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Iranian artillery bombed Kurdish militants in northern Iraq on Monday, injuring at least three people and forcing hundreds to flee their homes, Kurdish officials told VOA.

The cross-border shelling in Iraqi Kurdistan's Haji Omaran region targeted positions of Iranian Kurdish rebel groups Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (KDPI) and Komala, Kurdish officials said.

"The shelling started at 5 a.m. [local time] and continued for several hours, forcing hundreds of civilians from nearby villages to flee their homes," Farzang Ahmad, the local administrator of the Haji Omaran sub-district in Iraqi Kurdistan, told VOA.

Ahmad added that one villager and two rebels were injured and many local farmers' livelihoods were destroyed as a result of the shelling.

"The Republic of Iran's justification for the attack is the presence of Iranian Kurdish rebels in the border region with Iraq," he said.

Iran is home to roughly 10 million Kurds who mostly live in the northwest of the country, close to Iraqi and Turkish Kurdish communities across the border.

Kurdish groups

Kurdish armed groups, such as KDPI and Komala, have been in conflict with the Iranian government for decades, and are seeking greater autonomy for the areas inhibited by ethnic Kurds. These armed Kurdish groups are widely spread across the 60-kilometer border with neighboring Iraq.

The mountainous nature of the terrain makes it difficult for the Iranian government to control the area.

To diminish the growing activity of the Iranian Kurdish rebels, the country's military has bombed areas inside the Iraqi border on several occasions in the past, drawing criticism from Iraqi Kurdish officials who charge that civilians bear the brunt of the bombing.

The Iranian government has not commented on Monday's shelling, but Iraqi Kurdish officials say the bombing was carried out in response to the killing of an Iranian commander and injuring two Iranian border guards during clashes in Kermanshah province on Saturday.

Mustafa Mauludi, the secretary general of KDPI, denied his group's involvement in the killing and added that no other Kurdish group has claimed responsibility for Saturday's attack.

Mauludi accused Iran of initiating escalations with Kurdish rebels and breaking a two-decades-old cease-fire in 2015.

"The Islamic Republic of Iran has been attacking us for years now, thinking we will abandon our struggle," Mauludi told VOA. "We have persisted our struggle despite difficulties and we will continue to do so."

Escalation of fighting

The predominately Kurdish province in northwestern Iran situated in the border region with Iraq has recently witnessed an escalation of fighting between Kurdish armed groups and Iranian border guards.

Iranian officials say that they have expelled the Kurdish rebels from the province.

"Thanks to efforts of the armed forces and struggles of the intelligence forces, security is in place on the border lines," Asadollah Razani, Kermanshah province governor general, said last Thursday.

Razani added that Iranian forces are closely monitoring the border region with Iraq and "any suspicious move will receive strong response."

However, Kurdish rebel leader Mauludi told VOA that his group receives broad support from the Kurdish population in Iran and that conflict in the province may continue "until [the] Kurdish issue is resolved."

He told VOA that continued Iranian attacks will more likely encourage Kurdish rebel groups to unify against the Iranian government forces.

"We have been in dialogue with other Kurdish parties in Iran for a while to develop a long-term cooperation mechanism and a mutual platform that will help us be more prepared for future challenges," Mauludi said.

Original post:
Kurds Accuse Iran of Cross-border Shelling in Northern Iraq - Voice of America

A Canadian court has accused Iran of supporting terrorism, upholding a previous ruling that requires the Islamic Republic to pay around $1.7 billion in damages to American victims of terrorism.

Ontarios Court of Appeal rejected Irans request to reconsider the ruling on Monday night, arguing that doing so would amount to a breach of Canadas Justice for Victims of Terrorism Act (JVTA).

The JVTA allows victims of terrorism to sue foreign states for damages.

The accusation came despite Irans firm response to similar cases in the past, where various American and European courts had taken punitive measures against Tehran over unproven claims of complicity in terror.

The new case was brought by families of Americans citizens who had been killed in a series of attacks between 1980s and 2002, mostly blamed on Palestinian and Lebanese resistance movements Hamas and Hezbollah.

The families claimed that the Iranian government supported the two organizations and was therefore responsible for their actions.

The complaints were first filed in the US but the claimants turned to Canada after finding out that the Iranian government had more properties and bank accounts there.

A one-story house in Toronto, an industrial building in Ottawa and two bank accounts were among the assets that were sought in the case.

Without offering further elaboration, the court also claimed in its ruling that Iran was seeking to frustrate the JVTAs implementation.

The Iranian government had reportedly told the court that it had immunity in the case. It had also argued that the judgment was against international law and exceeded the maximum damages allowable in Canadian law.

Tehran also argued that the victims had to prove Irans role in each attack instead of just repeating the US governments baseless allegations.

The court said Iran was only immune in terrorism cases that had occurred before January 1985, when Canadas State Immunity Act was passed.

A recurring trend

Last year, the US Supreme Court ruled that around $2 billion had to be turned over to the American families of the people killed in a 1983 bombing in Beirut and other attacks blamed on Iran.

Likening the act to highway robbery, Iran said back then that it would seek reparations.

The trend of the unfair rulings continued in March, when a New York court ordered Iran to pay $7.5 billion in damage to families of victims of the September 11, 2001 attacks and $3 billion to a group of insurers over related claims.

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The ruling surprised many since Washington had clearly blamed the attacks on the al-Qaeda terror group and even investigated members of Saudi Arabias royal family who had proven ties to the terrorist organization.

Various investigations have revealed that 15 of the 19 plane hijackers involved in the attacks were Saudi nationals and some of them had received big sums of money from Saudi royals.

The ruling lost even more weight in September, after the US Congress passed the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA), clearing the path to sue Saudi Arabia for the tragic death of over 3,000 people.

It was reported in March, however, that a judge in Luxembourg had quietly put a freeze on $1.6 billion in assets belonging to the Central Bank of Iran (CBI) to compensate the 9/11 victims.

The Canadian courts ruling came days after yet another anti-Iran ruling by a US court, which allowed the American government to seize an Iranian charitys office tower in New York City over claims that it was used to breach Iran sanctions.

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Canadian court upholds $1.7 billion ruling against Iran - Press TV

Iran is accusing U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson of "a brazen interventionist plan" to change the current government that violates international law and the U.N. Charter.

Iran's U.N. Ambassador Gholamali Khoshroo said in a letter to Secretary-General Antonio Guterres circulated Tuesday that Tillerson's comments are also "a flagrant violation" of the 1981 Algiers Accords in which the United States pledged "not to intervene, directly or indirectly, politically or militarily, in Iran's internal affairs."

Tillerson said in a June 14 hearing before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on the 2018 State Department budget that U.S. policy is to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons "and work toward support of those elements inside of Iran that would lead to a peaceful transition of that government."

"Those elements are there, certainly as we know," he said.

Kohshroo said Iran expects all countries to condemn "such grotesque policy statements and advise the government of the United States to act responsibly and to adhere to the principles of the (U.N.) Charter and international law."

He noted that Tillerson's comments came weeks after President Hassan Rouhani's re-election to another four-year term and local elections in which 71 percent of the Iranian people participated. Rouhani is a political moderate who defeated a hardline opponent.

"The people of Iran have repeatedly proven that they are the ones to decide their own destiny and thus attempts by the United States to interfere in Iranian domestic affairs will be doomed to failure," Kohshroo said. "They have learned how to stand strong and independent, as demonstrated in the Islamic Revolution of 1979."

He said Tillerson's statement also coincided with the released of newly declassified documents that "further clarified how United States agencies were behind the overthrow of Mohammad Mossadegh, the popular and democratically elected prime minister of Iran on Aug. 19, 1953."

At the June 14 hearing, Tillerson said the Trump administration's Iranian policy is under development.

"But I would tell you that we certainly recognize Iran's continued destabilizing (role) in the region," Tillerson said, citing its payment of foreign fighters, support for Hezbollah extremists, and "their export of militia forces in Syria, in Iraq, in Yemen."

U.S. lawmakers have long sought to hit Iran with more sanctions in order to check its ballistic missile program and rebuke Tehran's continued support for terrorist groups, and on June 15 the Senate approved a sweeping sanctions bill..

The bill imposes mandatory sanctions on people involved in Iran's ballistic missile program and anyone who does business with them. The measure also would apply terrorism sanctions to the country's Revolutionary Guards and enforce an arms embargo. It now goes to the House.

Senators insisted the new Iran sanctions won't undermine or impede enforcement of the landmark nuclear deal that former president Barack Obama and five other key nations reached with Tehran two years ago.

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Iran accuses to US of 'brazen plan' to change its government ...

Under the terms of the deal, Total will invest $1 billion in the first phase of development of part of the South Pars gas field. It will form a partnership with the China National Petroleum Corporation and the Iranian company Petropars.

This is the one that everyone has been waiting for, Homayoun Falakshahi, an analyst at the energy consultancy Wood Mackenzie, said of the announcement. This deal very much sets the example.

Mr. Pouyann, a burly former rugby player, seems to have taken a calculated gamble. Iran has vast energy resources the worlds largest proven natural gas reserves and the second-largest trove of oil in the Persian Gulf, according to the BP Statistical Review of World Energy.

Total is extremely familiar with the slice of South Pars that it will work on, having scoped it out before sanctions made work in Iran impossible for big international companies.

Iranian oil officials are known as tough negotiators, but Mr. Pouyann argues that by being the first of the big international oil companies to sign a major deal with a post-sanctions Iran, he was able to shape much better terms than had been offered in the past.

Being in the lead could also position Total to reap other rewards, possibly including access to the Azadegan oil field, which could become one of the industrys largest projects in the next decade.

Turbulence in the Middle East including tensions between Qatar and other gulf countries, as well as violence in Iraq, Syria and elsewhere has made some companies wary. But Mr. Pouyann sees a strong opportunity for investment.

What the Middle East can offer us is having giant resources at a low cost, he said. You can have a profitable business.

Iran, long on oil and gas, but short on capital and technology, could be the next great energy frontier if global and domestic politics permit. A wide range of international oil companies are circling around it, looking for the right opportunity.

Totals deal is not without risks, however. In particular, the Trump administration, which is reviewing its approach to Iran, could take a harder line against Tehran, discouraging even international companies from investing there.

While Mr. Pouyann cannot rule out new sanctions, he and other potential investors were pleased when the Trump administration reapproved waivers, originally signed by the Obama administration, exempting international companies that invest in Iran from certain United States sanctions.

From Totals point of view, the advantages seem to outweigh the drawbacks.

It is a fairly reasonable risk to take, given what they have been seeing and what they have been hearing, said Richard Nephew, a former sanctions coordinator at the State Department who is now a researcher at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University.

Total can count on the backing of the French government, and it has additional protection from the investment of China National Petroleum Corporation, a state-owned company.

And with an annual investment budget of around $17 billion, the $1 billion Total has committed to spend over several years in Iran is relatively small in the grand scheme of things, said Oswald Clint, a senior analyst at Bernstein Research in London.

Pulling off a successful project in Iran will not be easy, and doing business there comes with a broad range of difficulties. Total has spent months preparing for this moment, sending small amounts of euros to Iran, for instance, to test the banking system there. The company has identified small European banks that will furnish its local financing needs, but other companies say that financing large deals remains difficult because most lenders avoid Iran, for fear of running afoul of the United States.

Iran can also be a difficult and opaque place to do business, one where corruption is widespread and where political opposition to foreign investment in Irans natural resources can raise obstacles.

Companies also say they need to take extreme care because of sanctions. Some oil executives said that when traveling to Iran to meet with officials there, for instance, they take only laptops stripped of sophisticated software like encryption programs, and older models of mobile phones, to avoid accidentally violating export controls.

Link:
Total Signs Deal With Iran, Exposing It to Big Risks and Rewards - New York Times

A shooting war between the US and Iran would set off a chain of uncontrollable conflicts.

It is now two years since the signing of the historic nuclear agreement between Iran and world powers. According to the United States and the International Atomic Energy Agency, Iran has complied fully with the agreement. Yet the enmity between the US and Iran has reached fever pitch under Donald Trump's presidency.

Trump, with his Israeli and Arab allies, has squarely targeted Iran as the main culprit for almost all the problems bedevilling the Middle East. He denounced it as the source of instability and extremism in the region, and put it "on notice".

Some analysts have raised the spectre of a US-Iranian military confrontation. They include former US Middle East envoy Dennis Ross, who recently penned an article in Politico to this effect. While the Trump administration's Middle East policy remains very incoherent, a military engagement with Iran could be disastrous for all sides.

Iran is not an entirely innocent party in the conflicts raging in Iraq, Syria and Yemen. Nor can it be dismissed as a source of growing Sunni-Shi'ite sectarian tensions and support for various sub-national groups, ranging from the Lebanese Hezbollah to the Iraqi Mahdi Army. Iran's involvement in these developments is part of a strategy of building a regional security architecture, stretching from Afghanistan to the Mediterranean. This, plus Iran's partnership with a re-assertive Russia, makes US concerns and those of its Arab allies, led by Saudi Arabia, understandable.

However, to blame solely Iran for the growing regional turmoil is to overlook other fundamental issues that darken the Middle East. It would be a gross oversight to ignore the role that the long-standing Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the flawed US intervention in Afghanistan and invasion of Iraq, and the botched approach to the Syrian crisis have played in opening the space for Iran to extend its strategic reach.

It would equally be tragic to turn a blind eye to the tensions and conflicts that have gripped the Arab world, manifested in the so-called Arab spring popular uprisings, the Saudi Arabian-led Arab efforts to restore the status quo, and the funding that has gone from some Gulf Cooperation Council states, not just Qatar, to Syrian rebels. Some of this funding has ended up in the hands of such extremist groups as the al-Qaeda-linked Jabhat al-Nusra, or what is now called Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, and also indirectly to the self-proclaimed Islamic State as anti-Shi'ite and anti-Iran groups.

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The latest move by Saudi Arabia and two of its Gulf council GCC allies the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain plus Egypt, to isolate and punish one of their own, Qatar, on the grounds that the emirate was supporting Islamist terrorism, is a further example of the perpetual conflicts that have struck the Arab landscape. However, Qatar's pursuit of an autonomous regional policy, involving good working relations with Iran, seems to be the main irritant. The Saudi-led demands for lifting the blockade of Qatar included that Qatar downgrade its relations with Iran, close down its Al Jazeera TV network (the only media in the Arab domain that was critical of authoritarian practices in the Arab world) and sever all ties with the Muslim Brotherhood movement and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas in Gaza.

The Muslim Brotherhood's electoral victory in the 2012 Egyptian elections and its year-long term in government before the military overthrew it shocked the Egyptian establishment and challenged the political legitimacy of the Gulf monarchies to the extent they denounced the movement as a terrorist organisation. No Arab monarchy found the Muslim Brotherhood's rise more challenging than Saudi Arabia, which claims the leadership of the majority Sunni Islam against Iran's championship of the minority Shi'ite Islam. The Saudis and their allies dislike Hamas because it originally grew out of the Muslim Brotherhood, and because of its rule of Gaza, where Qatari humanitarian and reconstruction aid was been critical in making a difference to the lives of the mostly impoverished 2 million inhabitants of the strip under Israeli blockade since 2007.

Qatar rejected the Saudi-led demands as unrealistic and repugnant to its sovereignty. The blockade has already proved counterproductive, as it pushed Qatar further towards Turkey and Iran, which rushed military support and food supplies to the emirate respectively.

Coming on top of all this is the Trump administration's confused and contradictory rhetoric and action. Its lambasting of Iran as the source of all evils in the region belies its confirmation that Iran has honoured the nuclear agreement and the unspoken fact that it has shared the US's fight against Islamic States.

Whatever the final outcome of the US-Iranian hostilities, if it leads to a shooting war it is bound to set off a chain of uncontrollable conflicts in the region. Iran does not possess the military strength and firepower to withstand a sustained attack by the US or, for that matter, Israel, or both. However, it is resourceful enough to make any attack very costly for its perpetrators by engaging in asymmetrical warfare and causing an inferno across the region. A combination of Iranian fierce nationalism and Shi'ite allegiance, as well as regional links, could make such a conflict very expensive and protracted. Russian involvement could widen beyond Syria, where the risk of a major-power confrontation is now also high.

No Arab monarchy found the Muslim Brotherhood's rise in Egypt more challenging than Saudi Arabia.

Amin Saikal is distinguished professor of political science and director of the ANU's Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies (the Middle East and Central Asia). He is the author of Iran at the Crossroads (Polity Press, 2016). amin.saikal@anu.edu.au

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Qatar crisis: Iran is not the only catalyst of the Middle East's turmoil - The Canberra Times