(December 10, 2021 / JNS) As negotiators in Vienna are conducting indirect negotiations to bring Iran and the United States back into the 2015 nuclear deal—the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)—Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Gilad Erdan told a crowd of thousands on Thursday that America should threaten Iran with its military to quench the threat.

Erdan was a guest speaker at the Israeli-American Council’s 2021 National Summit in South Florida in front of thousands of attendees as part of an onstage interview with Israeli TV host and defense analyst Yoav Limor during the summit’s opening plenary session.

Erdan started by pointing out that Israel had been opposed to the JCPOA since its inception, seeing it as “kicking the can down the road.” Today, he said, even members of the Democratic Biden administration agree that the old deal was faulty, which is why the administration has been pushing for a “longer, stronger deal.”

He said the international community can find a “formula” for preventing a nuclear Iran, and that U.S. sanctions alone won’t do it, as China and other major nations have been finding ways to go around them or simply outright ignoring them.

Israel hopes that the negotiations to re-enter the deal will fail, forcing the old signatories to the original deal to snap back crippling economic sanctions on Tehran.

Still, these measures may not be enough.

“What is this formula? The answer is quite clear, we should listen to the wise words of President [Theodore] Roosevelt, who used to say, ‘Speak softly, but also carry a big stick.’ The international community for many years spoke very softly to Iran. Sanctions are very important, but the sanctions are not enough,” said Erdan.

He continued, saying “Iran is on the verge of becoming a nuclear power. And this is the time now to present the Iranian regime [with] a credible military threat that would force them to decide between their own survival as a regime and their nuclear ambitions. And I believe the answer will be clear; Iran would rush to the negotiating table once they would be presented with a credible military threat.”

He said that Israel cannot rely on the international community, as the Islamic Republic poses a threat to its very existence.

“We are not going to wait until Iran would become a nuclear threshold country,” he said. “We are leaving all options on the table, and we’re not going to hesitate. We will do whatever is needed.”

Progress on the Visa Waiver Program

During the interview, Erdan did note optimism about the completion process to include Israel in the Visa Waiver Program, allowing Israelis to travel to the United States without a visa.

Despite the long, interconnected history between the two nations, Israel is not included in America’s Visa Waiver Program, although nationals from 40 other countries are allowed to travel to the United States without a visa.

The issue hit home for many in attendance since they are Israeli or have family members in Israel.

Erdan said the current situation was absurd—the United States is Israel’s closest ally, while the United Arab Emirates, which recently normalized its relations with Israel, already has a visa waiver agreement with Israel.

“Let me start with a personal story that I never told before. I’m now Israel’s ambassador for more than 14 months here in the United States. This is a true story. My parents were not able, couldn’t get a visa, to visit their own family and their grandchildren here in the United States since I was appointed,” said Erdan.

He told the audience that he understood the need to prioritize the issue after being contacted by so many families.

Erdan discovered that the reason Israel was not in the program was partially the result of American officials not understanding Israeli culture. They viewed Israelis in their 20s wanting visas to visit not as part of the culture of seeing the world after their completion of national military service, but as young people without jobs or still students—and thus, potential illegal immigrants.

“So our refusal rate went higher than 3 percent. And that’s what prevented Israel from joining this visa waiver program,” said Erdan. “Once I explained it to [U.S. Homeland Security] Secretary [Alejandro] Mayorkas—and even had the honor and opportunity to speak with the president himself—they prioritized this process.”

“So now, I can give you my assessment … that many, many of the relatives of the families of the IAC activists could be invited without a visa to participate” in the next summit,” he said to audience applause.

Source: https://www.jns.org/erdan-calls-for-us-to-put-military-options-on-table-to-counter-irans-growing-nuclear-threat/

The post Erdan calls for US to put military options on table to counter Iran’s growing nuclear threat first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Iranian Air Force General Amir Ali Hajizadeh has warned Israel that it is “doomed to termination” if it gives the Islamic republic an “excuse” to fulfill the threat of nuclear attack. The top Iranian military brass made the comment in light of Tel Aviv’s warnings that it could attack the country’s nuclear fuel enrichment plants.

Hajizadeh further ridiculed Tel Aviv over its threats, suggesting that the latter is not in a position to issue warnings while pretending that it is the “only regime in the world arguing about how to survive”.

“The [Israeli] regime that discusses its existence is doomed to termination and cannot talk about destroying other countries”.

The general acknowledged that Israel is able to carry out strikes against Iran, but noted that Tehran would win in an armed conflict. Additionally, he noted that constant demands from Israeli allies for Tehran to limit its missile programme are vivid proof that Iran possesses the power to fulfill its threat of eliminating Israel, should the latter strike first.

“Our enemies say we should negotiate on missiles… and our drones have become splinters in their eyes. If they insist on limiting the capabilities of our missiles and drones, it shows our strength. We don’t need to mention our strength because the enemy talks enough about Iran’s missiles and defensive capabilities”.

Earlier, IDF Chief of Staff Aviv Kohavi revealed that his country’s military had been carrying out preparations for a possible attack on Iranian nuclear sites. Tel Aviv has for years claimed that Tehran was developing nuclear weapons, begging global powers not to restore the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, which fell apart after the administration of US President Donald Trump withdrew the US in 2018, arguing that it could boost Iran’s capability to create a nuke.

Iran has consistently rejected allegations that it had been working on a nuclear device, insisting that such a weapon contradicts the state religion of Islam. Tehran has long pointed out that it uses nuclear technologies for energy generation. At the same time, Iran lamented that the international community completely ignores the fact that Israel has possessed nuclear weapons for decades, despite avoiding an international declaration of its status as a country that has nuclear weapons ready to use.

At the moment, the Islamic republic is planning on returning to the negotiating table in Vienna to reach an agreement with the US and other signatories of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA, also known as the Iran nuclear deal) treaty to restore the accord and lift sanctions from Iran.

The last round of talks ended without tangible results due to the failure of Tehran and the US to agree on the terms of a return to the JCPOA compliance, as well as due to presidential elections in Iran that would result in a change of government. A new round of talks is set to start later in November.

Source: https://sputniknews.com/20211111/iranian-general-israel-doomed-to-termination-as-tel-aviv-threatens-to-strike-nuclear-sites-1090666984.html

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FILE – In this April 14, 2021, file satellite photo provided from Planet Labs Inc. shows Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility. The Biden administration is considering a near wholesale rollback of some of the most stringent Trump-era sanctions imposed on Iran in a bid to get the Islamic Republic to return to compliance with a landmark 2015 nuclear accord, according to current and former U.S. officials and others familiar with the matter. (Planet Labs via AP)

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration is considering a near wholesale rollback of some of the most stringent Trump-era sanctions imposed on Iran in a bid to get the Islamic Republic to return to compliance with a landmark 2015 nuclear accord, according to current and former U.S. officials and others familiar with the matter.

As indirect talks continue this week in Vienna to explore the possibility of reviving the nuclear deal, American officials have become increasingly expansive about what they might be prepared to offer Iran, which has been driving a hard line on sanctions relief, demanding that all U.S. penalties be removed, according to these people.)

American officials have refused to discuss which sanctions are being considered for removal. But they have said they are open to lifting any sanctions that are inconsistent with the nuclear deal or that deny Iran the relief it would be entitled to should it return to compliance with the accord. Because of the complex nature of the sanctions architecture, that could include non-nuclear sanctions, such as those tied to terrorism, missile development, and human rights.

Biden administration officials say this is necessary because of what they describe as a deliberate attempt by the Trump administration to stymie any return to the deal. Under the 2015 agreement, the United States was required to lift sanctions tied to Iran’s nuclear program, but not non-nuclear sanctions.

Administration officials deny they will remove all non-nuclear sanctions, but have declined to identify those which they believe Trump improperly imposed on terrorism and other grounds.

“Any return to the JCPOA would require sanctions relief, but we are considering removing only those sanctions that are inconsistent with the JCPOA,” said State Department spokesman Ned Price. “Even if we rejoin the JCPOA — which remains a hypothetical — we would retain and continue to implement sanctions on Iran for activities not covered by the JCPOA, including Iran’s missile proliferation, support for terrorism, and human rights abuses.”

When President Donald Trump re-imposed sanctions after withdrawing from the deal in 2018, he not only put the nuclear sanctions back in but also added layers of terrorism and other sanctions on many of the same entities. In addition, the Trump administration imposed an array of new sanctions on previously unsanctioned entities.

This has put the current administration in an awkward position: Iran is demanding the removal of all sanctions. If the U.S. doesn’t lift at least some of them, Iran says it won’t agree to halt its nuclear activities barred by the deal known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA.

But if the Biden administration makes concessions that go beyond the nuclear-specific sanctions, Republican critics and others, including Israel and Gulf Arab states, are likely to seize on them as proof that the administration is caving to Iran. Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has led the charge among Trump alumni to denounce any easing of sanctions.

Former Trump administration officials say all the sanctions are legitimate. Gabriel Noronha, a former State Department senior adviser on Iran, said all the Trump-era sanctions had been approved by career Justice Department lawyers and would have been rejected if they weren’t legitimate.

But a senior State Department official involved in the negotiations said officials now “have to go through every sanction to look at whether they were legitimately or not legitimately imposed.”

The official, who like the others spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the private talks, also said the U.S. would be prepared to lift sanctions that would otherwise deny Iran the benefits of the deal. Those sanctions could include restrictions on Iran’s ability to access the international financial system, including dealing in dollar-based transactions.

“There are sanctions that are inconsistent with the JCPOA and as we have said, if Iran resumes its compliance with the nuclear deal … we would be prepared to lift those sanctions that are inconsistent with the JCPOA,” Price said last week. He declined to elaborate on what might be “inconsistent” with the deal.

Those comments suggest that sanctions imposed on Iran’s Central Bank, its national oil and shipping companies, its manufacturing, construction, and financial sectors are on the block. Deal critics briefed on aspects of the Vienna negotiations say they suspect that is indeed the case.

That’s because the bank, oil, shipping, and other sanctions, all ostensibly imposed by the Trump administration for terrorism, ballistic missile, and human rights concerns, also affect nuclear sanctions relief.

Current officials say no decisions have yet been made and nothing will be agreed in Vienna until everything regarding sanctions relief and Iran’s return to compliance with the nuclear deal has been settled.

But critics of the nuclear deal fear the administration will go beyond even what has been suggested by the administration’s oblique comments. They suspect that sanctions on people, companies, government agencies or other entities identified for nuclear sanctions relief in the 2015 deal will be cleared; even if they were subsequently penalized on other grounds.

“The administration is looking to allow tens of billions of dollars into the coffers of the regime even if it means lifting sanctions on major entities blacklisted for terrorism and missile proliferation,” said Mark Dubowitz, a prominent Iran deal critic and CEO of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

“They’re even looking to give the regime indirect access to the U.S. dollar through the U.S. financial system so that international companies can clear transactions with Iran through the U.S. dollar,” said Dubowitz, who is frequently criticized for his hard-line stance on Iran but has also been asked for his views on sanctions by the administration.

The Obama administration grappled with much the same issue after the conclusion of the nuclear deal in 2015. It took the position that some sanctions previously imposed by it and former President George W. Bush’s administration for terrorism reasons should actually be classified as nuclear sanctions and therefore lifted under the deal.

Still, many countries and international companies were hesitant to jump into the Iranian market for fear that the sanctions relief was not clear-cut and that a future U.S. president could re-impose the sanctions. Now, that that has happened, and even before an agreement has been concluded in Vienna, that concern has resurfaced.

Already, Republicans in Congress and opponents of the Iranian government are stepping up efforts to codify Trump’s hard-line stance on Iran with new legislation. Although a law to bar a return to the nuclear deal is unlikely to pass, there is wide bipartisan support for resolutions encouraging the administration to take a tougher line on Iran.

Such a resolution was introduced on Wednesday with more than 220 Democratic and Republican co-sponsors. In it, they call for the administration to recognize “the rights of the Iranian people and their struggle to establish a democratic, secular, and non-nuclear Republic of Iran while holding the ruling regime accountable for its destructive behavior.”

Source: https://apnews.com/article/iran-middle-east-business-iran-nuclear-government-and-politics-dc498f981c0746cd7c837b969702de28

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The post Iran rejects ending 20% enrichment before U.S. lifts sanctions, state TV says first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Iran holds military drills as tensions rise with US – (photo credit: REUTERS)

The post US to offer Iran new nuclear deal, sanctions relief this week – report first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani delivers a speech before the heads of banks, in Tehran, Iran, January 16, 2020. (Office of the Iranian Presidency via AP)

TEHRAN, Iran — Iran’s president Thursday applauded a ruling by the International Court of Justice that it can hear Iran’s case against the US seeking to end sanctions, calling it a “big victory” for the Islamic Republic.

A report by state-run IRNA news agency said President Hassan Rouhani congratulated the nation on its legal “victory” over the US.

“I congratulate the Iranian people on a very big victory the government achieved yesterday at the Hague, and this is one of several victories that the government has gained against America at the tribunal,” he said in remarks carried by State TV.

The United Nations’ highest court ruled Wednesday that it can hear a case brought by Iran against the United States. It seeks to end sanctions the administration of former President Donald Trump re-imposed in 2018 after pulling out of an international deal aimed at curtailing Tehran’s nuclear program.

US President Donald Trump signs a document reinstating sanctions against Iran after announcing the US withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal, in the Diplomatic Reception Room at the White House in Washington, DC, on May 8, 2018. (AFP PHOTO / SAUL LOEB)

Lawyers for the US argued at hearings last year that the case should be thrown out by the court for lack of jurisdiction and admissibility.

Iran filed the case in July 2018, a few months after then-President Donald Trump said he was pulling the US out of the 2015 international agreement and would re-impose sanctions on Tehran. Washington also threatened other countries with sanctions if they didn’t cut off Iranian oil imports by early November.

Iran alleges the sanctions breach a 1955 bilateral agreement known as the Treaty of Amity that regulates and promotes economic and consular ties between the two countries.

The ruling Wednesday came as US President Joe Biden is seeking to enhance diplomacy toward Iran.

The court based in The Hague, Netherlands, had ruled in favor of Iran in a preliminary ruling in October 2018, saying that Washington should “remove, by means of its choosing, any impediments arising from” the re-imposition of sanctions to the export to Iran of medicine and medical devices, food and agricultural commodities and spare parts and equipment necessary to ensure the safety of civil aviation.

The US sanctions do have specific carve-outs for medicine and humanitarian aid to Iran. However, international banks and financial institutions hesitate in dealing with Iran transactions for fear of being fined or locked out of the American market.

Source: https://www.timesofisrael.com/irans-president-claims-big-victory-in-legal-efforts-to-end-us-sanctions/

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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.

Israel Defense Forces have been preparing for the possibility that the U.S. military will strike Iran during the last two months of President Trump‘s term, according to a report.

This comes a week after the New York Times reported that Trump asked senior advisers about his options to strike Iran’s main nuclear site after international inspectors reported details about a significant increase in the Iran’s stockpile of nuclear material.

There is no intelligence that indicates an imminent U.S. strike but Israeli officials anticipate that the coming weeks will be “a very sensitive period,” according to Axios.

BIDEN SECRETARY OF STATE PICK BLINKEN OPPOSED TERRORIST LABEL FOR IRAN’S REVOLUTIONARY GUARD

Israeli media reported earlier this week that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu flew into Saudi Arabia for a secret meeting with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on Sunday night. The two longtime foes share a common enemy in Iran, and the reported meeting coincided with U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s visit to the Persian Gulf.

The Trump administration ramped up its “maximum pressure campaign” against Iran during the president’s lame-duck period.

Last week, the U.S. slapped sanctions on Iran’s Mostazafan Foundation, which the Treasury Department describes as an “immense conglomerate” whose “holdings are expropriated from the Iranian people and are used by the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei to enrich his office, reward his political allies, and persecute the regime’s enemies.”

BIDEN WILL MOVE US CLOSER TO 2015 NUCLEAR DEAL WITH IRAN, EXPERTS SAY

In announcing the new sanctions, Pompeo warned the future Biden administration about undoing Trump’s sanctions on Iran.

“The Western media reports with alarm that the Iranian regime is increasing its stockpile of enriched uranium,” Pompeo wrote in a document titled, “The Importance of Sanctions on Iran.”

“This is indeed troubling, but even more disturbing is the notion that the United States should fall victim to this nuclear extortion and abandon our sanctions.”

President-elect Biden wants the United States to re-enter the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.

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“I will offer Tehran a credible path back to diplomacy. 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 op-ed for CNN in September.

The Iranian regime would welcome the de-escalation of tensions, as sanctions have crushed its economy. Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani said on state TV on Wednesday he hopes Iran and the U.S. could find their way back to “the situation on Jan 20. 2017,” before President Trump was inaugurated.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Source: https://www.foxnews.com/world/israel-preparing-for-potential-us-military-strike-on-iran-report

The post Israel preparing for potential US military strike on Iran: report first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Russia has criticized Washington’s approach on sanctions against Tehran, stressing that Moscow will keep up its international trade ties with Iran despite US potential sanctions.

“The wrong approach again… The United States playing a ‘world policeman,’ substituting the UN Security Council is an unwelcome role,” Deputy Russian Ambassador to the UN Dmitry Polyanskiy tweeted on Monday 20 October.

“We are doing and will be doing business with Iran and it’s not up to the United States to tell us or others what they can or can’t do. Stop humiliating the United States in this pointless endeavor!” he added.

The remarks came after the US authorities blacklisted six Chinese entities and two individuals for allegedly having interactions with the Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines (IRISL) Group and, in some cases, helping it evade US sanctions.

Source: https://internationalinsider.org/russia-to-continue-trade-with-iran-despite-us-bans/

The post Russia to continue trade with Iran despite US bans 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.