Republicans To Force US Admin To Provide Congress With Iran Draft Deal

The United States accuses Iran of supplying drones to Russia for use in its war in Ukraine.

The US Treasury Department in a statement said it designated Tehran-based Safiran Airport Services, accusing it of coordinating Russian military flights between Iran and Russia, including those associated with transporting drones, personnel and related equipment.

The Treasury also designated Paravar Pars Company, Design and Manufacturing of Aircraft Engines and Baharestan Kish Company, accusing them of being involved in the research, development, production and procurement of Iranian drones.

The Treasury singled out Paravar Pars Company for involvement in the reverse engineering of US and Israeli-made drones, without specifying which models.

Reuters has reported that some of Iran's drones are based on unmanned aircraft from other countries, including an aerial US RQ-170 Sentinel reconnaissance drone captured in 2011. Also designated was Baharestan Kish Company’s managing director and a member of its board of directors, Rahmatollah Heidari.

Russia most likely planned to acquire hundreds of Mohajer-6 and Shahed-series unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), a US official had said.

On Thursday, undersecretary of the Treasury for terrorism and financial intelligence, Brian Nelson, said in a statement, "The United States is committed to strictly enforcing our sanctions against both Russia and Iran and holding accountable Iran and those supporting Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine."

Thursday's sanctions come as indirect talks between Iran and the United States have made only stuttering progress towards reviving a 2015 deal.

Reporting by Reuters

In Washington the United States national security spokesman John Kirby said President Joe Biden had told officials to make sure that, should efforts to revive the 2015 Iran nuclear deal fail, “we have other available options to us to potentially achieve that solid outcome of no nuclear weapons capability for Iran.”

While Kirby was reiterating existing policy, and did not elaborate what these options might be, the French foreign ministry spokesperson Anne-Claire Legendre concentrated on what may be an issue at the September 12-16 board meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

Legendre said France was consulting with “partners” on how to proceed after an IAEA report circulated Wednesday said there had been no progress in discussions with Tehran since agency director-general Rafael Mariano Grossi in June reported as inadequate explanations given by Tehran over uranium traces found by inspectors.

Iran had not “seized the opportunities” offered by the IAEA to “engage and shed light on the presence of non-declared nuclear materials at non-declared sites,” Legendre said. Following Grossi’s June report, France joined Germany, the United Kingdom, and the US in successfully moving a resolution at the IAEA board censuring Iran.

Whatever the “other options” raised by Kirby, the US and the three European states, the ‘E3’ may opt to tread lightly at the board so as not to scupper remaining hopes for reviving the 2015 nuclear deal, the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action).

While the E3 and US insist that the uranium traces are unrelated to JCPOA revival and instead a basic Iranian commitment under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Tehran has repeatedly said the IAEA enquiry into the uranium, which relates to work before 2003, must be dropped before the JCPOA is revived

Will the IAEA board escalate?

The US and E3 may not want to escalate matters at the IAEA board by referring Iran to the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), as happened in 2005 when the UNSC went on to impose multilateral sanctions. Russia and China voted against the June resolution at the IAEA board on grounds it undermined diplomacy over JCPOA revival, and both hold UNSC vetoes.

Russia’s IAEA ambassador, Mikhail Ulyanov, this week said another board resolution would be “extremely counterproductive.” As the E3 has edged closer to the Biden administration, Russia and China have maintained that an onus in the talks lies on the US, whose previous president Donald Trump left the JCPOA in 2018 and imposed ‘maximum pressure’ sanctions on Iran.

While analysts increasingly believe that the JCPOA talks are on hold until the November 8 US Congressional elections, Iran’s nuclear program continues to expand. The IAEA’s latest quarterly report showed Tehran’s stocks of highly enriched uranium of 60 percent purity at 55.6 kg, and its overall uranium stockpile at 3,941 kg. Under the JCPOA, Iran is allowed to enrich only to 3.67 percent and to hold 300 kg. Tehran has also recently brought into use more advanced centrifuges banned under the JCPOA.

Malley briefing Congress 14

Both supporters and opponents of the JCPOA in the US say this expansion confirms their views. Rob Malley, the White House special Iran envoy who is due to give a confidential briefing to the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs committee September 14, has argued both that agreement is close and that restoring the JCPOA is the most effective way to curb Iran’s nuclear program.

Critics of the agreement point to reported concessions offered by Washington that would ease the JCPOA’s nuclear restrictions, and they bemoan the billions in frozen overseas assets Iran would regain with the easing of ‘maximum pressure.’ Senator Tommy Tuberville, a Republican, this week criticized efforts to revive the agreement as motivated by a desire to “get Iranian oil to Europe.”

"We strongly condemn such malicious cyber activities designed to destabilize and harm the security of an ally, and disrupt the daily lives of citizens," the North Atlantic Council, grouping the representatives of NATO's 30 member states, said in a statement.

"NATO and allies support Albania in strengthening its cyber defense capabilities to withstand and repel such malicious cyber activities in the future," it added.

Albania cut diplomatic relations with Iran on Wednesday, after Prime Minister Edi Rama accused the Islamic Republic of being behind the July attack and gave its diplomats 24 hours to close the embassy and leave the country. "This extreme response ... is fully proportionate to the gravity and risk of the cyberattack that threatened to paralyze public services, erase digital systems and hack into state records, steal government intranet electronic communication and stir chaos and insecurity in the country," he said.

The United States and the UK strongly condemned the cyberattack, with the US saying it will “take further action to hold Iran accountable for actions that threaten the security of a US ally and set a troubling precedent for cyberspace.”

The attack happened around the time of a conference of the exiled Iranian Albania-based opposition group Mujahideen-e Khalq (MEK). In early August, cybersecurity firm Mandiant expressed “moderate confidence” the attackers were acting in support of Tehran’s efforts to disrupt the MEK conference, which had to be cancelled as well due to a terror threat.

Iran’s foreign ministry Thursday rejected US and UK accusationsabout the alleged cyberattack. Relations between Tehran and Tirana have been tense since 2014, when Albania accepted some 3,000 members of the MEK.

In a conference on Thursday, held two days before the World Suicide Prevention Day, sociology professor Akbar Aliverdinia said that the rate of suicide has increased about 44 percent in the past 20 years. 

He said, in 2001 the number was about four people in every 100,000 per year but currently the figure is over six, describing the rise as shocking. This brings the number annual total for suicides to over 5,000. In comparison, Turkey has an average of 2.5 suicides per 100,000 population.

Aliverdinia added that the data provided by the Iranian Legal Medicine Organization do not express the realities of the society properly because they only measure suicides that lead to death, while the number of attempted suicides is usually 20 times more. 

According to the data released by Iran’s Health Ministry, in the Iranian year 1399 (which ended on March 19, 2021) 100,000 people attempted suicide in the country. The Iranian Legal Medicine Organization says 5,542 people died as a result of suicide in that year.

Most of the people who commit suicide in Iran are married men and from the western provinces of the country, where economic woes are prevalent. There is also a significant correlation between the misery index and number of suicides which are both increasing in the Islamic Republic. 

Amid a dire economic situation, worsening in recent months, over a dozen people committed suicide in the last three months due to dismissal from their jobs and "livelihood problems". 

The Disciplinary Committee of the international governing body of association football – or soccer -- sent a letter to the Iranian Football Federation on Tuesday, and gave it a week to provide a response about the events at the FIFA World Cup qualifier between Iran and Lebanon on March 29, during which security forces denied women entry into the stadium and used tear gas and pepper spray to disperse them. 

The letter stated five cases of violations of the body’s codes and regulations, adding that investigations are in progress about the incidents.

About 12,500 tickets were sold for the match, and 2,000 of them were allocated for women, but hundreds of women with tickets were not allowed into the Imam Reza stadium in the religious city of Mashhad. 

Mashhad is home to numerous hardliner clerics who are against the presence of women in male dominated places. Firebrand representative of the Supreme Leader in the city, Ayatollah Ahmad Alamolhoda has been banning concerts and cultural events for years. The forceful banning of women’s entry into the stadium was reportedly ordered by the local clergy.

The world’s soccer authority had tried to convince Iran’s government -- which has barred female spectators from stadiums for years claiming it would violate religious rules of decency -- to lift the unwritten ban for nearly a decade. The ban has led to many arrests, beatings, detentions, and abuses against women.