Wednesday, September 21, 2016

Eye on Iran: U.S. Begins Unblocking Jetliner Sales to Iran


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The United States has started issuing licences unblocking the sale of Western passenger jets to Iran, aviation sources said.The U.S. Treasury has issued two licences allowing the export of some European Airbus jets to Iran and is expected to start approving sales of Boeing jets within days, the sources said. A spokesman for Airbus confirmed it had received two U.S. licences covering a total of 17 aircraft slated for early delivery. Although based in Europe, Airbus needs U.S. approval because of the high number of U.S. parts in its jets. Both planemakers have agreed to sell or lease more than 100 aircraft each to flag carrier IranAir as Iran rebuilds its aviation sector following last year's agreement between Tehran and major powers over the lifting of nuclear-related sanctions.

Iran's chief of staff of the armed forces said Wednesday a $38 billion aid deal between the United States and Israel makes Iran more determined to strengthen its military... During a separate parade Wednesday in the southern Iranian port of Bandar Abbas, Iran unveiled a new missile, known as Zolfaghar. It was carried by military truck which bore a banner printed with a 2013 anti-Israeli quote by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei saying that Iran will annihilate the cities of Tel Aviv and Haifa should Israel attack Iran.

Iran marked the anniversary of its 1980 invasion by Iraq by showing off its latest ships and missiles and telling the United States not to meddle in the Gulf. At a parade in Tehran on Wednesday, shown on state TV, the military displayed long-range missiles, tanks, and the Russian-supplied S-300 surface-to-air missile defense system. At the port of Bandar Abbas on the Gulf, the navy showed off 500 vessels, as well as submarines and helicopters, at a time of high tension with the United States in the strategic waterway. U.S. officials say there have been more than 30 close encounters between U.S. and Iranian vessels in the Gulf so far this year, over twice as many as in the same period of 2015.

UANI IN THE NEWS

Heard at "United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) 2016 Iran Risk Summit" at the Roosevelt Hotel in New York -- Joe Lieberman on why most Democrats supported the Iran deal: "I was strongly opposed to the agreement... Having been in the Senate for the first term of Obama, outside since, but talking to colleagues, the president got more involved personally in the advocacy before Congress on behalf of the Iran nuclear agreement than he did on any other issue. He was personally and directly involved in appealing to Democrats to stick with him." Lieberman's advice to the presidential candidates: "Aggressively oversee the deal. Don't give anybody, particularly the regime in Tehran, the feeling that the U.S. is closing its eyes on any violations of the agreement. Also, to aggressively enforce the considerable non-nuclear sanctions that remain against Iran. And it sounds like both candidates for presidents may have that in mind. We will see. My reaction to questions about the campaign this year, I end up chuckling for some reason. I don't know what that is."  Tzipi Livni on the first anniversary of the Iran deal: "The deal postponed the doomsday. This is something we should acknowledge. But the situation is still the same. We are facing an Iran with the same ideology, with an aspiration for nuclear weapons, and we need to address it... And it's wrong to have this state sponsor of terror be embraced by the international community just because they have agreed not to advance their nuclear program right now. Israel is not the only state that is being threatened by Iran... For so many years, I heard more about the Iranian threat in Arabic than I had heard about it in Hebrew. Stopping Iran from continuing to sponsor regional terrorism should not be done as a favor to Israel or even to the moderate Arab countries. It is the world's own interest."

SANCTIONS RELIEF

Only six months after signing of the energy agreement with the MAPNA Group, Siemens has shipped the first F-class gas turbine for the project Bandar Abbas to Iran. This is the first stage of the bilateral contract covering the transfer of know-how for F-class gas turbine technology between Siemens and MAPNA. As part of the Bandar Abbas gas-fired power plant, this turbine along with the rest of the equipment which will be provided by MAPNA, will help to cover the country's continuously rising demand for electricity. In March 2016, Siemens concluded a far-reaching agreement with MAPNA, Iran's largest power plant EPC contractor, to collaborate on the transfer of know-how for the F-class gas turbine technology to modernize the Iranian power supply system.

Switzerland's MECI Group International signed an agreement with Iran's government to build a 750 million-euro ($839 million) wind farm.
The project, located in the mountainous region in northern Iran, will have 270 megawatts installed capacity, according to a statement from the Swiss holding company. Turbine testing is already happening onsite, according to MECI Chairman Jeremiah Josey... MECI, which also agreed to build a 100-megawatt combined heat and power plant that will burn natural gas, will finance the project with a bond issue and equity partners, according to Josey.  Josey anticipates signing agreements for another 500 megawatts of renewable-energy plants once the wind farm progresses. MECI has a target to install 1 gigawatt of clean power in Iran, which will be a mix of solar and wind.

HUMAN RIGHTS

This is the third time Kamran Foroughi has flown here from London for the U.N. General Assembly, a private citizen hoping for success where diplomats have failed. Two years ago, he delivered a letter to the Iranian mission pleading for his ailing father's release from prison. Last year, he managed to attend a dinner for President Hassan Rouhani and handed an aide a second letter. Now, he has another letter asking Rouhani to release Kamal Foroughi, 77, on humanitarian grounds. The ­British-Iranian dual national has cataracts, spent 18 months in solitary confinement, and is more than halfway through his seven-year sentence on espionage charges. He has company in his quest. Foroughi came to New York with Richard Ratcliffe, whose wife, Nazanin, also a British-Iranian dual national, was sentenced last month to five years in prison on espionage charges while visiting her parents.

Multiple arrests in Iran as Rouhani arrives in New York | Al-Monitor
Iranian authorities appear to be stepping up their crackdown on media workers amid President Hassan Rouhani's just-concluded tour of Latin America and his arrival in the United States to address the UN General Assembly's annual meeting. On Monday, reports surfaced of the arrest of Sadra Mohaghegh, the society editor of the Reformist Shargh Daily. His sudden detention has caused an outcry among journalists, activists and Iranian netizens, who have turned Mohaghegh's name into a hashtag - especially after Mohaghegh's Twitter account was taken down on Tuesday for unknown reasons. According to Basij News, Mohaghegh was arrested "during an intelligence operation by security forces," without specifying which agency was responsible for his arrest. Media reports accuse him of having collaborated with "counter-revolutionary" foreign media. The detention comes only days after the arrest of another Iranian journalist, Yashar Soltani, who is in charge of Memari News, a website that focuses on urban news and architecture. The two arrests appear to be related. Mohaghegh and Soltani had both recently published a set of declassified reports involving Iran's General Inspection Office, an organization linked to the Judiciary. The reports focused on the transfer of property held by the Tehran Municipality to a number of cooperatives and select managers below market value.

OPINION & ANALYSIS

President Barack Obama's administration would like to give companies and banks the green light to financial transactions with the world's largest state sponsor of terrorism, but here's the reality: It can't. Unfortunately, the U.S. government doesn't know the full scope, scale, and reach of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the military branch charged with enforcing Iran's theocratic rule at home and "exporting the revolution" abroad. The IRGC's tentacles are well hidden in the Iranian economy, making the risk of becoming entangled with the organization an impossible-to-quantify possibility... CEOs, bankers, and board members around the world know that business with Iran is far more complicated than that. Ensuring an Iranian entity is clean exceeds the grasp of even the world's most capable intelligence agencies - much less any bank or company. Say an international company wants to invest in Iran, though it cannot find out much about its Iranian partner on the ground. It proceeds anyway, lured by the encouragement of the Iranian regime and the promise of profit. After some broken promises, it turns out that the company's Iranian partner is linked to the IRGC, either through a previous designation or a recent action, as the Treasury Department's poster evolves to track the Iranian partner's connection to the IRGC. Then the international company is in a bind: Either it violates U.S. sanctions by continuing to do business in Iran, thus forfeiting access to the American market and many others, or it risks losing its investment. That lose-lose situation could have been avoided. As the former head of two small businesses, I know the legal and reputational risks - not to mention the weighty moral dynamics of these sorts of decisions... Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry expect that a friendly meeting is all companies need to overcome this heavy risk. But companies should remember: Those two officials will move on, but a criminal conviction does not... The responsible choice? Steer clear of business with Iran.

Regardless of whether one believes the payment, the result of a settlement agreement related to decades-old legal claims between the two countries, was ransom, one thing is certain: The nature of the payment - all cash, some delivered in the middle of night and ferried to Iran by an airline known for its connections with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, without limits to ensure Iran would not use the funds for terrorism - is troubling. Cash transactions raise serious terrorism financing risks. According to the Financial Action Task Force, the international body that sets global standards for preventing money laundering and terrorist financing, "the physical cross-border transportation of currency ... [is] one of the main methods used to move illicit funds, launder money, and finance terrorism." These risks are particularly acute in the case in question; the State Department has identified Iran as one of the leading state sponsors of terrorism and the country actively supports terrorist organizations such as Hezbollah and Hamas, and assists Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in his murderous assault on civilians... historical examples suggest that the U.S. did not have to provide these funds in cash... other, less opaque options existed that would have allowed fast delivery of the money. Moving forward, the administration - and Congress if the president is unwilling - should ensure that any payments it makes to Iran are facilitated through the formal financial system. Current bills in the House of Representatives and the Senate are steps in the right direction. The United States should also take steps to reduce the risk that Iran uses such funds to support terrorism or Assad. These steps should include: holding the funds in escrow accounts, verifying that the end recipients of the funds are not sanctioned Iranian parties, and requiring the funds be released in tranches, with a certification provided by the Secretary of the Treasury that prior tranches have not been diverted to sanctioned persons. While Republicans and Democrats can disagree about the wisdom of providing funds that - at the very least - appeared to Iranian officials to be a ransom payment, the administration should not have sent this money in cash and risked inadvertently funding Iran's support for terrorism. It can and should do better in the future.

In recent weeks, the Obama administration has repeatedly argued that legal and pragmatic concerns accounted for its decision to use cash for a $1.7 billion payment to Iran. This claim lacks credibility: U.S. law expressly permits direct transactions between the American and Iranian financial systems to resolve outstanding claims before the Iran-United States Claims Tribunal, thereby enabling Washington to track whether Tehran uses the funds for illicit ends. In fact, the circumstances surrounding the payment suggest that the Iranian regime likely demanded a cash payment - and that the administration, eager to secure the release of hostages in time for the nuclear deal's Implementation Day, hurriedly consented to its demands... Congress will continue to investigate the administration's ransom payment in a hearing before the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Subcommittee on National Security and International Trade and Finance. Lawmakers in the House and Senate are also considering legislation - introduced earlier this month by Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-KS) - that would prohibit future ransom payments (H.R. 5940 and S. 3285). On September 14, the House Foreign Affairs Committee passed a similar bill (H.R. 5931), introduced by Rep. Ed Royce (R-CA), by voice vote. The Obama administration must provide a public accounting of the circumstances surrounding the ransom that fully explains the legal and strategic options at its disposal as well as Iran's potential demand for cash. At the same time, the White House should pledge to refrain from providing future cash payments to Tehran for any reason, and condition any future settlement of financial disputes on tangible Iranian steps to halt its regional aggression, human rights abuses, and illicit ballistic missile tests. In the meantime, Congress should work to pass new economic sanctions on Iran - and keep up the pressure on the 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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