Iran’s actions, nuclear advancements under scrutiny at US-Israel White House meeting

Ten out of the twenty-four members of the council want Zakani to be sacked and are reportedly lobbying with the others to gain the required majority for unseating him.

A speech by Narjes Soleimani, daughter of the late Revolutionary Guards Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani, at the council’s Sunday session has become the focal point of the controversies.

In her speech, Soleimani who heads the Council’s monitoring committee questioned Zakani’s performance in the past three years, and referring to his candidacy in the recent snap presidential elections, said the capital needed a mayor who “did not constantly yearn to be somewhere else”.

The conflict among the councilors is deeply rooted in the political rivalry between Parliament Speaker Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf and Saeed Jalili, who has close ties to the ultra-hardliner Paydari (Steadfastness) Party and its ally, Jebhe-ye Sobh-e Iran (Iran Morning Front).

Zakani withdrew his candidacy in Jalili’s favor before the election causing accusations that he became a candidate only to assist Jalili as his attack dog against other candidates in the debates.

Zakani repeatedly claimed before the elections and during the debates that he had ended the municipality's rampant corruption that had flourished during his predecessors’ tenures.

However, fresh allegations have surfaced about widespread corruption in Zakani's administration. Referring to allegations of bribery in the Municipality, Soleimani said the mayor had seriously failed the council in remedying deep-rooted corruption. She had earlier told the reformist Ham Mihan newspaper that there were numerous reports of bribery and that the Council had launched an investigation into the matter.

Last week, a pro-Ghalibaf journalist published a video clip in which a municipality manager, identified only by his last name, Afsouni, accused Zakani’s adviser, Saeed Sadrzadeh, of demanding 400 gold coins and $450,000 to secure him the position of development deputy for District One of Tehran, the city's most affluent area.

The allegation, that no municipality official has so far denied, sparked a new wave of popular support for a petition launched in March for Zakani’s dismissal and a counter-petition by his supporters that urges him “not to yield” to political rivals’ pressure.

Zakani’s tenure as Mayor of the capital has been plagued by several major controversies in the past few months including an outcry over his plans to construct mosques in public parks and a secretly concluded $2 billion agreement with a Chinese firm to import transport and traffic surveillance equipment. Soleimani was among the councilors who strongly criticized the deal.

Some critics have alleged that these mosques are meant to serve as Basij militia bases and facilitate their suppression of protesters across the capital. Zakani insists that details of the Chinese deal cannot be made public for national security reasons.

Narjes Soleimani who is married to Abouzar Khazraei, the former editor of the municipality-owned Tehran Emrouz newspaper and a close ally of Ghalibaf has come under fire from Zakani’s supporters some of whom accuse her of “betraying” her father by taking Ghalibaf’s side.

Soleimani, who was not a politician, ran in the council elections in 2020, apparently despite the strong objection of some family members including her sister, brother, and paternal uncle. She came third with around 350,000 votes.

Since 2012, Soleimani has been a member of a charity founded by Ghalibaf’s wife Zahra Moshirolestekhareh. The controversial charity of which Soleimani’s husband is a CEO was itself at the center of a land grab and corruption case in 2021.

Vance, a Republican senator from Ohio, has aligned himself with key conservative positions on Middle East policy.

Should Trump be elected president, a return of a maximum pressure campaign on Tehran will make a return, said Jason Brodsky, the policy director of United Against Nuclear Iran.

"I believe that the second term of the Trump administration would witness a return of the maximum pressure campaign and strong deterrent actions against the Iranian regime," said Brodsky.

Vance, like Trump, has been a vocal critic of the Iran nuclear deal, referring to it as “a disaster.”

Former president Trump withdrew in 2018 the United States from the landmark nuclear accord with Iran, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), restoring harsh sanctions.

"[Vance] has spoken very critically about the Obama era JCPOA. He has applauded President Trump from withdrawing from that agreement. He has called the Obama era policy of sanctions relief against Iran's regime repugnant," said Brodsky.

Vance has also been a strong supporter of Israel, and supported the relocation of the US embassy to Jerusalem.

“The Iran deal was a disaster, Israel is our most important ally and [former US president Donald] Trump was right to move the [embassy] to Jerusalem," he said according to Israeli local media on July 20 2022 while speaking at a VIP gathering at the CPAC Israel event.

Military action

Despite his tough stance, Vance has also warned against the authorization of military force against Iran.

During an interview with CBS's Margaret Brennan on 'Face the Nation' in October 2023, Vance said he would not support military action against Iran on its own soil in response to rising attacks on US troops in the Middle East.

Brodsky said that aligns Vance with Trump's rhetoric during his first term in office, calling it "peace through strength."

The US strike in Iraq that killed top Iranian commander Gen. Qasem Soleimani on January 3, 2020, did not lead to war, said Brodsky despite fears of it.

Trump himself referred to his decision at the time as one of deterrence rather than aggression.

Iranian-American activist Nick Nikbakht, who is a Trump supporter, told Iran International he's disappointed by the choice of Vance as Trump's running mate.

"I was disappointed as a Trump supporter, as an Iranian American activist, that he will pick him because he doesn't fall in line. And if you kind of separate foreign policy from him, a lot of Republicans, a lot of Trump supporters are not happy with J.D. Vance. He's a flip flopper," said Nikbakht, making reference to Vance once being one of Trump's strongest critics.

“I’m a never-Trump guy, I never liked him,” Vance said during an October 2016 interview with Charlie Rose.

Nikbakht said the news of Vance is 'troubling' and 'dangerous.'

Iran lobby

He pointed to Vance speaking in May at the Quincy Institute, which is an American think-tank that faced accusations of advocating for US foreign policy aligned with the interests of the Islamic Republic.

Arkansas Republican Senator Tom Cotton tweeted that the Quincy Institute is a "hotbed of pro-Iran lobbying."

In Episode 5 of Iran International's 'Eye for Iran' podcast, Ellie Cohanim, a former US special envoy under the Trump administration, weighed in on the issue.

She asserted that the Quincy Institute, co-founded by Trita Parsi, is linked to NIAC (National Iranian American Council). Cohanim further alleged that a law case deposition exposed Parsi's ties to the Iranian government.

Cohanim said she believes Vance was likely unaware of the reported ties.

"So through this chain, we know that Quincy has these links to the Islamic Republic. And sadly, people like Revet Ramoswami and JD Vance spoke at this Quincy Institute conference not too long ago. I'm not sure that those gentlemen are aware of Quincy's ties," she said.

But activists like Nikbahkt see things differently.

"He is perfect for the mouthpieces of the pro-regime lobbyist and propaganda arm. That's the reason he's there. So I would say it's more troubling and dangerous," said Nikbahkt in reference to Vance's recent speech at the Quincy Institute. He said his views are not a representative of all Iranian-Americans.

On social media, Iranian-American activist Sarah Raviani, a visiting fellow with the National Union for Democracy in Iran (NUFDI), wrote that reactions on Vance have been diverse within the community.

She encouraged her followers to watch Vance's Quincy Institute speech, and described her reaction to Vance's stance on Iran as a "surprise."

For years, Israel has frequently struck Iranian-linked targets in Syria, without claiming responsibility in most cases. These attacks have intensified recently amid the Gaza conflict and ongoing clashes with Hezbollah on the Lebanon-Israel border.

However, a security source has told Al Arabiya that Katerji was killed by an improvised explosive device (IED) rather than an Israeli airstrike.

Katerji, known for his close ties to the Syrian government, played a significant role in the financing operations of Iran's IRGC Quds Force and its proxies including Lebanon's Hezbollah, as reported by Al Arabiya.

The prominent businessman was killed instantly in his SUV on the highway linking Lebanon with Syria, an unnamed official from an Iran-backed group told the Associated Press on Monday.

Katerji may have been targeted because he had funded the Syrian "resistance" against Israel in the Golan Heights, as well as because of his links to Iran-backed groups in Syria, Rami Abdulrahman, the director of the London-based war monitor Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), told the AP.

Abdulrahman said the precision of the strike indicates a significant security breach within either Hezbollah or the Assad regime's inner circle, suggesting that highly sensitive information had been leaked to Israel.

Katerji's extensive business empire, built with his brother, is currently under US sanctions for "facilitating petroleum shipments and financing to the Syrian regime," according to the US Treasury website.

The UK has also sanctioned the Katerji brothers for "facilitating fuel, arms, and ammunition trade between the regime and various actors including ISIS (Daesh) under the guise of importing and exporting food items, supporting militias fighting alongside the regime," according to the UK Treasury Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation.

Experts, as cited by Tehran ILNA news agency recently, attribute Iran's primary challenge in these shared fields to a lack of investment.

The most substantial joint fields for Iran are with Iraq, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia—neighbors that have significantly increased their oil and gas production with the help of international, particularly Western, companies. These countries have ambitious plans for further increasing their reserves extraction.

In contrast, due to limited foreign investment and a weak private sector, Iran's Ministry of Oil relies only on a 14.5% share of oil revenues for investments (a little more than $5 billion last year). Statistics from the Parliament’s Research Center underscore a significant decline in annual investment in the country's upstream oil and gas projects, dropping from around $18 billion in the 1990s to about $7 billion in the early 2010s, and further decreasing to $3 billion since 2017.

Not only international and US sanctions have reduced Iran’s oil export revenues in the past decade, but the adverse environment created by these sanctions have made foreign investment or borrowing impossible for Tehran.

The joint fields represent 20% of Iran’s extractable oil and 30% of its gas reserves. Despite holding the world's second-largest gas reserves and the fourth-largest oil reserves, with 33 trillion cubic meters and 157 billion barrels respectively, Iran faces challenges in fully exploiting these resources in collaboration with its neighbors.

Iran and Saudi Arabia

Iran shares several oil and gas fields with Saudi Arabia, producing only about 35,000 barrels per day from the Forouzan field (known as Marjan in Saudi Arabia). In contrast, Saudi Arabia produces 14 times more oil from this field and aims to increase daily production by 60% to 800,000 barrels and gas production by 70 million cubic meters under a $12 billion contract with international companies over the past five years.

Iran shares another large gas field, Farzad (called Hasbah in Saudi Arabia), where negotiations with Indian companies that discovered the field have not yielded results over two decades ago. Iran itself lacks the $5 billion investment capacity required for developing this field, while Saudi Arabia developed and commenced gas production from this joint field since 2013, currently producing over 30 million cubic meters of gas daily with Aramco's ongoing plan to swiftly increase daily production to 75 million cubic meters.

Saudi Arabia and Kuwait also share two oil and gas fields, Esfandiar (Lulu) and Arash (Al-Durra), with Iran, where they have developed the Esfandiar field for years and plan to develop the latter soon. However, these two countries reject Iran's share in the Arash field, claiming exclusive rights to gas extraction, a stance Iran does not accept. Iran has not even initiated development in these fields.

Joint Fields with Iraq

Iran's largest joint oil fields are with Iraq, where Iraq extracts four times more oil than Iran from these fields. Iraq has entered significant contracts with Chinese, Russian, and Western companies to boost extraction efforts.

In 2013, Iran produced 90,000 barrels of oil per day from these fields and aimed to increase production to 1.2 million barrels per day by 2021 with Chinese assistance, focusing on fields like Yadavaran, Azadegan, Azar, Changouleh, Aban, and Paydar. However, Chinese companies fulfilled only a fraction of their commitments, leading Iran to achieve a "nominal capacity" of oil production, reaching 350,000 barrels per day from the joint West Karoun fields with Iraq.

In contrast, Iraq's oil production has surged by 1.4 million barrels per day since 2013, primarily driven by developments in joint oil fields with Iran. Iran estimates needing $11 billion in investment to develop five major joint oil fields with Iraq, an amount equivalent to just two months of the country's pre-sanctions oil revenue. However, the complex structure and predominantly heavy oil type of these fields mean that Iran's current technology can only extract 5 to 10% of the 64 billion barrels of in-situ reserves. Consequently, the involvement of advanced Western companies in developing these fields appears inevitable.

Southern neighbors

Iran shares two oil fields with the UAE, Salman and Nusrat. Both countries extract 50,000 barrels of oil per day from the Salman field. However, Iran faces challenges due to the lack of gas gathering facilities, resulting in the flaring of 11 million cubic meters of associated gas daily. In contrast, the UAE efficiently produces gas from the layers in this field. Additionally, the UAE produces 65,000 barrels per day of oil from the Nusrat field, which is 20 times more than Iran's production from the same field.

Iran also shares the Hengam oil field with Oman, with both countries producing 10,000 barrels per day.

Iran's largest gas field is South Pars (North Dome), shared with Qatar. Qatar started gas extraction a decade earlier than Iran and has produced twice as much gas. While the Iranian side of the South Pars gas field has entered its second half-life in 2023 and experiences annual production declines of 10 billion cubic meters, Qatar has recently signed $29 billion worth of contracts with international companies to increase production by 40% by 2027 and 60% by 2030. Currently, both Iran and Qatar produce 180 billion cubic meters annually from South Pars.

Iran's options for increasing production lie in installing 20,000-ton platforms equipped with large compressors—a technology dominated by Western companies. All 24 phases of the Iranian side of the South Pars field are currently operational, leaving limited room for introducing new phases to enhance production or compensate for output declines from existing phases.

Qatar also extracts 450,000 barrels of crude oil from the oil layer of South Pars gas field, which is 13 times more than Iran's production from the same layer.

Additionally, Iran and Qatar share the Rashadat oil field, with each country producing between 10,000 to 15,000 barrels per day.

The only option for Iran is to reach an agreement with the West over its nuclear program, which is seen as leading to a weapons capability. It also needs to change its hegemonial policy in the region. Without a major shift in its foreign policy, energy and other sectors in its battered economy will struggle along.

Publishing the news in a post on X, Mary Lawlor, the UN expert on Human Rights Defenders, called on Iranian authorities to release the women immediately.

Dubbed as the “Gilan 2023 Case” by observers, the activists were arbitrarily sentenced and subsequently transferred to Lakan prison this past Saturday, located in the province of Gilan in northwestern Iran.

Alongside five other activists, these six women’s summary sentences were upheld on May 28. They were sentenced to serve over 60 years in prison collectively.

Forough Saminia, Shiva Shahsiah, Negin Rezaei, Azadeh Chavoshian, and Matin Yazdani have each been sentenced to six years in prison. Jelveh Javaheri, on the other hand, received a one-year sentence.

The other activists sentenced include Zohreh Dadras, Zahra Dadras, Sara Jahani, Yasmin Hashdari and Houman Taheri.

Tagging the Iranian state’s Permanent Mission to the UN, Lawlor also called on the authorities to end the suppression of women human rights defenders in the country.

Women rights defenders charged with ‘disrupting national security’

Local rights group, Hyrcani Human Rights Media previously reported that the arrests of the six women rights defenders were made without an official summons notice and only by phone announcement.

Charges against the activists include "membership in organizations that aim to disrupt national security" and "assembly and collusion to act against national security."

According to the human rights group, Front Line Defenders their activism included advocating for various human rights issues including women’s rights, children's rights, and access to health and education in a healthy and enabling environment.

In May this year, Branch 11 of the Rasht Revolutionary Court of Appeals, headed by Judge Mohammad Sadegh Iran Aghideh, confirmed the verdicts of all the defendants in this case without holding a court session, according to Bidarzani.

Last week, on July 10, 2024, two of the activists, Zahra Dadras and Zohreh Dadras, were arrested without prior summons or notice and transferred to Lakan Prison to serve their prison sentences.

The eleven activists in this case were first detained during mid-August 2023 raids at their residences.

They were kept in solitary confinement, with their location undisclosed due to being denied legal representation and limited phone communication.

They were ultimately released on bail from Lakan prison on various dates between September 16 and October 1, 2024.