Iran Digest Week of March 4 - March 12
/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 Communications Associate Elizabeth Kos. Please note that the news and views expressed in the articles below do not necessarily reflect those of AIC.
US-Iran Relations
Ukraine War Pushes Biden Toward Venezuela, Iran and Saudi Arabia in Oil Hunt
The war in Ukraine has added urgency to the Biden administration’s monthslong search for new oil supplies, as it seeks to contain surging energy prices through talks at home and diplomacy abroad with friends and foes alike.
The rush to fill gaps from Russia’s rapidly shrinking contribution to the global energy markets has led the White House to oil-rich nations in the Middle East, countries under U.S. sanctions and private-sector oil giants meeting this week in Houston. But the quest has been complicated by several factors, including President Biden’s vow to take a tougher line against Saudi Arabia over human-rights abuses, domestic political pressure and post-pandemic supply-chain disruptions.
The upshot is a globe-spanning scramble for spare supply that has only accelerated after the Biden administration this week banned imported oil and other energy sources from Russia to punish the country for the onslaught in Ukraine.
The Biden administration also has its eye on Iran. If talks in Vienna to restore the 2015 nuclear accord finally reach a conclusion, Iran could re-enter international oil markets in the coming months. While U.S. sanctions on Iran would remain in effect, preventing direct purchases of Iranian oil, analysts see the completion of the agreement as one of the faster ways to get more crude on the market.
(The Wall Street Journal)
U.S. intelligence shows Iran threats on U.S. soil, but Blinken and Schiff say this shouldn't derail new nuclear deal
The U.S. intelligence community has assessed that Iran will threaten Americans — both directly and via proxy attacks — and that Tehran remains committed to developing networks inside the U.S., according to the intelligence community's 2022 Annual Threat Assessment, published Tuesday by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI).
Now, with the U.S. on the cusp of a diplomatic accord with Iran over its nuclear program, as well as a potential deal regarding the release of four American prisoners, it is not clear whether the Biden administration can extract any further concessions or convince Tehran to cease its other malign activities, including any on U.S. soil.
CBS News has obtained two persistent threat assessments submitted to Congress by the State Department in January 2022 which cited a "serious and credible threat" on the lives of former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and former Trump administration Iran envoy Brian Hook. These non-public assessments show that throughout 2021, and again in 2022, the State Department assessed the need to provide round-the-clock, U.S.-taxpayer funded diplomatic security details to both men.
House Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff agrees that the threats do not have to be addressed in any renewed nuclear-related deal with Iran."These other malign activities of Iran's, their plots against the U.S. personnel or Americans around the world we can deal with and have to deal with separately, and we should deal with them aggressively," Schiff told Face the Nation, Sunday. "We need to go after all of this, not necessarily in one agreement."
(CBS News)
US seized Iran oil cargo as Biden considers easing sanctions
The U.S. has quietly seized the cargo of two tankers suspected of transporting Iranian oil as part of an elaborate sanctions-busting scheme involving forged documents and the repainting of a ship’s deck to cloak illegal shipments.
Details of the seizure, which has not been previously reported, were contained in a federal civil case unsealed last month after the Greek-managed vessels discharged their valuable cargo, worth upward of $38 million, in Houston and the Bahamas at the direction of U.S. law enforcement.
The seizure comes as the Biden administration seeks to revive a 2015 nuclear deal with Iran that would likely entail the U.S. lifting punishing sanctions. That task has been made more urgent by Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and the U.S. decision to retaliate by banning all Russian oil imports, which potentially removes from Western markets more than 10 million barrels per day of oil. Some of that lost supply could be made up by Iran, which pumped an average 2.4 million barrels per day in 2021 though due to sanctions has been able to sell less than half of what it produces.
(Associated Press)
Nuclear Accord
Iran rejects curbs on its defensive power, regional presence
Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Thursday that Tehran will not bow to pressure to reduce its defensive power, regional presence and progress in nuclear technology, Iranian state media reported.
“Suggestions to reduce our defensive power so as to appease the enemy are nothing more that naive and ill-advised ...Over time, these flawed proposals have been rebutted, but if they weren’t, Iran would have now faced great threats,” the country's top political authority said according to state media.
“Regional presence gives us strategic depth and more power," Khamenei said."Why should we give it up? Scientific progress in the nuclear field is related to our future needs, and if we give that up, will anyone help us in the future?” he added.Iran on Thursday called on the United States to drop "unacceptable proposals" in the talks, while Russia's demands for guarantees from Washington have complicated efforts to close an agreement
(Reuters)
Iran nuclear talks stumble over unresolved Russian demands
Parties trying to revive the Iran nuclear deal scrambled on Wednesday to resolve last-minute Russian demands that threaten to scupper negotiations, diplomats said, with the United States appearing unwilling to engage with Russia on the matter.
Eleven months of talks to restore the deal, which lifted sanctions on Iran in return for curbs on its nuclear programme, have reached their final stages with several diplomats saying there was broad agreement.
But just as the final issues were being resolved, Russia presented a new obstacle by demanding written guarantees from the United States that Western sanctions targeting Moscow over its invasion of Ukraine would not affect its trade with Iran.
"In view of the new circumstances and wave of sanctions against Russia we have the right to protect our interests in the nuclear field and wider context," Ulyanov said.
He said the United States and the European Union had to make it clear that neither now or in the future sanctions could hit the implementation of nuclear projects in Iran as well as its trade and economic relations.
(Reuters)
Inside Iran
Report: Iran’s Revolutionary Guard launches second satellite
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has launched a second satellite into space, state media reported, as world powers awaited Tehran’s decision in negotiations over the country’s tattered nuclear deal.
State television identified the launch on Tuesday as taking place in its northeastern Shahroud Desert, without specifying when.
It came as Iran’s top diplomat at the months-long talks suddenly flew home late on Monday for consultations, a sign of the growing pressure on Tehran as the negotiations appear to be nearing their end on reviving the accord.
IRGC said the Noor-2 satellite reached a low orbit of 500km (310 miles) above the Earth’s surface on the Ghased satellite carrier, state-run Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) reported. It described the Ghased as a three-phase, mixed-fuel satellite carrier.
(Al Jazeera)
Regional Politics
Iran in talks with the Taliban to resume ambitious rail project
Iran is holding talks with the Taliban to resume construction of an ambitious rail project that ultimately aims to connect at least five Central Asian countries, according to an Iranian official.
Iran is ready to make further investments and both sides are willing to finish construction on a rail line connecting Khaf in northeastern Iran with Herat in northwestern Afghanistan, according to Iranian transit official Abbas Khatibi.
Khatibi, a deputy head of the Construction and Development of Transportation Infrastructures Company of Iran, was quoted by the Tasnim news website as saying the project could boost trade and reduce transit costs.
“This rail line can also link Afghanistan with Iran’s southern ports,” he said, adding that when fully complete, the project could eventually carve a path linking China to Turkey.
But Iran has yet to officially recognise the Taliban as the government of Afghanistan, with the administration of President Ebrahim Raisi saying that would hinge on the formation of an “inclusive” government in Afghanistan.
(Al Jazeera)
Iran says Israel will pay for Syria attack that killed 2 Revolutionary Guards
Iran said on Wednesday that anIsraeli air strike in Syria that killed four people including two Iranian Revolutionary Guards officers would be avenged.
Syrian state media said the other two victims of Monday's strike on Damascus were civilians, while the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights identified them as pro-Iran Syrian militiamen.
The Observatory said the two dead Iranians killed belonged to Iran's elite Quds Force. Six militiamen were also wounded, it added.
The Guards' website, Sepah News, identified the two slain officers as colonels Ehsan Karbalaipour and Morteza Saeidnejad, adding that Israel would "pay for this crime." Their funerals will be held on Wednesday, it said.
The Observatory said Monday's was the seventh Israeli strike on Syria this year and that the target was a weapons and ammunition depot near Damascus airport.
(Reuters)
Analysis
Sanctioning Russia Won’t Work. Just Look at Iran
By: Arron Merat
US president Joe Biden made a revealing slip-up in a speech addressing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last week. “Putin may circle Kyiv with tanks,” he said, “but he’ll never gain the hearts and souls of the Iranian people.” With this snafu, the president spotlighted an altogether different economic war still being fought by the US today; its decade-long sanctioning of Iran. Indeed, the sanctions that the US has announced it will be imposing on Russia’s central bank are formally the same as those it imposed on Iran in 2011.
Iran is the only country in living memory that has experienced such extra-territorial banking sanctions for a sustained period. In response to what the US said were its illicit nuclear activities, the US and its allies embargoed the country’s oil and cut off its bank – crucially its central bank – from global dollar trade in late 2011.
With its economy in free fall, the Iranian government was forced to improvise and make quick decisions to contain the damage. A new elite of so-called black knights was rapidly empowered to sell Iranian oil on the black market, smuggle dollars into the country, or buy up rials illegally to keep its currency afloat. Largely unaccountable, they embezzled billions from the Iranian economy.
Meanwhile, millions of ordinary Iranians bore the economic brunt of the sanctions. With inflation rising, the government effectively hung the poor out to dry, as it prioritised the protection of Iran’s core economic interests: food, energy and military procurement. This meant slashing welfare and violently suppressing the growing unrest in response to mass lay-offs and inflation-battered wages. Another particularly dire consequence of the sanctions was their role in preventing lifesaving drugs from reaching the country, despite there being special exemptions for medical supplies. During this period, rates of inequality, addiction and suicide – particularly public self-immolations – rose significantly – and, crucially, have never waned.
(Novara Media)
Iran should rejoin the nuclear deal with or without Russia
By: Nima Khorrami
As Iran and the IAEA managed to solve the few remaining continuous factors in ongoing nuclear talks and the prospect for a renewed nuclear deal began to look bright, Russia’s sudden demand for sanctions exemptions has dampened hope the a deal can be reached any time soon.
Linking its support for the deal to a guaranteed right to “free and fully-fledged trade and economic and investment cooperation and military-technical cooperation with Iran” in spite of the newly imposed sanctions on it, Iranian officials have been quick to criticize the last minute change especially after that the U.S. government has refused Russia’s demand as irrelevant. So what explains Russia’s change of heart and what does it mean for Tehran?
There are a number of explanations ranging from the effects of the deal on energy prices to the more long term prospect of Iran moving away from Moscow. To be able to avoid further deterioration of its economy and maintain its war efforts, Russia’s interest squarely lies in higher oil prices, and thus any development that could lower prices, however meagre, is to be prevented. A renewed nuclear deal with Iran would do just that. While Iranian oil will not replace that of Russia nor will it, in the short to medium term, reduce the EU’s dependency on the Russian energy, the addition of Iranian resources and Tehran’s ability to sell its oil on the global market freely will certainly reduce prices.
Added to this is Iran’s wariness of sanctions reimposition on its banking system and its companies should they engage in commercial interactions with their Russian counterparts. This, in turn, will serve a severe blow to Moscow’s attempt at carving an exclusive commercial role for itself in Iran and might even dampen Iranian enthusiasm for the signing of a long term strategic pact.
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