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The Senate moved decisively Thursday to renew a
decades-old sanctions law that lawmakers said gives the United States the
clout to punish Iran should it fail to live up to the terms of the
landmark nuclear deal. Senators passed the bill unanimously, 99-0, two
weeks after the House also approved the legislation by an overwhelming
margin of 419-1. The bill to grant a 10-year extension of the Iran
Sanctions Act will be sent to President Barack Obama, who planned to sign
it. The White House deemed the bill unnecessary but said it didn't
violate the international accord meant to slow Iran's ability to make
nuclear arms. Seeking to address Iran's concerns, White House officials
emphasized that the administration can and will waive all the nuclear-related
sanctions included in the renewal... Sen. Ben Cardin of Maryland, the
senior Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has argued
that keeping the law on the books is necessary if the U.S. wants to
retain "a credible deterrent" of putting sanctions back into
place should Iran cheat on its obligations under the nuclear agreement.
The Trump transition team is examining proposals for US
sanctions on Iran separate from its nuclear programme in a move likely to
draw a furious reaction from Tehran. Transition officials have begun
sounding out Republicans in Congress about the options for sanctions that
might not technically breach the 2015 nuclear deal. They could include
measures that focus on Iran's ballistic missile programme or its human
rights record, say congressional sources. Although the Trump team is a
long way from deciding how it will approach the nuclear deal, its Iran
policy work is being led by an expert on sanctions legislation.
"They are already looking closely at their options - and that very
much includes non-nuclear sanctions," says one congressional
official who has been in touch with the transition team... Officials and
experts in contact with the transition team are in the early stages of
developing an Iran policy, especially as Mr Trump has yet to choose a
secretary of state. However, the team has started preparatory work on new
sanctions. The point person for Iran on the transition is Yleem Poblete,
a former senior staff official at the House foreign affairs committee
where she was closely involved in drafting the main pieces of Iran
sanctions legislation... "The big difference next year is that we
will go from a White House that did everything it could to block these
bills to a White House that will be in favour and maybe even sponsor some
of these proposals," said a Republican congressional source.
The Senate passed on Thursday a ten-year extension of
existing U.S. sanctions on Iran, sending President Obama a bill that his
administration protests as unnecessary. Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah
Ali Khamenei, said last month that the extension of the Iran Sanctions
Act, which covers energy, trade and defense-sector sanctions against
Tehran's nuclear and missile activities, would threaten the nuclear pact
passed last year. He threatened that Iran would respond if the extension
became law - putting veto pressure on the Obama administration. But Obama
may be powerless to prevent the sanctions extension from becoming law,
now that both chambers have voted overwhelmingly for it: senators passed
the legislation on Thursday by a vote of 99 to 0, while last month, House
lawmakers passed the same bill by a vote of 419 to 1. The White House
argued against extending the law by stressing the president already has
"substantial authorities" to sanction the Iranian regime for
bad behavior - such as a recent spate of ballistic missile tests that
U.S. officials believe run counter to the spirit, if not the letter, of
the Iranian nuclear deal.
IRAN NUCLEAR DEAL
Iran said on Friday that Congress's decision to renew US
sanctions for 10 years was a violation of last year's nuclear agreement
and promised an "appropriate" response. "As repeatedly
stated by high-ranking Iranian officials, the recent bill passed by the
House of Representatives and the Senate to renew sanctions against Iran
is against the (nuclear deal)," foreign ministry spokesman Bahram
Ghasemi said. "Iran has proved that it sticks to its international
agreements but it also has appropriate responses for all
situations."
Iran will increase its uranium enrichment capacity if the
US renews sanctions against the Islamic Republic and violates the
landmark nuclear agreement between Tehran and the P5+1 group of
countries, a senior Iranian lawmaker says. "In case of the extension
of sanctions [against Iran] and violation of the JCPOA (the nuclear agreement,
known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action), we will raise uranium
production and enrichment to 190,000 SWU (separative work units),"
the chairman of the Iranian Parliament's Committee on National Security
and Foreign Policy, Alaeddin Boroujerdi, said on Tuesday. He added that
the "retaliatory measure" will be carried out in line with
legislation passed by the Iranian Parliament... "'Initiating
sanctions' is no different from 'renewing them after their expiration,'
and the latter is also [an instance of imposing] sanctions and violation
of the previous commitments by the opposite side," Leader of the
Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei said on Sunday.
As a candidate, Donald Trump called the six-nation accord
with Iran to halt its nuclear program "one of the dumbest deals
ever" and said dismantling it would be a top priority. Now, he's
finding that ripping it up after he becomes president may not be so easy.
Walking away from the deal struck just last year might satisfy Israel and
Gulf allies such as Saudi Arabia who say Iran's theocratic leaders can't
be trusted, but analysts say it could sour Trump's nascent relationship
with European allies, China and possibly Russian President Vladimir
Putin. Despite their distaste for the accord, some influential Republican
members of Congress believe there is little to be gained from canceling
it now. "A number of people who have been very critical of the Iran
nuclear deal are out there saying tearing it up is not the answer,"
said Stephen Hadley, a national security adviser under President George
W. Bush who has been mentioned for a possible position in the Trump administration.
SANCTIONS RELIEF
Trade Minister Todd McClay leads a senior-level business
delegation on New Zealand's first trade mission to Tehran in twelve
years, today. Iran and New Zealand have a long-standing trade
relationship, dating back to 1975 when New Zealand established an Embassy
in Tehran, its first in the Middle East. "There is enormous
opportunity for Iran and New Zealand to work together to boost two-way
trade," says Mr McClay... The eighteen New Zealand companies joining
Mr McClay on this visit to Iran are: NIG Nutritionals, Tait
Communications, Enatel Limited, Sealord, Silver Fern Farms, Westland Milk
Products, Fonterra, FrameCAD, Flight Coffee, Switchfloat, University of
Canterbury, University of Auckland, ANZCO, Auckland University of
Technology, Pacific Helmets, Pelco NZ, NZ Bankers Association, and
Pultron Composites.
FCAES, the 50/50 Faurecia - MAAD joint-venture will
develop and produce emissions control systems for the Iranian automotive
market... AFISCO, the 50/50 Faurecia - Azin Khodro joint-venture for
vehicle interior systems, expects its total sales to reach 50 million
euros in 2020. FAPSCO, the existing Faurecia joint-venture for automotive
seating, expects to grow its business to 340,000 car sets per year and
total sales of 150 million euros in 2020.
TERRORISM
Two Iranian men were charged Thursday in a Kenyan court
with collecting information to facilitate a terrorist act after they were
allegedly found with video footage of the Israeli embassy. Sayed
Nasrollah Ebrahim and Abdolhosein Gholi Safaee were arrested Tuesday in
an Iranian diplomatic car on Bishops Road in Nairobi, after they had come
from visiting Kamiti Prison where they saw two other Iranians who have
been jailed for 15 years on terrorism charges, said prosecutor Duncan
Ondimu. The suspects were taking the pictures using a mobile phone,
Ondimu said. A Kenyan driver, Moses Keyah Mmboga, who was chauffeuring
the vehicle belonging to the Iranian embassy, has been charged with the
suspects and also faces a separate charge of "abetting
terrorism". Iranian agents are suspected in attacks or thwarted
attacks around the globe in recent years, including in Azerbaijan,
Thailand and India. Most of the plots had Israeli targets. In June 2013 a
Kenyan court convicted two Iranian nationals of being Quds agents
plotting attacks against Western targets in Kenya and they were sentenced
to life in prison.
The Obama administration has determined that enabling the
sale of aircraft and other materials to an Iranian airline sanctioned for
ferrying weapons on behalf of Iran's military does not undermine its
foreign policy goals, according to communications with Congress obtained
exclusively by THE WEEKLY STANDARD. Administration officials have
resisted explaining why restrictions were dropped on Iran Air, which had
been sanctioned for helping Iran bolster Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad,
among other illicit activities, and have not said whether the airline has
stopped engaging in the activities it was originally sanctioned for... In
response to a recent inquiry from Illinois representative Peter Roskam,
the Treasury Department revealed that delisting the airline promoted the
administration's foreign policy priorities. "We made the commitment
to remove Iran Air from the SDN List only after a careful review of its
activity to ensure that its removal would be consistent with our national
security and foreign policy goals," the letter said. Experts insist
that Iran Air continues to engage in illicit activities.
OPINION & ANALYSIS
President-elect Donald J. Trump's improbable electoral
victory has left the international community stunned. With foreign
policy elites around the world bracing for a geopolitical earthquake when
it comes to the 45th President of the United States, the Iran file may
very well undergo an extreme makeover, pivoting from quasi-detente to
aggression. A Trump presidency has the potential to be a game changer in
relations between Iran and the United States for three principle reasons:
the emboldening of Iranian hardliners as a result of his election; the
initiation of a tit-for-tat retaliatory dynamic between both countries;
and the thwarting of the piecemeal normalization of U.S.-Iran bilateral
diplomatic contacts. From the day the nuclear deal was inked, the Supreme
Leader of Iran Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has been hedging his bets - blessing
the nuclear agreement, while publicly complaining that the United States
could not be trusted to fulfill its end of the bargain, akin to consuming
a "lethal poison." With President-elect Trump's dubbing of the
accord as a "disaster" that could lead to a "nuclear
holocaust" and vow that his "(n)umber-(o)ne priority"
would be to "dismantle the disastrous deal with Iran," such
rhetoric will likely play into the worst suspicions of conservatives in
Tehran's corridors of power. If a U.S. presidential administration
was seen as abrogating an international commitment, Iran's firebrands
would be given even more ammunition to direct at the pragmatic President
Hassan Rouhani, who is up for reelection in the spring of 2017.
The monarchies of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) have
survived another brush with cyberwarfare. Several U.S.-based
cybersecurity firms reported on Tuesday that a new version of Shamoon -
the same malware that wreaked havoc on oil and natural gas companies in
the region in 2012 - had surfaced, targeting computers in the Middle
East. Then on Wednesday, Saudi Arabia confirmed that the latest version
of Shamoon had hit six institutions in the kingdom, including its civil
aviation authority, which lost significant data and experienced
complications for several days after. (The incident did not impair
airport operations, though.) In tactics and intent, the latest attack was
strikingly similar to the 2012 episode. Like that attack, the recent
strike seemed to be intended as a warning to GCC countries, causing data
loss without interrupting operations or destroying critical
infrastructure. Furthermore, the use of malware against specific targets
- a more sophisticated tactic than, for instance, a distributed denial of
service attack - suggests the work of a state or state-sponsored actor.
Much as they did in the original 2012 case, all signs point to Iran as
the perpetrator. And though it could have been far more devastating for
Saudi Arabia, the incident offers a potent reminder that as countries
around the world vie for influence, cyberspace may be their next theater
of war.
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