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TOP STORIES
Rep. Mark Meadows suggested that the president doesn't
want a withdrawal to get in the way of ongoing discussions with North
Korea and China.
European powers still want to hand Donald Trump next
week a plan to save the Iran nuclear deal, but they have also started
work on protecting EU-Iranian business ties if the U.S. president
makes good on a threat to withdraw, six sources told Reuters.
Air France is cutting its Joon subsidiary's service
between Paris and Tehran to the summer season only, blaming a poor
economic performance over two years in operation.
UANI IN THE NEWS
President Macron and Chancellor Merkel will do their
best to save the Iran nuclear deal, also known as the Joint
Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), while simultaneously seeking
ways to pressure Iran to cease behaviour that has engendered
significant international condemnation and sanctions. To do so we
need more than threats. The Iranian regime needs to understand that
if it behaves responsibly, access to international markets,
technology, and financial systems will follow, and with it, economic
success and domestic political stability. The priority for Europe and
the US should therefore be to develop an incentive architecture that
ensures responsible behaviour.
I think President Trump should remain in the accord but
continue to work with our European partners to fix the deal. If he
withdraws on May 12, he really risks maying the U.S.'s behavior the
U.S., as opposed to Iran's intransigence in the region, support for
terrorism, and other problematic activity. And the president would
really be best served in trying to, now that he has John Bolton and
Mike Pompeo on board, negotiating with our European allies to make
the deal more rigorous and better.
NUCLEAR DEAL & NUCLEAR PROGRAM
An Israeli satellite imaging company on Thursday
released images showing what it described as "unusual"
movement around the Iranian Fordo nuclear facility, a one-time
uranium enrichment plant buried deep underground that was converted
to a research center as part of the 2015 nuclear deal.
Donald Trump seems set on pulling out of the Iran
nuclear deal next week, with U.S. officials suggesting that any
initial diplomatic turbulence will be followed by negotiations for a
new accord.
Iran's foreign minister took to YouTube on Thursday to
criticize President Donald Trump's threat to withdraw from the
nuclear deal, saying Iran will not "renegotiate or add
onto" the atomic accord.
It's time to start preparing for what happens after the
United States exits the deal. The media and many think-tank experts
will be apoplectic. The Europeans will rail about yet another
transatlantic divide. But in the end, none of that will matter. What
matters is whether President Trump is finally willing to learn from
the mistakes of 15 years of transatlantic diplomacy with Iran. That
will involve implementing a maximum pressure campaign modeled on his
efforts on North Korea.
The JCPOA, then, isn't really an arms-control agreement;
it's just cover for American inaction, and for President Obama's
acute desire to leave the Middle East. So, let us go post-JCPOA... We
can use America's approach to the Soviet Union as a model: Contain,
roll back, and squeeze.
Make no mistake: the Iranian archives that Israeli Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently presented to the world are very
important. Maybe the information we have seen so far is not new,
although there is a multitude of documents that we might still hear
about. But it comes straight from the horse's mouth. These are
Iranian documents, which lay out their nuclear plans and activities
in a very clear and unambiguous manner. There's no room for any doubt
that Iran was working on a military nuclear program.
MILITARY/INTELLIGENCE MATTERS & PROXY WARS
One of Donald Trump's main arguments for cancelling the
Iran nuclear deal has been Iran's role in devastating conflicts in
Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Lebanon
SYRIA, ISRAEL & IRAN
IDF believes Iran won't strike back before Trump's
deadline on nuclear deal, elections in Lebanon.
[Israeli] Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman sought
assurances from Russia on Thursday that its advanced missile defense
systems won't be used against Israeli jets over Syria, and he called
on Moscow to condemn Iran for its repeated threats against the Jewish
state.
On an official visit to Damascus this week, the chairman
of the Iranian Parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy
committee said that the Islamic Republic would retaliate against
Israel for last month's strikes on an air Syrian military base that
killed several Iranian nationals.
The commander of the Fatemiyoun Division, an all-Afghan
militia unit fighting under the Iranian Revolutionary Guards'
leadership in Syria, has rejected media reports that missiles hit its
military base near Syria's northwest over the weekend.
ECONOMIC NEWS
The 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and six world powers
- the US, Russia, China, the UK, France and Germany - lifted
international sanctions on Iran's economy, including those on oil,
trade and banking sectors.In exchange, Iran agreed to limit its
nuclear activities. US President Donald Trump has repeatedly
threatened to abandon the agreement and will make a decision on 12
May about whether to reintroduce sanctions from his country. So, as
that deadline draws nearer, Reality Check examines how Iran's economy
has fared since the nuclear accord came into effect.
Newly arrived in the city of Tabriz in northwestern
Iran, Corneilis Vamoorschot wanted to change his euros into rials,
but quickly realised it wouldn't be a simple task. "We wanted to
change at the bank, but the banks accept neither euros or dollars. We
came to the foreign exchange bureau, but they had no money,"
said the Dutch tourist, enchanted by the city's brick bazaar, despite
the inconvenience.
Iran is seeing bumper oil exports. But that doesn't mean
production is on a similar trend.
HUMAN RIGHTS
Iran's intelligence operatives have arrested two, and
possibly three, Iranians with British connections in the past two
months, human rights activists and others said Thursday.
An Iranian academic named Dr. Abu El Fadl Beheshti
attacked and insulted Ahwazi activist Shaima Silawi during a seminar
held on Wednesday in Brussels, involving a film about the victims of
mines in Iraq and Iran. In the video about the incident, which was
widely shared on social media sites, an Iranian activist who claimed
to be working for the security of the Iranian embassy in Brussels is
seen beating up and insulting the activist Shaima Silawi, a
representative of the Ahwaz Human Rights Organisation (AHRO).
Arabs have long said they face discrimination in Iran,
but two human rights groups say that hundreds of people have been
arrested around Ahvaz in the last few weeks alone amid protests
against water and power cuts, poverty and alienation.
GULF STATES, YEMEN, & IRAN
Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz called, on Thursday,
King Mohammed VI of Morocco. King Salman affirmed Saudi Arabia's
stand with the brotherly Morocco Kingdom against all threats to its
security, stability and territorial integrity, reported Saudi Press Agency.
During the telephone call, the two leaders stressed the need to unify
positions and coordinate efforts to confront the aggressive acts of
the Iranian regime, its interventions in the affairs of Arab
countries, and its policies which aim at destabilizing security and
stability in the Arab world.
TERRORISM & EXTREMISM
Hezbollah has expanded its regional clout by recruiting
thousands of young men from Lebanon's Bekaa Valley to fight in Syria.
But the war next door is producing a tide of discontent at home for
the Lebanese militia and political group ahead of elections on
Sunday.
IRAQ & IRAN
With Iraq's May 12 parliamentary elections nearing, the
coalition of Iranian-supported militia groups called Fateh Alliance
is confident that it can translate its military gains into a
political victory by either winning the premiership or playing
kingmaker in the post-election government formation process,
according to Tasnim News Agency, an outlet affiliated with Iran's
Revolutionary Guards.
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