Saudi Arabia and one each from the
UAE and Norway, off the coast of Fujairah emirate in the UAE on
Sunday.
IRAQ & IRAN
It's hard to tell what's really on the minds
of Iranian and US officials in the flurry of words they've
exchanged this week, but Baghdad has been perfectly clear about
any potential confrontation between the two: not in my
backyard. Amid prolonged dares and
double-dares between Tehran and Washington - punctuated
with claims from both sides that they don't want a war - Iraq
has made it known it won't become a proxy battleground. The issue
becomes a bit murky, however, when factoring in Iraq's pro-Iranian armed
military factions.
CYBERWARFARE
Bahraini authorities said Monday they have tracked a
network of destabilising electronic accounts operated in several
countries including Iran and Qatar amid rising tensions in the Gulf
over Iranian practices. The sites are aimed at inciting sedition, threatening
social peace and destabilising security in Bahrain, the kingdom's
head of the economic and electronic security department said.
OTHER FOREIGN AFFAIRS
U.S.-allied Bahrain warned its citizens on Saturday
against travel to Iraq and Iran and asked those already there to
return "immediately" for their safety, state news agency
BNA said. The Bahrain foreign ministry cited, "unstable
regional circumstances, dangerous developments and potential
threats," according to BNA. The warning comes amid
simmering tensions between the United States and Iran.
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