Iran

[Crafty_Dog]

http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/252374/ayatollah-empire-is-rotting-away

[Crafty_Dog]

Iran’s Regime at War With Itself
Jan 10, 2018

 
By Kamran Bokhari

Public agitation in Iran has many wondering about the fate of the almost 40-year Islamic republic. As evident from the way in which the latest wave of protests has been contained, popular unrest is unlikely to bring down Iran’s clerical regime. That said, the demonstrations underscore a political economic problem in the Shiite Islamist state. Before it can truly address its economic problems, it needs to sort out the war that the regime is having with itself.

Jan. 8 marks one year since the death of Iran’s most influential cleric and former president, Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. Normally, we at GPF do not pay much attention to individual political leaders since they matter only so much when it comes to geopolitics. But in this case, there is a strange development: Reportedly, President Hassan Rouhani has ordered a review of the investigation into Rafsanjani’s death. Rafsanjani, a founder of the Islamic republic, was found dead in his pool. The explanation given was that the octogenarian leader died of cardiac arrest, but the reports that surfaced in recent weeks quoting family members say his body had unusually high radiation levels.
 
(click to enlarge)

It is strange (to say the least) that this inquiry into Rafsanjani’s death comes at a time when Iran’s political establishment is trying to move past serious unrest. This story is emblematic of the struggles within the clerical regime, which have only gotten worse over the past decade. These internal differences are being exacerbated by the public uprising. Just as Rouhani’s opponents tried to take advantage of the unrest to weaken the president, his faction appears to be trying to use Rafsanjani’s death as a countermove – among many others.

Though many see Rafsanjani as a symbol of a corrupt political elite, many others see him as a symbol of political moderation. Rafsanjani left an indelible mark on the country’s political system. He was a close associate of the founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who led the uprising against the shah. After the revolution, Rafsanjani held several pivotal positions in the regime.

Khomeini appointed him to the Council of the Islamic Revolution, which existed from January 1979 to July 1980 with the purpose of transitioning the country from the monarchy to the Islamic republic. During this same period, Rafsanjani also served as interim interior minister. In 1980, he was elected speaker of parliament, a position he held for nine years. When Khomeini died, Rafsanjani played a key role in the succession of the current supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Then, from 1989 to 1997, Rafsanjani served two consecutive terms as president.

In 1989, he also assumed the chairmanship of the powerful Expediency Council, which was created to mediate between parliament and the Guardian Council (a 12-member clerical entity with oversight of legislation and the power to vet candidates for public office) and later granted supervisory authority over all three branches of government. Rafsanjani held this position until his death. In addition, from 1983 until his death he served as a member of the popularly elected Assembly of Experts, an 86-member clerical body responsible for electing the supreme leader, holding him accountable and removing him, if and when necessary. From 2007 to 2011 he served as the chairman of the assembly.

Rafsanjani is best known for being the father of the pragmatic conservative camp within Tehran’s political establishment. In this way, he had one foot in the camp of the hard-line clerical establishment and the other in the reformist trend that came to prominence under his successor, former President Mohammad Khatami.

Deeply cognizant of the public mood, as well as the strength of the hard-liners who have dominated the Islamic republic, Rafsanjani long sought to strike a balance between the two sides. His power began to fade after he lost a re-election bid against Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2005. Four years later he sided with the reformists who claimed foul play in the elections in which former Prime Minister Mir-Hossein Mousavi lost to Ahmadinejad.

The uprising known as the Green Movement that followed the controversial election forced Rafsanjani to return to trying to find some balance between the liberal and conservative camps. However, he had made enough enemies on the right that, despite his positions on the Expediency Council and the Assembly of Experts, his influence continued to wane. His last major accomplishment was supporting the 2013 election of his protege, the current president, Rouhani, who has emerged as the de facto leader of the pragmatic conservatives and their reformist allies.

It is important to note that these categories – pragmatic conservatives, ultra-conservatives and reformists – are no longer coherent blocs; rather, they represent broad coalitions containing multiple factions. The Iranian political establishment has been losing its coherence, especially since the intra-conservative rifts that emerged during the Ahmadinejad presidency (2005-13). In other words, the regime is fast approaching an impasse (if it hasn’t reached it already) where it cannot continue to expect that it will maintain social stability without undergoing substantial political economic reforms. The regime must evolve to preserve itself.

The current supreme leader, at age 78, is near the end of his career. The Islamic republic has had only two supreme leaders – Khomeini and Khamenei – and most of the founders are dead. The only prominent survivors are Khamenei, Rouhani and the 90-year-old Guardian Council chief, Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati. The political fragmentation coupled with the inability of the state to provide for the needs of a growing and increasingly younger population make succession all the more difficult. The tug of war between the republican and theocratic components of the hybrid regime and the disproportionate power wielded by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps further complicate matters.

The old guard is a dying breed, and its allies lack the ability to address the problems of governance. This has enabled Rouhani to get aggressive in pushing for economic reforms. Just this week he criticized religious organizations for not paying tax. On Jan. 9, he made an even more profound remark, according to a statement published on the presidency’s website: “The problem we have today is the gap between officials and the young generation. Our way of thinking is different to their way of thinking. Their view of the world and of life is different to our view. We want our grand-children’s generation to live as we lived, but we can’t impose that on them.”

Rouhani and his allies understand that the problems are not just economic; they are also political. The threat to the Islamic republic comes not from protesters but from the disagreement within the regime on how to govern the country of 80 million. The contradiction hardwired into its political system threatens its long-term stability. Iran’s political problems are catching up with it at a time when it was hoping to consolidate the geopolitical gains it has made over the years during the meltdown in the Arab world.

The post Iran’s Regime at War With Itself appeared first on Geopolitical Futures.
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•   Iran: The spokesman for the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran said Jan. 10 that the body had told the country’s highest authorities that it could increase the speed of uranium enrichment and other nuclear activities to several times the speed at which they were occurring before the nuclear deal was signed. Isn’t this an admission that the nuclear deal isn’t actually halting Iranian nuclear activity? If Iran wants the deal to survive – and that’s what we think right now – why is it saying this?

[Crafty_Dog]

Trump’s Iran Gamble
He issues a red line to rewrite the nuclear deal or reimpose sanctions.
By The Editorial Board
Jan. 12, 2018 7:09 p.m. ET

President Trump said Friday that he’s waiving sanctions related to the Obama-era Iran nuclear deal—for the last time. In essence he issued an ultimatum to Congress and Europe to revise the agreement or the U.S. will reimpose sanctions and walk away. His distaste for the nuclear deal is right, but the risk is that Mr. Trump is boxing himself in more than he is the Iranians.


Mr. Trump said in a statement that he is waving sanctions, “but only in order to secure our European allies’ agreement to fix the terrible flaws of the Iran nuclear deal.” He added: “This is a last chance. In the absence of such an agreement, the United States will not again waive sanctions in order to stay in the Iran nuclear deal. And if at any time I judge that such an agreement is not within reach, I will withdraw from the deal immediately. No one should doubt my word.”

That’s called a red line, and it means that if his terms aren’t met within 120 days, Mr. Trump will have to follow through or damage his global credibility. Presidents should be careful about putting themselves in box canyons unless they have a clear idea of a way out and what his next steps are.

Does Mr. Trump know? It isn’t obvious. Mr. Trump rightly focuses on the core faults of the accord: major provisions start sunsetting after 2023; the failure to include Iran’s ballistic-missile programs; and inadequate inspections. He wants the European allies that also negotiated the deal—France, Germany and the United Kingdom—to rewrite it with the U.S.


But Iran is sure to resist, and so will China and Russia. French, British and German companies already have billions in business deals invested or being negotiated with Iran, and their political leaders will be loathe to jeopardize them. European leaders have been embarrassingly quiet amid the anti-regime protests in Iran. European Union foreign-policy chief Federica Mogherini hosted the foreign ministers of Britain, Germany, France and Iran this week. They expressed support for the deal and said little about Tehran’s protest crackdown.

If the Europeans resist a nuclear renegotiation, Mr. Trump would then have to act alone with U.S. sanctions. While those are potent, to be effective they will have to target non-U.S. companies that do business with Iran, including our friends in Europe.

Some fear Iran would use reimposed U.S. sanctions as an excuse to walk away from the deal and rush to build a bomb, but we doubt it. The more likely scenario is that Iran will continue to court European business and try to divide the U.S. from its allies and block a new antinuclear coalition. The mullahs will claim to be abiding by the deal even as the U.S. has walked away.

On Friday Mr. Trump also challenged Congress to strengthen the nuclear deal’s terms under U.S. law, most likely by amending the 2015 Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act. This will require 60 votes in the Senate, which means Democratic support. This will test the sincerity of Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who opposed the deal. But in today’s polarized Washington, partisanship no longer stops at the water’s edge. Mr. Trump won’t persuade Europe if he can’t persuade Congress.

The question all of this raises, as British Foreign Minister Boris Johnson put it Thursday, is what is the policy alternative policy to the nuclear deal. The answer is containment with a goal of regime change. The people of Iran have again showed their displeasure with the regime, and the world should support them. We’d back such a strategy, but it isn’t clear that this is Mr. Trump’s emerging policy, or that he and his advisers know how to go about it.

The Treasury Department is moving ahead with sanctions against Iran for its ballistic missiles, including 14 more individuals and entities “in connection with serious human rights abuses and censorship in Iran.” The targets include the head of Iran’s judiciary and the cyber units trying to prevent protesters from organizing and accessing reliable news. But Mr. Trump has been reluctant to counteract Iran’s adventurism in Syria or Iraq, and a policy of regime change can’t be half-baked.





All of this is an enormous undertaking for an Administration already coping with the nuclear and ballistic threat from North Korea. The safer strategy would have been to keep waiving sanctions and let the nuclear deal continue while building support to contain and undermine Iran on other fronts. Mr. Trump can now say he has followed through on his campaign vow on Iran, but building a better strategy will take discipline and much harder work.

Appeared in the January 13, 2018, print edition.

[Crafty_Dog]

•   Iran: The Rafsanjani story isn’t going away. The former president’s daughter recently claimed that when he died in 2017, he had been wrapped in a radioactive towel at the hospital after having a heart attack, according to Etemaad news agency. Let’s revisit everything we know about Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and the circumstances around his death. From there, we can determine how his death, or the recent leaks, have affected Iranian protests.

[ccp]

for now:

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/455454/why-trump-extended-iran-nuclear-deal-timing-north-korea

[Crafty_Dog]

Iran’s Internet Imperative
The U.S. can do far more to help Iranians defeat the regime’s firewall.
By The Editorial Board
Jan. 17, 2018 7:20 p.m. ET
33 COMMENTS

No one knows how Iran’s political protests will evolve, and perhaps the current moment is more like Poland in 1981 than 1988. That’s all the more reason for the U.S. to assist Iran’s political opposition as it seeks to use the internet to evade regime censors and build a larger movement.

We do know that demand for information inside Iran is skyrocketing. Iranians are flocking by the millions to use circumvention software like Psiphon and Lantern to hide their identities from Tehran’s cyber authorities and access social media, messaging apps and trustworthy news sites. Silicon Valley tech company Ultrareach Internet Corp., which invented the Ultrasurf circumvention software, reported its servers failed this month as Iranians flooded their systems. More than half of the Iranian population owns a smart phone.

The authorities in Tehran are reluctant to order a wholesale internet shutdown lest it damage Iran’s already-weak domestic economy and anger more Iranians. But they also want to control the flow of news and information into and throughout Iran. Toward that end they’ve blocked Twitter , Facebook and in particular Telegram, a messaging app with more than 40 million Iranian users. Meanwhile, President Hassan Rouhani uses government TV and social media to offer lip service to the right of Iranians to express themselves.

This an opportunity for the Trump Administration to learn from the Reagan Administration, which used the telecommunications tools of the 1980s to spread information behind the Iron Curtain. The tools then were short wave radio, satellite news and fax machines. Today’s dissenters need software to evade the regimes’s internet firewalls.

Yet the U.S. government seems remarkably slow and backward in spreading the freedom message, starting with the taxpayer-backed Broadcasting Board of Governors. The BBG’s mission is to “inform, engage, and connect people around the world in support of freedom and democracy,” which should put it in the center of Iran’s online battle.

But the presidentially appointed BBG board has become a political sinecure, rather than a home for foreign-policy experts who want to fight oppression. Its current CEO, former cable industry executive John Lansing, was appointed by President Obama. President Trump hasn’t nominated a replacement.

While Iranians are desperate for reliable circumvention technology, the BBG leadership has spent only $15 million of its $787 million 2017 budget on internet freedom and anti-censorship projects, and the agency is telling vendors it’ll take weeks to direct more funding to these projects. The place needs a thorough rethinking for the internet age. Is President Trump aware that he could dismiss the BBG’s current board and nominate a CEO who’s more attuned to foreign policy and the fight for freedom?

Ronald Reagan once observed that truth is “the ultimate weapon in the arsenal of democracy.” That belief animated U.S. policy during the 1980s and, along with a U.S. economic revival and military buildup, sowed the seeds of revolution across the Soviet bloc. The Trump Administration needs a similar strategy toward Iran, North Korea, and for that matter Cuba, Venezuela and China.

[Crafty_Dog]

By Jacob L. Shapiro


A Theory About Iran


A battle for power is shaping up, and the stakes are extremely high.


When protests erupted in Iran at the end of December, the initial cause seemed obvious. The price of basic food staples like eggs and poultry rose by almost 40 percent in a matter of days, and data from Iran’s central bank showed a general rise of the inflation rate throughout the country. And yet, even at the time, there was something inadequate about this explanation. The protesters were everyday civilians, not students or political activists – and they had not risked their lives to protest in 2012 or 2013, when economic conditions were far worse. If the price of a carton of eggs rises temporarily from $3 to $4.20, it is hardly welcome, but it is also not the type of thing that leads to revolution.


 

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After the protests broke out, there were two even more befuddling anomalies. First, the protests were not put down, at least not at first. It took the security forces three days to crack down in earnest. Second, the Iranian government went out of its way to support the right of the protesters to express their discontent. President Hassan Rouhani himself said that the Iranian people were free to criticize their government, though he and government news outlets differentiated between what were described as “legitimate grievances” and rioters who were trying to co-opt the protests for their own politically subversive motives.

This line of thinking leads to an irresistible inference – namely, that the protesters who first took to the streets were not afraid of a crackdown. Our initial interpretation of the protests assumed economic conditions had become so bad and domestic frustration so acute that dissatisfaction with the government overrode the protesters’ fear – neither of which seems accurate in hindsight. This leads to another possible interpretation: that the initial protesters did not think they were going to be harmed. They had no fear because they had nothing to fear. Their protests had been unofficially sanctioned for a discrete political purpose, and they knew to go back home before the crackdown began.

Signs Emerge

We should be clear that there is still no direct evidence that a higher power had a role in directing the protests. But since the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps announced on Jan. 4 that the initial protests it blamed on Iran’s foreign enemies (America and Israel, among others) had been “defeated,” the anomalies have only multiplied. Those anomalies, culminating in last week’s protests against Iranian women being legally obligated to wear the hijab, all lend credence to the theory that the initial protests in December were in fact politically motivated, and that a much deeper struggle for political power in Iran is raging.

One example of this power struggle was the sudden proliferation of reports last month relating to Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a former multiple-term Iranian president who died in January 2017. Shortly before the protests broke out, Rafsanjani’s daughter told E’Temed News that her father had radiation levels “10 times more than the allowed level” at the time of his death. Soon after the protests were forcibly ended, Rafsanjani’s son said Rouhani had ordered a formal review of the circumstances around Rafsanjani’s death. A few days later, a freelance Iranian Kurdish journalist based in the U.S. released footage of a supposedly secret session in which Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was anointed supreme leader. In the video, Rafsanjani plays a key role in shepherding Khamenei’s confirmation.

The source of the sudden spike in interest around Rafsanjani remains something of a mystery. But what isn’t a mystery is that in the years leading up to his death, Rafsanjani ran afoul of both hard-liners within the Iranian political establishment and the IRGC. Ostensibly, this was because Rafsanjani supported the deal with the United States on curbing Iran’s nuclear program, but the fault lines go much deeper. Rafsanjani represented the views of an Iranian political faction that continues to believe a reduction of state control over the Iranian economy is in Iran’s best interests. That necessarily means curtailing the IRGC’s now wide-ranging powers, as well as reinterpreting some of the basic principles of the revolution, which included state control over most national industries.

Rafsanjani, however, is just a political totem. Far more important is the Rouhani administration’s attempt to realize some of Rafsanjani’s political goals – namely, the privatization of the economy. This is an old story in Iran. The 1979 constitution was reinterpreted in 2006 to allow for privatization of state-owned companies to reduce corruption and increase profits. On the surface, privatization occurred. According to an Iranian parliamentary commission, during President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s first term, from 2005-2009, control of more than 300 companies worth more than $70 billion was transferred to the private sector. However, the commission also noted that just 13.5 percent of those companies actually went to the private sector. Much of the rest went to organizations like the IRGC.

As a result, the IRGC is now estimated to control as much as 60 percent of the Iranian economy. This is untenable for the government because it means, in effect, that the IRGC has amassed too much power. Rouhani’s first priority was to close the nuclear deal with the U.S. and open the country back up to foreign capital. But the next and more dangerous priority has been to retake control of the economy from the IRGC. The process began in June 2016, when Khamenei replaced the chairman of the Armed Forces General Staff with an IRGC general. At the time, the move was seen as evidence that the IRGC was asserting even greater control over the affairs of state, but events in recent months indicate the opposite.

Reports began to circulate that the Rouhani administration was engaging in a quiet crackdown on some of the IRGC’s businesses interests. A September 2017 article in the Financial Times, citing an Iranian government official, said that some IRGC members had been arrested and others were being forced to transfer ownership of various holding companies back to the state. In a speech in November, Rouhani stated some of his intentions, noting that he had the support of the supreme leader in this regard, but the target of his remarks was implied, not explicit. (It should be noted that in 2007, Khamenei himself said that following the government’s privatization policies should be seen as a “form of jihad,” indicating his general support.)

Then, on Jan. 21, Iranian Defense Minister Amir Hatami dropped the pretense. In an interview with an Iranian newspaper, he said that the IRGC and the Iranian army would divest themselves of any economic activities irrelevant to their military duties, and that the new chairman of the Armed Forces General Staff would be overseeing this process. The move was not done without some compensation – Khamenei reportedly approved the allocation of $2.5 billion of the country’s National Development Fund for defense spending, perhaps to placate potential IRGC and Iranian army objections to divestment. But the overall trend is clear: the Iranian government is attempting to bring the IRGC and other potentially self-interested fifth columns in the Iranian political system to heel.

So far, the lack of resistance to Rouhani’s moves is striking. If Rouhani and his supporters fail, they may face a fate similar to that of former President Hosni Mubarak in Egypt: out of power and imprisoned. (Mubarak’s son, Gamal, lost the Egyptian military’s support because of his desire to wrest back economic control, which played no small role in the military’s willingness to offer Mubarak as a sacrificial lamb in January 2011 at the height of the so-called Arab Spring.) If they succeed, the government will have centralized a great deal of power, not unlike how Xi Jinping has consolidated government power in China after successfully cracking down on the perks that the People’s Liberation Army enjoyed in recent decades.

Battle Royal

Disagreement among political factions is par for the course in Iran. But this is not just disagreement. This is shaping up to be a battle royal for power, and the stakes are extremely high. The government has a clear view of Iran’s future, one that does not include Iran becoming a de facto military dictatorship. The military may have had to play a large and necessary role in rebuilding the country after the revolution and the subsequent 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq War, but Rouhani, himself a Rafsanjani acolyte, does not think this should be a permanent state of affairs. After making the Iran nuclear deal with the United States, he is now focusing on getting his domestic affairs in order. With the IRGC involved in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, it is an ideal time for Rouhani to make his move.


 

(click to enlarge)


How Rouhani’s moves intersect with events over the weekend are worth considering. The hijab protests were not particularly novel or important; they have happened sporadically in the past. The anomaly was that Iran’s Center for Strategic Studies, a think tank that functions as the research arm of the presidency, released a report a few days after police arrested 29 people in connection with the protest. The report – from 2014 – states that 49.8 percent of the Iranian public opposed compulsory head covering for women. The release of the study so soon after the hijab protests is either highly coincidental or a clear sign from the Rouhani government that it not only opposes hard-liner views on issues such as these, but that it is also not afraid to make its opposition public.

Perhaps, then, there was more to the December protests than first met the eye. Perhaps elements of the IRGC, dissatisfied with Rouhani’s moves, wanted to demonstrate its indispensability and to remind the administration that it better not get too ambitious in its privatization plans. And perhaps the Rouhani administration sought to take advantage of the situation by turning the focus back on the IRGC, using the momentum from the protests to blame the current system for the lack of economic progress and as justification for more intense reforms. There are a number of “perhapses” in this paragraph, and at this point, this is little more than a theory. It’s a plausible theory, but a theory nonetheless.

In any case, one question in all of this is to what extent, if any, these events will change Iran’s foreign policy. The preliminary answer is not much. Iran continues to press its advantage in the Middle East after the weakening of the Islamic State and the survival of the Assad regime. Via the IRGC, Iran continues to support proxies in Iraq and Syria. Israel has become so concerned with Iran’s moves that it is threatening war against Lebanon for becoming a de facto Iranian missile factory. In addition, Iran is reaching out to Hamas, an old friend it has been on the outs with in recent years, seeking to reclaim some of its influence in the Gaza Strip. None of this has been limited by the domestic unrest in Iran, or in the now accelerating government campaign to curtail the power of the IRGC and similar organizations at home – at least, not yet.

[Crafty_Dog]

https://clarionproject.org/far-can-irans-missiles-reach/

[Crafty_Dog]

Iran: Iran is threatening to withdraw from the nuclear deal if it does not reap economic benefits from the agreement and banks continue to stay away from the country. The country has frequently threatened to leave the deal, but what makes it different this time is that Iran is also aggressively pushing its interests in the Middle East in a way that runs against U.S. interests. Let’s gut check ourselves and see if Iran isn’t about to shift on this. The deputy foreign minister made the comment, so let’s see if he comes from a faction different than the one represented by President Hassan Rouhani. The nuclear deal was a major part of Rouhani’s agenda, so if it isn’t going well, it will reflect poorly on him, in theory.

[Crafty_Dog]

The European Union is still working on its response to U.S. President Donald Trump's promise to scuttle the Iran nuclear deal unless more is done to counter Iran's destabilizing activities in the Middle East. According to media reports, the EU3 powers — France, Germany and the United Kingdom — are working on a proposal to meet Trump's demands through new sanctions. EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said March 19 that there was no formal EU proposal in place for such sanctions, but she stopped short of denying that discussions over such a proposal were occurring. In addition, Mogherini urged adherence to the bloc's consistent position that the Iran nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), must succeed before the bloc will agree to further action against Iran.

Unless the United States or the European Union takes increased action against Iran, Trump has said that he will not continue to support the framework keeping the JCPOA in place. From the European Union, Trump is looking for commitment and willingness to issue sanctions that push back against Iran's ballistic missile program and regional activities. And right now, the EU3 are leading the efforts to meet those requirements. France and the United Kingdom, for example, have been vocal about their willingness to seek and issue sanctions as long as they remain separate from those lifted by the JCPOA itself. By making sure the new sanctions don't directly contradict the terms of the JCPOA, EU countries are hoping to preserve the nuclear deal and their ties to Iran. However, Iranian leadership has reiterated its position that any new sanctions will be viewed as a violation of the JCPOA — regardless of whether they attempt to blur the lines of the nuclear accord.

Germany, meanwhile, is on board with French and British efforts to issue sanctions that contain Iran without breaching the JCPOA. But German leadership has been less vocal on the issue, which has played well in Iran. French and British rhetoric on working to contain Iran's destabilizing activities, on the other hand, has increasingly caused outspoken frustration among Iranian leadership.

The White House has set a deadline of May 12 for the United States, the European Union and Iran to strengthen the nuclear deal with additional agreements. But on the U.S. end, it's unclear how much progress Congress has achieved in crafting legislation to meet Trump's requirements. With the clock ticking and the European Union contemplating its own next moves, lawmakers in Washington appear divided on the best strategy to counter Iranian influence without jeopardizing the nuclear deal.

[Crafty_Dog]

http://www.speroforum.com/a/MJRDJTSTLZ15/83098-Pat-Buchanan-Is-Trump-assembling-a-war-cabinet?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=DVVZTTYEXN53&utm_content=MJRDJTSTLZ15&utm_source=commentary&utm_term=Pat+Buchanan+Is+Trump+assembling+a+war+cabinet#.WrshtHrcCqA

[DougMacG]

I think Eli Lake is a great journalist.  I don't necessarily agree with his opinion here but he raises interesting points.  Trump has great leverage within the Iran deal because of his power to end it?

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-03-28/trump-and-the-iran-deal-the-u-s-strategy-is-working

[DougMacG]

http://www.defenddemocracy.org/content/uploads/documents/IranGlobalTerrorTestimony.pdf
39 page pdf, Congressional testimony.
No one seems to dispute the term, world's largest state sponsor of terror. 
This documents it.  All over the globe.

[Crafty_Dog]

 

Iran Deals With the JCPOA

The Big Picture
________________________________________
The United States is looking for ways to pressure Iran, and it's willing to risk the nuclear deal to extract more support for constraining Iran’s regional activities. But if the deal fails, Iran will need to make a choice between alienating European powers by restarting its nuclear program and acting more pragmatically.
________________________________________
2018 Second-Quarter Forecast
Middle East and North Africa
Iran's Arc of Influence

There are just 18 days left until Washington’s May 12 deadline for the United States and the European Union to reach an agreement about how to counter Iran’s regional activity and whether to tighten the straightjacket on its nuclear program. Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif has spent much of the last week in the United States on a media blitz, trying to push back against the United States, while French President Emmanuel Macron had Iran at the top of his agenda during his April 24 meeting with Trump. During the meeting, Macron presented the possibility of a new deal to complement — not replace — the Iran nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). He outlined four main concerns to address when countering Iran, which included the JCPOA’s short-term concerns but also long-term concerns about Iran’s nuclear program, its ballistic missile program and its regional activities in places such as Syria.

But Trump has continued to disparage the JCPOA. The president even called it “insane” while meeting with Macron, casting doubts that the United States would extend critical sanctions waivers on May 12 that enable Iran to receive precious economics benefits — including financial, energy and trade sanctions relief — in exchange for concessions involving its nuclear program. Since Trump took office, those benefits have been hanging in the balance, causing Iran to examine its options in case all or some of them are removed.

The Least Severe Next Step for Iran

The degree to which Iran responds depends on whether the United States reinstates all sanctions on Iran or merely a subset of them. But Iranian officials have so far outlined four different options which range in severity. And right now, with Tehran already dealing with an economic crisis at home, it could choose options that try to appeal to the European Union, at least initially, as a way of shielding itself from the most significant U.S. sanctions. After all, the effectiveness of unilateral U.S. sanctions has historically been drastically diminished without support from partners.

The first — and perhaps most appealing option from the European Union’s perspective — option would be to utilize the JCPOA’s dispute resolution mechanism. The big challenge here for Iran, however, is that the Article 36 dispute resolution mechanism was built under the assumption that the United States or other Western powers, not Iran, would need to implement it. The mechanism is designed to punish Iran and allow the United States and others to reintroduce sanctions on Iran if need be. Zarif noted that Iran has already filed 11 informal complaints to the JCPOA’s Joint Commission Chair Federica Mogherini, and said his country could file a formal one in the future based on the United States' behavior.
 
But the United States would not face any penalty if this happens. If Iran triggers Article 36, it would kick off a 15-day review period where the Joint Commission would either evaluate and hopefully resolve the complaint or refer it to the ministerial level, where ministers would also have 15 (possibly concurrent) days to resolve the complaint. If that process fails, the JCPOA would form a three-member advisory board with representatives from the complaining country (Iran), the accused country (the United States) and one independent member. The board would issue a non-binding opinion within 15 days, after which the Joint Commission would have five days to accept or reject it. If the issue is still not resolved, the complaining country could refer the matter to the United Nations Security Council, where the United States could veto any resolution and have justified grounds to suspend its own commitments under the JCPOA. In total, this process would take around 35 days.

The Other Options

Iran has three other realistic options beyond the dispute process. It can:

1.   Immediately pull out of the JCPOA and restart aspects of its nuclear program.
2.   Ease the application of the additional protocol that gives inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency easier access to its nuclear sites.
3.   Withdraw from the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.

Any one of these actions — all of which Iran has threatened at various points — would represent a more serious response and risk damaging Iran’s relationship with the European Union. Because of this, Iran would not take such action lightly. So, though it is both convoluted and ineffective, going through the JCPOA dispute process may well be Iran’s first move. The decision would allow Iran to earn international credibility from the European Union, China and Russia, which could help the country as it tries to influence the European Union to push back against U.S. sanctions. If those efforts fail and the Iranian economy starts to deteriorate more significantly under the United States' unilateral sanctions, Tehran may embrace more significant reactions.

[Crafty_Dog]

There are just 18 days left until Washington’s May 12 deadline for the United States and the European Union to reach an agreement about how to counter Iran’s regional activity and whether to tighten the straightjacket on its nuclear program. Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif has spent much of the last week in the United States on a media blitz, trying to push back against the United States, while French President Emmanuel Macron had Iran at the top of his agenda during his April 24 meeting with Trump. During the meeting, Macron presented the possibility of a new deal to complement — not replace — the Iran nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). He outlined four main concerns to address when countering Iran, which included the JCPOA’s short-term concerns but also long-term concerns about Iran’s nuclear program, its ballistic missile program and its regional activities in places such as Syria.
The Big Picture

The United States is looking for ways to pressure Iran, and it's willing to risk the nuclear deal to extract more support for constraining Iran’s regional activities. But if the deal fails, Iran will need to make a choice between alienating European powers by restarting its nuclear program and acting more pragmatically.
See 2018 Second-Quarter Forecast
See Middle East and North Africa section of the 2018 Second-Quarter Forecast
See Iran's Arc of Influence

But Trump has continued to disparage the JCPOA. The president even called it “insane” while meeting with Macron, casting doubts that the United States would extend critical sanctions waivers on May 12 that enable Iran to receive precious economics benefits — including financial, energy and trade sanctions relief — in exchange for concessions involving its nuclear program. Since Trump took office, those benefits have been hanging in the balance, causing Iran to examine its options in case all or some of them are removed.

The Least Severe Next Step for Iran

The degree to which Iran responds depends on whether the United States reinstates all sanctions on Iran or merely a subset of them. But Iranian officials have so far outlined four different options which range in severity. And right now, with Tehran already dealing with an economic crisis at home, it could choose options that try to appeal to the European Union, at least initially, as a way of shielding itself from the most significant U.S. sanctions. After all, the effectiveness of unilateral U.S. sanctions has historically been drastically diminished without support from partners.

The first — and perhaps most appealing option from the European Union’s perspective — option would be to utilize the JCPOA’s dispute resolution mechanism. The big challenge here for Iran, however, is that the Article 36 dispute resolution mechanism was built under the assumption that the United States or other Western powers, not Iran, would need to implement it. The mechanism is designed to punish Iran and allow the United States and others to reintroduce sanctions on Iran if need be. Zarif noted that Iran has already filed 11 informal complaints to the JCPOA’s Joint Commission Chair Federica Mogherini, and said his country could file a formal one in the future based on the United States' behavior.

But the United States would not face any penalty if this happens. If Iran triggers Article 36, it would kick off a 15-day review period where the Joint Commission would either evaluate and hopefully resolve the complaint or refer it to the ministerial level, where ministers would also have 15 (possibly concurrent) days to resolve the complaint. If that process fails, the JCPOA would form a three-member advisory board with representatives from the complaining country (Iran), the accused country (the United States) and one independent member. The board would issue a non-binding opinion within 15 days, after which the Joint Commission would have five days to accept or reject it. If the issue is still not resolved, the complaining country could refer the matter to the United Nations Security Council, where the United States could veto any resolution and have justified grounds to suspend its own commitments under the JCPOA. In total, this process would take around 35 days.

The Other Options

Iran has three other realistic options beyond the dispute process. It can:

    Immediately pull out of the JCPOA and restart aspects of its nuclear program.
    Ease the application of the additional protocol that gives inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency easier access to its nuclear sites.
    Withdraw from the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.

Any one of these actions — all of which Iran has threatened at various points — would represent a more serious response and risk damaging Iran’s relationship with the European Union. Because of this, Iran would not take such action lightly. So, though it is both convoluted and ineffective, going through the JCPOA dispute process may well be Iran’s first move. The decision would allow Iran to earn international credibility from the European Union, China and Russia, which could help the country as it tries to influence the European Union to push back against U.S. sanctions. If those efforts fail and the Iranian economy starts to deteriorate more significantly under the United States' unilateral sanctions, Tehran may embrace more significant reactions.

[Crafty_Dog]

Senior Iranian Official Boasts of IRGC Presence Abroad
by IPT News  •  Apr 24, 2018 at 2:49 pm
https://www.investigativeproject.org/7418/senior-iranian-official-boasts-of-irgc-presence

[DougMacG]

Senior Iranian Official Boasts of IRGC Presence Abroad
by IPT News  •  Apr 24, 2018 at 2:49 pm
https://www.investigativeproject.org/7418/senior-iranian-official-boasts-of-irgc-presence

It's hard to be humble when you are number one in the world - state sponsor of terror.

[DougMacG]

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/30/netanyahu-claims-to-show-irans-secret-nuclear-files-obtained-by-israel.html

Netanyahu: Iran had secret 'Project Amad' to design, produce and test warheads

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends the weekly cabinet meeting at the Prime Minister's office in Jerusalem February 11, 2018.   Israel's Netanyahu makes announcement on Iran 
12 Mins Ago | 03:32
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday revealed a cache of files he claims were obtained from Iran and prove Tehran ran a secret program to build nuclear weapons.

Netanyahu's office billed the televised statement as a "significant development" regarding the Iran nuclear deal, but it largely rehashed what the world long ago accepted: That Iran sought to develop nuclear weapons.

That acknowledgement marshaled international support for a U.S. campaign to impose a tough series of sanctions against Iran. The impact of those sanctions brought Iran to the negotiating table, ultimately producing the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.

Netanyahu's remarks come less than two weeks before U.S. President Donald Trump must decide whether to continue suspending sanctions against Iran under that deal, or restore the penalties on one of the world's biggest oil producers.

Iranian leaders have long said their nuclear program is only for peaceful purposes. But Netanyahu on Monday unveiled tens of thousands of pages of documents, which he said were copied from a "highly secret location" in Iran.

Israeli Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks during a news conference at the Ministry of Defence in Tel Aviv, Israel, April 30, 2018.
Amir Cohen | Reuters
Israeli Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks during a news conference at the Ministry of Defence in Tel Aviv, Israel, April 30, 2018.
Those files detail Project Amad, which Netanyahu described as "a comprehensive program to design, build and test nuclear weapons." He said the files provided "new and conclusive proof of the secret nuclear weapons program that Iran has been hiding for years from the international community in its secret atomic archive."

[ccp]

Obama and Kerry must be really pissed about this news. 

Not at Iran for lying as everyone with a brain new they would

but at Bibi for exposing it.

[G M]

Obama and Kerry must be really pissed about this news. 

Not at Iran for lying as everyone with a brain new they would

but at Bibi for exposing it.

Exactly.

[Crafty_Dog]

Did Israel Just Kill the Iran Nuclear Deal?

Highlights
•   Israel claims that Tehran held onto research related to Iran's nuclear weapons program and has lied to the international community about its intentions.
•   The announcement was timed to influence the United States and the European Union just days before the White House reaches a May 12 deadline to issue sanctions waivers in accordance with the terms of the Iran nuclear deal.
•   Israel seeks stronger U.S. backing for its bold military moves against Iran in Syria by characterizing Tehran as unreliable and ill-intentioned.
________________________________________
In a prime-time press conference from Tel Aviv, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced Israeli intelligence had smuggled a cache of evidence out of Iran. Dubbed Iran's atomic archive, the 100,000 files allegedly show that Tehran sought to conceal a nuclear weapons program. Throughout his presentation, Netanyahu argued that Iran lied to the international community — and to watchdogs from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) — about the existence of a secret nuclear weapons program and sensitive research that Iran held on to for future use.

While much of what Netanyahu presented has been said before — Israel and some in the United States have accused Iran of nuclear deception numerous times — the Israeli premier argued that Iran violated the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), better known as the Iran nuclear deal, by failing to come clean during 2015 talks with the IAEA. Just days before a May 12 deadline for the United States to issue sanctions waivers to Iran as part of the JCPOA, Netanyahu's presentation sought to discredit Iran as a negotiating partner in the eyes of the international community.

The Big Picture

As the United States narrows in on strategies to target and contain Iran's regional activities, Washington's crosshairs are focused more and more on the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, better known as the Iran nuclear deal. The United States is trying to negotiate stronger measures to supplement the deal — thanks in part to lobbying efforts from regional allies such as Israel — but impinging on the nuclear deal will not halt Iran's activity. Rather, as Stratfor's Second-Quarter Forecast said, the uncertainty surrounding the nuclear deal will reaffirm Tehran's desire for a robust defense policy that includes the very activities fueling U.S. fears: ballistic missile development, covert operations and support for regional militias.
________________________________________

2018 Second-Quarter ForecastMiddle East and North AfricaIran's Arc of Influence

European countries, including France and Germany, recently voiced their concerns about the full extent of Iran's activities, but continue to support the JCPOA as the best framework for countering Iran's nuclear ambitions. However, Israel is pressuring the European Union to abandon the nuclear deal and potentially even reinstate the sanctions the deal lifted. To ensure whatever sanctions levied against it are ineffective, Iran is seeking to keep the European Union and the United States from uniting to throw their combined weight behind them. But Netanyahu is hoping that his portrayal of Iran as a guilty party will galvanize opposition to Iran in the West.

Netanyahu's presentation was partially designed to convince countries in the European Union that the JCPOA is insufficient, but he may not need to. Netanyahu's message was coordinated with the United States ahead of time, indicating an increasingly clear alignment between Israel and the White House. Based on their rhetoric, both are growing convinced about the benefits of abandoning the JCPOA and doubling down on efforts to counter Iran's regional activities.

Potential Outcomes

Here's what we're watching for moving forward:

•   The European Union may be willing to meet U.S. demands by forming a supplemental agreement that imposes sanctions designed to stop Iran's regional activities and ballistic missile program. But, even if the United States withdraws from the original agreement on the JCPOA by refusing to approve sanctions waivers on May 12, the European Union is unlikely to reissue sanctions lifted by the JCPOA without clear proof that Iran is not holding up its side of the bargain. 

•   Israel says it will submit its new intelligence to the IAEA. If the files contain concrete proof, the IAEA could have a legitimate reason to request access to inspect new sites, potentially even military sites not originally included in the JCPOA. If Iran is found in violation of the JCPOA, the United States will have an excuse to leave the deal, which the current administration believe is insufficient to contain the full spectrum of Iran's regional activities.

•   Recent increased Israeli airstrikes against Iranian assets in Syria suggest that Israel is fully willing to challenge Iran militarily. As it pursues strategies to counter Iran's military and nuclear ambitions, Israel will seek an even stronger U.S. backing.

•   The United States could seek to reinstate sanctions on Iran's banking sector and central bank, which could force European and Asian consumers to reduce imports of Iranian oil. A decline in Iranian oil exports would exacerbate the pain Iranian citizens are already feeling as a result of currency-related and economic problems.

[G M]

If your IQ is above room temp, you knew Obama and Iran were lying from the jump. Still, it's nice to have evidence.

[DougMacG]

If your IQ is above room temp, you knew Obama and Iran were lying from the jump. Still, it's nice to have evidence.

Our favorite tweeter echoes your sentiment:

[Crafty_Dog]

Reality Check


By Xander Snyder


Iran’s Regime Under Siege


Tehran is on the verge of a major test, and every move it makes abroad could jeopardize its security at home.


It’s hard to shake the sense that a reckoning is approaching for Iran’s regime. The assaults from abroad are very public. Over the weekend, a suspected Israeli missile strike targeted an Iranian military base in Syria, the second such strike in April. On April 30, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu presented what he claims is definitive evidence that Iran has violated the terms of the nuclear deal, which would provide additional motivation to U.S. President Donald Trump to cancel the deal when it comes up for reauthorization next month. But Tehran is facing resistance at home as well, most recently with strikes in Iranian Kurdistan. Whether it comes from Israel, the U.S. or both, Iran is on the verge of a major test, and every move it makes abroad could jeopardize its security at home.

Kurdish Protests

The catalyst for the Iranian Kurdistan protests was the closure of Iran’s borders with Iraq. Iran first shut its border with Iraq after Iraqi Kurdistan voted for independence in a referendum last September. When Iraqi forces were deployed to suppress the mostly Kurdish province of Kirkuk, the Iranian government, anticipating a flood of Kurdish separatists trying to enter Iran, closed the border and sent about a dozen tanks, supported by artillery, to help enforce the closure. Iran reopened its border crossings with Iraq in late December but specifically excluded routes taken by “kolbars,” Kurdish porters who carry heavy loads of goods between Iraqi and Iranian Kurdish regions. Tehran said the decision was connected to the smuggling of illegal arms and drugs.

Illegal arms smuggling into Iranian Kurdistan is a legitimate risk for Iran. Iran’s Kurdish population includes separatist elements and, like Turkey, Iran is concerned about any pan-Kurdish movement that could bring its Kurds together with the more battle-hardened Kurds in Iraq and Syria.

But Iran’s socio-economic problems – high unemployment, inflation in the price of certain staple products and currency depreciation – point to two other motives for the anti-smuggling measures. First, Iran wants to bring all cross-border, black market trade under the government’s purview so that it can tax it. Second, having failed to realize the full benefits from foreign investment that the government was hoping the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action would provide, the government is now attempting to encourage domestic consumption in the hopes that it will provide a much-needed catalyst for economic growth. Indeed, in March, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei declared that in 2018, Iranians should focus on buying domestic goods.

The problem, though, is that much of Iranian Kurdistan’s economy depends on imports carried by kolbars from Iraq. According to Kurdish media, up to 80,000 kolbars are now out of work, and businesses lack goods to sell. The protests in response are not large – hundreds of shop owners are estimated to have gone on strike, and about 20 arrests have been made – and the government appears to have gotten most of the affected cities back to work, with the exception of Baneh. They surely aren’t large enough to challenge the government, which put down much larger unrest in January. But Iranian Kurdistan is just one of many simmering pockets of resentment toward Tehran. For instance, farmers in Isfahan and other provinces have staged several protests throughout the year in response to what they say is poor water management in the face of severe, nationwide drought. Then there is the banknote protest, an effort to circumvent traditional forms of censorship. This isn’t going to bring down the government either, but the spread of anti-government sentiment could encourage more people to participate in the next large-scale protests, whenever they occur.


 

(click to enlarge)


And this is precisely the sort of uncontrollable messaging that the Iranian regime – which came to power in 1979 through a mass uprising that incorporated diverse social strata – wants to prevent. The government can’t stop the spread of defaced banknotes, but it did implement a ban of the messaging app Telegram on April 30. Iran hopes that by eliminating this unmonitored channel of communication – which is used by 40 million Iranians, about half the country’s population – it will be able to get ahead of the next wave of opposition before it reaches the streets. In place of Telegram, the government is encouraging Iranians to use a homegrown messaging app called Soroush, which comes equipped with “Death to America” emojis.

Israel and the U.S.

The reason these domestic issues matter now, even though they’re still under control, is that they are intimately connected to Iran’s regional expansion. The more money the Iranian government spends on its foreign adventures in Syria, Iraq and Lebanon, the less money it has to invest at home. And the more Iran antagonizes the West and its allies, the harder it will be for it to attract investment, shed missile sanctions and realize the benefits of the JCPOA – if it survives.

And though Iran’s parliament did walk back some cuts to cash subsidies after the January protests, the growing threat of direct confrontation between Iran and Israel risks forcing Iran to spend even more heavily on its military. Israel hasn’t taken responsibility for the latest missile strike on an Iranian base in Syria, but it is the most likely candidate. If such strikes continue, Iran may reach a point where it will be compelled to retaliate or risk a deterioration in its position in Syria, a position for which it has fought so hard and spent so much. At the same time, a costly war with Israel would severely strain Iran’s finances and risk yet another round of mass protests.

Lurking beneath all these developments is the U.S. threat to back out of the JCPOA. Should the U.S. decide not to extend the sanction waiver on May 12, European countries and Iran could still try to uphold the deal. But the uncertainty would nevertheless spook foreign investors, who would fear follow-on U.S. sanctions targeting entities doing business with Iran (similar to those recently levied on Russia). Cash-strapped Iran desperately needs investment capital, which was a large part of the reason it agreed to the JCPOA in the first place. Investment has primarily flowed to the oil industry, mostly benefiting a small elite, but the end of the JCPOA could turn the tap off even for these funds, further straining an Iran that is facing an ever-growing regional military presence and the costs that accompany such expansion.

Every rial Iran spends defending its newfound regional position is one less spent on its domestic concerns, and the less the regime spends at home, the greater the risk of an uprising against the regime. The solutions Iran does have, such as collecting higher taxes by forcing border closures, also generate new political threats or exacerbate existing ones. Iran is damned if it does and damned if it doesn’t.

[Crafty_Dog]

https://patriotpost.us/articles/55801-john-kerry-goes-nuclear-secretly-negotiates-with-iran

[G M]

https://patriotpost.us/articles/55801-john-kerry-goes-nuclear-secretly-negotiates-with-iran

Aside from marrying wealthy women, giving aid and comfort to America’s enemies is what he does best.

[DougMacG]

OOps, Did Trump et al just raise the bar on other 'little rocket man'?

Trump 'Committed' to Iran Regime Change, Giuliani Says Days Before Nuclear Deadline

https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/trump-committed-to-iran-regime-change-giuliani-says-1.6055510
------------------

See also, Walter Russell Mead last week in WSJ, Crisis at both ends of Asia.  These crises are related!
https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-crisis-on-each-end-of-asia-1525125414

"... while progress continues toward a summit between Mr. Kim and President Trump.
At the same time, the U.S. and its Middle Eastern allies are tightening the screws on Iran. ..."

Both were emboldened by America weakness under Obama. Both need to recalculate now.   

It would be a shame if something happened to your little Hezbollah operation - or if someone (with a big button) stood with your protestors at home.

[Crafty_Dog]

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/05/john-kerry-iran-deal-collusion/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=SPONSORED:%20NR%20Daily%20Monday%20through%20Friday%202018-05-07&utm_term=NR5PM%20Actives

[Crafty_Dog]

second post

How the Iran Nuclear Deal Missed the Mark
May 8, 2018
By Jacob L. Shapiro

On May 8, U.S. President Donald Trump will reveal his decision on whether to extend a waiver on sanctions against foreign financial institutions that have had transactions with the Central Bank of Iran. Refusal to do so would effectively terminate the 2015 nuclear deal, officially called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. If he chooses this step, which would go into effect on May 12, the result in the short term will be strained U.S. relations with key allies in Europe and Asia, further deterioration of U.S.-Iran relations and higher oil prices. The most important consequence, however, will be the intense domestic pressure it will put on the Rouhani administration, for which nothing less than survival is at stake.

First Things First

The U.S. initially pursued the JCPOA because stopping Iran’s nuclear program by force would have been costly, if not impossible. Two things happened that made a diplomatic solution not just preferable but possible. First, the Islamic State emerged as a common enemy of the United States and Iran. The U.S. did not want to commit large numbers of its own troops to fighting IS and therefore needed all the help it could get in dislodging the fledgling caliphate. Second, the U.S.-led sanctions regime had finally begun to bite. Economic conditions in Iran were worsening, and the Rouhani administration was willing to trade centrifuges and uranium for opening the country up to foreign investment, selling oil to the world unencumbered and improving the quality of life in Iran.

Nonetheless, there was and still is significant domestic political opposition to the deal in both countries. In the U.S., many felt that Washington was getting far too little in return for waiving sanctions and convincing other countries to do the same. In Iran, hard-liners felt President Hassan Rouhani was betraying the spirit of the 1979 Iranian Revolution, which ousted the U.S.-backed shah. Despite the opposition, the deal went through. Iran’s economy, and its oil exports, soared, and the Islamic State was defeated (at least for the moment). The real threat to Iran, however, was not IS but the prospect of a unified anti-Iranian Sunni Arab bloc. That meant Iran had to solidify its positions in both Iraq and Syria. In addition, Iran continued to develop its missile program, which did not technically violate the JCPOA but didn’t instill much confidence in the West about Iran’s intentions.

Iran’s actions would have put pressure on any U.S. president to reconsider the terms of the JCPOA, but they placed enormous strain on a relatively new president who campaigned on tearing up the deal. The U.S. president has significant power over the agreement. The 2012 law that established the sanctions grants the president the power to review them every 120 days. Unlike NAFTA, where the president’s authority is ambiguous at best, or U.S. trade relations with China and other countries, where the president’s authority is somewhat limited by the law, the decision to scrap or extend the JCPOA is in the president’s hands.

If he does not renew the sanctions waiver on May 12, there will be immediate consequences. Countries will be expected to reduce imports of Iranian oil or face sanctions themselves, and although their compliance will not be assessed until Nov. 8, oil prices will likely immediately spike. U.S. allies that import significant amounts of Iranian crude, including France, Germany, South Korea and Japan, will all have to decide if they are willing to pay a premium for alternatives or risk U.S. sanctions. Other countries like China and India will face similar decisions. Russia, on the other hand, stands to benefit – the European Union now imports roughly 5 percent of its oil from Iran, and if Iranian oil is off the table, it will increase European dependence on Russian energy.

The United States’ Real Concern

U.S.-Iran relations will also suffer if Trump pulls the U.S. out of the JCPOA. For a time, the U.S. and Iran were indirectly coordinating in their fight against the Islamic State. But their briefly pragmatic relationship could not survive the loss of a shared enemy. Iran believes it has lived up to its end of the bargain by halting its nuclear program (and inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency have corroborated that). Iran is also frustrated that actions not expressly limited by the agreement – like solidifying power in Iraq or developing its missile program – are being used as evidence of Iranian duplicity. The U.S. is similarly perturbed that Iran is making a play for regional power and posing a direct threat to allies like Israel and Saudi Arabia. The U.S. aim, once IS was destroyed, was to create a balance of power in the region, not to tip the scale in Iran’s favor.

But the biggest impact of ending the deal will be felt within Iran itself. The Rouhani administration, which represents a political faction that wants to reduce state control of the economy and curtail the wide-ranging power of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, banked its future on the JCPOA. Rouhani believed the influx of foreign capital and the attendant economic benefits would legitimize his ambitious political reforms. Rouhani’s administration even moved to arrest key IRGC figures last September. Now, Rouhani’s grip appears to be loosening. Rouhani took to the airwaves over the weekend to criticize an Iranian ban on the messaging app Telegram, alluding to decisions made at the “highest level of the system” to which he had no recourse. Hard-liners in Iran suspected the U.S. would pull out of the deal as soon as it was no longer consistent with U.S. interests and will be vindicated at home if the deal fails.

It is not a foregone conclusion that Trump will renew sanctions. And even if he does, the mercurial president can waive them again just as easily as he reinstituted them if Iran makes further concessions, though its ability to do so will be limited. Trump could also symbolically refuse to renew the deal but use a legal loophole to provide exemptions from sanctions to importers of Iranian oil, which would mean in practice not much would change. In other words, the precise path ahead is unpredictable. But considering Iran’s need to secure its western front, this situation was bound to materialize sooner or later. Trump merely brought forward an inevitable reckoning.

The biggest defect of the JCPOA was that its main focus was preventing Iran from enriching uranium, even though the United States’ real concern was preventing Iran from establishing itself as a dominant regional power. Iran did not agree to curtail pursuit of its regional interests, nor did it stop work on developing the other elements necessary to launch a nuclear weapon such as longer-range missiles. Pulling out of the JCPOA will weaken Iran and cripple the Rouhani administration, which ironically means empowering the very hard-liners for whom the JCPOA was a betrayal in the first place. The U.S. and Iran have a history of distrust going back 65 years, but the bigger issue is that the U.S. is standing in Iran’s way. Without the JCPOA, politics will no doubt continue by other means.

[Crafty_Dog]

Third post

Trump’s Iran-Deal Withdrawal Is His Biggest Gamble Yet
Move represents a series of wagers with a number of downsides to losing
President Trump Announces Exit from Iran Deal
President Trump announced Tuesday that the U.S. will withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal and reinstate sanctions on Tehran. He called the deal "defective" and said it didn't do enough to stop the country from developing nuclear weapons. Photo: Getty Images
By Gerald F. Seib
Updated May 8, 2018 5:26 p.m. ET
90 COMMENTS

President Donald Trump’s decision to walk away from the nuclear deal his predecessor negotiated with Iran represents a giant gamble, easily the biggest of his presidency so far.

More precisely, the move represents a series of gambles—bets that Iran’s leaders, its economy and its people, as well as America’s allies and even the leader of North Korea, will react the way the president hopes. Mr. Trump may well win those bets, but the dangers that would accompany a loss are quite high.

The core of the president’s gamble is that a renewal of full-bore economic sanctions on Iran will be enough to compel its leaders back to the table to renegotiate the nuclear deal completed during President Barack Obama’s term. In fact, Mr. Trump flatly predicted Iran’s leaders will do exactly that.

Alternatively, his calculation appears to be that a resumption of full-bore American pressure will so disrupt a weak Iranian economy—already reeling from rising prices, a falling currency and a long drought—that the result will be growing dissatisfaction and internal unrest that threatens the very survival of the regime.

Mr. Trump didn’t say he wants his move to bring regime change in Tehran, but with his references to the “murderous” government in Iran and his declaration that “the future of Iran belongs to its people,” he walked to the edge of calling for it. The risk, though, is that the Iranian people instead rally around their government now that it faces a renewed threat from America.

The further gamble is that U.S. allies in France, Britain and Germany, who have pleaded for a different course from the president, will cooperate in a new wave of economic sanctions rather than rebel and move out to construct a new relationship of their own with Iran. Such European defiance could undercut the pressure Mr. Trump is trying to create and ultimately isolate the U.S. rather than Iran.

The president’s pledge to impose sanctions on any nation that helps Iran targets America’s allies as much as the regime in Tehran, and could produce a sanctions fight not just with Iran, but with allies.

In addition, Mr. Trump is taking a chance that Iran won’t simply respond by resuming full-bore nuclear activity, turning back on the hundreds of centrifuges it still possesses to produce the enriched uranium that the West fears would put it on the path toward nuclear-weapons capability. European leaders are urging the Iranians to react calmly, without precipitous action, but hard-liners in Tehran may instead seize the moment to revive actions they never wanted to halt in the first place.

Mr. Trump is further betting that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, with whom he meets in a matter of weeks, will take away from his announcement the lesson the president wants—which is that an Iran-style deal that slows rather than eliminates Pyongyang’s nuclear program won’t be deemed sufficient. The risk is that North Korea will take away an alternative lesson, which is that the U.S. can’t be counted on to live up to deals its leaders make.

Above all, Mr. Trump’s decision represents a gamble that the heightened tensions with Iran that now are at hand won’t escalate into conflict—with the U.S., with Israel or with Saudi Arabia.

“The worst case is that Iran restarts selected nuclear activities, and either Israel or the U.S. determines that is unacceptable, uses military force and Iran responds in any number of ways around the region or around the world with all its tools,” said Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations. Those tools, he notes, include terrorism and cyberwarfare.

Indeed, after Mr. Trump’s move “the ball is now essentially in Iran’s court as to how this crisis evolves,” says Suzanne Maloney, an Iran expert at the Brookings Institution. “I think the likely short-term approach will seek to maximize whatever diplomatic and economic restitution may be on offer from Europe.”

But, she adds, “Tehran has a wide range of options available for demonstrating that its leverage on the ground in conflicts in Yemen, Syria, Iraq, and elsewhere across the region is at least as formidable as U.S. economic leverage.”

Finally, Mr. Trump is gambling that his tough line on Iran will convince others in the region that the U.S. will remain adamant and unyielding in its insistence that Iran won’t ever be allowed to possess nuclear weapons. The president said that will help ensure that others in the region don’t set out to acquire nuclear weapons of their own, and seek to beat Iran to the punch as they do so.

The risk there, of course, is that the reverse could happen. Iran could now respond with a burst of new nuclear activity, Mr. Haass notes, prompting Saudi Arabia and potentially others to break away from the global Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and begin their own march toward nuclear arms.

[Crafty_Dog]

fourth post

How Fast Iran Could Build a Nuclear Bomb
Iranian officials have said they could start enriching uranium within days, but U.S. officials are skeptical they would risk doing so
By Laurence Norman
May 8, 2018 2:21 p.m. ET
169 COMMENTS

Iran could quickly ramp up its nuclear activities now that President Donald Trump pulled out of the 2015 international agreement designed to curtail them. But experts and former officials differ over how long Tehran would need to build a bomb.

Some, pointing to Iran’s slow past progress and independent analyses, believe Iran would need several years to produce a nuclear weapon. Others think Tehran could build one in little over a year.

Iranian officials have said they could accelerate nuclear activities and start enriching uranium within days.


Separate from the technical question is the political one. U.S. officials have voiced skepticism that Iran would quickly return to work on a bomb.

“Iran wasn’t racing to a weapon before the deal,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told lawmakers last month. “There is no indication that I’m aware of that if the deal no longer existed that they would immediately turn to racing to create a nuclear weapon today.”

Many observers believe Iran has incentives not to expand its nuclear activities or expel international inspectors even if the U.S. exits the deal.

Iranian officials hope to maintain trade with Europe—which is mainly supportive of the pact—and an outright return to nuclear activities would likely stop that. Attempting to relaunch its nuclear program secretly would slow Iran’s path significantly and carry major risks.
Uranium Enrichment
The deal limits the level to which Iran is able to enrich uranium.




Sources: IAEA; JCPOA text; U.S. government

Iran worked on three aspects of a nuclear program—enriching uranium, obtaining plutonium and trying to acquire the know-how to build a nuclear weapon—before the 2015 deal, which lifted most international sanctions in exchange for strict but temporary limits on its program. Tehran says its nuclear program was always for peaceful purposes.

Iran had amassed a large stock of low-enriched uranium and produced nuclear fuel enriched to 20% purity. That is several steps from producing weapons-grade uranium enriched to 90% purity. Still, U.S. officials said in 2015 that Iran was just two or three months from amassing enough fuel for a bomb.
Stockpiles
Under the deal, Iran was required to reduce its stores of enriched uranium.



Iran was also building a plutonium reactor at Arak, in its northwest. When completed, it could have produced material for a couple of nuclear weapons annually, U.S. officials say.

The International Atomic Energy Agency concluded in 2015 that Tehran— despite denials—pursued a concerted weaponization program until 2003 and continued some of that work until 2009.

The 2015 agreement was structured around restrictions to ensure Iran would need at least 12 months to gather enough nuclear fuel for a bomb.

Most experts believe that the accord largely ensured that by removing roughly 98% of Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile, mothballing two-thirds of its uranium-spinning centrifuges, limiting research and development, and removing the core of the Arak reactor.
Centrifuges
The machines spin uranium to increase purity.




“It would take many years for Iran to have a working nuclear arsenal,” said Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, a Washington based group that supports the deal.

One critic of the deal, Olli Heinonen, a former senior IAEA official who works for the Foundation for Defense of Democracies think tank, said Iran may have gathered the parts for more advanced centrifuges than Tehran had declared. That could speed the production of weapons-grade uranium and shorten the time to build a bomb. There is no evidence, however, that Iran lied to the IAEA about this additional hardware.

Experts and former officials say Iran would need at least 18 months to reconstitute the Arak reactor, whose core was filled with concrete as a consequence of the deal.
Breakout Time
Estimated time it would take Iran to produce enough fissile material for a weapon

July


It’s also unclear how much Iran knows about assembling a bomb. The IAEA in 2015 concluded that Iran’s weaponization work “did not advance beyond feasibility and scientific studies” and knowledge of “certain relevant technical competences and capabilities.”

The report was controversial. The IAEA spoke to some scientists and experts but not at length. Access to key sites was limited.

But it’s also unclear whether Iran​ has the technical ability to reliably deliver a nuclear warhead with its existing missile technology.

Last month, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his country had obtained 100,000 pages of documents from a secret location in Tehran showing Iran had safeguarded its nuclear know-how. He said the material showed Tehran intended to resume its activities. Israeli leaders have vowed to stop Iran from getting the bomb.

While no new information has emerged publicly from that archive, the IAEA has called out Iran for seeking to erase possibly crucial work at the sprawling military site of Parchin. The agency said in 2015 that Iran’s explanation for its activities didn’t add up.

Iran is believed to have carried out work there on high explosives—materials that detonate very quickly. Mr. Heinonen said these could have been “an important step in the design and mock-up of a nuclear weapon.”

Jeffrey Lewis, a non-proliferation expert at the Middlebury Institute of  International Studies, said Iran was “quite far along” on its weaponization work with access to sophisticated designs from abroad. Stopping that effort was one reason why concluding the 2015 deal made sense, he argued.

“What we don’t know is how well they [the Iranian efforts] would work on a first test,” he said.

[Crafty_Dog]

fifth post


By The Editorial Board
May 8, 2018 7:11 p.m. ET
228 COMMENTS

President Trump on Tuesday withdrew the U.S. from the Iran nuclear deal, rightly calling it “defective at its core.” Yet he also offered Iran a chance to negotiate a better deal if it truly doesn’t want a nuclear weapon. Mr. Trump’s challenge now is to build a strategy and alliances to contain Iran until it accepts the crucial constraints that Barack Obama refused to impose.

The Obama Administration spent years negotiating a lopsided pact that gave Tehran $100 billion of sanctions relief and a chance to revive its nuclear-weapons program after a 15-year waiting period. Instead of cutting off “all of Iran’s pathways to a bomb” as Mr. Obama claimed, the deal delayed the country’s entry into the nuclear club and gave the mullahs cash to fund their Middle East adventurism.
***

Mr. Trump outlined a more realistic strategy in October, promising to work with allies to close the deal’s loopholes, address Tehran’s missile and weapons proliferation, and “deny the regime all paths to a nuclear weapon.” An Iranian nuke would be a modest problem if Iran were a democracy. But the Islamic Republic is no India and has a four-decade history of oppressing its own people, taking foreign hostages and threatening neighbors with extinction.

State Department policy chief Brian Hook spent months shuttling between European capitals to get an agreement to strengthen inspections of suspected nuclear sites, stop Iran from developing ballistic missiles and eliminate the deal’s sunset provisions. Deal signatories China and Russia don’t share U.S. strategic goals in the Mideast, but the Trump Administration’s reasonable presumption is that Britain, France and Germany do.
Foreign Edition Podcast
Kerry's Shadow Diplomacy; More Chinese Provocations

Mr. Trump’s case for fixing the deal was bolstered last week when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu revealed intelligence that Iran repeatedly lied to U.N. weapons inspectors about past nuclear activity. As Mr. Trump noted Tuesday, Tehran doesn’t allow inspectors access to many military sites. Mr. Netanyahu also revealed that Iran hid an extensive nuclear archive, which would still be secret if not for Israeli intelligence.

Regimes that have peaceful intentions don’t behave this way. When South Africa decided to denuclearize in the early 1990s, President F.W. de Klerk ordered the destruction of all sensitive technical and policy documents and gave U.N. inspectors “anytime, anywhere” access to inspect nuclear facilities. In Moammar Gadhafi’s case, U.S. officials physically removed sensitive nuclear-weapons documents, uranium and equipment from Libya.

Yet Britain, France and Germany waved away Israel’s intelligence, and European Union chief Federica Mogherini said the evidence doesn’t “put in question Iran’s compliance” with the nuclear deal. The Europeans may think they can maintain commercial dealings with Iran and wait out Mr. Trump through the 2020 election.

This is risky because Mr. Trump said in the next 90 to 180 days the U.S. will reimpose “the highest level of economic sanction” on Iran’s energy and automotive industries, ports, shipbuilding and more. The sanctions will cut Iran off from the global financial system even as the regime faces labor strikes and political protests amid a struggling economy. The country may find fewer buyers for its oil exports, and the rial has plunged.

Iran may try to drive a wedge between the U.S. and Europe to keep euros flowing to Tehran. But the U.S. has leverage. As Mr. Trump said Tuesday, “Any nation that helps Iran in its quest for nuclear weapons could also be strongly sanctioned by the United States.” Attempting to isolate the U.S. could present European companies with an eventual choice of doing business with the U.S. or Iran. The smarter play is for Europe to persuade Iran that to maintain commerce with the world it should renegotiate the pact.
***

Mr. Obama issued his own broadside Tuesday against withdrawal, but then he made it easier for Mr. Trump by never winning domestic support for the deal. He refused to submit it for Senate approval as a treaty, which would have had the force of law. Mr. Trump is walking away from Mr. Obama’s personal commitment to Iran, not an American commitment.

But this is also a warning to Mr. Trump that his Administration has more work to do to execute his Iran strategy. This means building bipartisan support in Congress for sanctions; diplomacy to deter Iran’s adventures in Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East; and more diplomacy with Europe to fix the nuclear deal’s fatal weaknesses.

Perhaps the best part of Mr. Trump’s remarks came at the end when he spoke to “the long-suffering people of Iran.” He said “the people of America stand with you” and made the offer of better relations and a more prosperous future if their leaders will shed their destructive nuclear and imperial dreams. Political change in Tehran remains the best hope for a non-nuclear Iran.

[Crafty_Dog]

http://www.dickmorris.com/now-lets-really-squeeze-iran-lunch-alert/?utm_source=dmreports&utm_medium=dmreports&utm_campaign=dmreports

[Crafty_Dog]

http://www.dickmorris.com/clinton-bush-obama-hypocrites-iranian-sanctions-lunch-alert/?utm_source=dmreports&utm_medium=dmreports&utm_campaign=dmreports

[Crafty_Dog]

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/05/president-trump-exits-iran-deal-boost-for-global-security/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=WIR%20-%20Sunday%202018-05-13&utm_term=VDHM

https://patriotpost.us/articles/55931-whats-next-for-trumps-iran-strategy

[Crafty_Dog]

https://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/Saudi-Arabia-stops-new-business-with-Germany-over-its-pro-Iran-policy-558431

[Crafty_Dog]

Highlights

    Now that the United States is piling on sanctions, Iran's government is preparing for an inevitable economic decline. Iran's political factions are in relative agreement about how to handle the economic pressure, at least over the next several months.
    Tehran's goal will be to keep its head above water long enough to outlast the current U.S. administration. It will try to increase non-oil exports to make up for the loss of oil sales, implement financial reforms and slow the depreciation of its currency.
    Iran's key priorities while it is coping with sanctions will be to keep prices for food and other goods down, minimize protests against the government, and make foreign exchange reserves last as long as possible.
    One big question is how long Iran's discouraged population will trust the government's survival strategies before they start to protest against inflation and increasing wealth inequality.

Iran is preparing for major economic and financial challenges now that the United States is ready to implement tough oil-specific sanctions in November. The government in Tehran is unwilling to heed Washington's demands, which include halting its missile program and ending its support for regional militias, because it considers these basic components of the country's defense strategy. So Iran is managing its economy for the long haul, hoping it can insulate itself against the effects of sanctions long enough to outlast the current U.S. administration.

Iran's government will try to manage its finances in a way that protects its population from the most tangible effects of sanctions, employing what it calls a "resistance economy." But even with members of the Iranian government relatively united in their efforts to prevent economic disaster, the U.S. sanctions are powerful enough that Iran's economy is all but guaranteed to go into recession. And though the government will try to prevent unrest, the economic situation will only worsen existing wealth inequality issues, inevitably leading to protests.

The Big Picture


Since Iran's 1979 revolution, its government has been debating strategies for how to deal with financial hardship, planning for a "resistance economy" that ideally could insulate the country from the U.S.-dominated global economic system. New U.S. sanctions against Iran, including some previously lifted under the nuclear deal, are likely to put severe pressure on its economy. Because the Iranian government is more coherent today than it was in 2012 — the last time it faced a wave of damaging oil-related sanctions — Iran will be able to make some progress on financial and economic reforms that will help slow the inevitable recession. Internal reform certainly won't be enough to stave off recession, but it will be enough to help the government in its goal of outlasting the current U.S. administration.

One way to understand Iran's current situation is to look back to 2012, the last time the country faced such concerted sanctions. In the years leading up to the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the United States and United Nations issued waves of sanctions, while the European Union implemented an oil embargo in 2012. Throughout 2012, Iran's economy shrunk by 1.9 percent, and its oil exports had been reduced by more than 1 million barrels per day (bpd).

Things got worse between early 2012 and mid-2013, when Iran's currency, the rial, lost more than two-thirds of its value and unemployment peaked at around 14 percent. These factors were compounded by inequality and social justice issues, such as a crisis over skyrocketing prices for chicken, which prompted Iranians to protest against a government that could not provide basic food for them.

At that point, various factions of Iran's government were already decades into a debate over how to position the country in the global economy. The populist president at the time, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, championed the economic demands of the poor while also adjusting the country's privatization program to favor his own allies, mostly in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and hard-line government factions. Both moderate and hard-line clerics in the government rejected Ahmadinejad's perspective, viewing him as disruptive, imprudent and economically dangerous. And in a sign that governmental division was particularly sharp, Iran's supreme leader even directed the Ministry of Intelligence Services to investigate internal corruption in 2012.

What's Different in 2018

In early 2016, the JCPOA rolled back the sanctions that had hit Iran so hard, but now that President Donald Trump has withdrawn the United States from the agreement, Tehran must prepare for an onslaught of penalties once again. On May 8, the United States reinstated all secondary sanctions against Iran, saying it would punish any country whose central bank engages in oil transactions with Iran's central bank. By steadily layering on additional sanctions, the United States is showing that it is willing to target a broad range of Iranian activities and sectors, just as it and its allies did years earlier.

But there are some major differences between where Iran finds itself today compared with 2012. To start, this time, the United States is the main force driving sanctions against Iran. The European Union is less committed to the U.S. plan, and there is no significant sanctions regime from the United Nations, as there was prior to the JCPOA.

Several Charts About Iran's Economy

Of course, even by themselves, U.S. sanctions are quite powerful. In order to qualify for possible sanctions exemptions, once every 180 days countries will have to prove that they are reducing oil trade with Iran. And though the European Union isn't on board with enacting new sanctions against Iran, it won't be able to stop European companies from avoiding investment in and trade with Iran — especially if the United States decides not to issue waivers to countries that wish to trade with Iran even if they reduce their oil imports.

In the wake of such heavy U.S. sanctions, Iran simply cannot stave off recession. Its currency crisis is only getting worse, with the rial half as strong as it was six years ago and continuing to depreciate. But Iran's economy still has a better foundation than it did in 2012. Unemployment is around 11 percent — 3 percent lower than in 2012. And gross official reserves are at roughly $130 billion, giving the government a bit more of a cushion than it had in 2012, when reserves hovered around $100 billion. Most importantly, though, there is a new level of political coherence in Tehran, which means the government will be both willing and able to pursue reform efforts.

Moderates, conservatives and hard-liners within the Iranian government have been increasingly committed to finding common ground when it comes to managing the economy, at least for the next several months. The political factions may diverge on certain details of policy decisions, such as how to deal with corruption, but they agree overall about the need to stabilize the economy for the sake of national security. Of course, there will still be major arguments over such issues as how to divvy up funds. And political factions will remain engaged in ongoing fights over how each can take advantage of the situation. (The security-focused hard-liners are likely to gain influence over time.) But compared with 2012, Iran's government in 2018 is far more unified, and it will only grow more so as U.S. pressure intensifies.

The Government's Plan For Iran

Moderates, conservatives and hard-liners with the Iranian government have been increasingly in agreement about how to prepare for renewed sanctions. They will focus on implementing financial reform to help the country gain economic independence, restructuring and refinancing banks, and working on fixing nonperforming loans.

Additionally, without the economic protection of the JCPOA, the Iranian government will be putting more emphasis on cultivating domestic production and exporting non-oil products, which are likely to include saffron, pistachios and plastics. Since President Hassan Rouhani took office in 2013, Iran has seen an increase in non-oil exports, which account for just over 11 percent of the country's GDP. Indeed, the fiscal year that ended in March 2018 saw a 6.6 percent rise in non-oil exports year over year. Iran will also seek to refine oil products at home to make up for some of its lost oil export revenue. Already, the government has announced that it is redistributing 300,000 bpd to be refined for the domestic market.

Another crucial method for Iran to ensure it can survive sanctions is to implement contingency plans for shipping, seeking out countries willing to risk U.S. secondary sanctions for port access. Likely options include Pakistan, Oman, Qatar and southern Iraqi ports like Basra. All these countries have increased their trade activity with Iran over the last year, while other major powers have decreased theirs. And since the United States abandoned the JCPOA, Iran has been more actively working to solidify agreements with them.

Maps Showing Iran's Population Density, Unemployment and Protest Sites

But smuggling through countries willing to risk sanctions will be harder now than it was in 2012. Iran relied heavily on the United Arab Emirates in the past, but the Emirati government has been willing to work with the United States this time around and does not want to risk being sanctioned. And Qatar may also prove unwilling to cooperate with Iran, as it seeks to remain in the good graces of the United States amid the ongoing rift with other Gulf Cooperation Council nations. These complications increase the likelihood that Iran will eventually have to barter oil for goods as sanctions pressure intensifies.

Holding It Together

More than anything, Iran will strive to prevent its economic strain from translating into currency problems for its populace. The worse the economy gets, the more likely it is that the price of goods will increase and that income inequality will grow. Historically, food prices and unemployment — especially in rural areas — have been the major factors prompting protest and unrest in Iran. So the government will make sure to keep the price of goods in check, even if this means implementing sacrificing funds for short-term solutions such as buying shipments at a loss or making cash payments so that Iranians can afford food. Already, its central bank has issued a directive that allows merchants to directly purchase foreign currencies from money exchanges, even though exchange houses had previously been banned. Regarding unemployment, Tehran will try to spot-treat the issue by offering cash and job training, while also working on long-awaited tax reform and welfare/subsidy payment reform.

Many of these efforts are not designed for the long-term benefit of Iran, and the government does not intend for them to last for decades. Rather, Tehran is hoping that its resistance economy can hold the country together until Trump and his administration are no longer running Washington. Unfortunately for the government, Iranians are more pessimistic than they've been in years. The JCPOA, which Rouhani promised would bring $50 billion in foreign direct investment, had delivered only $3.4 billion in 2017. Across Iran, patience will likely run out before a new U.S. leader enters the White House, meaning economically motivated protests are inevitable

[Crafty_Dog]

Iran’s Response: The ‘Strategy Of Tension’
by Jonathan Spyer
Jerusalem Post
June 01, 2018
https://www.meforum.org/articles/2018/iran’s-response-the-‘strategy-of-tension’

The United States and its allies are currently in the opening stages of the pursuit of a strategy to contain and roll back the Islamic Republic of Iran from a number of points in the Middle East.  This strategy is set to include an economic element (renewed sanctions), a military aspect (involving Israeli action against Iran in Syria, and the Saudi/UAE campaign against the Houthis in Yemen), and a primarily political effort (in Iraq and to a lesser extent in Lebanon).

Iran can be expected to respond with a counter-strategy of its own, designed to stymy and frustrate western and allied efforts.  What form will this Iranian response take?  What assets does Iran possess in the furtherance of this goal?

First of all, it is worth noting what Iran does not have:  Teheran is deficient in conventional military power, and as such is especially vulnerable when challenged in this arena.  The Iranians have neglected conventional military spending, in favor of emphasis on their missile program, and their expertise in the irregular warfare methods of the Revolutionary Guards Corps and its Qods Force.

In Syria over the last months, Israel has demonstrated that Iran has no adequate conventional response to Israeli air actions.
 
In Yemen, coalition forces fighting the Houthis have begun to turn the tide of the war, demonstrating Iran's weakness in this field.

In Yemen in recent days, as government forces close in on the vital Hodaida port, so Iran’s weakness in this field is once more revealed.  Hodaida, held by the Houthis, is the main conduit for Iranian supplies to the rebels.  It is likely to fall in the period ahead.

Economic sanctions may also limit Iran’s ability to finance its various proxies.  Nevertheless, Iran possesses in the Qods Force of the IRGC a doctrine and praxis for the establishment, assembling and utilization of proxy political-military forces which still has no serious rival in the region.  It will be these assets and these methods which Teheran will be seeking to utilize to strike back at its enemies in the period ahead.

In Lebanon, thanks entirely to the use of these methods, Iran is at its strongest.  There is no prospect in the immediate future for Iran’s opponents to challenge Teheran’s de fact domination of this country through its proxy Hizballah.  Recent statements by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo suggest the beginnings of an acknowledgement by the US that Lebanon today is today effectively controlled by Hizballah.  But it is difficult to locate within the country any mechanism today capable of seriously challenging the Shia Islamist party.

The recent events in Gaza may well offer an example of the kind of options available to Iran in its efforts to counter US and allied moves against it.  Palestinian Islamic Jihad is a wholly owned franchise of the IRGC.  While the apparent ‘motive’ for its commencement of rocket fire was the killing of three of its militants by the IDF after a failed IED attack.  This incident, however,  would not normally have been of sufficient magnitude to generate the largest barrage of rockets since Operation Protective Edge in 2014.  It is probable, therefore, that the escalation in Gaza this week was an example of Iran’s ability to mobilize a proxy on one front to place pressure on an adversary, as a result of events taking place in another arena.

Yet this week’s events also demonstrate Iran’s limitations.  Hamas is not a wholly owned franchise of Teheran.  And the joint interest of Israel, Hamas and Egypt in avoiding a descent to a 2014 style conflagration served to put a lid on the escalation.

As noted above, in Syria, Iran has so far found no adequate response to Israel’s intelligence domination, and its willingness to take air action against Iranian infrastructure.
Further east, however,  in the Kurdish-administered, US-dominated 30% of Syria east of the Euphrates, the Iranians may find an arena more to their liking.  Here, a fledgling, US-associated and Kurdish dominated authority rules over a population of about 4 million people, including many Sunni Arabs.   In this situation, the IRGC’s methods of agitation, assassinations, the fomenting of unrest from below are directly relevant.

Unidentified gunmen are already operating in this area.  A prominent Kurdish official, Omar Alloush, was assassinated on March 15th.  Graffiti denouncing ‘Ocalan’s dogs’ has appeared in Arab-majority Raqqa city.

This week, demonstrations took place at four locations across the city demanding that the Kurdish dominated YPG quit the area.

It is more usual to attribute the guiding hand behind this activity to Turkish state bodies, rather than Iran.  But an IRGC officer looking for vulnerabilities and areas of potential counter pressure on the US and its allies in the neighborhood would surely focus his eyes on this US guaranteed enclave.

A new pro-Assad 'tribal resistance' was announced with the aim of fighting the U.S. presence in Syria. The initiative likely has Iranian support.

More broadly, while Israeli air action may make the Iranians think twice in terms of deployment of heavy weapons systems in Syria, the broader Iranian project of establishing local client militias and stationing proxy forces on Syria soil remains largely untouched and invulnerable to Israeli air action.

Similarly, in Iraq, the ongoing coalition negotiations and Iran’s domination of the Popular Mobilization Units and their political iteration the Fatah list offers Teheran ample scope for action. Fatah came second in the elections, with 47 seats to 54 for Moqtada al-Sadr’s Sairoon list.  Much will depend on the nature of the government that will emerge from the 90 day coalition building period now under way.  But whatever coalition emerges, the independent, Iran-controlled, armed element is there to stay in Iraq.  For Iran, a controlling influence in Iraq is a necessity, not a luxury. And with Saudi efforts to build influence in the country under way, this looks set to form a central arena for competition.

Again, the evidence of recent years shows that where Iran enjoys an advantage over its rivals in such arenas is in its greater ability to utilize paramilitary and terrorist methods.   There are already some indications of possible targeting of elements linked to the Sairoon list.  Unknown assailants bombed two offices linked to the Sadrists on May 15th.   One was placed at an office of the Saraya al-Salam, the Sadrist militia. The other targeted a religious organization linked to Sadr, Malek al-Ashtar.  In addition, on May 25, a double IED attack on the Iraqi Communist Party’s headquarters in Baghdad took place. No group has claimed responsibility for any of these attacks.

The evidence suggests that Iran’s methods are at their strongest where it can take on its opponents within a populated area, in a mixed political and military context, and weakest where it faces conventional resistance and a hard border separating it from its enemies.  This means that in the emergent contest, Iran is strongest in Lebanon and regime-controlled Syria, powerful and dangerous in Iraq and potentially in the Kurdish controlled, US guaranteed part of Syria, and weaker and with fewer options in Yemen and Gaza.

Iran enjoyed and benefited from the moment when the Arab world was at its most fragmented, and the west at its most rudderless.   That period may now be coming to an end. The ‘strategy of tension’, utilizing political and paramilitary means, eschewing conventional ones, remains the IRGC’s preferred method of struggle.  The period now opening up in the region will determine its continued efficacy.

Jonathan Spyer is a fellow at the Middle East Forum and an associate fellow at the Jerusalem Institute for Strategic Studies.

[Crafty_Dog]

https://www.jihadwatch.org/2018/06/obama-administration-skirted-sanctions-to-give-iran-billions-while-assuring-public-it-wasnt-doing-so
Obama administration skirted sanctions to give Iran billions while assuring public it wasn’t doing so

[Crafty_Dog]

https://patriotpost.us/articles/55962-european-officials-bribed-into-accepting-iran-nuke-deal?mailing_id=3544&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.3544&utm_campaign=alexander&utm_content=body

[DougMacG]

https://patriotpost.us/articles/55962-european-officials-bribed-into-accepting-iran-nuke-deal?mailing_id=3544&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.3544&utm_campaign=alexander&utm_content=body

We went through this before with UN oil for food and sanctions on Saddam Hussein.  Our holier than thou allies (and world bodies) are not so clean.  Tell Mueller to expand his inquiry.

[Crafty_Dog]

Don’t Fear Regime Change in Iran
For the past century it has been in a struggle between oppressive rulers and a freedom-hungry public.
Former Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh on trial in Tehran, 1953.
Former Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh on trial in Tehran, 1953. Photo: Bettmann Archive
By Reuel Marc Gerecht and
Ray Takeyh
June 11, 2018 6:42 p.m. ET
90 COMMENTS

President Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Iran deal, and to relentlessly pressure the Islamic Republic, has elicited a predictable response. Critics cite history, particularly a counterproductive 1953 coup, as a reason to oppose the strategy. But looking more closely at the past shows that a regime-collapse containment policy is the best way to effect change.

Westerners often look at Iran as an island of autocratic stability, as they once did with the U.S.S.R. American and European officials tend to see the mullahs’ tools of repression as indomitable. But for much of the past century Iran has been locked in a convulsive struggle between rulers wanting to maintain their prerogatives and the ruled seeking freedom.

The Constitutional Revolution of 1905 first injected the notions of popular representation into Iran’s bloodstream. During the first half of the 20th century, feisty Parliaments had little compunction about flexing their muscles. The local gentry would marshal the peasants, laborers and tribesmen into polls that would choose each Parliament. It wasn’t a Jeffersonian democracy, but the system had legitimacy. Bound to each other by land, family, tradition and the vote, the governing class and the people created mechanisms for addressing grievances. Consequently the Parliaments were sensitive to local concerns.

The first Pahlavi monarch, Reza Shah, challenged this system by imposing his will in the name of modernity. After his abdication in 1941, constitutional rule again gained strength. Yet it was Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh, deposed in the 1953 coup, who tried to derail Iran’s democratic evolution. Forget for a moment the nefarious Central Intelligence Agency intrigue; what happened in 1953 was an Iranian initiative.

There is a fundamental rule about American interventionism today: It takes two to tango. The 1953 coup proves it. Mossadegh, who had once been a champion of the rule of law and national sovereignty, became increasingly autocratic and vainglorious after Parliament nationalized the Anglo-Persian Oil Co. in 1951. In trying to navigate the financially ruinous aftershocks of that decision, the prime minister rigged elections, sought to disband Parliament, and usurped the powers of the monarchy.

Iran’s politicians, military men and mullahs then came together to take down the premier. The public mostly rallied to the monarch, Mohammad Reza, a figurehead around whom diverse forces gathered. The CIA was involved in the coup planning but gave up once the initial operation failed. Iranians took control and removed the prime minister. In doing so, they sought to revive their economy and protect their political institutions. Mossadegh fell not because of a plot hatched in Langley but because he lost elite and popular support within his own country.

After naming himself “king of kings” in 1971, Mohammad Reza did his best to subvert good governance. He wasted much of Iran’s oil wealth on arms. He reduced the venerable Iranian Parliament to a rubber stamp. His secret police managed to be incompetent and hated. He alienated the clergy and replaced the old elite with a coterie of sycophants.

Yet the 1979 revolution, which overthrew the shah, was bound to disappoint a public clamoring for democracy. The first constituency to give up on theocracy was the students, whose protest in 1999 ended the attempt by the regime to reform itself. Then came the titanic Green Movement of 2009. A fraudulent presidential election sparked a massive protest that discredited the regime among the middle class. In December 2017, nearly 100 Iranian cities and towns erupted in protest. The poor were thought to be the regime’s last bastion of power, tied to theocracy by piety and the welfare state. Yet this time they hurled damning chants.

President Hassan Rouhani, a lackluster apparatchik of the security state, once thought that a nuclear deal would generate sufficient foreign investment to placate discontent. That aspiration failed even before the advent of President Trump. The Islamic Republic—with its lack of a reliable banking system or anything resembling the rule of law—is too turbulent to attract enough investors. It is probably internally weaker than the Soviet Union was in the 1970s.

The essential theme in modern Iranian history is a populace seeking to emancipate itself from tyranny—monarchal and Islamist. Devising a strategy to collapse the clerical regime isn’t difficult: The U.S. can draw on Persian history and on experience with the Soviet Union. It will require patience. Iranians usually don’t hold 1953 against the U.S. Neither do the children of the revolutionary elite, who so often find their way to the U.S. and Britain. The biggest hurdle for Washington is self-imposed: It needs to take seriously the Iranian quest for democracy.

Mr. Gerecht is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Mr. Takeyh is a senior fellow at the Council for Foreign Relations.

[Crafty_Dog]

Iran: There are reports of a major clash between the head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps and President Hassan Rouhani over potential cuts to the IRGC’s budget. Meanwhile, the Rouhani administration said the government would act quickly to tackle high prices. On the foreign policy front, Iran said European proposals to modify the nuclear deal are insufficient. Rouhani appeared to have the upper hand against the IRGC, but this newest argument may indicate the balance is tipping the other way. How bad is inflation right now? And are Iran’s warnings about the nuclear deal just posturing, or is withdrawal imminent?

•   Finding: The consumer price index and the producer price index reported by Iran’s central bank were 9.1 percent and 11.3 percent, respectively, at the end of May. ISNA news agency has reported that, since March, meat prices have increased by 16 percent, basmati rice by 21 percent, and cooking oil by 4.5 percent. The rial has sunk to 65,000-70,000 per dollar – at one point in mid-June it dropped to 75,000 – even though the official exchange rate is being held at 42,000 rial to the dollar. Cars have gotten more expensive, as have home appliances.

[Crafty_Dog]

In what is beginning to feel like a never-ending story, Iran is once again in the throes of a currency crisis. The Iranian rial has plunged to a record low against the U.S. dollar. Shopping centers in Tehran, including the Grand Bazaar, closed in protest of “market stagnation and the devaluation of national currency.” (That that quote comes not from opposition news sites but from state-friendly Fars news agency itself should trouble the government.) Iranian President Hassan Rouhani was seen visiting a resort in northern Tehran and was panned for it accordingly. Iran has been in a low-level economic crisis since protests around the country in January, and while these latest protests may just be signs of continued simmering, the fact that the government is taking heat in mainstream Iranian press is an ominous sign.

[Crafty_Dog]

GPF: 

Marc-- any chance Trump's sanctions have something to do with this?

In Iran, Anger Rises as the Currency Falls


Protests in the capital are growing.
By Xander Snyder

Things in Iran seem to be going from bad to worse. Protests have broken out again, this time centered in the capital, Tehran, as the Iranian currency plummets in value. Thousands of people, including traders in Tehran’s Grand Bazaar, participated in the protests, which started June 24. According to the BBC, they are the largest protests in the country since 2012, when economic sanctions degraded the economy and galvanized the public to action. The Iranian economy, however, rebounded after the nuclear agreement in 2015 lifted the sanctions, and Iran re-entered the global economy. The U.S. withdrawal from the deal, and fears that it will lead to a total collapse of the agreement, is at least partly responsible for the rial’s decline.

The rial is currently worth 90,000 rials to the dollar, a sharp fall from roughly 43,000 to the dollar at the end of 2017. And its decline has had a real impact on businesses that rely on imports, which become more expensive when a currency depreciates.

The protests themselves occurred in two phases. The first happened at two shopping centers specializing in cell phone sales in Tehran, where traders went on strike and shut down the centers on June 24. The merchants criticized the shops that remained open and called the shopkeepers “cowards.” The minister of information and communications technology has claimed that the merchants went back to work, but only after the government provided guarantees that it would help them secure hard currency for imports. (How the government plans to actually do that remains unclear.)

The government’s guarantees didn’t manage to quell the unrest for long. The following day, more protests broke out, this time at the parliament building. The demonstrators were confronted by police, who used tear gas to disperse the crowd. According to media reports, protesters shouted anti-regime slogans, including “Leave Syria, think of us” and “Death to the dictator,” and other unusual slogans like “Death to Palestine.” 

It’s not clear who organized the protests, but Iranian media reported that the demonstrations that shut down the Grand Bazaar started when the rial fell to 90,000 to the dollar. The government tried to address the currency problem in April, when it fixed the official exchange rate at 42,000 rials to the dollar. But this rate hasn’t held on the black market. Large, anti-government protests also erupted in late December and early January. Those protests, initially sparked by rising food prices, spread to cities and villages across the country, while the current demonstrations are focused in the capital.

The Rouhani government, which thought that the nuclear deal would generate more widespread economic benefits than it actually has, is under pressure from hardliners, who were happy to see it fail Indeed, it’s not just opposition or international media reporting on the protests this time around, as so often happens in Iran. Mainstream Iranian media outlets have also been reporting on them, indicating that a segment of the establishment wants them to be publicized. Security forces appear to have control of the unrest for now, but there’s no telling if the peace will keep, considering that sanctions are looming and there’s no end in sight for the rial’s decline.

[Crafty_Dog]

second post

https://www.dailywire.com/news/32237/trump-winning-iran-foreign-minister-fears-collapse-hank-berrien?utm_medium=email&utm_content=062518-news&utm_campaign=position6

[DougMacG]

Instead of death to Israel, Palestine is their new target.  People are tired of the Mulluh money going to Syria etc when things are so bad at home. 

"Demonstrations indicate growing anger at regime's support for regional terror groups at expense of country's troubled economy"
https://www.timesofisrael.com/iranians-chant-death-to-palestine-at-economic-protests/

"The order is rapidly fadin' ", "The times, they are a-changin' "
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7qQ6_RV4VQ

[Crafty_Dog]

https://www.jpost.com/Opinion/COLUMN-ONE-The-Grand-Bazaar-AMIA-and-Lockerbie-561169

[Crafty_Dog]

    the strait would be a drastic and damaging move for the country.
    The tough rhetoric is more than likely to be followed up by more mild retaliation attempts, such as the harassment of vessels in the Strait of Hormuz.

What happened?

Recently, Iran's government has been revisiting a familiar refrain: the threat to block the strategic Strait of Hormuz. In comments published July 3 on his official website, President Hassan Rouhani issued a vague threat against regional oil exports, saying, "the Americans have claimed they want to completely stop Iran's oil exports. They don't understand the meaning of this statement, because it has no meaning for Iranian oil not to be exported, while the region's oil is exported." On July 4 and 5, several Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) officials expressed their willingness to follow through on the president's tacit threat. The IRGC's commander, Mohammad Ali Jafari, for example, said, "we are hopeful that this plan expressed by our president will be implemented if needed. We will make the enemy understand that either all can use the Strait of Hormuz or no one."

The Big Picture

The United States is pursuing a tough line against Iran, which it views as responsible for exacerbating the Middle East's regional instability. Washington is hoping that sanctions will weaken Iran's economy so much that it will force a change in behavior and ultimately in leadership. Faced with this difficult position, Iran must find ways to strike back at the United States without further compromising its economy and international alliances.
See 2018 Third-Quarter Forecast

See Iran's Arc of Influence
Why are the United States and Iran threatening each other?

Beginning in November, the United States will reapply sanctions on Iranian oil exports that has previously been suspended through the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), commonly called the Iran nuclear deal. While U.S. policy since Washington withdrew from the deal in May is still not entirely clear, it seems increasingly likely that the United States will demand that its allies completely stop importing Iranian oil. (At the same time, the United States is also pressuring its Gulf Arab allies to produce more oil — not only to make up for the anticipated Iranian drawdown but also to combat shortfalls resulting from turmoil in big oil producing countries like Libya.)

If all U.S. allies stop importing Iranian oil, the country could ultimately see its oil exports drop to as low as 1 million barrels per day (bpd) from its current 2.28 million bpd, resulting in a big loss of revenue. That dire prospect, amplified by the need to hit back at Washington and save face in some way, is prompting Iran to dredge up its familiar threat to shut off the Strait of Hormuz to any trade. The mere threat of closing the strait increases market uncertainty, stokes oil prices and creates some leverage for Iran without requiring that it follow through.

Why does the Strait of Hormuz matter?

The Strait of Hormuz, a narrow passage in the Persian Gulf between Omani and Iranian territory, facilitates the movement of some 30 to 35 percent of the world's maritime oil trade. Close to 17 million barrels of oil travel through the strait each day, and all Persian Gulf shipping must travel through it. This includes shipping from every port in Iraq, Kuwait, Bahrain and Qatar, most of the ports in the United Arab Emirates and some critical ports in Saudi Arabia. Consequently, threats to the Strait of Hormuz, whether realistic or not, drastically affect market certainty because all of the world's big oil or natural gas importers — including the United States — depend on the secure passage of shipping through the strait.

A Map of the Strait of Hormuz
Hasn't Iran made this threat before?

The current threats are reminiscent of previous statements that Iranian leadership has made over the years, whenever Tehran feels Washington is challenging its economic sovereignty. In 2012, Iran threatened to block the strait in response to sanctions by the United States and the European Union against the country's nuclear program. Iran's navy chief said it would be "easy" to block the strait, while its vice president warned that not a "drop" of oil would pass through it if more sanctions were piled onto Iran. But even when those sanctions did materialize, Iran did not block the strait.

One difference between then and now is the extent to which the White House responded to the Iranian threats. The former administration downplayed them while it sought to negotiate a complicated nuclear deal. But the current administration is pursuing a heavily focused anti-Iran policy in the Middle East while trying to build up its relationships with allies such as Israel and Saudi Arabia, who view Iran as their primary adversary.

Would Iran actually block shipping in the Strait of Hormuz?

Despite the rhetoric, actually blocking the Strait of Hormuz represents perhaps Iran's most extreme option. First and foremost, attempting to close the strait would result in a devastating war for Iran against the United States and the Gulf Cooperation Council, as the latter seeks to preserve the freedom of shipping and naval passage through the critical strait. Meanwhile Iran's own economy and naval activity also depend on the free passage of goods and vessels through the strait. Finally, cutting off the Strait of Hormuz would be counterproductive to Iran's current goal of trying to stave off further U.S. sanctions and keep the European Union and other allies such as China and India in its good graces. The move would be incredibly disruptive to global shipping and oil markets, spoiling the well with allies that Iran needs now more than ever.

What is likely to happen next?

Unless something as extreme as an all-out regional military conflict breaking out occurs, Iran will not block the Strait of Hormuz, even once the suspended oil-related sanctions go back into effect in November. As the United States increases sanctions pressure, Iran will probably retaliate in other ways, such as by utilizing its cyberwar capabilities against U.S. allies in the region or by harassing vessels in the Persian Gulf. These will likely include U.S. or allied military vessels, tankers carrying Saudi or Emirati crude oil or Saudi or Emirati offshore production platforms.

This type of harassment is common for the IRGC's navy, which maintained a strategy of deterrence in the Persian Gulf even after the implementation of the JCPOA. In 2017, it harassed Emirati ships and an offshore Saudi platform. In that same year came an incident between an IRGC vessel and a U.S. naval ship in which the U.S. vessel fired warning shots in an effort to prevent a collision. The IRGC put a stop to those behaviors in August 2017, when Iran began its charm campaign to placate the European Union and try to prevent the United States from leaving the JCPOA. But now that an aggressive White House has brought back sanctions and the European Union is unable to offer economic guarantees, the IRGC may well start up this type of activity again.

[G M]

I'd put money on it.

GPF: 

Marc-- any chance Trump's sanctions have something to do with this?

In Iran, Anger Rises as the Currency Falls


Protests in the capital are growing.
By Xander Snyder

Things in Iran seem to be going from bad to worse. Protests have broken out again, this time centered in the capital, Tehran, as the Iranian currency plummets in value. Thousands of people, including traders in Tehran’s Grand Bazaar, participated in the protests, which started June 24. According to the BBC, they are the largest protests in the country since 2012, when economic sanctions degraded the economy and galvanized the public to action. The Iranian economy, however, rebounded after the nuclear agreement in 2015 lifted the sanctions, and Iran re-entered the global economy. The U.S. withdrawal from the deal, and fears that it will lead to a total collapse of the agreement, is at least partly responsible for the rial’s decline.

The rial is currently worth 90,000 rials to the dollar, a sharp fall from roughly 43,000 to the dollar at the end of 2017. And its decline has had a real impact on businesses that rely on imports, which become more expensive when a currency depreciates.

The protests themselves occurred in two phases. The first happened at two shopping centers specializing in cell phone sales in Tehran, where traders went on strike and shut down the centers on June 24. The merchants criticized the shops that remained open and called the shopkeepers “cowards.” The minister of information and communications technology has claimed that the merchants went back to work, but only after the government provided guarantees that it would help them secure hard currency for imports. (How the government plans to actually do that remains unclear.)

The government’s guarantees didn’t manage to quell the unrest for long. The following day, more protests broke out, this time at the parliament building. The demonstrators were confronted by police, who used tear gas to disperse the crowd. According to media reports, protesters shouted anti-regime slogans, including “Leave Syria, think of us” and “Death to the dictator,” and other unusual slogans like “Death to Palestine.” 

It’s not clear who organized the protests, but Iranian media reported that the demonstrations that shut down the Grand Bazaar started when the rial fell to 90,000 to the dollar. The government tried to address the currency problem in April, when it fixed the official exchange rate at 42,000 rials to the dollar. But this rate hasn’t held on the black market. Large, anti-government protests also erupted in late December and early January. Those protests, initially sparked by rising food prices, spread to cities and villages across the country, while the current demonstrations are focused in the capital.

The Rouhani government, which thought that the nuclear deal would generate more widespread economic benefits than it actually has, is under pressure from hardliners, who were happy to see it fail Indeed, it’s not just opposition or international media reporting on the protests this time around, as so often happens in Iran. Mainstream Iranian media outlets have also been reporting on them, indicating that a segment of the establishment wants them to be publicized. Security forces appear to have control of the unrest for now, but there’s no telling if the peace will keep, considering that sanctions are looming and there’s no end in sight for the rial’s decline.