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TOP STORIES
The U.S. can impose severe penalties for trading with
Iran, but Trump administration has flexibility to grant exceptions.
President Trump declared on Tuesday that he was
withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal... Iran said it will remain in
the deal... So did France, Germany and Britain, raising the prospect
of a trans-Atlantic clash as European companies face the return of
American sanctions for doing business with Iran... Mr. Trump's announcement
capped a frantic four-day period in which American and European
diplomats made a last-ditch effort to bridge their differences and
preserve the agreement. That effort began Friday, when Mr. Pompeo
called his counterparts in Europe to tell them that Mr. Trump was
planning to withdraw from the deal, but that he was trying to win a
two-week reprieve for the United States and Europe to continue
negotiating. Mr. Pompeo, people familiar with the talks said,
suggested that he favored a so-called soft withdrawal, in which Mr.
Trump would pull out of the deal but hold off on reimposing some of
the sanctions.
An Iranian military base in Syria was attacked on
Tuesday, sources confirmed to Fox News. At least nine people died in
the attack, Rami Abdel Rahman, director of the Syrian Observatory for
Human Rights in Britain, told AFP.
UANI IN THE NEWS
If you're doing business in Iran, there's a prospect
that you're doing business with a terror-linked firm. We know that
dual nationals in Iran are in great danger of being detained. Iran is
one of the most aggressive users of hacking.
I would say that it remains unclear as to what's going
to happen in coming days because much depends on the speed, scope and
scale of these sanctions, what the Iranians decide to do and how
Europe decides to cooperate. But this definitely will make it more
likely that confrontation will appear between the United States and
Iran, just as it may make it more likely that the regime itself will
continue to erode. What I don't believe it will mean is in the near
term - in the very near term - the Iranians will march towards a
nuclear weapon because that would just bring the entire world against
them.
Here's what the president should look for in a new
nuclear agreement with Tehran.
A veteran who was wounded by a bomb in Iraq [ Robert
Bartlett] had the ultimate response to President Donald Trump pulling
out of the Iran deal on Tuesday... Bartlett responded by simply
saluting the president and stating, "Thank you, Mr. President, I
really appreciate it." "It's a great anniversary for me, I
mean, thirteen years ago last Thursday we got blown up," he
said. Bartlett, who now works as an adviser for United Against
Nuclear Iran, added that he knows Iran was using the money released
to them in the nuclear deal to spread terror.
Hezbollah is a part of Lebanon's political process, and,
like all other Lebanese parties, it freely and openly ran in the
country's first parliamentary elections in nine years, winning almost
all seats it was contesting. However, for U.S. policymakers,
acknowledging Hezbollah's place in the Lebanon's political pantheon
cannot mean accepting it. Instead, it must serve as a basis to
understand and reverse the source of the Shiite group's political
power: not its arms, but its popular support.
United Against Nuclear Iran Chairman and former US
Senator Joe Lieberman and CEO Ambassador Mark Wallace said, "We
vigorously opposed the JCPOA because it did not stop Iran from obtaining
nuclear weapons. It only paused their nuclear weapons development
program for a while, if they kept the promises they made in the
agreement. That is why we believe that President Trump made the
correct and courageous decision in terminating America's involvement
in the JCPOA, reimposing economic sanctions on Iran, and stating that
the US remains open to diplomacy that will achieve a better
agreement."
Ahead of the US government's decision on the Iran Deal,
the not-for- profit, transatlantic advocacy group UANI hosted the
event Tick-tock: Should we salvage the Iran Deal? on 2 May in
Brussels. It brought together experts from both sides of the Atlantic
to discuss the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) and the
consequences a withdrawal by the US would have on global security.
NUCLEAR DEAL & NUCLEAR PROGRAM
President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday said that France
regretted the United State's decision to pull out of the Iran nuclear
deal and that he would work towards a broader agreement that also
encompassed Iran's ballistics program and regional activities.
President Hassan Rouhani warned Tuesday that Iran could
restart enriching uranium "without any limitations" within
weeks, after President Donald Trump pulled America out of the nuclear
deal, though he said world powers still in the accord could
potentially save the pact.
Iran's supreme leader chastised President Donald Trump
on Wednesday over his decision to pull America out of the 2015
nuclear deal, while lawmakers lit a paper U.S. flag on fire inside
parliament, shouting, "Death to America!"
Iran's supreme leader has challenged U.S. President
Donald Trump over America pulling out of the nuclear deal, saying:
"You cannot do a damn thing!"
While Europeans are dismayed by decision, Israel and
Saudi Arabia express strong support for it.
President Trump on Tuesday withdrew the U.S. from the
Iran nuclear deal, rightly calling it "defective at its
core." Yet he also offered Iran a chance to negotiate a better
deal if it truly doesn't want a nuclear weapon. Mr. Trump's challenge
now is to build a strategy and alliances to contain Iran until it
accepts the crucial constraints that Barack Obama refused to impose.
Trump's courageous decision to withdraw from the nuclear
deal will clarify the stakes for Tehran. Now we'll see whether the
administration is capable of following through.
Now that President Donald Trump has officially withdrawn
the U.S. from the Iran Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the world
has to figure out how to live with that decision.
SANCTIONS & OTHER BUSINESS RISKS
President Trump signed an executive order that will
withdraw the U.S. from the Iran nuclear deal. The presidential memo
starts a 180-day countdown timer for the Trump administration to
re-impose all of the sanctions on Iran that were relaxed under the
Obama-era deal. The order specifies that many of the sanctions should
be re-imposed in 90 days - by Aug. 6.
The European Union has moved to protect the 2015 Iran
nuclear agreement by vowing to take steps to immunise European firms
doing business with Tehran from any US sanctions.
Major companies, particularly in Europe, could see
billions of dollars in commercial deals canceled because of the U.S.
decision to reinstall sanctions on Iran, though the ultimate impact
remains unclear due to the possibility of renegotiations and exemptions,
experts say.
European companies moved quickly to invest in Iran after
it agreed in 2015 to mothball its nuclear weapons program in return
for an end to economic sanctions... Yet even before President Trump
pulled out of the agreement with Iran, many companies had already
tempered their expectations and limited their investment. Now their
prospects look murkier as European leaders try to determine whether
there is a path forward without the United States.
Multinational companies that recently made big bets on
Iran scrutinized the Trump administration's decision to revive
sanctions on the country for ways to preserve their interests
there.
Washington's decision to reinstate Iranian sanctions
threatens to slowly cut off a chunk of the world's crude supply-a
shift that could redraw global supply lines and require Iran's big
customers to find alternative sources.
President Donald Trump announced Tuesday he will
withdraw the U.S. from a nuclear pact with Iran, a move that
threatens Boeing's multibillion dollar deals to help restock Iran's
aging commercial air fleet. The world's largest aerospace company has
agreements to sell planes worth roughly $20 billion to Iranian
airlines, based on list prices
[A]s analysts assess whether renewed sanctions will be
successful, they point to the fact that China is unlikely to curtail
its purchases of Iranian oil, and may in fact increase them. Iran may
also find an ally in Russia, also under U.S. sanctions.
MISSILE PROGRAM
It won't be easy, but Europe and Washington should
pressure Iran into suspending missile flight-testing... Indeed, if
both sides of the Atlantic are serious about stopping Iran from
developing a deliverable nuclear weapon, they should push for a
moratorium on nuclear-capable ballistic missile flight-tests.
MILITARY/INTELLIGENCE MATTERS & PROXY WARS
The commander of Khatam al-Anbia Construction Base, the
main engineering arm of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC),
has said that the conglomerate will complete 40 mega-projects in the
current Iranian year... According to [him], the organization's major
projects this year are in the oil and gas industry, water management,
railway and road construction, port and mine development, oil and gas
pipelines, and information technology.
U.S.-IRAN RELATIONS
[F]or Trump, the ending of the nuclear deal is the first
salvo in a larger campaign to come against the regime in Tehran.
SYRIA, ISRAEL & IRAN
There are increasing concerns Iran is on the cusp of an
attack against Israel, several US military officials told CNN.
Intelligence is not clear on when an attack could come and what form
it would take, they said, with one official noting that "if
there is an attack it might not be immediately clear it's
Iran"... the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) called up a
limited number of reserves Tuesday evening following what the IDF
termed the "identification of irregular activity of Iranian
forces in Syria."
For Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel,
President Trump's decision on Tuesday to abandon the 2015 agreement
was such a wholesale vindication that he abruptly cut short a trip to
Cyprus to be in Israel when it was announced.
OTHER ECONOMIC NEWS
Wall Street cut losses to end little changed on Tuesday
while energy stocks rallied after U.S. President Donald Trump said
the United States would quit the Iran nuclear deal, confirming what
many investors had expected.
HUMAN RIGHTS
Families of several Americans currently detained in Iran
are hoping President Donald Trump's decision announced on Tuesday to
withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal will not make it harder to get
their love ones freed.
NORTH KOREA & IRAN
Over the past two months, Trump has come to see his
policy toward North Korea as a success and believes his unusual
combination of insults and biting economic sanctions appears to have
brought Kim to the table. Now, Trump wants run the same playbook
against Iran.
GULF STATES, YEMEN, & IRAN
Yemen's Shiite rebels fired ballistic missiles at the
Saudi capital on Wednesday, according to the rebels and Saudi state
TV, which said they were intercepted by the military. The
cross-border attack by the Iran-allied rebels, known as Houthis, came
amid mounting regional tensions after U.S. President Donald Trump
decided to withdraw from the landmark 2015 nuclear agreement with
Tehran.
What happens when the Saudi military's massive budget
meets Iran's mastery of asymmetric warfare? Here's a preview.
HEZBOLLAH & LEBANON
The spin in some DC circles has begun to interpret the
unofficial results as a win by Hezbollah and its allies. This is a
simplistic reading of the outcome. The unofficial results reflect a
strong opposition among wide segments of the Lebanese society to Hezbollah's
policies in Lebanon and Syria.
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