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Politico:
"The Senate Foreign Relations Committee is planning to act as soon
as next week on a bipartisan bill that would allow Congress to approve or
reject any nuclear agreement that President Barack Obama reaches with
Iran. The panel's chairman, Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), said Monday he
hopes to move forward on the measure as early as March 25, one day after
a rough deadline set by the White House for a deal to wind down Iran's
nuclear program. The move would be a stern rebuke to the president: In a
letter released last weekend, Chief of Staff Denis McDonough told Corker
that moving on his Iran legislation would 'potentially prevent any deal
from succeeding.' 'That is my hope, yes,' Corker said when asked if he
will move forward next week. 'I just think waiting until the 25th
certainly should accommodate many of the Democrats' ... concern. I would
hope to mark it up next Tuesday or Wednesday.' Given the crowded Senate
calendar - only two weeks remain until a lengthy Easter break - Corker
doesn't expect his bill to have any chance of reaching the Senate floor
before mid-April. Corker also warned that he had to work out scheduling
the markup of his legislation with ranking member Robert Menendez
(D-N.J.), who led a group of 10 Democrats in vowing not to move on the Corker
legislation until March 24." http://t.uani.com/1BQ8Mo3
AP:
"Iranian negotiators meeting with U.S. officials Monday expressed
concern over a letter from Senate Republicans warning that a nuclear deal
with President Obama might not outlast his time in office. A senior
administration official said the Iranians broached the subject in the
almost five hours of discussions led by Secretary of State John F. Kerry
and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif... The negotiators face
a self-imposed deadline of March 31, set when an interim agreement was
extended in November... 'We are trying to get there. But, quite frankly,
we still do not know if we will be able to,' the administration official
said. 'Iran still has to make some very tough and necessary choices to
address the significant concerns that remain about its nuclear
program.'" http://t.uani.com/1CpcfKS
NYT:
"Iran's use of the death penalty is rising and its repression of
political critics is worsening despite promises by President Hassan
Rouhani of a less restrictive society, a United Nations human rights
monitor said on Monday... Iran has one of the highest execution rates in
the world and continues 'to harass, arrest, prosecute and imprison
members of civil society who express criticism of the government or who
publicly deviate from officially sanctioned narratives,' Mr. Shaheed told
reporters in Geneva... Over all, he said, human rights in Iran have
deteriorated since Mr. Rouhani took office in 2013, either because of
hard-liners who have sought to undermine him, or because of his
insufficient attention to such issues. Mr. Shaheed pointed to an
accelerating pace of executions, tighter constraints on political
freedoms and the treatment of ethnic and religious minorities. Iran
executed 753 people in 2014, including at least 13 juveniles, and 252
people in the first 10 weeks of this year, Mr. Shaheed said. Most were
sentenced for drug-related offenses, which under international law are
not considered sufficiently grave to warrant capital punishment. Some of
those who received the death penalty appeared linked to political
offenses, Mr. Shaheed said, including an individual executed for
contributing financially to a television station the government deemed
hostile." http://t.uani.com/1GitFIi
Nuclear Program & Negotiations
Reuters:
"After months of deadlock, there have been areas of progress in the
talks recently, Iranian, U.S. and European officials say. The number of
enrichment centrifuges Iran wants to operate over the long term, one of
the biggest sticking points in the talks from the beginning, is likely
resolvable if Tehran can keep around 6,500 of the machines that purify
uranium, they say. There are also discussions about the size of Iran's
uranium stockpiles and how much would be relocated to Russia or another
country, Western officials say. Originally, Iran wanted to enrich 2.5
tonnes of uranium per year, but could settle at half a tonne, a senior
Iranian official said. The remainder would be turned into fuel rods or
sent to Russia, he added. Recently the United States and France agreed to
consider the possibility of a swift suspension of U.N. nuclear sanctions
at the outset of any deal, in addition to freezing some of the most
painful U.S. and European energy and financial sanctions." http://t.uani.com/1wVbVme
Reuters:
"Iran and major world powers have been making headway in identifying
technical options for a historic nuclear deal as an end-March deadline
nears but difficult issues must still be addressed, a senior U.S.
official said on Tuesday... 'We have definitely made progress in terms of
identifying technical options for each of the major areas,' the U.S.
official told reporters on condition of anonymity. 'There is no way
around it. We still have a ways to go ... But even within this space, we
have some tough issues to address.' The official said any framework
agreement settled this month would need to have key details, including
numbers. 'If there is an agreement, I don't see how it could be
meaningful without having some quantitative dimensions,' he said, without
elaborating." http://t.uani.com/1DwotTF
AFP:
"Iranian MPs will not derail a nuclear deal with the West, as US
lawmakers have threatened to, if the country's supreme leader gives it
his backing, parliament's top official said Monday. Speaker Ali Larijani
said lawmakers and the government would be unified if an agreement gets
the nod from Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the final word on all policy
matters in the Islamic republic. 'Parliament and the government are
following the same path,' Larijani told reporters. 'We don't have
problems like those in the United States,' he said, alluding to the split
between President Barack Obama's White House and the US Congress over
nuclear talks... Larijani lambasted a letter from Republican senators
last week that said a final agreement could be rescinded by another US
administration after Obama leaves the White House. 'What the US Congress
did was really amateurish,' Larijani said." http://t.uani.com/1BMpS4V
Vice:
"'You can't have a discussion about Iran's pursuit of a nuclear
weapons capability without talking about the nature of the Iranian regime
and its elected officials,' says David Ibsen, executive director of
United Against a Nuclear Iran, a...US organization with a name that's
pretty self-explanatory. 'If you look at... how they treat their own
population, you're going to see some concerning things that certainly
impact young people living in the country... I don't think anyone
believes all Iranians think Death to America is a great slogan. But
unfortunately, when it comes to nuclear policy or state support of
terrorism by the regime and individuals who are in power, their brutality
is what you have to observe when you decide whether Iran is to be
trusted.'" http://t.uani.com/18C7sJW
Sanctions
Relief
AP:
"Iran said it began producing more natural gas from a giant field
shared with Qatar on Tuesday as part of efforts to expand gas production
and alleviate setbacks caused by international sanctions... During a
ceremony marking inauguration of the expansion project, President Hassan
Rouhani claimed the increased gas production proved Western sanctions,
imposed over Iran's s disputed nuclear program, were ineffective. 'We
succeeded in finalizing huge projects during the sanctions,' said
Rouhani. 'By inaugurating this project, we announce to the world that the
era of pressures ... is over.'" http://t.uani.com/19vzmIG
Tehran Times:
"Iran's gross domestic product grew by 3.6 percent in the first nine
months of the current Iranian calendar year(March 21- December 21, 2014),
compared to the same period last year, the Central Bank of Iran
reported... On March 10, Mohammad Baqer Nobakht, the head of Iran's
Management and Planning Organization, said the country's GDP is forecast
to grow 2.5 percent in the next Iranian calendar year, which begins on
March 21... The World Bank forecasted in its Global Economic Prospects
report that Iran's GDP will grow 2 percent and 2.3 percent in 2015 and
2016, respectively." http://t.uani.com/1ATdYTj
Press TV (Iran):
"Iran's exchange market on Sunday witnessed an unprecedented
appreciation of the Iranian rial against the US dollar in what many see
as the result of an overwhelming positive speculation by the country's
businesses toward the outcomes of nuclear talks now underway in Lausanne,
Switzerland. Media reports say the exchange rate for the US dollar that
was 35,700 rials two weeks ago has declined to as low as 31,800 rials at
the end of the trading on Sunday. This marks a fall of around 11
percent." http://t.uani.com/1EYYfte
Reuters:
"South Korea's imports of Iranian crude oil dropped 50 percent in
February from a year earlier, and the country's oil shipments from the
OPEC country in the first two months of this year met international
sanction requirements. Seoul imported 557,174 tonnes of crude oil from
Tehran last month, or 145,860 barrels per day (bpd), compared with 1.1
million tonnes a year ago, preliminary customs data from the world's
fifth-largest crude oil importer showed on Sunday. The world's
fifth-largest crude importer brought 830,800 tonnes or 103,216 bpd of
crude from the Middle Eastern country in the first two months of this
year, below last year's average at 125,000 (bpd). Iranian crude shipments
in 2014 were 6.2 million tonnes, or 124,497 bpd, down 7.1 percent from
the 2013 average of 134,000 bpd, according to the data and Reuters
calculations in January." http://t.uani.com/1EYPWxC
Iraq Crisis
NYT:
"Iran has deployed advanced rockets and missiles to Iraq to help
fight the Islamic State in Tikrit, a significant escalation of firepower
and another sign of Iran's growing influence in Iraq. United States
intelligence agencies detected the deployments in the past few weeks as
Iraq was marshaling a force of 30,000 troops - two-thirds of them Shiite
militias largely trained and equipped by Iran, according to three
American officials. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to
discuss sensitive intelligence reports on Iran. Iran has not yet launched
any of the weapons, but American officials fear the rockets and missiles
could further inflame sectarian tensions and cause civilian casualties
because they are not precision guided. Their deployment is another
dilemma for the Obama administration as it trains and equips the Iraqi
military and security services to help defeat the Islamic State, but
unlike Iran is unwilling to commit fighters and advisers who join Iraqi
forces in the field." http://t.uani.com/1EYRozW
Human Rights
NYT:
"Increasingly desperate to return to the United States, a Marine
veteran of Iranian descent who has been incarcerated in Iran for three
and a half years has renounced his Iranian citizenship, requested
deportation and accused Iran of using American prisoners as 'bargaining
chips,' his family said Monday. 'Once deported, he promises never to
return,' the family of the Marine veteran, Amir Hekmati, a dual citizen
of the United States and Iran, said in a statement. The statement also
detailed what it described as a litany of previously undisclosed torture
and other abuses - including feet whippings, Taser hits to the kidneys,
sleep deprivation and extended solitary confinement - suffered by Mr.
Hekmati in the Iranian penal system since he was arrested in August
2011." http://t.uani.com/1BQ3rgG
Foreign Affairs
NBC News:
"A former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who served in both
the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations said Sunday that Iran
poses 'a much more difficult challenge' than the threat posed by the
terrorist group ISIS. Iran is an 'incredibly complex country that we don't
understand very well. We've had no relations with them for 35 years,'
Retired Adm. Michael Mullen said on NBC's 'Meet the Press.' Mullen said
the United States will have to accept the role Iranian militias play in
the fight against ISIS in northern Iraq. While the number one priority is
to defeat ISIS, Mullen said it's worth remembering that the Iranian
regime committed acts of terrorism, which led to the war in Iraq." http://t.uani.com/1Cpd4U8
Opinion &
Analysis
Michael Knights in
Foreign Affairs: "A battle is unfolding in Saddam
Hussein's old tribal capital of Tikrit. Unthinkable just a decade ago,
the main government forces leading the battle are Shiite fighters -- the
Popular Mobilization Units (PMUs) that are under the control of militia
leaders. These forces' main partners are Iran and Lebanese Hezbollah.
U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey has
called the situation 'the most overt conduct of Iranian support' since
the war against the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) began. But
it doesn't have to be a bad thing, he hinted, as long as such forces
refrain from inflaming sectarian tensions. His comments get to the heart
of the debate over Iran's role in Iraq and the appropriate division of
labor between the U.S.-led international coalition and Tehran in the
fight against ISIS. The White House seems to view growing Iranian
involvement in the war as a reality that cannot be wished away, which is
probably true, but also as a step forward in U.S.-Iranian relations,
which is arguably naive. Events on the ground in eastern Iraq suggest a
different way of looking at the issue. If anything, the battle for Tikrit
has shown that there is a whole side of the war from which the
international community has been deliberately excluded. Iran and its
Iraqi proxies have been carving out a zone of influence in eastern Iraq
for well over a decade. And this zone, as Dempsey noted, is expanding.
Iraq, in short, could be experiencing what Lebanon did decades ago as
Hezbollah fighters took the Bekaa Valley. In this case, the land in
question is Mesopotamia and the forces are PMUs, but the result will be
the same: a swath of land in which the government is gradually ceding
ground to powerful paramilitary factions with strong terrorist connections.
There is a natural blending of Iraq and Iran in their shared border
provinces. Large Shiite populations extend northwest from Baghdad to Iran
along the Diyala River Valley. To the southeast are the largely Shiite
border provinces of Wasit and Maysan, where the border with Iran
dissolves into ungovernable marshes. Trade, smuggling, and religious
pilgrimages along age-old crossing points and rivers permanently link
these places. But since 2003 Iran has gone beyond these traditional ties
by enmeshing the border provinces through subsidizing shared electricity
grids, medical services, and refined oil products. Eastern Iraq has also
been a literal and figurative battlefield between Iranian-backed Iraqi
militants and the Iraqi state... Indeed, one of the least recognized
facts about the fall of the Saddam government in 2003 was that two
invasions took place: one from the south by the U.S.-led coalition and
another from Iran, down the Diyala River Valley, by Iranian-backed Badr
columns. During the Iran-Iraq War, the Badr Corps had fought as a
10,000-strong division alongside the Iranian military against Saddam's
government; they did it again in 2003." http://t.uani.com/1BMuIzf
UANI Advisory
Board Member Walter Russell Mead in The American Interest:
"But our second point, initially very controversial but now
acknowledged by Secretary Kerry, is that as a matter of law, the senators
are right. Any deal negotiated between President Obama and Iran will not
be legally binding-either on the United States or Iran. The President has
the authority to bind himself through an agreement with a foreign power;
he does not have the authority to bind the Congress, the courts, or his
successors. The Iranians, it seems clear from their initial reaction, did
not fully understand this before the senatorial letter and the State
Department acknowledgement. Now they do. As a matter of practice, the
question of how binding President Obama's John Hancock on an MOU with
Iran will be is a tricky one. Since the agreement isn't just with Iran, but
with the Permanent Members of the Security Council and Germany, there
will be a real cost to American credibility if we try to back out of it
later. If the U.S. backs out of the deal, Iran can also walk away from
its commitments-and there is no guarantee that other countries will
support any sanctions that the United States would like to reimpose. And
any president who reneges on President Obama's pledge would be
undercutting the credibility of any executive agreements he or she might
make as well. All this makes the President's signature much more than an
empty gesture, and by suggesting that any Iran deal would be embedded in
a Security Council Resolution, the administration has opened the door to
an even more contentious U.S. debate. But however the deal is finally
hammered out, Iran policy is so contentious and the stakes are so high
that one simply cannot rule out the possibility that at some point in the
future the United States would repudiate any agreement that President
Obama may make. While the Cotton letter is the center of the current Iran
uproar, the real question isn't whether the Senators did a smart thing by
sending their open letter to Iran, but whether President Obama is
pursuing a smart and sustainable policy with respect to Iran." http://t.uani.com/1MISuyU
David B. Rivkin,
Jr. & Lee A. Casey in TNI: "The recent open
letter by 47 Republican Senators, putting Iran on notice that the US
Constitution fundamentally limits the President's ability unilaterally to
conclude a durable nuclear weapons agreement, has prompted strident
criticisms from both the American and Iranian officials, giving some
tantalizing hints on how a 'nuclear deal' with Iran will be achieved.
Despite some carefully-phrased statements to the contrary, it appears
that the administration plans to evade the Constitution's clear
requirement that the Senate approve all treaties by having the UN
Security Council adopt a resolution implementing the deal... This
deception aside, the Security Council-centric approach, while solving
some of the Administration's political problems, would impose very
significant long-term costs on the United States, and would not
ultimately achieve a binding deal that cannot be altered. The
Constitution's framers purposely divided the treaty-making power between
the president and Senate, requiring that the Senate consent to any treaty
by a two-thirds supermajority, both to limit presidential power and to
ensure that all such international undertakings by the United States
enjoyed broad domestic support. This bedrock requirement cannot be
avoided by claiming that an agreement ordering critical aspects of our
relationship with another country is somehow not a 'treaty,' or by
reference to another treaty like the UN Charter. Ratification of the
Charter committed the United States, like other UN members, to comply
with certain Security Council resolutions and those resolutions may
impose binding international obligations on the United States.
Specifically, Chapter VII of the Charter indicates that the 'Security
Council shall determine the existence of any threat to the peace...and
shall...decide what measures should be taken in accordance with Articles
41 and 42, to maintain or restore international peace and security.' By
invoking Chapter VII, the administration intends to bypass the Senate and
Congress as a whole. The Charter, of course, does not and cannot reorder
the Constitution's division of power between Congress and the president.
As the Supreme Court noted in a recent case, involving U.S. obligations to
implement International Court of Justice decisions under the Charter,
where it found that ICJ decisions were not automatically binding as a
matter of domestic law '[t]he President may comply with the treaty's
obligations by some other means, so long as they are consistent with the
Constitution.' Nevertheless, having the Security Council drive an Iranian
agreement will have several deleterious legal and policy consequences.
First, while the Iranian nuclear deal would not be binding on the United
States as a 'signatory' to the agreement, rendering Secretary Kerry's
statement to this effect technically correct but utterly misleading, it
would bind the United States as a UN member. Second, as is common with
Chapter VII resolutions, the Iranian nuclear weapons resolution would
keep the Council seized of the matter. This means that the resolution
could be revised only by future Security Council action, which the United
States cannot guarantee. For example, the United States and its allies
would be unable to extend the proposed 10-year sunset provision, even if
that became necessary based on Iranian conduct, since Iran would surely
oppose the measure with the backing of Russia and China, who can veto any
change. This point is worth emphasizing, since the administration's main
oft-articulated reason for choosing the 10-year time frame for the
nuclear deal is its belief that over this time period Iran's regime would
lose its revolutionary character and become a responsible regional power.
This optimistic assumption has been strongly challenged by Israel, Saudi
Arabia and other Sunni Arab states, who point out that Tehran hasn't
mellowed over the last several decades." http://t.uani.com/1CrtMns
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