Tag: tehran
Biden Needs To Revive The Iran Nuclear Deal

Biden Needs To Revive The Iran Nuclear Deal

Donald Trump was a fierce critic of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal negotiated under Barack Obama. Because of it, he said in 2018, "In just a short period of time, the world's leading state sponsor of terror will be on the cusp of acquiring the world's most dangerous weapons."

He pulled the plug, and what a difference it made. On Thursday, a group of 40 nuclear arms experts issued a statement estimating that today, Tehran would need only a week or two to produce enough weapons-grade uranium to make a bomb. Under the agreement, it would have taken a year.

That's because the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action required the Tehran regime to scrap 13,000 centrifuges, strictly limit enrichment, ship out 97% of its spent nuclear fuel and more. It stipulated that "under no circumstances will Iran ever seek, develop or acquire any nuclear weapons."

Obama's critics had predicted Iran would not fulfill its obligations — but the International Atomic Energy Agency repeatedly certified that Iran had done what the deal required. Even as he was renouncing the agreement, Trump was unable to identify any violations. His own administration had certified Iran's compliance.


After the U.S. reneged on its commitment, though, Iran proceeded to do likewise. Since Trump's withdrawal, it has boosted its uranium enrichment, denied international inspectors access to surveillance videos and installed advanced centrifuges, all in violation of the accord.

This was not what Trump promised. He assured Americans that "we will be working with our allies to find a real, comprehensive and lasting solution to the Iranian nuclear threat" and that Iran would soon capitulate under the pain of new sanctions. It should surprise no one to find that he was talking nonsense.

Those allies strenuously objected to his withdrawal. In a joint statement, the governments of Germany, France and Britain, all parties to the deal, expressed "regret and concern" and declared, "We emphasize our continuing commitment to the JCPOA." Nor did the sanctions force Iran to come crawling back, begging for mercy.

Opponents of the deal said that because various provisions only lasted for 10 or 15 years, Iran would eventually be able to acquire the bomb. But Trump only speeded up the process. His policy was the equivalent of a cancer patient rejecting a proven treatment because the cancer might someday recur.

Another criticism of the accord was that it didn't keep Iran from supporting terrorist groups or testing new missiles. But that's like our cancer patient spurning cancer treatment because it wouldn't cure his arthritis or his migraines. Solving one problem is not as good as solving multiple problems, but it beats solving none.

Trump didn't just adopt a policy that was bound to fail. He also hindered any correction by his successor. In the first place, Trump's decision served to discourage Iran from ever forging any deal with Washington. Why agree to terms with one president if the next one might very well tear them up?

Trump also devised another way to prevent a revival of the accord. A year after he withdrew, his administration elected to list Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps, a part of the Iranian military, as a foreign terrorist organization — which triggers particular sanctions, and which was previously reserved for nongovernmental groups.

That's now the chief obstacle to a new agreement, because Tehran insists that the designation be revoked. Otherwise, Iran will be under more sanctions than it was after Trump withdrew. The Biden administration is so far unwilling to revoke the designation. Apparently, it doesn't want to give Republicans a chance to claim it's soft on terrorism.

But George W. Bush, who was never accused of being soft on terrorism, didn't register the IRGC as a terrorist group, because there was no compelling reason to do so.

As Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, told me: "Even if the IRGC is taken off the FTO list, it will remain a specially designated terror organization. It will still be considered a U.S.-designated terror organization."

Biden shouldn't let that dispute get in the way of reviving an agreement that blocked a longtime enemy from becoming a nuclear power. He may not want to be pilloried for agreeing to something that can be cynically misrepresented by his foes. But it beats being pilloried for letting Iran get the bomb.

Printed with permission from Creators.

Saudi Arabia Cuts Ties With Iran As Row Over Cleric’s Death Escalates

Saudi Arabia Cuts Ties With Iran As Row Over Cleric’s Death Escalates

By Sam Wilkin and Angus McDowall

DUBAI/RIYADH (Reuters) – Saudi Arabia cut ties with Iran on Sunday, responding to the storming of its embassy in Tehran in an escalating row between the rival Middle East powers over Riyadh’s execution of a Shi’ite Muslim cleric.

Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir told a news conference in Riyadh that the envoy of Shi’ite Iran had been asked to quit Saudi Arabia within 48 hours. The kingdom, he said, would not allow the Islamic republic to undermine its security.

Iranian protesters stormed the Saudi embassy in Tehran early on Sunday and Shi’ite Iran’s top leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, predicted “divine vengeance” for the execution of Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, an outspoken opponent of the ruling Al Saudi family.

Jubeir said the attack in Tehran was in line with what he said were earlier Iranian assaults on foreign embassies there and with Iranian policies of destabilizing the region by creating “terrorist cells” in Saudi Arabia.

“The kingdom, in light of these realities, announces the cutting of diplomatic relations with Iran and requests the departure of delegates of diplomatic missions of the embassy and consulate and offices related to it within 48 hours. The ambassador has been summoned to notify them,” he said.

Speaking on Iranian state television, Deputy Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said in Tehran’s first response that by cutting diplomatic ties, Riyadh could not cover up “its major mistake of executing Sheikh Nimr”.

The United States, Saudi Arabia’s biggest backer in the West, responded by encouraging diplomatic engagement and calling for leaders in the region to take “affirmative steps” to reduce tensions.

“We believe that diplomatic engagement and direct conversations remain essential in working through differences and we will continue to urge leaders across the region to take affirmative steps to calm tensions,” an official of President Barack Obama’s administration said.

Tensions between revolutionary, mainly Shi’ite Iran and Saudi Arabia’s conservative Sunni monarchy have run high for years as they backed opposing forces in wars and political conflicts across the Middle East, usually along sectarian lines.

However, Saturday’s execution of a cleric whose death Iran had warned would “cost Saudi Arabia dearly”, and the storming of the kingdom’s Tehran embassy, raised the pitch of the rivalry.

Strong rhetoric from Tehran was matched by Iran’s Shi’ite allies across the region, with Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, the head of Lebanese militia Hezbollah, describing the execution as “a message of blood”. Moqtada al-Sadr, an Iraqi Shi’ite cleric, called for angry protests.

Demonstrators protesting against the execution of the cleric, Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, broke into the embassy building, smashed furniture and started fires before being ejected by police.

Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani condemned the execution as “inhuman”, but also urged the prosecution of “extremist individuals” for attacking the embassy and the Saudi consulate in the northeastern city of Mashhad, state media reported.

Tehran’s police chief said an unspecified number of “unruly elements” were arrested for attacking the embassy with petrol bombs and rocks. A prosecutor said 40 people were held.

“The unjustly spilled blood of this oppressed martyr will no doubt soon show its effect and divine vengeance will befall Saudi politicians,” Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was quoted as saying by Iran’s state television.

PROTESTS

Nimr, the most vocal critic of the dynasty among the Shi’ite minority, had come to be seen as a leader of the sect’s younger activists, who had tired of the failure of older, more measured, leaders to achieve equality with Sunnis.

His execution, along with three other Shi’ites and 43 members of Al Qaeda, sparked angry protests in the Qatif region in eastern Saudi Arabia, where demonstrators denounced the ruling Al Saud dynasty, and in the nearby Gulf kingdom of Bahrain.

Relatives of Nimr, reached by telephone, said authorities had informed them that the body had been buried “in a cemetery of Muslims” and would not be handed over to the family.

Although most of the 47 men killed in the kingdom’s biggest mass execution for decades were Sunnis convicted of al Qaeda attacks in Saudi Arabia a decade ago, it was Nimr and three other Shi’ites, all accused of involvement in shooting police, who attracted most attention in the region and beyond.

Khamenei’s website carried a picture of a Saudi executioner next to notorious Islamic State executioner ‘Jihadi John’, with the caption “Any differences?”. The Revolutionary Guards said “harsh revenge” would topple “this pro-terrorist, anti-Islamic regime”.

Saudi Arabia on Saturday summoned the Iranian ambassador to protest what it described as hostile remarks emerging from Tehran. On Sunday, Riyadh’s Gulf allies the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Bahrain also summoned Tehran’s envoys to their countries to lodge complaints.

IRAQ ALSO FURIOUS

In Iraq, whose Shi’ite-led government is close to Iran, religious and political figures demanded that ties with Riyadh be severed, calling into question Saudi attempts to forge a regional alliance against Islamic State, which controls swaths of Iraq and Syria.

Iraq’s top Shi’ite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani described the executions as an “unjust aggression”. The opinion of Sistani, based in the Shi’ite holy city of Najaf south of Baghdad, carries weight with millions of Shi’ites in Iraq and across the region, including in Saudi Arabia.

Despite the focus on Nimr, the executions seemed mostly aimed at discouraging jihadism in Saudi Arabia, where dozens have died in the past year in attacks by Sunni militants.

But Saudi Arabia’s Western allies, many of whom supply it with arms, are growing concerned about its new assertiveness.

The U.S. State Department said Nimr’s execution “risks exacerbating sectarian tensions at a time when they urgently need to be reduced”, a sentiment echoed by EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini. The State Department also urged Saudi Arabia to respect and protect human rights.

France said on Sunday it deeply deplored the mass execution and said it reiterated its opposition to the death penalty in all circumstances.

In Istanbul, hundreds of protesters, some carrying pictures of Nimr and chanting “Saudi Arabia will pay the price”, gathered outside its consulate on Sunday as riot police stood guard.

The four Shi’ites had been convicted of involvement in shootings and petrol bomb attacks that killed several police during anti-government protests from 2011-13. More than 20 Shi’ites were shot dead by the authorities in those protests.

Family members of the executed Shi’ites have denied they were involved in attacks and said they were only peaceful protesters against sectarian discrimination.

Human rights groups say the kingdom’s judicial process is unfair, pointing to accusations that confessions have been secured under torture and that defendants in court have been denied access to lawyers. Riyadh denies torture and says its judiciary is independent.

(Additional reporting by Sami Aboudi, Sam Wilkin, Noah Browning, Omar Fahmy, Katie Paul, Dubai newsroom, Michel Rose in Paris, Stephen Kalin in Baghdad, Laila Bassam in Beirut, Hamdi Istanbullu in Istanbul, Parisa Hafezi in Ankara and Jeff Mason in Washington; Writing by Kevin Liffey; Editing by Richard Balmforth)

Shi’ite protesters carry posters of Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr during a demonstration in front of Saudi Arabia’s Consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, January 3, 2016. REUTERS/Osman Orsal

In A Tehran Without Nightlife, A Bridge Becomes A Gathering Place

In A Tehran Without Nightlife, A Bridge Becomes A Gathering Place

By Roy Gutman, McClatchy Washington Bureau (TNS)

TEHRAN, Iran – In a city ruled by the automobile, where crossing the street entails risking your life and a real downtown doesn’t exist, there could hardly be a more unusual weekend destination than the newly built Tabiat Bridge – perched over a busy expressway.

Not quite a year after opening to the public, this undulating, multilevel pedestrian bridge, with its curving walkways and sloping ramps, benches and cafes, has become the go-to place for young people on Friday or Saturday evenings. They stroll about with their friends, listening to music and showing the sort the intimacy between the sexes that the Islamic Republic frowns on in public places.

With well-tended parks at either end, the city lights twinkling to the south and traffic moving slowly on the Modarres highway below, the 890-foot-long bridge has become a gathering point for people from all over the city of 8.3 million.

It’s a new symbol for the Iranian capital, its popularity due in no small part to the fact that, in Tehran, there’s nowhere else to go.

“If I had a choice, I’d rather be at a rock concert,” said Soheil, a 20-year-old basketball coach who is getting a bachelor’s degree in physical education and asked to be identified only by his first name. “But the government always bans them.”

Soheil was among the crowd of people who packed the bridge on a Friday evening. In Aab-o-Atash Park, at the bridge’s eastern end, children frolicked in dancing water fountains as families played no-net badminton. In hilly, wooded Taleghani Park at the bridge’s western end, strollers walked along well-landscaped paths.

Gholamhassein Karbaschi, the former Tehran mayor renowned as the master builder of the city’s burgeoning park system, had Iran’s social constraints in mind when he launched the growth of the system, as did the young architect who designed the bridge at age 21.

“We don’t have dance clubs and nightclubs,” said Karabaschi, a reformist who served as mayor from 1991 to 1999 and might have been a candidate for national president until he was jailed on corruption charges in what appeared to be a political frame-up. Parks are “the only place people can go.”

With support from Ali Akhbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the centrist president who recruited him, and from his successor, reformist President Mohammad Khatami, Karabaschi built on a comprehensive urban plan designed before the Islamic revolution. He insisted on the best experts and architects available and rode herd during construction.

“I supervised all the details,” he told McClatchy.

It was thanks to a contest that Leila Araghian, then 26, was able to design the Tabiat Bridge. “They wanted something complex, to give an identity to those areas and become a symbol of Tehran,” she said. But Araghian wanted “something modest, but that has character and is interesting enough to have an identity.”

The result is not a utilitarian passage from one point to another, but a path full of unexpected turns, features and vistas. The bridge curves, blurring the destination, “so you won’t know where it is taking you.”

Having won the competition in 2008, Araghian then went to the University of British Colombia in Vancouver, where she wrote her thesis analyzing her own project. Her theme was “Modesty, Serendipity and Silence.”

It’s a very Iranian approach to design, she said. In Kashan, a city in central Iran, houses all have mud walls and a simple door as the entrance, and the way into the house is through a corridor, which then opens onto a huge garden. But there may also be a hidden private garden, where strangers are not welcome.

“It’s a labyrinthine style of building. You discover it through a continuous journey.” And she discovered that that is what drove her design. “I was not aware that that is how I think,” she said.

“The bridge is a serendipitous space,” she said. “When you hide things, there is a chance of discovering. And the excitement you have when you discover it by yourself is a better feeling than when you are expecting it.”

Photo: Blondinrikard Fröberg via Flickr 

Washington Post Journalist Faces Spy Trial In Iran

Washington Post Journalist Faces Spy Trial In Iran

Tehran (AFP) — A Washington Post reporter detained in Iran will be tried for espionage and collaborating with “hostile governments”, in a decision branded absurd Monday by the White House and the newspaper.

Jason Rezaian has been in jail for nine months in Tehran in what has become a politically sensitive case that has parallelled with high-level nuclear talks between Iran and global powers, including the United States.

The allegations against him had been shrouded in secrecy, but in a telephone call to AFP on Monday, Rezaian’s lawyer Leila Ahsan detailed the four serious offences her client faces.

As well as allegedly spying under the first two charges, the 39-year-old journalist, the Post‘s Tehran correspondent, stands accused of gathering classified information and of disseminating propaganda against the Islamic republic.

Ahsan, who said she had access to the complete criminal file, said it contained “no justifiable proof” against Rezaian, and that she had seen no legal reason to continue his detention after the case’s preliminary investigation.

But requests for bail had been turned down, said the lawyer who also criticised Iranian media for publishing allegations about Rezaian that are “wrong and contrary to reality”.

No date has yet been set for trial, Ahsan said, shortly after a senior judicial official described the dossier against the journalist, who holds both American and Iranian nationality, as “thick”.

Rezaian will face the allegations in one of the Islamic republic’s revolutionary courts, whose jurisdiction includes handling crimes against national security. Its cases are heard behind closed doors.

However Ahsan said: “Jason is a journalist and the nature of his work is to have access to information and to publish it. He had no access to confidential information, either directly or indirectly.”

Rezaian was detained in Tehran on July 22 last year, along with his Iranian wife Yeganeh Salehi, also a journalist, who was released on bail after spending two-and-a-half months in custody.

Rezaian is being held in the capital’s notorious Evin Prison and his family have frequently spoken of their fears for his health, citing his need for medication to combat high blood pressure.

But Ahsan said he was “in good spirits” despite being held in cramped conditions. He has also had no access to newspapers or media.

His mother Mary told AFP she had discussed the charges with the journalist’s wife, who remains in Tehran, but had no further comment.

‘No link’ to nuclear talks

The reporter’s detention has political resonance both because of his dual nationality and the long-running nuclear talks regarding Tehran’s disputed nuclear programme.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest said it had no official confirmation of the allegations, but if reports of Rezaian being accused of spying were true it would be “absurd” and that the charges should be “immediately dropped”.

But the journalist’s predicament would have no bearing on a nuclear deal either way, he added.

Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif last week said the reporter faced “very serious” allegations but it was a matter for Iran’s judiciary, insisting the case was free of political interference.

Ahsan also said the allegations against her client “had no link” with the nuclear talks, but in a nod to the diplomacy she added: “I hope this matter will accelerate the liberation of my client.”

In a rare official comment regarding Rezaian, Gholamhossein Esmaili, Tehran’s judiciary chief, said Monday: “The file is thick and contains different aspects.”

Quoted by the official IRNA news agency, he added: “In due course the judgment will be pronounced.”

In a statement, the Post‘s executive editor Martin Baron said: “The grave charges against Jason that Iran has now disclosed could not be more ludicrous.

“It is absurd and despicable to assert, as Iran’s judiciary is now claiming, that Jason’s work first as a freelance reporter and then as The Post’s Tehran correspondent amounted to espionage.”

Rezaian was among four U.S. citizens that President Barack Obama last month urged Iran to return home.

On April 2, Iran and world powers agreed the key parameters for a deal that would end a 12-year standoff about concerns that Iran is seeking a nuclear bomb, an allegation it denies. A final agreement is due by the end of June.

Photo: The detained Washington Post journalist Jason Rezaian, seen here in 2013, was jailed in Tehran on July 22 last year. (AFP photo)