Tuesday, January 17, 2017

Eye on Iran: Trump's Deal Threats Hang Over Iran's Election

TOP STORIES

He hasn't even taken office, but Donald Trump is already looming large in Iran's presidential election. As the Islamic Republic prepares to vote in May, Trump's threats to dismantle the 2015 nuclear accord, along with Congressional action against Iran, are providing a rallying cry for Tehran's conservatives. Under pressure, President Hassan Rouhani, the moderate leader who clinched the deal, and his officials have adopted a harsher tone against Washington: If Trump tears up the deal, "we will burn it here," Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Sunday. State TV compared U.S. lawmakers to gangsters in a Martin Scorsese movie. "This election will be shaped by Donald Trump coming into office," said Mahjoob Zweiri, a professor of Middle Eastern politics who focuses on Iran at Qatar University in Doha. "There will be interest in having a hardliner, or Hassan Rouhani himself will be acting more as a hardliner." ... "Bolstering a hardline Iranian president to stand up to his American counterpart was tried in 2005," said Ali Vaez, senior Iran analyst at International Crisis Group, referring to Ahmadinejad.

A bill has been introduced in Congress that could curtail the jetliner deals between Airbus and Boeing and Iran, offering an early test for the incoming administration and the future of the Iran nuclear deal. Iran Air took delivery last week of the first of 100 jets it has ordered from Airbus. The first of 80 aircraft from Boeing (BA) are scheduled to arrive in 2018. The badly needed jets will reconstitute Iran's decrepit commercial aircraft fleet, which has been languishing under decades of Western sanctions. Peter Roskam, a Republican member of the House, introduced a bill on Friday to initiate an investigation by the Trump administration's Director of National Intelligence into Iran Air and the nation's other airlines. If Iran Air or any other airline were to be found to support the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps or foreign terrorist organizations, the airline would be added to the U.S. sanctions list and be prevented from receiving new aircraft or U.S.-made parts. That would effectively freeze the sale of jets from Boeing to Iran.

At the start of his final week in the White House, Barack Obama issued a warning to the incoming Trump administration about the value of the nuclear deal with Iran. "The United States must remember that this agreement was the result of years of work," read a statement released by the White House on Monday, which did not mention the new president by name. The deal, the statement said, "represents an agreement between the world's major powers - not simply the United States and Iran." The White House said the agreement, implemented one year ago on Monday, "must be measured against the alternatives - a diplomatic resolution that prevents Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon is far preferable to an unconstrained Iranian nuclear program or another war in the Middle East." ... In an interview with the Times of London released on Sunday, Trump said he did not want to say "what I'm gonna do with the Iran deal"... "But I'm not happy with the Iran deal, I think it's one of the worst deals ever made, I think it's one of the dumbest deals I've ever seen ... Where you give ... $150bn back to a country, where you give $1.7bn in cash. Did you ever see $100m in hundred-dollar bills? It's a lot. $1.7bn in cash. Plane loads. Many planes. Boom. $1.7bn. I don't understand. I think that money is in Swiss bank accounts."

UANI IN THE NEWS

Now, with Trump about to take office, the potential obstacles to doing business look far greater than before. Many US politicians have opposed the deal just as vehemently as he has. They argue that it does not effectively prevent Iran from acquiring the bomb and boosts the economy of a country that, they say, supports terrorism and poses an existential threat to Israel... They have also sought to dissuade financial institutions from re-engaging with Iran. To that effect, one anti-JCPOA lobby group in the US, United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI), had by mid-October sent letters to 42 banks in 18 countries, listing all of the potential risks involved in doing business in the Islamic republic.  UANI hopes to persuade bank compliance teams that the risks are simply too high to justify interacting with Iran. One letter to Commerzbank, which UANI shared with Euromoney, mentions everything from the risk of falling foul of money-laundering regulation to the risk of employees being kidnapped... That said, the commercial, legal and political obstacles to ripping up the deal could slow Trump and the Republicans down, or even force them to reconsider their position. Mark Wallace, the chief executive of UANI, says: "I don't think it was a serious position to say that on day one you could go in and rip up the JCPOA. I think that was an unserious position - even as an opponent of the JCPOA, I don't think that would have been appropriate."

IRAN NUCLEAR DEAL

Iran will not renegotiate its nuclear agreement with world powers, even if it faces new U.S. sanctions after Donald Trump becomes president, Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said on Sunday... "There will be no renegotiation and the (agreement) will not be reopened," said Araqchi, Iran's top nuclear negotiator at the talks that led to the agreement in 2015, quoted by the state news agency IRNA. "We and many analysts believe that the (agreement) is consolidated. The new U.S. administration will not be able to abandon it," Araqchi told a news conference in Tehran, held a year after the deal took effect. "Nuclear talks with America are over and we have nothing else to discuss," he added. "It's quite likely that the U.S. Congress or the next administration will act against Iran and imposes new sanctions."

Iran's president has compared talk of renegotiating its nuclear accord to "converting a shirt back to cotton," and says U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's talk of doing so is "mainly slogans." ... Iran's President Hassan Rouhani told reporters Tuesday that "renegotiation has no meaning at all." He added that "Mr. Trump has so far made many remarks on the deal. These are mainly slogans. I do not see it likely that something happens in practice."

Incoming White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus said Sunday that the Iran nuclear agreement is on life support, but refused to say whether President-elect Donald Trump's administration would get rid of the deal. "I think it's on life support. I'll put it that way. But I'm not here to declare one way or another ultimately where this is going to go," Priebus told ABC's "This Week." ... Priebus said on Sunday that Trump believes the deal is "really bad." "I know the president-elect does not like the Iran deal, thinks it is really, really bad. And that's sort of the starting point on that discussion," he said.

Iran has complied with a deadline set by its landmark nuclear deal with world powers by removing hundreds of centrifuges, machines that enrich uranium, from a site buried deep inside a mountain, the U.N. atomic agency said on Monday. The deal reached between six powers and Iran in 2015 stated that no more enrichment would take place at the Fordow site near the holy city of Qom for 15 years, but that Iran could keep just over 1,000 centrifuges there for other uses... The transfer of centrifuges and other equipment from Fordow to storage at another underground enrichment site at Natanz was completed within a deadline of one year from the day the deal was put in place, Jan. 16 of last year, the IAEA said.

U foreign affairs head Federica Mogherini on Monday insisted the bloc will stand by the Iran nuclear accord, bluntly condemned by US President-elect Donald Trump, because it serves Europe's security needs. "It is proof that diplomacy works and delivers... The European Union will continue to work for the respect and implementation of this extremely important deal, most of all for our security," Mogherini told reporters as she went into an EU foreign ministers meeting... Mogherini said she would not comment on Trump's remarks, but claimed -- on the first anniversary of the accord she helped negotiate -- that much had been accomplished. The agreement "has delivered both on the nuclear-related commitments Iran took and on the firm determination of the international community to fully implement this deal", she said. As far as the EU was concerned, the accord had resulted in increased trade and economic ties, "which is really significant", she added.

FOREIGN AFFAIRS

Stefan Löfven is set to visit Iran after being invited by Iranian president Hassan Rouhani, with trade and Syria on the agenda. The Swedish PM's visit will take place on the 11th and 12th of February, the Government Offices of Sweden (Regeringskansliet) announced, and will also concern bilateral cooperation and developments in the region. "There are several reasons. One is because it is a major power in the region. With us sitting on the UN Security Council I have met President Rouhani in New York and I would like to meet him in Iran. The other is clear, now that the economic sanctions against Iran are lifted is important that Swedish industry can gain access to that market," Löfven told news agency TT. A business delegation including representatives of a large number of Swedish companies and government agencies will also travel for the visit, led by Sweden's minister for EU affairs and trade Ann Linde... Opposition politicians have pressed Löfven to bring up human rights issues in Iran during the visit.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif is slated for visits to Switzerland and Malaysia to discuss regional and bilateral issues. Iranian Foreing Minister Zarif will depart for Malaysia to take part in an ad hoc meeting by the foreign ministers of the Organization for Islamic Cooperation (OIC) countries in Kuala Lumpur on January 19 to address the situation of the Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar... Before departing for Malaysia, Zarif will make a short stop in Switzerland to attend the annual World Economic Forum in Davos that convenes on Tuesday where 3,000 delegates from all over the world will engage in a series of meetings and discussions about "entrepreneurship in the global public interest". Zarif will deliver speech on the latest developments in the region, particularly in Syria.

U.S.-IRAN RELATIONS

US "hostility" to Iran is growing day by day despite Tehran's nuclear deal, a senior Iranian official said Sunday, ahead of the first anniversary of the historic accord. "The United States has done whatever it can to slow down Iran's progress" after the deal, said Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, the chief Iranian negotiator in the agreement that took effect on January 16 last year. "In the last 12 months, we have witnessed delays and the disrespecting of promises by the US and some countries. Their hostility increases by the day," Araghchi told reporters.

A year after its nuclear deal went into effect, Iran is increasingly concerned over the arrival of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, who has threatened to tear up the historic accord. Analysts say it is unlikely the Trump administration will completely dismantle the agreement, which he described as "the worst deal ever negotiated." A series of Cabinet appointments, however, have signaled Trump is likely to take a hard line on Tehran. And that will ratchet up pressure on Iran's President Hassan Rouhani, who is making the nuclear deal a centerpiece of his re-election bid this year. "Some of the people who are taking office in the executive branch have a long history of being against Iran," said Foad Izadi, a professor of international studies at Tehran University. "We are going to see a harsher policy toward Iran during the Trump administration," he said.

More than 35 prominent Iranian-Americans, including artists and academics, have called on U.S. President-elect Donald Trump to preserve a nuclear deal with Iran by world powers and choose "diplomacy over sanctions and war" in dealing with the Islamic republic. The January 5 letter warns that scrapping the nuclear accord would be a "disaster for both nations." "It would also once again put the United States and Iran on the path of war," it warns of ditching the so-called Joint Comprehensive Plan Of Action (JCPOA) to curb Tehran's disputed nuclear activities in exchange for sanctions relief. The letter comes days after 30 Iranian activists called on Trump to take a harder line on Tehran by imposing further sanctions and encouraging regime change there... The signatories of last month's letter urging the incoming U.S. administration to harden its line toward Tehran include former Iranian political prisoner Ahmad Batebi, an iconic figure of a 1999 student uprising against Iran's establishment, and Arash Sobhani, the lead singer of the popular rock band Kiosk. They describe the nuclear deal as "disastrous" and liken Iran to the extremist group Islamic State (IS, also sometimes referred to as ISIS).

SANCTIONS RELIEF

Global shipping insurers have devised a way to ensure nearly full coverage for Iranian oil exports from next month after striking a deal to provide cover without involving U.S.-domiciled reinsurers, officials in Tokyo and London said. Restrictions on U.S. firms handling Iranian goods had greatly limited the number of reinsurers of cargoes, but the new arrangements - which essentially allow re-insurance of ships without the involvement of U.S. firms - should boost the number of eligible shipments. That will provide a boon to Iran, which is trying to raise oil exports after most sanctions were lifted last year, though banking restrictions that remain in place that could cap any major rise in exports. "There will be no U.S.-domiciled reinsurer participation on the 2017 IG reinsurance program," Andrew Bardot, secretary and executive officer at the International Group (IG) of P&I Clubs in London told Reuters on Tuesday. The new arrangements take effect on Feb. 20, he and other officials said.

South Korea's Iranian crude oil imports in December soared nearly eight times greater than a year ago, and its 2016 crude imports from Tehran more than doubled from 2015 levels, following last January's lifting of sanctions targeting the Mideast nation. The world's fifth-largest crude importer brought 1.55 million tonnes of Iranian crude in December, or 367,317 barrels per day (bpd), compared with 207,629 tonnes a year ago and 1.73 million tonnes in the previous month, customs office data showed on Sunday. In November, South Korea's Iranian crude imports more than quadrupled from a year earlier as Hyundai Chemical's new condensate splitter boosted the country's ultra-light oil demand from the Middle Eastern country... South Korea is one of Iran's major oil customers. Seoul imported 14 million tonnes, or 281,187 bpd, of crude from Tehran in 2016, up 145.4 percent from 5.7 million tonnes, or 114,595 bpd, in 2015.

HUMAN RIGHTS

In yet another case of a foreign resident or dual national from a western country grabbed and imprisoned in Iran without access to a lawyer or any other aspect of due process, Iranian-born Swedish resident and expert in emergency disaster medicine Ahmadreza Jalali has been held in Evin Prison for almost nine months. He is now approaching three weeks on hunger strike in protest against his detainment. Jalali was arrested by agents of Iran's Ministry of Intelligence on April 24, 2016 while visiting the Iranian capital, after being officially invited by Tehran University... "Ahmadreza had always traveled to Iran by invitation of state organizations, including the Red Crescent, and never experienced any problems before," his wife Vida Mehran-nia told the Campaign, adding that her husband has been charged with "collaborating with enemy states." ... Mehran-nia told the Campaign that her husband began his hunger strike on December 25, the day his interrogators told him he would receive the maximum punishment... A non-practicing general medicine physician with a post-doctorate degree in emergency and disaster medicine, Jalali lives in Sweden with his wife and two children.

DOMESTIC POLITICS

Perplexed residents of Tehran focused their eyes - and smartphones - upward on Monday afternoon as antiaircraft weapons hidden on rooftops suddenly began blasting away at "an unidentified flying object" in the clear sky. The thunderous clack-clack of gunfire and small dots of white smoke overhead provided a loud and unexpected accompaniment to the start of city's evening rush, as videos showed. Traffic slowed to a near standstill. It was the second time in a month that antiaircraft guns had opened fire in Tehran, Iran's capital. And both times the target turned out to be, according to the authorities, a camera drone.

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