Iran Focus
Tehran, 18 Jul – Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Saturday a nuclear deal reached this week with world powers would not affect Iran’s relationship with the United States or its policies in the Middle East.
Khamenei, who has the last word on high matters of state and had given his blessing to the nuclear talks, moved to dampen any speculation it would lead to a broader rapprochement with the US.
Iran Focus
London, 16 Jul – British politicians on Thursday condemned a food and fuel blockade on a camp of Iranian dissidents in Iraq and called on the United States government and the United Nations to urgently press Baghdad to lift the blockade.
Iran Focus
Washington, 15 Jul – The United States on Wednesday circulated a draft resolution to the UN Security Council that would endorse the Iran nuclear deal, reached earlier in the week between Tehran and the major world powers, but retain an arms embargo and ban on ballistic missile technology, said diplomats ahead of a likely vote next week.
US Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power briefed the 15-member council on the draft document behind closed doors.
The deal reached on Tuesday in Vienna with Iran was negotiated by Germany, the European Union and the five permanent, veto-wielding members of the Security Council – Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States.
PARIS (AFP): An exiled Iranian opposition group known for making revelations about Tehran’s nuclear drive in the past regretted Tuesday that Iran was allowed to continue enriching uranium under a historic deal.
Reached on day 18 of marathon talks between the 5+1 countries – the United States, Russia, France, Britain, China and Germany – and Iran, the deal aims at resolving a 13-year standoff over Tehran’s nuclear ambitions.
Iran Focus
London, 14 Jul – Iran and six major world powers reached a nuclear deal on Tuesday, capping more than a decade of negotiations to curb Tehran’s suspected nuclear weapons program.
US President Barack Obama hailed a step towards a “more hopeful world” and Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani said it proved that “constructive engagement works”. But Israel pledged to do what it could to halt what it called an “historic surrender”.
The agreement will now be debated in the U.S. Congress, but Obama said he would veto any measure to block it.
Iran Focus
London, 14 Jul – Top Iranian opposition leader Maryam Rajavi on Tuesday warned that an agreement reached earlier in the day between the world powers and Iran to curb its nuclear projects would “not close the mullahs’ path to deception and access to a nuclear bomb”.
“Despite many shortages and illegitimate concessions to the mullahs, the nuclear deal struck by the P5+1 and the Iranian regime forces [Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali] Khamenei to retreat and violate the declared redlines he had repeatedly insisted on over the past 12 years, including in recent weeks”, Rajavi said in a statement.
By Hamid Yazdan Panah
NIAC continues to use the nuclear crisis to score as many points as it can. Like a Mullah stuffing his face with the last remaining ghorme sabzi, NIAC has sought to squeeze every last drop of publicity (and money), out of the Iran talks. Not only is NIAC’s President Trita Parsi getting his articles re-published by the pro-regime Tehran Times, but NIAC itself is continuing to live off the fat of the political landscape, while pushing the same tired line as always. All of this has proven to be profitable, both for NIAC and the Iranian regime.
Iran Focus
Washington, 12 Jul – United States Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Sunday led a chorus of bipartisan concern from congressional leaders and 2016 presidential candidates about an Iran nuclear deal, amid reports that negotiators are expected to reach a provisional agreement.
“This is going to be a very hard sell for the administration”, the Kentucky Republican said on “Fox News Sunday”, when asked about the likelihood of Congress signing off on a deal.
Iran Focus
Washington, 11 Jul – A pro-Iranian advocacy group long accused of concealing illicit ties to the authorities in Iran is lobbying Congress in support of a demand that the US repeal a United Nations arms embargo limiting the Islamic Republic’s ability to stockpile arms, including ballistic missiles, which could be used to carry nuclear payloads, according to a copy of an email sent by the group to various lawmakers.
The National American Iranian Council (NIAC), which has long been suspected of acting as Tehran’s lobbying shop in Washington, D.C., sent lawmakers an email on Friday asserting that “the Iranian arms embargo will need to be disposed of as part of a final agreement on Iran’s nuclear program”.
Iran Focus
Washington, 10 Jul – An alternative to ongoing international negotiations to limit Iran’s nuclear ambitions is to bomb its facilities, according to a senior member of US President Barack Obama’s Democratic Party in the US House of Representatives.
That bombing plot would set Iran’s progress back just a few years, said Rep. Eliot Engel (N.Y.), the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
