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TOP STORIES
National Security Advisor H.R.McMaster made an appeal to
NATO members and allies at the Munich Security Conference to look
hard at who they're doing business with overseas and cut off funding
that indirectly funds Hezbollah and other proxy militias that weaken
Middle East nations to bolster Iranian influence. "When you
invest in Iran, you're investing in the IRGC. You might as well cut
the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps a check and say, 'please use
this to commit more murder across the Middle East,'" McMaster
said. "And when we look at the biggest trading partners with
Iran, we of course see Russia, we see China. But we also see Japan,
South Korea and Germany. It's time to focus business intelligence
efforts to figure out who we are really doing business with, and cut
off funding."
The United States has sketched out a path under which
three key European allies would simply commit to try to improve the
Iran nuclear deal over time in return for U.S. President Donald Trump
keeping the pact alive by renewing U.S. sanctions relief in May.
Last week, the United Nations published a report with
news a lot of people don't want to hear. A panel of experts found
that Iran is violating a United Nations weapons embargo - specifically,
that missiles fired by Yemen's Houthi rebels into Saudi Arabia last
year were made in Iran... Today, armed with this evidence, we have
the chance to rein in Iran's behavior and demand that it live up to
its international agreements that discourage conflict. But if action
is not taken, then someday soon, when innocent Saudi civilians are
killed by Iranian weapons, the chance for peace will be lost.
IRAN NUCLEAR DEAL
European officials are intensifying their efforts to
save the Iranian nuclear deal, opening a new channel to press Tehran
to curtail its military involvement in neighboring conflicts just as
tensions spiral throughout the Middle East. European diplomats sat
down with a senior Iranian official over the weekend on the sidelines
of a major security conference in Munich. They hope to check Iranian
activity in Yemen, Syria and other parts of the Middle East as a way
to show U.S. President Donald Trump that Iranian expansion can be
reversed while sticking with the nuclear agreement.
France reaffirmed its commitment to the Iran nuclear
deal on Monday, saying it wanted it to be strictly implemented and
was continuing talks with its European and U.S. partners on the
programme. The foreign ministry said France was concerned about
Iran's ballistic missile programme and its activities in the region,
mentioning its support for Houthi rebels in Yemen but making no
mention of its role in Syria.
IRAN PROTESTS & HUMAN RIGHTS
Three police officers were killed in Tehran on Monday, a
police spokesman said, as clashes broke out with members of a Muslim
religious order seen as a threat to the Shi'ite theocratic
establishment.
BUSINESS RISK
European companies engaged in business with Iran are
enriching the country's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and
inadvertently fueling its military activities in the wider Middle
East, Saudi Foreign Minister Adel Al-Jubeir told CNBC on Sunday.
SANCTIONS EVASION
An Iranian airline under sanctions by the U.S. for
ferrying weapons and fighters into Syria repeatedly bought U.S.-made
jet engines and parts through Turkish front companies over the past
several years, most recently in December, federal investigators said
in a new U.S. government filing.
The U.S. effort to put Iran in a financial vice was
working. European banks were paying big fines and closing off its
money flows, and severe sanctions on the country's banking and energy
sectors were forcing it to the table on a nuclear deal. But as U.S.
enforcement officials would soon discover, Iran had found a new
channel for its illicit transactions: Asia. Lenders in South Korea,
Taiwan and elsewhere in the region may have played a part, knowingly
or otherwise, in helping Iran evade trade sanctions before the
nuclear deal and turn some of its oil proceeds into U.S. dollars,
according to court testimony, legal filings and people familiar with
the matter.
FOREIGN AFFAIRS
Iran's official IRNA news agency says the foreign
ministry has summoned Sweden's ambassador over the Nordic country
decision to grant citizenship to an Iranian researcher [Ahmad Reza
Jalali] who is in jail in Tehran.
Iran issued a strong warning to Israel on Monday in response
to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's fiery speech at last
weekend's Munich Security Conference.
SYRIA & IRAN
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan and Iranian President
Hassan Rouhani discussed recent developments in Syria's rebel-held
town of Idlib and the Afrin region in a phone call on Monday, a
source in Erdogan's office said.
GULF STATES, YEMEN, & IRAN
Britain called on Iran to stop taking actions which
could escalate the conflict in Yemen after a United Nations group of
experts found that missiles and military equipment of Iranian origin
were introduced into Yemen after an arms embargo.
IRANIAN INTERNAL DEVELOPMENTS
Stagnation and inequality were central to the grievances
that erupted a few weeks ago into Iran's worst unrest for a decade.
In cities across the country, including Zanjan, protesters smashed
bank windows and clashed with police. The violence shook the regime
-- and on both sides of Iran's sharp political divide, it's forcing a
rethink of economic priorities.
An Iranian commercial airplane brought back into service
only months ago after being grounded for seven years crashed Sunday
in a foggy, mountainous region of southern Iran, and officials said
they feared all 65 people on board were killed.
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