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Iranian lawmakers voted to raise spending on the nations missile program and elite forces, bolstering twin pillars of the security establishment that are at the center of a growing dispute with the U.S.

Parliament on Sunday overwhelmingly approved a bill sanctioning an additional 20 trillion rials ($609 million) for Irans missile program and the Qods Force arm of the Revolutionary Guards. The legislation cited hostile U.S. policies against Iran and American adventurism in the region, according to Tasnim news agency. President Donald Trump has expanded sanctions on Iran and swung behind its Gulf rivals since taking office, amid signs he might attempt to sink the 2015 nuclear accord that opened the Islamic Republic for business.

The extra funding -- on top of two years of increased defense spending -- serves as amultifaceted message, according to Ariane Tabatabai, a senior associate with the Proliferation Prevention Program at theWashington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The missile program serves to project power and show strength at a time where the region is incredibly volatile and is geared toward Irans regional adversaries like the Gulf Arabs, as well as ISIS and other terrorist groups, she said. It also serves to show the U.S. that the chest-thumping wont intimidate Iran. From their perspective, this is about deterrence.

In another sign of escalating tensions, the U.S. said an Iranian drone operating without navigation lights came within 1,000 feet (305 meters) of U.S. aircraft from the carrier Nimitz that were in flight during night operations in the central Persian Gulf on Sunday. The approach created a dangerous situation with the potential for collision and is not in keeping with international maritime customs and laws, Commander Bill Urban, a spokesman for U.S. Naval Forces Central Command, said Monday in a statement.

The seven-party agreement curbing Irans nuclear program led to increased Iranian oil sales and investor interest in Iran, and was heralded as a basis for talks on easing clashes over Mideast flashpoints where Iran and Sunni powers allied to the U.S. are on opposite sides. But the deal has run into greater turbulence under Trump, who argues that its overgenerous terms have emboldened authorities in Tehran that oppose American interests.

His administration has so far found Iran to be in compliance with the accord after quarterly reviews -- a judgment also made by international monitors -- while saying its missile tests and overseas military interventions are in breach of its spirit.

Irans other malign activities are serving to undercut whatever positive contributions to regional and international peace and security were intended to emerge from the accord, State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said last month.

In June, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson signaled that support for peaceful regime change in Iran may be one option for the U.S. to consider.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, whose diplomatic overtures concluded with the landmark breakthrough, on Sunday again warned against unilateral efforts to undermine it.

Anyone who harms the accord harms himself and his country, Rouhani was quoted as saying by the Iranian Students News Agency. If the U.S. acts against the agreement everyone will side with us and against the person who wants to weaken it, he said in reference to other signatories to the deal, including Germany and France, which strongly support its continuation.

Rouhani has come under growing pressure from conservative opponents at home who want a more assertive response to Trump.

The bill passed on Sunday, which had been before parliament for two months, constitutes a first step, speaker Ali Larijani was quoted as saying by the official Islamic Republic News Agency. If the U.S. applies sanctions that violate the multi-party nuclear deal with Iran, the Iranian government will be bound to react, he said.

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Iranian officials have asserted that the legislation doesnt violate the agreement and a subsequent United Nations resolution, which discouraged but didnt bar missile development. Tehran considers American actions to have contravened the accord as the extra sanctions have further disrupted efforts to normalize trade. The bill needs to be approved by Irans Guardian Council, a body of Islamic law experts and jurists, in order to take effect.

With assistance by Anthony Capaccio

Excerpt from:
Iran Military Boost Signals Resolve to Resist US Pressure - Bloomberg

The administration is still working on its Iran strategy, but Mr. Trump and his aides have put a few cards on the table, demonizing Iran; backing tough new sanctions related to missiles and human rights violations; and pledging cooperation with Sunni countries that, like Israel, view Iran as a singular menace and demand its isolation.

Irans threatening behavior certainly deserves pushback from the United States and others. But Iran is not the only destabilizing force in the region, and unremitting hostility is not the answer. Even during the Cold War Washington engaged Moscow, when possible, on nuclear weapons, regional conflicts and human rights.

The United States and Iran had almost no contact after the 1979 Iranian revolution until Secretary of State John Kerry and Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif formed a working relationship during the nuclear negotiations. Instead of building on that, Mr. Trump and his secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, have refused to even meet the Iranians.

A more imaginative policy would revive the secretary of state channel to resolve conflicts before they grow and explore solutions for Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen and Iraq. There is precedent for cooperation. Iran helped America and others to organize the new Afghan government after the Talibans ouster in 2001 and to forge a unity government in 2014. Iran could be encouraged now to press the Taliban to enter reconciliation talks with Kabul. Iran and the United States could also work together to combat drug trafficking in Afghanistan, another shared concern. And Iran has been helpful in Iraq by fighting the Islamic State.

Last week, 47 national security leaders urged America and Iran to begin discussing with the nuclear deals other signatories a follow-up agreement that could extend the nuclear restraints on Iran further into the future and expand them to other countries in the region that have or are considering nuclear energy programs. In addition, they proposed a new consultative body so that Iran, Saudi Arabia, the United States, Russia, Turkey, China and the European Union could consult on major regional disputes.

There are other constructive ways for the United States to counter Irans influence, like joining with its Sunni allies in helping the regions war-torn countries rebuild. Saudi Arabias recent moves to improve relations with Iraq by opening a land border and resuming air links are a good sign.

Iran is too big to be ignored. And if Washington pursues regime change, as some officials seem to favor, the risks will be huge. This is a crucial moment for Iran as revolutionary leaders die off and competition heats up between hard-liners with a strict anti-Western Islamic ideology and pragmatists who back the nuclear deal and international engagement.

In the balance is a population of 80 million, mostly young, Iranians who have in recent years elected relatively moderate leaders inclined toward evolutionary reform. As it has done with adversaries such as the Russians and the Chinese, America can make progress by engaging the Iranians and avoiding the kind of escalation that empowers hard-liners.

A version of this editorial appears in print on August 14, 2017, on Page A18 of the New York edition with the headline: Before You Rip Up That Iran Deal ...

Originally posted here:
Before You Rip Up That Iran Deal ... - New York Times

Ayatollah Sadeq Khalkhali is notorious as Iran's "hanging judge," having ruthlessly ordered hundreds of summary executions after trials that sometimes lasted just minutes in the months following Iran's 1979 revolution.

His daughter, however, remembers him differently.

"My father's outside image is very violent," Fatemeh Sadeghi says in an interview published this month in the Iranian magazine Andisheye Pouya. "But that's not the image of him that I had at home. He was very strict at home, but he would never beat me."

Sadeghi said her father never discussed his dark past with her.

"He didn't want to talk about it," she said. "It was clear that he had [some issues], but he wasn't remorseful."

Revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini selected Khalkhali to head the newly created Revolutionary Courts shortly after taking power. Before Khalkhali was forced to step down and sidelined in December 1980, he sent hundreds of people to their deaths, including many affiliated with the regime of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi.

In his 2000 autobiography, Khalkhali wrote that he indeed felt no remorse.

"I killed over 500 criminals close to the royal family, hundreds of rebels in the Kurdistan, Gonabad, and Khuzestan regions, and many drug smugglers,'' Khalkhali wrote, according to a translation by The New York Times.

''I feel no regret or guilt over the executions. Yet I think I killed little. There were many more who deserved to be killed, but I could not get my hands on them," he added.

Khalkhali died in 2003 at the age of 77.

The Andisheye Pouya interview this month marks the first time that Sadeghi, a respected women's rights activist who has criticized the compulsory hijab in the past, has spoken publicly about her father.

He presented himself as a revolutionary and believed that he had to accept some bad notoriety for the revolution."

While she says she doesn't intend to justify her father or defend his actions, she asserts that, at that moment in her country's history, those in charge had to demonstrate "revolutionary decisiveness."

"The atmosphere then was very ideological," Sadeghi said. "I don't want to say that my father was kind -- not at all. But that ideological atmosphere required revolutionary decisiveness."

"At that time, they all wanted to present themselves as revolutionaries to scare the enemy. This is how I see things," she added.

She says she never felt she had to defend Khalkhali, who is believed to have acted with Khomeini's blessing, because "my father always insisted that his political face -- good or bad -- was his business."

"He presented himself as a revolutionary and believed that he had to accept some bad notoriety for the revolution," she said. "[My father] would always say: 'We made the revolution and we have to stand by it.' I can still hear him."

People often criticize her father, but Sadeghi says she doesn't react. She merely takes note so she can later tell relatives what she heard.

"People have the right to make judgments about political figures, so whatever I hear is not strange to me," she says.

Why didn't Fatemeh Sadeghi say: 'Although Khalkhali was my father and I love him, he did bad things to people -- many bad things.'"

Sadeghi then recounts a particular episode that has stuck in her mind.

She was riding in a long-distance taxi from Tehran to Karaj, about 30 kilometers west of the Iranian capital, when she heard one of the passengers attacking her father.

"[That person] started saying very bad insults about my father," she recalled. "He said that [my father] was once detained in France with two sacks of gold, adding that his wife was also with him.

"Those moments were hard on me. But I wanted to laugh at the image of my mother carrying a sack of gold," Sadeghi said. "[My father] wasn't a thief. He didnt have any hidden wealth.

"My father ordered the [execution] of [former Prime Minister Amir Abbas] Hoveyda. He went to Kurdistan (where Khalkhali ordered the execution of many Kurds)," Sadehi said. "All of this happened, but he didn't steal."

Khalkhali presided over the brief trial of Hoveyda, who served as prime minister under the shah for more than a decade. Moments after being sentenced to death, Hoveyda was taken outside and shot in the back of the head. Khalkhali then returned to the courtroom and announced that the sentence had been carried out.

The New Haven-based Iran Human Rights Documents Center reports that Khalkhali was proud to have been present at Hoveyda's execution and had kept the pistol as a memento.

She said that Khalkhali, who had become a supporter of the reformist movement, convinced her in 1997 to vote for reformist presidential candidate Mohammad Khatami, who won the election and served as Iran's fifth president from 1997 until 2005.

The interviewer, who says she is a friend of Sadeghi, rarely challenges her. At one point, she asks Sadeghi if she misses her father.

"It's a tough question. Is there anyone who doesn't love his or her parents?" Sadeghi asks.

Sadeghi's interview has been criticized by some as a dubious effort to humanize a monster.

"I wish Fatemeh Sadeghi had continued her silence regarding her father," wrote exiled Iranian journalist Arash Bahmani on Twitter.

The Iranian blogger who goes by the name Zeitoun commented on Facebook: "Why didn't Fatemeh Sadeghi say: 'Although Khalkhali was my father and I love him, he did bad things to people -- many bad things.' Why didn't she say that?"

Visit link:
Daughter Of Iran's 'Hanging Judge' Breaks Silence About Her Notorious Father - RadioFreeEurope/RadioLiberty

TEHERAN Iran's Parliament has voted to allocate US$520 million (S$708 million) to develop its missile programme to fight the US' "adventurism" and sanctions, and to boost the foreign operations of the country's Revolutionary Guards.

Sunday's vote follows a spike in tensions between Teheran and Washington since US President Donald Trump took office in January with a vow to get tough on the Islamic republic - and after the United States imposed fresh sanctions against Iran last month, targeting its missile programme.

"The Americans should know that this was our first action," said Speaker Ali Larijani, after announcing an overwhelming majority vote for a package "to confront terrorist and adventurist actions by the United States in the region".

A total of 240 lawmakers voted for the Bill, out of the 244 parliamentarians present.

It mandates the government allocate an additional US$260 million for missile development and the same amount to the Revolutionary Guards' foreign operations wing, the Quds Force, state news agency IRNA said.

The Quds Force leads Iran's military role in Syria and Iraq.

Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said the Bill had the support of the government.

The Bill is "very smart, particularly because it doesn't violate the nuclear deal and doesn't allow the other side to make excuses," he added.

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

See the rest here:
Iran raises budget for missiles, troops after US curbs - The Straits Times

By a huge majority, members of Irans parliament voted Sunday to increase spending on the nations ballistic missile program and finance its paramilitary Revolutionary Guard.

Members of Parliament chanted "Death to America" during the session, the Associated Press reported.

The vote was viewed as a response to recently announced U.S. sanctions against the Muslim country.

Irans state-run IRNA news agency reported that 247 lawmakers attended the vote session, with 240 approving the spending plan and one lawmaker abstaining.

No specifics were available about how the new funds would be used.

The bill now heads to an oversight committee called the Guardian Council, which is expected to approve it.

Abbas Araghchi, a deputy foreign minister and senior nuclear negotiator on hand for the vote, said moderate President Hassan Rouhani's government would support the bill.

"The bill has very wisely tried not to violate the (nuclear deal) and also gives no chance to the other party to manipulate it," he said in comments reported by IRNA.

Iran's President Hassan Rouhani speaks in Tehran, May 9, 2017. (Associated Press)

Under terms of the bill, some $800 million will be put toward several projects, including the Defense Ministry and its intelligence agencies. Among the agencies receiving money would be the Revolutionary Guards' Quds force, an expeditionary force run by Gen. Qassem Soleimani, who has been in Syria and Iraq.

The Guard, separate from Iran's conventional military forces, answers only to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

The bill also imposes a visa and travel ban on U.S. military and security organizations and their commanders who have provided financial, intelligence, military, logistic and training support to terrorists in the region, naming the Islamic State group and the Syrian branch of al Qaeda.

Iranian officials often accuse the U.S. of being involved with both groups. The U.S. is actively involved in a massive military campaign against the Islamic State group and has struck the al-Qaida affiliate as well.

Perhaps more relevantly, the bill also includes banning visas for American officials involved with the Iranian exile group called the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq. Prominent U.S. lawmakers and politicians have met with the group and spoken at its rallies. The MEK has paid one of Trump's Cabinet members and at least one adviser in the past for giving such speeches.

IRNA also referred to the money also being used to develop nuclear propellers. In December, Rouhani ordered officials to draw up plans on building nuclear-powered ships, something that appears to be allowed under the nuclear deal, over an earlier dispute on U.S. sanctions under the Obama administration.

Trump signed a sanctions bill earlier this month that included new measures imposed on Iran. That sparked new outrage in Iran, with Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif accusing Trump of trying to "kill" the nuclear deal.

Earlier this month, Iran reiterated a previous assertion that new U.S. sanctions against it would constitute a breach of the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and a group of Western powers.

Araghchi said the country had prepared a list of 16 measures to take against the U.S. in response to the sanctions, but would not elaborate.

The U.S. sanctions impose penalties on people involved in Irans ballistic missile program, enforce an arms embargo and apply terrorism sanctions to Irans powerful Revolutionary Guard.

In remarks aimed at Trump earlier this month, Rouhani issued a warning for anyone looking to discard the 2015 deal.

Those who intend to tear down the deal should know that they are tearing down their political life, Rouhani said during a swearing-in ceremony to launch his second term.

Trump has repeatedly criticized the 2015 negotiated by the Obama administration, calling it bad and vowing to come up with a better plan for discouraging Irans nuclear ambitions.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Iran lawmakers vote to boost spending on missile program ...