Joe Biden knows Iran better than any American President since its 1979 revolution. He has personally dealt with its top officials—a few of them for decades. “When I was Iran’s representative to the U.N., I had several meetings with Biden,” the Islamic Republic’s Foreign Minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, acknowledged after the U.S. election, in an interview with Entekhab, a Tehran publication. The two aren’t exactly friends. Their meetings “can be described as professional relations based on mutual respect,” Zarif said. But Biden does have the Iranian’s personal e-mail address, as well as his cell-phone number.

As one of his first acts on foreign policy, Biden wants to renew diplomacy with the Islamic Republic—and reёnter the nuclear accord that President Donald Trump abandoned in 2018. “If Iran returns to strict compliance with the nuclear deal, the United States would rejoin the agreement as a starting point for follow-on negotiations,” Biden wrote, in an essay for CNN, in September. Yet the President-elect already faces a minefield over basic issues—such as, what exactly is “compliance”? Who moves first? And how? And what about all those other flashpoints not in the 2015 accord—Iran’s growing array of missiles, its proxy militias and political meddling, which have extended Tehran’s influence across the Middle East, and the regime’s flagrant human-rights abuses?

During the transition, interested parties in the United States, Europe, and the Middle East have been posturing behind the scenes in ways that already complicate the Biden team’s thinking about how to reëngage. I’ve heard from all sides—unsolicited. “This is the silly, screwy period because everyone is trying to communicate through the press or interlocutors,” a former diplomat involved in the nuclear deal told me. Meanwhile, Trump appears determined to sabotage Biden’s plans, adding layers of military and economic obstacles. In December, the Trump Administration issued new sanctions, the latest of more than a thousand. Trump also discussed U.S. airstrikes on Iran’s main nuclear installation, at Natanz. And, since November 21st, U.S. B-52 bombers have flown three show-of-force missions—thirty-six-hour flights from as far away as Louisiana and North Dakota—around the perimeter of Iranian air space. Just before Christmas, Trump again put Tehran on notice, accusing Iranian proxies of firing rockets at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. “Some friendly health advice to Iran: If one American is killed, I will hold Iran responsible,” he tweeted. “Think it over.”

After Biden is inaugurated, he will have only a sliver of time—six to eight weeks—to jump-start the process before the political calendar in Iran threatens to derail potential diplomacy over the nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or J.C.P.O.A. On March 20th, Iran marks Nowruz, the Persian New Year, on the vernal equinox, and the whole country shuts down for two weeks. After the holiday, Iran’s Presidential campaign begins, culminating in a mid-June election. President Hassan Rouhani, who charted a new course by proposing diplomacy with the United States, in 2013, is not eligible to run; Iran has two-term limits. New U.S.-Iran diplomacy could become the top election issue and impact its outcome, the Tehran University political scientist Nasser Hadian told me. “If we have a very quick comeback to the J.C.P.O.A., the chances of reformists or moderates winning the next election in June is going to be very good,” Hadian said.

For Biden, there’s also a scientific urgency. When he and Barack Obama left the White House, in 2017, the “breakout” time for Iran to build a bomb was well over a year. Several safeguards had been put in place under the nuclear deal, which was brokered, in 2015, by the world’s six major powers, during intense diplomacy that featured pen-tossing, hair-pulling, shouting, a broken leg, and other dramas. The agreement was not foolproof; it involved unpopular compromises. But it provided for unprecedented human and high-tech inspections, as well as limits on the hardware and fuel needed to assemble the world’s deadliest weapon. It also forced Tehran to destroy some of its nuclear infrastructure, limit uranium enrichment, and reduce its stockpile—with the implicit threat that the world would jointly punish the Islamic Republic, through global economic sanctions or war, if it violated the terms.

When Donald Trump leaves office this month, Tehran will need only three months to produce enough highly enriched uranium for a bomb, according to a report by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. Iran’s weapon capabilities and existing stockpile of low-enriched uranium are now greater. Its research-and-development program—simply put, what it knows, and can’t now unknow—is more advanced. And the world has not stood together since Trump abandoned the accord, in 2018, to pursue a bigger deal that also covers the four other flashpoints. Trump failed—just as he failed to limit North Korea’s nuclear program, negotiate arms control with Russia, contain China’s economic and territorial ambitions, support Venezuela’s democratic opposition, and get Mexico to pay for a wall.

Even with a new President, however, U.S.-Iran diplomacy will still be defined by decades of mutual wariness. Long haunted by the 1979 seizure of its embassy and fifty-two hostages, Washington has been reluctant to trust Tehran’s overtures. Iran is, in turn, suspicious of American outreach, given U.S. support for Saddam Hussein during the eight-year Iran-Iraq War, in the nineteen-eighties, including intelligence that Iraq used to deploy chemical weapons and kill tens of thousands of Iranians. Biden may feel that he can make a fresh start, but Rouhani’s team has been stewing for four years over the costs of Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign—and his dismissal of the boldest Iranian diplomacy in four decades. U.S. sanctions slashed Tehran’s oil exports at one point last spring by more than ninety percent, and targeted everything from the Supreme Leader’s office to the Revolutionary Guards and the Central Bank. Iran claims that the sanctions have caused two hundred and fifty billion dollars in economic losses since 2018.

For Biden, the initial step is straightforward. After the Inauguration, he or his Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, can relay their intentions through Iran’s U.N. mission or directly to its foreign ministry, Richard Nephew, a former member of the U.S. negotiating team who is now at Columbia University, told me. But it will not be a “one-and-done” scenario, Nephew said, and success will require a lot more than diplomatic Band-Aids. Biden and the Iranians “have said fundamentally similar things—compliance for compliance,” Jarrett Blanc, the State Department coördinator on implementation of the Iran nuclear deal during the Obama Administration, said. “But they will first have to figure out what compliance means. It’s not dead obvious.”

Iran claims that the U.S. has to act first—since it withdrew from the deal—and do more than offer promises. “Go back to full compliance, normalize Iran’s economic relations with the rest of the world, stop making new conditions, stop making outrageous demands,” Zarif said, at the Mediterranean Dialogues, in early December. “And as soon as you come back to the letter of the J.C.P.O.A., let alone its spirit, we will immediately do that.” In a statement to the United Nations on December 22nd, Iran formally gave notice that it would roll back its breaches “as soon as all JCPOA participants start implementing their commitments unconditionally, effectively and in full.” Biden can lift sanctions with three executive orders, Zarif told an Iranian newspaper.

In broad terms, Biden wants Iran to roll back its recent breaches, especially on uranium enrichment. Iran, in turn, wants U.S. sanctions lifted so that it can sell more oil, tap into its financial assets frozen abroad, and revive an ailing economy also hard hit by the coronavirus pandemic. Tehran claims that it demonstrated restraint after Trump withdrew from the deal; it honored all its obligations for more than a year, as verified repeatedly in inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency. After Trump began a rapid-fire sequence of tough economic sanctions and demanded new negotiations, Tehran responded with gradual breaches in a tit-for-tat strategy to pressure Washington. “Because the J.C.P.O.A. was negotiated based on mutual mistrust, we put in place a mechanism that if one side does not live up to its obligations, the other side can in fact reduce its commitments or withdraw altogether,” Zarif said in December. Iran has also responded to covert operations against its program. After the nuclear facility at Natanz was hit by a mysterious explosion, in July, which Tehran claimed was sabotage, Iran began building a new facility deep in the mountains—safer from aerial assault—to produce centrifuges.

The potential problems go deeper. Biden is under pressure to maintain Trump’s sanctions as leverage to win concessions—to expand the original nuclear deal as well as to negotiate new accords on the other flashpoints. For six months, there’s been talk among diplomats and foreign-policy pundits about a “J.C.P.O.A.-Plus,” which would amend the nuclear deal, notably the sunset clauses stipulating when Iran can resume aspects of its various weapons programs. (The sunset clause that limited Tehran’s ability to buy conventional arms for its aging arsenal expired in October. Other limitations on the nuclear program expire gradually over the next twenty years, although the deal stipulates that Iran will never build a bomb and will permanently allow inspections of declared and undeclared suspect sites.)

On December 21st, Britain, France, and Germany—which co-sponsored the original pact—added to the confusion when they warned that “just a commitment” to the deal was not enough. “We are standing at a crossroads today,” the German Foreign Minister, Heiko Maas, said. “To make possible a rapprochement under Biden, there must be no more tactical maneuvers of the kind we have seen plenty of in recent times—they would do nothing but further undermine the agreement,” he added. “The opportunity that is now being offered—this last window of opportunity—must not be squandered.”

Iran was outraged. “Renegotiation is out of the question,” Zarif tweeted, on December 21st. Hadian, the Tehran University political scientist, who is close to top Iranian officials, told me, “The expectation of the Rouhani government is a quick return—not one word less and not one word more, not J.C.P.O.A.-Plus, not J.C.P.O.A. 2.0.”

Iran has also proffered ideas of its own that throw a spanner in the diplomatic works. It proposed that Washington lift sanctions without signing on to the original deal again. Zarif said that Biden could, instead, acknowledge U.S. commitments under U.N. Security Council Resolution 2231, which was passed unanimously, in 2015, as a global endorsement of the accord. If Biden formally reёnters the accord, Tehran is nervous about what rights that gives any future U.S. President, notably the ability to demand that the whole world impose “snapback” sanctions.

The deal allows any one of the six powers that negotiated the deal—Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia, and the U.S.—to call for “snapback” sanctions if it believes Iran is cheating; the other five countries automatically have to comply. The Trump Administration invoked “snapback” sanctions in September, but, because the U.S. had previously withdrawn from the deal, the other parties refused to comply. “We don’t know who is going to be President four years from now,” Hadian told me. “So we don’t want the U.S. to have the right to ‘snapback.’ ” Iran’s new position, a person familiar with Biden’s thinking told me, “adds confusion when the benefit of what Biden proposes is clarity. The Iranians are hurting their own case. It’s a bizarre interpretation and will slow everything down.”

The assassination, in November, of Iran’s top nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, further complicates the future. Iran blamed Israel. Tehran vowed to retaliate. Last month, the State Department withdrew some U.S. diplomats from neighboring Iraq, for fear that they could be targets. “No matter what happens between now and January 20th, Biden is determined to reëngage, with one caveat, which is that Iran could take actions which would make that commitment very difficult to adhere to,” the person familiar with Biden’s thinking told me. Endangering American lives would make Biden’s return to diplomacy “difficult if not impossible.” Biden’s first responsibility will be to “defend Americans and do what he can to help America’s allies.”

Iran’s parliament, however, did retaliate. On December 2nd, it hastily passed a law that required the government to immediately begin enriching uranium to a higher grade, closer to the level needed to fuel a weapon. It also requires that Rouhani suspend international inspections if U.S. sanctions are not lifted by mid-February. On January 2nd, Iran invoked a military analogy to describe its readiness to increase enrichment to twenty percent. “We are like soldiers, and our fingers are on the triggers,” Ali Akbar Salehi, the M.I.T.-educated head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, said, on national television. “The commander should command and we shoot. We are ready for this and will produce as soon as possible.” The move is still reversible if Biden acts before the sixty-day deadline. And uranium needs to be enriched to ninety percent to build a bomb.

“If, within two weeks of being President—between January 20th and no later than mid-February—Biden at least verbally says that he’s going back to the J.C.P.O.A., then Rouhani will be in a position to unconditionally return to the deal and outmaneuver everybody in Iran,” Hadian told me. “But if Biden doesn’t act, then all of Iran’s major factions will push for Iran to increase all aspects of its nuclear program, including enriching uranium to twenty percent.”

Even if Biden’s team gets an early agreement on “compliance for compliance,” the new Administration may not be able to negotiate much more until after a new Iranian President is inaugurated, in August. And then the issues only get more complex. The Pentagon is increasingly worried about Iran’s missile program, which has been pivotal to both offensive and defensive capabilities since the country’s air force was decimated during the long war with Iraq. “Over the last four years, Iran has continued to build ballistic missiles even while they’ve been under significant economic pressure,” General Kenneth F. McKenzie, Jr., the head of U.S. Central Command, told me.

Iran has half a million men and women in uniform; it is the largest military force in the Middle East, and the fourteenth largest in the world. Yet its capabilities are limited. Missiles are “the one thing that allows them to threaten their neighbors,” McKenzie said. “They have no army they can deploy. They have no air force worthy of its name, and they have a very weak and impoverished, fractured navy. But what they do have, what they view as the crown jewel, is their ballistic-missile force.” Iran’s arsenal of missiles is “very good, and they’re getting better,” McKenzie told me. Tehran has shared many of its rockets and missiles—via the Quds Force—with proxy forces in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen. “It’s a problem Biden’s going to have to face,” he said.

On the eve of Biden’s Inauguration, the standoff between Washington and Tehran has grown “very tense,” McKenzie added. The dangers were palpable over New Year’s weekend, with the anniversary, on January 3rd, of the U.S. airstrike that killed General Qassem Suleimani, the Quds Force commander responsible for Iran’s military operations and proxies across the Middle East. Suleimani was a hero in Iran; billboards are plastered with his picture, honoring his “martyrdom.” A year ago, Tehran retaliated by firing missiles on an Iraqi military base that housed U.S. troops; more than a hundred Americans suffered brain injuries. The Islamic Republic has long vowed additional revenge. At a commemoration for Suleimani on New Year’s Day, the head of Iran’s judiciary, Ebrahim Raisi, warned that his killers would “not be safe on earth.” In September, the Wall Street Journal reported that the Pentagon was concerned that McKenzie (who is viewed as Suleimani’s counterpart in the same theatre of operations) and the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, General Mark Milley, could be potential targets.

Any new accord—to limit Iran’s missiles and, potentially in return, the weaponry in rival Arab arsenals—will almost certainly have to include a wider array of countries. Israel and the United Arab Emirates are already lobbying to be included or have a say. Even stickier are the missiles that Iran has provided to proxies. In an end-of-year interview, the Hezbollah chief, Hassan Nasrallah, said that the Lebanese militia had doubled its stock of precision-guided missiles over the past year. “To develop a conventional missile program is an inherent right of any country under international law, and Iran is no exception,” the Iranian U.N. Ambassador, Majid Takht-Ravanchi, said, on December 22nd. “Iran will not negotiate its legitimate ballistic-missile program.” That divide, General McKenzie said, “appears to be, at least to me, intractable.”

The even harder challenge will be finding ways to address horrific human-rights abuses, which go to the heart of the unique judicial and political systems in the Islamic Republic. After his appointment as Biden’s national-security adviser, Jake Sullivan tweeted scathing criticism of Tehran’s treatment of Ruhollah Zam, an Iranian living in exile who publicized information about the 2017 anti-government protests, on the messaging service Telegram. In 2019, Zam was lured to Iraq, where Iranian Revolutionary Guards kidnapped him and returned him to Iran for trial on charges of “corruption on earth.” He was hanged in December. “Iran’s execution of Ruhollah Zam, a journalist who was denied due process and sentenced for exercising his universal rights, is another horrifying human rights violation by the Iranian regime,” Sullivan tweeted. “We will join our partners in calling out and standing up to Iran’s abuses.” The furor over Zam’s execution reflected the fundamental gap between the United States and Iran under any President. Even with Biden’s commitment to diplomacy, four years may not be enough time to achieve breakthroughs on all the flashpoints between Washington and Tehran.

The post Biden faces a minefield in new diplomacy with Iran first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Hezbollah media said it suffered no casualties and that the incident was one simply born of Israeli paranoia. The Jerusalem Post reported that there were three to five fighters in the Hezbollah group. Whatever the outcome, the key issue here is why Hezbollah did this in the first place. The group’s leaders knew that there was a very significant risk that their fighters would be engaged and killed. Considering that Israeli forces are not engaged in a military campaign against Hezbollah, the group’s risk-reward calculation here would seem to skew toward not attacking.

But there are two other factors.

First, Hezbollah has been significantly undermined by recent losses inflicted on it by Israel and the United States. The death, in January, of Hezbollah’s primary Iranian interlocutor, Qassem Soleimani, was a serious setback for the group’s work with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. That work centers on establishing a missile launching capability in southern Lebanon and southern Syria to enable Hezbollah’s targeting of major Israeli population centers. Hezbollah suffered another loss last week when one of its fighters was killed while guarding such a missile stockpile in Damascus. Hezbollah again referenced this loss on Monday, warning Israel, “Our response to the martyrdom of the Mujahid brother Ali Kamel Mohsen… is definitely coming, and the Zionists only have to wait for the punishment for their crimes.”

Were Hezbollah in a stronger position, it might fear an escalation in the form of punitive Israeli strikes. Yet the group’s increasingly precarious domestic situation likely alters that assessment. Lebanon’s economy is collapsing under the weight of decades of artificial currency manipulation and sanctions that have isolated Syrian investors from the Lebanese banking system. An international bailout is desperately needed. Hezbollah, however, is refusing to agree to the necessary economic and political reforms being demanded by the European Union and the U.S. in return for any bailout. The group knows these reforms would undermine the sectarian cronyism in which its power is rooted. But with populist anger growing over its intransigence and the crisis no closer to being resolved, Hezbollah risks its erstwhile political allies forming new alliances without it. And if that happens, the group will truly be in trouble.

It’s in this context that Hezbollah might view an exchange of violence with Israel as serving its short-term interests. Lebanese civil society tends to unify around Hezbollah during the conflict with Israel. Even for those who oppose Hezbollah, populist antipathy toward Israel offers a rare opportunity for a pretense of nationalist unity. So if, for example, Hezbollah kills a few Israeli soldiers, it will hope that any ensuing Israeli retaliation only strengthens its Lebanese nationalist credibility.

Iran’s hard-line leadership is also likely to favor short-term escalation. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is deeply upset at being caught between his own collapsing economy, a coronavirus catastrophe, and restored American deterrence against his escalation. If Hezbollah can give Israel a black eye, even if Israel strikes back far harder, Khamenei and the Revolutionary Guards will see it as boosting their own credibility. Iran will also regard this as delivering a veiled “We’re still powerful” threat to Iraq’s new prime minister, Mustafa al Kadhimi, who is adopting an agenda to mitigate Iran’s influence.

In short, expect new Hezbollah attacks in the days ahead.

Source: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/why-the-lebanese-hezbollah-is-escalating-against-israel

The post Why the Lebanese Hezbollah is escalating against Israel first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

The post Op-Ed: Iran and China close to large military and trade partnership deal first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

The post Israel’s strikes in Syria hurt Iran first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

The United States reinstated economic sanctions on Iran after President Donald Trump abandoned a landmark nuclear deal in May 2018.

Mr. Trump says he wants to apply “maximum pressure” on the government in Tehran to compel it to renegotiate the accord. But Iran’s leaders have remained defiant.

The substantial impact the sanctions have had on the country is clear, and the economic hardship Iranians are facing helped trigger widespread protests in November 2019 that were brutally quashed by the authorities.

The economy has fallen into a deep recession

Iran’s economy was badly affected for several years by sanctions imposed by the international community over the country’s nuclear programme.

In 2015, President Hassan Rouhani agreed to a deal with the US and five other world powers to limit Iranian nuclear activities in return for the lifting of those sanctions.

The following year, after the deal was implemented, Iran’s economy bounced back and GDP grew 12.3%, according to the Central Bank of Iran.

But much of that growth was attributed to the oil and gas industry, and the recoveries of other sectors were not as significant as many Iranians had hoped.

Growth fell back to 3.7% in 2017, helping to fuel the economic discontent that led to the biggest anti-government protests in Iran for almost a decade that December.

The reinstatement of US sanctions in 2018 – particularly those imposed on the energy, shipping, and financial sectors that November – caused foreign investment to dry up and hit oil exports. The sanctions bar US companies from trading with Iran, but also with foreign firms or countries that are dealing with Iran.

In May 2019, Mr. Trump ended exemptions from US secondary sanctions – such as exclusion from US markets – for major importers of Iranian oil and tightened restrictions on the Iranian banking sector. He said the decision was “intended to bring Iran’s oil exports to zero, denying the regime its principal source of revenue”.

As a result of the sanctions, Iran’s gross domestic product (GDP) contracted an estimated 4.8% in 2018 and is forecast to shrink another 9.5% in 2019, according to the International Monetary Fund. The unemployment rate meanwhile rose from 14.5% in 2018 to 16.8% in 2019.

The IMF is forecasting zero growth in 2020, which would support Mr. Rouhani’s assertion in October that Iran has ridden out “the storm” caused by the sanctions.

• Has Iran’s economy benefited from the nuclear deal?

Oil exports have plummeted

At the start of 2018, Iran’s crude oil production reached 3.8 million barrels per day (bpd), according to data gathered from secondary sources by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec). The country was exporting about 2.3 million bpd.

Most of the oil was bought by eight countries or territories that were granted six-month exemptions by the US when sanctions on the Iranian energy sector took effect – China, India, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Turkey, Greece, and Italy.

By March, Iran’s oil exports had fallen to 1.1 million barrels per day on average – AFP

A condition of the waivers was that the importers reduce their purchases of Iranian oil, and by April 2019 Iran’s oil exports had fallen to 1 million bpd on average, according to Bloomberg. That reduced the government’s revenue by billions of dollars.

Two months later, President Trump decided to allow the exemptions to expire and declared that he “intended to bring Iran’s oil exports to zero”.

By October 2019, Iran’s crude oil production had fallen to 2.1 million bpd on average, according to Opec’s data. Bloomberg reported that only 260,000 bpd on average was being exported.

However, analysts have said the figure may not reflect actual deliveries due to reported activities by Iran and its customers to conceal purchases or avoid tracking of tankers.

Iranian tankers have been accused of flouting international rules by turning off their Automatic Identification System (AIS) transponders. Iran is also said to frequently conduct ship-to-ship transfers to move oil and oil products.

The plummeting oil sales have also led to a significant fall in Iran’s foreign exchange earnings. The IMF estimates that Iran’s reserves of foreign currency have been reduced to $86bn – 20% below their level in 2013.

A senior US official, Brian Hook, said in December 2019 that he believed Iran had access to only 10% of those reserves because of restrictions on its financial sector and that as a result, it would struggle to prop up its currency and prevent inflation.

Iran’s government itself forecasts that oil export revenues will be reduced by 70% in the next Iranian fiscal year.

• Is it about to get more expensive to fill my car?

The rial has halved in value

Image captionCurrency traders were offering 143,000 rials to the US dollar at the end of April – AFP

President Rouhani kept the Iranian currency stable for almost four years. But it has lost 50% of its value against the US dollar on the unofficial market since the US abandoned the nuclear deal, according to foreign exchange websites.

The fixed official rate of 42,000 rials to the dollar is used for a limited range of transactions, so most Iranians rely on currency traders. Bonbast.com reported that traders were offering 13,650 rials to the dollar in early December 2019.

The rial’s slide has been attributed to Iran’s economic problems and a high demand for foreign currency among ordinary Iranians who have seen the value of their savings eroded and their purchasing power cut sharply.

The rial has regained some of its value since September 2018, when the Central Bank of Iran released more dollars into the market and authorities cracked down on currency dealers as prices reached a record low of 176,000 to the dollar.

Iran’s currency woes have also led to shortages of imported goods and products that are made with raw materials from abroad, most notably babies’ nappies.

• What babies’ nappies tell us about Iran’s economic woes

Living costs have risen dramatically

AFP

President Rouhani managed to get inflation down to 9% in 2017. But the IMF estimated that it soared to 30.5% in 2018 and projected that it would reach 35.7% in 2019.

The World Bank has said that inflation in Iran has been especially high for food items, with meat products 116% more expensive year-on-year in April 2019, and that the rural population has been disproportionally affected.

The Statistical Centre of Iran reported that the Consumer Price Index (CPI) 12-month rate of inflation for households stood at 42% in late October 2019. Food and beverage prices were up by 61% year-on-year and the price of tobacco was up by 80%.

The price rises led to long queues at government-subsidized grocery shops, particularly for rationed meat. In an attempt to lower prices, the government banned livestock exports, flew in hundreds of thousands of cows and sheep from abroad.

In November 2019, the government unexpectedly announced it was cutting petrol subsidies. It said the price of petrol would rise by 50% to 15,000 rials a litre ($0.12; £0.09 at the unofficial market exchange rate), and that drivers of private cars would be allowed to purchase only 60 litres each month before the price rose to 30,000 rials.

Mr. Rouhani said the $2.5bn in savings would allow the government to provide additional help to 18 million families. But the price rises caused widespread anger, and hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets across Iran.

A crackdown by security forces left at least 208 people dead and thousands injured, according to Amnesty International. The government dismissed such figures as “utter lies”.

• Videos reveal crackdown Iran tried to hide
• Iranians describe the impact of US sanctions

Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-48119109

The post Six charts that show how hard US sanctions have hit Iran first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

There is troubling news about Iran.  The Russians and Chinese are reportedly cooperating with Iran in maneuvers at sea.  All three nations are reportedly conducting drills in the Indian Ocean.  It seems foolish to repeat Iranian government statements, but this one might be good for a chuckle.

The Iranian admiral stated that the purpose was to demonstrate “peace, friendship and lasting security through cooperation and unity… and to show that Iran cannot be isolated.”  China released a statement saying that the drills were, “not necessarily related to the regional situation.”

By all accounts, the Iranian economy has been spiraling out of control due to President Trump’s economic sanctions.  We saw riots consume the country only a couple of weeks ago, with little news since.  Iranian forces killed hundreds, at least, and jailed thousands.  Can you even imagine the suffering and brutality to which they’re being subjected?  May God help them.

Not only have ships been wounded in close proximity to the Straits of Hormuz earlier this year, but Saudi Arabia saw several missile attacks and the U. S. has considerable naval assets also in the region.  Both Russia and China also claim to have friendly relations with Saudi Arabia.

With the recent British election, the British exit from the European Union is due to become official on January 31.  But it will remain bound to EU customs and trade rules until the end of 2020, with details to be worked out in the meantime.  The EU is urging Prime Minister Boris Johnson to extend discussions on the details for another two years, but he has refused.  If 2020 expires without agreements on trade, transportation, immigration, and fishing rights, analysts predict all manner of dire consequences for the British economy.  Why Britain can’t make up for whatever their needs may be with Australia, Canada and the U. S., we don’t rightly know.  Maybe it can.

Here at the end of 2019, we’ve reached impeachment limbo.  While the experts argue whether the President has actually been impeached, the Speaker of the House boasts that Donald Trump has been impeached for all time.  As we suspected, she may not want to turn the articles of impeachment over to the Senate.  Chances are, the whole cabal who orchestrated this monstrosity will be embarrassed or worse.  Apparently every single one of us has the right to face his accuser, and the right to a speedy trial, except the President of the United States.

The mainstream press is wallowing in its great accomplishment.  Turn on any one of the mainstream cable networks and you’ll likely see the banner declaring, “Trump impeached” across the bottom of the screen.  We hope they’re enjoying the satisfaction.  After all, they’ve contributed heavily to this situation, trotting out experts and analysts every day to declare that House members would be in violation of their oath if they failed to impeach Donald Trump.  They make all manner of accusations and insinuations but have failed to point out the specifics of any crime.  Even after all this time, it looks as though the Deep State still runs the alphabet agencies and is continuing its #resistance even now.

Nevertheless, things could be worse.  A lot worse.  The list of accomplishments we’ve seen over the past three years is overwhelming.  The economy is breaking records, Constitutional judges appointed and confirmed, immigration is being addressed if not solved… At least we have a President who isn’t trying to destroy the United States.  Hopefully, our kids and grandkids will enjoy a modicum of the freedom we’ve had.  And if President Trump offends someone from time to time, we’ll try not to enjoy it too much.

Mark

P.S. The new issue of 21^st Century WATCH appears to have been delayed somewhat due to the holiday crush. Maybe we should have expected that would be the case.  We hope it will be mailed and received without further delay.

Source: http://www.intercontinentalcog.org/fridayupdates.php

The post Weekly Update by Mark Armstrong – 27 December 2019 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.