Articles

An examination of the more distant and recent past are necessary to understand the series of explosions that have rocked Iran in recent days

By: Yossi Melman – July 8th 2020

Understanding the series of explosions and fires that have rocked Iran over the past week, particularly the explosion at the uranium enrichment plant at Natanz, requires us to travel back in time 18 years.

In August 2002, the National Council of Resistance of Iran, an umbrella group of exiles and opponents of the Islamic regime, revealed that Iran was building an underground uranium enrichment facility near Natanz. At the same time, it was revealed that the government had set up a workshop in one of Tehran’s industrial zones that was masquerading as an electronic watch factory run by the Kalaye Electric Company, but was actually constructing centrifuges.

Unlike Israel, Iran is a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and as a member state is obligated to report to the International Atomic Energy Agency on any facility, equipment or nuclear material on its territory, even if it is for peaceful means. The Iranians’ usual practice has been to deny the existence of banned facilities, only admitting to their existence when forced to. And even when acknowledging them, the Islamic republic made every effort to buy time, until finally being forced to let international nuclear inspectors into the Tehran workshop, the Natanz facility and other sites linked to its nuclear program.

Since then, IAEA inspectors have paid visits to the facilities at varying intervals

According to foreign reports, Israeli intelligence – the Mossad and the Israeli army’s Unit 8200, with the help of other espionage agencies – exposed the illegal activity at Natanz and “laundered” the information via Iranian opposition groups. It later became clear to the CIA and Britain’s MI6, from information supplied by the late Libyan dictator Muammar Gadhafi, that Iranian nuclear scientists had built centrifuges to enrich uranium based on knowledge and technology secretly acquired from Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan’s nuclear bomb.

The discovery of the Natanz facility was a wake-up call for intelligence communities in Israel, the United States and elsewhere, indicating Iran’s determination to pursue its nuclear program through every possible channel – uranium enrichment, laser enrichment and plutonium production. According to foreign reports, against this backdrop, operational-intelligence cooperation grew between Israel and the United States during President George W. Bush’s time in office.

Among other efforts, they would carry out various programs to step up intelligence gathering (via agents, wiretapping and computer hacking), and through increased infiltration of Iran’s procurement networks around the world – in an effort to have the Iranians provided with faulty information and technology – to sabotaging equipment on its way to Iran and damaging the nuclear facilities themselves.

Journalist James Risen wrote about one of these programs in his 2006 book “State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration.” According to the book, the Mossad and the CIA plotted to sabotage the electric grid near Iran’s nuclear sites through the use of electromagnetic pulses. Experts working for the CIA went to a testing site in Nevada to try out their technology on a model they had set up there. The book stated that the Mossad volunteered to smuggle the necessary equipment into Iran via agents in the country .

But when it tested out the technology and assessed its viability, the CIA decided to scrap the program on the grounds that it was not feasible and was too dangerous. Carrying out the plan would have required smuggling trucks into Iran and loading them with heavy equipment. Subsequently, according to reports, Mossad directors (Meir Dagan and Tamir Pardo), Israeli army intelligence chiefs (Aharon Ze’evi-Farkash, Amos Yadlin and Aviv Kochavi), along with commanders of Unit 8200, got together with the Americans and other espionage agencies to find other creative ways to damage, disrupt and delay Iran’s plans..

It was clear to those involved in the work that it was necessary to assemble a wide-ranging set of tools that would make systematic, coordinated, international operations possible and force Iran to suspend its nuclear program at the very least. No one ever imagined that Iran would give up its plans for the nuclear option, if not the construction of an actual atomic bomb.

According to foreign reports, this toolbox included inserting a computer virus into electricity boxes manufactured by the German company Siemens, which were connected to the computers running the Natanz centrifuges. The virus was dubbed Stuxnet and the joint operation by the Mossad, the CIA, Unit 8200 and its U.S. counterpart at the National Security Agency, was called Operation Olympic Games (as revealed in the United States in 2011)

More advanced centrifuges

In 2009, it was discovered that the Iranians had built another uranium enrichment site at Fordo, near the city of Qom, which was built even deeper in the ground than the Natanz facility and would be difficult to destroy. (The Israel Air Force does not have bunker-busting bombs as the United States does)

It also turned out that Iranian experts had managed to develop centrifuges that were more advanced than those acquired from Pakistan. The Iranian ones were capable of enriching larger quantities of uranium in less time.

As the other operations were proceeding, nuclear scientists who were part of Iran’s nuclear “weaponization” team, responsible for the most critical stage of nuclear weapons production, began to disappear one after another. The U.S. secretary of state at the time, Hillary Clinton, declared that her country was not involved in the deaths or assassinations. From her statement and prior precedents and analyses, the international media attributed the assassinations to the Mossad

According to foreign reports, these operations were a mix of Mossad, Iranian agents and others assigned to the task. It was clear that the assassinated scientists would be replaced by others, but the targeted killings also had a psychological aspect – consisting of a threat that it was hoped would dissuade Iranian scientists working at universities from joining the secret military project.

In addition to the killings and sabotage, the United States and other Western powers (and later, following a UN Security Council resolution, Russia and China) increased diplomatic and economic pressure on Iran. Here, too, the Mossad played an important role, being involved in gathering information that would be the basis for targeting Iranian companies and the financial sectors upon which sanctions could be imposed.

Iran’s economy was hit hard and in 2013 the Iranians agreed to enter negotiations, which in July 2015 produced the international nuclear agreement with the six major powers, which was signed in Vienna (the JCPOA)

Most senior Israeli defense and intelligence officials expressed the view that, despite its shortcomings, the deal was the least bad of all available options. But Prime Minster Benjamin Netanyahu thought otherwise and began to do all he could to scuttle the agreement. Threats made by Netanyahu and then-Defense Minister Ehud Barak, backed by visible air force exercises, created the impression that a military strike was imminent and unavoidable. It was one of the most successful deception operations in history.

Netanyahu also appeared before members of Congress in March 2015 to speak out against the agreement, a deal then-President Barack Obama supported. It’s possible that without Netanyahu’s involvement, a better agreement could have been achieved

Main task

In 2016, Yossi Cohen was appointed as director of the Mossad. As he has told associates, his main task was to obtain information proving that Iran was violating the nuclear deal. One of his major accomplishments was the break-in at Iran’s nuclear archive in January 2018 and the theft of its contents, which were brought back to Israel. (On Sunday, Netanyahu extended Cohen’s term as director by another six months, until June 2021.) But even this impressive intelligence coup didn’t yield diplomatic results. The world seemingly wasn’t impressed by the findings and stuck to its position that the nuclear agreement should be respected

On the other hand, President Donald Trump, with backing and persuasion from Netanyahu, announced in 2018 that the United States would be unilaterally withdrawing from the agreement. Following that, Iran began violating the deal – including, most significantly, with its renewed efforts to develop advanced centrifuges.

This is the backdrop for recent events in Iran: four explosions and fires, which occurred at an X-ray lab in Tehran; a missile base at Parchin (where the weaponization program was based); a power plant in Ahvaz, an area that is home to Iran’s Arab minority; and the enrichment plant at Natanz

Speaking Sunday, Defense Minister Benny Gantz and Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi reiterated Israel’s traditional responses on the subject. Ashkenazi said Israel would not permit Iran to develop nuclear weapons, while Gantz explained that not every unusual “event” is linked to Israel. The defense minister noted that Iran has had a history of major accidents due to faulty maintenance and outdated equipment, as a result of the sanctions against the country.

Gantz and Ashkenazi both know what the late head of the Mossad, Meir Dagan, used to frequently say: that Iran is a mosaic of ethnic groups (including Arabs, Kurds, Baluchis and Azeris) who are not pleased with the regime and have formed underground groups. According to foreign reports, some of these groups are gaining assistance from the CIA and the Mossad

It’s possible that a combination of the comments by the two Israeli ministers along with Dagan’s view might provide an explanation as to what is currently happening in Iran. Israel is doing absolutely everything it can to prevent Iran from moving ahead with its nuclear program, while Iran is prone to accidents and is exposed to terrorist attacks.

Whether or not Israel is responsible for these events, the fact the Iranians are accusing Israel only enhances the prestige of Israeli intelligence, while simultaneously damaging Iran’s own morale and its self-image. The major question is, if Iran retaliates, whom would it retaliate against, and how? A cyberattack on Israeli installations, as occurred earlier this year, is just one option

WHY WE WROTE THIS
The reasons for suicide are complicated, but something is driving an increase in the number of Iranians who take their own lives. Many see rising despair as an indictment of the political establishment

By Scott Peterson – 8th July, 2020

First the wounded veteran, then the unpaid security guard, then the hungry child.

The powerful images of hopelessness came one after another, creating mounting waves of shock for Iranians who may have thought themselves inured to tales of desperation, destitution, and political angst.

Yet decades after Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution seized power in the name of “social justice” for the poor and “oppressed,” and amid deepening economic collapse, Iran is battling a surge of suicides seen as a barometer of the ever-widening gap between the political leadership and society.

Accelerating a long-term trend, attempted suicides have leaped 23% in the past three months, marked by “chain suicides” and “more horrifying methods [carried out] before the public eye,” wrote sociologist Mohammad Reza Mahboubfar in the conservative Jahan-e Sanat newspaper.

Authorities say official statistics are only the “tip of the iceberg.” But calls to action have been galvanized by recent cases that appear designed to send dramatic messages of the need to ease despair.

Within days last month, for example, three very public suicides gripped Iran, with graphic images going viral on social media as they added to the most recent annual toll of more than 5,000 Iranians taking their own lives.

In a dispute over a small loan, Jahangir Azadi, a wounded veteran of the 1980s Iran-Iraq War – an almost sacred category of citizens in the Islamic Republic – set himself alight in front of the offices of the Foundation of Martyrs and Veterans Affairs in western Iran.

Days later, following late salary payments, Omran Roshani-Moghaddam, a security guard for an oil company, hung himself from crossbeams attached to a large metal tank in an oil field.

“I have nothing left to feed my family with, I have no bread to take home,” he had told his boss, according to co-workers in southwest Iran. The scene infuriated Iranians on social media for its stark contrast of utter poverty, explicitly juxtaposed against Iran’s immense oil wealth.

And days after that, 11-year-old Armin Moradi was buried after deliberately overdosing on drugs, pushed to the edge by “poverty, destitution, and disillusionment,” according to the Imam Ali Society of Students Against Poverty. In his home food was “basically non-existent,” with no trace of “dishes or spoons.”

“Message of revenge”
Those cases proved unsettling even for Iranians used to bad news, who have been buffeted by years of homegrown economic misrule, exacerbated by ever-more-staggering U.S. sanctions and now the disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Since late 2017, waves of angry protests against low and unpaid wages, soaring prices, and corruption have become a feature of Iranian life. So have the lethal crackdowns that have left hundreds dead.

“Hopelessness is the driving force behind almost all the attempted suicides I have been dealing with,” says a social worker in western Iran who asked not to be identified.

“The important point here is that the new cases are mostly meant to send a message of revenge against someone or something,” says the social worker, who has been trained in a government program to help others cope with suicidal thoughts.

“In the [veteran’s] self-immolation, the guy probably thought, ‘Well, by doing this I am ending my life, but at least I can send a bigger message to the whole country,’” he says. “The new suicides are becoming stronger symbols. They are not simply personal files. They represent macroscopic situations of desperation, which are increasingly crippling certain sections of the society.

“It is becoming an epidemic because those who follow suit feel like, ‘Yes, we can send the same message. … At least we do something this way,’” adds the social worker. It’s about “causing some sense of guilt in a beloved person, a parent, a boss, but more importantly – and on a larger scale – the authorities in the ruling system.”

Iranian officials appear to be getting that message, up to a point.

Prevention plan
The National Suicide Prevention Plan was announced in December by Ahmad Hajebi, a Ministry of Health director, who said it would expand research programs and reduce access to means of suicide. In February he told journalists, “We need to control the rising trend.”

Police announced last month that glass barriers would be installed on many platforms in Tehran’s sprawling subway system, to prevent people from throwing themselves in front of trains.

Already a suicide hotline – which officials credit with averting 8,500 deaths in 2017 alone – is in service. Police and other Iranian first responders also field teams trained to stop suicides, and large government charities conduct workshops on counseling tactics and suicide prevention.

But officials recorded 5,143 suicide deaths in the Iranian year that ended in March, an 8% increase over the previous year. The “growth rate over the past decade raises serious alarm” and requires action “with urgency and immediacy,” Masoud Ghadi-Pasha, a deputy director at the Legal Medicine Organization, said in late June.

In his report at that time, Mr. Mahboubfar, the sociologist, warned that “chain suicides” are a “wide-reaching tremor” that can quickly lead to “unrest more widespread than what we witnessed in recent years.”

That sentiment has echoed widely, especially amid a high-profile anti-corruption campaign that underscores for many how the Islamic Republic has strayed from its early days, when Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini declared: “Only those who have tasted poverty, deprivation, and oppression will stay with us to the end.”

The surge of poor people killing themselves over relatively small amounts of money comes “when there is talk of fraud cases in which we can’t even count the digits,” tweeted pro-reform journalist Ehsan Soltani. “Let’s keep these days in our minds, days when the call of the destitute fell on deaf ears [of leaders].”

Eroded safety nets
That growing inequality has been especially felt by veterans, who occupy an elevated status in Iran but have seen their state-supported safety nets erode for years. Last summer and fall, in four separate incidents, three veterans and the son of a war “martyr” from the shrine city of Qom burned themselves to death.

The national narrative portrays them “not just veterans of a war, but actual defenders of the revolution. So when they open up their mouths and start critiquing in the ways they do, it can be pretty damning,” says Narges Bajoghli, an Iran expert at the School for Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University in Washington who notes that concerns about rising veteran suicides date back a decade or more.

“Part of it is that they don’t have the ability anymore to provide for their families,” a fact that has “created more and more anxiety and desperation,” says Ms. Bajoghli, author of “Iran Re-Framed: Anxieties of Power in the Islamic Republic.”

The result, she says, especially for disabled veterans, is there’s no choice but “to go out into the street and start begging – and that’s just not acceptable to them as a possibility, because of their role [as] defenders of the revolution.”

To Abbas Abdi, who was among the students who took American diplomats hostage in 1979, but later became a pollster and regime critic who spent time in prison, the suicides magnify a broader failure.

“There is no proper understanding of the dangerous potential as local officials are more concerned about … fallout than tracing the roots of what led to those tragedies,” Mr. Abdi wrote in the reformist Etemad newspaper in mid-June.

He notes the irony of war veterans and “destitute laborers” committing suicide – despite a revolution carried out in the “name of the oppressed” – “at a time when others in the top echelons are abusing power and receiving whopping bribes. … How could such a system claim lawfulness?”

That assessment is no surprise to one professional journalist in Tehran, who has recorded the deleterious impact of rising prices, and now the pandemic, on Iran’s social fabric.

“If you see a janbaz [“self-sacrificer” veteran] set himself on fire; if you see a worker hang himself in an oil and gas zone; it is a symbol of poverty and misery alongside wealth – a wealth that people believe is not spent on [them] and is sent to countries like Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine,” says the journalist.

“People are not happy in Iran. They have no hope for the future,” he says. “I think this number of suicides is a message to [Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali] Khamenei, the message that says, ‘We want to have a normal life and no more.’”

The journalist recalls a conversation in a shared taxi last week, when the driver asked a young woman how she was doing.

“We are all dead,” the 21-year-old replied. “No job, no money, no fun, and no hope, so this is not life.”

Ariel Cohen – Sep 19, 2019

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called violent attacks on Saudi oil infrastructure in Abqaiq and Khurais “an act of war,” as evidence suggests that Iran is the culprit. This marks the most dangerous escalation between the U.S. and Iran since the seizure of the American embassy in Tehran. However, this confrontation has major implications for the growing U.S. – China strategic rivalry.

Amidst historic U.S. – Iran tensions, Beijing is doubling-down on its strategic partnership with Tehran, ignoring U.S. efforts to isolate the Islamic Republic from global markets. Following an August visit by Iran Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif to Beijing, the two countries agreed to update a 25-year program signed in 2016, to include an unprecedented $400 billion of investment in the Iranian economy – sanctions be damned.

The capital injection, which would focus on Iran’s oil and gas sector, would also be distributed across the country’s transportation and manufacturing infrastructure. In return, Chinese firms will maintain the right of the first refusal to participate in any and all petrochemical projects in Iran, including the provision of technology, systems, process ingredients and personnel required to complete such projects. According to an exclusive interview with Petroleum Economist, a senior source in Iran’s petrochemical sector had this to say about the new agreement:

The central pillar of the new deal is that China will invest $280 billion developing Iran’s oil, gas and petrochemicals sectors… there will be another $120 billion investment in upgrading Iran’s transport and manufacturing infrastructure, which again can be front-loaded into the first five-year period and added to in each subsequent period should both parties agree.

This comes at a time when Washington is exerting its so-called ‘maximum pressure’ strategy against Iran, which aims to change its international behavior by bringing oil exports down to zero.

The Trump policy is a 180 degree U-turn form the sanctions relief granted by the previous administration’s Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). The Obama brainchild intended to temporarily freeze the Iranian nuclear program, but ignored its regional power projection and growing missile arsenal. Under the agreement, Iran’s economy rebounded by over 12% compared to when sanctions were in full force. However, Iran continued to build intermediate and short-range ballistic and cruise missiles and drones, and fund proxies from Lebanon and Syria, to Iraq, to Yemen.

The Trump Administration’s sanctions, however, have cut Iran’s economic growth down to a meager 3.7%. The country’s oil output – the lifeblood of the economy — dropped from almost 4 million barrels per day (mbd) in 2018 to barely above 2.5 mbd in March of this year, and the exports declined to a trickle.

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Nowhere To Run But East

Given Iran’s precarious geopolitical and geo-economic position, it has little choice but to forge a closer relationship with China, despite the country’s reputation as a predatory lender. Russia, too, is a major Iranian partner, weapons and nuclear, rocket, and military technology supplier.

Like the other Eurasian economies involved in China’s massive Belt and Road initiative (BRI), mostly imported Chinese labor will be utilized to build factories, designed and managed by large Chinese manufacturers, with identical specifications to those in China. According to the Middle East Monitor, the agreement also confers “the right to delay the payment of these prices for two years in the Chinese national currency (Yuan).”

This presents an extremely favorable situation for the Chinese, as Beijing earns yuan from its projects across Africa and Central Asia – and therefore does not need to make oil trades in USD, diminishing the bite of sanctions. In return, Tehran gains an additional ally on the UN Security Council, and an economic lifeline with a secure oil and petrochemicals market. The deal facilitates Iran’s quest to become a regional and nuclear-armed hegemon, potentially threatening Europe and the U.S.

Debt-Diplomacy and The Changing World Oil Market

At a time when many nations are becoming more wary of Chinese investment – including companies across Europe, Greenland, and the Central Asian Republics – Iran is further embracing China and less savory actors like Russia, and Turkey.

Overall, this may not prove a financially sound endeavor by Beijing, as Chinese companies will come under U.S. sanctions – but it may end up as a shrewd geostrategic play by both parties. Profitability certainly hasn’t been China’s main motivation in many previous investment schemes, nor is it Iran’s. This case is no different. It is a geopolitical anti-American axis. China’s game here is clear: first, increase tensions between the U.S. and Iran by weakening the impact of American sanctions and increase their soft power leverage in the energy-dense Middle East. Then integrate Iran into the Belt-and-Road initiative and into the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, of which Tehran is an observer member.

Beijing’s gambit to cozy up with a terrorism-sponsoring state, however, may backfire. Iranian aggression is likely to end up in Tehran’s defeat. Regardless of how Saudi Arabia and the United States decide to proceed with retaliation for the Abqaiq-Khurais attacks, China may soon have a severe case of buyer’s remorse.

By Simon Watkins – Jul 06, 2020

Last August, Iran’s Foreign Minister, Mohammad Zarif, paid a visit to his China counterpart, Wang Li, to present a roadmap on a comprehensive 25-year China-Iran strategic partnership that built upon a previous agreement signed in 2016. Many of the key specifics of the updated agreement were not released to the public at the time but were uncovered by OilPrice.com at the time. Last week, at a meeting in Gilan province, former Iran President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad alluded to some of the secret parts of this deal in public for the first time, stating that: “It is not valid to enter into a secret agreement with foreign parties without considering the will of the Iranian nation and against the interests of the country and the nation, and the Iranian nation will not recognize it.” According to the same senior sources closely connected to Iran’s Petroleum Ministry who originally outlined the secret element of the 25-year deal, not only is the secret element of that deal going ahead but China has also added in a new military element, with enormous global security implications.

One of the secret elements of the deal signed last year is that China will invest US$280 billion in developing Iran’s oil, gas, and petrochemicals sectors. This amount will be front-loaded into the first five-year period of the new 25-year deal, and the understanding is that further amounts will be available in each subsequent five year period, provided that both parties agree. There will be another US$120 billion of investment, which again can be front-loaded into the first five-year period, for upgrading Iran’s transport and manufacturing infrastructure, and again subject to increase in each subsequent period should both parties agree. In exchange for this, to begin with, Chinese companies will be given the first option to bid on any new – or stalled or uncompleted – oil, gas, and petrochemicals projects in Iran. China will also be able to buy any and all oil, gas, and petchems products at a minimum guaranteed discount of 12 per cent to the six-month rolling mean average price of comparable benchmark products, plus another 6 to 8 per cent of that metric for risk-adjusted compensation. Additionally, China will be granted the right to delay payment for up to two years and, significantly, it will be able to pay in soft currencies that it has accrued from doing business in Africa and the Former Soviet Union states. “Given the exchange rates involved in converting these soft currencies into hard currencies that Iran can obtain from its friendly Western banks, China is looking at another 8 to 12 per cent discount, which means a total discount of around 32 per cent for China on all oil gas, and petchems purchases,” one of the Iran sources underlined.

Another key part of the secret element to the 25-year deal is that China will be integrally involved in the build-out of Iran’s core infrastructure, which will be in absolute alignment with China’s key geopolitical multi-generational project, ‘One Belt, One Road’ (OBOR). To begin with, China intends to utilise the currently cheap labour available in Iran to build factories that will be financed, designed, and overseen by big Chinese manufacturing companies with identical specifications and operations to those in China. The final manufactured products will then be able to access Western markets through new transport links, also planned, financed, and managed by China.

In this vein, around the same time as the draft new 25-year deal was presented last year by Iran’s Vice President, Eshaq Jahangiri (and senior figures from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and intelligence agencies) to Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, Jahangiri announced that Iran had signed a contract with China to implement a project to electrify the main 900 kilometre railway connecting Tehran to the north-eastern city of Mashhad. Jahangiri added that there are also plans to establish a Tehran-Qom-Isfahan high-speed train line and to extend this upgraded network up to the north-west through Tabriz. Tabriz, home to a number of key sites relating to oil, gas, and petrochemicals, and the starting point for the Tabriz-Ankara gas pipeline, will be a pivot point of the 2,300 kilometre New Silk Road that links Urumqi (the capital of China’s western Xinjiang Province) to Tehran, and connecting Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan along the way, and then via Turkey into Europe.

Now, though, another element that will change the entire balance of geopolitical power in the Middle East has been added to the deal. “Last week, the Supreme Leader [Ali Khamenei] agreed to the extension of the existing deal to include new military elements that were proposed by the same senior figures in the IRGC [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps] and the intelligence services that proposed the original deal, and this will involve complete aerial and naval military co-operation between Iran and China, with Russia also taking a key role,” one of the Iran sources told OilPrice.com last week. “There is a meeting scheduled in the second week of August between the same Iranian group, and their Chinese and Russian counterparts, that will agree the remaining details but, provided that goes as planned, then as of 9 November, Sino-Russian bombers, fighters, and transport planes will have unrestricted access to Iranian air bases,” he said.

“This process will begin with purpose-built dual-use facilities next to the existing airports at Hamedan, Bandar Abbas, Chabhar, and Abadan,” he said. OilPrice.com understands from the Iranian sources that the bombers to be deployed will be China-modified versions of the long-range Russian Tupolev Tu-22M3s, with a manufacturing specification range of 6,800 kilometres (2,410 km with a typical weapons load), and the fighters will be the all-weather supersonic medium-range fighter bomber/strike Sukhoi Su-34, plus the newer single-seat stealth attack Sukhoi-57. It is apposite to note that in August 2016, Russia used the Hamedan airbase to launch attacks on targets in Syria using both Tupolev-22M3 long-range bombers and Sukhoi-34 strike fighters. At the same time, Chinese and Russian military vessels will be able to use newly-created dual-use facilities at Iran’s key ports at Chabahar, Bandar-e-Bushehr, and Bandar Abbas, constructed by Chinese companies.

These deployments will be accompanied by the roll-out of Chinese and Russian electronic warfare (EW) capabilities, according to the Iran sources. This would encompass each of the three key EW areas – electronic support (including early warning of enemy weapons use) plus electronic attack (including jamming systems) plus electronic protection (including of enemy jamming). Based originally around neutralising NATO’s C4ISR (Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance) systems, part of the new roll-out of software and hardware from China and Russia in Iran, according to the Iran sources, would be the Russian S-400 anti-missile air defence system: “To counter U.S. and/or Israeli attacks.” The Krasukha-2 and -4 systems are also likely to feature in the overall EW architecture, as they proved their effectiveness in Syria in countering the radars of attack, reconnaissance and unmanned aircraft. The Krasukha-2 can jam Airborne Warning And Control Systems (AWACS) at up to 250 km, and other airborne radars such as guided missiles, whilst the Krasukha-4 is a multi-functional jamming system that not only counters AWACS but also ground-based radars, with both being highly mobile.

It is again apposite to note here that an entire EW company (encompassing the three core elements of EW) can consist of as little as 100 men and, according to the Iran sources, part of the new military co-operation includes an exchange of personnel between Iran and China and Russia, with up to 110 senior Iranian IRGC men going for training every year in Beijing and Moscow and 110 Chinese and Russians going to Tehran for their training. It is also apposite to note that Iran’s EW system can easily be tied in to Russia’s Southern Joint Strategic Command 19th EW Brigade (Rassvet) near Rostov-on-Don, which links into the corollary Chinese systems. “One of the Russian air jamming systems is going to be based in Chabahar and will capable of completely disabling the UAE’s and Saudi Arabia’s air defences, to the extent that they would only have around two minutes of warning for a missile or drone attack from Iran,” one of the Iran sources told OilPrice.com last week.

An indication of what Iran hopes to receive in return its co-operation with China, and Russia, came last week when Zhang Jun, China’s permanent United Nations (U.N.) representative, in a statement to the Security Council, told the U.S.: “To stop its illegal unilateral sanctions on Iran… The root cause of the current crisis is the U.S.’s withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal in May 2018 and the re-imposition of unilateral sanctions against Iran.” He also opposed the U.S.’s push for the extension of the U.N. arms embargo on Iran, which expires in October. “This has again undermined the joint efforts to preserve the JCPOA [Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action],” Zhang said, and added: “The [JCPOA] agreement was endorsed by the U.N. Security Council [UNSC] and is legally binding.”

He concluded: “We urge the U.S. to stop its illegal unilateral sanctions and long-arm jurisdiction, and return to the right track of observing the JCPOA and Resolution 2231 [of the UNSC].” Securing China’s support was a key reason for the original secret part of the deal agreed last year, along with that of Russia, as the two countries have two-fifths of the total Permanent Member votes on the UNSC, with the others being the U.S., the U.K., and France. Aside from this support and the US$400 billion+ of investments pledged by China, the other reason that Iran has agreed to such Chinese (and Russian) influence in its country going forward is that China has guaranteed that it will continue to take all of the oil, gas, and petchems that Iran requires.

‘According to S. Sakac and many orientalists and archaeologists the word ‘Croat’ is derived from the name of an Iranian or Persian tribe known as the Harahvati.

Today the Croats call themselves “Hrvati” in their own language. The word “Harahvati” appears in Iranian inscriptions from the time of Darius the Great (521-485 B.C.). That monarch divided his empire into twenty-odd satrapies or provinces. One of these was called “Harauutis”. During the administration of Xerxes this name changed to “Haravatis.” Still another variation, “Harouvatis”, appears on a map of lands subject to the Achaemenid kings of old Iran. This province occupied the district of Helm and the surrounding area in the vicinity of Kandahar in modern Afghanistan. The name “Harahvati” appears in Darius’ “List of Peoples”, and the Greek commentators of the Alexandrian epoch referred to them also.

In the Persian Annals

Carvings in the Persian royal palaces excavated at Persepolis show the Harahvatis leading camels and bearing gifts to offer to the King of Kings. For a long time, however, the etymological connection between “Hrvati” (Croats) and “Haralivati” or “Haravati” was over looked because the Greeks and Macedonians, after Alexander the Great’s conquest of the Persian empire in 333 B.C., changed the name of the province of Harahvati to the Greek form, Arachosia. Thus for more than two thousand years the original appellation was forgotten.

In Croatian literature and folklore

There are old Croatian customs and national poems that have been cited as evidencing lingering traces of the fire and sun worship of the Iranians. Fire, the essence of human origin, the sun, and the great boiling cauldron around which the warriors spring in the age old kolo or circle dance, all these are ingredients in the national lore of the Croatian nation. The Croat vilas or fairy witches resemble the peris of Iranian mythology.

Then there is the legendary Sviato zov, the personification of strength, a being almost too huge for the earth to bear. He is strongly reminiscent of the “elephant-bodied” Rustum of Persian legend. Of course there is nothing especially unique in resemblances of this nature appearing in the folklore of apparently unrelated peoples. Perhaps even more suggestive of a possible Asiatic origin is the distinction between Croatian horse harness and that of the western peoples. Also the fire-producing apparatus used by the Croats throughout the ages, the whips and staffs carried by the herdsmen, and the embroidery of the caps and shawls sometimes worn by the Croat women \definitely shows an Asiatic inspiration in the opinion of many art critics and experts. Obviously, however, the Croats could have copied Avar or Magyar modes in these connections. Partisans of the Iranic theory of Croatian origins nonetheless are able to cite additional indications of similarity between these two geographically separated groups.

Commercial Organization

The Croatian historian, Luka Jelic, has identified certain elements in the old commercial organization of Dalmatia as being of indubitable Persian origin. Jelic believes also that it was the Alans who contributed the Iranian touch that such art authorities as Professor J. Strzygowski have noted in early Croat artistic forms. Strzygowski has called attention to the striking similarity that exists between Persian architecture and ornamentation of the Sassanid period (225 A.D.-641 A.D.) and the earliest known work of the Croats in these fields of expression.

Zoroastrian and Iranian Religious Elements

Ivo Pilar and Joseph Peisker both have argued that the Croats brought with them to Dalmatia elements of the Zoroastrian religion of Iran, or of even older Iranic faiths. On the other hand a number of amateur historians, such as Archbishop Bohusz-Szestrencewicz in the last century, considered that a great many ancient peoples origin ally had the same language and religion as those of the Medes and the Persians.

The emphasis placed by the Slavs upon farming activities he explained in terms of the religious injunctions of Zoroaster to cultivate agriculture. Unquestionably there is a tinge of dualism in the old Slavic religion and it is not impossible that this represents a heritage from Zoroastrian dualism. In early times the Croatian god of light was Vid, while Crnobog, the god of darkness, was represen tative of the principle of evil. The parallel with the Iranian god of light, Ahura-Mazda, the personification of good, and his rival, Ahri man, god of darkness, is striking. That old treatise, L’Abrege des Merveilles relates that some of the Slavs (does this statement refer actually to the Croats particularly?) followed the religion of the Magians (priests of Zoroaster) and adored the sun and fire. It mentions also a nation living between theSlavs and the Franks which worshipped the planets. This nation was very intelligent and skilled in the art of war which it conducted against the Slavs and the “Turks”. The latter reference must be to the Magyars, and it is noteworthy that Hungarian national legends preserve a vague memory of contact with the Alans, and that the linguistic history of the Hungarian nation contains evidence of Alan or other Caucasian influences. When it is recalled that the present day descendants of the Alans in the Caucasus, the Ossets or Osseten, still call themselves Iron(Parthians), the role of the Alans as the transmitters of Iranian influences and traditions of various kinds seems plausible. For instance L’Abrege declares that this “nation living between the Slavs and the Franks” held seven feasts annually to correspond with the number of the planets and that the most splendid celebration was that of the sun. It has to be recollected in this connection that the number seven was of special occult significance in Iranian thinking.

Linguistics and Vocabulary

There are some words in the Croatian language that undoubtedly are of Iranian origin, but the same may be said for most of the Slavic anguages. After all the Iranians were related to all the Indo-Euro ean peoples who spread over western Asia and Europe and it would be remarkable if there were not linguistic similarities to be found here and there. It is peculiar, however, that the title of “ban” was used among no other European people save the Croats. This word is found in the same form and with the same accent in Persian. Further more it possesses the same significance in the two languages, “grand seigneur”, “great lord”, “supreme commander”, “patron”.

At the seventh international congress of Byzantine studies in Brussels in 1948 the Abbé Marin Tadin also called attention to the fact that the Croat word Zupan appears to be of Babylonian origin. It is true that the Serbs among other Slavs use this term also, but they probably picked it up from the Croats originally.

Etymologists believe, too, that the names of some of the Croat nobles in very early times, such as Momir, Vonomir, and Jezdimir are identical with the forms Möes, Vonon, and Jezda, discovered in the annals of the Iranians. Tadin considers that the Croat word “mir” is a derivative of the Iranian “mihr” which relates to Mithra “lord”. If his theory is correct the suffix “mir”, which appears in so many Croat names, signified originally “siegneur” or “lord” instead of the Slavic meaning “peace”. Tadin also holds that the Croat names for the days of the week and the months of the year convey their exact meaning only in terms of the Zoroastrian philosophy of ancient Iran. It is certainly true that the names of some of the earliest known Croat chiefs, such as Varda and Pervaviega, are typically Iranian, and that the name of one of the seven or eight original great Croat tribes, Jamomet, also appears to be of Iranian origin. Even in the Carpathian area today there are names that seem to be derived from old Persian and it is more than likely that the Croats on their march southwards left splinter groups behind them who applied these Iranian names to the districts in which they lived.

Symbolic Colors of Cardinal Directions

There is another piquant circumstance that needs to be mentioned. When the Croats settled on the Adriatic those who lived north of the Cetina river were known as White Croats, while those dwelling between the Neretva and Lake Skutari in Albania were called Red Croats. It was the Iranian custom to designate cardinal points by colors. White stood for the west, and of course the Croats north of the Cetina were the westernmost of all the Croats. Red to the Iranians meant south or southern. The use of colors to indicate directions is not found among the Slavs save where they may have been influenced by Croat examples.

Similarities of Social Structure

Striking analogies between the social structure and culture of the Croats in early times and those of the ancient Iranians can be cited too. There is no doubt that the Croats differed radically in these respects from the Slavs with whom their name has been associated traditionally. Until well into the medieval era the organization of the Croats was tribal in character, and the denomination of social units and the functioning of these units is remarkably like that of the Iranian tribal organization of the seventh century BCE.

When the Croats arrived in the Adriatic lands they were a society of warrior and shepherd families. They were cattle herders rather than agriculturists, unlike the Slavs. Basically they were warriors, although there unquestionably were Slavic agriculturist elements subject to them. The social formation was that of the tribe having as its basic subdivision the large communal family or bratsvo. This family group had as its center the kuca or dom. From the latter stems the term domena, which is similar to the Persian demana meaning house. Specialists in the social history of Iran seven centuries before Christ know that the center of the Iranian family group at this epoch was the demana. Absolute master of this demana was the dengpaitis. In like manner there reigned over the Croatian domena in early times the gospodar or domacin. Perhaps this word can best be translated in general terms as “head”. While the authority of the Croat domacin was by no means so extensive as that of the dengpaitis among the early Iranians, the fact remains that right down to Tito’s day the father’s power in Croat peasant families has remained exceptional by western standards.

The prince’s household in seventh century Iran was organized on the same model as that of the ordinary family group. This princely household was known as the vis. Its master was the visopaitis. The Croat social organization was such that the relationship of the family community to the household of its chief corresponded to that of the Iranian family groups within the vis. Some etymologists think that this word vis is the ancestor of the Croat word yes which used to mean a territory inhabited by several family communities forming a bratsvo or fraternity. A parallel can be drawn, too, between the Croat word, zupa, and the Iranian term, zantav. The latter meant a district ruled by a chief called the zantupaitis whose jurisdiction was most extensive. Some of the Croat Zhupan, or chief of the zupe (plural of zupa), possessed the same competence as the zantupaitis. Among both the Iranians and the Croats a definite clan or tribe had its own zantav or zupa.

Similarities in Lifestyle and material culture

The conclusion cannot be avoided that the early Croat society of warriors and herdsmen bore a much closer resemblance to that of the Iranians, and the Ural-Altaic peoples, whose formation was similar to the one found in Iran, than it did to the Slavic agriculturist groups. In this connection the predominance of horsemen among the early Croats is worth more than passing notice. Constantine Porphyrogenitus himself was impressed by the high ratio of mounted to foot soldiers in the tenth century Croat armies. It is thought by some authorities that the mounted element in the Croat national forces in the time of her national kings represented the descendants of the Iranian ancestors of the Croatians, while the infantry were of Slavic descent. However that may be ancient Croat tombs bear mute witness to the equestrian past of this nation. Besides curved sabers, the sign of nobility, there are found regularly in such tombs many appurtenances of the early Croat cavalrymen who stood behind the Croat chiefs. Carvings of mounted warriors and of horses are seen more frequently on these early sepulchers than is customary among European peoples. Peculiar, too, is the circumstance that until the middle of the eighteenth century many Croat highlanders continued to live in wooden huts mounted on wheels. This mobile way of life may present another lingering heritage of Iranian nomadic culture. So may the dog carvings and dog tombs found scattered among the oldest graveyards. In the Iran of antiquity dog, cat, and horse were all held in high esteem.

How the Iranians got to Croatia

Rather than to continue to cite linguistic evidence and analogies in ways of life it appears advisable to try to determine how the Iranians, if they were ancestors of the Croats, got to Europe. Professor Sakac supposes that they emigrated from Iran to the Caucasus.

Professor Francis Dvornik holds that it is more probable that some Harahvatis did not go into Iran with the main body of their nation but remained in the steppe country between the Caspian and Aral Seas. From this vantage point at a somewhat later date they could have moved to wards the Sea of Azov and the Caucasus.

Still another theory to explain the arrival of the Harahvatis in Europe relies upon their presence in force in the Scythian expedition undertaken by Darius the Great in 516 B.C.

This venture was the first historically recorded attack of Asia upon Europe. Darius’ hosts crossed the Bosporus just as they were to do in their invasion of classic Greece later in his reign. They marched north through Thrace to the Danube. En route the natives in their path submitted peacefully to the King of Kings. The army crossed the Danube by a bridge of boats that the Iranian fleet built for it near the modern Rumanian towns of Galatz and Braila. Then it plunged on into the trans-Danubian wilderness. According to the ‘Father of History,’ Herodotus, the expedition followed the Black Sea route to the Don steppes in southern Russia. If Herodotus’ report is correct Darius’ cohorts must have marched north or northwest a cross the Moldavian plain, for he says that the tribes that opposed them beyond the Danube retreated towards the ‘land of the Agathyrs,’ which lay in the Carpathians. The Iranians then crossed the Dniester, Bug, and Dnieper rivers and arrived finally at the Volga.

Old Persian forts are said to have existed for centuries afterwards between the Volga and the Don. But in the steppe land of southern Russia the Persians experienced the same fate that later day invaders of the Muscovite lands were to encounter – they ran short of supplies. Now there began a race back to the Danube as from every where Scythian tribes hurried up to cut off the stragglers. The Persian sick and wounded as well as their transport had to be abandoned. Strong rear guards had to be left behind at river crossings and at other strategic points to cover the retirement of the main body which successfully repassed the Danube.

It is by no means impossible that a Harahvati nucleus was left behind in the wake of the retreat and that it survived and stayed in southern Russia where the Croats later on turned up. Obviously there is not a shred of evidence to support such a fanciful hypothesis. But it seems worthwhile to cite the theory here because it is scarcely less fantastic than the commonly accepted cliche that the Croats, Serbs, and Slovenes were of identical stocks. Indubitably much work remains to be done in comparing and correlating the oldest historical materials with the known movements of peoples from western Asia into southern Russia. Yet the connecting role played by the Alans in the formation of the Croatian nation from various Iranian elements, Goths, Slavs, and Avars, seems almost self-evident.

It should not be forgotten that the Alans were still to be found around Tanisis as late as the fourth century. The Hunnic invasion of 375 A.D. hit them first and all those who were able to outride the Huns joined the Goths, their nearest neighbors. In time, the Alanic nobility acquired the designation ‘White Croats.’

With clever ads and searing social media attacks, the group has drawn notice. But what that means for the election is up in the air.

By Allan Smith – July 6, 2020

Seeking to defend President Donald Trump from questions over whether he actually reads his daily intelligence briefing, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany told reporters last week “the president does read” and “is the most informed person on planet Earth when it comes to the threats we face.”

Within an hour, the Lincoln Project, a super PAC run by a host of so-called never-Trump Republicans, tweeted a six-second edited video of the moment out to its more than 1 million followers in its latest attempt to troll the president.

“This is CNN breaking news,” the video begins, playing a quick cut from the network, followed by McEnany saying, “The president does read.”

The anti-Trump group has become ubiquitous on social media in recent weeks as the president is bogged down by the COVID-19 pandemic and social unrest. Its members include George Conway, husband of top White House official Kellyanne Conway, and prominent Republican operatives like John Weaver, Reed Galen, Steve Schmidt, Rick Wilson and Stuart Stevens, who have worked on the George W. Bush, John McCain, Mitt Romney and John Kasich presidential campaigns.

Founded in December, the group’s stated mission is to “defeat Trump and Trumpism” in 2020.

Weaver said the Lincoln Project seeks to provoke a Trump response with its ads and social media ventures while targeting white voters who may traditionally vote Republican but are uneasy about the president.

He said the group tries “to do it in such a way, as Republicans, that they’re used to seeing when we would go after Democrats with the same type of language and symbolism.”

During the Lincoln Project’s first few months, nothing much took off. But then came the coronavirus outbreak, and the group released a pandemic-themed ad titled “Mourning in America,” playing on President Ronald Reagan’s famous 1984 re-election ad.

“Under the leadership of Donald Trump, our county is weaker and sicker and poorer,” the ad states. “And now, Americans are asking, ‘If we have another four years like this, will there even be an America?'”

The group spent a few thousand dollars to place the ad on Fox News in the Washington, D.C., media market in early May hoping Trump would take the bait.

He did.

In a four-part tweetstorm sent just before 1 a.m. ET on May 5, Trump said the “group of RINO Republicans who failed badly 12 years ago, then again 8 years ago, and then got BADLY beaten by me, a political first timer, 4 years ago” are “doing everything possible to get even for all of their many failures.” “RINO” is shorthand for “Republican in name only.”

The president then called out members of the group individually, adding, “They’re all LOSERS, but Abe Lincoln, Republican, is all smiles!”

It was the never-Trumpers, however, who were all smiles after Trump’s lengthy attack, particularly as fundraising increased. Weaver said that ad alone got more than 30 million views, adding that in June the group had more than 110 million video views on its ads.

“By attacking us, he’s become our biggest financial bundler,” Weaver said. “If we were an administration, we’d probably make him ambassador to Slovenia or something, because he’s raising so much money for us.”

Through the end of March, the group raised had about $2.6 million and spent a little less than $1.4 million. It had spent about $223,000 against Trump as of early May. The number had increased to more than $2 million as of late June.

The group has particularly targeted Washington, D.C., and swing states like Wisconsin, Michigan, North Carolina and Pennsylvania. It has also spent hundreds of thousands against Republican Senate candidates in states like Arizona, Iowa and Montana.

June was its biggest month by far for expenditures in the 2020 cycle, with the group spending more than $1.46 million. Its largest donors through March included he hedge funder Andrew Redleaf, Walton family heir Christy Walton and venture capitalist Ron Conway.

“Trump is his own worst political enemy at times,” Weaver said. “And there’s no doubt that he hasn’t given us rocket fuel by engaging with us. I mean, it’s hard to claim we’re irrelevant if they’re constantly attacking us.”

While the group isn’t one of the better-funded PACs, it has been able to take advantage of the members’ large combined social media followings and prevalence on cable news.

Galen said the Lincoln Project sees itself as “a pirate ship” that, because it isn’t aligned with any party, is able “to be extremely nimble” and is not subject to “a lot of hemming and hawing” over decision-making.

Recent ads mocked Trump for his smaller-than-promised crowd at his rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma; ridiculed him over the latest controversy over Russian bounty intelligence; and lampooned his handling of the coronavirus response.

The group also cut a spot hitting Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale over lavish spending, which included purchasing a Ferrari.

Since Trump put a bull’s-eye on the Lincoln Project, Republicans and GOP-aligned groups have taken aim.

The conservative super PAC Club for Growth Action recently released an ad exclusively on Fox News in Washington, D.C., ripping the Lincoln Project and accusing its members of hating Trump supporters and pocketing contributions.

Trump campaign communications director Tim Murtaugh said in a statement that Trump “has the support of a record number of Republicans and leads a united party.” He continued, “Every shred of evidence proves that Republicans enthusiastically support President Trump, so any efforts by disgruntled former Republicans are doomed to fail.”

Republican strategist Matt Mackowiak, president of the Potomac Strategy Group, called the Lincoln Project a “Democrat-funded group that is doing the bidding of the left by trying to flip the Senate.”

“Their ‘strategy’ of trying to make Trump see their ads is absurd and strategically useless,” he said, adding, “But I’m sure the operatives are getting paid.”

The Trump campaign has called the Lincoln Project a “scam PAC,” accusing members of “lining” their pockets. In response, Lincoln Project spokesman Keith Edwards said, “No one here is buying a Ferrari.”

A recent New York Times/Siena College poll found that Trump enjoys 91 percent approval among Republicans, although his numbers are slipping with some key voting groups as former Vice President Joe Biden opens up a lead nationally.

Democrats have welcomed the group’s efforts, although whether it would have influence on a potential Biden administration is an open question.

Rebecca Katz, a progressive strategist, said the Lincoln Project was “not really my cup of tea, but to the extent that they can focus on Trump voters and let the Biden campaign focus on motivating the Democratic voters who stayed home in 2016, then I’m all for it.”

Jesse Ferguson, a top staffer on Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign, said the Lincoln Project is “telling a powerful story about the soul of this nation — not about a political party, but about the character of the country versus the character of Trump.”

“Defeating Palpatine even required getting Darth Vader to switch sides,” he said, referring to the “Star Wars” franchise.

Lincoln Project members say they don’t feel as if their mission will wrap should Biden pull off a November victory.

“From the moment that we launched back in mid-December, we said that job one is to defeat Donald Trump,” Galen said.

“But from our position,” he continued, “the job is not done until Joe Biden takes the oath of office on January 20th. And even after Joe Biden is elected and sworn in, there’s a whole bunch of Trumpism left in the system.”

Satellite photographs show the explosion happened at a missile production facility. Iran said the episode was a gas explosion at a different military base.

By David E. Sanger, Ronen Bergman and Farnaz Fassihi – 29 June 2020

When a major explosion lit the skies on the edge of Tehran last week, the Iranian government was quick to dismiss the episode as a gas explosion at the Parchin military base, which was once the focus of international nuclear inspectors.

It turned out that was false: Satellite photographs show the explosion happened at a missile production facility not far from Parchin, a base laced with underground tunnels and long suspected to be a major site for Iran’s growing arsenal.

But beyond Tehran’s effort at misdirection — commercial satellite photographs showed the telltale burn marks of the explosion and the location — it is unclear whether the cause was an accident, sabotage or something else.

American and Israeli intelligence officials insist they had nothing to do with it.

But in Iran, where curating conspiracy theories is a national pastime, the sight of a huge explosion in eastern Tehran quickly merged on social media with news of a power outage in Shiraz, nearly 600 miles to the south. Shiraz also has major military facilities, and the explosion and the outage happened within the same hour on Friday.

There is no evidence the incidents were related.

Nuclear inspectors visited the Parchin military facility five years ago after years of standoffs with the Iranian authorities. Renovations at the facility had been so extensive that it led to suspicions that the government might have been trying to hide past work on nuclear detonation technologies.

After the episode last week, Iranian news organizations were shown a small hole in an otherwise intact gas tank, which seemed an improbable explanation for an explosion so large that pictures of the flames, taken miles from the site, showed up on Twitter.

By the end of the weekend, overhead commercial photographs showed a scorched hillside at the Khojir missile production complex in eastern Tehran, where both liquid and solid propellants are made for Iran’s missile fleets.

“It seems likely that some sort of gas or liquid storage tank blew up,” said Fabian Hinz, an expert on Iran’s military at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in Monterey, Calif. “Probably industrial gas that’s needed for missile production,” he said, but it was unclear from the photos. The main buildings at the missile production center appeared undamaged.

Iran’s missile program has long been a target of Israeli intelligence agencies. A large explosion in 2011, which killed a key architect of Iran’s missile program, is widely viewed as an act of sabotage.

But this explosion may have been different. Two Israeli intelligence services that operate outside Israel’s borders, the Mossad and the Israel Defense Forces intelligence unit, said they were investigating the episode and had not yet reached a final conclusion on whether it was an accident or sabotage. But several officials insisted that Israel was not involved.

American officials also said they doubted it was a sabotage operation. Usually, Israel and the United States act in coordination in such covert missions, as they did with the cyberattack on Iran’s nuclear centrifuge facility at Natanz a decade ago.

A spokeswoman for the Israeli prime minister’s office declined to comment on whether Israel was involved in the explosion, a standard response to such questions. A spokesperson for the I.D.F. also declined to comment.

Ronen Solomon of IntelliTimes, an intelligence blog, who was among the first to identify the Khojir missile facility as the site of the explosion, noted that it did “little damage.” But he noted it was “a vast facility,” and as part of the Shahid Hemmat Industrial Group, it has been the target of American economic sanctions.

If the explosion was an act of sabotage, some analysts noted, it was carefully designed to not invite retaliation because damage was so minimal. But in the past, there have been small attacks designed to create fear among Iranians that foreign powers had insiders in the country’s sensitive military programs.

Iran’s news media tried to counter reports about the missile site, saying those were generated by “enemy media” eager to portray Iran’s missile bases as vulnerable to attack.

Trump’s so-called maximum pressure campaign has empowered hard-line figures in Tehran, marginalizing those eager to take the diplomatic route.

BY SINA TOOSSI | JULY 2, 2020

US President Donald Trump said on June 5 that Iran should not wait until after the presidential election “to make the Big deal,” but can get a “better deal” with him now. Trump’s remarks came after a recent prisoner swap, which saw detained U.S. Navy veteran Michael White released from Iran in exchange for Iranian American doctor Majid Taheri. However, while Trump may want to negotiate with Iran and reinforce his self-avowed reputation as a deal-maker before the U.S. election, his “maximum pressure” policy has all but eliminated the chance for U.S.-Iranian diplomacy in the months to come.

Iran has proven resilient in the face of U.S. pressure. While many ordinary Iranians are suffering, the economy is not in total free fall, as many in Washington hoped for. Instead, the country has shown signs of economic recovery, with domestic production and employment increasing. According to Iran’s Central Bank chief Abdolnaser Hemmati, Iran’s nonoil gross domestic product grew by 1.1 percent last year. Prominent Iranian economist Saeed Laylaz also contends that Iran’s economy can weather the coronavirus pandemic and may experience growth this year despite the virus.

Trump’s bellicose rhetoric and actions have not made Iran more inclined to do a deal, but they have undermined any Iranian officials who supported negotiations with the United States. Whether wittingly or not, Trump’s policy decisions have closed the potential for diplomacy. The political cost one faces in Tehran for arguing in favor of negotiations is now simply too high. This is evident in how Iranian officials have reacted to the recent prisoner exchange.

Ali Shamkhani, the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, one of the highest decision-making bodies in Iran, said in response to Trump’s offer for a deal, “The exchange of prisoners is not the result of negotiations & no talks will happen in the future.” Shamkhani’s remarks reflect a consistent line in Tehran: Negotiations with the United States are off the table. Even moderate President Hassan Rouhani’s foreign minister, Javad Zarif, and spokesperson Ali Rabiee now maintain that prisoner swaps can occur without negotiations.

The situation was different just a few months ago. The only other time the United States and Iran exchanged prisoners under the Trump administration was in December 2019, when Iran released Princeton doctorate student Xiyue Wang for Iranian scientist Masoud Soleimani. Unlike the recent White-Taheri exchange, the December swap also saw high-level meetings between U.S. and Iranian officials, a rare instance of bilateral U.S.-Iranian talks under the Trump administration. The United States has called for such a meeting again, but Iranian officials now accuse it of sabotaging diplomatic efforts.

Rouhani’s rhetoric around the time of the December swap also suggested he was more open to a new round of negotiations with the United States. Rouhani explicitly declared in the lead-up to the swap that Tehran had not ruled out talks and that negotiations could be “revolutionary.”

Then, in late December, Rouhani traveled to Japan in a trip that Japanese media said was greenlighted by Washington. There was speculation that the trip could have led to a “small deal” between the United States and Iran, with Iranian media reporting that Japan could get a U.S. waiver for importing Iranian oil and release billions of dollars in frozen Iranian oil revenues. Such a deal could have built confidence and met Rouhani’s precondition of sanctions removal for negotiating with Trump.

However, any hope that the positive diplomatic momentum built in late 2019 would lead to diplomatic progress between the United States and Iran was crushed in early January, with the U.S. assassination of Iranian military commander Qassem Suleimani. Many millions thronged Iran’s cities calling for revenge after the killing. Rouhani defiantly exclaimed in February: “They thought that with maximum pressure they can take us to the table of negotiation in a position of weakness … this will never happen.”

The political climate in Iran has since decisively turned hostile to any talk of negotiating with the United States, reestablishing a taboo that existed for years before the nuclear negotiations during the presidency of Barack Obama.

“Negotiations and compromise with America, the focal point of global arrogance, are useless and harmful,” said Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Iran’s new parliamentary speaker, in his first speech to the body, “Our strategy toward the terroristic America is to complete our vengeance for the blood of the martyr Suleimani.”

Ghalibaf, a former commander in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and an old friend of Suleimani, unsuccessfully ran against Rouhani in both Iran’s 2013 and 2017 presidential elections. He assumed his parliamentary post in May, after parliamentary elections in February that swept conservatives to power. Importantly, that conservative victory occurred amid record-low turnout in the election and the widespread disqualification of reformist and moderate candidates by the Guardian Council.

Nevertheless, the total capture of parliament by conservatives cements the marginalization of reformists such as Rouhani and his allies that began after Trump scuttled the 2015 nuclear deal. Rouhani had sunk all his political capital into negotiating the accord and promised it would give the Iranian people major economic dividends.

Ghalibaf has now replaced Rouhani’s ally Ali Larijani as parliamentary speaker. Meanwhile, the judiciary, considered one of the three branches of government in Iran alongside the presidency and legislature, is being run by Rouhani’s other former 2017 rival, conservative cleric Ebrahim Raisi.

The changing political winds are significant for the future of Iranian foreign policy. Within the byzantine Islamic Republic system, Rouhani managed to forge necessary consensus on negotiations with the United States during the Obama administration, which included nods of approval from both the Supreme National Security Council and the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Unlike his hard-line predecessor, the boisterous and belligerent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Rouhani formed a cabinet of many U.S.-educated technocrats and his ambitions laid squarely on securing Iran’s economic integration to the world. For a time, Rouhani was riding high in public opinion polls, but that has dramatically reversed.

Ghalibaf, while not as aggressively ideological as Ahmadinejad, has made it clear that he will do everything in his power to ensure Rouhani remains a lame duck for the rest of his presidency. In his first address as parliamentary speaker, he lambasted Rouhani’s administration for its “focus on the outside [world]” and not believing in “the principles of jihadi management.”

Ironically, Ghalibaf himself has been described as a technocrat, drawing from his 12-year run as mayor of Tehran. During his tenure, he oversaw the construction of major infrastructure projects, voiced support for the nuclear deal, and participated in international summits such as the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, where in 2008 he called for international investment in Iran.

However, political expediency compels Ghalibaf to oppose Rouhani for the rest of his term, which ends next year. As parliamentary speaker, Ghalibaf presides over disparate conservative factions, ranging from the fundamentalist Front of Islamic Revolution Stability to the free-market-oriented Islamic Coalition Party. Targeting Rouhani and his agenda is an easy and effective way for Ghalibaf to unite conservatives behind him. Above all, the goal will be to obstruct Rouhani’s ability to negotiate with the United States and restore the political fortunes of his camp.

Trump is mistaken if he believes “maximum pressure” is getting him closer to a deal with Iran. The policy is not leading to Iran’s capitulation or collapse, but entrenching U.S.-Iran hostilities and keeping the United States perennially at the cusp of war in the Middle East. Trump, who ran in 2016 on getting the United States out of costly Middle Eastern wars, nearly went to war last June and again in January over his decision to escalate with Iran.

An alternative approach is possible but requires Trump to ditch maximum pressure and rebuild the trust necessary for successful negotiations. International relations and the real estate market are not similar. Bullying and bluster do not win deals; mutual respect and “win-win” compromise do. Trump has styled himself as a deal-maker, but ahead of the November election he has zero foreign-policy victories to his name. If he wants any semblance of a positive foreign-policy legacy, he needs to get off the path to war and on a path to negotiations with Iran.

Wed July 1, 2020

A group of former George W. Bush administration and campaign officials has launched a new super PAC to mobilize disaffected Republican voters for presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden.

The group, launched Wednesday under the name “43 Alumni for Biden,” “seeks to unite and mobilize a community of historically Republican voters who are dismayed and disappointed by the damage done to our nation by Donald Trump’s presidency,” according to a release. The formation of the group is the latest example of efforts being made by anti-Trump Republicans to defeat the President in November.

Karen Kirksey, the director of the committee and who worked on the Bush 2000 election campaign and in the Labor and Agriculture Departments, said the endorsement of Biden is “not necessarily in full support of his political agenda but rather in full agreement with the urgent need to restore the soul of this nation.”

“For four years, we have watched with grave concern as the party we loved has morphed into a cult of personality that little resembles the Party of Lincoln and Reagan,” Kirksey said in a statement.

“Once elected, we look forward to working in a bipartisan way through civil, spirited debate on the many important issues facing Americans today and for decades to come,” she continued later.

Reuters was first to report on the details of the group.

Kristopher Purcell, who worked in the Office of Communications in the White House and in the State Department during the Bush administration, told CNN that about 200 former officials and those who were part of the Bush campaigns have joined the group.

“A lot of us who worked in government, who have held positions of public integrity, we know what normal is,” he told CNN. “We’re seeing now what abnormal is and we’re seeing the damage it can do to the country. We’re seeing the way it can divide the country.”

“The reason we’re supporting former Vice President Biden,” he continued, “is we believe he can bring stability to the country and honor and integrity back to the White House. The leadership and moral authority of the United States has been incredibly damaged.”

Many Bush alums have been frustrated with Trump’s presidency, said John Farner, a member of the group’s committee who also worked on the Bush 2000 campaign.

“We’re made up of Republicans, Democrats, and independents. We’re a pretty diverse group that worked for the Bush administration during his eight years in office and a lot of us who have been involved in the Republican Party in the past were just looking for ways to get involved, to support Joe Biden for President because we haven’t really campaigned with Democrats in the past,” Farner told CNN. “We’re not part of any other group, so this is a group where we felt comfortable going in and speaking with one voice.”

43 Alumni for Biden is backing the former vice president as Trump’s support slips in the polls.

Last month, a group of Republican operatives launched “Right Side PAC,” that, according the group’s founder Matt Borges, will work to turn “that group of Republicans who feels that Donald Trump is an existential threat to the country and this party.”

A group called Republican Voters Against Trump launched a $10 million ad campaign in May targeting GOP-leaning voters in top swing states to encourage them to support Biden.

And a group of “Never Trump” Republicans formed the Lincoln Project in late 2019 and have run negative ads that have drawn the ire of Trump.