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Top
Stories
Reuters: "Iran has deployed the
Russian-supplied S-300 surface-to-air missile defence system around its
Fordow underground uranium enrichment facility, Iranian state media
reported on Monday. Iranian state TV on Sunday aired footage of
deployment of the recently delivered missile system to the nuclear site
in the central Iran. 'Our main priority is to protect Iran's nuclear
facilities under any circumstances,' Brigadier General Farzad Esmaili,
commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps' (IRGC) air defense
force told state TV... The IRGC's Esmaili did not say whether the system
was operational, but added: 'Today, Iran's sky is one of the most secure
in the Middle East'. Iran's top authority Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali
Khamenei said on Sunday that the country's military power was for
defensive purposes. 'The S-300 system is a defence system not an assault
one, but the Americans did their utmost to prevent Iran from getting it,'
Khamenei said in a speech broadcast live on state TV." http://t.uani.com/2bv2TWq
AP: "A $400 million cash delivery
to Iran to repay a decades-old arbitration claim may be unprecedented in
recent U.S. history, according to legal experts and diplomatic
historians, raising further questions about a payment timed to help free
four American prisoners in Iran. The money was sent to Iran on Jan. 17,
the same day Tehran agreed to release the prisoners. The Obama
administration claimed for months the events were separate, but recently
acknowledged the cash was used as leverage until the Americans were
allowed to leave Iran. Only then, did the U.S. allow a plane with euros,
Swiss francs and other foreign currency loaded on pallets to take off in
the other direction for Tehran. 'There's actually not anything
particularly unusual about the mechanism for this transaction,' White
House press secretary Josh Earnest said this week of the initial cash
payment. But diplomatic historians and lawyers with expertise in
international arbitration struggled to find any similar examples. Asked
to recall a similar payment of the U.S. using cash or hard money to
settle an international dispute, the office of the State Department
historian couldn't provide an example." http://t.uani.com/2bLYtgl
Fox News: "Dangerous confrontations
between Iranian and American warships in the Persian Gulf are up more
than 50 percent in 2016 compared with this time last year, according to a
U.S. defense official - despite the highly touted nuclear accord, as well
as a recent $1.7 billion U.S. payment to Tehran. The latest incidents of
provocative Iranian behavior flared in the Persian Gulf earlier this
week, including one filmed by the U.S. Navy. The video showed four
Iranian gunboats from its Revolutionary Guard Corps coming within 300
yards of USS Nitze, an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer. The incident was
part of a troubling pattern, according to stats shared with Fox News. In
2015, there were roughly 30 dangerous interactions between Iranian and U.S.
Navy warships in the Persian Gulf, according to the U.S. Navy's 5th
Fleet. The Iranian vessels acted as the aggressors every time, the Navy
says. Yet already this year, that number is at least 30. Through the
first six months alone of 2016, there were 26 dangerous confrontations
that U.S. military officials called 'unsafe and unprofessional.' 'We are
on pace to exceed last year's numbers by more than fifty percent,' the
defense official told Fox News, while saying the confrontations have
risen by that much so far." http://t.uani.com/2bLYqwg
Nuclear
& Ballistic Missile Program
NYT: "Iran said on Sunday that a
person close to the government team that negotiated its nuclear agreement
with foreign powers had been arrested on accusations of espionage and
released on bail. The disclosure, reported in the state news media,
appeared to be the latest sign of the Iranian leadership's frustration
over the agreement, which has failed so far to yield the significant
economic benefits for the country that its advocates had promised.
Iranian officials have blamed the United States for that problem... There
were unconfirmed reports last week that the Iranian authorities had
arrested Abdolrasoul Dorri Esfahani, who has dual Iranian and Canadian
citizenship, on espionage suspicions. Mr. Esfahani, an adviser to Iran's
central bank, helped the Iranian nuclear negotiators bargain for
sanctions relief in exchange for Iran's pledges of verifiably peaceful
nuclear work. The official Islamic Republic News Agency said a spokesman
for Iran's judiciary, Gholam Hossein Mohseni Ejei, speaking at a weekly
news conference on Sunday in Tehran, had 'confirmed the arrest of an
individual from the negotiating team.' But the spokesman also said that
'his charge of spying has not been proved' and that the suspect had been
released on bail pending an investigation." http://t.uani.com/2bxID3O
IRNA
(Iran): "Financial
resources have been allocated for construction of two new nuclear power
plants in Iran, says the spokesman for the Atomic Energy Organization of
Iran. Behrouz Kamalvandi told reporters on Sunday that President Hassan
Rouhani has given the go-ahead for the construction of two nuclear plants
in the country and that financial resources have been earmarked by the
Presidential order. 'We are going to set a date in the near future for
the ground-breaking ceremony,' Kamalvandi said. He also said that the
Islamic Republic and the United Nations Atomic Energy Organization are
closely cooperating with each other." http://t.uani.com/2clVdZA
U.S.-Iran
Relations
Reuters: "Iran's military detected a
U.S. drone entering Iranian airspace on Monday and issued a warning for
it to leave, which it subsequently did, Iran's Tasnim news agency
reported. 'Iran's army air defence detected and warned an American drone
in the eastern airspace of the country. It was coming from Afghanistan.
The drone left the area,' Tasnim quoted the Iranian military as saying.
Tasnim gave no details on how the Iranian authorities had warned the
unmanned drone to leave its airspace." http://t.uani.com/2c8LNiY
FT: "The US was Iran's major market
for Persian rugs and the sanctions caused total carpet exports to drop by
30 per cent - the embargo meant no American could buy, sell or import
Persian rugs, even if they were purchased outside of the Islamic
republic. But now, with many of the west's sanctions lifted after Tehran
reached a historic nuclear deal with western powers last year, the
industry is enjoying a boom as sales to America soar. Persian carpet
exports were up 39 per cent in the four months to July 21, with American
devotees of the Iranian artistry the main buyers. The surge is providing
a rare bright spot for Iran amid mounting frustrations about foreign
companies' wariness to take advantage of the post-sanctions era and
provide the economic dividend Iranians expected. 'The most important
reason for the rise is the lifting of the US sanctions,' says Hamid
Kargar, director of the Iran National Carpet Center, the state body in
charge of handmade carpets." http://t.uani.com/2c8NtJi
Sanctions
Relief
AFP: "French Environment Minister
Segolene Royal met with her Iranian counterpart in Tehran on Sunday to
announce plans for a number of joint projects addressing energy, water
shortages and pollution. Royal held talks with the head of Iran's
Environmental Protection Organisation, Massoumeh Ebtekar, and said they
would build several key partnerships by February. 'Several highly
operational subjects were discussed,' Royal told reporters. The French
minister is travelling for three days with senior business figures from
environmental and renewable energy firms specialising in water, pollution
and energy efficiency -- including the boss of multinational Engie. 'They
were chosen by Iran on the basis of the challenges they face,' said
Royal." http://t.uani.com/2bxDOr2
Reuters: "Iraq's government would
consider selling crude through Iran should talks with the autonomous
Kurdish region on an oil revenue-sharing agreement fail, a senior oil
ministry official in Baghdad told Reuters. Iraq's State Oil Marketing
Organisation (SOMO) plans to hold talks with the Kurdish Regional
Government (KRG), possibly next week, about Iraqi oil exported through
Turkey, Deputy Oil Minister Fayadh al-Nema said in an interview on Friday
evening. 'If the negotiations come to a close' without an agreement 'we
will start to find a way in order to sell our oil because we need money,
either to Iran or other countries', he said by telephone." http://t.uani.com/2c8Kd0q
Extremism
IRNA
(Iran):
"Ayatollah Khamenei said that enmity with the Iranian nation and
Islamic system is far from the customary hostilities experienced in four
corners of the world. 'Our enemies are made up of the global arrogance
and the world Zionism, the dirty natured and deceitful camp with
tyrannical ideology. They have resentment to the Iranian religious
beliefs, independence and the non-compromisory spirit of Iranian nation.'
He added that hostility of the arrogant camp is evident in many ways.
'Once the hostility is represented in the form of the US administration
and another day in the form of such tyrannical regime as Saddam; but
what's of importance is that we should use many capacity available to the
country and identify the stances and plans of the enemy to make right
decision to thwart the threats.'" http://t.uani.com/2bugJLK
Cyberwarfare
Reuters: "Iran has detected and removed
malicious software from two of its petrochemical complexes, a senior
military official said on Saturday, after announcing last week it was
investigating whether recent petrochemical fires were caused by cyber
attacks. The official said the malware at the two plants was inactive and
had not played a role in the fires. 'In periodical inspection of
petrochemical units, a type of industrial malware was detected and the
necessary defensive measures were taken,' Gholamreza Jalali, head of
Iran's civilian defense, was quoted as saying by the state news agency
IRNA." http://t.uani.com/2bwmcvD
Saudi-Iran
Tensions
AP: "Iraq's Foreign Ministry said
the government on Sunday formally requested that the Saudi ambassador in
Baghdad be replaced after he claimed that Iranian-backed Shiite militias
are plotting to assassinate him. Foreign Ministry spokesman Ahmed Jamal
told The Associated Press that the government sent a formal request to
Saudi Arabia to replace the kingdom's ambassador in Baghdad, Thamer
al-Sabhan. Jamal said al-Sabhan's reported comments are untrue and harm
relations between the two countries. He said the allegations are considered
interference in Iraq's internal affairs and that al-Sabhan has not
provided the ministry with any proof or evidence of these claims...
Al-Sabhan was quoted as telling the Saudi-owned al-Hayat newspaper that
Iraqi intelligence provided him with information about the assassination
plans. He said this was happening as Iran tries to block reform efforts
in Iraq and other Arab countries." http://t.uani.com/2bwp23L
Human
Rights
AP: "The scratchy, echo-filled tape
recording carries the voice of a man who once was in line to become
Iran's supreme leader, talking about one of the darkest moments of the
country's post-revolution history still not recognized by its government.
The recording has Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri condemning Iran's
execution of thousands of prisoners at the end of the country's bloody
war with Iraq in 1988. He warns those gathered they've committed 'the
biggest crime in the history of the Islamic Republic,' while criticizing
them for misleading the country's then-ailing supreme leader, Ayatollah
Ruhollah Khomeini. The criticisms by Montazeri, who lived for years under
house arrest and died of natural causes after Iran's disputed 2009 presidential
election, long ago surfaced in his own memoirs and writings. But the
furor ignited by the release of the tapes by his family this month expose
the lingering, unhealed wounds of the chaotic years that followed Iran's
1979 Islamic Revolution, as well as politics now at play in the greater
Middle East. 'All advice and criticism from my father was for saving the
ruling system - which he had paid so much for,' his son, Ahmad Montazeri,
recently wrote online." http://t.uani.com/2bDbjdl
UN: "The United Nations rights
expert on the situation of human rights in Iran has called on the
Government to immediately halt the execution of 12 individuals, all of
whom have been reportedly sentenced to death for drug-related offences.
The executions are reportedly scheduled for tomorrow, Saturday, 27
August, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR)
said in a news release today. 'It is regrettable that the Government
continues to proceed with executions for crimes that do not meet the
threshold of the most serious crimes as required by international law,
especially the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to
which Iran is State party,' Ahmed Shaheed, Special Rapporteur on the
situation of human rights in Iran, said in the news release." http://t.uani.com/2c8Ns88
Reuters: "The death penalty has failed
to reduce drug trafficking in Iran, a senior Iranian judiciary official
said on Saturday shortly before the scheduled execution of 12 people for
narcotics-related offences. His criticism was unusual in a judiciary that
has long been a bastion of the hardline security establishment in the
Islamic Republic, which carries out more executions per capita than any
other country. Nearly 1,000 prisoner were put to death in 2015, most of
them for drug trafficking. Most narcotics are smuggled into Iran along
its long, often lawless border with Afghanistan, which supplies about 90
percent of the world's opium from which heroin is made. 'The truth is,
the execution of drug smugglers has had no deterrent effect,' Mohammad
Baqer Olfat, deputy head of judiciary for social affairs, was quoted as
saying by the semi-official Tasnim news agency. 'We have fought
full-force against smugglers according to the law, but unfortunately we
are experiencing an increase in the volume of drugs trafficked to Iran,
the transit of drugs through the country, the variety of drugs, and the
number of people who are involved in it,' Olfat said. He said he had
suggested to the judiciary chief that rather than the death penalty,
traffickers should serve long prison terms with hard labor." http://t.uani.com/2bDaKjz
Domestic
Politics
AFP: "The Tehran prosecutor
recommended strict new rules Saturday for concerts in the capital, the
latest in a tug of war between moderates and conservatives that has
already seen live music banned in Iran's second city Mashhad. Police
should record all events, while the culture ministry and the provincial
governor should take greater responsibility for the content of
performances and the behavior of audiences, the judiciary's official
Mizan news agency quoted Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi as saying. It comes amid
a wave of last-minute cancellations of concerts in Iran under pressure
from hardliners and religious leaders which has been criticized by the
more liberal President Hassan Rouhani... A row erupted earlier this month
when a prayer leader in Mashhad, which is a Shiite pilgrimage site as
well as Iran's second city, lashed out at the 'debauchery' of
concert-goers and called for them to be banned. Although no concerts have
been held in Mashhad for 11 years, Culture Minister Ali Jannati agreed to
the ban, only to find himself criticized by the president for caving into
conservative demands. 'As far as I am concerned, no minister should give
in to any pressure,' Rouhani said this week... On Thursday, a letter
signed by 5,000 people in Iran's music industry was published in the
reformist press, describing the ban on concerts in Mashhad as a
'catastrophe that sacrifices music today, and the rest of the culture and
the reputation of this country tomorrow.'" http://t.uani.com/2bwo0Ez
AP: "Iran's official news agency is
reporting the country has inaugurated first phase of its 'National
Network of Data.' Iran has long sought to create its own national
Intranet. The Sunday report by IRNA says the network aims to promote
online Islamic content, and encourage less dependency on the Internet
while providing safer data transfer and protection against cyber-attacks.
It said the second phase of the decade-old project will go online in
February 2017 and it will be completed in August 2017. Critics say the
network may eventually lead to more restrictions for users, but officials
deny that." http://t.uani.com/2bLCS5N
Opinion
& Analysis
Farzin
Nadimi in WINEP:
"The strategic Strait of Hormuz has once again been the scene of
close encounters between U.S. Navy vessels and speedboats from the
Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy (IRGCN), leaving observers to
guess at the motivations behind the Iranian moves. The multiple incidents
that occurred this week raised the risk of miscalculation in a
sovereignly cramped part of the world. On August 23-24, several IRGCN
speedboats aggressively approached American warships as the latter were
reportedly transiting international waters in or approaching the Strait
of Hormuz in accordance with maritime law. On each occasion, the Iranians
conducted what the U.S. Navy called 'unsafe intercepts,' crossing the
bows of the American ships at high speed and close range without any
attempt to establish radio contact. In at least one of the incidents,
they even reportedly uncovered their weapons. During yet another incident
on August 25, the USS Squall fired several warning shots well in front of
the Iranian boats to warn them off. These events are only the latest
example of provocative encounters between American and Iranian naval
forces in the Persian Gulf -- especially by the IRGCN, which is much more
prone to such behavior than Iran's regular navy. It is certainly not a
new thing for IRGCN boats to harass Western and American ships crossing
the strait. They have also made it a habit to conduct surprise live rocket
fire exercises in proximity to U.S. Navy vessels in the international
waters of the Persian Gulf, most recently on August 15 according to
Defense News. The nature and timing of the latest incidents provide some
clues about the intentions of the IRGC's high-risk behavior. In
particular, the provocations may have a domestic political dimension,
aimed at those within President Hassan Rouhani's government who advocate
better relations with the West. The IRGC is closely aligned with Supreme
Leader Ali Khamenei's hardline circle and frequently takes actions in
accordance with his spoken or unspoken policies." http://t.uani.com/2bwnN9k
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