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TOP STORIES
President Donald Trump understands the
"danger" of the Iran nuclear deal, the Israeli prime
minister said on Thursday, adding that Israel will take all measures
necessary to stop Tehran from getting atomic weapons... Netanyahu
said that despite what he described as a revival of anti-Semitism in
the West, the greatest danger "comes from Iran." The Shiite
power and Israel's archenemy is "calling outright for the
destruction of the Jewish state," Netanyahu said, adding that
the Iranian regime's calls to "wipe out every Israeli" have
been met with "deafening silence" by the world. Netanyahu
said he believes the Trump era will change that. "I spoke a few
days ago to President Trump and he spoke about the Iranian
aggression. He spoke about Iran's commitment to destroy Israel. He
spoke about the nature of this nuclear agreement and the danger it
poses. We spoke about it together," Netanyahu said... Netanyahu
was speaking at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem on the
eve of International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Theresa May has warned about "Iran's malign
influence in the Middle East" in a speech delivered to
Republicans in Philadelphia. The Prime Minister said pushing back on
"Iran's aggressive efforts" to increase its "arc of
influence from Tehran through to the Mediterranean" was a
priority for the UK, taking a markedly tougher tone since
reestablishing diplomatic relations 18 months ago... Ms May said
while the deal was "controversial" it had been successful
in neutralising the threat posed by the country. However, she warned
that it should be "rigorously policed" and any potential
breaches of the deal should be dealt with "firmly and
immediately".
Iranian human rights defender and writer Golrokh
Ebrahimi Iraee, sentenced to six years in prison for writing a story
about the cruel practice of stoning, was rearrested on Sunday and the
judicial review of her conviction is being illegally blocked, said
Amnesty International today. Golrokh Ebrahimi Iraee was returned to
Evin prison after being picked up by Revolutionary Guard officials
while on the way to visit her gravely ill husband, human rights
defender Arash Sadeghi, in hospital. She had been on temporary prison
leave since 3 January, awaiting a judicial review by Iran's Supreme
Court of her six-year imprisonment for writing an unpublished,
fictional story. The review is being deliberately held up in the
courts by the Revolutionary Guards.
SANCTIONS RELIEF
Supertankers from Iran's state-owned oil fleet are
sailing to Europe for the first time since sanctions were eased last
year, as one of the world's biggest crude shippers moves to step up
deliveries. The National Iranian Tanker Company currently has two
giant vessels called 'Snow' and 'Huge' steaming towards the storage
and trading port of Rotterdam after loading at Kharg Island earlier
this month. While European refiners have been taking small cargoes of
Iranian crude since the loosening of sanctions linked to the nuclear
deal with Tehran last year, these are the first vessels operated by
the NITC rather than independent shippers. Each of the very large
crude carriers (VLCCs) are capable of carrying more than 2m barrels
of oil. Sirus Kianersi, NITC managing director, said last week that
there had been a "resolution" of the insurance and
international certification issues that had delayed the Iranian oil
shipper from sending its own vessels to European ports.
Iran's monthly oil exports are set to climb slightly
in February, as Indonesia takes its first shipment since sanctions on
Tehran were lifted last year, a person with knowledge of Iran's
tanker loading schedule said. Volumes remain below last September's
high, however, suggesting that Iran has had difficulty finding more
buyers for its oil, even after being exempt from production cuts
agreed by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries
(OPEC) and other exporters last November... Indonesia is expected to
lift nearly 34,000 bpd in February, according to the source... The
Netherlands is lifting its first crude and loading nearly 70,000 bpd
this month, according to the source. It earlier bought condensate
from Iran... In the last month supertankers owned by Greek and
Croatian owners have hauled Iranian crude from Kharg Island to Spain,
Italy and Thailand according to ship tracking data on the Reuters Eikon
terminal.
HUMAN RIGHTS
Last month alone, two prominent Iranian soccer players
found themselves summoned to the Ethics Committee of the Iranian
soccer federation. Masoud Shojaei was called in for discussing
corruption in Iranian soccer in an interview with a foreign media
outlet. One week later, on Dec. 10, Mehdi Rahmati, the goalkeeper and
current captain of the Esteghlal Football Club, was summoned for
taking a picture with a woman who was not wearing a headscarf during
a team camp in Armenia... Critics say the Ethics Committee's
interference in players' personal lives is inappropriate and in
violation of a FIFA statute.
OPINION & ANALYSIS
Iran announced last week that it would start feeding
its first IR-8 centrifuges with uranium hexafluoride gas (UF6). The
2015 Iran nuclear deal states that Tehran's breakout time (the time
needed to enrich uranium enough for a nuclear bomb) is one year, but
that is based on Iran only using the first-generation, less-efficient
IR-1 centrifuges. With more powerful IR-8s and other advanced
centrifuges, Iran could enrich uranium for a weapon much faster. In
three to four years, the country could be able to deploy large
numbers of advanced centrifuges - if it can convince the
international community that its nuclear program is peaceful and that
it should be treated like any other nation, without restriction on
its nuclear and enrichment activities... The Trump administration
will need to act quickly. Once Iran is technically able to construct
an IR-8 demonstration plant, and once the IAEA reaches a broader
conclusion, rolling back Tehran's enrichment capacity will no longer
be in the cards. Instead, Iran will have an expanding nuclear program
with increasing uranium enrichment capacities - with all of the
dangerous ramifications for the region and the world that such a
scenario would bring.
The death of Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, one of the
Islamic Republic of Iran's founding fathers, represents not just the
loss of an elder statesman. It's a political blow to the fortunes of
reformists and moderates in Iran for three main reasons: Rafsanjani's
revolutionary street cred; his absence from the Assembly of
Experts-the body that selects the next Supreme Leader; and his
promotion of republicanism within Iran.
Ehud Barak, Israel's Prime Minister from 1999 to 2001,
believed his country's Arab adversaries would be more afraid if Tel
Aviv behaved in an unpredictable way. As long as Israel was
predictable, Barak's thinking went, outrageous acts of terrorism
would continue to be inevitable. Known as "the landlord went
crazy," the strategy was employed by Dan Halutz, the then Israel
Defense Force chief of staff, in the Second Lebanon War in 2006 and
the Gaza operation in 2008. The confession of Hezbollah secretary
general Hassan Nasrallah, after the Second Lebanon War, that if had
he known Israel would "go crazy" in response to the ambush
and abduction of its soliders, he would not have made such a mistake,
reveals the effectiveness of the crazy-landlord strategy, and indeed
Israel's failure to convey that message to the terror group at the
time. Similarly, the United States has failed to convey an adequate
message of deterrence to the Iranian regime during the past 37 years.
Since 1979, Iran has adopted a unique posture involving the export of
its own particular brand of Islamism; defiance of international
norms; a pursuit of hegemony over the Middle East; a quest for
nuclear weapons; and, most consequentially of all, declaring jihad
against the United States.
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