News Agency in MI | A staff member positions an Iranian flag on a stage after a group picture during the Iran nuclear talks at Vienna International Centre in Austria on July 14, 2015. Why any new agreement would likely be worse than resuscitating the existing deal.

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Last week, Iran announced that it had started enriching uranium to 20 percent at its underground Fordow facility. This step is a serious escalation in a long-running crisis—but, even more ominously, it is also a threat. Iran is apparently signaling that if the 2015 nuclear deal—formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action —is not salvaged in the weeks after U.S. President-elect Joe Biden takes office, it will further ramp up its nuclear program to strengthen its hand ahead of any future negotiations. Under these circumstances, any new agreement would likely be worse than resuscitating the current deal.

In spite of the Trump administration’s best efforts, the Iran deal has not collapsed completely. In 2018, the administration ceased providing Iran with promised sanctions relief. In response, Iran gradually ramped up its nuclear program, breaching the deal’s limits on uranium enrichment. Nonetheless, Iran hoped that President Donald Trump would lose the 2020 U.S. presidential election and a new Democratic administration would want to reenter the deal. Accordingly, Tehran did not withdraw or restart its plutonium program. It has continued to accept exceptionally intrusive monitoring of its ongoing nuclear activities. And it could reverse its ongoing noncompliance quickly and easily. If Biden can provide Iran with the sanctions relief it was promised, he can likely reassemble the deal (to which all the other signatories are still committed).

If he fails, Tehran will almost certainly escalate its violations. It probably won’t try to build a nuclear weapon (although the possibility it might is reason enough to preserve the deal). Instead, Iran will likely opt to scale up its nuclear program—by developing better centrifuges, installing more of them, stockpiling ever-greater amounts of enriched uranium, and perhaps even enriching to higher levels. In short, Iran will pick up exactly where it left off in 2013 when its nuclear program was first constrained by the Joint Plan of Action, the less comprehensive predecessor to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. Iran will likely try to use its ramp-up to pressure the United States into negotiating an end to sanctions. Because of all the additional leverage at Tehran’s disposal, any new deal—if one is ever reached—will likely have to tolerate more nuclear activity in Iran than is currently permitted.

Advocates of holding out for a better deal argue that enhanced economic sanctions will drive Iran to make further concessions.

Advocates of holding out for a better deal argue that enhanced economic sanctions will drive Iran to make further concessions.

The problem is that Tehran has a greater capacity than Washington to escalate the crisis. Despite the current U.S. maximum pressure campaign against Iran, Iranian oil sales are back on the rise. Even maintaining the current level of economic pressure will be a challenge for the United States as Iran becomes more adept at circumventing sanctions and international support for them continues to wane. By contrast, without the 2015 deal in place, Iran could expand its nuclear program dramatically, without needing to cross the nuclear threshold.

If the idea of a competition in leverage feels speculative and abstract, the basic problem faced by the United States should be familiar from labor disputes. Managing the Iran crisis involves offering Tehran economic and security benefits in return for its not conducting certain nuclear activities. Managing a labor dispute, likewise, involves offering workers improved pay and conditions in return for their not striking. In both cases, the shape of any deal is determined by the relative leverage of the two sides.

To increase their leverage—and thus drive a harder bargain—unions may try to make the threat of a strike more credible. A classic tactic is for workers to vote to authorize a strike unless their negotiators can reach an acceptable agreement. This approach often proves effective, because it places the onus for averting a strike onto management, which can then feel pressured into making significant concessions.

In a similar way, Iran’s parliament recently sought to empower Iranian negotiators by passing a law that would prohibit international inspections and require an expansion of Iran’s nuclear program unless sanctions relief is forthcoming (enriching uranium to 20 percent is the first step in the implementation of the law). This law isn’t yet part of a dash to the bomb. But it is a signal that Iran is moving closer to the nuclear threshold and making the threat of a acquiring a nuclear weapon more credible.

As for the hope that the United States can win a competition in leverage by ramping up sanctions, its experience of playing—and losing—that game against North Korea should temper expectations. There are, of course, many differences between Iran and North Korea (starting with the fact that the former does not have nuclear weapons). However, the case does exemplify how enhanced capabilities translate into enhanced leverage—even as economic sanctions are progressively tightened

Over the course of last 40 years, North Korea has advanced its nuclear capabilities by amassing ever-larger amounts of plutonium, developing an enrichment program that “stunned” the U.S. weapons scientist who saw it, and conducting periodic long-range missile and nuclear tests. The result was that each of the deals concluded by the last four U.S. administrations was less restrictive than the previous one.

The Clinton’s administration’s Agreed Framework created a comprehensive road map for freezing and eliminating North Korea’s plutonium program. The George W. Bush administration’s deal provided for splashy “disablement” activities—including the televised blowing up of a reactor cooling tower—but was vague about next steps. A short-lived deal reached by the Obama administration in 2012 sought to freeze various North Korean nuclear and missile-related activities without requiring anything to be dismantled. And the hortatory summit declaration signed by Kim Jong Un and Donald Trump contained no concrete commitments whatsoever. (A nuclear and missile test moratorium trumpeted by U.S. officials was a unilateral gesture made months earlier.)

A senior North Korean diplomat once noted that, “the time that has been lost [in dealing with us] has not been beneficial to the” United States. If the Iran deal falls apart, the time lost will be similarly detrimental to U.S. interests. Biden is absolutely right, therefore, to indicate that the United States will reenter the Iran deal (rather than hold out for something better), if Iran comes back into compliance with its restrictions.

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Media Agency in Battle Creek MI | FILE PHOTO: A general view of the Bushehr nuclear power plant, 1,200 km (746 miles) south of Tehran, August 21, 2010. Iran began fuelling its first nuclear power plant on Saturday, a potent symbol of its growing regional sway and rejection of international sanctions designed to prevent it building a nuclear bomb. REUTERS/Raheb Homavandi

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States plans to announce additional Iran sanctions on Friday related to conventional arms and to the metals industry, sources familiar with the matter said.

The sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, did not provide details on the sanctions, the latest in a series that U.S. President Donald Trump has imposed on the Iranian economy to try to force Tehran into a new negotiation on curbing its nuclear program. The State and Treasury Departments did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the announcement.

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US News Agency in MI | Iranian Guard drones in drill mirror in Saudi attacks

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard conducted a drill Friday that saw “suicide drones” crash into targets and explode, triangle-shaped aircraft that strongly resembled those used in a 2019 attack in Saudi Arabia that temporarily cut the kingdom’s oil production by half.

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Iran has long denied launching the attack on the sites of Abqaiq and Khurais while Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels initially claimed the assault.

However, the United States, Saudi Arabia and U.N. experts believe the drones were Iranian, likely launched amid an escalating series of incidents stemming from President Donald Trump’s unilateral withdrew from Tehran’s nuclear deal with world powers.

The Guard’s decision to use the drones on Friday alongside a series of missile drills comes as Iran tries to pressure President-elect Joe Biden over the nuclear accord, which he has said America could re-enter.

Tehran recently seized a South Korean oil tanker and begun enriching uranium closer to weapons-grade levels, as the U.S. sent B-52 bombers, the USS Nimitz aircraft carrier and a nuclear submarine into the region as a deterrent in Trump’s final days as president.

“The nuclear issue is likely to be the Biden administration’s first foreign policy test,” wrote Simon Henderson, an analyst with the Washington Institute for Near-East Policy. “Ultimately, the United States holds the best hand, but Iran may still be able to play the game quite well, even with a weak hand.”

Iranian state television described the drill as taking place in the country’s vast central desert, the latest in a series of snap exercises called amid the escalating tensions over its nuclear program. The footage showed four of the unmanned, triangle-shaped drones flying in a tight formation.

Another scene showed the drones smash into targets Iran described as being “hypothetical enemy bases” and detonate. One target appeared to be a missile vehicle — a telling target in a region where American forces and their Gulf Arab allies rely on Patriot missile batteries for defense.

Looking at the footage frame by frame, the triangle-shape drone appeared to have two fins on either side. This strongly resembles the so-called “Delta” drones used both in the Abqaiq and Khurais assault in September 2019, as well as a May 2019 attack on Saudi Arabia’s crucial East-West pipeline. Saudi Arabia showed damaged drones to journalists after the attacks, while U.N. experts included images of the drone in a report.

Experts refer to such bomb-carrying drones as “loitering munitions.” The drone flies to a destination, likely programmed before its flight, and either explodes in the air over the target or on impact against it.

Iranian officials did not acknowledge the resemblance, nor did they immediately identify the drones used.

“The message of this drill is our might and firm determination to defend our sovereignty, our holy ruling system and our values against the enemies of Islam and Iran,” said Gen. Hossein Salami, the Guard’s top commander.

The Guard also launched solid-fuel ballistic missiles named Dezful and Zolfaghar during the drill, with state TV repeatedly airing imagery of the simultaneous launch of eight missiles from truck-based launchers.

Iran’s missile program has a 2,000-kilometer (1,250-mile) range, far enough to reach archenemy Israel and U.S. military bases in the region. Last January, after the U.S. killed a top Iranian general in a drone strike in Baghdad, Tehran retaliated by firing a barrage of ballistic missiles at two Iraqi bases housing U.S. troops, which saw dozens of troops injured with concussions.

___

Associated Press journalists Amir Vahdat and Mehdi Fattahi in Tehran, Iran, contributed to this report.

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Outages have been compounded by cryptocurrency mining, which uses banks of high-powered computers.

Agency for Global Media | Iran’s smog, blackouts made worse by power-sapping crypto mining

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Latest News | US News | World News: President Trump holds campaign rally in Dalton, Georgia

FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Donald Trump addresses a campaign rally in Dalton, Georgia, U.S., on the eve of the run-off election to decide both of Georgia’s Senate seats January 4, 2021. REUTERS/Leah Millis

January 5, 2021

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The United States on Tuesday blacklisted a Chinese company that makes elements for steel production, 12 Iranian steel and metals makers and three foreign-based sales agents of a major Iranian metals and mining holding company, seeking to deprive Iran of revenues as U.S. President Donald Trump’s term winds down.

In a statement, the U.S. Treasury Department named the China-based company as Kaifeng Pingmei New Carbon Materials Technology Co Ltd. (KFCC), saying it specialized in the manufacture of carbon materials and provided thousands of metric tonnes of materials to Iranian steel companies between December 2019 and June 2020.

Among the 12 Iranian companies blacklisted are the Pasargad Steel Complex and the Gilan Steel Complex Co, both of which were designated under Executive Order 13871 for operating in the Iranian steel sector.

The others are: Iran-based Middle East Mines and Mineral Industries Development Holding Co (MIDHCO), Khazar Steel Co, Vian Steel Complex, South Rouhina Steel Complex, Yazd Industrial Constructional Steel Rolling Mill, West Alborz Steel Complex, Esfarayen Industrial Complex, Bonab Steel Industry Complex, Sirjan Iranian Steel and Zarand Iranian Steel Co.

The Treasury said it was also designating MIDHCO’s Germany-based subsidiary GMI Projects Hamburg GmbH, its China-based World Mining Industry Co Ltd and U.K.-based GMI Projects Ltd for being owned or controlled by MIDHCO.

“The Trump Administration remains committed to denying revenue flowing to the Iranian regime as it continues to sponsor terrorist groups, support oppressive regimes, and seek weapons of mass destruction,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in the statement. Trump’s term ends on Jan. 20, when Democrat President-elect Joe Biden is to be sworn in to succeed him.

(Reporting by Arshad Mohammed, Daphne Psaledakis and Doina Chiacu; writiing by Arshad Mohammed; editing by Doina Chiacu and Jonathan Oatis)

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US News Agency | Apadana Media | Gulf leaders arrive in Al-Ula, Saudi Arabia for GCC summit

Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman welcomes Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani upon his arrival to attend the Gulf Cooperation Council’s (GCC) 41st Summit in Al-Ula, Saudi Arabia January 5, 2021. Bandar Algaloud/Courtesy of Saudi Royal Court/Handout via REUTERS ATTENTION EDITORS – THIS PICTURE WAS PROVIDED BY A THIRD PARTY

January 5, 2021

By Aziz El Yaakoubi

US News Agency | Apadana Media

AL-ULA, Saudi Arabia (Reuters) – Embracing Qatar’s ruler, Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince pushed a deal to end a bitter row with Doha at a Gulf Arab summit on Tuesday to try to shore up an anti-Iran front, although a final declaration contained only a general pledge of solidarity.

The kingdom’s foreign minister said Riyadh and its Arab allies agreed to restore ties with Doha to end a boycott imposed in mid-2017 and strengthen a Gulf Arab alliance against Tehran.

While the communique contained no detailed confirmation of a deal, the apparent breakthrough signalled hope for mending a rift between major U.S. allies two weeks before President-elect Joe Biden takes office and at a time of regional tensions with Iran.

“There is political will and good faith” to guarantee implementation of the deal, Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan al-Saud told a news conference, saying the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt had all agreed to restore ties with Doha.

The apparent deal followed mediation efforts by the United States and Kuwait, and a U.S. official said on Monday Qatar would suspend legal cases related to the boycott under the emerging deal.

Ahead of the gathering in the historic city of al-Ula, which was also attended by White House senior adviser Jared Kushner, Kuwait announced that Saudi Arabia would reopen its airspace and borders to Qatar. The other three nations have yet to announce similar moves.

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Qatar’s emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, hugged at the airport tarmac before heading to the summit venue in a mirrored building reflecting the desert landscape.

Saudi de facto ruler Prince Mohammed, who chaired the short event instead of his father King Salman, said the al-Ula agreement “confirms Gulf, Arab and Islamic unity and stability”.

He also called for serious action by the global community to address a threat he said was posed by Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programmes and its “subversive and destructive plans”.

Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt severed diplomatic, trade and travel ties with Qatar over allegations Doha supports terrorism, a charge it denies.

WORKING THE PHONES

U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration has been pushing for a resolution to the dispute that Washington sees as hindering efforts to contain Iran.

Kushner, tasked by Trump, his father-in-law, to work on ending the rift, was making phone calls on the emerging deal until the early hours of Monday, a U.S. official had said.

Diplomats and analysts said Riyadh was also pushing reluctant allies to show Biden that the kingdom is open to dialogue. Biden has said he will take a harder line with the kingdom over issues including its human rights record and the Yemen war.

“This (deal) is seemingly influenced by a desire to pre-empt pressure from an incoming Biden administration, more than a genuine commitment to conflict resolution,” said Emadeddin Badi, nonresident senior fellow at Atlantic Council.

“The détente within the GCC is very unlikely to significantly affect geopolitical dynamics beyond the Gulf.”

All the states are U.S. allies. Qatar hosts the region’s largest U.S. military base, Bahrain is home to the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet, and Saudi Arabia and the UAE host U.S. troops.

Qatar says the boycott aims to curb its sovereignty.

The other countries had set Doha 13 demands, including closing Al Jazeera TV, shuttering a Turkish base, cutting links to the Muslim Brotherhood and downgrading ties with Iran.

(Additional reporting by Raya Jalabi in Dubai Writing by Ghaida Ghantous, Editing by Tom Hogue, John Stonestreet, Nick Macfie and Timothy Heritage)

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National Media Agency News | When will you get your stimulus payment?

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US Elections | Georgia Elections | Georgia votes in crucial runoff elections

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CNN’s Madison Park, Eric Bradner, Clare Foran, Donald Judd, Alex Rogers and Ryan Nobles contributed to this report.

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Iran the big loser in Nagorno-Karabakh war

LUKE COFFEY

November 13, 202020:12

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A woman speaks on the phone as she prepares to leave an area once occupied by Armenian forces but soon to be turned over to Azerbaijan, in Yekhetnut, Nagorno-Karabakh, on Friday, Nov. 13, 2020. (AP)

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An almost three-decades-old conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh was brought to an end this week after 45 days of hard fighting.
The conflict had its origins in the collapse of the Soviet Union. During this period, ethnic Armenians living inside Azerbaijan’s Nagorno-Karabakh region tried to break away and join Armenia. Armenia took advantage of the chaos and invaded the region, capturing a sizable chunk of Azerbaijan’s internationally recognized territory.
A ceasefire agreement was signed in 1994, which, for the most part, held — albeit there were occasional minor skirmishes over the years. That same year, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe established the so-called Minsk Group to help broker a final peace — but it failed to do so.
Having grown impatient over the lack of progress in peace talks and the bellicose rhetoric coming from Armenian leaders, Azerbaijan decided to act. Major fighting kicked off in late September and was brought to an end this week by an Azerbaijani victory. With the help of Turkish and Israeli drones, and a lot of bravery from its soldiers, Azerbaijan was able to liberate large swathes of its territory from Armenian occupation.
Armenia is estimated to have lost approximately 40 percent of its equipment, including hundreds of tanks, armored vehicles and pieces of artillery. It is likely that Azerbaijan ended up capturing more equipment from Armenia than it lost on the battlefield — probably one of the few cases in history of an army ending a war with more equipment than it started with.
Turkey and Russia played a big role in the conflict. Russia traditionally backs Armenia, but in this conflict took a standoffish approach to the dismay of Yerevan. Turkey has always been close to Azerbaijan and has been in a protracted geopolitical competition with Russia over places like Syria, Libya, and to a certain extent Ukraine in recent years.
The peace agreement announced earlier this week was brokered by Russia with Turkish influence behind the scenes. It led to the surrender of Armenian forces inside Azerbaijan and the deployment of a small Russian peacekeeping force to regions in Nagorno-Karabakh with a sizable Armenian minority. While a lot of the commentary has been focused on what Armenia’s defeat means for Turkey and Russia, one country that was a big loser in this conflict was Iran.

Iran will have to devote time, resources, and troops to adjust to the new geopolitical reality along its northern border with Azerbaijan.

Luke Coffey

For historical reasons Iran sees itself as entitled to a special status in the South Caucasus. Both Armenia and Azerbaijan were once part of the Persian empire. Today, Armenia and Iran enjoy cozy relations.
Azerbaijan is one of the predominately Shiite areas in the Muslim world that Iran has not been able to place under its influence. While relations between Baku and Tehran remain cordial on the surface, there is an underlying tension between the two. During the war in Nagorno-Karabakh in the 1990s, Iran sided with Armenia as a way to marginalize Azerbaijan’s role in the region.
There are three reasons why Iran is a big loser in this conflict.
Firstly, it remains to be seen how Azerbaijan’s victory will play out with Iran’s sizable Azeri minority. Azeris are the second-largest ethnic group in Iran. During the conflict there was a lot of pro-Azerbaijani rhetoric and protests on social media and on the streets in support of Baku by ethnic Azeris. The Iranian regime was very careful to appear balanced during the conflict, but at the same time stifled many of these pro-Azerbaijani protests. There is a constant low-level push for self-determination and increased autonomy in northern Iran for the Azeri minority. Although this has not materialized into a mass movement for independence, it makes some in the Iranian leadership nervous.
Secondly, Iran will have to devote time, resources, and troops to adjust to the new geopolitical reality along its northern border with Azerbaijan. This could mean less Iranian focus on other places such as the Gulf and Syria. Part of the Azerbaijan-Iran state border has been under Armenian occupation since 1994. Now that this border is back under the control of Baku, a new security dynamic has been created between the two countries. Also, the presence of 2,000 Russian peacekeepers — now only 100 km from the Iranian border — is bound to make many in Tehran nervous. Although Russia and Iran have enjoyed good relations in recent times, the two have been rival powers in the region for centuries. Iran has already started to deploy more military assets along its northern border. It remains to be seen whether this is just a temporary measure or will become permanent due to the new security situation on the ground.
Finally, it is unclear how Azerbaijan’s success in the war will affect its bilateral relationship with Iran. Azerbaijan has strived to maintain cordial relations with Iran because it relied on access to Iranian airspace and territory to supply its autonomous region of Nakhchivan — an exclave of Azerbaijan nestling between Iran, Armenia and Turkey. In addition to transit rights, Azerbaijan also relied on Iran to provide natural gas to Nakhchivan. As part of the recent peace deal, Armenia is opening up a corridor through its territory to allow Azerbaijan to transport goods directly to Nakhchivan. In addition, earlier this year Turkey announced a new natural gas pipeline to supply Nakhchivan with energy. Iran is less important for Azerbaijan now and it is likely that the dynamics in the bilateral relationship will change in Baku’s favor.
Iran has many problems. A stagnant economy, political unrest at home, the fallout from the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and the never-ending costly interventions in places such as Syria and Iraq. The last thing Tehran needs right now is a change to the cozy status quo it has enjoyed in the South Caucasus for the past three decades.
Unfortunately for Iran, this is exactly what is happening.

• Luke Coffey is director of the Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy at the Heritage Foundation. Twitter: @LukeDCoffey

Disclaimer: Views expressed by writers in this section are their own and do not necessarily reflect Arab News’ point-of-view

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