Monday, July 29, 2019

Iran Links British Seizure Of Oil Tanker To Ailing Nuclear Deal



   EYE ON IRAN
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Iran for the first time tied the British seizure of an Iranian oil tanker to the ailing nuclear deal on Sunday, calling it illegal and a violation of the agreement. By making that link, Iran appeared to be trying to press the Europeans to make good on the promised financial benefits of the 2015 agreement known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or J.C.P.O.A. "Since Iran is entitled to export its oil according to the J.C.P.O.A., any impediment in the way of Iran's export of oil is actually against the J.C.P.O.A.," Iran's deputy foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said after emergency talks in Vienna with other parties to the nuclear deal.


U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says Iran has rejected his offer made July 25 to go to Tehran to address the Iranian people. In a wide-ranging interview with Bloomberg Television, Pompeo had said, "I'd like a chance to go [to Tehran], not do propaganda but speak the truth to the Iranian people about what it is their leadership has done and how it has harmed Iran". He added that Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif is often able to communicate with the American people during trips to New York to visit the United Nations.
  

The head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization, Ali Akbar Salehi, told lawmakers on Sunday that Iran will restart activities at the Arak heavy water nuclear reactor, the ISNA news agency reported. ISNA cited a member of parliament who attended the meeting. Heavy water can be employed in reactors to produce plutonium, a fuel used in nuclear warheads. Iran stopped complying in May with some commitments in the 2015 nuclear deal that was agreed with global powers, after the United States unilaterally withdrew from the accord in 2018 and re-introduced sanctions on Tehran.

NUCLEAR DEAL & NUCLEAR PROGRAM


Diplomats from Iran and five world powers recommitted Sunday to salvaging a major nuclear deal amid mounting tensions between the West and Tehran since the U.S. withdrew from the accord and reimposed sanctions. Representatives of Iran, Germany, France, Britain, China, Russia and the European Union met in Vienna to discuss the 2015 agreement that restricts the Iranian nuclear program. "The atmosphere was constructive, and the discussions were good," Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi told reporters after the meeting ended.


Iran's deputy foreign minister said Sunday that an emergency meeting in Vienna between Tehran and its partners in the Iran nuclear deal had yielded positive developments but had not "resolved everything." "The atmosphere was constructive, and the discussions were good," Abbas Araghchi told reporters. Araghchi said he and his partners from Germany, France, Britain, China, Russia and the European Union remain determined to save the deal.
  

Parties to Iran's 2015 nuclear deal are meeting in Vienna on Sunday for emergency talks called in response to an escalation in tensions between Iran and the West that included confrontations at sea and Tehran's breaches of the accord. Below are some of the key restrictions imposed by the nuclear deal, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.


The remaining signatories to the Iran nuclear deal will meet in Vienna on Sunday to try again to find a way of saving the accord amid mounting tensions between Tehran and Washington. The U.S. pulled out of the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) or the nuclear agreement with Iran in May 2018, leaving the fate of the accord in question and precipitating tensions following the reimposition of sanctions by Washington.


The head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) Ali Akbar Salehi has disclosed that Tehran has enriched 24 tons of uranium after signing the 2015 nuclear deal with world powers. Earlier, it was said that Iran had limited its stock of enriched uranium to 300 kilograms since 2015 nuclear agreement. Salehi made the revelation during Sunday's session of the "independent conservative" faction of the Parliament to discuss the latest developments regarding the nuclear accord known as JCPOA.

SANCTIONS, BUSINESS RISKS, & OTHER ECONOMIC NEWS  


Two Iranian ships stranded off Brazil's coast are refueled and ready to sail home with a cargo of corn after a court order forced the state-controlled oil company to set aside concern about the risk of U.S. sanctions. The ships were held up when Petroleo Brasileiro SA refused to provide fuel in early June, prompting Iranian threats to halt imports. The shipment is valued at 100 million reais ($26 million), according to an email from Kincaid Mendes Vianna, a law firm for Eleva, the Brazilian company that hired the vessels.


China's crude oil imports from Iran sank almost 60% in June from a year earlier, Chinese customs data showed on Saturday, following the end of a waiver on U.S. sanctions at the start of May. Crude shipment from Iran were 855,638 tonnes last month, or 208,205 barrels per day (bpd), data from the General Administration of Customs showed. That compared with 254,016 bpd in May. According to Refinitiv Oil Research assessments, a total of 670,000 tonnes, or about 163,000 bpd, of Iranian crude oil was discharged in June at Tianjin in north China and Jinzhou in the northeast.

MISSILE PROGRAM


Iran said on Saturday missile tests were part of its defensive needs and were not directed against any country, after Washington said Tehran had test-fired a medium-range missile. A U.S. defence official said Iran tested what appeared to be a medium-range ballistic missile on Wednesday that travelled about 1,000 km (620 miles), adding that the test did not pose a threat to shipping or U.S. personnel in the region.

PROTESTS & HUMAN RIGHTS


Iranians sending images to a U.S.-based activist over an anti-headscarf campaign could face up to 10 years in prison. The activist, Masih Alinejad, founded the "White Wednesdays" campaign in Iran to encourage women to post photographs of themselves without headscarves online as a way of opposing the compulsory hijab. The semi-official Fars news agency on Monday quoted the head of the Tehran Revolutionary Court, Mousa Ghazanfarabadi, as saying that "those who film themselves or others while removing the hijab and send photos to this woman ... will be sentenced to between one and 10 years in prison."


Hundreds of retired teachers in Iran held rallies on Sunday, July 28, in front of the Islamic Republic's Majles (parliament) and offices of Plan and Budget Organization (PBO), to demand adjustment pays. The enraged pensioners chanted, "Teachers Die, But Will Never Accept Abjection!", "We Will Not Step Back, Until Receiving Our Bonuses!" Earlier on Saturday, the teachers had also held similar rallies outside the PBO, and the Ministry of Education.

U.S.-IRAN RELATIONS & NEGOTIATIONS


Iran doesn't think the U.S. is seeking talks or an agreement with the Islamic republic, Abbas Mousavi, a spokesman for the Foreign Ministry in Tehran, said days after Secretary of State Michael Pompeo expressed willingness to travel to Tehran to address the Iranian people. This is a "defensive move" by American officials in response to Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif's recent trip to New York where he addressed the U.S. public, Mousavi said in comments aired live on state-run Press TV news channel. 


Talks between Iran and the United States would be possible if based on an agenda that could lead to tangible results, but Washington is not seeking dialogue, Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi said on Monday. U.S. President Donald Trump has said he would be willing to hold talks with the Islamic Republic. "Dialogue and negotiation can be held when we have a certain agenda in place and when we could get some tangible and practical results out of it," Mousavi said in a news conference broadcast live on Press TV.


Surprising new signs are emerging that President Donald Trump's controversial "maximum pressure' campaign on Iran could set the table for new negotiations toward a better agreement. To get there, however, Trump will have to navigate the greatest perils in U.S.-Iranian relations in recent memory - something he has done so far with a military restraint that has confounded his critics and gained him praise for "prudence " even from Iran's foreign minister.
  
MILITARY/INTELLIGENCE MATTERS & PROXY WARS


Iran's Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) said they lost one soldier and killed a number of "anti-revolutionaries" in clashes Friday near the western border with Iraq. A Guards border patrol "encountered and fought with an anti-revolutionary group in Sarvabad," in Kurdistan province, the semi-official Fars news agency reported. The report said an unspecified number of the "anti-revolutionaries were killed and wounded and a considerable amount of their weapons and ammunition was destroyed".

IRANIAN INTERNAL DEVELOPMENTS


Iran's President Hassan Rouhani has voiced his opposition to having to respond to Parliament's questions about his performance in a letter to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, Iran's state TV reported on Sunday July 28. The Speaker of Iran's Parliament (Majles) has quoted Rouhani as saying in the letter that presenting annual reports to the Majles by his administration is against the law. Rouhani pointed out that it is only the internal regulations of the Majles, and not the Constitution that calls for the report.

IRANIAN REGIONAL AGGRESSION


Iran accused its neighbors of making talks impossible through their "hasty and arrogant moves," during a meeting between Tehran's top security official and Oman's chief diplomat on Saturday amid a tanker crisis. Oman, a past mediator between Iran and its foes, sent its minister in charge of foreign affairs, Yusuf bin Alawi, to the Islamic republic amid amplified tensions between Iran and the United States and its allies, including in the Gulf.

GULF STATES, YEMEN, & IRAN


The foreign minister of Oman has arrived in Tehran for talks with Iranian officials, in a visit that comes amid mounting tensions in the Gulf between the United States and Iran. Iran's state television said on Saturday that Yusuf bin Alawi would meet his Iranian counterpart, Mohammad Javad Zarif, and other officials to discuss the latest developments in the region.


Yemen's Iran-aligned Houthi group said it launched on Sunday a drone attack on Saudi Arabia's Abha airport, Houthis' Al- Masirah TV reported citing the group's military spokesman. There was no immediate confirmation from Saudi authorities.


The Houthi rebels' shelling in Yemen's war-torn port city of Hodeidah on Sunday killed a man and injured four children, a government security source and a medic said. The shelling targeted a dairy factory and government military positions in the area of Kilo 16, as well as residential quarters in Jiraybah area, they said. The killed man, identified as Mohammed Wanis, was a worker of the dairy factory in Kilo 16, while the four children were wounded by the shelling in Jiraybah area. Both areas are on the southern outskirts of the port city.

OTHER FOREIGN AFFAIRS    


Britain's seizure of an Iranian oil tanker off Gibraltar was illegal and will be detrimental for Britain, Iran's President Hassan Rouhani said on Sunday, according to the official presidency website.  British forces captured an Iranian oil tanker in early July near Gibraltar, accused of violating sanctions on Syria. On July 19, Iranian commandos seized a British-flagged tanker in the Strait of Hormuz, the world's most important waterway for oil shipments. 


Iran rebuffed European efforts to defuse tensions in the Persian Gulf, calling military escorts to secure shipping a provocation and rejecting U.K. terms for resolving a crisis over seized tankers. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani had hinted last week that a tanker exchange would lower the pressure with the U.K. after Iran seized the Swedish-owned, British-flagged Stena Impero tanker earlier this month in the Persian Gulf. The move was widely viewed as retaliation for the detention of Iranian tanker Grace 1 in the British overseas territory of Gibraltar.


European countries forming a naval coalition for the Gulf would send a hostile message, Iranian government spokesman Ali Rabiei said on Sunday, according to the semi-official Fars news agency.  France, Italy and Denmark gave initial support for a British plan for a European-led naval mission to ensure safe shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, proposed after Iran's seizure of a British-flagged tanker, three senior EU diplomats said last week.


A second British warship arrived in the Persian Gulf as Iran has called Britain's proposal for a European-led maritime mission to escort tankers in the area "provocative." Britain's Defense Ministry said that the HMS Duncan destroyer joined the HMS Montrose frigate to "support the safe passage of British-flagged ships" through the Strait of Hormuz that bisects the Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman.


Britain's refusal to go along with the Trump administration's fiery approach to recent Iranian aggression has experts and lawmakers concerned about the state of the "special relationship" between two historically close allies.  The United Kingdom on Monday shunned the United States' call for a multi-nation effort to protect non-Iranian ships in the Persian Gulf, despite the fact that the country had its own oil tanker seized in the region.






Eye on Iran is a periodic news summary from United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) a program of the American Coalition Against Nuclear Iran, Inc., a tax-exempt organization under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. Eye on Iran is not intended as a comprehensive media clips summary but rather a selection of media elements with discreet analysis in a PDA friendly format. For more information please email press@uani.com.

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