The stories you want. The opinions that matter.
No, thanks
Tag: hassan rouhani
Belligerent Trump Adviser Bolton Escalates Confrontation With Iran

Belligerent Trump Adviser Bolton Escalates Confrontation With Iran

On Sunday, May 5, U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton announced that the USS Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group and a bomber task force had begun to make their way from the Mediterranean Sea toward the coastline of Iran. Iran, Bolton said, had made “a number of troubling and escalatory indications and warnings.” He was, characteristically, not specific. It was enough that Bolton—who has a history of hazardous statements—had made these comments from the perch of the White House in Washington, D.C. “The United States is not seeking war with the Iranian regime,” he said rather incredibly. After all, what is the arrival of a massive war fleet on the coastline of a country but a declaration of war?

On his way to Europe, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that the “indications and warnings” included actions by the Lebanese political formation Hezbollah. Once more, Pompeo said he would give no evidence: “I don’t want to talk about what underlays it.”

It did not help that last month Iran faced devastating floods in the country’s northeast and southwest. The damage is estimated to cost $2.5 billion. Countries that want to send financial support toward the flood victims cannot do so as a result of the U.S. sanctions on financial systems, says the Iranian Red Crescent Society. This is why in-kind aid has been the only thing that has been permitted into the country, with China sending tents and Austria sending blankets. But even in-kind aid, including from Saudi Arabia and the UAE, was blocked due to the U.S. sanctions. Iran’s Foreign Minister Javad Zarif wrote on Twitter, “Iranian Red Crescent can’t receive any funds due to illegal US sanctions. US should own up to its ECONOMIC TERRORISM.”

On Wednesday, May 8, Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani will go on television and the radio to announce his country’s response to the U.S. withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear deal and to the harsh new sanctions’ regime.

The United States had permitted Russian and European firms to do work on Iran’s nuclear energy sector. Five waivers had been given to help four Iranian facilities—at the Bushehr nuclear power plant, the Fordow enrichment facility, the Arak nuclear complex and the Tehran Research Reactor. Pompeo allowed three waivers to be extended for 90 days (half the length of the previous waivers) but disallowed two. The two that were not renewed include one to Russia, which had swapped Iranian enriched uranium for Russian raw yellowcake, and one to companies that operate in Oman to store heavy water from Iran. Both Russia and Europe are not happy with this situation. Iran has refused to stop enrichment, which is essential to its nuclear energy program—legal under the terms of the 2015 agreement. It is likely that Rouhani will affirm Iran’s right to continue to enrich uranium for its power reactors.

The journey of the USS Abraham Lincoln through the Red Sea comes as the U.S. government tries to tighten its sanctions regime against Iran. Any country that buys Iranian oil, the United States now says, will be liable to have sanctions placed against it. The five countries most vulnerable to further U.S. sanctions are China, India, Japan, South Korea, and Turkey. India, Japan, and South Korea have said that they would try and abide by the new, and harsh, U.S. sanctions. China and Turkey have made it clear that they will not follow the U.S. lead.

Iran’s deputy oil minister Amir Hossein Zamaninia told Iranian state media that his ministry will oversee the sale of Iran’s oil into the “gray market.” The U.S. sanctions, Zamaninia said, are “illegal,” and therefore Iran is entitled to use all kinds of methods to circumvent them. The “gray market” includes loading tankers with Iranian oil—often sold at deep discounts—and then allowing them to alter their signals as they go out into open water. Congestion of tankers on the world’s waters makes it difficult to monitor which tanker has actually come from which port. But even if Iran sells oil on the gray market, the volumes will drop significantly, and this will impact Iran’s external revenues.

In April, the International Monetary Fund projected that Iran’s economy would likely slide downhill by six percent in 2019. The main reason for this continued slide is, of course, the U.S.-led sanctions that have whittled away at Iran’s budget and at the confidence of its people. Iran’s macroeconomic situation is hurt by large-scale budget deficits—projected to reach over $14 billion this year—and the flooding of the market with Iranian rials—so that money supplied grew by over 20 percent. Serious problems of capital flight and of tax evasion dog Iran’s prospects. Kazem Delkhosh, the deputy head of the Iranian parliament’s economic commission, estimates that about 40 percent of the country’s income is hidden from the tax authorities.

Last month, Iran’s senior leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei urged his Iraqi counterparts to “make sure that the Americans withdraw their troops from Iraq as soon as possible because expelling them has become difficult whenever they have had a long military presence in a country.” Iran and Iraq have—since the U.S. war against Iraq in 2003—deepened their ties. Close economic links, including roadways and a potential train, have made both countries dependent on each other (Iraq, despite U.S. pressure, imports Iran’s oil). Khamenei referred to the 5,200 U.S. troops who remain in Iraq. Bolton has said that these troops are there to “watch Iran,” a phrase that has been widely mocked after Trump used it earlier this year.

The war of words has escalated into dangerous territory. In April, Trump’s government called Iranian military forces “terrorists.” In response, the Iranian parliament retaliated. Defense Minister General Amir Hatami put a bill forward that would allow Iran’s government to respond to the “terrorist actions” of U.S. forces. It was not clear how Iran would respond, although the bill suggested that the response could be political and diplomatic rather than military.

The U.S. government has said that Iran might target U.S. troops in Iraq or elsewhere in the region. These are likely the “indications and warnings” of Bolton. There are tens of thousands of U.S. troops in Afghanistan, Iraq and the Gulf. The U.S. military hardware that encircles Iran is lethal. Late last year, the Iranian government—feeling hemmed in by this military noose—proposed that it could strike U.S. forces at al-Udeid Air Base (Qatar), al-Dhafra base (United Arab Emirates) and Kandahar base (Afghanistan). “They are within our reach,” said Amirali Hajizadeh, who heads Iran’s Revolutionary Guards’ air brigade. As if to provoke Iran further, in March of this year, the United States signed a deal with Oman to use its ports at Salalah and Duqm for military purposes.

In his last State of the Union address, Trump said, “Great nations do not fight endless wars.” The United States has tried to push a new deal in Afghanistan and has tried to withdraw from the conflict in Syria. Neither of these withdrawals will be easy.

But if the United States strikes Iran, there is no doubt that the wars from Lebanon to the border of India will become endless. There is no question that Iran—much weaker militarily than the United States—will use its advantages to strike the United States inside Afghanistan and to urge its allies to strike U.S. forces in the Gulf and across North Africa. Iran’s population is deeply patriotic and would see any U.S. strike as one against the Iranian people and not just against the Iranian government. It is unlikely that the United States will find any significant allies amongst the Iranians. A war against Iran at this time would be a war against a stretch of the world that has seen too many wars in recent times, that would like to open the door to peace. Trump—with Bolton and Pence—seek to provoke a war. These are dangerous men with a dangerous agenda.

Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian, editor and journalist. He is a writing fellow and chief correspondent at Globetrotter, a project of the Independent Media Institute. He is the chief editor of LeftWord Books and the director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. He has written more than twenty books, including The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World (The New Press, 2007), The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South (Verso, 2013), The Death of the Nation and the Future of the Arab Revolution (University of California Press, 2016) and Red Star Over the Third World (LeftWord, 2017). He writes regularly for Frontline, the Hindu, Newsclick, AlterNet and BirGün.

This article was produced by Globetrotter, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

Iranian Reformists Win Majority In Parliament and Religious Body

Iranian Reformists Win Majority In Parliament and Religious Body

Reformists and moderate conservatives have won a majority of seats in the Iranian parliament following the first elections in the country since a nuclear deal was signed between Iran and the five world powers last July. The electoral victory vindicates the policies pursued by Iran’s reformist president, Hassan Rouhani, who has thawed relations with Western powers.

With 62 percent of eligible voters casting their ballots, the results showed reformists, who support greater engagement with the international community, winning at least 85 seats in the 290-seat parliament. Moderate conservatives, who allied with reformists in supporting the nuclear deal and Rouhani, won 73 seats. The two camps have a majority in parliament, with a combined 158 seats.

Hardliners, who supported Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s policies during his presidency and opposed the nuclear deal, won 68 seats. That count is a significant drop from the more than 100 seats they hold in the current parliament. In Iran’s capital, Tehran, all 30 reformist candidates, eight of them women, won seats.

The reformists also made big gains in the Assembly of Experts, the religious body in charge of selecting the next Ayatollah. The most important candidate to win a seat in the assembly was Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who held numerous posts during post-revolution Iran, including command of its armed forces and chairman of the Iranian parliament during the Iran-Iraq War, and president of Iran from 1989-1997. He and 14 other Rouhani-allied candidates won all but one of the 16 assembly seats up for election in Tehran.

The moderates previously held around 20 seats in the assembly and their win is seen as an expansion of their influence within the powerful body. It is likely that Iran’s current ayatollah, Ali Khamenei — who is 76 years old — will not last until the end of the assembly’s term. The assembly will have an opportunity to dictate the Iran’s future for decades to come, if and when Khamenei passes.

Iran’s hardliners have attempted to accept defeat with grace. Mehdi Mohammadi, a former adviser to hard-line former nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili, conceded that these elections were a blow to conservatives in Tehran. “From my view, more than anything else, the people have decided to give the Hassan Rouhani administration more time,” he wrote on his Telegram account, according to Al-Monitor.

This election is not the first time reformists have come to power in Iran. They first came into parliament during the 1997 election, followed by a majority victory in the 2000 election. But in the 2004 election, which brought Ahmadinejad to power, the reformists suffered setbacks after the Guardian Council, an unelected, hardline body that vets candidates, disqualified 2,500 candidates, including 80 sitting parliamentarians, from the election.

This election, there were no reports of sitting parliamentarians prevented from running. Still, nearly half of possible parliamentary candidates were not approved to run, as were more than 75 percent of Assembly of Experts candidates.

Iran’s geopolitical reality has been, in so many ways, transformed: The country has enjoyed a period of thawing relations with Western countries, become increasingly powerful as the Middle East continues to destabilize, and faces the inevitable succession of its Supreme Ayatollah in the foreseeable future. This reformist electoral victory could just be the start.

The ramifications of the election will be clearer following America’s own elections later this year. Just like the Iranians, the American public spent months listening to politicians argue over the effectiveness of the Iran Deal. Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz compared the deal to Neville Chamberlain’s speech following the Munich Pact in 1939 and Marco Rubio claimed the deal was not binding on the next, assumedly Republican, administration.

Even the Democratic candidates were divided. Bernie Sanders came out in support of the deal. He even supported normalizing relations, something that the Obama administration has been unwilling to do. During a Democratic debate in January, Bernie Sanders said, “I think the goal has got to be as we have done with Cuba to move in warm relations with a very powerful and important country in this world.”

Hillary Clinton also came out in support of the Iran deal, but was against Sanders’s proposal to normalize ties with Iran. She came out against such a move through a statement by 10 former diplomats and officials released by her campaign. “The stakes are high. And we are concerned that Senator Sanders has not thought through these crucial national security issues that can have profound consequences for our security,” read the statement.

The effects of the reformist’s political fortunes will rely, in great measure, on what happens in the American elections. If a Republican wins and Iranians find themselves treated with the same disdain they experienced during the Bush years, they will react in turn and bring about another Ahmadinejad. Under a Democratic president, the future is much brighter.

Photo: Iran’s former president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani (C), Iranian former vice president Mohammad Reza Aref (centre, L) and a group of reformists pose for a photo in Tehran February 22, 2016. REUTERS/Mohammad Kazempour/TIMA

As Improved US-Iran Relations Are Celebrated, Questions Loom About Road Ahead

As Improved US-Iran Relations Are Celebrated, Questions Loom About Road Ahead

By Tracy Wilkinson and Patrick J. McDonnell, Los Angeles Times (TNS)

WASHINGTON — Amid celebration of the milestone nuclear deal and the depature from Iran of three freed Americans, the Obama administration offered a reminder Sunday of the gulf that remains in the countries’ relations.

The U.S. placed new sanctions targeting 11 people or companies that work to advance Iran’s ballistic missile system, and President Barack Obama promised to “remain vigilant.”

That announcement came almost as an aside in an otherwise upbeat message but illustrated the continued strains in what is being hailed as a new relationship between enemies Iran and the United States.

Addressing their respective nations, Obama and his Iranian counterpart, Hassan Rouhani, praised the nuclear deal as a victory for tough diplomacy between two governments that just a short time ago were not on speaking terms.

Obama said the deal, fully implemented on Saturday, makes the world safer, allows Iran to join the world by lifting key sanctions, and is already providing sidebar dividends: the release of five Americans who were being held in Iranian jails and were “finally coming home.”

Three of them touched U.S. territory Sunday, at an American military base at Ramstein, Germany. The Swiss jet carrying Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian and the others landed Sunday evening at the base, where the freed men will undergo medical checks.

Along with Rezaian, the other two were U.S. Marine veteran Amir Hekmati and Christian pastor Saeed Abedini. Also on board were Rezaian’s Iranian wife and his mother; locating them in Tehran on Saturday delayed the departure of the flight.

A fourth Iranian-American, Nosratollah Khosravi-Roodsari, about whom little is known, chose to stay in Iran, U.S. officials said, adding that it was his right to decide where to go. The fifth, student Matthew Trevithick, who was in Iran studying Farsi, left earlier.

With the exception of Trevithick, the prisoners were released in an exchange for seven Iranians who were jailed or facing trial in the U.S. They were charged with violating sanctions by attempting to illegally export prohibited items and will be granted clemency by Obama. They were on a much longer list the Iranians supplied but that was whittled down to include only those who hadn’t committed violent or terrorism-related crimes, U.S. officials said.

Obama said the nuclear deal, under which Iran has dismantled much of its nuclear arms capabilities and been rewarded by the easing of significant economic sanctions, serves as a reminder “of what we can achieve when we lead with strength and wisdom.”

And he told the Iranian people that they will be able to emerge from dark days of isolation. Iran will receive tens of billions of dollars in frozen assets as well as access to the international banking system and world markets for its oil and gas.

“We’ve now closed off every single path Iran had to building a (nuclear) bomb,” Obama said, speaking from the White House. “We’ve achieved this historic progress through diplomacy, without resorting to another war in the Middle East.”

In Tehran, before parliament, Rouhani lauded a “golden page” in the Islamic republic’s history that will be the beginning of economic recovery thanks to the injection of cash and trade.

“While we always remain ready to defend Iran, we bear the message of peace, stability and security for our region and the world,” he later tweeted.

Iranian officials are hopeful that the lifting of sanctions will help revive the nation’s economy, crippled by the sanctions in recent years, but the low price of oil means its immediate income will be lower than needed or expected.

Obama also announced the resolution of a long-standing claim Iran had brought in the Iran-U.S. Claims Tribunal in The Hague, the international court through which such demands were pursued.

Dating to shortly after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Iran said it was owed $400 million for military equipment the deposed government was buying. In the resolution, the U.S. paid the $400 million plus $1.3 billion in interest, which was much less than what the Iranians had sought, Obama said.

Within the framework of the nuclear negotiations, a less hostile relationship developed between the U.S. and Iran following decades of acrimony, especially through the personal contacts of U.S. Secretary of State John F. Kerry and his Iranian counterpart, Javad Zarif. Many hope that can be translated into cooperation on other persistent conflicts in the region, such as the civil war in Syria.

American officials are also hopeful that the success of the nuclear deal will strengthen the hands of Rouhani and other likeminded moderate Iranians.

With Iran, the tone of its rhetoric “very much changed when Rouhani was elected,” an administration official said. “He had a mandate to engage the West on the nuclear issues.”

Yet it is clear that change comes slowly in Iran, and discord between the two countries remains deep.

On Sunday, hours after the nuclear deal, the Obama administration slapped new sanctions on Iran’s ballistic missile program in connection with alleged violations of United Nations resolutions last year. The sanctions had been prepared weeks ago but held up until the prisoners were freed.

The sanctions target “11 entities and individuals,” including a network based in the Middle East and China and another with suspected links to North Korea, as well as five Iranians who U.S. officials said had worked to secure ballistic weapon components for Iran.

“Iran’s ballistic missile program poses a significant threat to regional and global security, and it will continue to be subject to international sanctions,” Adam J. Szubin, Treasury’s undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, said in a statement Sunday.

The sanctions include a freeze of any assets that these entities and individuals have in the U.S. financial system, as well as prohibitions on doing business with them.

The sanctions are separate from the sanctions against the nuclear program that were lifted this weekend. Iran launched ballistic missiles on two occasions last year in violation of the U.N. restrictions; Iran says it has a right to use the weapons.

Other U.S. sanctions that remain in place on Iran include those related to activities considered by Washington to be terrorism and violations of human rights. Obama and other U.S. officials insist they can revive other sanctions at any point if Iran is found to be in violation of nuclear restrictions or any other sanctionable activities.

In swapping the prisoners, the Obama administration has come under criticism among Republicans and others for appearing to exchange innocents for convicted criminals. But administration officials Sunday defended the swap, saying it was a one-time, unusual opportunity that they saw arise on the margins of the nuclear talks.

(Wilkinson reported from Washington and McDonnell from Beirut. Staff writer Don Lee in Washington contributed to this report.)

©2016 Los Angeles Times. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Photo: Iranian President Hassan Rouhani waves during a news conference in Tehran, Iran January 17, 2016. REUTERS/President.ir/Handout 

Iran Debate: Clinton Steps Up To Oppose The Demagogues

Iran Debate: Clinton Steps Up To Oppose The Demagogues

When Sarah Palin joins Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, and a motley crew of crazies in Washington this week to rally against the Iran nuclear deal, the speeches are likely to reflect the incoherence of the opposition. None of these right-wing celebrities appears to comprehend its terms, how it was negotiated or – most important – why its failure would probably lead to yet another horrific war.

On that same day, as Cruz, Trump, and Palin blather on about their love of Israel, their hatred for Barack Obama, and their determination to “make America great again,” someone else will step up to support the agreement – someone whose diplomatic efforts laid the groundwork for successful negotiations with Tehran.

That would be Hillary Rodham Clinton, the former Secretary of State and leading candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination. Scheduling a major speech on the Iran deal for the same day as the Washington event, Clinton is plainly determined to display her mastery of its details as well as her defiance of the right-wing opposition.

But this speech — which could become one of the best moments in public life — will also prove just how far she has come since the last time she ran for president.

That’s because Iran was the subject of one of the most troubling moments in her 2008 campaign, when she promised to “totally obliterate” that country (and presumably its 70 million-plus population) if the mullahs ever attacked Israel with a nuclear weapon. Having uttered that genocidal threat in response to a provocative question, she reiterated the same bluster a few days later on ABC News’ This Week.

“I want the Iranians to know that if I’m the president, we will attack Iran [if they attack Israel with nuclear weapons]. And I want them to understand that. … I think we have to be very clear about what we would do,” she told host George Stephanopoulos.

At the time, in early May 2008, it wasn’t clear why the Iranians needed to “understand” any such ultimatum, since our own intelligence showed that they neither had nuclear weapons nor were likely to possess such weapons any time soon – and that the Israeli military was (and is) fully capable of nuclear retaliation. Clinton’s harsh rhetoric seemed to be aimed more directly at Obama, her primary opponent, whose aim of negotiating with traditional enemies like Tehran she had denounced as “naïve.”

Those who expected better from her pointed to her Mideast advisors, who advocated an opening to Iran, and to her own previous remarks about the imperative of talking with “bad people” as a sign of strength, not weakness. But at that moment, she seemed to echo John McCain and the “bomb Iran” chorus among the Republicans.

Much has changed since 2008, of course – including the leadership of the Iranian government. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the aggressive Holocaust denier who held the Iranian presidency back then, gave way in 2013 to Hassan Rouhani, a reformer who wants to end his country’s international isolation. Thanks in part to Clinton’s work as Secretary of State, a powerful and unprecedented international alliance enforced real sanctions that finally pushed Iran into serious negotiations. And since those negotiations began, Rouhani’s government has heeded the required limitations on its nuclear activities.

Perhaps Clinton hasn’t changed. After all, she has always believed that diplomacy, aid, and other aspects of American power are just as fundamental to our security as military force. But she has found a balance and a voice that are more vital than ever in a contest against irresponsible politicians, whose demagogy points us again toward war.

Photo: U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton addresses a panel on healthcare in San Juan, Puerto Rico, September 4, 2015. REUTERS/Alvin Baez