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Iran hit in anti-government protests

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Anti-government demonstrations that began in Iran on Thursday have now spread to several major cities.Large numbers reportedly turned out in Rasht, in the north, and Kermanshah, in the west, with smaller protests in Isfahan, Hamadan and elsewhere, BBC News reports.The protests began against rising prices but have spiraled into a general outcry against clerical rule and government policies.

A small number of people have been arrested in Tehran, the capital.

They were among a group of 50 people who gathered in a city square, Tehran’s deputy governor-general for security affairs told the Iranian Labour News Agency.

The US State Department condemned the arrests and urged “all nations to publicly support the Iranian people and their demands for basic rights and an end to corruption”.

What is behind the unrest?

The protests were initially against economic conditions and corruption but appear to have turned political.

Slogans have been chanted against not just Mr Rouhani but Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and clerical rule in general.

Demonstrators were reportedly heard yelling slogans like “The people are begging, the clerics act like God”. Protests have even been held in Qom, a holy city home to powerful clerics.

There is also anger at Iran’s interventions abroad. In Mashhad, some chanted “not Gaza, not Lebanon, my life for Iran”, a reference to what protesters say is the administration’s focus on foreign rather than domestic issues.

Witness In Iran Sanctions Case Says Turkey’s Erdogan Aided Evasion Scheme

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Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was among the targets of an investigation in Turkey into suspected bribery and money laundering in connection with a scheme to help Iran evade sanctions, a former Istanbul police officer has testified.

The officer, Huseyin Korkmaz, told a New York court on December 11 that the Turkish investigation that he led in 2012-2013 initially focused on Turkish-Iranian businessman Reza Zarrab, who U.S. prosecutors have said was the mastermind behind the Iran sanctions evasion scheme, but later grew to include dozens of others.

He called Erdogan the “No. 1” target in a group that also included former Economy Minister Mehmet Zafer Caglayan and Suleyman Aslan, the ex-CEO of state-owned Halkbank, which he said was at the center of the scheme.

Korkmaz — a witness in the trial of Halkbank executive Mehmet Hakan Atilla, who is charged with participation in the Iran sanctions evasion scheme — testified that Erdogan ultimately killed the case by firing and jailing the prosecutors and judges who pursued it.

As the lead investigator in the Turkish case, Korkmaz said he was reassigned and ultimately jailed. He said that after his release, he fled the country and took with him a cache of the investigative materials that he eventually turned over to U.S. authorities, who are now using the evidence in their case against Atilla.

If accurate, Korkmaz’s testimony confirms for the first time that the corruption case in Turkey was aimed directly at Erdogan — not just his ministers, associates, and family members.

Erdogan reacted angrily when the U.S. prosecutors opened their own case. Erdogan personally lobbied for the release of Zarrab and Atilla at the White House and has heatedly denounced U.S. prosecutors’ decision to pursue the case.

In shutting down the Turkish investigation in 2013, Erdogan called it a coup plot that sought to remove his government from power. He and his deputies have described the U.S. case in much the same way in recent weeks.

The Turkish investigation ended after Zarrab’s December 2013 arrest in Turkey and a raid on Aslan’s home, where authorities said they found millions of dollars stuffed into shoe boxes. Photos of the cash recovered from the raid were shown to the jury in New York.

As the United States ratcheted up financial sanctions on Iran over its nuclear and missile programs, Tehran was increasingly unable to access billions of dollars piling up in overseas banks from oil sales to foreign countries.

U.S. prosecutors allege that Zarrab, with the aid of Turkish officials and bank executives, ran a laundering scheme to get around the sanctions and use Iran’s money to make international payments on its behalf, including $1 billion that flowed through New York banks in violation of U.S. sanctions.

Zarrab pleaded guilty shortly before the U.S. trial and spent seven days on the witness stand testifying against Halkbank executive Atilla, who is charged as Zarrab’s co-conspirator but is now the lone defendant in the U.S. case. He has pleaded not guilty.

Nine people in all have been indicted, including Aslan and Caglayan, who have denied the charges. All but Atilla and Zarrab have avoided U.S. arrest. Erdogan has never been charged.

In testimony last week, Zarrab said he was told that Erdogan personally ordered that two Turkish banks be cut in on the alleged laundering scheme, and that Erdogan ordered the resumption of the alleged sanctions-evasion scheme after his government quashed the investigation.

Erdogan was prime minister until late August 2014, when he became president.

Much of Korkmaz’s testimony on December 11 focused on how the 2013 Turkish investigation targeting Zarrab and Erdogan, among others, was shut down and bribery payments were made to keep the sanctions evasion scheme going.

Witnesses have said that the laundering scheme first employed gold trading as a means of getting Iran’s money out of Halkbank, then turned to disguising the flows as humanitarian food shipments after revised sanctions rules banned the gold trade.

Korkmaz said he was jailed for more than a year after Erdogan’s government fired the Turkish investigators. He was released on bail in February 2016.

Fearing for his safety, Korkmaz said, he hired a smuggler in August 2016 to help him flee Turkey. Afraid he’d be tortured if caught and sent back home, he said he went through two countries before he obtained a new passport under a false name.

Korkmaz said he ultimately came to the United States with the help of U.S. law enforcement officials. At the airport, he said, he gave authorities a trove of materials he had taken, including audio recordings, photographs, statements, and documents.

Korkmaz said he took the evidence out of Turkey because he believed it would have been destroyed there.

With reporting by Bloomberg, Newsday, and Reuters

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/turkish-police-witness-iran-sanctions-case-says-erdogan-aided-sanctions-evasion-scheme-zarrab-atilla-kormaz/28911053.html?ltflags=mailer

Armenian community expects Iranian authorities to come up with condemnation – Armenian-Iranian MP

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The Armenian community of Iran expects the Islamic Republic to issue a condemning statement, Armenian MP in the Parliament of Iran Karen Khanlaryan wrote in a column published in local “Ghanoon’ daily.

Expert in Iran Armen Israyelyan refers to the piece on his Facebook page, writing that the MP reflected on deepening of the Iranian-Armenian high-level cooperation in all spheres, including on the challenges and achievements o the Armenians living in Iran.

Speaking of the Iran’s stance on the Nagorno Karabakh conflict, Khanlaryan noted the Islamic Republic had always shown constructive approach toward the conflict settlement and on numerous occasions had voiced a desire to settle it through peaceful means. In that regard, the Armenian MP points pout to continuous military threats exercised by Azerbaijan.

The next topic Khanlaryan covered was the issue of the international recognition of the Armenian Genocide and the need for condemnation, adding the Armenian-Iranian community expects the authorities of the Islamic Republic to come up with an official condemnation.

“Considering the existing challenges in the region and the matters Iran faces, Armenian lawmakers in the Iranian parliament as well as other structures operation in the neighboring country have recently doubled their efforts to promote Armenia’s (including Artsakh) interests in Iran, while Armenian-Iranian journalists and experts work toward representing Armenia properly not only for raising larger awareness about Armenia among Iranians but also for the preservation of the Armenian identity,” Israyelyan wrote as a post scriptum to his post.

U.S. Says Alleged Mastermind In Iran Sanctions Case Won’t Stand Trial

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Both Turkish banker Mehmet Hakan Atilla (left) and Turkish-Iranian businessman Reza Zarrab are in U.S. custody. (combo photo)

A wealthy Turkish-Iranian businessman who was the alleged mastermind in what U.S. prosecutors say was a high-level conspiracy to help Iran evade U.S. sanctions will not stand trial this week as scheduled, though the case is proceeding against his co-defendant.

U.S. Judge Richard Berman announced on November 27 as jury selection got under way on the case that Reza Zarrab will not not stand trial and that Turkish banker Mehmet Hakan Atilla “is the only defendant in this trial.”

Both Atilla and Zarrab are in U.S. custody.

Berman gave no explanation for Zarrab’s absence from the trial after a series of unexplained no-shows at pretrial hearings. The development deepened the mystery surrounding the case and renewed speculation that Zarrab has cut a deal with prosecutors to testify rather than go on trial.

NBC News, Bloomberg News, and other U.S. media have reported that Zarrab, 34, is cooperating with U.S. prosecutors.

Zarrab’s name appeared on a list of possible witnesses and names that may come up during the trial, which was handed out to prospective jurors on November 27.

The close ties of Zarrab and other defendants with the government of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has turned the case into a major irritant in U.S.-Turkish relations.

Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Bekir Bozdag earlier on November 27 repeated Ankara’s demand that prosecutors drop the case, which he said had “no valid evidence” and “no legal basis.”

Bozdag, who is Ankara’s government spokesman, asserted that the aim of the case was to cause the collapse of Turkey’s economy, in an apparent reference to the plunge of the Turkish lira last week to a record low against the U.S. dollar in reaction to a development in the case.

U.S. prosecutors have denied Turkey’s accusations, while the judge has urged Turkey to provide any evidence it has that could prove the defendants’ innocence to the court rather than hurl accusations at the prosecutors.

In court papers, prosecutors allege that Zarrab used a network of businesses and Atilla’s bank, Turkish state-owned Halkbank, to funnel cash and gold to Iran while duping U.S. banks into processing the transactions.

The scheme, which allegedly occurred between 2010 and 2015, violated U.S. prohibitions against Iran using the U.S. financial system or U.S. dollars to transact business, prosecutors say.

Court documents say the defendants in carrying out the scheme paid tens of millions of dollars in bribes in cash and jewelry to Turkey’s then-economy minister, Mehmet Zafer Caglayan.

Caglayan, who has denied the charges, and six other high-ranking co-defendants in the case remain in Turkey.

In an indication of why the case has become so important to Erdogan, who has pressed repeatedly for Zarrab’s release, prosecutors said in a recent court filing that Zarrab once told another defendant he had spoken with Erdogan directly about the alleged scheme.

Bozdag said on November 27 that there was “pressure” on Zarrab to confess to “slanderous” claims.

Zarrab’s name has also come up in connection with allegations being investigated by U.S. Justice Department Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

In that case, investigators are probing whether Turkey’s government may have paid former White House national security adviser Michael Flynn to secure Zarrab’s release as well as the deportation of a U.S.-based Turkish cleric, whom Erdogan blames for a failed coup against him last year.

With reporting by NBC News, AFP, dpa, AP, and Reuters

Russia and Iran back in Erdogan False-Flag Operation trap and Karabakh conflict

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The Iranian, Russian and Turkish presidents hold a trilateral meeting on the Syria crisis in the Black Sea resort of Sochi.

The Wednesday talks between Hassan Rouhani, Vladimir Putin and Recep Tayyip Erdogan come as Iran, Russia and Turkey are acting as the guarantors of a ceasefire that took effect in Syria late last year.

Turkish President Recept Tayyip Erdogan has highlighted Russia’s role as the only world power capable of resolving the Nagorno-Karabakh (Artsakh) conflict.

According to Aydinlik, the Turkish leader also promised “to raise the issue if possible” at the upcoming summit in Sochi.

Erdogan earlier discussed the Armenian-Azerbaijani land dispute with Russian President Vladimir Putin at a recent meeting in the Russian resort.

“I told him that it would be better for Russia to be a more active role-player in the conflict settlement process. Highly respected Putin also shares that opinion, but he does not cherish great hopes due to the positions adopted by the two countries,” he said.

 

In a statement made earlier, Erdogan said that the Nagorno-Karabakh issue “is of equal importance for Turkey”

Iran’s Rouhani declares end of Islamic State

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Iranian President Hassan Rouhani declared the end of Islamic State on Tuesday in an address broadcast live on state TV, Hindustantimes.com reports.

A senior commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, Major General Qassem Soleimani, also declared the end of Islamic State in a message sent to the country’s supreme leader on Tuesday which was published on Sepah News, the news site of the Guards.

Videos and pictures of Soleimani, who commands the Quds Force, the branch of the Guards responsible for operations outside of Iran’s borders, at frontline positions in battles against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria have been posted frequently by Iranian media in recent years.

Last week, Iranian media published pictures of Soleimani at Albu Kamal in eastern Syria, a town which Soleimani said on Tuesday was the last territory retaken from Islamic State control in the region.

The Revolutionary Guards, Iran’s most powerful military force which also oversees an economic empire worth billions of dollars, has been fighting in support of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad and the central government in Baghdad for several years.

More than a thousand members of the Guards, including senior commanders, have been killed in Syria and Iraq.

Armenia offers assistance to Iran after earthquake

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Armenia’s Ministry of Emergency Situation (MES) has reached Iranian authorities through diplomatic channels, offering assistance to eliminate the consequences of the earthquake that hit the country late on Sunday.  “We offered assistance in eliminating the consequences of the disaster through our Embassy in Iran as well as contacted the Embassy of the Islamic republic in Yerevan,” deputy head of the press department at the ministry Nana Gndoyan told Panorama.am.

In her words, the ministry’s search and rescue subdivision is brought to full readiness to dispatch once the Iranian side approves.

It was noted that the MES has established contact with Iranian Red Crescent NGO to elaborate on possibilities to provide emergency response to those suffered in the natural disaster.

According to updated data, more than 350 people have been killed by an earthquake that hit the Iran-Iraq border region late on Sunday. According to Iran’s Tasnim news agency, as many as 3,950 people have been injured. According to a crisis center set up after the quake, the strongest jolts were felt in the Kermanshah and Ilam provinces in western Iran, where the heaviest damage and the majority of victims were recorded.

To remind President Sargsyan swiftly reacted to the devastating natural disaster on Monday expressing solidarity with the people of Iran within hours of the quake.

Iran-Iraq earthquake passes 300 Death toll 6,000 Injured in powerful 7.3 earthquake

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TEHRAN — Iranians spent the night digging through rubble in a frantic search for survivors after a powerful earthquake struck near the Iraqi border on Sunday evening, killing more than 300 people and injuring thousands more, officials said.

The epicenter of the quake was near Ezgeleh, an Iranian town about 135 miles northeast of Baghdad, and had a preliminary magnitude of 7.3, according to the United States Geological Survey.

Photographs from the region — a patchwork of farms and home to many Kurds, a large ethnic minority in Iran — and posted on the internet showed collapsed buildings, cars destroyed by rubble and people sleeping in the streets in fear of aftershocks.

At least 341 people were killed and nearly 6,000 people in Iran were injured, according to the state news agency IRNA, and hundreds of people waited in line to donate blood in Tehran in response to a call from the government.

At least eight people were killed on the Iraqi side of the border, according to Dr. Saif al-Badir, a spokesman for the Health Ministry, and at least 535 were hurt.

Iran: 336 people confirmed dead, 3,950 injured, state-run IRINN TV has reported
Northern Iraq: 7 people dead, 300 people injured in the semi-autonomous Kurdish region, Rekawt Hama Rasheed, the health minister of the Kurdish Regional Government said.
Rescue efforts: Authorities in Iran and Iraq have initiated rescue operations; Iran has declared three days of mourning.
The earthquake hit late Sunday night with the epicenter across the Iraq-Iran border.
The quake, which reached a depth of 23 km (just over 14 miles) according to the US Geological Survey, was felt across the region with aftershocks hitting Pakistan, Lebanon, Kuwait and Turkey, news agencies in those countries reported.
Iraq’s Meteorological Organization issued a warning on Iraqi State TV urging citizens to stay away from buildings and to refrain from using elevators.

Iran Rejects Turkmen Proposal For Gas Shipments To Turkey

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RFE/RL.Energy politics around the Caspian Sea breeds complications, as a recent example involving Turkmenistan, Iran, Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Armenia reminds us.

Turkmenistan is in a serious bind. The country has the fourth-largest natural gas reserves in the world but currently has only one customer — China — at a time when Turkmenistan’s economy appears to be spiraling downward.

Turkmenistan would likely sell gas to anyone at this point, considering its extreme revenue shortages, and needs to start selling to someone, soon.

So, according to reports from October 23-25, Turkmenistan is proposing a gas-swap deal with Iran to get Turkmen gas to Turkey, where it could be pumped into the Trans-Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline (TANAP) that is currently under construction.

Iranian National Gas Company (INGC) Director Hamid Reza Araki, who is also deputy oil minister, replied that Iran was not “positively disposed” to the idea.

That response is hardly surprising.

Since the late 1990s, Turkmenistan has been shipping gas to northern Iran, an area that is poorly connected to Iran’s gas-rich south.

At the end of 2016, Turkmenistan demanded Iran pay somewhere around $2 billion (the figure is not entirely clear) for supplies of Turkmen gas to northern Iran during the winter of 2007-08.

Iran countered that the figure was too high and claimed that Turkmenistan had jacked up the gas price during that particularly bitter winter to $360 per 1,000 cubic meters, about nine times the usual price at the time.

Last-minute negotiations before the new year appeared to end in an agreement, but on January 1 Turkmenistan shut off the gas supplies — and they have remained off.

Iran says Turkmenistan illegally broke the contract and has periodically threatened to take Turkmenistan to international arbitration.

With that as a backdrop, there is little wonder Araki indicated that Tehran has no enthusiasm for helping Turkmenistan.

But Araki mentioned another reason the Turkmen proposal was never likely to be met with sympathy in Tehran.

“We are against the sale of a rival country’s gas to Turkey via swap operations,” Araki stated, an indication that even if the debt dispute between Turkmenistan and Iran is resolved, there is little hope Iran will ever cooperate in exporting Turkmen gas to Turkey.

There is no pipeline running the length of northern Iran from the Turkmen to Turkish border, so Ashgabat wants a swap: Turkmenistan exports gas for use in northern Iran, and Iran pumps a like amount into a pipeline (or one day probably pipelines) leading to Turkey.

TANAP is the prize for both Turkmenistan and Iran.

TANAP, a 1,840-kilometer pipeline to bring gas from Azerbaijan’s Shah Deniz-2 Caspian Sea field across Turkey to Europe, is currently under construction and is tentatively scheduled to be launched next year.

In its initial stages, TANAP will carry only Azerbaijani gas. But as the pipeline expands capacity on its way to eventually reaching some 60 billion cubic meters (bcm), there will be space for gas from other countries.

Turkmenistan would like to be one of those countries, but Iran — and potentially Iraq and northeastern Syria — are better positioned to provide gas to TANAP.

However, Turkmen gas is, and, according to INGC chief Araki, will continue moving to the west, at least as far as Azerbaijan.

Araki said Iran had no objections to a gas swap with Turkmenistan as concerns gas for Azerbaijan.

Azerbaijan is a gas producer, but it purchases Turkmen gas during the summer, when the price is low, to make “maximum use of the commercial potential of storage facilities” of the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan Republic (SOCAR).

Reports did not mention the amount of Turkmen gas Azerbaijan purchases, but it could not be very much.

SOCAR buys Turkmen gas in the summer to “top off” its gas storage facilities, then resells the gas in winter at a profit.

Armenia is hoping for a similar arrangement and has offered to mediate the Turkmen-Iranian debt dispute in an agreement that would see a Turkmen-Iranian gas swap supplying gas to Armenia.

On October 20, Armenia’s minister of energy infrastructure and natural resources, Ashot Manukian, claimed that “we have proposed our involvement in settling debt-management issues between Turkmenistan and Iran, and they have accepted our proposal.”

Ashgabat certainly has not confirmed this, and it is difficult to see why Turkmenistan would agree to the Armenian proposal.

Manukian’s solution would see Iran settle its debt by shipping gas to Armenia; Armenia would then pay off Tehran’s debt to Ashgabat, but by barter, not cash.

Barter was exactly the deal Turkmenistan had with Iran before the dispute erupted.

Ashgabat had agreed to accept goods and services as compensation for the first $3 billion worth of gas exported to Iran, though Ashgabat was trying to renegotiate that agreement since Iranian gas imports rarely exceeded $3 billion.

Turkmenistan’s government wants cash, not goods, so it is difficult to see how the Armenian deal would suit Ashgabat.

Additionally, Turkmenistan did sell gas to Armenia in the 1990s via Russian pipelines and Armenia was regularly deep in debt for those supplies.

And, in any case, Manukian indicated Turkmenistan would probably be competing even for the small Armenian gas market.

Manukian said Armenia was ready to import more gas from Iran “if Iran offers lower prices.”

Manukian noted that Armenia also purchases gas from Russia for $150 per 1,000 cubic meters; meaning that if Iran, and presumably Turkmenistan, could sell their gas for less than that amount, Yerevan would be interested.

So it seems that Turkmenistan’s possibilities to export gas westward are, at best, limited.

It is interesting that Turkmenistan made the swap offer to Iran.

After all the acrimony this year in Turkmen-Iranian ties, Turkmen officials must have known the offer would probably get a cold reception in Tehran.

But Ashgabat made the offer all the same, because there are so few options and so little time left for the Turkmen regime to turn the country’s economy around.

Armenia, Iran ink three cooperation agreements

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Three agreements on cooperation in the IT, science, education and art as well as agriculture spheres were signed in the scope of Armenia’s PM Karen Karapetyan’s official visit to the Islamic Republic of Iran, local media outlets reported.

The Armenian delegation comprises the chairman of the state revenue committee, minister of energy and natural resources, ministers of transport and communication, agriculture, and culture.

As the government reported earlier, the head of the Armenian government is holding meetings with IRI President Hassan Rouhani, First Vice President Es’haq Jahangiri and Majlis Speaker Ali Larijani.

Karen Karapetyan is also set to visit Ararat Sports Club where he is scheduled to meet with representatives of the local Armenian community, including the business community.