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TOP STORIES
Iran has chosen to "step back and recalculate"
after making preparations for an apparent attack against U.S. forces
in the Persian Gulf region, but it is too early to conclude the
threat is gone, the top commander of American forces in the Mideast
said Thursday. In an interview with three reporters accompanying him
to the Gulf, Gen. Frank McKenzie said he remains concerned by Iran's
potential for aggression, and he would not rule out requesting additional
U.S. forces to bolster defenses against Iranian missiles or other
weapons.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is embarking on an effort to
mediate the dispute between the U.S. and Iran over Tehran's nuclear
program, a rare international diplomatic move by a Japanese leader.
Mr. Abe has built a rapport with President Trump over five
rounds of golf and dozens of conversations, and he recently met
Iran's foreign minister. The Japanese leader is hoping to leverage
those relationships on a trip to Tehran that Japanese officials said
was set for June 12 and 13.
Iran is failing as a nation after Washington imposed
powerful sanctions last year, U.S. President Donald Trump said on
Thursday, adding that he could turn that around very quickly in talks
with the leadership in Tehran. Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah
Ali Khamenei said on Tuesday that Tehran would not be
"deceived" by Trump's offer of negotiations and would not
give up its missile program.
NUCLEAR DEAL & NUCLEAR PROGRAM
Germany's foreign minister is traveling to Iran next
week to discuss the faltering nuclear accord between Tehran and
leading world powers, his office said Thursday. Heiko Maas' visit to
Iran will be part of a broader trip to the Middle East starting
Friday, with stops in Jordan and the United Arab Emirates, Foreign
Ministry spokeswoman Maria Adebahr said. Maas plans to meet his
Iranian counterpart Mohammed Javad Zarif on Monday to discuss
Tehran's role in the restive region and the 2015 nuclear accord.
Iran rejected French calls for wider international talks
over its nuclear and military ambitions, saying on Friday it would
only discuss its existing 2015 atomic pact with world powers, state
TV reported. French President Emmanuel Macron had said a day
earlier that Paris and Washington both wanted to stop Tehran getting
nuclear arms and new talks should focus on curbing its ballistic
missiles programme and on other issues.
U.S. President Donald Trump and his French counterpart
President Emmanuel Macron say they agree that new negotiations with
Iran are needed. Following their meeting in Caen, France on Thursday
June 6, Macron said that Paris and Washington share the same objectives
concerning Iran. This comes while Washington has withdrawn from the
nuclear deal with Iran, and France is one of the European trio with
UK and Germany that have remained in the 2015 deal...
Iran says European countries have failed to fulfil their
obligations in the nuclear deal with Tehran, also called
the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). The Iranian
Foreign Ministry has on Friday June 7 reacted to French President
Emmanuel Macron's remarks that were made on Thursday during
a meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump.
SANCTIONS, BUSINESS RISKS, & OTHER ECONOMIC
NEWS
Iranian and US officials are in the early stages of
negotiating an agreement to allow Tehran to sell limited quantities
of oil in exchange for goods, Iraqi sources have told Arab
News. Iraq will be the transit point for both the oil exports
and the import of goods, according to officials in Baghdad familiar
with the talks. Washington's stated policy is for sanctions to
reduce Iranian oil exports to zero, and US government sources denied
to Arab News that there was a deal to permit limited sales.
MISSILE PROGRAM
Following claims by Iran about why it deployed
missiles in early May that led the U.S. to deploy an aircraft
carrier strike group and B-52 bombers to the region, a U.S. defense
official has provided ABC News with new details about the
intelligence that drove the Trump administration's strong response.
U.S. intelligence assessed that, despite Iran's contention the move
was made for defensive purposes, there was no plausible reason to
load the cruise missiles onto small civilian boats except to have
them ready for offensive purposes...
Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that Iran has
fully complied with the world's atomic watchdog and its nuclear issue
is separate from its missile program. Speaking with heads of foreign
news agencies on June 6, Putin said, "From the standpoint of
control over its nuclear programs, Iran is today the most verifiable
country in the world. These are not hollow words; this is what the
IAEA management has been talking about.
TERRORISM & EXTREMISM
Iran has renewed its funding for
the Hamas movement through aid to the families of
Palestinians killed in resistance activities, numbering 1,700
families in the Gaza Strip, who stopped
receiving their monthly salaries in February because of
a decision by the Palestinian Authority (PA). A limited
amount of funds also went to families affiliated with the Islamic
Jihad movement. The Iranian Palestinian Martyrs
Foundation announced May 30 that it would provide financial aid
to 1,540 families in the Gaza Strip.
PROTESTS & HUMAN RIGHTS
In the summer of 2010, poet Hossein Jannati was basking
in the adulation of the supreme leader. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, a
self-professed poetry lover who also has the final say in politics
and religion in Iran, was publicly reciting Jannati's
"very fine" verses and using his powerful media team to
share that poetry. But less than a decade later, 39-year-old Jannati
has run afoul of Khamenei's censorship and security apparatus, reportedly
charged with "spreading propaganda" against the
establishment.
U.S.-IRAN RELATIONS & NEGOTIATIONS
President Trump and his aides have sent a dizzying,
seemingly conflicting set of messages to Iran in recent weeks,
ordering more troops to the Middle East and a carrier to the Arabian
Sea as military threats even while declaring that Washington is
seeking new negotiations, not war. European allies, still trying to
save a 2015 deal to restrain Iran's nuclear program that Mr.
Trump abandoned a year ago, are trying to make sense of the
administration's strategy.
For years, the liberal foreign policy establishment
presented Americans with a false choice on Iran: surrender or war.
President Trump has proved that binary to be a fantasy, squeezing and
deterring the Iranians without full-on confrontation. "When I
became president, Iran was a true state of terror," Trump said
in France this week. Now, "they are failing as a nation."
France and the United States share the common objective
of preventing Iran obtaining nuclear arms and new international
negotiations need to be opened for that goal to be met, President
Emmanuel Macron said on Thursday. Accusing Tehran of
"championing terrorism" across the Middle East, President
Donald Trump said Iran was failing as a nation following tough U.S.
sanctions, but that he was ready to talk to the Iranians.
The top commander of U.S. troops in the Middle East said
Thursday the threat from Iran remains "imminent," even as
he said U.S. deployments to the region caused Iran to "step back
and recalculate." "It is my assessment that this has caused
the Iranians to back up a little bit, but I'm not sure they are
strategically backing down," U.S. Central Command chief Gen.
Frank McKenzie told reporters in Baghdad, according to The
Associated Press.
IRANIAN INTERNAL DEVELOPMENTS
The state-run IRNA news agency is reporting that Iran's
minister of education has resigned to run for a seat in parliament in
February 2020. IRNA said Thursday that President Hassan Rouhani
approved Mohammad Bathaei's resignation. Earlier, the semi-official
Tasnim news agency reported that Bathaei handed in his resignation to
the president at a Cabinet meeting.
May 1 is recognized by many governments across the
world - including Iran - as International Workers' Day and is
celebrated in various forms. In Iran, May 2 is Teachers' Day.
Therefore, the beginning of May is of great importance for two large
groups of Iranian wage earners. Following previous trends, this
year witnessed demonstrations, both by teachers and by
workers. However, the makeup of the participants in these
demonstrations has subtly changed in recent years.
On June 4, 1988, in a highly dubious situation, Khamenei
was appointed as the absolute strongman of the nine-year-old
clergy-dominated Islamic Republic of Iran. During a closed session of
the body in charge of picking the successor to the founder of the
Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the Assembly of
Experts (AE), voted for Khamenei to take the helm.
RUSSIA, SYRIA, ISRAEL, HEZBOLLAH, LEBANON & IRAN
Iran's
Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has condemned the June 6
meeting between the United Nations Security Council (UNSC)
and Saudi Arabia, Norway and the United Arab Emirates
(UAE), regarding the attacks on three ships in the Persian Gulf
off the coast of the UAE. The UAE, Norway and Saudi Arabia,
whose oil tankers were slightly damaged in the May 12 attacks
off the port of Fujairah, will present their findings to
the UNSC.
There have been growing signs that Iran has infiltrated
Syrian society in the country's south and northeast as Russia has
continued to expand its influence in Syria's state institutions.
Syrian opposition sources in Turkey revealed on Thursday that recent
changes in the Syrian security and army apparatuses were the result
of Moscow's attempts to increase its influence within the two
institutions.
GULF STATES, YEMEN, & IRAN
The United Arab Emirates said Thursday that special
forces from a hostile nation likely carried out coordinated attacks
last month on four ships near the Strait of Hormuz, but stopped short
of directly accusing Iran. In a closed-door briefing to members of
the United Nations Security Council, Emirati officials presented
their preliminary conclusions that small boats dropped divers in the
waters near a busy U.A.E. port and that the divers then placed limpet
mines on the hulls of the four ships.
Qatar seeks to confirm its position towards Iran by
exploiting current circumstances. The discrepancy in the news
published by the two countries' official agencies remains, indicating
Doha's unwillingness to publicly demonstrate its position on Iran in
light of the international escalation against the republic. Qatar
fears this escalation would affect it in case it expresses its
position on Iran, especially after the re-imposition of US sanctions
on Tehran, the Warsaw Conference...
An imam and nine worshippers were killed following
Houthi militia attacks on a number of mosques for celebrating Eid
al-Fitr on Tuesday, after Saudi Arabia announced the sighting of the
Shawwal crescent, Yemen's information minister Moammar al-Eryani and
local media reported. According to al-Eryani, the militias stormed
mosques during Eid prayer in Houthi-controlled areas, including Sanaa
and Dhamar.
OTHER FOREIGN AFFAIRS
Mehr news agency in Iran reported on Thursday June 6
that Pakistan has released 6 Iranian sailors who were detained in
Pakistan. The agency reported that the sailors have returned to Iran.
The sailors were arrested on the charges of illegal entry into
Pakistan's waters. However, they claim they were in international
waters when they were arrested.
CYBERWARFARE
Dozens of social media accounts displaying suspicious
behavior have been uncovered in a new report that sees pro-Iranian
messaging promoted by profiles impersonating real people, as well as
journalists and activists who don't seem to exist. The accounts,
which promoted often aggressive messages and hashtags in support of
the Iranian government, have also taken on the personas of Republican
members of congress and ordinary Americans, according to
the latest investigative report from California-based
cybersecurity firm FireEye.
For years, countries have spoken in vague terms
about creating domestic internets that could be isolated from the
world at will. Now we're seeing some begin to execute that vision.
Last month Iran announced that its "national information
network"-essentially a domestic internet-is 80 percent complete.
Earlier this year, Russia launched a major initiative to
build a domestic Russian internet, purportedly to defend against
cybersecurity threats-though also a likely expansion on the Kremlin's
desire to control the flow of information within its borders.
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