Obama and stretching the appeasement to the breaking point with the Mullahs

A Bad Iran Investment The Obama administratio

A Bad Iran Investment, The Obama administrations promotion of Irans economy has prompted no change in Iranian behavior.

Stretching appeasement to the breaking point, Washington is working overtime to convince global institutions, nations, banks and companies to dismiss their well-founded concerns and do business with the America-hating, terror-sponsoring, nuclear weapons-pursuing regime in Tehran.
Washington's efforts – which are coming despite no discernable change in Iranian behavior – extend a familiar script of recent years, in which the Obama administration kowtows to the regime, ignores the concerns of America's regional allies and breaks its promises to monitor Iranian activities closely and act accordingly.
It's an embarrassing spectacle that diminishes U.S. leadership and credibility in the region and beyond.
Nevertheless, the U.S. effort is having an impact. The Paris-based Financial Action Task Force, which sets global standards for fighting money laundering and terror financing, responded to U.S. pressure by deciding last week to suspend for a year its measures to combat Iranian terror sponsorship because Iran has adopted a plan to address the problem – even though Tehran hasn't actually implemented it. And the plan is meaningless to begin with because it excludes from 'terrorism' any group that Iran says is 'attempting to end foreign occupation, colonialism, and racism,' as Iran surely would say of its terrorist proxies Hezbollah and...
The Financial Action Task Force has long labeled Iran and North Korea 'high-risk or uncooperative jurisdictions' and urged other countries to take 'counter-measures' to protect their financial systems. As recently as February, it said it was 'particularly and exceptionally concerned about Iran's failure to address the risk of terrorist financing and the serious threat this poses to the integrity of the international financial system.'
Whether the group's change of heart will generate much new business for Iran, however, remains unclear. 'Practically speaking,' the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington, D.C. think tank, has noted, 'there is no change since, given the continued concerns over Iran's illicit conduct, financial institutions will continue to voluntarily implement strict countermeasures … Businesses considering ties to Iran will have to conduct enhanced due diligence that will prove a nightmare for them.'
That's because Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp controls nearly a third of Iran's economy, many of Iran's companies hide their ties to the guard, the country ranked 130 out of 168 countries on Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index, and it continues to bolster Bashar Assad, Syria's brutal dictator, and to support Hezbollah… and other terrorist groups.
'Most large banks that care about long-term protection of their assets,' the Foundation for Defense of Democracies wrote, 'are not rushing back into Iran because they understand it has a long way to go before it's safe to do business there. Ultimately they are looking to avoid the massive sanctions, money-laundering, and corruption risk Iran poses to their stakeholders.'
The Obama administration is conceding one thing after another to Tehran, just to keep its nuclear deal afloat.
On the other hand, Boeing recently announced that it will sell 100 jets to Iran Air in a $25 billion deal that the State Department said it 'welcomes,' adding that Boeing was in 'close contact' with the department on the deal. To facilitate it, the administration dropped the sanctions that it had slapped on Iran Air in 2011 for using its passenger and cargo planes to send rockets and missiles to Syria, disguising those shipments as medicine or spare parts, and enabling the Revolutionary Guard to control some of the flights.
Whether pressuring the Financial Action Task Force, facilitating Boeing or promoting Iran as a place to do business, the administration admits that it's going well beyond its obligations under the U.S.-led global nuclear deal with Iran.
'I have personally gone beyond the absolute requirements of the lifting of sanctions,' Secretary of State John Kerry said recently, 'to personally engage with banks and businesses and others who have a natural reluctance after several years of sanctions to move without fully understanding what they are allowed to do and what they are not allowed to do.'
Iran's recent missile test highlights one more weakness in the Obama administration's nuclear accord.
Administration officials say they're driven by two motives. First, President Barack Obama is doubling down on his hopes that – whether through the $100 billion-plus in sanctions relief provided under the nuclear deal, or because of U.S. promotion of Iran as a place for business – Iran's economic progress will convince the regime to abandon its militancy and become a responsible global actor.
Second, by expanding U.S. ties to and investment in Iran, Obama hopes to make it harder for his successor to undo his nuclear deal, which he considers among his top achievements. To achieve this goal, in his remaining months in office, he's reportedly pushing for such additional steps as Iranian entry into the World Trade Organization and facilitating Iranian access to the dollar.
But U.S. efforts to nourish Iran's economy have prompted no change in Iranian behavior. Unless they eventually do, a more prosperous Tehran will pose greater risks for the United States on the world stage.
A president focused on his legacy, however, doesn't seem to worry.

Source: US News, 29 June 2016

US Navy Personnel Disciplined in Iran Incident Rises to Nine

 This picture released by Iran’s

This picture released by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps shows detained U.S. Navy sailors at an undisclosed location

WASHINGTON- The Navy is taking disciplinary action against a total of nine of its personnel in connection with an embarrassing incident in January in which American sailors were detained by Iranian military authorities when two small U.S. boats mistakenly wandered into Tehran’s territorial waters.The sailors and officers failed to perform their duties and didn’t conduct proper mission planning, veering off course almost immediately after leaving port on Jan. 12, according to a U.S. official familiar with a new Navy report on the matter. The sailors were attempting to transit two riverine boats from Kuwait to Bahrain.The sailors and officers also failed to report the sighting of land or to communicate with superiors once they ran into trouble after one of the engines of the 50-foot boats broke down, according to the official.The report is to be formally released at the Pentagon Thursday morning by Adm. John Richardson, chief of naval operations.The incident drew wide attention and was considered a humiliation of the U.S. by Iran just as international powers were concluding a nuclear agreement. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard troops held the American sailors at gunpoint, blindfolded them and provided video of the incident, which ran on cable news shows within hours of President Barack Obama’s final State of the Union speech, in which he was expected to tout a historic nuclear deal with Tehran.The Navy report stated Iran was within its rights to investigate the two stranded American boats in its territorial waters near Farsi Island but went too far by holding the sailors at gunpoint, videotaping them and interrogating them, thus violating international law, according to the U.S. official.The Navy had announced earlier that two senior officers—who are among the nine included in the report being released Thursday—had been relieved of command in connection with the incident. Capt.Kyle S. Moses and Cmdr. Eric Rasch were reassigned to other jobs.The nine face what the military calls “non judicial punishment,” according to a U.S. official, which in some cases could end careers. The nine range in rank from a Navy captain to an enlisted petty officer. Some of the nine were sailors on the two boats, while others were part of the chain of command that oversaw the mission, according to the official.The report concluded that senior officers exhibited improper leadership by ordering the sailors to take the boats on such a long transit—259 nautical miles—inside of a short, 24-hour period, the official describing the report said. The commander failed to understand the dangers and complexity of the mission and didn’t question the approach the sailors were taking.At the same time, the official said, the senior sailors on the boats made a series of poor decisions, exhibited poor leadership and didn’t react quickly or appropriately when confronted with Iranian ships coming toward them, according to the official. The sailors had stayed up all night before the mission to repair one of the boats, according to the official.Source: Wall Street Journal, 30 June 2016

UNLAWFUL, SOMETIMES FATAL INTERROGATION METHODS TPERSIST HROUGHOUT IRAN

Nazanin-Zaghari-Ratcliffe700

 By INU Staff
Sunday, the National Council of Resistance of Iran reported upon the death of Nader Sharifi-Fard, a young Iranian who was summoned for police questioning in the city of Abadan, and apparently died as a result of torture inflicted on him as part of the interrogations. The report indicates that local authorities have denied that such torture took place, and have even gone so far as to order mass arrests of individuals who reported upon Sharifi-Fard’s death and helped to make his case go viral on social networks and among human rights advocates.

On Wednesday, IranWire published a report that contradicted the denials that have been repeated by the authorities involved with Sahrifi-Fard and other similar cases. It pointed out that torture during police interrogation is notably commonplace in the Islamic Republic, especially during political crackdowns like those seen at the end of the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s, and after massive protests against the disputed reelection of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2009.

Many observers have noted that Iran appears to currently be in the midst of another crackdown that is similar to, albeit more gradual than, the 2009 repression of dissent. Journalists and persons with foreign connections have been arrested en masse over the past several months, in what is widely regarded as a preemptive attack on any individuals or social trends that might suggest cooperation and reconciliation with Western governments in the wake of last summer’s nuclear agreement between Iran and six world powers including the US.

The IranWire report quoted some observers as saying that the laws regarding interrogation have been improving, at least in theory, by barring figures like Intelligence Ministry agents from conducting them on their own. But the same report emphasizes that these sorts of alterations are unlikely to create meaningful change in practice, especially considering that Iranian officials frequently violate the law, and with impunity.

Since 2003, the law has technically considered confessions to be invalid which are extracted under coercion. And yet reports continue to emerge from within Iranian jails describing torturous interrogations and forced confessions, which are not only embraced by the Iranian judiciary but also broadcast on Iranian state media as supposed proof of guilt, or of broader narratives like the claim of Western infiltration.

In some cases, arrestees report being forced to sign confessions even before criminal charges have been brought against them. This has been the case in multiple recent, high-profile cases involving dual nationals. Among the most recent such incidents, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a British-Iranian woman and project coordinator for the Thomson Reuters foundation, was reportedly forced to confess to interrogators while being held without charge, after she was separated from her two-year-old child and arrested at the airport while trying to return home from a visit to her Iranian parents.

As well as illustrating that forced confessions are apparently still commonplace in instances of apparently political arrest, the accounts of Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s treatment also highlight the fact that such confessions may be elicited not only through physical but also through psychological torture.

The IranWire report details how many former political prisoners had observed similar tactics whereby one interrogator would seek to secure a confession through physical violence and threats, and if unsuccessful would be followed by another interrogator who would try “to make the accused co-operate by giving him false hope.”

It seems likely that these tactics were at play in an incident in which Zaghari-Ratcliffe was informed on June 9 that she was going to be released from prison, and conveyed that information to her family before the decision was reversed, leading to her remaining in custody to the present date. Still, no charges have been levied against the woman, although she has vaguely been accused of being a leading member of an infiltration network involved in attempts at “soft overthrow” of the Islamic Republic.

The International Campaign reports that Zaghari-Ratcliffe has been systematically denied access to a lawyer, even after presenting choices of representation to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps for approval. It also notes that her case is conspicuously similar to those of several other dual nationals, including Iranian-Canadian anthropology professor Homa Hoodfar and French Foreign Ministry staffer Nazak Afshar, both of whom have also apparently been subject to coercive and technically unlawful interrogation.

John Kerry: The United States cares about a strong EU

 Kerry calls on EU to-stay calm after Brexit shock

Brussels  - US Secretary of State John Kerry on Monday urged European Unionmembers not to 'lose their head' or be 'revengeful' after Britain's shock referendum decision to leave 28-nation bloc.

'I think it is absolutely essential that we stay focused on how, in this transitional period, nobody loses their head, nobody goes off half-cocked, people don't start ginning up scatterbrain or revengeful premises,' Kerry said in Brussels. He said Washington and Europe must 'look for ways to maintain the strength that will serve the interests and the values that brought us together in the first place. And that is what is important.' Kerry also stressed that despite Britain's decision on Thursday, these common values would endure, and that a 'strong EU' remained vital for Washington. 'The United States cares about a strong EU,' he said. 'It is through the strength of those countries coming together that we are able to make good things happen.' Kerry was speaking before heading to London to meet outgoing British Prime Minister David Cameron and Foreign Minister Philip Hammond. His comments came a day before a summit of EU leaders, including Cameron, in Brussels that will discuss the timing and modalities of Britain's departure and how the bloc can respond.

Source: AFP, 27 June 2016