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TOP STORIES
Southern Syria, once the quietest corner of the
country's multisided conflict, has unexpectedly become the most
volatile flashpoint between America and Iran as the two countries vie
for control. The U.S. military has moved mobile artillery-rocket
launchers into southern Syria for the first time, as American troops
in the area face increasing dangers from Iran-backed forces. Iran's
best-known military commander, meanwhile, was photographed praying
with allied fighters in Syria, a visit seen by some U.S. officials as
a public taunt by Tehran. Worried that the situation may spiral out
of control, top U.S. military commanders are pressing Moscow to step
in. "This is rapidly developing, it's not settled at all and I
don't even know that there's a good direction determined yet,"
one U.S. official said. "Everybody's trying to figure out what
to do here. It's in nobody's interest for us to get into an active
fight with these pro-regime forces."
An Iranian naval patrol boat shined a laser at a U.S.
Marine Corps helicopter flying over the Strait of Hormuz in what
officials said was an unsafe encounter. U.S. Navy Cmdr. Bill Urban
said Wednesday that the Iranian vessel also turned its spotlight on
two Navy ships that were moving through the strait on Tuesday. Urban,
a U.S. Fifth Fleet spokesman, said the Iranian boat came within 800
yards of the USS Bataan, an amphibious assault ship, and scanned it
from bow to stern with the spotlight. It also shined the light on the
USS Cole, a guided missile destroyer. The Marine CH-53E Super
Stallion heavy lift helicopter automatically fired flares in response
to the laser. No one was injured and there was no damage to the
ships. A third American vessel, the USNS Washington Chambers cargo
ship, was accompanying the others but was not affected.
Iranian forces killed two members of a Sunni Muslim
jihadist group in the city of Chabahar on Wednesday and arrested five
others, the intelligence minister said, as security forces stepped up
measures to prevent militant attacks. Last week, suicide bombers and
gunmen attacked parliament and Ayatollah Khomeini's mausoleum in
Tehran, killing 17 people in what was an unprecedented security
breach for Iran. Islamic State claimed responsibility and threatened
more attacks against Iran's majority Shi'ite population, whom the
hardline Sunni militants consider heretics. Iran has arrested almost
50 people in connection with the attacks On Wednesday, state
media reported that security forces had fought with members of Ansar
al-Furqan, a militant Sunni group, in Chabahar, a city in southeastern
Iran. Intelligence minister Mahmoud Alavi was quoted as saying by
state media that two militants had been killed and five arrested. One
security officer was also killed, he said.
UANI IN THE NEWS
Foreign Minister Zarif's effort at deflection portrays
Iran as a beacon of democracy in a region of autocrats He criticizes
Middle East neighbors and American allies for their role in global
conflicts, all the while ignoring Iran's notorious domestic
repression and record of sponsoring wars in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and
Yemen. President Hassan Rouhani's re-election is touted as a symbol
of the Iranian public's desire to engage with the world, yet neither
he nor his foreign minister has ever had control over Iran's regional
policies. The supreme leader drives policy and politics, and his
decisions consistently support export of Iran's radicalism and
terrorism. Tehran has provided plenty of its own "beautiful
military equipment" - an estimated $6 billion a year - to prop
up Bashar al-Assad's Syrian regime with men and money, and arms are
supplied to Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen. While
fighting extremism in the region remains the challenge of our time,
it is mendacious for Iran to portray itself as an innocent bystander.
Its bloodstained record tells a different story.
U.S.-IRAN RELATIONS
Former Secretary of State John Kerry lobbied for the
Iran nuclear deal on Wednesday by saying it helped the US. avoid
armed conflict, and that leaders of some Middle East countries wanted
the U.S. to attack Iran. "We were hurtling toward
conflict," Kerry said at an annual retreat of "mediators
and peace process actors" in Oslo, Norway. "I mean, there's
just no other way to describe it." "Leaders in the region were
saying to me personally, and to the president, President Obama, you
should bomb these guys," Kerry said. "That's the only way
to resolve this issue." "And we chose a different
path," he said. "What we did is to find a mutually
acceptable way to guarantee that both sides were able to agree on a
path forward that met both sides' needs."
BUSINESS RISK
India's oil imports from Iran have fallen to their
lowest since June 2016, shipping data shows, in possible retaliation
for Tehran not awarding a gas field development to Indian companies.
India, Iran's top oil client after China, shipped in 487,600 barrels
per day (bpd) in May, about 9 percent less compared with April and
nearly 40 percent less than a peak registered in October, according
to ship tracking data obtained from sources and data compiled by
Thomson Reuters Oil Research & Forecasts. Most Western-led
sanctions against Tehran's nuclear programme were lifted in January
last year, and India's Iranian crude imports began climbing two
months later in March. In the fiscal year to March 2018, though,
India has said it plans to order about a quarter less Iranian crude
due to a snub over development of Iran's Farzad B gas field.
SYRIA CONFLICT
Whether thanks to hesitation, poor planning or a total
lack of strategy, U.S. forces have been frozen out of eastern Syria,
with Iran and the Syrian regime gladly seizing the initiative and
securing a foothold on the Iraqi border. Remote, sparsely populated
and seemingly unremarkable, the area around Al-Tanf on the Syria-Iraq
border has become increasingly strategic, as the militant group Daesh
(ISIS) prepares to make its last stand in Syria's east. It is in this
desert outpost that the United States has been training Syrian
rebels, apparently with a view to expand north and put a physical
U.S. presence in between pro-Iran militias in Iraq and the Daesh-held
Euphrates valley in Syria. From here, Washington believed, a Sunni
Arab force could be built up to rid the area of Daesh and deny the
space to Iran and the Syrian regime.
EXTREMISM
Three years after the last war in Gaza, the leaders of
Israel and Palestine seem to be lurching toward another round of
fighting-although not for the reasons you may think. On Sunday, the
Israeli security cabinet agreed, at the request of the Palestinian
president, to reduce the amount of electricity it supplies to the blockaded
territory by 40 percent. The officials came to the decision even
after top Israeli generals warned it would lead to a humanitarian
crisis in the strip, where 1.9 million people are bracing for a
scorching summer with perhaps only three hours of power per day.
Hamas, the militant Islamist group that controls Gaza, warned of an
"explosion." Blackouts are not the only issue, however: If
there is a fresh round of fighting, it may be sparked by a diplomatic
crisis happening some 1,100 miles away-one that both the Israeli
defense minister and U.S. President Donald Trump have goaded on.
HUMAN RIGHTS
Women in Iran have found a middle
ground in the struggle between those who want to cover their hair and
those who don't in a new campaign called White Wednesday or
"Wednesday without compulsion." Now running for the fourth
week, the campaign invites women and men to wear white veils, scarves
or bracelets, the color of peace, to show their opposition to the
mandatory dress code. It is the latest initiative of journalist Masih
Alinejad, founder of My Stealthy Freedom, an online movement
advocating freedom of choice. "This campaign is addressed to
women who willingly wear the veil, but who remain opposed to the idea
of imposing it on others. Many veiled women in Iran also find the
compulsory imposition of the veil to be an insult. By taking footages
of themselves wearing white, these women can also show their
disagreement with compulsion," Alinejad wrote in a post on the
My Stealthy Freedom Facebook page announcing the beginning of the
campaign on May 24.
OPINION & ANALYSIS
Under the terms of the nuclear deal with Iran, formally
known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), key
restrictions would expire if the IAEA formally reaches a
"broader conclusion" that Tehran's nuclear program is
entirely peaceful. Such a conclusion would result in the lifting of
the UN's remaining non-nuclear sanctions, including the ban on
ballistic missile testing and the conventional arms embargo.
Furthermore, the U.S. and EU would delist additional entities
from their sanctions lists. Notably, the EU would delist all
entities affiliated with Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps,
the organization responsible for both terrorist activities abroad as
well as key aspects of the nuclear program. Spurring the IAEA to
reach a broader conclusion as quickly as possible appears to be
Iran's goal. In a televised speech in the middle of May, Iran's
President Hassan Rouhani expressed his intention to engage in "lifting
all the non-nuclear sanctions during the coming four years" - at
least two years earlier than the JCPOA would otherwise allow.
Unless additional steps are taken to redress the International
Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA) closing of Iran's possible military
dimension (PMD) file in December 2015, it is technically
possible for the IAEA to reach a broader conclusion within four
years.
I had visited the sprawling mausoleum of the founder of
the Islamic republic multiple times, trying to blend in with
pilgrims. I would sit on the thick red carpets with visitors from
across Iran and beyond, talking with them about the war in Syria, the
latest soap operas and coming elections. Sometimes officials would
ask me who I was, only to offer tea and let me be. Despite its
reputation, Iran is much more open than many think, even for a
foreign journalist. Of course, after the attacks last week on the
Parliament building and the mausoleum, a gold-domed sanctuary that
houses the remains of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and other important
Iranian officials, entering as a common foreign tourist is more
problematic because of new security checks. So I went with my
journalist identification.
This month, the Islamic State successfully carried out
its first attack on Iranian soil, resulting in 17 dead and some 50
injured. Iran is a top targetbfor the Islamic State - and has been
since the group rose to prominence in 2014. But Iranian security forces
had effectively thwarted the threat through an extensive
counterterror program. Iran took pride in keeping the fight against
the Islamist militants outside its territory. Until now. The Islamic
State views Shiite Muslims as apostates. It portrays Iran as a Shiite
power threatening the "real" Muslim community - the Sunnis.
Because of this - and the threat the group poses to Iran's interests
in the region - Tehran views the Islamic State as a national security
threat. As a result, it placed "no limits" on resources to
combat it both inside and outside its borders.
On June 7, terrorists successfully attacked Iran's
parliament building and the tomb of the regime's founder, Ayatollah
Ruhollah Khomeini. At the end of the gun and suicide bomb attack, 17
were dead and 43 wounded. It was the first major terrorist attack in
Iran since the 2010 bombing attack at the Jamia mosque in Zahedan in
southeast Sistan-Baluchestan province, which is populated mostly by
Sunni Baluchis and borders Pakistan and Afghanistan. That attack was
claimed by Jundallah, a Sunni Baloch terror group, as revenge for
Iran's execution of their leader, Abdolmalek Rigi. The recent attack
was also executed by a minority group, in this case Kurds. The
perpetrators, who fought for Islamic State (IS) in Iraq and Syria,
were quickly identified and the ringleader, Serias Sadeghi, was a
known IS recruiter in Iranian Kurdistan. The IS claimed
responsibility for the attack, but Iran's government quickly blamed
the U.S. and Saudi Arabia for the atrocity, so as to distract the
people from the failings of the security apparatus and to signal the
approved theme for demonstrations and reportage.
Last week ISIS staged an unprecedented terrorist attack
in the heart of Iran. At least 17 people were killed and dozens more
were injured at two symbolic locations of the Islamic Republic: the
parliament and the mausoleum of Ayatollah Khomeini. The reaction from
Iran's clerical rulers was predictable; they variously blamed their
regional and international enemies - the USA, Israel and Saudi
Arabia. Ignored by Iranian officials and by most expert commentators,
however, was any recognition that Tehran's domestic and regional
policies were contributing factors. In other words, the expansion of
ISIS into Iran was a classic case of Iranian regime blowback. The
conventional wisdom suggests that Iran would remain immune to ISIS as
a global terrorist threat. Given Iran's majority Shia population and
the fact that ISIS is a deeply anti-Shia cult informed by an
extremist Sunni neo-Wahhabism, it has been widely assumed that
Iranian recruits to ISIS would be difficult to find.
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