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TOP STORIES
On Iran, Pompeo said the Islamic Republic has a
"significant foothold" in Syria and is seeking to create a
corridor through Syria and Iraq as part of its effort to become the
"kingpin" of the Middle East. "We are working
diligently to figure out how to push back against Iran, not only in
the nuclear arena but in all the other spaces as well," Pompeo
said. Pompeo was a strong opponent of the deal Iran signed with world
powers during the Obama administration to curb its nuclear program in
exchange for lifting some sanctions. While the current administration
has reluctantly certified that Iran is keeping its commitments under
the accord, the intelligence chief compared its compliance to having
a "bad tenant." "They don't pay their rent, you call
them and then they send a check and it doesn't clear and then they
send another one," Pompeo said. "And then the next day
there's an old, tired sofa in the front yard and you tell them to
take it away, and you know they drag it to the back. This is Iranian
compliance today: grudging, minimalist, temporary."
Kuwait ordered the expulsion of the Iranian ambassador
and 14 other diplomats for alleged links to a "spy and
terror" cell, Iranian and Kuwaiti media reported on Thursday,
worsening an unusual public dispute between the two countries.
Kuwait also told Iran's cultural and military missions to shut
down, following a court case that increased tensions between the Gulf
Arab state and Tehran. Iran responded to the expulsions by filing a
complaint with the Kuwaiti charge d'affaires, the Iranian news agency
ISNA said. ISNA also said Kuwait is allowing only four of 19 embassy
staff to remain in the country. Some sources said those expelled were
given 45 days to leave the country; others said 48 days. The
expulsions were an unusual move for Kuwait, which avoids conflict and
has worked at keeping good relations with all the countries in the
region, and whose ruling emir is a regional diplomatic broker.
Analysts said they thought the expulsion of the ambassador was the
first ever by Kuwait.
The family of former FBI agent Robert Levinson has met
with State Department officials about efforts to locate him more than
a decade after he disappeared in Iran. That's according to a U.S
official who says the meeting took place in Washington on Thursday.
The official wasn't authorized to discuss the information publicly
and requested anonymity. It's unclear exactly what the relatives
discussed with the State Department. The official says many U.S.
government officials believe Levinson is no longer alive. The State
Department isn't confirming the meeting but says the U.S. is
"unwavering" in its commitment to find Levinson and bring
him home. The State Department says it seeks Iran's cooperation.
Levinson disappeared from Iran's Kish Island in 2007. For years, U.S.
officials didn't acknowledge his FBI affiliation.
SANCTIONS ENFORCEMENT
New U.S. sanctions against Iran over its ballistic
missile programme are unfounded, a senior Russian Foreign Ministry
official said on Thursday, the RIA news agency reported Washington
slapped new economic sanctions against Iran on Tuesday over its ballistic
missile programme, saying Tehran's "malign activities" in
the Middle East had undercut any "positive contributions"
coming from the 2015 Iran nuclear accord. RIA also cited Mikhail
Ulyanov, head of the Foreign Ministry's department for
non-proliferation and arms control, as saying that the United States
was fulfilling its own part of the Iran nuclear deal "very
badly."
FOREIGN AFFAIRS
Iran threatened to reciprocate Kuwait's decision to
expel most of its diplomats on Thursday, saying the accusations that
Tehran was behind a terrorist cell in the country were
"baseless". "Iran's strong objection has been
communicated to Kuwait's charge d'affaires It was reiterated that
Iran reserves the right to a reciprocal measure," said foreign
ministry spokesman Bahram Ghasemi in a statement on his Telegram
channel. A senior Kuwaiti official had earlier told AFP that 15
Iranian diplomats had been asked to leave the country. The move
follows a court case in which 21 people were found guilty of belonging
to a cell that had been formed and trained by Iran's Revolutionary
Guards, which Tehran has denied "It is regrettable that Kuwaiti
officials, in this sensitive situation in the region, instead of
making an effort to reduce useless tensions... have targeted the
Islamic republic with baseless accusations," an Iranian foreign
ministry official told the Kuwaiti charge d'affaires during their
meeting, according to Ghasemi.
HUMAN RIGHTS
The Center For Human Rights In Iran
(CHRI) has voiced concern over what it says is a "disturbing
trend" of arrests and imprisonments of Christian converts in
Iran. The New York-based rights group said on July 20 that in less
than two months, eleven Christian converts and the former leader of
the Assyrian Pentecostal Church in Iran have been sentenced to long
prison terms. "Christians are recognized as an official
religious minority in Iran's Constitution, but the state continues to
persecute members of the faith, especially converts," CHRI's
executive director, Hadi Ghaemi, said in a statement. Activists say
that dozens of Christian converts have been arrested and harassed in
recent years in Iran, where according to applied Islamic laws a
Muslim who converts to another faith can face the death penalty.
DOMESTIC POLITICS
Iran's official IRNA news agency is reporting that elite
Revolutionary Guard forces have killed three terrorists and wounded
four others in a clash in a border area in the country's northwest.
The Friday report said a Guard member was killed and another wounded
in the clash that happened late Thursday. One terrorist was detained,
the report said. IRNA did not identify the insurgents but said some
of them escaped. Northwest of Iran is a Kurdish area close to the
borders of both Iraq and Turkey and it is the scene of occasional
clashes between Iranian forces and militant Kurdish separatists and
Daesh (ISIS)-linked fighters. Iran also faces threats from Arab
separatists in the southwest and Baluch militants on its eastern
border with Pakistan.
OPINION & ANALYSIS
Throughout the long and contentious debate over the
nuclear deal with Iran, the question of Iranian compliance with any
agreement was one of the most contentious. The pact was bitterly
criticized for setting up an inspection process that was far from the
"anytime, anywhere" system initially promised by the Obama
administration. But in a stroke of irony, nearly two years into the
life of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, it is not just Iran's
compliance that is being debated. Tehran is accusing the U.S. of
violating the deal, a charge backed up by a feature in the New York
Times. The president should embrace the breach, and he should realize
he erred in certifying Iran's own compliance with the deal earlier
this week - a decision he reportedly made at the behest of his
counselors, going against his own inclinations. The next time the
U.S. has to certify compliance, Trump should have the courage of his
convictions and say no.
Two months have passed since the May presidential
"elections" in Iran that saw the incumbent Hassan Rouhani
reach a second term. The pro-Iran appeasement camp in the West went
the distance to raise hopes over the hoax of Rouhani rendering major
reforms. These voices somehow described Rouhani as a
"reformist" and completely neglected the over 3,000
executions during his first term as president. Reports from across
the country are turning out to be very disturbing, signaling more
troubling times to come in reference to human rights violations. As
fellow Forbes contributor Ellen R. Wald reported, "On July 16,
news came out that an American graduate student at Princeton
University named Xiyue Wang had been sentenced to 10 years in an
Iranian prison for 'espionage.'" This is Iran again resorting to
old tactics of taking Westerners as hostage, mainly dual citizens, to
be used as bargaining chips in advancing objectives and politics in
negotiations with interlocutors.
As the Iranian nuclear agreement turns two years old
this month, Iranhawks are once again advocating their preferred
solution to the Iranian problem: regime change. Last month, Politico
reported that shortly after President Trump's inauguration, the
Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a conservative Washington
think tank, had submitted a memo to the National Security Council
arguing that "Iran is susceptible to a strategy of coerced
democratization because it lacks popular support and relies on fear
to sustain its power [...] The very structure of the regime invites
instability, crisis and possibly collapse." As the Council on
Foreign Relations' Ray Takeyh put it in another example, "The
task for the administration now is to study ways that we can take
advantage of Iran's looming crisis to potentially displace one of
America's most entrenched adversaries." U.S. President Donald
Trump and his team's hostility toward the Islamic Republic has surely
encouraged such hawks, with U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson
recently indicating that peaceful regime change is a policy option
that his team may pursue. Regime change, however, simply isn't
feasible unless the United States is ready to commit, politically and
militarily, to another Middle Eastern theater for an extended period
of time.
Over the past six months, in one way or another,
President Donald Trump has kicked several of the cans inherited from
Barack Obama down the road. After several attempts at abolishing it,
the so-called Obamacare has been kicked into legislative oblivion.
Obama's policy of courting the Castro brothers has been slightly
modified but not scrapped. The Paris Climate Accord has been verbally
dismissed but not definitely buried if only because it won't become
binding until 2020. The latest can to be kicked down the road is the
so-called Comprehensive Joint Plan of Action (CJPOA), the curious
press release which enumerates things that Iran must do about its
controversial nuclear project in exchange for the temporary
suspension of sanctions. On Monday, the US State Department informed
Congress that the president would extend the waiver for suspending
sanctions for a further three months. The department justified the
decision by claiming that Iran had respected the letter of the CJPOA
while violating its spirit.
An American student, Xiyue Wang, who was in Tehran
studying a dynasty that ended nearly a century ago, has been detained
and sentenced to jail in Iran, likely without convincing proof.
Universities in the United States must ban sending students to Iran
until it demonstrates a willingness to stop turning them into
geopolitical pawns. Based on my experiences, and in light of the long
list of Westerners detained by the Iranian government in recent
decades, it is reckless for American universities to ignore the real
threat that students face when they travel to Iran. This is a painful
position to for me to promote. Such exchanges have had a
transformative effect on my life. I was introduced to the Middle East
through the Beirut Exchange. I worked for four years at the American
University of Afghanistan, having the honor of representing America's
envied higher education system while doing my part to find more
effective tools for US. foreign policy through research and writing.
I wrote a short book detailing the life of a little-known Persian
poet from Afghanistan whose studies in the United States in the 1970s
led to a groundbreaking PhD documenting the previously unknown
influence of Rumi on Walt Whitman.
Under this "deal," up to $150 billion in
sanctions relief, as well as our leverage, was negotiated away
without addressing Iran's non-nuclear bad activities: overthrowing
foreign governments, sponsoring terrorism, developing
intercontinental ballistic missiles, unjustly imprisoning Americans,
blowing up mock U.S. warships, pledging to wipe Israel ("the
little Satan") off the map, and chanting Death to America
("the great Satan") on national holidays, just to name a
few. As far as Iran's nuclear activities go, the Iranians can't help
themselves but to cheat. Even if they don't cheat, on top of the
billions of dollars in sanctions relief that can be at least
partially used for Iran's dangerous, threatening activities, it has a
blueprint for how to obtain a nuclear weapon in just over a decade.
It's the best of both worlds, and Iran is the clear all-around
winner.
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