Iran Digest Week of April 22 - April 29
/AIC’s Iran digest project covers the latest developments and news stories published in Iranian and international media outlets. This weekly digest is compiled by associates Tony Liu and Cynthia Markarian.. Please note that the news and views expressed in the articles below do not necessarily reflect those of AIC.
Nuclear Accord
Blinken defends Iran deal talks against congressional criticism
Despite an apparent impasse in talks to revive the Iran nuclear deal, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has defended efforts to revive the agreement against congressional criticism, stressing that a return to the pact would curb Tehran’s nuclear programme.
Testifying at the United States Senate on Tuesday, Blinken told lawmakers that the deal succeeded in limiting Iranian production of fissile material needed to build a nuclear weapon – until the former US administration withdrew from the agreement.
“We continue to believe that getting back into compliance with the agreement would be the best way to address the nuclear challenge posed by Iran, and to make sure that an Iran that is already acting with incredible aggression doesn’t have a nuclear weapon or the ability to produce one on short notice,” he said.
(Al Jazeera )
Iran moves centrifuge-parts workshop underground at Natanz, IAEA says
Iran's new workshop at Natanz for making parts for centrifuges, machines that enrich uranium, has been set up underground, U.N. nuclear watchdog chief Rafael Grossi said on Thursday, a move apparently aimed at protecting it from possible attacks.
The workshop uses machines from a now-closed facility at Karaj that suffered what Tehran says was a sabotage attack by its arch-foe Israel. The workshop can make parts essential to advanced centrifuges that are among the most efficient in Iran's enrichment programme.
The International Atomic Energy Agency informed its member states two weeks ago that Iran had moved the machines to Natanz without specifying where at the sprawling site, which includes the underground Fuel Enrichment Plant where Iran has thousands of centrifuges operating.
Until now Iran has used the FEP only for enrichment. It is the one facility where the 2015 nuclear deal with major powers allows Iran to produce enriched uranium, but only with its first-generation IR-1 centrifuges, which are far less efficient than Iran's more advanced models.
(Reuters)
Economy
Iran Ramps Up Oil Exports as China Pulls Back on Russian Crude
Iran oil exports—which go almost exclusively to China apart from rare deliveries to Syria and Venezuela—rose to 870,000 barrels a day in the first three months of the year, up 30% from an average of 668,000 barrels a day in the full-year 2021, said commodities data provider Kpler. China cut back its purchases of Russian oil by 14% in March, according to data from Chinese customs administration.
Iran’s growing exports illustrate how the invasion of Ukraine is redrawing the world’s energy trade routes, as energy consumers look for alternatives to Russian oil and gas to avoid Western sanctions. The changes are expected to accelerate as more Russian oil comes off the market, with the International Energy Agency predicting that the country’s production will fall by more than a quarter.
The opportunity to sell more oil comes at an especially opportune time for Iran. It had been preparing to increase its oil output in anticipation of a nuclear deal with the U.S. that would have included an end to the embargo on Iranian oil. Talks to revive the pact have stalled.
(The Wall Street Journal)
Inside Iran
Iran executions: Alarming rise in use of death penalty in 2021 - report
Executions in Iran rose alarmingly by 25% last year and surged after hardline cleric Ebrahim Raisi was elected president, two campaign groups say.
At least 333 people were put to death, according to Norway-based Iran Human Rights (IHR) and France's Together Against the Death Penalty (ECPM).
The number of executions for drug-related offences - 126 - was five times higher than in 2020, their report says.
In October, a UN human rights expert warned that almost all executions in Iran were "an arbitrary deprivation of life" and urged the country to end the imposition of the death penalty where it is in violation of international law.
Under Iran's penal code, people can be executed for crimes that are not considered among "the most serious" under international law, such as drug trafficking.
(BBC News)
Iran protesters hurl rocks at police over trash crisis
Dozens of furious protesters in northern Iran chanted slogans and hurled rocks at police on Thursday, Iranian media reported, injuring five officers over frustrations that their lush village had become a massive waste collection site that they say has become a health hazard.
Security forces dispersed the gathering and detained several protesters, referring their cases to prosecutors in the town of Saravan in the northern Gilan Province, the semiofficial Fars news agency reported.
The group of villagers in Saravan increasingly has been staging protests in recent weeks in an attempt to pressure authorities to find a solution for the waste that has been accumulating in Saravan for the past four decades.
(Associated Press)
Regional Politics
Tensions Flare Between Neighbors After Afghan Man Kills Iranian Clerics
An Afghan immigrant walked into one of the holiest shrines in Iran this month, Iranian media reported, drew a knife and stabbed three clerics multiple times, killing two of them and severely wounding the third.
The stabbings at the Imam Reza Shrine in the northeastern city of Mashhad set off a chain of events that has spiraled into ethnic tensions in Iran and Afghanistan and a diplomatic crisis between the two countries. Both have sent troops to their common border.
Iranian officials said Wednesday that the two countries were in discussions to defuse the situation and that a Taliban delegation may soon travel to Tehran for talks.
But the hostilities showed how easily one spark could inflame tensions between two countries whose relations have been fragile since the Taliban took power in Afghanistan last summer.
(The New York Times)
Iran seeks to expand its military cooperation with China
Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi expressed Wednesday his government’s desire for closer cooperation with China in remarks made during a visit by the Chinese defense minister, state media reported.
According to the report, Raisi told China’s Minister of National Defense Wei Fenghe that Tehran sees its ties with Beijing as strategic. Closer cooperation would serve to confront what the Iranian president described as U.S. unilateralism as talks to revive Tehran’s nuclear deal with world powers have stalled.
Iran and China have increased their military ties in recent years, with their navies visiting each other’s ports and holding joint naval drills in the Indian Ocean.
In 2021, Iran and China signed a 25-year strategic cooperation agreement that covered a variety of economic activities from oil and mining to promoting industrial activity in Iran, as well as transportation and agricultural collaborations.
(ABC News)
Iran confirms fifth round of talks held with Saudi Arabia
Regional rivals Iran and Saudi Arabia held a fifth round of "positive" talks in Baghdad last Thursday on normalising bilateral relations, Iran's foreign ministry spokesperson Saeed Khatibzadeh confirmed on Monday.
Predominantly Sunni Muslim Saudi Arabia and Shi'ite Iran, which are locked in proxy conflicts across the Middle East, started direct talks last year to try to contain tensions.
But Iran suspended the talks in March without giving a reason after Saudi Arabia executed 81 men in its biggest mass execution in decades. Tehran condemned the executions that activists said included 41 Shi'ite Muslims.
On Sunday, Iraq's Foreign Minister Fouad Hussein said Baghdad would host a new round of talks.
(Reuters)
Iran marks Jerusalem Day after 2-year pandemic suspension
Thousands of Iranians marched in the capital of Tehran on Friday to mark “Quds Day,” or Jerusalem Day, a traditional show of support for the Palestinians. It was the first time such marches were held since before the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic.
Iran has been marking the day, the last Friday of the Muslim holy fasting month of Ramadan, since the start of its 1979 Islamic Revolution led by the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. The name Quds Day comes after the Arabic name for Jerusalem.
Iranian state TV later showed a variety of ballistic missiles on display at the rally, describing them as “Israel hitters.”
Iran does not recognize Israel and supports the Palestinian Hamas and the Lebanese Hezbollah, militant groups that oppose it. Israel views Iran as its archenemy in the Middle East.
(Associated Press)
Analysis
European officials: Stop dawdling and pass the JCPOA already
By: Jim Lobe
More than 40 former top European officials, including former foreign and defense ministers from more than half a dozen countries, have called for the United States and Iran to quickly conclude their year-long negotiations to return to full compliance with the 2015 nuclear deal, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.
In an open letter released by the Brussels-based International Crisis Group, the former officials warned that, absent a renewed accord, the two parties risk “enter[ing] a state of corrosive stalemate, serving neither side’s interests, that risks devolving into a cycle of increased nuclear tension, inevitably countered by the further application of coercive tools.”
The letter called on Washington, in particular, to “swiftly show decisive leadership and requisite flexibility to resolve the remaining issues of political (not nuclear) disagreement with Tehran,” a reference to the Biden administration’s apparent failure to date to decide whether to retain or drop Iran’s Islamic Republican Guard Corps on the State Department’s list of “Foreign Terrorist Organizations,” a designation made by the Trump administration as part of its “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran.
(Read More Here)
