Friday, January 19, 2018

Eye on Iran: US Says Iran 'Leading Cause of Instability'





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US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley... called Iran on Thursday "the leading cause of instability in an unstable part of the world." Tehran supports "terrorists, proxy militants and murderers like (the head of the Syrian regime) Bashar Assad," she told the UN Security Council... Haley said the international community must respond to Iran's "dangerous violations" of its obligations in the UN resolution endorsing the nuclear deal, "not because we want the nuclear deal to fail, but because we want the cause of nonproliferation to succeed."


A bill was introduced in the US House of Representatives on Thursday aimed at tightening the terms of the Iran nuclear deal, despite Tehran's rejection of changes to the accord.

Iranian Spies in Germany Targeted Israel Embassy, Jewish Kindergartens | Times of Israel

The German journalist who first reported raids by local security forces at the homes of suspected Iranian spies across Germany supplied new details Wednesday about the Israeli and Jewish targets allegedly monitored by the suspects. Josef Hufelschulte, of the weekly German-language magazine FOCUS, told Israeli public broadcaster Kan that the suspected spies had been gathering information on the Israeli embassy in Berlin, as well as on targets related to the local Jewish community, including kindergartens.

IRAN NUCLEAR DEAL


Russia's foreign minister is warning that a failure of the Iran nuclear deal, especially as a result of action by the Trump administration, would send "an alarming message" to North Korea and impact all international agreements. 


[T]he president has a high card to play in his demand for an allied showdown with Iran on its ballistic missile programs, its support of the Syrian government, its creation of unrest in other parts of the Middle East, and its long-term nuclear ambitions. He may be able to use it to get the agreement he seeks, or a large part of it.

IRAN PROTESTS

Publicly, the Islamic Republic of Iran blames the United States-and the other usual foreign-enemy suspects-for the nationwide protests that gripped the country of some eighty million people for at least a week. Talk about rich. The demonstrations clearly arose as the direct result of the regime's repressive and misguided policies, not because of some foreign power's interference or meddling. The regime knows this-and so do the Iranian people.


The latest protests in Iran may be largely crushed for now, but the characteristics of this particular uprising suggest that, unlike the so-called Green Revolution of 2009 and other previous waves -- the unrest could continue sporadically for years to come. Although the rioters -- largely workers and farmers from rural and religiously conservative villages and towns -- were not part of a unified or organized movement, they do have shared grievances that fueled the outrage, and this could be a game changer. Unlike past uprisings in Iran when demonstrators' outcries concerned lofty goals, such as democracy and free elections, these protesters' complaints are practical and urgent, because their lives are far more difficult than those of Iranians in major cities.


The recent unrest in Iran has confirmed what many attuned to domestic conditions in the Islamic Republic have long known: that an explosion was not a matter of if, but of when. The destructive reach of the Islamic Republic of Iran from Africa to South America and via Lebanon, Yemen, Syria and Iraq is hardly disputed. Yet this destructive influence serves the hesitance of many in the West to confront what appears as a strong and threatening regime. The riots and demonstration may have faded - but not the realities that created them. And this might provide an important policy lesson: Islamic regime's power posturing is designed to hide its true weaknesses.

U.S.-IRAN RELATIONS


U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson will travel to Europe next week, stopping in London and Paris for talks on Iran and Syria before heading on to Davos, Switzerland, for the World Economic Forum and then to Warsaw, the State Department said on Thursday.

BUSINESS RISK


Iran's central bank, Bank Markazi, has filed a suit in Luxembourg against Deutsche Boerse's Clearstream unit seeking to recover $4.9 billion in assets plus interest, the German stock exchange operator said on Thursday. The assets, frozen on suspicion of terror financing and in part paid to victims, include $1.9 billion turned over to plaintiffs in the United States following a 2013 court order as well as $2 billion that is subject to further litigation by U.S. plaintiffs in the United States and Luxembourg.

HUMAN RIGHTS


Two more Iranians have been identified as having been killed under torture by authorities in Arak and Sanandaj during the recent uprising.


A semi-official news agency is reporting that authorities in Iran have amputated the hand of a convicted thief in a prison in the country's northeast.

FOREIGN AFFAIRS


Relations between the U.S. and Turkey have hit a new low over Washington's support of militias battling the Islamic State, according to analysts. The government in Ankara views the Kurdish fighters as terrorists. Experts warn that the crisis is resulting in Turkey - a longtime American ally with NATO's second-largest standing army - turning away from the West and toward Russia and Iran.


The Berlin office of the American Jewish Committee urged Germany's Foreign Ministry on Wednesday to expel Iran's ambassador because of his country's alleged spying on Israel's embassy and a Jewish kindergarten.

IRANIAN DOMESTIC ISSUES


Nigeria. Syria. Somalia. And now Iran. In each country, in different ways, a water crisis has triggered some combination of civil unrest, mass migration, insurgency or even full-scale war. 


After receiving criticism for unblocking the popular social media app Telegram, which was closed over the recent protests that rocked Iran, President Hassan Rouhani is not retreating from his position. In fact, his administration is reportedly preparing to spend money to create more digital jobs and attempt to bring Iran up to date in the cyberworld.







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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