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Category: iran

  • Iran Names Suspect In Natanz Centrifuge Attack

    Iranian state television has identified a suspect in an April 11 attack on the Natanz nuclear site that damaged centrifuges used to enrich uranium.

    The television report on April 17 said the suspect was Reza Karimi, a 43-year-old native of Kashan, Iran. The report did not explain how Karimi might have gained access to Natanz, one of the country’s most secure sites.

    Karimi has reportedly left Iran, and state television said Tehran was seeking his return through legal channels.

    AP reported that Interpol did not respond to a query as to whether a “red notice” had been issued for Karimi.

    Tehran blamed Israel for the incident and has vowed “revenge.”

    Israel has not confirmed any role in the incident and generally does not comment on clandestine operations, though Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu repeatedly has described Iran as the greatest threat facing his country.

    Based on reporting by AP, Reuters, and AFP

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Biden Says Iranian Decision To Increase Uranium Enrichment To 60 Percent ‘Not Helpful’

    U.S. President Joe Biden has called Iran’s enrichment of uranium to 60 percent purity unhelpful but said the United States is “pleased” that Iran is still participating in indirect talks with Washington aimed at getting both countries back into compliance with the 2015 nuclear deal.

    “We do not support and do not think it’s at all helpful that Iran is saying it’s going to move to enrich to 60 percent,” Biden told reporters at the White House during a joint news conference with Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga.

    “We are, though, nonetheless pleased that Iran has continued to agree to engage in discussions — indirect discussions — with us and with our partners on how we move forward and what is needed to allow us to move back into the [nuclear deal]…without us making concessions that we are just not willing to make,” Biden added.

    Asked if Iran’s move was a sign that Tehran is not serious about returning to the nuclear deal, Biden said: “The discussions are under way. I think it’s premature to make a judgment as to what the outcome will be. But we are still talking.”

    Iran announced earlier that it had begun enriching uranium to 60 percent, higher than it has ever done before and a step closer to the 90 percent that is weapons grade.

    Ali Akbar Salehi, the head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, said on state television that the centrifuges at the Natanz nuclear site were now producing 9 grams at 60 percent purity an hour, adding: “Any enrichment level that we desire is in our reach at the moment and we can do it at any time we want.”

    Iran announced on April 13 that it planned to start enriching uranium at up to 60 percent purity in reaction to an alleged attack on the Natanz nuclear site two days earlier that they have blamed on Israel.

    Tehran has repeatedly denied it is seeking nuclear weapons, saying its nuclear ambitions are purely for civilian purposes.

    Under the 2015 nuclear deal, Iran committed to keep enrichment to 3.67 percent. Recently it has been enriching up to 20 percent, saying the deal was no longer enforceable.

    Iran and global powers have been meeting in Vienna to try to rescue the nuclear deal, which former President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew the United States from in 2018.

    The talks will carry on for several more days before breaking so that Iranian and U.S. officials can return home for consultations, a European Union official said on April 16.

    Iran’s decision to go up to 60 percent enrichment “is not making the negotiation easier,” the EU official told reporters, calling an explosion that occurred at the Natanz site “deliberate sabotage.”

    Few details have emerged about the April 11 attack.

    Israel has neither confirmed nor denied involvement, but multiple Israeli media outlets quoted unnamed intelligence sources as saying that the country’s Mossad spy service carried out a successful sabotage operation at the Natanz site.

    Israel plans to hold a meeting of its top security officials on April 18 over the Iranian announcement on enrichment.

    With reporting by Reuters, AFP, and AP

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Iran Says 60 Percent Enrichment ‘Under Way’ At Natanz Site

    Iranian officials say the country has begun enriching uranium up to 60 percent purity, higher than it has ever done before, despite ongoing talks between Tehran and world powers to revive the 2015 nuclear deal.

    State television quoted parliament speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf as saying that Iranian scientists had successfully started enriching 60 percent uranium after midnight local time on April 16.

    His comments were backed up by Ali Akbar Salehi, the head of the Atomic Energy Organization, who was quoted by the semiofficial Tasnim news agency as saying that “the enrichment of uranium to 60 percent is under way” at the Natanz nuclear site.

    The move raises the stakes as Iran negotiates with world powers in Vienna over a way to bring Washington and Tehran into full compliance with the 2015 agreement, abandoned by the United States under former President Donald Trump three years ago.

    Iran announced on April 13 that it planned to start enriching uranium at up to 60 percent purity in reaction to an alleged attack on the Natanz nuclear site two days before that they have blamed on archenemy Israel.

    The UN’s nuclear watchdog has confirmed that Iran was preparing to enrich uranium to 60 percent purity at an aboveground facility at the site.

    Under the 2015 nuclear deal, Iran had committed to keep enrichment to 3.67 percent. Recently it has been enriching up to 20 percent, saying the deal was no longer enforceable.

    While enriching uranium to 60 percent would be the highest level achieved by Iran’s nuclear program, it is still short of the 90 percent purity needed for military use. Tehran has repeatedly denied it is seeking nuclear weapons and that its nuclear ambitions are purely for civilian purposes.

    Iran and other parties to the accord — Britain, France, Germany, China, and Russia — last week launched what has been described as “constructive” talks aimed at reviving the nuclear agreement, with European countries working as intermediaries between Washington and Tehran.

    After more talks in Vienna on April 15, diplomats said two working groups would continue discussions and refine details on how to lift U.S. sanctions and bring Iran back into compliance with restrictions on its nuclear program.

    U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said late on April 14 that Tehran’s “provocative” announcement on enrichment “calls into question Iran’s seriousness with regard the nuclear talks.”

    Britain, France, and Germany have expressed “grave concern” over Tehran’s “dangerous” announcement, saying it was “contrary to the constructive spirit and good faith” of ongoing efforts to revive the 2015 pact.

    Few details have emerged about the alleged April 11 sabotage, which Iranian officials said knocked out power at the enrichment plant in central Iran.

    Israel has neither confirmed nor denied involvement but multiple Israeli media outlets quoted unnamed intelligence sources as saying that the country’s Mossad spy service carried out a successful sabotage operation at the Natanz site.

    Lawmaker Alireza Zakani, who heads the research center of Iran’s parliament, said in an interview that “several thousand centrifuges were damaged and destroyed.” Other officials said that only first-generation machines had been affected.

    Citing two intelligence sources, The New York Times has reported that production at Natanz could be set back by at least nine months due to the attack.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • For JCPOA Re-entry, Biden Must Tear Down This Sanctions Wall

    It was clear from the outset: Returning to the Iran Nuclear Deal was not a matter of nuclear technicalities or diplomatic savvy. It was and remains primarily a matter of political will and political capital. 

    Though all eyes will be on the start of formal talks in Vienna this week, the real test will take place in Washington D.C. where President Joe Biden must muster the political will to tear down the “sanctions wall” his predecessor put in place for the sole purpose of preventing an American return to the nuclear agreement, lest the talks in Vienna will be for naught. 

    With only two months left until the Iranian elections, Washington and Tehran find themselves in agreement on at least one issue: There is no time for a lengthy negotiation on how the two can return to full compliance with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (the JCPOA).

    The post For JCPOA Re-entry, Biden Must Tear Down This Sanctions Wall appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Iran Signs Deal To Buy 60 Million Sputnik Vaccine Doses From Russia

    Iran’s ambassador to Moscow says Tehran has signed a contract with Russia to purchase 60 million doses of the Sputnik V COVID-19 vaccine.

    Kazem Jalali told the state-run IRNA news agency on April 15 that the deal with the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), which is responsible for marketing the vaccine abroad, would provide enough shots to fully vaccinate 30 million people.

    Jalali said 60 million doses would be sent to Iran between June and December.

    He added that so far two Iranian companies have signed a contract with Russia for the joint production of vaccines in Iran.

    Sputnik V, developed by Moscow’s Gamaleya Institute, overcame international skepticism in February after peer-reviewed results published in the medical journal The Lancet showed it to be safe and 91.6 percent effective against COVID-19. Sputnik V is a vector vaccine based on the human adenovirus, which causes the common cold.

    Iran is struggling to stem a new wave of COVID-19 infections, with the coronavirus killing one person every four minutes in the country, state TV reported on April 15. The country of 83 million people has recorded a total of 65,680 coronavirus-related deaths and more than 2.1 million infections since the pandemic began.

    Authorities imposed a 10-day lockdown on April 10 across most of the country to curb the spread of a fourth wave of the coronavirus, triggered in part by people ignoring health protocols during a two-week public holiday for Norouz, the Persian New Year.

    In some cities, hospitals are inundated with the sick and running out of beds.

    Businesses, restaurants, schools, and other public institutions have been forced to shut and gatherings are banned during the holy month of Ramadan.

    Iran is testing a homemade vaccine that may be ready for distribution in the spring. The country has also began working on a joint vaccine with Cuba. It is also planning to import some 17 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine under COVAX, an international collaboration to deliver the vaccine equitably across the world. COVAX delivered its first shipment of 700,000 AstraZeneca vaccine doses this week.

    With reporting by AP, IRNA, and Reuters

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Iranian Opposition Group Members Charged In Denmark With Financing Terrorist Activity

    Denmark’s public prosecutor has charged three members of an Iranian Arab opposition group with financing and supporting terrorist activity in Iran and aiding Saudi intelligence services.

    “This is a very serious case, where people in Denmark have carried out illegal intelligence activities and financed and promoted terrorism from Denmark in other countries,” Lise-Lotte Nilas, a Copenhagen prosecutor, said in a statement on April 15.

    “Of course, this cannot take place on Danish soil, and therefore I am satisfied that we can now bring charges in the case.”

    The three members of the Arab Struggle Movement for the Liberation of Ahvaz (ASMLA) were arrested in February 2020 and have been in custody since.

    At the time of their detention, Danish officials said the three “collected information about individuals in Denmark and abroad and passed on this information to a Saudi intelligence service,” among other things.

    The prosecutor said the case was linked to a 2018 police operation over an alleged Iranian plot to kill one or more opponents of the Iranian government.

    They said it was also connected with a criminal case that is currently pending against a Norwegian citizen of Iranian origin who is charged with having helped the Iranian intelligence service plan the murder in Denmark of one of the three.

    A jury trial will start on April 29 for the three and be held at the Roskilde district court, the statement said.

    The defendants face prison sentences of up to 12 years if convicted.

    ASMLA, which has an armed branch and seeks a separate state for ethnic Arabs in Iran’s oil-producing southwestern province of Khuzestan, was accused by Tehran as being behind a deadly 2018 terror attack on a military parade in the southwestern city of Ahvaz that left at least 25 dead, including civilians.

    With reporting by Reuters

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Iran Nuclear Talks To Resume In Vienna Under Shadow Of Alleged Sabotage

    Talks to revive the Iran nuclear deal are set to resume in Vienna amid renewed tensions as Tehran prepares to ramp up uranium enrichment following an alleged sabotage attack on the country’s main nuclear site.

    Iran and other parties to the 2015 agreement -– Britain, France, Germany, China, and Russia — last week launched what has been described as “constructive” talks to bring Washington and Tehran into full compliance with the accord.

    But on April 13, Iran announced it would start enriching uranium at up to 60 percent purity, higher than it has ever done before, casting a shadow on the negotiations at which European countries have worked as intermediaries between Washington and Tehran.

    Iranian officials say the move comes in reaction to an alleged attack on the Natanz nuclear site two days earlier that they have blamed on archenemy Israel.

    U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Tehran’s “provocative” announcement on enrichment “calls into question Iran’s seriousness with regard the nuclear talks.”

    Britain, France, and Germany expressed “grave concern” over Tehran’s “dangerous” announcement, saying it was “contrary to the constructive spirit and good faith” of ongoing efforts to revive the 2015 pact.

    Under the deal, abandoned by the United States under former President Donald Trump, Iran had committed to keep enrichment to 3.67 percent. Recently it has been enriching up to 20 percent, saying the deal was no longer enforceable.

    While enriching uranium to 60 percent would be the highest level achieved by Iran’s nuclear program, it is still short of the 90 percent purity needed for military use. Tehran has repeatedly denied it is seeking nuclear weapons and that its nuclear ambitions are purely for civilian purposes.

    Few details have emerged about the April 11 alleged sabotage attack, which Iranian officials said knocked out power at the enrichment plant in central Iran.

    Israel has neither confirmed nor denied involvement but multiple Israeli media outlets quoted unnamed intelligence sources as saying that the country’s Mossad spy service carried out a successful sabotage operation at the Natanz site.

    Lawmaker Alireza Zakani, who heads the research center of Iran’s hard-line parliament, said in an interview that “several thousand centrifuges were damaged and destroyed.” Other officials said that only first-generation machines had been affected.

    Citing two intelligence sources, The New York Times has reported that production at Natanz could be set back by at least nine months due to the attack.

    Inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN nuclear watchdog, have visited the site but have not commented on the extent of the damage caused by the alleged attack.

    However, the IAEA did say that Iran had “almost completed preparations” to enrich uranium to 60 percent purity.

    The 2015 nuclear deal lifted international sanctions on Tehran in exchange for limits on its nuclear program. But the Trump administration imposed a raft of sanctions under a “maximum pressure” campaign after it withdrew from the nuclear agreement in 2018.

    Iran responded by gradually breaching many of the nuclear restrictions, saying the deal no longer applied.

    U.S. and Iranian officials have publicly clashed over the sequencing of possible U.S. sanctions relief and Iran reversing its breaches of the deal.

    Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif on April 15 said the Natanz attack had unleashed a “dangerous spiral” and warned Biden the situation could only be contained by lifting the sanctions Trump imposed.

    “No alternative. Not much time,” he wrote on Twitter.

    Ali Vaez, director of the Iran project at the International Crisis Group think tank, said that events of the past few days had “added urgency” to the talks.

    “It is clear that the more the diplomatic process drags on, the higher the risk that it gets derailed by saboteurs and those acting in bad faith,” he added.

    Eric Brewer, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told RFE/RL that “enriching to 60 percent is a significant Iranian step and will further shorten Iran’s breakout timeline.”

    However, the Iranian move was “unlikely to have the intended effect of forcing the U.S. to accept Iran’s demands,” said Brewer, who served as a deputy national intelligence officer and was responsible for monitoring Iran’s nuclear program.

    With reporting by AFP, dpa, and RFE/RL’s Radio Farda

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Incident At Natanz Complicates Attempts To Revive Iranian Nuclear Deal

    An alleged act of sabotage against a key Iranian nuclear site appears to have complicated newly launched negotiations aimed at reviving the 2015 nuclear deal.

    Two days after the attack — which Iran has blamed on Israel –Tehran announced it will start enriching uranium at 60 percent purity, higher than it has ever done before.

    Iranian President Hassan Rohani said on April 14 that the decision to sharply boost the enrichment was a reaction to the alleged attack at the secretive underground facility in central Iran.

    “Enabling IR-6 [centrifuges] at Natanz today, or bringing enrichment to 60 percent, this is the response to your evilness,” Rohani, apparently alluding to Israel, said at a cabinet meeting. “What you did was nuclear terrorism. What we do is legal.”

    Iranian authorities have called the damaging attack on Natanz an act of “nuclear terrorism,” suggesting it was aimed at undermining recently launched, indirect negotiations between Tehran and Washington held to try to find a way for the United States to rejoin the deal it left in 2018 in exchange for Iran strictly adhering to the agreement.

    “You wanted to leave our hands empty during the talks but our hands are full,” Rohani said, suggesting that Tehran was attempting to gain leverage in the talks in Vienna, which are due to resume later this week.

    Tehran’s decision to enrich uranium at unprecedented levels was announced two days after the April 11 incident at Natanz. Iran’s envoy to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Kazem Gharibabadi, said on April 14 that 60 percent enrichment would begin next week.

    Under the nuclear deal agreed between six world power and Iran, Tehran is allowed to enrich uranium at 3.67 percent. Nuclear enrichment of 90 percent purity is needed to produce a nuclear bomb.

    Tehran began enriching uranium to 20 percent in January after parliament passed a law requiring the government to boost enrichment levels. The bill was adopted following the November assassination of top Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh amid suspicions that Israel was behind the killing near Tehran.

    Analysts have warned that the incident at Natanz — which involved a carefully timed disruption of the site’s power — was likely to make it more difficult for Iranian negotiators to compromise in the nuclear talks, at which European countries have worked as intermediaries between Tehran and Washington.

    “Domestic politics in Iran were already making compromise hard, this is just going to pour gasoline on that problem,” Eric Brewer, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told RFE/RL. “Enriching to 60 percent is a significant Iranian step and will further shorten Iran’s breakout timeline,” said Brewer, who served as a deputy national intelligence officer and was responsible for monitoring Iran’s nuclear program.

    He added that the move was “unlikely to have the intended effect of forcing the U.S. to accept Iran’s demands.”

    A satellite image shows the Natanz uranium enrichment facility on April 12.


    A satellite image shows the Natanz uranium enrichment facility on April 12.

    Who Profits?

    Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said sabotaging Natanz was “a very bad gamble” that he claimed would strengthen Tehran’s hand in the nuclear talks. He also said Tehran will retaliate if it determines that Israel was behind the sabotage. “The Zionists want to take revenge for our progress on the way to lift cruel sanctions,” Zarif said earlier in the week, adding that “we will not fall into their trap.”

    The extent of the damage to the underground nuclear site is not clear. Citing two intelligence sources, The New York Times reported that production at Natanz could be set back for at least nine months due to the attack, which reportedly caused fires.

    Lawmaker Alireza Zakani, who heads the research center of Iran’s hard-line parliament, said in an interview that “several thousand centrifuges were damaged and destroyed.”

    Israel has neither denied nor confirmed a role in the attack. Unnamed intelligence sources have told Israeli media that Mossad was responsible for the sabotage.

    The White House has denied that the United States had any involvement in the incident while declining to comment on whether the major power outage might undermine efforts to restore the nuclear accord.

    ‘Not A Small Signal’

    Brewer said the attack at Natanz signals to Iran that “its adversaries can still ‘reach out and touch’ its nuclear program whenever they feel like it.”

    “After years of attacks against Iranian facilities and scientists and efforts Iran has taken to prevent them, [that attack is] not a small signal,” he said, adding that more events, “deliberate and otherwise,” are expected that could test the talks.

    “For diplomacy to work we have to weather those events, and we’ve done so before. But that’s a lot harder right now given that we’re probably a ways off from a deal and there’s a lack of trust,” he added.

    Damage is seen to a building after a fire broke out at the Natanz facility in July 2020.


    Damage is seen to a building after a fire broke out at the Natanz facility in July 2020.

    Ali Vaez, director of the Iran project at the International Crisis Group, said the attack at Natanz appeared to be “a win-win scenario for Israel.”

    “If Iran doesn’t retaliate out of fear of derailing nuclear diplomacy, it grants Israel a cost-free but devastating blow to Iran’s nuclear program. If Iran retaliates, then it risks derailing nuclear diplomacy, which is in line with Israel’s objectives,” he told RFE/RL.

    Complicating Talks

    Dalia Kassa Kaye, a fellow at the Wilson Center and the former director of the Rand Center for the Middle East, believes undermining diplomacy was not the only aim of the attack at Natanz, which was also targeted in July in an act of sabotage that was also blamed on Israel as part of shadow efforts undermining Iran’s nuclear program, which Israeli officials see as an existential threat.

    “But such incidents certainly complicate diplomacy for the [administration of President Joe Biden] and are only likely to further erode trust between the United States and Iran,” she said. “It’s hard to imagine the administration welcomed this action in the midst of this particularly sensitive time in nuclear diplomacy.”

    The incident resulted in a call by Iran’s Tasnim news agency, which is affiliated with the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, for Rohani’s government to leave the Vienna talks that the news outlet said were taking place “under the shadow of terror.” Tasnim suggested the Natanz attack must have been coordinated with the United States.

    Lawmaker Mojtaba Zolnur, who heads the parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, called on Rohani not to trust Washington, saying Israel’s “involvement” in the incident did not clear the United States, which he claimed had been working “to inflict more severe blows” on Tehran.

    But Reza Noroozpur, the head of the official IRNA state news agency, warned against halting the negotiations, saying it was “the demand of [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu.” He added that Tehran should follow the policy of “strategic patience” and retaliate at an appropriate time.

    U.S. President Donald Trump exited the landmark agreement in May 2018 while reimposing crippling economic sanctions at the same time. Tehran reacted by gradually decreasing its commitments under the deal.

    The Biden administration has expressed its readiness to rejoin the nuclear deal — also co-signed by Germany, France, Russia, Britain, and China — if Tehran returns to full compliance with the agreement.

    Washington said last week it would be prepared to lift sanctions that are inconsistent with the nuclear agreement.

    But Tehran has called for the removal of all sanctions in refusing any direct talks with Washington, saying that it is no longer a party to the agreement.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Iran Says It Will Start Producing Uranium Enriched To 60 Percent Following Suspected Sabotage

    Iran says it will start producing uranium enriched to 60 percent purity by next week following an alleged attack on the country’s main Natanz nuclear site that Tehran has blamed on archenemy Israel.

    Iran’s envoy to the UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), tweeted on April 14 that the country will use two cascades of advanced IR-4 and IR-6 centrifuges in Natanz to enrich uranium hexafluoride up to 60 percent.

    Enriching uranium to 60 percent would be the highest level achieved by Iran’s nuclear program, although it is still short of the 90 percent purity needed for military use. Tehran has repeatedly denied it is seeking nuclear weapons, saying its nuclear ambitions are purely civilian.

    “The modification of the process just started and we expect to accumulate the product next week,” Kazem Gharibabadi wrote.

    Iran had flagged the move a day earlier when it announced it would enrich uranium to its highest level ever, with Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif saying the alleged attack on the nuclear site south of Tehran was a “very bad gamble” that would strengthen Tehran’s hand in talks to revive the 2015 nuclear deal with world powers.

    Under the agreement, Iran had committed to keep enrichment to 3.67 percent. Recently, it has been enriching up to 20 percent, saying the deal was no longer enforceable.

    The White House has said it remains committed to talks with Iran despite Tehran’s “provocative” statement that it will ramp up uranium enrichment.

    In a message aimed at Israel, Iran’s President Hassan Rohani said during a cabinet meeting on April 14: “You wanted to make our hands empty during the talks, but our hands are full.”

    “We cut both of your hands, one with IR-6 centrifuges and another one with 60 percent,” he added.

    IR-6 centrifuges enrich uranium at a far faster rate than the IR-1 first-generation centrifuges that were taken out in the suspected sabotage attack.

    On April 13, the IAEA’s director-general, Rafael Mariano Grossi, confirmed that Iran had informed the agency that the country “intends to start producing UF6 enriched up to 60 percent.”

    The White House is “certainly concerned about these provocative announcements,” press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters. “We believe that the diplomatic path is the only path forward here and that having a discussion, even indirect, is the best way to come to a resolution.”

    Few details have emerged about the April 11 alleged attack; no images of the aftermath have been released.

    Iranian officials have said an explosion caused a power failure at Natanz that affected Iran’s first generation of centrifuges, and vowed it would take “revenge” and ramp up its nuclear activities.

    In a state television interview, Alireza Zakani, head of the Iranian parliament’s research center, referred to “several thousand centrifuges damaged and destroyed.”

    While no one has claimed responsibility for the attack, Israel is widely believed to have carried out the still-unexplained assault, which came a day after new uranium-enrichment equipment was unveiled at Natanz, an underground site key to Iran’s uranium-enrichment program that is monitored by IAEA inspectors.

    It also occurred amid diplomatic efforts to revive the nuclear agreement, abandoned by the United States under former President Donald Trump, and which Israel fiercely opposes.

    “Israel played a very bad gamble if it thought that the attack will weaken Iran’s hand in the nuclear talks,” Zarif said on April 13. “On the contrary, it will strengthen our position.”

    Last week in Vienna, Iran and the global powers held what they described as constructive EU-hosted talks centering on overcoming an impasse between Washington and Tehran to bring both parties into full compliance with the 2015 nuclear accord.

    Further discussions are scheduled in the Austrian capital on April 14.

    The pact lifted international sanctions on Tehran in exchange for limits on Iran’s nuclear program. But the Trump administration imposed a raft of sanctions on Tehran under a “maximum pressure” campaign after it withdrew from the nuclear agreement in 2018.

    Iran responded by gradually breaching many of the nuclear restrictions.

    U.S. and Iranian officials have publicly clashed over the sequencing of possible U.S. sanctions relief and Iran reversing its breaches of the deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

    Multiple Israeli media outlets quoted unnamed intelligence sources as saying that the country’s Mossad spy service carried out a successful sabotage operation at the Natanz site, potentially setting back enrichment work there by months.

    Israel is suspected of carrying out sabotage against Iran in the past, including cyberattacks and assassinations of nuclear scientists.

    With reporting by AP and AFP

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Iran’s Natanz Nuclear Site Hit By Suspected Israeli Sabotage

    Iran’s Natanz nuclear site suffered a blackout in a suspected act of sabotage committed by Israel, an incident that could overshadow diplomatic efforts to revive the 2015 nuclear deal abandoned by former U.S. President Donald Trump.

    Ali Akbar Salehi, the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization (IAEO), called the April 11 blackout an act of “nuclear terrorism” and urged the international community to stand up against the threat.

    He did not mention who may have been behind the alleged sabotage or what caused it, but said Iran “reserves the right to take action against the perpetrators.”

    “To thwart the goals of those who commanded this terrorist act…Iran will continue to improve its nuclear technology on the one hand and to lift oppressive U.S. sanctions on the other hand,” Salehi said.

    Israel’s Kan public radio cited intelligence sources who said Israel’s Mossad spy agency had carried out a cyber-attack.

    But The New York Times, citing American and Israeli intelligence officials, reported Israel had a role in what it described as a “large explosion” that destroyed an internal power system that supplies underground centrifuges that enrich uranium. The blackout occurred a day after Tehran launched new advanced centrifuges with the potential to accelerate uranium enrichment.

    The intelligence officials said the damage to the power system was enough to knock out Natanz’s uranium enrichment for at least nine months.

    The underground Natanz site is key to Iran’s uranium enrichment program and monitored by inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN nuclear watchdog.

    Israel, Iran’s archenemy, is suspected of carrying out sabotage against Iran in the past, including cyber-attacks and assassinations of nuclear scientists. Last year, a fire broke out at an aboveground part of the Natanz nuclear facility, which Iran said was an attempt to sabotage Iran’s nuclear program. Then in November, Iran’s top nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was killed in an attack on his car near Tehran. Iran blamed Israel for the assassination.

    Israel generally does comment on clandestine operations, though Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu repeatedly has described Iran as the greatest threat facing his country.

    The latest development comes as Israel is intensifying a long-running shadow war against Iran, ranging from upping airstrikes on Iran-aligned forces in Syria to a suspected mine attack earlier this month on a ship used by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps off the coast of Yemen.

    The incident at Natanz casts additional uncertainty over ongoing efforts in Vienna to revive the 2015 nuclear deal between world powers and Tehran, an accord long opposed by Israel.

    President Joe Biden has expressed a willingness for the United States to reenter the accord first abandoned by the Trump administration, which imposed a raft of sanctions on Tehran under a “maximum pressure” campaign. Iran responded to the U.S. exit from the deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), by gradually breaching many of the nuclear restrictions.

    The EU-hosted talks in Vienna center on overcoming an impasse between the United States and Iran to bring both parties into full compliance with the 2015 agreement, which lifted international sanctions on Tehran in exchange for limits on Iran’s nuclear program. U.S. and Iranian sides have publicly clashed over the sequencing of possible U.S. sanctions relief and Iran reversing its breaches of the deal.

    With reporting by AFP, AP, and The New York Times, and Reuters.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Iran Urged To Halt Execution Of Man Convicted Of Raping Child

    Amnesty International has called on Iran to halt the execution of a man sentenced to death for the rape of a minor.

    The London-based rights watchdog said Farhad Salehi Jabehdar, 30, is scheduled to be executed on April 13 in the northern province of Alborz.

    His execution has been scheduled even though a request for a judicial review of his case is pending before the Supreme Court.

    Iran’s Supreme Court on April 11 informed Jabehdar’s lawyer that the judicial review request will be examined in several weeks but rejected the lawyer’s request to order a stay.

    In a statement on April 11, Amnesty said that “in addition to the fact that the use of the death penalty for the crime of rape is prohibited under international law, the death penalty is the ultimate cruel, inhuman, and degrading punishment and is never the answer.”

    Jabehdar was arrested in June 2018 in connection with the sexual assault of a 10-year-old child in 2017.

    He was convicted of “forced male-male intercourse” and sentenced to death in 2019. The conviction and sentence were upheld by Supreme Court.

    The parents of the child have formally requested that the authorities not impose the death penalty on Jabehdar.

    Iran is the world’s second-most-active executioner after China, according to Amnesty.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Iran Reports ‘Incident’ At Natanz Nuclear Site

    An electrical problem has been reported at Iran’s Natanz nuclear site, a day after Tehran launched new advanced centrifuges that enrich uranium more quickly.

    It was the latest incident to strike one of Tehran’s most secure sites amid negotiations over the tattered atomic accord with world powers.

    “The incident caused no casualties or pollution,” Iranian Atomic Energy Organization spokesman Behrouz Kamalvandi said, adding that “electricity was affected at the Natanz facility.”

    Last year, a fire broke out at the Natanz nuclear facility that the government said was an attempt to sabotage its nuclear program.

    The underground Natanz site is key to Iran’s uranium enrichment program and monitored by inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN nuclear watchdog.

    Israel, Iran’s regional archenemy, is suspected of carrying out an attack there, as well as launching other assaults.

    Iran also blamed Israel for the killing of a scientist who began the country’s military nuclear program decades earlier. Israel has not claimed any of the attacks, though Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly described Iran as the major threat faced by his country in recent weeks.

    The incident at Natanz comes amid efforts to revive the international 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and major powers that former U.S. President Donald Trump withdrew the United States from three years ago. Trump reimposed sanctions that were lifted on the Islamic republic, and brought in many more.

    In reaction, Iran breached many restrictions imposed by the accord. Tehran has abandoned all the limits of its uranium stockpile. It now enriches up to 20 percent purity, a technical step away from weapons-grade levels of 90 percent.

    Earlier this week, talks began in Vienna aimed at bringing the United States and Iran back into full compliance with the deal.

    On April 10, Iran announced it had launched a chain of 164 IR-6 centrifuges at Natanz, injecting them with the uranium gas and beginning their rapid spinning.

    Officials also began testing the IR-9 centrifuge, which they say will enrich uranium 50 times faster than Iran’s first-generation centrifuges, the IR-1. The nuclear deal limited Iran to using only IR-1s for enrichment.

    Iran maintains its nuclear program is solely for peaceful purposes, but fears about Tehran having the ability to make a bomb saw world powers reach the deal with the Islamic republic in 2015.

    The deal lifted economic sanctions on Iran in exchange for it limiting its program and allowing inspectors from the IAEA to keep a close watch on its work.

    With reporting by AP, Reuters, and AFP

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Iran Reports ‘Incident’ At Natanz Nuclear Site

    An electrical problem has been reported at Iran’s Natanz nuclear site, a day after Tehran launched new advanced centrifuges that enrich uranium more quickly.

    It was the latest incident to strike one of Tehran’s most secure sites amid negotiations over the tattered atomic accord with world powers.

    “The incident caused no casualties or pollution,” Iranian Atomic Energy Organization spokesman Behrouz Kamalvandi said, adding that “electricity was affected at the Natanz facility.”

    Last year, a fire broke out at the Natanz nuclear facility that the government said was an attempt to sabotage its nuclear program.

    The underground Natanz site is key to Iran’s uranium enrichment program and monitored by inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN nuclear watchdog.

    Israel, Iran’s regional archenemy, is suspected of carrying out an attack there, as well as launching other assaults.

    Iran also blamed Israel for the killing of a scientist who began the country’s military nuclear program decades earlier. Israel has not claimed any of the attacks, though Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly described Iran as the major threat faced by his country in recent weeks.

    The incident at Natanz comes amid efforts to revive the international 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and major powers that former U.S. President Donald Trump withdrew the United States from three years ago. Trump reimposed sanctions that were lifted on the Islamic republic, and brought in many more.

    In reaction, Iran breached many restrictions imposed by the accord. Tehran has abandoned all the limits of its uranium stockpile. It now enriches up to 20 percent purity, a technical step away from weapons-grade levels of 90 percent.

    Earlier this week, talks began in Vienna aimed at bringing the United States and Iran back into full compliance with the deal.

    On April 10, Iran announced it had launched a chain of 164 IR-6 centrifuges at Natanz, injecting them with the uranium gas and beginning their rapid spinning.

    Officials also began testing the IR-9 centrifuge, which they say will enrich uranium 50 times faster than Iran’s first-generation centrifuges, the IR-1. The nuclear deal limited Iran to using only IR-1s for enrichment.

    Iran maintains its nuclear program is solely for peaceful purposes, but fears about Tehran having the ability to make a bomb saw world powers reach the deal with the Islamic republic in 2015.

    The deal lifted economic sanctions on Iran in exchange for it limiting its program and allowing inspectors from the IAEA to keep a close watch on its work.

    With reporting by AP, Reuters, and AFP

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Iran Launches Production Of New Centrifuges After Start Of Nuclear Talks In Vienna

    Iranian President Hassan Rohani oversaw the launch of a production line of advanced centrifuges on April 10 in an apparent new violation of the 2015 nuclear deal after talks began earlier this week in Vienna aimed at bringing the United States and Iran back into full compliance with the accord.

    Rohani was seen in a live state TV broadcast at the Natanz nuclear plant ordering the injection of uranium gas into the centrifuges and mechanical tests on its newest advanced nuclear centrifuge.

    The ceremony marked National Nuclear Technology Day and unveiled 133 advances over the past year in the country’s nuclear industry mostly in the fields of medicine, power, agricultural, and energy, state television said.

    “Once again, I stress that all our nuclear activities are peaceful and for non-military purposes,” Rohani said. “We continue to be committed to our pledge to NPT (nonproliferation treaty) and to the world not to deviate militarily from our nuclear program,” he added.

    Although Tehran says it nuclear program is for civilian purposes, there have long been concerns in the international community that the country is inching ever closer to producing enough fissile material for an atomic bomb.

    The April 10 broadcast showed no images of the injection of uranium hexafluoride gas but showed a link with engineers at the plant who said they had started the process.

    The centrifuges that were started up on April 10 allow uranium to be enriched more quickly and in greater amounts than Iran’s first-generation centrifuges, which are the only ones that the 2015 deal allows it to use.

    Iran has breached many restrictions imposed by the deal since former President Donald Trump withdrew the United States from it in 2018.

    ‘Good Start’ To Vienna Talks

    The talks in Vienna are aimed at restoring restrictions on Iran’s nuclear activities in exchange for the lifting of U.S. and other international sanctions.

    All sides said the talks, in which Washington is not participating directly but has the European Union as an intermediary, had got off to a good start.

    Two working groups have been formed to hammer out a compromise, which if reached could still be weeks away. One expert group is focused on how to lift U.S. sanctions to bring Washington back into compliance with the accord. Another group is tasked with detailing a path for Iran to comply with restrictions on its nuclear program, including limits on uranium enrichment and centrifuges.

    An EU statement after the last session on April 9 said the so-called Joint Commission on JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action) had been “briefed on the work of the two expert groups on sanctions lifting and nuclear implementation measures and participants noted the constructive and results oriented exchanges.”

    It said “the participants emphasized their resolve to further pursue the ongoing joint diplomatic effort” and that a coordinator under EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs Josep Borrell “will continue his separate contacts with all JCPOA participants and the United States.”

    In addition to reimposing nuclear-related sanctions, the Trump administration slapped a web of sanctions on Tehran over a range of issues such as terrorism, human rights, and ballistic missiles. They include sanctions on Iran’s Central Bank and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, a part of Iran’s armed forces that the Trump administration labeled a terrorist organization.

    Briefing reporters after talks wrapped up on April 9, a senior State Department official said the initial talks were encouraging but that the United States would not meet Iranian demands to lift all sanctions.

    “If Iran sticks to the position that every sanction that has been imposed since 2017 has to be lifted or there will be no deal, then we are heading towards an impasse,” the senior U.S. official told reporters on a conference call.

    The official said the Trump administration’s sanction policy on Iran had a “purposeful and self-avowed intent to make it difficult for any future administration” to return to the nuclear deal.

    With reporting by AFP, AP, dpa, and Reuters

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • ‘Constructive’ Iran Nuclear Talks Adjourn In Vienna, With Meetings To Resume Next Week

    Diplomats and negotiators have wrapped up four days of talks in Vienna aimed at reviving the hobbled 2015 agreement to limit Iran’s nuclear activities, saying this week’s meetings were “constructive” and provided “positive momentum.”

    A return to the Joint Comprehensive Plan Of Action (JCPOA) has been a priority for U.S. President Joe Biden since taking office in January following his predecessor’s withdrawal from the JCPOA three years ago.

    The EU-hosted talks involved teams from Iran, Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia, and the United States. U.S. and Iranian diplomatics reportedly declined to hold face-to-face meetings so the other other parties conducted shuttle diplomacy.

    An EU statement after the last session on April 9 said the so-called Joint Commission on the JCPOA had been “briefed on the work of the two expert groups on sanctions lifting and nuclear implementation measures and participants noted the constructive and results-oriented exchanges.”

    It said “the participants emphasized their resolve to further pursue the ongoing joint diplomatic effort” and that a coordinator under EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell “will continue his separate contacts with all JCPOA participants and the United States.”

    Expert groups, it said, will resume meetings “in the course of next week.”

    The U.S. and Iranian sides have publicly clashed over the order of possible U.S. concessions on sanctions reimposed under then-President Donald Trump and moves to reverse Iranian deviation from noncompliance with the JCPOA before a new deal can be achieved.

    Russia’s ambassador to the UN in Vienna, Mikhail Ulyanov, said the other sides “took stock of the work done by experts over the last three days and noted with satisfaction the initial progress made.”

    He later tweeted that representatives “will reconvene next week in order to maintain the positive momentum.”

    Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei — who has ultimate political and religious authority in Iran — has demanded that Washington withdraw its crippling sanctions on Iran before any new agreement.

    Iranian President Hassan Rohani said this week that “all parties have come to the conclusion that there is no better alternative.”

    Biden has said Trump’s abandonment of the deal in 2018 has left Tehran closer to possessing nuclear weapons — a goal that Tehran says it rejects. Biden floated hopes for a return to the agreement along with pledges to do all he could to ensure that Iran does not have a nuclear-bomb capability.

    Iran has released a South Korean oil tanker it seized three months ago amid a dispute over billions of dollars in funds frozen due to U.S. sanctions.

    During this week’s talks, suspicion fell on JCPOA opponent Israel after an Iranian ship used by its powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) had been struck with an attached mine in the Red Sea.

    And overnight on April 8-9, South Korea’s Foreign Ministry said the Hankuk Chemi and its captain had been released and the vessel had left an Iranian port near Bandar Abbas.

    The ship had spent months in Iranian custody in an incident seen by many as part of tit-for-tat shows of force in the region with ties to billions of dollars in frozen assets in South Korea linked to Iran.

    With reporting by Reuters and AFP

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Iran Releases South Korean Tanker Seized Amid Dispute Over Frozen Funds

    Iran has released a South Korean oil tanker it seized three months ago amid a dispute over billions of dollars in funds frozen due to U.S. sanctions.

    South Korea’s Foreign Ministry said in an April 9 statement that the Hankuk Chemi and its captain had been released and the vessel left an Iranian port near Bandar Abbas. Twelve of the crew who had previously been released stayed on the ship for maintenance while it was impounded.

    Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) seized the Hankuk Chemi on January 4 near the Strait of Hormuz. At the time of its seizure, Iran said the vessel was leaking oil in violation of environmental laws.

    The move was widely considered a response to around $7 billion frozen in Iranian bank accounts in South Korea, although Tehran officially denied its actions had anything to do with the money.

    The United States reimposed sanctions on Iran in 2018 after former President Donald Trump withdrew Washington from the 2015 nuclear deal between Tehran and world powers.

    South Korea was a major buyer of Iranian oil until Washington ended a sanctions waiver on the Asian economy’s imports of Iranian oil in 2019. That left the Iranian funds sitting frozen in two South Korean banks.

    South Korea’s Foreign Ministry made no mention of any deal or the funds. But in February the two sides agreed to speed the way forward for Iran to receive its money pending U.S. approval. Iran has said it needs the money so it can purchase medicine, medical equipment, and COVID-19 vaccines.

    The development comes as negotiators from Iran and world powers have been meeting in Vienna to overcome an impasse over U.S. sanctions on Iran and Iranian breaches of the nuclear agreement.

    With reporting by AFP, AP, Reuters, and Yonhap

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Limitations of JCPOA Negotiation

    On April 1 — appropriate date, perhaps, for a saga of unending western foolishness and villainy — the EU announced that officials from Iran, Russia, China, the UK, France, and Germany would be meeting virtually to discuss a possible return of the USA to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). Later announcements indicated that representatives of both the USA and Iran would meet with European partners in Vienna in the first week of April, although possibly from different rooms to separate US and Iranian representatives. Talks began on August 6.

    A State Department spokesman welcomed the move, indicating the Biden administration’s preparedness to return to the 2015 deal tortuously negotiated over several years between Iran, the US Obama administration and European powers, and that former President Donald Trump later unilaterally abrogated in May 2018. A pretense by the USA and Europe that resumption of JCPOA requires arduous negotiation camouflages the reality that it has always been obvious that removal of US sanctions on Iran would automatically prompt its immediate return to the JCPOA framework.

    The use of the potential (but not the actuality) of nuclear weapons in the form of weapons development capability has arguably been an instrument of Iranian foreign diplomacy from the days of the Shah, first as a defense against nuclearization of regional neighbors and, since the Islamic revolution in 1979 — and in the guise of varying percentages of uranium enrichment and the construction of centrifuges (many unused) — against US and European opposition to Iranian independence from Washington.

    The 2015 deal itself was the outcome of a long-standing, bullying, propaganda campaign by the USA, Israel, and Europe (UK, France, and Germany) to smear Iran’s peaceful nuclear energy program (including the slight enrichment of uranium for scientific and medical purposes, far below the 90%+ required for nuclear weaponry) as a meaningful threat of nuclear war. Yet Iran, a signatory in 1968 of the Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), had over several decades conceded detailed scrutiny of its energy program (perfectly legitimate, under the NPT) to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Israel, on the other hand, in possession of one hundred or more nuclear warheads, never signed the NPT.

    Israel, with a far smaller population (9 million) than Iran (82 million) and a far smaller territory (22,145 sq.km to Iran’s 1,648,195 sq km), is and has consistently shown evidence of being by far the more likely nuclear aggressor in the Middle East. In June 1981, an Israeli airstrike destroyed an unfinished suspected Iraqi nuclear reactor located 17 kilometers southeast of Baghdad, Iraq. In 2007, Israel struck a suspected nuclear reactor in the Deir ez-Zor region of Syria. In the period 2009 to 2012 the Israeli administration of Benjamin Netanyahu several times threatened to attack Iranian nuclear facilities. In addition, the US and Israeli administrations collaborated in a cyberattack on Iranian facilities (“Stuxnet”) in 2009. There have been several assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists – the latest reported in November 2020 – mostly attributed to Israel’s Mossad.

    Through JCPOA, Iran — which has never possessed nuclear weapons and which has never formally revealed evidence of wanting or planning them — was cowered into conceding an implicit but false admission to being at fault in some way. Iran’s Supreme Leaders have consistently stated their belief that such weapons are immoral.  Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of Iran, confirmed a fatwa against the acquisition, development and use of nuclear weapons in October 2003. “Evidence” of Iranian scientists’ planning for nuclear weaponry is based on forgeries.
    The bullying gang was a cabal of more prosperous nations that unlike Iran, did possess nuclear weapons and, in the case of the USA, had actually used them and, from time to time, demonstrated continuing willingness to consider their use.

    Furthermore, Washington has never shown a fraction of the hysteria it regularly performs on account of Iran’s (non-existent) nuclear “threat” as it did with the actual nuclear weaponization of India from 1998 (with possibly 150 nuclear warheads today) and Pakistan in 1972.

    Iran’s misleading concession to the West’s false narrative was the product of Western coercion through sanctions’ regimes. US-driven sanctions’ terror over Iran, both primary (involving relations between Iran and U.S. actors) and secondary (involving relations between Iran and non-U.S. actors), started from the early 1980s and extended in 1995 to cover bilateral trade and foreign investment in Iranian oil and gas development. Sanctions were further extended in 2002 to include nuclear and missile technology, financial services, transportation, foreign banks operating in Iran, and purchase of Iranian oil. Although many sanctions were lifted by JCPOA, others were retained, including Iranian support for terrorism, development of ballistic missiles, arms-related transactions, violations of human rights and corruption. The slipperiness of concepts such as “terrorism,” “human rights,” and “corruption” in the hands of U.S. and allied states and state-compliant “NGO” agencies provides ample room for continuing sanctions aggression on false or misleading pretext. This is particularly worrisome in the contexts of covert and proxy wars between the US, European powers, Gulf States, Israel, and Salafist rebels in Syria, on the one hand and, on the other, the Syrian government, Russia, and Iranian-backed Hezbollah, as also in the case of Iranian support for the Houthis in Yemen. Even a return to JCPOA, therefore, would exercise considerable restraint on Iranian exercise of its legitimate, sovereign power.

    Iran’s peaceful nuclear energy program originated from imperial machinations in Iran. It was launched in 1957 with US and European assistance in the administration of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Shah of Iran, in the wake of the US-UK orchestrated coup d’etat of 1953 that toppled democratically elected prime minister Mohammad Mossadegh. The program continued until the 1979 Iranian Revolution. The Shah approved plans to construct up to 23 nuclear power stations by 2000. It is possible that the Shah always entertained the possibility of transitioning from a nuclear energy to a nuclear weapons program should neighboring states do the same. The USA supplied the country with a reactor fueled by highly enriched uranium in 1967. After a two-year hiatus, the Shah’s program was resumed by the revolutionary administration in 1981. The regime intended to continue collaborating with a French-owned consortium, but France succumbed to pressure from the Reagan administration in 1984 to end all nuclear cooperation with Iran, despite the absence of any evidence for US claims that Iran’s then only reactor presented a risk of proliferation. In the 1990s, Russia formed a joint research organization with Iran, providing Iran with Russian nuclear experts and technical information.

    Sanctions have a negative impact on the Iranian economy and the welfare of its people. The value of Iranian petroleum exports fell from $53 billion in 2016-2017 to $9 billion in 2019-2020. Iranian GDP shrank by between 5% and 6.5% each year in the period 2018-2020, and inflation rose each year between 30% and 41%. The value of the Iranian currency, the rial, fell from 64,500 rials to the dollar in May 2018 to 315,000 to the dollar in October 2020.

    As strategies of control, sanctions have significant other weaknesses, even from the western point of view. Since the revolution of 1979, first, there is a clear correlation between western aggression towards Iran and the influence on the Iranian polity of anti-western Iranian conservatives and their control over Iranian society through the clerical hierarchy and its exercise of superordinate power over Iran’s parliamentary democracy by the Office of the (non-elected) Supreme Leader, the Council of Guardians, the religious foundations (or bonyads) and Revolutionary Guards. Second, sanctions encourage Iranian strategies of import substitution and technological independence. Third, they help consolidate Iran’s relations with global powers that rival Washington, including Russia and China, and its relations with sympathetic powers in the region, including Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq. In March 2021 Iran and China agreed a deal whereby China would invest $400 billion in Iran over 25 years in exchange for a steady supply of oil to fuel. The deal represented a further incursion of Chinese influence in the Middle East (extending to an offer by China to broker peace between Israel and Palestine) at the likely expense of the USA, promising further escalation of tensions between China and the USA and the ultimate threat of nuclear war.

    Oliver Boyd-Barrett is Professor Emeritus of Bowling Green State University, Ohio. He is a scholar of international media, news, and war propaganda. Read other articles by Oliver.

    This article was posted on Thursday, April 8th, 2021 at 6:46pm and is filed under China, Europe, France, Germany, Iran, Israel, Joe Biden, Nukes, Opinion, Russia, Sanctions, United Kingdom.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Limitations of JCPOA Negotiation

    On April 1 — appropriate date, perhaps, for a saga of unending western foolishness and villainy — the EU announced that officials from Iran, Russia, China, the UK, France, and Germany would be meeting virtually to discuss a possible return of the USA to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). Later announcements indicated that representatives of both the USA and Iran would meet with European partners in Vienna in the first week of April, although possibly from different rooms to separate US and Iranian representatives. Talks began on August 6.

    A State Department spokesman welcomed the move, indicating the Biden administration’s preparedness to return to the 2015 deal tortuously negotiated over several years between Iran, the US Obama administration and European powers, and that former President Donald Trump later unilaterally abrogated in May 2018. A pretense by the USA and Europe that resumption of JCPOA requires arduous negotiation camouflages the reality that it has always been obvious that removal of US sanctions on Iran would automatically prompt its immediate return to the JCPOA framework.

    The use of the potential (but not the actuality) of nuclear weapons in the form of weapons development capability has arguably been an instrument of Iranian foreign diplomacy from the days of the Shah, first as a defense against nuclearization of regional neighbors and, since the Islamic revolution in 1979 — and in the guise of varying percentages of uranium enrichment and the construction of centrifuges (many unused) — against US and European opposition to Iranian independence from Washington.

    The 2015 deal itself was the outcome of a long-standing, bullying, propaganda campaign by the USA, Israel, and Europe (UK, France, and Germany) to smear Iran’s peaceful nuclear energy program (including the slight enrichment of uranium for scientific and medical purposes, far below the 90%+ required for nuclear weaponry) as a meaningful threat of nuclear war. Yet Iran, a signatory in 1968 of the Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), had over several decades conceded detailed scrutiny of its energy program (perfectly legitimate, under the NPT) to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Israel, on the other hand, in possession of one hundred or more nuclear warheads, never signed the NPT.

    Israel, with a far smaller population (9 million) than Iran (82 million) and a far smaller territory (22,145 sq.km to Iran’s 1,648,195 sq km), is and has consistently shown evidence of being by far the more likely nuclear aggressor in the Middle East. In June 1981, an Israeli airstrike destroyed an unfinished suspected Iraqi nuclear reactor located 17 kilometers southeast of Baghdad, Iraq. In 2007, Israel struck a suspected nuclear reactor in the Deir ez-Zor region of Syria. In the period 2009 to 2012 the Israeli administration of Benjamin Netanyahu several times threatened to attack Iranian nuclear facilities. In addition, the US and Israeli administrations collaborated in a cyberattack on Iranian facilities (“Stuxnet”) in 2009. There have been several assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists – the latest reported in November 2020 – mostly attributed to Israel’s Mossad.

    Through JCPOA, Iran — which has never possessed nuclear weapons and which has never formally revealed evidence of wanting or planning them — was cowered into conceding an implicit but false admission to being at fault in some way. Iran’s Supreme Leaders have consistently stated their belief that such weapons are immoral.  Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of Iran, confirmed a fatwa against the acquisition, development and use of nuclear weapons in October 2003. “Evidence” of Iranian scientists’ planning for nuclear weaponry is based on forgeries.
    1 The bullying gang was a cabal of more prosperous nations that unlike Iran, did possess nuclear weapons and, in the case of the USA, had actually used them and, from time to time, demonstrated continuing willingness to consider their use.

    Furthermore, Washington has never shown a fraction of the hysteria it regularly performs on account of Iran’s (non-existent) nuclear “threat” as it did with the actual nuclear weaponization of India from 1998 (with possibly 150 nuclear warheads today) and Pakistan in 1972.

    Iran’s misleading concession to the West’s false narrative was the product of Western coercion through sanctions’ regimes. US-driven sanctions’ terror over Iran, both primary (involving relations between Iran and U.S. actors) and secondary (involving relations between Iran and non-U.S. actors), started from the early 1980s and extended in 1995 to cover bilateral trade and foreign investment in Iranian oil and gas development. Sanctions were further extended in 2002 to include nuclear and missile technology, financial services, transportation, foreign banks operating in Iran, and purchase of Iranian oil. Although many sanctions were lifted by JCPOA, others were retained, including Iranian support for terrorism, development of ballistic missiles, arms-related transactions, violations of human rights and corruption. The slipperiness of concepts such as “terrorism,” “human rights,” and “corruption” in the hands of U.S. and allied states and state-compliant “NGO” agencies provides ample room for continuing sanctions aggression on false or misleading pretext. This is particularly worrisome in the contexts of covert and proxy wars between the US, European powers, Gulf States, Israel, and Salafist rebels in Syria, on the one hand and, on the other, the Syrian government, Russia, and Iranian-backed Hezbollah, as also in the case of Iranian support for the Houthis in Yemen. Even a return to JCPOA, therefore, would exercise considerable restraint on Iranian exercise of its legitimate, sovereign power.

    Iran’s peaceful nuclear energy program originated from imperial machinations in Iran. It was launched in 1957 with US and European assistance in the administration of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Shah of Iran, in the wake of the US-UK orchestrated coup d’etat of 1953 that toppled democratically elected prime minister Mohammad Mossadegh. The program continued until the 1979 Iranian Revolution. The Shah approved plans to construct up to 23 nuclear power stations by 2000. It is possible that the Shah always entertained the possibility of transitioning from a nuclear energy to a nuclear weapons program should neighboring states do the same. The USA supplied the country with a reactor fueled by highly enriched uranium in 1967. After a two-year hiatus, the Shah’s program was resumed by the revolutionary administration in 1981. The regime intended to continue collaborating with a French-owned consortium, but France succumbed to pressure from the Reagan administration in 1984 to end all nuclear cooperation with Iran, despite the absence of any evidence for US claims that Iran’s then only reactor presented a risk of proliferation. In the 1990s, Russia formed a joint research organization with Iran, providing Iran with Russian nuclear experts and technical information.

    Sanctions have a negative impact on the Iranian economy and the welfare of its people. The value of Iranian petroleum exports fell from $53 billion in 2016-2017 to $9 billion in 2019-2020. Iranian GDP shrank by between 5% and 6.5% each year in the period 2018-2020, and inflation rose each year between 30% and 41%. The value of the Iranian currency, the rial, fell from 64,500 rials to the dollar in May 2018 to 315,000 to the dollar in October 2020.

    As strategies of control, sanctions have significant other weaknesses, even from the western point of view. Since the revolution of 1979, first, there is a clear correlation between western aggression towards Iran and the influence on the Iranian polity of anti-western Iranian conservatives and their control over Iranian society through the clerical hierarchy and its exercise of superordinate power over Iran’s parliamentary democracy by the Office of the (non-elected) Supreme Leader, the Council of Guardians, the religious foundations (or bonyads) and Revolutionary Guards. Second, sanctions encourage Iranian strategies of import substitution and technological independence. Third, they help consolidate Iran’s relations with global powers that rival Washington, including Russia and China, and its relations with sympathetic powers in the region, including Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq. In March 2021 Iran and China agreed a deal whereby China would invest $400 billion in Iran over 25 years in exchange for a steady supply of oil to fuel. The deal represented a further incursion of Chinese influence in the Middle East (extending to an offer by China to broker peace between Israel and Palestine) at the likely expense of the USA, promising further escalation of tensions between China and the USA and the ultimate threat of nuclear war.

    1. Kiriakou, J. and Porter, G. (2020) The CIA Insider’s Guide to the Iran Crisis: From CIA Coup to the Brink of War. New York: Skyhorse Publishing.
    The post Limitations of JCPOA Negotiation first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Iran Hits Coronavirus Case Record For Third Consecutive Day; Infections Above 2 Million

    Iranian authorities say COVID-19 cases have surpassed 2 million, with a new daily record of more than 22,000 infections, following the Persian New Year holiday.

    “Unfortunately, with 118 new fatalities since yesterday, we have recorded a total of 63,884 coronavirus deaths,” Health Ministry spokeswoman Sima Sadat Lari told state television on April 8, adding that the number of infected people had reached 2,006,934 with 22,586 new cases.

    Some critics say they believe the government has suppressed reporting and that the actual numbers are much higher.

    Iran is battling the Middle East’s deadliest coronavirus outbreak, and officials have blamed the latest surge on trips made by millions of Iranians during the Norouz holiday, which ran for two weeks from March 20, despite health guidelines warning them not to travel.

    Last year, officials enacted tight restrictions on gatherings and the movement of people across the country during the Persian New Year.

    Iran has avoided imposing a full lockdown on its population of 82 million since the pandemic started more than a year ago, resorting instead to temporary bans on travel or businesses.

    The country launched its vaccination drive in February.

    With reporting by AFP and Reuters

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Meeting To Revive Iran Nuclear Deal Begins In Vienna

    The Joint Commission of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)—the Iran nuclear deal—resumed talks in Vienna on Tuesday, with the lifting of sanctions on Iran and nuclear implementation measures at the center of the agenda.

    Representatives from Iran, China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the European Union met for an hour. Although not at the session, the US envoy remained a few meters away from the venue, which was understood as a gesture of willingness to rescue the agreement.

    Several participants qualified the meeting as positive, including Russia’s permanent representative to international organizations in Vienna, Mikhail Ulyanov, who stressed the “success” of the meeting.

    The post Meeting To Revive Iran Nuclear Deal Begins In Vienna appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Israel Attacks Iranian Command Ship In Red Sea

    An Iranian command ship stationed in the Red Sea was damaged in an Israeli mine attack on Tuesday, a US official has told the New York Times (NYT).

    The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said: “The Israelis had notified the United States that its forces had struck the vessel at about 7.30am local time.” 

    The official said the ship was damaged below the water line and that Israel had called the attack a retaliation for earlier Iranian strikes on Israeli vessels.

    Iran’s foreign ministry said on Wednesday that the vessel, the Saviz, had been targeted in the Red Sea, a day after media reports that the ship had been attacked with limpet mines.

    “The explosion occurred on Tuesday morning near the Djibouti coast and caused minor damage with no casualties,” said foreign ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh.

    “The vessel was a civilian ship station

    The post Israel Attacks Iranian Command Ship In Red Sea appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • On Day Two Of Vienna Talks, Iran’s Rohani Argues For ‘Renaissance’ Of Nuclear Deal

    As international talks to revive a major nuclear agreement with world powers continued in Vienna, Iranian President Hassan Rohani said that he hoped negotiations led to a “renaissance” of the 2015 deal.

    The day-old talks are U.S. President Joe Biden’s first major effort to revive the Joint Comprehensive Plan Of Action (JCPOA) since taking office on pledges to curb Iran’s nuclear program following his predecessor’s withdrawal from the agreement three years ago.

    “Once again, all parties have come to the conclusion that there is no better alternative,” Rohani said in a statement on April 7, referring to the JCPOA, which was reached over hard-liners’ opposition in the Austrian capital five years ago. .”Thus, we can hope for a renaissance of the Vienna nuclear agreement.”

    The U.S. and Iranian sides have publicly clashed over the order of possible concessions on U.S. sanctions and Iranian nuclear activities before a new deal can be achieved.

    Rohani staked heavy political capital on the 2015 deal during his first presidential term despite resistance from hard-liners allied with Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who holds ultimate political and religious power in Iran.

    “The U.S. says it wants to return to the agreement,” Rohani said. “Fine, let’s see how serious they are.”

    U.S. State Department spokesman Ned Price said after the first day of talks on April 6 that Washington saw the discussions in Vienna as a “constructive” and “welcome step,” even though “we are not meeting directly with the Iranians.”

    European diplomats are acting as intermediaries facilitating indirect talks between U.S. and Iranian officials, whose delegations are staying in nearby hotels.

    Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator, Abbas Araqchi, told state television that his talks with envoys from the remaining parties to the agreement — Britain, China, France, Germany, and Russia — were “constructive.”

    Russia’s Vienna-based envoy to international organizations, Mikhail Ulyanov, said the negotiators got off to a “successful” start.

    Ulyanov also said two expert-level groups on sanctions lifting and nuclear issues had been tasked “to identify concrete measures to be taken by Washington and Tehran” to restore the deal.

    The Russian envoy predicted in a separate tweet that it would take “some time” to restore the nuclear agreement.

    With reporting by dpa

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Iran Posts Second Consecutive Daily Record For New COVID-19 Cases Amid Holiday Surge

    Iran has set a new daily record for new coronavirus infections amid a surge of cases following the Norouz holiday.

    The Health Ministry said on April 7 that in the previous 24 hours, 20,954 new cases had been reported, breaking the record set a day earlier of 17,430 infections.

    Deputy Health Minister Iraj Haririchi said on state television that some members of the country’s coronavirus task force were to blame for the surge by “preventing us from using the golden opportunity of [the holiday] to extinguish the flames of the coronavirus.”

    Last year, the two-week Persian New Year celebration was a muted affair after officials enacted tight restrictions on gatherings and the movement of people around the country.

    Haririchi said similar measures weren’t enacted this year because of some officials, whom he did not name. Instead, millions of Iranians hit vacation hotspots across the country to celebrate the holiday, despite health guidelines warning them not to.

    “Travel should have been stopped,” he said.

    Iran has struggled for months to curb the worst outbreak of the coronavirus in the Middle East.

    Official figures on April 7 put the total number of cases in the country at 1,984,348, with the death toll at 63,699.

    Some critics say they believe the government has suppressed reporting and that the actual numbers are much higher.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Mine Blast Damages Iranian Ship In Red Sea Linked To IRGC

    An Iranian ship long anchored off Yemen and used by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) has reportedly been damaged by an explosion in the Red Sea.

    The hard-line Tasnim news agency, which is affiliated with the IRGC, reported late on April 6 that the vessel, a cargo-category ship identified as Iran Saviz or MV Saviz, was targeted on April 6 by a mine that was attached to it.

    It said the ship “has been stationed in the Red Sea for the past few years to support Iranian commandos sent on commercial vessel [anti-piracy] escort missions.”

    Earlier, Saudi broadcaster Al Arabiya quoted unidentified sources as saying the vessel was attacked off the coast of Eritrea and was affiliated with the IRGC.

    Iranian officials did not immediately comment on the reports, which followed a reported series of attacks on Israeli- and Iranian-owned cargo ships since late February in which the two archenemies accused each other of responsibility.

    But Iranian state television later tacitly acknowledged the incident, citing foreign media.

    The New York Times cited IRGC-linked social-media accounts alleging that Israel had carried out the attack. The newspaper noted that Israel had not confirmed that information.

    But it quoted an unidentified U.S. official as saying that Israel had informed the United States of its role after the early morning attack on April 6.

    The incident comes amid years of naval skirmishes between Iranian, Israeli, and Western forces. But it also coincided with the start in Vienna hours later of tense international talks involving the United States, Iran, and other countries intended to revive the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear deal that Washington withdrew from nearly three years ago.

    U.S. President Joe Biden took office in January with a commitment to revive that deal if Tehran returned to full compliance.

    Iran has responded to the reimposition of crippling U.S. economic sanctions by gradually reducing its commitments under the accord.

    Israel has been a strident critic of the JCPOA, which aimed to ease economic sanctions on Iran in return for curbs on Tehran’s disputed nuclear program.

    “We must not go back to the dangerous nuclear deal with Iran, because a nuclear Iran is an existential threat to the state of Israel and a great threat to the security of the entire world,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told party colleagues on April 6 after being picked to form a government following inconclusive elections.

    The Saviz was placed back under U.S. sanctions by Donald Trump’s administration following the JCPOA withdrawal in 2018.

    The U.S. military’s Central Command said it was “aware of media reporting of an incident involving the Saviz in the Red Sea,” adding, “We can confirm that no U.S. forces were involved in the incident.”

    Representatives from Britain, China, France, Germany, and Russia met with Iranian officials in Vienna on April 6 in an effort to revive the deal.

    Iranian and U.S. officials called the meetings “constructive.”

    With reporting by The New York Times, Tasnim, AP, and Reuters

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Facebook Removes Accounts Tied To Exile Group Opposed To Iranian Government

    Facebook has removed hundreds of fake accounts linked to an Iranian exile group that posted content critical of Iran’s government.

    The accounts were supportive of Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), which is seeking to overthrow the Islamic republic, Facebook said on April 6.

    Facebook determined the accounts were being run from a single location in Albania by a group of individuals working on behalf of the MEK.

    The United States considered the MEK a terrorist group until 2012. Its designation was removed following a lobbying campaign and pledges to end its violent militancy.

    While not successful in building significant audiences, Facebook said the operation appeared to be a “tightly organized troll farm” in which people were paid to post content that was often misinformation to social media.

    The network of fake accounts was most active in 2017 and again in late 2020, Facebook said. In all, more than 300 accounts, pages, and groups on Facebook and Instagram were removed as part of the company’s action.

    Facebook also noted that some of the fake accounts used photos of Iranian celebrities or deceased dissidents. A small number of the Instagram accounts appear to have used profile pictures that were computer generated.

    Facebook said it has disrupted seven operations since 2019 that used such photos and it will continue to refine its enforcement.

    “We know that influence operations will keep evolving in response to our enforcement, and new deceptive behaviors will emerge,” it said.

    Based on reporting by AP

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Public Spat Reveals Divisions In Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Ahead Of Presidential Vote

    A dispute within Iran’s powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) has spilled into public view with a deputy commander lashing out at an aide to the IRGC’s commander in chief who has ambitions to win the presidency in a June election.

    Divisions within the IRGC over the vote became public when Yadollah Javani, an IRGC deputy commander for political affairs, gave an interview with the Fars news agency on April 3.

    Javani accused Saeed Mohammad, the former commander of IRGC’s construction conglomerate Khatam al-Anbya, of “violations” and said he had been dismissed due to his pursuit of the presidency.

    Mohammad has been raising his profile ahead of the June 18 vote, which could bring a hard-liner to power.

    “The IRGC does not and will not support Saeed Mohammad or any other candidate in the election,” Javani told Fars.

    Javani also said the IRGC opposes members of its ranks entering the election arena without going through “legal processes.”

    Mohammad announced his resignation from the construction conglomerate in early March, suggesting that he could run for the presidency.

    Following his resignation, he was appointed as a special adviser to IRGC Commander in Chief Mohammad Salami.

    Mohammad has hit back at Javani — denying he committed any “violations” and saying that Javani is not a spokesman for the IRGC. Mohammad said Javani’s criticism was “his personal” view.

    A statement from Mohammad’s office published by Iranian state media charged that Javani’s interview has created public distrust and undermines the “maximum participation” in the election that has been demanded by Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

    No Agreed Candidate?

    Washington-based analyst Ali Afshari says the public dispute suggests the IRGC leadership has not agreed upon a single presidential candidate.

    Afshari told RFE/RL that Mohammad, 53, does not appear to be the establishment’s preferred candidate — despite speculation that his profile fits Khamenei’s call for a relatively young and ideologically hard-line president.

    “The attacks against Saeed Mohammad do not come only from senior IRGC officials and hard-line figures,” Afshari said. “Some in the [IRGC’s] Basij force have also launched heavy attacks against him while calling for the Guardians Council to disqualify him” from the election.

    In his interview with Fars, which is affiliated with the IRGC, Javani said Khamenei’s call for a “young and Hezbollahi” government means the Iranian leader is seeking a government with “an Islamic approach.”

    “Therefore, being young is a symbol of dynamism and [hard] work,” Javani said.

    A day after Javani’s interview, IRGC spokesman Ramezan Sharif denied that there were divisions within the IRGC. Sharif said the IRGC will not “approve or destroy” any candidate.

    He also would not confirm whether Mohammad had violated the IRGC’s legal procedures, saying: “An IRGC deputy perceived that a violation took place, but this may not be the IRGC’s official view.”

    Saeed Mohammad (file photo)


    Saeed Mohammad (file photo)

    “If [Mohammad] committed any violation, then why did an IRGC commander appoint him as his adviser,” Sharif said, referring to Salami’s decision to designate Mohammad as his special adviser.

    There are reports that several former IRGC members could contest the presidency in June.

    They include parliamentary speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf and former IRGC commander Saeed Dehghan, who serves as a military adviser to Khamenei.

    Other conservatives have also signaled their intention to run for president, including the former head of the state television, Ezatollah Zarghami.

    Hard-liners aim to unify power in Iran after having taken control of the parliament in 2019 elections characterized by mass disqualifications of candidates by the hard-line Guardians Council.

    Turnout in that vote was the lowest in the history of the Islamic republic.

    Swiss-based political analyst Mehdi Talaati said the hard-line faction of the Iranian establishment is attempting to restrict the number of candidates to create unity and raise its chances of winning the election.

    “If the hard-line faction, which has several military candidates, enters the election with multiple candidates, they could be defeated by the reformists. Therefore, they’re trying to resolve this issue before the vote,” Talati said in an interview with the BBC.

    The younger brother of Khamenei, a reformist cleric named Hadi Khamenei, said in an April 5 interview with Enetkhabnews that the future president could come from the Iranian establishment’s hard-line faction.

    “It’s still not clear. But it is very likely that the future government will be from the [faction] that already controls everything,” he said.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Iran Charges 10 Officials Over 2020 Downing Of Ukrainian Airliner Near Tehran

    Iran says it has charged 10 officials over the crash of a Ukraine International Airlines (UIA) jet that was shot down last year, killing all 176 people on board.

    Gholam Abbas Torki, the former military prosecutor for Tehran Province, said on April 6 that the 10 have been “brought to responsibility” and will face trial to determine “the necessary conclusions” over the incident in January 2020, the semiofficial ISNA news agency reported.

    Torki, who made the comments at a ceremony where he was handing over the office to his successor, gave no further details.

    Tehran initially claimed the plane had crashed, but admitted three days after the tragedy that Flight PS752, which was headed to Kyiv, had been shot down “unintentionally” by the country’s air defenses.

    Iranian forces say they downed the Boeing 737 after mistaking it for an incoming missile at a time of high tensions with the United States.

    Iran later called it a “disastrous mistake” by forces who were on high alert.

    Iran’s Civil Aviation Organization’s interim report blamed the tragedy on the misalignment of a radar system and lack of communication between the air-defense operator and his commanders.

    Those who died in the crash included citizens of Afghanistan, Britain, Canada, Germany, Iran, Sweden, and Ukraine.

    With reporting by ISNA

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • U.S. Expects No Quick Breakthrough At Talks On Reviving Nuclear Deal

    The United States expects talks set to begin on April 6 on reviving the 2015 Iran nuclear deal to be “difficult” and does not foresee any early breakthrough.

    U.S. and Iranian officials are scheduled to take part in the talks in Vienna – the first serious effort to revive the pact – with European officials expected to act as intermediaries.

    Iran has ruled out face-to-face bilateral discussions, and last week denied reports that indirect negotiations would take place between the two countries’ negotiators.

    U.S. State Department spokesman Ned Price said on April 5 that the United States does not “underestimate the scale of the challenges ahead.”

    “These are early days,” Price said. “We don’t anticipate an early or immediate breakthrough, as these discussions, we fully expect, will be difficult.”

    Under the deal, formally named the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), economic sanctions on Iran were eased in return for curbs on the country’s nuclear program, which Tehran denies is for weapons development.

    The United States unilaterally pulled out of the agreement in 2018 under former President Donald Trump, who reimposed crippling economic sanctions. Iran reacted by gradually reducing its commitments under the deal, including higher uranium enrichment.

    U.S. President Joe Biden has signaled his readiness to revive the accord, but his administration says Iran must first return to its nuclear commitments.

    “We certainly expect that the primary issues that will be discussed over the course of the coming days are the nuclear steps that Iran would need to take in order to return to compliance with the terms of the JCPOA and the sanctions relief steps that the United States would need to take in order to return to compliance as well,” White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said.

    She added that the U.S. side doesn’t anticipate that there will be direct talks with Iran “though we remain certainly open to that prospect.”

    Price said the United States is approaching the talks in Vienna “with urgency,” saying the “breakout time” if Iran decides to pursue a nuclear bomb had diminished since the U.S. withdrawal.

    He reiterated that the United States is ready to look at lifting sanctions – but only those related to the nuclear issue.

    Referring to the accord’s text, he said, “The original formulation is one that still holds today – it’s the limited lifting of nuclear sanctions in return for permanent and verifiable limits on Iran’s nuclear program.”

    U.S. Special Envoy for Iran Rob Malley will lead the U.S. delegation, and diplomats from the other countries that signed the JCPOA – Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia, and Iran – will take part in the EU-brokered talks.

    The four nuclear powers plus Germany, the so-called 4+1, are eager to see the return of the United States, but technical and political challenges remain for all parties that could easily scuttle any progress.

    Iran has said it wants the United States to lift all sanctions and rejects any “step-by-step” easing of restrictions.

    “We have only one step, not step-by-step, (which) includes the lifting of all U.S. sanctions,” Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said, speaking in Tehran on April 5.

    Khatibzadeh said experts from the Iranian delegation would explain how Iran plans “to stop our remedial measures,” adding that whether the agenda produces a result “depends on the Europeans and the 4+1 reminding the U.S. of its obligations and the Americans acting on their commitments.”

    With reporting by Reuters, AFP, and dpa

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Peace With Iran Is Tricky: Is Biden Making It Impossible? 

    American policy toward Iran has long been stupid and self-defeating. Anyone here not see that? Anyone here think that’s a necessary state of affairs?

    OK, it’s true that stupid, self-defeating policy toward Iran is an American tradition of more than 70 years standing. And yes, it has had some short-term benefits, enriching the Shah’s thugocracy and its American supporters like the Rockefellers and other oil interests. That’s a plus in some books, just not in Iranian books. There it looks more like colonial exploitation laced with crimes against humanity.

    Wait a minute: didn’t they take our diplomats hostage in 1979? As well they might. Get over it. Some of you should be particularly grateful for that hostage-taking, since Iran did the US the great “favor” of holding the hostages till their captivity helped elect Ronald Reagan. Ever since then, most Americans have been the hostages of the American right.

    Once in power, Reagan showed US gratitude by supporting Saddam Hussein’s war on Iran. Iraq had invaded Iran in September 1980 and the Reagan administration backed Iraq’s eight-year war against Iran. Iraq sometimes used chemical weapons, with US blessing.

    Over the last thirty years, US policy has largely consisted of a cold war typified by demonization of anything Iranian and by repeated sky-is-falling cries of Iran getting nuclear weapons as soon as next month. That it never happened has done nothing to quell the cries of wolf. From time to time the US and Israelis assassinate Iranian officials and nuclear scientists, but we don’t call that terrorism. What we call terrorism is any Iranian support for its allies in the region.

    The US broke diplomatic relations with Iran in 1979 and has not attempted to restore normal diplomatic dialogue since then. No wonder, then, that American policy toward Iran has long since lost touch with anything resembling intellectual integrity, never mind moral authority. American policy toward Iran is little more than chauvinistic resentment supported by tenacious bigotry against non-white Shia Muslims with a civilization millennia older than ours.

    The present moment, the early Biden administration, presents the US with a rare opportunity to re-think our Iran policy and at least attempt to create a relationship with Iran based on mutual respect, honesty, and a recognition of our own historical culpability. This is an opportunity that is not likely to last for long. And it will likely lead nowhere unless the US takes the initiative. So far, that appears unlikely.

    At the core of the present moment is the Iran nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) signed on July 14, 2015, by the US, China, France, Germany, Russia, UK, the European Union, and Iran, after almost two years of negotiation. The joint treaty established limits on Iranian nuclear development, enforced by inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). In exchange for signing the agreement, Iran was to be relieved of various sanctions imposed by the other parties. (Only three countries in the world opposed the JCPOA at the time – Saudi Arabia, United Arab Republic, and Israel.)

    In October 2017, the Trump administration unilaterally violated the agreement by refusing to lift agreed-upon sanctions. In May 2018, the Trump administration violated the agreement again, by unilaterally withdrawing from it despite opposition from all the other signatories. No other signatory has withdrawn from the JCPOA. The US has acted in bad faith toward Iran at least since 2017, and that bad faith continues under the Biden administration.

    According to the IAEA, Iran remained in compliance with the agreement through May 2019. Two months later, Iran announced that it had breached its limit on low-level enriched Uranium, which the IAEA confirmed: Iran had 205 kg of enriched Uranium, 2.2 kg above the agreement’s level of 202.8 kg. This is not a significant difference, it was self-reported, and it is meaningless in relation to nuclear weapons.

    In January 2020, the Trump administration assassinated an Iranian general at the Baghdad airport in Iraq, deemed a violation of international law by the UN. In response, Iran said it would not continue to comply with the agreement without US assurance that it would rejoin the agreement and lift the sanctions it had previously agreed to lift. The Trump administration maintained its hard line. The IAEA has maintained a partial verification with Iran through March 2021. The Biden administration has maintained the Trump administration’s hard line. Despite President Biden’s expressed intention to rejoin the JCPOA, he has taken unilateral inaction to maintain President Trump’s unilateral action to disrupt the agreement.

    In addition, in late February, Biden used disputed assertions of “Iranian influence” to launch a dubiously-legal attack on a base in Syria said to be the source of attacks in Iraq on US mercenaries there. The US attack came in the midst of intensified Israeli bombing of “Iran-backed” forces in Syria, along with Israel’s announced contingency plans for bombing nuclear facilities in Iran. For more than two years, Israel has carried on an undeclared war on Iranian shipping (according to Haaretz and the Wall Street Journal): “several dozen attacks were carried out, which caused the Iranians cumulative damage of billions of dollars, amid a high rate of success in disrupting its shipping.” Haaretz has also reported two unconfirmed “Iranian missile” attacks on Israeli ships in the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman.

    US intelligence on Iran has been politicized and unreliable for decades. Iran is a country of fifty million people on the other side of the world, ringed by US military bases and the US Navy. Iran is under the threat of nuclear attack from US forces every minute of every day. Iran is struggling under crippling economic sanctions imposed and enforced by the US. Despite this longstanding reality, US senators Bob Menendez (D-NJ) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) recently wrote to President Biden affirming the deep-seated lie that “Iran continues to pose a threat to US and international security.” Whatever sliver of truth may lurk in that assertion, it’s minuscule compared to the threat the US continues to pose to the rest of the world.

    Official American paranoia about Iran became hilarious on March 21, as dutifully and uncritically reported by the Associated Press (AP) under the headline:

    AP sources: Iran threatens US Army post and top general

    The breathless lead gave no clue that the “threats” were already two months old, as well as virtually impossible to carry out:

    Iran has made threats against Fort McNair, an Army post in the U.S. capital, and against the Army’s vice chief of staff, two senior U.S. intelligence officials said.

    The most serious question raised here is why the AP, much less anyone else, should take seriously a story leaked by anonymous sources offering no evidence of any credible military threat by a country thousands of miles away from a US fort on an inland waterway in Washington, DC. How scared are we supposed to be? Intelligence agencies refused to respond to press queries. The local military commander, Gen. Omar Jones, had already managed to reduce the threat to absurdity: “The only specific security threat he offered was about a swimmer who ended up on the installation and was arrested.”

    In a rational world, a story like this would go unpublished. Or it would be written in its real context: a local zoning dispute between the city and the Pentagon.

    The same day that the AP was indulging in Iranophobia, Iran was reiterating its position with regard to US sanctions and entering new negotiations. As reported by Al Jazeera, Iran said that, first, the US should restore the JCPOA to its pre-Trump status and lift all Trump-imposed sanctions, then Iran would return to full compliance. In an hour-long address marking the Persian new year that coincides with the spring equinox, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in part:

    … that previous fool [Trump] … went away in that infamous way, bringing disgrace to his country…. [The US] must know ‘maximum pressure’ has failed so far, and if the current US administration wants to continue, it will also fail.

    This was not widely reported in US media. Reuters omitted mention of Iran’s stated position on the JCPOA, but mentioned Biden’s empty gesture of sending the Iranians greetings and hope for the new year.

    Loss of trust in the US is the crux of the Trump legacy. The US has demonstrated that it cannot be trusted to abide by international agreements. The US has demonstrated that it cannot be trusted to protect its own citizens from a pandemic. Biden cannot evade this multifaceted reality by pretending it doesn’t exist. Restoring trust is not likely to be quick or easy, but it won’t be possible without determined effort.

    The Biden administration has made some progress on the pandemic front. So far, some of the Biden administration’s cold war mentality hardliners seem to have stymied progress on Iran. There can be no break with the past as long as the US continues Trump’s policies, which are themselves breaks with the past.

    Biden’s special envoy to Iran provides reason for hope. Robert Malley is generally respected for his nuanced understanding of Middle East politics. He is a veteran diplomat and mediator who served in both the Clinton and Obama administrations. His appointment sparked right-wing accusations that he has too much sympathy for Iran and an “animus towards Israel,” even though he is of Egyptian Jewish descent. Malley has a record of challenging Washington orthodoxy. In a lecture in 2008, Malley acknowledged that US actions abroad have often been “destructive,” and that the US:

    … anoints preselected leaders, misreads local dynamics, misinterprets local balances of power, misuses its might, misjudges the toxicity of its embrace, encourages confrontation, exports political models and plays with the sectarian genie.  

    Although that analysis has been true since long before 2008, it still raises hackles in that part of US leadership still guided more by ideological fantasy than complex reality.

    That reality added a new complexity March 27, when China and Iran announced a new economic agreement for the next quarter-century. Five years in negotiation, the pact provides $400 billion in Chinese investments in Iran in exchange for a steady supply of Iranian oil at a discounted price. At a minimum, this agreement seems to offer Iran some breathing room and stability as well as real relief from economic sanctions.

    The Biden administration continues to take positions designed to assure failure to resolve the issue. Maybe that’s the Biden goal, in which case all the posturing is time-wasting theatre. When the US Secretary of State is publicly saying, “The ball is really in their court,” he sounds like he’s mired in mindless denial, not making any gesture to restore broken trust. But if Biden actually wants rapprochement of some balanced nature, he has to decide just how long it’s in US interests to continue to accept the damage of prolonging Trump policies. How is that such a hard choice?

    The post Peace With Iran Is Tricky: Is Biden Making It Impossible?  first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Peace With Iran Is Tricky: Is Biden Making It Impossible? 

    American policy toward Iran has long been stupid and self-defeating. Anyone here not see that? Anyone here think that’s a necessary state of affairs?

    OK, it’s true that stupid, self-defeating policy toward Iran is an American tradition of more than 70 years standing. And yes, it has had some short-term benefits, enriching the Shah’s thugocracy and its American supporters like the Rockefellers and other oil interests. That’s a plus in some books, just not in Iranian books. There it looks more like colonial exploitation laced with crimes against humanity.

    Wait a minute: didn’t they take our diplomats hostage in 1979? As well they might. Get over it. Some of you should be particularly grateful for that hostage-taking, since Iran did the US the great “favor” of holding the hostages till their captivity helped elect Ronald Reagan. Ever since then, most Americans have been the hostages of the American right.

    Once in power, Reagan showed US gratitude by supporting Saddam Hussein’s war on Iran. Iraq had invaded Iran in September 1980 and the Reagan administration backed Iraq’s eight-year war against Iran. Iraq sometimes used chemical weapons, with US blessing.

    Over the last thirty years, US policy has largely consisted of a cold war typified by demonization of anything Iranian and by repeated sky-is-falling cries of Iran getting nuclear weapons as soon as next month. That it never happened has done nothing to quell the cries of wolf. From time to time the US and Israelis assassinate Iranian officials and nuclear scientists, but we don’t call that terrorism. What we call terrorism is any Iranian support for its allies in the region.

    The US broke diplomatic relations with Iran in 1979 and has not attempted to restore normal diplomatic dialogue since then. No wonder, then, that American policy toward Iran has long since lost touch with anything resembling intellectual integrity, never mind moral authority. American policy toward Iran is little more than chauvinistic resentment supported by tenacious bigotry against non-white Shia Muslims with a civilization millennia older than ours.

    The present moment, the early Biden administration, presents the US with a rare opportunity to re-think our Iran policy and at least attempt to create a relationship with Iran based on mutual respect, honesty, and a recognition of our own historical culpability. This is an opportunity that is not likely to last for long. And it will likely lead nowhere unless the US takes the initiative. So far, that appears unlikely.

    At the core of the present moment is the Iran nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) signed on July 14, 2015, by the US, China, France, Germany, Russia, UK, the European Union, and Iran, after almost two years of negotiation. The joint treaty established limits on Iranian nuclear development, enforced by inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). In exchange for signing the agreement, Iran was to be relieved of various sanctions imposed by the other parties. (Only three countries in the world opposed the JCPOA at the time – Saudi Arabia, United Arab Republic, and Israel.)

    In October 2017, the Trump administration unilaterally violated the agreement by refusing to lift agreed-upon sanctions. In May 2018, the Trump administration violated the agreement again, by unilaterally withdrawing from it despite opposition from all the other signatories. No other signatory has withdrawn from the JCPOA. The US has acted in bad faith toward Iran at least since 2017, and that bad faith continues under the Biden administration.

    According to the IAEA, Iran remained in compliance with the agreement through May 2019. Two months later, Iran announced that it had breached its limit on low-level enriched Uranium, which the IAEA confirmed: Iran had 205 kg of enriched Uranium, 2.2 kg above the agreement’s level of 202.8 kg. This is not a significant difference, it was self-reported, and it is meaningless in relation to nuclear weapons.

    In January 2020, the Trump administration assassinated an Iranian general at the Baghdad airport in Iraq, deemed a violation of international law by the UN. In response, Iran said it would not continue to comply with the agreement without US assurance that it would rejoin the agreement and lift the sanctions it had previously agreed to lift. The Trump administration maintained its hard line. The IAEA has maintained a partial verification with Iran through March 2021. The Biden administration has maintained the Trump administration’s hard line. Despite President Biden’s expressed intention to rejoin the JCPOA, he has taken unilateral inaction to maintain President Trump’s unilateral action to disrupt the agreement.

    In addition, in late February, Biden used disputed assertions of “Iranian influence” to launch a dubiously-legal attack on a base in Syria said to be the source of attacks in Iraq on US mercenaries there. The US attack came in the midst of intensified Israeli bombing of “Iran-backed” forces in Syria, along with Israel’s announced contingency plans for bombing nuclear facilities in Iran. For more than two years, Israel has carried on an undeclared war on Iranian shipping (according to Haaretz and the Wall Street Journal): “several dozen attacks were carried out, which caused the Iranians cumulative damage of billions of dollars, amid a high rate of success in disrupting its shipping.” Haaretz has also reported two unconfirmed “Iranian missile” attacks on Israeli ships in the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman.

    US intelligence on Iran has been politicized and unreliable for decades. Iran is a country of fifty million people on the other side of the world, ringed by US military bases and the US Navy. Iran is under the threat of nuclear attack from US forces every minute of every day. Iran is struggling under crippling economic sanctions imposed and enforced by the US. Despite this longstanding reality, US senators Bob Menendez (D-NJ) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) recently wrote to President Biden affirming the deep-seated lie that “Iran continues to pose a threat to US and international security.” Whatever sliver of truth may lurk in that assertion, it’s minuscule compared to the threat the US continues to pose to the rest of the world.

    Official American paranoia about Iran became hilarious on March 21, as dutifully and uncritically reported by the Associated Press (AP) under the headline:

    AP sources: Iran threatens US Army post and top general

    The breathless lead gave no clue that the “threats” were already two months old, as well as virtually impossible to carry out:

    Iran has made threats against Fort McNair, an Army post in the U.S. capital, and against the Army’s vice chief of staff, two senior U.S. intelligence officials said.

    The most serious question raised here is why the AP, much less anyone else, should take seriously a story leaked by anonymous sources offering no evidence of any credible military threat by a country thousands of miles away from a US fort on an inland waterway in Washington, DC. How scared are we supposed to be? Intelligence agencies refused to respond to press queries. The local military commander, Gen. Omar Jones, had already managed to reduce the threat to absurdity: “The only specific security threat he offered was about a swimmer who ended up on the installation and was arrested.”

    In a rational world, a story like this would go unpublished. Or it would be written in its real context: a local zoning dispute between the city and the Pentagon.

    The same day that the AP was indulging in Iranophobia, Iran was reiterating its position with regard to US sanctions and entering new negotiations. As reported by Al Jazeera, Iran said that, first, the US should restore the JCPOA to its pre-Trump status and lift all Trump-imposed sanctions, then Iran would return to full compliance. In an hour-long address marking the Persian new year that coincides with the spring equinox, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in part:

    … that previous fool [Trump] … went away in that infamous way, bringing disgrace to his country…. [The US] must know ‘maximum pressure’ has failed so far, and if the current US administration wants to continue, it will also fail.

    This was not widely reported in US media. Reuters omitted mention of Iran’s stated position on the JCPOA, but mentioned Biden’s empty gesture of sending the Iranians greetings and hope for the new year.

    Loss of trust in the US is the crux of the Trump legacy. The US has demonstrated that it cannot be trusted to abide by international agreements. The US has demonstrated that it cannot be trusted to protect its own citizens from a pandemic. Biden cannot evade this multifaceted reality by pretending it doesn’t exist. Restoring trust is not likely to be quick or easy, but it won’t be possible without determined effort.

    The Biden administration has made some progress on the pandemic front. So far, some of the Biden administration’s cold war mentality hardliners seem to have stymied progress on Iran. There can be no break with the past as long as the US continues Trump’s policies, which are themselves breaks with the past.

    Biden’s special envoy to Iran provides reason for hope. Robert Malley is generally respected for his nuanced understanding of Middle East politics. He is a veteran diplomat and mediator who served in both the Clinton and Obama administrations. His appointment sparked right-wing accusations that he has too much sympathy for Iran and an “animus towards Israel,” even though he is of Egyptian Jewish descent. Malley has a record of challenging Washington orthodoxy. In a lecture in 2008, Malley acknowledged that US actions abroad have often been “destructive,” and that the US:

    … anoints preselected leaders, misreads local dynamics, misinterprets local balances of power, misuses its might, misjudges the toxicity of its embrace, encourages confrontation, exports political models and plays with the sectarian genie.  

    Although that analysis has been true since long before 2008, it still raises hackles in that part of US leadership still guided more by ideological fantasy than complex reality.

    That reality added a new complexity March 27, when China and Iran announced a new economic agreement for the next quarter-century. Five years in negotiation, the pact provides $400 billion in Chinese investments in Iran in exchange for a steady supply of Iranian oil at a discounted price. At a minimum, this agreement seems to offer Iran some breathing room and stability as well as real relief from economic sanctions.

    The Biden administration continues to take positions designed to assure failure to resolve the issue. Maybe that’s the Biden goal, in which case all the posturing is time-wasting theatre. When the US Secretary of State is publicly saying, “The ball is really in their court,” he sounds like he’s mired in mindless denial, not making any gesture to restore broken trust. But if Biden actually wants rapprochement of some balanced nature, he has to decide just how long it’s in US interests to continue to accept the damage of prolonging Trump policies. How is that such a hard choice?

    William M. Boardman has over 40 years experience in theatre, radio, TV, print journalism, and non-fiction, including 20 years in the Vermont judiciary. He has received honors from Writers Guild of America, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Vermont Life magazine, and an Emmy Award nomination from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. A collection of his essays, EXCEPTIONAL: American Exceptionalism Takes Its Toll (2019) is available from Yorkland Publishing of Toronto or Amazon. This article was first published in Reader Supported News. Read other articles by William.

    This article was posted on Sunday, April 4th, 2021 at 7:44am and is filed under Anti-war, Iran, Joe Biden, Media, Terrorism (state and retail).

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.