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WashPost:
"Iranian authorities are charging The Washington Post's Tehran
bureau chief, Jason Rezaian, with espionage and three other serious
crimes, including 'collaborating with hostile governments' and
'propaganda against the establishment,' according to his attorney in
Tehran. Providing the first description of the precise charges against
Rezaian since his arrest nine months ago, the lawyer said that an
indictment alleges that Rezaian gathered information 'about internal and
foreign policy' and provided it to 'individuals with hostile intent.' The
statement, issued from Tehran by Rezaian's attorney, Leila Ahsan, was
provided to The Post by the family of the imprisoned reporter. Rezaian
also is accused of collecting classified information, said Ahsan, who is
believed to be the only person outside the judiciary to have read the
indictment. The indictment says he wrote to President Obama, in an
example of his alleged contact with a 'hostile government.' The charges
carry a maximum sentence of 10 to 20 years in prison... Martin Baron, The
Post's executive editor, described the charges against Rezaian as
'scurrilous.'" http://t.uani.com/1E6gbRh
LAT:
"Signaling a potential key compromise in negotiations with Iran, the
White House said Monday that it might be willing to start providing
sanctions relief as soon as Tehran begins putting in place new curbs on
its nuclear program... Tehran has insisted that the tough penalties on
Iran should come off as soon as a deal begins to be implemented. U.S.
officials have demanded that relief should be delayed until Iran
completes curbs intended to keep it from obtaining a nuclear weapon...
But White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said Monday that the
administration might be willing to accelerate some of the relief.
Sanctions relief can start 'once Iran has begun taking the tangible,
measurable, verifiable steps that they commit to as it relates to
curtailing and limiting their nuclear program,' he said. Earnest said the
'crux' of the next 10 weeks of negotiations would be bargaining over
'what steps do they have to start taking in order to start receiving some
of the sanctions relief?' ... At a news conference Friday, President
Obama said he was prepared to be flexible, and called on U.S. negotiators
to be 'creative' in looking for ways to satisfy both sides." http://t.uani.com/1GfiO5D
WSJ:
"The U.S. is sending an aircraft carrier to the Yemeni coast to join
a growing fleet of ships keeping watch on an Iranian flotilla that
defense officials suspect may be carrying arms for Houthi fighters in
Yemen. U.S. military officials said they are monitoring as many as nine
Iranian ships suspected of carrying arms bound for Yemen, where Iran's
regional rival Saudi Arabia has been conducting airstrikes against the
Houthis for nearly a month. U.S. officials said the arrival of the USS
Theodore Roosevelt will raise to 12 the total number of U.S. Navy vessels
in the Gulf of Aden, where Saudi and Egyptian ships are also stationed as
the situation in Yemen deteriorates. American officials aren't certain of
the Iranian flotilla's intentions. If the Iranian ships try to head for
Yemen, it could create a dramatic showdown this week in the Gulf of Aden.
U.S. officials don't expect American sailors to try to board the Iranian
ships." http://t.uani.com/1HeFYJD
Nuclear Program & Negotiations
Bloomberg:
"Nuclear inspectors will need unfettered access in Iran as part of a
deal to lift economic sanctions, U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz said
a day after an Iranian general said military sites must be off limits.
'We expect to have anywhere, anytime access,' Moniz, a nuclear physicist
who negotiated the technical details of a framework nuclear accord, said
Monday in a meeting with editors and reporters at Bloomberg's Washington
office. Inspections of Iran's military sites under the proposed long-term
agreement wouldn't be 'frivolous;' they would be part of 'a well-defined
process,' he said. United Nations inspectors would need access to any
location if they had well-founded suspicions of covert 'out-of-bounds
activities.' On Sunday, Brigadier General Hossein Salami, deputy head of
Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps, said 'they will not even be permitted
to inspect the most normal military site in their dreams,' according to
the state-run Press TV... In response to Moniz's comments, the deputy
head of Iran's Atomic Energy Agency, Behrouz Kamalvandi, said Iran hasn't
agreed to 'anywhere, anytime' inspections, saying 'negotiations are
continuing,' the Iranian Students' News Agency reported." http://t.uani.com/1G3b8hj
Press TV (Iran):
"Iran has rejected a call by US Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz for
unlimited access of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)
inspectors to the Islamic Republic's military sites. In a Monday
interview with ISNA news agency, the spokesman for the Atomic Energy
Organization of Iran (AEOI) described Moniz's demand as 'not practical
and acceptable.' Behrouz Kamalvandi noted that negotiations aimed at
reaching an agreement over Iran's nuclear program 'are still underway,'
urging the other side to put forward its views during the talks.
Kamalvandi stressed that Tehran will not undertake any commitments beyond
'common laws and regulations.'" http://t.uani.com/1G3fEN2
Bloomberg:
"Even if an agreement to curb Iran's nuclear program is reached, it
would leave one big question unanswered. Would a deal help strengthen the
country's moderates, or would it enrich and embolden the forces that
remain intent on exporting Iran's Islamic revolution? ... Signing a
nuclear deal, Obama said in the NPR interview, might 'strengthen the hand
of those more moderate forces inside of Iran.' ... While 'it's possible'
that a nuclear deal would pave the way for some Iranian moderation, the
U.S. needs to plan for the opposite case in which sanctions relief
provides a 'turbo-boost to the ayatollahs,' Martin Indyk, a former
Mideast negotiator who's executive vice president of the Brookings
Institution in Washington, said in an interview." http://t.uani.com/1Da0KT8
Sanctions
Relief
FT:
"The head of Lukoil said on Monday that the Russian energy group
wanted to return to Iran as soon as sanctions on Tehran are lifted, the
latest foreign company to signal interest in developing the country's oil
and gas after a nuclear deal with the west. Vagit Alekperov, Lukoil
president, told reporters at the IHS CERAWeek energy conference in
Houston that the group's office in Iran, recently reopened, was studying
geological data so it could take advantage of any opportunities should
international sanctions be eased. He said: 'We hope that sanctions will
be lifted in the medium term, in the near term, and that we will be able
to come back to Iran and come back to the field we were working on.' Mr
Alekperov disclosed that he met Iranian oil minister Bijan Zanganeh at
the World Economic Forum in Davos, where he signalled that Lukoil was
'ready to participate' in the development of the oil industry." http://t.uani.com/1cVm9ua
Bloomberg:
"The world's largest commodity trading houses are first in line to
profit from the much expected return of Iran to global markets as Tehran
and Washington enter into the final three-months of nuclear talks. While
the global oil industry has been seen as the biggest beneficiary of a
thaw, commodities traders including Cargill Inc. Glencore Plc, Vitol BV,
Trafigura Beheer BV and Louis Dreyfus Commodities BV have a long history
in Iran, helping to export its oil and import daily basics like gasoline,
wheat and rice... 'We like other people have talked to the Iranians,'
Vitol CEO Ian Taylor said in an interview. 'They used to be major players
in the markets, but obviously none of us will do anything unless
sanctions are actually lifted.'" http://t.uani.com/1G3bnJt
WSJ:
"India has raised the issue of getting back an oil field from Iran,
where domestic companies have invested but hadn't begun producing natural
gas because of international sanctions against Tehran, according to a top
government official. ONGC Videsh Ltd., the overseas arm of Oil and Natural
Gas Ltd., India's flagship exploration firm along with Oil India Ltd. and
Indian Oil Corp. Ltd., had invested about $100 million in Farzad-B field.
The companies have explored and discovered oil and gas in 2008. The oil
field holds about 13 trillion cubic feet of recoverable reserves. 'The
production could not be started because of the sanctions' against Tehran,
the official at India's Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas told The
Wall Street Journal on condition of anonymity. New Delhi has also conveyed
its concerns regarding investments and wanted Tehran to reallocate the
block back to the Indian investors in the wake of upcoming exploration
rules that could put those investments in jeopardy... ONGC Chairman D.K.
Sarraf said the talks were aimed at keeping the two sides engaged on the
issue." http://t.uani.com/1cVfSOY
Reuters:
"Members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries
(OPEC) should prepare for extra Iranian crude production when Western
sanctions on Tehran are lifted, Iran's oil minister was quoted on Tuesday
by state news agency IRNA as saying. 'We expect the members of OPEC to
pave the ground for (an) increase of Iran's oil production that will
reach global markets when sanctions are lifted,' Bijan Namdar Zanganeh
said during a meeting with his Venezuelan counterpart Asdrubal Chavez in
Tehran, the agency reported. Iran, once OPEC's second-largest producer
after Saudi Arabia, hopes to boost crude exports by as much as 1 million
barrels per day (bpd) if Tehran and six major powers finalize a nuclear
agreement by a June 30 deadline." http://t.uani.com/1E6eB1P
Regional Destabilization
Reuters:
"The U.S. State Department said on Monday it might talk with Iran
about promoting regional stability, noting it had been open to including
Iran in past efforts to achieve a Syrian peace deal if Tehran had altered
its policy... State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf made the comments
when asked about a call by Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif
in a New York Times opinion piece for regional dialogue to address the
crises in countries such as Iraq, Syria and Yemen... Asked if the United
States might discuss regional issues as it has in the past with Iran if
Tehran pursued policies more in line with U.S. objectives, Harf replied:
'Maybe.' She said Washington had been open to including Tehran in a
second round of Syria peace talks in 2014 had Iran embraced the 2012
'Geneva Communique,' which called for a political transition, but left
ambiguous the fate of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad... Harf sought to
draw a distinction between the possibility of talking to the Iranians and
the reality of 'working with' them, suggesting that was a line Washington
would not cross. 'We've always said we won't be coordinating or working
with the Iranians, and there's a difference between discussing and
working with,' she said." http://t.uani.com/1Jq4zsg
Syrian Conflict
AFP:
"Bashar Al-Assad said he had invited Hezbollah militants to fight
alongside his regime but he denied the presence of Iranian troops in
Syria in an interview with French television broadcast Monday. Iran is
Assad's main regional ally, and Tehran has acknowledged sending military
advisers to assist his forces in their fight against rebels and jihadist
militants. However it has denied accusations from opposition forces and
Saudi Arabia that it has troops on the ground in Syria. 'We invited
Hezbollah, but not the Iranians, There are no Iranian troops in Syria and
they have not sent any force,' Assad told France 2 Television." http://t.uani.com/1E6eX8A
Opinion &
Analysis
National Review
Editorial Board: "We thought we had a bad deal with
Iran; then it looked like we didn't really have a deal at all. Now it
appears President Obama is doing everything he can to make whatever we have
worse. The interim agreement supposedly reached at the beginning of April
gave the Iranians a great deal of concessions the U.S. had suggested were
off the table. But it left a number of issues still unresolved. There was
no public agreed-upon text, just fact sheets released by the respective
sides, and the gaps between them are substantial. It was unclear, for
instance, whether the signing of a final deal will trigger immediate, and
maybe even complete, sanctions relief. Iran said that was the plan, while
the White House said sanctions should be phased out. But then, last
Friday, President Obama suggested the U.S. would allow substantial
immediate sanctions relief - some $50 billion worth, potentially - on the
day a final deal is signed. In return, he insisted, the sanctions will be
'snapped back' if Iran is caught cheating. Yet that is hardly sufficient:
Russia and China are known to be wary of a snapback policy, and a
punishing sanctions regime can't be reconstructed quickly or
unilaterally. Meanwhile, the White House has said that inspectors will
have unrestricted access to any sites where there is suspicious activity,
but an Iranian general remarked this past weekend that no inspections
will be allowed at any military base. President Obama has a proven track
record of resolving such disputes - he just gives the Iranians what they
want. It is still no sure thing that the remaining gaps between our
negotiators and the Iranians can be bridged, but it falls to Congress to
ensure that President Obama can't resolve them as he is accustomed.
Congressmen of both parties remain skeptical of the outlined deal. The
confusion over what the interim outline meant has only strengthened the
case that the White House cannot be trusted with reaching a final deal,
and more concessions should further worry hawkish Democrats. So what can
be done? The Senate Foreign Relations Committee has unanimously passed a
bill sponsored by Senator Bob Corker that would give Congress a period in
which to approve or disapprove of a final deal. It is a weak measure -
the president retains plenty of flexibility and rejecting a deal will
require two-thirds of both houses - but it is better than nothing.
President Obama had clearly hoped never to have to send the text of an
agreement to Congress. Now, even though it looks unlikely that 13
Democrat senators will vote against a final deal, Obama does have to send
it to Congress, making the terms public. That is something. But Congress
should do more - indeed, all it can to signal its disapproval of the
ongoing Obama concessions and to destabilize the agreement before it can
be finalized. Opponents of the drift of the negotiations should push,
again, for a measure along the lines of the Kirk-Menendez legislation,
which would reinstate sanctions if talks drag on. They should pass
resolutions making it clear that a congressional majority disapproves of
a deal that lifts sanctions immediately, or a deal that doesn't allow for
any-time, anywhere inspections, or a deal that doesn't guarantee that
enriched uranium is shipped out of Iran (which is yet another point of
confusion). The time for all of this is now." http://t.uani.com/1Gfqdlm
Eli Lake in
Bloomberg: "The Barack Obama administration has
estimated for years that Iran was at most three months away from
enriching enough nuclear fuel for an atomic bomb. But the administration
only declassified this estimate at the beginning of the month, just in
time for the White House to make the case for its Iran deal to Congress
and the public. Speaking to reporters and editors at our Washington
bureau on Monday, Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz acknowledged that the
U.S. has assessed for several years that Iran has been two to three
months away from producing enough fissile material for a nuclear weapon.
When asked how long the administration has held this assessment, Moniz
said: 'Oh quite some time.' He added: 'They are now, they are right now
spinning, I mean enriching with 9,400 centrifuges out of their roughly
19,000. Plus all the ... R&D work. If you put that together it's
very, very little time to go forward. That's the 2-3 months.' Brian Hale,
a spokesman for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence,
confirmed to me Monday that the two-to-three-month estimate for fissile
material was declassified on April 1. Here is the puzzling thing: When
Obama began his second term in 2013, he sang a different tune. He
emphasized that Iran was more than a year away from a nuclear bomb,
without mentioning that his intelligence community believed it was only
two to three months away from making enough fuel for one, long considered
the most challenging task in building a weapon. Today Obama emphasizes
that Iran is only two to three months away from acquiring enough fuel for
a bomb, creating a sense of urgency for his Iran agreement." http://t.uani.com/1QePO0w
Dennis Ross in
Politico: "Should the framework understanding with
Iran be finalized in a deal, its terms would give us high confidence that
the Iranians would not become a nuclear weapons state for the next 15 years.
Even after that, for 25 years, we would be in a good position to know if
Iran was seeking to divert materials to a covert nuclear program given
the framework's provision for monitoring the whole supply chain -
including the mining and milling of uranium, the conversion of yellow
cake to UF-6 gas, its purification in centrifuges, centrifuge assembly
and storage facilities, etc. In many ways, the framework represents a
deal that over time would roll back sanctions in exchange for
transparency. Though there would be a significant reduction of
centrifuges and Iran's stockpile of enriched material for the first 10
years of the agreement, Iran would be able to build up with few limits
after that. So the key is not the rollback of the program, but our ability
to monitor it. That is what will allow us to determine if the Iranians
are living up to the deal and put us in a position to impose severe costs
if they are not. For me, the deal is acceptable - provided that the
transparency is real, we have assured response mechanisms to any
noncompliance that cannot be blocked, and we establish in advance what
the consequences or price will be for every category of violation. I also
believe that for the period during which the Iranians can build an
industrial-size nuclear program, starting after 15 years, the Obama
administration should establish now the principle that would bind its
successors - namely, if the Iranians move to create a nuclear weapon, we
will be prepared to use force to prevent it from doing so. Does this mean
I think the deal is a foregone conclusion and we should discount comments
that the supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, recently made about the framework,
and, in particular, those that indicated he would not accept extensive
transparency? 'The country's military officials are not authorized to let
aliens enter our security domain,' Khamenei said. 'No unusual monitoring
that makes the Islamic Republic of Iran an exceptional country in this
regard would be acceptable.' Already his comments are being echoed by
Gen. Hossein Salami, deputy commander of the Revolutionary Guard, who
declared that allowing inspection of military bases was not acceptable
and would amount to 'occupation.' I do not dismiss these statements. Nor
should others try to discount such statements as being just for domestic
consumption... Khamenei and his negotiators need to see we will not be
moved by what he had to say - and we are not so anxious for a deal that
we will adjust the meaning of the commitments in the framework." http://t.uani.com/1DabGQD
Max Fisher
Interview of Michael Doran in Vox: "The case for the
Iran nuclear deal, which the US and other world powers are currently
negotiating, is pretty straightforward. The deal would significantly
reduce and heavily monitor Iran's nuclear program, making it much more
difficult for the country to ever build a nuclear bomb (Iran gets relief
from economic sanctions in return). And, in the most optimistic reading,
it could be the beginning of the end of decades of Iranian hostility and
isolation. The case against the Iran deal may not be as obvious, and in
many ways has been obscured by the antics of people like Sen. Tom Cotton.
To understand it, I spoke to Michael Doran, who oversaw Middle East
policy on George W. Bush's National Security Council from 2005 to 2007
and is currently a scholar at the Hudson Institute. Doran made waves in
February by writing, in a lengthy article in Mosaic Magazine, that the
Iran deal is part of Obama's secret strategy to initiate a detente with
Iran and remake the Middle East in its favor. Whether or not you find
that argument persuasive (it is not widely held by regional analysts), he
makes a number of points along the way about how this could all backfire,
potentially disastrously. Even if the deal works, he points out, it will
give Iran more freedom and money to wreak havoc in the region. If the
deal falls apart, it risks leaving Iran in a far stronger position than
it's in now. What follows is a transcript of our conversation, edited and
condensed for clarity." http://t.uani.com/1JqgiqH
Phillip Smyth in
The Daily Beast: "The fact is, Iranian domination of
the Iraqi security field extends to many groups, both old and new. The
Badr Organization is the largest of the Iranian proxies and its leader,
Hadi al Amiri, maintains a large amount of control in politics and on the
battlefield. Meanwhile, Abu Mahdi al Muhandis, a wanted terrorist and
Iranian agent who was convicted of bombing the U.S. embassy in Kuwait in
1983 and of building the registered terrorist group Kata'ib Hizballah,
has now been made the deputy commander for the Popular Mobilization
Force, the umbrella organization for the agglomeration of Iraqi Shia
militias. Since the collapse of the Iraqi army and other state security
apparatuses last year, many of which had been infiltrated by
Iranian-backed groups, the U.S. has lacked credible allies on the ground.
Even before the main ISIS push last June to take Mosul, the
second-largest metropolis in Iraq, Iran's proxy militias were already
building up their forces, and it wasn't a pretty picture. Many of these
groups racked up gruesome records of human-rights abuses. But the
strength of these Shia militias is an undeniable reality, and it has put
U.S. policymakers into the position of looking for 'good' Shia militias
with cleaner records and fewer links to Tehran. For instance, an April 2
an article in The Wall Street Journal suggested one militia that the U.S.
could work with was Kata'ib Jund al-Imam (KJI), translated as the
Brigades of the Soldiers of the Imam. American and Iraqi officials
interviewed for that piece claimed that this group, and others, 'aren't
beholden to Iran, and are more careful to avoid stoking sectarian
tensions with the Sunni community, [and] will help defeat the Sunni
militants across Iraq.' According to CNN's Ben Wedemen, the group's
fighters did not treat a commander from the Iranian-controlled Badr
Organization with much respect. And surely this must mean KJI is more
attentive to American demands and is no Iranian proxy. Nadhim al Assadi,
one of the group's commanders, told the Journal, 'Yes, we have our
ideology and visions but at the end of the day, we go with the interests
of the majority.' Wait a minute. What 'ideology and visions' are they are
they referring to? On one of the organization's official web pages, their
'What We Believe' section is quite open about what the group represents,
and emphasizes its deep links to Tehran. Among their numbered principles:
the foundation concept is Islamic government based on the wisdom of the marja'iya
(religious sources of emulation, namely grand ayatollahs) and Wilayat
al-Faqih... It's important to note that Iraq's most prominent religious
leader, Grand Ayatollah Sistani, is no fan of absolute Wilayat al-Faqih.
In fact, absolute Wilayat al-Faqih is not a prevailing ideology in Iraq
or with the Shia population as a whole, and many members of the militia
probably are not ideologues and are only in the group to fight ISIS. But
it is clear that the leadership elements of the organization are loyal to
Iran, despite their claim to answer only to the government in
Baghdad." http://t.uani.com/1HQzIGS
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