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Over the past decade, a significant portion of Irans economic institutions have been handed off to the office of the Supreme Leader under the guise of privatization.

The driving force behind this stunning power grab is the expanding sphere of influence of Khamenei's office and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) over Irans economic resources.

This so-called privatization campaign is a decisive turning point beginning in 2005, when Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and the IRGC stacked the executive with people who completely at least initially shared Khameneis strategic vision for the regime. At this point, Khamenei began to implement a profound restructuring of Iran's economy, including the ownership of a wide range of industries and institutions.

This first took the form of an official directive issued in May 2005. The government was instructed to transfer 80 percent of its economic enterprises to "non-government public, private and cooperative sectors" by the end of 2009. Among these were large mines, primary industries (including downstream oil and gas), foreign commerce, banks, insurance, power generation, post, roads, railroads, airlines, and shipping companies. By some estimates, close to $12B in shares were transferred over just three years, from 2005 to 2008.

The beneficiaries of the bulk of these transfers were the Supreme Leaders office and its various tentacles, including the dominant Setad, the armed services, and the infamous bonyads or foundations. The implications are better grasped in light of the fact that these institutions exercise virtually absolute control over all decision-making, legislative mechanisms, intelligence gathering, and access to significant budgetary commitments. The resulting powerhouses that have arisen act as the main players and the gatekeepers for western companies into the Iranian economy.

The newly published Rise of the Revolutionary Guards' Financial Empire: How the Supreme Leader and the IRGC Rob the People to Fund International Terror released by the U.S. office of the National Council of Resistance of Iran highlights 14 economic powerhouses directly or indirectly controlled by Khamenei, the IRGC, or their affiliates. Setad's holdings alone total about $95 billion, according to a recent Reuters calculation. All these entities are tax-exempt while some also receive annual government funding.

The Supreme Leader and the IRGC control at least 50 percent of Irans GDP.

But where do the profits go? They end up funding the conflict in Syria, terrorism and sectarianism in Iraq, the war in Yemen, the nuclear and missile programs, the security apparatus in Iran, and fundamentalist operations around the world. In the end, Irans national economy has been made to serve the domestic suppression, warmongering, export of fundamentalism, and terrorism.

Tehran is spending between $15-20 billion annually to fund the war in Syria, including at least $1B in salaries to its proxies. IRGC Qods Force commander Qassem Soleimani spends billions of dollars in Iraq to fund the Shiite militias and instigate sectarian violence. At least one billion dollars is provided to Hezbollah in Lebanon annually, and Tehran has poured at least 1.3 billion dollars into the coffers of Hamas.

Western companies would like the deals they make with Iran to be seen as transactions with the private sector. However, behind the official banks and companies lies a web of institutions controlled by the IRGC.

Western companies, governments, and the citizens they represent cannot avoid the reality that today those running Irans economy are those who suppress the Iranian population and export the terrorism and fundamentalist ideology that threaten the West.

To do business with Iran is to do business with Khamenei and the IRGC.

The Trump administration now has a unique opportunity to help cut off resources to the IRGC and impose limitations on its profit-making, terror-funding operation, by designating the IRGC for what it is: a Foreign Terrorist Organization.

Congress would certainly agree with this bipartisan issue.

Alireza Jafarzadeh, the deputy director of the Washington office of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, is credited with exposing Iranian nuclear sites in Natanz and Arak in 2002, triggering International Atomic Energy Agency inspections. He is the author of "The Iran Threat" (Palgrave MacMillan: 2008). His email is Jafarzadeh@ncrius.org.

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Iran, terrorism and the rise of the revolutionary guards' financial empire - Fox News

VIENNA

U.S. President Donald Trump's administration pledged on Tuesday to show great strictness over restrictions on Iran's nuclear activities imposed by a deal with major powers, but gave little indication of what that might mean for the agreement.

The 2015 deal between Iran and six major powers restricts Tehran's nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of international economic sanctions against the Islamic Republic.

Trump has called the agreement the worst deal ever negotiated. His administration is now carrying out a review of the accord which could take months, but it has said little about where it stands on specific issues.

The Trump administration also gave few clues about any potential policy shift on Tuesday in a statement to a quarterly meeting of the U.N. nuclear watchdog's Board of Governors.

The United States will approach questions of JCPOA interpretation, implementation, and enforcement with great strictness indeed, the statement to the International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA) 35-nation board said, citing the deal's full name: the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.

Familiar wording

But the U.S. statement, the first to the Board of Governors since Trump took office in January, also repeated language used by the administration of former U.S. President Barack Obama, for whom the deal was a legacy achievement.

Iran must strictly and fully adhere to all commitments and technical measures for their duration, it said wording identical to that used in the U.S. statement to the previous Board of Governors meeting in November.

The IAEA, which polices the restrictions on Iran's nuclear activities under the deal, last month produced a quarterly report saying that Iran's stock of enriched uranium had halved after coming close to a limit imposed by the agreement.

U.S. expects more details from Iran

That report was the first to specify how much enriched uranium Iran has, thanks to a series of agreements between Tehran and major powers clarifying items that would not count towards the stock.

Some major powers had criticized previous reports for not being specific enough on items such as the size of the enriched uranium stock, and the U.S. statement called for future reports to be as detailed.

We welcome inclusion of the additional level of detail, and expect it will continue in the future, it said.

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Trump Administration Pledges 'Great Strictness' on Iran Nuclear Deal - Voice of America

Swift-moving Iranian vessels came dangerously close to a U.S. Navy surveillance ship in the Strait of Hormuz over the weekend, U.S. officials said Monday.

The apparent harassment of the USS Invincible on two occasions, on Thursday and Saturday, came amid Iranian state media reports that Iran had tested its newly acquired S-300 missile air defense system that is designed to intercept incoming missiles.

In addition, Fox News reported that Iran had test-fired a pair of ballistic missiles that destroyed a floating barge over the weekend, but that could not be independently confirmed.

Iran fired a medium-range ballistic missile last month, apparently violating a U.N. Security Council resolution. The Trump administration responded with its first economic sanctions, placing 12 businesses and 13 people on a list that prohibits Americans from dealing with them.

The February test led President Trump to tweet, Iran is playing with fire they dont appreciate how kind President Obama was to them. Not me!

[Trump wants to push back against Iran, but the country is more powerful than ever]

Taken as a whole, the incidents form a pattern suggesting Tehran and Washington could be squaring off for a more direct confrontation. Trump came to office condemning the Obama administration for being what he characterized as weak on Iran, and he has vowed to be tougher. Iran seems to be testing whether Trump means what he says.

In the incidents involving the Invincible, an Iranian frigate came within 150 yards of the Navy ship on Thursday, a Pentagon spokesman, Capt. Jeff Davis, told reporters. On Saturday, a number of smaller boats approached the U.S. ship, closing to within 600 yards, Davis said.

Surveillance ships like the Invincible are typically equipped with scientific instruments and radar that allow them to monitor missiles and rockets from their launching to the point that they land.

A Navy official condemned the Iranian actions as unsafe and unprofessional.

British and U.S. warships patrol the regional waters, and three ships from Britains Royal Navy were reportedly accompanying the Invincible. State Department officials said they were aware of reports that Iran had tested an air defense system but could provide no further information.

But a key Senate Republican called for more than tough words in response to what he described as Iranian provocations.

These provocative tests are just the latest example of Irans dangerous actions that demand a coordinated, multifaceted response from the United States, said Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker (R-Tenn.). The administration has already begun to push back in the way that we should, and I look forward to working with them as we prepare to introduce bipartisan legislation to deter Irans threatening behavior on all fronts.

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Pentagon says Iranian vessels harass Navy ship, as Iran tests missile defense system - Washington Post

BEIRUT President Hassan Rouhani should apologize to the Iranian people if he cannot show that the economy has improved, one of Iran's most prominent hardliners said on Tuesday, setting a battle line for a presidential election in May.

Rouhani is opposed by hardliners who resent the nuclear deal he struck with world powers including the United States which lifted economic sanctions and was supposed to boost the economy.

Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, the head of the Assembly of Experts, a body that selects Iran's supreme leader, starkly criticized that policy and what he said was Rouhani's failure to improve the economy over his four years in office.

If the resistance economy has not been followed in the way that it should and must have been, then he must apologize and tell them (Iranians) the reasons, Jannati told a meeting of the Assembly where Rouhani was present, Fars News reported.

Rouhani said that his administration would present a full economic report by the end of the Iranian calendar year, in late March, according to the state TV's website.

While hardliners, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, have criticized Rouhani's economic record in recent weeks, the president has sought to move the political discourse to other matters that might appeal to moderate voters.

In a speech to lawyers at the Iranian bar association later on Tuesday, he expressed, in unusually blunt terms, his hopes for better civil rights in Iran.

We need to make people more aware of their rights than in the past, Rouhani said, according to Fars News. When an investigator asks about peoples private lives they should stand strong and say this is my private area and you dont have a right to ask me about my private life.

We shouldnt interfere in peoples private lives and shouldnt search them.

The conservatives who hope aim to stop Rouhani winning a second four-year term, have yet to identify their candidate, but they hope the election of U.S. President Donald Trump and his ban on travelers from Iran will swing public opinion their way.

Its a gift to the most radical elements of the Islamic Republic of Iran who have been saying for years that America is not interested in genuinely good relations with Iranian people, said Abbas Milani, director of the Iranian Studies program at Stanford University.

(Editing by Robin Pomeroy)

KABUL Gunmen dressed as doctors attacked a military hospital close to the U.S. embassy in the Afghan capital, Kabul, on Wednesday and were engaging security forces inside the building, officials and witnesses said.

SEOUL A man claiming to be the son of the slain, estranged half brother of North Korea's leader said he was lying low with his mother and sister, in a video posted online by a group that said it helped rescue them following the murder a month ago.

KUALA LUMPUR Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak struck a softer tone with North Korea on Wednesday, a day after accusing it of treating Malaysians as "hostages" amid a diplomatic meltdown over the murder of the estranged half-brother of the North's leader.

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Rouhani talks rights as Iran election nears, critic attacks him on economy - Reuters

He was the leader who presided over a Twitter ban in Iran, but now former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has made his own debut on the social networking site complete with an English-language video message and posts encouraging mercy and love.

Off social media, Ahmadinejad is better known as a hard-line conservative who worked hard to censor the Internet, blocking Facebook and Twitter amid anti-government protests in 2009.

But on Sunday, tweets began to flow from an account first created in January that bears Ahmadinejad's name and a personalized video message. The former leader quickly gained more than 14,000 followers, and top aides retweeted his posts. He also drew jeers from Iranian and other Twitter users alike, with some joking about a potential Twitter war with President Trump, another prolific user of the site.

(Twitter is still technically banned in Iran, but an increasing number of Iranian officials use it, including Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and its current president,Hassan Rouhani).

"Follow me at @Ahmadinejad1956 that's me," Ahmadinejad said in a short video message posted Sunday, in which he speaks English and stands next to an Iranian flag.

Later, on Monday, he wrote: "The merciful creator created all human beings from the essence of love."

"Let's all love each other," he wrote.

The tone of his new tweets is a departure from his political image as a populist firebrand who challenged the West. Ahmadinejad served two terms as Iran's president from 2005 to 2013, a period when human rights deteriorated, government corruption spread and Iran became increasingly isolated from the rest of the world.

Late last year, Ahmadinejad emerged as a potential chief rival of Rouhani, who is seeking reelection this spring. But Khamenei, who holds considerable sway over the political process, urged Ahmadinejad to abandon any presidential ambitions he might have ahead of new elections in May.

Still, Ahmadinejad is seen as an influential player and potential spoiler. His former vice president, Hamid-Reza Baghaei, announced in February his intention to run for president a move widely seen as having Ahmadinejad's backing.

Other hard-liners have joined Twitter in recent months, including the ultra-conservative editor of Kayhan newspaper. Other conservative-affiliated organizations, including the Mizan News Agency and even state-run businesses, maintain Twitter accounts, according to the New York-based International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran.

Meanwhile, on Twitter, Ahmadinejad's bio describes him as: "Husband, Dad, Grandfather, University Professor, President, Mayor, Proud Iranian.

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Former Iranian president Ahmadinejad banned Twitter. Then he joined it. - Washington Post