Iran Digest Week of May 6 - May 13
/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.
US-Iran Relations
Trump sought strike on top Iran military figure for political reasons – Esper book
Shortly before the 2020 election, Donald Trump’s national security adviser, Robert O’Brien, “stunned” the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff by saying the president wanted to kill a senior Iranian military officer operating outside the Islamic Republic.
“This was a really bad idea with very big consequences,” Mark Esper, Trump’s second and last secretary of defense, writes in his new memoir, adding that Gen Mark Milley suspected O’Brien saw the strike purely in terms of Trump’s political interests.
At a meeting in July 2020, Esper writes, O’Brien pushed for military action against Iran over its uranium enrichment – work that accelerated after Trump pulled out of the nuclear deal.
Trump made belligerence towards Tehran an important part of his administration and platform for re-election, pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal and regularly warning in bombastic terms of the cost of conflict with the US.
(The Guardian)
Nuclear Accord
Qatar, EU say pushing stalled Iran nuclear talks
Qatar's emir and the European Union on Thursday said they are working to push forward stalled negotiations aimed at reviving a 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and major world powers.
Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani met Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Ebrahim Raisi in Tehran as an EU envoy held a second day of meetings with Iran's chief negotiator Ali Bagheri in the Iranian capital.
The meetings came as a French diplomatic source expressed pessimism over prospects for the talks that have been paused since March between world powers and Iran on restoring the landmark deal.
Economy
Iran raises prices of food staples, stirring panic and anger
Iran abruptly raised prices as much as 300% for a variety of staples such as cooking oil, chicken, eggs and milk on Thursday. Scores of alarmed Iranians waited in long lines to snatch up bundles of food and emptied supermarket shelves across the country in the hours before the price hike took effect.
Panicked shoppers raided stores and stuffed basic goods into large plastic bags, according to footage shared widely on social media. Lines in Tehran snaked out of grocery stores late Wednesday. On Thursday, Iran’s currency dropped to a low of 300,000 rial to the dollar.
Internet disruptions were reported across Iran as the government braced for possible unrest, advocacy group NetBlocks.org said. Protests appeared to spring up in the remote and impoverished south, according to videos shared online. The Associated Press could not verify their authenticity but the footage corresponded to reported events.
(Associated Press)
Iran’s president says oil exports have doubled since August
Iran’s president said Monday the country is exporting twice as much oil as when he took office in August, despite heavy sanctions on oil exports imposed by the U.S.
Ebrahim Raisi made the claim in a live interview on state-run TV without elaborating, including on the amount of oil being exported.
Raisi’s remarks came as international markets are seeking alternatives to Russian crude following Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine and ensuing Western sanctions. Iran’s crude, with a similar composition to Russia’s grade, compete in the oil market.
As a result of the war and supply concerns, oil prices have surged to multi-year highs. International benchmark Brent crude nearly touched $140 in March, increasing the challenge of enforcing sanctions. Brent was trading over $105 a barrel on Monday.
Iran’s Raisi launches major economic reform
Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi has set about major reforms in the country’s subsidies system amid continued efforts to give new momentum to stalled talks aimed at restoring the country’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers.
“The prices of bread, medicine and petrol will not increase under any circumstances,” Raisi promised as he directly addressed the Iranian people.
By the next morning, the central bank said an overwhelming majority of the country’s 85-million population had received Raisi’s promised cash subsidies – totalling 460 trillion rials ($1.6bn open market rate) for two months – in their bank accounts, which they will be able to use in the near future.
Only the richest Iranians are excluded from the cash subsidies list, as about one-third of the population reportedly received 4 million rials ($13), and 60 percent received 3 million rials ($10) per individual in a month.
(Al Jazeera)
Inside Iran
France condemns arrest of two citizens in Iran
France's foreign ministry has confirmed two of its citizens are being detained in Iran and demanded their release.
On Wednesday, the Iranian intelligence ministry said two Europeans had been arrested for planning to cause "chaos, social disorder and instability".
The ministry said they shared the same nationality and alleged that they were "agents" sent to Iran to "take advantage" of protests by teachers and other workers, without providing evidence.
Earlier this month, scores of teachers took to the streets in more than dozen Iranian cities to demand fair wages, better conditions, and the release of colleagues detained ahead of the protests.
(BBC News)
Iran Says It Will Execute an Iranian-Swedish Scientist Accused of Espionage
Iran’s judiciary said on Tuesday that it would carry out the execution sentence of an Iranian-Swedish scientist accused of spying for Israel and aiding its assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists.
The announcement of the planned execution of the scientist, Ahmadreza Djalali, who has denied all the charges against him, coincided with the conclusion of a landmark court case in Sweden where, for the first time outside of Iran, a former Iranian official was tried for crimes against humanity.
Swedish prosecutors have asked for a life sentence for the official, Hamid Nouri, who was arrested in 2019 on a trip to Sweden, for his role in the mass execution of 5,000 dissidents in the 1980s. He has denied the charges. A verdict is expected in July, according to Sweden’s judiciary.
Mr. Djalali, a 50-year-old physician and lecturer at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, migrated to Sweden in 2009 to study for a doctoral degree, according to his family. He had traveled to Iran in 2016 on an invitation from a university to participate in an academic workshop when he was arrested.
(The New York Times)
Regional Politics
Syria President Assad visits Iran for meetings in rare trip
Nour News, a website close to Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, reported that Assad met Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Ebrahim Raisi. It said the leaders praised the strong ties between their nations and vowed to boost relations further. Assad was reported to have left Tehran for Damascus later on Sunday.
“Everybody now looks at Syria as a power,” Khamenei told Assad in the meeting, according to Iran’s semiofficial Tasnim news agency, believed to be close to the country’s powerful paramilitary Revolutionary Guard. ”The respect and credibility of Syria is now much more than before.”
Assad, for his part, said that strong relations between Iran and Syria served as a bulwark against American and Israeli influence in the Middle East.
(The Washington Post)
Iran’s IRGC shells ‘terrorist positions’ in Iraq’s Erbil
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has shelled an area in Erbil in neighbouring Iraq, targeting positions it said were held by “terrorist groups”.
The IRGC ground forces launched artillery fire on Iraq’s northern Kurdish regional capital early on Wednesday, according to the semi-official Tasnim news website.
The IRGC’s website said in a statement that its ground forces dismantled an Erbil-based “terrorist team” inside Iran a day earlier and five members of the team were arrested in Baneh near Iran’s western border with Iraq.
Based on their confessions about plans to engage in “sabotage” operations in Iran, it said, the IRGC ground forces moved to target their bases in northern Iraq.
(Al Jazeera)
Analysis
The IRGC terror designation is a de-facto Iranian travel ban
By: Reza Mazaheri and Sanjay Sethi
On March 26, a sold-out crowd excitedly awaited the performance of internationally celebrated Iranian vocalist Alireza Ghorbani at the Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Orange County, California, as part of Pacific Symphony’s 2022 Nowruz Concert. But Mr. Ghorbani never showed up.
The day before, while boarding his flight to California, Mr. Ghorbani was approached by officers from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection at Pearson International Airport in Toronto. For several hours, Mr. Ghorbani was questioned by CBP agents, who ultimately refused his entry into the United States due to his military service in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps over 30 years ago.
Aside from the personal devastation of having his visa canceled, Mr. Ghorbani could not understand how he conceivably posed a risk to the United States: he is a permanent resident of Canada, had already toured the United States on multiple visas vetted by CBP and the U.S. State Department, and recently was approved by the United States Customs and Immigration Service for an EB-1 visa, affording him permanent residency solely based upon his extraordinary career achievements.
(Read More Here)
