Daily Report for Tuesday, May 10, 2016
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Report for
Tuesday, May 10, 2015
Ordibehesht 21, 1394
Highlights, Page 2 News Briefs, Page 3 Other Stories, Page 4
A grand but faulty vision for water problems, Page 7 US officials circle globe to explain Iran policy, Page 10
Daily Report for Tuesday, May 10, 2016
2 Highlights
A grand vision of eliminating water scarcity looks attractive for tens of millions of people in the desert cities of central Iran worried about drought. Ambitious water transfer projects are being put in place to answer a call from President Hassan Rouhani. (See Page 7)
Obama administration officials are making strenuous efforts to convince foreign banks that they can return to Iran, but are failing to overcome fears of heavy fines and new sanctions. (See Page 10)
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News Briefs
* Vice-President for Science and Technology Sorena Sattari announced that Iran has exported its first nano product to South Korea. He reiterated that the first nano product produced by Iran has been exported to South Korea.
“This move has changed our world ranking in the nano sector from seven to the sixth position,” Sattari said on Monday.
* A total of 103 MPs signed a petition calling for President Hassan Rouhani to set a deadline for ending Iran’s implementation of the nuclear agreement if the U.S. fails to end its
“mischievousness, disloyalty, obstruction, and noncompliance in the lifting of sanctions and creation of a poisoned atmosphere for the agreement’s atmosphere.” The 103
members of the outgoing Parliament constitute over a third of the 290- member Parliament.
* The Statistical Center of Iran has reported that youth unemployment reached 26.1% in the last Iranian year, which ended March 19, 2016. Among young women the rate was 42.8%. The overall unemployment was 11% — 9.3% of men and 19.4% of women.
* Minister of Defense Brigadier General Hossein Dehqan announced that S-300 missile has been handed to Iran’s air defense system. Dehqan made the announcement Tuesday when visiting aerial achievements of Khatam-ol-Anbia Air Defense Base.
Other stories
Iranian casualties in Syria
IRGC 25th Karbala Division has taken heavy casualties south of Aleppo.
Iranian news outlets reported the deaths of over 13 soldiers of the IRGC 25th Karbala Division after opposition groups seized the town of Khan Tuman, located south of Aleppo.
‘An IRGC spokesman’ [no name is mentioned] confirmed that 21 other soldiers from this division were also wounded in the fight. Pro-regime
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forces supplemented by IRGC troops captured the town from opposition groups in December 2015.
An IRGC member from Tehran was also killed in fighting near Khan Tuman.
A “large number” of casualties belonged to the Afghan Shia militia Fatimiyoun Brigade, according to Iranian news outlets. Exact numbers, however, have not yet been released.
MP Mohammad Esmail Kowsari told reporters that “based on the latest numbers...five or six Iranians were also captured” during fighting with opposition forces in Khan Tuman.
IRGC Quds Force commander has also been killed. Shafi Shafiee was an IRGC Quds Force commander from Gilan province who was reportedly killed during the opposition offensive on Khan Tuman.
Retired IRGC general killed in Khan Tuman. IRGC Brig. Gen. 2C Javad Durbin was from Gilan province and retired from the IRGC in 2011. He reportedly traveled to Syria in April 2016 to serve as an “advisor.”
Four Fatimiyoun fighters buried in Mashhad. Iranian news outlets reported that four members of the Afghan Shia militia Fatimiyoun Brigade were buried in Mashhad on May 9.
Shamkhani: Russia, Syria, and Hezbollah will not leave the attack in Khan Tuman unanswered
Supreme National Security Council Secretary Ali Shamkhani vowed retaliation for the attack in Khan Tuman [Syria] and claimed that the opposition forces were “abusing the goodwill of Iran in the ceasefire.”
He added: “The Islamic Republic was not opposed to the principles of the ceasefire plan when it was proposed, but believed that it had structural deficiencies. The Khan Tuman incident shows that the concerns raised by Iran were completely correct and based on the realities of the battlefield.
[We considered] that the ceasefire would only be an opportunity for the
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government supporters of the terrorist groups [in Syria] to rebuild these groups.”
Ayatollah Khamenei orders police to enforce morality
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei implicitly addressed the controversy over a new 7,000-member police unit assembled in part to report moral transgressions, including improper veiling, during a speech on May 8.
He stated that police should “ignore the opposition of certain people” who object to police involvement in matters of morality.
President Hassan Rouhani is among those who have criticized the police unit.
Tehran, Madrid plan to launch direct flight
Deputy Foreign Minister Hassan Qashqavi said Iran and Spain agreed to pave the w
Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister for Consular, Parliamentary and Expatriates Affairs Hassan Ghashghavi held talks with his Spanish counterpart Cristóbal González-Aller in Madrid on Monday on bilateral consular ties.
The two sides discussed facilitating visa issuance and judicial and police cooperation against terrorism, organized crimes, human smuggling and drugs.
The Islamic Republic of Iran announced its readiness to present the draft of the agreement for transfer of criminals, extradition of criminals and judicial cooperation.
Cristóbal González-Aller, for his part, welcomed Iran’s offers and called for boosting cultural, political and economic cooperation with Iran.
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The two sides also agreed to pave the way for launching Tehran-Madrid direct flight.
Iran refuses reports on missile launch with range announced by media
Iranian Students News Agency (ISNA) reports that Defense Minister Brigadier General Hossein Dehghan said Iran did not have a missile test with the range announced by media.
“We have not had any stop in defense actions, including missile tests. We did not have a missile test with the range announced by media,” he said.
He also continued that Iran’s doctrine is of defense type when it comes to defense issue. “We have never followed aggressive approach and what we do is to improve our country’s defense capability.”
Iranian defense minister further noted that Iran’s measure aim to provide security of the country. “Because Iran’s defense power is cause of regional stability.”
Dehghan further said that regional security and stability are intertwined, and Iran’s defense capacity guarantees the issue.
Daily Report for Tuesday, May 10, 2016
7 A grand but faulty vision for water problems
The Guardian newspaper: A grand vision of eliminating water scarcity looks attractive for tens of millions of people in the desert cities of central Iran worried about drought. Ambitious water transfer projects are being put in place to answer a call from President Hassan Rouhani.
Two high-profile projects would see desalinised water transferred to the central plateau from the Caspian Sea, and from the Persian Gulf and Sea of Oman.
Mohammadreza Khabbaz, governor of Semnan, a province sandwiched between the lush Caspian Sea coastline and the central salt desert, is a staunch supporter of the Caspian Sea water transfer project as a “permanent” solution.
Last month he said there was “no other option…to meet water demand in, and transfer water to, Iran’s central desert, including Semnan province”.
The Caspian Sea project was initiated in 2012 during the administration of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. It was shelved when Rouhani took office in 2013 due to concerns raised by the department of environment but is now back on the table and at planning stage.
A 460km (285 miles) underground pipeline would be installed, with pump stations to send water up over 2000 meters to cross the Alborz Mountains. The water would go as far as Qom, Kashan, and Isfahan, and eastward toward Khorasan. This, say proponents, would avoid water rationing in the cities and ease acute shortages threatening to cripple fragile agricultural communities and ruin ecosystems.
Transferring water from the Persian Gulf and Sea of Oman is even more ambitious in aiming to secure drinking water for 47 million people in 16 provinces. In March 2016, Rouhani announced a budget of $400m to launch the initiative.
Hamidreza Janbaz, managing director of Iran’s National Water and Wastewater Engineering Company, a state body, has explained the scheme as several sub-projects that are at different stages. Most are still in planning but some have broken ground, including water transfer from the Sea of Oman to the northern part of Sistan- Baluchistan province.
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But as construction begins, a simple question remains. Is pumping desalinised water from hundreds of kilometres away a sustainable way to support dehydrated mega- cities and parched farmlands?
The country’s water and natural resources experts say no. They object on both economic and environmental grounds. Some academics and environmental activists have demanded the Caspian Sea project be scrapped because of the likely consequences of deforestation, and habitat and biodiversity loss, in the Hyrcanian forests, the steppe and alpine ecosystems of the Alborz Mountains, and in the Caspian Sea itself. They are also concerned that Iran might set a precedent for Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Russia and Turkmenistan, the four countries also adjoining the land- locked Caspian Sea.
Some of those opposing water transfer projects argue that the plans contravene article 50 of Iran’s constitution, which makes environmental sustainability a public duty, forbidding “economic and other activities that inevitably involve pollution of the environment or cause irreparable damage.”
The dichotomy of water management and environmental sustainability is hardly new.
But it is growing. Water shortages result from a mix of rapid population growth, disproportionate spatial distribution of people, inefficient agriculture, mismanagement and thirst for development.
With a mere 250mm (1o inches) of rain a year, less than a third of the global average, Iran is generally dry. Over many decades, the country has been tempted by grandiose, supply-oriented engineering solutions such as dam construction and water transfer tunnels to secure water supply.
But Iran should already have learned that inter-basin transfers – moving water from one geographic region to another, typically over long distances – are no panacea. A series of water diversions from the western headwaters of the Karoun river over a few decades more than doubled the natural flow of the Zayandeh-Rud river, a major surface water source for a strategic socio-economic hub in central Iran, but this promoted unbridled development and encouraged people to move in.
As a consequence, scarcity reappeared just years after each project was finished, while downstream the Gav-Khouni marsh faced a reduced flow inadequate to maintain
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aquatic habitats. Overall, the Zayandeh-Rud projects made the situation worse, not better.
Once a source of pride, largescale supply-oriented solutions are now being understood as a major cause of environmental degradation, manifested in drying up of Lake Urmia, the Middle East’s largest saltwater lake, and in dust storms and haze in the west and southwest. Furthermore, declining groundwater resources are a clear sign of unsustainable management and national “water bankruptcy” whereby withdrawals exceed natural aquifer recharge.
The magnitude of the planned water-transfer projects means that any miscalculations can leave deep, lasting scars. Scepticism is reinforced by past failures. The Gotvand Dam (in Khuzestan province was built on salt beds that make the water in the reservoir too salty to use: the planning phase failed to detect that the geology would not permit the storage of water suitable for irrigation.
These are complex issues and pressures are real on government to ensure drinking water and encourage agricultural and industrial development in the central provinces.
Around the world, other desperate governments – as in Brazil and China – are looking for solutions based on water transfers.
But it is still possible to implement a host of water management strategies to alleviate water scarcity before slashing the country with lavish projects. These include appropriate water pricing, incentives for conservation, improving farming technologies and practices, capturing stormwaters, reducing leakage in aging distribution networks, limiting groundwater withdrawal, and recycling waste water.
Interbasin transfer of desalinised water is one of the less favourable options. It should only be used only as a last resort.
Daily Report for Tuesday, May 10, 2016
1 0 US officials circle globe to explain
Iran policy but fail to persuade
Al-Monitor news website: Since a landmark nuclear deal went into effect in January, US officials have conducted roundtables with banking officials in more than 15 countries, but failed to reassure major foreign banks that it is OK for them to return to Iran, Al-Monitor has learned.
A business source briefed on the issue told Al-Monitor at a May 3-4 business conference in Zurich on condition of anonymity that two Swiss banks — Credit Suisse and UBS — were among those approached by officials from the US Department of State and the US Treasury. Most big foreign banks have so far rejected a return to Iran for a host of reasons, including heavy fines paid to the US government for past sanctions violations and concerns that the sanctions environment could change again for the worse.
Gregg Rosenberg, a spokesman for UBS, told Al-Monitor that his bank was not going to handle Iran business. “At this time there are no changes to our global sanctions policy, which restricts business activity with or involving Iran, including client activity such as payments or trading that involves Iran,” Rosenberg said in an email.
A Credit Suisse spokeswoman had a similar reply: “As a global bank Credit Suisse complies with various national and international sanctions programs. While the international community has recently lifted a part of the sanctions against Iran, other Iran sanctions that impact our Bank’s international operations remain in place. Credit Suisse maintains its general policy to abstain from conducting business with or involving Iran. We continue to closely monitor the situation.”
UBS suspended Iran business in 2005 after paying a $100 million fine to the US government for providing new US banknotes to the Islamic Republic.
In 2009, Credit Suisse agreed to pay $536 million for concealing the identity of Iranian clients it did transactions for, including the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran and the Aerospace Industries Organization. Both were blacklisted by the United States for nuclear-related activities.
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Iranian businessmen have expressed frustration that US reassurances are failing to persuade large European banks that they may legally finance trade with and invest in entities in Iran that do not face sanctions.
Mostafa Beheshti Rouy, an executive board member and director of international affairs for Bank Pasargad, Iran’s largest bank, told Al-Monitor that only third-tier European banks have shown any willingness to re-enter the Iranian market.
Since the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) was implemented Jan. 16, the Obama administration has sent officials to explain the situation to Switzerland, Britain, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Oman, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Thailand and Hong Kong, Al-Monitor has learned. In addition, US officials have held video conferences with bankers from other countries, including Afghanistan, Malaysia and Indonesia.
Before meeting with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif in New York on April 22, Secretary of State John Kerry told reporters that the United States has “no objection and we do not stand in the way of foreign banks engaging with Iranian banks and companies, obviously as long as those banks and companies are not on our sanctions list for non-nuclear reasons.”
Kerry added that these banks shouldn’t “assume that activities still prohibited by the primary [US] embargo are also prohibited for foreign actors” and that his message was, “when in doubt, ask.”
In addition, a spokesman for the Obama administration told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity, “Iran has kept its end of the deal, and we have upheld ours and are committed to continuing to do so.” The official added, “Iran is already seeing real benefits from the sanctions lifting that occurred in January — nearly doubling its oil sales, beginning to access funds abroad and starting to reconnect to the international banking sector.”
The official acknowledged, however, that “questions remain” about what foreign companies can and cannot do, which is why “Treasury and State officials have traveled worldwide to meet with government and private sector partners to provide clarity on our sanctions. … While we are committed to providing clarity on the sanctions issues that are within our control, the reality is that there are factors beyond our control that also continue to slow Iran’s economic engagement — including
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corruption and lack of transparency in its financial and business sectors. These are issues that have nothing to do with sanctions, and Iran has its own work to do to address these and earn the confidence of international companies and financial institutions.”
Iran has acknowledged that it needs to do more to clean up its banking sector, which was saddled with nonperforming loans and other unorthodox transactions under the administration of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Visiting Washington in April for the biannual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, the governor of the Iranian Central Bank, Valiollah Seif, told Al-Monitor that Iran has held meetings with the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), an international intergovernmental body based in Paris, to show the steps Iran has taken to counter abuses that FATF cited in designating Iran a high-risk jurisdiction for money laundering and noncooperative in countering financial terrorism.
The record of the last few months shows that it is far harder to unwind financial sanctions than to impose them.
George Kleinfeld, a sanctions expert at the law firm Clifford Chance, told the Zurich conference that there remains a “primal fear” of Iran on the part of Western banks because of “years of hyperactive enforcement” of sanctions by the US government.
In addition, there is uncertainty surrounding the future of sanctions because of US presidential elections.
Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, has called the JCPOA
“incompetent” and “disgusting,” while Hillary Clinton, his likely Democratic opponent, has urged stringent actions to counter other Iranian policies disliked by the United States.
Concerns are growing among Iranians who want a better relationship with the United States and Europe that without more tangible economic benefits, support for the Iran deal — and for the government of President Hassan Rouhani — will wane.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who allowed the JCPOA to go forward, has taken an increasingly hostile tone toward Washington in recent weeks.
Meanwhile, Rouhani’s predecessor, Ahmadinejad, has been hinting that he will try to run again when Rouhani seeks re-election in 2017.
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Kleinfeld said it was up to European countries to defend their economic interests and make clear that they would not accept new sanctions or a snapback of old US secondary sanctions if Iran continues to abide by its nuclear obligations.
“Where are the European voices saying there is no way we will allow Congress to reimpose sanctions?” Kleinfeld asked.
