Mohammed bin Salman (commonly referred to as MBS) is on a historic visit – the first in nearly 75 years – to Saudi Arabia’s closest ally, the US. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal this week, he called for restrictions that would “create more pressure” on Tehran.
“If we don’t succeed in what we are trying to do [imposing sanctions on Iran], we will likely have war with Iran in 10-15 years,” MBS, who has become the true power behind his aging father, King Salman, said.
Tehran and Riyadh have clashed over various issues in recent years. The Syrian crisis – especially the future of Syria’s government under President Bashar Assad – remains one of the major stumbling blocks.
The trip to the US of the prince’s entourage and meeting with Donald Trump only added fuel to the fire amid already strained relations. Iran sees the whole tour as a cynical exercise in self-promotion ahead of Bin Salman’s assumed ascension to the Saudi throne.
Prior to his coast-to-coast US trip, in which he rubbed shoulders with top politicians and Silicon Valley executives, the 32-year-old Saudi prince said that his country would enter the nuclear arms race if Iran is ever successful in developing a weapon of mass destruction. He also called Iran’s supreme leader the “new Hitler.”
The Iranian Foreign Ministry described MBS as “delusional” and “naïve,” following his allegations that Iran is hosting Al-Qaeda leaders.
The oil-rich kingdom and the US – under President Trump – have repeatedly slammed the landmark 2015 Iranian nuclear deal. Trump seems to be advancing a plan to confront Saudi Arabia’s number 1enemy in the region.
According to Vladimir Sazhin, a senior research associate at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, by withdrawing from the Iranian nuclear agreement, “the US would become a pariah,” since the international community largely approves of the deal and confirms that Tehran is sticking to its obligations.
Mabna Institute Hackers Penetrated Systems Belonging to Hundreds of Universities, Companies, and Other Victims to Steal Research, Academic and Proprietary Data, and Intellectual Property, USA Department of Justice, 23 Mar 18
An Indictment charging Gholamreza Rafatnejad, 38; Ehsan Mohammadi, 37; Abdollah Karima, aka Vahid Karima, 39; Mostafa Sadeghi, 28; Seyed Ali Mirkarimi, 34; Mohammed Reza Sabahi, 26; Roozbeh Sabahi, 24; Abuzar Gohari Moqadam, 37; and Sajjad Tahmasebi, 30, all citizens and residents of Iran, was unsealed today. The defendants were each leaders, contractors, associates, hackers-for-hire or affiliates of the Mabna Institute, an Iran-based company that, since at least 2013, conducted a coordinated campaign of cyber intrusions into computer systems belonging to 144 U.S. universities, 176 universities across 21 foreign countries, 47 domestic and foreign private sector companies, the U.S. Department of Labor, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the State of Hawaii, the State of Indiana, the United Nations, and the United Nations Children’s Fund……..https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/nine-iranians-charged-conducting-massive-cyber-theft-campaign-behalf-islamic-revolutionary
Iran’s Rouhani: West will regret collapse of nuclear deal
Iran’s president accuses US of sabotaging 2015 pact as other officials say Tehran’s missile programme is non-negotiable. Aljazeera, 7 Mar 18
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has warned the West will come to “regret” the day the nuclear agreement collapses, laying blame on the United States for trying to sabotage the historic deal.
Rouhani’s comment came as a senior Revolutionary Guard official vowed on Tuesday that Iran will defy pressure to scale back the country’s ballistic missile programme – part of a new push by US President Donald Trump to renegotiate the original pact signed in 2015.
Following a meeting with France’s Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian in Tehran on Monday, Rouhani said while Iran is ready for any “unfavourable” consequences, negotiations and diplomacy remain the best options to save the agreement.
“Remaining committed to the accord would prove to the world that the negotiation and diplomacy is the best way to solve problems, but the collapse of the deal means that political talks are a waste of time,” he said.
Rouhani stressed it is necessary for all signatories of the deal to adhere to their commitments, adding Tehran will never be the first party to violate the agreement, Tasnim News agency quoted him as saying.
Iran will not negotiate over its ballistic missiles until the United States and Europe dismantle their nuclear weapons, a top Iranian military official said on Saturday.
While Iran has accepted curbs on its nuclear work — which it says is for purely peaceful purposes — it has repeatedly refused to discuss its missile program.
Iran says its nuclear program is defensive because of its deterrent nature.
Ian Jails ‘Nuclear Spy’ For Six Years, Radio Free Europe 4 Feb 18 Tehran’s prosecutor says an unnamed person has been sentenced to six years in prison for relaying information about Iran’s nuclear program to a U.S. intelligence agent and a European country.
Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi told judiciary news website Mizan that the Iranian court also ordered the confiscation of the money the convict allegedly received for the information.
Dolatabadi said the alleged spy met the U.S. agent nine times and provided him with information about “nuclear affairs and sanctions.”
The convict also provided the information to a European country, the prosecutor added, without providing further details.
In December, Dolatabadi said Iran’s Supreme Court had upheld a death sentence against Ahmadreza Djalali, an Iranian-Swedish academic convicted of providing information to Israel about Iran’s nuclear and defense plans and personnel.
Iran insists its nuclear program is only for peaceful purposes, while the United States and other countries claim it has been trying to develop nuclear weapons………
Baquer Namazi, a retired UNICEF official, and his son Siamak are serving 10-year prison sentences.
Iran says President Donald Trump’s hostility to the 2015 nuclear deal is dampening foreign investment in the energy sector despite the lifting of sanctions.
Oil Minister Bijan Zanganeh told reporters on Sunday that the uncertainty over the future of the agreement, which Trump has repeatedly threatened to scrap, is scaring off potential investors.
Trump re-certified the deal in January but said he would not do the same in May unless it is fixed.
Iran hopes to attract more than $150 billion to rebuild its energy industry after years of sanctions. Last year it signed a $5 billion gas deal with France’s Total SA and a Chinese oil company to develop a massive offshore gas field.
Mike Pence confirms US intention to withdraw from Iran nuclear deal, The US vice president’s visit to Israel has prompted anger from Palestinians over US policy in the Middle East. The Independent ,By Ken Thomas, January 23 2018US vice president Mike Pence has reiterated to Israeli leaders that the Trump administration plans to pull out of the landmark 2015 Iran nuclear deal unless the pact is amended.
The remarks came as Mr Pence wrapped up his visit to Israel. On Monday, he repeatedly referred to Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, speaking alongside the country’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He also used a high-profile speech to the parliament to announce plans to speed up the timing of the opening of the US Embassy in Jerusalem, moving it from Tel Aviv, by the end of 2019.
“Issues not directly related to the [nuclear deal] should be addressed without prejudice to preserving the agreement and its accomplishments,” Guterres said in a statement on January 17.
The deal is a “major achievement of nuclear nonproliferation and diplomacy, and has contributed to regional and international peace and security,” he said.
The administration of U.S. President Donald Trump has repeatedly criticized Iran’s ballistic-missile development as well as support for Syria’s government in a six-year civil war and its backing of Yemeni Huthi rebels, while demanding major changes in the nuclear deal.
On January 12, Trump threatened to pull out of the deal unless it is changed to clearly prohibit ballistic-missile development, among other changes he is seeking.
Trump said he was waiving U.S. nuclear-related sanctions for another 120 days, as required under the deal in exchange for curbs on Iran’s nuclear activities.
But he said was doing so for the “last time” to give U.S. and European negotiators a “last chance” to enact measures to fix what he called the deal’s “disastrous flaws.”
Iran has ruled out any changes in the agreement, maintaining that Trump’s demands violate terms of the deal sealed by the administration of former U.S. President Barack Obama and signed by Britain, France, Germany, China, and Russia.
While the Trump administration insists that Iran’s testing of ballistic missiles that are capable of carrying nuclear weapons violates the “spirit” of the nuclear accord, Guterres noted that the International Atomic Energy Agency has repeatedly concluded that Iran is fulfilling its side of the agreement.
Trump’s not killing the Iran deal — yet But this could be the last time he extends it. Vox, By Zeeshan Aleem@ZeeshanAleemzeeshan.aleem@vox.comPresident Donald Trump has decided to extend the Iran nuclear deal once more — but it may be the last time he does it.
The president announced Friday that he wouldn’t reimpose economic sanctions on Iran over its nuclear program, a move that would have effectively killed the Obama administration’s landmark nuclear deal in Tehran in 2015 and isolated the US from allies around the world.
Trump is legally required to decide every 120 days whether or not he’ll put the sanctions back into effect. In his statement Friday, the president said he’d reimpose the measures next time the deadline comes around unless European allies put stricter limitations on what Iran is allowed to do under the pact.
“Today I am waiving the application of certain nuclear sanctions, but only in order to secure our European allies’ agreement to fix the terrible flaws of the Iran nuclear deal,” Trump said in a statement. “This is a last chance.”
According to senior administration officials, Trump wants to establish new sanctions on Iran tied to the way it handles its ballistic missile program, inspections of its nuclear sites by international monitors, and any expansion of the Iran’s nuclear program that causes the country to come within a year of “nuclear breakout,” the amount of time it would take to produce enough fuel for a single nuclear weapon.
Trump also said he expects Congress to craft new legislation that would “deny Iran all paths to a nuclear weapon — not just for ten years, but forever.”
The Trump administration also announced new sanctions against 14 Iranian nationals and organizations for behavior unrelated to the country’s nuclear program. Those measures are being imposed on Iran for its government’s human rights abuses and censorship, mainly tied to widespread national protests in Iran in recent weeks……
Trump’s decision to extend the deal is in some ways a surprising move — late last year he declared the deal wasn’t in the national security interests of the US. It represents a tentative win for Secretary of Defense James Mattis and other top aides, who have spent months lobbying the president to preserve the deal. And it prevents, at least for now, what could have been a nasty fight with America’s closest allies, who believe the deal is working and have made clear that the US would stand alone if Trump pulled out of it.
World powers stick to Iran nuclear deal despite protests, US, Kambiz Foroohar, SMH, 7 Dec 18,New York: US Ambassador Nikki Haley called an emergency session of the United Nations Security Council on Friday to focus on deadly protests in Iran, but the hearing didn’t go as planned.While most envoys criticised the violence of the past week and called on the Iranian government to show restraint with protesters, several – including American allies France and the UK – also used the opportunity to defend the 2015 nuclear agreement between Iran and world powers, an accord increasingly seen as under threat by the Trump administration.
After criticiSing Iran’s ballistic missile development and role in supporting Yemeni rebels, UK Ambassador Matthew Rycroft added that “the UK remains fully committed to the JCPOA,” an acronym for the nuclear accord. “We encourage all members states to uphold all their commitments. A prosperous, stable Iran is beneficial to all.”
Ending the nuclear accord “would be a major setback for the entire international community,” French envoy Francois Delattre said, adding that “the agreement is one of the cornerstones of stability in the Middle East as a whole.”
The concerns about the nuclear accord come as US President Donald Trump faces a series of key decisions on Iran starting next week – including whether to honour part of the 2015 agreement that lifted restrictions on Iran’s banking, oil and shipping industries. He could opt to re-impose the sanctions and risk collapse of the accord, a move that Friday’s UN session showed would leave the US isolated……http://www.smh.com.au/world/world-powers-stick-to-iran-nuclear-deal-despite-protests-us-20180106-h0ed20.html
He says through its social media manipulation operations, spy agency Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) tried to influence online activists during the 2009 Iranian presidential election protests, and the 2011 uprisings widely known as the Arab Spring.
Al-Bassam told the Chaos Communication Congress in Germany last week that the Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group (JTRIG) – a unit in GCHQ – uses “dirty tricks” to target activists.
He says JTRIG has been tasked by the British government to “[use] online techniques to make something happen in the real or cyber world.” To fulfil this aim, a wide but basic array of technological tools and software are used, including ‘DEADPOOL,’ which is described as a “URL shortening service,” and ‘HUSK,’ a “secure one-to-one web based dead-drop messaging platform.”
He told the conference: “It’s basically a fancy name for sitting on Twitter and Facebook all day and trolling online. What they do, is they conduct what they call ‘human intelligence’ – which is like the act of interacting with humans online to try and make something happen in the real world.
“In their own words one of the things they do is to use ‘dirty tricks’ to ‘destroy, deny, degrade [and] disrupt’ enemies by ‘discrediting’ them.”
JTRIG has been involved in infiltrating hacktivist groups Anonymous and LulzSec, and protesters in Iran, Syria and Bahrain, he says.
As a “honey pot” to attract activists, GCHQ set up free URL shortening service lurl.me, which was used on Twitter and other social media platforms to spread revolutionary messages in the Middle East. These messages would attract people protesting against the government there, and British intelligence would collect information on them.
Al-Bassam said he discovered this information among the documents leaked by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. “In 2011, I was unknowingly messaged… by a covert agent from [GCHQ], who was investigating the hacktivist groups of Anonymous and Lulzsec. Later that year, I was arrested and banned from the internet for my involvement in Lulzsec.
Then, in 2014, I discovered through a new Snowden leak that GCHQ had targeted Anonymous and Lulzsec, and that the person that messaged me was a covert employee, pretending to be a hacktivist.”
He added: “Because I was myself targeted in the past, I was aware of a key detail – a honeypot URL shortening service set up by GCHQ, that was actually redacted in the Snowden documents published in 2014. This URL shortening service enabled GCHQ to deanonymize another hacktivist and discover his real name and Facebook account, according to the leaked document.
“Using this key detail, I was able to discover a network of sockpuppet Twitter accounts and websites set up by GCHQ, pretending to be activists during the Arab spring of 2011,” he said.
Moderation on Iran: Better to improve than scrap nuclear pacthttp://www.post-gazette.com/opinion/editorials/2018/01/02/Moderation-on-Iran-Better-to-improve-than-scrap-nuclear-pact/stories/201712300018 THE EDITORIAL BOARD, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette It shouldn’t seem necessary to make an argument to the American people that the United States should not go to war with a nation of 80 million, located far from our shores, with which America once had a fruitful commercial and political relationship and with which, like other parts of the world, it has entered into a nuclear weapons control agreement.
But here we are, and it is useful to suggest that it would be unwise for America to go to war with Iran, whose regime in recent days has been beset by popular political demonstrations.
The Trump administration has criticized the Iran nuclear agreement repeatedly and could scrap it. However, as far as the agreement having shortcomings, wouldn’t it make more sense to take the agreement — signed not only by Iran and the United States, but also by China, France, Germany, Russia and the United Kingdom — as the basis for negotiating changes, as opposed to threatening to pull out of it and, perhaps, to attack Iran?
The first problem with the current U.S. posture is that the other signatories like the agreement. China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom and the rest of the world have taken it as a green light to improve trade, including major sales, to Iran. America-based companies have considered the continued U.S. sanctions against Iran, and, particularly the continued political objections to it in the United States, including from Israel and American Christian fundamentalists, as a reason not to put the pedal to the metal in terms of pursuing trade and investment opportunities in Iran.
The second major problem in any thought that the United States might attack Iran militarily is that the results would be catastrophic. Of course, the United States would probably win an all-out war against Iran in the long haul — that is, assuming the American people would be prepared to support such a war. That’s a real question, because it would be hard to persuade them that there was any reason for such a war, and it would cost the Earth.
In the short run, a quick glance at the map is worth the trouble in assessing U.S. vulnerabilities in such a conflict. Iran lies just across the Persian Gulf from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Oman, in all of which the U.S. has important military installations, including the headquarters of the U.S. 5th Fleet and the regional headquarters of the U.S. Central Command, a short rocket distance away. Iran also borders on Afghanistan and Iraq, where the U.S. maintains a vulnerable presence as well as long-term investment.
It would be dreamy to imagine that Iran’s first response to a U.S. attack wouldn’t be retaliation against some or all of these key U.S. targets surrounding it. The usual arguments for improving relations with Iran, not worsening them, are otherwise foregone commercial opportunities, the concerns of some of our allies, and regional and world peace in general. Given that President Donald J. Trump’s principal national security affairs advisers are current or retired military officers, it is also worth looking at the military aspects of U.S. relations with Iran with a cold eye, then determining future U.S. policy, in 2018 and beyond.
How Trump could kill the Iran nuclear deal in January The president will soon face a series of deadlines during which he could deliver on a campaign promise to rip up the 2015 agreement. Politico eu, By MICHAEL CROWLEY, 12/28/17, President Donald Trump allowed the Iran nuclear deal to survive through 2017, but the new year will offer him another chance to blow up the agreement — and critics and supporters alike believe he may take it.
By mid-January, the president will face new legal deadlines to choose whether to slap U.S. sanctions back on Tehran. Senior lawmakers and some of Trump’s top national security officials are trying to preserve the agreement. But the deal’s backers fear Trump has grown more willing to reject the counsel of his foreign policy team, as he did with his recent decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital……..
The deal was negotiated in 2015 by the Obama administration, along with five other nations. It lifted U.S. and European sanctions on Iran in exchange for strict limits on Tehran’s nuclear program. …..
The deadlines for Trump begin on January 11, when the agreement requires him — as it does every 90 days — to certify whether Tehran is meeting its obligations under the deal. International inspectors who visit the country’s nuclear facilities have repeatedly said Iran is doing so. But Trump refused to certify Iranian compliance in mid-October……..
upcoming deadlines for Trump to continue the temporary waiver of U.S. sanctions on Iran, which the deal dictates will not be permanently repealed for several more years. The president must renew the waivers every 120 days. Sources familiar with the law said multiple waiver deadlines arrive between January 12 and January 17, forcing Trump to reassess the deal.
If Trump rejects the waivers and restores biting sanctions, Tehran is certain to claim the U.S. has breached the agreement and — supporters of the deal say — may restart its nuclear program. That could court a military confrontation with the U.S. and Israel. At a minimum, the U.S would find itself isolated abroad given that every other party to the deal — France, the U.K., Germany, China and Russia — all strongly oppose a U.S. withdrawal from the agreement.
Top Trump officials, including National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, all hope to avoid that outcome, telling others that while they may not love the nuclear deal, the potential fallout from a unilateral U.S. withdrawal would be too great to risk……….https://www.politico.eu/article/iran-how-donald-trump-could-kill-the-iran-nuclear-deal-in-january/
Iran undertook to curb its uranium enrichment program in return for relief from international sanctions that crippled its economy, and U.N. nuclear inspectors have repeatedly verified Tehran’s adherence to the key aspects of the accord.
Trump has called the agreement between Iran, the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Russia, China and the European Union “the worst deal ever” and he disavowed Iran’s compliance last month. His decision did not constitute a U.S. exit from the accord but raised concern about its staying power.
Trump’s move, at odds with the commitment of the other parties to the deal, meant the U.S. Congress must decide by mid-December whether to reimpose economic sanctions lifted under the accord, reached under his predecessor Barack Obama.
If Congress reimposes the sanctions, the United States would in effect be in violation of the deal and it would likely fall apart. If lawmakers do nothing, the deal remains in place.
In response, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has said Tehran will stick to the nuclear accord as long as the other signatories respected it, but would “shred” the deal if Washington pulled out.
If the deal unravels, it would strengthen hardline opponents of Hassan Rouhani, Iran’s pragmatist president who opened up diplomatic channels to Western powers to enable nuclear diplomacy after years of worsening confrontation.
Iran’s stock of low-enriched uranium as of Nov. 5 was 96.7 kg (213.2 pounds), well below a 202.8-kg limit set by the deal, and the level of enrichment did not exceed a maximum 3.67 percent cap, said the confidential International Atomic Energy Agency report sent to IAEA member states and seen by Reuters.
Iran’s stock of so-called heavy water, a moderator used in a type of reactor that can produce plutonium, a potential nuclear bomb fuel, stood at 114.4 metric tonnes, below a 130-tonne limit agreed by the parties to the deal.
The 3.67 percent enrichment and 202-kg stockpile limit on uranium, and the 130-tonne cap on heavy water, aim to ensure that Iran does not amass enough material of sufficient fissile purity to produce a nuclear bomb. Such a device requires uranium to be refined to around 90 percent purity.
IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano told Reuters in September he would welcome clarification from the powers on how the agency should monitor Iran’s implementation of the so-called Section T of the nuclear pact that deals with certain technologies that could be used to develop an atom bomb.
Russia had been critical of the agency’s monitoring of Section T provisions, but Monday’s report said the IAEA had verified Iran’s commitment to the section.
Reporting by Shadia Nasralla; editing by Mark Heinrich
Trump’s CIA Is Laying the Groundwork for a Devastating War on Iran, with Help from Neocon Think Tank, By Ben Norton, Global Research, AlterNet 10 November 2017
An ex-CIA analyst has raised suspicions about the CIA’s release of bin Laden documents and apparent collaboration with the hard-right organization Foundation for Defense of Democracies. The Central Intelligence Agency appears to have collaborated with the neoconservative think tank Foundation for Defense of Democracies to try to link Iran to the Salafi-jihadist group al-Qaeda.
Ned Price, a former CIA analyst and spokesman, has suggested that the move may be part of a wider campaign by the Trump administration’s new CIA director to establish “a rationale for regime change” in Tehran.
In the lead-up to the illegal 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, the effort to link Baghdad to al-Qaeda was “a key element of the march to war,” Price explained, implying that the Trump administration might be doing something similar with Iran.
President Donald Trump has, since the beginning of his term, made aggressive opposition to Iran a key feature of his foreign policy. He has surrounded himself with anti-Iran hawks in the White House, and pledged to unilaterally “tear up” the nuclear deal agreed to by major world powers.
Saudi Arabia, a key U.S. proxy in the Middle East, has in recent weeks escalated its campaign against Iran. The Saudi monarchy pressured Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri to resign, and has been accused of holding him hostage. The kingdom then effectively declared war on Lebanon, in the name of countering Iran and its ally Hezbollah.
President Trump has praised Saudi Arabia’s belligerent intervention and foreign meddling, even while accusing Tehran of doing exactly what Riyadh is doing. The U.S. government is working very closely with the Saudi monarchy and Israel to, in Trump’s words, “counter the regime’s destabilizing activity.”
Supposed Al Qaeda links
To justify these aggressive actions, the Trump administration has tried to link Iran to al-Qaeda.
The neoconservative think tank Foundation for Defense of Democracies published an article November 1 that aimed to highlight the alleged connections between the two. In order to do so, the staunch right-wing organization cited previously unreleased CIA documents that had allegedly been collected in the May 2011 U.S. raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.
The Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) indicated in the post, “The CIA provided FDD’s Long War Journal with an advance copy of many of the files.”
The right-wing think tank’s Long War Journal project subsequently stressed that the documents purportedly “show Iran facilitated AQ at times.” The Long War Journal also claimed that several al-Qaeda leaders lived in Iran, where they were allegedly detained at the time.
Next, Long War Journal editors Thomas Joscelyn and Bill Roggio conducted a lengthy interview with conservative radio host John Batchelor, in which they hammered on bin Laden’s supposed connections to Iran.
FDD has for years advocated for aggressive U.S. action, including military options, against Iran. It is one of the leading anti-Iran voices in the Beltway’s constellation of neoconservative think tanks. Funded in the past by the billionaire Sheldon Adelson, a confidant of Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu, FDD has been on the front lines of the campaign to undermine the Iran nuclear deal, which the far-right U.S. president has promised to “tear up.”
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