TOP STORIES
The Pentagon won't
rule out that Iranian missiles provided to rebels in Yemen were used
to fire upon two U.S. warships in the Red Sea on Sunday, spokesman Capt.
Jeff Davis said Tuesday. The destroyer USS Mason and amphibious
warship USS Ponce were conducting "routine operations in
international waters" in the Red Sea on Sunday night when the
first of two cruise missiles was detected heading toward them, Davis
said... On Tuesday, Davis confirmed that both missiles were launched
from a coastal area of Yemen that is under the control of
Iranian-backed Houthi Shiite rebels... Davis said Tuesday that while
the Houthis may have obtained advanced weaponry through the
facilities they now control in Yemen, the U.S. was not ruling out
that the missiles might have come from Iran. "It's no secret
that Iran has been actively supplying them and giving them the tools
of war," Davis said.
The United States
is seeing growing indications that Iran-allied Houthi rebels, despite
denials, were responsible for Sunday's attack on a Navy destroyer off
the Yemen coast, U.S. officials told Reuters. The rebels appeared to
use small skiffs as spotters to help direct a missile attack on the
warship, said U.S. officials, who are not authorized to speak
publicly because the investigation is ongoing. The United States is
also investigating the possibility that a radar station under Houthi
control in Yemen might have also "painted" the USS Mason, something
that would have helped the Iran-aligned fighters pass along
coordinates for a strike, said the officials. Neither of the two
missiles fired from Houthi-controlled territory on Sunday hit the USS
Mason or the nearby USS Ponce, an amphibious transport dock. But the
incident threatens to trigger the first direct U.S. military action
against Houthis in Yemen's conflict, even if it is limited to one-off
retaliation... Reuters has learned that the coastal defense cruise
missiles themselves had considerable range, adding to concerns about
the kind of heavy weaponry that the Houthis appear willing to employ
and some of which U.S. officials believe is supplied by Iran.
The Lebanese
Shi'ite movement Hezbollah vowed to maintain its "jihad" in
neighbouring Syria at a huge rally in Beirut on Wednesday, a day
after its leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said the war was in a phase
of escalation. Addressing thousands marking Shi'ite Islam's annual
Ashura religious commemoration in a heavily secured square in
Hezbollah's south Beirut stronghold, Nasrallah said the war in Syria
was being fought in defence of the whole region. "We will
continue to bear our great responsibilities of jihad there. Your sons
are there, and your men, your brothers, your husbands. They are
defending their existence, dignity and the resistance," he
said... Since Hezbollah's entry into Syria's civil war on the side of
President Bashar al-Assad, some 1,500 of its fighters have died, say
security sources in Lebanon. These have included about 350 this year;
their images, often in heroic pose, are displayed on posters in
Shi'ite villages across Lebanon.
NUCLEAR
& BALLISTIC MISSILE PROGRAM
The Obama
administration has cemented secret exemptions to last summer's
nuclear deal that allow Iran to keep a still-unknown amount of
uranium above what the deal's caps allow. That's according to top
nuclear experts and sources who spoke to THE WEEKLY STANDARD after
lawmakers called for greater transparency last month in the wake of a
think tank report detailing some of the exemptions. David Albright,
the founder of the Institute for Science and International Security
(ISIS), which published last month's report, criticized the
administration Tuesday for maintaining a "policy of
secrecy" that allows Iran to store significant amounts of
uranium in various forms above what the deal allows. "[The
administration] always tell me they 'forgot' the number, but I think
they are very uncomfortable releasing any information," he told
TWS. Albright told attendees at a Washington, D.C. event that there
"could be tons of this [low-enriched uranium] waste" but
that the administration refuses to disclose the amount.
REGIONAL
DESTABILIZATION
Former Prime
Minister Saad Hariri accused Hezbollah and Iran Tuesday of destroying
Syria and seeking to partition Yemen, in a swift response to Sayyed
Hasan Nasrallah's verbal attack on Saudi Arabia. "Shouting will
not cover the hand of Iran and Hezbollah in the destruction of Syrian
cities and in the blood of more than a quarter of a million
Syrians," Hariri said in a series of tweets. "It is better
for those who are crying for Yemen and its people to stop
participating in partitioning Yemen and inflaming the civil war
between its sons," he added. "Let them stop spilling the
blood of Yemenis, Syrians and Iraqis and let them refrain from the
policies of hitting at Islamic unity," a third tweet said.
SANCTIONS
RELIEF
Norwegian Foreign
Minister Borge Brende announced that Oslo has opened a
one-billion-dollar credit line to help the Norwegian companies with
export of their commodities to Iran. "About $400 million dollars
of that credit line ($1 billion has been used to export the modern
technologies to Iran," Brende said in a meeting with Iranian
Economy Minister Ali Tayyebnia in Washington. Tayyebnia is in
Washington to attend the 2016 annual meetings of the International
Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank Group in Washington DC on
October 7-9... "DNB as Norway's largest financial services group
is due to be active in Iran's market," Brende added.
Glencore is seeking
to increase oil trading with Libya, Iran and Iraq to beat what looks
to be a much tougher trading environment compared with last year,
Glencore's global head of oil Alex Beard told the Reuters Commodities
Summit... Beard said Glencore would be seeking to trade more crude
from the Middle East, including Iraq and Iran, as well as from Libya
and Russia. "We are currently lifting products from (Iran's)
NIOC and private firms and are looking to expand into crude,"
Beard said, adding he was looking into pre-financing Iranian exports.
India's purchases
of Iranian oil fell 4.1 percent in September, slipping from August
when imports from Tehran hit their highest in at least 15 years,
according to ship tracking data and a report compiled by Thomson
Reuters Oil Research and Forecasts... State-run Mangalore Refinery
and Petrochemicals Ltd was the biggest importer of Iranian oil in
September buying about 150,200 barrels per day, the data showed.
Essar Oil imported about 134,000 bpd followed by 131,000 bpd by
Indian Oil Corp and 69,000 bpd by Reliance Industries Ltd. Hindustan
Petroleum imported about 68,000 bpd oil.
MTN Group Ltd., the
South African wireless carrier with $1 billion stuck in Iran, agreed
to make an investment of 20 million euros ($22 million) that will
support Snapp.ir, the Islamic Republic's first cab-hailing smartphone
application. The funds "will allow us to quickly expand to other
cities" than Tehran, Snapp Chief Executive Officer Shahram
Shahkar said by e-mail on Tuesday. Johannesburg-based MTN will
transfer the cash to the app's owner, Iran Internet Group, which
operates and invests in start-up and e-commerce companies. MTN's
investment in Snapp strengthens the phone company's ties with Iran as
it tries to repatriate 15.4 billion rand ($1.1 billion) from the
country following the lifting of U.S.-led economic sanctions. MTN's
former Chief Financial Officer, Brett Goschen, said in August that it
will take at least five months for the carrier to transfer the money
due to a lack of ties between the Republic and international banks.
Investors have
turned Iran into the latest country to embrace the ride sharing and
car-hailing app phenomenon. The Iran Internet Group has secured a €20
million Series A round of financing for its ride-sharing application,
Snapp. The South African mobile phone company MTN led the round and
is the sole investor. MTN is also a major shareholder of Irancell and
Iran Internet Holdings. The firm launched Snapp, formerly known as
Taxi Yaab in 2014. €20 million is among the second largest
investments in Iran's nascent startup ecosystem this year. In March
Swedish-based investment firm Pomegranate invested €60 million in
Sarava, an Iranian investment firm focused on e-commerce.
Managing Director
of Germany's H&R GmbH & Co KGaA Niels H. Hansen has said that
removal of anti-Iran sanctions and improvement in Berlin-Tehran ties
have created good conditions for his company to choose Iran as a
regional hub for H&R activities. Speaking to IRNA on Sunday,
Hansen said his country aims to develop its activities in the Middle
East region and has chosen Iran as a regional hub... H&R, he
said, had had trade ties with the Iranian sides for about a decade
before the sanctions era, stressing that his company is to revive
those relations.
HUMAN
RIGHTS
A rights group
urged the Iranian judiciary on Tuesday to quash a death sentence
against a 22-year-old woman accused of murdering her husband, who she
said had repeatedly abused her. Zeinab Sekaanvand was arrested in
February 2012 and convicted of her husband's murder after what
London-based Amnesty International called a "grossly unfair
trial". She faces execution by hanging as soon as Oct. 13.
Sekaanvand was just 17 when she allegedly committed the crime, making
her a minor by international legal standards. She said she had been
physically abused by her husband. "This is an extremely
disturbing case," said Philip Luther, research and advocacy
director for the Middle East and North Africa at Amnesty
International. "Not only was Zeinab Sekaanvand under 18 years of
age at the time of the crime, she was also denied access to a lawyer
and says she was tortured after her arrest by male police officers
through beatings all over her body." ... In the past decade,
Iran has executed at least 73 juvenile offenders, according to the
January Amnesty report.
DOMESTIC
POLITICS
Iran is pursuing a
"resilient economy" that is less dependent on oil, has
reduced nonperforming loans in its banking sector and is anticipating
European participation in financing a landmark Boeing deal, according
to Minister of Economic Affairs and Finance Ali Tayebnia. In an
interview with Al-Monitor on Oct. 7 on the sidelines of the fall
meeting of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF),
Tayebnia gave an upbeat account of reforms undertaken since the
inauguration of President Hassan Rouhani in 2013. But Tayebnia, like
Rouhani and other Iranian officials, accused the United States of not
completely fulfilling its promises under last year's landmark nuclear
deal and suggested that the United States should do more to
facilitate Iran's return to the international financial system.
Iran's approach to economics has often been described as one of
"resistance" to Western-led domination. Tayebnia, in
comments on a panel with other ministers from oil-producing countries
on the morning of Oct. 7, said a more accurate translation was
"resilience." "The main characteristic of a resilient
economy is flexibility against external shocks," he explained in
the subsequent interview. "When there is a storm, a dry tree may
break very easily, but a flexible tree can survive that storm."
OPINION
& ANALYSIS
As America enters
the home stretch of our 2016 presidential campaign, the world is
watching. From ISIS to Russia to North Korea and beyond, the
current challenges of international affairs naturally raise the
world's interest in who the next President of the United States will
be. We must have a leader who can manage and meet the global
challenges we all face, with our allies. In my opinion, the most
dangerous of the threats facing the world continues to be Iran.
The nuclear deal the members of the P5+1, including France and
the United States, negotiated with Iran is now being undermined by
Iran. Under the agreement, Iran has recouped tens of billions of
dollars in frozen assets. Rather than using this enormous
amount of money to improve the lives of their citizens, regime
leaders are using it to fulfill their extremist and hegemonic
ambitions. For example, Article 22 of Iran's 2016-2017 budget
has earmarked the $1.7 billion in cash received from the United
States-a ransom payment to secure the release of American
hostages-for defense spending. Billions more will surely go to
supporting the deadly presence in Syria of the Islamic Revolutionary
Guard Corps (IRGC) and Hezbollah... The next American President must
act, and act promptly-hopefully with our allies-to hold Iran
accountable for its reckless and belligerent behavior by intensively
monitoring the nuclear agreement and enforcing continuing sanctions
against Iran for supporting terrorism and suppressing human rights
for the future protection of the people of Iran, and for the freedom,
security, and prosperity of the United States, and of our allies,
including France is on the line.
The Obama
Administration keeps stretching the limits of the nuclear deal with
Iran to provide the type of sanctions relief the mullahs believe they
are owed, no matter what the deal says. So what better way to repay
White House's generosity than by firing on U.S. ships? That's one way
to understand Sunday's incident off the coast of Yemen, when the USS
Mason, a guided-missile destroyer, and the USS Ponce, an amphibious
ship, were attacked by two Chinese-built C-802 cruise missiles fired
from territory controlled by Iranian-backed Houthi militia. Iran is a
major operator of the C-802; its proxy Hezbollah used it in 2006 to
punch a hole in an Israeli corvette off the coast of Lebanon. On
Sunday neither missile hit its target, though the USS Mason launched
SM-2 air-defense missiles to defend against the threat. The episode
could have ended differently: Last week the Houthis scored a direct
hit on the HSV Swift, an unarmed transport shift used by the United
Arab Emirates to resupply the Saudi-led military coalition that has
been fighting the Houthis for 18 months... More significantly, the
attack on the Navy ships-with hundreds of American sailors aboard-is
another reminder that the nuclear deal has done more to embolden than
moderate Tehran's ambitions, despite a cascade of U.S. concessions...
So let's get this straight: The Administration grants the mullahs
unprecedented concessions not called for by the nuclear deal, and
they respond by attacking the U.S. Maybe President Obama sees a
foreign-policy paradox at work. A better way of describing the
dynamic might be cause-and-effect.
On Sunday night, as
Americans were transfixed by the spectacle of the second presidential
debate, events occurred off the coast of Yemen that remind us of the
kind of challenges with which a president must contend. Two ballistic
missiles were fired at a U.S. destroyer in international waters from
the part of Yemen controlled by the Houthis, an Iranian-back militia.
The missiles did not hit the USS Mason, although it's unclear if they
had some internal defect or whether the ship defended itself with its
suite of missile-defense systems. U.S. warships do not routinely come
under attack. When they do, it's called an act of war. So someone has
committed an act of war against the United States. The proximate
culprit appears to be the Houthi movement, which is mad at America
for backing an assault on it by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab
Emirates. Just last week, an Emirati ship was destroyed off the same
part of the Yemen coast. But the Houthis are hardly lone actors. They
do not manufacture their own missiles. They get them from Iran. That
suggests this could be seen as an act of war by Iran against the
United States. It is an incident that is far more serious than the
way it is being treated. It is, in fact, almost entirely overshadowed
by the furor over the Trump campaign. The Obama administration should
not be allowed to ignore it-if that is, in fact, its intent. "A
senior Obama administration official" told the Washington Post:
"Our first priority is the safety and security of
Americans overseas, and we will take all appropriate actions to
protect our men and women in uniform in the region." But what
action? The administration will want to do as little as possible for
fear of alienating Iran and thus scuttling the nuclear deal. This is
what those of us who opposed the deal predicted-that it would become
a cover for Iranian aggression that the U.S. could not stop because the
mullahs could always blackmail us with threats of restarting their
nuclear program. But if the U.S. continues to ignore Iranian
aggression, the result will be to plunge the region deeper into
conflict and empower extremists of both Shiite and Sunni persuasion.
Iran's ideological
camp has launched a new wave of accusations against Expediency
Council Chairman Hashemi Rafsanjani, who heads the country's
pragmatic camp, following his August 20, 2016 statements at an
education conference praising Japan's and Germany's strong economies.
He said that these two countries had succeeded in reviving their
economies by investing in scientific innovation instead of in their
militaries, and expressed hope that Iranian President Hassan Rohani
would do the same in a second presidential term. In response,
mouthpieces of the ideological camp accused Rafsanjani of attempting
to weaken Iran militarily, arguing that his statements invite Iran's
enemies to attack it and adding that this path will ensure that Iran
loses its independence and returns to being subordinate to the U.S.
On September 5, 2016, Rafsanjani's office issued a furious rebuttal,
arguing that his statements had been twisted and taken out of context
as part of an "organized plot" by "a certain
stream," in order, inter alia, to harm Rohani's chances of
reelection. It added that the ban on a military buildup in Germany
and Japan was an historical fact, and not a personal statement by
Rafsanjani, and that had presented the two countries as examples of
nations that had successfully relied on their knowledge and used
their military budgets to establish strong industries that can
confront foreign countries. The following are September 18 statements
by Khamenei criticizing Rafsanjani following the latter's rebuttal,
and a September 4 editorial in Kayhan prior to Rafsanjani's rebuttal.
The Treasury
Department opened the door to business with Iran's leading terrorist
organization-the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)-in guidance
issued on Oct. 7. This new edict accelerates a pattern of undeserved
concessions to Tehran as it simultaneously escalates its terrorist
activities, ballistic missile tests, and human rights violations. Any
long-term success of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)
depends on Iran understanding that any violation will lead to swift,
certain response. Undeserved concessions going beyond the JCPOA only
reinforce Tehran's propensity to violate its international
obligations and ultimately undermine the JCPOA itself.
A number of the
world's leading women chess players have announced they won't attend
the upcoming World Chess Championship in the Islamic Republic of
Iran, because there they would be forced to wear a hijab. American
chess star Nazi Paikidze incited controversy by letting go her
opportunity to win a world title. Controversy began in late
September, after Iran was assigned the right to host the Women's
World Chess Championship. "I think it's unacceptable to host a
women's World Championship in a place where women do not have basic
fundamental rights and are treated as second-class citizens."
Paikidze declared on Instagram. Her call for a boycott evoked mixed
comments. World Chess Federation FIDE reacted with the usual
platitudes that women should respect cultural differences in other
countries. What then with women rights? Are they not to be respected?
That FIDE assigned the World Championship to Iran without paying
attention to discrimination of women only vindicates Islamists in
their conviction... FIDE's and other sport organizations' shameful
cultural relativism is carried on by international politics and
diplomacy. If Western women, when going to Iran, are forced to cover
their heads "out of respect for the ayatollahs"
(unfortunately not for Iranian women), then why do top officials of
the Islamic Republic of Iran not have to pay respect to the Western
culture when going there? Concessions to Islamism do not belong in
the free Western culture and we have to inhibit them by all means.
That is why it surprises me to see Western women,
opinion-makers and organizations openly seized with emotion by a
Muslim woman apparently being forced by police officers to take off
her burkini on a Nice beach after she chose not to leave the beach,
but not expressing their sympathy for the many Iranian women who want
to throw off their headscarves. As a former victim of Iran's
oppressing and misogynistic regime, this is the world upside down to
me. In these dark days of spreading Islamism, I am grateful for the
few chess players who do want to back Iranian women and refuse to
renounce their own values. When will the ladies and gentlemen in power
follow their example?
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment