Friday, August 2, 2019

Britain Tells Iran: There Will Be No Tanker Swap



   EYE ON IRAN
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Britain on Thursday ruled out exchanging an Iranian tanker detained by Gibraltar for a British-flagged tanker seized by Iran in the Gulf.  "We are not going to barter: if people or nations have detained UK-flagged illegally then the rule of law and rule of international law must be upheld," Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said while on a trip to Bangkok.


U.S. allies criticized Washington's decision to impose sanctions on Iran's foreign minister and vowed to keep their own diplomatic channels open, in the latest spat between the White House and European countries over how to deal with Tehran. Even as it has said it is willing to meet with Iran without preconditions, the Trump administration on Wednesday blacklisted Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif-freezing any assets he might have in the U.S. and potentially restricting his travel across U.S. borders.


Three women held in custody for "disrespecting compulsory hijab," or the so-called Islamic dress code, have been sentenced to a total of 55 years and six months. A "Revolutionary Court" in the capital city of Tehran delivered the verdict to Monireh Arabshahi, Yasamin Ariany, and Mojgan Keshavarz who are behind bars in the notorious Qarchak prison. Arabshahi and Ariany's legal counsel, Amir Raeesian, told Ensaf News website August 1 that if the verdict is upheld, his clients would be sentenced to ten years to serve, each.

NUCLEAR DEAL & NUCLEAR PROGRAM


U.S. President Donald Trump referring to his withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear agreement has said Iran wants to negotiate a deal "so badly". In a campaign rally speech in Cincinnati, Ohio, Trump said it was to protect American security that he withdrew from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or JCPOA, as the nuclear accord is known. "Iran is a much different country than 2 ½ years ago when I took over. It was all over... Now...Now they just want to negotiate a deal so badly", Trump told the audience attending the rally.


President Hassan Rouhani said on Thursday Iranian officials were ready for the worst as they tried to salvage their nuclear deal with world powers, but he was sure they would eventually prevail.  "We have a hard battle ahead, but we shall surely win," Rouhani said on live television.  Iran faces an uphill battle as U.S. sanctions reimposed after Washington withdrew from the 2015 nuclear accord take a toll on the economy.

SANCTIONS, BUSINESS RISKS, & OTHER ECONOMIC NEWS  


Iranian officials reacted with unified irritation on Thursday to the Trump administration's decision to sanction Iran's foreign minister, calling the move petty and provocative - further evidence, they said, of Washington's insincerity when it talks of peace. The foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, an American-educated diplomat who negotiated the 2015 nuclear deal that President Trump rejected last year, is one of Iran's best-known leaders and perhaps its most effective in making his country's case to the West. 
  

OPEC's output, already at the lowest since 2014, slid again last month as U.S. sanctions took a further toll on exports from Iran. Iran has been pumping the least crude since the mid-1980s as the U.S. imposes penalties on any country or company that deals with Tehran, part of President Donald Trump's campaign to pressure the country over its nuclear program. Iranian production dropped by 70,000 barrels a day last month to 2.21 million a day, according to a Bloomberg survey.


Iran's crude oil exports last month were either less than two supertankers' worth, or as much as one of the giant vessels every two days, depending on who has the most accurate data.  The huge discrepancy between industry experts and analysts on the true volume of Iran's exports shows just how difficult it has become to get accurate figures since the United States ended sanctions waivers for the country's top eight buyers.

PROTESTS & HUMAN RIGHTS


An "Islamic Revolutionary Court" in Tehran has upheld a thirty-year sentence against a prominent Iranian lawyer and defender of human rights. A member of the Iranian Bar association and defender of several political activists, Amirsalar Davoudi, was initially sentenced to thirty years last June. He refused to appeal, and the sentence was automatically upheld on Tuesday, July 30.


A Swedish-Iranian medical doctor and researcher who has been in jail in Iran since 2916 on charges of "espionage" with a death sentence, has been moved to an unidentified place, the inmate's wife told Radio Farda on Thursday August 1. Ahmad Reza Jalali (Djalali) was arrested by Iranian intelligence while visiting Iran to attend a scientific conference at the invitation of the University of Tehran in May 2016.

U.S.-IRAN RELATIONS & NEGOTIATIONS 


With tensions rising with Iran, the United States and Britain have been shopping for European support to bolster patrols in the Persian Gulf around the Strait of Hormuz, a vital passage way for global oil supplies. But so far the American requests for help to escort shipping in the Gulf have been met with silence or rejection, including a blunt "no" on Wednesday from Germany.

IRANIAN INTERNAL DEVELOPMENTS


The U.S. Department of Treasury's sanction against Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif came at the worst of times for him. The sanctions were announced on July 30, during a hard week when Zarif received a lukewarm reply from Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei to a letter in which he had complained about "insults and slander" levelled at him by the state TV. All along the previous month, a popular TV series aired on the network operating under the aegis of Khamenei portrayed him for "passivity and inaction," and not being firm enough against "infiltrators" and "spies."

RUSSIA, SYRIA, ISRAEL, HEZBOLLAH, LEBANON & IRAN


Masan Nahas, head of the Iran - Syria Chamber of Commerce says Iran has agreed to open three factories in Syria before Eid al-Adha (August 12). Two of the factories are going to produce skimmed milk and medicine for cancer, and the third, will be a car manufacturing factory, Nahas told Al-Vatan newspaper. The development coincides with the sharp decline in the output of Iranian factories as a result of U.S. sanctions that have made procuring raw material and spare parts impossible as observed by Iran's Industry Ministry.


Two airstrikes on Shiite militia targets took place in Iraq last month. No country or organization has taken responsibility, but there are strong reasons to think they were carried out by Israel. If so, these would be the Jewish state's first air raids on Iraq since the destruction of Saddam Hussein's Osirak nuclear reactor in 1981. The first of the raids, on July 19, targeted a militia base near the town of Amerli in Salah al-Din province, north of Baghdad. The second, three days later, struck Camp Ashraf, a former U.S. military base in Iraq's Diyala Province. Both the Ashraf and Amerli bases are now controlled by the Badr Organization, a Shiite militia cum political party, in apparent cooperation with Iran.

GULF STATES, YEMEN, & IRAN


Saudi Arabia's envoy to Yemen accused Iran of being behind an attack on a military parade in Aden on Thursday that the Iran-aligned Houthi movement has claimed responsibility for.  Envoy Mohammed bin Saeed Al Jabir, in a Twitter post, also blamed Iran for a separate attack on a police station in the southern port city, which no one has claimed yet. Yemen's Prime Minister Maeen Abdulmalik Saeed, in separate tweets, said the attacks were coordinated under "Iran's administration".






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.

United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) is a non-partisan, broad-based coalition that is united in a commitment to prevent Iran from fulfilling its ambition to become a regional super-power possessing nuclear weapons.  UANI is an issue-based coalition in which each coalition member will have its own interests as well as the collective goal of advancing an Iran free of nuclear weapons.

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