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FP:
"The long-simmering fight between the White House and the top
Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee has roared back to
life over the Obama administration's efforts to rein in Iran's nuclear
program. On Tuesday, Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) announced his desire to
pass new legislation to sanction Iran's economy before Congress's session
ends next week -- despite the White House's repeated warnings that such a
bill would derail the fragile negotiations taking place on the
international stage in Vienna. 'If we continue down this course we will
weaken ourselves to a point that Iranians will think there's no credible
military threat on the table any more,' Menendez said at a Wall Street
Journal event. 'They will believe the sanctions will never be reimposed.'
Menendez and the White House have clashed over this issue for more than
year, but the dispute is reaching new depths, with the White House
planning to hold a Situation Room briefing on Wednesday with top
Democrats but not Menendez, and declining to send any senior officials to
Menendez's open Iran hearing planned for the same day. Unlike a variety
of top Democrats who issued statements of support for a seven-month
extension of the negotiations last month, Menendez has openly blasted
administration efforts to reach a deal that would curb the size of Iran's
nuclear enrichment program in exchange for sanctions relief." http://t.uani.com/1rTeBif
AFP:
"Top US diplomats will this week make a 'strong case' to lawmakers
to hold off on fresh Iran sanctions, hoping to avoid an ugly political
showdown which could scupper nuclear talks. Acting Deputy Secretary Wendy
Sherman, who has led the tense, secretive negotiations for months, will
be at the vanguard of an administration drive to persuade Congress not to
push ahead with draft legislation which would slap even more punitive
sanctions on Iran. Hawkish lawmakers are eager to pass new sanctions
through Congress aiming to prod the Islamic republic into a lasting deal
that prevents Iranian leaders from developing a nuclear weapon... Sherman
will brief lawmakers behind closed doors on Thursday, a State Department
spokeswoman said Tuesday, ahead of a flurry of consultations over the
next two weeks... 'We will make a very strong case to them why now is not
the time for new sanctions,' deputy State Department spokeswoman Marie
Harf told reporters of Sherman's planned meetings in Congress." http://t.uani.com/1wraMSa
WSJ:
"A wild card in the seven months of extended negotiations between
the U.S. and Iran over its nuclear program is the continuing plunge in
global oil prices and its impact on Tehran's finances. U.S. and European
officials said they had a growing sense earlier this year that Tehran and
its Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei believed they were weathering
the West's international sanctions - despite the halving of Iranian oil
exports since 2012, largely driven by a European embargo. Under an
interim agreement reached with the West a year ago, Iran has been
receiving $700 million in monthly payments from oil revenues frozen in
overseas accounts... But pressure on Iran's finances has re-emerged over
the past week, potentially giving the U.S. more leverage in the nuclear
talks, which were extended last week until July. The failure of Iran and
global powers to reach a comprehensive agreement in Vienna by a Nov. 24
deadline depressed the rial and the Tehran Stock Exchange, according to
Tehran-based businessmen. Optimism had been growing in Iran's business
community that a deal was imminent that would bring an easing of Western
sanctions... Even more problematic for Iran, though, was the decision by
the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, or OPEC, last Thursday
to maintain its production output levels. The decision has led crude oil
exports to plunge below $70 a barrel from over $110 in recent
years." http://t.uani.com/11TQlQF
Nuclear Program & Negotiations
Reuters:
"The U.N. atomic agency says it needs an extra 4.6 million euros
($5.67 million) from member states to finance monitoring of an extended nuclear
deal between Iran and six world powers, a document seen by Reuters said
on Wednesday... In a confidential note to member states ahead of an
extraordinary IAEA board meeting next week to discuss the issue, the U.N.
agency said it estimated the cost of its extended monitoring work at 5.5
million euros. A part of this would be covered internally and by earlier
unspent contributions, but an additional 4.6 million euros 'of voluntary
extra budgetary contributions would be required'. IAEA Director General
Yukiya Amano 'invites member states which are in a position to do so to
make the necessary funding available for the continuation of the agency's
monitoring and verification' in Iran, it added. Because of the deal's
political importance, diplomats have said there should be no problem
raising the required funds... The IAEA earlier this year asked for
contributions of 6.5 million euros to cover its extra Iran-related costs.
Amano last month said the IAEA's 'verification effort in Iran has
doubled.'" http://t.uani.com/1rXdoR9
IRNA (Iran):
"Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said on Tuesday that nuclear
talks between Iran and the world six powers are one of the most important
issues in the post-Cold War age. Zarif, also the head of Iran's nuclear
negotiating team, made the remarks while addressing a meeting of
university students in Tehran. Hosted by Tehran's Tabatabaei University,
the meeting was dubbed the 'Nuclear Diplomacy.'" http://t.uani.com/1w0ZLre
Congressional
Sanctions Debate
The Hill:
"Senate Republicans are stepping up pressure on President Obama to
place sanctions on Iran. The Senate Republican Policy Committee posted a
statement on its website saying that Obama should request that the
Congress impose new sanctions in Iran before the end of the year. If
Obama doesn't make the request, the committee said it should become 'an
early order of business for the next Congress in January,' when
Republicans take over the chamber." http://t.uani.com/1wrhnfD
The Hill:
"Placing additional sanctions on Iran would 'blow up' negotiations
over the country's nuclear program, national security adviser Susan Rice
said Tuesday. 'The P5+1 would fracture, the international community would
blame the United States rather than Iran for the collapse of the negotiations,
and the Iranians would conclude that there's little point in pursuing
this process at the negotiating table,' Rice said at a conference hosted
by The Wall Street Journal." http://t.uani.com/1ykttGN
Sanctions
Relief
AFP:
"US car manufacturers remain barred from doing business in Iran even
though European automakers are eyeing huge deals as sanctions are eased
against the Islamic republic, a US official said Tuesday. France's PSA
Peugeot-Citroen was in 'intense' talks about resuming production in Iran,
halted since March 2012, a company representative said in Tehran on
Monday at the start of the Iran Auto Show. 'We are aware of this auto
show,' a State Department official told AFP. 'As we have said previously,
we do not consider Iran open for business, though our sanctions on
foreign companies doing business with Iran's auto sector are suspended,'
he said, following an interim deal with Tehran on reining in its suspect
nuclear program... 'Put simply, US companies cannot do business in Iran
at this time, including in or with Iran's automotive sector.'" http://t.uani.com/1ykpry3
IRNA (Iran):
"Trade transactions between Iran and Turkey in the first 10 months
of the current year reached $11.229 billion and despite a drop of 10% in
comparison with the same figure last year trade between the two countries
has taken an upward trend in recent months. Volume of trade between Iran
and Turkey amounted to over $12.464 billion in the first 10 months of
2014 showing a decrease of $1.235 billion as compared to the same period
last year. Data about Turkey's foreign trade shows that in recent months
trade exchanges between the two countries took an upward trend so that in
October the volume of bilateral trade reached $1.092 billion which shows
an increase as compared to $1.008 billion transactions in October last
year. During the same month Turkey's exports to Iran increased by 27.9%
and amounted to $339.397 million and its import from Iran increased by
1.2%, amounting to 753.439 million. In the first 10 months of the current
year, Turkey's export to Iran amounted to $2.876 billion and its import
from Iran was $8.352 billion." http://t.uani.com/11PyOsN
IRNA (Iran):
"Spokesman for the Majlis Energy Commission Hossein Amiri Khamkani
referred to the reduced dependence of Iran on oil revenues and said the
US and Saudi Arabia are willing to exert more pressures on Iran by
cutting oil price. Speaking to IRNA, the parliamentarian said the oil
price slump has its root in political and economic factors, adding that
the Iranian government is used to low oil revenues and during the past
year has administered the country with the least amount of oil income.
Rejecting pressures imposed on Iran as futile, Khamkani said reduced oil
revenues cannot have a significant impact on the economic situation of
the country." http://t.uani.com/12l4Igw
Iraq Crisis
LAT:
"Iranian warplanes have launched several airstrikes in recent days
against Islamic State militants in eastern Iraq, U.S. and Iranian
officials said Tuesday, the latest sign that America's longtime adversary
is conducting a parallel but largely unacknowledged military campaign in
the conflict. At least some of the bombing runs were by F-4 Phantom jets,
American-built warplanes provided to Tehran before the 1979 Islamic
Revolution that ousted Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, a close U.S. ally. In the
shifting political landscape of the latest Iraq war, Tehran and
Washington are in effect aligned on the same side and are conducting dual
but separate military operations to back the beleaguered Baghdad
government... Four Iranian jets attacked Islamic State positions during
an offensive in Iraq last month to retake two towns, Saadiya and Jalawla,
less than 20 miles from the Iranian border in the eastern province of
Diyala, said Hamid Reza Taraghi, a conservative Iranian politician who is
well informed on military matters. 'Iran regards the area as a buffer
zone and does not tolerate any military threats within that buffer zone,'
Taraghi said in an interview in Tehran. He said Iraqi officials 'asked us
to be quiet about it.'" http://t.uani.com/1FO0gGh
Human Rights
IHR:
"18 people were executed in three different Iranian prisons on
Tuesday according to unofficial sources. All the prisoners were convicted
of drug-related charges and there were two women and one Afghan citizen
among them." http://t.uani.com/1yLmPYU
ICHRI:
"In a continuing series of attacks against women in Iran, a suspect
has been arrested for the stabbing of six women in the southern town of
Jahrom in Fars Province over the past week. The stabbings follow the
numerous acid attacks against women in Isfahan over the last few months,
which were allegedly linked to vigilante justice that was aimed at
punishing 'improper' hijab and encouraged by the Iranian Parliament's
proposed 'Plan to Promote Virtue and Prevent Vice.' There is growing
concern that the stabbings reflect a continuation of such 'Virtue
Plan'-inspired attacks, especially as state officials have rushed to
dissociate the suspect in the stabbing attacks from the proposed Parliamentary
Plan. Moreover, Saham News reported that the perpetrator is a Basij
militia member (an all-volunteer paramilitary force under the supervision
of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards, which is used to enforce the
regime's ideological dictates) and the Parliament has designated the
Basij to be the principal enforcers of the proposed Plan." http://t.uani.com/1HZFkOG
IRNA (Iran):
"The UNDP Resident Representative in Iran, Gary Lewis, in Tehran on
Monday lauded good cooperation between Iran and the UN about the issues
consistent with women and said Iranian women are in a more favorable
condition than those in the region. Speaking to the Conference of Women
Entrepreneurship in the Islamic Countries, held at Iran Chamber of
Commerce, Lewis said Iran has implemented very good programs for women
education and health, which is favorable. He lauded suitable and helpful
cooperation of Iranian officials with the UN to improve status of
women." http://t.uani.com/1vGWXNY
Domestic
Politics
Reuters:
"Afghanistan will send a delegation to Iran to ask the government to
extend temporary visas to allow 760,000 Afghan refugees who have no
documents and risk deportation to stay on for at least a year, an Afghan
government spokesman said on Wednesday. There are almost 1 million
registered Afghan refugees in Iran, according to the United Nations, most
of whom arrived before 2001 when U.S.-led troops toppled the hard-line
Taliban Islamist regime. But those who arrived afterwards are required to
have their permits assessed on an individual basis, making it harder for
them to obtain the paperwork needed to be officially registered,
according to the United Nation's refugee agency. 'The delegation will
request the Iranian government to extend the visas for at least one more
year,' said the Afghan chief executive's deputy spokesman, Javid
Faisal." http://t.uani.com/1yOteUn
Foreign Affairs
Tasnim (Iran):
"Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi lauded Iran for standing by
his country in very critical conditions, when other countries were
hesitant to help the Arab nation in the face of threats posed by
terrorists. 'We are now grappling with the war of life and death, and
Iran is standing by us in this war,' Abadi said in an interview with the
Lebanese-based Al Mayadeen TV channel. Heaping praise on Iran for not
leaving Iraq alone in dire conditions, Abadi made it clear that his
government will not ruin ties with its ally and neighbor. 'I would not
damage our relations with Iran just because the others want so,' the
Iraqi premier underlined. He said Iran rushed to help Iraq and 'never
ever had any doubts' even about assisting the Kurdish residents of Arbil
when the city faced the threat of ISIL militants, while Americans were
hesitating over whether to support Baghdad or not when the capital city
was in jeopardy." http://t.uani.com/1rSzXvZ
Reuters:
"Iran is seeking a senior post on a United Nations committee that
decides accreditation of non-governmental organizations, a move that
Israel on Tuesday compared to gangster Al Capone running the U.S. Federal
Bureau of Investigation. Iran was elected to the 19-member committee in
April for a four-year term from 2015. The United States and Israel are
also members of the committee, which acts as a kind of gatekeeper for
rights groups and other NGOs seeking access to U.N. headquarters to lobby
and participate in meetings and other events. When Iran was first elected
to the committee, the United States sharply criticized it as a 'troubling
outcome' because of what it said was Tehran's poor human rights record.
The U.S. mission to the United Nations did not respond to a request for
comment on Iran's bid to become vice chair of the committee. In a letter
obtained by Reuters, Iran presented its candidacy for vice-chair of the
committee, which will begin meeting in late January." http://t.uani.com/11TV58E
Opinion &
Analysis
Benjamin Weinthal
in JPost: "Since the world powers reached an interim
agreement to slow down Iran's nuclear weapons program last year, there
has been an astonishingly fast-paced change by some European countries
and institutions to ignore the Islamic Republic's wretched human rights
record. Put simply, a topsy-turvy situation is unfolding where an
abnormal regime in Tehran is being mainstreamed as normal. A telling
example is an Iran-Italy conference this week in Rome titled 'Protection
of Human Rights in the Penal-Judicial System of Iran and Italy.' The head
of Iran's Human Rights Council, Mohammad Javad Larijani, appeared at the
event. This is the same Larijani who defended the stoning of women and
denied the Holocaust at a 2008 German foreign ministry event. According
to a Sunday report by the Fars News Agency, which is affiliated with
Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps, Larijani said at the conference that
Iran is 'the most powerful and advanced democracy in the region.' He
lamented that 'since the victory of the Islamic Revolution, there have
been many discussions between Iran and the West on different topics, and
unfortunately some of these topics have been misunderstood and misinterpreted
due to a lack of information about the rational nature of the Islamic
Republic system's pillars and its mechanisms.' ... Saba Farzan, a
German-Iranian journalist and executive director of the Berlin-based
think tank Foreign Policy Circle, told The Jerusalem Post on Sunday, 'The
recent joint Iranian- Italian conference in Rome is yet another shameful
example of how much European democracies are throwing Iran's civil
society heavily under the bus. Europe needs to learn a political lesson
urgently: human rights in dictatorships don't improve when you sit down
and discuss them with those dictators. On the contrary, as long as any
kind of negotiations continue, the Islamic Republic can torture and kill
innocent Iranians with impunity.' She added, 'Political sanctions aren't
enough to support Iran's democracy activists as long as Iran's leadership
doesn't go financially bankrupt. Therefore, tough economic punishment is
needed as well so that Iranians won't be punished anymore, but reclaim
their freedom and country back.' ... Italy's northern neighbor Austria
sent a delegation to visit a sanctioned Iranian university involved in
illicit nuclear weapons work. Peter Moser, vice rector of the
Montanuniversitat Leoben, along with Hubert Dürrstein, CEO of the Austrian
Agency for International Cooperation in Education and Research, traveled
in November to Tehran's Sharif University of Technology. Stefan Schaden,
a spokesman for the Vienna-based NGO Stop the Bomb, told the Post Iran
exploited the visit 'for their propaganda.' In short, Iran's attempts to
turn illegal nuclear proliferation activity into a normal part of its
social fabric that the West must accept. Schaden also was one of the few
voices in Austria to note that Iran's university system engages in ubiquitous
discrimination against women, and against ethnic and religious minorities
such as the struggling Baha'i community. Erhard Skupa, a spokesman for
Montanuniversitat Leoben, told the Post: 'Prior to the visit,
Montanuniversitat Leoben checked the legal situation and concluded that a
meeting with researchers does not break the embargo.' Skupa's explanation
hardly seems to be the point, according to critics who see a kind of
institutionalization of a rogue regime in Tehran by European elites. To
be fair, at one point, Europe took the business of human rights
seriously. In 2012, the European Parliament awarded Iranian human rights
attorney Nasrin Sotoudeh its Sakharov human rights prize. The EU's
decision to publicize her case probably helped force Iran to release her
early from prison in 2013... Some European countries appear to have a
short-term memory deficit. European human rights pressure targeting
Iran's regime could breathe change into the backward Islamic Republic.
With or without an agreement to end Iran's nuclear crisis, human rights
will continue, absent external pressure, to be trampled." http://t.uani.com/1wlp86M
Energy Policy
Information Center: "This morning, Securing
America's Future Energy (SAFE) and Roubini Global Economics (RGE)
released a report assessing the impact of current global oil market
dynamics on Iran and the ongoing negotiations with the P5+1 over the
country's uranium enrichment activities. Today's well supplied oil
market, the report finds, has increased the economic challenges facing
Iran under current sanctions while also creating room for additional
sanctions, potentially tilting the balance in favor of the P5+1 as
negotiations extend into 2015. Specifically, if current oil market
dynamics persist, Iranian oil export revenue will decline by 25 percent
year-over-year in 2015 to $40 billion-well short of Iran's projected
budget requirement of more than $70 billion. In 2015, according to EIA's
oil price forecast of an $83 average Brent crude oil prices for the year,
Iran's oil revenues will drop by $10.2 billion from an estimated $49.6
billion in 2014 to $39.4 billion. This revenue shortfall is in addition
to the significant losses Tehran has already experienced from
sanctions-in 2013 alone, restricted oil exports removed $55 billion in
estimated revenue from Tehran's coffers, likely cutting the central
government's budget nearly in half. Ultimately, today's lower prices add
pressure on Iran to bring a successful end to nuclear negotiations, while
allowing Western negotiators to work toward the best possible deal
without risking damaging consequences for the global economy. However,
current supply conditions also limit the relative benefits to Iran of
returning its oil supplies to the market, since these additional volumes
are likely to cause further price collapse. In this way, Iran is caught
in a catch-22. Oil revenues are declining year-over-year and Iran is
desperate to meet its government's spending goals. But today's
well-supplied market and low prices give Iran little option but to
negotiate in the hopes of increasing foreign investment and spurring
economic relief. Lower than expected global oil demand, increased
non-OPEC oil production, and the return of Libyan oil production have all
contributed to oil's $40 per barrel price drop since June. Estimates
suggest prices will remain between $75 and $85/bbl in 2015, far below
Iran's required price of $120/bbl to satisfy federal spending
requirements. Thus, for the time being, oil markets are unlikely to
constrain the United States as it works to negotiate a deal with Iran
consistent with its long-term national security objectives, and this
condition is extremely likely to hold in 2015 and potentially beyond. In
fact, greater market flexibility could enable the P5+1 to not only maintain
current sanctions at low-cost, but also to credibly threaten
implementation of even more biting sanctions without risking
economically-destructive oil price volatility." http://t.uani.com/1zj81jJ
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Eye on Iran is a periodic news summary from United Against
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