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(JTA) Shootings are up in New York City. So are anti-Semitic incidents. And federal law enforcement is recasting itself as an adversary, not an ally, to local authorities.

That is the climate in which Tali Farhadian Weinstein seeks to become Manhattans top prosecutor.

Farhadian Weinstein, 44, stepped into the citys crowded district attorneys race last week with a vision for progressive prosecution or what she says is applying the office as a lever to both improve public safety and increase equity.

Pursuing cases that dont advance public safety and that might actually perpetuate injustice instead, like racial disparities or criminalized poverty, those are things that we should stand down from, Farhadian Weinstein told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

A former general counsel to the Brooklyn district attorney, Farhadian Weinstein came to the United States as a child from Iran, via Israel, after the Iranian revolution and now lives on the Upper East Side with her husband, hedge fund founder Boaz Weinstein, and their three children. A Rhodes Scholar, her resume includes clerkships with U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day OConnor and others. Former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, with whom Farhadian Weinstein worked at the Department of Justice, narrated a video announcing her campaign. The election is next year.

Farhadian Weinstein said the Trump administrations move to crack down on unrest in cities presents a vexing inversion of the role that that federal law enforcement has traditionally played.

I think its important to remember why the founders thought that the police power and law enforcement of this kind should belong to the states, she said. I think that was so that people themselves could decide in their own communities what laws do we enforce and in what circumstances and I think thats at the heart of what it means to be a progressive prosecutor.

We spoke with Farhadian Weinstein about her vision for the role, what she might do as district attorney to combat anti-Semitism and her very Jewish thesis topic.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

JTA: Youve called yourself a progressive prosecutor. What does that mean to you?

Farhadian Weinstein: Its two things, one is to make sure that at every step of the way were being fair to everybody with whom were interacting, whether they are the defendant or the witness or the victim. And second, and I think this is the more expansive idea, we, progressive prosecutors, have a more meaningful understanding of what public safety is and we have to check ourselves that everything we do advances public safety rather than takes away from it.

It means understanding that incarceration should be a last resort and only used when it advances public safety. Pursuing cases that dont advance public safety and that might actually perpetuate injustice instead, like racial disparities or criminalized poverty, those are things that we should stand down from. And instead we should be using our resources to actually bring the cases that matter and to protect vulnerable people, which is why were in this job to begin with.

What would you say are the cases that matter?

I think that gun violence is obviously on a lot of peoples minds because of what were seeing around New York City. (The city has recorded a spike in shootings, including several of children, in recent weeks.) I think that gender-based violence, which is often really just violence against women, is something we should be investigating and prosecuting more vigorously than we have, and by that I mean sexual assault and domestic violence. The Manhattan district attorneys office has a tradition that goes back to Bob Morgenthau of prosecuting from the streets to the suites, so the cheating and stealing that affects the lives of the people who live here.

Yesterday, Donald Trump spoke with New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and the two reportedly agreed that federal troops would not be sent to New York City. How would you approach the idea of federal troops being sent to New York City as district attorney?

Theres still a lot about this that is unknown and developing and also unprecedented so I think a lot of people are trying to figure out, is this legal? That has to be the first question, and for me, is it advisable, is it good policy, even if it is legal? And I think why its challenging is that its an inversion of how we usually think about why federal forces would go into a city to confront a situation thats being run by state or local officers. This is very much not Little Rock in 1957 or integrating the University of Alabama in 1963 where the feds are the good guys.

I think this is all new, were processing this idea, in blue states in particular, that we now have to push back at the idea that the federal government is bringing justice rather than state and local governments.

When I think about what am I trying to do as a local prosecutor, as Manhattan district attorney, I think its important to remember why the founders thought that the police power and law enforcement of this kind should belong to the states. I think that was so that people themselves could decide in their own communities what laws do we enforce and in what circumstances and I think thats at the heart of what it means to be a progressive prosecutor. Around New York, local prosecutors dont really prosecute misdemeanor simple marijuana possession even though that law is on the books. Theres a reason for the constitutional order that we have.

At the very moment that people are saying we dont have enough trust in law enforcement and there isnt enough accountability when police officers break the law, youre making both of those things worse. And its bad for public safety when people dont trust law enforcement. Its also bad for public safety to pull these people [federal officers] away from their mission.

Where do you come down on the conversation about defunding or reforming the New York Police Department?

Ive said before that I dont particularly care for the word defund the police because I find it inflammatory and not solution-oriented. But I do think its great that we are engaged in the conversation about what we want from law enforcement and how we think the police should be doing what I just described about progressive prosecution to make sure that everything that happens is to further public safety and nothing else.

Its interesting to me because some of the themes that are now being talked about in the context of police reform are things that weve been working on all of these years on the side of prosecution. Minimizing contacts between law enforcement and people and understanding that those are traumatic and should be a last resort, bringing other competencies into the work. In local district attorneys offices, we have social workers, counselors. You dont learn everything you need in order to do that job of delivering public safety to communities from going to law school. And likewise now, were really having this conversation now of who should really respond with the police, instead of the police, whatever the case may be. So I think that the conversation is great and Im quite hopeful about it.

What do you think you can do in furthering that conversation about reform from the perch of the district attorneys office?

Some of that has to come from within the police do not report to the DA; its the mayors responsibility. But we work alongside the police, obviously the police make arrests and we process them. You could use different words to describe that relationship depending on the issue theres negotiation, theres cooperation, theres consultation. So there are pushes and pulls that happen between us in deciding what are the cases we should be bringing and what are the cases we should not be bringing. I also think that DAs in any area of legislation having to do with criminal justice are an important voice and so, for example, a number of the district attorneys in the state and in the city were longtime advocates for repealing 50-a. I was in favor of repeal and Im glad that it happened. (Section 50-a was a rule that kept personnel files for police officers confidential. It was repealed last month by the New York State Legislature.)

Our job is to prosecute everybody without fear or favor, no matter who they are, no matter what uniform they wear. So when police officers break the law, they have to be held accountable just like everybody else. And in Brooklyn, I started our standalone law enforcement accountability bureau and I supervised it. We investigated and prosecuted police officers.

How would you use the role of Manhattan district attorney to fight anti-Semitism in New York City?

It requires a multifaceted response of which law enforcement is one very important part. We have a hate crime statute and I would enforce it vigorously. I was just on the New York State Bar task force on domestic terrorism and hate crimes. We thought about this a lot because there has obviously been such a horrible surge in anti-Semitism in New York City and around the state over the past year.

The statute at this point makes it possible to sentence somebody to some kind of education program as well, and I think thats something that we need to look at a little more closely, whether we could be doing more of that. Because you need to respond to the crime when it happens and you need to also think about what is the root cause, why is this happening, why are people so hateful towards each other, and I think we need to come at it from both ends. District attorneys offices have traditionally taken a role, and I think this is terrific, in going out into communities and talking about the law and the underlying reasons for the law. So theres an education component, too.

Do you have some thoughts about why theres been this uptick in anti-Semitic incidents in New York City in recent years?

One thing that we have seen in law enforcement is that the internet definitely makes things worse because people can find like minded haters for whatever the target of your hate is and it can fester and foment. Thats something to think about that I think needs a law enforcement response. Why anti-Semitism in particular? its important to say that other kinds of hate have also been on the rise. Weve seen terrible hate towards Asian Americans, particularly tied to COVID, hate crimes against LGBTQ people and hate against African-Americans, all of these things sort of come together, I think.

How do you think about balancing calls for bail reform with the difficulties that has posed in preventing incidents of anti-Semitism in New York City?

The thing about bail reform is its about balancing different values and different concerns. I have largely been an advocate for bail reform, because I think the fundamental goals of bail reform have been right. So I think, first of all, we should always be really careful when were taking somebodys liberty away before trial, before theyve been convicted of anything and in our system theyre presumed innocent, as they should be. I also think its undeniable that over time in New York, Black and brown people in particular and poor people were incarcerated pre-trial at astonishing, shocking and really unacceptable rates. And I should say, in Brooklyn, we had managed to really bring those numbers down before the law changed. And I also find cash bail deeply troubling, the idea that theres a connection between a persons liberty and how much money they have and that there should be a price on liberty at all.

It continues to concern me that New York is the only state that does not allow for dangerousness to be a consideration in deciding what should happen to people before trial. Taking that off the table makes it harder to achieve the kind of balance that youre asking me about, to make sure that in every single case are we putting public safety into that equation.

Do you think the bail reform that was passed in New York State went too far?

The bail reform in both of its iterations is not the ideal situation that Ive described in which you would have eliminated cash bail completely, we still have cash bail for qualifying offenses, but on the other hand allowed for a small number of people to be detained because of dangerousness before trial. I think conceptually, its not the approach I would have taken though it accomplished what it set out to accomplish in part, which is to reduce the number of people held before trial and which I think is a good goal.

What is something about you that people might find surprising?

Ive spent a lot of time in Israel: I have a ton of family there, because many of the Jews of Iran went to Israel at various points and wound up staying. Ive taken my girls to Israel I think three times, and I spent a lot of time in high school when I went on the Bronfman Youth fellowship.

I ended up doing my thesis at Oxford about a certain strand of Israeli literature, the literature of Jews from the Arab world, like A.B. Yehoshua and Sami Michael. Where I grew up was a predominantly Ashkenazi community. Where I went to school, we were among very few families that were not Ashkenazi. My husbands mother was born in the Warsaw Ghetto but she grew up in Israel. So some of it was personal because I was trying to understand the coming together of Ashkenazi and Mizrahi Jews in different places around the world. Id been studying Arabic for some time, and I was interested in the politics of that literature because they were describing a different origin story and a different experience of what it meant to be Israeli.

How does your own story of coming to this country as an immigrant inform the way you would approach the job of district attorney?

Being an immigrant has affected me, its an outlook that stays with you forever and in my case, I think, has helped me do this work because its helped me bring a kind of empathy to this work. Its the commonality of the experience of having been vulnerable, of having come here with an ambition to be free and to live in safety and to understand in a really visceral and personal way what it means to yearn for those things. And those are the very things we are supposed to be delivering in a job like this one, fairness and safety privileges that in other parts of the world, people dont get to experience.

Youre talking about immigrants who are coming here from Central America and South America and who are waiting right now at our borders. I see myself in them.

What do you think about when you hear Donald Trump speaking negatively about immigration and Iran, two different things that you know personally on a different level?

I feel pretty much horrified by anything and everything that he says, the fomenting of hate, the attempts to divide. I think the commonality that I just described is I think very different from the way hes described America coming together.

I think thats also a very Jewish idea to hold onto the fact that all of us were strangers in a strange land at some point and even when youre past that, as I am in many ways now, I think our tradition tells us to remember that because it is a source of empathy and ultimately, justice, to see that in others and to draw on that collective experience even if it was not a personal experience.

Read the original:
Meet the Iranian-Jewish 'progressive prosecutor' vying to be Manhattan's next district attorney - JTA News - Jewish Telegraphic Agency

Rescue teams examine the wreckage of the Ukrainian airliner that was shot down shortly after takeoff in the Iranian capital, Tehran, on Jan. 8. Iran says a tragic series of mistakes led to the missile strike. Akbar Tavakoli/IRNA/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

Rescue teams examine the wreckage of the Ukrainian airliner that was shot down shortly after takeoff in the Iranian capital, Tehran, on Jan. 8. Iran says a tragic series of mistakes led to the missile strike.

Human error, a misaligned missile guidance system and a decision to fire without authorization contributed to Iran's downing of a civilian passenger plane in January, according to a new report from Iran's Civil Aviation Organization.

Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 was shot down shortly after takeoff from the Iranian capital, Tehran, killing all 176 people on board. For several days, no one took responsibility, but signs pointed toward it being struck by a missile. Eventually, Iran admitted it had targeted the plane after mistakenly believing it was a U.S. missile.

"PS 752 was identified by one of the air defense units as a threat and targeted consequently," Iran's accident investigation report says in its introduction, before laying out the pertinent facts. The Kyiv-bound plane received permission from air traffic control to take off from Tehran's Imam Khomeini International Airport. The flight plan was relayed to Iran's air defense coordination center, and the military granted clearance for the plane to depart.

That's when everything went awry. Mistake No. 1: One of Iran's air defense units had been moved but because of human error, its radar system was never realigned. So when the unit spotted an object traveling on an unknown flight path, the unit didn't realize that it was the Boeing 737-800 that had already gotten clearance.

The air defense unit operator notified command about the object and identified it as a threat. But command never responded and never let the unit operator know that it was the Kyiv-bound flight. "Another link in the chain of events was formed at this point," the report says.

By now, the tragedy still could have been averted, the report says, if not for mistake No. 3: "If at this point he had identified the target as a passenger aircraft, the missile would not have been launched."

The errors continued. From air traffic control's vantage point, PS 752 was following its assigned flight path. But having not heard back from command, the air defense unit operator fired upon the target. He wasn't supposed to do that; Iran's military procedure states that individual units aren't authorized to fire without explicitly getting orders to do so. "The fourth link leading to the firing of the missile was now formed."

The first missile likely hit the plane, the report says. But the rogue unit, still tracking the object, fired again. By now, the aircraft had lost radio communication. It turned to the right. A fire broke out inside the plane. Two minutes later, it crashed into a playground in Khalajabad, exploding on impact. "The aircraft then kept hitting the ground and bouncing on a route towards the airport, making the aircraft pieces, victims' properties, objects and body remains disintegrate completely in a vast area near a residential complex, recreational and sports park, gardens and the surrounding agricultural land," the report says.

All passengers and crew members were killed.

"The sequence of events clearly shows the occurrence of a chain of events initiated by a human error," the report says.

Iran's government had previously explained that it was on high alert after it fired missile strikes on Iraqi bases hosting U.S. troops. That attack was a retaliation for a U.S. drone strike that killed the prominent Iranian military commander Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani and militia leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis in Baghdad on Jan. 3.

Iran has delayed providing international investigators with the flight's black box recorder but has reportedly pledged to provide it to French investigators on July 20.

Excerpt from:
Rogue Air Defense Unit Fired On Passenger Plane Without Authorization, Iran Says - NPR

It has been 18 months since Kanniyakumari-native Maria Gildas left home for work in Iran. He has been stuck there since, waiting for a seat on a return flight.

A total of 65 fishermen, including 40 from Tamil Nadu, 19 from Kerala and one from Puducherry, are holed up in a room in Iran, waiting for help from the Central and State governments.

A ship brought many home... He did not get a seat on it. We dont have money for a ticket. The last time too, when he tried coming home before the COVID-19 outbreak, he did not have money for a ticket and had to work for two months to earn the money. They now have found a sponsor for the tickets, said Jeeva, wife of Mr. Gildas.

Ms. Jeeva has now pinned her hopes on the kindness and compassion of Chief Minister Edappadi K. Palaniswami.

He has been kind enough to bring back many fishermen. He has written to the Union government asking them to expedite the return of those stranded in Iran, she said.

Mr. Gildas said that they were waiting for details about a flight to Delhi on July 16.

We struggled for a seat on that ship. It had a capacity of only 700 persons, so we were left behind. People here are from several districts, including Nagapattinam and Cuddalore, said Mr. Gildas, the captain of a boat, speaking over the phone to The Hindu.

We are not bothered about eating or sleeping. We just want to return home, he said.

Fisheries Minister D. Jayakumar said that steps were being taken to bring back the men.

They will be brought back at the earliest, he said.

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Fishermen stranded in Iran look to head back home - The Hindu

LONDON (Reuters) - Iran has slashed crude oil production to its lowest level in four decades as storage tanks and vessels are almost completely full due to a fall in exports and refinery run cuts caused by the coronavirus pandemic, industry data showed.

FILE PHOTO: A general view of Abadan oil refinery in southwest Iran, is pictured from Iraqi side of Shatt al-Arab in Al-Faw south of Basra, Iraq September 21, 2019. REUTERS/Essam Al-Sudani/File Photo

Total onshore crude stocks surged to 54 million barrels in April from 15 million barrels in January, and swelled further to 63 million barrels in June, according to FGE Energy.

Market intelligence firm Kpler estimated Iranian average onshore crude storage for June to be around 66 million barrels.

That is around 85% of available onshore storage capacity.

(Graphic: Iranian onshore crude oil storage, here)

However, it will technically not be possible to fill tanks to 100% given technical constraints at storage tanks and potential infrastructure bottlenecks, said Homayoun Falakshahi, a senior analyst at Kpler.

Tensions between Tehran and Washington have ratcheted up since 2018, when the United States withdrew from a 2015 nuclear pact between Iran and six major powers and President Donald Trump reimposed sanctions on Iran, hammering vital oil exports.

Irans floating storage is also filling up. Shipping sources said Iran was estimated to be using in the region of 30 tankers to store oil most of them supertankers, each of which can carry a maximum of 2 million barrels of oil.

This would equate to over 50 million barrels of oil being stored, which has been static for some months. This is likely to be a combination of crude and condensate, a very light grade of crude, the sources said.

Refinitiv data showed a maximum of 56.4 million barrels were being held in floating storage by July 3.

Irans fleet of crude oil tankers numbers 54 vessels, data from valuations specialist VesselsValue showed.

Iran storage is expected to continue as we do not see these vessels being able to trade anytime soon, a spokesman for shipping group NORDEN said.

The exact number of Iranian vessels on floating storage is a bit of a black box as they have all turned off their AIS signals, he said, referring to a vessels tracking transponder.

The oil ministry is trying to manage crude stocks by shutting more production.

Irans total liquid production - including crude oil, condensate and natural gas liquids - fell from 3.1 million barrels per day (bpd) in March to 3 million bpd in June, according to FGE. The firm predicts the production will fall by another 100,000 bpd in July.

Crude production was as low as 1.9 million bpd in June, according to Reuters OPEC survey. That was almost half of Iran's production in 2018, and the lowest level since 1981, the beginning of Iran's war with Iraq and attacks on its oil facilities, according to OPEC data. (Graphic: Iran oil production, here)

Iranian exports also fell to new lows as an oversupplied market and the coronavirus pandemic made it harder for Tehran to find customers willing to take its sanctions-hit oil.

Iranian crude exports were around 100,000 bpd in May, according to Kpler, and around 210,000 bpd according to FGE, reaching a new low, and a fraction of the more than 2.5 million bpd that Iran shipped in April 2018.

Kpler estimated June crude exports at 237,000 bpd and FGE at

210,000 bpd.

In the absence of official data, estimates are usually based on cargo tracking and could be subsequently revised.

Condensate stocks have also skyrocketed and are still rising. Managing the condensate inventories would be more difficult for Iran, analysts said, as they were byproduct of gas production that the country is heavily reliant on.

We still see Irans condensate stocks to continue building and approaching critical levels within the next 12 months, FGE said.

Irans domestic products demand, especially gasoline, also dropped in first half of 2020 due to COVID-19 lockdowns, putting more pressure on the inventories.

Iran is a coronavirus hot spot in the Middle East with more than 11,000 reported deaths, according to a Reuters tally.

As the result, Irans refinery runs significantly dropped in the second quarter of 2020.

Refinery intake for crude fell to 1.4 million bpd in May from 1.5 million bpd in April, FGE estimated. The intake was almost 1.8 million bpd in February before the lockdown.

(Graphic: Iran Crude & Condensate Stocks Outlook, here)

Reporting by Bozorgmehr Sharafedin and Jonathan Saul, additional reporting by Alex Lawler; editing by David Evans

Continue reading here:
Iran's oil storage almost full as sanctions and pandemic weigh - Reuters

Irans controversial former president is reportedly set to offer to negotiate a peace settlement between warring groups in Yemen, but he may find no takers in either the Arabian Peninsula or his own government.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a one-time firebrand who served as Irans president from 2005 to 2013, plans to send letters to United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, the leader of Yemens rebel Houthi movement and Saudi Arabias Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, offering to mediate an end of the conflict, several Iranian news websites cited an informed source close to the former official as saying.

Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates launched a war in Yemen in 2015 after the Iranian-backed Houthi militia took control of the countrys capital, Sanaa, from the internationally recognised government. The conflict has since turned the country into the worlds most dire humanitarian crises, according to the UN.

Sharing the full story, not just the headlines

According to the source close to Mr Ahamadinejad, the letters would be followed by the formation of a mediation commission that would oversee peace talks. Citing an unnamed source, Independent Persian journalist and scholar Arash Azizi said Mr Ahmadinejad had asked former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohammad to join the mediation panel.

Mr Ahmadinejads letters have yet to be publicly released. But a senior official of the internationally recognised Yemeni government, now based in the city of Aden, quickly dismissed any talks.

The best thing Iran could do to Yemen is to stay away from Yemen and to stop their support for the Houthis, Yemeni foreign minister Mohammed al-Hadhrami told the Independent.

It also remains unclear if Mr Ahmadinejad understands the extraordinary complexity of Yemens conflicts, which include battles between UAE-backed southern separatists and the pro-Saudi government in Aden and a military effort to defeat Al Qaedas local branch.

Mr Ahmadinejad, the first non-cleric to become president of the Islamic Republic of Iran, also lacks credibility in his own country. He was a noisy populist hardliner in office but managed to alienate both reformists and conservatives with his disruptive foreign and domestic policies. Under his presidency Iran drastically expanded its nuclear programme and increased hostility with the west while damaging Irans economy with pricey handouts that fuelled inflation.

During his presidency, he frequently wrote letters to world leaders requesting dialogue, but was frequently ignored.

At 63, Mr Ahmadinejad, who is also a former mayor of Tehran, has been struggling to redefine himself and remain in the public limelight.

His attempt to run for the presidency in 2017 was thwarted by the Council of Guardians, which vets Iranian candidates for national office. He has sought to generate buzz through social media, praising professional athletes, quoting American rap stars and commenting on world affairs.

What sin have the people of Kashmir, Libya, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan, and the people of the Ninth Ward [of New Orleans] and those of the South Side of Chicago committed to live under such an inhuman world system of governance? he wrote last year on Twitter.

Some analysts have suggested Mr Ahmadinejad may be preparing a 2021 presidential bid. Earlier this week he decried a potential long-term deal between Iran and China, saying it would allow Beijing to economically exploit the country.

See the original post here:
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: Irans controversial former president to offer to mediate in Yemen war, reports say - The Independent