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The United Nations Security Council was
to hold an emergency meeting Friday afternoon on what U.S. Ambassador
Nikki Haley has described as the "troubling and dangerous
situation in Iran." At least 450 people have been arrested and
21 killed in anti-government protests that swept quickly across the
Islamic Republic late last week. But as the Trump
administration sought to use the protests to increase pressure on the
Iranian regime, issuing public support for the demonstrators and
calling for a United Nations response, the Iranians appeared to have
largely quashed the uprisings with an overwhelming and aggressive
security response. While there were still scattered anti-government
protests reported on Thursday evening, they had been largely replaced
by pro-government counter demonstrations, with thousands of people
hitting the streets of Tehran and other major cities in support of
the Islamic cleric-led regime.
U.S. senators and Trump administration officials met at
the White House on Thursday, hoping to hammer out compromise
legislation to tighten restrictions on Iran while keeping Washington
in an international nuclear deal with Tehran.
The U.S. imposed sanctions on five entities tied to
Iran's ballistic-missile program, seeking to punish Tehran for its
management of the economy as thousands of Iranians protest against
their government. Treasury Department officials blamed Iran's Islamic
Revolutionary Guard Corps and other parts of the government for
funding proxies across the Middle East despite the needs of the
Iranian people at home.
IRAN PROTESTS
More than a thousand people have been rounded up and
detained in Iran over the past week, rights groups and the State
Department said Thursday, as authorities try to quell the largest
street protests in nearly a decade. Amnesty International warned that
those being held risk torture and ill-treatment in the country's
prisons, calling for the release of those arrested for demonstrating
peacefully. Earlier this week, the head of Iran's Revolutionary Court
warned that arrested demonstrators could face the death penalty.
Iran on Thursday directly blamed a CIA official for a
week of protests calling for the overthrow of the Islamic Republic,
as the strength of the demonstrations was uncertain with fewer
reports of rallies. The Trump administration has denied having any
hand in the protests, and the CIA declined to comment.
The Trump administration was caught off guard by the
unfolding protests in Iran and is now wrestling with how to deter
Tehran from carrying out a broader crackdown on dissent, senior U.S.
officials said Wednesday. With antigovernment protests spreading
across Iran, the U.S. is relying on presidential tweets, public
condemnation and international pressure aimed at swaying but not
toppling, officials say Iran's leaders.
Iran's most fervent regional foes, Saudi Arabia and
Israel, are both eagerly looking for signs of vulnerability and
imminent change in their nemesis amid the past week of protests
across the country. But they've taken vastly different approaches of
how to engage with the upheaval.
For just a moment around the new year, Iran seemed
poised for something big. What started as a couple of scattered
protests on Dec. 8 over the cost of eggs quickly erupted into a
countrywide movement... Then, just as suddenly, things began to quiet
down. Police arrested hundreds of protesters, and access to
social-media sites was suspended... Reporters on the ground say the
protest gatherings have ebbed, and Maj. Gen. Mohammad Ali Jafari, the
head of Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps, apparently agrees... None
of that, however, means the country's anger has been soothed. The
protests could be the beginning of a longer period of unrest, one
that could destabilize both the country's elected government and its
theocratic leaders.
Moscow's response to the massive anti-regime protests
gripping Iran since Dec. 28 should have been predictable - a
condemnation of another perceived "U.S.-led regime
change"... Yet Moscow's message on Iran has been cautious,
almost neutral... The reasons may be related both to Moscow's
relationship with Tehran and Russia's position in Syria.
[I]t is vital to understand why failing to support the
protesters at this critical juncture would constitute a moral and
strategic mistake - one of potentially historic proportions... [A]
policy of silence on the part of world leaders is so misguided. What
matters to Iranians debating whether to cross this decisive threshold
is how much they dislike their own government, as well as their
knowledge that the free world - those who share the basic principles
for which they are fighting - stands behind them in their moment of truth.
For many, last week's outburst of protests in Iran came
as a huge surprise. There were few signs in the English-language
media that a massive bubble of discontent was growing in the
forgotten areas outside of Tehran-the provincial towns and cities
that few foreigners ever visit, and where even many residents of the
capital have never set foot.
Despite heavy restrictions on social media, some videos and
pictures have found their way online, including those appearing to
show protesters vandalising buildings and being fired at by
government forces. One of the most widely shared images is of a woman
taking off her white head covering and waving it on a stick in an
apparent act of defiance against Islamic rule. Although the image is
genuine, it was not taken during the current unrest.
Seyed Mohammad Hosseini makes for an unlikely
revolutionary. The last time he was in Iran was in 2011. He was a
minor celebrity, as the host of "Simorgh," a zany game show
on which he would ask contestants to perform silly stunts for prizes.
Today he lives in America and urges Iranians to burn mosques and
deface police stations.
The Iranians shouting, "Leave Syria, think of
us!" are the West Virginia coal miners shouting, "Make
America Great Again." That's not yahooism. It is anxiety
directed at incumbent elites who tell the public that reduced levels
of economic growth are the new normal. The world's populations will
not accept that.
SANCTIONS ENFORCEMENT
Today, a federal jury in the Southern District of New
York returned a guilty verdict in a landmark case focused on Turkish
efforts to help Iran evade U.S. sanctions... The testimony heard at
trial demonstrates the extent to which senior Turkish officials
pursued personal enrichment by means that directly undermined the
supposed objectives of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's foreign
policy. Since 2012, Erdogan has been the loudest critic of the
Iranian client on his southern border, Syrian President Bashar
al-Assad, as well as the top supporter of Sunni rebels fighting the
Syrian regime... All the while, the New York trial has shown, his
government was facilitating a scheme that helped Iran fund both its
nuclear program and Assad's war effort in Syria.
PROXY WARS
Israel and the U.S. are amplifying criticism of Iran's
role in Middle East conflicts, part of a coordinated effort to curb
Tehran's influence in the region as antigovernment protests put
pressure on the country's leaders.
SYRIA CONFLICT
In demonstrations across Iran, chants are going up
against the military's vast and shadowy war in Syria, one of Tehran's
closest allies and a frontline state in its confrontation with its
archenemy, Israel. Although the protests have focused on economic
issues, demonstrators have also voiced strong opposition to the
government's policy of sending young Iranians to fight and die in
Syria while spending billions of dollars on the military when they
say the priority should be working to provide jobs in Iran and
control the rising cost of living.
IRAQ CRISIS
The head of a prominent Iranian-backed Iraqi militia
group has called for the exit of American troops from Iraq, Iran's
Fars News Agency reported today.
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