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TOP STORIES
The United States has kept its side of a landmark
nuclear deal with Iran, and Tehran has no reason to complain that
Washington has not done enough on lifting sanctions against it, U.S.
Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz said on Monday. Iranian President Hassan
Rouhani said last week that Washington had not fulfilled its
obligations under the agreement, which places restrictions on
Tehran's nuclear activities in exchange for the lifting of
sanctions... "The sanctions that were to be relieved have been
relieved. That's what was the commitment. That has happened."
Moniz told a news conference on the sidelines of an annual meeting of
the U.N. nuclear watchdog's member states. "The consequences of
that in terms of how many companies make foreign direct investments
in Iran is not for the government to decide, that's for companies to
decide," he said.
As deadly airstrikes pounded Aleppo, Syria over the
weekend, a major foreign ground force was also converging on the
region. As many as 3,000 Iranian-backed fighters have arrived in
Aleppo supporting the Syrian regime in its fight to crush the
rebellion, two U.S. officials confirm to Fox News. There are an
estimated 250,000 Syrian civilians trapped in Aleppo facing an
onslaught of Russian and Syrian bombs, according to reports. The
Iranian-backed Shiite militias include fighters from neighboring Iraq
as well as Afghanistan, officials say. Many of those fighters had
already been in Syria but recently descended on Aleppo.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will not run for president in next
year's Iranian election, he said on Tuesday, bowing to the wishes of
supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei who warned his candidacy would
increase divisions in Iran. "In carrying out the intentions of
the leader of the revolution, I have no plans to take part in the
elections next year," Ahmadinejad said in a letter to Khamenei,
published on his website dolatebahar.com... Khamenei, who has the
final say in all matters of state, was quoted on Monday as saying
Ahmadinejad's candidacy would polarize society and "create ...
divisions in the country which I believe is harmful."
NUCLEAR & BALLISTIC MISSILE
PROGRAM
Iran's Defense Ministry on Sunday released video of
the latest homegrown ballistic missile, Zolfaqar, being launched and
hitting a target. The video shows Zolfaqar moving upward with a thick
vapor trail and then detonating a target in the middle of a desert
area. Earlier in the day, Defense Minister Brigadier General Hossein
Dehqan inaugurated the mass production line of the tactical ballistic
missile. Zolfaqar runs on solid fuel and can hit targets with
pin-point accuracy in a range of 750 kilometers.
The North may not be working alone. An intelligence
finding that the United States quietly made public in January
suggests that the development of the North's big engine, which it
claims produces 80 tons of thrust, may be part of a joint partnership
with Iran. A Treasury Department announcement of sanctions against
Iranian officials and engineers named two who had "traveled to
North Korea to work on an 80-ton rocket booster being developed by
the North Korean government." ... The announcement identified
"Iranian missile technicians" from companies working for
Iran's Ministry of Defense for Armed Forces Logistics. It said that
two of them, Seyed Mirahmad Nooshin and Sayyed Medhi Farahi,
"have been critical to the development of the 80-ton rocket booster,
and both traveled to Pyongyang during contract negotiations."
HUMAN RIGHTS
A Canadian-Iranian retired professor was released from
prison on "humanitarian grounds" and flown out of Iran on
Monday, Iran's state-run news agency said, ending her months of
detention alongside other dual nationals swept up by hard-liners in
the security services. Homa Hoodfar was flown to the Arab Gulf nation
of Oman, the brief report from the IRNA news agency said. Canadian
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau hailed her release in a statement,
thanking Italy, Switzerland and Oman for their help in the matter.
Hoodfar, 65, was questioned and barred from leaving Iran in March
after traveling to the country to visit family following the death of
her husband. Her family said she has been held in Tehran's Evin
Prison since June. Hoodfar until recently taught anthropology and
sociology at Montreal's Concordia University. In July, Iran announced
indictments for Hoodfar and three others, without providing any details
about the accusations. In recent weeks, Hoodfar's supporters
described her health as deteriorating while she was in solitary
confinement, saying she was "barely able to walk or talk."
U.S.-IRAN RELATIONS
Commander of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC)
Second Naval Zone General Ali Razmjou announced that thousands of
valuable documents were seized from the US naval forces when they
were captured by the IRGC forces in the Persian Gulf on January 12.
"We seized thousands of pages of valuable intelligence from the
US marines during their detention," General Razmjou said,
addressing a gathering in the Southern province of Bushehr on
Sunday... Earlier this week, Lieutenant Commander of the Islamic
Revolution Guards Corps Navy General Alireza Tangsiri announced that
his forces had detained Canadian and Australian forces before they
captured the US and British marines for violating Iran's territorial
waters in the Persian Gulf in the past. "The IRGC Navy has
detained American and British trespassers twice and the Canadians and
Australians once in the Persian Gulf," Tangsiri told reporters
on the sidelines of military parades in the Southern port city of
Bandar Abbas on Wednesday.
SANCTIONS RELIEF
Trade Minister Steven Ciobo is leading a business
delegation to Iran this week in a bid to secure an early advantage
for Australian companies looking for deals as the market of 80
million people re-enters the global economy. Mr Ciobo saidthe lifting
of punitive sanctions following a deal to restrict the scope of
Tehran's nuclear aspirations meant there was "significant
potential" from an Iranian re-engagement with the international
community. The trade mission to Tehran is the first to the Islamic
republic by an Australian trade minister since 2002, and follows the
trip by Foreign Minister Julie Bishop in April in which she sought to
recalibrate the relationship and persuade Tehran to take back hundreds
of Iranian asylum-seekers. Mr Ciobo will use his visit to talk about
trade with his Iranian counterpart, Mohammad Nematzadeh, and reopen
Austrade's office in Tehran to help Australian companies in doing
business in the $US393 billion ($515bn) economy. Executives from
GrainCorp, WorleyParsons, LiveCorp, Oil Search, Qantas, Sydney
University and Rubicon Water will travel with Mr Ciobo tomorrow.
Iran says Japan has agreed to fund the development of
some of its petrochemical projects - a groundbreaking move that could
open the way for similar funding mechanisms for other sectors in the
future. Iran's Ministry of Petroleum announced in a statement that a
deal has been signed between the country's Persian Gulf Petrochemical
Industries Company (PGPIC) and Japan's Marubeni to provide as much as
€320 million for the development of PGPIC's petrochemical projects,
IRNA reported. This, the Ministry added, will be carried out through
a mechanism known as the Usance Letter of Credit (L/C).
SYRIA CONFLICT
Iran's President Hassan Rouhani vowed on Tuesday that
his country would continue to back Syria in its fight against
"terrorism", the semi-official news agency Tasnim reported.
"Iran will continue helping Syria in the fight against terrorism
and towards establishing security in the region," Rouhani told
the visiting Syrian parliament speaker Hadiyeh al-Abbas, the agency
said.
SAUDI-IRAN TENSIONS
Saudi Arabia and Iran on Tuesday dashed hopes that
OPEC oil producers could clinch an output-limiting deal in Algeria
this week as sources within the exporter group said the differences
between the kingdom and Tehran remained too wide. "This is a
consultative meeting ... We will consult with everyone else, we will
hear the views, we will hear the secretariat of OPEC and also hear
from consumers," Saudi Energy Minister Khalid al-Falih told
reporters. Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Zanganeh said: "It is not
the time for decision-making." Referring to the next formal OPEC
meeting in Vienna on Nov. 30, he added: "We will try to reach
agreement for November." ... Three OPEC sources said Iran, whose
production has stagnated at 3.6 million barrels per day, insisted on
having the right to ramp that up to around 4.1-4.2 million bpd, while
OPEC Gulf members wanted its output to be frozen below 4 million.
OPINION & ANALYSIS
It is often suggested that the most consequential
barrier to Iranian pragmatism is Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali
Khamenei. Once the elderly Khamenei passes from the scene, the
argument goes, his successors will embrace prevailing international
norms. The sunsetting restrictions of the nuclear deal need not be of
concern, for a revamped Islamist regime will find global integration
too tempting to discard for the sake of nuclear arms. The only
problem with such expectations is that the candidate Khamenei and the
Revolutionary Guards are grooming to ascend to the post of supreme
leader is one of the most reactionary members of Iran's ruling elite.
Ibrahim Raisi, Iran's probable next supreme leader, could be the only
person in the Islamic Republic who could cause people to miss
Khamenei. Raisi is 56 years old and, like Khamenei, hails from the
city of Mashhad. After a stint in the seminary, he has spent his
entire career in the Islamic Republic's enforcement arm, serving as
prosecutor general, head of the General Inspection Office and lead
prosecutor of the Special Court of the Clergy, which is responsible
for disciplining mullahs who stray from the official line. In one of
his most notorious acts, he served as a member of the "Death
Commission" that, in the summer of 1988, oversaw the massacre of
thousands of political prisoners on trumped-up charges.
America's settled policy of standing by while half a
million Syrians have been killed, millions have become refugees, and
large swaths of their country have been reduced to rubble is not a
simple "mistake," as critics like Nicholas D. Kristof and
Roger Cohen have lately claimed. Nor is it the product of any
deeper-seated American impotence or of Vladimir Putin's more recent
aggressions. Rather, it is a byproduct of America's overriding desire
to clinch a nuclear deal with Iran, which was meant to allow America
to permanently remove itself from a war footing with that country and
to shed its old allies and entanglements in the Middle East, which
might also draw us into war. By allowing Iran and its allies to kill
Syrians with impunity, America could demonstrate the corresponding
firmness of its resolve to let Iran protect what President Barack Obama
called its "equities" in Syria, which are every bit as
important to Iran as pallets of cash. And just like it sold its Iran
policy through a public "echo chamber" of paid
"experts" from organizations like Ploughshares and
quote-seeking journalists and bloggers, some of whom also cashed
White House-friendly nonprofit checks, the White House deliberately
constructed an "echo chamber" to forward its Syria policy.
The difference between the two "echo chambers" is that,
absent any wider debate or the need for congressional approval, the
Syria version was much more narrowly targeted at policy wonks and
foreign-affairs writers, and the arguments it echoed were entirely
deceptive in their larger thrust-the point of the Iran Deal was, in
fact, to do a deal with Iran-rather than simply incomplete or false
in their specifics... Recently, portions of the
strategic-communications façade erected by the administration have
started to crumble, allowing interested analysts and members of the
public to see the administration's actual policy more clearly. In a
recent interview, Wall Street Journal reporter Jay Solomon revealed
that in 2013, Iran told President Obama that if he were to strike the
regime of Bashar Assad following the latter's chemical-weapons
attack, the Iranians would collapse the talks over their nuclear
program. Obama canceled the strike, of course, and later reassured
Iran that the United States would not touch Assad. Solomon's
reporting confirms a critical fact about Obama's Iran and Syria
policies: They are one and the same. Or, stated differently, Syria is
part of the price for the president's deal with Iran.
It's a simple question - if a U.S. exporter sells its
product to a foreign customer, and the customer resells the product
to a prohibited country such as Iran, can the U.S. exporter have
liability for an export violation? The U.S. District Court for
the District of Columbia handed down an important decision regarding
obligations of U.S. exporters in such situations. This is a
sobering decision that every exporter should read. The case involves
U.S. exporter Epsilon Electronics and its subsidiaries.
According to the decision, Epsilon had sold its retail electronics
products to a customer in the United Arab Emirates. The UAE
customer, in turn, resold the products to customers in Iran.
OFAC learned about the sales, initiated an investigation, and
eventually levied a civil penalty against Epsilon for $4,073,000. In
its defense in the case, Epsilon argued that OFAC failed to provide
any evidence that Epsilon had knowledge that the goods would be
resold to Iran. However, under OFAC's Guidance On
Transshipments to Iran ("Guidance"), a U.S. company can
have liability if it had direct knowledge or if it had "reason
to know" that the products were intended to be resold to
Iran. Thus, even if the U.S. company did not have actual
knowledge of a potentially illegal transaction, if facts are present
that the goods would be shipped to Iran this is sufficient to constitute
a violation.
The easing of economic sanctions against Iran
represents long-term trade and investment opportunities for
Australia. To explore these opportunities I am leading a business
delegation to Tehran this week, marking the beginning of a new
economic and trade relationship with an economy that has been
isolated for a decade. It is a rare event for a country such as Iran
with more than 80 million people and a gross domestic product of
nearly $US390 billion ($511bn) to reintegrate with the global
economy. Given this significance, the Turnbull government is
monitoring developments closely... Navigating Iran's complexities
will be a challenge for Australian businesses, which is why the
Turnbull government has reopened an Austrade office in Tehran. For
our businesses to make the most of Iran's economic resurgence, they
will need to identify new opportunities and develop effective methods
to capture them, while managing the impact of remaining sanctions and
other conventions... There are significant risks but, like any
important market, there are also potential rewards.
Kurdish militants have escalated attacks against
Iranian security forces in the past six months. Clashes along Iran's
western borders have occurred almost weekly from May through early
September. The current level of violence will not endanger Tehran's
control of Iran's western provinces. It will, however, drive
Tehran to intensify its efforts in managing the politics of Iraqi
Kurds and Baghdad in order to prevent any further spillover of
Kurdish separatism into Iran. An escalation of the conflict would
also divert military resources that Iran might otherwise have
deployed to Syria and elsewhere. The Islamic Republic has struggled
with Kurdish militancy since its inception. Kurdish separatist groups
exploited the turmoil of the Islamic Revolution to launch a
full-fledged insurgency in 1979, which Tehran was only able to
reverse after significant deployments of Iranian troops to the area.
One of the largest Kurdish separatist groups involved in the
conflict, the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (PDKI), continued
to conduct limited attacks on Iranian forces until 1996, when it announced
a ceasefire with Tehran and retreated to bases located in Iraqi
Kurdistan. Another militant group, the Iran-Kurdistan Free Life Party
(PJAK), waged a low-level insurgency against the Iranian central
government from Iraqi Kurdistan that culminated in a 2011 ceasefire,
although PJAK fighters continued to occasionally clash with Iranian
security forces afterwards. Violence in Iranian Kurdistan therefore
persisted at relatively low levels with only isolated incidents of
cross-border violence prior to this year.
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