Thursday, February 8, 2018

Eye on Iran: U.S. Secretly Offered Iran a Channel for Talks on Prisoners





   EYE ON IRAN
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The White House secretly reached out to Iran in December to propose creating a direct channel to negotiate the release of prisoners held by each side, according to U.S. officials and people briefed about the discussions, marking the first U.S. diplomatic overture to Iran on the issue under President Donald Trump. However, Iran didn't respond and, despite at least three subsequent offers from Washington, so far has refused to engage with U.S. officials on the offer, according to the people briefed about the discussions.


Britain said on Thursday it was working with its partners to tackle U.S. concerns over a landmark 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and major powers, but said Tehran must avoid actions that threaten regional security.


The White House on Wednesday warned Iran that it will be held responsible for the health of 81-year-old American citizen Baquer Namazi, who was recently sent back to prison after medical treatment.

IRAN NUCLEAR DEAL


France will continue to encourage its firms to do business in Iran despite uncertainty surrounding a landmark 2015 nuclear deal, which has put the business environment in "limbo", a senior French finance official said on Thursday.


A shuffle in Democratic leadership on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee may change the course of negotiations among lawmakers and the Trump administration on the Iran nuclear deal, as the president presses for legislation that would "fix" his concerns with the accord. After surviving a federal corruption probe, Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey will take back the reins of the committee's ranking committee chair from Sen. Ben Cardin of Maryland. Both men disapproved of the agreement when it reached Congress for a vote in 2015, but Menendez, in particular, has been a vocal critic on the Democratic side.

NUCLEAR & BALLISTIC-MISSILE PROGRAMS


Countries like Iran, North Korea and Pakistan have robust missile development programs. And the similarity of some of their missiles indicates that they have collaborated to share technology.

IRAN PROTESTS & HUMAN RIGHTS


Iranian women are defying the government by pulling off their head scarfs in public, joining a growing protest movement that places them on the front lines of a debate between Iran's Islamic conservatives and proponents of greater social freedoms.


It was the quietest protest Iran has ever witnessed. Vida Movahed, a thirty-one-year-old mother of a toddler, stood atop a large utility box on Tehran's busy Enghelab Street and removed the hijab head covering that all women are required to wear by law. Her jet-black hair cascaded far down her back. She then tied her white scarf to a stick and, as shoppers scurried beneath her on a busy thoroughfare, silently waved it like a flag... Thus began the so-called Girls of Revolution Street protest, on December 27th, and with it Iran's most robust debate about both women's rights and religious restrictions in the four decades since the fall of the Shah. 


Iran executed at least three child offenders across the country in January 2018, Human Rights Watch said.


The Iranian authorities must immediately and unconditionally release human rights activists Atena Daemi, Golrokh Ebrahimi Iraee and her husband Arash Sadeghi, Amnesty International said today, amid reports all three have begun a hunger strike to protest the unlawful transfer of Atena Daemi and Golrokh Ebrahimi Iraee to the dangerous Shahr-e Rey prison in Varamin outside Tehran.


Iran's Supreme Court has rejected a request to review the death sentence given to university professor Ahmadreza Djalali, accused of passing information to Israel, his lawyer said on Tuesday.


A proposed bill aimed at designating public spaces in Iran for protests will lead to "more limits" on the people's right to voice their demands, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi told the Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI).


Police arrested more than 30 protesters on the fourth day of a strike by hundreds of workers on February 4, 2018, at a major sugar plant near the city of Shush, in Iran's Khuzestan Province. 


During the recent protests in Iran, dissidents both inside and outside the country asked the U.S. government to enforce sanctions against Tehran's state-run media enterprise, the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB). Despite Congress imposing sanctions on IRIB in 2012, the Obama and Trump administrations have continually issued waivers suspending IRIB sanctions every 180 days for the last four years. Since IRIB and its partners continue to facilitate human rights abuses inside Iran, this IRIB waiver policy should be reversed.


The bravery of the women recently protesting in Iran stiffened my resolve to participate in the 2018 Women's March in Los Angeles. As a decadelong advocate for women, I felt compelled to use my freedom of expression to demand theirs.

U.S.-IRAN RELATIONS

When Baquer Namazi, the oldest American known to be held in Iran, was released on medical leave Jan. 28 from Tehran's infamous Evin Prison, it was an unexpected and unusual act of mercy. There was even some hope that Mr. Namazi, an 81-year-old former diplomat for Unicef, might be granted parole. On Tuesday, those hopes were dashed as the authorities ordered the ailing Mr. Namazi to return to jail, a decision so lacking in compassion that the Trump administration must intervene.

SANCTIONS ENFORCEMENT


South Korean officials say they will not provide Iranian and North Korean players with Samsung smartphones which are available free to all other athletes at the Winter Olympics starting Friday. State news agency Yonhap quoted PyeongChang Olympic organizers as saying Wednesday that the decision had been taken in line with sanctions on the two countries.

IRANIAN REGIONAL AGGRESSION


Iran said on Thursday there was no link between its influence in the Middle East region and its 2015 nuclear deal with major powers that has now come under fire from the Trump administration. 

SYRIA & IRAN


Turkey and Russia agreed on Wednesday that their next three-way summit with Iran to discuss the conflict in Syria will be held in Istanbul, a Turkish presidential source said. 


Iran's President Hassan Rouhani has discussed the war in Syria with visiting Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu and offered Iranian assistance in helping allay Turkey's concerns about Syria's future.

GULF STATES, YEMEN, & IRAN


Bahraini authorities say police have arrested four men suspected of being behind a blast that ripped through a state-run oil pipeline in November. A statement by the Interior Ministry says two of those arrested received "intensive training" in Iranian Revolutionary Guard camps in Iran. Iran denies allegations it is behind Shiite insurgents in Bahrain.

IRANIAN INTERNAL DEVELOPMENTS


A political crisis in Iran aggravated on Wednesday after deputies garnered the needed votes to question President Hassan Rouhani over the country's economic and financial policies.







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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