TOP STORIES
Iran's Revolutionary Guards look set to entrench their
power and shift the country to more hardline, isolationist policies
for years to come following the death of influential powerbroker Ali
Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. Former president Rafsanjani long had a
contentious relationship with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps
(IRGC), which is both the strongest military force in Iran and also
has vast economic interests worth billions of dollars. With a
presidential election in May and a question mark over the health of
Iran's most powerful figure, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei,
analysts say the Guards will soon have opportunities to tighten their
grip on the levers of power. Rafsanjani, who died on Sunday aged 82,
had criticized the Guards' expanding economic interests, which range
from oil and gas to telecommunications and construction, their role
in the crackdown on protests after disputed 2009 presidential
elections and the country's missile program which the Guards oversee.
Iran has received authorisation from world powers to
import 130 tonnes of natural uranium, Iran's Atomic Energy
Organisation spokesman Behrouz Kamalvandi said Thursday. He said the
green light was given by the joint commission overseeing the nuclear
deal which Iran struck in 2015 with Britain, China, France, Germany,
Russia and the United States. "They have accepted our request to
purchase 130 tonnes of (natural) uranium," Kamalvandi told state
television, without naming the supplier. According to Kamalvandi,
Iran has already imported 220 tonnes of uranium since the nuclear
deal went into effect in January 2016. This and the additional 130
tonnes would provide Iran with "good reserves" for its
nuclear programme. But Iran will need bigger stockpiles of uranium to
raise its nuclear programme to "industrial" levels and
exploration for new uranium mines is underway across the country, he
said.
In addition to his remarks skeptical of Russia and
supportive of NATO, General Mattis tacked to the left of
President-elect Trump and most of the Republicans in Congress on
whether to keep the agreement constraining Iran's nuclear program.
Mr. Trump has said that his top priority is to "dismantle the
disastrous deal with Iran." But General Mattis urged the United
States to take steps to rigorously enforce it. "I think it is an
imperfect arms control agreement - it's not a friendship
treaty," he said. "But when America gives her word, we have
to live up to it and work with our allies." ... But it was also
clear that General Mattis favors a more assertive response to Iran,
which he described in a written submission to the Senate committee as
the "biggest destabilizing force in the Middle East."
General Mattis did not say how many American troops should be kept in
Iraq, but he asserted that the United States needed to maintain its
influence there long after Mosul is retaken from the Islamic State,
also known as ISIS or ISIL, to ensure that Iraq "does not become
a rump state of the regime in Tehran."
SANCTIONS RELIEF
Iranian authorities, keen to roll out the red carpet
to foreign investors, are taking steps to help local firms sell bonds
abroad and Western fund managers are eager to buy... Investors are
eager but more than a year after international sanctions against Iran
were removed in exchange for curbs on its disputed nuclear program,
compliance risks may remain. "We would be very interested,"
said Lutz Roehmeyer, director at Landesbank Berlin Invest. "We
have no exposure, and that would be a great first step, but
eventually we would actually like to be invested in local
currency." ... Iran's capital marker regulator, the Securities
and Exchange Organisation (SEO), is nonetheless encouraging local
firms to explore alternatives to domestic lending, where rates remain
above 20 percent. "There is a big project to help big listed companies
or even the government itself to issue bonds in other countries, the
first of which is Korea," said Bahador Bijani, Vice Chairman for
International and Foreign Investment Affairs at the SEO.
"Additionally, SEO is facilitating the process of listed companies
issuing bonds in international markets like London."
A delegation, comprising senior officials of Poland's
largest oil company, is scheduled to visit Tehran in coming days
aiming to ink a contract for developmental of Iranian oilfields.
Poland has begun new cooperation with Iran in the post-JCPOA era over
development of oil trade as well as collaborations for investment in
upstream sector of Iranian oil and gas industry. So far, National
Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) has signed spot contracts for crude sales to
Lotos S.A. and PKN Orlen while negotiations have also begun with
another Polish oil giant for investment in Iranian oil and gas
industry.
KraussMaffei has a new agency in Iran and thus wants
to further strengthen its market position in injection molding and
reaction process machinery in this region. KaranSimaFam, a family-run
company in the Iranian plastics industry with over 50 years of
experience, represents KraussMaffei with the new company Krasifam
(KSF).
India's annual oil imports from Iran surged to a
record high in 2016 as some refiners resumed purchases after the
lifting of sanctions against Tehran, according to ship tracking data
and a report compiled by Thomson Reuters Oil Research and Forecasts.
The sharp increase propelled Iran into fourth place among India's
suppliers in 2016, up from seventh position in 2015. It used to be
India's second-biggest supplier before sanctions. For the year, the
world's third biggest oil consumer bought about 473,000 barrels per
day (bpd) of oil from Iran to feed expanding refining capacity, up
from 208,300 bpd in 2015, the data showed... Indian refiners Reliance
Industries, Hindustan Petroleum, Bharat Petroleum and HPCL-Mittal
Energy Ltd (HMEL) last year resumed imports from Tehran, attracted by
the discount offered by Iran.
SYRIA CONFLICT
In the valleys between Damascus and Lebanon, where
whole communities had abandoned their lives to war, a change is
taking place. For the first time since the conflict broke out, people
are starting to return. But the people settling in are not the same
as those who fled during the past six years. The new arrivals have a
different allegiance and faith to the predominantly Sunni Muslim
families who once lived there. They are, according to those who have
sent them, the vanguard of a move to repopulate the area with Shia
Muslims not just from elsewhere in Syria, but also from Lebanon and
Iraq. The population swaps are central to a plan to make demographic
changes to parts of Syria, realigning the country into zones of
influence that backers of Bashar al-Assad, led by Iran, can directly
control and use to advance broader interests.
HUMAN RIGHTS
Iran should immediately halt the execution of 12 men
convicted of drug offenses, scheduled for January 14, 2017, in Karaj
Central Prison, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International said
today. The human rights organizations expressed concern that, despite
repeated government promises, Iran has not made any tangible progress
in reducing its alarming execution rate.
Two prisoners were hanged in public in the city of
Sarpol-e Zahab (Kermanshah province, western Iran) on Moharebeh
charges (enmity against God). According to a report by the Iranian
state-run media IRIB, the executions were carried out in public on
the morning of Sunday January 8.
DOMESTIC POLITICS
At the shrine of Imam Reza, Iran's holiest site,
Ibrahim Raeisi tells thousands of pilgrims about their
responsibilities to society. The conservative cleric then takes a
swipe at Iran's arch enemy, the US. "The bullying system [of the
US] is arrogant, overconfident and evil ... and tramples upon the
rights of people as it has done with Palestinians for 70 years,"
Mr Raeisi, clad in a black turban and brown robe, tells worshippers.
"The right will prevail." His sermon reflects the sentiments
espoused by hardline sections of the Iranian regime, including
clerics, the judiciary and the elite Revolutionary Guards. And it
hints at how Mashhad, Iran's second city, is increasingly finding
itself used as a base for hardliners to promote their brand of Shia
radicalism. And it comes as Iran gears up for May elections at which
Hassan Rouhani, the centrist president, will attempt to ward off the
challenge of such hardline opponents and secure a second term in
office.
OPINION & ANALYSIS
"The horrible Iran deal," President-elect
Donald Trump tweeted just before the New Year. These words have been
largely ignored. They should not be. They indicate that his pledge
during the campaign to tear up and renegotiate the nuclear deal with
Iran remains viable. To be sure, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of
Action, as it is formally called, is highly flawed. But it would be
foolhardy and risky for America to scuttle it now. First of all, it
is improbable that Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany - the
other five parties to the deal - would agree to jeopardize it.
Pulling out would isolate the U.S. from the coalition it successfully
created and leave no credible means for stopping Iran from acquiring
nuclear weapons, the objective of the deal. A second reason to keep
the deal in place is that during its first seven years it delivers a
period of significant constraints over Iran's nuclear program along
with tight inspections and monitoring. But in the eighth year, 2023,
as President Obama has acknowledged, the agreement will gradually
allow Iran to build enough nuclear capability to reach almost zero
"breakout time" (the time needed to produce enough fissile
material to make a bomb). That makes those first seven years an
opportune time to address the deal's flaws. The United States should
put into place partnerships and plans to deter any Iranian effort to
race toward nuclear weaponry once the constraints on its nuclear
program start waning. Third, tearing up the deal would create a
dangerous void: Washington would be provoking Tehran at a moment when
it has no credible leverage to restrain Iran on its own. Since this
is an international rather than bilateral deal, so long as Iran
complies with it, international sanctions would not be restored and
international legitimacy for military action would be weak or
withheld entirely.
On January 10, officials from Iran and the P5+1
countries met in Vienna under the auspices of the Joint Commission, a
body established by the 2015 nuclear deal and coordinated by
Frederica Mogherini, the European Union's high representative for
foreign affairs and security policy. Numerous media reports indicate
that the commission was set to approve Tehran's request to import 130
tons of natural uranium from Russia and possibly more from
Kazakhstan. Yet Iran has no civil need for that uranium -- it already
possesses ample supplies for its research reactors, and Russia was
previously contracted to provide sufficient fuel for the nuclear
power plant at Bushehr. Aside from concerns about the implications of
these potential uranium imports, the reported decision highlights a
deeper, ongoing issue with implementation of the nuclear deal -- thus
far, information about what the Joint Commission allows Iran to do
has come largely from news leaks. Outside experts have not been able
to make informed opinions about how well the Joint Comprehensive Plan
of Action (JCPOA) is working because they lack sufficient information
from the Joint Commission and the International Atomic Energy Agency
(IAEA). The scheduled January 18 UN Security Council (UNSC) discussion
of Resolution 2231, which embodies the JCPOA as well as the ban on
Iranian arms exports, is a good opportunity to provide greater
transparency that allows for better-informed judgments about the
deal. Consequently, the incoming Trump administration should revive
the two main levers that brought Iran to the negotiations, but were
partially abandoned by the Obama administration: a credible threat of
sanctions that could severely damage the Iranian energy and financial
sectors, and a credible surgical military option.
The process outlined in a new Joint Commission
decision dated January 10, 2017 is in theory going to downblend the
reportedly 100 kilograms (kg) of low enriched uranium (LEU) held up
in Iran's Enriched UO2 Powder Plant (EUPP) into natural uranium or
even depleted uranium. However, the devil is in the details, and
understanding the actual situation requires more information. On the
surface, the process appears to describe mixing depleted uranium and
enriched uranium inside the plant, ideally resulting in a mixture
that would not be enriched uranium. However, the wording implies that
the mixing is not ideal and thus the downblending may be incomplete
and reversible, e.g. the LEU would be recoverable if Iran built a
facility to do so.
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