Eye on Iran: Iran Test-Fires Ballistic Missile, Latest after Nuclear Deal
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AP: "Iran test-fired another ballistic missile, the latest in a spate of tests following the implementation of the nuclear deal with world powers earlier this year, according to a report Monday by the country's semi-official Tasnim news agency. The test-firing of the missile was carried out two weeks ago, the agency quoted Gen. Ali Abdollahi, deputy chief of the armed forces' headquarters, as saying. Tasnim is close to the country's powerful Revolutionary Guard, which is in charge of Iranian ballistic missiles program. The agency said the missile has a range of 2,000 kilometers, or 1,250 miles - enough to reach much of the Middle East. Iranian military commanders have described them as a strategic asset and a strong deterrent, capable of hitting U.S. bases or Israel in the event of a strike on Iran. Iran insists the ballistic tests do not violate the nuclear deal and is likely seeking to demonstrate it is making progress with its ballistic program, despite scaling back on the nuclear program following the deal that led to the lifting of international sanction on Tehran. Abdollahi said the latest missile tested is very accurate, within 8 meters (yards). 'Eight meters means nothing, it means it's without any error,' he said. He did not elaborate. Last month, Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, chief of the Guard's airspace division, said a new, upgraded version of the Sajjil - a solid fuel high-speed missile with a range of 1,200 miles that was first tested in 2008 - would soon be ready. But it was not immediately clear if the missile Abdollahi referred to was the new Sajjil. In March, Iran test-fired two ballistic missiles - one emblazoned with the phrase 'Israel must be wiped out' in Hebrew - that set off an international outcry." http://t.uani.com/1Ok961s
Guardian: "A British-Iranian woman is being held in solitary confinement in Iran, away from her two-year-old daughter, after they attempted to return to the UK from a family visit. Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a 37-year-old project manager with the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the news agency's charitable arm, was arrested in early April in Tehran by members of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guard at Imam Khomeini airport, where she and her daughter, Gabriella, were about to board a flight back to the UK. The mother has since been separated from her daughter, who is British and does not have Iranian nationality; she has been placed in the care of Zaghari-Ratcliffe's family in Iran and her passport confiscated. Her father, Richard Ratcliffe, who has been advised not to travel to Iran, says he has not seen or held his daughter since she went holiday, or spoken to his wife since her arrest. 'It is now nearly two months since I saw or held my little girl. I cannot get her back: her passport is confiscated, I have no visa, and I have been advised not to try and go to Iran,' Ratcliffe said... 'It is hard to understand how a young mother and her small child on holiday could be considered an issue of national security. She has been over to visit her family regularly since making Britain her home,' her husband said in a statement. He has not been able to speak to his wife since the arrest. 'The cruelty of the situation seems both outrageous and arbitrary - that a young mum and baby can be treated as some national security threat is absurd, far outside any reality our family was familiar with,' he said. 'But it is also very real. In its isolation and pressures on her, it is a cruelty that is clearly deliberate and designed. And I have been powerless to stop it. After 36 days we have gone public, against the advice of the [Foreign Office], in the hope that with others and with public pressure that might change.'" http://t.uani.com/1No70Tl
Politico: "Jaws dropped in Washington's tight-knit foreign policy community when Ben Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser and one of President Barack Obama's closest aides, was quoted in the New York Times Magazine deriding the D.C. press corps and boasting of how he created an 'echo chamber' to market the administration's foreign policy. Marbled with the kind of overly candid observations that sank Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the wartime general who was quoted mocking Vice President Joe Biden in a 2010 Rolling Stone profile, the article, written by David Samuels, hit like a bomb. It portrayed Rhodes as a real-life Holden Caulfield, a prep-school brat with literary pretensions whose greatest work of fiction was crafting the White House's 'narrative' to defend the Iran nuclear deal from its critics. 'The way in which most Americans have heard the story of the Iran deal presented - that the Obama administration began seriously engaging with Iranian officials in 2013 in order to take advantage of a new political reality in Iran, which came about because of elections that brought moderates to power in that country - was largely manufactured for the purpose for selling the deal,' Samuels claimed in the article, which the agreement's conservative critics see as validation of what they have been saying all along. Rhodes pushed back with a post on Medium late Sunday evening, arguing that the administration had made no attempt to mislead, while offering an apology of sorts to any reporters he might have offended." http://t.uani.com/1T6W4bQ
Bloomberg Radio: "Former Senator Joe Lieberman, Chairman of UANI-United Against Nuclear Iran, discusses why his organization is warning companies that re-entering the Iranian market is risky business." http://t.uani.com/1Wkk5jT
Nuclear & Ballistic Missile Program
Press TV (Iran): "A group of Iranian lawmakers have called on President Hassan Rouhani to stop implementing a nuclear agreement if the US continues violating the accord and maintains its hostile policies. As many as 102 legislators on Monday urged President Rouhani to set a deadline for reconsidering Iran's voluntary implementation of nuclear-related measures under the agreement. They asked the government to resume all nuclear activities under the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in case the US refuses to return some $2 billion recently taken away from frozen Iranian assets. They accused the US administration of backpedaling on the June 2015 agreement, sabotaging the deal and blackmailing over the removal of sanctions. The lawmakers asked the government to respond in kind, with regard to the seizure of Iran's frozen assets by the US." http://t.uani.com/1ZwO0ms
Business Risk
Trend: "Iran is holding an international oil, gas, and petrochemical industrial exhibition in which a strong sense of hope prevails regarding the future possibility of Iran-world business boom as the country is now free of sanctions. However, a general inquiry from various companies which have set up booths around the fairground tells of one running theme: the banking problems that still hinder transfer of money to or from Iran. 'Banking is a real problem. We have many projects that are currently let down because Iranian companies have no financer,' Roberto Epicoco, manager of projects at the Italian Skem industrial consultation firm told Trend May 7. He pointed out that his company is overseeing many petrochemical projects in Iran, including a major one in the production of polyolefin, all of which are waiting for banking relations to be established. The financing problem continues despite sanctions in that many major Western banks still lack confidence to start business with Iran. Another major problem is that US primary sanctions which include a ban on the use of the dollar in business with Iran are still in place. 'Iran has one of the biggest markets all around the world. It needs recovery by foreign companies, but financing is needed to do that,' said the manager of a South Korean company, speaking on condition of anonymity. Trend also spoke with Shayan Mesri, the media relations officer of the Society of Iranian Petroleum Industry Equipment Manufacturers which is an umbrella organization with over 700 companies. 'Iranian companies have to deal with a lot of problems. There is the banking issue, but also insurance, tax, raw material procurement, customs laws, brain drain, liquidity. A chain of problems in fact,' he said." http://t.uani.com/1YhHLCT
Sanctions Enforcement
Reuters: "Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc said on Friday it recently learned that one of its foreign units made sales through a third-party distributor to customers in Iran, despite U.S. sanctions against that country. In its quarterly report filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Omaha, Nebraska-based Berkshire said it alerted federal authorities including the Department of the Treasury on Friday about the transactions in question. It said the customers 'include or may include parties that meet the definition of the Government of Iran.' The transactions took place from June 2013 to November 2015, and generated about $2,500 of profit on $45,000 of revenue, Berkshire said. Berkshire did not identify the unit involved or when it learned there might be a problem, but said the unit has stopped shipments to the Iran parties and does not intend to resume them. It also said it has hired outside lawyers to help it conduct an internal probe, and will cooperate with government agencies." http://t.uani.com/1ZwF8gy
Sanctions Relief
Sky News: "Some of Britain's biggest banks will hold talks this week with John Kerry, the US Secretary of State, as they wrestle with the implications of last year's move to lift economic sanctions against Iran. Sky News has learnt that the British Bankers' Association (BBA) has circulated a note to its members inviting them to send senior representatives to a meeting with Mr Kerry, who will be in London to attend an anti-corruption summit. The discussions will be held against an uncertain backdrop for UK banks, some of which are keen to do more business with Tehran but remain nervous about the consequences of deals which may be frowned upon by Washington. Mr Kerry has sought to allay concerns among foreign banks about forging new ties in Iran, saying last month that the US 'is not standing in the way, and will not stand in the way, of business that is permitted in Iran since the [nuclear deal] took effect'. 'There are now opportunities for foreign banks to do business with Iran. 'Unfortunately there seems to be some confusion among some foreign banks and we want to try and clarify that.' This week's meeting will take place just weeks after the banking industry's main lobbying group moved to establish a high-level panel to navigate the removal of western sanctions against Iran." http://t.uani.com/1VQozhI
Reuters: "German auto parts supplier Robert Bosch is opening an office in Tehran and plans to hire 50 staff by the end of this year because it sees growing potential for Iran's car market following the lifting of international sanctions. 'We are delighted to be back in Iran. In our quest to pick up speed quickly, we are benefiting first and foremost from re-establishing contact with former local partners and customers,' said Uwe Raschke, Bosch's management board member responsible for Europe, the Middle East and Africa. 'The country's potential is tremendous. We expect to see the Iranian economy grow by just under 5 percent this year. The medium term is also highly promising.' A number of foreign carmakers, including Renault, Daimler, Peugeot Citroen and Suzuki Motor Corp have announced plans to re-enter Iran or step up production there since the United States and Europe partially lifted sanctions in January, under a deal with Tehran to limit its nuclear program." http://t.uani.com/1s7iRvT
Tehran Times: "Renowned international companies from 38 countries across the globe are participating in the 21st International Oil, Gas, Refining and Petrochemical Exhibition of Iran (Iran Oil Show 2016), which is being held at Tehran Permanent International Fairground from May 5 to 8. On the sidelines of the oil show and in their meetings with Iranian senior officials, representatives of the foreign companies have sought avenues to have a share in Iranian lucrative oil sector via making joint venture and signing MOUs." http://t.uani.com/1q8Z2lL
Tasnim (Iran): "Dutch Economics Minister Henk Kamp who arrived in Tehran early on Sunday, is scheduled to hold talks with Iranian officials on promotion of mutual cooperation between the two nations. Heading a high-ranking economic delegation, Kamp is planned to sit down with Iran's Agriculture Minister Mahmoud Hojjati on Sunday to explore avenues for the expansion of bilateral ties between Tehran and Amsterdam. The two ministers will discuss contribution of the private sector in various fields of farming industry, joint investment in agricultural projects, and the transfer of technology. The Dutch minister will also pay an official visit to the 21st Iran International Oil, Gas, Refining and Petrochemical Exhibition underway at Tehran International Permanent Fairground. Several cooperation documents in the fields of oil and energy are expected to be signed between Iran and the Netherlands on the sidelines of the international event, which will come to an end on May 8. This is Kamp's second visit to Tehran after a lasting nuclear deal between Iran and the Group 5+1 (Russia, China, the US, Britain, France and Germany) in July 2015, which took effect on January 16." http://t.uani.com/1TxXsBS
Tehran Times: "A 36-member Malaysian commercial delegation will start its four-day trip to Iran next Monday to hold talks with Iranian companies and officials from Iran Chamber of Commerce, Industries, Mines and Agriculture (ICCIMA). The Malaysian delegation, as IRNA reported on Friday, is headed by Dzulkifli Mahmoud Chief Executive Officer of Malaysia External Trade Development Corporation (MATRADE) and is comprised of directors and representatives of 27 private sector companies. The visit comes a week after Malaysian foreign Minister Anifah Aman's journey to Tehran last Tuesday where he met President Hassan Rouhani, Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, and Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh. In his meeting with Zarif, Aman called for expansion of ties between the two countries in various spheres, especially economy." http://t.uani.com/24Gn6zF
Reuters: "Iran's oil and gas condensate exports have reached 2,450,000 barrels per day, Oil Minister Bijan Zanganeh was quoted as saying by ministry news agency SHANA on Saturday. He also said there was no obstacle to Iran regaining its lost share of the oil market after the lifting of international sanctions against Tehran in January." http://t.uani.com/1UMtJKs
Extremism
IranWire: "Iran's most powerful official, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, says the Holocaust is a myth. But Iranian Jews who lived in Europe during the Second World War knew better. They experienced first-hand the Nazis' genocidal ambitions and had to evade the Gestapo, or Nazi secret police. Some European Jews who fled the Nazis, meanwhile, traveled to Iran as refugees. This year, in recognition of Holocaust Remembrance Day, IranWire reports on little-known stories of Iran and the Holocaust." http://t.uani.com/24GvP1i
Syria Conflict
AP: "More than a dozen members of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards were killed this week during an attack by militants in northern Syria in what shows Tehran's deep involvement in the Syrian civil war. Iran has been one of President Bashar Assad's strongest backers and has, along with Lebanon's Iran-backed militant Hezbollah group, sent fighters to battle on the government's side. Iran's semi-official Fars news agency quoted Hossein Ali Rezaei, a spokesman for the Revolutionary Guard in the northern province of Mazandaran, as saying that 13 members were killed and 21 were wounded. Rezaei did not say when or where the incident occurred but another semi-official news agency, Tasnim, quoted a Revolutionary Guard spokesman in the same area as saying that they were killed when a coalition of insurgents, including al-Qaida's branch in Syria known as the Nusra Front, seized the northern village of Khan Touman from pro-government forces... The announcement in Tehran came as a senior Iranian official met with Assad in Damascus and vowed continued support for his government in the country's five-year-old civil war. Ali Akbar Velayati, an adviser to Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was quoted by Syria's state news agency SANA as saying that Tehran will always stand by Syria because it 'knows that terrorism does not target Syria but the whole people of the region.'" http://t.uani.com/1TxWRAc
Human Rights
Amnesty: "Iranian spiritual teacher and prisoner of conscience Mohammad Ali Taheri has been in pre-trial solitary confinement for five years, and has launched over a dozen hunger strikes in protest at his detention. His mother Ezat tells us of her long fight for his release.'" http://t.uani.com/1q8VLTH
AFP: "An Iranian director sentenced to 223 lashes for making a film that has never been officially shown in his homeland said Friday he just wanted to be left alone to work rather than 'be turned into a hero'. Keywan Karimi ran into trouble with Iran's powerful Revolutionary Guards over a documentary he shot called 'Writing on the City' about graffiti in the capital Tehran. He spent 15 days in solitary confinement in 2013 and was accused of making 'propaganda against the regime' and 'insulting religious values'. But since then, the young avant-garde filmmaker told AFP, several other 'ridiculous' charges have been added including drinking alcohol, having extramarital affairs and making pornography. 'All I was doing was filming what was being written on the walls of Tehran,' said the 33-year-old, who comes from the country's Kurdish minority. Karimi was sentenced to six years in prison in 2015 but after an international outcry in which acclaimed Iranian directors including Jafar Panahi and Mohsen Makhmalbaf rallied to his support, five years of the term was suspended. The threat of the 233 lashes has not however been lifted, and the prison authorities are now demanding that the punishment be carried out. 'I am not a political activist,' Karimi told AFP in a telephone interview. 'I am not being sent to prison because I oppose the regime but because I am a filmmaker.'" http://t.uani.com/24GhEwq
Foreign Affairs
Costa Rica Star: "Iran's top diplomat, Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif will begin a diplomatic tour of Latin American states on Sunday, May 8, according to Iran's Ministry of Foreign Affairs. 'The Iranian foreign minister's 6-day-long visit to Brazil, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Venezuela and Cuba will start on May 8,' Foreign Ministry Spokesman Hossein Jaberi Ansari said. During the trip, Zarif will discuss different ways to 'further expand bilateral political and economic relations' with Latin American states, and will be accompanied by an Iranian trade delegation, Ansari said. 'Tehran and [Latin American] nations have forged an alliance against the imperialist and colonialist powers and are striving hard to reinvigorate their relations with the other independent countries which pursue a line of policy independent from the U.S.,' Iran's semi-official FARS news agency said in reporting the upcoming visit." http://t.uani.com/1QWnNrl
Opinion & Analysis
Roger Cohen in NYT: "Perhaps nothing is more important to President Obama's foreign policy legacy than the success of the Iran nuclear deal. It bears his personal imprimatur and will stand or fall on whether it prevents Iran from producing a bomb over the 15-year term of the agreement and beyond. If an Iranian hard-liner returns to power in the presidential election next year, replacing President Hassan Rouhani, the likelihood of the deal unraveling will increase. The balance between the reformist Rouhani and the hawkish Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei produced the political conditions in which the accord became possible. But today America is undermining that balance, reinforcing Iranian hawks and putting the hard-won deal that reversed Iran's steady advance to the nuclear threshold at risk. It's a shoot-yourself-in-the-foot policy after a major diplomatic achievement. The growing cry in Tehran is that Rouhani and his foreign minister Javad Zarif were had by Washington because Iranian concessions - the slashing of the number of centrifuges and its uranium stockpile - have not produced promised economic benefits. Hard-liners are baying: 'Where's the beef?' The chief problem is that European banks are terrified that if they provide financing to Iran they will fall foul of United States sanctions that are still in place. Many of these banks - including BNP Paribas, Commerzbank and Société Générale - have paid hefty fines in recent years. In all, European banks have handed over more than $15 billion since 2012 for infringement of U.S. financial sanctions on Iran. From a risk-reward standpoint no European bank can make enough revenue in Iran to offset the possibility of being slapped with a big fine. Secretary of State John Kerry attempted to break the logjam last month by saying that, 'We have no objection and we do not stand in the way of foreign banks engaging with Iranian banks and companies, obviously as long as those banks and companies are not on our sanctions list for non-nuclear reasons.' But the ownership structure of Iranian corporations is often opaque, making it difficult for European companies to be sure there is not, for example, a Revolutionary Guard Corps interest. Knowing exactly who the customer is may be arduous. One international businessman based in Tehran told me he'd received a letter from United Against Nuclear Iran, an American advocacy organization, warning him that he might be working with the Revolutionary Guards and could get into trouble. 'You can be sure that letter is going to all the European banks,' he said." http://t.uani.com/1s7lfCS
David Samuels in NYT: "Rhodes's innovative campaign to sell the Iran deal is likely to be a model for how future administrations explain foreign policy to Congress and the public. The way in which most Americans have heard the story of the Iran deal presented - that the Obama administration began seriously engaging with Iranian officials in 2013 in order to take advantage of a new political reality in Iran, which came about because of elections that brought moderates to power in that country - was largely manufactured for the purpose for selling the deal. Even where the particulars of that story are true, the implications that readers and viewers are encouraged to take away from those particulars are often misleading or false. Obama's closest advisers always understood him to be eager to do a deal with Iran as far back as 2012, and even since the beginning of his presidency. 'It's the center of the arc,' Rhodes explained to me two days after the deal, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, was implemented. He then checked off the ways in which the administration's foreign-policy aims and priorities converged on Iran. 'We don't have to kind of be in cycles of conflict if we can find other ways to resolve these issues,' he said. 'We can do things that challenge the conventional thinking that, you know, 'AIPAC doesn't like this,' or 'the Israeli government doesn't like this,' or 'the gulf countries don't like it.' It's the possibility of improved relations with adversaries. It's nonproliferation. So all these threads that the president's been spinning - and I mean that not in the press sense - for almost a decade, they kind of all converged around Iran.' In the narrative that Rhodes shaped, the 'story' of the Iran deal began in 2013, when a 'moderate' faction inside the Iranian regime led by Hassan Rouhani beat regime 'hard-liners' in an election and then began to pursue a policy of 'openness,' which included a newfound willingness to negotiate the dismantling of its illicit nuclear-weapons program. The president set out the timeline himself in his speech announcing the nuclear deal on July 14, 2015: 'Today, after two years of negotiations, the United States, together with our international partners, has achieved something that decades of animosity has not.' While the president's statement was technically accurate - there had in fact been two years of formal negotiations leading up to the signing of the J.C.P.O.A. - it was also actively misleading, because the most meaningful part of the negotiations with Iran had begun in mid-2012, many months before Rouhani and the 'moderate' camp were chosen in an election among candidates handpicked by Iran's supreme leader, the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The idea that there was a new reality in Iran was politically useful to the Obama administration. By obtaining broad public currency for the thought that there was a significant split in the regime, and that the administration was reaching out to moderate-minded Iranians who wanted peaceful relations with their neighbors and with America, Obama was able to evade what might have otherwise been a divisive but clarifying debate over the actual policy choices that his administration was making. By eliminating the fuss about Iran's nuclear program, the administration hoped to eliminate a source of structural tension between the two countries, which would create the space for America to disentangle itself from its established system of alliances with countries like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Israel and Turkey. With one bold move, the administration would effectively begin the process of a large-scale disengagement from the Middle East... In the spring of last year, legions of arms-control experts began popping up at think tanks and on social media, and then became key sources for hundreds of often-clueless reporters. 'We created an echo chamber,' he admitted, when I asked him to explain the onslaught of freshly minted experts cheerleading for the deal. 'They were saying things that validated what we had given them to say.' When I suggested that all this dark metafictional play seemed a bit removed from rational debate over America's future role in the world, Rhodes nodded. 'In the absence of rational discourse, we are going to discourse the [expletive] out of this,' he said. 'We had test drives to know who was going to be able to carry our message effectively, and how to use outside groups like Ploughshares, the Iran Project and whomever else. So we knew the tactics that worked.' He is proud of the way he sold the Iran deal. 'We drove them crazy,' he said of the deal's opponents." http://t.uani.com/1SYBnjN
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Mon, 05/09/2016 - 14:32