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All in News
◢ Some destinations in Iran got their biggest break courtesy of Donald Trump. His decision in May to reimpose U.S. sanctions led to a collapse in the rial currency that’s sapped Iranians’ spending power, forcing many to abandon the idea of expensive overseas trips. While the resulting runaway prices and shortages are causing hardship for poorer Iranians, it’s boom time on dolphin-shaped Qeshm in the Gulf.
◢ President Hassan Rouhani travelled to flood-hit zones of Iran for the first time Wednesday after nine days of heavy rains that have inundated most of the country and killed 43 people. The authorities have been struggling to cope with flooding after extreme rainfall which at times has been equivalent to half of the average annual levels within 24 hours.
◢ With the web of US sanctions tightening, Iran faces a host of challenges as it looks to an isolated port in the country's far southeast to maintain the flow of goods. The port in Chabahar, only about 100 kilometers (62 miles) from the Pakistan border and located on the Indian Ocean, is Iran's largest outside the Gulf.
◢ The US Treasury Department sanctioned 25 individuals and entities it accused of transferring more than USD 1 billion dollars and euros to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard and Iran’s defense ministry. Some of the people and entities obtained millions of dollars worth of vehicles for the defense ministry, the Treasury Department said in a statement Tuesday.
◢ The death toll from major floods swamping much of Iran has risen to 23, emergency services said Tuesday, as authorities sent safety warnings to mobile telephones across the country. Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei issued a message of condolence urging officials to speed up relief efforts and compensation for victims of the floods, which the authorities described as unprecedented.
◢ President Donald Trump’s national security team is deeply divided over whether to let a small group of countries keep buying Iranian oil after a U.S. deadline on sanctions waivers expires in May. Now that fight is getting ugly. The division—primarily between John Bolton’s National Security Council and Michael Pompeo’s State Department—has led to rising frustration and flared tempers.
◢ The death toll of floods that have swept across most Iranian provinces has risen to 18 with more than 70 injured, the country's emergency services said Monday. National Emergency Service chief Pirhossein Koolivand said the casualty toll in the southern city of Shiraz was 17 dead and 74 injured, while another person was killed in Sarpol-e Zahab in the western province of Kermanshah.
◢ The United States on Friday imposed sanctions on Iranian nuclear researchers, saying it wanted to warn young scientists to steer clear of any future effort to build a bomb. Sanctioning 14 individuals and 17 entities, US officials acknowledged that the nuclear work was in the past but said Washington wanted to make the targeted figures "radioactive."
◢ The U.S. office in charge of financial sanctions, President Donald Trump’s favorite weapon against American adversaries, risks being hobbled by staff departures due to management turmoil and growing private-sector demand for its expertise. Trump has nearly doubled the number of people and companies under U.S. sanctions. But in the last two years, about 20 staff have left the office in charge of implementing and enforcing sanctions.
◢ An Australian man was sentenced to two years in prison in Washington Thursday for exporting restricted aviation equipment to Iranian buyers in violation of US restrictions. The exports took place in 2007-2008. At the time Levick was general manager of ICM Components, Inc., located in Thornleigh, Australia.
◢ France on Thursday called for Iranian human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh to be released and warned Tehran that its adherence to a nuclear accord does not give it a blank cheque on human rights. "We will do all we can to secure the release of Mrs Sotoudeh", French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian told the upper chamber Senate.
◢ Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called a trade mechanism launched by European countries to bypass renewed US sanctions a "bitter joke" on Thursday, in a speech aired by state TV. "This financial channel they recently set up resembles a joke, a bitter joke," Khamenei told a thousands-strong congregation at a shrine in the northeastern city of Mashhad, where he speaks every year to mark Iranian new year.
◢ Iran's supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called the economic difficulties of Iranians the main and most urgent problem of the country in a message aired Thursday on state TV. Iran has faced increased economic hardship in the last 12 months which was aggravated after US President Donald Trump withdrew from the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and world powers last May.
◢ Top US diplomat Mike Pompeo sought Wednesday to bolster a united front against Iran during a Middle East tour that will include talks with key ally Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ahead of Israeli elections. The US secretary of state kicked off his regional tour in Kuwait where he met Emir Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad Al-Sabah on the first stop of a trip that will also take him to Israel and Lebanon.
◢ The United States is extending a waiver to let energy-hungry Iraq keep buying power from Iran, despite Washington's campaign of sanctions aimed at curbing Tehran, an official said. "While this waiver is intended to help Iraq mitigate energy shortages, we continue to discuss our Iran-related sanctions with our partners in Iraq," a State Department official said.
◢ Iran's Mahan Air has been forced to cancel its Paris flights over "sanctions", its customer services team said Tuesday weeks after Germany banned the airline. "We have been told that (flights to France) have been cancelled... as of the first of April," an operator at the airline's office in Tehran's Imam Khomeini Airport told AFP.
◢ Iran isn’t facing a Venezuela-style collapse, but renewed U.S. sanctions have slashed oil revenue, battered the rial and pushed prices beyond the reach of many. Shortages, in meat, medicine, even gasoline in some regions, are spreading; proof, say hardline conservatives, that President Hassan Rouhani’s engagement with the West has failed.
◢ Tehran is preparing a lawsuit in Iran against US individuals involved with economic sanctions imposed by Washington, President Hassan Rouhani said Monday. Rouhani said the presidency's legal affairs office as well as the justice and foreign ministers have been tasked with "drawing up a lawsuit against all those within America involved with designing and executing these sanctions.”
◢ US officials said the global oil market can withstand the removal of all Iranian crude exports this year, a conclusion that could be pivotal in the coming weeks as President Donald Trump weighs whether to end sanctions waivers granted to several nations. The message from American officials comes as OPEC and its allies prepare for a ministerial meeting in Baku, Azerbaijan.
◢ Uncertainty over U.S. waivers for buyers of Iranian oil is starting to grip the market again, under very different circumstances than when American sanctions were set to go into effect last year. The Trump administration, for its part, says the aim is still to completely halt Iran’s oil shipments as it seeks to increase economic pressure on Tehran.
