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Tehran called on the US to release all Iranian citizens currently detained in the country, reported Iranian state news agency on Saturday.

We raised the issue of the release of Iranians who are detained under the meaningless accusation of bypassing sanctions, on Iran, Irans deputy foreign minister Abbas Araghchi was quoted as saying, according to the Associated Press, but he did not elaborate.

The statement was made on the sidelines of a meeting on the 2015 nuclear deal in Vienna with an American delegation.

President Donald Trump's White House dialed up the pressure on Iran Friday, demanding the quick return of Americans detained in the Islamic Republic.

"President Trump is prepared to impose new and serious consequences on Iran unless all unjustly imprisoned American citizens are released and returned," the White House said in a statement.

The tough warning comes just days after Trump rowed back on a campaign promise and upheld the Iran nuclear deal, while introducing new non-nuclear related sanctions.

The threat of prisoner-related sanctions opens up a new front in tensions between Tehran and the Trump administration.

US officials say Trump has taken a keen interest in the fate of Americans held overseas and was deeply affected by the case of Otto Warmbier, a student who was released last month from a North Korean prison in a coma and died shortly after being sent back home.

Two US citizens are believed to have been detained in Iran -- former FBI agent Robert Levinson, who disappeared in Iran in 2007 and Princeton graduate student Xiyue Wang arrested last year.

In the case of Xiyue, Irans judiciary announced a 10-year prison sentence for the student last week, causing public waves.

"President Donald J. Trump and his Administration are redoubling efforts to bring home all Americans unjustly detained abroad," the White House statement said.

"The United States condemns hostage takers and nations that continue to take hostages and detain our citizens without just cause or due process."

Washington and Tehran have had no diplomatic relations since April 1980 in the wake of the Islamic revolution, and tensions have sharpened under Trump after a brief warming under his predecessor, Barack Obama.

The two countries along with other major powers signed an accord July 14, 2015 aimed at curbing Iran's nuclear program. Washington has continued to honor the accord despite Trump's threats as a candidate last year to "rip it up."

(Staff with agencies)

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Tehran calls on US to release detained Iranian citizens amid tensions - i24NEWS

Iranian lawmakers have proposed changes to the countrys tough antidrugs laws, a move that could abolish the death penalty for some drug-related crimes.

If approved by parliament, a proposed amendment could curb the number of executions in the Islamic republic, which has one of the highest rates of capital punishment in the world.

Iran has been under mounting international pressure to curb its number of executions. Human rights groups say Iran executed at least 567 people in 2016 and nearly 1,000 in 2015, including men from Afghanistan, where the majority of illicit drugs come into Iran. Iranian officials say 70 percent of all executions in the country were for drug-related offenses.

In Iran itself, calls have been made to ease the use of capital punishment for drug-related offenses. Critics say the extensive use of the death penalty has done little to stop drug use and trafficking in the country that is on a major transit route for drugs smuggled from Afghanistan.

Iran has some of the toughest drug laws in the world. The death penalty can currently be invoked for the trafficking or possession of as little as 30 grams of heroin or cocaine.

On July 16, parliament approved a proposal to amend the law to disallow the death penalty for petty, nonviolent drug-related crimes. Parliament speaker Ali Larijani, however, sent the draft bill back to the parliamentary judiciary committee for further deliberation.

"I have consulted the head of judiciary regarding this bill, Larijani was quoted as saying by the semiofficial ISNA news agency on July 17. They said they agree with the principle of the bill, but there are still some drawbacks that need to be resolved.

Before becoming law, the legislation needs to be approved by parliament and ratified by the Guardians Council, the powerful clerical body that must approve all proposed legislation.

Height Of Cruelty

The New York-based Human Rights Watch has called for the government to halt all executions for drug-related crimes while parliament debated the reforms.

It makes no sense for Irans judiciary to execute people now under a drug law that will likely bar such executions as early as next month, said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. It would be the height of cruelty to execute someone today for a crime that would at worst get them a 30-year sentence when this law is amended.

In November, Hassan Nowruzi, the parliamentary judicial committee spokesman, called for parliament to change the law, revealing that 5,000 people were on death row for drug-related offenses, the majority of them aged between 20 and 30. He said the majority are first-time offenders.

In October, more than 150 lawmakers in the 290-member chamber called for the executions of petty drug traffickers to be halted. Lawmakers also suggested that capital punishment should be abolished for those who become involved in drug trafficking out of desperation or poverty.

In August, Mohammad Baqer Olfat, the deputy head of the judiciary's department for social affairs, said the death penalty had not deterred drug trafficking; in fact, he said, it was on the rise. Rather than the death penalty, he suggested, traffickers should be given long prison terms with hard labor.

Tough Stance

But hard-liners in the judiciary appear to be resistant to the idea of tweaking the country's harsh drug laws.

In comments published in September, Judiciary head Ayatollah Sadegh Larijani defended the bodys tough stance against amendments to the law.

In some cases, including drug trafficking, were forced to act quickly, openly, and decisively, said Larijani, while adding that the judges should not delay the implementation of sentences.

He said in some cases alternative punishments can replace the death penalty while respecting some conditions, but added that the death penalty cannot be ruled out.

Afghan Inmates

Thousands of Afghans involved in the illicit narcotics trade have ended up in Iranian prisons and have been executed. Afghanistan is the worlds largest producer of opium, which is used to make heroin, and Iran is a major transit route for the drug to western Asia and Europe.

The precise number of Afghans executed in Iran over the past several years is unknown. Tehran rarely informs or provides explanations to Kabul about the execution of its citizens.

Afghan media estimates that some 2,000 Afghans have been jailed in Iran on drug-smuggling charges and other criminal acts, while hundreds more face the death penalty.

Afghan lawmakers and human rights groups have raised concerns, saying many Afghans imprisoned in Iran do not receive fair trials because they lack access to defense lawyers and are not given the opportunity to get assistance from Kabul.

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Iranian Deputies Push To Abolish Execution For Drug-Related Offenses - RadioFreeEurope/RadioLiberty

There was a lot of news lost at the end of last week when Sean Spicer, the hapless White House press secretary, finally resigned. In any other news cycle, the revelation that Jared Kushner forgot about $10 million in assets on his ethics forms (weve all been there) or a U.S. senate candidate siding with members of the alt-right over the Anti-Defamation League would have garnered more attention.

One story that should not slip underneath the radar, however, is a report that the Trump administration has apparently entrusted a small group at the White House to undermine the Iran nuclear accords over the objections of the Departments of State and Defense.

The Worst Deal Ever That Actually Wasnt

The news says a lot about two very narrow ways in which the administration sees not only Iran but the greater world. First, some members of the administration have failed to see the admittedly very real challenges presented by Iran outside the binary U.S.-Iranian contest for influence in the Middle East. Second, and most importantly, some members of the administration still do not understand that much of what the United States has been able to accomplish over the past two decades has been achieved through coalitions that could actively resist U.S. efforts to roll back those accomplishments.

Many incoming members of the Trump administration felt strongly that the Obama administrationand perhaps even the Bush administration before itdropped the ball on meeting the challenges posed by Iran. They have half a point. Iran has posed three undeniable challenges to the United States and its partners since the September 11th attacks, and those challenges include its nuclear program, its conventional arms build-up, and its asymmetric activities supporting proxy groups and partners from Yemen to Lebanon.

From the perspective of many regional partners, including many Israelis and some key Gulf partners, the only solution to the threats posed by Iran is a change in the Iranian regime. The Obama administration, looking back on the regime change wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan as less than glittering successes, tried to break the problem down, though, and focus first on the nuclear program. Through painstaking diplomacy, the Obama administration and its international partners negotiated the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action to halt the Iranian nuclear program.

It was a monumental achievementalbeit one greeted with fury by those same regional partners who played no role in its negotiation. I accompanied the Secretary of Defense, Ash Carter, to some decidedly frosty meetings with Israeli and Saudi leaders once we finalized the deal, and I then watched the Saudis and Israelis unsuccessfully lobby the Congress over the summer to reject the deal.

If those regional partners had no success on Capitol Hill, though, they have had success in the Trump White House. And they were helped by the fact that many of the men who are working on the Middle East within the White House have as their frame of reference for Iran the war in Iraq between 2006 and 2008. U.S. Army veterans like Derek Harvey and Joel Rayburnboth mentioned in the report as staffers working on the Iran dealare not specialists on Iran but sure remember Iran and its proxies lobbing mortars into the Green Zone in Baghdad during the darkest days of 2007. Its not hard to understand why they might not have warm feelings toward the Iranians.

And its also understandable why they might criticize our efforts in the Obama administration. We addressed the Iranian nuclear program, sure, but we never curbed Irans asymmetric activities, which only got worse in Yemen and Syria in particular. Worse, some members of the Obama administration held out some hope that the nuclear deal might bring Iran in from the cold or moderate its behavior in other arenas. Needless to say, that did not happen.

Those of us who work on Middle East policy, though, often fail to remember theres a world beyond our particular region of focus. And Im struck by the words of one of our most senior military commanders in the waning days of the Obama administration: The more I look at North Korea, the more thankful I am for the Iran deal.

Few who work on North Korea think the Iran deal was a bad deal. Asia specialists would kill for the kind of deal we Middle East specialists spend so much time griping about.

In the same way, I understand why neither the Israelis nor the Gulf partners would ever want the United States to reduce the roughly 35,000 U.S. servicemen we have stationed in the Gulf region alone. But the United States has global obligations, and there is real opportunity cost to tying up so many U.S. resources in a region energy markets are making less important while the Pacific region grows in strategic significance. In that context, even the Obama eras most quixotic efforts to disentangle the United States from the Middle East look more excusable.

The second way in which the Trump administration is constricted by a very narrow focus, though, is the lack of appreciation for the way in which the United States has achieved most of its gains in the Middle Easteither against the Islamic State or Iranoperating as part of coalitions. Those same coalitions both enable and constrain U.S. actions.

Against the Islamic State, the United States assembled a broad coalition of nations to claw back Iraqi and Syrian territory. Thirty nations contribute to the military coalitionwith many more contributing diplomatic, intelligence, and humanitarian support. It is fair to say that few of these nations support an effort to carry the fight to Iran once Daesh is defeatedthough I know that some members of the Trump administrations national security staff are eager to challenge Irans proxies in Syria and Iraq.

The same goes for the other members of the United Nations Security Council, Germany, and the European Unionall of whom helped negotiate the nuclear deal with Iran. We Americans often describe Iran as a rogue state, but if the Trump administration is seen to be undermining the nuclear deal, it will not be Iran that our international partners consider rogue. The secretaries of State and Defense both understand this, and the president should as well. If the deal collapses, and the United States is seen as being the one to blame, multilateral diplomacy is no longer a viable option to contain Irans nuclear ambitions. Only a military strikeor series of military strikeswould suffice. This might be what some within the Trump administration want, and its certainly what many regional partners want, but its neither what Americas allies or Trumps voters want.

Ironically, six months into the Trump administration, there has been a lot more continuity in U.S. Middle East policy than change. But some members of the Trump administration remain obsessed with the former administration. In recent months, the top Gulf, Syria, and Iraq experts at the National Security Councilall career civil servants, but all suspected of having too many close ties to the Obama administrationhave been unceremoniously returned to their home agencies. Members of the administration go on Fox News and proclaim former Obama administration officialswho they had previously and incongruously denounced as nave and incompetentare running a vast conspiracy within the U.S. civil service to undermine the presidents agenda.

All of that creates a toxic environment whereby members of the Trump administration might be tempted to do things not because they are wise but simply because they reverse things the Obama administration did. When it comes to the Iran deal, that would be a mistake of epic proportions.

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If Trump Undermines the Iran Deal - The Atlantic

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy says the sanctions will show those who work against America's interests that their "actions have consequences." Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call,Inc. hide caption

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy says the sanctions will show those who work against America's interests that their "actions have consequences."

Congress will consider imposing new sanctions on Russia and Iran as well as North Korea, after Republicans and Democrats agreed to changes that will allow the legislation to move ahead. The bill also aims to prevent President Trump from relaxing sanctions without lawmakers' consent.

An earlier form of the sanctions legislation had sailed through the Senate with a 97-2 vote last month. But that legislation focused only on Russia and Iran. It then lost momentum in the House after representatives said they wanted to include North Korea. That conflict has been resolved, lawmakers say.

A vote is expected in the House on Tuesday. On the same day, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee has scheduled a hearing on assessing U.S. policy toward North Korea.

"Those who threaten America and our interests should take notice your actions have consequences," House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy said in a tweet as news of the agreement emerged on Saturday.

The sanctions bill "will hold Russia and Iran accountable for their destabilizing actions around the world," Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer of Maryland said. "The legislation ensures that both the majority and minority are able to exercise our oversight role over the administration's implementation of sanctions."

Lawmakers are looking to approve the sanctions before leaving Washington for the August recess.

Suggesting strong support for the new bill, McCarthy and House Foreign Affairs Chairman Ed Royce issued a joint statement in which they noted that in May, the House voted 419-1 to impose sanctions on North Korea.

The two California Republicans say the revised bill has a range of targets, including North Korea's ballistic missile system. They also said the sanctions have been modified to prevent side effects that would have benefited what they called Russia's "energy oligarchy," while also addressing concerns of European countries that have said sanctions could threaten their access to energy resources.

It's not known how Trump might greet the legislation if it reaches his desk. He could sign it or veto it something that would risk both public criticism and the chance that Congress might override his veto with a two-thirds vote.

Earlier this month, White House Legislative Affairs Director Marc Short said the legislation regarding congressional approval was written in a way that no administration, Republican or Democratic, would support.

Short said the legislation would set "an unusual precedent of delegating foreign policy to 535 members of Congress by not including certain national security waivers that have always been consistently part of sanctions bills in the past."

The U.S. has a long history of imposing sanctions on Russia including the seizure by the Obama administration of two diplomatic compounds in the U.S. But as NPR's Greg Myre recently reported, "Critics say the two countries should be focused on matters like the war in Syria and the turmoil in Ukraine."

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House And Senate Reach Deal On Sanctions For Russia, Iran And North Korea - NPR

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Iran seizes Saudi Arabian fishing boat and arrests crew as tensions escalate in Persian Gulf - The Independent