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TOP NEWS
The French government said on Tuesday that a decision to
seize assets belonging to two Iranians and the Iranian intelligence
services was linked to a foiled attack against an Iranian opposition
group rally near Paris on June 30. "An attempted attack in
Villepinte was foiled on June 30. An incident of such gravity on our
national territory could not go unpunished," said a joint
statement issued by the French foreign ministry, the French interior
ministry and the French economy ministry.
China is joining Russia and EU to set up a "special
payments system" and save the Iranian nuclear deal. That's
according to a Globaltimes editorial, which sees such a payment as
reducing the reliance of oil trade on the US dollar. But using a payment
system other than the dollar wouldn't work (e.g., the yuan).
A 12-mile stretch of the Iraq-Syria border has become
the epicentre of a battle between Iran and the United States for
control of the Middle East. Militias backed by Iran have taken
control of territory on the Iraqi side of the frontier and just over
the border in Syria stands a military base containing thousands of
Shia fighters loyal to Tehran, according to analysts.
NUCLEAR DEAL & NUCLEAR PROGRAM
Iranian state-run media claimed Monday that the Tehran
warehouse described by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during his
speech to the UN last week as a "secret atomic warehouse"
is actually a recycling facility for scrap metal. A Tasnim News
reporter sent to investigate Netanyahu's allegation was told by a
worker from inside the facility that it was not a military site, and
the Israeli leader was "a stupid person" for believing it
was a nuclear warehouse.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday met with
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and asked that he request the
International Atomic Energy Agency inspect what he said were
previously unknown Iranian nuclear sites, one of whose existence he
revealed in a speech to the UN General Assembly.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu intended to reveal a
third batch of intelligence material in his UN speech on Thursday, in
which he exposed what he said was a "secret atomic
warehouse" in Tehran and revealed details of Hezbollah missile
factories in Beirut, a senior Israeli official said at the weekend.
The U.N. nuclear watchdog has said its independence is
paramount and it does not take intelligence presented to it at face
value, in an apparent response to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu's description of a "secret atomic warehouse" in
Iran. "The agency sends inspectors to sites and locations only
when needed. The agency uses all safeguards relevant to information
available to it but it does not take any information at face value,"
International Atomic Energy Agency chief Yukiya Amano said in a
statement on Tuesday.
SANCTIONS, BUSINESS RISKS, & OTHER ECONOMIC NEWS
OPEC delivered only a limited increase in oil production
in September, a Reuters survey has found, as a cut in Iranian
shipments due to U.S. sanctions offset higher output in Libya, Saudi
Arabia and Angola. The 15-member Organization of the Petroleum
Exporting Countries pumped 32.85 million barrels per day in
September, the survey on Monday found, up 90,000 bpd from August's
revised level and the highest this year.
Iran has no plans to cut oil production, the head of the
state-run National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC), Ali Kardor, said on
Monday, according to the Tasnim news agency. The United States aims
to reduce Tehran's oil revenue to zero in an effort to force Iran's
leadership to change its behavior in the region. U.S. officials have
said new sanctions will be imposed on Iran's oil sector from Nov. 4.
In the great game that is the international oil
industry, you can't tell the players without a scorecard. There is
Iran (the world's largest state sponsor of terror) , its mullahs
joined with Russia (international dispenser of exotic poisons) , in
an alliance to preserve the murderous Assad regime in Syria.
China's Sinopec Corp is halving loadings of crude oil
from Iran this month, as the state refiner comes under intense
pressure from Washington to comply with a U.S. ban on Iranian oil
from November, said people with knowledge of the matter.
Militant attacks on security forces and unrest in Iran's
main oil hub threaten the country's economic engine as the regime
struggles to cope with tighter U.S. sanctions, a falling currency and
growing regional tensions. On Saturday, gunmen killed more than 25
people at a military parade of the elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard
Corps in the southwestern province of Khuzestan.
Iran is developing a range of new financial products,
from Islamic bonds to warrants and insurance-linked securities, in an
effort to give local firms more funding options as sanctions put
pressure on the economy. The Iranian rial has plunged 70 percent
against the U.S. dollar in the free market this year, inflation has
risen and foreign trade has been disrupted after Washington
repudiated an agreement on Tehran's nuclear program and reimposed
sanctions.
Iran's currency, the rial, is rallying after weeks of
depreciation following President Donald Trump's decision to withdraw
America from Tehran's nuclear deal with world powers. Money exchange
shops in Tehran on Tuesday were offering 135,000 rials for one U.S.
dollar. Only the day before, the rial was selling at 170,000 to $1.
MISSILE PROGRAM
Iran on Monday fired a barrage of ballistic missiles at
what it called terrorist militiants in Syria, but Kurds in Iran's
Northwest reported soon after that they had been struck by one of the
missiles. In response, Iranian semi-official media offered a computer
animation of a counterfactual excuse: The explosion near the launch
site, they said, amounted to rocket boosters landing as normal,
rather than an embarrassing blunder.
TERRORISM & EXTREMISM
Western powers "do not have proof" that Iran
supports terrorism, according to Russia's top diplomat. "We do
not have proof that, for example, Iran is a state that sponsors
terrorism," Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told
reporters at the United Nations General Assembly.
U.S.-IRAN RELATIONS & NEGOTIATIONS
The Trump administration pressed ahead Friday with plans
to create an "Arab NATO" that would unite U.S. partners in
the Middle East in an anti-Iran alliance, but Qatar said the crisis
among Gulf countries must be solved first. Secretary of State Mike
Pompeo met in New York with foreign ministers from Bahrain, Egypt,
Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab
Emirates to advance the project.
The U.S. military preparedness for a possible
confrontation in the Persian Gulf is lagging behind the Trump
administration's increasingly harsh rhetoric towards the Iranian
regime, military experts say. Military officials told The Wall Street
Journal that the U.S. military haven't had a U.S. aircraft carrier in
the Persian Gulf since March, which is the longest period in the two
decades. The U.S. military normally maintained presence in the region
over the years.
The Trump administration is drawing more attention to
concerns about human rights in Iran as part of its campaign to
pressure Tehran into a new deal regarding its perceived malign
activities. Senior State Department officials highlighted those
concerns in a Friday news briefing devoted to Iran's human rights
record on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in New York.
The United States has criticized an Iranian missile
attack on purported militant targets in eastern Syria, calling it
"reckless, unsafe and escalatory." In a statement sent to
VOA on Monday, Pentagon spokesman Cmdr. Sean Robertson said Iran took
no measures to notify other military powers operating in Syria of
Monday's predawn missile strike.
IRANIAN INTERNAL DEVELOPMENTS
At least 42 people have died after drinking contaminated
bootleg alcohol in Iran, a government spokesman said. Health ministry
spokesman Iraj Harirchi said 16 people had gone blind and 170 had
undergone dialysis after trying the tainted drink. In the past three
weeks, at least 460 people across five provinces have been
hospitalised, with the youngest victim a 19-year-old woman.
In a conversation caught on camera, a woman in Ahvaz,
the capital of Iran's southwestern Khuzestan Province, didn't hold
back as Labor Minister Ali Rabiei stood listening.
"Khuzestan's [people] have nothing. We only had security,
which is gone now. Be sure that those young men who committed [the
attack] did it because they were unemployed.... Go to [neighborhoods]
in Ahvaz and see for yourself the misery people are living in,"
the woman said in a video which went viral on social media.
RUSSIA, SYRIA, ISRAEL, HEZBOLLAH, LEBANON & IRAN
A quarrel over leadership led to fighting between rival
Houthi factions in northwest Yemen on Saturday, reportedly leaving
several dozen fighters dead. The clashes continued into Sunday in the
Magash district of Sada city, a stronghold of the rebel group which
has controlled large parts of Yemen since 2014, according to a
spokesman in the media centre of the Yemeni army in Sada governorate,
where some pockets have been retaken by pro-government forces.
Iranian forces launched ballistic missiles targeting
Syrian militants early Monday, an attack that potentially put
coalition forces at risk, a Pentagon official said. A ballistic
missile fired by Iranian forces hit an area where U.S. troops and
Syrian Democratic Forces are clearing remnants of Islamic State
forces out of the Middle Euphrates River Valley.
In the early hours of Monday, October 1, according to
the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Iran launched six
surface-to-surface missiles across Iraq at "takfiri"
(apostate) targets in Syria east of the Euphrates River, in the Abu
Kamal and Hajin regions of Deir al-Zour governorate. These were
followed up by aerial strikes using seven Saegheh "stealth"
armed drones aimed at "terrorist positions and support
infrastructure."
Declaring that victory over "terrorism" is
almost at hand after more than seven years of civil war, Syria's
foreign minister took to the world stage Saturday and demanded that
"occupation" forces from the U.S., France and Turkey leave
the country immediately.
Lebanon's foreign minister said on Monday Israel was
trying to "justify another aggression" by falsely alleging
there are missile sites near Beirut airport belonging to Iran-backed
Hezbollah. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, speaking at the
United Nations last week, identified three locations near the airport
where he said the Shi'ite group Hezbollah was converting
"inaccurate projectiles" into precision-guided missiles.
Lebanon rejected Israeli claims that Hezbollah
maintained missile facilities near Beirut's airport, warning of
regional repercussions if its forces decided to act. Foreign Minister
Gebran Bassil gathered ambassadors from Arab nations and outside the
region to refute the charge by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu, saying his "lies carry the seeds of a threat."
Hezbollah has not set up any missile sites near Beirut's
airport, Lebanon's Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil said, in response
to claims by Israel at the UN General Assembly. The minister, whose
Christian Free Patriotic Movement has been a political ally of
Hezbollah since 2006, led dozens of ambassadors on a tour of the area
close to Beirut-Rafic Hariri International Airport in a bid to
discredit Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's claims.
As Lebanon's foreign minister gathered ambassadors
Monday near Beirut international airport in a bid to disprove Israeli
accusations that the Hezbollah terrorist movement has secret missile
facilities there, the Israeli army derided what it indicated was a
cover up.
Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel announced on Saturday
in a podcast video that the Federal Republic and Israel share a
unique relationship, but she remained silent about her country's
support for the Iran nuclear deal and trade with the regime that
calls for the Jewish state's destruction.
It is finally coming to an end. Set up in 2009
principally to investigate and try the perpetrators of the 2005
bombing in Beirut that resulted in the killing of the former Lebanese
Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, the UN Special Tribunal for Lebanon is
preparing, at last, to issue its decision. The trial itself didn't
actually get underway until 2014.
OTHER FOREIGN AFFAIRS
France seized the financial assets of two Iranian
individuals as well as some belonging to Iran's intelligence
services, according to the government journal published on Tuesday.
France said a foiled plot to bomb an exiled Iranian opposition
group's rally outside Paris on June 30 is linked to the asset
freezing.
As the Trump administration takes an increasingly tough
stance against Iran, a country it calls the world's number one
state-sponsor of terrorism, one small government agency is working
strategically to untangle other countries who have developed a deep
dependency on Tehran - namely Iraq.
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