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Iranian defeated presidential candidate Mehdi Karroubi (R) speaks with an unidentified cleric following Friday prayers at Tehran University in the Iranian capital on July 17, 2009. Getty Images

A relatively stable period in Iranian politics came to an end this week when one of the country's main opposition figures announced he would go on hunger strike to protest his detainment under extrajudicial house arrest since 2011, piling pressure on President Hassan Rouhani just as his second term gets going.

Mehdi Karroubi , 79, is one of the leaders of the opposition Green Movement, the popular protest movement that arose in the wake of the 2009 elections. Karroubi ran for the presidency that year and contested the official result when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was named the victor. He launched his hunger strike on Wednesday, just days after having a cardiac pacemaker implanted to prop up his ailing heart.

Lawmakers were busy debating the proposed cabinet of the recently re-elected President when news started to filter through that one of the few remaining first generation revolutionaries had stopped eating and drinking since the morning, demanding a public trial and an end to the 24 hour presence of intelligence agents inside his house.

The political establishment was caught off guard, as lawmakers, reformist figures and general members of the public lined up to criticise the 7-year decision by the Islamic Republic to hold Karroubi under house arrest, as well as fellow opposition leader Mir-Hossein Mousavi , and his wife Zahra Rahnavard. The three are being held without prospect of trial or due legal process.

The live coverage by state TV of the Parliament session was cut short when members of parliament began discussing Karroubis strike instead of the planned votes of confidence on the new cabinet. Former president Mohammad Khatami was among the reformist voices urging Rouhani, a moderate who owed both of his election wins to the support of reformists, to act immediately. Many reminded the President of his promise, in his first election bid four years ago, to try to have the house arrest lifted.

The reaction on Twitter and other social networking apps was even more outspoken, with many denouncing the house arrest, and a campaign to go on hunger strike in solidarity gaining traction.

However, it was only when news broke that Karroubi had been rushed to hospital at 1 a.m. on Thursday with his condition deteriorating and his son Mohammad asking for people to pray for him, that the state began to react. With armed security forces and supporters amassing at Karroubis home and at the hospital where he was being treated, Rouhani gave in to Karroubis demand for security agents to leave his home immediately. He promised that the government would do its best to have a public trial although that decision is under the jurisdiction of the judiciary, over which the Supreme Leader holds authority.

What made this whole rather short-lived saga remarkable was the level of reaction from politicians to activists and supporters of the detained leaders of the Green Movement, which was long thought to be over and ended. Rouhani, who had been under fire from reformists for not satisfying their requests for cabinet ministers, was suddenly faced with a united and belligerent front from his supporters demanding action. Just as he begins his second term, he is already being torn between the demands of reformists, and the constraints of the state.

It may be too soon to say whether the incident marks the return of a resurgent Green Movement, but it has serious implications for Rouhani's second term. If Karroubi and Mousavi continue to be held without trial, the President's perceived inability or unwillingness to do anything about it will harass him throughout the next and final four years of his presidency.

And if either of these now elderly men should die in the meantime, public anger against Rouhani and the state could boil to levels not seen since the 2009 protests that birthed the Green Movement in the first place.

Read more:
How a Hunger Strike in Iran Spells Trouble for Hassan Rouhani - TIME

Iran is ready to swap 500,000 bpd of oil with its fellow Caspian Sea countries, Iranian Fars news agency reported on Friday, quoting a senior official.

According to Hamid Hosseini, head of the North department at Iranian Oil Pipeline and Telecommunication Company, a 272-km (169 miles) pipeline has been built to ship crude oil from the Neka terminal on the Caspian Sea to a Tehran refinery.

Under the swap deals, refineries in Tehran and Tabriz use the swapped oil, while Iran delivers the same amount it receives via the Kharq Oil Terminal in the Persian Gulf.

Last week, Iran resumed the oil swaps in the Caspian Sea after a 7-year suspension, Platts reported, quoting the National Iranian Oil Co.

Several oil tankers have already been offloaded at the Neka terminal, the Iranian company said, but did not name the countries with which it had resumed swap deals.

Before the hiatus, Irans main swap deal partners in the Caspian Sea area were Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Azerbaijan.

Iran stopped the oil swap deals in 2010, when then-oil minister Massoud Mir-Kazemi said the agreements were losing money rather than generating profits. The volume of the oil swaps then was between 70,000 bpd and 100,000 bpd.

For Iran, the swaps with Caspian producers meant that Tehran could supply northern areas with oil processed at the Tehran, Tabriz, and Arak refineries without having to transport it all the way from wells in the south.

Related:Aggressive U.S. Oil Sanctions Could Bankrupt Venezuela

According to Platts, Iran had been negotiating over the past four years the resumption of the oil swap deals with Kazakhstan, Russia, and Turkmenistan.

Now that most of the Western sanctions on Irans oil have been lifted, Tehran is targeting to add 700,000 bpd to its overall production capacity, which is expected to rise to 4.7 million bpd by 2021.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

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Iran Seeks 500000 Bpd Oil Swap With Caspian Countries - OilPrice.com

President Donald Trump likes a good war of words with foreign leaders. And besides the North Koreans, the leadership in Iran makes a first-rate target for him. After all, one of his signature campaign pledges was to undo the 2015 nuclear deal that Barack Obamas administration signed with Tehran and five world powers.

Since Trumps earliest days in office, he has kept alive the threat that he might unilaterally withdraw the United States from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), a multilateral agreement unanimously endorsed by the U.N. Security Council. This represents a challenge to Trumps counterpart in Tehran, President Hassan Rouhani, who made the deal his administrations central accomplishment and is now banking that the U.S. president will stick to it despite Trumps rhetoric.

But Rouhani cant let Trumps threats go unanswered. On Aug. 15, he warned that if Trump imposed new sanctions, Iran could turn the nuclear clock back to where it was prior to the 2015 deal and could do so not within months and weeks, but in a matter of hours and days. In Washington, this was interpreted to mean that Tehran might undo all the concessions it made during the negotiation process and, in a bat of the eye, move back to the edge of a nuclear weapons capability.

Iran has its own merciless politics, and Rouhanis gambit is an effort to prevent Trumps denunciations of the deal from acting as an anchor around his neck. At worst, U.S. opposition to the deal could hinder his domestic agenda and serve as ammunition for members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and other hard-liners, who never believed that Washington would keep its end of the bargain. For Rouhani, the nuclear agreement was never an end in itself: Its successful implementation was to be the catapult that would propel him to the highest office in the Islamic Republic. He clearly seems loath to let Trump push him off his path.

No doubt, the recently re-elected Rouhani has greater political ambitions left in him. It is a safe bet to assume he is already eyeing the top job in the regime, the position of supreme leader.

The incumbent, 78-year-old Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has no plans to go anywhere just yet but Rouhani has to start preparing the ground if he is serious about taking Khameneis post when the current supreme leader dies. In this jockeying for power, and with Trumps threats in the background, Rouhani has no option but to up the rhetorical ante to mollify his right flank. For Rouhani, appearing soft in the face of Trumps warnings is tantamount to political suicide.

Nonetheless, the Iranian presidents statements on the future of the nuclear deal are carefully considered. They in no way indicate that Iran intends to abrogate the nuclear agreement at the first opportunity. In fact, the unanimous view across the Iranian political space is that Trumps aim is to goad Tehran to walk away from the deal on its own.

As Ali Shamkhani, the head of Irans Supreme National Security Council, put it, Trump is laying a trap, and Iran will not fall for it. Elsewhere, in an explicit signal to the Europeans, China, and the Russians,Shamkhanialso said that Iran is not willing to keep JCPOA at any cost, for JCPOA is valid only if all parties continue to respect it.

Iran wants to press the other parties to the nuclear deal to do their utmost to minimize the damage that may arise from American resistance. This is most evident in Tehrans insistence that the major economic powers in Europe and Asia ignore Trumps call to shun the Iranian economy. In other words, Tehran is engaging in its own systematic goading of international public opinion by trying to isolate Trump. As long as all the other signatories to the deal continue to abide by it, the Iranians will have no urge to walk away. Nor does the leadership in Tehran believe that Trump will have the political capital, at home or on the international stage, to mobilize support for renewed sanctions on Iran.

On Aug. 15, Rouhani made another point that did not receive as much attention as his remarks about turning back the nuclear clock. He said criticism inside Iran about the 2015 deal has subsided. He is right, and it is an important point. He is no longer depicted as the father of a deal that was meant to produce sanctions relief but that his hard-line foes said was a pledge that was dead on arrival. With the Iranian presidential elections over, the hard-liners are instead turning their condemnation to Trump for his anti-deal posturing.

What should Washington make of this political convergence in Tehran? Its important not to get too excited: Yes, Rouhani and even his most ardent critics agree that the nuclear deal is both a reality and worth saving. But whether this confluence amounts to a new trajectory in Iranian politics remains to be seen.

Here is what we do know.Rouhanis landslide election victory on May 19 was made possible only because Irans vast reformist-minded voter class opted to come out and cast a vote. The almost 24 million who backed him, many reluctantly, wanted to empower the president to forge ahead with bold policies that pressed for the release of political prisoners and increased representation for women and religious minorities. After all, that is what he promised as the incumbent candidate.

But so far Rouhani has shown no appetite for boldness in his second term. Instead, he appears to be doubling down on his first-term playbook recognizing that change in the Islamic Republic can only be instituted by co-opting the supreme leader and not by attempting to force an agenda on Khamenei.

This is already evident. Just look at the makeup of Rouhanis cabinet nominations, which are up for confirmation this week. Not only did Rouhani reportedly seek Khameneis approval before the list was sent to the parliament for confirmation, an unusual step and one that contravenes the constitution, but his nominees are hardly of the reformist ilk. Mohammad Khatami, the elder of the reformist movement, who had backed Rouhani, was forced to publicly remind the president about his campaign promises.

Meanwhile, in his inauguration speech on Aug. 5, Rouhani avoided any topic that might dismay Khamenei. There was no mention of freeing political prisoners or questioning the vast powers of the IRGC or its military interventions in Syria and Iraq. Rouhani focused on assuring that there are no serious splits inside the regime and dismissed the idea of duality of power in Tehran as merely a myth. Foreign businesses, he said, should feel safe investing in Iran.

The head of the IRGC, Gen. Mohammad Ali Jafari, did not attend the inauguration perhaps a signal that contradicts Rouhanis attempt to prove Iranian politics is in harmony. It isnt, but Rouhani is not the only one who wants to move the political pendulum toward the center.

Khameneis own recent appointments also suggest a desire to strengthen the nucleus of the regime by keeping both reformists and the far-right out of key positions. His appointments this week to the Expediency Council, an organ that mediates between the elected parliament and the unelected Guardian Council, were devoid of both radical reformists and any candidates from the far right.

The fact that Khamenei and Rouhani are acting in concert is not coincidental and should not come as a surprise. Neither man is interested in major disruptions inside the regime.Meanwhile, a feasible strategy for Rouhani, as he looks to make himself into the inevitable choice for the top job when the day arrives, is to broaden his base.

Rouhani successfully cajoled reformist voters to pull the lever for him in the last presidential election but, going forward, this is not the constituency that he needs the most. If he hopes to rise to the Islamic Republics top post, he needs to move toward the political center and even further to the right, where he will find the IRGC and other hard-liners. Rouhanis calculated war of words with Trump has to be seen in this broad context: Iran is unlikely to violate the nuclear deal as long as the EU, Russia, and China stick to it, but threatening to walk away will help the Iranian presidents political strategy at home.

ATTA KENARE/AFP/Getty Images

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Iran Is Not About to Fall for Trump's Trap - Foreign Policy (blog)

Mehdi Karroubi pictured in 2009 when he was the Iranian parliaments speaker. Photograph: Damir Sagolj/Reuters

An Iranian opposition leader who has been under house arrest for six years has ended a hunger strike after the government agreed to remove intelligence agents from his home.

However, Mehdi Karroubis demand to be tried for his supposed crimes appears no closer to being granted. He has not been charged with any offence since being placed under house arrest in 2011.

The 79-year-old Shia cleric stopped eating and drinking on Wednesday morning and was taken to hospital on Thursday due to high blood pressure.

His son Mohammad Hossein told the reformist Jamaran website that Karroubi met the health minister, Hassan Ghazizadeh Hashemi, on Thursday and secured promises that convinced him to end the hunger strike.

Sahamnews, a website linked to the Karroubi family, said the government had promised to remove the agents from his home.

Karroubi and the fellow reformist politician Mir Hossein Mousavi were candidates in Irans disputed 2009 presidential election, which sparked months of mass protests over claims the polls were rigged in favour of hardline incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Both were placed under house arrest in 2011 for their role in the protests, which were brutally put down by the regime.

The former president Mohammad Khatami, the figurehead of the reformist movement who has been banned from appearing in the media since the protests, said there was nothing he could do to secure a trial.

The fact that I cannot do anything to remove these worries makes me even more sad, he told Karroubis son, according to Sahamnews.

Karroubis wife, Fatemeh, told Sahamnews this week that his first demand was the removal of intelligence ministry agents and security cameras that had been recently installed in their home, which she said has no precedent before or after the [1979 Islamic] revolution in any house arrest.

Second in case of continuation of the house arrest, they should arrange a public trial, she said. Karroubi does not expect a fair trial but wants it to be public and would respect the verdict, she added.

In March, Hossein was sentenced to six months in prison for propaganda against the regime after he published a letter that his father had written to Irans current president, Hassan Rouhani, calling for a trial.

Karroubis failing health he underwent a heart operation this month poses a potential problem for the Iranian regime, with fears that any deterioration could lead to renewed protests. He remained in hospital on Friday.

Rouhani, considered a political moderate, was re-elected in May after rallying reformists and vowing to win the release of Mousavi and Karroubi.

But the hardline judiciary chief, Ayatollah Sadegh Larijani, played down the likelihood of Rouhanis promises shortly after the election. Who are you to end the house arrest? Larijani said in May.

Link:
Iran reformist leader Mehdi Karroubi ends hunger strike - The Guardian

Well, well, well, it looks like Saudi Arabia is finally realizing that its impulsive strategies and ill-conceived policies are not working in its favor. Who ever thought that in an era of arrogant chest pounding the desert kingdom would reach out to Iraq to mend relations between Riyadh and Tehran? But that is exactly what happened few days ago.

The Iraqi TV channel Alghadeer reported that Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), the impulsive crown prince who once said that he would take the fight to Iran, reached out to Haider al-Abadi, the Iraqi prime minister, requesting that al-Abadi lead a mediation effort with Iran.

Why this sudden change of heart from Saudi Arabia? The answer lies in not only the Middle Easts complex political dynamics, but also the kingdoms declining regional political clout. Let us, then, not fall for the Saudis empty promises, false indications, and misreading.

The kingdoms demand for Iraq to act as a mediator to mend Saudi Arabias relations with Iran shows that the desert kingdom realizes a pragmatic political truth: Rather than fight Iran on all fronts, it makes sense to reestablish relations, to work together (though on the surface only) to resolve regional issues (Syria, Yemen, Iraq, etc.), and to find a common ground on oil prices.

Another explanation is that Saudi Arabia wants to accelerate the inevitable political changes that will speed across the region once the Syrian conflict is resolved (if ever), tensions in Yemen subside, the blockade of Qatar gets lifted, and oil prices stabilize. My guess is that someone is advising the Saudi leadership not to lock horns with Iran because China and Russia will work behind the scenes to pull the two nations apart (as a favor to Iran). Mind you that it is in the interest of both China and Russia that conflicts in the region persist. That way, both countries, Russia and China, can realize greater opportunities to multiply their economic and political footprints in the region, to influence the internal affairs of the Middle East.

Irony: there are those in the Middle East who argue that the reestablishment of relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia will bring stability to the region. I have to disagree with their assessment. The reason is that the desert kingdoms initiative stems from fear of losing its leadership in the regionwhatever is left of itin the face of Irans growing influence. One does not have to look far to see, for instance, how Muqtada al-Sadr, a Shiite and an anti-American figure who commands a large following among the urban poor of Baghdad and the southern cities, is visiting the Gulf region while the dispute between Qatar and a Saudi-led bloc persists.

Of note: Shia-majority Iraq lies on the fault line between Shia Iran and Sunni-ruled Arab Gulf monarchies that include Saudi Arabia.

As I argue in my forthcoming book, Saudi Arabia: Islam, Corruption and the Hidden Truth, the future of Saudi Arabia will change as it settles into the regions geopolitical shift. That landscape is one in which (a) Irans influence continues to grow, and (b) Saudi Arabia pursues unsound foreign policies while domestic discontent (high unemployment) grows. Thus, Saudi Arabias desire to repair relations with Iran is a strategic move and has nothing to do with Islamic brotherhood or any other slogan. . . .

By the way: Did the desert kingdom receive the blessing of the religious establishment to repair relations with Iran? No doubt. To my knowledge, nothing can proceed in Saudi Arabia, from a policy perspective, without the blessing of the hardline conservative religious establishment. It leads me to wonder how Mohamed bin Salman intends to approach religious issues. Thus far, MBS has treated the religious establishment as allies against radicalism rather than as cultural adversaries. I find MBSs argument that extreme religious conservatism in Saudi Arabia is a relatively recent phenomenon, born in reaction to the 1979 Iranian revolution, absurd.

My sense is that the desert kingdom (the royal family) is worried more about its survival and domestic stability. Thus, shifting the conversation and diverting attention could be a good strategy. However, if the people of Riyadh, Jeddah, Dammam, Khobar, and Qatif among others, were to unravel, combined with ongoing issues in the Shia eastern province, things could quickly take a different turn. In that case, Iran stands to benefit from a destabilized Saudi Arabia. An unstable Saudi Arabia would pave the way for Iran not only to increase its influence in Iraq, Yemen, and Syria even further than it already has, but also to start working on other Gulf States, including Bahrain and Kuwait.

That scenario sends chills down the spines of some observers in Sunni circles.

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