Thursday, November 9, 2017

Eye on Iran: Exclusive: Iran's Revolutionary Guards Arrest More Dual Nationals


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Iran's Revolutionary Guards have arrested at least 30 dual nationals during the past two years, mostly on spying charges, according to lawyers, diplomats and relatives, twice as many as earlier reported by local or international media. The number marks a sharp rise since 2015, when an international nuclear deal raised hopes of detente with the West. In the years before that the number of dual nationals detained at any given time was in single figures.


France's foreign ministry said on Wednesday it was taking accusations by the United States that Iran had violated two U.N. Security Council resolutions seriously and urged Iran to comply with all its international commitments... [A ministry spokesman] did not respond when asked whether Paris supported potential measures at the Security Council.


Egypt's president said Wednesday that Iran must stop "meddling" in the Middle East and the security of Arab Gulf countries must not be threatened, but he underscored that he does not want war and believes dialogue can resolve the region's crises.

IRAN NUCLEAR DEAL


Earlier this year, President Donald Trump said that Iran was violating the "spirit" of its nuclear deal with the P5+1 powers. Now, it is clear that the Islamic Republic is disregarding the letter of the accord, but the international community is ignoring and denying that reality, experts say.

NUCLEAR & BALLISTIC-MISSILE PROGRAMS


Last week, the head of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps declared that the country's Supreme Leader had mandated "cap" on the range of Iran's surface-to-surface ballistic missile force of 2,000 kilometers. According to U.S. Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Dan Coats, the regime can already "strike targets up to 2,000 kilometers from Iran's borders," a range sufficient to hit both U.S. military bases in the region as well as the entire state of Israel. In other words, the alleged cap on Iran's ballistic missiles locks-in the threat, rather than rolling it back, while doing nothing to curtail the wide range of activities Iran is undertaking to improve its missile force. This includes a concerted but concealed effort to develop an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) capability.

U.S.-IRAN RELATIONS


Saad Hariri's unexpected resignation has rattled Tehran. Many Iranian officials, analysts and media outlets warn that the Lebanese prime minister's resignation is part of a broader strategy by the United States and its regional allies - particularly Israel and Saudi Arabia - to counter the growing influence of Iran and its proxies in the Middle East.


A fierce nationalism grips an increasingly confident Iran as its paramilitary chalk up more successes in the Arab world and the broader region. At the same time, the country is swiftly modernising, attracting troves of foreign investment despite Donald Trump's efforts to curb its ambitions. Tehran's highways, bridges, flyovers and walkways are adorned with the flag and everywhere you find enormous, black-and-white posters hanging down from the railings.

HUMAN RIGHTS


The Iranian regime's harassment and intimidation of journalists continues... The Iranian people, like people everywhere, deserve the chance to learn the truth about their society, their government, and the world -- truth that dedicated journalists seek to convey. The threats to Iranian journalists and their families must stop.


Babak Namazi is making an appeal to the Trump administration to open a dialogue with Iran to help get his brother and father out of jail in the country.


The husband of a charity worker jailed in Iran has asked Boris Johnson to take him to Tehran so he can see his wife for the first time in 18 months, after a gaffe by the Foreign Secretary threatened to double her sentence. Mr Johnson has promised to travel to Tehran to try to secure the release of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe.

FOREIGN AFFAIRS


The resignation of Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri on Sunday has sent shockwaves in Tehran. While Iranian leaders and their regional allies try to appear measured and confident, they fear that political instability in Lebanon and a potential war between Israel and Iran's ally Hezbollah - particularly at a time when Hezbollah and other Iranian proxies are still engaged in the Syrian war - could adversely impact Tehran's regional ambitions.


Israel is moving to counter Iran and its Lebanese ally Hezbollah with assertive diplomacy, aligning its policies with onetime foe Saudi Arabia and signaling a shift in the region's power politics as the war in neighboring Syria winds down.

SYRIA CONFLICT


Note to President Trump: The new Iran strategy that you announced just three weeks ago is hanging by a thread. Its fate will likely be decided in the next few months on the Syria-Iraq border. If you are serious about countering Iranian aggression, you need to act soon to block Iran's bid for hegemony across this critical battle space - ground zero in the region's struggle for strategic primacy. If you don't - if you stand aside and allow the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to assert its political, economic and military dominance over the Middle East's entire northern tier, giving it an unimpeded land bridge from Tehran to the Mediterranean - your Iran strategy will be stillborn, embarrassingly consigned to history's ash heap within a few short months of its unveiling.


The top adviser to Iran's supreme leader said he expects the Syrian army to soon recapture rebel-held Idlib province, as well as eastern Syria, an area where U.S.-backed militias hold swathes of territory.

GULF STATES, YEMEN, AND IRAN


Saudi Arabia's foreign minister urged the international community to slap fresh sanctions against Iran Thursday, accusing its arch-regional rival of supporting terrorism.


Instead of viewing Yemen as a poor peripheral country of little importance, the princes of the House of Saud seem to see it as a dagger aimed at their heart-MbS's grandfather Ibn Saud supposedly warned of the threat of Yemen on his death bed. As long as the regional proxy war with Iran continues, Yemen will remain a key theater for that war, and a vital piece of MbS' regional ambitions.


On November 4, a Burkan-2H (Volcano) ballistic missile was launched toward Riyadh by Houthi forces in Yemen and intercepted by a U.S.-supplied Patriot defense system. Wreckage from the missile fell on the outskirts of King Khalid International Airport on the northern edge of the Saudi capital, indicating that it overflew the densely populated city... This was not the first Houthi missile attack on the Riyadh area... But the latest strike comes at a particularly sensitive time due to the U.S. announcement of a new "pushback" strategy against the Iranian regime and its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)... [S]tatements from both sides set the stage for an intensified U.S. effort to expose Iran's hand in the Houthi missile development program.


President Hassan Rouhani of Iran stood his ground on Wednesday in an escalating regional showdown, defending a Yemeni rebel missile attack on the Saudi capital that Saudi Arabia has denounced as an Iranian "act of war."


Saudi Arabia should strengthen ties with Iran rather than befriend Israel and maintain an alliance with the United States, according to regime's president.


A string of escalatory moves in the Gulf in recent days suggest the long-brewing cold war between Saudi Arabia and its regional arch-rival Iran could soon grow hot.


It's not only struggles for political office or military dominance that are rocking Saudi Arabia and Lebanon this week. Increasingly, Saudi officials and their Lebanese allies are banking on the idea that control over financial levers of power is the key to achieving their foreign-policy objectives and domestic political ambitions.


A semi-official Iranian news agency says authorities have ordered a two-day ban on hard-line newspaper Kayhan after it ran a headline saying Dubai was the "next target" for Yemen's Houthi rebels.






Eye on Iran is a periodic news summary from United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) a program of the American Coalition Against Nuclear Iran, Inc., a tax-exempt organization under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. Eye on Iran is not intended as a comprehensive media clips summary but rather a selection of media elements with discreet analysis in a PDA friendly format. For more information please email press@uani.com.

United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) is a non-partisan, broad-based coalition that is united in a commitment to prevent Iran from fulfilling its ambition to become a regional super-power possessing nuclear weapons.  UANI is an issue-based coalition in which each coalition member will have its own interests as well as the collective goal of advancing an Iran free of nuclear weapons.

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