The US itself may well be in breach of the spirit of the deal. The White House has admitted that Trump has sought to dissuade other world leaders from doing business with Iran. That’s despite the deal barring the US and EU from any policy “intended to directly and adversely affect the normalisation of trade and economic relations with Iran” so long as Tehran remains in compliance. Not surprisingly, Iranian president Hassan Rouhani has reacted angrily to Trump’s rhetoric and said Iran could abandon the deal “within hours” if the US imposed more sanctions. ››read more

If President Trump’s recent pronouncements on Iran are to be believed, it’s all but certain that he will not recertify the Iran nuclear deal the next time around. He is expected to accuse Iran of advancing its missile technology and supporting terrorism, which in his view would be a violation of the spirit of the Iran deal, formally known as Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). Trump and his Iranophobe supporters are itching for a war with Iran, without any consideration of the disastrous consequences that will ensue.

It’s as if they have not learned any lessons from the Iraq invasion, nearly a decade and a half ago. ››read more

The Trump administration’s hostile rhetoric on Iran is causing unease but on closer analysis the escalating war of words between America and the Islamic Republic is not a radical departure from the norm ››read more

ZarifIranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has criticized three European countries for issuing a joint statement with the United States against Iran’s recent test-launch of a satellite rocket. ››read more

Sharmine NarwaniThe Russians, Iranians, Hezbollah, and other allied Syrian forces are in Syria legally, at the invitation of the UN-recognized state authority. The United States and its coalition partners are not.

At the moment, the latter are trying hard to ignore that elephant in the room. But as ISIS collapses, the question “why are you still here?” is going to rise in volume. ››read more

Rex TillersonThe biggest current threat to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the agreement that limits Iran’s nuclear program, comes from Donald Trump’s obsession with killing the accord. That obsession is driven by his impulse to undo whatever Barack Obama did and to fulfill campaign rhetoric based on such contrarianism. The power of that impulse should not be underestimated, no matter how much it collides with truth, reason, and the best interests of the United States. Trump has demonstrated parallel obsessions in pulling out of the Paris climate change agreement in the face of an overwhelming scientific and global political consensus, and in his current posture on health care, in which he evidently is willing to harm the health of the American people in an effort to make his rhetoric about Obamacare appear to come true. ››read more

US-AlqaedaLast week a Trump administration official decided to inform the news media that the CIA program to arm and train anti-Assad Syrian forces had been terminated. It was welcome news amid a deepening U.S. military commitment reflecting the intention to remain in the country for years to come. As my recent article in TAC documented, the net result of the program since late 2011 has been to provide arms to al Qaeda terrorists and their jihadist and other extremist allies, which had rapidly come to dominate the military effort against the Assad regime. ››read more

Iranian newspaper standIranian media said on Monday the government had agreed to measures in response to the U.S. sanctions and that President Hassan Rouhani would announce them soon to relevant ministries. U.S. President Donald Trump issued a veiled threat against Iran last week, warning Tehran to adhere to the terms of the nuclear accord or face "big, big problems". The Trump administration certified Iran as being in compliance with the nuclear deal, even though the Republican president has called the agreement, negotiated by his Democrat predecessor Barack Obama, "the worst deal ever." ››read more

Rex TillersonTrump has preserved the deal for now, although he has made clear he did so reluctantly after being advised to do so by Tillerson. "He and I have differences of views on things like JCPOA, and how we should use it," Tillerson said at a State Department briefing, using the acronym for the deal, formally called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). Tillerson said that Washington could "tear it up and walk away" or stay in the deal and hold Iran accountable to its terms, which he said would require Iran to act as a "good neighbor." ››read more

EUJCPOA is clearly working, and even the Trump administration, despite its very hostile attitude towards Iran, certified Iran’s compliance with the agreement. Another reason is that the JCPOA is one of the few true diplomatic successes of the EU. It was unanimously endorsed by its member states. Mogherini repeatedly emphasized that the accord belongs to the whole international community. The EU needs engagement with Iran to be able to play a relevant role in the Middle East, since the conflicts in that region are a major source of terrorism and irregular migration that threaten the security and wellbeing of the European societies. Brussels sees the continued validity of the JCPOA and the trust its implementation is engendering as a gateway for deeper cooperation with Iran. ››read more

These details, though, don’t matter. The Trump administration is already signaling that it intends to sabotage the nuclear deal by insisting on inspections in a transparent and cynical effort to push Iran out of the agreement. The JCPOA already provides for inspections, but Team Trump seems to be envisioning the equivalent of a safeguards colonoscopy, not to catch Iran cheating but to make life under the agreement a constant source of friction. Whether or not a space launch is legally permitted or prohibited, Team Trump is likely to decide that it is one more calumny to launch against what Trump modestly called the “worst deal ever.” ››read more

This has less to do with Iran and more to do with Trump’s frustration with his own Cabinet for supporting the deal — reportedly so great that he commissioned a parallel working group of lower-level, less-experienced officials to advise him before the next review. So the threat of a major conflict with Iran is high — because the administration wants it that way. Most if not all of the administration’s key national security players, and their allies in Congress, see stepped-up U.S. military activity in the region as important to confronting Iran. Far from believing that the Iran deal contained the most serious U.S.-Iran flashpoint, they believe Iran, even without nuclear weapons, poses an existential threat to the U.S. and our allies. They believe that regime change — switching out Iran’s theocracy for a (hypothetical) secular democracy — is the only way, long-term, to deal with that threat. (Hands up if you recall hearing that one before about a country beginning with I.) ››read more

M. Javad ZarifThe nuclear deal does not cover Iran's ballistic missile programme. Iran has denied it has missiles designed to carry nuclear warheads. On Friday, Mohammad Javad Zarif, Iran's foreign minister, said his country is complying with the nuclear deal and suggested that the US is not complying with the "letter and spirit" of the deal. "Rhetoric and actions from the US show bad faith," he said. "Iran is not and will not be developing nuclear weapons; so by definition cannot develop anything designed to be capable of delivering them." The fresh sanctions come as Donald Trump's administration continues debating its Iran policy and whether to scrap the 2015 nuclear deal. ››read more

An Iranian nuclear facilityTaraghi, a former lawmaker, said the Additional Protocol allowed for snap inspections and that international inspectors had installed closed-circuit cameras in all nuclear-related facilities. “They have access to everything going on here on the ground,” Taraghi said. “What else do they want to know?” It was not immediately clear what military sites the Trump administration was seeking to have inspected, or whether it had evidence that Iran was breaching the terms of the deal. U.N. inspectors monitoring Iran’s compliance had not requested access to military facilities as of July 25, according to a paper published Thursday by Mark Fitzpatrick, executive director of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in Washington. ››read more

NIACReports that Trump is pushing for IAEA access to Iranian military sites without a compelling intelligence justification should be deeply concerning. Already, Trump has not only signaled his intent to withdraw from the nuclear accord, he’s made clear that he wants to find Iran out of compliance even when the IAEA and U.S. intelligence services have confirmed that Iran is living up to the deal. Clearly, facts don’t matter to the Trump administration – their desire to start a war trumps everything. Now, his team appears to be putting his desires into action. ››read more

As an Iranian American academic who has conducted research in Iran since 1992, I completely disagree with Matt Trevithick’s July 21 op-ed, “American colleges should stop sending students to Iran.” In this era of heightened isolationism and fear-mongering, it is disappointing that those on our last frontier of hope for restoring diplomacy — intellectuals — should be asked to withdraw from interacting with Iran. ››read more

ISISAlong with the other “crimes” committed by the republic, the video points to its alleged attempts to disseminate Shiism around the world, its support for militias in the Arab world and its tolerance of Jewish synagogues and Christian churches in Iran.
The video features a film of Iranian Jews worshiping in peace in Tehran and Isfahan as signs of the Islamic Republic’s un-Islamicness. It also attacks Iranian Sunni imams like Mowlana Abdolhamid, the Friday prayer leader in Sunni-majority Zahedan, who has been a popular stalwart of the Iranian Sunnis due to his efforts to better their conditions and fight discrimination while also countering the influence of Takfiri groups like al Qaeda and ISIS, which regard those who do not share their rigid orthodoxy and heretics deserving death. In addition to using Persian, the video also features a protagonist speaking in Balochi, a language spoken by about two percent of Iranians, most of them living in the southeast. Another speaks in fluent Arabic and is introduced as Al-Ahwazi, meaning he is allegedly from the Arab-populated southwest of Iran that has long harbored separatist and Pan-Arabist factions but has been mostly immune to Sunni radicalism (the majority of Iranian Arabs are Shia). The video also calls on “Kurds and Persians” to join ISIS and fight Iran. ››read more

Irrespective of what Mr. Trump decides, his move, much like his statements during a visit to Riyadh in May contributed to the eruption of the Gulf crisis and the UAE-Saud-led boycott of Qatar, could encourage Saudi Arabia to step up its long-standing existential battle with Iran. Lowering relations with Iran, with whom Qatar shares the world’s largest gas field, was one of the demands initially put forward by the UAE-Saudi-led coalition. Kuwait, the lead mediator in the Gulf crisis and one of the Gulf states that has long balanced its relations with Saudi Arabia and Iran, this week expelled the Iranian ambassador and 14 other diplomats for alleged links to a “spy and terror” cell. Saudi Arabia has felt emboldened by Trump’s hostility towards Iran as well as his focus on combatting terrorism even though the US administration appears to be wracked by policy differences between the president and some of his key aides. ››read more

United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI), a group that actively opposed the Iran deal, and the Counter Extremism Project (CEP), which shares staff with UANI and was “formed to combat the growing threat from extremist ideologies,” are no strangers to controversy about their funding.

Emails allegedly originating from the hacked email account of United Arab Emirates Ambassador to the U.S. Yousef Al-Otaiba and sent to LobeLog by “GlobalLeaks” appear to show a close relationship between UANI and CEP principals and the UAE government, raising questions about possible UAE funding of the U.S. based groups, both of which engaged in lobbying and public diplomacy campaigns. ››read more

Abu GhraibAs I noted in FAIR last month, nominally down-the-middle reporters are allowed to mind-read U.S. policy makers’ motives so long as they conclude that those motives were noble and in good faith. Never are reporters allowed to ascribe sinister motives to U.S. officials—this is only permissible when covering America’s enemies— which Arango does in the next paragraph, insisting that “from Day 1, Iran saw something else: a chance to make a client state of Iraq.” Note that the U.S. did not seek to make Iraq a “client state,” but rather a “democracy.” Big bad Iran however (which not only had nothing to do with the invasion but openly opposed it), was plotting all along to exploit the U.S. invasion to establish a puppet regime. It’s a masterful work of 180-degree reality inversion. The second thing wrong with the opening frame is that Arango mentions the “4,500 American lives lost” and the “$1 trillion spent” but makes no mention of the 500,000 to 1 million Iraqis killed. He mentions the use of chemical weapons but doesn’t say who used them — it was Iraq, not Iran. He also omits the country that supplied them to Saddam: the United States. ››read more