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Thousands of Iranians participated Friday in annual anti-Israel rallies, a heavily stage-managed show of support for the Palestinian territories that included displays of ballistic missiles.

The rallies on Quds Day, after an ancient Arabic name for Jerusalem, included the usual signs condemning Israel and the United States along with placards denouncing Saudi Arabia, its Sunni Muslim rival.

Protesters were bused into Tehran, the capital, or rode on subway trains whose fares were temporarily lifted. Demonstrators burned Israeli and American flags while others posed for selfies in front of yellow-painted missiles including the Zolfaghar, the type Iran fired this week at alleged Islamic State targets in Syria.

Irans Revolutionary Guard paramilitary force said it fired six Zolfaghar missiles on Sunday on the city of Deir el-Zour, one of Islamic States last remaining strongholds in Syria. Iran supports Syrian President Bashar Assad and is in an escalating confrontation with Saudi Arabia, which backs anti-Assad rebels.

The missile strikes were Irans first in more than a decade, according to reports, and came in response to attacks this month on the parliament building and a shrine in Tehran that were blamed on Islamic State militants.

Speaking at the Friday prayer ceremony at Tehran University following the march, firebrand clergyman Ahmad Khatami said that Iran would continue its missile program despite warnings from the Trump administration.

The missiles shot at Daesh were mid-range you can imagine the power of our long-range missile, Khatami said, using an Arabic acronym for Islamic State.

AFP/Getty Images

Ballistic missiles are displayed during a rally marking Quds Day in Tehran.

Ballistic missiles are displayed during a rally marking Quds Day in Tehran. (AFP/Getty Images)

The annual protests held on the last Friday of the fasting month of Ramadan are organized by Irans hard-line Shiite Muslim establishment as a show of support for the Palestinian people. Iran does not recognize Israel and backs militant groups, including Hamas and Hezbollah, that oppose the Jewish state.

President Hassan Rouhani and other top officials attended the rallies while state television repeatedly played a song whose lyrics proclaimed that Israel will be wiped out.

Standing in the shade on a warm morning, Zia Zahedi, a white-turbaned clergyman, said protesters were showing their support as Muslims for any oppressed people, wherever they live.

We are here to express our hatred against Saudi Arabia, Israel and America, said Zahedi, 57. The Saudi Arabian regime is not Muslim they are allies of Israel.

Sadegh Sofiyani ,a retired teacher, said protesters were soldiers of the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who said in 2015 that Israel would cease to exist in 25 years.

We are ready to shed our last drop of blood in any war against Israel, or in defending holy shrines in Syria and Iraq against Daesh, no matter the cost, Sofiyani said.

Special correspondent Mostaghim reported from Tehran and Times staff writer Bengali from Mumbai, India.

shashank.bengali@latimes.com

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Iran's anti-Israel rallies, a tradition during Ramadan, this year include ballistic missiles - Los Angeles Times

A Qatar semi-government human rights body said the demands were a violation of human rights conventions and should not be accepted by Qatar.

Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani had said on Monday that Qatar would not negotiate with the four states until economic, diplomatic and travel ties cut this month were restored.

The countries that imposed the sanctions accuse Qatar of funding terrorism, fomenting regional unrest and drawing too close to their enemy Iran. Qatar rejects those accusations and says it is being punished for straying from its neighbors' backing for authoritarian hereditary and military rulers.

The uncompromising demands leave little prospect for a quick end to the biggest diplomatic crisis for years between Sunni Arab Gulf states, regional analysts said.

"The demands are so aggressive that it makes it close to impossible to currently see a resolution of that conflict," said Olivier Jakob, a strategist at Switzerland-based oil consultancy Petromatrix.

Ibrahim Fraihat, Conflict Resolution Professor at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, forecast a prolonged stand-off.

Qatar will reject the demands as a "non-starter", he said, and its neighbors had already escalated as far as they were likely to go. "Military action remains unlikely at the moment so the outcome after the deadline would be a political stalemate ..."

Washington, which is a close military ally of countries on both sides of the dispute, has called for a resolution. U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Qatar's neighbors should make their demands "reasonable and actionable".

TEN DAYS TO COMPLY

An official from one of the four nations, who gave details of the demands on condition of anonymity, told Reuters the offer would be "void" unless Qatar complied within 10 days.

The UAE has said sanctions could last for years. Qatar, the world's richest country per capita, says the sanctions amount to a "blockade", but it has ample reserves to weather the storm.

The dispute is a big test for the United States, which has a large base in Qatar housing the headquarters of its Middle East air power and 11,000 troops.

President Donald Trump has backed the sanctions, even as his Defense and State departments have tried to remain neutral, resulting in mixed signals. Trump called Qatar a "funder of terrorism at a very high level", only for his Pentagon to approve selling it $12 billion of warplanes five days later.

The most powerful country in the region to back the Qatari side in the dispute has been Turkey, whose President Tayyip Erdogan has his roots in an Islamist political party similar to movements that Qatar has backed in the region. Days after the sanctions were imposed, Turkey rushed through legislation to send more troops to its base in Qatar as a sign of support.

Defence Minister Fikri Isik rejected the demand to close the base, saying it would represent interference in Ankara's relations with Doha. Instead, Turkey might bolster its presence.

"Strengthening the Turkish base would be a positive step in terms of the Gulf's security," he said. "Re-evaluating the base agreement with Qatar is not on our agenda."

Qatar has used its vast wealth over the past decade to exert influence abroad, backing factions in civil wars and revolts across the Middle East. It infuriated Egypt's present rulers and Saudi Arabia by backing a Muslim Brotherhood government in Cairo that ruled for a year until it was deposed by the army in 2013.

Qatar's state-funded satellite broadcaster Al Jazeera became hugely popular across the Middle East, but has long infuriated Arab governments used to exercising firm control over the media in their countries. Jazeera hit back at the closure order, calling it "nothing but an attempt to silence the freedom of expression in the region".

STOP INTERFERING

The demands, handed to Qatar by mediator Kuwait, tell Qatar to stop interfering in the four nations' domestic and foreign affairs and refrain from giving Qatari nationality to their citizens, the official from one of the sanctioning states said.

They also include severing ties with the Muslim Brotherhood, Islamic State, al Qaeda, Hezbollah, and Jabhat Fateh al Sham, formerly al Qaeda's branch in Syria, and the surrender of all designated terrorists on Qatari territory. Qatar denies it has relationships with terrorist groups or shelters terrorists.

It was ordered to scale down diplomatic relations with Iran, limit its commercial ties and expel members of Iran's Revolutionary Guards. Qatar denies they are there.

The sanctioning countries demanded Qatar pay them reparations for any damage or costs incurred due to Qatari policies. Compliance with the demands would be monitored, with monthly reports in the first year, then every three months the next year, then annually for 10 years, the official said.

Although Reuters was told about the contents of the ultimatum by an official from one of the sanctioning countries, UAE Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Anwar Gargash accused Qatar of leaking the demands.

"There is a price for the years of plotting and there is a price to return to the neighborhood," Gargash said on Twitter. "The leak (of demands) seeks to derail mediation."

Qataris who spoke to Reuters described the demands as unreasonable, particularly the closure of Jazeera, which millions of Arabs see as an important outlet for voices willing to challenge the region's authoritarian rulers, but which neighboring governments call a conduit for Islamist propaganda.

"Imagine another country demanding that CNN be closed," 40-year-old Haseeb Mansour, who works for telecom operator Ooredoo, said.

"A LOT ON THE LIST"

Abdullah al-Muhanadi, a retired public sector worker shopping for groceries in Doha on Friday morning, said the boycott must be lifted before negotiations to resolve the dispute could start.

"There's a lot on the list that is simply not true or unreasonable, so how can we comply?" he said. "There are no IRGC (Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps) elements in Qatar and the agreement with Turkey is a long-standing diplomatic agreement so we cannot ask them to leave."

Qatar has only 300,000 citizens enjoying the riches produced by the world's largest exports of liquefied natural gas. The rest of its 2.7 million people are foreign migrant workers, mostly manual laborers employed on vast construction projects that have crowned the tiny desert peninsula with skyscrapers as well as stadiums for the 2022 soccer world cup.

The sanctions have disrupted its main routes to import goods by land from Saudi Arabia and by sea from big container ships docked in the United Arab Emirates. But it so far has avoided economic collapse by quickly finding alternative routes, and it says its huge financial reserves will meet any challenges.

Qatar says the sanctions have also brought personal hardship for its citizens who live in neighboring countries or have relatives there. The countries that imposed the sanctions gave Qataris two weeks to leave, which expired on Monday.

(Additional reporting by Tom Finn and Tom Arnold in Doha, and Daren Butler in Istanbul; Writing by Rania El Gamal and Peter Millership; editing by Peter Graff and Jonathan Oatis)

Original post:
Arab States Issue Ultimatum to Qatar: Close Jazeera, Curb Ties With Iran - New York Times

Co-written with Daniel Wagner (@CountryRiskMgmt) of Risk Cooperative (@RiskCoop).

An official response to ISIS deadly twin attacks in Tehran on June 7, Irans medium-range missile strikes were a clear message not only to many in the region, but to Washington as well, that the Islamic Republic will not hesitate to respond decisively to forces hostile toward Iran.

Irans strikes against Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) targets in Syrias Deir ez-Zor governorate on June 18 marked the Islamic Republics first missile strikes in a foreign country since Tehran attacked the Peoples Mujahedin of Iran (MEK), a militant political organization, in Diyala, Iraq, with ballistic missiles in 2001.

Though the Iranian missiles hit targets in Syria, Tehran was most intent on delivering a message to Saudi Arabia. Irans Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) blamed Riyadh (and Washington, too) for the ISIS attacks in Irans capital. For years, Tehran has also accused Saudi Arabia of sponsoring terrorism in Irans peripheral provinces where Sunni-majority ethnic communities (Baloch, Kurdish, Arab, etc.) live, and where there has been a history of militancy against the Islamic Republic waged by groups with grievances stemming from marginalization in the country as well as some with separatist ambitions.

With Saudi and Iranian leaders having recently exchanged increasingly heated threats about direct military confrontation, Tehrans launch of missiles at a foreign country marks yet another sign of escalation in the Saudi-Iranian geopolitical rivalry for dominance in the Middle East. Saudi King Salmans decision to elevate his son Mohammad bin Salman (MBS) to crown prince, several days after Irans strikes on eastern Syria, can only further inflame bilateral tensions based on MBS anti-Iranian and increasingly sectarian foreign policy vision for the Middle East.

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Iran and the United States' Competition in Eastern Syria - HuffPost

The Trump administration is planning to step up its lobbying against parts of a bipartisan Senate bill slapping new sanctions on Russia and Iran, a senior official said - an effort that comes as Congress works to clear up an unexpected roadblock to the measure that could give the White House more time to air its concerns to sympathetic House Republicans.

The White House opposes provisions that could be seen as pre-empting the president's powers, the official said. Of particular concern is a congressional review process that would allow the House and Senate to block the president from lifting sanctions.

The House blocked progress on the Senate-passed Countering Iran's Destabilizing Activities Act earlier this week, arguing that it flouted the constitutional provision requiring revenue-raising bills to originate in the House. That prompted accusations from Democrats that the House Republican leaders were trying to stall the bill at Trump's request.

While the procedural snag could be cleared as soon as next week, it remains unclear when the House will take final action.

The Trump administration has publicly warned against impeding presidential prerogatives to relieve sanctions. "We would ask for the flexibility to turn the heat up when we need to, but also to ensure that we have the ability to maintain a constructive dialogue," Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told the House Foreign Affairs Committee last week.

The White House official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk more freely, said the administration's concern is one of separation of powers and not policy toward Russia. The official said the White House expects to see previous officials from Democratic administrations voicing the same concern as the debate plays out in the House.

For Trump, however, the issue is politically fraught because his relationship with Russia and whether Moscow interfered in the 2016 presidential election have become central themes of his presidency and is the subject of investigations by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III and congressional committees. The sanctions bill was passed by the Senate in response to Russia's continued involvement in the wars in Ukraine and Syria and for its alleged meddling in the election.

The president continues to express anger and annoyance at the focus on Russia's role in the election even as his public comments on the matter, such as calling it "all big Dem HOAX!" in a series of tweets earlier this week, have kept the issue in the news.

White House aides this week said the president isn't denying Russia tried to meddle in the election.

"I think he's made it clear and been consistent that while everyone agrees the result of the election wasn't influenced, he think that it probably was Russia," deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters Thursday.

House aides said Thursday a solution was being crafted in coordination with the Senate to address the constitutional issue, which dealt with possible revenue from fines that could be levied under the bill.

"Absent Senate action to return the bill and cure the Origination Clause issue, the House will act to preserve its Constitutional rights and 'blue slip' the Senate-passed bill," a Ways and Means Committee aide said, using Capitol Hill lingo for the constitutional objection.

Senate leaders have not said whether they will accept the House's proposed fix, and House leaders have not committed to schedule the bill for a floor vote. But if senators sign off on the proposed changes - which one House GOP aide described as "technical, not substantive" - the bill could be on the floor in July. While the four House committees with jurisdiction over sanctions have not committed to whether they will formally review the legislation a course of action, at least some, including the Foreign Affairs Committee, are expected to waive their right to hold hearings to expedite its passage.

House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Edward R. Royce, R-Calif., told reporters this week that he was prepared to move the bill. "One way or the other, we have to do it very quickly," he said Wednesday, according to the Hill.

If the House takes up the measure, it could set up a veto fight with the White House that Congress is likely to win. A veto-proof majority of senators already voted in favor of the measure. But a showdown between Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress over Russia sanctions would be politically problematic for the party.

House Speaker Paul D. Ryan, R-Wis., told reporters Thursday that he personally supports the new sanctions and that Royce is "very eager to move this bill."

"So we want to get this bill cleaned up. We need Foreign Affairs to do their scrub of this legislation, which is what we do every time a bill comes over from the Senate," he said. "But Chairman Royce has indicated he wants to get moving on this quickly, and we want to honor that."

Karoun Demirjian contributed to this report.

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White House will step up lobbying against Iran, Russia sanctions bill now stalled in Congress - Chicago Tribune

Irans atomic energy chief Ali Akbar Salehi, who helped forge the 2015 nuclear agreement, warned the United States on June 23 against upsetting the balance of power in the Middle East by siding with arch-rival Saudi Arabia.

Writing in the Guardian newspaper, Salehi said Tehran views a lavish" deal U.S. President Donald Trump's administration recently announced to sell Saudi Arabia $110 billion in weapons as "provocative."

"This is especially the case if the national defense efforts of Iran...are simultaneously opposed and undermined," he said, alluding to steps the Trump administration has taken to increase U.S. sanctions on Iran for developing ballistic missiles even as it has ramped up arms sales to Riyadh and its allies.

"It would be unrealistic to expect Iran to remain indifferent to the destabilizing impact of such conduct," said Salehi, an MIT graduate who has also served as Iran's foreign minister and was a senior negotiator on the nuclear deal.

Salehi stressed that Washington's strong tilt toward Tehran's rivals in the Middle East not only risks setting off a regional arms race and "further tension and conflict" in the region, but it imperils the "hard-won" nuclear deal, which took two years to negotiate.

If the nuclear deal is to survive, he said the West must change course. "The moment of truth has arrived."

Trump, who visited Saudi Arabia on his first trip as president earlier this month, seems largely unconcerned that his showy support for the kingdom threatens to blow up the nuclear accord or set off a renewed arms race in the Middle East. He has openly shown disdain both for Iran's leaders and the nuclear deal.

Trump and the Saudis frequently blame Iran for wars ranging from Yemen to Syria, as well as for restive minority Shi'ite populations within the borders of the kingdom and other Persian Gulf states ruled by Sunni Muslims.

The Saudis, like Trump, were strongly opposed to the nuclear deal. But while Trump has promised to dismantle the disastrous deal, he has not so far taken any concrete steps to do so.

His administration has indicated it will adhere to the deal, which requires Iran to curb its nuclear activities in exchange for the lifting of international sanctions, as long as Tehran continues to do so.

But Salehi's article in the Guardian suggested that Iran's so far strict honoring of the deal may come into doubt in the future if the United States continues to disregard Irans "genuine security concerns" and "stokes Iranophobia" in the region.

Salehi urged the United States and its Western partners to "save" the nuclear deal with "reciprocal gestures" showing a commitment to engagement with Iran.

Iranian voters recently showed their preference for engagement with the West by re-electing President Hassan Rohani with his pro-Western platform, but engagement is simply not a one-way street and we cannot go it alone," Salehi said.

"Unfortunately, as things stand at the moment in the region, reaching a new state of equilibrium might simply be beyond reach for the foreseeable future, he said.

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Iran's Nuclear Chief Warns US Against Tilting Power Balance In Middle East - RadioFreeEurope/RadioLiberty