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The U.S. special representative for Iran
is traveling to the United Nations to update permanent members of the
Security Council on U.S. policy toward Iran, as Washington looks to step
up pressure on Tehran. The U.S. State Department said in a statement that
Brian Hook would be in New York on April 30 and May 1 for the meetings.
"He will underscore the importance of holding Iran accountable for
its defiance of UN Security Council resolutions on the development and
testing of ballistic missiles," the statement said.
Iran's economy is on the
brink thanks to the Trump administration's sanctions, according
to the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Iran is in a deep
recession, with inflation at roughly 40 percent, the organization said,
marking the highest such level since 1980. The crisis is intensifying a
chasm between President Hassan Rouhani's allies and those who oppose
diplomatic exchanges with the U.S. government, the Financial Times
noted.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani signed a
bill into law on Tuesday declaring all U.S. forces in the Middle East
terrorists and calling the U.S. government a sponsor of terrorism. The
bill was passed by parliament last week in retaliation for President
Donald Trump's decision this month to designate Iran's elite
Revolutionary Guards a foreign terrorist organization.
NUCLEAR DEAL & NUCLEAR PROGRAM
The 2015 nuclear deal is close to
collapse after the U.S. tightened oil sanctions against Iran again last
week, Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has said. "We
have given diplomacy enough time but enough is enough," the
minister, who was one of the architects of the deal, wrote in the
Wednesday edition of the Etemad newspaper. He said the latest U.S.
sanctions and the powerlessness of the other signatories to the deal to
do anything about them had left Iran feeling hopeless.
SANCTIONS, BUSINESS RISKS, & OTHER
ECONOMIC NEWS
U.S. President Donald Trump's unexpected
decision to ban all Iranian oil purchases after May 1 - ending exemptions
for eight nations - came after hawkish economic and security advisors
allayed the president's fears of an oil price hike, according to three
sources familiar with the internal debate. The unprecedented move to
fully sever Tehran's financial lifeline - finalized just days before the
April 22 announcement - underscores the strong influence of hard-liners
within Trump's inner circle.
Iran's supreme leader, senior military
commanders, top diplomat and the president have all in recent days
attacked US sanctions imposed on Tehran. Battle-ready warships are
patrolling the high-traffic Strait of Hormuz, with Iranian officials
saying if they can't sell oil through the strait, no one will. Al
Jazeera's Zein Basravi reports from the Strait of Hormuz near Iran's
southern coast.
In the 40 years of Iran's Islamic
Republic, 2019 is shaping up to be among the worst for an economy that's
weathered wars, sanctions and oil slumps. Even before the U.S. decided to
tighten oil sanctions against Iran last week, the rial currency had lost two-thirds
of its value against the dollar, and the International Monetary Fund
expected gross domestic product to shrink 6 percent.
Kuwait has announced its concern
following Iran's threat to close the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow waterway
that links the Persian Gulf with the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman. It
is the main artery for the transport of oil from the Middle East. Adm.
Alireza Tenksiri, commander of the naval forces of Iran's Islamic
Revolutionary Guard Corps, stated last week that Iran would close the
waterway to all traffic if Tehran were prevented from using it.
Late last month, the Trump administration
kicked its "maximum pressure" campaign against Iran into high
gear when it announced that it would no longer provide waivers to
countries like China, India and Japan to continue buying Iranian oil
without facing sanctions. These countries and their respective companies
now face the prospect of being excluded from the American market if they
don't immediately stop buying Iranian crude.
PROTESTS & HUMAN RIGHTS
Iran secretly executed two teenagers last
week, according to rights group Amnesty International, which criticized
the country for its "utter disdain for international law and the
rights of children." The 17-year-old cousins, Mehdi Sohrabifar and
Amin Sedaghat, were executed on April 25 at a prison in the southern city
of Shiraz "following an unfair trial," Amnesty said in a
statement on Monday. The teens had been convicted on multiple rape
charges.
The defense lawyer of two
Iranian-American dual nationals sentenced to jail in Iran for
"collaboration with a belligerent state," says he is going to
demand their "conditional release". The announcement by the
lawyer comes less than a week after Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad
Javad Zarif put forward the idea of a prisoners swap between Iran and the
United States, and one day after Tehran's prosecutor allegedly
"resigned."
U.S.-IRAN RELATIONS & NEGOTIATIONS
Iran criticized a U.S. plan to designate
the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization, Iranian Foreign
Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said in Doha on Wednesday. "The U.S.
is not in position to (..) start naming others as terror organizations
and we reject by any attempt by the U.S. in this regard," he told
reporters on a sideline of a conference. "The U.S. is supporting the
biggest terrorist in the region, that is Israel."
Iran replaced the commander of its
powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) less than two weeks
after the United States designated it a "foreign terrorist
organization." Given the wider global agenda advanced by the
new IRGC commander, the replacement is a clear signal from Tehran that
bowing to Washington's pressure is not an option. On April 22, Supreme
Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei appointed Hossein Salami as the
IRGC's new chief, ending Mohammad Ali Jafari's tenure of over a decade.
MILITARY/INTELLIGENCE MATTERS & PROXY
WARS
On April 21, Iran's Islamic Revolutionary
Guard Corps (IRGC) got a new leader: Brig. Gen. Hossein Salami, who
replaces Maj. Gen. Mohammad Ali Jafari. The change of personnel was
unexpected; Jafari's tenure, which started in 2007, had just been
extended by three years in 2017. He will now preside over the Hazrat
Baqiatollah al-Azam Cultural and Social Headquarters, an office for
countering the so-called Western soft war against Iran.
IRANIAN INTERNAL DEVELOPMENTS
Massive crowds accompanied the April
29 funeral procession of Mostafa Ghasemi, a 46-year-old
cleric who was shot and killed in broad daylight in the western
Iranian city of Hamedan last week. Within 24 hours of the murder,
security forces killed the alleged assailant in a gun battle, leaving
behind unanswered questions as well as debates among Iranians. Responding
to the murder, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei ordered law
enforcement authorities to get tougher on the arms trade.
The state-run Iranian Students News
Agency ISNA reported an unusual rise in the price of bread in Iran on
Tuesday April 30. However, the chairman of the trade union for
traditional bakers has told the agency that the rise in the price of
bread is "illegal." Bread has always been the cheapest
essential food in Iran and usually heavily subsidised by the government
to make sure that everyone gets the minimum ingredient for a cheap meal.
GULF STATES, YEMEN & IRAN
Amnesty International called on Yemen's
Houthi movement, which controls the capital Sanaa, to free 10 journalists
held for nearly four years on what the rights group described as
trumped-up spying charges. The Iran-aligned Houthi group ousted the
internationally recognized Yemeni government from power in Sanaa in late
2014, prompting a Saudi-led Sunni Muslim military coalition to intervene
in the war in 2015 to try to restore the government of Abd-Rabbu Mansour
Hadi.
OTHER FOREIGN AFFAIRS
Iran has reacted to the flare up of
tensions and violence in Venezuela by reiterating its support for the
embattled president Nicholas Maduro, but also calling for negotiations
between the opposing sides. Earlier on Tuesday, opposition leader Juan
Guaido called for a "final phase" to push out Maduro and called
for the people and the military to support the constitution. Iran's
foreign ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi said, "Unrest and chaos in
no way can solve political differences in Venezuela".
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