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TOP STORIES
President Donald Trump will call on world leaders to
confront North Korea and Iran in his first address to the United
Nations on Tuesday, seeking a broad alliance against the two
countries his administration considers the world's gravest threats.
With his remarks, Trump will emphasize that the peril posed by North
Korean and Iranian weapons programs is too great for any country to
remain on the sidelines, according to two U.S. officials who
previewed themes of the address on Monday.
Asked by reporters whether he would withdraw [from the
Iran deal], Mr. Trump said, "You'll see very soon. You'll be
seeing very soon." He added: "We're talking about it
constantly. Constantly. We're talking about plans constantly."
"We will destroy the Zionist entity at lightning
speed, and thus shorten the 25 years it still has left," Iranian
media quoted [Seyyed Abdolrahim Mousavi, an Iranian military officer
currently acting as the Commander-in-Chief of the Islamic Republic of
Iran Army] as saying in reference to a recurring threat by Iran and
its Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to take down the State of
Israel in the next quarter century. "I warn the [Zionist] entity
not to make any stupid move against the Islamic Republic of Iran,"
he threatened. "Every [such] stupid act will [make us] turn Tel
Aviv and Haifa into dust."
IRAN NUCLEAR DEAL
NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISOR H.R. MCMASTER: Well, we have
to see what live with it means, right? Live with can't be giving this
regime cover to develop a nuclear capability. And so, a lot of things
have to happen immediately, rigorous enforcement of that agreement.
It is under-enforced now. We know Iran has already violated parts of
the agreement... the IAEA has identified and we've identified some of
these breaches that Iran has then corrected. But what does that tell
you about Iranian behavior? They're not just walking up to the line
on the agreement. They're crossing the line at times... [W]e have to
recognize the fundamental flaws in this deal. It is -- as the
president said -- it is the worst deal. It gave all these benefits to
the Iranian regime upfront and these benefits now they are using to
foment this humanitarian catastrophe in the greater Middle East.
Lawmakers on the Senate Intelligence Committee are
hinting at still-secret details related to Iranian compliance with
the nuclear deal that the president could use to back up a potential
October decertification. Trump is required by law to report to Congress
every 90 days on Iranian implementation of the nuclear deal. If he
decertifies compliance on or before October 15, Congress then has 60
days to debate reimposing sanctions lifted under the agreement-some
of which Trump waived this week.
France on Monday gave a staunch defense of the Iran
nuclear deal, suggesting there could be talks to strengthen the pact
for the post-2025 period but that allowing it to collapse could lead
Iran's neighbors to seek atomic weapons.
The United States and Iran quarreled over how Tehran's
nuclear activities should be policed at a meeting of the U.N. nuclear
watchdog on Monday, in a row sparked last month by Washington's call
for wider inspections. Key U.S. allies are worried by the possibility
of Washington pulling out of a 2015 landmark nuclear deal under which
Iran agreed to curb its nuclear program in exchange for sanctions
against it being lifted.
Iranian Vice President Ali Akbar Salehi on Monday
accused the U.S. of violating the spirit and letter of the 2015
nuclear deal, escalating a clash between the two countries at the
start of a crucial week of talks on the accord's future.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said Monday that
America will pay a "high cost" if US President Donald Trump
makes good on his threats to scrap the Iran nuclear deal... He said
any riposte from Iran would come "quite swiftly" and
"probably within a week," adding that "if the US wants
to increase the tensions it will see the reaction from Iran."
With President Trump's disdain for the 2015 agreement on
limiting Iran's nuclear program threatening the pact's survival,
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani is likely to focus much of his time
at the U.N. General Assembly this week with one main goal in mind:
defending the controversial agreement. During his highly anticipated
speech to the General Assembly on Wednesday--along with several other
planned meetings--Rouhani will likely argue that Iran has complied
with the terms of the deal.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will suggest
"concrete ideas" to US President Donald Trump during their
meeting in New York on Monday to either change or scrap the Iranian
nuclear deal, sources in the Prime Minister's entourage said on
Sunday. The meeting comes amid a debate in Washington over whether
the US should walk away from the deal and what ramifications that
move would create.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will lay out a
comprehensive case against Iran in his speech Tuesday at the United
Nations, "connecting the dots" between the nuclear deal and
Tehran's desire to establish itself militarily on Israel's northern
border, Israel's ambassador to the UN Danny Danon said Sunday.
Netanyahu will make plain that in Jerusalem's view the Iran nuclear
pact must not be left intact, Danon said.
The French government will use meetings at the UN this
week to try to persuade Donald Trump not to abandon the nuclear
agreement with Iran, warning that the deal's collapse would trigger a
"spiral of proliferation" in the Middle East, the French
foreign minister said. Jean-Yves Le Drian said that Iran was abiding
by the terms of the 2015 deal, and that verification measures were
being "strictly implemented" by the International Atomic
Energy Agency (IAEA).
SANCTIONS RELIEF
As Iran's economy tries to rebound from years of harsh
international sanctions, producers of black caviar - that salt-cured
delicacy associated with the rich and famous, with a price tag to
match - are also eyeing a comeback. Once among Iran's most famous
exports, the industry nearly collapsed because of trade restrictions
and an international clampdown on the capture of sturgeon from the
Caspian Sea.
Less than two years after it returned to the
international oil markets, Iran is quick to embrace the alternative
of oil: renewable energy sources. The country's Deputy Energy
Minister, Houshang Fallahatian, told media that Tehran plans to add
1,000 MW of new renewable power capacity every year over the next
five years. Revenues from renewables should reach US$60 billion if
the plan succeeds.
EXTREMISM
Iran's army chief warned Monday that his country would
immediately lay waste to Israel's commercial capital of Tel Aviv
should Israeli leaders make any mistakes. The threat came just a day
before Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was set to take the
stage to deliver a U.N. General Assembly speech widely believed to
center on Iran's growing influence in the Middle East. Israel's
traditionally dismal relationships with other countries in the majority-Muslim
region have shifted, with some Gulf Arab states reportedly moving
away from a decades-long boycott established after Israel's founding
in 1948 and the subsequent expulsion and exodus of hundreds of
thousands of Palestinians.
FOREIGN AFFAIRS
Like two catty girls whose favorite thing to do when
getting together is talk smack about the weird kid in class, it seems
when the US and Israel meet - or rather their leaders do - all they
want to dish about is Iran, and not their own fetch bilateral relations
or peace efforts. With Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in New York
for the United Nations General Assembly, and slated to see US
President Donald Trump on Monday, Israeli concerns about Iran are, in
the words of Yedioth Ahronoth's headline, "Back on the
table."
Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Chief of
General Staff Gen. Hulusi Akar will pay separate visits to Iran in
the coming days amid rising tension over the Iraqi Kurdistan Regional
Government's (KRG) bid to hold an independence referendum on Sept. 25
and continued efforts to defeat the Islamic State of Iraq and the
Levant (ISIL) in Syria. President Erdoğan and Iranian President Hasan
Ruhani will preside over the Fifth Turkey-Iran High Level Strategic
Council meeting that will be held in Tehran on Oct. 4.
IRAQ CRISIS
Iran warned on Sunday that independence for Iraqi
Kurdistan would mean an end to all border and security arrangements
with the regional government.
YEMEN CRISIS
The top American admiral in the Middle East said on
Monday that Iran continues to smuggle illicit weapons and technology
into Yemen, stoking the civil strife there and enabling
Iranian-backed rebels to fire missiles into neighboring Saudi Arabia
that are more precise and far-reaching.
HUMAN RIGHTS
President Donald Trump will give special attention to
the Iranian people during his speech Tuesday to the United Nations
General Assembly - signaling that he sees them as not only separate
from their Islamist government, but as a threat to its survival, a
senior administration official said.
Iran's imprisonment of Xiyue Wang, a naturalized United
States citizen from China who is a Ph.D. candidate in history at
Princeton University, has left his family, colleagues and supporters
despondent and outraged... The Iranian judiciary said this July that
he had been sentenced to a 10-year term for espionage. His wife, Hua
Qu... [said]... ["]Over all, he's doing poorly there. He has
health problems and hopes to get access to medical treatment and to
get home as soon as possible. That is probably the only way to solve
his health issues, his depression. It's very difficult.["]
Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof has been ordered to
attend a court hearing in Tehran after his passport was confiscated
at the border before the weekend. Rasoulof, who won the Un Certain
Regard award at Cannes this year for his film A Man of Integrity
(also known as Lerd), was returning to Iran from Colorado's Telluride
Film Festival when he was stopped at Tehran Airport on Friday. No
reason was given for the confiscation of his passport, and he was
subsequently ordered to appear at a "culture and media"
court in the Iranian capital, Kaveh Farman a co-producer on A Man of
Integrity told The Hollywood Reporter.
Mahvash Sabet, one of the leaders of Iran's Baha'i
community jailed by authorities, has been released after serving her
10-year-prison sentence. Sabet, 64, and six other Baha'i leaders were
arrested in 2008 and convicted of espionage and spreading propaganda
against the clerical establishment... "Although the news of the
release of Sabet after the completion of her sentence is a welcome
development, it does not signal the end of the persecution of the
Baha'is in Iran," Bani Dugal, the representative of the Baha'i
International Community to the United Nations in New York, said.
OPINION & ANALYSIS
Team Trump is facing up to the fact that Iran is
regularly cheating on the Obama administration's nuclear deal - even
if it's not yet clear what they'll do about it... Why keep the deal
when Iran is simply cheating its way into the nuclear club?
As world leaders converge on New York this week for the
U.N. General Assembly, a U.N. body is set to publicly call for the
release of two Iranian Americans imprisoned unjustly in Tehran. That
creates an opportunity for the Trump administration to make good on
its promise to ramp up efforts to bring American hostages home. With
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad
Zarif present with him in New York, President Trump is expected to
focus on the future of the Iran nuclear deal, Iranian military
expansion in the Middle East and the regime's human rights abuses.
But the subject of American hostages is also a stated priority of the
Trump White House. The question is whether the president will give it
equal billing or put the fate of the U.S. prisoners on a back burner.
[I]f the US president is hell-bent on needling Iran, he
should at least needle them on the right topic: human rights...
Freedom of speech and the right to protest would energise young
Iranians who crave the opportunities their peers have in the West.
The problem is the US shows itself barely interested in backing waves
of dissent that would help to boot religion out of government in
Iran... So what should Trump do as he attends his first UN General
Assembly as President? Easy. Approach Federica Mogherini, the EU's
high representative on foreign affairs - she has the ear of the
Iranians like no one. Just like General Zod used Lois Lane to get
Superman's attention, Trump should implore Mogherini to pile pressure
on Iran's foreign minister Zarif - who denies Iran even has a human
rights problem - to push his government about the plight of innocent
people in the country's jails and outside, and those in judicial
limbo having paid a paralysing amount of money for bail.
As Prime Minister Netanyahu rightly pointed out during
our meeting, the greatest threat to Israel is the expansion of the
world's leading state sponsor of terrorism and a regime that openly
calls for the annihilation of the Jewish State - Iran. The Iranian
threat has increased exponentially due to an influx of billions of
dollars to the regime that resulted from the Obama administration's
flawed nuclear deal that provided sanctions relief to a tyrannical
regime.
It is hard to tell what [Secetary of State Rex
Tillerson] thinks or even if he speaks for the president, who has
said he wanted to nix the deal months ago... [A]re these guys
recommending Trump find Iran in breach or not? You got me. The
haphazard way in which this is playing out - without a single clear
message, without consultation with our allies or Congress, and with
no plan for what happens if Russia and China (at the very least) don't
go along with existing sanctions and nix sanctions on non-nuclear
activities - is distressing... Does anyone think this administration
is remotely capable of comparable finesse in managing the
consequences of a pullout from the JCPOA? Tillerson cannot even get
through a polite interview without sowing confusion and
consternation.
Israel's formidable military capability-for which the
Russians (and Assad) have a healthy dose of respect-can become a
major factor driving a wedge between Russian and Iranian designs.
Ever since Russia's military intervention in Syria began in September
2015, it has been made repeatedly and abundantly clear to Moscow that
Israel will act decisively to prevent Syria from becoming a conduit
of strategic supply to Iran's proxy Hizballah or a base of operations
for that organization's further expansion. Interestingly, Putin's
response has been not summarily to show Netanyahu the door but
instead to suggest mechanisms of "deconfliction": another
way of saying that Israel's concerns are understood and will be
honored. This is hardly to suggest that the Russians will relinquish
their cooperation with Iran. But they are quite capable of telling
Assad, discreetly but effectively, not to put himself, let alone what
Moscow has invested in his survival, at risk.
Despite President Donald Trump's disapproval of the
JCPOA agreement with Iran, which he promised during his election
campaign to "rip up," he has been persuaded by his advisers
to recertify it. He has also, however, gotten the UN Security Council
to impose sanctions on Iran as a penalty for developing nuclear
missiles, supporting terror, and undermining international order. The
Iranian leadership responded with a threat to quit the JCPOA and
renew uranium enrichment at a high level. Though the IAEA has not yet
determined that Iran has violated the agreement, Western experts view
Iran's behavior as problematic. They fear Iran could break the rules
and renew its nuclear weapons program, and that it will be encouraged
to do so by North Korea's provocative stance toward the US.
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