Iranians shop in a bazaar in Tehran, Iran. Photograph: Abedin Taherkenareh/EPA

Iranians were bracing themselves for a period of economic hardship on Monday after sweeping US sanctions came into full force, leading Iran’s president, Hassan Rouhani, to describe the situation as “economic war”.

The Iranian economy has been under strain since May, when Donald Trump exited the 2015 nuclear agreement – designed to curb Iran’s nuclear programme – and announced the return of sanctions.

His first set of sanctions were reimposed in August. Those measures hit the country’s access to dollars, gold, precious metals and the car-making sector, amid growing street protests.

And on Monday Trump unilaterally reimposed further sanctions, despite opposition from the US’s European partners of the nuclear accord, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. The new sanctions were timed to coincide with the anniversary of the 1979 US hostage crisis.

“For ordinary people, sanctions mean unemployment, sanctions mean becoming poor, sanctions mean the scarcity of medicine, the rising price of dollar,” said Akbar Shamsodini, an Iranian businessman in the oil and gas sector who lost his job six months ago as European companies started to pull out of Iran in fear of US sanctions.

“By imposing these sanctions, they want to force Iranians to rise up in revolt against their government but in practice, they will only make them flee their country,” he said, adding that ironically it would be Europe that would have to bear the burden of such a mass migration.

“We’re being squashed here … as an Iranian youth who studied here, worked here, the only thing I’m thinking about now is how to flee my country and go to Europe.”

Mahdi Attar, a postgrad student of mechatronics in University of Tehran, said most Iranians feared the impact of sanctions on the price of the dollar, which has more than tripled. One dollar buys roughly 145,000 rials this week, compared with 40,500 a year ago.

He said Iranian students now had to deal with much pricier payments for exams such as TOEFL or GRE, buying books online or simply paying for application fees when applying for universities abroad.

“Please inform Mr Trump that he has been cruel to us, the people of Iran; ask him not to pretend he’s on our side. Let the mask fall,” he said.

Trump’s sanctions, however, have been welcomed by the US allies in the region. The Israeli minister for education, Naftali Bennett, a politician from a righwing religious party, thanked Trump on Twitter for “making the ayatollahs scared again”.

Vahid Hatami, 27, who works in the banking software sector, said he earns around £100 ($130) a month – a salary that supports his parents and younger brother. “In the past six months as the situation is getting tough, if I didn’t have a job it means that my family would have been in trouble,” he said.

Iraj Kaveh, who has a company in Tehran specialized in importing wear-resistant steel plate from Belgium, said he could easily trade until March, but it is now finding it almost impossible, or with commissions of up to 11%, because of banking restrictions.

“We used to use both public and private banks or money exchanges to pay Belgium’s KBC bank, but since June all our money transfers gets rejected, citing US sanctions,” Kaveh told the Guardian. “These plates are used in our mining and cement industry and if companies use the domestic equivalent, it means they have to change them every two months, while the European version last for more than a year.”

Rouhani said the US was using the language of “pressure and threats” against the people of Iran. He said Washington was isolated in its anti-Iran stance, except for a few allies, in what appeared to be apparent references to Saudi Arabia and Israel.

He said: “The US is proud of backing a regime that kills the people of Palestine every day, putting them under bombing. They are proud of supporting a regime that is killing the people of Yemen every day.”

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/nov/05/iran-trump-us-sanctions

The post ‘People are despairing’: Iranians brace for sanctions to bite first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

The sanctions end all the economic benefits America granted Tehran for its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, though Iran for now continues to abide by the accord that saw it limit its enrichment of uranium. While for now not threatening to resume higher enrichment, Iranian officials in recent months have made a point to threaten that could resume at any time faster than before.

The new American sanctions particularly hurt Iran’s vital oil industry, a crucial source of hard currency for its anemic economy. Its national currency has plummeted over the last year, sending prices for everything from mobile phones to medicine skyrocketing.

“Today, Iran is able to sell its oil and it will sell,” Rouhani vowed Monday as the sanctions kicked in.

Iranian state television aired footage of air defense systems and anti-aircraft batteries in two-day military maneuvers underway across a vast stretch of the country’s north.

The drill was to continue through Tuesday. Iranian army Gen. Habibillah Sayyari said both the national army and the country’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard were taking part in the exercise.

Rouhani, meanwhile, pledged to government officials in comments aired on state TV that Iran would overcome the sanctions.

“We are in the war situation, ” Rouhani said. “We are in the economic war situation. We are confronting a bullying enemy. We have to stand to win.”

Iran is already in the grip of an economic crisis. Its national currency, the rial, now trades at 145,000 to one U.S. dollar, down from when it traded 40,500 to $1 a year ago. The economic chaos sparked mass anti-government protests at the end of last year which resulted in nearly 5,000 reported arrests and at least 25 people being killed. Sporadic demonstrations still continue.

The United States says the sanctions are not aimed at toppling the government, but at persuading it to radically change its policies, including its support for regional militant groups and its development of long-range ballistic missiles.

However, President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani and John Bolton, the president’s national security adviser, both have made public statements supporting overthrowing Iran’s theocratic government.

Israel’s Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman welcomed the newly restored U.S. sanctions in a tweet on Monday, saying they will deal a “critical blow” to Iran’s military presence around the Middle East.

The Trump administration’s decision to restore sanctions “is the sea change the Middle East has been waiting for,” he said.

Israel has been a fierce opponent of the 2015 nuclear deal from which the U.S. withdrew in May, saying the accord failed to rein in Iran’s regional military threat.

Contact TIME Editors about this story at editors@time.com.

Source: http://time.com/5444587/iran-military-drills-renewed-sanctions/

The post Iran’s President Warns of a ‘War Situation’ as the U.S. Reimposes Sanctions first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Iranian leader Khamenei on Wednesday published conditions the three European signatories of the 2015 Iranian nuclear deal — Germany, Britain and France — must accept to guarantee Iran stays in the agreement.

The move came as the three countries scramble to salvage the accord in the wake of the US’s withdrawal.

What the three European countries must accept:

• They will pledge to avoid opening negotiations over Iran’s ballistic missile program or actions in the Middle East.
• European banks should “safeguard trade” with Tehran.
• They should continue buying Iranian oil and should, if necessary, also buy Iranian oil the US decides not to buy.
• They should “stand up against US sanctions” on Iran.
• They should condemn US for reportedly breaking a United Nations resolution that supports the nuclear deal.

Read more: US plan for Iran means economic strife, break with EU

‘We don’t trust them’

Khamenei said, “We do not want to start a fight with these three countries [France, Germany and Britain] but we don’t trust them either.” He also warned that Iran would continue its enrichment of uranium if the terms are not met.

Scramble for Iran: All three European countries have sharply criticized US President Donald Trump’s May 12 decision to withdraw Washington from the deal and have vowed to discuss how to save it with Iran and the other signatories — China and Russia.

Read more: Could America’s hardline policies towards Iran be a dilemma for Arab countries?

Sticking points: Khamenei’s terms put the three European powers in a bind. They have tried to reassure Washington that it would be possible to renegotiate the current deal to curtail Iran’s ballistic missile program and its aggressive foreign policy in the Middle East.

Pompeo’s vision: On Monday, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo demanded all signatories negotiate a fresh treaty that would encompass not only Iran’s nuclear program, but its defense and foreign policies as well. He warned Iran would face “the strongest sanctions in history” if it did not agree to make changes.

Read more: US strategy on Iran entails regime change

Source: http://www.dw.com/en/iran-lists-tough-conditions-for-europe-to-save-nuclear-deal/a-43904326

The post Iran lists tough conditions for Europe to save nuclear deal first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Some European leaders vow to stand by Iran nuclear deal

President Trump slams the agreement at the United Nations, calls it ‘the worst’

As President Donald Trump considers whether to certify to Congress the controversial 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, word that the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog can’t verify a crucial part of the agreement could tip the scales with time running out by the middle of next month.

U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley indicated Thursday that Russia was shielding Iran by blocking the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) from verifying part of the deal. The IAEA initially revealed the news to a reporter in a Q&A. Meanwhile, under a requirement from Congress, Trump must choose whether to certify the deal by October 15.

Yukiya Amano, the IAEA Director General, told Reuters that his agency’s “tools are limited,” regarding verification of section T in the nuclear deal.

Section T of the Iran nuclear deal, which is also known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), prohibits activities related to “design and development” of a nuclear weapon.

Amano told Reuters that the Russians don’t believe the IAEA has a mandate for that particular section of the agreement.

In response to his admission, Haley, not referring to Russia by name in her statement, said that for the deal to have meaning, “the parties must have a common understanding of its terms.”

“Now it appears that some countries are attempting to shield Iran from even more inspections. Without inspections, the Iran deal is an empty promise,” she said in the statement released Thursday.

The United States Mission to the U.N. when asked for further comment on Haley’s views on certification and on whether the deal is failing because of Iranian noncompliance referred Fox News to Haley’s latest statement and a speech she made to the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) in Washington, D.C. in September.

Haley’s AEI speech was broadly interpreted as laying out the administration’s case for not certifying the Iran Nuclear deal.

Congress requires the president to certify the Iran deal every 90 days under the terms of the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act (INARA) — also known as the Corker-Cardin bill — that was passed in 2015, paving the way for the Iran nuclear deal, a cornerstone of the Obama administration’s foreign policy legacy.

David Albright, who has advised the IAEA in the past, is the founder and president of the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington D.C. He told Fox News that Russia’s not wanting to let the IAEA verify section T could be problematic.

“Amano basically said that the IAEA is not implementing the verification of section T and is unsure how to proceed. He wants guidance from the Joint Commission. However, Russia has said it does not want the IAEA to verify section T. If it sticks to that position in the Joint Commission and blocks instructions to the IAEA to proceed with verifying Section T, and the IAEA does not act on its own to verify Section T or find a work around, then the verification of the JCPOA is incomplete and the deal is not fully implemented,” he said.

“Full implementation is a requirement for the President to certify under INARA (Corker-Cardin). Lack of verification of Section T would also demonstrate that the deal does not deliver like promised and promoted by deal supporters,” Albright told Fox News.

Omri Ceren, a veteran Middle East expert and a leading critic of the Iran deal, said the IAEA’s inability to verify this part of it should make the president’s decision on certification simple.

“There’s no wiggle room here. The law requires the president to tell Congress yes or no, do we know if Iran has ‘fully implemented’ the deal? The U.N.’s nuclear watchdog just said they don’t know if Iran has implemented the section of the deal about nuclear weapons’ work, because Iran won’t let them into military bases where that work is likely to occur. Advocates of the Iran deal are saying the president should certify anyway. They’re asking him to lie to Congress on behalf of the deal,” Ceren said.

Trump recently hinted that he might not certify when the 90 days is up on October 15. Since taking office he has twice certified the deal as required by Congress.

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